In academia, there exist today many important studies dealing with the issue of sources of the Qur’an’s polemics towards people of different faiths (esp. Jews and Christians). They posit the question, with what type of Christians or Jews or other non-Muslims was the Prophet’s ummah in contact? (Cf. studies since Geiger 1833 until today; more recently, for example, Van Riel 2019; Slade 2014; Gilliot 2011; etc.). However, in recent years another perspective has emerged that has shifted its focus from the external circumstances to the internal use of the “Qur’an’s creative rhetoric” (Reynolds 2014; cf. also Hoffmann 2020; Hawting 1999; Griffith 2011; etc.). It focuses on the usage of various rhetorical devices in Qur’an’s polemics with different groups of people. This contribution follows the latter perspective in order to ask the question of what rhetorical tools the qur’anic texts utilize in polemics with different faiths for creating the opposition between the “Other” and the “Self.” This opposition establishes a specific symbolic role for the “Other,” helping the “Self” to differentiate itself from the “Other.” The follow-up questions then ask about the purpose of creating this kind of contrasting imagery. Why are these particular rhetorical devices deployed for creating the image of the “Other”? Furthermore, are there also instances that problematize these oppositional stances? These questions will be answered by looking deeply at the two surahs revealed among the latest to Prophet Muḥammad, Q al-Ma’idah 5 and Q al-Tawbah 9. These surahs bear much polemical material towards non-Muslims, in which can be discerned the creative usage of rhetoric (cf. Q 5:17f, 59ff, 72f, 116; 9:30f, 109, etc.). On the other hand, some verses also problematize the clear distinction between the “Self” and the “Other” (cf. esp. 5:43ff; 9:1ff). This contribution will thus show how the Qur’an’s powerful rhetoric (hyperbole, irony, metaphor, vocatives, etc.) is used in order to create the opposing images between “Self” and “Other” as well as the purpose of this contrasting imagery in its immediate literary context.

This presentation examines the significance of two opposing approaches to qur'anic hermeneutics among Usuli Shi'i jurists in the Iranian constitutional movement of 1906-1907. The first approach was practiced by the anti-legislation jurists, namely those that opposed the constitution, the parliament, and the enactment of positive law besides Shari‘a. In this paper, I argue that the Qur'an is central to the arguments of the anti-legislation jurists in two respects: firstly, in all three anti-legislation treatises that I examine in this paper (by Fadl Allah Nuri [executed 1909], Abul-Hasan Najafi Marandi [d. 1930], and MuHammad Husayn Tabrizi, [d. unknown]), the structure of argumentation develops through the discussion of several verses of the Qur'an; and secondly their interpretive method with regard to these verses is literalist (the precise meaning of which I explain in the paper). More specifically, for the anti-legislation jurists, verses such as ‘nor any seed in the dark recesses of the earth, nor anything moist or dry, but that it is in a clear Book’ (Q al-An‘am 6:59) indicate that the Sharī‘a is complete, and therefore there is no space for modern legislation. Moreover, these jurists argue that whoever rejects the literal meaning of these verses, as they understand them, and argue that the scriptural sources do not offer adequate rulings have arrogated to themselves the Divine right to legislation (tashri‘) and thus they can be deemed infidels. In the second half of the paper, I juxtapose this approach with the significantly different interpretations of the disputed verses proposed by the pro-legislation jurists. By focusing on the legal category of ‘emerging issues’ (al-mawdu‘at al-mustahdatha), the pro-legislation jurists, such as Muhammad Husayn Nayini (d. 1936), argued that there are necessarily issues that are not mentioned in the scriptural sources, and thus the disputed verses cannot be interpreted literally. Indeed, Nayini accuses the jurists with who follow the literal meaning of these verses of implicitly following the hermeneutic methods of the Akhbaris (a literalist school of Twelver Shi‘ism that had become sidelined by this point) despite the fact that the anti-legislation jurists self-identified as Usulis, the now mainstream interpretative tradition. As part of this argument, Nāyīnī focused on the concept of ghayr mansus (the area for which there is no scriptural text), using this concept to create a theoretical basis for positive law besides the rulings of the Sharī‘a. By contrasting these two approaches, this paper seeks to show the enduring significance in the modern period of various pre-modern approaches to qur'anic hermeneutics, and the way this field shaped the central discussion among the ulama regarding the meaning and legitimacy of the goals of the Iranian constitutional movement.

While Muhammad’s prophethood as presented in the Qur’an has been thoroughly investigated historically and theologically, it remains to be studied from a linguistic-rhetorical perspective. This study is a result of research conducted in the frame of the Ambiguity and Precision in the Qur’an project in which I work as a Ph.D. fellow. The project is held at the University of Copenhagen under the supervision of Professor Thomas Hoffmann. The study aims to explore the role of qur’anic language in shaping Muhammad’s identity as a prophet through analysis of a number of early Meccan passages, i.e., Q al-'Alaq 96:1–5; Q al-Muddaththir 74:1–7; Q al-Muzzammil 73:1–11; Q al-Duha 93:6–11; Q al-Sharh 94; Q al-Kawthar 108. The analysis focuses on ambiguity, which I define as the existence of at least two probable interpretations of a stretch of speech, as it appears in a number of polysemous words such as rabb, muzzammil, muddaththir, yatim, and dall. Other relevant techniques receive attention: second-person pronouns, the vocative, the active participle, and rhetorical questions. The American theorist Kenneth Burke (d. 1993) offers exciting methodological possibilities that could be exploited in studying the rhetorical aspects of ambiguity. According to Burke, the need for rhetoric arises when experiential ambiguity (that stems from life experience) interacts with symbolic ambiguity (that stems from language). In this interaction, ambiguity is effectively utilized as a rhetorical strategy. I combine Burke’s ideas with theoretical concepts belonging to identity studies such as self-identity, identity change, and role identity. The analysis reveals that ambiguity functions as a strategic management tool for overcoming identity uncertainty. By identification, the central concept in Burke’s rhetoric, ambiguity creates a bridging identity: a certain type of identity that links past biographical experience (e.g., orphanage which is mentioned in Q. 93:6) with a current role (as a prophet). In qur’anic expression, ambiguity is deployed to transfer the prophet from the stage of ya-ayyuha’l-muddaththir (“O thou shrouded in thy mantle”) in Q. 74:1 to the stage of ya-ayyuha’n-nabiyy” (“O Prophet”) in Q. 33:1. This finding suggests that qur’anic scholarship needs to reconsider qur’anic ambiguity not as a translation problem or a source of puzzlement but as a rhetorical device employed to achieve purposes. Besides, the insights gained from this study may be of assistance to reassess some of the various frameworks of qur’anic chronology that has been developed in Western qur’anic scholarship so that the chronological order of qur’anic chapters and passages could be constructed based not only on circumstances of Muhammad’s religious career but also on the rhetorical development of his prophetic identity.

Praise infiltrates the Book of Isaiah more than any other prophetic book. Joseph Blenkinsopp makes this abundantly clear in his catalogue of at least 25 hymns or passages with hymnic influence from across Isaiah. A few scholars go further and recognize how worship is significant in the structure of the Book of Isaiah, specifically noting how Isaiah 27 and 66 both end with worship on Zion (Beuken; cf. Gärtner; Mitchell). Going even further, this paper argues that worship is more prominent in the structure of Isaiah than previously recognized. The argument will begin by observing how the topic of worship emerges at the conclusion of all of the major sections of Isaiah: Isaiah 1–12 (ch. 12), 13–27 (27:13), 28–35 (35:10; cf. 51:11), 40–55 (55:12–13), and 56–66 (66:18–23). Next, a linguistic comparison of these texts with one another and within the book as a whole will enable us to assess what, if anything, the recurrence of this theme at the conclusion of these sections reveals about editorial and redactional activity in the book. It will be apparent that worship is an impulse that animated the shaping of the sections of Isaiah and therefore the entire book (cf. 1:11–14; 66:23). The denouement of worship, then, is a significant feature in Isaiah’s structure.

Feminist biblical scholars have contributed significantly to research regarding the roles women played in food processing in ancient Israel, especially the processing of harvested grain (wheat and barley) to make bread and related products (beer). Less is known about consumption, especially the degree to which women were able to join together with their households and larger community on feasting occasions

This textual study concerns itself with problems in the interpretation of Qoh 5:3 and 5:6. These two verses are examples of the tendency in the book of Qoheleth to subtly polemicise against other contemporaneous theological ideas which do not map onto Qoheleth’s larger intellectual system. Another example along the same lines is Qoh 6:10 in relation to Job. In the examples at hand in chapter five, we find engagement with two central motifs found in Jewish Apocalyptic literature (cf. e.g. Dan 7:1, 1 Hen 13:8) whose intellectual origins lie approximately in the same intellectual milieu as critical wisdom literature. Both of these are concerned with revelation of knowledge, specifically the conveying of it through dreams and angels. In the case of the latter it must be noted that my reading assumes a repointing of the Masoretic text as lĕpānay hammalāk instead of lipnê hammalāk. Through this study I seek to contribute to scholarship on the book of Ecclesiastes in the context of its Geistesgeschichte. Specifically, I will suggest that while Qoheleth’s overall rhetorical tendency is not polemical, the study of these verses enables one to understand the book’s intellectual tendencies in its historical-intellectual milieu. This study will then consider the thrust of Qoheleth’s argument at large, in which such tendencies recur more implicitly. Specifically, I will suggest a relationship between Qoheleth and early Jewish Apocalypticism the nature of which I will seek to explicate through the exegetical consideration of the aforementioned verses and literary and larger thematic analyses. This paper is a small part of my doctoral project, which is entitled “On Time and Theology. The Thought of Qoheleth and the Emerging Jewish Apocalypticism in the Hellenistic Period.”

In Mark 11: 12-14, 20 Jesus curses a fruitless fig tree. It is one of the rare cases where Jesus uses his power to destroy nature. Jesus speaks to the tree and it withers because it is fruitless contrary to its semblance of having fruits. Jesus’ action has been adequately discussed from both ethical and theological perspectives. However, my aim in this paper is to interpret the text in the context of the Yoruba belief about authority and nature. There are certain Yoruba mythological and sagacious sayings which correlate with Jesus’ action in the text. Intercultural hermeneutics method will guide my interpretation of the text. The method is advocated by John Mbiti, Justin Ukpong and other interpreters of African descent. I will point out the implications of Jesus’ action for environmental degradation in Africa in my conclusion.

According to the medieval collection of midrashim known as the Yalkut ha-Makiri, Jesse’s wife Nitzeves learned from a maidservant that Jesse had offered to emancipate her in exchange for sexual favors. She and the maidservant then agreed to secretly exchange places at the time of her pre-arranged liaison with Jesse. When his wife became pregnant after he unwittingly spent the night with her, Jesse erroneously supposed that David, the child conceived from their union, was illegitimate. A very similar tradition is also attested in two witnesses to the Greek text of the Palaea historica, a Byzantine retelling of biblical history composed sometime after the 9th century. The story is cited here to explain the meaning of David’s confession that "I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me“ (Ps. 50[51]:5). A more expanded version of the same tradition also appears in the commentary of Acacius the Sabaite on the Great Canon of Andrew of Crete (12th century). Acacius claims to have learned the story from an aging monk whom Acacius had met while visiting Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity. In this paper, I will explore the various witnesses to the tradition and offer some thoughts about its origins and avenues of transmission.

Both al-Tabari (d. 310/923) and al-Maturidi (d. 333/944) titled their qur’anic commentaries as works of ta’wil rather than tafsir. This paper examines these two terms and seeks to trace their development and usage. I argue that these terms were used in the earliest Sunni exegetical works (100-300 AH) to represent different levels of epistemological certainty. Tafsir was used to denote meanings that were considered integral to the text itself and to be accepted at a level of (near) certainty (qat‘). Ta’wil was used to denote the best possible interpretations of the text, however numerous and mutually exclusive. These multiple meanings were then sorted and ranked for plausibility according to hermeneutical methods developed by different interpretive communities. It was only later that ta’wil came to represent allegorical interpretation, whether by Ismailis, Sufis, or the mutakallimun. For the early Sunni exegetes, the ahl al-ta’wil, as al-Maturidi refers to them repeatedly in his exegesis, were the scholars, often jurists (fuqaha), who strove to discover layers of meanings in the text. Even exegetical comments from early generations such as the Followers (tabi‘un) were treated as “ta’wil” unless there existed other corroborating evidence to raise their exegesis to the level of certainty of meaning reserved for “tafsir.” To establish these conclusions, I will explore how early exegetical statements attributed to Mujahid ibn Jabr (d. 104/722), Muqatil ibn Sulayman (d. 150/767), and Sufyan al-Thawri (d. 161/778) were treated in 3rd century commentaries. Third century exegetes such as al-San‘ani (d. 211/827), al-Tahawi (d. 321/933) as well as al-Tabari and al-Maturidi needed to navigate the conflicting exegetical statements made by Companions and Followers. In order to establish their own interpretive meanings, especially in issues of fiqh and kalam, third century exegetes posited their interpretations, or ta’wilat, as even more authoritative than the earliest transmitted exegetical statements, or tafsir, thereby blurring, if not reversing, the distinction between these two terms.

In Genesis 1:29–30, God establishes a way of life surrounding how to eat. What does this mean via a nutritional-intertextual approach to the canonical texts? Through a scientific-nutritional analysis of Genesis 1:29–30, we conclude that the plant diet as part of God’s creation order was sufficient and good. However, we also question why God allows animal meals in Genesis 9:3, which presumes an animal’s death (cf. Genesis 3:21). Some would say that God permits animal foods because the first plant meal was deficient. Since the plant diet that God gave in Genesis 1:29–30 was nutritionally sufficient, it is difficult to say that animal diets are allowed in Genesis 9:3 to fill the nutritional deficiency. We argue that the emergence of the death of animals and animal diets is related to the idea that sins before God must be dealt with through death. To be more specific, we argue that God’s permission to eat animals in Genesis 9:3 is a temporary measure to solve the problem of human’s sin and its consequences. The problem of sin and its result could never be ultimately solved by repeated deaths of animals since they were just mediums and shadows to look toward/prepare for the Messiah. As the ultimate Passover lamb and sin-offering, Jesus Christ died “once for all” (Heb 10:10), fulfilled these shadows, and revealed the meaning of his death through the botanical sacrament. Therefore, we now infer that, after Jesus died on the cross and was resurrected, not only the animal sacrifices but also the animal meals will no longer have reason to be done in our lives. Of course, eating animal products itself is not a sin because God permits it (Gen 9:3), and none of us can condemn and judge each other (Rom 14:1–14). Our attempt is to show a meaningful way of life based on our scientific-intertextual reading of Genesis 1:29–30 with love and compassion in this era of crisis. We also believe the results of this study have a realistic meaning when considering the situation of animal diets as the cause of epidemic diseases such as Covid-19, the reality of factory farming, and the climate crisis as a by-product of environmental pollution via raising too many animals, etc.

Christians have long confessed Jesus as having the threefold office of prophet, priest, and king. Two of the scriptural texts commonly cited in Christian interpretation as reflecting prophetic christology are the quotations of Deuteronomy 18:15, 18–19 in Acts 3:22 and 7:37. While some other New Testament texts, including in Luke-Acts (4:24; 13:33), identify Jesus as a prophet, does Deuteronomy 18:15, 18–19 function in Acts itself as a predictive prophecy fulfilled in Jesus as a singular anticipated prophet like Moses? Through considering the internal logic of the two speeches, their rhetorical and narrative contexts, and the reception of Deuteronomy 18:15, 18–19 and the Acts speeches in Jewish and patristic literature, I propose that Acts’s speeches cite Deuteronomy 18 as speaking of prophets in general rather than identifying Jesus as a singular prophet like Moses. By doing so, these two speeches affirm the prophetic anticipation of Jesus as the messiah, confront their narrative audiences for disregarding Moses and all the prophets who spoke of Jesus, and warn that they are cut off from the people of God unless they heed the call to repentance. They do so, moreover, in accordance with a Lukan theme of scriptural fulfilment in Jesus.

It is widely accepted that the Greek Pentateuch served in some capacity as a lexicon for later Septuagint translators. Yet some scholars demand a higher burden of proof than what is typically provided for such claims. In this paper I evaluate this topic in light of a discussion between Emanuel Tov and James Barr concerning whether the translator of Greek Isaiah appropriated the unique lexical pairing of גֵּר and γιώρας from the Greek Pentateuch directly into his work. Rejecting Tov’s appeal to Greek Isaiah’s unequivocal use of this pairing, Barr remarks: “No features of context or content have been adduced that might explain why the Isaiah translator, if he was consulting the LXX, avoided the massive majority of Pentateuchal renderings and just here adopted this highly unusual rendering, which is a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew term.” In spite of Barr’s criticism of Tov, I propose that the translator of Greek Isaiah did in fact utilize the Greek Pentateuch as a lexical storehouse for this pairing. Even though I agree with Barr regarding Tov’s insufficient appeal to lexical statistics, I address Barr’s criteria of appropriation by highlighting four contextual and thematic features in Isaiah 14:1-4 in support of a direct appeal to the Greek Pentateuch. I conclude that the Greek Pentateuch’s lexical material included in Greek Isaiah 14:1-4 is in fact grounded upon other thematic and intertextual connections between these two literary corpora. Thus, perception into the lexical appropriation from the Greek Pentateuch into Greek Isaiah is reserved solely for those with ears to hear. As a result, this argument refines discussion of lexical appropriation from the Greek Pentateuch by demonstrating how interaction with contextual and thematic features of later Septuagint books contributes to our understanding of the Greek Pentateuch as lexicon.

This paper provides a brief history of the Göttingen Septuagint Editions up to 2019, and focuses on the new Psalter Project “Die Editio critica maior des griechischen Psalters” (Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen), which started at the beginning of 2020. The paper illustrates some of the challenges of the planned editorial work. First, an overview is provided of the editorial history, from the earliest printed versions to the Sixtine edition, followed by all other modern editions. Second, attention is drawn to one of the most urgent research tasks, namely the reconstruction of the fragmentary hexaplaric tradition.

The struggles and frustrations of thousands of Latinas and Latinos who cross their national borders to find in the United States better living conditions, peace, security and equality are augmented by a racist, violent, and oppressive environment that serves as a reminder of the rejection and inhospitality of supremacist groups. Inequality is exposed every day to the world community with deplorable acts of violence, injustice and mistreatment. Latino/Latina adversities and frustrations are shared by other groups and communities around the world. A sharp contrast with the rest of Latino/a and Hispanic countries is the island of Puerto Rico and its inescapable peculiarity: in addition to its roots with “Latinidad” that goes back for more than 400 years, the Island has been controlled by The United States of America for the past 122 years, with an ongoing process that tends to erase the native identity and idiosyncrasy. In this sense, what about those who are somehow marginalized and oppressed in their own native soil? How disdain and violence can diminish individual and collective dignity, as well as the very essence of a society? This paper will attempt to contrast Puerto Rico and the story of Luke 19:1-10 in terms of the concept of internal colony.

While much has been written on the translation technique of the Greek Septuagint, less attention has been given to the translation techniques of its secondary translations. This presentation will focus on that of the Vetus Latina. Research in the last several decades has made it clear that the Vetus Latina is an essential witness for understanding the textual development of biblical books, sometimes witnessing to an otherwise unattested textual form. Descriptive study of the Vetus Latina’s translation technique is necessary to show where the translators either represent or depart from a Greek Vorlage. As with the study of the Septuagint’s relation to its Hebrew source, certain grammatical, syntactical, and lexical features can be chosen as objects of study to reveal the Latin translator’s techniques. Taking the book of Esther as an example, this paper illustrates how the Vetus Latina’s translation technique can be studied, an assessment of Vetus Latina Esther’s stylistic characteristics, as well as its place on the spectrum of literal to interpretive rendering. Special attention will be given to the issue of revision towards Greek in the Vetus Latina textual transmission and the use of other secondary translations (in particular, Old Georgian and Armenian) as independent, corroborating data.

The anthropomorphic and anthropopathic depictions of God in Hosea 11:1–9 provide a fruitful opportunity to highlight the benefits of incorporating insights from the history of interpretation within biblical studies, especially when the ultimate goal is to uncover the text’s theological implications. In the midst of what appear to be diametrically opposed characterizations of God, who is depicted as both the loving parent of a toddler and the angry punisher of a nation, Yahweh makes the declaration, “for I am God and not a man.” Thus, Hosea 11 presents a significant interpretive opportunity for better understanding how humanlike portraits of God can be read alongside the emphatic statement that God is not a human. For early Christian commentators, to take biblical anthropomorphisms and anthropopathisms as literal depictions of God violated the principle that any claims made of God must be both ἄξιος τοῦ θεοῦ (“worthy of God”) and θεοπρεπής (“befitting God”), which ultimately derives from their belief that Scripture is theologically coherent. At the same time, these interpreters were committed to the didactic import of the sacred text at every point, often reckoning with texts both in terms of the "plain" sense of the words and also at the level of theological claims arising from the texts. These commitments led early Christian commentators to find constructive meaning in an individual biblical text's flow of thought that could be connected to theological conclusions that make sense with the rest of Scripture. This paper will first identify and explore the theological tensions that surface from a careful reading of Hosea 11 in its literary context. It will then highlight the value of patristic exegesis for constructively resolving these tensions. Within Hosea 11, God is seen to punish Israel for failing to "return," but the text leaves several questions unanswered: What precisely aroused God's anger in the first place? What causes God to turn toward mercy? Was God's earlier anger justified? How are we to interpret the physical description of God's heart recoiling? Does God have any purpose in these dealings with Israel? By considering interpretive insights provided by patristic commentators such as Jerome, Theodoret, and Cyril of Alexandria, we can gain insights into what questions the text invites us to ask, and how to answer these questions with respect to both the text's discourse and its place within Scripture as a whole. For readers today who are interested in what conceptual coherence might be found in texts such as Hosea 11, both in its literary-historical setting and in terms of its theological implications, the interpretive strategies formulated by the church fathers have much to contribute.

The reception history of the Book of Revelation has been widely discussed, with scholars such as J. Kovacs & C. Rowland, I. Boxall, T. Beal, and B. D. Chilton, tracing the manifold ways in which the biblical text has been understood and used in theological writing, music, drama, literature, visual art, etc. But whereas these, and other, studies have provided both broad-scope overviews, and detailed analyses of individual artifacts of reception, the question of how John’s Apocalypse forms a rich and recurrent source of inspiration for Heavy Metal music has, with few exceptions (see below), not been adequately addressed. This is unfortunate, considering the significant impact of the biblical text on this particular musical genre, and its sizeable audience. From Black Sabbath’s “Electric Funeral” (1970), through Iron Maiden’s “Number of the Beast” (1982), to Avenged Sevenfold’s “Beast and the Harlot” (2005), John’s dark and frightening account has lent itself to the musical and lyrical aesthetics of Heavy Metal. Indeed, there is arguably a deep connection between the ancient biblical text and this particular post-modern form of art. Both the Apocalypse and Heavy Metal use vivid and terrifying symbols to shake the respective audiences into waking up to the true reality of things. Moreover, they share many characteristics in ways they do so, employing imagery of death, horror, destruction, and violence. Accordingly, building on previous studies of R. Till, and T. Malkinson, my paper addresses the hitherto largely neglected reception history of the Apocalypse in Heavy Metal, with special attention to its reuse in so-called thrash metal; an extreme subgenre, characterized by its overall musical/lyrical aggression and intensity, and not seldom disdain of Christianity. Triggered by the interpenetration between two seemingly incompatible discourses – on the one hand, the ancient biblical tradition, on the other, the secular practice of heavy metal music – I examine the literary reuse of John’s Apocalypse in Metallica’s “The Four Horsemen,” Megadeth’s “Blessed be the Dead,” and Testament “Seven Seals.” Taking my theoretical/methodological point of departure in G. Genette’s notion of transtextuality, I identify and describe: (a) the biblical material brought into play by the pertinent lyrics; (b) the different literary forms it takes as it is brought over; and (c) the shifting functions it plays in the new lyrical contexts. Through analysis of these aspects, the paper not only contributes to the ongoing work of mapping the reception history of the Bible in general, but also sheds new light on the rarely acknowledged issue of how words, images, and ideas derived from John’s Apocalypse take form in the historical, cultural, and hermeneutical, context of Heavy Metal.

This paper reflects on the strides taken over the course of the past decade in scholarship around the topic of food and feasting in the HB/OT in relation to the Ancient Near East and possible future directions for exploration. With regard to scholarly accomplishments, it highlights important studies of key iconographic and literary depictions of feasting in especially Levantine and Mesopotamian sources in connection to biblical portrayals. Turning to open vistas for study, it considers both Egyptian comparisons and links to Greek conceptions as possible avenues for future insights.

Qira’at extend beyond recital renditions or exegetical traditions to theological conceptions of the Qur’an, its legal authority, and textual authenticity. Evolving around the same text, Islamic disciplines outlined an interdisciplinary framework to synthesize Qur’anic Studies. While theologians were concerned with the textual inimitability as a manifestation of God’s speech, legal theoreticians (usulis) scrutinized its jurisprudential authority within the dichotomy of primary and secondary sources of law. In investigating the authenticity of oral and written transmission, Qur’an scholars (qurra’) sought to standardize the canonized readings. Despite the Qur’an becoming a closed text after the ‘Uthmanic systemized print, the canonization of its qira’at continued over four centuries without agreed-upon criteria. This lengthy filtering process eventually established a tripartite taxonomy of canonical readings peculiar to that of the usulis who tried to limit the scope of canonical readings to maintain consistent legal interpretations. Furthermore, usulis incorporated, later, a theological-legal distinction between Qur’an and qira’at in response to the disputed authenticity of the text. Early Islamic legal and exegetical literature (8th and 9th centuries), concomitant to the establishment of the doctrinal legal schools (madhahib), relied on a wider array of qira’at than the later seven to ten dominant readings. The multi-layered meaning phenomena of qira’at influenced the deriving of legal rulings by confirming an agreed-upon opinion, outweighing one opinion over another, reconciling between conflicting opinions, extending the application of certain rulings, or clarifying an ambiguous meaning intended by the lawgiver. Moreover, qira’at triggered theoretical debates pertaining to distinguishing the preserved holy book from its variant readings, reducing the legal authority of non-canonical readings by equating them to verdicts of the Prophet’s companions (qawl al-sahabi) as secondary sources of law, and synthesizing textual additions (ziyadah ‘ala al-nass) of non-canonical readings as signals for abrogated verses (naskh). These debates paralleled evolving discourses of the epistemic principle of “true narrative” and the hadith concept of tawatur, denoting boundaries of legal certainty. There is sparse academic literature analyzing the impact of qira’at on the law. While qira’at’s canonization and history are fairly studied in academia, “the idea that specific types of readings were generated through early legal discourses has not been fully probed” (Shah, 2016, p. 203). In tracing these interdisciplinary interactions through the prism of Qur’an’s manuscript tradition, I seek to discuss how early usulis (8th – 9th centuries) defined Qur’an and characterized sources of law prior to qira’at’s prolonged canonization and taxonomy.

The history of emotions is a much researched topic of the past 10-15 years. What remains much less studied, however, is the role of emotions in the writing of history. In ancient historiography, emotional states and reactions are commonly narrated with explanatory force for the deployment of events. Affects being a main driver of human actions, we could probably say that no history can be written without assumptions about emotional states. This applies not only to individual protagonists, but also to the general mood of an era. Modern historians, too, make assumptions and convey images of such moods – examples include Johan Huizinga’s Autumn of the Middle Ages (1919), or recently Christopher Clark’s Sleepwalkers (2012) on the beginnings of World War I. The mood historians deem appropriate for their subject matter will guide their emplotment of historical facts and shape the storyline of the historical account. Of course, historians will seek to ground their assumptions about moods and atmospheres in contemporary sources. Consciously or not, historians of ancient Israel and Judah are often influenced in their attribution of affective qualities to events and eras by emotions conveyed by biblical texts. The proposed paper will reflect on this issue taking as example the Judean history of the Neo-Babylonian period, where the assumption of certain emotions underpins plotlines such as «exile and return». The first part of the paper will contrast two accounts of this historical period, by Julius Wellhausen and Charles C. Torrey, which are set in a very different emotional atmosphere: In Wellhausen’s account, the history of the Neo-Babylonian period is essentially defined by what is lost and absent, characterized by feelings of longing and hope, while in Torrey’s account the Judean exiles are active and driven by entrepreneurial motivations, the prevailing mood being one of optimism. These contrasting historical accounts both have a basis in the diversity of moods depicted in biblical texts. The second part of the paper will therefore deal with biblical texts that convey such diverse moods of exile, paying particular attention to Ps 137. The gloomy atmosphere of this highly emotional psalm has proved especially influential in historical research, up to modern historical studies informed by trauma theory. The paper will discuss the extent to which this reception represents a selective reading and argue that the emotions in the biblical text are themselves a (retro-)projection shaping the memory of past events.

This paper explores the concept of divine presence in and through material objects in late antique Christianity. In asking how late antique Christians conceived of divine presence inhering in material objects, scholars of early Christian art have tended to front two analytical paradigms: vision and belief. For such scholars, divine presence is conceived as an ascription of divine agency or power to an object by late antique viewers on the basis of their belief in that presence. Such an approach, this paper argues, tends to result in a pair of linked dichotomies—presence/absence and belief/disbelief—that discourages further analysis of the ways that divine presence might be theorized as a social practice. The goal of this paper is to offer an alternative way of thinking about divine presence as a species of social practice: that is, as a process rather than a state, something that both objects and people “do” through interaction with one another. Toward this goal, the paper examines two case studies that illustrate divine presence in late antique monastic Christian communities: apsidal niche paintings of Christ in a late antique Egyptian monastery, and portable crosses carried by monks in late antique Syro-Mesopotamia. In both cases, I argue, divine presence in these objects emerges as inextricable from the embodied, relational practices through which monastics interacted with the objects. The fact that such practices—including prostration, kissing, and speaking and listening—were also employed as relational behaviors between and among monastics helps to situation divine presence within the web of monastic social practice more broadly.

The academic study of Ismaili Quranic ta’wil – often translated as “esoteric interpretation”, “allegorical interpretation”, or “spiritual exegesis” – is in its early stages with just one monograph by Hollenberg published on the topic. In that monograph, the author argues that medieval Ismaili ta’wil is meant to induce “new habits of mind” and thereby reinforce sectarian loyalty within the Ismaili movement and articulate veiled polemic against other Shi‘is in light of contemporary socio-political events. Accordingly, Hollenberg interprets the Fatimid Ismaili ta’wil of the Quranic story of Adam as a polemic against the Eastern Ismaili da‘wa that failed to recognize the Fatimid Imam-Caliph; in his reading, the Adam figure alludes to the first Fatimid Caliph al-Mahdi while Iblis refers to the da‘i who had betrayed him. Even though ta’wil in Ismaili thought is self-defined as a teaching that orients and guides the believer to his/her spiritual origin (awwal), Hollenberg’s thesis diverts the focus of Ismaili ta’wil to being primarily about socio-political events. In this study, I offer an alternative perspective to this reading by arguing that the Ismaili exegesis of the Adam story was coined to harmonize the Qur’an with Ismaili theology and soteriology and thereby deepen Ismaili community’s understanding of the Qur’an. My method is to analyze the Ismaili ta’wil of the Adam story as found in four sources: Sara’ir wa-asrar al-nutuqa by Ja‘far b. Mansur al-Yaman (10th CE), Asas al-ta’wil by al-Nu‘man (10th CE), Rawda-yi Taslim by Nasir al-Din Tusi (13th CE), and Zahr al-ma‘ani by Idris Imad al-Din (15th CE). I register core similarities of the Ismaili exegesis as presented over four centuries. I argue that the Ismaili interpretation of the Adam narrative found across these different Ismaili texts is primarily concerned with four theological goals: 1) safeguarding the absolute transcendence of God above all anthropomorphic qualities, such as vocal speech and literal breathing; 2) interpreting the creation of Adam from water and clay as his prophetic initiation as opposed to his physical creation, so as to affirm Adam’s natural birth from human parents; 3) establishing the concrete existence of the Imam and his da‘wa as a metahistorical channel of divine guidance on earth both before Adam and in succession to him; 4) positing Iblis as a renegade human teacher who reappears in every prophetic cycle, including that of Muhammad, to violate the protocol of taqiyya and betray God’s representative. The Ismaili reading of the Adamic creation story is primarily concerned with interpreting Quranic narrative in harmony with Ismaili theology, cosmology, and sacred history. One finds a consistent Ismaili exegesis of the Adam narrative from the 10th century to the 15th century, despite the varying socio-political contexts of these Ismaili thinkers. Therefore, the overall purpose of Ismaili ta’wil cannot be reduced to interpreting or situating socio-political events; it is self-styled as doing the opposite of this and this is confirmed by the content of the literature.

Amos 4:6-11 is drawn from the second of three poetic sermons in chapters 3-6, each beginning with the phrase, “Hear this word…” This oracle recalls a series of seven calamities that God "gave" to Israel. The number seven is probably not coincidental, as two key curse texts from Leviticus 26:24 and Deuteronomy 28:22 each echo seven remarkably similar covenant curses. Uttered in the first person, God announces this string of corrective judgments meant to awaken Israel to the realization that they need to repent. The recurring refrain, “yet you did not return to me” reveals Israel’s persistent refusal of divine correction. A hymn fragment follows the string of curses in 4:12-13, and celebrates the creativity of God. Amos utters a third poetic sermon as a scathing lament (Amos 5:1-17). At the heart of this lament is second hymn fragment (5:8-9). The lament frames the hymn in a way that suggests the lament and hymn might be interpreted together. Amos 5:11-12 also takes up performative curse language echoed in legal curse texts. Israel will never drink wine from the lush vineyards they had planted; never live in the palatial houses of quarried stone. “You will build a house but not live in it. You will plant a vineyard and not enjoy its fruit” (Deuteronomy 28:30). In the theophany of Amos 9:1-4 the Lord promises chilling images of sword and exile reminiscent of Leviticus 26:33. Amos 9:4 ominously concludes, “I will keep my eye on them for evil and not for good” (Amos 9:4, Jeremiah 44:27). A third and final hymn fragment (9:5-6) transitions to more promising language of a surviving remnant. Amos 9 reverses life-negating curse language altogether, replacing it with the blessing of restoration and renewal. Allusions to covenant curses in Amos raise relevant issues for discussion: applying speech act theory to written texts, dating of the Torah’s/Amos’s curse texts, relation of the hymn fragments to the book of Amos, and the social function of curses and blessings.

In the history of the interpretation of Paul’s letter to the Romans, the nature of the audience has been debated concerning whether the primary recipients are Jews or Gentiles. While many contemporary commentators see a primary or full gentile audience (e.g., Das), there are commentators (e.g., Mason) who propose a Jewish audience based on positive comments towards Judaism evidenced in the letter. Still others (e.g., Cranfield) propose a mix within the audience. I would suggest that there is a mix not just of Gentiles and Jews, but of believers and unbelievers, based on the rhetorical situation. An examination of the rhetorical situation, defined by Lloyd Bitzer as “the nature of those contexts in which speakers or writers create rhetorical discourse” ("The Rhetorical Situation," Philosophy and Rhetoric, Supplementary Issue,1992). What I am proposing is that a fourfold model of the audience based on the rhetorical situation can be constructed as follows: (1) The primary audience is composed of gentile believers (in Jesus as the Messiah), who have laid claim to replacement of Jews in the lineage of Abraham by faith, and who have withdrawn from the synagogue community; (2) a secondary audience consists of Jewish believers in Jesus and who are returning (or have returned) to Rome based on Nero’s rescinding of the edict of Claudius; (3) a watchdog audience composed of the broader Jewish community in Rome where unity is required for the protection of the believers in both groups; and (4) a gatekeeper audience who are decision makers. As per Richard Vatz’s examination of Bitzer’s process, an internal analysis of the text is also required to establish the rhetorical situation. As such, a brief examination of Paul introduction in Romans 1:1-17 will provide evidence for this model of the audience.

The so-called Beelzebul Controversy (Mark 3:22-30; Matt 12:22-30; Luke/Q 11:14-23) has been something of a Grand Central Station in the study of the synoptic problem. It is a “go-to” text for Q skeptics and proponents of alternative synoptic solutions, featuring multiple Mark-Q overlaps (Q 11:15, 17b-18, and possibly 11:16 and 11:21-22) in addition to parallels in the double tradition. In the last decade alone, this text was engaged in publications by Eric Eve (2015) and Mark Goodacre (2018), proponents of the Farrer hypothesis (Luke’s use of Matthew and Mark). For a Two-Document hypothesis (2DH) scholar, the text poses broader questions than simply functioning as an important battleground in the synoptic debate. The reconstruction of this Q segment is famously fraught with difficulties, which include separating Q from Mark in the Mark-Q overlaps and accounting for the origin of εἰδὼς in Matt 12:25a and Luke 11:17a. Of particular significance are Q 11:16 and the portion of Q listed by the Critical Edition (2000) as Q 11:[[21-22]]. In the latter, the double brackets tell the story (or, more accurately, pose the question): did Q feature the parable of the strong man? In this paper, I would like to revisit the contributions to the study of the Q Beelzebul Controversy made by Frans Neirynck, in a 1986 article (addressing the issue of εἰδὼς) and a pair of essays (1995 and 2001, addressing the potential Mark-Q overlaps at Mark 3:27 and 8:11). These contributions and Neirynck’s reconstruction of Q have not received sufficient attention in recent scholarship. I will suggest that Neirynck’s observations extend beyond the sphere of a 2DH scholar’s immediate interests (such as Q’s reconstruction) and have direct implications for the synoptic problem.

Scholars have struggled to reconcile the literary landscapes of late antique Egyptian monasticism with archaeological realia. Hagiographies frequently portray monks as living in spaces far removed from civic society, but the material evidence seems to tell a different story. Monasteries were located across highly variable landscapes, which, archaeologists have argued, do not match the isolated topographies described in the textual accounts. Attempting to push back against the “mythology of the desert,” some scholars have understood the archaeological evidence as the “physical reality,” and the literary landscapes as “imaginary.” While this critique has its place and has helpfully highlighted the rhetorical utility of such hagiographies, it nonetheless remains an explanation rooted in a dichotomous view of city and wilderness that presumes that monastic spaces must be physically remote to be removed. Drawing on queer approaches to affect, archaeology, and ecocriticism, I will argue in this paper that the materialities of monasteries, in fact, could produce just this sort of emotional affect among their inhabitants. I examine the archaeological and documentary evidence of two late antique Egyptian women’s monasteries located in urban environments, showing how these spaces, despite their proximity, cultivated feelings of isolation and alienation in female monastics. At sites such as Atripe and Abydos in Egypt, material strategies of mediating access to spaces, bodies, and practices within monasteries served to regulate monastics’ attachments and intimacies in ways that reinforced their sense of separation, guardedness, and withdrawal.

Evil haunts Charles Baudelaire’s Fleurs du mal (1957; 1861). Indeed, the collection’s title suggests that evil sublates even beauty. The collection attends to the titular provocation by devoting itself to a sweeping study of evil that blames, in turns, humans, Satan, and God for the existence of evil. Fleurs thus attends to the most persistent theological issue that monotheism provokes: theodicy, or the reconciliation of divine benevolence and manifest evil. Yet this paper demonstrates that although Fleurs attends to theodicy, the text does not ultimately participate in reconciling divine benevolence and manifest evil. Instead, Fleurs demonstrates that evil is primarily derivative of divine malevolence: the text is antitheodic. To this end, Fleurs enters a debate both ancient and contemporaneous. Theologians have engaged in theodicy since the genesis of monotheism itself, both proliferating arguments that “justify the ways of God to men [sic],” and proffering divine malevolence as a resolution of divine omnipotence and manifest evil. Yet scholars have not adequately explored either Fleurs’ position in this debate, or the extent to which Fleurs’ language recalls biblical source material. This paper explores Fleurs’ representations of divine malevolence—or its evidence of antitheodicy—by centering the poem “Abel et Caïn.” The poem appears in the text’s short “Révolte” section, which, in the 1861 edition, links the eponymous section with the final one, “La Mort.” “Abel et Caïn”—indeed “Révolte” taken as a whole—insists that evil issues not from humans or from Satan, but from God. Recalling both the Genesis 4 narrative and the book of Job, Baudelaire’s “Abel et Caïn” culls an antitheodic reading from the Cain and Abel legend.

The scrutiny of the text of CD 4:12-5:19 that deals with the transgressions of the builders of the barrier leads to a better understanding of the text’s recensions and conceptions through its use of scriptures. Scholars such as Davies, Knibb and Kister have outlined the literary growth of the passage as the combination of halachic rulings concerning sexual conduct with the concept of the defilement of the sanctuary. In this paper I will focus on the numerous tropes of biblical separation terminology in lines 5:12-19 to show an additional stimulus for the rhetorical elaboration of the text and its inner arrangement. I will compare this passage with CD 6:14-7:4, directed to the trespassers who led Israel astray; which also utilizes the text of Lev 20:25-26 to frame separation from outsiders as an instruction to who have been brought into the covenant. This discussion, in its turn, has an influence on the identification of the builders of the barrier, as has been discussed by Hultgren in the Damascus Document and in other Qumran texts.

Conspiracy theories have infiltrated ever larger areas of cultural and political life. Conspiracy tends to be substituting or complementing fundamentalist religious values, while also providing content that is successfully used to advance political and ideological agendas. In light of recent violent attacks, emphasis has been put on how information is distributed through conspiratorial cultures in digital spaces. This paper will examine the discourse from the Qanon movement in an attempt to understand better how xenophobic conspiracies and tropes transition from fringe platforms to mainstream platforms, in an attempt to be more established and closer to the mainstream, by representing xenophobic beliefs as a legitimate “alternative view”. Using a mixed methods approach, this paper will seek to provide evidence in an effort to answer the following questions: 1) how does the ideological fringe community use tactics to influence the other, and if so in what manner does this influence represent itself? 2) Does the xenophobic framing of issues and discourse lead to violence?

Frank Wilderson's use of the term "metaphysical holocaust" to describe what happens to Africans in the Middle Passage has increasingly gained significance in black studies as a way of distinguishing between anti-Semitism and anti-Blackness. Black scholars have increasingly taken this "metaphysical holocaust" as coincident with the transformation of African personality into black chattel that Hortense Spillers describes in her foundational essay "Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe." Yet, Spillers makes explicit use of *eucharistic* terms, describing this transformation as *transubstantiation*. While on it's own, this may not be a crucial distinction, this paper situates Spillers' articulation of this black transubstantiation within a larger examination of sacrifice in her work. In so doing, I show how Spillers identification of Christian sacrificial logics in the racial order enable a non-analogical examination of the role of sacrifice in the reproduction of status that race names. This paper thus extends Spillers sacrificial insights to recast the difference between anti-Blackness and anti-Semitism in terms of sexuality, legitimacy, and the reproduction of Christian order.

There is plenty of evidence in early Christian texts suggesting that Christ adherents were laborers. For example, Paul presents himself as “working with his hands” while the writer of Acts narrates Paul and others interacting with people in various occupations. Using evidence from occupational associations, I will examine how the gods populated such working environments. Given the size of the Christ groups, it is unlikely that there were any exclusively “Christian” workplaces. Thus, I will explore strategies that Christ adherents might use to find balance between the diverse cult practices related to their occupation and the singular commitment to Christ that their leaders expected them to uphold.

Ezekiel’s oracles against the nations (chapters 25-32) have a straightforward geographical order in describing Yahweh’s methodical destruction of seven nations. As a Judean, he starts with the nations surrounding Judah, the Transjordanian polities to the east (Amnon, Moab, Edom), Philistia to the west (ch. 25), the territories north of Judah, Tyre and Sidon (chs. 26-28), and the land of Egypt in the south. In a few passages in Ezekiel’s oracles against Egypt, Yahweh seems also to have an orderly plan to destroy Egypt: from Migdol in the far northeastern Delta all the way to Syene (Aswan) in Upper Egypt (30:6; cf. 29:10). In the third oracle against Egypt (ch. 30), Ezekiel gets more specific on the geography of that territory by listing divine actions taking place in seven cities: Memphis (30:13, 16), Zo‘an and Thebes (30:14, 15b), Pelusium (30:15, 16), On and Pi-beseth (30:17), and Tehaphnehes (30:18). For those familiar with the Egyptian terrain, the text clearly shows a lack of geographical logic in the disposition of these toponyms prompting some scholars to disregard their mention as important for the oracle’s message. In this paper, I will argue that the Ezekiel’s erratic presentation of Egyptian geography was deliberative. By doing so, he underscored the chaotic outcome of Yahweh’s actions against Egypt. Just as the reader is spaced out by the destruction taking place in different parts of Egypt, so would be the Egyptians when experiencing Yahweh’s judgments. Furthermore, I will posit that by writing a disoriented presentation of the Egyptian geography in his text, Ezekiel was charging the Egyptian Pharaoh of not maintaining order (Ma’at) within its border, and allowing disorder (Isfet) to run amok.

This paper traces the evolution of the literary trope haqiqa-majaz (literal vs. figurative speech) in the qur’anic commentaries of early, classical Mu‘tazili scholars circa 3rd/9th to 7th/12th century. While majaz has garnered increasing attention in Western scholarship recently, its use and role as a hermeneutical tool in Mu‘tazili works has been largely neglected particularly pre-Zamakhshari (d. 538 AH/1144 AD). Such a gap is striking given prevailing narratives in both Islamic and Western secondary scholarship that the emergence of the haqiqa-majaz dichotomy can be linked to theological concerns of anthropomorphism in emerging Mu‘tazili circles in the second and third centuries. This study will examine the extent to which majaz developed as an exegetical and rhetorical tool in Mu‘tazili commentaries, acquiring a technical meaning distinct from its early usage. A close study of the writings of figures such as al-Jahiz (d. 255 AH/868 AD), Abu Bakr al-Razi al-Jassas (d. 370 AH/981 AD), and Ibn al-Malahimi (d. 536 AH/1141 AD) shall reveal that the use of majaz as denotation of figurative or non-literal language in qur’anic verses occurred far earlier than has been suggested by scholars. Such early understandings and interest in the figurative naturally have implications for the literal as well; the paper is thus also interested in identifying moments in these works where the haqiqa-majaz coupling first begins to emerge. A key interest of this study is to consider parallels between the question of the nature of the Qur’an as a created versus uncreated entity in theological circles on the one hand, and the role of figurative language in God’s Divine Speech on the other. Such connections will invariably take us through critical moments in Islamic history such as the mihna (the Inquisition), underscoring the socio-political and historical-literary approach this project intends to take. Were initial references to haqiqa-majaz the sole purview of Mu‘tazili scholars or were they linguistic transformations to be found in broader works of Qur’anic studies? How did the emergence of this linguistic trope as a hermeneutical tool evolve during the classical period up until al-Zamakhshari in his famous qur’anic exegesis, al-Kashshaf? In answering these questions, this paper aims to shed light on a group whose literary contributions to qur’anic scholarship - quite apart from their theological treatises - are lesser known. It also hopes to contextualize the examination of literary and linguistic perspectives on the qur’anic corpus within the broader historic-political climate wherein these discussions took place.

The study of fronting is no novelty in BH studies and the book of Genesis has been the primary object of such investigation. Unfortunately, outside of the information structure notions of topic and focus, previous treatments have only managed to compile diverse and seemingly unconnected taxonomies of semantic possibilities. In this paper I revisit fronting in Genesis and propose that the communicative principle of Common Ground holds promise for a unified approach. The distinction between categorical (topic-comment) and thetic (unified) statements will be analysed as an extension of the Common Ground model, not as a separate level of analysis, as both depend on the information status of the content of the statement. The former can be seen in the final clause of Gen. 4:2, וְקַ֕יִן הָיָ֖ה עֹבֵ֥ד אֲדָמָֽה׃, where Cain is discourse active and presented as the topic of the clause, and the latter can be seen in Gen. 6:4, הַנְּפִלִ֞ים הָי֣וּ בָאָרֶץ֮ בַּיָּמִ֣ים הָהֵם֒, where the entire clause is irretrievable from the Common Ground at the moment of utterance. These unexpected informational units are entered into the Common Ground by means of accommodation, whereby the hearer posteriorly accepts the presuppositions, the activation (or existence) of referential entities and the asserted content of the statement for the purposes of fluid and cooperative communication. Such is true if a person says to her friend, ‘Your shoe’s untied,’ without any previous discussion of the hearer’s footwear. The shoe’s status as topical is impossible and thus the entire state of affairs is profiled. It will be shown that, apart from more adequately accounting for pre-verbal clausal constituent order in BH narrative with typological evidence, the benefits of such an approach include a more robust methodology for tracing discourse thematic attention and the delineation of text-units.

The relationship between David and Uriah is often underplayed in comparison to the adulterous acts of the Israelite king and Bathsheba. However, close scrutiny of the narrative in 2 Sam 11 reveals a Deuteronomistic critique delivered through a standard rhetorical trope of the DtrH, one that signals the imminent demise of David’s kingdom. The narrative of 2 Sam 11 begins with the indictment that David remains in Jerusalem while the armies of Israel, under the guidance of Joab, are at war. This initial indictment of David is not the only pejorative in 2 Sam 11. Often overlooked is Uriah’s response to David in 2 Sam 11:11, “Shall I then go to my house, to eat and to drink and to lie with my wife?” I contend that the words of Uriah intentionally allude to the Deuteronomic laws governing the exemption clauses for Israelite warfare (Deut 20:1–8). The intertextual allusion between Deut 20:1–8 and 2 Sam 11 placed in the mouth of a foreigner is a standard rhetorical tool of the DtrH to highlight the king’s ignorance of the laws concerning warfare. Subsequent to Deut 20:1–8, the DtrH utilizes the Deuteronomic law governing the future monarch (Deut 17:14–20). The accumulation of horses, wives, and wealth have been linked to the lives of David and, more specifically, Solomon (cf. Deut 17:14–17; 1 Kgs 3–11). Yet, the rhetorical force of Deut 17:18–20 is also engaged in the background of 2 Sam 11. In vv. 18–19, the king is commanded to write a copy of the law approved by the Levitical Priests. The king is expected to read the law “all the days of his life,” which in turn would teach the king to fear the Lord (Deut 17:18–19). The final provision of this Deuteronomistic royal critique is the issue of the king’s heart. The future king is not to lift himself above his brothers (Deut 17:20). When viewed together, Deut 17:14–20 and 20:1–8 form the intertextual link with a key theme of the DtrH: David, like Achan, breaches the covenant whereas Uriah, like Rahab and the Gibeonites, show deep engagement with and reiterate the importance of Deuteronomic Torah. In other words, the DtrH puts the language of the Deuteronomic ideal in the mouth of Uriah much like others outside the covenant: Rahab (Josh 2:8–14) and the Gibeonites (Josh 9:9–15). Thus, this paper, in essence, identifies underlying connections between Deuteronomy’s rhetoric and the David and Bathsheba affair. The text of 2 Sam 11 shows David’s lack of knowledge and respect for the law he is, in the DtrH imagination, to copy and read daily. Furthermore, this paper proposes that the placement of a Deuteronomic ideal in the mouth of a foreigner in order to critique a Judean is a repeated rhetorical trope of the DtrH.

The book of Daniel gives a unique local perspective on the downfall of the Seleucid Empire and of the end its rule over Judea in particular. In Daniel 11:45, the King of the North, recognizably Antiochus IV, dies in the area of Judea after wreaking havoc in the Levant, bringing an end to his kingdom. He is the only king in Daniel 11 whose death is depicted in detail. As a result, this passage has attracted considerable scholarly attention. Since the account of this king’s death does not match what we know about his final days from Classical and Cuneiform sources it is supposed to have been written in wishful expectation to it. This paper will address the question why Daniel 11:45 elaborates in such a way on the “end” of the King of the North and locates it around Judea. I will do so by situating the account of the king’s death in its immediate literary context—Daniel 11:40–45—demonstrating it is a discernable unit that predicts the end of the Seleucid kingdom and history itself. This context calls for a comparison with the only precedent for this kind of dynastic end in the Danielic tradition—the death of Belshazzar. A comparison between the King of the North and Belshazzar reveals a literary pattern in which the wicked king swiftly dies at the scene of his crime. It thus provides us with an explanation for the narration of the death of Antiochus as it appears in Daniel 11:45: it follows the pattern of Belshazzar’s death as punishment for his crime, especially given previous knowledge of his father’s—Nebuchadnezzar—misdeeds. This pattern was available for the scribe who wished to predict the death of the Seleucid king in 11:40–45. Nevertheless, the pattern’s entrenched cultural nature along with the trend to fictionalize this particular king’s demise even after the events leading to his death were known (e.g., 1 Macc 1–16, 2 Macc 9:1–28), raise the possibility that the scribe deliberately chose to conform with a meaningful literary convention over historical accuracy. I will conclude this paper with exploring the implications of this comparative historiographical reading on the historical settings and date of the final redaction of Daniel. These affect our understanding of imperial power shifts in second century BCE Judea and the way dynastic transitions were perceived by contemporary literati.

Book III of the Sibylline Oracles presents a Sibyl integrated into a Jewish axis of history as a kin to Noah, an ancestor to all those living in this post-flood world, a witness to all major Mediterranean events, the inventor of hexameter verse, and a female prophetess sent from Babylon to Greece by God, offering salvation for all that are wise enough to receive it. I have argued in my book, Uncovering Jewish Creativity in Book III of the Sibylline Oracles: Gender, Intertextuality, and Politics, that the initial Jewish authors of Book III were conversant with the Archaic Greek as well as Roman Sibylline traditions but offered an innovative new branch of Sibylline discourse. The Christian appropriation of the Sibyl as a pseudepigraphal voice of prophecy used this Jewish branch of Sibylline discourse as its model, but unlike the interpretatio Judaica which positioned her power as emanating from her role as the prophetess of the One True God, her role was diminished as she was slowly tokenized as a pagan proof text, an outside witness to the coming of Jesus. Her subsequent reputation focused not on her role as a prophetess proclaiming the past, present, and future to all but rather solely as a herald of the Messiah, a particular message which expressed little concern about wider universal history. Nevertheless, she was still seen as a powerful enough persona to show the Emperor Augustus a vision of the Madonna and Child in response to his question if there would be a man more powerful than himself. The Christian appropriation of sibylline discourse presents a range of attempts to negotiate how to best draw power and authority from Jewish, Greek, and Roman traditions in order to substantiate a supersessionist position over those very traditions. This led to the downplaying and ultimately the erasure of the Jewish Sibyl from the tradition because it did not fit the dualist model in which the Sibyls and Hebrew prophets functioned as representative voices from two different communities proclaiming the validity of the Messiah that would unite them both.

Variations in repetition are rarely identified as the most riveting aspects of narration. However, biblical narrators often use this device to shape their characters and stories in ways that add layer and depth. This paper looks at four types of varied or subverted repetitions within the book of Judges. The first is when a character responds with a slight variation to another character’s command, such as when Eglon commands “silence,” and his attendants respond instead by leaving (Jdg 3:19). The second type of change is when the actions of characters deviate from their own words or promises, as seen in Gideon’s revenge, which escalates far beyond his initial threat (Jdg 8). Both of these types of variations reveal significant qualities in the characters (for examples, ineptitude or recklessness). The third variant in expected repetition is when a character repeats the words of another character, albeit with a subtle change or omission. Samson does this in his double request for the Timnite woman (Jdg 14:2-3). A fourth type of change in repetition occurs in the dialogue between two or more characters, often involving changes or omissions of important words or phrases, as with the elders’ repeated request for Jephthah to be their “commander” and then “head” (Jdg 11:6,8). Variations in repetition in these categories tend to reveal character motives. It seems that scholarly interest in varied repetition has waned in recent decades. This paper is a small attempt at reviving that conversation.

The origins of the antichrist myth in its relation to Qumran remains an underexplored topic in the study of early Christianity. With respect to antichrist references in 1 and 2 John, scholars such as Judith Lieu and John Painter have primarily focused on the nature of the tensions in the Johannine community rather than the cluster of meanings signifying the ideological content of such a term. This paper focuses on the use of the term “antichrist” as part of an eschatological slogan in 1 and 2 John that synthesizes the concepts of false prophets and themes of deceit in the last days from Qumran with the specific Christological concerns of the Johannine community, insofar as they can be discerned. As Gregory Jenks has shown, the antichrist references in 1 and 2 John do not fit the explicit idea of an end-time tyrant nor use the combat myth pattern seen in later iterations of the antichrist figure in early Christianity. However, the references in the Johannine letters illustrate an early stage of the myth that has counterparts in Mark 13:22 and 2 Peter 2:1, among other texts referring to messianic pretenders. Calling upon Jewish prophetic traditions from the Hebrew scriptures and Hellenistic period and particularly the theme of deceit as emblematic of enemies of God, 1 and 2 John use the term “antichrists” to identify those within the community who seek to deceive others. This paper examines the combination of sources used at Qumran to conceptualize the eschatological threat of false prophets and argues that the writer(s) of the Johannine letters situate the Christological controversies within the community within such a context, thus reinforcing claims for the authority of prophecy for specific understandings and teachings of Jesus within an eschatological framework. As an early attestation of a developing myth, the term “antichrist” of the Johannine letters illustrates, when read in the context of Qumran texts such as the Damascus Document and the Commentary on Habbakuk and the sources behind them, the ideological weight of epithets and their function in specific ancient communities.

Stemmatology is an important branch of textual criticism, since it allows for the identification of relationships between witnesses for reconstructing the transmission history of texts. Medieval manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, however, have been rarely studied according to stemmatological criteria. It is often assumed that it is impossible to divide Hebrew manuscripts in textual groups or families, because of phenomena of generalized contamination and controlled transmission that characterize the copying process of the Hebrew Bible in the late Middle Ages. Moreover, the largely dominant one-recension theory, according to which all manuscripts would descend from the great oriental Tiberian exemplars, has made stemmatic analysis unnecessary in practice. As a result, few attempts of stemmatic classification have been made, and Hebrew manuscripts are still treated singularly, usually quoted with the numbers given by the great eighteenth-century collations of B. Kennicott and G. B. De Rossi. Computer-assisted stemmatology tools, and, in particular, phylogenetics methods proper of evolutionary biology, can represent a valid resource for philologists dealing with textual history. Indeed, they permit to handle large amounts of variant readings efficiently and to compute genealogical relationships according to principles that closely resemble those of Lachmann's method, the most well-known genealogical method in philology. In this contribution we present an example of application of phylogenetic methods to the medieval tradition of the Hebrew Bible, taking as a case study the book of Qohelet according to the data provided by the above mentioned collations. We will first illustrate how the critical apparatus of the two collations have been digitized and how the variant readings have been encoded in XML-TEI language in order to make them machine-actionable. We will then explain the assumptions standing behind the phylogenetic method chosen for the analysis, namely Maximum Parsimony criterion, and examine the results obtained from its application to the tradition of the book of Qohelet. In conclusion, we will discuss potentialities and limitations of phylogenetic analysis in biblical textual research, trying to evaluate the concrete perspectives it offers for establishing stemmata codicum of the medieval tradition of the Hebrew Bible.

Paul’s Letter to the Philippians: Performance and Analysis

Abstract: The oracles of Balaam reflect the intersection of blessing and cursing. Although Balaam is hired to curse Israel, his actual utterances convey blessing. In this way, his intended performative speech-act is inverted. This study examines the intention and outcome of the Balaam passages in Num 22–24 through the prism of speech-act theory. It proposes that illocutionary intention of cursing Israel through the speech-acts of Balaam formulated by Balak comes into conflict with a divine illocutionary intention to bless. These opposing illocutions play out in the locutionary addresses of Balaam which have the perlocutionary effect of giving blessing rather than cursing. This paper further suggests that Balaam’s own illocutionary purposes are left deliberately ambiguous through the interplay between his employer and the divine. The contrast between the commission to curse and the actualization of blessing also turns upon the use of metaphors of sight in which the blindness of those who seek to curse is played against the clear-sightedness of the divine announcement of blessing. This paper focuses upon the first four oracles in which Balaam’s uttered speech is placed in direct opposition to the intended speech of his employer. It focuses on the parallels established between the intentions of God and the fortunes of Israel. It reveals the biblical text’s understanding of the limits of illocutionary intention of humans seeking to manipulate the spiritual realm when such manipulation is presented as conflicting with divine intention. It also reflects on Balaam’s function as an intermediary in the manner his acceptance of Balak’s framing of his oracular activity as a curse, while seemingly not resisting the divine injunction to bless. As the oracles progress, disjunction fades through the now clear-eyed vision of the once-blind spiritualist. Exploring the Balaam oracles as a struggle between the power of cursing and blessing thus reveals the close link between words of life and death. The framing of the oracles reveals that speech accomplished by death (through animal sacrifices) and intended to bring death through curse, instead is redirected toward the announcement of life.

2 Timothy 3:16 contains three Greek nouns that correspond to three verbs in Flavius Josephus’ Contra Apionem 1.3. The author of 2 Timothy states that “all scripture” is good “for teaching (πρὸς διδασκαλίαν), for rebuking (πρὸς ἐλεγμόν), for correcting (πρὸς ἐπανόρθωσιν), and for training (πρὸς παιδείαν) in righteousness” (3:16). The first three of these prepositioned nouns correspond to three verbs Josephus uses in explaining the impetus for his penning his most overtly apologetic work, the Contra Apionem: “I thought it necessary to write briefly on all these matters, to rebuke (ἐλέγξαι) those who insult us as guilty of malice and deliberate falsehood, to correct (ἐπανορθώσασθαι) the ignorance of others, and to instruct (διδάξαι) all who wish to know the truth on the subject of our antiquity. Αt first glance, the overlap seems incidental: a didactic letter to a young convert and a sprawling multicultural apologetic aimed at widespread anti-Jewish polemic are not the same kind of literature on the face of it. But I suggest that they are. In this paper I show how, when situated in their respective literary and cultural locations, the author of 2 Timothy and Josephus are doing fundamentally the same rhetorical thing in these passages: justifying their own scribal enterprises in an attempt to restructure, codify, and perpetuate their own inherited traditions.

Scholars often explain Haggai’s pro-temple stance in terms of Yehud’s economic, political, or religious systems. However, these approaches to Haggai typify androcentric readings of Haggai, neglecting nature’s central role within the book and the ancient ideological link between temple and nature. Drawing from Norman Habel’s ecological hermeneutic, a nature-sensitive reading of Haggai recovers the Earth as a pro-temple character within Haggai, advocating for the rebuilding of the temple by supplying material for the temple and partnering with God to coerce the Yehudites to build. Earth as a pro-temple character echoes the Ancient Near Eastern ideology that links the life-giving nature of temples and nature’s prosperity. The ideology of temple and creation’s prosperity undergirds Haggai’s argument for rebuilding a temple, an ideology that is missed in androcentric readings of Haggai. This paper’s ecological reading serves as a corrective for androcentric readings and allows for the retrieval of Earth’s voice and role within the book of Haggai.

The combined wording in 1 Tim. 1:18 of στρατεύω + στρατεία (a cognate accusative) can be rendered “fight the fight,” “battle the battle,” or more generally “perform military service” or “serve in a military campaign.” Apparently, no one has surveyed this combination in extra-biblical literature. The combination occurs often throughout Greco-Roman literature to express a patriotic idiom for someone whose good character and reputation is demonstrated by faithfully persevering in some kind of extended battle campaign. This is applied to Timothy to demonstrate his good Christian character and reputation over against the false teachers’ bad character. The idiom also occurs often in a legal context to affirm the character and good reputation qualifying a person to be an officer of the court or endorsing a person’s character before the court in a legal dispute, showing him to be worthy to be considered of an innocent verdict. This occurs often in a context where the accusations are not true. Eight of the seventeen legal uses actually have reference to “witnesses” in the context (either μάρτυς or the verb form or other cognate forms). In 1 Timothy this idiom is used in a legal context (where also the μάρτυς word group is repeatedly used), which is to demonstrate and acquit Timothy’s character and reputation over and against that of the false teachers. The redundant word combination of ἀγωνίζομαι + ἀγών (“struggle the struggle”) in 1 Tim. 6:12 and 2 Tim. 4:7 is recognized by commentators as a development of the phrase in 1 Tim. 1:18. This combination also has not been studied in the Greek world, where it is also a well-worn idiom used in the same way as the στρατεύω + στρατεία expression probably to highlight the difficulty of the fight. This is why the expression ἀγωνίζομαι + ἀγών is used synonymously, even together with the adjective “good,” with that in 1 Tim. 1:18. Some translations even translate the redundant expressions in 1 Tim. 1:18, 1 Tim. 6:12, and 2 Tim. 4:7 as “fight the good fight,” clearly seeing them as synonymous. The above Greco-Roman study of usage endorses such a synonymous understanding.

On several of the surviving murals of the Synagogue at Dura, alongside of stray graffiti scratched into the paint, are twelve brief messages in ink (dipinti) apparently made as sanctioned additions to the paintings. They are all written in Pahlavi script, in Middle Persian or Parthian language, and most of them follow a common formula in which individuals bearing Iranian names and identified as “scribes” record their visit to “examine” or “approve” the paintings. Since their discovery, a number of hypotheses have been advanced to explain these enigmatic texts. This paper marshals evidence from the dipinti themselves, as well as from other information on late antique Judaism, to make the case that these visitors were Iranian Jews representing the institutional authority of their communities across the border in Sasanian Iran.

A common argument in Acts scholarship is that Luke reserves a distinctive role for the twelve apostles, though of course the place of Paul and Barnabas in that group remains debated (cf. Acts 14:4,14). In a related vein, the Lukan emphasis on Peter in the first half of Acts and then Paul in the second is the focus of many parallel studies, and perhaps rightly so. However, what a narrow focus on the apostles generally and these two main human characters can miss is how often the mission is carried forward by minor and even unnamed characters in Acts. They are also heirs of the promise of the Spirit’s decentralizing empowerment at Pentecost, and they contribute in their own ways as the gospel moves from Jerusalem to the end of the earth (Acts 1:8). Studies in characterization typically employ a cumulative approach that follows characters throughout a narrative, but one effect of this has been the further marginalization of many minor characters, who have already lost in the competition for narrative space. This paper seeks to redress that deficiency and analyze minor characters collectively; in other words, together as a major character. In a 2017 JBL article on Lukan characterization Michal Beth Dinkler refers to the “particular habitual behaviors” of characters, stressing that different readers will come to different conclusions on what those behaviors or attributes are; in this paper I will frame the “particular habitual behaviors” of this character group as their positive response to the gospel and participation in its forward movement. In so doing I embrace the contours of New Historicism and New Formalism as articulated by Dinkler in her recent monograph Literary Theory and the New Testament (2019).

In this presentation, I will discuss several layout features for Ha’azinu, the Song of Moses, that many scribes of Masoretic codices from the 10th-12th centuries attempted to emulate. I will show that while there was a definite tendency towards a certain ideal in the physical presentation of Ha’azinu, not all scribes saw the ideal as essential in the production of their codex, or treated all aspects of the ideal equally, making various layout adjustments along the way. Aspects of what I am about to present have been treated by various people, most popularly by Goshen-Gottstein in 1960, and recently by Sarah Lind in 2013. Barthélemy, likewise, in his methodical Studies in the Text of the Old Testament, details a number of common features for Ha’azinu, the problem being that many of the manuscripts Barthélemy examined postdate Maimonides. Barthélemy does include seven manuscripts from the 10-12th centuries, but these are only the proverbial tip of the iceberg for the period in question. No one, to my knowledge, has gone through the Second Firkovitch collection or trawled Friedberg’s digitized collection to see what these manuscripts might contain which relates to Ha’azinu. In what follows, I seek to broaden our understanding of the majority tendencies for some scribal habits of Ha’azinu, by assessing codices that, from a paleographic point of view, appear to predate Maimonides’s Mishneh Torah (c. 1180).

A few years ago, I presented on the manipulation of scent in ancient Israel’s cultic system, concluding that this manipulation was one of the primary indicators for efficacious interaction between the divine and the mortal. In this role, the scents associated with both the burnt sacrifices and incense sacrifices marked the transitional, liminal nature of the cultic experience. Related to, but not a part of the same ritualized sequence of sacrifice, was the scent associated with the anointings of the priest and tabernacle, a scent that negotiated the spaces between cultic events, such as sacrifice. This paper explores further the epistemological function of scent in the cosmological framework of the Israelite cult, namely the manner in which scent, combining with the visual color scheme of entrance ways (and the priestly clothing), acted as a sensory map demarcating the liminal space/time inherent in the Israelite cultic system (scentways). As such it acted as a code by which Israel could navigate successfully and safely their interaction with the divine realm.

The withdrawal of Egyptian power from the southern Levant marks the traditional transition to the Iron I. While many studies have focused on the changes that occurred within this new power vacuum, many administrative structures—and personnel—remained in place. The corpus of Iron Age glyptic in the southern Levant provides a wealth of information from which we can investigate the ways in which glyptic carvers either perpetuated, altered, or outright rejected previous practices, both locally and regionally. Building from previous research, this paper will examine points of continuity and divergence in stamp seal production through a series of case studies that span the beginning of the Iron Age and culminate in the Iron IIB with the rise of epigraphic seals. Proposed explanations will be provided for (dis)continuities in an attempt to situate systems of production and consumption within the larger, ever-changing social landscape.

Readings of Romans by Sylvia Keesmat and Peter Oakes have highlighted aspects of each letter that enable contemporary readers to see how the text might have been understood by early readers. For both Keesmat and Oakes, Romans 12 is a chapter that is significant in its revisioning of social ties for the Roman audience. Yet in both Keesmat’s article and Oakes’s book, the individual interpretations by their first century Roman characters step back to take a broader view of the entire epistle. Only in Oakes’s general “house church” interpretation does Romans 12 receive more detailed interpretation. Broad application of Romans’ parenetic material, rather than particular focus, is a tendency in the field of Romans studies overall: in many other works on Romans, the portions that have borne greater emphasis are the doctrinal and controversial sections between Rom 9–11, and perhaps the sections on Sin from Romans 5–7. Extra attention is given to the parenetic material in chapter 13, insofar as it affects understandings of how to interact with political powers. Yet that material is part of a larger unit from 12:1 to 15:13, and the section about civil authorities is itself governed by overarching ethics of transformation (12:1–2) and emulation of the love of Christ (12:9). An attempt to understand Rom 12:9–21 from the perspective of “people’s history” could begin to imagine how this section would have affected common people who read it and sought to apply it in first-century Rome. By paying further attention to Romans 12:9–21 and considering contextualized readings by individual Roman Christians, there is potential to understand better how Paul’s teachings about Christian love would have been understood by members of an early Christian household. It is for that aim that this paper will 1) argue for an exegetical platform of the pericope (Rom 12: 9–21) from which to proceed, and then 2) offer a contextualized reading. For those of us reading Romans in an individualistic context in which connections are often commodified, and even close bonds are often strained by our mobile and career-focused lives, attempting to read Romans through the eyes of a multigenerational Roman household can be instructive. How would ancient families understand Paul’s explication of Christlike love in the face of typical social expectations? How would Paul’s insightful guidance address in-home tensions created by high mortality rates and frequent remarriages? How might the embedded nature of families in patronage and in Christ assemblies shape reception of Paul’s instructions? How would women and children see their own responsibilities? To explore the implications of Romans’ love ethic, I will imagine the impact of this section of Paul’s parenesis on two free women in one household: an elderly widow and a young wife. These are chosen in part to explore implications that would add to Oakes’s reading of Romans’ larger section by a model craftworker, and also to supplement Keesmat’s insights in her reading of Romans from the perspectives of an enslaved woman and a freedman.

Excavations at Tel Kedesh have revealed a monumental compound at the southern tip of the lower mound, built c. 500 BCE, in the time of Achaemenid Persian rule but under the auspices of the royal house of Tyre. It was both an agricultural depot and a ceremonial facility. A large, colonnaded entry court on the east welcomed visitors from points east and south. Small luxuries – silver bracelets, a green jasper scarab, glass seals – reflect personal status and well-being. When the Ptolemies took over at the end of the fourth century BCE, they substantially modified the building: closing off the east entrance; dismantling the columns; subdividing the entry court. They installed plastered bins to collect and measure dry goods. The ceramics reveal the inhabitants’ curtailed circumstances: of 8346 ceramic fragments, a mere 26 are of foreign origin. There are no fine table wares, no perfume bottles, no imported wine. Under the Ptolemies, Kedesh was reduced from a showplace to a work-a-day establishment, a small cog within the larger Ptolemaic world. The effects of Ptolemaic control were felt throughout the broad region of the Galilee. The adjacent Hula Valley became King’s Land, where tenant farmers worked at small farmsteads such as Tel Anafa. In the Galilee large estates such as Beth Anath were laid out. Active Tyrian engagement receded; a palpable imperial presence replaced the sense of local autonomy. The social effects of this shift took time to play out, but eventually coalesced in the form of various movements whose seeds were planted in the third century BCE.

At first glance, Exod 7:8-13 appears to be an archaic battle account, which narrates how Joshua defeats the Amalekites with the help of the miracle worker Moses. However, upon a closer look the story reveals an entirely different meaning. The paper argues that Exod 17:8-13 should be interpreted as a proto-Chronistic allegory, which outlines the institutional implementation of the ideal of theocracy. Only when the Torah (Moses) is supported by the priesthood (Aaron) and the royal dynasty (Hur) will Israel prevail over its enemies (Joshua vs. the Amalekites).

Several laws in the Deuteronomic core, 12:1–26:16, are concerned with warfare. This article gives a thorough analysis of these laws, first by comparing them to other biblical passages and then to other Ancient Near Eastern regulations. War laws seem to be rather absent from Ancient Near Eastern regulations, although the references to armies and soldiers in them show that armies were very much part of everyday life. These comparisons show that the presentation of the Deuteronomic war laws is highly unusual, especially as present in a set of regulations. The contents of the war laws, on the other hand, do seem to reflect general tendencies in Ancient Near Eastern war practices, contrary to common belief. Hence, in order to explain the presence of the war laws in Deuteronomy and interpret them correctly, the framework of Deuteronomy needs to be taken into account.

Eve is an undeniably pivotal figure in Syriac Christianity, yet she is rarely presented as a single entity. Instead, she is normally paired, presented in comparison with another figure, such as Adam, or perhaps even more often, Mary. Moreover, Eve occupies persistently ambiguous space in Syriac Christian thought. She is treated as both an equal and as a subordinate to Adam, joined with him and distinct from him, condemned for her sin and also redeemed from it. In this paper, I argue that it is this intrinsic relationality and ambiguity that makes Eve, even more so than Adam, paradigmatic of humanity in the Syriac worldview. I will examine Jacob of Sarug’s Hexaemeron and Ephrem’s Hymns on Paradise and Hymns on Nativity to analyze what implications the complexities of Eve’s character in these portrayals have for Syriac views of salvation and theological anthropology.

How many of the thousands of seals from the Southern Levant can be related to gendered persons and gender performances? What if stamp seals from the southern Levant belonged mostly persons with a female gender? For how many stamp seals could this be proven? These thoughts demonstrate the elusiveness of gender regarding our knowledge about glyptics from the southern Levant. I propose that stamp seals are a unique field for gender issues due to the intersection of material culture and human bodies. Their high numbers, wide dissemination, and common accessibility to persons of various social status and origin renders seals ideal for such an approach. Gender is performed by engendered bodies, whose bodies in turn are shaped by such performances. This is not only the case for the body, but also for material culture related to the body. Therefore, both aspects can be present in the archaeological record. Consequently, some excavations in the Southern Levant increasingly employ bioarcheological methods systematically, enabling more extensive assumptions about societies but also sex and gender constructions of individuals. Based on the reports from the Ashkelon 1985–2006 excavations, I will undertake a case study of stamp seals from Ashkelon’s cemeteries from the Middle to Late Bronze Age. Interesting finds include the naked goddess on a seal which was found with a female sexed skeleton as well as a scarab probably belonging to the Omega group.

This paper proposes Jesus’ sign of Jonah (Matt 12:38-42; Luke 11:29-32) can be profitably interpreted as a call for anti-prejudice. I will draw heavily upon the interpretation of the book of Jonah as a satire criticizing those who thought God’s mercy and compassion belonged solely to the Israelites, and to no other nation. The pericope within the Gospels of Matthew and Luke warrant this extended connection to the book of Jonah for two reasons. First, they evoke the entirety of the story of Jonah (which I will show). Second, they include the non-Israelite Queen of the South, who does not appear in the book of Jonah. By including her, I argue the Gospels are emphasizing the non-Israelite role of the Ninevites in the story of Jonah. In the book of Jonah, the foreigners (sailors and Ninevites) were the means whereby the author(s) demonstrated the universalism of God’s mercy and compassion. The literary figure of Jonah, on the other hand, whom the Gospels of Matthew and Luke link to their Christian audience, was the means whereby the author(s) of Jonah demonstrated the fallacy of prejudice against non-Israelites. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke portray Jesus as making the same point through this pericope. I will further suggest this anti-prejudice interpretation has at least two echoes elsewhere in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke: the Canaanite woman (Matt 15:21-28) and the Parable of the Lost Sheep (Luke 15:1-7). Together, these stories suggest at least some early Christian efforts at social justice through anti-prejudice.

In a recent article, Claire Clivaz surveys the rise of VREs (Virtual Research Environments) that allow for scientific hypothesis-driven, iterative, and collaborative research in the Humanities. In this presentation, we propose a new kind of VRE, the Linked Open Data Living Informational Book or LODLIB, essentially a scientific hypothesis-driven iterative digital codex. LODLIBs follow the structure of scientific articles (introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion), leverage international Linked Open Data standards (unique and interconnected DOIs), rely on non-commercial Open Science repositories, include internal data dictionaries and lexicographical resources, embed datasets and code within the digital book, invite global open peer-review and collaboration, and allow for cycles of continuous improvement characteristic of software and systems development. Essentially, the LODLIB reimagines the codex as human- and machine-readable software, bringing together research and publishing, the Sciences and the Humanities. The LODLIB format inverts the power- and economic relationships between academic authors and publishers, opens up academic discourse up to the global public, allows for rich analytics about readership and citations, and has the potential to make monographs and compilations go viral in online environments. The conclusion will relate the story of the presenter’s prototyping of the LODLIB genre in to propose and realize a new, scientific solution to Q and the Synoptic Problem.

The Book of Jeremiah is laden with threats of and responses to war and disaster. As the literal (physical) war unfolds, so does a psychological (metaphysical) one between fact and falsehood, truth and lies. On one side is the prophet Jeremiah who warns Judah of the coming “sword, famine, and pestilence.” On the other is a group of prophets who pronounce “peace, peace” (Jer 6:14, 8:11). Each faction has its own “facts,” which are both manufactured and consumed by their own constituencies. Both parties proclaim the other “liar” and “deceiver.” People take sides, and the political and social divisions within the nation widen, the government stalemates, and those most affected are ultimately the people of the land. Thousands of years later, we find ourselves in a similar reality. Disaster has struck. Millions are left dead, and thousands have been robbed of their sense of security. Like the ancient Judahites, our realities have been disrupted, and we search in this liminal reality between “the before times” and “the after times” for a truth to steady us. In this paper, I will begin by unpacking these meaningful intertextual similarities between the periods of disaster in Judah in the 580s and the current pandemic in America. Thereafter, I will draw upon trauma theory, social science, and psychological studies in order to make three claims. One, disaster or threat of disaster can not only induce trauma for individuals but also create a “truth vacuum” in society, much like the ones in ancient Judah and contemporary America. Two, these vacuums prompt competing powers, including religious powers, to lay claim to “the facts” regarding the disaster, and this battle between “true and false prophets” causes confusion, fear, and unrest. Three, such environments, i.e. those rife with disinformation and chaos, have the potential to compound the psychological harm of recent trauma victims if they trigger additional existential questions regarding one’s reality or meaning. Finally, I will fold all of these elements together in order to suggest that Americans (or other disaster/trauma victims) might be able to reread Jeremiah with a deeper sense of empathy for the “psychologically dislocated” exiles of the 580s and to learn how to lament from them in this time of liminality as we await a post-Covid world.

Early Christianity through its literary remains purports to have appealed especially to slaves. Such texts, for one, depict the early church to have attracted slaves through status dissolution (e.g. Gal. 3:28/1 Cor. 12:13/Col. 3:11). For this to have worked, however, slaves must have lacked any degree of social autonomy, but as we will see, this was not always the case. Such texts also depict the church as inclusive of enslaved members (e.g. Eph. 6:5-8; Col. 3:22-25; 1 Tim. 6:1-2). However, in large part, slaves in antiquity lacked control of their own bodies and were thus often unable to meet Christianity’s radical sexual standards. Such texts even depict the church as preferable to indigenous ‘pagan’ religion (e.g. Acts 17:22-34; 1 Cor. 12:2; etc.). However, in a set of inscriptions from 2nd century (CE) Greece (IG II[2] 1365-6), we meet Xanthos, an ancient slave who could have realistically joined the church. However, as the inscriptions show, Xanthos was not a Christian. The example of IG II[2] 1365-6 generates a constellation of related questions: Were slaves in antiquity drawn to Christianity? Could slaves even be so drawn? If so, could they have maintained membership in the early church, given the radical sexual ethics of the early Christian movement? In this paper, I contend that the early church was generally not congenial to (the majority of) ancient slaves. Toward this end, I examine two inscriptions from southern Greece (IG II[2] 1365-6), noting in brief what they reveal about the lived experience of ancient slaves. I, then, examine several Christian texts (1 Cor. 7:21-23; Gal. 3:28/1 Cor. 12:13/Col. 3:11) which portray the early church as attractive to slaves. I, then, return to Xanthos, comparing the preferability of local Christ-associations with indigenous ‘pagan’ cults (in this case, the Laurian cult of Mēn Tyrannos). I conclude the paper by suggesting a more nuanced picture of enslaved religious preference in Mediterranean antiquity.

This paper examines the imagery of wilderness as alterity and the liminal spaces where humans negotiate the relationship with nature in First Isaiah and the corpus of Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions through an ecocritical lense. While punishment is largely a divine prerogative in Isaiah, a subversive concept of ecological catastrophe on its own terms challenges the predominant perspectives in the text. The ecocritical reading brings to the fore the discursive impetus in Isaiah that reintegrates humans as a species within a larger biotic system where beings are not ranked by relative value. The disproportionate and dangerous excesses of nature are cast as weather phenomena, insects swarming, plagues, and the landscape attacking and changing from the "domestic picturesque" to the "scenic sublime" and outright "wilderness" along the continuum of ecological space developed by Peter Barry. Whereas Isaiah sees cultured space receding in the face of a nature that is not necessarily intrinsically divine, the Neo-Assyrian imperial project mounts a discourse that seeks to neutralize and domesticate the threatening wild. The propagandistic descriptions of how king and army navigate and appropriate challenging spaces employ what Joseph Meeker has called the comedic mode of ecology, and we can trace the competing strategies of othering certain spaces while absorbing them into the sphere where the empire claims suzerainty.

In Homo Necans, Burkert enrolls the women of Lemnos among his case studies for festivals of dissolution and renewal, New Year’s festivals in which a tripart rhythm of anticipatory renunciation, a savage act, and pleasurable gratification reflect the transition into civic life of the age-old experience of the hunter. Wilamowitz had seen the festival as a cultural memory of 7th century BC colonial encounters (1931: 231), Bachofen as a recollection of primordial matriarchy (1861). Burkert grounded the violence of the women in the conflation of hunting, homicide and sacrifice that tied a local Greek festival into larger human cultural types (1983: 190-196). His project was implicitly comparative, explicitly structural, and overtly engaged with evolutionary models. He acknowledged that the rapid development of arguments in the social sciences could render it obsolete even by 1983 (1983: xiii). The post-structuralist movement commenced in the late 1960s; the Boasnian critique of evolutionary anthropology was already underway in the first half of the 20th century. Shepard argued as early as 1973 that early man, rather than a ‘killer ape’, emerges as a ‘tender carnivore’, and that the act of hunting is approached with empathy and amicable reciprocity. More recent publications in ecology and anthropology support this hypothesis: the equation of hunting, murder, and ritual sacrifice holds up neither in anthropological nor ecological studies of early man. The symbolic logic of ritual practices, indeed, is often focused on the restoration of the earth’s resources, a pattern which encourages an ecological perspective on ritual bloodletting. This paper revisits Burkert’s Lemnian Women through these updated critical lenses, using two case studies from the South Pacific. The water politics of East Timor offer comparanda for ancestors in the landscape who enable cooperation and mediation of past violence with present renewal, resonant with the invocations of Sintians and Kabeiroi in Lemnian tradition (Palmer 2015). The Subak systems of Bali enable a temple-centered response to competition for critical water resources, integrating the goddess Dewi Danu into collaborative counsels (Lansing 2019). These recommend a model for the Lemnian rites that foregrounds the message of ecological renewal in the form of the island’s fires - telluric in reputation, domestic, industrial and mobile in the rites. These examples suggest the resilience of Burkert’s inspiration to engage with the human sciences. His frequent expressions of caution about his hypotheses signal his readers that definitive answers to the nature of man were not his goal; the interdisciplinary project, rather, allows the study of the past to harvest fresh insights precisely as the human sciences themselves evolve.

The work of Sidney White Crawford has indelibly influenced the field of Early Judaism and the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls. In her new book, she takes up the “traditional” view in identifying the authors of the Scrolls and the inhabitants of the site of Khirbet Qumran as Essenes (the “Qumran-Essene hypothesis”). She does this, however, with much nuance, taking into account statistical analyses for the dating of caves alongside a renewed examination of the archaeological features of the site and caves and reconsideration of the literary sources describing the Essenes. Along the way, she raises many questions which continue to puzzle scholars, namely the relationship between the site of Khirbet Qumran and the caves, and also of the individual caves to one another, concluding that both the caves and the site “were used by one and the same sectarian Jewish community” (p. 310). While White Crawford spends a great deal of time looking at the “sectarian” texts as a defining feature of the Essene community, my paper extends this examination to the biblical materials, using the Qumran Daniel manuscripts as a case study for examining this theory of the interconnectedness of the caves and the site. This work, preserved in eight manuscripts discovered in three different caves, has often been argued to have greatly impacted the ideology of the “sectarian” community, and thus offers a good locus for recalibrating the discussion. This paper seeks to answer two important questions. First, how do the different Qumran manuscripts of Daniel relate to one another? Do these reflect a single tradition or could they have originated in different communities and served different purposes? Second, how do the Qumran manuscripts of Daniel relate to the broader Qumran (especially sectarian) literature? Here I combine an analysis of the paleographical dates of the manuscripts with study of their physical/material and linguistic features. Particularly intriguing in this regard are certain linguistic features, which have been identified as characteristic of “Qumran Aramaic” (and different from all other forms of Aramaic), and which are also found in at least one of the Daniel manuscripts. All of this offers both support as well as some challenges for White Crawford’s theory of the connectivity of the caves and the site as well as a possible connection with a particular scribal “school” or group (perhaps to be located at the site).

Paul opens Romans by staking his emotional wellbeing on the success of his gospel about Christ. Far from being a reason for shame, his proclamation of a crucified lord and messiah stands as the apostle’s highest honor. Not only has the Christ-event reframed the apostle’s thinking, it has also realigned his emotions, recalibrating his experience of shame. Hockey has proposed, writing on emotions in 1 Peter, that “the absence of shame sits in a larger matrix of value” in that believers find new “alignment with God’s values and norms.” The present paper argues that Paul depicts a similar realignment of values at two key moments in his epistolary writings: in his disavowal of shame for the gospel at Rom 1:16, and in his disavowal of the shame of imprisonment at Phil 1:20. In both epistolary moments it is the prospect of positive evaluation before the divine court of approval that counteracts the shamefulness associated with either situation. In both Romans and Philippians, Paul’s engagement with the Scriptural tradition of the Isaianic servant furnishes him with the emotional discourse of shame being overturned and replaced with honor. Whereas Jesus is primarily the one who participates in this prerogative of the Isaianic servant’s reversal, Paul views his own ministry as sharing in this servant-ministry, thereby allowing him to confidently expect a similar reversal of shame. This apostolic participation in the honorific reversal promised to Isaiah’s servant comes to the fore in Paul’s letters, where Paul reframes his pending Roman trial as an opportunity for glorification rather than as a cause for shame. In so doing, the apostle echoes language from Isa 50:7, where the servant undergoes a shameful discipline at the hands of YHWH, yet holds fast to a confidence in ultimate vindication and a reversal of honorific fortunes from the God whom he faithfully serves. Paul picks up this language when he writes to the Philippian believers, “I know…that I will in no way be put to shame” (Phil 1:20), as he does also when writing to the Roman believers asserting that “I am not ashamed of the gospel” (Rom 1:16). This paper argues that Paul’s association with Isaiah’s servant furnishes the apostle with a pattern of shame overturned that enables him to envision a glorious ministry among his gentile audience rather than the shameful associations which would have attached to his imprisonment. To support this claim, I will interact with biblical scholarship on the shame of the innocent sufferer in the Hebrew Scriptures (Klopfenstein, Janowski), connecting this to the burgeoning scholarship on the emotion of shame in the New Testament (Vorster, Elliott, Hockey, Lau) as well as in the ancient world (Kaster, Konstan, Barton). I will then bring this Scriptural depiction of shame into conversation with those working on Paul’s intertextual use of Isaiah (Wilk, Wagner, Gignilliat, McAuley), showing that it is the apostle’s Isaianic frame of reference which controls his construal of shame and its reversal in these two letters.

This study draws on insights from new form criticism and genre analysis to track the way rhetorical strategies are used for ethical purposes in the Haggai-Malachi corpus of the Twelve. This will show that the contribution of prophetic books to moral formation extends beyond the direct appeals of the imperative to more indirect and subtle strategies for moral formation.

The paper explores Adonijah’s coup d’état in light of two ancient Near Eastern mythological texts: The Ugaritic Kirta Epic (KTU 1.16) and the Sumerian Epic “Ninurta and the Stones” (Lugale-e). The 13th century BCE Kirta Epic provides a literary topos on the weak, sick, and old king whose rule is challenged by his young son on account of the former’s physical decline. Tablet C, describes Kirta’s weakness, as he seems close to death. El sends a winged being, Šaʿtiqatu, to heal him. Her name means ‘She who causes to pass on’. She drives away the sickness by restoring his appetite for food, and beautiful Ḥurraya prepares him a fattened sheep for meal that restores his strength. However, the King Kirta finds out that his oldest son Yaṣṣubu attempted to usurp his power. In a long internal dialogue, Yaṣṣubu first ruminates how to justify his rebellion then repeats his monologue verbatim, citing Kirta’s failure as a military leader against raiders, his inability to judge the cause of the widow, the orphan, and of the oppressed people. Kirta failed in his royal duty to maintain order. King Kirta abhors the idea of having his power usurped, and curses his rebellious son Yaṣṣubu: “May Ḥôrānu break your head, Aṯtartu ‘name’ of Baʿlu your skull. You will surely fall” (KTU 1.16 vi.54-58). The rebellion against the king especially when the latter was ill was seen as a sacrilege that provokes a curse. It is a dynastic provision aimed in discouraging coup d’état and rebellion of the sons against the reigning king. The second text, “Ninurta and the Stones” is a Sumerian epic of 728 lines, attested in bilingual and Akkadian texts in over 200 tablets dating from the Old Babylonian down to the Hellenistic times. Adonijah’s choice of place for the sacrifices and a banquet “at the Stone of the Snake/Dragon” (ʾeben hazzōḥelet) by the side of the ‘Fuller’s Source” (ʿên rōgēl), might have a) military b) mythological, and b) economic significance. W. Heimpel classifies the epic Lugal-e under the ‘Dragon slayer motif’ (RlA 8: 562 fig 9.A). These three aspects are explored in light of the heroic epic of Ninurta who served as the model for the figure of Nimrod in Gen 10:8, the rebel king par excellence. The rabbinic tradition explains the name Nimrod as a 1c.pl. G-stem from √mrd meaning “we shall rebel.” Since these connections rely on the intermediary of Aramaic from the Targums and involve interpretative techniques known as “Babylonian hermeneutics,” at the root of Midrashic exegesis, the allusions to Adonijah and Ninurta/Nimrod as the rebels were most probably elaborated by Deuteronomistic scribes in the Babylonian exile. While Adonijah might have identified himself with the positive aspects of the Ninurta/Nimrod tradition like “great hunter”, victorious hero (qurrādu) and warrior, as well as famous chariot hunts of Assyrian kings, the Deuteronomistic redactors identified him with insurgence, rebellion, and revolt.

Scholarly discussions surrounding the biblical practice of tearing clothes have focused on what the action was meant to convey to the reader or to bystanders (e.g., intense grief/mourning), but little has been discovered about the possible benefit of the practice for the actor. Why did people express grief in this way? What factors may have given rise to this practice? And does this action do anything to benefit the actor? Modern scientific studies on memory may shed light on these questions. It has been demonstrated conclusively that memories—especially those that are particularly emotional or traumatic—can be triggered by certain context-dependent cues such as odors, words, images, objects, and sounds. In this paper, I apply psychologist Dorthe Berntsen’s findings regarding involuntary autobiographical memories to biblical stories in which a character tears his or her clothing in response to some traumatic event. Specifically, Berntsen has demonstrated that most involuntary autobiographical memories are activated by cues from the everyday environment of the individual (clothing being one such example). She has also determined that personal events with a substantial impact on one’s emotional life—such as the death of a close person—may increase one’s sensitivity to these memory cues. Based on these psychological findings, it is my contention that the ancient practice of tearing clothing supplied for the actor at least an unintentional benefit of suppressing a traumatic memory by destroying a likely and potent memory cue: the clothing he or she was wearing at the moment of the traumatic memory.

In the content- and context-related approach, one of the criteria used to evaluate the translation technique of Septuagint (LXX) translators consists in analysing how Hebrew hapax legomena have been rendered into Greek. On this topic, several studies have been conducted revealing a more accurate characterisation of the LXX translators’ translation technique and often modifying and nuancing the portraits of the Greek translators. However, none of these studies focused on the Greek rendering of the Hebrew hapax legomena in the LXX of the book of Ruth. Therefore, this paper will, at first, identify and isolate the Hebrew hapax legomena in the book of Ruth. Afterwards, they will be presented in their narrative context, since this might play a decisive role in the way the LXX translator handles them. Subsequently, their enigmatic Hebrew meanings and their Greek rendering will be examined and evaluated. The aim of this paper is twofold: on the one hand, to offer a more nuanced characterisation of the translation technique of the Greek translator of the LXX-Ruth, and, on the other, to gain a clearer understanding of the nuances, innovations, and/or specificities of the LXX text.

Visiting the sick is one of the works of mercy mentioned in Matthew 25:36, alongside with other exemples, e.g. giving to eat and to drink. Most of these specific works of mercy appear in the Hebrew Bible, e.g. Isaiah 58:7. However, this is not the case for visiting the sick, an idea attested only in the Greek text of Sirach 7:35 but not in the corresponding text in Ms A. This raises the question of whether the idea of visiting the sick occurs elsewhere, namely in Jewish Hellenistic literature or in texts of non Jewish origin, e.g. Greek literature. The aim of this paper is to give an answer to this question.

Loss follows the Sibyl wherever she goes. Despite the fact that sibylline oracles have maintained a constant presence in the imaginations of scholars from at least the fourth century BCE onward, the sibyl carries with her a precarious legacy. Throughout her many appearances as a character in Graeco-Roman, Jewish, and Christian narrative, the sibyl is often unable to reliably transmit her divine speech to others. All along the way the sibyl and her oracles run into trouble. Her prophecies are burned. Her oracles are poorly recorded. Her speech is forgotten. She is unable to write for herself She has her contributions hidden. People lose track of her manuscripts. and sometimes the Sibyl participates in the destruction of her own writings. This idea of sibylline loss carries through a wide variety sources from the first century BCE until at least the 6th century CE. This study argues that the persistent story of loss is a productive fiction for sibylline oracles, that drives the composition of the sibyls verses and ultimately the assembly of the anthologies we know as the Sibylline Oracles. In conversation with the category of "Fiction" as theorized by Bruno Latour this paper makes the case that one of the primary ways in which the Sibyl’s oracles are realized is through the stories about them. It then lays out that two crucial aspects of these stories are that the Sibyl's speech is both extremely valuable and just out of reach. The study then asserts that the fictional realization of lost and hidden books of extreme value leads various figures throughout antiquity and beyond to materialize oracles, or part thereof, to fill the gap created by the fiction. This leads to the production and discovery of scattered sibylline verses, individual sibylline books, the first and second late antique anthologies of oracles, and ultimately the modern book circulated under the title Sibylline Oracles. At each step these materializations of the sibyl's oracles are both dispatched by the fiction and participate in its realization by "discovering" sibylline verses once thought to be lost. The end result is that the Sibylline Oracles have (at least) two ontologies, one as fiction, and one as material object.

Recent studies by scholars such as Ross Kraemer, Seth Schwartz, and Karen Stern have built a conception of late antique Jewish diaspora life that was highly diverse and deeply rooted in local Greco-Roman material culture. However, we are left knowing little about the religious lives of diaspora Jews. For example, what texts were they familiar with, and in which languages? What prayers might they have said? What stories would they have told? Material finds such as amulets can begin to answer these questions, and further research into their evidence is warranted. Amulets provide numerous interpretive challenges, but close attention to their features offers a fuller picture of what Jewish religious life may have looked like in antiquity. To begin engaging in a conversation about the evidence from amulets, I have selected three amulets from Roy Kotansky’s Greek Magical Amulets that provide insight into the realms of liturgical practice, biblical stories, and textual transmission. These three amulets will operate as case studies to explore how further analysis of amulets can illuminate the textual, liturgical, and narrative traditions that characterize local Jewish diaspora practice. These amulets from the Kotansky collection draw on traditional stories, texts, motifs, and prayers from Jewish scripture, but evidence traditions quite different from one another. The first, P. Coloniensia XXII/1, no. 2, was found in Wales and dates to the late 1st or early 2nd century. This amulet is replete with Hebrew prayers and scriptural quotations, some transliterated and some translated into Greek, and provides evidence for liturgical languages as well as common phrases used in worship. The second amulet, P. Coloniensia XXII/1, no. 32, was found in Sicily and dated to the late 2nd or early 3rd century. This amulet describes itself as the amulet Moses used for protection at Sinai, repeatedly emphasizing its connection to Moses and its protective power. To assure this protective agency, the amulet articulates that it should be carried in purity and handed down over generations. Further, this amulet uses a quotation from an unknown Greek version of Deuteronomy, revealing diversity of biblical texts in the world of amulet scribes. The third, P. Coloniensia XXII/1 no. 33, was found in Sicily and dates to the 3rd or 4th century. Its text draws from angel names and pleas for the protection of Judah, who bears the holy law, from Artemis. These three amulets begin to illuminate the lives of the Jews who wore them and the circulation of Jewish ideas in antiquity. They show phrases and stories that would have been meaningful to those who carried them and demonstrate the localized nature of Jewish life and practice. The evidence for circulation of Hebrew prayers, Greek texts, and Moses-stories illustrates the need to further consider the close relationship between the texts of amulets and the religious lives of the Jews who wore them.

The paper will examine all references to drying vegetation in the Hebrew Bible located through searches on verbs of drying (‘bl, ybsh, hrb, nbl, ‘ml, nsht, mll, shdp), with particular attention to the latter prophets. Prophetic references to drying vegetation focus on human emotional responsiveness to plant desiccation (e.g., mourning and shame in Jer 14:1-7 and Joel 1:5-14) that may be understood through research on biophilia, or human emotional engagements with nature. Biblical writers also use drying vegetation as a metaphor for human mortality (e.g., Isa 1:30; 28:1-6; 40:6-8, 22-24) and emotional exhaustion (Isa 37:27; Jer 15:9). The paper will describe the literal and metaphorical uses of drying vegetation in light of human biophilic connections with nature, with particular focus on the prophets. From the evidence, it appears that the earth does not mourn (e.g., in Isa 24:4, 7; Hos 4:1-3, etc.), but the mourning meaning of ‘bl may have developed from the biophilic relationships that motivated the use of drying vegetation as a source domain in metaphors for human emotion. Writers describe desiccated landscapes as ashamed compared to flourishing green landscapes, which may be described as joyful or prideful.

During the first years of his reign (37-4 BCE), Herod's power in Idumea, the place of origin of his family, was threatened by a certain aristocrat named Costobar, who wanted to restore the ancient Idumean religion and detach Idumea from the kingdom of Judea. Indeed, several decades earlier, in about 111 B.C.E., Idumea had been conquered by the Hasmonean ruler John Hyrcanus, and its inhabitants were compelled to convert to Judaism. The activity of Costobar proved most dangerous to Herod, for it could have led to the dismantling of his kingdom. This paper proposes that Herod’s architectural activity in Idumea was pursued in reaction to the separatist aspirations of Costobar, and was part of a more general policy aiming at completing the Judaization of the Idumeans. In this respect, the memorials of Hebron (Haram al Khalil), including the supposed tombs of the Israelite patriarchs and matriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Leah, and Rebekah), and that of Mamre (Haram Ramet al-Khalil), dedicated to Abraham, are of great importance. Although Josephus does not ascribe the construction of these two open-air precincts to Herod, there is compelling archaeological evidence that these are genuine Herodian buildings, such as the fact that they share striking common features with the Herodian precinct of the Jerusalem temple. Herod’s decision to monumentalize these two Idumean Abrahamic memorials suggests that he sought to emphasize the patriarchal traditions common to both Idumeans and Jews and thus, their supposed common ancestry. A further fact supporting the proposition that Herod strove to anchor the Jewish character of Idumea is that in contradistinction to his action in the pagan areas of his kingdom, Herod did not reconstruct the destroyed Hellenistic cities of Idumea (Marisa and Adora).

This proposed paper for the Bible and the Civil Rights Movement focuses on Martin Luther King, Jr. and his use of the Apostle Paul in his sermons and speeches. This paper will demonstrate that King uses Paul to critique segregation, its underlying notion of black inferiority, and to declare that condoning segregationist policies conforms to the ways of the world, not to the ways of God. This paper will also argue that Paul’s “body” imagery enables King to highlight the importance and value of black bodies and thereby to focus upon significant aspects of a Pauline body hermeneutic. Furthermore, along with understanding “that the gospel of Christianity is one that seeks social change religiously and morally,” King also understands that people are coworkers with God and partner with God to bring about the manifestation of these changes on earth. Quoting Pauline language of being coworkers with God, King argues that justice and liberation are never only a human enterprise nor solely a divine endeavor. This paper will argue that King believes that the Divine and human work in concert to bring about change and that this need for divine and human collaboration becomes extremely clear in King’s employment of Paul’s letters.

Both formative Christianity and formative Judaism show some concern for marital status among community leaders. Perhaps most robustly, the Pauline strand of formative Christianity witnesses to marital status as an important status and leadership marker. In the Pastoral Epistles, a certain marital status is a qualification marker for leadership, whereas texts such as the Acts of Paul and Thecla witness to marital status as a qualification for baptism and close association with the apostle (e.g. 1 Timothy 3:2, 5:9-11 and Acts Paul 25, 40 c.f. 1 Cor 7). The Synoptic Tradition hints at such concerns both in the teachings of Jesus and in the example of the Twelve (e.g. Mk 10:28-31//Mt 19:27-30//Lk 18:28-30). The Didache provides another data point, as leaders could be expected to embody the teachings from the Two Ways section most robustly (Did 1:4, 2:2 cf. Did 11:8, 15:1). Marital status also served as a qualification and/or status marker in various Jewish contexts across the first few centuries CE (e.g. m. Sanh. 2:1 c.f. b. Sanh. 2a, Contempl., Prob. 77, CIJ I 166, and CIJ I 333). In both Christian and Jewish contexts, at times one is to be married, at other times to be a virgin or celibate. Sometimes it matters who one marries, particularly whether or not a potential spouse has been married before. Sometimes the discussion concerns leaders, but at other times expectations are for the general population. When the general population is in view, it is reasonable to assume leaders would be expected not only to hold the same standard, but to be more rigorous and exacting in their maintenance of the standard. The particular nuances of marital status among these groups are best understood within the broad ancient Mediterranean context of associations. This paper contextualizes these Jewish and Christian gestures at the value and virtue of a specific marital status within the broad world of the ancient Mediterranean, with particular attention to the wealth of data provided by inscriptions. A survey of inscriptional data from associations during the 2nd and 1st c. BCE and the first few centuries CE provides a basis for understanding Christian and Jewish sources. As public-facing and enduring features of ancient life, inscriptions participate in a particular form of rhetoric. First, the paper explores how ancient associations presented their leaders in terms of marital status, with particular concern for how the public would view such a presentation. Then, the paper turns to 1st and 2nd c. CE Christian and Jewish sources to describe and analyze the ways these sources are both conjunctive and distinctive in their own concerns around marital status, with a particular focus on the marital status of leaders. In this way, the paper explores how marital state as a marker of status and qualification began to take on particularly religious and moral dimensions in Christian and Jewish contexts during this period.

The book of Joel attests the collective trauma experienced by Earth community in post-exilic Yehud. Fundamental assumptions about the goodness of God, divine care for Earth, and Yhwh’s protection and blessing of the covenant people have been repeatedly challenged and are eroding. The human community itself is divided between those who are suffering traumatic setbacks, and those who have been more or less perpetrators of trauma against other humans and Earth. The locust attack is the final blow to an already traumatized Earth who is suffering under this fragmented human community. Joel offers Earth community a movement toward recovery through commanding God’s people to tell and retell Earth community’s experience, and by calling Earth community to lament through ritual mourning. The community responds to both of Joel’s pleas. Humans mourn with and for a groaning Earth, and engage in repeated attempts to make sense of Earth community’s trauma through integrating their experiences into variations of the day of Yhwh tradition. Indeed, the final text of Joel is essentially an account of the resilience of a traumatized intergenerational community as they strive to reintegrate their experiences into their collective narratives, sometimes in highly symbolic ways. Yet as Earth community is moving toward recovery, Joel also reveals how current and past national wounds resurface. Consequently, the narrative resorts to traditional prophetic announcements of divine judgment against enemies as an assurance of continued divine presence and protection for Yhwh’s people and Land. As a result, Joel’s closing chapter does not bode well for the broader Earth community, and later readers are compelled to retell Earth’s story by moving beyond the book’s ending in search of Earth friendly alternatives. This paper will reconstruct the setting in Yehud by a comparative methodology, including the use of an agrarian approach supplemented with archeological data. It will employ ecological hermeneutics and trauma theory to gain an appreciation for and understanding of the Earth community dynamics reflected in the text.

Biblical Wisdom literature creates a map of the social landscape. It traces paths of wisdom and folly; righteousness and wickedness; well-lit paths leading straight home, and crooked paths that lead to the dwellings of dangerous companions. These are conventionally recognized as metaphors, by means of which abstract concepts like virtue or wickedness are mapped onto a material “source” domain in service of the moral or cognitive formation of the student. Wisdom literature itself does not lay claim to the project of moral formation, however. Instead, it addresses itself to the bodies and behaviors of its students. If we impose an anachronistic dichotomization of the human self onto the imagination of these texts, we obscure some of the major claims developed in Proverbs 1-9 and other Wisdom texts: that the qualities of these paths are physically marked, and that our embodied stances and our movements through the physical-relational landscape lead us to good ends, or to bad ones. Far from processes of reflection or cognition; biblical wisdom instruction seeks to direct the eyes, the ears, the hands, the feet, and the mouths of its students. This hypothesis generates a methodological challenge: How might a cognitive metaphor theorist engage with a non-binary theory of self? On one hand, cognitive linguistics takes for granted the embodied formation of thought and the deep physical and experiential substrates of the conceptual landscape. On the other hand, the boundaries between metaphorical and non-metaphorical references are still assigned based on the ontological categories of the theorist. Thus, even cognitive-linguistically oriented readers identify instructions about the body and movement as metaphorical, where the text may not entirely intend them as such. I propose that engaging with a wider theoretical construction of embodiment on the foundations of Mauss, Merleau-Ponty, et al, helps identify and redescribe the attention to body and habitus within wisdom literature, and this in turn allows us to articulate different boundaries and contours of metaphor within these texts. Rather than seeing the “paths of wisdom” as a metaphorical source representing entirely cognitive moral decision-making, we should more properly recognize the instructions on wise walking functions as a kind of metaphorical synecdoche, establishing an experientially-rooted framework which both includes the physical instructions of Wisdom literature, and which encompasses forms of training extending beyond individual body parts to include the integrated self. This suggests a broader methodological imperative for theorists of metaphor: we must remain attentive to the possibility of ontological disjunction between different readers (or writers and readers) of a given text. Boundaries between concrete reference and metaphor (whether conceptual or literary metaphor) are sometimes subjective. A close reading of metaphorical references within a given text, if it aspires to make claims about an historical interpretation, must therefore include a self-aware account of the reader’s own ontological presuppositions about the nature of the self, and the boundaries between the physical/material world and body, and the cognitive/abstract domain of the mind.

Over the course of the third century BCE, the Ptolemaic Empire developed new economic strategies that were unevenly implemented throughout their own territory and their possessions. In the administrative district of Syria and Phoenicia, which included Judah, local scribes encountered new concepts and were tasked with establishing new practices that were characterized by speculation, comprehensive calculation, and optimal value creation through incremental improvement. These new economic policies required local scribes to communicate and enforce them, along with the speculative conceptual framework that undergirded them. Jews living in the southern Levant were not as culturally hellenized as inhabitants of Alexandria, Maresha, or the Phoenician coastland, but nevertheless, their social and economic relations were clearly shaped by their participation in the empire’s novel economic and bureaucratic institutions and ideology. While the material culture of Judah seems to have changed little in the transition from Persian to Ptolemaic eras, an explosion of Jewish forms of knowledge, genres of literature, and scribal culture attests to a remarkable period of intellectual and cultural transformation. These include the emergence of apocalyptic literature, the first appropriation of Babylonian science, the development of a detailed angelology and demonology, the rise of self-consciously speculative ontology, and scriptural libraries. In this paper, I argue that the Ptolemaic administration of the southern Levant generated the potential for these intellectual developments among Jews and others through greater cultural interaction, changes in bureaucratic procedure, a monetized economy, and new forms of administrative oversight. Literary texts produced by Jews living within these conditions, including both early apocalyptic literature and Ecclesiastes, reflect not only new knowledge but also newfound degrees of speculative thought and new subjective experiences.

In my paper I want to confront Nock's ideas about pre-Constantinian relgion with that of recent insights

John and Ezekiel. Everything starts with a quote The book of Revelation is made of a cluster of various allusions to OT prophetic texts. Especially John’s vocation in Rev 1 and 10 is close to Ezekiel’s vocation in Ez 1–3. In my comparative analysis of these two passages, I will show how John’s vocation as a quote of Ezekiel’s vocation does not express an author’s intention, but offers a performative enactment of an inconceivable reality. For this purpose, I will juxtapose John’s quotational technique with Jacques Derrida’s notion of grafting. This botanical metaphor offers a new approach to the relation of Revelation to its pretext and thus to the quotational relation between OT and NT texts. In his theory of grafting Derrida states: “Everything starts with a quote”. If prophetic literature is always a reaction on something prior to itself, thus a quote, notions of originality and intertextuality can be seen in a new light

Jesus’ encounter with the Gerasene Demoniac (5:1–20) is a significant episode in the narrative of Mark. Treatments of this pericope have noted a number of interesting features that enhance our understanding of the Gospel, such as intertextual echoes, theological motifs, and narrative significations. However, one area that invites further investigation is the nature of unclean spirits/demons in the socio-cultural world of the author. What exactly is an unclean spirit/demon? What kind of threat(s) do these beings present to humans? And, perhaps most importantly, how does the portrayal of demons—here and elsewhere in Mark—relate to alternative views in antiquity? This study examines the details of this fascinating and bizarre exorcism in order to gain insight into how Second Temple Jews and early Christians constructed their views of the spiritual realm and its relationship to human anthropology. By appealing to the broader Near Eastern and Greco-Roman world(s), this study investigates the ways in which the Markan narrative is both similar to and different from other views of unclean spirits and demons. This study argues that the demonology expressed in the Gerasene Demoniac pericope and elsewhere in the Gospel of Mark provides a rare window on a cultural innovation in demonology that would become foundational for later Christian understandings of the spiritual world. In particular, the basic notion of internal possessors (ἔχω + δαιμόνιον; δαιμονίζομαι), rather than external attacking forces (ὀχλέω, πνίγω, etc.), as well as the concept of multiple indwelling can be seen as alternative and innovative ways of understanding the spiritual realm’s effects on humans.

The Jesus tradition did not evolve in a linear fashion from sayings to narrative, but the coextensive and dynamic interplay of both. The hypothesis of the growth of the Jesus tradition from sayings to narrative, formulated in Rudolf Bultmann’s “History of the Synoptic Tradition”, hinges upon his examination of the apophthegm form and a judgment that the sayings of Jesus were later clothed in narrative by the later tradition. This view has proven to be persuasive, but its foundations are unstable precisely because the evidence of the Gospel of Thomas has been quarantined from the development of the synoptic tradition as an alternate trajectory. In this paper I will reexamine the apophthegms of the Gospel of Thomas to propose an alternate hypothesis on the progression of the Jesus tradition. Given its “sayings” interpretive approach, Thomas has no redactional interest in narrative, but it nevertheless finds narrative features to be essential to understanding some of Jesus’ teachings. Thomasine apophthegms testify to the indispensability of narrative elements in the Jesus tradition alongside the early circulation of Jesus' sayings, regardless of whether one dates Thomas “early” or “late” relative to the synoptics. The resultant picture modifies the interpretation of the synoptic gospels and understandings of their pre-history.

With the recent upsets across college campuses—especially among faith-based private liberal arts colleges—from COVID-19 to dwindling budgets, assessment strategies and their availability have become more difficult. While some colleges and individual professors have opted to utilize lockdown browsers during assessments, recent articles reveal that students can decipher workarounds for lockdown browsers and call into question the ethics of what is now a multi-million dollar enterprise. Furthermore, student feelings of invasion and the concomitant “class experience” deteriorates as a result. While open-book and open-note tests might provide some paths forward for professors to avoid the stress and labor of identifying students who cheat, I argue that changing the way we view both formative and summative assessments can provide ways forward not only in assessment but in pedagogy. Through inviting my students to think creatively about the topics we engage in class in their formative assessments and designing collaborative summative assessments, my classroom promotes access and enjoyment of assignments for both the students and for me. Tasked with covering the history of the Christian traditions, I often struggled to introduce and entice students to engage these conversations. Students who identified with the Christian tradition often engaged their own confirmation biases in papers; students who did not identify with the tradition felt lost and as if they did not have a voice in class. I realized that what I wanted students to take away from my class did not match the traditional paper-writing or test-taking assignments. Instead, I wanted to offer students an invitation to engage the world of the Bible and historical figures and place this world in conversation with their own in creative and compelling ways. For example, instead of writing a paper on Jesus as a first-century Jewish man, students write Jesus blog entries. Instead of engaging the narratives of Christian martyrs in a paper format, I task students with trolling their ideological opponents. Instead of an examination for the first biblical unit, students go through digital escape rooms in teams. These assignments, in comparison with papers, were most often a delight to grade and frequently left me laughing at their ingenuity and humor; who doesn’t want to laugh as they grade? The growth in creativity and application that these activities have enticed in my students have led me to believe that assessing student learning on the formative and summative levels does not have to be a chore for the students to produce or for the professor to grade. At the same time, creative approaches to the classroom have led to a more inclusive classroom and more equitable outcomes.

Matthew within Judaism: What Are We Framing and How?

It is now widely acknowledged that the book of Job interacts with a broad range of Israelite literature that came to be incorporated into the Jewish Bible, including not only other so-called wisdom literature, but also pentateuchal traditions, prophetic literature and psalms. But do these parallels and allusions form any larger patterns within the book? This paper will consider the divergent ways in which different parts of Job juxtapose and coordinate two seemingly contradictory traditions: the retribution theology embraced by texts like Deuteronomy, Proverbs and certain psalms and prophetic texts, and the righteous suffering of God’s servants emphasized in texts such as Jeremiah, Deutero-Isaiah and the lament psalms. Whereas the dialogues present these traditions as fundamentally at odds, the overall framing of the book seems to resolve the tension through the person of Job himself, who becomes the (unwitting) model for both righteous suffering and retributive justice, despite his own vigorous protestations to the contrary.

Many scholars note the uncanny similarity between the biblical names Esther and Mordecai and the Mesopotamian deities Ishtar and Marduk — but the connection often stops there. Yet the story of Esther takes place in a court setting populated by eunuchs and concubines, while Ishtar was famously attended by gender-transgressive priests. Moreover, Esther herself dons "feminine drag" during her elaborate transformation from good Jewish girl to sexually alluring queen-to-be, and her dual political loyalties are mirrored by this ambiguity in gender performance. Does Esther — like the eunuchs surrounding her, and like Ishtar — embody gender fluidity? And if so, how does that shape our understanding of the relationship between the characters of Esther and Ishtar, and of the author who chose such an evocative name for a Jewish heroine? This paper will address these questions and explore how queer theory can explain the literary development of this carnivalesque text.

[*The abstract will be submitted at a later stage]

This paper explores the connection between Paul’s language in Galatians 6:14–16 and his argument in Galatians as a whole. The use of stoicheō in 6:16, especially in connection to ‘this rule’ (tō kanon), and the enigmatic ‘the Israel of God’ continues to promote lively debate. 6:16 has traditionally been interpreted Christologically, given the explicit reference to the cross in 6:14. But a number of features suggest this is unduly narrow. In 6:11–18 Paul draws together much of what he has argued previously into a brief yet pointed polemic against those who have presented ‘another gospel’ (Gal. 1:6), in contrast to his own gospel of freedom. Paul’s gospel of freedom is one of transformed identity, inaugurated by and centered around Christ, but also defined by the Spirit (3:2, 14; 4:7; 5:16–25). In light of this new identity, grounded in the kainē ktisis (Gal. 6:15), the Galatians are challenged to follow Paul’s example, boasting only in the cross of Christ (Gal. 6:14). In contrast to life within the old cosmos, the delineating social markers of circumcision and uncircumcision are no longer valid expressions or rules within this new creation life. Rather, new creation life is paradoxically one of willing enslavement to others grounded in the fruit of the Spirit. Paul challenges the Galatian believers that those who follow this rule and walk in the ‘new creation’ life and act accordingly, will show themselves to be the true Israel of God. Given that the previous use of stoicheō linked with the Spirit in 5:16–25, I propose that Gal. 6:14–16 reflects not just a Christologically determined ideal for Paul’s argument but may also include pneumatological undertones. If so, this provides the opportunity to consider pneumatological implications within Gal. 6:11–18, and especially 6:14–16.

The story of the initially childless individual who becomes a parent is not unique to the Hebrew Bible. Versions of the story appear in Ugaritic, Akkadian, Egyptian, and Hittite literature. The purpose of this paper is to identify the meaningfulness of the recurring biblical character of the childless woman by situating the biblical stories of childlessness in this ancient Near Eastern context as variations of the widespread childless hero motif. In order to do so, this paper first analyzes the extra-biblical stories of childlessness in order to demonstrate that the childless hero motif was utilized widely and across linguistic and cultural barriers in very similar ways. The story of a childless king who becomes a happy father is consistently used to introduce a family drama that tragically ends in the death or betrayal of the divinely granted son. Not merely a neutral trope, the motif was used to introduce irony and increase tragedy in the larger narrative of which it is a part. Understanding the childless hero motif to have functioned as a poignant literary device in the extra-biblical literary texts, we are then poised to examine the biblical iterations of the story and to identify the ways in which the shared tale was appropriated and transformed in the biblical narratives. What we will find is that three primary features distinguish the biblical stories of childlessness. The first and most striking difference is that the biblical stories of childlessness focus not on the man but on the woman. It is her experience of childlessness and her miraculous transition to motherhood that is in the narrative foreground. The second biblical transformation is that the son of the once-childless woman enjoys a special relationship with the deity. While the son of the extra-biblical versions is simply portrayed as the product of an answered prayer and with no special relationship to the deity himself, the son of the biblical stories enjoys divine favor and is specially chosen for a specific role. The third transformation is that the son is destined to survive. Unlike the son of the extra-biblical tales whose story ends in tragedy, the chosen child of the biblical narratives will face a death threat from which he will emerge triumphant. The biblical stories therefore transform the tale of the childless hero into a powerful theological device. The notice that a couple, or individual, is without a child does not serve to enhance the narrative interest by heightening the tragedy of the story to come. Instead, the story of childlessness as it occurs in the Hebrew Bible serves to indicate that the child born despite all odds is in fact specially chosen by the deity and therefore destined to survive. It is this theological message that becomes attached to the character of the childless woman, making her a favorite character among the biblical authors, who cast her as the mother of patriarchs, judges, prophets, and kings.

The expression “kingdom of God” appears six times in the undisputed letters of Paul (1 Thess 2:12; Gal 5:21; 1 Cor 4:20; 6:9–10; 15:50) and three times in the letters that are disputed (2 Thess 1:5; Col 4:11; Eph 5:5). Of these nine occurrences, only Ephesians 5:5 adds an additional modifier so that the expression is expanded to read “in the kingdom of Christ and God.” The addition of the term “Christ” to the expression is consistent with a phenomenon that occurs in the disputed letters where the term “kingdom” becomes modified by other terms such as “Lord,” or “Christ” (or a pronoun whose antecedent is “Lord” or “Christ”) rather than or in addition to the term “God” (Col 1:13; 2 Tim 4:1; 2 Tim 4:18). Thus, the disputed Paulines provide four instances where the standard expression “kingdom of God” is either adapted or dispensed in order to reframe Paul’s basileia language as a Christological assertion. But why and to what end? This paper explores each of these texts (Eph 5:5; Col 1:13; 2 Tim 4:1; 2 Tim 4:18) to demonstrate the exegetical value that the addition of Christological language provides to each discourse. Through an analysis of each text, I demonstrate that in each case the linguistic modification betrays a development toward the veneration of Jesus that functions as a mechanism for coming to terms with the non-event of the kingdom of God. By linking basileia and vocabulary that depicts a revered Jesus, the disputed Paulines allow the expectation of the imminent kingdom to be mediated through the veneration of Jesus in their present. Thus, this analysis provides a contribution to understanding these disputed Pauline texts specifically and the context of early Christianity more broadly.

Many who are concerned about textual variants are often limited to the information provided in the apparatuses of their critical texts. Such information is usually incomplete as they only show about ten percent of the variants while the vast majority are completely ignored. And for the variants that are shown, only a limited list of witnesses is displayed that varies from book to book. And on top of that, sometimes they contain errors! The Universal Apparatus (UA) was created to address these problems by providing the first complete apparatus to be generated for all witnesses across all variants in a corpus. The UA is computer-generated from original source data to minimize the possibility of introducing errors. The UA provides some additional advantages in that it is a lot simpler to use and understand for there is only one set of substitution symbols, and it is portable so that the same apparatus can work with any critical text. It also offers the feature of indicating which readings are supported by the other major critical texts which is often just as much of a curiosity.

The five ancient apocryphal acts (Peter, Paul, John, Andrew, and Thomas) appear in a variety of forms in the manuscript tradition: sometimes abbreviated, occasionally expanded, but most often, truncated, reduced only to the account of the apostle’s demise. It has become common to think of the acts as victims of orthodoxy’s dislike for the texts’ advocacy of universal asceticism and for their somewhat unorthodox Christology, presented typically in the apostles’ sermons and prayers. As a result, the apocryphal acts were mutilated and thereby transformed into hagiographical martyrdoms. But that is not the complete story. For one, the survival of the entire Acts of Thomas indicates that some copyists, at least, found little offensive in that text. And other acts composed, perhaps, as replacements of the ancient acts, contain many of the same themes as their predecessors. Given that apocryphal texts were copied and read in monasteries, it is difficult to maintain the position that the teachings and activities of their protagonists would be unwelcome. The prevailing theories reflect more what previous scholars imagined would be problematic about the ancient texts and are influenced by an artificial distinction between the proclivities of apocrypha and the interests of hagiographa. This paper focuses on the evidence, with an examination of the various manuscript contexts for the transmission of the ancient acts—whether as complete texts, as martyrdoms only, or separated into independently circulating stories—and a reconsideration of why these texts faced such struggles to survive.

The roles played and risks taken by women within the Ugaritian economy have been recognized and discussed in a number of previous studies, but newly published administrative documents and ongoing work on the small body of Ugaritic juridical texts shed further light on this topic. The new evidence gathered and presented here serves both to illustrate the financial liability women could face in association with their husbands’ activities (through family debt) and to augment our understanding of the administrative and legal recourses available to women to protect themselves from such liability. This evidence is in turn considered in relation to the ambiguity it introduces for the evaluation of several possible examples of women acting as economic agents at Ugarit.

Scholars have acknowledged the presence of Abrahamic tradition and its early Jewish reception in the Exagoge 68–89 (e.g. Jacobsen, 1983; Lafranchi, 2006). How then does the employment of this tradition function for the author of the Exagoge? I will argue these traditions serve to portray Moses as a divine plenipotentiary figure in fulfillment of the promise to Abraham in early Jewish tradition. Moses’ numbering of the stars draws on the Abrahamic promise in Genesis 15, the stars here appearing as armed ranks before him, thus assuming the role of the God of Israel, the divine potentate and marshal of the celestial armies (cf. Ps 147:4; Job 25:3; Isa 40:26). In the interpretation of Moses’ dream (83–89), he is told he will “rule and govern men.” Early Jewish interpretations of the astral promise made to Abraham highlight a connection between his seed becoming as the stars qualitatively (e.g. Philo, Her. 86–87; QG 4.181) and the rule of nations and men (e.g. LXX Sir 44:21; Apoc. Abr. 20:3–5; cf. Gen. Rab. 44.4, 12). This connection is rooted in the conception of the gods/angels of the nations as celestial bodies (i.e. Deut 4:19; 32:8–9). I will further argue that this conceptualization of Moses as divine plenipotentiary and the imagery of a celestial census is a reflection of Second Temple interpretations of Moses’ ascent of the cosmic mountain through the lens of Abrahamic traditions. Thus, the ascent of the cosmic mountain is here understood as the fulfillment of the astral promises made to Abraham, the seed of Abraham becoming as the celestial bodies, experiencing angelomorphic or divine transformation, exalted over the nations of the earth, led by their plenipotentiary, portrayed in Abrahamic fashion as the divine potentate and marshal of the celestial armies, i.e. the seed of Abraham.

A central stumbling-block in the study of Philo’s discussions of divine care (πρόνοια, “providence”; ἐπιμέλεια, “care, attention”) across his sprawling corpus is his appropriation of two Greek philosophical traditions that both maintain the existence of providence, but differ as to how it works: Platonism and Stoicism. This paper will focus on Philo’s treatment and transformation of Stoic teaching about providence, particularly as regards the issue of care for particulars and arguments concerning theodicy. Special attention will be paid to how Philo’s own immediate context as a prominent Alexandrian Jew played a decisive role in his development of his questions and goals concerning the doctrine of providence.

The Paul in Jewett’s Romans Commentary is a careful researcher who adapts scripture for his own rhetorical purposes. He views the LXX as a malleable source whose words can be creatively adjusted to advance his message of ecclesial reconciliation. Ironically, this approach to the LXX parallels the Pauline concept of the “Israel of God” that challenges Jews to embrace a flexibility that accommodates “Gentile” believers.

Accepted paper for the IBR research group on Isaiah and Intertextuality.

Sustained engagement with the Church Fathers does not typically come to mind when considering contemporary evangelical biblical interpretation or theological reflection, and the sacraments are no exception. Compared with the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions, which place much emphasis on continuity with the ancient church, evangelicals with liturgical inclinations may feel that their sacramentality lacks sufficient historical depth. Gordon Smith, for example, laments that his “evangelical heritage typically assumed that one had to choose: evangelical meant that you rejected the sacramentalism of not only the Catholic Church but any Protestant church that even seemed to hint at the possibility that the sacramental rites were a means of grace.” The same might be said of much of their exegesis, which sometimes fails to take into account the full range of wisdom offered by the Great tradition of Christian biblical exegesis. Yet, given that the reformers themselves were avid patristics students, it seems that evangelical Protestants have as much claim to the Church Fathers as any branch of Christendom. John Calvin, for example, consistently drew upon his patristic forerunners in his commentaries, tracts, and sermons in order to ground his theology within the broader tradition of the church. This paper will focus specifically on Augustine of Hippo’s interpretation of John 6, and Calvin’s subsequent use of Augustine’s Tractates on the Gospel of John in those portions of his Institutes of the Christian Religion that address the Lord’s Supper. It will hold up Calvin as a potential model for contemporary evangelical engagement with the Fathers, demonstrating that Protestants too have good reason to see themselves as their descendants on the sacrament of the Eucharist. This will be done first by surveying Augustine’s own interpretation of the text in his sermons on John, then considering how Calvin made subsequent use of Augustine’s exegesis in his own interpretation. It will also consider how Calvin and Augustine, both typically viewed with much reverence in the evangelical world, relied substantially upon John 6 in their theologies of the Lord’s Supper – despite Calvin’s own hesitation at some junctures – a significant point considering that the text attracts relatively little attention compared to, say, 1 Corinthians 11 within contemporary evangelical theologies of the Eucharist. By discussing how both individuals interpreted the passage, this paper would also seek to encourage further engagement with the history of interpretation of this particular text among evangelical Protestants for the purposes of constructive theology – especially in the area of sacramentality. In particular, Augustine and Calvin’s mutual insistence that personal faith is necessary to obtain the benefits offered in the Supper offers considerable promise to help further this conversation within a movement that so cherishes personal faith and experience, yet would do well to grant greater focus to the witness of the historic Christian tradition.

Asian coinage of the imperial period is replete with legends flagging sponsorship by men keen to promote their citizenship, official positions and authorization. This general pattern is little different in Phrygia, except for a one hundred year window when a number of women adorn civic bronze coins with their names. This paper proposes to identify these women and examine the coins that were struck under their sponsorship. A number of methodological questions will be addressed: 1. How is the status and initiative of these women to be assessed within the city in/for which their coins were minted, especially given the older presumption that they were mere adjuncts to their elite husbands? 2. What currency values can be assigned to their coins and how might these provide clues as to their own negotiation of the civic and political realities of the day? 3. Given the working hypothesis that sponsors of coins chose the iconography (and epigraphy) of coins, how might we discern and evaluate the identity-projection present on the coins minted by these women? 4. How might we approach the relationship between text and image on these coins, especially with the addition of official or semi-official positions held by women in the legends? 5. How are implications to be drawn from this focused sphere of female benefaction to the wider dynamics in cities and in other civic groups (including Christ-followers) in Phrygia in the first and second centuries CE. Particular reference will be made to the coins of Pedia Sekounda of Eukarpeia (especially Hermes’ “penny”) and Claudia Eugenetoriane of Kolossai (especially the widow’s goddess, Demeter).

This study provides an alternate reading of Laban’s and Rachel’s allegiance to deity. Both characters show a complex relationship with deity and underscore a clear polytheistic thread in the narrative. Through a close philological and contextual reading of the Hebrew text, this paper argues that both Laban and Rachel are devotees of gods other than J, and that this devotion ultimately leads to Rachel’s demise. With regards to Laban, the key elements in proving this are analyses of the words teraphim and nahash, the examination of Laban’s relationship to J, and the vow he makes with Jacob. As for Rachel, the main factors rely upon the investigation of her theft of Laban’s teraphim, the phrase “wrestlings of gods” (naftulei elohim) in her competition with Leah, and her death in J’s territory along with the erection upon her tomb of the matzebah that is not dedicated to J. Based on contextual and philological evidence from these passages, this paper challenges customary readings by demonstrating that taken as a whole, the text is filled with markers supporting the premise that both Laban and Rachel are worshippers of other deities.

In recent decades the concept of "theodrama," seeing the biblical narrative as a Divine play or drama in a series of acts laying out God's redemptive purposes in creation, has become a way of theologically explaining and exploring the biblical narrative. Of particular interest in the discussions of theodrama is how the biblical narrative incorporates and guides Christians in their role in this Divine drama. In her recent book, Preaching God's Grand Drama: A Biblical-Theological Approach (Baker Academic, 2019), Ahmi Lee has applied the concept of theodrama to homiletics. In this paper, I draw on Lee's theological-homiletical framework to explore how the preaching of Moses in Deuteronomy anticipates or illustrates the theodramatic preaching she advocates. That is, Moses' speeches in Deuteronomy provide a precursor and example of what a theodramatic homiletic can look like. Some scholars have identified the speeches of Moses in Deuteronomy as akin to sermons by Moses to the new generation of Israelites, who are preparing to enter the Promised Land. From the perspective of the full Christian canon, the drama as it appears in Deuteronomy consists of only the first few "acts" of the whole theodrama. Still, within Deuteronomy one can discern a similar dramatic structure in which this new generation stands on the edge of the Promised Land with a call to live as God's people in the land. The "script" that guides their "faithful improvisation" for their place in the drama includes what God has done in the past (the promises to the ancestors, the exodus, and the giving of the torah at Horeb) and the anticipation of God's actions in their future, both in terms of their rebellion and restoration. In addition, God's larger intentions for Israel in God's redemptive plan becomes evident. As Lee describes her homiletical appropriation of theodrama, she does so in ways that clearly resonate with the speeches of Moses in Deuteronomy. Adjusting for Israel as the audience of Moses' preaching, Moses' sermons move Israel "to participate in the reality" of being God's chosen people, reorients their view of reality, and shapes them as performers in God's drama (pp. 125-138). Lee also notes four perspectives in theodramatic preaching (pp. 150-167) that are evident in Moses' preaching in Deuteronomy: "retrospection" (what God has done for God's people); "introspection"(what God is doing now among God's people); "extrospection" (what God is doing in the world around God's people); and "prospection" (what God will do).

This culturally cued literary study of Mark’s trial and flogging scenes (15:1-20) argues that Jesus does not passively acquiesce in the injustice that is perpetrated against him, as is the usual view of commentators on these narratives. Instead, Jesus alternately engages in and resists the judicial proceedings in which he becomes embroiled. Initially, he welcomes and participates in the proceedings before Pilate, just as he had before the Jewish council. He disengages, however, when the prosecution dissolves into a series of false allegations established by perjured testimony. The flogging that Jesus undergoes does not render him unable to carry the cross to Golgotha—he simply refuses to do it.

This paper will explore feminine attributes or virtues illustrated on coins via Livia and goddess personifications (such as Salus, Pax, Pietas) to illuminate virtues of the Roman Empire and examine how these interact with the virtues and/or attributes of the early Christ follower communities as expressed in the Pauline literature.

Accepted paper for the IBR research group on the Relationship between the OT and NT

Accepted paper for IBR research group on Biblical Violence.

Sea-travel in Mediterranean antiquity was a dangerous affair. The presence of pirates and the perennial threat of dangerous weather were experienced by a broad range of travelers and commented upon at length by ancient authors. Notably, these issues were not limited to “serious” writers of the Greco-Roman world. Rather, sea-faring and its concomitant dangers was also taken up by comedic writers. This trope of pirates and shipwrecks is attested as early as Plautus’ comedies and grew to become a staple among the writings of the 1st century CE, acting as an especially important element of the Greco-Roman novels. In the present paper, I propose a fresh reading of Mark 4:35-41, a Jewish-Christian tale of ancient travel relating the odd detail that Jesus slept even as his boat was nearly destroyed during a storm at sea. Scholars have examined this text against an array of backgrounds, but none to my knowledge has interpreted this text in light of the trope of sea-storms in comedies or comedic writings. Yet, two texts in particular offer a new and potentially more straightforward way of understanding the act of Jesus’ sleeping: Jonah (LXX) and Petronius’ Satyricon. Both of these texts relate not only the presence of a storm at sea, but intentionally exaggerate for comic impact the behavior of characters acting strange during such a phenomenon. Such a reading opens up new avenues for interpretation. First, it is likely that humor enhances the narrative’s performance, memorability, and persuasive capacity. Second, this story precipitates a discussion concerning Jesus’ abilities (and inabilities) that will recur through the rest of the miracle-cycle (4:35-6:6a). Third, this cycle problematizes Mark’s christology earlier than is generally assumed by throwing into question Jesus’ status as a wonderworker well before the half-way point of Mark's Gospel.

It is not as clear as it once was how to designate strata of the Pentateuch, especially when trying to teach some basic, broadly-accepted views to students. In an earlier era almost all students learning a historical approach to the Bible were taught the Documentary Hypothesis, learning to list, date and describe its four hypothesized sources, J, E, D and P. Now, in the early twenty-first century, crucial parts of that hypothesis are no longer part of the broader scholarly consensus on the formation of the Pentateuch. It is no longer accurate to say that the field agrees that one can reliably identify J and E cross-pentateuchal sources (let alone place them in early Israelite monarchies). Moreover, scholars have posited an increasing number of supplementary, relatively late layers across different parts of the Pentateuch, even as they/we have disagreed on the extent, dating and character of such layers. Faced with this complex scholarly situation, it is unclear how one responsibly and clearly teaches the field to students. For example, use of the scholarly term “non-P” for materials outside P (or outside P and D) only characterizes what those materials are not. Yet just using the term “JE” for materials outside P and D just reproduces the parts of the documentary hypothesis that are most controverted. This presentation advances some ideas on this topic that were formed in the process of producing a fully revised edition of an introductory textbook (now entitled The Hebrew Bible: A Contemporary Introduction to the Christian Old Testament and Jewish Tanakh [Wiley, 2021]). Using an unusually brief format to allow for broader discussion, this short paper will suggest some different possibilities for terming scholarly schools in Pentateuchal study and raise several arguments for the benefits of using the letter “L” to speak to students about a set of relatively late, layers of non-Priestly lay materials that many scholars now identify across different parts of the Pentateuch.

Three interpretations have dominated readings of the troubling Matthew Chapter 23: a rhetorical approach typical of the discourse of rivals in philosophical traditions (Johnson); a social-psychological approach whereby groups define their identity over against other groups (Luz; Stanton; Berger and Luckman); an ecclesial didactic and parenetic approach about scribes and Pharisees but addressed to the Matthean church (Garland; Harrington). This paper argues that imperial gender dimensions comprise a further and neglected aspect of the power exerted in the chapter. The chapter sets two parties of powerful male figures in conflict; one speaks while the other is spoken about. The Matthean Jesus rhetorically attacks the scribes’ and Pharisees’ embodiment and mimicry of imperial masculinity and societal leadership, even as the chapter mimics imperial masculinity in constructing Jesus’ performance of dominance. Because of time limits, the paper’s discussion is limited to 23:1-12. Verses 2-7 attack the absent scribes and Pharisees. Verse 3 names their dominant and prestigious “seat of Moses” from which they exercise power in shaping societal practices. Verse 4 intensifies the critique of their failed male societal leadership because the hierarchical societal structure they impose is burdensome to many poorer people. Verses 5-7 condemn their public performance of elite privilege and parading of male dominance with oversized phylacteries and fringes, places of honor at banquets and synagogues, greetings in the marketplace. By contrast, Jesus-followers in humility are to seek the good of the other (23:8-12). The Gospel thereby positions Jesus to reinscribe for his followers an imperial-philosophical tradition whereby elite ruling males are to use their power and status to enhance the well-being of their subjects.

The Gospel of Matthew mentions “σεισμοὶ” or its cognate verb “σείω” five times, where Mark and Luke mention them once, and John, not at all. Moreover, four of these five occurrences in Matthew (excepting 21:10) are associated with someone or something being “raised” (ἐγείρω): Jesus from sleep (Matt. 8:24-25), “nation…against nation” (Matt. 24:7), the deceased saints from their graves (Matt. 27:51-52), and then Jesus from his tomb (Matt. 28:2, 6). Why the tight association in Matthew of earthquakes with “rising,” especially from sleep or death? The answer lies in Ezekiel’s vision in the “Valley of the Dry Bones” (37:1-14), particularly in its Old Greek version: when the bones come together, there is a “σεισμὸς” (37:7), while God interprets the sign to Ezekiel by declaring, “I am opening your tombs (ἀνοίγω ὑμῶν τὰ μνήματα), and I will bring you up (ἀνάξω) from your tombs and I will lead you into the land of Israel” (Ezek. 37:12), a passage which is particularly resonant with Matthew 27:51-52. Matthew’s repeated pairing of earthquakes and resurrection subtly declares that in Jesus, God is bringing to pass his promise to raise his people from their death in the exile of sin. Nonetheless, Matthew's earthquake-texts include some puzzling prose. For instance, he describes an “earthquake [σεισμὸς] in the sea” (8:24), though he plainly means a storm (cf. the “winds” in 8:26, and Mark 4:37's “λαῖλαψ μεγάλη ἀνέμου”). So too, Matthew 24:7 confusingly predicts that, along with “famines,” “earthquakes” – and not “tumult” or “havoc” – will follow “nation rising against nation.” These textual stumbling blocks perhaps indicate that Greek Matthew’s earthquake passages reflect an Aramaic Vorlage. Notably, the “Old Syriac” (E. Aramaic) versions of these passages preserve their allusions to Ezekiel 37:7 (as reflected in, e.g., its Targum Jonathan and Peshitta versions), but “ܙܰܘܥܳܐ” has a broader semantic range than “σεισμὸς,” referring in the first instance to any “commotion” or “disturbance.” In Aramaic, then, all of the occurrences of "ܙܘܥܐ/זוע" in Matthew are idiomatic, yielding a "tumult on the sea" (8:24), or "havoc & famines" (24:7). Greek Matthew preserves the allusions to Ezekiel, but at the cost of a certain stylistic woodenness. That Matthew’s earthquake passages reflect an Aramaic Vorlage is consistent with a wide range of evidence for its at least partial composition in Aramaic, evidence both external (e.g., Papias, Irenaeus, Eusebius, Epiphanias, Jerome, i.a.), and internal (thoroughly surveyed by Étienne Méténier in his recent *Vetus Syra* (Parole de l’Orient, 2019, 3 vols.), following Marie-Émile Boismard ("Évangile des Ébionites et problème synoptique," 1966, p. 351), and Charles Torrey (*Our Translated Gospels*, 1936, passim), among others).

Recent studies have underscored the importance of Leviticus 19 for the logic and theology of James, with the clearest example being found in the citation of Lev 19:18b in Jas 2:8. However, scholarship has largely overlooked the allusion in Jas 2:5 to another love command––the command to love God in Deut 6:5. I support this identification by observing the collocation of inheritance language, election terminology, the phrase τοῖς ἀγαπῶσιν αὐτόν, and other contextual elements. I then briefly trace their usage in the scriptures of Israel. Second, I argue that James 2:5, 8, by juxtaposing the commands to love God and neighbor and linking them lexically via the repetition of the βασιλ- stem, presents the double love command as an epitome of the Mosaic torah refracted through the lens of Jesus’s teaching. James 2:5 and 2:8 both incorporate reformulations of Jesus traditions, with 2:5 identifying who is an heir of the kingdom and 2:8 clarifying the standard of life in the kingdom. The torah, thus interpreted by Jesus, is portrayed as the royal road leading to eschatological reward in the kingdom (cf. Philo, Post. 101–102). On this point, Jas 2:5, 8, may reflect commonalities with specifically Markan tradition. Third, following the insights of Mariam Kovalishyn, L. L. Cheung, and Richard Bauckham, I claim that echoes in Jas 1:17–25 of Jeremiah 31 and its promise for an internalized torah underpin the author’s hermeneutical strategy for linking the Mosaic torah with Jesus’s teaching. I suggest that James 2 serves as an example of a hermeneutical trend in early Christian literature which associated Jesus traditions––specifically the double love command––with the promise of the internalized torah of Jeremiah 31. In this section, I survey a number of examples of this trajectory in first- and second-century writings, with comparisons to James 2.

In the ancient world as today, ‘innovation’ in the widest sense of the word, which includes new ideas, new forms of literature and discourse, new practices/rituals, and material objects, occurs in every domain, not least in the religious domain. However, innovations, understood in this broad sense, cannot be adopted by a relevant society unless they are integrated and accommodated in the conceptual categories, values, beliefs, and ambitions of that society through a process—or an activity, involving agency—of ‘anchoring.’ In the first part of this paper, based on some preliminary results of the on-going Dutch project ‘Anchoring innovation’ (‘Anchoring Innovation’ Gravitation Grant, 2017–2027; https://www.anchoringinnovation.nl), I will show that the concept of ‘anchoring’ provides a fruitful category to understand the dynamics between innovation and tradition, old and new, in several domains of Classical antiquity and its reception. In the second part of this paper I will argue that the concept of ‘anchoring’ can also provide a valid conceptual tool for interdisciplinary research in biblical studies. Some examples from Second Temple Judaism—notably ‘Hellenistic’ Judaism—and Early Christianity will be used as case studies in this second part of the paper. Selected bibliography Dijkstra, R. (ed.), The Early Reception and Appropriation of the Apostle Peter (60-800 CE): The Anchors of the Fisherman. Euhormos: Greco-Roman Studies in Anchoring Innovation 1. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2020. Klawans, J., Heresy, Forgery, Novelty: Condemning, Denying, and Asserting Innovation in Ancient Judaism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Sluiter, I. (2016). “Anchoring Innovation: A Classical Research Agenda.” European Review 25/1 (2016): 20-38. Sluiter, I., and M.J. Versluys, “Anchoring: a Historical Perspective on Frugal Innovation,” in: C. van Beers, A. Leliveld, P. Knorringa, and S. Bhaduri (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Frugal Innovation, London: Routledge, forthcoming. van Henten, J.W., and S. Castelli, “Massah and Meribah Re-interpreted: Biblical Accounts, Judith, and Josephus,” in B. Schmitz and K. de Troyer (eds.), The Early Reception of the Torah. Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature Studies 39. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020, 19–38.

In this paper, I present a Greek glossary on I-IV Kingdoms, which was composed in Late Antiquity/Early Byzantium. Such glossaries exist for many (but not all) books of the Greek Bible. They are collections of words extracted from the Biblical text (‘lexeis’). Each entry is accompanied by a short explanation: one or two synonyms, a brief description, an exegetical comment, a grammatical remark, etc. Diverse in content and composed with a philological interest in the Greek Bible, these glossaries are fascinating documents, yet they have not been studied in detail. That on I–IV Kingdoms presents one of the glossaries available in print (Fabricius/Harles, Bibliotheca Graeca vol. VI, 1798, pp. 646–648, published from MS Leeuwarden 38). I am not aware of any modern studies of this text. In this presentation, I outline the transmission of this collection of "lexeis" of the Biblical text and discuss how it was recycled in subsequent Greek dictionaries and encyclopedias. On the basis of a selection of entries, I present the methods and sources of the glossary and discuss its relations with the Septuagint version, variant readings and Hexaplaric material. In my conclusion I turn to the question of the text-critical use of these Lexeis.

Accepted paper for the IBR research group session on the Early Historical Books.

Applying embodied cognition theory and cognitive linguistics, this paper investigates how Paul tried to reconcile the religious experience of bodily transformation and the everyday experience of mortality, arguing that he eventually redefines the latter as a constitutive part of the former. Paul struggles greatly with the mortal body largely because his experience and expectation in Christ are very much somatically-oriented. Arguing against the common ancient ideas that consider spirituality as the transcendence of the body, Paul maintains that the body is not to be escaped or abandoned but to be transformed both in experiences here and now and in the afterlife. In 2 Cor 3:18 Paul explicitly claims that “we all are being transformed.” This is an ongoing transformation that starts when one “turns to the Lord” (3:16) and participates “in Christ” (3:14). Using recent findings in the cognitive science of religious experience as well as the ancient concept of the “porous body” (Martin 1995), I will argue that Paul’s statement about ongoing transformation starting at a person’s religious initiation is at least partially dependent on 1 Cor 12:13, where Paul integrates the ecstatic experience of receiving the Spirit and the ritual experience of being baptized into the body of Christ. Applying conceptual blending theory, I will show that Paul interprets the Corinthians’ religious experience as the ongoing transformation of the body. However, Paul still has to face the problem of the weakness and ongoing decay of the body. This is a reasonable challenge to the idea of ongoing transformation especially when it is followed by the conviction of a future transformation in the afterlife (cf. 1 Cor 15; 2 Cor 5). If the body is already being transformed and will continue to be in existence in the afterlife in a glorious form, why is it obviously weak and wearing away in our present life? Being concerned with mortality, Paul delivers his fullest exposition of bodily transformation in 2 Cor 4-5. Again, applying conceptual blending theory, the second half of this paper then investigates the way in which Paul uses the metaphor of “treasure in clay jars” (2 Cor 4:7) to distinguish the outer and the inner of a person and to argue that the decay of the outer mortal body contributes to the transformation of the inner person, an inner transformation that will culminate at the complete transformation in the future (5:1-5). In so doing, Paul spiritualizes the experience of mortality and redefines it as an ongoing religious experience producing an eternal glory (4:17).

The debate about whether to take the phrase πίστις Χριστοῦ as an objective genitive (‘faith in Christ’) or a subjective genitive (‘faith of Christ’) has raged ever onwards over the course of the past two centuries, particularly among Pauline scholars. While the debate has ventured beyond the boarders of Paul for brief excursions into the Synoptics or the Patristics, John’s Apocalypse has remained relatively unexplored. In a lonely essay, David deSilva has rightly observed that any contribution to the question from Revelation must be inferred from glosses adopted in commentaries and the arguments occasionally rallied in their defence. For all the controversies swirling around the Apocalypse, the πίστις Χριστοῦ debate is not one of them. But perhaps not for long. Recent studies indicate a growing interest in the πίστις lexicon in Mediterranean antiquity, including its application to Jesus in Revelation. In this paper, anticipating the inevitable, I will examine the use of πίστις with particular reference to the genitive constructions in 14.12 (τὴν πίστιν Ἰησοῦ) and 2.13 (τὴν πίστιν μου), where Jesus is brought into direct grammatical contact with ‘faith(fulness)’. While deSilva appeals to an ancient idiom to read these phrases as objective genitives (‘faithfulness to Jesus’, 14.12; ‘faithfulness to me’, 2.13), I will draw from modern theoretical and applied linguistics to argue in favour of subjective genitives in both instances (‘the faithfulness of Jesus’, 14.12; ‘my faithfulness’, 2.13). I will do so in two steps. First, I will offer a lexical-semantic analysis of the πίστις lexicon John's Apocalypse in order to disambiguate the meaning of the head term as perfecting its action reference (‘faithfulness’). Second, I will offer a pragmatic analysis of the collocational patterns in which πίστις habitually reoccurs in wider Graeco-Roman literature (including case function and syntax) in order to specify its referential relation to the genitive constructs in Revelation (‘Jesus’s own faithfulness’). 
I will conclude by critically engaging deSilva’s appeal to an ancient idiom in light of my findings.

Scholars have noted for some time how Biblical Hebrew poetry’s structures of equivalence and contiguity are controlled at different linguistic levels: semantic, syntax, morphology, and phonology. However, in biblical poetry sonic echo (phonological parallelism) is arguably the hardest feature to evaluate because of its seemingly subjective nature. A person may identify a rhyme, and at some level it indeed possesses a quantifiable measure of phonological parallelism, but questions remain as to whether that rhyming is coincidental or intentional and how it may pertain to the poetry’s structure and meaning. Many instances of sonic echo are additionally hard to evaluate because the phonologically paralleled elements are often not perfectly matched but “near rhymes.” Nevertheless, though less prominent than semantic and syntactic parallelisms, phonological parallelism in biblical poetry indeed occurs, often contributes as a major feature to parallelism, and occasionally significantly controls how the poetry conveys its meanings. In literary studies, the many forms of sonic echo have been long identified: rhyme in its narrow sense (repetition of cVC; dog vs. fog), alliteration (Cvc), assonance (cVc), consonance (cvC), frame rhyme (CvC), back rhyme (CVc), and rich rhyme (CVC). By employing articulator-based feature theory (AFT), this paper describes and evaluates these forms of sonic echo through the concepts of place of articulation (e.g., labial [mem] vs. dental [taw]) and manner of articulation (e.g., +/- voice; dalet [+] vs. taw [-]). Employing AFT provides precise means for evaluating the strength of these different forms of sonic echo, especially in those instances where the echoing does not perfectly match but involves sonically-similar phonemes. By analyzing the different forms of sonic echo through AFT, it is possible to present defined controls for evaluating the seemingly subjective nature of sonic echoes and for describing complex sonic echoes (e.g., an echo involving rhyme in the ultima syllable and also assonance in the penultimate syllable). The latter half of this paper focuses on how sonic echoes in their different forms operate in biblical poetry (primarily Ps 22, Ezek 24.1-8, and Lam 3). It presents a hierarchy for explaining how the diverse forms of sonic echo in poetry are employed differently. It concludes with close readings of select sonic echoes, illustrating their roles in contributing to poetic rhythm, parallelism, metaphor, and poetic closure.

The deep ritual, spiritual, and personal significance that communities attach to death evidences in their funerary art. Under Justinian I in the eastern Roman Empire, Miaphysite Christians reflected upon death and their hopes for the afterlife in the visual programs of their funerary spaces. On the edges of the empire, sixth-century Miaphysite monks of the Dayr al-Za‘farān Monastery carefully decorated their funerary chapel (beth qadishe)—a location for worship, ritual observation, and eventually the resting place of several Syrian Orthodox patriarchs. The visual designs they selected reveal the beliefs and hopes about death held by that particular Miaphysite community and provide a window for the contemporary scholar into understanding an immediate and particularized experience of death. Built between 526 and 536 CE, just before the church of Mar Hananyo on the same site, the beth qadishe of Dayr al-Za‘farān is decorated with designs traditional to Northern Mesopotamia like acanthus capitals, Greek crosses, and leaf friezes. Other elements of its visual program, however, evoke a marine theme: scallop shells, dolphins, and pearls decorate the small chapel. Seemingly at odds both with their desert location and funerary setting, these marine designs evoked baptismal and salvific themes rather than emphasized mortality or dying. This paper builds upon the material and textual work of Marlia Mundell Mango, Elif Keser-Kayaalp, Sebastian Brock, and others. Analysis of the artistic program and contemporary Syriac authors elucidates how this particular monastic community conceived of death and, perhaps, prepared themselves to meet it. In this paper, I will analyze the symbolism of the beth qadishe’s marine program—its scallops, crosses, dolphins, and pearls—giving particular attention to the theological symbolism of pearls in Syriac hymnody, where they were popular and multivalent metaphors for Christ, baptism, salvation, and virginity. From Ephrem’s Hymns on the Pearl, Aphrahat’s Demonstration 14, and Jacob of Serugh’s homilies and funeral orations, contemporary theological understandings of these symbols will be elucidated and explored; the poetic images frequently were multivalent, which would have played especially well with the chapel’s artistic program. For images themselves function on multilayered strata. Ultimately, through this material and textual analysis I will argue that the visual program of Dayr al-Za‘farān’s beth qadishe plays upon Syriac theological symbolism generally and Miaphysite typology in particular to offer a location-specific commentary on death as new life and to connect the chapel to its monastic affiliation by evoking virginity. Hope of resurrection embedded in baptism and virginity—both the monk’s own and Christ’s—filled the funerary chapel and served as the community’s visual centerpiece as they reflected upon the deaths of their brothers and prepared their souls for their own.

Work was an everyday reality for enslaved people in the Roman Mediterranean. In addition to the physical and manual, there was the "emotion work" of managing feelings and desires within contexts of unequal social and power relations (Hochschild 2012; Levin-Richardson 2019; Seesengood 2019). The world of monetary transactions is a revealing example of enslaved work that required such emotion management. Roman financial life operated through enslaved and formerly enslaved agents, who were made to bear the anxieties, vices, and negative affect that the free associated with the handling of money. At the same time, the commemorative practices of enslaved and freed bankers, money testers, and household accountants potentially illustrate the strategic disciplining of their own responses to their occupational identities. Attention to this complexity, along with its class, gendered, and racialized aspects, challenges common assumptions about work, enslavement, and manumission in the Roman world, including the "professional pride" that historians often see in funerary representations of work.

Psalm 89, a royal psalm, is widely known for its radical turn from praise to communal lament. In the first half of the psalm (vv. 1-37), the psalmist praises YHWH for his establishment of everlasting ‘ḥesed’ and covenantal promise to David. However, this praise suddenly shifts to protest in the latter part (vv. 38-51), for God forsakes his ‘ḥesed’ and covenant. This unexpected turn is even more marked in the psalmist’s way of using the hand imagery. The hand (or right hand/arm) of YHWH is a symbol of God’s incomparable power and what protects Israel in the former part of the psalm (vv. 10, 13). The same metaphor, however, radically shifts in the second half. It is now the enemies’ hand (yāmîn) that is raised (v. 42). What is worse, even God exalts that hand, which is traumatic on Israel’s side. This hand imagery throughout the psalm is likely to be inspired by the age-old tradition of the Egyptian smiting motif (cf. Exod 15:1b-18; Pss 44:3; 118:15b-16; 136:10-13; 144:7). This paper explores the ambivalent hand motif in Psalm 89 not only literarily but also iconographically. It demonstrates that constellations of images in Egyptian smiting iconography help us understand how dynamically and ingeniously the psalmist employs the hand motif to reveal how devastating the current circumstance of Israel is. The ambivalent hand imagery which is already striking in the textual realm becomes more distinctive and disturbing in the non-textual domain.

While most scholars only seem to recognize the influence of Hab. 2:4 on Paul’s letter to the Galatians only where he quotes it in 3:11, this paper will argue that the presence of its influence should be discerned across a much broader range of texts within the letter, including 2:16, 19-20; 3:7-9, 11-12, 22, 24; 5:5. Various parts of the letter will be reconsidered in light of the understanding that ἐκ πίστεως serves as a snippet quotation of the distinctive wording of Hab. 2:4LXX and that Paul rewrites or paraphrases Hab. 2:4 in a variety of ways.

At two points in the Temple Scroll, its author augmented material adopted from Deuteronomy concerning priests. In the kingship legislation, the author adopted material from Deut 17:18 indicating that the “Levitical priests” oversee the production of the king’s lawbook but dropped the term “Levitical” with the result that the “priests” alone would oversee the production of the king’s lawbook (11Q19 56:21). In legislation concerning testimony, the author adopted material from Deut 19:17 indicating that litigants testify “before YHWH, before the priests, and the judges” but inserted the phrase “and the Levites” with the result that the litigants are now to stand “before me, before the priests and the Levites, and before the judges” (11Q19 61:8–9). Scholars have put forth various theses concerning the motivations behind these alterations, some arguing for textual motivations like harmonizing or homogenizing (Stackert 2011; Crawford 2000; Milgrom 1989; Maier 1985; Yadin 1983) and some arguing for historical or ideological motivations (Stackert 2011; Paganini 2009; Crawford 2000; Milgrom 1978). After briefly reviewing and commenting on the limitations of previous studies regarding textual motivations, I build upon these studies to put forth a new explanation regarding the textual motivations behind these changes. I argue that these two alterations are part and parcel of the author’s wider effort to harmonize Deuteronomic material which did not maintain the intra-Levitical distinction between priests who are the sons of Aaron and the Levites, specifically material from Deut 17:9; 17:18; 18:1; and 21:5 (cf. 11Q19 56, 60, and 63), with the wider Temple Scroll which did maintain the intra-Levitical distinction, likely under the influence of other Pentateuchal texts like Lev 3 (cf. 11Q19 22:4–5). Because the alterations in 11Q19 56:21 and 61:8–9 can be explained on textual grounds, I argue that additional historical or ideological explanations are superfluous.

Scholars like Kathleen O’Connor, Louis Stulman, and Brad Kelle have drawn our attention to the myriad creative metaphors, imagery, and stories that are utilized by the biblical prophets to tell and retell the traumatic memories of the Babylonian invasion and Exile. In this way, the Jeremianic triad of “sword, famine, and pestilence” in Jer 14:12 (also Jer 24:10; 29:18) occurs in the context in which the destruction of vegetation is used to capture the devastation wrought by imperial violence. As O’Connor rightly observes, this repetitive retelling of the catastrophe helps survivors gain control over past trauma that extends far beyond the original events. Another example of this rhetorical strategy of using symbol to speak about the unspeakable comes from Jonah 4:6-7 in which the story of a militarized worm’s attack on a defenseless plant serves as a way for the traumatized prophet and his equally traumatized constituents to voice the effects of imperial violence on their community. In this paper, I will consider how these symbolic retellings of the trauma inflicted by the Babylonian empire in Jeremiah 14 as well as Jonah 4 utilize the symbol of the destruction of vegetation to create a “safe confrontation” with the wounds of the past.

“These things are to be taken allegorically,” Paul says in Galatians 4 of Abraham’s family. Yet only here in all of his extant writings does Paul state that he is interpreting Israel’s scriptures allegorically. Indeed the explicit allegory in Gal. 4:21–5:1 is unique among the Old Greek translations of the Hebrew scriptures and among the early Jewish Christian writings collected in the New Testament. This paper locates Paul’s allegoresis among his several other, more “normal” interactions with Jewish scripture in Galatians. It demonstrates significant congruence between Paul’s allegorical method and Philo’s. It then probes Paul’s letter critically to discern his rationale for choosing an allegorical mode at this point in his argument. To what use does Paul put this allegory? In what ways might allegoresis serve those ends more effectively than “normal” exegesis of Genesis? Finally the paper assesses the validity and value Paul assigns to allegoresis as a mode of interpreting Israel’s scripture by his use of it. Does Paul’s appeal to the allegory validate his argument, or must he cite other scriptures to confirm an otherwise tenuous interpretation? Is the allegory’s value essentially rhetorical, or is it also interpretive?

How do women who have left the sex industry view Biblical narratives concerning women considered a “prostitute,” or zonah? Do they see themselves as heroes within the narrative or carry the shame that many times is expressed in a surface reading of the story? After reviewing Avaren Ipsen’s Sex Working and the Bible, I began to invite women in our ministry to experience these Zonah narratives while journaling their thoughts, experiences, and understanding of the texts. In our work with women in intimate partner violence, the sex industry, and houselessness we have experienced healing in Biblical narratives where they identify with major characters. Our Biblical narrative reading group has also found that inviting those to the reading table who have experienced life as a Zonah, provides important resources for scholarship in understanding the life of the characters, while embracing the role reversals that often lie beneath the text. I will discuss their perspectives of the stories i Tamar, Rahab, Solomon, and the prophetic metaphor in Ezekiel while offering a model to invite this marginalized population to the table as one way to practice practical theology.

One of the better-known types of 5th-7th century Christian pilgrimage eulogiae are small tokens, typically around 40 mm., often made of unfired clay and impressed with an image on one side. Most such objects are unprovenanced. However, two assemblages of eulogiae tokens excavated in situ come from Bet She’an. One group is made up of four tokens and associated finds excavated in the Byzantine shops on the Street of the Monuments, and excavators suggested that they could have been among the goods offered for sale to pilgrims and passers-by. The second group consists of five tokens found in a large house, which was assumed to belong to a wealthy Christian family, based on its size and associated finds. These tokens all display images associated with biblical figures or stories associated with Roman Palestine. Petrographic analysis of those found in the Byzantine shops suggests that they originated in the Jezreel Valley. Those discovered in the house have images associated with Christian sites in Palestine and display evidence of use, such as scraping away at the edges of the objects. This presentation places the tokens from Bet She’an within the wider context of Byzantine pilgrimage souvenir production, including GIS maps of comparable pilgrimage souvenir distributions, and contends that the assemblages from Bet She’an challenge common assumptions about the production and movement of pilgrimage eulogiae. Such objects are often assumed to come from and to have been purchased at the places they depict. However, the petrographic analysis of tokens from the Byzantine shops at Bet She’an, combined with the range of places depicted on the tokens, suggests that tokens could be produced away from the places they depict and that they could be sold at commercial hubs like Bet She’an and not exclusively at the pilgrimage locations depicted on the objects. The presence of tokens depicting Palestinian holy sites in a house in Bet She’an indicates that they were acquired and used by local populations, where they made up part of the household religious environment. Both assemblages are also suggestive of potential secondary markets for pilgrimage objects, which challenges common assumptions that eulogiae were acquired and transported by individual pilgrims.

Accepted paper for the IBR research group on the Relationship between the OT and NT

This paper takes up the repeated assertion that the Mishnah’s imagined past and rabbinic rulings can be understood as a “utopia.” While there is a pronounced subset of material that imagines the social world of the past and present in unrealistic, utopian terms, there is a countervailing tendency to engage fully and thoroughly with the contingency of the everyday world, with the possibility and reality that things can and do go wrong. Drawing on Utopia Studies scholarship, I demonstrate that the function of utopian imagining in the Mishnah is to express rabbinic ideals, especially about ritual activity and rabbinic authority. Taking up ritual theory, the concept of ritual failure, and the revisionist approach to rabbinic authority, I argue that the more nuanced portrait of the world full of contingency also represents an ideal, in which a robust ritual system can maintain stability in the face of an uncertain world.

This paper presents new evidence relevant to H. J. M. Milne and T. C. Skeat’s argument for the date of Codex Sinaiticus, which they described as “not likely to be much later than about A.D. 360.” Such precision derived in part from their observation of an “old system” of scribal figures for numerals in the thousands found in the codex. In addition to presenting many new relevant comparanda, this study also provides a critical examination of the argument itself. It is argued that although many of Milne and Skeat’s observations were correct, their appeal to numerals to establish a terminus ante quem for Codex Sinaiticus is invalid.

In Galatians 5:11, Paul indicates that at some point in his past he “proclaimed circumcision.” While a handful of interpretations have been put forth regarding when this activity occurred and what it entailed, the most prominent proposal is that prior to his fidelity to Jesus as Israel’s Messiah, Paul was open to—and possibly even a proponent of—gentile proselyte circumcision. In light of recent studies that argue that Paul was an ethnic essentialist/primordialist and committed to a strict halakhic position on the requirement that circumcision must be performed on the eighth-day after birth—therefore ruling out the possibility that non-Jews could become Jews through circumcision—it is worth reconsidering what activity this previous proclamation of circumcision refers to. This paper argues that the brief autobiographical detail Paul gives in Galatians 1:13–14 regarding his former occupation in Ἰουδαϊσμός—understood not as “Judaism,” but as a religio-political activist movement (2 Macc 2:21; 8:1; 14:38)—is the crucial datum that sheds light on what his past proclamation of circumcision entailed. In light of this information, I propose that “proclaiming circumcision” refers not to the acceptance or promotion of gentile proselyte circumcision, but to an exclusionary stance on gentile participation within the people of God. That is, Paul previously promoted the idea that only the circumcision (natural born Jews) were the people of God, but in light of his revelation of the Messiah (Gal 1:15–16) he now believes that non-Jews are able to share in this status.

In the apocryphal Acts of Peter, Acts of Paul, and Acts of Thomas, the resurrected Christ appears in the form of a young man at several baptisms. Discussions of these narratives have focused on the christological implications of Jesus’s polymorphy, but have said little about the ritual context of these christophanies (e.g., Foster 2007, Lalleman 1995, Junod 1982, Klauck 2008, Garcia 1999). Reading these marginal narratives in the context of the Dura-baptistery, however, I show such narrative depictions of Christ function as ekphrasis. Building on the studies of baptism and art (e.g., Ferguson 2009; Jensen 2011, 2012; and Peppard 2016), I argue that the ritual experience of the baptisand and other participants at Dura-Europos would have included visual engagement with the images on the walls—images brought to life by the flickering light of oil-lamps and the dancing shadows cast upon the walls. In particular, during the baptism itself, witnesses would be fixated on the partial or full immersion of the baptisand directly under the image of a young shepherd—a common representation of Christ. Apocryphal acts give narrative form to this scene, depicting Christ as manifest in the form of a young man at baptisms to witness and validate the ritual. Reading these apocryphal acts in light of early Christian baptismal art—especially the depictions of Christ at Dura-Europos—sheds new light on the apocryphal narratives as well as on early Christian practice.

After Andersen (1970) and Hoftijzer (1973), a flurry of contributions by Niccacci (1993), Zewi (1994, 2008), Zewi and van der Merwe (2001), and Holmstedt-Jones (2014) have focused on the verbless clause, including a volume edited by Miller-Naudé (1999). The current paper continues this conversation, drawing on Lucien Tesnière’s ‘dependency grammar’ (1965; trans. 2015)—this is an alternative framework to Noam Chomsky’s constituency grammar for analyzing syntax (Mazziotta and Imrényi 2020). This paper suggests that what Tesnière called (in French) 'phrase attributive' = English ‘attributive clause’ (Tesnière 1966, Chapter 66) may help in understanding the syntactic meaning of the verbless clause in BH. Let us take the following two sentences: (i) והוא אדמוני (literally) ‘and he [David] ruddy’ (1Sam 16:12) and (ii) ותהי חטאת הנערים גדולה מאד את־פני יהוה ‘and the sin of the young men was very great in the sight of the LORD’ (1Sam 2:17, RSV). Tesnière’s grammar suggests that the verb ‘to be’ may be understood as an auxiliary and hence is open to the possibility of being agglutinated into the attributive member of the sentence. When this is applied to the two sentences above, one may say that (1) they are both ‘attributive clauses’, as they attribute a property to a subject and that (2) the syntactic difference between them seemingly regards whether the auxiliary ‘to be’ is agglutinated or not, respectively (Tesnière 1965). After outlining some brief methodological issues based on Tesnière’s work, this paper argues that while these two sentence types may semantically convey the same meanings, at the grammatical level they are different. A semantic-level analysis explains that (1) the verbless clause and the verbal clause with היה ‘to be’ share the same semantic meaning of attaching to something or someone the following items: number; name; property; location or time; or indication of the existence of something or someone—that is, the property of being in existence is attached to something or someone. Grammatical analysis argues that (2) the absence of the verb in the verbless attributive clause has a linguistic consequence: the verbless clause prolongs or imitates the features of its syntactic situation. That is, its syntactic value is provided by its syntactic VSO or SVO ‘head’. The underlying reason is that, as Harald Weinrich explains, a “linguistic sign in a text remains valid until the text comes to an end or its validity is overridden by another sign of the same category” (Weinrich 2001, 23). As it lacks the verb, the verbless clause should not be able to replace the syntactic value of a preceding VSO. Along with the work of Tesnière, this paper explores these various issues within Weinrich’s text-linguistic method.

In mid-fourth-century Italy, a new iconography of Christ develops. This pictorial program which modern scholars have typically designated as the traditio legis centers on a frontal portrait of the Savior presenting a book to the viewer. While much has been said about the traditio of these images, this paper investigates the identity and function of the book in Christ’s hands, the so-called legis. The open scroll, or rare codex, does not face its holder, but displays its contents to the viewers outside of the image. With this novel form of textual presentation in the Roman visual sphere, the scroll is no longer a simple attribute of education or status as in representations of emperors, philosophers, or doctors. It becomes an independent figure which invites the viewer’s participation. The unrolled scroll is an image within an image that acts as a point of contact for viewers, regardless of literacy levels, since it shifts them into the mental space of visual exegesis and interaction. The scroll further asserts its autonomous authority by displaying text written almost exclusively in the third person, but Christ’s grasp on the volume attests to their intrinsic connection. In this way, Christ’s scroll exemplifies the paradox of his identity. It is both a signifier of Christ as the Logos and the Logos signified. The iconography of Christ revealing the scroll thus invites the viewer to “see the divine spirit that is concealed in the veil of the letter,” as Origen encourages in his Homilies on Leviticus 1.1. The represented scroll in his hands holds potential to be both the incarnate word and unincarnate Logos, just as Christ is accessible to all men through the written word, yet his divinity and works cannot be contained or comprehended by earthly means. Focusing on depictions of a frontal Christ holding a book in the fourth and fifth centuries, this paper seeks to expand the category of the traditio legis to include representations previously designated as “Christ as Teacher.” The combined iconography, which I call Christ as Logos, is diffused from the private to the public arts of fourth- and fifth-century Italy, in the funereal arts of sarcophagi, catacomb paintings or mosaics, and gold glass and in basilica, chapel, and baptistery apses. As they are seen at consistent and repeated intervals throughout the Christian visual environment, Christ as Logos images function as cult portraits that bear the promise of divine presence rather than conveying a narrative or exegetical meaning exclusive to interpretations of death, baptism, or liturgy. By centering the discussion on the scrolls and codices represented with Christ, this paper gives agency to the books in late antique Italian art and thereby presents a new interpretation of Christ’s early iconography.

Scholarship on the text of the New Testament has long devoted careful attention to individual manuscripts, to codicology, and to the work of scribes. Textual criticism frequently also attends to how liturgical and exegetical reading have shaped the transmission of New Testament texts. Precisely these phenomena—manuscripts, scribes, reading—are the locus of critical attention for ‘new’ or ‘material’ philology as well. What then is ‘new’ about new philology? I argue in this paper that the novelty of new philology is not primarily in its objects of analysis but in its historiographic perspective. Textual criticism has traditionally privileged a ‘retrospective’ mode of textual history, focused on reconstructing or approximating an original or initial text. Studies of manuscripts, scribes, and reading are oriented toward this project. By contrast, new philology has programmatically centred individual material texts in a kaleidoscopic approach to textual history. This has brought renewed attention to how specific readers encounter particular textual objects and to how those textual objects change over time—both affording significant insights for more traditional textual history. Nonetheless, in its programmatic form, new philology often offers a series of disconnected micro-historical ‘snapshots’ at the expense of historical continuities in texts and reading. Yet fragmentation is unlikely to be the enduring influence of new philology in the study of the New Testament. For more than two decades now, New Testament textual criticism has instead witnessed an interest in a diachronic ‘living text’. New philology has widened the historiographic lens to examine what texts, manuscripts, scribes, and readers do across time and geography. Its focus on materiality and use invites a ‘prospective’ textual history that observes the ongoing vitality of the New Testament in diverse contexts of study and worship. Recent scholarship on major variation units and on paratextual systems exemplifies these new perspectives. Such a prospective textual history is also the focus of my own work on the Eusebian apparatus and the history of Gospel reading, from which I will offer a number of examples. Paradoxically, new philology—or by now perhaps better ‘material philology’—may both succeed and disappear. The ongoing materiality and use of the New Testament might simply become an integrated part of textual scholarship. (One can witness a similar shift already in disciplines like medieval studies.) Yet whether the prospective mode of textual history will find a lasting home in the discipline of New Testament textual criticism alongside retrospective approaches is less clear. This paper is an invited submission for the session on New Philology and its significance for New Testament textual criticism.

The Hebrew Bible has very little to concretely connect it to a material culture of writing. Due to the use of papyrus in ancient Israel and Judah, any earlier drafts of biblical texts are lost to us and scholars instead must turn to other written evidence in order to understand writing in ancient Israel. This engagement with material culture is key for a better understanding of the world that produced the Hebrew Bible, but the language of material culture analysis appears in other studies of biblical literatures as well, particularly in studies on the editing of the Hebrew Bible. These studies, especially those related to the Torah, transform the text into a Tell by discerning different layers within the text and proposing theories that can date these layers and articulate the relationship between them. Though they employ literary methods, they turn to the language of material culture and archaeology to describe the source elements that they find in the text. From Martin Noth’s proposal of a grundschrift to David M. Carr’s description of a “basic P-stratum in Genesis,” archaeological and material culture language permeates the way in which biblical scholars analyse sources and seams in biblical texts. This language constitutes an attempt on the part of scholars to reify the text, to take the literary evidence that it provides and construct from this evidence a kind of physical model that provides an archaeology of the text. Without the benefit of real material evidence for a culture of writing in ancient Israel though, how much does this archaeology of the text constitute merely a constructed history, that may or may not have any bearing on the historical development of these texts? In this paper, I argue that archaeological and material culture evidence is key to an understanding of the redaction of the Torah. It is this evidence that provides support for the embodied lives of texts and allows us to construct a better model for our Tell and come to a better understanding of the strata within it.

A conundrum appears in vv. 7 and 12 of Ezekiel 47, where, far from the center of Ezekiel's utopian temple complex, out in profane territory, there appears the tree(s) of life. Comparative evidence leads us to expect to find the tree(s) bundled with the sacred river, but not here—not outside the holy temple. One example is a thirteenth-century BCE Assyrian ivory inlay showing a mountain god. Here, the tree of life is certainly at the cosmic center. The Mari investiture panel gives us another example. The vases of the river goddesses in the panel sprout their trees within the panel’s innermost frames. The trees lie in the midst of the Mari garden (cf. Gen 2:9). The inner frames correspond to Ishtar’s inner shrine in the Mari palace. Should not the life-bearing trees of Ezek 47:7, 12 lie deep within Ezekiel’s utopian temple complex as in this iconography? There, at the center of the holy compound, the trees of life would be symbolically shielded by cosmic trees, trees corresponding to the specifically stylized palmetto trees of the Mari panel. Such “second-tier,” cosmic trees are represented by Ezekiel’s temple’s ʿāb (lintel, canopy) and by the palm trees of Ezek 41:18, 25. Farther out are the lower-tier palms, like those in the side frames of the Mari panel. In Ezekiel’s complex, these are the trees adorning the walls of the outer gatehouses (40:16, 22, 26, 31, 34, 37). The solution to the puzzle of the location of the prized, "top-tier" tree of life in Ezekiel 47 lies in renewed, intensified study of ancient Near Eastern iconography. This paper lays out the results of such a study.

In The Literary Function of Possessions in Luke-Acts, Luke Timothy Johnson notes that, “Luke consistently speaks about possessions,” but he “does not speak about possessions consistently” (1977:13). This is particularly apparent through the juxtaposition of the parable of the rich fool (Luke 12:16-21) and the admonition to “Consider the ravens” in Luke 12:22-34. Beginning with the cautionary tale of a man who has no anxiety about money because his harvests have yielded enough for many years and he has stored them in brand-new barns, the next passage advises the audience not to worry about food or clothing but to rather “Consider the ravens” who “have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them” (Luke 12:24). Because of the agricultural threat posed by ravens, both Luke and his original audience were likely to be more aware of and knowledgeable about the behavior of ravens than are modern interpreters from industrialized nations. By giving focused interpretive attention to the ravens who have historically been marginalized by more traditional approaches, ecological hermeneutics provides valuable insights for scholarship on Luke’s Gospel. A close examination of raven feeding and caching behavior demonstrates both similarities to and differences from the behavior of the rich fool. Although it is true that ravens do not build storehouses or barns, they nevertheless hoard surplus food in caches for future use. Unlike the rich man’s barns, however, these caches do not remove the resources from larger ecological cycles and they do not prevent the use of those resources by others. By offering the ravens as examples to be emulated despite their hoarding behavior, Luke 12:24-25 undermines simplistic readings of both the preceding parable and the admonition not to worry. Instead, it invites the interpreter to engage in more nuanced reasoning about the uses of wealth, and particularly the ways in which multiple different approaches to excess resources can foster communal resilience. This indicates that Luke’s inconsistent treatment of wealth may not need to be harmonized, but rather demonstrates the need for multiple approaches if the community is to flourish.

Most readers of the Bible associate monstrous creatures with the final chapters of Job or the apocalyptic visions of Daniel. The Book of Isaiah, however, not only refers to natural predators like lions, leopards, or hawks, but also features a variety of (quasi)mythological beasts, including Sheol (5:14), seraphim/flying serpents (6:2, 6; 14:29; 30:6), satyrs (13:21; 34:15), Leviathan (27:1), the sea-monster Rahab (30:7; 51:9), and the demon Lilith (34:15). Most of these creatures are known from other biblical texts or ancient Near Eastern sources. Notably, they appear across multiple compositional layers of the book of Isaiah This paper argues that Isaiah references to these creatures form a kind of bestiary within the biblical book. That is, like Medieval taxonomies of beasts, they imbue the created order with both threat and wonder. As recent work in ecology has demonstrated, ferocious creatures play an important symbolic role across cultures in human self-understanding vis-à-vis nature (e.g., E. O. Wilson’s notion of the “grizzly bear effect,” adapted for Leviathan by William P. Brown, The Seven Pillars of Creation: The Bible, Science, and the Ecology of Wonder; see further David Quammen, Monster of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind). Isaiah’s portrayal of these animals draws upon these imaginative resonances to construct a world in which human power is not absolute, as both God and nature dwell beyond human control. Also like the Medieval bestiaries, Isaiah’s parade of beasts encourages reflection upon the complex relationship among God, humans, and non-human animals. In some cases, God sympathizes with humans at the expense of these creatures and kills them to guarantee human survival and well-being (e.g., 27:1; 51:9). The peaceable kingdom texts (6:6-9; 65:25) operate similarly, as wild animals must be denuded of their ferocity for the sake of human and domestic animals. In other cases, God more explicitly sympathizes with these creatures. They are affiliated with God (e.g., Isa 6:2) and benefit from God’s removal of humans from urban centers (e.g., 13:21; 34:15). The paper will conclude by considering the resonance of Isaiah’s discourse about these divine/human/non-human relationships with the current extinction crisis and recent observations of changed animal behavior in response to decreased human activity during COVID-19 pandemic.

The Gospel of John features several figures as speakers of the text of Isaiah. Most obvious among these, John (the Baptist) is presented as the voice of Isaiah 40:3 and Jesus is most likely the speaker of Isaiah 6:10. Drawing on rhetorical and social memory approaches as well as insights drawn from the early technique of prosopological exegesis, this paper identifies believers as giving voice to Isaiah’s question, “Who has believed our report?” (Jn 12:38). Likewise, the first eyewitnesses of the resurrection vocalize Isaiah’s testimony, “I saw the Lord,” and the comment that Isaiah “saw his glory and spoke about him” functions equally as an apt description of the Gospel itself (12:41; cf. 1:14). Consequently, the “report” (ἀκοή) of Isaiah (Isa 6:9; 52:7; 53:1) turns out to be the testimony to Jesus, particularly as it is preserved in (and as) the Gospel. John then shares in the status and authority of Isaiah, as well as his rejection.

Conflict characterizes the New Testament epistle to the Colossians. The letter evidences a struggle between the author of the letter, thrice self-identified as Paul (Col 1:1, 1:23 and 4:18), the recipients of the letter, and those proclaiming “plausible arguments” (Col 2:4) and “philosophy and empty deceit” (Col 2:8) who, according to the author, threaten to deceive the Colossians (Col 2:4) and take them captive (Col 2:8). This deep and pervasive conflict makes Colossians an interesting window into methods of conflict resolution within early Christian communities. There has been considerable focus on the way the letter seeks to theologically repudiate this “Colossian philosophy,” which, when viewed from the perspective of conflict resolution, suggests that the letter primarily responds to conflict as an intellectual, polemical refutation of the “false” and affirmation of the “true.” This paper suggests an alternative reading of the letter’s approach to conflict resolution by analyzing the letter’s ethical exhortations for the Colossians to demonstrate an ethic of love in Col 2:3 and 3:14. Such an analysis, this paper argues, demonstrates that Colossians encourages its addressees to demonstrate an ethic of love that connects and unites all members of the community in the midst of conflict. It further indicates that this ethic of love is a present possibility in the midst of conflict because the Colossians are citizens of the Kingdom of the Beloved Son (Col 1:13). This study ultimately suggests that Colossians maintains that encourages its recipients to respond to conflict with a theological understanding of Jesus that leads to an ethic of love demonstrable in everyday actions that exhibits unity, connection, and reconciliation in the midst of conflict.

In unique manner the narrative complex of Luke 1–2 considers the topics of age and intergenerationality from multiple perspectives. First of all, Luke tells the stories of the births of John the Baptist and Jesus the Messiah. Stories that relate to a person´s youngest age, respectively the beginning of all aging in general. Secondly, the auctor ad theophilum tells us the story about Jesus as a boy at the age of twelve, teaching in the temple (Lk 2,41–51). The only story in the biblical canon about Jesus in a youthful age. Thirdly, Lk 1–2 includes as many old narrative characters as nowhere else in the New Testament in such a tight framework: Elizabeth and Zechariah (Lk 1,5–25.36.39–45.57–80), Simeon and Anna (Lk 2,22–40). Finally, Mary and Joseph as a young couple, respectively together with Jesus as a young family contribute another facet of intergenerationality to the overture of the third gospel. Given these facts, there is probably nor more appropriate place in the New Testament to investigate intergenerational relations than the storyline of Luke 1–2. Methodologically the primary approach of the paper will be to analyze the characterizations of the characters of different age in this narrative framework. In particular the paper will focus on aspects such as behavior and speech in order to sketch a picture of the intergenerational dimensions in the figure constellation in Luke 1–2. By doing so, this paper aims to elucidate the (socio-)ethical as well as the ecclesiological implications that can be derived from the relationship between the various protagonists coming from different generations. The paper wants to emphasize at least the following three theses: 1) The voices of both young and old resound together in a cross-generational symphony, to proclaim the salvation, which takes shape in the coming of Jesus Christ. Young and old voices meet without excluding one another on the basis of youth or age. They complement, enrich and depend on each other. An outstanding example of this is the interaction between Mary und Elizabeth (Lk 1,36–45). 2) Still, it is up to the old to specify the keynote in this symphony. Luke gives the leading voice to the old and its essentially up to them, to anticipate and interpret, what will happen to John, Jesus and the rising generation. This becomes particular evident in the prayers of Elizabeth (Lk 1,41–45), Zechariah (Lk 1,67–80) and Simeon (Lk 2,28–35). 3) According to the traditions of ancient near-eastern society the younger generations have a duty of care towards the old (Ex 20,12; Dtn 5,16; Rut 4,15). The old should be respected and honored (e. g. Lev 19,32). These aspects also come to light in Luke 1–2. However, in the narrative of Luke 1–2 it becomes certainly clear that it is also up to the younger generations to admonish, rebuke or teach the old. Especially the angel´s words about John and his destiny refer to this dimension of intergenerationality (Lk 1,17).

In the early decades of the Christian movement, many followers of the Way operated on the margins and challenged the norms of society. Their founder was a convicted criminal subjected to capital punishment. In Mark 13:9-13 (par. Matt 10:16-23 and Luke 12:4-12) Jesus warns his followers of trials before governors and kings. In 2 Cor 6:4-5 and 2 Cor 11:23, Paul lists his many detentions among his credentials. Acts narrates the detainment of followers of the Way at numerous points (see, e.g., Acts 5:17-21, 12:1-19, and 16:16-40). Evidence of confinement is not limited to the New Testament. According to Suetonius conflict between Jews about “Chrestus” was so public and contentious that it caught the attention of the emperor Claudius and expelled them from Rome. Tacitus reports that Nero could plausibly accuse Christians of arson in the aftermath of the great fire in Rome in 64 C. E. The Bishop of Antioch, Ignatius, was led in chains to Rome in the early second century. As Glanville Downey (1976) observed, early Christians very likely could have been seen by so-called upstanding Romans “as a troublesome and potentially dangerous minority in an empire that was full of un-Roman minorities and strange people.” There is considerable debate as to what crimes Christians may have been guilty of. Some options include treason (maiestas), general contumacy, participating in banned societies, and practicing superstition or atheism. Christians, fairly or not, were perceived to be criminal. 1 Peter 4:15 perhaps provides a helpful window into the nature of early Christian criminality. As the letter concludes, the author reminds the audience that their suffering should not be on account of murder, theft, criminality, or the ever so tricky ἀλλοτριεπίσκοποϛ. When discussing this text many commentators appeal to the ways in which Christians were criminalized and their ritual practices (such as the Eucharistic meal and baptism) misunderstood. The very real possibility that Christian actually engaged in criminal behavior is not discussed at length. While caution should be observed when interpreting vice lists and some degree of criminalization (and also intentional misprision) of the early Christian movement certainly exists, this paper explores the factors that would contribute to Christian criminality and the types of crimes that some early Christians would have likely perpetrated.

In his "Against Heresies" (I, 31), Irenaeus is the first to report the existence of a group of Christians who, subverting the "traditional" interpretation of the book of Genesis, held the figure of Cain in high esteem. Without ever naming them, Irenaeus accuses the members of this group of exhibiting, in support of their beliefs, a "Gospel of Judas" which they had forged. The public unveiling of the Tchacos Codex in 2006 and of the “Gospel of Judas” it had preserved, apparently confirmed Irenaeus' assertions, at least as far as the existence of such a text. Almost as soon as it was revealed, this newly discovered “Gospel of Judas” was quickly identified with the one invented by the so-called Cainites. But considering the fluidity of titles in Antiquity and the proliferation of writings with identical titles but very different content (for example the two “Revelations of James” of Nag Hammadi, or the “Gospel of Philip” of Nag Hammadi and the one cited by Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion XXVI), can we really be certain that we are before the same text? In this paper, we propose to compare what can be deduced of the positions of this group of Christians apparently favorable to Cain with what can be read in the “Gospel of Judas” in the Tchacos Codex, in order to establish whether Irenaeus refers to the text which has come down to us, or to a still unknown text.

Some recent examinations of Paul’s rhetoric have encouraged interpreters to apply approaches that illuminate the apostle’s humanity rather than eclipse it. Such encouragement is especially pertinent to the examination of 2 Corinthians where Paul frequently threads autobiographical references into his largely judicial rhetoric. These autobiographical references have parallels with self-promotions (periautologia) within Paul’s Greco-Roman milieu such as Seneca’s Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium. Paul’s self-promotions contain especially vulnerable and transparent admissions shaped by his use of Jewish lament that simultaneously inform his rhetoric and person. One only reads as far 2 Corinthians 1:9 to find such admissions, “We despaired of living” which echoes the darkest of laments, namely Psalm 88 (87 LXX). With a focus on this kind of repeated feature in the letter, the overarching argument in this paper is that Jewish lament language functions as a primary source for the way Paul crafts his self-promotions in 2 Corinthians. By locating his source in Jewish lament, one obtains a wider frame of reference for examining Paul’s self-promotions. Jewish lament supplies Paul with an idiom and multiple exemplars whose afflictions resonate with his apostolic experience. Paul reconfigures Jewish lament around his experience with the crucified and risen Christ as part of his collective effort to defend his apostleship. Part of that defense is to promote a weakness consistent with some of the weakest figures in Israel’s history, namely “lamenters” such as the figure in Psalm 88 (87 LXX), prophets such as Jeremiah, Job, and, climactically, Jesus. While the letter contains several instances of these lament-laden self-promotions, this paper limits its focus to three texts: (1) 2 Corinthians 1:8–10 and its use of Ps 87 LXX; (2) the peristasis catalogue in 2 Corinthians 4:7–15 and its use of multiple lament pre-texts including Psalm 30:13 LXX, Jeremiah 19:11, and Lamentations 4:2; and (3) 2 Corinthians 12:6–10 and its use of Job 7:16. The approach employed in this paper is two-fold. First, the lament pre-texts embedded in Paul’s self-promotions are analyzed metaleptically. In short, the interplay between these texts and the lament language they employ produce unstated points of resonance that clarify and amplify the kind of weakness that Paul promotes to the Corinthians as part of his larger effort to defend his apostleship. Second, Paul’s lament-laden self-promotions of weakness are compared to self-promotions in Seneca’s Epistles in which he appeals to his own weaknesses, particularly Epistles 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 26, and 54. While Paul accentuates his weaknesses by using Jewish lament to instruct the Corinthians, Seneca tends to temper and rationalize his weaknesses in his instruction to Lucilius. The paper concludes by drawing out some of the rhetorical and autobiographical implications of Paul’s self-promotions given their use of Jewish lament and their divergence from contemporaries such as Seneca.

The prophetic corpora of the Hebrew Bible reveal a curious preponderance of 'sign acts' in the books associated with Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Although developed over many decades, these prophetic traditions frame themselves as responses to the crises of the sixth century, most notably the destruction of Jerusalem and the involuntary displacement of many of Judah's inhabitants. It is widely recognised that these events were highly traumatic for the individuals and communities involved and that these traumas are reflected in the books' contents as well as their formation. This paper proposes that the unusual number of sign acts in these traditions may be understood in similar terms. Trauma, as is well known, frequently manifests in loss of language. In the face of unspeakable trauma, the prophets are depicted as deploying their bodies in lieu of words.

Developments in the archaeology of Edom over the past twenty years have informed our understanding of Edomite history and culture, including the earliest development of what would become Edomite religion. This paper will argue that the uniquely Edomite form of religion formed during a period when pastoral and nomadic groups settled in the Wadi Faynan and participated in the copper exploitation and production that flourished in early Iron Age. Using theories related to coalition building and cooperation among pastoral groups, this paper will focus on the rise of the little-known god Qaus to prominence within the Edomite pantheon. Several scholars now suggest this area as also being the origin of Yahweh, highlighting the importance the nomadic religions of this region for the history of the religion of Judah.

This paper explores the possibility that the Davidic genealogy offered for Zerubbabel in 1 Chronicles 3.17–19 is best understood as an ideologically motivated explanation for the political history of early Persian period Judea. The passage establishes continuity between the Davidic-ruled kingdom of Judah and the Persian province of Yehud that ultimately succeeded it by providing one of Yehud earliest governors with Davidic ancestry. In 1 Chr 3, the only passage to explicitly connect Zerubbabel with the former ruling house, the governor is identified as the son of Pedaiah and the grandson of the exiled king Jehoiachin. Importantly, these details are at odds with the earliest reference to Zerubbabel’s parentage in the book of Haggai. In Haggai’s opening verse Shealtiel is the name given for Zerubbabel’s father, without further lineage recognized (cf. Ezra 3.2). Notably, Shealtiel also appears in 1 Chr 3.17–18, where he is listed as the brother of Pedaiah (and thus Zerubbabel’s uncle). This discrepancy need reflect a textual corruption or scribal error (cf. the OG of this passage); rather it reflects a different approach to lending legitimacy to Zerubbabel’s appointment as governor. While earlier sources like Haggai and Zech 1–8 appealed to traditionalist Royal Judean imagery and symbols from the monarchic period (e.g. the seal/signet, language of divine choice, and Zerubbabel as “branch”) to outline their expectations for his political career, the Chronicler made these connections explicit by constructing a Davidic lineage for Zerubbabel and his descendants. This move would parallel the roughly contemporary example of Darius I’s efforts to establish himself as a descendent of Cyrus the Great in the Behisitun inscription. Beyond legitimizing Zerubbabel’s rule through a connection to the previous Judean dynasty, the move also serves the Chronicler’s broader theological program of reaffirming Yahweh’s promise to David of an unbroken line (1 Chr 17). By incorporating Zerubbabel into the house of David, the Chronicler argues that the dissolution of the kingdom of Judah in the 6th century did not mean the end of the line for Yahweh’s chosen royal family; rather it continued unbroken (albeit with geographic disruption) through Yehud’s earliest governors.

In an incisive paper delivered in 1998 to the SBL Seminar on Ancient Myths and Modern Theories of Christian Origins (published 2004), Dennis Smith proposed that some evidence traditionally taken to support an early Jerusalem church can, in fact, be explained through the convention of pilgrimage. “[T]he fact that Cephas was in Jerusalem for Paul to visit for fifteen days, and James was there for him to ‘see,’ does not necessarily mean that they both lived in Jerusalem and were leaders of the Jerusalem church. It could simply mean they were there during a festival season, for example, since it was quite common for Jews to make frequent pilgrimages to Jerusalem…” The sweeping scope of this inference cannot be fully borne by Paul’s language in Galatians 1 and must be tempered. Its gist, however, is capable of much broader support; and in this paper I seek to buttress it along three further lines of inquiry: the festal connotations surrounding the “fifteen days” of Paul’s stay with Cephas (e.g., an eight-day khag prefaced by seven days purification); indications of pilgrimage Sitze im Leben throughout Acts 1-7 (Pentecost/Acts 2, of course, but also elsewhere, e.g., Stephen’s diasporic opponents); and (c) Luke’s historiographical potential (drawn from his use of other sources) to recast pilgrimage stories as a Galilean relocation to Jerusalem. Building on Smith, I will ask, Might it be that the Lukan narrative of an immediate Jerusalem church is woven from stories of early apostolic attendance at khaggim? That “to go up to the apostles in Jerusalem” was to expect such attendance as a mechanism for early catholicity?

The motif of “rest” dominates the section of Hebrews that extends from 3:7 to 4:13. Some have argued that “rest” in this passage should be understood in light of gnostic parallels (or, more recently, Middle Platonism), while others have contended that Jewish apocalyptic literature offers a better basis for comparison. Without in any way denying the importance of exploring the background of the “rest” concept directly, I propose to explore the background of the passage from a somewhat different angle, that of Jewish Sabbath discourse. Such a comparison seems promising because the passage twice associates the “rest” concept with Sabbath observance. In 4:4, God’s rest is defined in terms of ceasing from his works on the seventh day of creation. Then in 4:9, the possibility of humans entering God’s rest is represented as a “Sabbath rest” (σαββατισμὸς) that remains for God’s people. My comparative analysis will situate the discussion in Hebrews against the backdrop of Sabbath discourse in Jubilees, Philo, and rabbinic traditions (focusing on the Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael). Not only do these sources represent three different streams of Jewish thought, but also each discusses theoretical matters pertaining to the Sabbath (i.e., origin, significance, conceptual associations, and the meaning of rest). In other words, these authors give attention to the underpinnings of divine and human Sabbath rest. Turning to Hebrews, I will argue that the author shares in certain perspectives seen in the aforementioned texts as I trace the main contours of the argument in Heb 3–4. With regard to divine rest, the author asserts that God has been in a perpetual state of Sabbath rest since creation (4:3–4), and yet perpetual rest does not mean inactivity (cf. 3:9). This perspective seems to draw on philosophical ideas like those attested in the writings of Philo, who portrays the Sabbath as a universal festival premised on God’s contemplation of his created works (see Opif. 89; Decal. 97). God is a perpetual keeper of festival, but his rest is “a working with absolute ease” (Cher. 87). With regard to human rest, the author of Hebrews speaks of an eschatological possibility available to the audience of entering by faith into God’s own perpetual Sabbath (4:1–2, 9–10) at any time (“as long as it is called ‘today,’” 3:13). Here the perspective is similar to certain rabbinic traditions (m. Tamid 7:4; b. Sanh. 97a; Mek. R. Ishmael, Shabbata 1) that mention a coming age of perpetual Sabbath. The author of Hebrews capitalizes on this perspective but insists that the age to come has already arrived (cf. Heb 6:5). The author engages with these various Jewish perspectives but redeploys them in service of an exhortation to participate in the rest of salvific fulfillment. In short, analyzing Heb 3–4 against the backdrop of Sabbath discourse helps clarify the passage’s function: it calls its audience to join with God in celebrating a perpetual Sabbath of completion and fulfillment, something that is possible because Jesus has already led the way into this eschatological reality.

“Am I in the place of God?”: This question that Jacob asks Rachel in Genesis 30:2 highlights the presence of a divine-human boundary that constitutes a theme in the book of Genesis which becomes especially clear in YHWH’s creation and removal of disabilities. Specifically, YHWH disables Jacob at Jabbok because Jacob acted as God each time he tried to claim chosenness for himself. By disabling Jacob, YHWH ensures that Jacob can no longer wrestle what he wants for himself—as when he grabbed Esau’s heel, convinced Esau to sell his birthright, and tricked Isaac into offering his blessing—and alters his way of being in the world. Jacob is no longer the primary actor who shapes his narrative, suggesting that his cultural category has shifted. Conversely, because the men in the matriarchs’ lives overstepped the divine-human boundary in orchestrating and offering up these women’s lives—as in the wife-sister tales and Laban’s daughter swap—YHWH responds as only YHWH can by enabling the matriarchs to bear children. In so doing, YHWH removes the matriarchs’ disability of infertility. This argument extends the work of disability studies within biblical studies; using the cultural model of disability, I argue that Jacob’s impairment and the matriarchs’ infertility constitute disabilities and draw together these instances of divine disabling and enabling. Additionally, I employ a feminist lens in attending to the suffering the matriarchs experienced.

This paper reconsiders debates in North African Christian sources about infant baptism, focusing on the writings of Tertullian and Cyprian of Carthage. Moving the emphasis from Tertullian or Cyprian’s own agendas, this paper asks what their debates over baptism tell us about the motivations of those seeking this rite for their infants. While these Christian writers come to differing conclusions about the practice—Tertullian rejects it, Cyprian expressly advocates it—both reveal that parents in their Christ assemblies sought out this ritual, and perhaps especially in cases where an infant was ill or even dying. The practice of infant baptism, I suggest, points to prevalent conceptions of and concern about this early stage of human life. Evident but rarer in other parts of the Roman Mediterranean, this practice was ubiquitous in Roman North Africa by the fourth century. What might have given rise to it among members of North African Christ assemblies? High infant mortality rates and the uncertainties attending pregnancy and childbirth heightened the sensibility that infancy was a momentous and delicate time. Ancient people built up various responses to managing the threat of death and the transition from birth to infancy and childhood. Often these entailed ritually incorporating infants, either near their birth and even in the case of their untimely deaths, into domestic and social networks by placing them under the protection of a god. Considering archaeological, epigraphic and literary sources for these practices, this paper speculates that parents in North Africa could have imbued infant baptism with meanings drawn from Romano-Punic cultic approaches to the precarity and uniqueness of this phase of life.

The text of the Hebrew Bible (BHQ) and the text of the Greek Bible (Septuagint) have striking differences. Differences in the arrangement of verses and in some cases even of chapters, differences in semantics, differences in the choice of lexemes, differences and nuances in meanings which cannot be explained only by the differences in syntactic structures. Such differences can be found for all books of the Old Testament, including the book of Proverbs. The aim of the paper is to answer to which extent the wisdom concepts of Prov 30-31 MT and Prov 30-31 LXX unfold in the foreground of the respective traditions of these two texts. To this end, the research question is explored as to whether, how, and why the ideas and the concepts of wisdom of Prov 30 and 31 MT differ from those of Prov 30 and 31 LXX. The focus, then, is on a comparison between the Hebrew text and the Greek text. The Hebrew text (BHQ) is always the reference and the starting point for the comparison. This presentation aims to show how the wisdom concepts found in Prov 30-31 MT and LXX unfold in the foreground of the respective traditions of these two texts. My thesis is that the different wisdom concepts unfolded in Prov 30-31 MT and in Prov 30-31 LXX can give precise clues to the respective different tradition backgrounds in the foreground of which they are systematized. In a first part, the specific problem of the text of the LXX in contrast to the text of the Masoretes is explained, and then in a second part the different wisdom concepts are elaborated on the basis of precisely selected textual examples. This text-critical, lexical, and semantic investigation leads to several insights into the different wisdom concepts presented by the two texts. It will be the subject of the third part. Two prominent evidences result from the study: In Prov 30-31 MT, wisdom is related to God, the Creator. According to the creation account in the Priesterschrift, God created the world and brought about a certain order. This order is good. The wisdom of mankind consists in fitting into this good order created by God. This gives rise to the concept of cosmotheistic wisdom. In Prov 30-31 LXX, on the other hand, the focus is on man. Man is directly addressed as the wise one. Man proves himself wise by behaving as the righteous one in society. This righteousness results from faithfulness to the law, from a good education, and from a sense of responsibility. This is the concept of an educational wisdom.

In a recent survey of research on the "book" of Isaiah, the history of research is summarized as follows: "from the prophet Isaiah to the three books to the one book of Isaiah." So put, it highlights that the issue of unity in Isaiah has long been at the center of scholarly discussion. It also indicates a shift in perspective: away from the prophet, and towards the ”final form” of the book. But how should the relation between the two be conceived of when it is quite clear that the “final form” is the result of a long process of formation? To answer these questions, this paper will focus on the way the relation between the figure Isaiah and the book that bears his name is conceptualized in the Dead Sea Scrolls. More specifically, I will, after a review of the shape of Isaiah throughout the Isaiah scrolls, pay close attention to the pesharim that quote from the book of Isaiah, especially those who do so by mentioning the prophet’s name. The aim is to formulate a “native” model of how unity is constructed in the book of Isaiah in light of the figure Isaiah in the Second Temple Period.

This presentation will review the work of Patrick D. Miller, the preacher, particularly in his published collection, Stewards of the Mysteries of God: Preaching the Old Testament--and the New (Cascade, 2013).

When teaching the extrabiblical gospels, it is difficult to wrest the narrative away from the church fathers and to convey how these gospels may have been received by their original communities. To overcome this challenge, I begin the unit by describing a more contemporary scenario: a fictional author, Janet Osteen, publishes an article denouncing popular books that are so consumed with witches, wizards, and magic, the entire series is named after its most famous wizard, Harry Potter. I describe the series from her point of view, but because the students grew up in the Harry Potter era and know the franchise, they immediately hear the bias in her argument. Next we speculate. What if the Harry Potter books disappeared so completely that future generations’ only knowledge of them was via Ms. Osteen’s article: how would their understanding of those books be distorted? What if, 2000 years from now, archaeologists suddenly discovered the books themselves? By the time I introduce the Gospel of Thomas in the second half of the class, we are prepared to meet this gospel—and others that follow—on their own terms, to embrace their “strangeness,” and to critically engage with questions of church history, authority, and canon. We utilize to this comparison between Harry Potter and extracanonical gospels throughout the course (for example, when discussing the problems of multitext conflation in the Jewish-Christian gospels, we remember Harry’s beloved mentor, Gandalf). Since these gospels are unfamiliar to the majority of undergrads, these contemporary characters’ repeated appearance not only aids in assimilation of new knowledge, it provides a welcome respite.

In her article, “Following Generation,” Catherine Malabou proposes her affect theory of plasticity in which a reader, who is an inheritor of a particular tradition, plays both an active and a passive role in engendering the inheritance itself. Her theory discusses precedence and causality as components of affect theory’s understanding of consciousness. By using the example deconstruction, Malabou understands the reader of a particular text as participating in a process of deconstructing the text, which in turn creates a new structure by the very process of deconstruction. In this way, the inheritor of a text can no longer read the text in a past state of peace. On the contrary, the inheritor will find a new structure that originates out of the process of deconstruction. I contend that this is the very process that led Paul to engender his previous understanding of his inherited “law” with the new meaning or structure that he labeled “the law of faith” (Rom 3:27). In light of his experience with Christ and through a process much like Malabou’s theory of plasticity, Paul deconstructed his previous understanding of δικαιοσύνη (righteousness) in the law (Phil 3:6) and realized a new structure that erupted through the deconstruction of his previous understanding. This new structure now claimed that the δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ was διὰ πίστεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ εἰς πάντας τοὺς πιστεύοντας (Rom 3:22). I will argue that the theory of plasticity helps explain the emotions of Paul as expressed in his understanding of righteousness as explained in Rom 3:27-31 and in his following example of the faith of Abraham in Rom 4.

This paper focuses on variants due to graphic similarity in the two comprehensive Hebrew traditions of the Pentateuch – the Masoretic text and the Samaritan Pentateuch. It presents a comprehensive corpus of all these variants and examines them from a broad perspective. The paper presents a statistical analysis of the data, including a survey of the interchanging letters and the frequency of the interchanges. Moreover, it discusses the paleographic background of the interchanges and examines the shapes of the interchanging letters during each stage of development of the three relevant scripts – Hebrew script, square script, and Samaritan script. Through this process, it determines the script on which the interchanges occurred and the approximate chronological framework of the interchanges. That is, it identifies the stage at which there exist graphic similarities between the letters and when it is reasonable to presume the changes occurred. The statistical data emerging from the paleographic analysis shed light on the transmission distribution of Pentateuch in the Hasmonean and Herodian period. The main innovation of the paper is the incorporation of methods from the paleographic realm in order to explore a known textual phenomenon that occurred during the transmission of scriptural texts. Paleographic analysis of variants due to graphic similarity serves as a new criterion pointing to scribal activity at certain periods during the transmission process.

In the last decade, a number of scholars have explored the usefulness of the critical field of Fan Studies for interpreting apocryphal or parabiblical writings. Many have found this field to offer a rich interpretive lens for understanding issues such as canon and canonicity, or examining subaltern, non-orthodox voices. Meredith Warren has demonstrated that just as fanfiction influences media canon, parabiblical texts also influence the biblical canon. Recently Kasper Bro Larsen has argued that fanfiction and early Christian Apocrypha have similar literary strategies and functions, suggesting that apocryphal writings both democratize the creation of meaning and gatekeep it. While certainly productive, many of these analyses do not to take the full economies, history and production contexts of contemporary fanfiction into account. This paper presents initial results of monograph research into Fan Studies and Christian traditions, offering a more nuanced and historicized reading of the heuristic relationship between apocryphal writings and fanfiction, and considering the implications of this relationship for Early Christian scholarship. Engaging with Sarah Iles Johnston’s concept of the Greek mythic story world, characterised by hyperseriality and crossover, and Fan Studies research on affect and interpretative communities, I examine the influence that secondary Acts and Gospels had on both the reading of the oldest Christian narratives and on the actual world itself. I argue that apocryphal writings had a similar effect as the Greek mythic story world, reinforcing the believability of the earliest Christian narratives and continuity between the first century setting of Jesus and the disciples and the later production and reception contexts. Furthermore, I argue that in these communities that wrote, copied and transmitted apocryphal writings there was a cumulative effect that altered the perception and reception of the earlier narratives. These two facets will demonstrate the usefulness of the Fan Studies discourse in examining early Christian fiction.

Mystery, Wonder, and Praise: Encountering God as Teachers of his Word

This paper seeks to explore the connection between ritual and the reading of sacred texts in Mesopotamia and Early Judaism. In Mesopotamia, particularly in the Neo-Assyrian period, ritual and divinatory practices were highly technical activities, which required a class of specially trained individuals imbued with specific skills and familiarized with a sizeable body of knowledge. In this connection, it is common to distinguish between five distinct fields of activity: astrology, extispicy, incantation, medicine, and lamentation. A central skill required of scholars and diviners was the ability to interpret the meaning of signs. And it is the case in other communicative processes, the signs of divinatory practices were often ambiguous. This could result in different interpretations and the need to consult (and develop) both “canonical” and "non-canonical” written and oral traditions. Most significantly, the interpretation and manipulation of sacred signs and objects by Mesopotamian scholars regularly occurred in the context of ritual practices. I argue that this scenario bears analogies with the reading of sacred texts in Early Judaism and that it is possible to identify trajectories of development from Mesopotamian divinatory rites to phenomena attested in apocalyptic literature and the Qumran pesharim. I argue further that some of the interpretive practices attested in these sources suggest that reading itself could be seen as a form of sacred ritual. My contention is that this study can illuminate both the discussion on the relationship between ritual and epistemology and our understanding of the history of interpretation of sacred texts. The theoretical perspectives that inform this paper include Victor Turner’s view of the use of symbols in ritual, and the debate between Clifford Geertz and Talal Asad on the role of symbols in religious epistemology.

In the MT Esther 3:8-9, Haman, who is the main courtier at Ahasveros’s court, gives three reasons for the king to exclude people: first, that there is a certain people scattered and separated among the people in the king’s empire. Second, that these people have laws that are different from those of every other people. And finally, that these people do not keep the king’s laws. In this threefold argumentation, the exclusion of one people is described. This ought to convince the king that it is not appropriate to tolerate these people. Subsequently, Haman proposes that a decree be issued for the destruction of the people. In this case, the exclusion as reported leads to the formulation of a Judaeophobic edict. This paper will focus on the three arguments as listed. It will ask how the king and the reader were supposed to know who the people were. Then it will compare the formulation of the arguments in the three texts, that is the MT, OG and AT, with each other. Finally, the arguments as used will be compared with Jewish and Greek-Hellenistic texts of second century BCE.

Cleodemus Malchus, a fragment of whom is preserved in Josephus’s Antiquities (1.239–241) and Eusebius’s Praeparatio Evangelica (9.20.2–4), connects descendants of Abraham and Keturah (Gen 25:1–4) with African peoples. The great-granddaughter of Abraham even becomes the spouse of Heracles. In many ancient Jewish texts, Abraham figures as the ancestor of the Israelites in an exclusive way. In Cleodemus Malchus, however, Abraham and his offspring appear as ethnically inclusive. In my paper I will compare background and aim of this ethnical inclusivity with contemporary historical circumstances.

The purpose of this paper is to examine John Chrysostom’s exegesis the story of Cain and Abel. Chrysostom’s interpretation of this story has been selected specifically because of his rather peculiar construction of Cain. Chrysostom not only constructs Cain as a violent murderer and sinner, but as someone who becomes diseased in his soul and, eventually, his body, because of his acts of passion and violence. In Genesim homiliae 18 and 19, in particular, provide the reader with an exegetical construction of Cain that is especially informed by late ancient medical discourse. In these exegetical homilies, Chrysostom constructs Cain, medically, by having Cain’s psychic disease intersect with his body. Cain is punished with a trembling disease, almost like Parkinson’s Disease or Essential Tremor, which severely disables Cain. The analysis of Chrysostom’s interpretation therefore affords us the unique opportunity to investigate the complex intersections between discourses of conflict and violence, medicine and medical imagery, and the late ancient Christian exegetical and pedagogical imperative. The paper will ask first how Chrysostom understands the nature of Cain’s violent crime; and second, how he subsequently constructs Cain, medically, and to what ends. Thus, I shall first enquire into Chrysostom’s elaboration about the nature of the conflict between Cain and Abel (and God). In this section I shall focus especially on how the soul of Cain, and its various faculties, is delineated by Chrysostom. Thereafter, I shall examine how Cain is medically constructed and pathologised in Chrysostom’s exegesis, examining specifically the disease with which Cain is said to be cursed in the context of ancient Greco-Roman medicine. The main primary Chrysostomic sources for this paper are In Genesim homiliae 18 and 19, upon which most of the focus will fall, with shorter references and allusions in other works of Chrysostom.

The THEOT project has been under way for nine years now, and the time has come for the release of the first volumes covering the textual history of Ethiopic Obadiah, Amos, Deuteronomy, and Nahum. The introductory volume, on Obadiah, includes a detailed description of the THEOT methods and workflow. This report will cover the history of the project, its team members (Daniel Assefa, Steve Delamarter, Garry Jost, Ralph Lee, and Curt Niccum), the methods employed, an outline of the volumes for publication as well as a description of the substantial digital assets produced by the project and made available online, support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and future goals for the project.

On a three stage ‘ladder’, from humanism to scepticism to pessimism, Ecclesiastes has traditionally been regarded as the last of those three (following Priest, ‘Humanism, Skepticism and Pessimism in Israel’). Many recent studies, however, have challenged this assessment, seeing ‘joy’ passages as normative, in conjunction with ideas of progression across the book (eg Lee, The Vitality of Enjoyment in Qoheleth’s Theological Rhetoric). This fresh emphasis on optimism has led to scholars feeling that they have to make a choice between the two extremes. It is my argument in this paper that a middle way needs to be found, not through scepticism or irony (eg Crenshaw, The Ironic Wink), but framed in the language of ‘realism’. What does it mean to say that Qoheleth is a realist? Examples of his pragmatic advice, experiential starting point and continual balancing of life’s options will be aired.

A survey of baptismal narratives in early Christian literature documents a rather consistent emotional pattern, one in which prospective baptizands’ anxiety and fear give way to expressions of joy through the baptismal act. This pattern mirrors what Angelos Chaniotis and his collaborators have found in ancient Greek sources that report human–divine encounters. So similar are the patterns that baptism can be classified as a kind of human–divine encounter. With these considerations as guide, the paper turns to an analysis of the surviving wall paintings of the baptismal room of the domus ecclesiae in Dura-Europos with the aim of determining how baptizands would have experienced them. If baptism and epiphanic encounters were co-related and triggered a common emotional response, the wall paintings must be seen in a new way, not as expressions of theological themes or illustrations of biblical story but as facilitating and mediating the baptizand’s experience of the divine.

This paper offers an interpretation of Isaiah 1 to showcase my scholarly journey, as my biblical work moves from the world of the text to the world in front of the text, from reading with the text to reading against the grain, from appreciating the text’s poetics to interrogating its poetry. The first section of the paper discusses my past published interpretation of Isaiah 1 in the context of biblical Hebrew poetry with a focus on the text’s rhetoric and the world of the text. The second section explain how my exegetical work has shifted from the world of the text to the world in front of the text. The move indicates that my reading of Isaiah 1 has now morphed to a feminist interpretation. The third section explains why my interpretation strategies shifted by taking seriously my social location as a Christian-Catholic Bible scholar of the twenty-first century. The conclusion challenges biblical Hebrew poetry scholars and feminist scholars alike by suggesting new directions for biblical studies if we wish the field of Biblical Studies to continue moving forward, and if we are concerned about the global transformation of socio-political, cultural, and religious structures, attitudes, and mindsets responsible for the myriad of injustices present in the world today.

The transformation of sacrificial ideology across axial-age cultures has been concisely detailed by Guy Stroumsa in The End of Sacrifice. In Stroumsa’s historical recounting Clement of Alexandria’s role in the specifically Christian internalization of cultic sacrifice centers upon Clement’s advocacy of a Christian gnosticism that exemplifies a new form of asceticism. This presentation will integrate Stroumsa’s thesis with exegetical treatment of Clement’s writings on wealth and charity, particularly the treatise Who Is the Rich Man Who Is Saved? Elizabeth Clark claimed in Reading Renunciation that Clement’s figurative interpretation of Christ’s advice to the rich young man in the synoptic gospels, in contrast to Origen’s exegesis of this passage, illustrated a weakening of ascetic commitment. While Peter Brown, Harry Maier and Judith Kovacs have demonstrated how Clement’s emphasis on internal detachment from wealth stems from non-Christian Middle Platonic and Stoic sources, further social contextualization by L. Michael White shows how Clement uses the gospel story of the rich young man to persuade wealthy Christians in third-century Alexandria of a revisionist gnostic ideal. Yet Clement’s claim, that synoptic gospel pericopes teach that the well-to-do are often better off keeping enough goods to practice charitable giving, does not fit so easily into an interpretation of Clement as a Christian gnostic preaching to aspiring ascetics. Stroumsa’s hypothesis that the end of cultic sacrifice coincides with a “Christianization of subjectivity,” in a manner similar to the tradition outlined in Charles Taylor’s Sources of the Self, needs supplementation. Clement’s interpretation of the rich man in the gospels promotes not simple renunciation but a community of almsgivers in which sacrifice is not only internalized but contextualized within idealized communities dependent upon the mutually beneficial soteriological and economic relationships between rich and poor.

In his recent contribution, Jesus as Philosopher: The Moral Sage in the Synoptic Gospels (OUP 2018), Runar Thorsteinsson claims that the Markan figure of Jesus is consistent with contemporary philosophical figures, especially the Stoics, as regards his conduct and moral teaching. However, as Luke Timothy Johnson has proposed (“The Jesus of the Gospels and Philosophy”, in: Jesus and Philosophy, CUP 2009), one can approach the relationship between the Gospels and philosophical traditions not only from the perspective of ethics but also from the viewpoint of the theological, cosmological and ontological principles lying behind the gospels. Therefore, this paper intends to reconstruct the theoretical principles lying behind the Markan reflections on intermediaries between God and humans, i.e. Christ, the Son of Hypsistos Theos, as well as angels and demons, against the backdrop of current philosophical discourses. I do not assume that Mark depends on Roman philosophers, but rather he is familiar with popular concepts that are also echoed in philosophical texts. It is striking that since the 1 cent. BC, Middle Platonists drew on Plato to speculate on the nature and the distinction of intermediaries bridging the gap between the terrestrial and divine worlds (representatively, Plutarch, Def. orac., 415A; Apuleius, De Plato 1.11, medioximi … loco et potestate diis summis sunt minores, natura hominum profecto maiores). These ideas occur in a period when the Hypsistos Theos cult that includes the mediator notion also became popular, and its followers adopted a kind of monotheistic philosophical theology (Mitchell, The Cult of Theos Hypsistos, in: Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity, 1999). The votive of thanksgiving dedicated to a single anonymous deity called “aggeliko Theo” on an altar from Stratonicea in Carea (IStr 1119) has been found in the proximity of other votives to a Theos Hypsistos and is representative of a cult that involved an angel God serving an abstract transcendent God. This development reflects cultural hybridity that also is evident in Judaism from the 2nd century BC onward among Diaspora Jews who invoked God by the title Theos Hypsistos along with his aggeloi (Cline, Ancient Angels: Conceptualizing Angeloi in the Roman Empire, Brill 2011). Thus, the Markan reference to a son of a Theos Hypsistos and his power over demons (Mark 5:7) could be understood by the Gentile audience as Mark’s answer to debates regarding intermediary beings and its relationship to a supreme God in early Imperial religious and philosophical traditions.

In its polemics and exhortations, the Qur’an repeatedly decries the ignorance of its opponents, who “do not know” God’s clear signs from nature or the divine character of God’s miracles (e.g., Q al-A’raf 7:187). The Qur’an’s rhetoric, however, provokes the question of what kind and amount of knowledge could be expected of believers and, more pressingly, of Muhammad as God’s prophet. Nowhere is this question more vexing than in Muhammad’s preaching of “the Hour”, where some verses seem to detail the character of the Hour, others strongly imply that Muhammad believed the eschaton to be imminent, and yet still others disavow the possibility that a prophet could ever know its arrival. While much has been written on the eschatological aspect of qur’anic prophetology, this paper seeks to contribute to this discussion by asserting that prophetic agnosticism regarding the Hour is bound to the Qur’an’s prophetological discourse. Muhammad’s claim to prophethood was compared to those of Moses and ‘Isa, and the limits of his prophetic knowledge were re-presented as a doctrinal response against Jews and Christians. Even in passages that appear to acknowledge the historical Muhammad’s political successes, there is opposition from the qur’anic audience which nevertheless rejects the qur’anic verses despite their use of biblical imagery and parables (e.g., Q Al-An’am 6:36-47, Q al-Qamar 54:45-46). This paper argues that in announcing the Hour, Muhammad was understood as a messianic figure and, as such, was expected to possess eschatological power and knowledge akin to Jesus and Moses. However, his divergence from these expectations despite his professed similarities required a rapprochement that can be seen in the qur’anic text. From this observation, it will argue that Muhammad responded to biblical and late antique apocalyptic traditions by utilizing them to assert the solely human nature of the prophets. As such, the agnosticism of the Hour is a crucial textual witness to a historical progression whereby the historical Muhammad reconciled the prophetic careers of Moses and Jesus to his own. The historical Muhammad may have begun his prophetic career by grounding his authority in the vindication that the imminent arrival of the Hour would bring, but the Hour’s function in the text transitions to a doctrine that delineated the human prophet from the one God. This paper, then, argues with Stephen Shoemaker that the arrival of the Hour was fundamental to the qur’anic faith preached by Muhammad, but qualifies that its importance shifted as Muhammad confronted continued skepticism from Jews and Christians towards his prophethood. Evidence from prophetic movements and personages from Late Antiquity, such as Aphrahat, illuminate the late antique prophetic expectations with which Muhammad conversed, and show that the qur’anic rhetoric surrounding knowledge of the end of the world represents a conscious break with this model after previously having aligned itself with it.

When scholars talk or write about the encounter between Hellenism and Judaism, it revolves around the meeting of constructs of culture. This encounter has often been framed in terms of opposition and Greek-speaking Jews are often understood as a community that moved away from an “essential” Judaism. Related to this presumption is the observation that the motivation behind the Jews' adoption of Greek is often formulated in terms of necessity. However, this encounter also provided the Jews with opportunity: opportunities to develop and expand their tradition in a new language. Alongside the translation of their scriptures, we see the flourishing of Jewish composition in Greek, including poetry. These texts are concrete expressions of the cultural encounter of Greek and Jewish traditions. What happens when Jews start speaking Greek and start expressing their own cultural heritage in a new language? How do they engage with the traditions that accompany the adoption of a language that has an extensive literary heritage? In this paper, we will look at what happens when Judaism and Hellenism are embodied in a text, when biblical tradition meets Greek literary culture, in particular in Ezekiel's Exagoge, a retelling of Exodus 1-15 in Greek tragic form. This text has often been understood as a Jewish “public relations endeavour” towards the Greek world (Howard Jacobson, The Exagoge of Ezekiel, 1983, p. 8). On the basis of a close reading of the text, I argue instead that Ezekiel’s tragedy needs to be situated within an environment of Jewish multilingualism and provides evidence of a writer who is an insider in two traditions at once.

Greek athletics in ancient gymnasia was inextricably linked with cultic practices. Gods and heroes such as Hermes and Herakles featured prominently in these facilities throughout the ancient world. The religious elements implied in athletic training would have been a hurdle for full Jewish integration with their Gentile neighbours. Some have argued that Jews must have founded their own parallel gymnasia (Kasher), or had to compromise their orthodoxy by participating in such religiously-loaded activities (Feldman). The case of Philo, however, is consequential for this discussion, not only because of his extensive use of athletic imagery, but also for his first-hand familiarity with the Alexandrian gymnasium. He praised Jewish parents who had their children educated in such institution (Spec. 2.229-230), and even seems to have himself enjoyed the same kind of intellectual and athletic training. In this paper, I will explore how Philo's attitudes toward the Greek gods may have led to his open engagement with gymnasial activities, and what these practices tell us about Jewish life and thought in Alexandria during Philo's lifetime.

This paper argues that the epistolary format of the apostle Paul’s teachings was closely linked to the promotion of moral development among the recipients and hearers of Paul’s letters in the first century. Certainly, Paul's letters served many functions in the initial decades of the Christ movement, but this paper will focus on the ways in which letter production and circulation helped facilitate character building within early Christ assemblies. After briefly describing the basics of letter writing, reading, exchange, and collection in antiquity, I will analyze the ways in which such epistolary activities helped foster the conditions necessary for the type of moral development that the apostle championed among members of the Christ movement.

There is an African proverb that states “Until the lion tells his side of the story, the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” For centuries the story of African Traditional Religion has been told from the colonizers’— or hunter’s— perspective. These harmful accounts have negatively shaped the world’s view of Africa and its religious practices. Similarly, the account of Josiah’s reform in 2 Kings 22-23 is recorded from the hunter’s perspective and negatively shapes readers’ view of common and traditionally accepted practices in ancient Israel. Among Josiah’s many actions listed in these chapters, is the demolition of the altar of Bethel. According to the Deuteronomistic text, the purpose of this demolition was to make ancient Israelite religion more in line with the book of law that was found during Josiah’s reign. However, considering that Bethel is such a meaningful worship location throughout biblical tradition—from Jacob to Jeroboam—the significance of Josiah’s destruction of this altar must be examined beyond what is recorded in 2 Kings. By approaching Josiah’s reform through the lens of colonized Africa, this paper uses the significance of Bethel as a traditional worship location to present a critical view of Dtr’s positive account and to offer a more accurate representation of Josiah’s reform.

“Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.” –King, “I See the Promised Land” “Let judgment roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.” –King, “Paul’s Letter to American Christians” This paper will explore the relationship between justice and judgment in Paul’s letters with particular focus on Romans and 1 Corinthians. While δικ- words have featured prominently in myriad studies of justification in Paul since Stendahl and Sanders, κρι- words have received much less attention. In fact, the concept of divine judgment or wrath has become an “ungeliebte” topic (Ralf Miggelbrink) for many in recent years and across modernity, often perpetuating a de-Judaized, Marcionite binary between judgment and mercy that obscures Paul’s pictures of justice (inter alia). Schleiermacher denied that any retributive punishment existed in Paul’s conception of justice, such that Paul’s occasional references to divine judgment are merely accommodations to rustic Jewish audiences and their Old Testament notions of an angry deity. Adolf von Harnack went even further, affirming Marcion’s opposition between love and judgment and suggesting that nineteenth-century Christians decanonize the Old Testament. Even the otherwise fecund apocalyptic Paul school has given little attention to divine judgment outside of the defeat of cosmic forces. This paper will argue that one integral component of justice for Paul is divine judgment, and that close examination of κρι- texts in Rom 2–3, 1 Cor 5, and 1 Cor 11 reveals surprising contours in Paul’s vision of God’s δικαιοσύνη and δικαιοκρισία. In short, justice in Paul cannot be understood apart from judgment. Paul’s theology of divine judgment situates him in close but complex relation to Israel’s scriptures and Jewish apocalypticism. Imagery in Paul’s letters, furthermore, persistently presses readers toward a picture of remedial judgment that can and should ground discussions of restorative justice in Paul. One of the most practical and effective interpreters of Paul was Martin Luther King, Jr, and this paper will close by reflecting on how Dr. King likewise interweaves divine judgment with active promotion of restorative justice in ways that continue to resound in today’s church and world.

Dualistic concepts explaining world and human life encounter here and there in Judaism; the backgrounds are unclear. In Isa 45,7 God presents himself as the creator both of good an and evil; Archaemenidan Zoroastrism can be the contrasting background. In Qumran we have the Treatise about the Two Spirits (1Q S III,13–IV,26) deriving a predominantly moral dualism from God the creator; Iranian influences have to be considered and are debated in research. In the book of Sirach and the Testament of Asser a dualism which combines moral and cosmic aspects is proposed - with the tendency to see the antagonisms as part of a cosmic order. An anthropological dualism is expressed by the doctrine about the two inclinations (not at least in Bereschit Rabbah); we will have to discuss how this concept is related to older dualistic wisdom. The concept of antagonisms as constitutive for the cosmic order is to be found in the Sefer Jesarim and in the works of the Christian author Lactantius. The aim of this paper is first to present an overview and then to raise the question to what degree and how these different concepts may have been borrowed from non Jewish sources (Zoroastrism? Neopythagoreanism?) and if there exists an inner-jewish trajectory of dualistic ideas.

The Didascalia Apostolorum, a “church order” commonly ascribed to the third century, has attracted scholarly interest both for its glimpses into aspects of early Christian communal life, and as a source for discursive engagement between different religious groups. Famously dubbed “a Mishnah for the Disciples of Jesus” by Charlotte Fonrobert, the Didascalia combines halakhah and aggadah, instructions for living and biblical exposition, all framed by a pseudepigraphal narrative. The latter provides audiences with a quasi-historical glimpse into first-century Christian life: the apostles, a group whose representatives speak both individually and jointly at different points in the text, here remain in Jerusalem in the aftermath of crafting a "letter to the churches" (Acts 15), to address a variety of supposedly heterodox practices, including, most notably, aspects of the "second legislation," the Mosaic purity laws. In order to loose these false bonds, the Twelve resolve "to write this catholic Didascalia” – the very book now before the reader – “for the confirming of [all Christians]" (DA 24; Vööbus 237.9-10). In this fashion, the Didascalia creates a niche in the Acts narrative into which to insert its own origin story. To do so, however, does not exhaust the work’s historiographic ambitions. Particularly in its concluding chapters, the text weaves a tight literary framework of canonical and extra-canonical narratives surrounding the apostolic era in which it grounds the rules it seeks to convey. As such, the Didascalia is a prototypical example of the complex interrelationship between law and sacred history, between making rules and telling stories about the context from which the rules (allegedly) emerged. The legal and narrative portions of the Didascalia thus mutually reinforce one another: its laws provide a hook for its amplified version of the story of Christian expansion – a final iteration of Acts' cycle of communal fracture and reunification. The narrative in turn stands surety for the authoritative and trustworthy nature of the laws – an anchor for the means by which that unification ought to come about. More than a warrant for the laws it propounds, however, the Didascalia's narrative portions serve as guarantors for its interpretation of another, still more authoritative legal text: that of the Hebrew Scriptures. The latter present its readers with divine laws, albeit without providing instructions on its application to the challenges that face Christian communities in the post-apostolic setting. By entering into the habitus, the historical narratives, and indeed the personae of the apostles, this paper suggests, the Didascalia seeks to provide for its audience the keys to unlocking biblical law as a means of setting it apart from its rivals: at the intersection of law, legal interpretation, and the creation of sacred histories, the Didascalia labors to create the tools by which to forge lasting communal identities.

Feminist and gendered analyses of Judean Pillar Figurines have moved beyond the biological essentialism that labelled them “fertility” figurines in the past. Many interpretations of JPFs, however, remain rooted in presentist assumptions about embodiment that continue to limit the interpretive horizon. Because the significance of women in the Hebrew Bible is largely restricted to their portrayals as wives and mothers, interpretations of artistic portrayals of female bodies from biblical regions are often limited to generic functions of biological females. In order to move beyond fixations on gender, sex, and physical functions of the female body, I propose to incorporate insights from semiotics into a gendered iconographical analysis in order to expand our range of potential meanings of JPFs and other symbolic embodiments. A semiotics of gender provides us with a theoretical basis for evaluating the plausibility of potential interpretations, encourages us to think about a variety of potential synchronic meanings of these figures for their viewers, and does not assume that an object’s materiality is predicated on it having a ritual function.

There are many ‘extras’ in the canonical gospels, characters who come and go within a single scene. Some have names, others do not; some get to speak a line or two, others remain silent. Barabbas, the man released by Pilate at the behest of the crowd, doesn’t really have a chance to shine in the gospels. He remains an undeveloped character. While films about Jesus might include some new aspect in their brief portrayal of Barabbas, there are now five films that focus on him as the protagonist: Barabbas (Alf Sjöberg / 1953 / Swedish), Barabbas (1961 / Richard Fleischer / English), Barabbas (Aneesh Daniel / 2005 / Hindi), Barabbas (Roger Young / 2012 / English), and Barabba (Evgeniy Emelin / 2019 / Russian). Three of these are adaptations of the 1950 novel by Pär Lagerkvist. The films develop Barabbas’ storyline before and after his arrest and release, the only brief mention he warrants in the gospels. I will look at the back-story and themes developed by the films to provide Barabbas with a personality he lacks in the Bible.

The second-century letter from Christ-followers in Rome to the ekklēsia in Corinth, conventionally called 1 Clement, provides a fascinating reference to voluntary enslavement among early Christians. In the context of an appeal for schismatics among the Corinthians to be willing to depart in order to end an ecclesiastical conflict in Corinth (54.1-4), the Roman authors of 1 Clement allude to practices of self-imprisonment and voluntary slavery among Christ-followers: “We know that many among us have had themselves imprisoned, so that they might ransom others. Many have sold themselves into slavery, and with the price received for themselves have fed others” (55.2). This paper will explore the reference to voluntary slavery in 1 Clem 55.2 in light of the letter’s deliberative rhetorical strategies, such as the use of historical examples (e.g., 1 Clem 55.1-6; cf. C. Breytenbach, “The Historical Example in 1 Clement”) and the appeal to the noble past of the Corinthians, including the Corinthians’ earlier commitment to meeting the material needs of those within their community who suffered affliction from others (2.6-7; cf. 38.1-4). In doing so, the paper will contribute to recent conversations regarding Orlando Patterson’s influential thesis that slavery be understood as social death, a status characterized by violence, natal alienation, and dishonor (cf. Bodel and Scheidel, eds., On Human Bondage). For the authors of 1 Clement–and presumably also for the epistle’s intended recipients, given the document’s rhetorical aims– self-imprisonment and voluntary slavery represent noble (gennaios), compassionate (eusplagchnos), and loving (agapē) acts done for the benefit of others, deeds that serve as paradigmatic examples for the Corinthians to imitate (54.1; 55.2). Far from representing social death, voluntary slavery (along with self-imprisonment) in 1 Clement 55 is framed as a practice that solidifies social bonds among Christ-followers (“many among us”) and results in honor for those who have made this sacrifice.

This paper will explore the idea of divine corporeality by revisiting the way in which descriptions of God's body in the Old Testament might be regarded as metaphorical. This will involve examining the reasons given for a literal reading of relevant texts and suggesting instead that texts in which God has a body might be read anthropomorphically without imposing an alien philosophical framework upon the canon of Scripture. I will draw from some premodern treatments of metaphor and of figurative attributes of God and make an argument that the Old Testament texts taken on their own terms fit with the conclusion that God is incorporeal or spiritual.

The aristocratic Irish writer and activist Eva Gore-Booth (1870-1926) is best known for her political work on behalf of working women and women’s suffrage, but she was also a self-taught biblical scholar of considerable talent. Already a member of the Theosophical Society, Gore-Booth pursued both Greek and Latin in order to study the Bible on a deeper level. Although she was a prolific writer in multiple genres (poetry, drama, essays, and even an unpublished novel), her book A Psychological and Poetic Approach to the Study of Christ in the Fourth Gospel is arguably the masterpiece of her literary career, her own pride in it witnessed by the fact that she carefully transcribed the manuscript into a leather-bound journal that now resides in the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland. When her publisher (Longmans, Green and Co.) deemed the book “quite off the usual lines” and “unlikely to appeal to the general public,” Gore-Booth financed one thousand copies of the work at her own expense. In the introduction, Gore-Booth writes that her work can have “no claim to scholarship,” and yet she is clearly in conversation with historical-critical scholarship on the Bible, as well as the science and psychology of her day. She meets us in the pages of her book as a radically creative mind, undaunted by convention or orthodoxy and boldly anticipating much of the feminist and gender criticism of the Bible that would flourish in the second half of the twentieth century. This paper will explore, on the one hand, the critique of historical-critical scholarship that is subtly woven into Gore-Booth’s treatise on the Gospel of John. On the other hand, it will seek to outline the contours of the informed, sophisticated, and deeply-felt spirituality that emerges vividly in the commentary on the Fourth Gospel, and that provided a foundation for the rather astonishing critique of the status quo that defined Gore-Booth’s life and mission.

The presentation deals with the results of the project financed by Rustaveli National Foundation. In the frame of the project a complete parallel electronic edition of the Greek (three textual forms), Armenian and Georgian versions of the Book of Tobit were prepared, which, at the same time, were annotated. The digital edition was prepared according to the standard of scientific electronic edition of the text – TEI (Text Encoding Initiative). In the frame of the project encoded files of the mentioned manuscripts (their metadata and text) were prepared in XML format, on the basis of which a database and website was constructed for the parallel texts. The redaction focus of the parallel corpus-based edition of the Book of Tobit is determined by the doctoral research, consequently, the digital edition demonstrates the findings of the research. XML coding of each manuscript, apart from the standard minimum requirements of encoding (metadata and text), are enriched by linked data and extensive linguistic annotation.

Clifford Ando opens his essay “Subjects, Gods, and Empire, or Monarchism as a Theological Problem” noting that while recent scholarship on religion and the Roman empire has rejected Christian triumphalist narratives, “[a] more appropriate goal might have been to shift the units of analysis altogether—to ask, in other words, what entitles us to speak of plural ‘religions’ and to understand them as historically autonomous and thus in competition in the first place.” That is, for whatever analytic benefits were achieved by moving away from triumph narratives toward a civic model of religion, certain fundamental assumptions about “religion” and how these religions “compete” were left untroubled. Recent studies have addressed the problems with religion, emphasizing the difficulties of conceiving various ancient social affiliations in terms of the modern category of religion. However, less attention has been paid to competition. While the subject itself is often discussed, the anachronistic economic language that motivates these discussions is not. This paper explores how scholars of antiquity have utilized economic language to situate Roman religion in late antique religious history. Specifically, I argue that far from lacking “currency” in rendering ancient religions (per Engels and Van Nuffelen), economic language has played a dominant role in orienting the academic study of Roman religion and accounting for its changes and adaptations, especially from Republic to Principate. Yet, this mode of description has, at best, been deployed in weak analogies and, at worst, in explanatory models framed around anachronistic concepts drawn from modern liberal economics. I propose that economic speak has taken two forms in the above scholarship. The first is expressed in the above language of a “marketplace” of religions in the Roman empire and the second is the idea that Roman religion (and ancient religion more broadly) was “embedded.” Exploring how both are used, I show that each one draws, more or less directly and explicitly, on sociological models designed to explain change in religion and modern society. In principle, there is nothing wrong with employing an explanatory model forged from modern data. However, with a few notable exceptions, scholars of antiquity who use this language do so evocatively and without making explicit and necessary adjustments before applying this idiom to Roman data. In other words, redolent analogies rarely rise to the rigor of sociological models. It is in the slippage between analogy and model that Roman religion tends to be read on the anachronisms of modern liberal economics. Drawing on James Rives’s discussion of the bureaucratization of cult as well as Clifford Ando and Jörg Rüpke’s respective considerations of the “effects of empire” on ancient cultural differentiation and social belonging, I suggest that an emphasis on the structural effects of legal and institutional change offer an alternative explanatory idiom. Rather than naturalizing ancient cults as commodities in competition for adherents in a deregulated market, a focus on large shifts in Roman religious governance might help account for the sociological and material conditions that created various collective affiliations and the possibilities for how they interact.

Although social historians have made great contributions to the study of early Christianity, particularly in the wake of the work of scholars such as Peter Brown and Elizabeth Clark, there remains a tendency to tell history from the perspective of the elite. Narratives continue to be dominated by the writings of Cyprian, Athanasius, Augustine, and others. When attention is turned to the experiences of the wider populace, this is referred to as “popular theology.” But “popular” as opposed to what? “Popular” in this context seems to be juxtaposed with “proper” theology, as if the practices of the populace are somehow inferior or illegitimate. In this paper I will push back against this tendency and its accompanying nomenclature through an analysis of the cult of the saints. Reading the cult of the saints in light of patron-client relationships, I will argue that the hierarchy assumed within the cult was a more authentic reflection of the everyday lives of ancient peoples than the arguments of bishops and theologians. Therefore, practices such as commemorative banquets, pilgrimage, the veneration of relics, etc., should be interpreted not as “popular theology” but “cultural theology.”

Prophecy and divination in general are of special importance for the religious practices and systems of the Ancient Near East and Greece and, especially, for political decision-making processes. Therefore, procedures of verification played an important role and the texts (letters and ritual texts) show the human actors’ responsibility within the acts of communication. Extispicy has been repeated several times, several variants of divination have been combined (e.g. ARM 26, 239), and the prophetical person itself has been evaluated. For example, the sending of hair (šartum) and garment (sissiktum) mentioned in the Mari-letters (ARM 26, 200; 201; 215; 217 a.o.) mirrors aspects of responsibility. In addition, examples of older – and successful – prophecies have been used for new situations. Herodotus shows in his Histories cases of oracle testing in Greece (cf. Croesus; Hist. 1.46). The paper reevaluates the multifaced mechanisms of these processes of verification in the Ancient Near East – especially in Mari, where such cases are well attested, and Assyria, where you can find traces of similar processes – and Greece and, thereby, sheds new light on the motif and treatment of false prophecy outside the Old Testament. These possibilities or criteria for recognizing true prophecy and successful understandings of oracles and signs will be compared, in a second step, with key-texts of the OT. In Deuteronomistic texts, other aspects of divination except prophecy have been excluded (cf. the Law of the Prophet in Deut 18) and, as a result, only the prophets can recognize if they really speak Yhwh’s words. Therefore, the motif of prophetical self-testing plays an important role as can be shown by a modified interpretation of Ezek 13:1–16. Every prophet bears a crucial part of the responsibility for his sayings. In addition, learning from history – the real impact of the deuteronomistic ex post-criterion of fulfillment – enables another type of prophecy.

This paper will compare the usage of the concept and terminology of “divine providence” (πρόνοια) in Philo and Josephus in two of their works which give parallel accounts of the same events. Both Philo’s Legatio ad Gaium and Josephus’ Antiquities 18–19 narrate the events of the Jewish embassy to the emperor Gaius in the wake of the civil unrest between Jews and Greeks in Alexandria, and the emperor’s subsequent attempt to erect his image in the Jerusalem temple. Each author also appeals to divine providence multiple times in their narratives to explain the outcome of events which gravely threatened the Jewish nation. While Philo’ usage of divine providence in Legatio and In Flaccum departs from his technical philosophical employment of this concept and terminology elsewhere in his works, Josephus employs it in a uniformly non-technical and non-philosophical fashion throughout AJ as a consistent explanation for the vicissitudes of the Jewish people and of prominent characters in his account. Because Josephus is known to have consulted Philo at other points in AJ, and since Philo is likely his source for much of AJ 18–19, it is useful to compare Philo and Josephus here to determine the extent to which they employ divine providence in similar or diverging ways. In particular, this study will seek to determine the extent and nature of Josephus’ conceptual and literary debt to Philo in presenting the events of AJ 18–19 as the result of divine providence. Attention will be paid both the explicit terminology of divine providence (πρόνοια), but also to the concept as operative in the narratives even where the terminology itself is absent.

Because John Chrysostom is an Antiochene, it is usually assumed that he is concerned with history. But what does historia mean for John? And what work does it do for his exegesis? Is his understanding of the term the same as that of Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia—the great touchstones of the so-called school of Antioch? This paper will argue that while John is indeed interested in historia, his use of it differs from these other Antiochenes in a variety of ways. Rather than being concerned with establishing the historical facta which lie behind the biblical text, John’s interpretation centers on the narration of events, which allows him to develop theological and ethical teaching to benefit his audience. His use of to historikon also serves a different interpretative purpose than it does for Theodore: the historical facta are not adduced for their own sake—or for demonstrating the historicity of the story—but, again, for demonstrating theological and ethical dogmata. As is often mentioned, a major difference between the works of John and Theodore is the divide between the scholar-commentator and the preacher. But John’s homiletical approach to exegesis is not merely a rhetorical veneer over the sort of “scholarly” exegetical work that Theodore does. Rather, John understands biblical historia to be fundamentally about divine activity and human activity, and his task in reading this historia is to elucidate this activity. In order to discover the divine oikonomia and human virtue, John focuses on the minutiae the stories’ narrations, in a variety of aspects. This precise attention to the narratives of scripture is in large part where John’s famous moral teaching comes from: biblical historia is full of characters whose virtue is put on display. But historia is also where John comes to learn of divine activity: he carefully reads the same historiai to come to a vision of God’s providential economy. In order to demonstrate John's particular approach to historia, this paper first examines John's use of the term throughout his extant corpus; it then compares John's approach to that of Theodore, through several small test cases, drawing especially from their respect interpretations of the Gospel of John (Theodore’s Commentary and John's Homilies).

The critical study of Targum Onqelos, the “canonical” Jewish Aramaic translation of the Pentateuch, has from its inception been concerned with the reliability of the Targum’s text. A comprehensive analysis of the complicated textual traditions of Onqelos is crucial for a proper evaluation of its language and meaning, as well as its history and its cultural value. The intensive study of Targum manuscripts has been going on for more than a century, yet it has been mostly focused on the identification of genuine textual witnesses and the recovery of alternative, non-Onqelos Targum traditions. The textual analysis of the overwhelmingly intricate medieval European transmission of Onqelos, on the other hand, has been all but neglected. In this paper I will present initial findings from the study of a large group of European witnesses of Targum Onqelos, undertaken as part of the ERC ‘TEXTEVOLVE’ project which explores new methods and approaches for collating and analyzing the textual traditions of the Targums. The European textual tradition of Onqelos is usually considered late and inferior, yet the examples I analyse suggest an intriguing correlation between variants preserved in European witnesses and readings suggested by ancient lists of annotations on Onqelos. Certain annotations can be properly understood only when considered against a broad range of textual witnesses. Others attest to unique readings preserved solely in late European manuscripts, raising the possibility that some variants in the European text witnesses actually reflect ancient alternative forms of Onqelos. Thus, the examples investigated in this paper offer a more nuanced understanding of the textual development of the Targum and demonstrate the complicated routes of its transmission, preservation, and modification.

How should we understand the sense of the ancient Greek term elpis? There has been much recent interest in this term, and the ways in which it does or does not conform to its most common modern translation, as ‘hope’. Of course, the modern meaning of ‘hope’ is also itself much debated, but recent analyses of the ancient term elpis have established a number of specific, significant meanings in which it differs from its modern counterpart, drawing attention, for example, to how this ancient term often focuses on expectations or intentions. In ancient poetic, dramatic and philosophical writing, scholars have noted, it is often used to signal misguided opinions or overweening ambitions, which lead mortals astray. In that context, it has been acknowledged that elpis indicates a facet of human relations with what is ‘other than human’ and/or the divine; it is (as Cairns 2020) part of ‘a traditional body of thought that emphasizes the limitations of human foresight, the vanity of human wishes, and the inability of human beings to secure their own happiness’. In turn, examinations of elpis in historical prose, specifically Herodotus and Thucydides, have tended to focus on its perceived use for emphasising ‘human incapacities and inclinations’ (e.g., Lateiner 2018). In that context, it has been understood as a signal of the ancient writer’s own disapproval of any kind of belief in other-than-human entities. For example, In the context of Thucydides’ history, it has been argued, references to elpis are used to reinforce the ancient writer’s indication that a particular character’s approach is ‘inextricably linked with superstition and a naïve, groundless belief in the divine’ (Tsoumpra 2018 on Thucydides 7.77.1-3). But such approaches risk reinforcing particular perceptions of the ancient writers, closing down the possibility of more nuanced interpretations of their work in general and their use of this term, elpis, in particular. This paper suggests, in contrast, that we approach the use of elpis in these texts as part of the larger semantic network of concepts relating to the ancient Greek comprehension of humankind’s relationship to the future, including chance, foresight—and divination. By doing so, it argues, we may gain a more sophisticated understanding of these ancient writers’ approach to their histories and to ancient Greek cultural models of fate, luck and fortune, cause and responsibility.

One striking feature of Josephus’ Antiquities is its documents: it quotes almost fifty; the Bellum, by contrast, none. Some of these Josephus merely takes over from his sources. For example, Josephus’ retelling of the Letter of Aristeias replicates the documents found there, as does his version of First Maccabees. But his handling of one pair of these documents is especially interesting: an exchange of letters with Sparta. This began, we are told, when Jonathan wrote to Sparta reporting the discovery of a letter written by the Spartan king Areios to the high priest Onias. Both First Maccabees 12. 6-19 and Jos. AJ 13.163-170 quote Jonathon’s letter; both versions of the letter mention that a ‘copy’ (ἀντίγραφον) of Areios’ letter has been appended to it. Only First Maccabees, however, actually includes that copy; in the Antiquities, it appears a full book earlier, at 12.226-7, where Onias III accedes to the high priesthood. This is methodologically significant: Josephus has moved the documents from its documentary context to a chronological one. This is something that he does elsewhere in the Antiquities, most clearly in his retelling of biblical narratives, which he recasts “according to the proper order” (Ant. 1.17: κατὰ τὴν οἰκείαν τάξιν). That Josephus has moved the letter of Areios to fit what he regarded as its correct chronology is obviously telling, as is the fact that he clearly got that chronology wrong. The Spartan letter-writer can only be Areus I, who ruled 309—265 BC, which requires that his correspondent must be the high priest Onias II (or, just possibly, I). Josephus, however, has assigned it to Onias III (c. 198—171): a straightforward case of mistaken identity, with one Onias having been confused for another. In practical terms, it is not surprising that an attempt at chronological organization has misfired because of a confusion of homonyms: ancient documents were typically dated by the names of local officials and modern arguments about dating hinge on prosopographical criteria more often than any other factor. The same thing seems to have happened elsewhere. At 14. 150-5, to choose the most obvious case, a decree of Athens honouring Hyrcanus I is cited as evidence of the high regard that Hyrcanus II was held in. The mistake, however, is less telling here than underlying motive: the principle that chronology takes precedence. Invoking such a principle helps explain what has happened with the Caesarian fragments found 14. 196-8, 199, 200-1, and 202-10. These, it has recently been argued, had once been part of the text of the lex Cornelia Antonia (§§219-22), which had collected earlier unenacted decisions and then embedded them into its text. Josephus, it seems, has physically moved this material away from its documentary provenance (the lex Antonia) to a chronological context immediately following Caesar’s letter to Sidon (§§190-1) and its appended edict (§§192-5). In doing so, he applies the same methodology as with the letter of Areios.

From a kabbalistic point of view, midrashic episodes that portray an imperfect God are particularly troublesome. Such is the famous rabbinic scene that tells the story of the belittled moon (b.Chullin 60b). Saddened by its inferior position, especially in relation to the sun, the moon protests against the obvious injustice of having to share the sky with a superior star. After all, why would the cosmological narrative of the fourth day of creation (Genesis 1:16) refer to both the sun and the moon as the great lights, then immediately demote the moon and designate it as a lesser light? The moon approaches God and initiates a long argument, at the end of which God is forced to admit that the small size of the moon, not to mention its cyclical waning, is his own fault. "Bring an atonement for me," God says, "for I have diminished the moon." The nation is commanded, therefore, to sacrifice, with each new moon, a special monthly sin offering on behalf of God (Numbers 28:15; b.Shevuot 9a). Later rabbinic texts — for example, Samuel Yaffe Ashkenazi (1525–1595) in his commentary on Genesis Rabbah 6:4 (פירוש יפה תואר) and Abraham Aaron Broda in his 1838 commentary on Pirkei de Rabbi Eliezer 51 (ביאור הבית הגדול) — reaffirm the possibility of a divine error, stating that although God had every right to make certain celestial objects smaller than others, it was nevertheless his duty to acknowledge the fact that by doing so he had hurt the moon. Consequently, it was also his duty to make repeated and sincere efforts to appease the moon. According to kabbalistic hermeneutics, on the other hand, the smallness of the moon, and especially the fact that it has no light of its own, means that the intimacy between Israel and God — or humanity and the divine — is diminished. In exile, when the nation is afflicted by witlessness, displacement, and impermanence, the human and the divine are back-to-back, so to speak. Through prayer, the keeping of the commandments, acts of loving-kindness, and laboring in the Torah, these deficiencies are rectified and transformed into a face-to-face reunion. This kind of rectification (tikkun), according to Menahem Nahum Twersky of Chernobyl (1730–1787), will remedy the three major predicaments of Israel and humanity: limited consciousness, exile, and mortality (Light of the Eyes: Bereshit). More specifically, limited consciousness is the smallness of mind with which we are born. Rectified by the acquisition of wisdom, it is an inherent imperfection that signifies a potential for growth, whereas exile is a historical catastrophe that will be rectified by freedom from the bondage of outside oppressors. Mortality, particularly in this context, is both a congenital and external threat. Rectified by the resurrection, it signifies the potential of the lower worlds to excite the supernal realm into offering freedom from the angel of death. This reciprocal process foresees a future in which the moon will shine as brightly as the sun (Isaiah 30:26).

Questions about handwriting in the Pauline epistles typically gravitate around one of two poles. The first is the apostle’s education and his attendant ability or inability to write an entire discourse by hand. The second is which words in a given Pauline text, especially Philemon and Galatians, were penned by Paul himself. Often missing from these discussions is attention to the sociality of writing letters by hand. This presentation addresses that aspect of letter writing, making two central arguments. First, contrary to the common notion that antique authors avoided writing in their own hands, either because doing so was difficult or it was stigmatized, I argue that the practice was common at varying social strata, especially with respect to letters. Second, I demonstrate that a handwritten text has a dramatically different social impact than does a text dictated to or copied by an amanuensis. To make these arguments, I engage three different kinds of handwritten letters: those from elite literary figures; imagined letters in the Greek romance novels; and personal papyri letters. The elite letters come from two sets of correspondence. The first is Cicero and Atticus and the second Marcus Aurelius and his tutor, Fronto. The normal practice for all of these men was to handwrite their letters to one another. In the Greek romance novels, both men and women handwrite missives and as a result there is an imagined sentimentality attached to the physical text. The third kind of handwritten text, personal papyri letters, actualizes the imagined sentiment constructed in the novels. I present four different letters handwritten by their sender that demonstrate it was not just the Frontos and Marcus Aureliuses of the ancient world that sentimentalized their friends’ and family’s handwritten correspondence. The otherwise unknown individuals of antiquity did as well. The presentation then moves from wholly handwritten correspondence to letters that were partially dictated and partially written by hand. In some cases, particularly in the papyri, a change in hand reveals that a letter was a mixed composition. In other cases, an author explicitly calls attention to a change in compositional mode, just as the author of a Pauline letter does on five occasions (1 Cor 16:21; Gal 6:11; Col 4:18; 2 Thess 3:17; Phil 18). The presentation concludes by surveying the social reasons that a letter-sender might produce a partially-dictated, partially-handwritten missive, and how these reasons map onto Pauline references to handwriting.

The midrashic commentary on the verse in Proverbs, “What a rare find is a capable wife” (31:10), narrates a story about the death of Rabbi Meir’s sons. His wife demonstrates stoic strength in the face of death and criticizes her husband for his own emotional display of grief. This paper attempts to understand why the Midrash would use a story about the death of children to exemplify paradigmatic domesticity. In doing so, it lays bare the Midrash's implicit critique of overly feminized Greco-Roman rituals of mourning, as well as a critique of the rabbis' failure to cultivate an embodied theology.

In his groundbreaking work, Obituary for “Wisdom Literature”, Will Kynes attempts to replace the traditional taxonomic and form critical approach to genre with an intertextual approach. He argues that genre is “a formalized version of intertextuality” (p. 110). He deems his theory of genre an emergence theory in which genres emerge as readers perceive similar features inherent in texts. Moreover, he employs conceptual blending to bring Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes (the focus of his book) into conversation with biblical and extra-biblical texts outside the standard “wisdom” corpus. He contends that literary texts necessarily participate in multiple genres and, therefore, scholars should aim to identify the many genres in which they participate in order to understand them. In this paper, we apply Kynes’ method to the Deir ‘Alla plaster inscriptions (Combinations I and II) to test the utility of Kynes’ method and to enhance scholarly understanding of the plaster inscriptions. Scholars have typically compared the Deir ‘Alla plaster inscriptions with a narrow set of textual analogues, usually the biblical Balaam texts (Num 22-24; 31:8, 16; Deut 23:5-6; Josh 13:22; 24:9-10; Micah 6:5; Neh 13:2) and prophetic biographical texts (1 Kings 22; 2 Kings 8:6-13; Amos 7). In this study, we attempt to move beyond these readings by evaluating a wide variety of comparanda in the literature of the ancient Near East from the Late Bronze Age through the Iron Age. We argue that the Deir ‘Alla inscriptions participate in at least 8 textual “constellations” (to borrow a metaphor from Kynes), including prophecy, ritual incantation, curse, prayer, lament, dream narrative, divine council narrative, and “masa” (burden) texts. We also argue that, within the texts at Deir ’Alla, these intertextual resonances work together in a hierarchy in which some stand out as prominent and others serve in a supporting role. In this paper, we demonstrate how previously-unconsidered genres are embedded within the highest genres of the hierarchy (i.e., prophetic narrative in Combination I and ritual incantation in Combination II). For example, Combination I embeds a dream narrative, “masa” text, and lament within the prophetic narrative. This idea of a hierarchy of embedded genres both draws upon and advances Kynes’ model. By situating the Deir ‘Alla plaster inscriptions within this larger textual world, we uncover the many genres of these inscriptions and dispute some of the generic claims about the Deir ‘Alla plaster inscriptions offered by previous scholars (e.g., the contention that Combination I is a wisdom text).

This paper sets forth a methodology for approaching visual art and physical artifacts as evidence for the development of early Christian discourses and practices related to marriage, and summarizes findings resulting from such an approach. It examines the corpus of 3rd-4th century Christian artifacts at Rome and its environs (sarcophagus reliefs, grave slabs, gold-glass medallions, catacomb frescoes, items of jewelry, mosaics) containing portraits of married Christians, inscriptions indicating commission by/for married Christians, surrounding images and symbols, and depictions of biblical couples or models of marital fidelity. The interpretation of this iconographic and epigraphic evidence yields insights on the Christianization of marriage by: (1) identifying intentionality via alterations to conventions of pre-Christian Roman art, in a way analogous to redaction criticism and form criticism; (2) employing visual culture theory and considering iconographic programs as visual rhetoric with multiple purposes and audiences — images perform tasks such as eulogizing, idealizing, constructing/maintaining identity, asserting theological commitments, and contesting rival socio-religious ideas; (3) contextualizing marital imagery within the broader early Christian conversation about the religious merit of marriage, ascetic renunciation of marriage, and the place of married Christians within the faith community, as well as the development of early forms of marriage liturgy such as the nuptial blessing. The evidence suggests that a relatively wealthy, assertive, lay clientele in 3rd-4th century Rome employed images of their own commission and use to oppose ascetic extremes and to promote the concept of a religious merit in marriage in continuity with an anti-encratist, moderate strand of early Christian tradition. Concepts of a marital bond formed by deity, a nuptial blessing, an eschatological reward associated with Christian marriage, and a way of life in continuity with biblical role models find expression in the visual evidence. Considering these physical artifacts that were commissioned and used by rank and file Christians yields appreciation of lay influence on the development of a Christian theory of marriage — Christian ideas and practices were not merely imposed upon masses of people from above by religious elites, but were developed in community with assertive, enthusiastic participation of the laity (Lisa Kaaren Bailey, The Religious Worlds of the Laity in Late Antique Gaul [2016], 3). The iconographic programs surveyed constitute a visual form of “family discourses” that, “like ascetic discourses, could effectively construct Christian reality in antiquity” (Andrew S. Jacobs and Rebecca Krawiec, Journal of Early Christian Studies 11.3 [2003], 262).

Much of current scholarship understands Paul as a Christ-confessing Jew of the first century CE. Rather than seeing Paul as having converted from Judaism to Christianity--an interpretation that held until the mid-twentieth century--newer scholarship asserts that Paul maintained his Jewishness as he moved from being a non-Christ-confessor to a Christ-confessor. This essay situates Paul’s theology within this understanding--that is, within a first century Jewish context. In doing so, however, it argues that Paul’s infamous declaration in Romans 11 (a text often read as a summation of Paul’s eschatology regarding Jews and Gentiles) that “all Israel will be saved” in the eschaton reflects a particular universalism. In other words, while situating early Christ-centered writings within a context of ancient Judaism is historically sound--and while Paul’s statements concerning fellow Jews can also be understood within a context of ancient Jewish difference and debate--I suggest that his understanding of the “right” kind of Jewish worldview is still Christ-centric. When Paul claims that “all Israel will be saved” in the end of days, his “all” still refers to a Christ-centered “all” (i.e., all Christ-centered Israel, whether Jew or Gentile, will be saved). Ultimately, this essay pushes against the grain of apologetic interpretations by arguing that, in situating Paul within Judaism, readers must address more honestly--must wrestle with indeed, if we engage further a Jewish entryway--the exclusivity of Paul’s claims. And if it requires saying: I, as a Jewish New Testament scholar, am more ethically and historically comfortable with this entryway than an apologetic one. Situating Paul within Judaism means that we must engage the complexities of Paul’s Jewishness, including those that make us struggle.

This paper analyzes the Apocryphal Apocalypse of John – better known as the First Apocryphal Apocalypse of John – starting from the comparison with the canonical one in order to define its social and cultural context that is still rather neglected among scholars together with its different textual forms. The new critical text that I’ve established within my Ph.D project at the University of Geneva - forthcoming in the Series Apocryphorum (CCSA) - that takes into account the entire manuscript tradition, gives a very important contribution in order to identify the context of the origin of the Apocryphal Apocalypse of John. The investigation starts from the analysis of the literary genre, the symbolic language and the eschatological theology and immediately puts in evidence both, its predilection for the oracular dialogue, rather than visions, as a means of the divine revelation; and a theological position, based on the idea of a single universal resurrection, which introduces an antimillenarian eschatological representation. The absence of any reference to the Millennium, as it is represented in the canonical Apocalypse, and the absence of the devil, as one of the protagonists of the final events, are peculiar elements of this text in which the eschatological enemy is represented by the antichrist. The detailed description of its appearance occupies the central part of the narrative and combines typical elements of the portraits of the antichrist widely used in ancient Christian apocalypses, buti it also seems to take into account the Legend of the Antichrist used in some byzantine apocalypses. There is a narrative framework consisting in two narrative element at beginning and the end of the book: 1. the description of the moment when the revelation takes place – that is when John is taken up to heaven from Tabor mountain on a brightly-shining cloud after seven days of prayer on Tabor mountain; once he has passed through the otherworldly dimension, he can see the heaven opened, but he is not taken on a heavenly journey. This is the very starting point of revelation later mediated through dialogue between John and the ascended Christ. 2. The second one is the concluding sections of the narrative in which John is first told to report to the believers what he has seen and heard, so that they won’t walk in darkness, and then he’s brought back to Tabor mountain where he listens to a voice proclaiming macarisms. Due to the lack of clear historical, political and social references within the narrative, the dating of this text is still an open question. Taking into account all the proposals put forward until now, it seems convincing to consider the VII-VIII century as the reliable period of composition, basically as a result of the use of a terminology which is not attested before the Iconoclasm, σεπτὴ εἰκών, but which is widely used during the controversy in defense of the veneration of the icons, but expecially after a comparison with some texts pertaining to the byzantine apocaliptic tradition.

This paper brings First Reformed (2017) into conversation with Romans 8:18–25 to examine what each can offer the other using ecological hermeneutics. The film tells the story of Protestant minister Ernst Toller and his encounter with environmentalism after meeting a couple (Mary and Michael) who are new to his church. As the film progresses, Toller begins to despair of the harm being done to the world around him. Yet this despair exists in tension with the hope he experiences in relation to Mary, through whom he eventually finds redemption. The film is rich with biblical allusions: both Toller and Mary evoke different biblical figures through their mosaic character constructions, and Romans 8:23 is explicitly cited in a pivotal scene towards the end of the film. Using this scene—in which Toller and another character debate the Church’s responsibility to act to prevent further climate breakdown—First Reformed’s broader narrative can be read as a longform exegesis of Romans 8:18–25, with the film’s key intertwining themes of suffering and hope mirroring the logic Paul expounds in the Romans passage. The passage has become a cornerstone text in discussions of ecological hermeneutics (e.g. Braaten 2006, Horrell, Hunt, and Southgate 2010, Byrne 2010, Bauckham 2011, Tonstad 2016), and by adopting Larry Kreitzer’s approach for reading biblical texts through film in order to ‘reverse the hermeneutical flow’ (1993), the film can elucidate three particular dynamics of Romans 8. First, Toller’s embodiment of ‘groaning’, both on behalf of his own ailing body and also for the fate of the world around him, depicts a kind of ‘solastalgia’—a term coined by Glenn Albrecht, an environmental philosopher, to describe contemporary climate grief as ‘the homesickness you have at home’ (2019). The concept of solastalgia can then be read reciprocally alongside Romans 8 as a way of exploring the connection between human and non-human creation. Second, and in conjunction with a recurring question posed throughout the film about whether God will forgive humanity’s contribution to climate breakdown, we can consider the role of knowledge in relation to creation’s groaning. This knowledge is presumed on a corporate scale by Paul in Romans 8:22 (οἴδαμεν ὅτι), but is nuanced by the film; who knows what about climate breakdown, and how do they act on that knowledge? ‘We know that’ thus resonates quite differently today, both in terms of what we know about climate breakdown, but also who chooses to participate in the ‘we’ and who is willing to excuse themselves from the responsibility such knowledge entails. Finally, the film allows us to challenge Paul’s rhetorical question about hope in 8:24, because in fact Toller both passionately despairs and hopes for the physical world around him, as well as for Mary—there must, in fact, be hope for what is already seen. Ultimately this paper invites a fresh perspective on both First Reformed and Romans 8, making each other strange through the use of ecological hermeneutics.

The importance of symbolism in the poetic works of Ephrem the Syrian has been the subject of ample scholarship. Murray and Brock, and more recently Bou Mansour and den Biesen, have shown that symbols and figurative language are not incidental features of Ephrem’s poetic style, but a central structure of his theology. Modern scholarship has also shown that Ephrem’s connections with his Jewish contemporaries are not merely incidental, but that certain elements of rabbinic exegesis find echoes within his work. Understudied up to this point, however, has been the comparison between Ephrem and roughly contemporary Jewish religious poetry. The work of Rodrigues Pereira on late antique Aramaic poetry juxtaposed Ephrem’s madrashe with Jewish Aramaic poetry of the same period, but few similar treatments have been forthcoming. This paper offers another attempt to read the great Syrian poet against late antique Jewish poetry, choosing in this instance the body of pre-classical and early classical piyyutim— a genre of Hebrew liturgical poetry, dating from roughly the 5th to 7th centuries CE. Although differing in their linguistic and religious context, piyyutim share several crucial similarities with Ephrem: a liturgical context, a didactic function, and a highly developed verbal artistry (employing acrostics, internal rhymes, and puns). This paper will address another similarity: both corpora share a dense symbolic and figurative vocabulary, drawing and expanding upon scriptural language. The animating questions will be first, how does figurative language “work” in each case (what images are drawn upon, how does the poet adapt or expand symbols and figures found in the scriptural text); and second, what do these differing methods in employing figurative language reveal about the role of symbolism in the thought and “world-view” of the poets? While the nature of the evidence does not permit absolute statements, this study will generally observe that Ephrem is more likely to coin “new” symbols and figures, drawing upon his particular theological view of nature, while the payyetanim are more likely to “limit” their figurative language to expressions with scriptural warrant—while nevertheless being entirely willing to expand these images, to chain figures from disparate verses together, and otherwise to elaborate their sources. To the second question, we will suggest that Ephrem regards symbols—both scriptural and natural—as God’s own method of revealing himself to limited human minds; symbols are important because they draw the mind analogically toward God. For the payyetanim, meanwhile, symbolism makes the language of scripture new, and newly-relevant, for contemporary listeners. This is not merely an ornamental feature: rather, it draws Biblical narrative into a new historical context, and reasserts continuity between the ancient and late antique communities of Israel. The academic study of piyyutim, like Syriac studies, is young, especially outside of the Hebrew-speaking world. Although scholars like Yahalom and Münz-Manor have probed the question of figurative language in piyyutim, relatively little comparative work has yet been done. This presentation aims to contribute modestly to this exciting question, by tracing parallel developments in Semitic-language religious poetry in late antiquity.

The bodies of people living with disabilities are often “translated” by theologies in Sub-Saharan Africa which operate according to the health and wealth gospel, or according to the mainline developmentalist gospel. They are treated as passive agents. Similarly, the translation of biblical texts assumes people living with disabilities will be passive members of the translation audience. However, African translation theology as described by Sanneh and Bediako argues that the sites of a translation’s reception are more decisive than its sites of production. Since sites of reception are not abstract, but include real bodies in time and space, a post-colonial and emancipatory translation theology suggests people living with disabilities must re-interpret the Bible from their own embodied and sectoral sites of reception. More than that, I will be arguing in a theoretical and embodied way for bringing a site of the Bible’s reception into dialogue with its sites of production such that people living with disabilities in northern Ghana re-translate the Bible and in the process rework the ideo-theologies that are bringing death to them and their contexts. The case study explores how people living with disabilities in northern Ghana participate in re-translating Job’s lament governed by an alternative post-colonial logic of re-translation for social and theological liberation.

A long-standing puzzle of arboreal imagery in the NT occurs at the end of John the Seer’s Apocalypse: A tree with leaves that can heal. While people often ascribe healing properties to plants and herbs, the same is not true of tree leaves. During his vision of the new Eden, John sees the tree of life as an echo of the original creation story: A tree of life bearing fruit by a river where people dwell within proximity to God. One notable difference in symbolism between John’s vision and the original creation story is the mention of the leaves on the tree—explicit in John but implicit in Genesis. What to do with the leaves in Revelation was a question not lost on the first interpreters of the text; some early interpreters such as Ephrem the Syrian and Oecumenius treated the leaves in a somewhat straightforward manner, whereas other interpreters such as Ambrose and Victorinus of Pettau saw the leaves in a fully symbolic or allegorical vein. This confusion over the interpretation of the leaves raises several questions: What kind of tree produces healing leaves? What kind of leaf is able to heal people? Why does John add these leaves to his version of the tree? What kind of healing do the leaves provide? There seems to be at least three initial areas for investigation into this puzzle, each of which I briefly develop at the beginning of this presentation: first, ANE sacred tree imagery with references to leaves; second, OT imageries of trees with leaves (Ps 1:3; Ezek 47); and third, earliest interpretations of the Apocalypse with comments about the leaves (Ephrem the Syrian, Eusebius, Ambrose, Jerome, Victorinus of Pettau, Oecumenius). From this foundation, I argue that while each of these are cast important light on the puzzle, none are a direct parallel on which John relies. I argue that there is an often overlooked area for investigation: The theology of the “Johannine School” (specifically the Gospel of John). I argue that it is the unique Johannine perspective on healing-salvation-life that, filtered through OT imagery, theologically animates and is the actual ‘root’ of the symbol of the healing leaves. In doing so, I argue that the Seer’s intentional ambiguity about the tree and the leaves is the cause for the widely varied interpretations found among the earliest interpreters. The tree of life in the Apocalypse may be a completely polyvalent image, but it is still one based on OT imagery and rooted in Johannine theology.

Caroline Bammel argued in one of her path-breaking studies on Augustine and Origen that in an engagement with various theological opinions circulating in Africa, the bishop did not use the work of Pelagius. Instead, Augustine used the Latin translation of Origen’s Commentary on Romans. Augustine delivered sermon 32 on the Psalms, Bammel maintained, before reading Pelagius’ Commentary on Romans. If correct, argued Bammel, this non-use of Pelagius would effectively place this sermon before the composition of the treatise De peccatorum meritis (ca. 411), one of Augustine’s earliest critiques of Celestius. But does this sermon exhibit no “influence of Pelagius”? I will argue that to the contrary, in at least one clear instance, and perhaps even two, readers can indeed detect the presence of Pelagius’ Commentary on Romans. Although Augustine used Origen’s Commentary on Romans to address various soteriological questions, he also looked to the insights of Pelagius from his recently finished commentary on the same Pauline epistle. To demonstrate this thesis, I will show that in at least one instance, Augustine directly used certain comments of Pelagius on Romans 3 and 4. A textual comparison between Augustine’s interpretation of a passage in Romans in sermon 32 and Pelagius’ Commentary on Romans, I believe, reveals a direct, though unacknowledged, borrowing from the work of Pelagius. I will also show that Augustine did not borrow these comments from other commentators on Romans available or possibly available to him such as Origen, Ambrosiaster or the Anonymous Budapest Commentator. Augustine’s borrowing from Pelagius was partly due to the fact that the sermon was most likely delivered in Carthage around the year 412. During this time, many immigrants from the City of Rome had fled to Carthage because of Alaric’s invasion of the Eternal City. Some members in the audience were interested in the soteriological topics discussed by Pelagius and his disciples. As a way to address the hotly debated soteriologies circulating in North Africa at this time, Augustine used Pelagius’ comments to support his interpretations of Paul, a strategy used in the treatise De peccatorum meritis. This study will have a threefold benefit. First, it will show that sermon 32 was actually penned at the time of or shortly after after the composition of book 3 of the De peccatorum meritis. By demonstrating the use of Pelagius at this stage, we can now be certain that this important sermon was not penned before the De peccatorum meritis, as Bammel maintained. Second, this paper will demonstrate that Augustine indeed used Pelagius for sermon 32, again contrary to Bammel’s assertion. This borrowing will provide yet another instance of an early engagement with Pelagius’ thought. Third, with this additional evidence, we now have a more expansive picture of the various ways in which Augustine used the work of Pelagius. This paper will show that Augustine continued to leverage Pelagius’ comments on Paul in his own favor in areas of mutual agreement. In sum, this paper opens new areas of potential investigation between these two early Christian scholars.

This paper is part of an ongoing project that reexamines the language of pistis in Paul’s letters. The paper argues that, rather than instilling “belief” in his followers, Paul was constructing relations of trust, fidelity, and faithfulness—toward himself and toward his Judean deity. The paper examines four categories of people in antiquity who were expected to demonstrate fidelity (or faithfulness) toward a superior, and to the social web of which they were a part: soldiers to their unit and command, the enslaved toward their owners, children to their fathers, and virgins who were soon to be wives. Throughout his letters, Paul refers to these categories of people and the expectation of their faithfulness in order to exhort the fidelity and obedience of his gentile followers. Notably, Paul does not draw on the image of subjects being pistoi toward a king or emperor. Casting his followers as sons of God, soldiers of Christ, slaves of Christ, and betrothed virgins being offered to Christ, Paul rhetorically outlines the parameters of singular devotion he demands from gentile followers. This rhetorical strategy is central to building what John Kloppenborg has recently called “networks of trust” in Pauline Christ groups.

It is no secret that competitions surrounding high-profile episcopal succession during late antiquity were intense, often leading to occasions of violence in the moment and subsequent efforts to control the narratives of succession. In some cases, the competitions endured long afterward, with successive revisions in the historical record. One such example is found in Socrates’ account of Cyril’s accession as bishop of Alexandria (Eccl. Hist. 7.7). As narrated, upon the bishop Theophilos’s death, two candidates (his nephew Cyril and the archdeacon Timothy) were put forth as his successor, one receiving the support of the local military commander, Abundantianus, the other that of the people. Here, however, accounts of the succession diverge. According to one manuscript tradition, found in the received Greek text of the History, Abundantianus supported Timothy, but his attempt to install the man was prevented by the people’s insistence on Cyril. A different version of the incident appears in the Armenian translation of the History. There, it is Cyril whom Abundantianus forcefully installed against the people’s choice of Timothy as their new bishop. As early as 1909, Matthias Gelzer argued that the Armenian translation, made during the first half of the sixth century, preserves a reading closer to Sokrates’s original text, and it was this variant that Günther C. Hansen and Manja Širinian advanced in the 1995 GCS critical edition of Sokrates. Subsequent scholars (e.g., Hans Van Loon, 2014) have challenged the Armenian reading, arguing that Cyril’s attacks on heretics and Jews following his election align with his standing opposition with secular authorities. However, these arguments focus on the immediate narrative circumstances of Cyril’s ordination and overlook a motif repeated throughout Sokrates’s history, namely, that bishops who had been installed with armed support from governmental authorities historically acted as tyrants. This motif surrounds several other high-profile bishops in Sokrates’s History, most notably, Makedonios, John Chrysostom, and Nestorios, each of whom relied on imperial backing for their positions and were later removed due to abuses of power. The repetition of circumstances, along with Sokrates’s general disdain for Cyril, provides additional support for retaining the Armenian reading of the passage. If this is correct, Sokrates’s presentation of Cyril’s episcopal usurpation appears to have caused some discomfort for later readers who regarded the Alexandrian bishop as one of the foremost champions of orthodoxy (as previously noted by Susan Wessel, 2001). In this paper, I will explore the competitive aspects of this episode on two levels. First, following Hansen, I will examine Sokrates’s narrative construction of episcopal succession, arguing that the author is engaging in competitive discourse against Cyril’s supporters. Second, I will consider the revision of this passage as a continuing act of competition. While the revision—which appears fairly early in the Greek manuscript tradition and adopted in subsequent Latin and Syriac translations—does not completely mask Cyril’s tyranny, it does offer a cover of legitimacy for his actions, a cover not extended to similarly tyrannical bishops.

This presentation will survey the current state of affairs in the quest for Scribal Habits and a way forward. I will begin by giving a historical overview starting with Griesbach, will then move to Westcott and Hort, continue to Colwell, will culminate with Royse, and then discuss those who have built upon Royse’s work in recent years. It has been fifteen years since Royse’s Scribal Habits was published. I will therefore consider whether Royse’s methods have stood up to recent scrutiny and their proper role as we continue in the quest for Scribal Habits. We will discuss the Ausgangstext, the singular readings method, the shorter reading criterion, and other topics that play a role in determining scribal habits before discussing specific critiques to Royse’s method and a way forward. In the end we will discuss whether Royse’s methods should live on or if Royse’s methods were prolific stepping stones toward other methods better suited for the Quest for Scribal Habits.

The Dura Europos synagogue provides a rich site to mine in the study of ancient literacy, pedagogy, and cross-cultural interactions in antiquity. In her 2018 book Jewish Children in the Roman World, Hagith Sivan writes that “the ingenuity of the Durene synagogue designers lies in the patent juxtaposition of the remote past and the concrete present to generate a perfect pedagogical tool” (260). Sivan was speaking specifically about pedagogy for Dura’s children, for whom the synagogue wall paintings depicting biblical narratives functioned as a sort of visual scripture. These paintings, especially those which featured children, complemented what the children learned from the scripture they heard read in the synagogue, as well as the lessons they learned at home and through the social experience of childhood. Using Sivan’s framework, I argue that paintings featuring mothers or women in maternal roles functioned as pedagogical tools for the women members of the Dura synagogue community. For Dura’s women, these images provided models of how to use their roles as mothers to preserve and transmit their Jewish identity in the multireligious, multiethnic environment of Dura Europos--a garrison town within the Roman Empire with a significant and visible Roman military presence, an ever-present reminder of the Jewish community’s minority status. I consider three images as examples of visual pedagogy for women in the Dura Europos synagogue community. First, “Elijah Restores the Widow’s Child,” which constructs an image of a foreign, widowed mother who challenges the authority of a prophet in order to save her child; second, “The Infancy of Moses,” in which several women, from Israelite slaves to an Egyptian princess, work together to protect the infant Moses, the future leader of the people of Israel; and third, “The Purim Panel,” in which Queen Esther models both semi-divine leadership and maternal care for the vulnerable population of Shushan’s Jews. Each of these images presents a pedagogical model for Dura’s Jewish women, and invited them to emulate the behavior of the biblical figures in their own social context. These images and the community which created them did not operate in a vacuum. I follow Anabel Jane Wharton, who calls the interplay between the visual images of scripture and the sharing of written scripture within the synagogue context a “narrative bricolage” (“Good and Bad Images,” 15-16). Written scripture, the so-called canon of the Torah, Prophets, and Writings, by no means occupied a privileged space in this bricolage. The paintings of women in the Dura synagogue drew on alternative narratives found in Aramaic translations (targumim) of the Tanakh, as well as from narratives in collections of rabbinic midrash. They also mimicked contemporaneous visual models such as images of women in Dura’s other religious buildings, or in nearby cities like Palmyra. The result is images of women in maternal roles that reflect a multiplicity of interpretive voices showing diverse cultural influences. The mothers or maternal figures in the Dura synagogue paintings thus present for their viewers a model of Jewish motherhood that is both hybrid and complex.

Among the corpus of Second Temple Jewish literature, there is a subset of texts with a focus on sacrifice and sacred space. Traditionally these texts have been analyzed with respect to texts we now identify as part of the Hebrew Bible, especially the Pentateuch. This focus on comparison however, and specifically on the supposed diachronic development of legal or ritual thought, has artificially flattened and obscured the distinct ideologies and concerns present within Second Temple literature about sacrifice. In this paper, I propose a step back from these diachronic models and argue for reading these texts for what they are: works of literature in their own right with their own specific ideologies and aims. One of the most intriguing and distinctive ideas in these texts is their focus on the sensorial landscape of sacrifice, especially as it relates to the bodily experiences of the priest and of the worshipper. Across texts such as the Aramaic Levi Document, the Letter of Aristeas, Ben Sira, Temple Scroll, and Bel and the Dragon, authors describe sacrifice and ritual practice in ways primarily oriented to sensory perception. In this paper, I will explore the sensory language and imagery deployed by these authors and analyze the ways in which these texts theorize sacrifice from a position of embodiment. For example, from the insistence on visually bloodless, spotless sacrifice in Aramaic Levi to the description of sacrifice as “entirely silent” in the Letter of Aristeas, these texts construct their own sensorial landscapes of sacrifice that are unapologetically disconnected from the messy and cacophonous realities of sacrificial worship. Following this, I will suggest that the focus on the sensorium offers one piece of evidence that these texts are best understood as literary works, and not simply representations of historical practice or interpretations of earlier texts.

The textual scholarship of Mediterranean antiquity is currently undergoing a significant shift regarding our proper object of study, from the idealized text to the artifactual text. Newer approaches, often labelled “new” or “material” philology, constitute new scholarly modes of reading that leverage the artifactual status of a text-object in order to better understand and appreciate ancient modes of reading and other forms of textual engagement. In fact, these approaches rely heavily on the researcher’s ability to gain first-hand access to the text-objects they wish to study. For some of us, these textual artifacts are Egyptian papyri, many of which were excavated around the turn of the 20th century under the auspices of the British Egypt Exploration Fund (EEF) and distributed to public institutions across the globe. While papyrologists are somewhat familiar with this practice of papyri distributions, fewer are aware that it coincided with the distribution of thousands and thousands of Egyptian antiquities – objects in an uncontested sense. Drawing together original research on the papyrological collections at the University of Toronto and the Royal Ontario Museum and archival documents of the EEF, along with recent scholarship on the distribution of Egyptian Antiquities by the EEF (Stevenson 2019, Johnson 2012), this paper historicizes current discussion about the artifactual status of texts and its implications for our modern and scholarly modes of reading. Excavators and scholars often valued Egyptian papyri – especially literary papyri – as texts (in an idealized sense). Nevertheless, the papyri experienced the practicalities of artifact transportation, were subject to the legal obligations of excavated Egyptian antiquities, while appearing distinct from and intermingled with other Egyptian antiquities in EEF bureaucratic documents. By drawing out these tensions in the historical and archival record, this paper shows one way in which the distinction between text and artifact has haunted textual scholarship for over a century.

During the trinitarian discussions of the fourth century, the elevation of the Nicene homoousios to the status of a shibboleth for correct belief (a process initiated in 340 and consumed by the mid-350s) imposed a transformation not only on the matter of the trinitarian dispute, but also on its manner. Increasingly generalized preoccupation with lexical exactitude—the akribeia of which anti-Nicene thinkers did not tire of speaking—led to the proliferation of theological parties identified by one or another byword and to the development of ortholalia. The latter may be defined as the discursive device whereby formulary ways of correctly confessing theological truths functioned not only as keys to accessing appropriate beliefs, but also as tools to promote the grouping of different factions around a particular credal definition. Remarkably, such ecclesial rearrangements would occur in strategic derogation from what the actors themselves perceived as theologically appropriate, and in joint opposition to a belief cast as heretical and functioning, from the standpoint of discourse analysis, as a master signifier. Ortholalia was crucial to the fourth-century dogmatization of theological discussion, and could work in unsuspected ways. Its capacity as an aggregator was extended, for example, to non-literal adherence to a formula: while the signifier was still regarded as the litmus test of orthodoxy, more subjects than those willing to utter the phrase could pass the test. This paper will demonstrate the dialectical productivity, ecclesiological implications, and ideological import of ortholalia through an examination of the reception history of a phrase contained in a fragment attributed to Eustathius of Antioch. The corpora interrogated will include Jerome's Correspondence, Epiphanius's Panarion, and a Letter of the Marcellan clergy of Ancyra.

There is a heart-warming scene in the Synoptic Gospels in which mothers bring their children to Jesus for blessing (Mark 10:13-16 and par.). The moment is pictured in western society as robust and playful little ones gathered about the great rabbi-prophet. Whether the scene is historical or not, the pathological question remains. What was the reality? How would such a scene have happened? Jesus research has for over one hundred and fifty years labored to craft a theological/religious background to Jesus’ ministry. More recently, historians have proposed various socio-economic backgrounds. Few, however, have offered a paleopathological background. Knowledge of ubiquitous and endemic disease can serve as important context for a movement. This paper proposes to sketch the evidence for widespread malaria in the Galilean region during the time of Jesus and then to show its effects, at least partially attributable to this disease, in terms of childhood mortality. I will examine geographical evidence (both ancient and pre-modern), literary references, and archaeological remains (surveys, amulets protecting against fever, and human skeletal remains that show pathology and length of life) for the Galilee region. In the concluding paragraphs, I hope to suggest some insights into the lives of children in Galilee and the Gospels’ presentation of the ministry of Jesus based on my results.

Jeremiah and Ezekiel share many motifs (D. Vieweger), also theological concepts, e.g. God as shepherd (Jer 23:3; Ezek 34:11–16), divine love and empathy (Jer 31; Ezek 20), repeated announcements of bringing the people back from exile, etc. This invites to reflect on their mutual relationship (D. Rom-Shiloni). Comparing their theological differences, one can notice specific emphases in the respective portrayals of Yhwh. Whereas Jer depicts God as weeping, as incessantly, eagerly acting (שׁכם hiphil), and as “fountain of living water”, Ezek accentuates his holiness, his life-giving רוח and his ‘travelling’ כבוד, leaving the temple and returning to it. This points to distinct focalizations in the perception of God, noted also by H. Leene. Based on the comparison of the theologies of Jer and Ezek, I want to address anew the question of the links between these two prophets.

This paper investigates metaphors of God in the prophet Hosea and uses the paradigm of conceptual metaphor and blending theory. By this approach from cognitive linguistics, different fields of metaphors and metonymes used to sketch an image of God are analyzed. It shows how metaphors are based on an incongruity between different ideas and presents God as a figure, shaping an image of a personality with sarcastic and ironic characteristics and explores, how the sustained metaphors used, shape a dynamic and coherent image of God.

This paper will explore the contribution as well as the continuing importance of Arthur Darby Nock's scholarship for early Christian studies.

Twenty-five years after the 1994 100 day genocide in Rwanda Caroline Williamson Sinalo has published a ground breaking analysis entitled Rwanda after Genocide: Gender, Identity and Post-Traumatic Growth. ‘Post traumatic’ growth is a term frequently used to describe positive changes after a traumatic event. Sinalo has chosen to focus her attention on the post-traumatic growth of Rwanda instead of the effects and impact of the trauma itself, a topic that has been covered by many others in a variety of ways. The purpose of her study is to analyze how – not how much – post-traumatic growth occurs in Rwandan survivors. Similarly, an analysis of social identity, hybridity, and leadership in Ezra-Nehemiah evidences Israel’s testimony of post-traumatic growth. Through the use of social identity and socio-literary reading strategies coupled with post-colonial theory and Sinalo’s trauma growth theory, this paper will seek to ferret out evidences of Israel’s post-traumatic growth as evidenced in the Ezra-Nehemiah corpus.

Few papyri have influenced the field of New Testament textual criticism like Chester Beatty Biblical Papyrus I (CB BP I), which is better known by its Gregory-Aland designation, P45. This fragmentary papyrus codex contains portions from each of the four Gospels and from the book of Acts. The art of transcribing fragmentary witnesses involves judgement and approximation. We ought not to be surprised, therefore, that the available transcriptions of P45 differ from each other and that all can be improved. There are at least five complete transcriptions of the entire text of P45 by scholars or institutions: (1) The editio princeps by Frederic Kenyon in 1934, (2) Philip Comfort and David Barrett, (3) Karl Jaroš, (4) Reuben Swanson, (5) and the Institut für Neutestamentliche Textforschung. In addition to these, several transcriptions of smaller sections have been published: (1) Hans Gerstinger, Günther Zuntz, and Wendy and Stanley Porter have published transcriptions of a fragment held apart from the rest of the surviving codex at the Austrian National Library in Vienna; (2) The International Greek New Testament Project published a complete collation of Luke and a complete transcription of John; (3) Kyoung Shik Min published a transcription of Matthew. The first part of this paper evaluates the editio princeps and surveys the history of transcribing P45, including an evaluation of each attempt. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the IGNTP and INTF transcriptions are the best available. The second part of this paper presents new readings in P45 in the Gospels that are not present in any other published transcription. This paper concludes by observing that published transcriptions are more likely to err in the Gospel of Mark than in the other three Gospels. One reason for this may be that the text of Mark in P45 is the most idiosyncratic of the Gospels in the papyrus. Larry Hurtado has established that P45 and GA032 (W) are each other’s nearest neighbors with no other close relationships i.e., they are a family of two. Even if one transcribes Mark in P45 with a standard critical edition and the majority text at hand, P45 is likely to present readings that are unfamiliar to the editor.

The Apocalypse of John has long been a contested site for women. Recent feminist and womanist scholarship has called attention to the complexities of the characterization of the woman Babylon as a “whore” (pornē), along with the dangerous implications of the violence done to her for real women. Others have argued that because the destruction of Babylon the woman/whore signifies the apocalyptic destruction of Rome the city, there are no dangers intended for real women. The violent destruction of Babylon in Revelation 17 is followed immediately by descriptions of the mourning of the kings, merchants, and seafarers, who weep because “all of [their] wealth has been laid waste!” (Rev. 18:17). Although some commentators have highlighted the specifically economic critiques of Rome in Revelation 18 and used this text as a resource for critiquing economic exploitation in the present, no significant work has been done that connects the depiction of Rome as a prostitute to the economic critiques of Rome and the Roman empire. Yet, this connection is crucial, both for the way that John constructs his critique of Rome and for readers that want to construct a critique of John’s critique. John’s repeated use of the Greek word pornē (prostitute) to describe Babylon/Rome seeks to deepen the shame of the critique. A pornē most likely referred to a brothel slave, or the lowest class of prostitute. Yet, John also describes Babylon/Rome as accumulating great wealth and living luxuriously. Although commentators have offered thoughtful ways to reconcile these two seemingly conflicting representations, they do not take seriously the possibility that John intended to deploy divergent representations of Babylon/Rome as a prostitute because he needed them to construct his critique. I argue that John needed some aspects of the experience of a pornē (prostitute, brothel slave), namely degradation and multiple sexual partners, as well as some aspects of the experience of a hetaira (courtesan), specifically the perception of wealth and luxury provided by others, in order to disparage and denounce Rome as thoroughly as possible. Thus, John critiques the economic exploitation perpetuated by the Roman empire, but he fails to see that the primary image or metaphor that he uses – a prostitute or brothel slave – was also a victim of exploitation. In portraying Babylon/Rome as a pornē who lives luxuriously, John is trying to have the best (or worst) of both worlds – the multiple, anonymous partners of the degraded brothel slave and the perceived wealth of the rich courtesan. Only by focusing on the social and economic lived realities of prostitutes can we fully challenge John’s construction and critique of Babylon/Rome and the problematic gender ideology that undergirds it. In this paper, I call attention to the intertwined constructions of gender, sexuality, and economics present in Revelation – and the ways that commentators have often reinforced these constructions rather than challenged them – in order to highlight the dangers of these constructions and their implications for women throughout the ongoing history of interpretation.

Standard translations like the Good News Bible offer at the beginning of 2 Cor 3:13 an emendated text: “We are not like Moses, who had to put a veil […]” Such a translation puts Paul and Timothy in direct opposition to Moses. This might be one of the instances where the title of a recent contribution holds true: “The Good News Bible: Is It Good News for the Jews? Methodological Observations on Translational Choices in GNB” (Cf. Förster, BiTr 69 (2018) 383–401). It appears that the translation offered by GNB is interpretive and might misconstrue the syntax thereby missing also the point of what Paul intends to say. There is (among others) no relative clause in the Greek text of this passage. Consequently, there might be no indication whatsoever in the Greek text which would put Paul and Timothy in direct opposition to Moses. This has consequences for Paul’s relationship to Judaism. The contribution will analyse the syntax, offer an alternative translation and evaluate the consequences of this translation for understanding Paul’s relationship to Judaism.

Deciding whether a clause constituent is an argument (a part of the semantic core) or an adjunct (a peripheral constituent) remains a stubborn challenge. Unfortunately, existing solutions lack coverage and consistency, whether they are obtained by local improvisation, by manual valency dictionary construction, or by algorithmic valency frame inference. While some grammarians have abandoned the distinction between argument and adjunct, it is quite useful pedagogically and operationally. Hence, others have suggested recasting the distinction by treating the argument and adjunct categories as the prototypical endpoints of a gradient scale. My argument-adjunct gradient estimator seeks to encompass the grammatical characteristics of Biblical Hebrew. Using clause features, the estimator evaluates the degree of argumenthood exhibited by each clause constituent in the BH corpus.

This paper will reflect upon some unexamined contexts that inform readings of a text of forgiveness among Black and White Christians in post-apartheid South Africa. It will do so by reflecting upon the method and findings of a study in contextual biblical interpretation, conducted with groups of Black and White South African readers over a period of 4 years. The findings stem from an empirical contextual Bible reading research project that involved contextually diverse readers who engaged in a series of Bible studies in which they read Matthew 18:15-35 and reflected upon the ‘politics of forgiveness’ in post-apartheid South Africa. South Africa is a deeply religious nation, and conflicting interpretations of the Bible remain a source of struggle. 84% of persons profess Christian faith. Research shows that readings of biblical texts play a significant role in forming moral, ethical, and political identities. The participants in this study read Matthew 18.15-35 in ‘in- group’ (mono-racial, and mono-cultural), and ‘out-group’ (multi-racial, multi-ethnic, and multi-cultural), social identity settings in order to extrapolate their varying hermeneutic perspectives on forgiveness. The data shows that context plays a central role in informing hermeneutic positions. Social identity, race, economic status, gender, life’s experience, and the age of the readers influence the hermeneutic perspectives of forgiveness that emerged from the readings and interpretations of the text. The study finds that Black readers in South Africa tend to understand forgiveness in social and political terms – these readers accentuate economic restitution for the wrongs of colonialism and apartheid, and emphasise the need for social, economic and political transformation in their interpretations of the text. While, on the other hand, White South African readers, understand forgiveness in largely personal and spiritual terms – once the sin and wrongdoing has been confessed to God, the matter is settled. Forgiveness, from their perspective, does not necessarily require any engagement with the offended party. It only requires God’s ‘unmerited grace.’ The paper will present some insights into the methodological considerations that informed the design of the empirical contextual Bible studies. The empirical component of the contextual Bible studies allowed the researcher to gain deeper, richer, and more textured understandings of how the readers’ contexts informed their hermeneutic perspectives on the ‘politics of forgiveness’ in post-apartheid South Africa. The paper will also reflect on how this approach allowed for the explication, clarification, and naming of ‘hidden’, ‘unquestioned’ and ‘unexamined’ contexts in the participants’ hermeneutic engagements with Matthew 18:15-35. Finally, the paper will offer some suggestions on the possibilities, and pitfalls, that empirical contextual methods present for contemporary Biblical scholarship as it intersects with issues of ethical concern.

In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul responds to the Corinthian assertion that “it is good for a man not to touch a woman” (1 Cor. 7:1). While some in Corinth argue that celibacy is best, Paul fleshes out his reasons for wanting people to get married: to account for cases of porneia and that it is better for them to marry than to burn with passion. Thus, in spite of the Corinthians’ own feelings regarding sexual touch, Paul’s rhetoric is a forceful attempt to persuade the Corinthians to marry and have sex for the sake of passions run amok, for the sex abusers in the community. Antoinette Wire and others have argued that this debate in Paul’s letter addresses male sexual immorality by enticing would-be celibate women to marriage and sex for the good of the community. In thinking with the affect theory of Ann Cvetkovich and others, this paper asks to what extent interpreters should imagine a communal feeling of sexual violence or assault in this early Christ community? How would such a feeling interact with other communal feelings, such as a communal sense of grief, as argued by Laura Nasrallah via the archaeological remains in Corinth? What are the gendered implications of such affective logics? After briefly exploring the methodological hurdles of such questions, this paper argues that this sort of affective approach to 1 Cor. 7 broadens the possible visions of intersectional figures in this Christ community. It is possible that reading this text in the era of the #MeToo movement requires attention to burning rage moreso than other burning passions.

This paper will analyze and discuss a set of early rabbinic texts that either narrate or legislate the recitation of alternating scriptural verses in Hebrew (miqraʾ) and Aramaic translation (targum), and the relation of this performative code-switching to the other branches of the rabbinic “curriculum” of “oral Torah" (e.g., talmud/midrash, halakha, and aggada), which, in a sense, will be shown to derive from it. Emphasis will be placed on the difference between code-switching in the private domain of scriptural study and the public domain of scriptural lection. A text from the Palestinian Talmud will be introduced that both thematizes miqraʾ/targum code-switching and exemplifies it in its own text by switching between the Aramaic story frame and its Hebrew speech acts. Finally, it will be shown how medieval manuscripts graphically continue the linguistic code-switching between miqraʾ and targum, Hebrew and Aramaic, that originates in the tannaitic practice and tradition.

The story of Noah’s drunkenness (Gen 9:20-27) is famously plagued with prominent difficulties. First, why does Noah pronounce such a severe curse in response to the seemingly minor crime of seeing nakedness? Second, why does Noah curse his grandson Canaan, when it was his son Ham that committed the crime? Finally, why does verse 24 refer to Ham as “his youngest son” when, according to the simple implication of the passages that refer to Noah’s three sons, Shem, Ham and Japhet (Gen 5:32; 6:10; 9:18; 10:1), Japhet was the youngest son, and Ham was the second son? Scholars have offered various theories concerning the evolution of the text in order to account for these anomalies. In this paper I will offer a critique of these theories, and suggest a new redaction-critical analysis of the text. Following this analysis, the story of Gen 9:20-25, in its original form, was an etiological tale about the drunkenness of Ham, not Noah. Whereas Noah was remembered as the hero of the flood, Ham was remembered as the first vintner. Similarly, the original offender was Canaan, not Ham (removing the words “Ham, father of” in verse 22). According to Gen 10:6, the sons of Ham were Cush, Mizraim, Put and Canaan. Thus, it was Ham who was violated in his tent by his “youngest son,” Canaan, and this is why it is Canaan who is cursed. The tale originally accounted for the indentured status of Canaan and the Canaanites vis-à-vis the other “sons of Ham,” who essentially personify the Egyptian empire (and note the phrase “the tents of Ham” at Psalm 78:51). The curse of Canaan to subordination to “his brethren” (verse 25) – Cush, Mizraim and Put - broadly corresponds to the historical reality of the territory of Canaan in the second millennium B.C.E. At a later stage in the transmission of the text, the point of the etiology was transformed. The offended father was identified with Noah so that the Canaanites could be given over to the domination of Noah’s oldest son, Shem, representative of the people of Israel. The analysis concludes with a brief reflection on the historical problems surrounding the exodus myth and the possibility, suggested by the development of Gen 9:20-27, that it is ultimately rooted in early memory regarding the political subordination of Canaan.

In an important and revealing section of book V of the Divine Institutes, Lactantius lists and evaluates Christian writers who have come before him. He suggests these authors generally had the same literary goals as him and proceeds to describe their strengths and weaknesses. While this passage has been regularly analyzed and discussed, the tendency has been to focus on the specific content—what Lactantius commends or criticizes about earlier writers. In this paper, I will instead look at the reason for this passage’s inclusion in the Divine Institutes and the rhetorical import of creating a literary pedigree. I will argue that Lactantius, by naming and discussing his predecessors, should be read as creating a genre of Christian literature. In so doing, he aims to create literary context for his work and to invent rhetorical space for imagined, future Christian intellectuals.

Lev 4 and Num 15:22–31 are concerned with the same issue: how to atone and obtain forgiveness for unintentional offenses (šǝgagah). While the structural similarities and lexical proximity between both passages cannot be overlooked, the two texts nevertheless differ significantly from each other in length, style, scope, and halakhic details. How can the differences be accounted for? Ancient readers (11QTemple, Rabbinic sources), averse to the idea that two sets of biblical laws might contradict each other, sought to resolve the problem by assigning them to different types of transgressions. Modern interpreters have either seen the texts as unrelated and reflecting different periods and practices, or considered one to be a re-elaboration of the other. Arie Toeg has convincingly argued that Num 15:22–31 is a halakhic midrash on Lev 4. The daršan, he claims, dispenses with ritual detail and simplifies the categories of šǝgagah. The most jarring halakhic discrepancy between the two passages (different animals for the public ḥaṭṭaʾt and the unusual order Ꜥolah before ḥaṭṭaʾt) Toeg shows to be the result of a process of normalization common in midrashim (in later terminology: supplying a new sêp̄aʾ for the rêšaʾ and vice versa). In good homiletic fashion, Num 15 expands on the theology implicit in Lev 4: atonement can be gained for these sins precisely because they were committed inadvertently. Most importantly however, Num 15 introduces the treatment of a new category: that of the brazen sinner who sins defiantly (bǝ-yad ramah). No sacrifice can atone for this type of sin and the sinner must be cut off (karet) from the people. Toeg’s article, published in Hebrew, has been treated in only a few later publications, some of which I review in my paper. I show that Jacob Milgrom’s dismissal of his proposal cannot stand up to scrutiny, leaving Toeg’s account of the relationship between the passages as the most convincing explanation at hand. Most importantly, I show that, if Toeg is right, Num 15:22–31 is a remarkable and unusual piece of priestly self-criticism. Against the rabbinic interpretation (reprised by Milgrom) according to which wanton sins (Num 15:30–31), when repented, can be atoned for by the High Priest on the Day of Atonement, it must be maintained that the homilist of Num 15 sees the cultic system of atoning sacrifices at the end of its wits when it comes to sins of particular gravity. Thus, an author of the priestly school, in a language that can be shown to echo prophetic criticism as found in Ezekiel, seeks to provide a safeguard for God’s transcendence against all temptations of priestly/cultic presumptuousness. Israel’s cult is not a well-oiled system prepared for any contingency where priests know how to diffuse divine anger at will. In every sacrifice it honors a God whose holiness and righteousness evades human manipulation. Num 15:22–31 is proof that some members of the priestly school were keenly aware of this.

The paper will discuss various approaches of contextualizing John in Platonic, Gnostic, Jewish-Apocalyptic, Hellenistic-Jewish, and Early Christian contexts and propose paths towards a textually adequate solution.

On the south slope of the Athenian acropolis beneath the Parthenon, the Theater of Dionysus remains a fixed monument attesting to the era that produced some of history’s most renowned playwrights at the zenith of Athens’ political power and cultural production. Less evident to contemporary visitors is the religious legacy of this theater, for instance, that it was originally in the sacred precinct of Dionysus Eleuthereus, and that its plays were staged in honor of the god amidst festivals, ritual processions, and sacrifices. Even less well known, sometime in the sixth century CE, a basilica was constructed at the eastern parodos of the Theater, and the orchestra functioned as the church’s courtyard with a phiale built into its floor. This architectural move reflects a Christian impetus to erase the legacy of “pagan” performances; this was achieved, however, by re-appropriating the very structure where classical drama was once produced. And basilicas were similarly built atop theaters at Priene and Tegea. Continuity in ritual performance spaces is also evident in the “synthronon,” the semi-circle stepped seating in the apse behind the altar that became a standard architectural feature of Byzantine churches. Celebrated examples in Constantinople include the Hagia Eirene, wherein the sythronon still survives in roughly its sixth-century form, and the Hagia Sophia. Although the latter’s synthronon no longer remains, it is described in detail by Paul the Silentiary in a poem where he explicitly compares it to a theater (Description of the Hagia Sophia 411–15). Moreover, at roughly the same time on the island of Paros, eleven seats from the Hellenistic theater were transferred and redeployed in the sythronon of the newly constructed church, Panagia Katapoliani, where they remain in situ. These adaptations of theatrical spaces and of their architectural elements for reuse in Christian ritual have profound implications for the relationship between performance and religion. In their words and gestures, priests assumed the role of Christ and re-enacted Gospel scenes as drama for a new era, now staged in honor of a new patron deity.

A series of influential studies in the 1970s and 1980s put social-scientific models to work in the historical research of early Christianity. Did the use of social-scientific perspectives shed light on the dark corners of human behavior and consciousness? Or did it instead fill in historical gaps with modern-day assumptions, reflecting back to us our own beliefs of how the mind works and what experiences it can tolerate? Perhaps the picture is more complex. To be sure, the use of social-scientific models has proven illuminating in many instances. But when should we pause to ask what precisely is being illuminated? When, as if in a Venn diagram, do our own perceptions of reality overlap with those of our historical subjects? And when do such perceptions belong to separate spheres? How can we tell the difference? In this paper I will investigate a specific case study. The compelling analysis of the book of Revelation in Adela Yarbro Collins, Crisis and Catharsis (1984), assimilates a range of social-scientific insights — none more important than a social-psychological model of conflict between expectation and reality that is best known as cognitive dissonance. My remarks will be organized around three points. First, I will show what made Crisis and Catharsis such an important work of biblical scholarship in 1984, and why it remains so today. Second, I will describe the strange origin of the theory of cognitive dissonance, which emerged from fieldwork conducted in the 1950s on a North American group expecting the arrival of UFOs and a catastrophic flood. My paper will discuss the description of the project in Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter, When Prophecy Fails (1957), as well as describe the results of archival research of Festinger’s papers at the Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. In the archive is a record of the development of Festinger’s thinking about cognitive dissonance, captured in correspondence, notes, and memos. Third, I will place the example of Crisis and Catharsis within the framework of ongoing critical reassessments of the theory of cognitive dissonance. Is belief-persistence, as Barbara Herrnstein Smith asks in Natural Reflections (2009), a phenomenon found only among those expecting the end of the world? Or, do we – the scholars who study such groups, beliefs, and texts – likewise tend toward what Herrnstein Smith calls “cognitive conservatism”?

Trauma is never simply personal. Trauma lives on and on in the lives that itself violently touches, and always asks to be reckoned with. When trauma effects whole cultures and people groups, however, there is a process of how that trauma will be interpreted. Using Jeffery Alexander’s book, Trauma: A Social Theory, this paper will seek to consider the horrific text of Judges 19 as a narrative used in order to explain the realities and events of exile and displacement of Israel and Judah. As the rape and dismemberment of the Levite’s concubine in the Scripture leaves us dumbfounded, the words asked as the reader bears witness is not to look away, but to “consider it, take counsel, and speak. (v.30)”

Scholars whose primary interest revolve around explicating the Psalter’s rhetorical agenda advance numerous theories about its structure, but the Psalter’s broad range of theological motifs displayed in the individual psalms make the task of synthesizing the book’s message difficult. Psalm 137 and its contribution to Book V provides a prime example of the difficulty interpreters face when they try to tease out the Psalter’s narrative structure. This paper argues that the very features which scholars identify as problematic provide the means by which one can appreciate the psalm’s contribution to Book V. Both Psalm 137’s dark imagery, which contrasts the euphoric themes explored in Psalm 136, and its ambiguous genre (communal lament, Zion psalm, or complaint?) help ground the psalm, and Book V, in a post-exilic worldview. Read in this light, the psalm’s question hovers just below the surface of Book V’s emphasis on praise: “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” (Ps 137:4). Consequently, rather than stand out as an outlier in a book of praise, Psalm 137 anchors the entirety of Book V in the people’s lived reality.

This paper presents a collaborative digital humanities project, “Mapping Mana,” between faculty, students, and community organizations at Morgan State University and Hamline University as a framework for exploring biblical hermeneutics’ potential to yield new approaches to Humanities GIS and digital storytelling techniques. GIS and digital mapping technologies have facilitated what historians have termed the “spatial turn” and increased recognition of space’s influence on history, culture, and memory. In biblical studies, the spatial turn has been particularly fruitful and yielded new insights into traditional fields, such as sacred space and pilgrimage, as well as new ones, including embodiment, subjectivity, praxis, and mobility. While yielding new insights, the spatial turn has also raised growing concerns over the reduction of biblical scholarship to instrumental analysis as scholars adapt digital technologies into their methodologies and risk reducing complex material conditions into one-dimensional data visualizations. Wendy Chun (2011), for example, cautions against using digital mapping technologies in the humanities without critically reflecting on the notions of governmentality which underlie them and calls upon the digital humanities to produce multifaceted, layered, and pluralistic mapping actions which complicate computation’s potential for static or fixed spatial configurations. This is the central challenge that motivated us to create a collaborative digital mapping project which approaches GIS mapping from the perspective of biblical hermeneutics and refines a spatial-critical GIS strategy around the interlocking material conditions of food insecurity, holiness, and urbanization. In particular, our approach was informed by the spatial-critical work of Ernest Van Eck and Meshack Mandla Mashinini who studied South African communities dealing with food insecurity and observed that they read the parables in the Gospels as mapping a food security network among towns and cities near Jerusalem that are experiencing food shortages. Informed by Eck and Mashini’s spatial-critical approach to the Gospels, we used GIS as a mechanism to trace the linkages between food security and holiness in the cities of Baltimore and the Twin Cities where Morgan State University and Hamline University are located. The mapping process revealed the historical elimination of once crucial food infrastructures and recent innovations of urban gardens, food distribution centers, and renewed collaborative partnerships between religious communities and neighborhood organizations. Of particular importance was the map’s ability to visualize the Black Church’s historical significance in the Twin Cities and Baltimore and trace the evolution of decentralized and decolonized food networks in urban centers. Ultimately, we argue that Mapping Mana exposes the capacity and need for biblical hermeneutics to yield new approaches to GIS and move beyond instrumental analysis to unlock what Miriam Posner (2015) has described as “the radical unrealized potential of the digital humanities.”

This paper reads Paul’s letter to the Galatians alongside Hortense Spillers’s pivotal essay “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe,” to interrogate more deeply the Pauline notion of the flesh. In 1987, Spillers named the “flesh” as a locus of physical, social, and metaphysical violence during North American slavery, which dehumanized and ungendered African-American people. Although Paul’s rhetoric of the flesh occurs in a radically different context, it too appears within the framework of enslavement, sex and gender, and family in Galatians, especially Galatians 4:21-31 through the allegory of Hagar and Sarah. Spillers’s careful attention to these multiple entanglements prompts deeper examination of Paul’s discourse. First, how is the flesh related to physical embodiment, social personhood, and structural harm? Second, how do Paul’s images and logics situate Christ with respect to the flesh? Lastly, by rethinking both the flesh itself and Christ’s relationship to it, how can we reread the allegory of Hagar and Sarah? I propose that the flesh is tied to embodiment to the same extent as its counterpart, the spirit. For both Paul and Spillers, the flesh refers to the experience of a material person who is embedded in a structure which results in violence and harm. The series of metaphorical images in Galatians 3-4 construct Christ as in solidarity with those who are under the law, under a curse, under slavery, and under the flesh, because Christ too is under the law (4:4) and under a curse (3:13), and so too subject to slavery and the flesh. It is in Christ’s shared experience of the flesh that Christ offers liberation to fellow members of the family, including Hagar and Ishmael. Christ too is a son of the slave woman, born according to the flesh, and Christ participates in embodied, social, and structural liberation alongside mother and brother. This alternative constellation of images opposes harmful readings of Pauline discourses of flesh and enslavement, according to which gendered and sexualized bodies are denigrated and legacies of racial slavery are condoned.

Accepted paper for the IBR research group on Early Christian Judaism

The Johannine Farewell Discourse replaces the Synoptic Gospels’ details of the Last Supper. The discourse has two major narratives: (1) John 14–16 describes Jesus’ speech and discussion with his disciples, and (2) John 17 is Jesus’s prayer to the Father, also called the High Priestly Prayer. From a literary perspective, John 17 stands as an independent storyline within the Farewell Discourse. Analogously, Q al-Ma’idah 5:111–115 also presents a discussion between Jesus and his disciples, while Q 5:116–120 portrays a discussion between Jesus and God. Similarly, Q 5:116–120 stands as an independent storyline, especially when taking into account the literary markers that divide the longer passage (Q 5:110–120), in which each section starts with “idh” (when) for God either saying or inspiring something. Several intertextual links between Q 5:116–120 and John 17 suggest that the qur’anic passage is possibly alluding to Jesus’s High Priestly Prayer and reminding its audience of its content, presuming their awareness of it. For example, in Q 5:116–117, God questions Jesus if he asked the people to take him and his mother as two gods instead of God. Jesus glorifies God and responds that he only told them what God commanded him to say. This parallels John 17:3, where Jesus tells the Father that he has made the Father known as the only true God. It also parallels the frequent reminder that Jesus addresses to his disciples throughout the Farewell Discourse, including John 17, that he is only saying what the Father has commanded him to say. In Q 5:117, Jesus says he was a witness to his disciples as long as he was among them, which parallels John 17:6–8. Additionally, the qur’anic passage states that Jesus informs God that when God caused him to die, it was God who remained as a witness and protector to his followers. This also resonates with Jesus beseeching the Father to watch over his followers in John 17:11–12 and 17:15. Furthermore, Q 5:119 suggests that the truthful will be rewarded, which parallels Jesus asking the Father to sanctify his followers in truth in John 17:17–19.

In Psalm 42-43, cosmological space and divine activity feature prominently: the wilderness and watery locations of chaos, the divine restraint of primordial waters, the mountain of God’s dwelling, the descent of divine light, and more. From the ancient perspective, these cosmological notions are both literally true of the ordering of the universe and metaphorically fitting to the message and petitionary function of the psalm. Psalm 42-43 therefore examples the complicated dynamics that arise when biblical poetry metaphorizes cosmological or mythical realities. The intricate details of the myths and cosmological concepts in question define the source domain for such metaphors, meaning that the modern interpreter must use all available external evidence to better understand the cultural background. At the same time, poetic metaphors may illuminate the cosmological concepts on which they rely. The way a poem utilizes a set of cosmological concepts may tell us something about their dynamic interplay in the Israelite worldview and imagination. Building on work by Else Holt and using insights from Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Conceptual Blending Theory, this paper argues that Psalm 42-43 expresses tensions in Israelite cosmology about the simultaneously life-giving and destructive capacity of the divine provision of water.

Since its inception, liberation theology has experienced its fair share of growing pains. The power of the Exodus story caused liberation theology to outgrow its Latin American context and be used as an epistemological foundation for Black liberation theology in the United States to Minjung theology in South Korea among others. Indigenous theologians have rightly problematized the use of the Exodus story as the basis for liberation theologies (See Robert Warrior and Naim Ateek). In response to these critiques, Filipino American theologian Eleazar S. Fernandez constructs a Filipino American liberation theology that relocates the liberative moment from the Israelites leaving Egypt for the Promised Land to Joseph and the House of Jacob relocating from Canaan to Egypt. Fernandez’s proposition is productive for first-generation Filipino Americans identifying their experience as immigrants. This paper builds off of Fernandez by arguing that the next unfolding of liberation theology for Filipino Americans who have only ever known the American context is better understood in the story of Moses returning to Egypt from Midian. I will demonstrate that God’s call for Moses to שוב, “return,” in Exodus 4 is paramount in the narrative. This importance is precipitated by Moses’ indebtedness to the Hebrew midwives, his mother and sister, and his fellow Hebrews laborers. I will employ Filipino Postcolonial Psychologist E.J.R. David’s analysis of the indigenous Filipino notions of kapwa, the shared inner-self, and utang na loob, debt of gratitude, to contextualize Moses’ indebtedness to those still in Egypt. Moses’ return to his people in Egypt is the liberative moment for Filipino Americans. This reading is particularly salient in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of Anti-Asian racism which has forced Filipino Americans to reconcile with their dueling allegiances: whether to white America, their former colonizers, or to their black and brown allies under oppression. My reading of Moses’ Exodus-Returning-to-Egypt provides a constructive theological foundation for Filipino American’s innate feelings of indebtedness. Filipino Americans conflicted in their identity affiliation, whether to assimilate or resist, in the US ought to view the moment when Moses leaves his life in Midian to return to his people as their own liberative moment. I am interested in publishing the paper.

Joel’s oracle proclaiming the day of the Lord concludes with the announcement of a series of wonders that will transform the vision of heaven and earth into a grandiose spectacle. Nature is overrun by fire, blood, smoke (Jl 3:3), while the sun and the moon assume a tenebrous and mysterious appearance (Jl 3:4). The event that the prophet announces is not devoid of chromatism, since the language of colour emerges in the prophecy through elements of nature that connote colour such as blood, fire, smoke (Jl 3:3), sun and moon (Jl 3:4). It is logical, then, to ask if חשׁך retains the meaning of ‘state in which there is no light’ (SDBH), in other words, ‘darkness’, ‘obscurity’ as the main dictionaries of the Bible propose (BDB; HALOT), or if, on the contrary, it has a chromatic meaning as its verbal form has in Ex 10:15; Lam 4:8 (SDBH). In order to establish if חשׁך has a chromatic meaning we will apply a specific methodology based on cognitive linguistics. First of all, we will acquire the encyclopaedic knowledge of the native speaker of the time had. For this end, we will conduct a status quaestionis on the meaning of the colour terms proposed by the main dictionaries and a comparative study of how the terms have been translated in the different versions of the Bible. We will then study the characteristics of the book where the colour term appears and analyze in detail the context as well as the entity that describes the color term, the sun. In the light of this semantic analysis, it will become clear that חשׁך expresses color in Joel 3,4: darkness is blackness. This explains why, centuries later, the author of the book of Revelation reinterpreted the pericope and chose a colour adjective, μέλας, to describe the appearance of the sun (Rev 6:12). Finally, we will develop the definition of חשׁך and propose possible glosses.

Ever since his Rethinking Gnosticism was published in 1996, Michael A. William’s critique of the modern historiographical term “gnosticism” and the attendant use of “gnosis” and “gnostic” have become a necessary point of departure for all studies of the various forms of religious discourse and practice identified by early Christian heresiologists as gnostic and/or found within the Nag Hammadi corpus. Whether one subscribes to the specifics of William’s assessment or other, adjacent assessments like that of Karen King, the point has been cemented in the field: the term “gnosticism” is at the very least unhelpful, and may even constitute a recapitulation of early Christian heresiology. The purpose of this paper is to “rethink” the category of gnostic “myth,” and to ask whether and to what extent it is susceptible to similar critique. Of course, mythos and mythopoesis are variously assessed in ancient religious discourse, sometimes positively and sometimes negatively. Nevertheless, while it is now commonplace in the literature to reject the category “gnosticism,” it remains standard practice to refer to the narratives exhibited within the associated ancient texts as various forms of “myth.” Moreover, while early Christian heresiologists are quick to label (and decry) their rivals as “mythmakers,” little evidence suggests that “myth” and “mythmaking” were ever utilized for the sake of self-designation among these religious practitioners. Accordingly, we should ask if and to what extent mythos itself can be understood as a heresiological category. Toward this end, I consider, as a case study, the heresiological accounts of Valentinus and the Valentinians in Irenaeus of Lyons and Clement of Alexandria, alongside the fragments of Valentinus and the Gospel of Truth. In light of this consideration, I turn to a critical appraisal of the historiographical potential of “myth” as a heuristic category. To the extent that critical distance demands conscious anachronism, the early Christian heresiological deployment of “gnostic myth” necessitates a measured evaluation of its modern historiographical counterpart. Although my title refers to William’s classic “rethinking,” I do not ultimately contend that “myth,” itself a vital and broad literary, philosophical, and historiographical category, must be dismantled. Rather, in conversation with comparative religions scholarship, especially the methodological reflections of Jonathan Z. Smith, I unearth dimensions of its use which have not yet been critically assessed.

Recent interest in women, gender and asceticism in the Acts of Andrew centres on the author's subversive theological anthropology—how his Pythagorean-Platonic spirit/matter dualism yields portraits of salvation framed as a return to pre-lapsarian asexual states of being. This paper broadens our understanding of the relationship between childbearing and salvation in the Acts of Andrew, and early Christianity more generally, by attending to the hitherto neglected story of a certain Calliope, transmitted in Gregory of Tour's epitome (Liber de miraculis beati Andreae apostoli 25). First, I argue that this intriguing tale of a pregnant woman's miraculous physiological salvation from life-threatening labour seeks to disincentivise illicit sexual activity by identifying this as the cause of her predicament. Second, I argue that the author casts the apostle Andrew in the role of spiritual midwife, which puts him in opposition to the cult of Diana/Artemis, goddess of childbirth, as the sole mediator of divine mercy. The depiction of Andrew’s midwifery as superior to the idolatrous, demonic alternative bears witness to the underlying socio-historical reality that childbirth was a context of religious competition for women's devotion. It models for readers an exclusively Christocentric response to the health hazards of childbearing in the ancient world. However, there is a tension between the depiction of Andrew as a divinely authorised procurer of physical healing and the wider notion of salvation as liberation from the body. This is mitigated by the death of Calliope's fetus at the imprecatory word of the apostle, which liberates her from a future of motherhood, thereby enabling her to live according to the author’s ideal, masculinised form discipleship, which ultimately culminates in liberation from the body and the world.

In 2020, the Danish Bible Society published its “Now-Bible” (Nu-bibel) where it attempts to translate the texts in a way that better communicates the contents to modern readers. The most significant change was that it translates most of the occurrences of the word “Israēl” in the Greek text with other words, e.g., “the Jews” or “the Jewish people.” This caused an outrage in the Scandinavian countries and the Jewish community, where the translation was heavily criticized. Whereas the committee behind the translation argues that its choices are made only for communicative purposes, and not ideological, this paper arguers that it builds on one political choice, to omit ”Israel” firstly because the modern state Israel may disturb modern Danish readers and secondly because the theological presupposition that the Land of Israel is unimportant in the new covenant. The former presupposition should not influence a Bible translation and the latter lacks support in the New Testament.

The pandemic has brought to public consciousness the troubling degree of injustice that mars contemporary American society. Those who are oppressed and forgotten in the best of times suffer the most in the worst of times. The “sword, famine, and pestilence” of the pandemic—to borrow a gruesome phrase from Jeremiah—fall the heaviest on the “scum” of society—those we scorn and abandon. Perhaps the most vulnerable in our society are our incarcerated sisters and brothers, whom—by virtue of their crimes—we damn to razor-wire cages. It is easy to have compassion on the “innocent” victims of patriarchy and capitalism. Much harder is offering humanity to the one who traumatized you with drawn gun and demonic hate. And so we lock them up. In my work as a professor and administrator of a college in prison, I spend most of my professional and career-development energy networking with the damned. Reading Jeremiah with them changes the way I view the “sword, famine, and pestilence.” In this paper I will invite you behind bars to see how the gruesome words of Jeremiah have become words of life and beauty. Amid the ravages of Covid-19, two images from Jeremiah in particular—which feature the gruesome words—offer hope: Jeremiah’s investment in gardening (buying a field; Jeremiah 32) and Jeremiah’s incarceration (Jeremiah 38).

I explore the cognate relation between Egyptian nHm and Hebrew נחם, and probable also with Siryac mxN and the Coptic NoHem. They have the same trilateral root, belong to the same linguistic family, have dual semantic fields, hold common linguistic clusters, have similar meanings, and develop similar religious ideas. I also show that the usual translation of the Hebrew נחם as “to repent” or “to be sorry” when applied to God does not represent the true theology of the passages as in all of them the final result are God’s saving acts. In fact they point to Covenant relations involving not repentance in God. Unfortunately, from the Deluge story onwards erroneous translations are spread throughout the Bibles, not only in the English versions but in other languages as well. If we keep on doing so, we’ll continue betraying the theology of the texts and showing a painful and erroneous image of God’s saving acts.

Scholars have often noted how the book of Ruth may be read as an allegory based on the narrator’s extensive use of intertexts. As such, Eli-melech, Mahlon, and Chilion represent the Israelite nation who died in exile, Naomi represents the surviving remnant of exile, Ruth represents the foreigners of whom the prophets promised would be ingrafted into the Israelite community in the last days, and Boaz represents Yhwh who promises to redeem the land and re-marry his people (ketubah). Accordingly, Naomi and Ruth’s journey from Moab to Beth-lehem, from emptiness to fullness, from widowhood to married life, from being childless to attaining motherhood, all through the mediation of Boaz, embodies the prophetic hope of restoration. Not much attention, however, has been given to how the narrator’s use of inner-textuality and other textual features also support such a reading. By examining the narrator’s use of these features, this paper will explore how reading Ruth allegorically is grammatically warranted. Arguments made herein may also prove useful for helping to understand the use of metaphor and allegory elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible.

Why did the texts of some ancient letter collections remain relatively stable in transmission, while others were more fluid? How do we judge the relative extent of textual fluidity given partial evidence and differential attestation between extant collections? Can the fact of fluidity itself teach us something about how ancient and medieval readers interpreted such letter collections? This paper will seek to address these questions, grappling with the methodological difficulties inherent in attempts to use aggregate manuscript evidence (as distinguished from the focused micro-histories of much material philology) as evidence for reception history. I will bring Daniel Selden’s analysis of the Alexander Romance (and related highly fluid textual traditions) as “Text Networks” together with lively current conversations on the genre of the ancient letter collection in order to highlight some peculiar features of epistolary “text networks.” Selden, David Konstan, and Christine Thomas have all shown that—far from being a “fringe” phenomenon in antiquity—the narrative fluidity of the Alexander Romance or the Apocryphal Acts was an extremely common phenomenon in the ancient literary landscape, particularly for narratives without attributed authors. I will argue that some letter collections, just as fluid but hardly as anonymous, participated in this same literary phenomenon. This raises pressing questions for our understanding of ancient authorship, ancient textual transmission, and ancient fiction.

How does one teach the entire corpus of ancient fiction in seventy-five minutes? Have the students “write” their own novel. In 2018 and 2019, I gave guest lectures in a course entitled “Introduction to Greek Civilization.” Because this course covers the Greek literary canon, I was asked to introduce the students to something “non-canonical.” I suggested the novels. Setting required readings is, however, difficult in such instances; even Xenophon’s Ephesiaka is too long to assign prior to a guest lecture. My solution was to introduce the students to all five novels simultaneously. Each student received a piece of paper the size of an index card. On the front, it read “Number the following tropes. You may put the events in whatever order you choose”. Tropes #1 (Boy meets girl: Love at first sight) and #11 (The couple are reunited and live happily ever after) were predetermined; the other tropes characteristic of the novel genre were listed between the two predetermined lines. The students were free to order them as they wished. The back of the page read: “Choose one of the following:” o There is a court case to decide on the heroine’s rightful husband. o The hero and heroine become priest and priestess in cults to the Sun and Moon. o The hero and heroine are shepherd and shepherdess. o The satirical novel is written from the first-person perspective. o There is a prophecy predicting the couple’s wanderings and sufferings. Those acquainted with the Greek romances will immediately recognize the references to Chariton, Heliodorus, Longus, Achilles Tatius, and Xenophon. I then walked the students through pairing their second choice with the appropriate novel. The students were surprised to learn that the order on the first page is not as central to the creation of their “novel” as the single characteristic they choose on the back of their page. They are equally amused to learn that they had “read” all five romances in under five minutes (without learning Greek!). This exercise serves a greater purpose than entertaining the students, however. Narrative tropes and devices like love at first sight and rival lovers are not new to our students. They recognize these familiar plots from modern romantic-comediess and books. In establishing these tropes with the students, I am able to quickly move into how and why different narrative elements appear in the Greek romances. Drawing on the works of Virginia Burrus, Brigit Egger, and Tim Whitmarsh, among others, I use the novels to introduce questions of gender, (inter-)marriage, sexuality, race, social status, and imperialism. From there, it is easy to pan out and look at how Jewish and Christian fictions played with these same narrative elements to ask equally pressing questions about identity and belonging. Through fiction, we examine how societal norms are shaped or undermined by the stories we tell. Students are eager to discuss how fiction and romance, both ancient and modern, contribute to group identity and social convention.

The Acts of the Apostles presents five different acclamations of divinity through the span of its narrative (8:4–24; 10:24–26; 12:20–23; 14:8–20; 28:1–10). The majority of recent commentators have interpreted these acclamations as a critique of “paganism,” a nebulous category and rarely defined. The contrast drawn from these texts is between a polytheistic and superstitious “paganism” on the one hand and a strictly monotheistic and much more rational “Christianity” on the other. This contrast is typically read out of one of the occurrences of the divine acclamation motif (14:8–20) and then applied to the others. More recent analyses, such as Joshua Jipp on Acts 28 for instance, complicate this picture considerably, however. Those on Malta are scarcely portrayed as senseless yokels, and several of the acclamations (such as 14:8–20) do appear justified when read within its broader ancient Mediterranean context (e.g., Ovid, Metam. 8). This paper contends that a single purpose cannot be read into this pattern of deification. Each occurrence deals with its own historical and theological concerns that lie behind and within the text of Acts. These patterns of deification fall broadly into similar patterns found in ancient Mediterranean literature. This paper argues that, far from using the divine acclamation motif as a criticism of “paganism” or a particular “worldview,” the patterns of deification serve positively to elevate certain figures in the narrative (Peter and Paul) as genuine possessors of divine power and negatively to denigrate other figures (Simon and Herod) as charlatans and self-seekers. The contrast drawn thereby is not between Lukan Christianity versus a vaguely-defined paganism, but a contrast between false and genuine ways of manifesting divine power.

Modern westerners conventionally construe a sense in exteroceptive terms. Consider, for example, that the five Aristotelian senses of vision, audition, touch, taste, and smell all admit data external to the organism. Such a narrow understanding of a sense presumptively excludes other faculties that some cultures construe as senses, such as balance, kinesthesia, or speech. Using a philological approach that is attentive to the concerns of sensory anthropology, this paper investigates sensory vocabulary in the book of Proverbs as a case study. It argues that Proverbs, in contrast to the modern western exteroceptive assumption of what constitutes a sense, evidences an understanding of a sense as a portal that facilitates communication between a person's inside and outside. Using examples from several sensory modalities in Proverbs, the paper illustrates how an exteroceptive bias has led to certain mistranslations or misunderstandings. It suggests that a careful investigation of sensory vocabulary framed by insights from sensory anthropology offers readings that mitigate modern exteroceptive preconceptions.

In translations of late antique texts, one often encounters the English term “maintenance” as referring to the householder’s management of household members’ basic daily needs. In rabbinic texts, this word “maintenance” translates the Hebrew term mĕzônôt, which may refer to the support a husband provides his wife, a father his son or daughter, a son his father or widowed mother, a slaveholder an enslaved person, or an employer his hired laborers. Conceptually distinct from a wage, and usually quantified in food units rather than in currency, the provision of mĕzônôtis also governed by a variety of rationales. Due to the halakhic afterlife of the term mĕzônôt, this domestic exchange is often understood using the anachronistic language of legal rights and obligations. Through an analysis of rabbinic texts and other late antique sources, I argue that “maintenance” was a much more malleable concept, which shaped dependencies rather than reflecting them. I show how the rabbis and their contemporaries think through which household members are entitled to maintenance—that is, to have needs at all, and to have those needs met.

Rabbinic strictures required special procedures to deal with omitted instances of the Tetragrammaton to ensure it was treated respectfully. The Sages discussed four solutions: 1. supralinear addition, 2. abrading an inline word and replacing it with the Tetragrammaton, 3. wiping off an inline word and replacing it with the Tetragrammaton, and 4. removing the sheet containing the omission. Medieval rabbis differed about requiring or recommending one or more of these solutions. Medieval scribes may have employed all these methods, but only 1 and 2 have been identified. New solutions introduced in the Middle Ages include abrading an inline word and rewriting it on the line together with the Tetragrammaton in liturgical scrolls, and text-correcting qere and reshaping letters in codices. Another medieval solution was marginal addition both adjacent to, and distant from, the spot of the omission. The latter was common in codices but opposed by decisors in Torah scrolls.

This paper seeks to explore particular themes that emerge universally in literature that span both time and geography. In a broadly construed sense, the paper will examine these themes in a comparative manner. Methodological principles such rhetorical criticism and intersectionality will be employed. In this manner we will develop an understanding how aspects of one's social and political identities (e.g. gender, race, class, sexuality, ability, religion, etc.) might combine to create unique modes of interpretation and implications for society. Using the book of Ruth with its principal themes of kindness and refuge among others, this paper explores such universal themes in the context of contemporary social and cultural issues. The paper intersects the words and the social and cultural world of wide-ranging figures such as Marcus Aurelius, together with feminist scholars, historical and contemporary political leaders, while examining these themes intertextually as well. The paper seeks to provide implications for contemporary society on issues such as the centrality of kindness and society’s role in providing refuge to immigrants.

The ninety-first verse of Q al-An‘am 6 has proven puzzling to scholars of the Qur’an. This verse opens by criticizing those who claim that “God has sent down nothing to a human being,” a claim that seems to stem from the Prophet’s pagan opponents. However, to rebut this claim, the verse adduces the precedent of the Torah (“the book that Moses brought”) and reminds its addressees that “you make it [the Torah] into documents (qaratis) that you display, while you conceal much.” The rebuttal thus seems addressed to the Jews, who cherished the written Torah in their learning and piety. Some scholars have been content to note these contrasting indications about the verse’s addressees without attempting a resolution (e.g. Rudi Paret, Der Koran: Kommentar und Konkordanz, 147). Others have suggested that the verse originally addressed the Meccan pagans but was supplemented in Yathrib—by the phrase “you make it [the Torah] into documents that you display, while you conceal much”—to reflect displeasure with the town’s Jewish authorities (Richard Bell, A Commentary on the Qur’ān, 1:197). More recently, the late Patricia Crone claimed that this verse addresses only the pagans and shows that far from being scripture-less, they were “in the habit of copying [Mosaic revelations] on papyrus sheets” (The Qurʾānic Pagans and Related Matters, 1:111). In this paper, I argue that the best solution to the puzzling features of Q 6:91 is departure from its dominant reading. Specifically, the skeletal Arabic text that is rendered as “you make it into documents, which you display, while you conceal much” should be read as featuring third-person verbs instead of second-person ones, that is to say, as “they make it into documents, which they display, while they conceal much” (yaj‘alunahu qaratisa yubdunaha wa-yukhfuna kathiran). This reading eliminates the apparent oscillation in the target audience of this verse, which should be seen as addressing the pagans in its entirety. In addition to making a case for this reading, the paper examines the invocation of the Torah in Q 6:91. As alluded to earlier in the surah (v. 7) and elsewhere in the Qur’an (e.g. Q al-Qasas 28:48), the pagans seemed to have disparaged the Qur’an as inferior to the Torah on account of the former’s piecemeal and oral manner of dissemination. The qur’anic text under consideration may be countering this disparagement by noting that, at least in its present form and for practical purposes, the Torah is fragmented (into scrolls?) and of limited availability to outsiders. The paper ends by discussing the material form of the Written and Oral Torah in Late Antiquity, and the significance of orality to the qur’anic self-image.

Responses of grief in fourth-century Christian funeral orations provide compelling opportunities for textual research and theological reflection (cf. Pelikan, 1962). In the North African tradition, Cyprian of Carthage anticipated this development in Christian consolation literature, with his De Mortalitate – itself a sermon addressing fear of death at a time of plague in ca. 252. For Augustine of Hippo, perhaps fixed between ideals – his preference for Christian unity in tension with the aristocratic tastes of social elites (Morris, 1992) – Augustine of Hippo did not contribute an elaborate oration of this genre in his oeuvre. Even so, Augustine stands out among late-antique authors for the profundity and extent of his thought on grief, mortality, and original sin – areas which cannot be underestimated in his contribution to theological anthropology. These concerns appear not only in exegetical, polemical, and theological contexts, but are also reflected in his preaching (Rebillard, 1994 and 2003). Augustine also suggests pastoral approaches to care for the dead in his work on the care of the dead, De cura pro mortuis gerenda, which reflects both his leadership and familiarity with burial practices as necessary human and cultural expressions. Recent scholarship has explored Augustine’s specific homiletic activation of an exercise in “imagined death” among his contemporaries, identifying the “postmortal” as an important corrective for establishing social boundaries of identity and, not incidentally, overcoming fear of death (Muehlberger, 2019; cf. Dodaro, 2006, 1996, and 1989). This paper seeks to establish a tailored pastoral-cognitive interpretation of Augustine’s preaching, by selectively tracing exegetical themes of human mortality, salvation, and original sin. How does the latter, often polemical construct, appear within select sermons of consolation and exhortation? Second, in what way do the Gospel of John and the Pauline corpus interact, as Augustine develops themes of death and resurrection – so crucial to the early Christian preaching about Christ? That is, do certain biblical texts or tropes protect against realism about human nature? Finally, how might a specifically Johannine framework of death and resurrection be detected amidst Augustine’s evident focus upon Pauline texts – 1 Thess 4:13 and 1 Cor 15:32, in particular, here – about human mortality and finitude? Principal sermons of Augustine to be emphasized include serm. 172-173, De mortuis, and serm. 361-362, De resurrectione mortuorum futura, each of which takes a Pauline verse as its point of departure. Additional, shorter contributions of note include serm. 335K and serm. 396, given at the memorial and funeral of a bishop, respectively. Various sermons offered at the anniversary of a martyr’s death permit further material for comparison – as does evidence from Augustine’s Enarrat. Ps. This paper supports conclusions regarding the bishop of Hippo’s pastoral balance of realism and sympathy, synthesis of biblical source traditions, and further development of a North African pastoral theology of death and dying.

The interaction between verbal semantics and argument realization has been a major research area in linguistics for decades. In 1993, Beth Levin published her seminal book “English Verb Classes and Alternations,” where she organized English verbs into syntactic and semantic classes. I model this study on hers and discuss how we might go about organizing verbs in the Biblical Hebrew (BH) lexicon into classes. After this theoretical discussion, I demonstrate what this would look like by classifying argument alternations in the Qal and Hiphil binyanim into syntactic and semantic classes, building on work already begun (Grasso 2021). In order to classify verbs syntactically, I show that there are three primary parameters that must be considered. First, Voice introduces the external argument (Kratzer 1996), and variations in Voice affect the type and number of external arguments available to a verb (Alexiadou, Anagnostopoulou, and Schäfer 2015). I show how this interacts with the binyan system, which may spell-out Voice. Second, the binyan system itself can serve one of two functions, either adding additional semantic material to verbs or modifying valency (as a spell-out of Voice), and I show how these interact, drawing on work on the Modern Hebrew binyan system (Arad 2005). The third parameter is the meaning contribution of the root. Adopting a distributed morphology framework (Halle and Marantz 1993), I show that where the root incorporates syntactically has consequences for the type and number of arguments present in the verb, including its capacity to alternate with other binyanim. With these three parameters, many of the argument alternations in BH can be derived. Semantically, I group together verbs based on root meaning and syntactic behavior. As shown by Levin and Rappaport Hovav (2005), syntax is often a reflection of meaning. Given that we do not have access to native speaker intuitions in the study of BH, I show that syntactic behavior can be a reliable indicator of semantic import in the absence of such intuitions. In addition to a verb’s argument realizations, I also investigate the distribution of roots, particularly whether they allow or seem to disallow word formation in categories besides verbs. This can help us to establish the basic classification of root meaning as either referring to an event, state, or entity (Marantz 2001). Rather than decomposing root meanings ad infinitum, I suggest that they should be decomposed only insofar as they affect syntactic behavior. This enables us to see how the meaning of the root interfaces with data we already have, namely syntax, and I propose that this provides a natural grain-size to classify verbal meanings.

This paper argues that feminist biblical studies is in crisis, and that Luce Irigaray's work offers an invigorating and exciting model for how to do feminist biblical studies differently. While feminist biblical studies has never been so successful (with the journals, panels, handbooks, encyclopedias, edited volumes, etc. to prove it), this success has not always translated into interpretive courage, vigor, or play. Too much of feminist scholarship remains stuck applying borrowed, rigid, or outdated paradigms about gender and sexuality to biblical texts. In addition, feminist discourses about biblical studies, whether or not they originate with scholars working with feminist approaches, often emphasize a liberal feminist equality model that is insufficient, limited, and limiting. Responding to this state of affairs, this paper turns to Luce Irigaray as thinker and writer to imagine an alternative, or alternative future, for feminist biblical studies. Irigaray’s body of work offers a number of dynamic interpretive strategies and tactics, including subversive close readings, destruction “with nuptial tools,” literary style as a mode of critique, taking seriously sex and love, anger, touch, and openness. These strategies and tactics empower feminist biblical criticism in ways that other dominant feminist paradigms do not, while also refusing timidity, asceticism, and respectability as critical postures. In calling for a turn to Irigaray, I will also address the suggestion that her work is anti-queer, anti-trans, or anti-intersectional, arguing for a dynamic and inclusive Irigarayan hermeneutics.

An important aspect of pilgrimage in pre-70 Jerusalem was the need for various rental spaces to support large numbers of pilgrims visiting the city on a temporary basis. These spaces could include “upper rooms,” dining halls, or triclinia for participating in specific communal meals (such as the Passover), hostels or inns for nightly accommodations of small groups over a limited period of time (such as the days of a certain festival), or other places of shelter (such as nearby caves) that could meet similar needs on a more modest scale. To explore this aspect of the Jerusalem landscape during the late Second Temple period, this paper will consider three types of potential rental space that could have been used by pilgrims in and around the city: residential structures with dining rooms that could have been rented out on special occasions (including the wealthier courtyard homes of the upper city and the more modest terraced housing attested near the lower city); the hostel represented by the Theodotos inscription (which reflects the existence of a synagogue that housed pilgrims and provided them with basic services, such as rooms, washing facilities, and Torah instruction); and the Gethsemane Grotto on the western slope of the Mount of Olives (a cave outside the city walls that contained an oil press for harvest activities in the fall, but that might have been used by pilgrims for overnight accommodations during the non-harvest seasons). Each of these case studies will be considered in light of the relevant archaeological remains, textual evidence (including accounts in the New Testament gospels of Jesus and his disciples visiting Jerusalem on pilgrimage), and extant documentary sources (including various contracts that survived from Roman Egypt and that can provide valuable insights into the logistics of rental agreements in the broader region). By exploring these different types of rental space in pre-70 Jerusalem, we can have a fuller understanding of the pilgrimage experience in the city and better appreciate the material reality behind the literary accounts describing visits to Jerusalem during the late Second Temple period.

Many of our students know about the major events that took place in 1st century Jerusalem as described in the New Testament. They sometimes struggle, however, to visualize those stories and see how they weave together in their historical setting. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a digitally immersive experience with a game engine is worth more than ten thousand words to our digitally native students. This session will demonstrate a free app of 2nd Temple Jerusalem, designed for instructors to use as a supplement for teaching New Testament classes. This session will have two major focal points. First, I will demonstrate the following: • How the app can provide overviews of the city to give students a better sense of size, scale, orientation, and relation to other major landmarks and features • A brief virtual tour of Temple Mount from birds-eye view points and a ground level walkthrough experience • A brief virtual tour of the pools of Bethesda and Siloam, the Mount of Olives, Kidron Valley, Mount Zion, and the northern quarries The second half of the presentation will be a pedagogical demonstration of how the app could be used to enhance lessons focused on events that transpired during the final week of Christ’s life.

There are eleven passages in the Gospel of Mark where a caregiver brings someone who is ill to Jesus. Characters with illnesses or disabilities have more recently been the focus of many studies but there have been fewer studies on the caregiver characters. This paper will explore the caregivers from the perspective of contemporary caregivers. Caregivers in Mark are either parents, anonymous characters, or the religious community. In four different scenes, parents seek Jesus for their children and many have names, titles, and/or voices (Jairus for his daughter, 5:22-23; Syrophoenician woman for her daughter, 7:26; a father for his son, 9:21; Timaeus and his son Bartimaeus, 10:46). Four passages indicate that anonymous characters (friends, neighbors, family members?) bring the sick to Jesus but have no names, titles, or voices (“four of them” carry the paralyzed man, 2:3; “they” and “people” bring the sick on mats, 6:55-56; “they” bring him a deaf man, 7:32; “they” brought a blind man, 8:22). Those who are ill are also closely connected to the Jewish community in three passages but are simply situated within that context (“in their synagogue”, 1:23; the leper is sent to the priest,1: 44; a man in the synagogue, 3:1). While the parents have some voice, none of the caregivers have much of a role and their main activity is bringing their loved one to Jesus, nothing about what happens before or after that event. Not only are these biblical characters less examined in the biblical studies literature but this social location is often invisible in American society and it is also not typically made explicit in biblical interpretations. Remarkably, caregivers as spouses or partners are not present at all in Mark. This may be the most taken for granted role as a caregiver. The caregivers in Mark will be explored from the experience of caregivers. As I read these passages, I will foreground my experience as both a spouse and parent in my roles as caregiver and I will also interview other caregivers and examine their interpretations of these passages through the Contextual Bible Study approach. I will also draw from Disability Studies and Cultural Studies.

The paper aims at a semantic analysis of the vocabulary of emotions assigned to God, humans and the personified city of Jerusalem in the Book of Lamentations, persuing two main research questions: (1) How are emotions described or alluded to in the Book of Lamentations, and (2) How do these references contribute to our understanding of how the ancient Israelites experienced and conceived emotions? Research on emotions in Lamentations can only trace the expressions of emotions in the texts, thus analyzing the verbal expressions of emotions: in verbs, nouns, personifications, images (images of body, daily life, animals, war, etc.). Access to biblical emotions is possible via semantics, analysing linguistic expressions of emotions. Beside explicit references to emotions, the biblical texts describe reactions of the body like, e.g., tremending, facial expressions, gestures, affect sounds, e.g. crying, sighing, and manifestations accompanying words like speech rate or voice pitch. Metaphors will be investigated as a means of representing, evoking and generating emotions. Conceptual blending theory will be used as a basic methodology for the imagery of Lamentations. Literary studies have developed certain catalogues to describe emotions in texts, e.g., the distinction between explicit words of emotion – e.g., grief, fear, shame – and implicit or connotated emotions: lexical presentation in context, images/metaphors, which are frequent especially in lyrical texts. These catalogues are useful for investigating the language of Lamentations about emotions. The distinction between explicit emotional words and images, metaphoric language is essential for the interpretation of Lamentations. While psychological research concentrates on the individuum, cultural-anthropological research on emotions has highlighted the ritual aspects linked with emotions. Emotions in Lamentations are not only considered private experiences, but also public expressions linked with gestures, performative acts and rituals. Being part of social and transcendent relationships, they cannot be described only on an individual level. Emotions are no separate conceptual domain in the ancient world, but are linked with the body and physical sensations, movements and actions, cultic actions and ritual gestures. In addition to that, a special focus will lie on the potential of Lamentations to create emotions in readers and listeners.

The Mishnah, for the most part, is a Hebrew text, but on a small number of occasions, it sprinkles in some Aramaic into its text, whether it be just a few words or even full sentences. Many of these instances of Aramaic in the Mishnah concern the formulation of legal documents. When discussing how to formulate a specific clause, the rabbis will often cite that clause in Aramaic. They do not, however, do so exclusively in Aramaic, as they will sometimes give such legal formulations in Hebrew. In this paper, I will consider these instances and the possible factors that may have influenced their language choice. Such factors include the type of legal document being discussed, and whether a given clause is meant for written formulation or for a verbal declaration (verba solemnia) or both. In addition, I will also consider how these discussions accord with the language of extant legal documents from this era. Relevant data from the Tosefta will also be considered.

Hebrew Bible scholarship has had an appetite for food studies for roughly three decades now, and this has led to significant insights regarding the links between food and social relations in biblical literature, and how social relations are negotiated through meals, feasts and fasts in these texts. In this presentation, I start with a brief survey of the state of research on food and the social in the HB/OT, and then I point out what I see as three fruitful trajectories for future investigations. The first is the application of Annie Hauck Lawson's concept of "food voices" to biblical literature, the second is to read through the concept of cuisine (Levi-strauss; Goody) with a focus on etiquette, aesthetics and manners, and the third and final is a focus on Bible reception through 'food events' and eating, such as Easter meals and communal cooking in church settings.

The description of the House of YHWH in 1 Kings 6 is followed by the descriptions of several “halls”. The first one—the House of the Forest of Lebanon—is the only one for which architectural details are provided. It is mentioned again in 1 Kings 10, after the visit of the Queen of Sheba, as the repository of two sets of golden “shields”. On the basis of the size of this house, of the terminology used for the shields and on relevant iconographical sources, this paper argues that the House of the Forest of Lebanon is no mere armory where ceremonial paraphernalia is to be stored. It has all the ingredients to represent a large temple that dwarfs the House of YHWH. The memory of this magnificent temple is suppressed in the biblical text, but it lingers in several texts of the Hellenistic era, starting with the biblical book of Chronicles and in the writings of Josephus.

Although much has been written about the art of the famous synagogue at Dura-Europos, its Mesopotamian rootedness has gone largely unexplored. As a contribution to this invited panel, my study looks south along the local trade routes to Iranian Babylonia and examines evidence available about the religious function of Durian Jewish and Sasanian Manichaean pictorial art as part of a shared regional development of techniques of instruction. It reveals that the distinctly different pictorial arts used by these two communities in mid-third-century Mesopotamia are nevertheless comparable based on their didactic function. They both: (1) displayed a visual library of doctrinal subjects, that is, they captured in pictorial form a large sample of core tenets, which were also recorded in the respective sacred texts of these religions; (2) fulfilled a primarily didactic function, that is, their pictorial genres (narrative scenes, didactic portraits, and diagrams in the Manichaean case) played a dominantly instructional role; and (3) effectively supplemented oral instruction, that is, the paintings were sermonized about and discussed in light of living interpretations. I argue that these correlations result not from direct influence between the two communities, but rather from a shared approach to what images can do for a religion. The Jewish and Manichaean paintings in question emerged simultaneously and in relative closeness to one another. While the Jewish archeological records of the painted synagogue are all but silent, various characteristics of the mid-third-century Manichaean paintings are noted in literary records, including what they portrayed and, most importantly for this study, the pedagogical reasons for how and why they were used. As evidenced by Iranian, Coptic, and Syriac textual sources from between the mid 3rd and the late 4th/early 5th centuries, the founding prophet of Manichaeism, Mani (active from 240 to 274/277 CE), not only wrote down his own teachings, but also created visual representations of them on a solely pictorial scroll—the Book of Pictures—that he and his highest ranking elects used in the course of oral instructions while missionizing across greater West Asia and the East Mediterranean region.

Perhaps no other verse in the entire Qur’an has caused so much intense debate, past and present, about its possible meaning as the verse Q al-‘Imran 3:7. The key term that has been central in this whole debate is undoubtedly the mighty and mysterious word: mutashabih. As the classical tafsir (Qur’anic interpretation) literature informs us, more than seventy different theories have been developed by classical scholars about its exact meaning, and yet the list continues to grow today, and so does the controversy around it, without any convincing, coherent clarification one way or another. This highly puzzling content of the verse led some contemporary scholars of Qur’an to even suggest that this verse might have been a later post-prophet Muhammad addition to the Qur’an. If there is any single author for the Qur’an, however, as the majority of its followers believe, then under this scenario of a possible single authorship at least, how is it possible to imagine that the author of the Qur’an would leave such a foundational key term, which seems to be so consequential for the comprehension of the structure of the entire Qur’an, to sheer speculation without providing any explanation for, or at least some hints towards its meaning? Could there be any relevant clues inside the Qur’an itself that have been missed so far? This paper argues that a careful study of the other neglected key terms entailed in that very verse Q 3:7 and some other related key terms and their interconnections, such as ta’wil, haqq and ayat bayyinat, as these terms are used and explained throughout the Qur’an, in fact do provide some important clues and evidence towards solving this central qur’anic puzzle. Based on this new evidence, it is possible to introduce a comprehensive map for the foundational structure of the Qur’an and also to develop a set of necessary basic principles for a coherent methodology for the textual interpretation of the Qur’an. As Ibn Kathir and other classical scholars shrewdly argued, the most authentic way for Qur’anic interpretation would be to try to understand and interpret the Qur’an with the Qur’an itself (“tafsir al-Qur’an bi-l Qur’an”). Decoding and mapping some of the Qur’an’s most foundational terms based on their meaning and use inside the Qur’an itself, would be a good place to start implementing their advice.

Recent counter-imperial interpretations have often pitted Paul against the Roman authority, especially in opposition to what has been called the “cult of the emperor.” These political interpreters have sought to understand Paul as a hero of those downtrodden by the political authority. Furthermore, they claim that Paul’s preaching was an empire-resisting gospel which places the Lord Jesus above the lord Caesar. Rom 13:1¬–7, nevertheless, is Paul’s unqualifiedly positive view of the governing authorities. Contextualizing Rom 13:1–7 reveals Paul’s Hellenistic Jewish character, not as one who seeks to subvert but one who seeks to preserve order. It is a way to safeguard the community. This essay will argue that Paul is neither seeking to subvert the emperor nor the governing authorities. Paul is also not suggesting that the community of believers be “subordinate” to the civil authority. Paul, however, maintains in this passage that believers should “fit in” (ὑποτάσσω) with the authorities. To “fit in” is neither complete submission to societal institutions nor a broad rejection of them. To “fit in” is an integration of both assimilation or conformity and distinctiveness or resistance. Paul is not suggesting a complete withdrawal from society or a repudiating of society. He is urging a rapprochement with Roman society as he encourages them to fit in on account (δία) of God’s wrath (ὀργή) and on account of one’s conscience (συνείδησις). Contextualizing Paul in this way reveals how western counter-imperial scholarship understand the mechanics of the formation of Paul’s ideology. For these scholars, Paul is modeled as a counter-imperial heroine offering a universal liberation from oppressive powers. However, their presentation of Paul only reinforces the model that Paul is a colonized colonizer. Rom 13:1–7, therefore, can become a tool for the colonizer. If, however, one does not override the ancient voices, allowing them to speak and to be heard, then in theory such passages can no longer negatively be used.

Qur'anic narrations of episodes related to the Book Genesis often differ in many aspects from their biblical parallels. Contemporary scholarship relates some of these to the indirect transmission of narrations from the Hebrew Bible into Arabic, suggesting that this transmission took place orally, and through the mediation of a third language, e.g., Syriac, between the Hebrew and the Arabic. A close study of qur'anic narrations of episodes from Genesis reveals, however, that these texts often contain remnants of the Hebrew vocabulary of the Masoretic text of these biblical episodes. Furthermore, there are also intertextual wordplays in these qur'anic narrations, that are only meaningful for speakers of Hebrew (and Arabic). The textual evidence, therefore, suggests that at least some of the Qur'an, and some of its audience, were familiar with at least some of Genesis in the Hebrew language.

At the beginning of the First Epistle of John, the author states that he is declaring to the readers “what was from the beginning.” This claim implies that what the author delivers in the epistle is based upon a solid and unchanged foundation backed up by the testimony of the eyewitnesses. The rest of the epistle suggests, however, that the address of the author may become contested, as there are conflicts and disagreements as regards to what is the right way to believe in Jesus. In this paper, I first assess the appeal to the beginning in the light of similar claims made in other early Christian and ancient literature. I then proceed to apply social identity approach that clarifies why appeals to the past are so central for various groups in developing their self-understandings. Appeals to the past can be taken as attempts to essentialize a group identity that actually emerges from a mixture of various past and contemporary stimuli and as such remains continually in the making. By referring to the shared and incontestable beginnings, entrepreneurs of ideology can present constructed identities that are subject to historical change and renegotiation as stable and impervious to any counterclaims. I also argue that various loosely formulated symbols (etc. life, darkness) used in the First Epistle of John are convenient tools for anyone who wants to present a particular formulation of contemporary identity as fixed. These symbols do not carry any particular meanings and for this reason can be used to convey the sense of historical continuity even in situations where traditional shared cultural symbols are the subject of intense revision and actualizing reinterpretations

Hebrews 2:12–13 contains two unusual features: 1) Jesus speaks, and when he speaks, he uses the words of Scripture as if he were their original speaker. 2) The Jewish Scriptures attributed to Jesus in these verses come from two very disparate contexts and on the surface appear unrelated. While some commentators recognize a shared theme between the quotations of Ps 21:23LXX in Heb 2:12 and Isa 8:17–18 in Heb 2:13, most make little effort to show how the author would have moved from one to the other. Though some do argue that kinship terms (ἀδελφός and παιδίον) link the passages (e.g. Weiss, Gräßer), that is as far as the argument often goes. This paper provides a plausible exegetical method for the author of Hebrews that takes into account both of these unusual features. Specifically, the paper establishes how a combination of the author’s homiletical aims and rhetorical practices, in this case prosopopoieia especially, guided his exegesis of the Jewish Scriptures and his application of those Scriptures to the mouth of Jesus. In making this argument, this paper addresses Gabriella Gelardini’s challenge that those who argue for a pervasive influence of classical rhetoric on Hebrews’s structure take seriously how Hebrews fulfills the essential homiletic task of “‘explanation and application’ of Scripture.” This paper demonstrates that the author of Hebrews does not distinguish between rhetoric and homiletic tasks, as does Gelardini. Rather the author’s rhetorical practices and theological convictions about Jesus shape how he understands and employs Scripture in a manner both attentive to the original context and pertinent to the needs of his audience.

The book of Job makes it amply clear that Yahweh plays a prominent part in the mayhem that happens to Job and his wife in ch. 1, although God has someone else to blame—ha-śātān. This malevolent member of the divine council can and did “incite” God (2:3), which brings the Palestinian amora Rabbi Yoḥanan to tears [b. Ḥagigah 5a]. In the prologue, none finds fault with the heaven, however, except Job’s wife, who in v. 9 exposes the absurdity she rates as evident in the “time out of joint” (Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5). The šǝḥîn that erupts from the sole to his crown and strikes his soul (vv. 7b-8) is not the end of his suffering, and the scope and depth of horror in the land of Uz evoke comparison with those of horror films. In the poetic body of the book, the discursive skirmishes muster the images of terror including ṣalmāwet (ṣl-mwt “shadow of death” or ṣlmwt “darkness” [cf. Arabic ẓalamun], 3:5); nocturnal spectres (4:13-21); a spider’s web (8:14), gore of slashed organs (20:24-25), a creature of clay (a golem? 33:6), and many more. More important, the cacophony of the friends’ disjunctive discourses may be compared to for Gilles Deleuze’s Cinema 2 of “time-image,” in which “time” is not gauged by sequencing temporal movements but gazed with intuition and the multiplicity of memory based on Henri Bergson. While Job’s friends busily labor to construct a wholesome virtual universe in which causality is a theory of everything, he repeatedly invites them to linger a bit over signs that do not neatly integrate, consider a future that could be otherwise than they expect, and share the present time that he lives amid pain, suffering, and the acute sense of fractured meaning, for which God must be responsible somehow. In the present form of the text, the book reaches the climax with the Yahweh Speeches, which bring out the legendary monstrous forces like Yamm (38:8, 16), tǝhôm (recalling Tiamat, v. 16), and Behemoth and Leviathan (40:15-41:26). However, they are all declawed and defanged, deprived of their boundary-transgressing features, and the “Frankenstein” is erewhon. In reception history, the Yahweh Speeches evoke diametrically opposed responses. The majority view finds horror finally reaching sympathy and reconciliation when God speaks out of the whirlwind. In stark contrast, the minority protests that divine speeches sidestep the crux, resurrecting the question that hauntologically echoes 9:24 where Job asks,’im-lō’ ’ēpô’ mî hû? Even as Virginia Woolf strikes a chord when she says, “I read the book of Job last night. I don’t think God comes out well in it,” the true monster of Job remains a mystery, leaving the audience in the third space in which the sublime and the grotesque blend—eerily simulating the way horror films often end.

A de-imperial vision for biblical scholarship is increasingly necessary in the world under siege by neoliberalist imperial agendas. Various scholars critique the bias of biblical texts or their reception histories, but this work has not yet gained sufficient traction in the academy. Overall, the field of biblical scholarship remains detached from the lives of those affected by empire and imperial domination. In this paper I propose that this detachment is irresponsible and untenable. Utilizing the work of Edward Said, I shed light on connections between biblical studies and the life and death consequences of imperial projects of representation. Then, through application of the main principles of Enrique Dussel’s Ética de la Liberación, I argue that effects on communities oppressed by empire must become a guiding hermeneutic by which scholars interact with the biblical texts. Lastly, I provide a case study in which I apply this hermeneutic to the interpretation of Israel’s interaction with the Gibeonites in Joshua 9. In the case study, I show that Dussel’s hermeneutic is not antithetical to any methodology other than those that support the use of biblical texts for the purposes of empire.

In recent years, scholarship has begun to take notice of the role that embodiment plays in cognition and communication. This, in turn, has inspired new approaches to ancient texts which take embodiment into account. One such approach focuses on the sensory elements within texts, such as in Dorothy Lee’s 2010 analysis of the five senses in the Fourth Gospel. This paper builds on Lee’s work (2010, 2016), applying a focused sensory analysis to one of the seven predicated I am sayings in John. Important for their articulation of both Christology and soteriology, these seven sayings in their contexts also contain vibrant, sensory language. Each saying is a metaphorical picture of how Jesus, the revelatory “word made flesh” (1:14) brings “life in his name” (20:31). The sensory elements provide an imaginative entry point into the Johannine world, and they also enliven each saying’s narrative representation of the relationship between Jesus and those who participate with him. Together the sensory aspects of the seven I am sayings bring concrete, tangible, and affective qualities of participation into the notion of this union, contributing to the participatory theology of the Fourth Gospel. This paper will apply a sensory analysis to one I am saying. In John 6 Jesus states, “I am the bread of life,” and then he invites hearers to eat. To explore the sensory qualities and implications of this sensory invitation, this paper makes heuristic use of insights brought by Sensory Anthropology, an emerging discipline which helps uncover qualities of taste that often go unnoticed in a world that tends to be more sight centric. More specifically, we will explore the role of sensory memory and how the embodied memory of a taste heightens the tangible impact of Jesus’s claim to be the bread of life. Lee’s use of Ricœur’s reproductive/productive imagination will be a helpful framework to apply to Jesus’s sensory invitation in terms of how ancient readers might interact with it. Fundamental to all thought processes, the reproductive imagination involves conceptualizing something that already exists, while the productive imagination “transform[s] existing categories.” When applied here, this suggests that when Jesus states, “I am the bread of life,” this will trigger prior sensory memories attached to the concept of “bread,” such as wisdom, Torah, or literal bread. Then, when Jesus extends the invitation for hearers to eat of him as bread, this prompts the productive imagination to consider the implications of this invitation. What is Jesus implying about who he is and about what he is inviting hearers into? And what happens within the imaginative process when Jesus switches the imagery from bread to flesh? What sensory memories are prompted by reference to flesh-eating and blood-drinking, and how does the productive imagination contend with the invitation to participate with Jesus in this way? The responses within the narrative suggest for ancient readers certain qualities of participation perhaps not considered.

David’s recent biographers rightly claim that the Hebrew Bible’s political ideology and literary development have obscured the historical David. Since the Former Prophets have been editorially shaped not as biographies but as books, however, to encounter David is to reckon with the literary shaping of the books in which his story is narrated. This paper’s point of departure is the oft-noticed detail that the David story has been interrupted by the literary boundary between 2 Samuel and 1 Kings. 2 Samuel, departing from a pattern in the Former Prophets (Deut. 34; Josh. 24; Jdg. 16[?]; 1 Sam. 31; 1 Kgs. 25), does not end with a major character’s death and burial. Instead, the account of David’s decline and death has been deferred to 1 Kings 1-2. In its place is 2 Sam. 21-24, a sequentially displaced collection of Davidic traditions. Recent scholarship on 2 Sam. 21-24, following M. Noth and L. Rost, has tended to assume the arbitrariness of the Former Prophets’ present literary divisions. Even recent studies of 2 Sam. 21-24 that have taken seriously Samuel’s present literary shape have not fully accounted for the inter-book pattern of endings from which these chapters deviate. There is an “enigma factor” (A. Campbell) in 2 Sam. 21-24: are these chapters complimentary of David, critical of him, or both? W. Brueggemann (1988) has labeled these chapters an “appendix of deconstruction” that critiques David’s concentration of royal power in Jerusalem in 2 Sam. 5-8. By contrast, S. Chapman (2016) has argued that 2 Sam. 21-24 retrospectively highlights Saul’s deficiency and David’s suitability for kingship in Israel, despite the latter’s flaws. This paper acknowledges the ambiguity of David’s portrayal but argues that it is not the decisive issue in these chapters. The various units of the Samuel “appendix,” even those that portray David in an ambiguous light, collectively bestow special honor upon David vis-à-vis the other book endings of the Former Prophets. The account of David’s aversion of the famine through the expiatory execution of Saul’s sons (2 Sam. 21:1-14) concludes with David’s honorable reburial of Saul’s bones in his ancestral territory. Whereas 1 Samuel ends with his death at the hands of the Philistines (ch. 31), 2 Samuel ends with the Philistines’ death at David’s (soldiers’) hands (21:15-22; 23:8-17). Thus, at the conclusion of 2 Samuel, in place of David’s (expected) death and burial is a re-narration of his failed predecessor’s burial. Rather than dying and receiving an honorable burial himself at the conclusion of the book, the figure of David endures and continues to accrue honor. This paper argues that 2 Sam. 21-24, read in its present location as a conclusion to the book(s) of Samuel, presents David as a perpetually vigorous, death-defying king whose divinely-bestowed vitality extends vicariously to his servants, to the entire nation of Israel, and to his descendants (i.e., the kings of Judah). Samuel’s unique conclusion within the Former Prophets suggested that David’s mysterious vitality was unprecedented in Israel’s national history and decisive for its future.

Between 1928 and 1937 a joint team from Yale University and the French Academy of Inscriptions and Letters uncovered the remains of Dura-Europos, an ancient city on the Euphrates in modern day Syria. The richness of the material that its ruins yielded prompted scholars to liken the site to Pompeii; and the existence of painted mural programs throughout the city, from homes to religious buildings (a Mithraeum, Temples, a Synagogue, a Christian building), inspired Michael Rostovtzeff to describe the site as “a veritable museum of decorative wall-painting”. Since the excavation, the distinctive iconographic programs found in different religious contexts have received close attention but have tended to be studied in isolation from each other. Approaches to the Christian building exemplify these limitations: although textual and liturgical evidence has been used to address questions around the content and function of this third century pictorial program, a clearer understanding of its significance for the early history of Christian art has reached an impasse. This paper suggests reconsideration of the mural programs in scientific and interdisciplinary terms. Although scientific and technical analyses of paintings from Pompeii and other Southern Italian sites (including Herculaneum and Ostia) as well as in the Roman catacombs, have provided new clarity surrounding artistic practice, including design, dissemination of iconographic patterns, and exchange of ideas within these sites, the paintings at Dura have not been subjected to similar examinations. Some scholars, observing that certain paintings in the different religious buildings share similar stylistic, compositional or iconographic features, have raised the possibility that the same artists (or workshops) worked on commissions from different groups. However, this hypothesis has not been interrogated and the nature of artistic collaboration between artists and local patrons has not been explored in any detail. The paper outlines possibilities for future scientific and technical analyses of extant wall paintings from Dura that could contribute to a reformulation of long-held theories about how ancient religions simultaneously developed their own visual language at this pivotal period in history in Syria.

The reader valuation of early Christian texts is a highly contested topic in the field of ancient Christianity. To determine which texts Christians revered most in antiquity, researchers have typically considered which texts appear in ancient canon lists, which texts are most often cited, and which texts are most often copied. Rarely, however, have scholars taken into account the material and economic features of our Christian manuscript evidence when considering these issues. This paper considers the cost of the production of early Christian literature in Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, and the dynamic relationship between canonicity and the cost of manuscript production. Using database software in combination with a variety of other methods for assessing the monetary value of manuscripts in Roman and Late Antique Egypt (á la Bentley Layton and Anne Boud’hors), this paper presents a survey of the cost of Christian literary production in Oxyrhynchus from ca. 100-700 CE. In particular, this study compares the cost of apocryphal Christian literary manuscripts with so-called “canonical” Christian texts as well as non-Christian and para-Christian literary productions.

Jesus’ position with regard to purity has intrigued scholars for some time (see Thiessen 2020; Kazen 2016; Wassen 2016). His actions seem to both deny and endorse the efficacy of purification from ritual impurity. On the one hand, Jesus honors the Temple and sends a leper to the priest for validation of purification. Only his disciples, but not Jesus, are accused of neglecting to wash hands before eating. On the other hand, although Jesus makes contact with many impure persons, the texts never state that he purifies himself. He even eats with sinners, crossing the boundary between pure Jew and impure Gentile without concern for contagion. As a result, some scholars downplay the importance of ritual purity in Jesus’ time while others see Jesus as a halakhic Jew. The Dead Sea Scrolls are a critical component in the current debates over Jesus and purity. While rabbinic scholars produce explanations of ritual purity, these are often dismissed as a retrojection of rabbinic norms onto first century Judaism. But the Scrolls, dated within Second Temple times, paint a more contemporary picture, which rests in much the same ideological room as the later Rabbis. In substance, the concerns are similar and the differences lie in the details. Indeed, the Scrolls usually reveal an even greater concern over impurity than the Rabbis. Hence it is reasonable to assume that Jesus lived in a climate concerned about purity vs. pollution and to take seriously discussions in the Gospels about purity of food and vessels as well as the contagion of impure persons. In this paper I apply the data of the Scrolls to passages in the Synoptic Gospels in an attempt to clarify Jesus’ and/or the Pharisees’ position regarding ritual impurity. These include: discussions on the purity of food/eater, healing of persons with severe impurities, e.g. lepers and the woman with an abnormal blood flow, and raising the dead. Reading the Gospels through the lens of the Scrolls brings into relief the fact that purity was a live issue in Jesus’ time. The question was not whether purity was necessary in Judaism but how much purity was required. This ambiguity stems in part from Scripture which gives alternate viewpoints regarding purity of food and eater (cf. Lev 7:20-21; 11:33-34; 17:3-4; Deut 12:15, 22). Finally, the Scrolls shed light on the reason for Jesus’ baptism. It is curious that although Jesus is presented by the Gospels as pure, he still submits to purification. The Scrolls give evidence that purification goals were not just to shed impurities but to provide a path to holiness, e.g. initiation to a holy order, access to the holy city, and bathing in anticipation of a holy mission. Before beginning his ministry, Jesus too purifies himself in anticipation of a prophetic mission and is rewarded by the descent of the holy spirit.

It is often recognized that Paul’s justification statements function as judicial metaphors. Less common is a treatment of these Pauline metaphors precisely as metaphors. In this paper, I examine the verb δικαιοῦν in secular and Septuagint Greek to establish its conventional, non-figurative meaning and conclude that the verb means to establish or maintain justice, i.e., a state of affairs in which justice obtains. I briefly suggest that in the prophetic writings of the Septuagint the verb is used to speak figuratively of God’s deliverance and restoration from foreign oppression in terms suggestive of a judge’s act of establishing justice. This figurative use is also evident in Psalm 142 LXX, in which God’s justifying action entails his delivering the psalmist from mortal danger at the hands of his adversary. Finally, I bring all of this to bear on Paul’s argument in Galatians. Noting the way Paul recalls the prophetic metaphor with his allusion to Psalm 142:2 LXX, I argue that Paul’s use of δικαιοσύνη in Galatians suggest that he has revised the prophetic metaphor in light of the Christ-event to speak of Christ’s death and resurrection as the ultimate act of God wherein he establishes a world in which justice obtains. Rather than from any human enemies, God has delivered his people in Christ’s death from the present evil age and established them in Christ’s resurrection in the eschatological age of new creation, in which life — itself an expression of ultimate justice in a context where sin and death loom large — reigns.

Biblical narratives are home to several high-profile figures who would be considered blind by modern standards, yet no biblical text ever refers to a named character as עור “blind.” While some such absences may be merely incidental, at other times euphemistic terminology reflects the negotiations of competing identity factors. This paper examines the portrayal of age-related vision loss as a function of visual impairment, deviant embodiment, disability stigma, and the social significance of aging. Far from self-evident categories with straightforward entailments, these factors are constructed in interaction with one another and the broader social context. Analyzing their interplay clarifies their conceptual boundaries and the complexity of identity representation in biblical Hebrew texts.

Syriac poetry in its literary forms provides us access to the public presence and participation of women, children, and "uneducated" laity in the civic life of late antique communities, in a variety of social locations. Madrashe and memre that contain refrains indicate the vocal contributions of these groups to collective activities: weekly, daily, and festal liturgies; special civic occasions such as the arrival of visiting dignitaries; occasions of public crisis or resolution of crisis; and civic demonstrations. Such poetic forms also indicate pedagogical methods in local schools, both ecclesiastical and monastic. The sharp changes in madrashe, in particular, from the masterful compositions of Ephrem the Syrian in the fourth century to the simpler hymnographic forms in the fifth and sixth (including the soghyatha, the hymns of Simeon the Potter, and various anonymous hymns, sometimes wrongly ascribed to Ephrem) also contribute to the possibility that we are dealing with common, publicly used texts in local communities, perhaps villages and small towns. As these are demographics not easily visible to us in other kinds of extant literature, the ramifications of such a consideration are important for our understanding of late antique Syriac Christianity.

Current research on slavery in the synoptic gospels has shown that these texts tend to portray slavery and enslaved characters in ways that are typical of the wider first-century Mediterranean world. Of particular note, these texts consistently place enslaved characters in situations where their bodies are vulnerable to physical violence. The Gospel of Luke, following its synoptic sources, often characterizes the enslaved as susceptible to violence, but it also provides two notable variations from the parallel stories of enslaved abuse that are found in Mark and Matthew. First, in the Parable of the Tenants (Luke 20) the enslaved emissaries who are killed by the tenants in the Markan and Matthean version are instead beaten and sent away (empty handed yet still very much alive). Second, at the arrest of Jesus in the garden (Luke 22) when a disciple assaults the slave of the high priest, it is only the Lukan Jesus who heals him. This paper focuses on these two passages and, more specifically, on the redactional changes introduced by the author of Luke which seem to lessen (though not eliminate) the violence experienced by their enslaved characters. Adopting a reading strategy from feminist biblical scholarship, I read Luke’s text as a source for enslaved history which “is to be used with the most vigilant suspicion,” (D’Angelo). Such a reading will demonstrate, on the one hand, that the author has made deliberate choices which ameliorate the portrayed fate of their enslaved characters and, on the other hand, that the gospel as a whole still accepts a conventional understanding of the enslaved body as vulnerable to violence. The paper will conclude by offering some possible explanations for this tension which take into account Luke’s broader characterization of slavery and enslaved characters.

The study of literary motifs is inherently a comparative endeavor as one examines various narratives and identifies the common features that appear in those stories. However, the features that one chooses to accentuate have the potential to create a distorted view of the motif. Therefore, a rigorous methodology is required to generate a faithful and reliable description of literary motifs. This paper promotes the use of a comparative method that is rooted in both folkloric and literary studies to refine the description of literary motifs or type-scene. Based upon the structuralist study of folk literature, this comparative method is used to identity the component parts of a tale and compare those parts on two levels. The component part of interest in this method is the event, which is composed of an action performed by an actor. The first level of comparison is the general elements, in which the events will be described in terms of their generic features. These general elements are used to establish a means of comparison between the different tales. The second level of analysis is the specific elements of the tale. In this level the constituent unit of the event will be described in terms of its specific features and will provide a means for distinguishing the features that are unique to each story. This dual layered approach allows for a discussion of the unified message of the motif while still considering the unique features of each individual tale. This method of assessing the component parts of the tale will be coupled with a literary approach to the text that explores the poetics of the narrative. The attention to the poetics of the text helps guard against the fragmentation of the text that can arise from a purely structuralist based approach. A literary approach also helps to ascertain the events in the scene and provides a means for interpreting the significance of the events within the motif. This method will be illustrated in a case study of the “Potiphar’s Wife Motif.” Based upon its usage in the folk literature of the world, the “Potiphar’s Wife Motif” is broadly defined as scene in which a woman, often identified as a stepmother figure, makes vain overtures to a man then accuses him of attempting to force her. Localized approaches to this motif identify its presence in the ANE tales of the Epic of Gilgamesh, The Tale of Aqhat, and The Tale of Two Brothers. However, the generalized description does not align well with each of these narratives. By applying the proposed comparative methodology, a case will be made to refine the description of the motif as the “Hero and His Temptress Motif.” This methodology will also demonstrate how the previously overlooked occurrence of the motif in Judg 16 can be identified and incorporated as an exemplar of the motif. Thus, this methodology seeks to clarify which events are indispensable to the content and structure of the motif by illuminating the key features that unite the tales together.

The biblical historical books report that the Israelites were in conflict with the Ammonites from the time of the judges through at least the time of King Jehoiakim. After the battle accounts of 2 Sam 10-12 and the assertion of Ammonite vassalage to Judah in the tenth century (2 Sam 12:26-31), however, there are few details about their relationship. Recent excavations at Khirbet ʿAuja el-Foqa, in the southern Jordan Valley, may open a window to some of this history. This paper will introduce the excavations at ʿAuja el-Foqa and summarize the first three seasons of excavation, which have made it clear that this was an Israelite fortified town built in a strategic location in the Jericho Valley. It will then consider the geo-political aspect of the site, which was located on the west side of the Jordan River, due west of the Ammonite capital of Rabbah and south of a series of what were probably Israelite towers that had been built in the Desert of Manasseh. It will be suggested that ʿAuja el-Foqa was built as a central administrative site in the Jericho region, and that it was also part of an Israelite defensive network designed to defend Israel’s eastern border. The paper will conclude by proposing that the site be identified with biblical Naʿarah, located on the border of Ephraim and Manasseh (Josh 16:7).

Since the turn of the 21st century, scholars have drawn attention to the distinctive and prominent role prophets play in the book of Chronicles (Beentjes 2001; Jonker 2011; Knoppers 2010; Warhurst 2011). Numerous factors bolster the importance placed upon the prophetic office in the book, including the multiple additional references to otherwise unknown prophets compared to the parallel accounts in the Deuteronomistic History (DtrH), the virtual lack of criticism against prophets, and the unique role prophetic books play as historical sources (Schniedewind 1997). In this paper, I analyze the rhetorical function of these prophetic sources in the book of Chronicles and conclude that the Chronicler used these prophetic citations to affirm the positive evaluation of a king’s reign. The divergences in the prophetic citation formula for king Uzziah (2 Chr 26:22), however, suggest that this peculiar citation belongs to a later redactor who sought to depict Uzziah in a positive light. The history of scholarship reflects a transition from the earlier debates on the existence of the sources in Chronicles, to the evaluation of how these sources rhetorically function in the Chronicler’s retelling of Judah’s history. Out of the thirteen sources mentioned by name, the text assigns eight to prophets. The history of scholarship on the prophetic sources has primarily centered on the existence or non-existence of these sources—while some assert that the Chronicler refers to independent compositions, others claim that the Chronicler either modified or created these books based on the source formulae embedded in the Chronicler’s Vorlage of Samuel-Kings. Scholars adhering to the latter position identify the function of prophetic sources as bolstering the narrative with a sense of authority and authenticity. Few scholars note the interesting pattern that prophetic sources only appear with kings whom the Chronicler either partially or wholly views favorably (Glatt-Gilad 2001; Klein 2006; Knoppers 2004; Williamson 1982). Building upon recent scholarship, I concur that Chronicler’s prophetic sources indeed communicate the Chronicler’s positive evaluation towards a particular monarch. The reign of Uzziah, however, appears as an anomaly due to the Chronicler’s Sondergut that concludes the king’s reign in a negative light with his improper sacrifice and his banishment from the temple. Moreover, Uzziah’s prophetic citation diverges from the consistent formulae employed by the Chronicler for all the other kings (for example, the lack of הנה and the use of the active verb כתב instead of the passive form כתוב). I, therefore, contend that Uzziah’s prophetic formula that attributes Isaiah with recording the reign of the king, belongs to a later redactional hand that desired to redeem Uzziah as a positive king, rather than a negative king who did evil in the sight of the Lord.

The death of Aaron (Num 20:23-29) is a rare subject in the surviving homiletic corpus, treated extensively in Syriac literature only in the mimro ‘On Aaron the Priest’ attributed to Jacob of Serugh and published by Bedjan (HS I. 68-84). Even though early Syriac authors were primarily interested in other aspects of Aaron’s life and character, this unique mimro was popular in medieval and early modern Syriac manuscript anthologies. It was collected with the works of Jacob of Sarug, collected with other mimre on priests, or among funerary texts. In a large homilary from the 13th century, the mimro is collected together with funeral homilies for bishops, priests, deacons, monks and children. The popularity of the mimro is perhaps best illustrated by its development in transmission, resulting in four distinct recensions among the twelve surviving Syriac manuscripts. The title of the mimro in Bedjan’s edition, which is taken from Vatican Syriac 117, is slightly misleading. Rather than retelling the whole life of Aaron, the donnée of the mimro is the period leading up to and including the death and burial of Aaron. The contents are better reflected by the scribe of a 13th century manuscript who gave both the title and a brief summary of the work: “Next, we’ll write a mimro about the burial of Aaron, son of Amram … The subject of the mimro: How sad was the hour of the death of Aaron the priest, the high [priest] of the Old Testament, when Moses his brother strips him of the holy garments.” I take this summary as the jumping off point for this paper. I first consider the dramatization of the moment of the death of Aaron, including the removal of the priestly robes, and then explore the theme of sadness and mourning, looking at the responses of Moses, Aaron, Eleazar, the Lord and the angels to the death of Aaron.

The Revelation to John represents the creative work of a Jewish Christ believer whose religious and cultural identity cannot be reconstructed easily. A similar problem comes up regarding the Christ group he describes. Is it “Jewish”, “Jewish Christian” or “Christian”? Such broad taxonomies are rightly criticized, and so this paper tries to formulate a new description of Revelation’s Christ assembly by answering the following questions, (a) How are the terms “ekklesia” and “laos” used? Although “ekklesia” occours twenty times in Revelation, it is mainly restricted to the seven assemblies mentioned in chapters 1 to 3 and plays no major conceptual role. “Laos” occurs nine times in Revelation, mostly in connection with “tribe”, “language” and “nation” to describe universal humanity from which those come who stand before the throne and before the Lamb (7:9). In two references (18:4 and 21:3), “laos” clearly alludes to Israel. The Covenant Formula is used in 21:3, although with the plural “laoi”. God’s people come from many peoples. (b) Is the phrase “synagogue of Satan” (2:9; 3:9) a polemic against Jews as a group of others, is it an inner-Jewish polemic or – not very probable – is it a polemic against Gentile sympathizers to Judaism? (c) Which is the meaning of the “twelve” symbolism in Revelation? Especially relevant here is to ask for the identity of the 144,000 who are saved (7:1-8; 14:1-5). (d) Is the story in Rev 12 referring to Israel with some additional elements from a Christ believing perspective or is it the story of the followers of the Lamb told in Jewish apocalyptic fashion? Who is the woman (12:1)? Who is the male child (12:5)? What is the meaning of the flight into the wilderness (12:6) which alludes to the Exodus? The paper will conclude that the formative motivation to write Revelation was the author’s belief in Jesus as the Lamb and as the Messiah. This belief was expressed in genuine Jewish concepts, language and images. For example, “Israel” (2:14; 7,4; 21:12) and “Jew” (2:9; 3:9) are used as positive terms. Indeed, the author tries to protect the designation “Jew” and claims that the Christ assemblies represent the real “Jews”. In socioreligious terms, Revelation “presents itself as advocating a true form of Jewish identity … Rather that agitating for the founding of a separate, explicitly non-Jewish community, the author stays within Jewish discourse and tradition” (Rowland 2020). Further, the universalistic integration of Gentiles into the new people(s) of God is formulated in traditional Jewish wording. Diaspora Judaism in Asia Minor provides a very probable setting and basis for this creative social identity formation. Maybe the way how the Revelation to John includes traditional Jewish and Jewish Christ-believing features in its concept of the “peoples of God” can be an inspiring paradigm for a Christian ecclesiology today.

Accepted paper for the IBR research group on Pauline Theology.

This paper surveys ancient Judean coins from the Second Temple Period with a focus on the origin and possible intended meanings of symbols. Key related numismatic elements to be discussed include the half shekel Temple tribute and the role of the money changers within the temple system. David Hendin is vice president and adjunct curator of the American Numismatic Society and author of Guide to Biblical Coins soon to be published in its 6th revised edition and 17 other books.

Those of us who have taught undergraduate courses within the field of religious studies are likely familiar with the preliminary hurdle of disabusing students of certain ingrained assumptions regarding the stark dichotomy of “true” and “false,” especially in reference to sacred narratives or myths. We are challenged with demonstrating the semantic nuances of those relevant constructs that are generally accepted as synonymous with “true” or “false,” the most obvious concept being “myth,” but also “history,” “fiction,” and “non-fiction.” Students often approach primary source material as either “true” or “false,” “fiction” or “non-fiction” in regards to historicity. Indeed, this approach is not limited to the study of sacred narratives, but spans all disciplines tasked with interpreting history in some form. Primary sources are without a doubt the best way to engage students and demonstrate the messiness of “truth” when reconstructing history, but we are still faced with the task of choosing the best types of sources that will put this messiness into stark relief at a level intelligible to non-experts. This paper proposes that the genre of the ancient epistle is a prime candidate for overcoming this problem. Epistles, both “fictional” and “non-,” or “historic” and “novelistic,” all carry multiple levels of narrative capable of simultaneously conveying both truths and falsehoods within the same document. With minimal introduction to literary theory and concepts like the implied author and implied audience, students can easily understand how a pseudonymous letter or epistolary novel can nevertheless describe an accurate narrative of historic events. This paper recounts and discusses an in-class exercise from a course on the history of biblical interpretation in which students read four ancient epistles—Pliny the Younger’s letter to Tacitus on the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, Pliny the Younger’s letter to Licinius Sura, “To Aeschylus” from the epistolary novel The Letters of Themistocles, and “Chronos’s Letter to the Rich” from Lucian’s Saturnalian Letters. Students were tasked with rating the veracity of each letter in regard to multiple aspects (author, narrator, contents, etc.). This paper will further describe the methods of presentation and student voting in this pedagogical exercise, as well as discuss the results of its execution and further benefits of its application in courses dealing with sacred narratives.

Second Samuel 20:15–22 and 21:1–14 share remarkably similar storylines and key vocabulary. Each begins with a dire threat to the community (Abel, Israel). A leader summons (“qara”) a party with the power to nullify the threat. The leader identifies her/his people as the “nachalat (“inheritance of”) Yahweh” in pleading for salvation. The summoned party responds by insisting that destruction of the threatened populace is not the goal; instead, the community harbors someone who does not merit protection. The leader duly surrenders the guilty parties, after which the threat is lifted. Scholars traditionally assign these passages to different authors, with good reason: 2 Sam 20 is closely tied to the larger Succession Narrative begun in 2 Sam 9, featuring a Yahweh who stays in the shadows, while in 2 Sam 21 Yahweh’s action is more evident. Yet both stories draw attention to an overriding issue through Samuel: Israel’s problems come about not due to outside influence, but to a deficit of inner purity. Too often the people are at risk because they are unwilling to expel individuals who have not behaved well. And forty years ago, Forshey pointed out that the peculiar use of the term nachalat Yahweh, referencing people rather than a geography, further unites these passages. This paper will show that these accounts impact the understanding of “cities of refuge” laws of Numbers 35:9–34, Deut 19:1–13, and Josh 20:1–9. The 2 Sam passages stress that when refuge is provided the protected individuals must stand trial (following the model of Num 35, as explained by Cocco) lest the entire community find itself in grave danger. 2 Sam 21 highlights the danger of permitting murder to go unpunished, then 2 Sam 20 applies the same idea to a city in a way that recalls Deut 19: Abel Beth Maacah, located at or beyond Israel’s northern border, effectively becomes a candidate for a new city of refuge as stipulated in Deut 19:8¬–9. By doing the right thing in executing a guilty fugitive, Abel Beth Maacah establishes its residents as part of the nachalat Yahweh and becomes a legitimate city of refuge in an expanding Israel.

In some college contexts, the student body is deeply aware of racism and actively works to be part of the anti-racism movement. In other college contexts, however, the student body is not as interested in racism. That disengagement can come about because of student demographics, because the college “bubble” hinders engagement beyond campus, or because the college itself has not emphasized racism and thoughtful responses to it. This presentation will show the combination of a reading from Deuteronomy 15:12-15, a reading from Ta-Nehisi Coates on the effects of slavery, and an assignment to investigate racism locally can overcome student disengagement. Coates’s article begins with Deuteronomy 15:12-15, and so that is where this learning unit begins. Students will discern that this passage is speaking about a system of Hebrew slavery due to financial debt. Moreover, they will see that slavery is something that has a definitive end in freedom with formerly enslaved people leaving with financial goods as a remembrance of Israel’s own enslavement in Egypt. With this textual background, students will then read Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “The Case for Reparations” that appeared in June, 2014 issue of The Atlantic. This essay walks readers through the physical and financial consequences of slavery on black folk in America. Coates’s tracing of a direct line from slavery and racism to wealth inequality brings what can seem like a problem from long ago into contemporary relevance. Despite the strengths of this article, students still might believe that the problems of racism reside elsewhere. To overcome this challenge, I added an assignment where students explore the local history of racism. For example, in my context at Toccoa Falls College in northeast Georgia, I had students explore either the local history of racism where they were raised or in the counties surrounding Toccoa. One student made a startling discovery at the Stephens County Library: a Toccoa Record article from June 17, 1915 entitled “Escaped Negro Convict Lynched.” As students read this account of local lynching, the strength of the local racism that existed was palpable, making the Coates article even more believable than before.

Accepted paper for the IBR research group on Difficult Texts in the OT.

As a methodological point, it should always be recognized that the vicissitudes of history have forced biblical scholars to work with a body of literature that is fairly limited in size. We are fortunate to have Mesopotamian and various North West Semitic texts to help us fill out the worldview of the biblical authors. Nevertheless, gaps remain in our understanding. There is, though, another source of information that provides insight into the world of the ancient Mediterranean. The expansive corpus of the Hellenic world, though less frequently utilized by biblical scholars than Mesopotamian literature, can also shed light on the intellectual trends of ancient Judah when used responsibly. Without suggesting homologous points of connection, this paper compares and contrasts the ways in which myths centered on child sacrifice taking place at foundational moments were received in both biblical and ancient Greek literature. For biblical literature, this involves an investigation of references to child sacrifice in the various legal corpora of the Pentateuch as well as in the editorial history of Genesis 22. For ancient Greek literature, this involves tracing the various versions of the Iphigenia myth through time and across multiple classical authors. In this discussion, close attention will be paid to the representation of Iphigenia’s sacrifice in the works of Homer and Hesiod, as well as in the tragedies of Euripides, Sophocles, and Aeschylus. Finally, a brief review of Philo of Byblos’ Phoenician History allows us to highlight a different response to these types of stories—one in which the practice appears to be received more positively than in previous examples. We conclude that these stories highlight a distinctive aspect of Eastern Mediterranean culture that is not shared with Mesopotamia.

Accepted paper for the IBR research group on Isaiah and Intertextuality

The purpose of this paper is to explore how Bible translation has shaped contemporary images and conversations about migration and migrants in the public square. In particular, we will examine the way in which the primary term for migrant in the Hebrew Bible, gēr, has been rendered with translations that arise from suspicion and fear of the migrant and continue to perpetuate suspicion and fear of the migrant in contemporary social and political discourse. These translations are not grounded in an accurate understanding of the social and political context of the gēr in the biblical period. The first claim I want to make is that gēr should be translated “migrant” or “immigrant” to most nearly capture in contemporary English the authentic place of the gēr in antiquity. This is what we have chosen to do in the Common English Bible, the first Bible translation in English to make this choice. Where it is used in the book of Genesis and elsewhere, gēr fits precisely the current definition of a migrant, one who makes a “change of residence across administrative borders.” In the biblical period, this meant relocating to take up residence in a new country. It meant leaving the status that one’s own land and kinship structures provided and moving to a new land without these protections. The consequent claim I wish to make is that none of the common translations of gēr—sojourner, foreigner, alien, resident alien—are satisfactory representations of the place of the gēr in the ancient context of the Hebrew Bible. Rather, they are partial translations that promote typical stereotypes of the migrant experience, in antiquity and today. “Sojourner” portrays the migrant as merely temporary in their new place of residence. “Foreigner” stigmatizes the migrant as perpetually other, even when the migrant takes up permanent residence in a new country. And “alien” or “resident alien” demotes the migrant to a non-human or sub-human status. In this paper, I wish to explore both the roots of these translations in a suspicion and fear of migrants and the way these translations have promoted views of migrants as aberrant, threatening, and less than human in religious and political conversations and in the media today. And I want to propose that the proper use of language of migration in Bible translation and interpretation can normalize the phenomenon of migration and create new and more constructive discourses about migration today.

This paper will examine structural linkages and affinities between the Hebrews list of exemplary figures and rabbinic prayers (Mishnah Ta’anit, Amidah) with Didache 10 and Apostolic Constitutions 7.32-33. Some of these passages have been compared fruitfully before, but this study will trace connections in defense of the thesis that liturgical practices and themes drifted freely within the Jewish-Christian milieu of the first centuries of the Common Era. A structuralist approach, focusing mainly on repeated biblical figures and themes, will seek to elucidate several elements of the “Parting of the Prayers”. First, while Did. 10 has affinities with the Model Prayer (Matt 6/Luke 11) and its repetition in Did. 7, the thanksgiving prayers of Did. 10 show closer similarity to Heb 11 and the seven benedictions of m.Taan 1:4. These in turn have resonances with Apos. Con. 7.32-33. The “pull” that the “list of faith” seems to have made in these liturgical communities is significant and needs discussion. Second, the thematic units of these documents then map to the Amidah (Shemoneh Esrei) prayers. The order and form of prayers thus appears to persist in both Jewish and Christian practice for centuries. Finally, the alignment of the thematic units across these documents then hints at an answer concerning how the “Eighteen Prayers” expanded, particularly with regard to the Birkat HaMinim and the separation (by exclusion) of Jew and Christian in this period.

Robin Wood has theorized that “the true subject of the horror genre is the struggle for recognition of all that our civilization represses or oppresses.” Horror films dramatize the reemergence of the repressed, “the happy ending (when it exists), typically signifying the restoration of repression.” Wood’s is just one of many theories of the horror genre, but it has remarkable explanatory power for folk horror films, whose protagonists often represent an oppressive and orthodox modernity suddenly challenged by its pagan antecedents. Although folk horror was not popularly recognized as a sub-genre until 2010, the celebrated “unholy trinity” is half a century old, consisting of Witchfinder General (1968), The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971), and The Wicker Man (1973). Older still is folk horror’s central conflict, and it is no surprise to find it in texts that comprise the scriptures of every good witchfinder: the Hebrew Bible. The biblical prophets in particular, like some folk horror heroes, are proponents of a “legitimate” religion that seeks to annihilate the persistent, heterodox practices of the Other. Refining the sub-genre, Adam Scovell has recently proposed a chain of elements that constitute a folk horror film: landscape, isolation, skewed belief systems and morality, and happening/summoning. This paper locates the links of Scovell’s folk horror chain in the Hebrew Bible’s Former and Latter Prophets. Particular attention is given to the book of Jonah. With its urban setting, self-isolating hero, pious pagans, and divine anticlimax, Jonah subverts the conventions of folk horror. But the narrative is still a nightmare for Jonah and the readers he represents: like the doomed Sergeant Howie keeping his appointment with the Wicker Man, Jonah burns at dawn and discovers that God is not strictly on his side. A dialogue between prophetic texts and folk horror films reveals the biblical writers’ rhetorical use of terror, pits triumphalist biblical religion against the hauntology of paganism, and provides a new lens for psychoanalytic interpretation of the prophets. In turn, reading biblical texts as folk horror both expands and affirms the genre’s conventions, shows how the object of horror’s repression might be a dominant cultural institution, and suggests how horror films might depict and problematize a cinematically absent God.

Jesus’s statements in the climactic exchanges of John 8:31–59 have puzzled both his literary interlocutors and contemporary readers. The longstanding consensus is that vv. 34–38 lack an organizing principle other than the keywords “slave” and “son” (Brown, 1966). V. 35 has been singled out as an independent Parable of Slave and Son, awkwardly inserted by a secondary editor (Dodd, 1963; Brown, 1966). On this theory, the ill-fitting v. 35 is comparable to Synoptic traditions which draw a simple contrast between slavery and sonship (Mark 12:1–11 // Matt 21:33–46 // Luke 20:9–19; Matt 17:25–26; cf. also Heb 3:5–6), and most commentators identify the “son” of the parable as Christ himself. Yet this identification renders the logical connection between vv. 35 and 36 opaque: why should the son’s permanent residence entail that, “If the son sets you free, you will really (ontōs) be free”? Moreover, several considerations attenuate the partition theory: (1) No extant manuscript of John 8 is missing v. 35; (2) the permanent position of a son is a poignant illustration in a dispute which invokes the sperma Abraam (8:33, 37); (3) the textual variants of vv. 34–36—e.g., the removal of tēs hamartias and avoidance of sin as personified master—are more easily explained by the presence of v. 35 and its neutral/positive construal of a household; (4) v. 36 begins with the coordinating conjunction oun, whose purpose disappears in the absence of v. 35, as v. 36 makes little sense as an inference from v. 34. I propose that vv. 35–36 constitute a parabolē (Aristotle, Rhet. 2.20), a rhetorical example from common human experience, with the word “son” (huios) functioning as double entendre. The son is both Jesus himself, one able to set others free (cf. vv. 31–32) and also heir to the household of God, a permanent authority who guarantees a slave’s manumission. Taking vv. 35–36 together as a parabolē requires no textual emendation and preserves the logic of the Johannine Jesus’s argument. Moreover, I demonstrate the cultural currency of the parabolē by adducing P. Petr. 12.3, a will in which the testator frees a slave woman and her son and prohibits their re-enslavement in the future by the testator’s surviving relatives. This text illustrates the social dynamic in which the status and security of a freedman is derived from his or her relation to the household’s heir, an individual who would eventually be in a position to treat the slave harshly or even challenge a prior manumission. Thus, if manumitted by the heir himself, the slave is truly free.

Ethnic boundaries are a defining factor of social life. Who belongs to a group and who does not? The answer to this question provides information about which person receives which treatment and which amount of support, and has which possibilities. Ethnic groups determine by their self-definition who belongs to them and who does not; in doing so, they define a social boundary that does not necessarily have to coincide with the geographic boundary. Therefore, geographical and social boundaries are not inevitably identical. In telling the story about the expansion of the Hasmoneans’ power up to their assumption of the office of high priest, the First Book of Maccabees refers to the Judean group mostly as ‘Israel’. Besides, the Second Book of Maccabees primarily focuses on the prehistory and the early years of the Maccabean resistance movement under the Maccabean brother Judas, whilst it denotes the Judeans as ‘Ioudaioi’. In both books, there are mechanisms of inclusion in and exclusion and from the Judean group, whether the group is called ‘Israel’ or ‘Ioudaioi’. In order to show how inclusion in and exclusion from the Maccabean group work in 1 and 2 Maccabees, two examples for each book will be given (1 Macc 5:9–36, 55–62; 2 Macc 12:3–7, 14:18–25). This contribution aims to give deeper insight into these processes of inclusion and exclusion in the First and Second Books of Maccabees, in order to elaborate how inclusion in and exclusion from the Judean group works. Of particular interest are the questions of who belongs to the Judean group, which member promote and sign responsible for inclusion and exclusion, and how, therefore, the Judean group self-identifies.

Fourth Ezra (2 Esdras 3-14) is the only Jewish apocalypse included in the Christian Apocrypha, unless you count Greek Daniel as an apocryphal book. Its inclusion is sometimes attributed to the framing of 4 Ezra by two shorter Christian prophetic/apocalyptic works at the beginning (5 Ezra) and end (6 Ezra). The textual and reception history of 4 Ezra suggests otherwise. While the Christian appropriation of key elements of 4 Ezra in 5 Ezra played a role in the “Christianization” of 4 Ezra, its inclusion in Christian Bibles in the West, whether among the Apocrypha or in an appendix to the Vulgate after the Council of Trent, was primarily due to the expansive Old Testament canon in the Gutenberg Bible. In many Orthodox churches, 4 Ezra was also included in the Old Testament without the Christian additions (5 and 6 Ezra). It was transmitted in Syriac, Ethiopic, Coptic, Armenian, Georgian, Slavonic and Arabic Christian Bibles. Moreover, with the exception of a few verses of 5 Ezra that were incorporated into Christian liturgy, the Jewish apocalypse was far more influential on Christian history, nowhere more than in the Iberian Peninsula. After tracing the textual history that led to the inclusion of 4 Esdras in the Gutenberg Bible, this paper will focus on the influence of 4 Ezra on the Spanish colonization of Latin America, beginning with Christopher Columbus.

In The Thessalonian Correspondence: Pauline Rhetoric and Millenarian Piety, Robert Jewett argues that reading the Thessalonian correspondence in juxtaposition with a “millenarian model” provides a plausible framework for reconstructing the socio-rhetorical situation of the Thessalonian ekklesia, especially for explaining some Thessalonians’ abandoning of their work, ecstatic experiences, and sexual freedom. I suggest that by adding another millenarian analogue to his model, namely the Ghost Dance movement inspired by the Paiute prophet, Wovoka (which may have even been inspired in part by 1 Thessalonians), helps us to further attune our historical imagination to how anti-colonial/imperial and ethnic concerns may have animated the eschatological vision of the Thessalonians and Paul. In this essay, I offer a social-rhetorical reading of the text that privileges indigenous experiences in its attempt to reconstruct the colonial/imperial situation of Paul and his Thessalonian audience.

This paper explores some of the ways in which characters and events are portrayed in Acts, and specifically how such characterizations reflect authorial purpose. Should the narrative of Acts be read as though character portrayal is part of the author’s literary purpose? And, if so, can this be linked to authorial intent? Does the “intentional fallacy” also apply to literary characterization? These questions will be explored by looking at some specific texts, not only the portrayal of certain people such as Peter and Paul, but also certain events such as the perceived “Roman portrayal” of Philippi (ch. 16) and the “Greek portrayal” of Athens (ch. 17).

This essay examines the relationship between form criticism and William Hallo's contextual approach. Hallo suggested that literary studies might produce a fruitful means of comparison and contrast across ancient literary texts. So this essay examines the most recent insights of form criticism to study how this discipline might inform contextual studies. It looks to the primary form critical concepts of form, genre, and Sitz im Leben to determine how these features of form criticism (especially as today's form critics view them) provide a helpful method for investigating the relationship between biblical literature and texts from the ancient Near East.

The Acts of Thomas and His Wonderworking Skin (Acts Thom. Skin) follows the Apostle’s missionary activities in India. The core of the narrative centers on Thomas’s founding of two churches—the first in the household of Arsenoë, the second in the former temple of Kentera. In both episodes, sexual renunciation features prominently. In the first, Arsenoë’s newfound Christian faith leads her to reject her husband’s sexual advances. This begins a sequence of events that include Thomas’s flaying, Arsenoë’s suicide, and the Apostle’s use of his flayed skin to restore her miraculously to life. This use of Thomas’s skin to raise the dead also plays a key role in the second episode, and so too does sexual renunciation. Thomas’s work in Kentera begins with the Apostle bringing six brothers (and several others) back to life. The governor had killed them all because the oldest had backed out of his engagement to the governor’s daughter. All of the events of this episode are set in motion by the oldest brother’s vision in which Jesus exhorts him to avoid marriage and remain chaste. In both episodes sexual renunciation serves to advance the plot of Acts Thom. Skin, and this paper examines this narrative function. The significance of sexual renunciation, however, extends beyond a few central characters and key moments in the narrative. Rather, in this paper I argue that sexual renunciation is part and parcel of Christian conversion in Acts Thom. Skin.

The Bavli (Meg. 16b), the Yerushalmi (Meg. 3:8), and Massekhet Soferim (13:2-4) all record a scribal practice for writing the names of the sons of Haman (Esth 9:7-9) in a special two-column layout in the liturgical Esther scroll. This halakhic tradition is still followed today, yet it remains understudied in scholarly literature. This scribal midrash concerning the ten sons of Haman suggests deliberate parallels between Exodus and Esther, between Pesach and Purim, through the lens of midrashic intertextuality (Boyarin 1994). This cluster of intertexts was not only written, but also seen, chanted, and heard in the multisensory performance of the megillah at Purim. The language with which the rabbis describe the scribal layout is telling; they contrast the ‘half-brick on half-brick and brick on brick’ layout of the names of the sons of Haman with the ‘brick on half-brick and half-brick on brick’ layout of the Shirat haYam (Exod 15). The latter is more structurally sound than the former, a fact known in antiquity (e.g., Vitruvius, De Architectura 2.4.3). Just as Exodus 15 proclaims God’s lasting kingship in place of Pharaoh (e.g. Exod 15:18), so the rabbis read Esther as proclaiming God’s kingship amidst diaspora in foreign lands. This Purim-Pesach connection draws on the Book of Esther’s note that Haman issued his decree the day before Pesach (3:12), as well as the Haman-Amalek typology already in the megillah. This parallel, subtly traceable in the Greek Additions, becomes a staple of rabbinic interpretation of the Book of Esther in both Targums, both Talmuds, and Esther Rabbah. However, this cluster of intertextual allusions is not only written, but performed at Purim. Both the Bavli (Meg. 16b) and Massekhet Soferim (13:2-4) also mention a tradition in which these sons’ names must be recited in a single breath during the reading of the megillah. Thus, the scribe’s written performance of this midrash in the word-image interplay of the scroll parallels the cantor’s oral performance of the ten sons of Haman in Purim. While most late antique sources on Purim performance suggest that this was a mockery of Haman’s sons—gallows humor, quite literally—one late antique piyyut, “Zeresh’s Lament,” suggests the presence of an opposite tradition in which Haman’s sons were also the victims of their father’s evil. In sum, the performance of the names of the ten sons of Haman in late antiquity suggests the myriad ways in which sacred texts as material objects did cultural and ritual work, and how writing was an act invested with significance beyond mere textual transmission. It also suggests, following Laura Lieber’s recent work on text, ritual, and performance in Jewish late antiquity, that hearing, seeing, reading, and singing must all be considered in tandem as embodied performance.

The period ranging from Alexander the Great’s conquest through the Diadochi’s wars to the Ptolemaic domination on the Southern Levant was eventful in military and political terms. We may surmise that both the turmoil and the imposition of the Ptolemaic order further entailed far-ranging changes in the social structures of the elites in Judea alongside continuities. In this paper I will examine the relationship between empire and elites and its dynamic impact on the balance between various categories of elites: high priest, temple personnel, personnel in the royal administration, and the so-called strongmen documented in the Zenon papyri. I will advance two basic claims, namely, that changes were neither stable nor linear, and that we need to distinguish between structural changes in the state apparatus—which were real—with a change in the identity of the elite families. To this end, I will use recent studies on the relationship between empire and native elites in the ancient Mediterranean and comparative material from Ptolemaic Egypt and Tel Kedesh in Phoenicia. Regarding the high priest, I will examine evidence and comparative material suggesting that he first emerged as the local leader in the era of the Diadochi wars, which resulted in a political void, but his powers were curtailed to a significant extant with the establishment of the Ptolemaic order. Second, I will question the view that the setting up of the Ptolemaic administration together with the increased monetization of the economy entailed the emergence of new, secular elites who were socially distinct from the priestly elites linked to the temple. Likewise, as I will show through the case-study of the Tobiad family, the opposition between priestly families and strongmen may have been overemphasized. The claim that the boundaries between these various elite groups were far less rigid than it has often been argued has potential bearings on our understanding of the social location of texts in this period and the subsequent era.

It is common to speak of Lev 17–26 as the “Holiness Code”, or as the “Heiligkeitsgesetz” in German. In spite of this labelling since August Klostermann, it is far from clear that the Holiness Code (HC) actually represents “law”. Just as with regard to the Deuteronomic Code (DC), this issue is highly debated and poses several important questions. Among those are: Does this designation need HC to be ius (i. e. historically applied provisions), or does it suffice to say that it constitutes leges (utilizing Yale scholar Leopold Pospíšil’s differentiation)? Yet, even if only the latter, does that textual corpus as a whole represent a collection of leges at all? In fact, many regulations are often called “apodictic”, the identification of which as “legal” has been cast doubt upon by Erhard Gerstenberger, and others. Actually, several of those passages seem to be outright ethical and not strictly legal. This paper will offer answers to these and further questions regarding the nature of HC, i. e. whether, and, more importantly, in what ways the designation “law” might apply. For this, the paper will differentiate between an emic, and an etic level of appraisal. In other words, it will both aim at carving out the “self-perception” of these texts, as well as at establishing an assessment based on an inter-culturally valid toolset. Accordingly, the paper will resort to a multi-pronged approach, mainly drawing on methodological, and hermeneutical insights taken from the anthropology of law (Leopold Pospíšil, Wolfgang Fikentscher, Fernanda Pirie), but also revisiting semantic, and form critical arguments. As a result, a nuanced, and differentiated picture of HC as some sort of “artificial law” will emerge, i. e. an intentionally shaped textual body incorporating legal, cultic, ethical, and further elements, but all that in the guise of “law”.

It has long been known that dissonance between the Masoretic consonantal tradition and the Tiberian reading tradition exceeds explicit cases of ketiv-qere and acknowledged instances of qere perpetuum. The written and reading traditions are related, but independent, affording access to more than a single tradition. Divergences between the two are generally (rightly) attributed to secondary development in the reading tradition, sometimes assumed to date as late as the medieval period. Often ignored are affinities between the Tiberian vocalisation tradition and other Second Temple traditions—to say nothing of earlier evidence of phenomena eventually standardized in the pronunciation tradition. The present study illustrates the complex diachronic relationship between various traditions of ancient Hebrew consonantal and vocalic evidence by revisiting one of the most oft-studied cases of apparent Masoretic consonantal-vocalic mismatch: 2ms ךָ- and תָ-. Innovative aspects of the study include maximal incorporation of evidence from various traditions and chronolects, more granular examination of evidence from the Judean Desert and Iron Age epigraphy, and integration of the 2ms issue within the broader framework of dissonance in the combined Tiberian written-reading tradition.

Many professors who have used asynchronous forum assignments to foster engagement with course material have likely encountered student posts that not only fail to engage substantively with course material but are then followed by a steady stream of superficial sentiments of assent. This presentation will argue that tweaks to forum prompts can nourish more substantial engagement with course material and foster more enjoyment of the forum experience for students and instructors alike. The presentation will offer three examples of soliciting student inclusion of mixed media in forum posts. First, the presentation will explore the use of forum prompts that encourage student creation of media in the form of illustrated memes that demonstrate acquisition of course content. This method of meme creation allows students to provide evidence of their learning in creative and alternative formats. Second, the presentation will suggest how inviting students to connect course content to songs allows for both an opportunity to engage with the reception history of biblical texts and to connect existing student interests to course material. Finally, the presentation will highlight how inviting students to engage with news media can illustrate the contemporary significance of thematic elements of the biblical text while simultaneously developing students’ information literacy skills. The presentation will conclude by gesturing toward ways in which these asynchronous forum assignments might also be translated into synchronous class activities in order to bridge student work inside and outside of the classroom.

In recent decades, Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho the Jew has experienced a resurgence of popularity as a potential witness to the complex and shifting relationships between Jews and Christ-followers in the second century CE. The trend in this research is to cast doubt on whether the Dialogue offers an accurate representation of Jewish-Christian dialogue in the second century. It is often suggested that Justin’s knowledge of Judaism comes from second-hand, polemical sources, or that Justin merely uses Trypho’s “Judaism” as a stand-in for what are actually (in Justin’s view) heterodox Christian doctrines and interpretations. In other words, the current consensus denies that Justin in the Dialogue disputes with genuinely Jewish arguments. Such research, however, is often conducted without much dialogue with studies that have queried the sources of Justin’s own theology. One of the key questions that has occupied the latter group is the possibility of Justin’s use of and dependence on Philo of Alexandria. The purpose of this paper is to explore Philo not as Justin’s source, but as (partially) representative of Justin’s Jewish interlocutors. The paper takes up a rarely-noted conundrum in Justin scholarship: the near disappearance of the Logos from Justin’s theophany arguments in the Dialogue. Despite Justin’s extensive use of the Logos in the Apologies, the Dialogue finds him far more often referring to the “other god” to describe the preexistent Christ. After surveying the problem of the Dialogue’s missing Logos, the paper considers several important instances from the Philonic corpus where the Alexandrian exegete discusses the Logos in connection with biblical theophanic accounts. Comparison with the relevant exegetical material in Justin reveals points of contact but also sharp divergences. Though many have noted the similar shape to Justin’s and Philo’s exegesis of theophanies, Justin’s “other god” diverges from Philo’s Logos in striking ways, especially as it pertains to the experience of the visio dei. How can we reconcile the strong evidence for shared traditions between Philo and Justin while appreciating the distinctions? It is my thesis that the relative absence of the Logos in the Dialogue with Trypho is best explained as a rhetorical positioning on the part of the Justin, one that distances his positions from those of Hellenized Judaism. In other words, we would do well to reconsider the possibility that Justin’s exegesis in the Dialogue is employed in part as an intentional response to Jewish exegetical traditions, and thus offers a more helpful window into developing Jewish/Christian relations than many have recently acknowledged.

(this is a resubmission of a paper accepted and then withdrawn last year) This paper examines the interplay between biblical exegesis and Tertullian’s understanding of the New Prophecy through a careful analysis of the role of the Paraclete in both Johannine and North African contexts. In particular, this paper begins with an important corrective to most published translations of Against Praxeas 2.2, demonstrating that Tertullian identifies the Paraclete as the one who will prove the truth of the regula fidei. This point leads into a discussion of how Tertullian conceives of the twofold work of the Paraclete in inspiring Scripture and providing direct revelation through the “Montanist” prophets, showing how these two interrelated aspects of the Spirit’s work both testified to the reality of the divine economy. Finally, this paper examines continuities and discontinuities between Tertullian’s understanding of prophecy and that of his predecessors Justin and Irenaeus, challenging conventional views by demonstrating how Tertullian’s understanding of the Paraclete is a natural extension of earlier views. As a result, we will have a new lens for contextualizing Tertullian and North African prophecy within a broader trajectory of biblical exegesis.

In the first homily on the Creation of the Human Being (or Hexaemeron X), attributed to Basil of Caesarea (ca 330- 379), the main topic is the creation of the human according to the image of God (τὸ κατ’ εἰκόνα), whereas the possibility to achieve the likeness to God (ὁμοίωσις θεῷ) is considered a capacity (δύναμις) to be actualized. This homily compares human striving to be like the prototype with the realization of a portrait, which should be admired for the ability of the painter, not only as a static resemblance. Having the image of God through his creation, human beings have to work their craftsmanship – through free will – in order to realize the resemblance. What is the relationship between the given image (eikon) and the accomplished image (portrait) and how does the painter-metaphor function in Basil’s discourse? Starting from this question, tackled by Anca Vasiliu (L’image dans le discours des trois Cappadociens, 2010), I investigate the painter-metaphor in another Greek Father, Diadochus of Photike (ca 400- 486), who is concerned, in One Hundred Chapters on Spiritual Perfection, with the human constitution as eikon of God. I address the concepts used by Diadochus to illustrate the being and becoming of the eikon: the seal (σφραγίς), the imprint or mark (χαρακτήρ), the trait or characteristic feature (γράμμα). I equally address how Diadochus echoes the Pauline approach to the image of God in its strong Christological articulation and search for Pauline roots of Diadochus’s vocabulary (e.g. Heb 1:3 the Son as image of God is named χαρακτὴρ τῆς ὑποστάσεως αὐτοῦ). I consider the description of the relation image – prototype in terms of “glory” and “illumination” or “resplendence” in Basil (On the Holy Spirit, XVIII, 45, 149C) and Diadochus (ch. 8, 17, 36), starting from Heb 1:3 (ἀπαύγασμα τῆς δόξης). Thereafter, I investigate the shift, in the patristic discourse, from the Pauline Christological understanding of the “image” to a trinitarian (Basil) and anthropological one (Diadochus). I also highlight Diadochus’s platonic language of participation and mimesis, which is meant to clarify the relation between the human and his Archetype. Against this Pauline and Platonic background, I focus on the comparison between the grace of God and a painter, which paints the luminous traits of the likeness over the purified image of God in the human, realizing a perfect portrait, in response to human ascetic efforts (Diadochus, ch. 89). Finally, I assess the conceptual potentialities of the imagery of the painter, painting and portrait, considering its uses in Basil and Diadochus, as well as its relationship to the Pauline concepts of εἰκὼν τοῦ Θεοῦ (Col. 1, 15) and μορφὴ Θεοῦ (Phil. 2, 6). My conclusion concerns the connections and differences between a formal, a substantial and a vivid-performative understanding of the eikon in the patristic discourse, as compared to the Pauline connotations (and terminological renderings) of the “image of God”.

When did the ritualization and Christianization of marriage occur? The answer to that question depends on how we define and apply the terms ritualization and Christianization to the study of early Christian marriage. David Hunter has concluded that the “The absence of explicit witnesses to Christian blessings or ceremonies before the fourth century suggests that the actual ritualizing of Christian marriages occurred very gradually and that marriages customs remained largely ‘un-Christianized’ for a long time.” [Marriage and Sexuality in Early Christianity, 33 (2018)]. In this evaluation of the question at hand, Hunter has equated ritualization with the presence of marriage ceremonies, which has lead him in turn to date the earliest efforts to Christianize marriage to the fourth century, which is when we have the first explicit reference to a wedding blessing by a bishop in the writings of Ambrosiaster. However, the term ritualization has deep roots in anthropology, in which the term is distinguished from ceremonialization. The study of marriage in late antiquity can benefit by applying this distinction to our research. Ritualization is not equivalent to ceremonialization, nor should we assume that the ceremonialization of marriage is equivalent to the bishopizing of marriage. By recognizing these processes as different from one another, with their own unique timelines of development, I argue that the bishop’s blessing is not the place where we should begin our inquiry into the question of when the ritualization and Christianization of marriage began to occur. When we carefully distinguish between the ritualization, ceremonialization, and bishopizing of Christian marriage, we can better understand the ways in which Christians, prior to the third century and drawing from both Jewish and Greco-Roman tradition, began to (re)ritualize and Christianize their marriages, not the through the involvement of a bishop, but through the material actions of the couple during their married, sexual, and procreative shared life, as evident in both the writings of Clement, as well as the non-canonical Gospel of Philip. The latter has not been widely treated as a text that is relevant to the study of early Christian marriage, but I suggest that not only does it show evidence of the early Christianization of marriage, the text also suggests that the Christian community associated with it, uniquely ceremonialized their marriages in a process that did not center around a bishop’s blessing, but whose purpose was to facilitate the reritualization of the Christian couple’s sexual and procreative lives.

Much work has been done in recent years to counter the tendency to consider Jeremiah as a Deuteronomistic text and Ezekiel as a Priestly one. In the past few decades, scholars have begun to recognize that both Jeremiah and Ezekiel reflect both Deuteronomistic and Priestly ideologies and traditions, and that the sharply drawn line between them is more blurred than previously thought. Yet there is one topic about which these divisions still hold: Egypt. In this paper, I will argue that Jeremiah builds on the traditions of the Deuteronomistic school to cast Egypt in a negative light—one that positions it as the land to which the Judahites must not return (Deut 17:16). This corresponds not only to the depiction of Egypt in the Deuteronomistic History (DtrH) as a place which frequently houses enemies of the monarchy (1 Kgs 11:14–22; 11:40) and upon which the monarchy should not rely but also to an emphasis on Egypt as the “house of bondage” for the Israelites, a phrase that occurs in Deuteronomy more than anywhere else in the Hebrew Bible (Deut 5:6, 6:12, 7:8, 8:14, 13:10, and 24:17). Ezekiel, on the other hand, likens Egypt to Israel in his oracles concerning the fall of Egypt, so that Egypt suffers the same exilic fate as the Israelites (Ezekiel 29–32). In so doing, Ezekiel builds upon the Priestly tradition, which deemphasizes the enslavement of the Israelites in Egypt and, instead, highlights a similarity between the Israelites and Egyptians through the traditions about Ishmael in Genesis 17 and 25 and the story of the blasphemer of mixed Egyptian-Israelite ancestry in Leviticus 24. While Egypt remains a key enemy of Judah’s, the emphasis in Ezekiel is on a close relationship between Judah and Egypt but not on the idea of enslavement there. I will argue that the approaches of Jeremiah and Ezekiel to Egypt are not radical innovations but natural continuations of attitudes toward Egypt that are found in Pentateuchal traditions and that have been expanded in light of the specific situation of each exilic community. In the case of Jeremiah, the approach reflects an effort to make Egypt less appealing as a place of refuge to those fleeing Jerusalem leading up to and following its destruction by the Babylonians in 587 BCE. In the case of Ezekiel, the audience was already exiled in Babylon, meaning that Egypt posed no imminent threat as a place of refuge. It is in this context that the mythic dimension of the relationship with Egypt would have been effective. This paper illustrates the stark differences in approaches to Egypt that characterize Jeremiah and Ezekiel and locates those differences within the context of exile.

This paper reflects on the translation style of the Ethiopic translator of 1 Samuel through investigation of select chapters. Working from the consensus opinion that the Ethiopic version was translated from a Greek Vorlage, I investigate the text-linguistic relationship between the presumed precursor (usually construed as OG) and Eth-1Sam (as found in Dillmann’s edition). I focus on “de- and re-Semiticization” as a translational phenomenon in which typically Semitic syntactic patterns were lost in the translation of the text from Hebrew into Greek and then re-implemented (often obligatorily) in the movement from Greek to Ethiopic. Often, the “re-Semiticization” phase of this process produced morphosyntactic patterns that diverged from the underlying Hebrew original. For example, the Hebrew construct chain (N.CONST + N.ABS) was morphologically revised using the Greek genitive (N + N.GEN). In turn, the Greek construction frequently underwent morphosyntactic transformation when it was realized in Ethiopic as the waldu la-negus construction (N-PRO + PREP-N). Similarly, the Hebrew N + DEMONST.ADJ (e.g., ha-‘iysh ha-hu’) was frequently rendered in Greek with a simple ART + N construction (ho anthropos; 1 Sam 1:3), which was then rendered in Ethiopic with the demonstrative (we’etu be’si). In some cases this could be explained as dependence on an Intermediary translation, but other cases imply that the addition of the demonstrative adjective was due to the translator’s re-Semiticization (e.g., ye’eti be’sit in 1 Sam 1:18). I use the typology of translational transformations proposed by Chesterman (2000) to track these obligatory or culturally-preferred grammatical changes, differentiating them from semantic and pragmatic changes. This method allows greater precision in identifying authentic instances of re-Semiticization more likely to be due to the translator’s method, enabling the researcher to differentiate them from merely apparent instances of the phenomenon that seem to rely on intermediary translations. The goal of this study is to offer methodological controls for the task of determining the Greek manuscript family from which Eth-1Sam was originally translated.

The label of “model minority” with reference to Asian-Americans has rightly come under scrutiny in recent decades. The work of historians such as Madeline Hsu and Ellen Wu has demonstrated the particular role that Asian-Americans played in constructing a new cultural narrative which repositioned them as desirable immigrants. In Christian communities, the construct of “model minority” has often been seen mirrored in the biblical book of Ruth. As ancient Israel’s most famous daughter-in-law, Ruth continues to play an outsized role in shaping Asian-American Christian identity as compliant, loyal, and family-oriented, despite being foreign. Recent global developments have mounted a challenge to this account of the “model minority.” On this note, it should also be recognized that Ruth has also been (mis)used within Asian-American Christian circles as a “biblical” mandate for forced cultural assimilation, oppressive family relationships, and muting dissent if various kinds. Ruth’s mixed history of interpretation necessitates a different kind of “model minority" for faith communities, one that Jeremiah’s portrayal of Ebed-Melech the Cushite can supply. His intervention on behalf of a prophet about to be killed (Jeremiah 38) marks him as a “model minority” who speaks truth to power despite his marginal position in King Zedekiah’s court. However, J. Daniel Hays has shown that Ebed-melech is frequently overlooked because of the unfounded assumption that, as a black Cushite, he must have been a slave or otherwise minor figure. For this reason, an Asian-American reading of Ebed-Melech serves the double purpose of (1) gaining a biblical model for how a “model minority” can faithfully protest the injustices of the establishment, and (2) exposing the tendency of both Western and Asian cultures (from both of which Asian-Americans draw their hybrid identity) to overlook the lifesaving contribution of a black Cushite in redemptive history. The tendency of ethnic Asian Christians to reproduce the racist biases of Western interpreters about Africa’s place in the Bible has broader implications for reconciliation in the fraught relations between African-Africans and Asian-Americans. These two groups have both suffered at the hands of others as well as often being pitted against each other.

The significance of the indivisibility of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDG) for biblical ecological hermeneutics and sustainable living has a lot of potential but scholars have not yet fully explored these possibilities (Nilsen, 2021). I suggest that heeding Nilsen’s challenge of partnering the biblical texts using various methods of doing ecological hermeneutics with the UNSDG is beneficial for both domains. On the one hand, the dialogue will highlight the various UNSDG reflected in the biblical texts especially on the interaction between the divine, non-human and human creation and raise the necessity of doing ecological biblical interpretation. On the other hand, an ecological reading of biblical texts will also provide religious grounding for the UNSDG to invite people of faith in concretizing the UNSDG by 2030. In this presentation, I will use the principles of ecological hermeneutics as outlined in the Earth Bible Project as I focus on the character of Miriam in the Old Testament in relation with various bodies of water in Exod 2:1-10; 15:20-21; and Num 20:1-2. I will first briefly present some observations using a hermeneutic of suspicion about the character of Miriam in these texts, from the viewpoint of feminist biblical scholars. Next, I will identify and highlight Miriam’s relations with the divine, her siblings and the peoples, and the non-human creation. Finally, I will retrieve some alternative images of Miriam and her relationship with water and integrate them with contemporary women’s struggles concerning water during the COVID-19 pandemic and how the biblical Miriam can accompany them in realizing the 2030 UNSDG #6 Clean Water and Sanitation; #11 Sustainable Cities & Communities; #15 Life on Land; #16 Peace, Justice & Strong Institutions; and #17 Partnerships for the Goal.

The paper posits that a digitally enhanced version of the well-known pastoral-theological spiral help students discern the presence of the Word in the World in a Liberal Arts course at the De la Salle University in the Philippines in a pandemic setting and beyond. The pastoral spiral is generally composed of three basic steps: See (to assess a problem in a particular context) -Judge (Social and Theological Analyses) and Act (the planning and executing actions to solve the problem). This spiral has been enhanced with the addition of Evaluate-Celebrate steps for a more complete process (Talavera, 2020). Nonetheless, while the Celebrate step includes varied forms, the language obscures the need for much-needed ritualization under the negative experiences in the pandemic. Thus, an enriched version of See-Judge-Act-Evaluate-Celebrate/Ritualize becomes necessary to explore issues such as the loss of lives and work and to provide pandemic coping from the religious tradition in the Philippines which commemorates the 500 years of Christianity and yet beset by inadequate government response to COVID-19 (Ibita, 2021). Matthew 20:1-16 will serve as a test-case. The biblical exploration will employ combined contextual hermeneutics (liberationist, feminist, empire, and postcolonial) while the delivery of the process will show how students learn through a combination of the Learning Management System Canvas, Mentimeter, Google Jamboard, Canva poster and Spotify.

Making use of the concept of market and competition in understanding relationship among and within religion is new and promising because it applies a new and well developed framework to explain ancient religious phenomena. However, it could have a risk of merely using a new term to describe an old phenomenon without giving any new perspective nor providing new insight to the field. Scholars have also observed that there are competition among religions on the one hand, but not every relationship can fit the concept of competition on the other hand. This paper proposes, first, that without clearly defining and choosing an appropriate concept of market and its relevant theoretical framework, the use of the concept of competition may not necessarily lead to new and deeper perspective. In light of that, the paper further proposes, instead of using the traditional concept of market as places, either physical or non-physical, for exchange, the concept of market under the branch of New Institutional Economics (NIE) is more relevant and helpful to illuminate the inter and intra religion relationships and behaviors. Under the theory of NIE, market in narrow sense is just one form of contracts being chosen subject to different constraints. Therefore, a better concept to explain religious relationships will be theory of contract, focusing on how specific form of contract is be chosen, instead of assuming market as the predetermined form of interaction. In this direction, different interactions or relationships resulted from different form of chosen contract can be interpreted as different form of religious competition. Competition in this sense is not limited to rivalry relationship but provides us a broader lens to look into the complicated relationships based on the framework of NIE. The final part of the paper will use the relationship between gentile Christians and Jewish Christians as a demonstrating example of how the suggested NIE concept and theory can help to generate a better theoretically ground to explain religious competitive relationships.

This paper argues that John’s Christology affirms the material visibility of God by reconciling the notion of an “unseen” God (1:18a; 5:37; 6:46) to the visibility of the Father that Jesus presents (Jn 12:45; 14:9). It proposes that John 1:18a is best read as “no one has ever [fully] seen God [yet]”. Three pieces of evidence support this claim. The first is that “unseen” and “invisible” are not synonymous. A survey of Second Temple, Biblical, and Rabbinic literature reveals that one may not assume that all Hellenized Jews embraced Platonist notions of invisibility. Second, John 1:18a exists in the same Gospel as John 12:45 and 14:9 – in which Jesus presents the Father as visible, however restricted that visibility may be to Jesus’s person. Third, John’s use of Isaiah (Jn 12:41) suggests that the visibility of God in Jesus is consistent with God’s visibility in the theophanies. The divine corporeality evident across the Hebrew Bible sets a precedent for the incarnation.

In the letter to Galatians, Paul uses the story of Sarah and Hagar as an allegory to create a hierarchy between mothers and their children. The superiority of a free, upper class mother contrasted against the inferior, slave mother, fractures maternal subjectivity and splits maternal bodies into an idealized Subject or realized object. The maternal fragmentation performative in mothers also extends to their children as dichotomized mothers bring forth children whose subjectivity is fractured and disjointed. The emergence of these fragmented infants are dichotomized by Paul as “child of the slave born out of flesh,” and “child of the free born out of promise.” Thus, born in the likeness of their mothers, these children are subjected to a hierarchy where the life of some children are valued, preserved, and protected more than, and at the cost of the life of other children. The appraisal of some maternal and infantile life over and above the rest in the Letter to Galatians 4:21-31 sheds light on a new citizen whose value is based on the geographical, social, and cultural location of the womb in which they were conceived. The surrogacy industry in India is estimated to be a 2.3 billion dollar industry. Surrogacy in the contemporary context, is depicted as a “win-win” situation where “women help other women.” However, a closer look reveals that lax laws, cheap maternal labor, the availability of English speaking doctors, and accessible technology in the Indian context promotes the exploitation of third world women at the hands of their first world contemporaries. Surrogacy not only highlights the ways in which Indian surrogate mothers are exploited, but also raises questions around the identity and citizenship of both the mother and her child. In other words, the life of a child born to an Indian surrogate mother receiving financial, emotional, physical, and medical support is valued at a much higher cost than the biological child of the surrogate mother; conceived through the flesh. Furthermore, the subjectivity of the surrogate child conceived through “non-traditional means” is uplifted as the “ideal citizen” and given the privilege to share in the wealth of the Nation; a right that is taken away from the biological children of surrogate mothers living in poverty. Although, the context of Sarah and Hagar and their children is different from the Indian surrogate mothers living in postcolonial India, the subjectivities of both these mothers and their children bear some similarities. Reading Galatians 4:21-31 alongside and through the contextual and real-life experiences of Indian surrogate mothers, this paper seeks to reinterpret the subjectivities of Hagar, Sarah, and their children through the lens of Race, Nation, and Citizenship. Thus, drawing on postcolonial, feminist, and race theories, my paper will attempt to construct a nuanced reading of this text as conversations of identity relating to surrogate mothers and their children pertaining to Race, Nation, and Citizenship come to be seen through a more complex and ambivalent light

Over the years, the Textual History of the Ethiopic Old Testament (THEOT) research group has developed many processes to transcribe, compare, and research Ethiopic manuscripts. A lot of this work has been automated, yet some bottlenecks remain such as the manual creation of the “Dots and Bars” document. This document is built to align manuscript transcriptions so that they can be compared using the scripts developed by Garry Jost. The Dots and Bars document starts off with parallel lines of text, often coming from 30+ manuscripts. From that starting point, researchers manually align each segment of text, creating columns for matching words. This work can take many hours to complete. In this paper, I will explore the possibility of automating this process. The need to align sequences of texts arises in many areas of research, one of which is DNA comparison. As researchers compare two or more DNA sequences, they need to find the places where they match and where there are differences. Due to the large amount of data encoded in a DNA sequence, automated tools have been developed to accomplish the comparison. One such tool is the BioPython pairwise2 module. This module is a Python package that was built to compare similar strings of text. In this paper, I will explore the pairwise2 package and how it can be used to compare Ethiopic manuscripts. I will present a Python program I have built around pairwise2 that starts with a corpus of manuscripts and outputs an Excel file containing the aligned texts. The goal of this program is to produce a file that reduces the manual work necessary in text alignment. While the automated approach will likely never be one hundred percent accurate, the hope is that the program can complete a majority of the work, thus speeding up the process of producing the Dots and Bars file.

The presentation aims to offer a reading of the qur’anic narrative in Surah 27 (Q al-Naml 27: 15—44) whose initial opening scene zooms into a little ant laying a strategy of nonresistance in the face of Sulayman’s encroaching army. The ant’s story functions as a foreshadowing to the politics of the Queen of Sheba, where the ants’ survival plan is later amplified as the Queen’s diplomatic response to Sulayman and his threat of a military invasion. The scenes move back and forth between the courts of the Queen and Sulayman, both of whose opposing dynamics are presented as two modes of being in the world. I make use of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s dialogical ontology to read the inevitable encounters that arise between humans and nature, man and woman, power, and powerlessness, but most importantly the modality of the political as an alternative to armed action. By reading the subtexts of the dramatic dialogue and eventful plot, I propose to present a qur’anic politics of nonresistance as an alternative to armed patriarchy. I present a hermeneutics of power relations by using Christopher Long’s analysis of Greek mythology. His use of the way Zeus swallowed Metis as a metaphor of subverting feminine power provides a political reading of Sulayman’s interest in de-throning the Queen. Sulayman’s obsession with “stealing” the throne, resembles the obsession of Zeus, and therefore “articulates a dimension of the tragic dialectic of patriarchal dominion,” as Long argues. Sulayman’s reliance on physical force as his means of consolidating his multi-dimensional sovereignty over being, represents an invincible form of power immune to challenge. One feels like an unheard ant in the face of such an armed, epistemologically framed, and religiously justified, patriarchal power and authority. The parallels that arise in the stories of the ant and Queen, woven into a unified narrative, are worth noting because they echo an ethics of nonviolence that underpin the qur’anic text, and which is emphasized as being marginalized and unheard. The passage therefore functions as a compressed ethical code in whose tropes the larger ethical themes of the Qur’an are enlisted. The nonresistance of the ant and Queen echo the qur’anic Prophetic archetypal response(s) as an alternative to domination and the threat of force when facing authoritarian nations or tyrants. The passage unfolds between the tragic authority of patriarchal and military dominion and the promise of a nonviolent dialogical politics in which a woman, diplomatically, and non-violently, resolves an inter-state conflict while also laying a larger ethical paradigm as an alternative politics of encounter.

Feminist scholarship of The Song of Songs has often treated the poem as a celebration of femininity, a kind of subversive enclave from the pervasive androcentrism of the biblical texts. And yet, as J. Cheryl Exum, Fiona Black, and others have rightly pointed out, the text is not immune from the dynamics and discourse of patriarchy. This paper takes an intersectional approach using the recent work of feminist philosopher Kate Manne, who argues that the distinction between “sexism,” and “misogyny” sheds analytical insight on the pervasive experiences of women in patriarchal contexts. Song 5 meets her criteria of “misogyny” insofar as it offers evidence of a regulatory or “punishing” dimension of feminine experience. Manne’s work offers terminological clarity that helps to explain the conundrum of how a text so celebratory of female eroticism also witnesses to and encodes gendered forms of domination. At the same time, her distinction also helps to open a path for reparative feminist readings.

In his account of the Jewish war in Histories 5, Tacitus provides a detailed excursus on Palestine, on the origins of the Jews, their religion and their customs (5.2–5). His account is full of misunderstandings, false information, and prejudice against the Jews. The paper will briefly outline Tacitus’ excursus on the Jews with a particular interest in his description of the Jewish religion and customs. It will then focus on Tacitus’ accusation of the Jew’s hostility against all other humans (Hist. 5.5.1). It will argue that, whereas the accusation of superstition of the Jewish people and their opposition against the polytheistic worship is as old as anti-Jewish resentments in Greek and Latin literature are, its explicit interpretation as hostility against all people occurs not earlier than Diodorus Siculus (Diodor 34/35.1; 1st century BCE). Based on a comparison with similar allegations against the Jews in Greek and Latin literature, the paper will show that this topic became more prominent since the Flavian age because the Flavians’ propaganda legitimated the new dynasty with the victory over the rebellious and hostile Jewish people. Tacitus’ accusation, it will be argued, cannot be understood without the background of the Flavian propaganda on the occasion of the Jewish war.

The aim of this paper is to revisit the question about the relationship between archaeological record and the writing of sacred scriptures like those of the Hebrew Bible. Some scholars assumed that large institutions like palaces or temples and, most importantly, evidence of extensive bureaucratic practices need to exist. For example, the well-known work of Finkelstein and Silberman affirms that this kind of sociopolitical context appears after the foundation of the Omrite Dynasty in Samaria, but particularly during the last decades of the Kingdom of Judah. From this point of view, it was in that time that the sacred scriptures began to be written. However, from a minimalist perspective, like Thompson's, the evidence of those kingdoms remains insufficient to affirm the existence of large institutions and bureaucratic practices, so he preferred, instead, to consider the Persian and Hellenistic periods as the moment when the sacred scriptures began to be written. In spite of this, the archaeological record of these last periods, as Na’aman shows, does not allow to affirm the existence of such socio-political context in Yehud Medinta either. One last possible answer could be that the sacred scriptures began to be written in Mesopotamia or Egypt, but once again there is no evidence of it to the present day. We think that the main problem of this common proposal is that it applied a model that is more adequate for the polities of the Bronze Age, whose institutions used the complex cuneiform or hieroglyphic system closely related to ancient and prestige scribal schools. In contrast, the linear alphabetical systems originated in marginal areas of palatial regimes by people who apparently were not causally related with scribal schools and its diffusion corresponds with the peripheral regions of great empires of the Iron Age. Indeed, the imperial powers adapted it once they conquered a large population familiarized with this kind of scripture, as the Aramean kingdoms of Syria. The linear alphabet was first used by small polities of the Levant, but its use may have extended to other sectors of society later on. Objects with this kind of scripture appeared in different contexts, not only in cities, towns, and possible villages, but also in isolated locations in arid zones. Even more, the most ancient biblical texts were found in desertic regions associated with small communities like Qumran, a kind of organization that practised opposing principles to those of the palaces and temples. A similar scenario can be proposed for the Greek cities of the Archaic period, where the first writings of presocratic philosophers appeared, like Thales of Miletus. In those regions a particular kind of sociopolitical organization emerged, where we neither find relevant bureaucratic practices. In sum, it is necessary to review our models about the relationship between archaeological record and the writing of sacred and philosophical scriptures in a linear alphabet, because this system emerged in a particular social context and was used by distinct kinds of polities, some resembling traditional palatial systems, but others not.

Review of David Brakke, The Gnostic Scriptures

The OFW (Overseas Foreign Workers) as the “Etceteras” of the Gospel of Mark: A Korean Filipino Re-Reading of the Markan “Ochlos”

I used text linguistics of ETCBC (Eep Talstra Center for Bible and Computer) located at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. It mainly observes the syntax of the book of Numbers and defines the relationship between a preceding clause and the following clause, by the iterative process from the first clause to the last clause of a text I built up a syntactic-hierarchical structure of the Pentateuch, in which I find the location of the structure of Numbers. In this session, I would like to elaborate on the thematic progress in the second major division (4 sections) of Numbers. Whereas the first major division focuses on the theoretical foundation on which the second major division develops, the second major division focuses on how the theory was performed by participants and how YHWH responded to them and instructed them, and how it instructs contemporary generations. I note syntactic patterns, in other words, constituents' orders (Wayyiqtol + explicit subject clause in which divine formula is combined with locative phrase or time phrase) work as textual frames of the Pentateuch and in Numbers and extract the thematic meaning of the delimitations in the structure. I list persuasive linguistic clues, rhetorical clues to support the demarcations in Numbers. The theme of a section comes from a thorough observation of the participants and their roles in a section. The observation is based on thorough participants' identification in all the lexemes, prefixes, suffixes that are attached to substantive, preposition, infinitive. The process helps a reader to see who are the main players in a section, how they affect other participants or events, and what is the main theme of a section. I compare two adjacent sections between a syntactic pattern in terms of the percentage change of shared participants, shared roles, explain the percentage change indicate linguistic connectivity between two sections, thematic separability between them. I argue the arrangement of sections in the second major division of Numbers reflects a well-organized plot, well-designed literary structure. Moving from the first section to the last section in the second major division of Numbers develops the plot of a story systematically, the process causes exciting suspense of the thematic flow. Through the presentation, I argue the second major division of Numbers gives hope to readers, not despair. It encourages contemporary readers to hear the word of YHWH, obey it, and achieve the promise of YHWH. The main theme of the second major division of Numbers is relevant to the authority in the community of YHWH. It will shed light on the question of 'how much authority, how much flexibility, and how much influence should/could the educators (including professors, teachers, rabbis, and pastors) have in their teaching?'.

The paper will explore the use of the Hebrew word “seed” in Isaiah 40–66 in order to advance some guiding principles for interpreting figurative expressions in poetic prophecy. More often than not, the word “seed” in Second Isaiah is understood to mean “offspring” in a general sense, and is so rendered in many standard translations (41:8; 43:5; 44:3; 45:25; 48:19; 57:3, 4; 59:21; 61:9; 65:9, 23; 66:22). The paper reconsiders this convention. Poetic discourse is generally referential and implicit in nature, and much of the underlying conceptual knowledge is left unsaid in the text. Accordingly, once that conceptual background is clarified, images and figurative expressions—which might first appear vague or incoherent—may appear to express a rhetorical or poetic concept substantively fitted to its context. The paper will consider if the same holds true for the word “seed” in Isaiah 40–66.

This paper advances Hortense Spillers’ use of the term “flesh” as that basic materiality that resists captivity, dispersion, and the dissolution of kinship ties by surfacing the ways that flesh operates according to these black feminist claims in the Hebrew terms bāśār and shĕ'er. If Spiller’s “flesh” is to become a generative theological category, “flesh” must be exhumed from the mound of sin-talk piled upon it by the Apostle Paul. This paper seeks to contribute to that effort by showing how the Hebrew concepts found in bāśār and shĕ'er function according to at least three of Spiller’s fundamental claims about flesh as they appear in a number of her essays in *Black, White, and In Color*: (1) Flesh is the something that stands behind the body, prior to categorization and the violences of social organization. bāśār connotes a basic materiality that marks all of humankind and can even indicate the materiality of non-human creation. bāśār can connote male, female, or uncategorized genitalia (Exo 28:4; Lev 6:3, 15:2-19, 16:4; Ezek 16:26, 23:20). This materiality is not averse to spirit but rather operates in partnership with spirit (Gen 17:3, Job 189:26, Ps 84:2, Ezek 11:19, 36:26, etc.). (2) Flesh is inherently social, corporate, and relational. shĕ'er can be translated “flesh” or “kin.” Leviticus especially is concerned with the relationships between kin-flesh, the protection of vulnerable kin-flesh from violation (Lev 18:6, 12, 13, 20:19, 21:2, 25:49), and the right of flesh to redeem its kin (Lev 25:49). (3) To tell the story of flesh is to tell the story of the “high crimes” done against it (Spillers, “Mama’s Baby”). The Psalms and exilic prophets tell the story of a bāśār that thins, dies, rots, and becomes food for scavengers (Ps 38:3-7, 70:2, 102:5, 109:24, Ezek 11:7, 24:10, etc.). In both Spillers and the exilic texts, the “seared, divided, ripped-apartness” of flesh never exhausts the potential of flesh (Ibid., 206). Coming from the root shĕ'ar, “to remain or be left over,” the semantics of flesh is the story of what remains. The paper then turns back to Spiller’s corpus showing how Spillers herself engages in creative appropriation of explicitly biblical flesh talk, suggesting that Spillers’ project has been a re-imagining of a biblical concept all along. The paper concludes with one example of what emerges when a biblical text and black feminist theorist are read together through a hermeneutics of flesh. Following Spiller’s call for attention to the work of “fugitive poets,” the paper engages the poetry of NourbeSe Philip’s Zong! in which Philip engages the poetry of Ezekiel 37 (Spillers, “Black, White, and in Color,” 299). These fugitive poets point to a flesh that exceeds its own scattering and insists upon its own en-Spirited re-membering, even after the mass murders of Middle Passage and Babylonian exile. Philip and Ezekiel exemplify how black feminist thought and biblical imagination collaborate to insist that all flesh holds a basic integrity, insistent relationality, and inherent en-Spiritedness that demands an alternative sociality in which all flesh is honored.

In this paper, I illustrate how the Book of Joshua can open up discussions of contemporary forms of settler colonialism. I put Joshua's lists of place names in Joshua 13-21, the story of the Gibeonites in Joshua 9, and the narrative of the altar in Joshua 22 into conversation with the history of the place I now live (Durham, NC) and with the Naqbah and subsequent Israeli encroachment on Palestinian land. The paper is not a discussion of pedagogical method, but is intended to model forms of interpretation that allow students and biblical scholars to engage more deeply in the issues that affect their communities.

In comparative analyses of lawgiving in biblical and Mesopotamian tradition, scholars generally talk about two fundamentally different mentalities or modes of thought defining each. Mesopotamian lawgiving was based on a “dualistic” model, whereby the human lawgiver (usually the king) was a temporal representative of the gods whom they had mandated to create and maintain social order. The divine law of the Bible, by contrast, represented an innovation (or theologization) of this older tradition, depicting Israel’s god Yahweh as the source of both cosmic justice as well as the civil laws governing human beings. The current study challenges this model, which essentializes Mesopotamian mentality as a stage of thinking anterior to biblical tradition, one Jewish thought ultimately leaves behind. In a diachronic manner, I trace how both Mesopotamian and biblical literature compared and at times equated human rulers with gods in their shared capacities as lawgivers. This is not a study of divine kingship in the ancient Near East, but a more focused analysis on how the very act of lawgiving was in some sense divine. This mentality was most apparent in literary, ritual, and iconographic depictions of the king in his judicial capacity as a sun god. Relying on interpretive approaches from the fields of Assyriology, biblical studies, art history, and cognitive metaphor theory, I argue that solar imagery extended beyond figurative rhetoric and metaphor in some contexts, blurring the lines between mortal and divine lawgivers.

Matthew 27:25, “his blood be upon us and upon our children,” has been a problematic and troubling verse for interpreters, and worse for those who have suffered its Wirkungsgeschichte. C. G. Montefiore laments that it is “a terrible verse, a horrible invention…. one of those phrases which have been responsible for oceans of human blood and a ceaseless stream of misery and desolation” (1947). Various readings have been offered, which Catherine Sider Hamilton groups under two headings: “standard” views which take the passage to presage the destruction of Jerusalem and rejection of Israel, and “ironic” readings which see in the spilling of Jesus’ blood the “unwitting” redemption of the people (2017). With her, I concur that neither reading convinces fully. Sider Hamilton has productively fit the passage within the matrix of traditions concerning innocent bloodshed (2008; 2017). Recently, Richard Hays has attempted to deal with these two sides of the issue by noting the “hermeneutical potentiality” of an ironic, intertextual reading that, though likely unperceived by Matthew himself, is nevertheless felicitous to later readers (2016). Whereas Sider Hamilton focuses on innocent blood traditions, and Hays on the encyclopedia of reception rather than production (cf. Alkier, 2009), this paper goes in a different, though perhaps not contradictory, direction by fitting Matt 27:25 within a wider narrative-critical pattern in Matthew’s passion centered on eschatological inversion. After noting issues with both the “standard” salvation-historical reading of Matt 27:25 (e.g., Clark, 1947; Gaston, 1975) and the “ironic” interpretation (e.g., Cargal, 1991; Carter, 2001), I then make the case for eschatological inversion in Matthew’s Passion. I first note the pattern that Jesus’ death brings about the inversion of what is normal. For example, the sun is darkened; Jesus’ closest followers flee from him; his nearest companion, who claimed he would rather die than desert, thrice denies knowing him; a notorious prisoner is freed while the innocent Jesus is led to his execution; the religious elite, previously worried about a riot, end up inciting one; even Jesus’ God, so close to him otherwise, apparently abandons Jesus in his final moments. Viewed within this sequence, the rejection of Jesus by the Jerusalem crowd comes into sharper narratological focus: even those among Jesus’ own people, whom he is to save (1:21), call for his crucifixion after being “seduced” by the religious elite (Konradt, 2014). Having established the inversion motif, I adduce patterns of inversion in late-antique eschatological texts (e.g., 1QpHab 2:12-15; 4 Ezra 5:1-13; T. Mos. 7-8; m. Soṭah 9:15; b. Sanh. 97a) to argue that Matthew’s use of the inversion motif for Jesus’ rejection is similarly eschatological. Lastly, the paper challenges those who take this inverted temporary state to be indicative of Matthew’s rejection of Israel tout court (Origen; Dahl, 1983; Marguerat, 1995; yet cf. Saldarini, 1994; Davies and Allison, 1997; Sider Hamilton, 2017). Instead, it is argued, since the other relationships are restored in Matthew, so too should the reader expect the possibility of a similar rapprochement between Jesus and the people.

Robert Jewett was a leader among biblical scholars in seeking insight from popular culture and then using that insight intertextually to help discover new meaning resident in a biblical text. This essay will seek to assess Jewett's contribution methodologically, place that contribution within the larger discussion of constructive theology, and then illustrate that approach with reference to Romans 1-2, particularly those texts which speak of the limitations and possibilities of “natural” theology.

This paper analyses the ways in which the Qumran texts draw the lines between “us and them” and which “others” are testified in the scrolls. The theoretical framework is the social identity perspective, according to which the human tendency to categorize their social environment and draw their sense of self from various group memberships is a built-in natural capacity. “Othering” is normally understood as a negative or extreme form of this categorization. Whereas the Qumran movement is often viewed as the prime example of Jewish sectarianism, I will view it as a set of dynamic group processes, negotiations, and competitions. Texts do not reflect reality, they construct it. From this angle, it is also possible to ask if the texts include any recognition of entanglement with the “others” while striving to keep boundaries clear.

This paper analyses Artemisia Gentileschi’s use of canonical scripture in the production of three of her biblical heroines - 'Judith Slaying Holofernes' (1620-1); 'Esther before Ahasuerus' (c.1628-35); 'Mary Magdalene' (1616-17) - in the context of the Italian renewal of the Querelle des Femmes. Through analysis of the religious underpinnings of these culturally significant works, it will consider Artemisia as a Christian exegete and proto-feminist, and address the often-overlooked question of how Artemisia was engaging with biblical sources. Using the narratological approach evident in Artemisia’s contribution to Bronzini’s contemporaneous biography as exemplar, it will argue that her works offer a proto-feminist exegesis that remains relevant. Artemisia’s artworks give insight into a generational resistance to the rampant cultural misogyny that was frequently dependent upon the patriarchal framework of Christianity. Though much discussion is given to Artemisia’s proto-feminism, due consideration of the relationship between that feminism and her (at least culturally) Christian faith is notably absent. Garrard, for example, makes a compelling case for reading Artemisia’s work in the long trajectory of feminist movements but her focus on the socio-political context fails to provide a full account of the distinct role of Christianity. By considering Artemisia’s various portrayals of biblical women in the context of her faith as well as her feminism, this paper will seek to offer a more fulsome account of both the works themselves and the significance of the Bible in the context of Christian proto-feminism in Counter-Reformation Italy. Artemisia’s ‘auto’biography in Bronzini, which creatively rewrites the most traumatic period in her personal life, takes an approach to narratology that shows limited concern for historical objectivity in favour of restoring female agency. This paper will argue that a similar approach can be seen in her visual interpretation of biblical texts, and will thus argue that this mode of narratology can be understood as interpretive method. By using this approach as a lens to reconsider Artemisia’s portrayals of Judith, Esther and Mary Magdalene in dialogue with the biblical texts, this paper will analyse how faith and feminism are at work in the act of adapting word to image. Hutcheon (2006: xvi, 9) variously describes adaptation as “repetition without replication” and “derivation that is not derivative”. In this sense, this paper will use these three case studies to demonstrate that Artemisia’s biblical women offer an adaptive exegesis of scripture. More than just a replication of the Douay Rheims text, it will argue that these works offer an adaptation grounded in her specific personal and cultural milieu. Moreover, it will show that the works offer a unique perspective on the role of Christianity in the burgeoning feminist movement of Artemisia’s age, that resists the false separation of religion and gender-politics. Ultimately, this paper will argue that Artemisia’s paintings here model a mode of biblical interpretation that prioritises amplification of marginalised female voices over direct replication, and therefore that Artemisia can be understood as a foremother of modern feminist historiography in her exegetical narratology.

The ‘Table of Nations’ in Genesis 10 has long been recognized as combining material from the Priestly Source (vv. 1-7, 20, 22-23, 31-32) with non-Priestly material (vv. 8-19, 21, 24-30). While the non-Priestly material contains material from a wide variety of sources, much of it dependent on other material from the Pentateuch, the list of eponymous ancestors in the Priestly material contains a large number of names which make their first appearance in other sources during the Neo-Assyrian period. This paper will examine the list of descendants of Japheth in vv. 1-4 in light of threats to Assyria’s northern border during the reigns of Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal to argue that the extent of Neo-Assyrian influence on this material and its implications for dating the Priestly source has been overlooked. While toponyms and ethnonyms such as Gomer (as Gamir/Gimir), Madai, Javan, Tubal (as Tabal), Mešek (as Mušku), Tiras (as Tiris), and Tarshish first emerged in the first millennium and appear in Neo-Assyrian sources from the ninth to seventh centuries, other names from the line of Japheth appear only in a much narrower date range and can be linked to the ‘Cimmerian’ (Assyrian Gimirayya) migration of nomadic groups originating from north of the Caucasus which began to threaten Assyria in the middle of the seventh century BC. Omen queries from the reign of Esarhaddon show that the Assyrian king was concerned with the threat posed by the Gimirayya as well as another group called the Iškuza. Earlier attempts to equate the term with the Greek skythoi have been discarded, and the name is known only from the omen queries and royal inscriptions of Esarhaddon. The similarity between Iškuza and Aškenaz in v. 3 has long been noted, but the significance of Aškenaz’s status as a son of Gomer and the chronological narrowness of the term have not been fully understood. Furthermore, this paper will argue that Togarmah, the third son of Gomer in v. 3, can likely be equated with the Gimirayya ruler Tugdummê, who alternately allied with Ashurbanipal and then turned against him, threatening Assyria’s northern frontier from the 660s to the 640s and killing Gyges of Lydia. The threat posed by the Cimmerian migration brought the land beyond Assyria’s northern border into the consciousness of ancient Judah, and the mention of specific names related to these events allow this passage to the closely dated to the mid to late seventh century BC. Further examination of other Priestly genealogies such as the descendants of Ishmael in Gen. 25:12-18 reveal additional names of seventh century date, suggesting that the entire Priestly source may have been composed in the latter half of the seventh century, and further suggesting a Josianic origin for the source.

At the intersection of cognitive linguistics and psycholinguistics is the principle of concepts, “…mind frames that make up the common currency of our thoughts and are required in our normal day-to-day thinking and behavioral functioning,” which are associated with words. Not only do words vary in meaning from one location to another, within one location the meanings of words change over periods of time. Likewise, concepts also take on new meaning, especially cross-culturally. In this paper, I will explore how grammatical gender influences not only the understanding of a text but also the translation, interpretation, and embodiment of texts cross-culturally. The Hebrew term נחשׁ will be used as the highlighted example for this presentation, with demonstration how its translation into German changes the conceptualization based upon the grammatical gender. Additionally, information will be shared about future studies concerning this phenomenon.

The field of Hebrew studies is slowly becoming aware of the role and significance of verbal complementation (valency). Recent grammars give witness to this fact (Van der Merwe et al. 2017; Cook & Holmstedt 2013). When applying valency to the Hebrew Bible, the analysis in a number of cases is straight-forward, if not intuitive. ‘Give’ (ntn), for example, is trivalent: I1 give it2 to you3 (Gen. 23:11). Yet the verb ‘eat’ is notoriously difficult, both in Hebrew (’kl) (Forbes 2016) and throughout the world’s languages (Gillon 2012; Cennamo 2017; Puglielli & Frascarelli 2011). Even more complicated are phrases that might be termed ‘idiomatic’. In an effort to handle the complexities of verbal valency throughout the world’s languages, some linguists are combining two distinct and seemingly contradictory approaches: projectionist and constructionist (Ágel 2015; Ágel & Fischer 2015; Willems & Coene 2006; Coene 2006). The former approach is verb-centric, by which the verb determines the complements. The latter, on the other hand, de-centers the verb, giving prominence to arguments and other contextual features that combine with the verb. A constructionist approach can make sense of the trivalent She1 sneezed her tooth2 across the yard3 (Goldberg 2006), whereas a projectionist approach struggles because ‘sneeze’ is prototypically a monovalent verb. This paper attempts to further the study of verbal complementation by applying both projectionist and constructionist approaches to the Hebrew Bible. In hopes of showing the promise (or peril) of combining such approaches, the application will be made on one of the more difficult, albeit productive, binyanim in the Hebrew Bible, namely, the Niphal.

In 2 Sam 5, David is threatened by the ‘blind and lame’ and attacks the ‘blind and lame.’ His hatred for them is exposed, and associated with a decree that ‘the blind and the lame shall not enter the house’ (2 Sam 5:8). In 2 Sam 9, however, he welcomes Mephibosheth, who is ‘lame’ into his house and gives him dining rights (2 Sam 9:7). This contrast is rarely explored, except through brief comments about David’s kindness towards someone ‘hated by his soul’ (pace Ceresko and Vargon).2 Such readings emphasize Mephibosheth’s dependency and David’s kindness, but ignore Mephibosheth’s power and the power of including the hated in the house. I argue that Mephibosheth has power because of his lineage and his disability; both render him different and dangerous before a jealous king who is nonetheless concerned with his duty. In this paper, I survey these issues through a Girardian lens, giving Mephibosheth back the agency which the biblical text bestows on him, and figuring David into the Mephibosheth story.

The Textual History of the Ethiopic Old Testament (THEOT) project has been well served by the development of its methodology, which employs manual and computer processes to compare and analyze Ethiopic texts. The computer processes have been implemented in a set of Google Apps scripts, where input data housed in Word docs and Google Sheets has been converted to output data in additional Google docs, in some cases with informative hover tips, and in visualizations such as a dendrogram. Also, a website, the THEOT Ethiopic Text Viewer, displays the texts in convenient fashion for further analysis. Now, aided by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the THEOT Team is afforded the opportunity to re-think or re-imagine the nature of these processes. This endeavor involves the collaboration of the two teams of the NEH grant, the Philology Team (Curt Niccum, Steve Delamarter, Ralph Lee, Daniel Assefa, and Garry Jost), and the Data Team (Brent Reeves, James Prather, Steve Delamarter, and Garry Jost). The teams have adapted the principles of industry best practice Agile development, whereby the teams 1) define the desired user stories, that is, what the scholars/users want to be able to do, or what questions they want to have answered), 2) implement the highest priority user stories in short one- or two-week iterations, and 3) demo the results to the teams for evaluation against the acceptance criteria of the user stories. Although my presentation will include information about technology decisions, it will focus on defining the needs/requirements of the scholars to help answer their questions about the Ethiopic texts and the textual history of those texts. The “Input, Algorithms, Output” of the title of this presentation could be re-framed as: 1) the raw data of the manuscripts along with select metadata; 2) the research processes that the scholars employ to help answer their questions; and 3) the resulting reports, visualizations, and websites that support this research. The presentation will end with a brief discussion on future directions for my research.

By and large, scholars have posited that the relative dearth of demonic beings and incantatory literature in the Hebrew Bible was due to the stringent monotheistic theology endorsed by the biblical scribes. According to this traditional model, the uncontested divinity of the God of Israel did not allow for the existence of capricious numinous entities whose exercise of misfortune and harm occurred outside the direct jurisdiction of the deity, thus prompting their general exclusion from the biblical writings save for a few anecdotal remnants that somehow escaped complete censorship. This study challenges this preeminent perspective and instead proposes that the cursory and obscure role of demonological traditions and knowledge in the Hebrew Bible most likely reflects the specific social, cultural, intellectual, and material realities embedding demonic discourse in ancient Israel and Judah rather than simply the monotheistic beliefs of its writers and redactors. After briefly tracing the intellectual history of the monotheistic model, this study will unpack how material culture, scribal education and occupation, socioeconomic contingencies, and the canonical process each played a formative role in shaping the relative disinterest in demonological customs, knowledge, and ritual displayed in the Hebrew Bible. In doing so, this study strives to move past the unilinear theological narratives that have dominated our understanding of the transmundane realm experienced and envisioned by the biblical writers and more authentically situate the demonological landscape of ancient Judaism within its proper historical context.

The textual history of Proverbs has puzzled researchers due to the large-scale order differences between LXX/G Proverbs and Masoretic/M Proverbs. The difference concerns the location of two large text-blocks (Prov 30:1-14 and 30:15-31:9). In this paper I focus on the last two verses of the Words of the Wise (WW) text-block (24:21-22) and the first two verses of the Words of Agur (WA) text-block (Prov 30:1-2)—the seam uniting the two according to G’s arrangement. When we examine the way these two texts interact literarily in Hebrew, we find an overlooked, sophisticated instance of paronomasia between Proverbs 24:22 and 30:2 which exploits the polysemous nature of the root בע"ר and the sound similarity of אידם (24:22) and אדם (30:2)—a Hebrew pun only recognizable in a Hebrew version of Proverbs with G’s arrangement of materials. Finally, I discuss implications for viewing G’s positioning of the WA text-block as chronologically prior to M’s arrangement.

I Thirst: Spirit, Truth, and Living Water (John 4:7–42)

Though a wide range of scholars have posited much about the sexual relationships and identities of the main characters of the book of Ruth (Ruth and Boaz as heterosexual romance; Ruth and Naomi as lesbian romance; Boaz as homosexual; Ruth as bisexual), all of these readings have relied on a straightforward dyadic resolution to the tensions in the text. But to what extent is a dyadic resolution to the reading of the story a result of social and cultural conditioning that allows neither readers nor exegetes to be more imaginative with the triangular/triadic nature of the Naomi-Ruth-Boaz relationship? Attending to the textual lacunae as well as the textual clues – the use of the roots חסד and אהב, for example – in the Book of Ruth, I will argue for a triadic resolution to the story. I will explore the ways in which gender identity, cultural stereotypes, and disability may play into our readings of this narrative. Using contemporary ideas about polyamory, in particular, I will consider the ways in which Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz may interrelate to each other not as rivals for affection, but as a hidden transcript for a relationship of polyfidelity between the three of them, ultimately thereby sustaining a fertile and caring family unit.

This paper traces the research in which I have engaged with the Book of Ezekiel against the backdrop of my identity as a middle-class Jew, lesbian, feminist and biblical scholar - as they have shifted over the course of three decades. I note direct connections between my social, economic, cultural and religious locations and the questions I brought to the text. I reflect on my initial lack of awareness of how circumstances in my life were impacting on my scholarship and how I now find that my awareness strengthens my work, makes it more meaningful for me personally, as a scholar, and perhaps most importantly as a teacher. This paper begins with a story that emerges in the mid-1980’s when I was in my twenties, preparing for my doctoral comprehensives, coming out as a lesbian, involved with Take Back the Night marches, deeply involved in a progressive Jewish community and fighting against apartheid in South Africa. While all of this was happening, I was preparing for my comprehensives and after reading carefully through the Bible in Hebrew, I landed in the Book of Ezekiel. I would never have predicted living with Ezekiel, from day to day; but that is exactly what happened. The paper closes with reflections on why I am currently equally engaged in studies of the Book of the Leviticus alongside Jewish biblical theology and queer readings of biblical narrative.

The violent language exhibited in Ezekiel 16 is apparent and unsettling. Without overlooking other texts of a similar orientation, this study examines the violent imagery imposed upon vulnerable female bodies and the “affective hold” (as W.A. Joh uses this terminology) of such imaginaries. While scholarly examinations have probed the historical and literary dimensions of the violent language in Ezekiel 16, the affective dimensions of the text have been broadly assumed in the response of interpreters that point to unsettling pornographic or voyeuristic posture presupposed in the metaphor. This study picks up on such responses to examine the text through the lens of affect theory, which foregrounds non-material responses of emotion, sensation, and being as essential registers that shape perceptions of power, gendered relationships, and other social constructs that are a part of embodied living. This study will prioritize grief as one affective dimension that is absent in the language of Ezekiel 16 that perpetuates and intensifies not only the violent effects of, but delimits the restorative (im)possibilities within the metaphor.

Codex Vaticanus (4th c. CE) is one of the earliest copies of the Greek Bible that contains both the Septuagint and the New Testament. Although the complete manuscript is the product of multiple scribes, one particular scribe has been attributed with copying both portions of the Septuagint (1 Kingdoms 19.11b–Psalms 77.71; Hosea–Daniel) and the entire New Testament (Grenz 2019). Although scholars have differed with respect to the exact portions attributable to this copyist, this scribe has been termed “Scribe B” since the early days of text-critical work on Codex Vaticanus. In this paper, I will demonstrate that there are a handful of features in Scribe B (or his predecessor) that demonstrate advanced and/or productive knowledge of Hebrew phonology. In other words, Scribe B (or his predecessor) updated certain orthographic features (in transcribed or loaned Hebrew names) in such a way that only a scribe with knowledge of Hebrew phonology would be likely to do. Some of these features even find parallels in the epigraphic and documentary record of Hebrew/Aramaic‒Greek bilinguals writing in Greek in Judea-Palestine of the Roman and Byzantine periods. In this paper, I will cover features like (i) the use of the Greek digraph ει to represent long /iː/ in Hebrew names (see also Williams 2018), (ii) the use of χσ to transcribe /ʃ/ in letter names in Hebrew acrostics, (iii) the use of τιαδη to transcribe /ṣ/ (צ) in a letter name in Hebrew acrostics (see also Steiner 1982), (iv) the use of στ to transcribe /ṣ/ (צ) before /r/ in Hebrew names, and (v) the spelling ιωανης (with one ν instead of two νν) corresponding to the Hebrew name יוחנן. (The final example is more indicative of a Roman Jewish context). Although each individual feature might be explained otherwise—it is possible that one or more of these features are original—taken altogether these features point to knowledge of Hebrew phonology on the part of Scribe B (or his predecessor). The internal distribution of these features across the Scribe B material in Codex Vaticanus, in comparison with other early witnesses to the NT, can shed further light on original spelling conventions in the New Testament text.

In Gregory of Nyssa’s De perfectione, the motif of imaging plays a prominent role since there he engages with biblical evidence of Christ being the image of God. Even if a Trinitarian dimension is present in the treatise, what should not be downplayed in reading Gregory is his emphasis on the economic paradigm of the Son’s imaging the Father. Thus, the paper argues that in De perf, Gregory, dealing with Col 1:15, speaks primarily not of the Trinity “in itself” but of the divine economy realised in the Son’s incarnation. It is an alternative to the evaluation of De perf by Giulio Maspero, for whom the Trinity is the dominant subject of Gregory’s discussion so that Gregory shifts to the oikonomia only for a moment, working mainly within the Trinitarian framework. But if the overall framework of Gregory’s exegesis of Col 1:15 is incarnational, then the “image” Gregory is writing about is not a “pre-incarnate” Son imaging the Father apart from the economic relation to creation but precisely the incarnate Son. Moreover, all of this has a direct impact on what the Christian life is like: it is imitatio Christi. The paper consists of three parts. The first part focuses on a text that is crucial for the argument of the paper, namely a passage that explicitly points to Christ’s becoming God’s image. In this passage, one can find not only the term εἰκών but also μορφή and χαρακτήρ. The second part deals with Gregory’s further discussion on the way how human beings assimilate to the crucified Christ, becoming themselves God’s image. In the final part, where a parallel is drawn between Gregory and Irenaeus, some more general theological and anthropological implications of Gregory’s thought are shown.

Although scholars have spilled much ink over the topic of the Bible and otherworldly violence, little has been said about the function of such violence and the social effects it had on the original community to which the message was propagated. In this paper, I interrogate violence in the visions of proto-Zechariah, focusing specifically on violence enacted upon villainy figures. Specifically, I will analyze Zechariah’s second (the vision of four horns and four craftsmen), fourth (the vision of Satan and Joshua), and seventh (the vision of the flying ephah) vision. I ask why it is that the prophet chose to enact violence on such figures in imaginary realms and, in conversation with anthropological literature on violence, theorize the social work the propagation of these visions accomplished in their original context. I demonstrate that otherworldly violence performed against a villain accomplishes some of the things this-worldly violence against a human typically accomplishes, but eschews the expected consequences of physical violence, i.e., escalation and complete social and political disaffiliation. The violent image thus had tactical potential socially and politically for Zechariah and his program.

The late Second Temple period saw numerous conflicts and dissensions concerning Torah interpretation and observance. While halakic controversies in the Jesus tradition focus on Jesus and the Pharisees, extant evidence for contemporary legal interpretation and development is mainly found in the Dead Sea texts. The character of many of these texts have often been described as realist, or legal essentialist, in contrast to the nominalism, or legal formalism, that came to predominate later rabbinic halakah, which is regularly ascribed anachronistically to the Pharisees. Within such a binary construction, Jesus frequently seems to side with the Qumran realism/essentialism. For a more meaningful understanding, however, we need to see this within a broader framework and consider the gradual (and uneven) shift from Hebrew torah (instruction, guidance, as in ancient West Asian tradition) to Greek nomos (constitution, law, jurisdiction), taking place during the Greek and Roman periods and sometimes described as a development from a descriptive to a prescriptive function. The judicial shades of meaning that Jewish “law” was imbued with influenced the ways in which it was understood, interpreted, interacted with, and adhered to. Within such a framework, some of the Dead Sea texts can be understood to take legal essentialism in an innovative direction, at times expanding or even breaking with previous custom and practice, while the Jesus tradition often suggests a custom-based and pragmatic or traditional approach, but without the more formalist defences, including some strained exegesis, found with later rabbis. I argue that Jesus did not understand the Torah as legislation in a Greco-Roman sense, but as a resource for wisdom and understanding, making people righteous and enabling them to exercise justice. Hence his legal interpretation was intrinsically bound up with his prophetic critique of the elite and defence of the weak. With such a traditional attitude to the law, there is no real conflict between the guidance and instruction of the Torah and its pragmatic and customary application. Some of the texts from Qumran provide us with a window into a process of reorientation with regard to the role and character of the Torah, which characterised not only the yaḥad, but late Second Temple period Jewish society at large. The early Jesus tradition similarly attests to this process, albeit in a slightly different key. In this paper I compare a few key texts to illustrate similarities and differences.

In Gal 3:8-14, Paul begins and ends with blessing in Abraham, but in between addresses the curse. The curse is for law-breakers, but Jesus experienced the curse in their place on the tree. The present experience of the promised blessing of Abraham, inheriting the coming world, is experienced through the Spirit (3:5, 14), available to the families of the earth blessed in Abraham. Paul ingeniously links multiple texts based on shared key terms.

This exploration of justice in the Pauline epistles rests on the following three-legged stool: 1. that in the Pauline letters, adikia should be translated as “injustice” thereby providing a key to the widespread concern with justice in Paul’s letters; 2. that in Paul’s letters, dikaiosyné should be translated into English in a way that honours its translation of two Hebrew words in the LXX, tzedaqah (usually translated as “righteousness” in English) and mishpat (usually translated as “justice” in English); and 3. that Paul’s echoes of and allusions to the psalms (especially the psalms of lament) and the prophets reflects a deep concern with socio-economic and wider societal justice. These three points will provide the basis for my argument that throughout his letters Paul is concerned not only about our relationship with God, but also with the overarching biblical concern for justice, broadly conceived as care for the most vulnerable in our midst: not just the orphan, the widow and the stranger, but also the land and other creatures. In the end, it is this socially embodied expression of justice that encompasses the dikaiosyné of God.

Among the potential clues for understanding the compositional history of Isaiah 40–66, scholars have long recognized the value of geographical and topographical language. These clues have primarily been understood in relation to questions of the social location of the prophet, for example, as in the case of the famous “desert motif” and “second exodus” (e.g. 40:3–5; 41:17–20). In this paper, I propose a different approach to such language by analyzing “natural” space in Isaiah 40–66 by using insights from the work of Henri Lefebvre. According to Lefebvre, space is not a passive container “indifferent to its content,” but instead it both produces and is produced by social and economic relations. Using this theoretical perspective, I will examine the production of “natural” space in Isaiah 40–66 with an eye toward questions of continuity and discontinuity in the major units of Isaiah 40–48, 49–55 and 56–66. What new insights might result from considering the relation between prophetic expectations in these texts and natural space — especially as it contrasts with urban space? Certain restorative and transformational descriptions of natural spaces might suggest a particular ideological framework, such as the wilderness becoming like a garden (51:3; cf. 58:11), deserts filling with water (41:18; 43:19–20; cf. 42:14–16; 50:2), or coastlands awaiting divine salvation (51:5; 60:9). Such hopeful expectations for natural space can be contrasted with texts focusing on Zion/Jerusalem. In the urban/rural dichotomy of Isaiah 40–66 too, there are instances where the restorative vision for Jerusalem extends outward from urban space (42:11; see also 40:9; 44:26; cf. 54:3); others remain strictly Zion/Jerusalem focused (52:1; 60:14; 61:4; 62:12; 64:9; 66:6), instead describing urban redevelopment, and the construction of walls and gates (e.g. 56:5; 58:12; 60:10, 18; 62:6). This kind of spatial analysis comes to a head in the case of Isaiah 60–62, a text often understood to contain the kernel of Trito-Isaiah. Here the natural sphere is understood in economically extractive terms, as natural space produces wealth which gravitates to the urban Zion/Jerusalem. Considering various constructs of natural space in such texts will reveal ideological patterns which can illustrate new avenues for understanding the (dis)unity of Isaiah 40–66.

As is well known, the Corinthian community had a penchant for the gift of tongues. Scholars continue to argue whether Paul meant a Spirit-given ability to speak in known languages or some other kind of spiritual language. While this is an interesting argument, clearly within the setting Paul envisages, he has in mind people speaking languages largely unknown to the community gathered. Hence, the tongues must be translated (or interpreted). As such, I will simply assume in the paper that these languages are not the lingua franca of the majority in the gathered community. With this in mind, one implication of his teaching is worth considering. Namely, what does Paul’s instruction suggest concerning the use of languages in a general sense in gathered worship settings? This is an appropriate question, as Paul is clearly addressing practices within a gathered worship setting as he instructs the Corinthians. Further, he is speaking to a group or groups in which a variety of languages (spiritual or known) can potentially be spoken. It is also cogent as with increasing globalization, what were once monocultural church services across the world (especially in the west) are becoming increasingly multicultural gatherings. This transformation is certainly the case in my church in Glenfield, Auckland, NZ. Such things are also important in contexts where colonialism has marginalized indigenous populations and the rightful desire to do everything possible to ensure that indigenous languages are not only preserved but celebrated and encouraged. Finally, I have also observed differing approaches to the use of language in NZ churches and Christian gatherings. It is not uncommon to hear people speak in a language different from the dominant language. In some settings, this is even celebrated. However, when untranslated, people often have no idea what is being said. Is this appropriate? Conversely, some settings do not allow the use of languages other than the dominant language. Is this apposite? So, what might Paul say to us in such settings? This paper will consider what Paul’s instructions to Corinth may say concerning the use of language in multicultural gatherings in today’s multicultural and multilingual churches. A range of things will be canvassed including Paul’s positive view of different languages as a gift to be exercised, yet his disdain for them in the public space when not translated; his assumption of a lingua franca; the power that publicly spoken and translated tongues have in terms of prophecy, education and edification, prayer, song, thanksgiving, praise, and evangelism; the converse power of untranslated language to marginalize, render uncomprehending, offend, and completely put off and alienate others (especially guests); the expectation that the speaker will translate where no translator is found; multi-lingual communities as a fulfillment of OT eschatological hope; and so on. I will specifically apply these things to my own church in New Zealand, confident that this will spark thoughts and responses from others in similar situations.

In the New Testament, 1 John 5:4 is the only verse in which the noun for “victory” (nikē) appears, and it is associated with pistis (belief/faith): “…And this is the victory that conquers the world—our faith.” In the Greco-Roman world, nikē and pistis were also aligned: the concept of victory was associated with the goddess Nike (Roman: Victoria), who often appeared in the context of military battle, and writers like Polybius and Josephus reveal that these victories were often achieved through a “pistis to the Romans.” The Romans would conquer other cities by offering a pistis relationship in which opponents would submit themselves to Roman rule. Given this cultural background of pistis and victory, it is interesting that conquering language appears several times within the five chapters of 1 John (2:13-14; 4:4; 5:4-5), with multiple opponents including the evil one, the devil, false prophets, and antichrists. The first named conquerors are the “young men,” which underlines the sense of fighting as they are of military age. However, they are not to conquer the Greco-Roman world with violence. The multiple references to murder in chapter 3 suggest that others may threaten violence against them. However, the writer exhorts his audience not to respond like Cain who killed his own brother. While the Greco-Roman culture might respond in violence to those who have different beliefs, the Johannine community are to respond with love, a message that is reiterated several times in the letter. By the end of the epistle, the writer makes clear that the conqueror of the world is the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God, and that victory is pistis in Jesus. They do not conquer the world, as the Romans do, by enforcing a pistis toward the emperor; the Johannine believers conquer the idolatry of the Greco-Roman culture through pistis in Jesus as the true divine Son. Thus, conquering the world in 1 John means conquering through belief in Jesus as the Son of God and responding with love, even while the Greco-Roman world achieves victory through the threat of violence and by enforcing a pistis to the Roman emperor.

Theological Educators as Priests, Midwives, and Freedom Fighters: Seeking a More Inclusive Pedagogy

The precise meaning and function of the historical present is still a topic of debate. In order to contribute to the discussion, this paper examines the historical presents in LXX Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Joshua, and 1 Samuel. Analyses of certain tokens that may help elucidate the function of the historical present are then presented. A potential problem with studies examining the historical present is the danger of circularity. One may come up with a theory of how the historical present functions and then read that function into the texts and contort the interpretation of the text to make it fit one’s theory. It is especially difficult to avoid this circularity with vague notions like prominence, vividness, and discontinuity. The LXX books are a useful corpus to examine because they provide minimal pairs and potentially allow one to discover the reasoning for a linguistic choice. By comparing the LXX with the Hebrew text, there may be some hints as to why the historical present was used in a particular environment. Thus, the tokens in the various LXX books are analyzed in an attempt to uncover factors in the syntactic and discourse environment that may have motivated the translators to choose the historical present over the much more common translation equivalent for wayyiqtol, the aorist. The analysis of both the Hebrew and Greek texts can hopefully help to constrain the interpreter’s tendency to make things fit into his or her proposed theory. This paper makes much use of the work of Steven Runge and Talmy Givón, who work within a functional framework. Thus, this paper follows them and utilizes the tools of the functional tradition. Since this project requires an examination of the discourse environment above the clausal level, the discourse-pragmatic analyses prominent in functionalism are especially important. In addition, the paper seeks to bring in the perspective of Cognitive Grammar (CG). According to the principles of CG, each linguistic form pairs with one or more meanings. Meaning is defined as the conceptualization associated with a linguistic form. Conceptualizing content, though not limited to visual perception, can be likened to the viewing of a scene. If this viewing metaphor may be elaborated and taken into the domain of film production, then the historical present may be conceptualized like a cut from one camera shot to another. The effect of this film-making technique is not too different from the everyday bodily experience of blinking and shifting one’s gaze. In this paper, it is argued that the historical present functions to mark discontinuity and that it is able to do this because the present tense form in a historical context is associated with construing a shift in the viewing arrangement of a scene.

The earliest manuscript we have today does not show the section, paragraph, and chapter breaks. Since the third and fourth century manuscripts, some markers such as spacing and ekthesis are appearing. However, interestingly, the modern Greek New Testament has clear and explicit paragraph/section divisions indicated by the heading of a new line and spacing between verses. Then, in what criteria can we make breaks between chunks or clusters of a text? Also, what benefits can we acquire through paragraphing the individual book of the New Testament? The present essay will attempt to answer those questions through Information Structure (henceforth, IS). Without providing an overarching system, paragraphs may be arbitrarily or intuitively divided. Alongside this, if making a unit does not help to read or understand the Bible, there is no need to make such divisions. In this regard, this paper employs information structure and modifies it for the Greek New Testament accordingly. Then, finally, this essay utilizes the information structure to Romans 14 as a test case. To succinctly explain, the trajectory of IS can be detected through three periods, pre-Prague school, Prague school, and post-Prague school. Though each era has its distinctiveness in terms of the notion and applications, there is a commonality throughout the trajectory of IS. That is, IS has been dealt with the clause level. However, this essay will propose that the analysis of IS ought not to be confined in the clause level but should go to the discourse level. A language user does not enumerate all information in a jumble of thoughts. Rather, s/he organizes it to convey the message. That is to say, as an architect, the author displays each information as a constituent of a particular information unit and constructs the discourse as a whole. Furthermore, the author introduces information linearly and hierarchically. It is linear because the author should choose the language and places it sequentially, from words to phrases, to clauses, to sentences, and to larger units. It is also hierarchical since information is regimented by structures of linguistic units. Thus, depending on how the author uses different language repertoires, the information would be structured differently. Therefore, through the analysis of IS, the reader would be able to identify how information is introduced and elaborated upon by the latter elements, how the author encloses a linguistic chunk as an information unit, and how each information unit collaborates to build up a discourse. In this regard, the present paper will project analytic tools for each level of language—the clause, clause complex (sentential/super-sentential level), and discourse. Finally, as a test case, this paper analyzes Rom 14:1–15:13 through information structure and proposes that Paul displays information and structures information units to convey his message of the discourse that is the unity in Christ.

Anti-Asian xenophobia and discriminatory acts against Asian Americans have increased significantly as the COVID-19 pandemic has increased across the US. On March 16, 2021, a series of mass shootings driven by racism took place in metro Atlanta. Eight individuals were killed and six of them were Asian women. While trying to make sense of this senseless tragedy, Asian American theologians, ministers, and leaders begin to raise a series of challenging questions: How can we comfort the families who have lost their loved ones? How can we as Asian Americans ever find a sense of belonging in this nation? How can we as Asian American Christians take faithful steps to break our overdue silence and stand in solidarity with our larger communities in great pain? Seeking to address these questions, we examine the historical novella in Esther to explore and understand (1) what it means for the Jewish community in exile to embrace their bicultural identity and (2) how these Jewish cousins named Mordecai and Esther use their agency to protect and save their fellow Jewish people from annihilation at the hands of Haman. Along with Daniel and Ezra-Nehemiah, Esther belongs to the post-exilic portions of the Bible. While Esther similarly addresses the issues of Jewish lifestyle in exile, what portrayed in Esther is different. Esther is not associated with loyalty to God (Daniel) and adherence to the Torah (Ezra-Nehemiah) that indicates the importance of the traditional Jewish identity. Specifically, in chapters 2-3, Esther and Mordecai are depicted as “assimilated” individuals who use pagan names, conceal their Jewish identity, and work in a cooperative manner with the Persian royals. In chapter 4, on the other hand, Esther and Mordecai observe the accepted codes of Jewish identity. They openly identify themselves as Jews and exhibit their concern to ensure the survival of the Jewish community on Persian soil. From the sociological perspective, what we see in the exiled lifestyle of Mordecai and Esther is “segmented assimilation.” These two Diasporic Jews learn and absorb the Persian culture, language, and rules while remaining continuously rooted in their Jewish community, which ultimately enable them to fight for the safety of their community in a time of great crisis. In conversation with Asian American studies, sociology, and practical theology, this co-presentation will highlight how the Jewish lifestyle in exile of Esther and Mordecai are strikingly similar to how Asian Americans experience their lives as bicultural immigrants seeking a sense of belonging. Moreover, Mordecai asks Queen Esther to intervene for her people and challenges her not to “remain silent” at “a time like this” (4:14). What does it mean for Asian American faith communities to break our silence at a time like this as we lament the death of our women? The contextual re-reading of Esther will offer critical insight on how Asian Americans can use their agency and voices as a way of protecting and advancing the welfare of their communities in the face of a global pandemic, systemic racism, and xenophobia.

While many scholars pointed out the traumatic experience of the Jewish War and the Temple's destruction to be crucial in forming early Christian identities, not many have analyzed the generational dynamics over this issue present among early churches. While the impact of the War was limited in predominantly gentile churches in the diaspora, studies suggest that this was still seriously traumatic for the first few generations who were deeply associated with the Jewish religiosity and shared the symbolic significance of the Temple(Gruen 2002). Furthermore, sociological studies on post-war trauma suggest that the trauma transmits throughout generations, being dealt differently by older and younger generations. Younger generations, in particular, actively address the trauma through the redescription of the past and older generations, as creating their own generational identity and presenting new hopes for the community(Daiute and Turniski, 2005). In this article, through literary analyses of a selection of examples from Luke-Acts (ex. Mary-Zechariah; early apostles-Stephen; Saul), I explore how Luke addresses the problems of different understandings of the Temple between older and younger generations and trauma persisting in the community. By portraying the old and young in particular ways, Luke attempts to heal the communal trauma of the War, promote mutual understanding between generations, and empower the next generation of the church. Erich S. Gruen, “Roman Perspectives on the Jews in the Age of the Great Revolt,” in Andrea M. Berlin and J. Andrew Overman(eds.), The First Jewish Revolt: Archaeology, History, and Ideology (London; New York: Routledge, 2002), 27-43. Colette Daiute and Maja Turniski, "Young People's Stories of Conflict and Development in Post-War Croatia," Narrative Inquiry 15.2 (2005): 217-40.

Exegetes concur that the term ἔγγυος (surety) is a legal concept or metaphor (e.g., Oepke, Spicq, Attridge, Graßer, Weiss), but despite its significance, the meaning of ἔγγυος has not attracted the careful attention that it deserves. Interpreters usually read ἔγγυος in the sense of ‘guarantee’ or ‘assurance’ (e.g., Preisker, Spicq, Backhaus, Bruce, Lane, NIV, NRSV, ESV) with respect to the salvation (e.g., Michel) or the future of the believers (e.g., Ellingworth) without specific historical and lexical studies. Some other scholars (e.g., Moffatt, Graßer, Koester) interpret the term ἔγγυος in terms of ‘mediatorship,’ but the meaning is still unclear. In this study, we will consider the concept of ἔγγυος in light of Greco-Roman legal practices and documentary papyri, which remain unexplored by NT scholars. It should be noted that, in this verse, the author of Hebrews does not employ βεβαίωσις or βεβαιότης (guarantee, assurance), but ἔγγυος (surety) which contains certain societal implications. In particular, we should perceive that the surety is a sort of intercessio (e.g., Digesta 46.1.48; 46.1.70.4) in the Roman law (ius intercessionis), as Domitius Ulpian mentions, “the giving of a pledge [of the surety] constitutes an intercession” (pignoris datio intercessionem faciat; Digesta 46.1.8). In this vein, to become a surety for someone is to incur liability by entering into a contract (i.e., fideiussio) with someone’s creditor as a third party, and also means the substitution or addition of a new debtor. This sense of the surety is also widely observed in Greco-Egyptian documentary papyri. For instance, the phrase ἔγγυος εἰς ἔκτισιν (the surety for repayment) is broadly used as a ‘surety formula’ in ancient contracts (e.g., BGU 2.592; P.Mich. 1.70; P.Mich. 5.328; P.Mich. 5.343; C.Pap.Gr. 1.14; P.Oxy. 12.1483; P.Col. 10.281, etc.), and signals that, by becoming a surety, a third party could assume the loan or the penalty which the original debtor could not pay off. From this perspective, ἔγγυος was not simply an assurance but an intercessor for the debt or the penalty. This definition matches well with the given context of Heb 7:22. In the adjacent context, the author of Hebrews takes up the theme of Christ’s priesthood and the oath (7:1-21; 7:22-28). The role of the surety as intercessor begins by the oath in ancient contracts (e.g., P.Oxy. 2.259), and this concept is reminiscent of ‘Christ’s mediatorship by oath’ in Heb 6:17b (he mediated it with an oath [ἐμεσίτευσεν ὅρκῳ]). Furthermore, the concept of ἔγγυος as intercessor fits with the notion of Christ’s priesthood (e.g., “Christ intercedes for us” [ἐντυγχάνειν ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν; 7:25]). Thus, in this study, we argue that, as a legal metaphor, the concept of ἔγγυος in Heb 7:22 does not merely refer to ‘the assurance of the salvation’ or ‘the assurance of the eschatological destiny of the believers,’ but conveys the intercessorship (intercessio tacita) of Christ, who paid the price on behalf of his people for the sake of their sins and covenantal failures through his atonement according to the new contract (i.e, the new covenant) as a surety (i.e., priestly intercessor).

In this paper, I will discuss the fundamental theoretical notions and methodological frameworks of the Functional Sentence Perspective theory and apply them to a biblical text of the Greek of the New Testament. In the first section, I will examine the significance of the Functional Sentence Perspective theory in the context of modern linguistics and its core notions that are particularly founded by Vilém Mathesius, who represents the classical period of the Prague School of Linguistics. In the second section, I will deal with the new form of the Functional Sentence Perspective that has elaborated and advanced Mathesius’s theory in more systematically organized ways focusing on the Communicative Dynamism concept introduced by Jan Firbas in the post-classical period of the Prague School of Linguistics. In the third section, I will apply the Functional Sentence Perspective theory to 1 Thess 1:2–4 and then conclude by suggesting its methodological value for the study of the Greek of the New Testament and discussing the prospect of the theory in the field of New Testament studies.

This paper provides a sociolinguistic analysis of fifty-four kinship terms (KTs) used as free forms of address between two human interlocutors in biblical Hebrew prose. Unlike personal names (PNs) and occupational titles (OTs), KTs are inherently relational. They relate the referent of the term to the anchor by means of kinship, which can be established either through blood (consanguineal) or marriage (affinal). In anthropology, KTs are commonly classified according to the degree of closeness the anchor has to different referents: primary (those who are directly related to the anchor), secondary (those who are related to the anchor through his/her primary kins), and tertiary (primary kins of the anchor’s secondary kins or vice-versa). What is striking about the KTs used in address in our corpus is that all of them are primary consanguineal KTs (אָב, אֵם, אָח, אָחוֹת, בֵּן, בַּת) which are not only used for those who are directly related to the speaker (= the anchor) through blood but often used for non-kin addressees (= the referents). I attempt to explain the speaker’s use of primary consanguineal KTs for his/her non-kin addressee within the framework of Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory. According to them, the speaker’s act of addressing may function as a politeness strategy to mitigate the threats posed by the speaker’s “face-threatening acts” towards the addressee. Thus, the speaker may use KTs in particular, which Brown and Levinson (1987, 107) call “in-group identity markers,” as polite address terms to claim solidarity with the non-kin addressee. In doing so, he/she seeks to reduce social distance between them. I argue that the use of primary consanguineal KTs for non-kin addressees in our corpus is to be viewed as a politeness strategy to mitigate face threats that the speaker posed towards the addressee. While the KTs used in address primarily indicate solidarity between the speaker and the addressee, they can also express their power/status differential. Thus, ascending generation KTs (אָב, אֵם) can be used for the addressee who is superior to the speaker, descending generation KTs (בֵּן, בַּת) for the addressee who is inferior to the speaker, and horizontal generation KTs (אָח, אָחוֹת) for the addressee who is equal to the speaker. Thus, in contrast to referentially direct PNs which are normally used for social inferiors and contextually formal OTs which are normally used for social superiors, referentially circumspect and contextually informal KTs can be used for all status types of the non-kin addressees conveying the sense of solidarity in each type. I argue, therefore, that we can arrange address terms used between two human interlocutors in our corpus in the ascending order of politeness: PNs - descending generation KTs - horizontal generation KTs - ascending generation KTs - OTs.

How do names “do” things? How do proper names “act,” and how does examining presentations of such agency in ancient texts illuminate underappreciated facets of religious experience in antiquity? Informed by the posthumanist contentions of philosophers like Rosi Braidotti and Donna Haraway, this paper applies the agentive implications of their scholarship to Acts 16:16-18. In so doing, this paper illuminates how proper names and titles (e.g., “Jesus Christ,” “slaves of the Most High God”), usually overlooked as agents, “act” in critical ways in this passage. More specifically, over the past few decades, posthumanist voices have argued persuasively for an expanded ontological scope appreciative of the diverse entities that constitute the “human.” Such views have begun to inform New Testament studies (e.g., in the work of Denise Kimber Buell and Stephen Moore), but the influence of posthumanist arguments on this field remains nascent. This paper therefore seeks to advance this scholarly collaboration by reading Acts 16:16-18 through a posthumanist lens, one that attends to ancient religious experience by shifting the focus from individual human “actors” (e.g., Paul) to the multiple ontologies and agencies collectively active in the passage. In particular, this paper attends to the agency of proper names and titles, underappreciated by modern scholars yet central to ancient understandings of how and why things occur. The paper explores how such words “do” things—e.g., exerting control over their referents—when uttered under certain conditions. Specifically, the paper examines how both the slave-girl (along with the spirit inside her) and Paul perceive and seek to utilize a link between names/titles and agency, as each attempts to control the other through specific invocations and appellations (e.g., “slaves of the Most High God,” “name of Jesus Christ”). After elucidating the agency of names for both Paul and the slave-girl/spirit, the paper concludes by highlighting the exegetical impact of this reading before briefly discussing three broader benefits of attending to onomastic agency, as illuminated by a posthumanist lens. These benefits include highlighting the diffusion of agency away from a single protagonist towards multiple actors (both human and non-human), the intricate web of power relations that underscores the mutual dependency of Paul and the slave-girl, and the ways in which this passage can be read not only as a story of conflict but also as one of creation. Finally, the paper ends with suggestions for further avenues of collaboration between posthumanist philosophy and the study of religious experience in antiquity. 

Many early Christian texts thought about baptism in terms of purity. In the majority of cases, the ritual was understood as purifying a person from sin. Another perspective is provided by the pseudo-Clementine literature, two early fourth-century Syrian texts that has similar content. While the texts do not deny that baptism purifies a person of sin, they add that baptism washes away demons from the soul. They develop a detailed demonology that this paper will explore. According to the texts, demons enter the soul when a person engages in sin, be that idolatry, lust, or excess consumption of food or drink. Both texts assume that Gentiles have this demonic impurity by nature of their being Gentiles. While the texts disagree on the demons’ motivations and how they escort the soul to eternal punishment, they agree that the presence of demons causes a person to enter into the eternal fire. They describe ways to prevent the demons from taking hold on those who are not baptized, but because most of their audience is Gentile, they also address how to exorcize demons. This happens through baptism. Baptism cleanses a person of the demons that they have within their soul and provides a new garment for the soul that replaces the old polluted one. I conclude the presentation by discussing the effect that demonic impurity and its removal has on the relationship between the pseudo-Clementine community and Gentiles. While Peter, the representative of the pseudo-Clementine community, and Clement, a Gentile, touch and kiss often, Clement is forbidden from eating and praying with him. It is only after he is baptized—after he is purified of demons—that no longer poses a threat to the pseudo-Clementine community and he is fully admitted.

In this paper, I will examine the body of Jesus in the passion, crucifixion, and resurrection narratives of the Gospel John (19-20) from the perspective of crip theory and queer studies. My aim is to show how Jesus’ body can be seen as a site of resistance: It is treated as an object of violence and power-over but after the crucifixion Jesus gains their subjecthood back and thus becomes the ascended Christ. In these events, the body of Jesus is presented in a way that challenges the understanding of normative bodies, normality, and (dis)ableness. In the crucifixion narrative, Jesus’ human body is tortured, violated, killed, and even pierced after its death (John 19:1-37). In resurrection, Jesus’ human body goes through metamorphosis, and in result Jesus becomes unrecognizable (20:11-16) and untouchable (20:17) to Mary Magdalene. To other disciples, Jesus appears through shut doors and encourages Thomas to touch Jesus’ stigmata (20:26-27). Jesus’ body challenges many normative dichotomies, such as, divinity/humanity, masculinity/femininity, and disability/ability in its refusal to be categorized either/or. My paper will concentrate on deconstructing these dichotomies in the events of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Analyzing Jesus’ body from this perspective could offer valuable insights for the lives of the queer, non-binary, and disabled people of our time.

Isaiah 13–14, Proverbs 30, and the Balaam text from Deir ‘Alla do not appear at first glance to be ancient Northwest Semitic texts that share much in common. Although they are all poetic compositions, their form and context would seem to many scholars to diverge sharply. And yet, all three texts describe themselves with the term māśśā’ (משׂא). If this is indeed an emic genre term in the Hebrew Bible, then it is not clear to scholars just what it might connote. In the past māśśā’ has been treated both as a broad synonym for prophecy and as a specific form-critical Gattung. Isaiah 13–14 (and the oracles against the nations that follow) have typically been viewed as definitional of this genre. It has rarely been considered, however, that Deir ‘Alla self-applies the term; while Proverbs 30 has typically been excluded from consideration due to its classification as Wisdom Literature. Through a close intertextual reading, this paper will explore what might have held these three texts together for ancient scribes. Several notable coincidences will emerge, including a common focus on warning and rebuke, prominent use of animal imagery, and a foreboding preoccupation with the reversal of the created order. Pursuant to this analysis, I’ll argue that the essence of a māśśā’ is found less in form or context and more in tone and purpose. Perhaps a māśśā’ is a type of “heavy” discourse that bears an instruction, rebuke, or curse and requires action to avert disaster. If the essence of a māśśā’ is found in a quality of tone or purpose, then it becomes clear why this text type is no respecter of modern scholarly genre boundaries but ranges from prophecy to wisdom and back again.

The Shapira Deuteronomy fragments have resurfaced in recent popular and scholarly works, with a number of writers advocating for their authenticity, usually by comparison to Dead Sea Scrolls (I. Dershowitz, S. Guil, R. Nichols, Y. Sabo). This paper will illuminate a significant and largely undervalued aspect of this affair: Jewish Christianity. The Jewish Christian nature of these fragments decisively demonstrates their post-New Testament origin. Moreover, this feature of the fragments raises additional suspicions regarding their likely 19th century fabrication. Recent reviews of the matter often point to Scrolls scholars like J. Allegro and J. L. Teicher. While citing their arguments for authenticity, recent treatments problematically overlook their arguments for (Jewish) Christian connections. Both Teicher and Allegro put forward formidable arguments to the effect that Shapira’s Deuteronomy reflects distinctively Christian interests. A version of Deuteronomy shorn of sacrifices and most law reads like an early Christian rewritten Torah. The fragments’ unique reformulation of the Ten Commandments, along with the correlated Levitical blessings, bears the unmistakable imprint of Jesus’s double love command (Matt 22:36-40). This paper will review and strengthen this line of argumentation: the Shapira fragments are demonstrably post-Christian. Also overlooked is Shapira’s Jewish Christianity. A Jewish born convert to Christianity, Shapira was an active member in Jerusalem’s fledgling evangelical Protestant community, whose Hebraism remains visible today on the walls of Christ Church, Jerusalem. While viewed as an apostate by the Jews of Jerusalem, Shapira at times reclaimed a Jewish identity when abroad. What are the chances that the only version of Deuteronomy ever discovered that textually foreshadows Jesus’s double love command would be revealed to the public by a Jewish Christian antiquities dealer? And what are the chances of all this happening innocently to such a dealer with an established history of plying fakes? Scholars and students of forgery quickly learn that forgeries have a tendency to make their way to scholars keenly interested in their content. Recent scholars, ignoring or overlooking these patterns, have failed to see the most irregular thing of all: Shapira’s Deuteronomy fragments are suspiciously commensurate with his own religious background and commitment. Whether Shapira was a forger or another forger’s mark remains of interest but is secondary to the larger argument. The evidence and coincidences point decidedly away from taking these artifacts as a plausible record of a pre-Christian Deuteronomy.

The transition from the 8th to the 7th century BCE was the setting of momentous changes in Judah. One highly discussed aspect of this period is the abandonment of public cult places outside Jerusalem at the end of the 8th century BCE and its representation in the archaeological and biblical record. The latter indicates that the cult places were abandoned by order of King Hezekiah, in the course of his cult reform (2 Kgs 18:4). In biblical studies the ancient texts on Hezekiah’s reform are highly discussed and their historical reliability questioned. On the other hand, in archaeological research the few scholars that are concerned with this subject understand the finds from Arad and Beer-Sheba in direct connection to the events depicted in the bible. Their interpretation, however, has been called into question by historians and biblical scholars, who construe the finds towards the idea of a de facto centralization. According to this theory the abandonment of public cult places in Judah is not the result of a religious or political reform but rather the inevitable outcome of Sennacherib’s campaign. During recent excavations at Lachish new evidence for cult related activity was uncovered in the city gate dated to the 8th century BCE. The excavators understand the finds as a testament for a cult reform under Hezekiah. The recent publication and interpretation call for a re-evaluation of the archaeological evidence. In this paper I will present a fresh look at the data from Arad and Beer-Sheba, as well as on the new finds from Lachish and try to answer the question: Do the data support the historicity of the biblical account and Hezekiah’s reform or are they evidence for a de facto centralization?

One can see a clear change of focus in the so-called Fribourg School's works from biblical interpretation towards history (of 'Ancient Israel' and its religion) in the early 1990s. Whereas some authors described the rerouting from a genealogical perspective and on conceptual grounds, this paper revisits the shift using a social-material lens. Assuming that tools alter epistemic practices and that visual expressions produce and embody information, this contribution focuses on the corpora built by the group, aiming to describe the cognitive and disciplinary implications of the cataloging system adopted. As visual knowledge tools, the roughly 10.000 index cards housed at Fribourg's Department of Biblical Studies helped to analyze, translate and decompose the visual artifacts into archaeological/historical data in the form of textual descriptions. In terms of media theory, this process implies the translation of structural (from non-linear to linear), cognitive (from synthetical to consecutive), and syntactical (from dense to non-dense) features. I shall argue that the cards constituting the Fribourg team's primary working tool were not just central methodologically, they also supported the group's conceptual transition. The paper thus addresses an important issue in and for Digital Humanities, namely the conceptual role of knowledge tools in scholarship interpreting the past.

After Cain’s murder of his brother Abel and after God curses Cain to be a fugitive upon the earth, Cain does not end up wandering over the earth. Cain deliberately goes out from the presence of the Lord, marries a wife, has a son, and builds a city in the land of Nod, to the east of Eden; the city shows Cain’s intention to settle rather than to wander. The closeness of this city to his affections is attested in that the city is named after the son that is born to him, Enoch, and this name, ‘Enoch’, means ‘education’. It may surprise us that Cain, the murderer, thinks education matters. Yet, Cain’s descendants are aware of the consequences of what they can learn through the arts and sciences because they are the first to produce tents, to practice animal husbandry, to make and play musical instruments, to discover engineering, and to produce poetry and song for the singing of heroic—if ignoble—deeds, such as Lamech’s boast of killing a man who struck him. Lamech, the last individual of Cain’s line is like his ancestor Cain—their view of justice entails committing murders. Despite the hope that this line shows for the ongoing progress in the arts and the sciences, the biblical text ends abruptly, at the end 4:24, with no further recounting of the Cainite line, and the text moves on to another option, the birth of Seth and his line. The lesson is not too difficult to recognize: arts, sciences, and technology without justice are problematic, even dangerous; the line of Cain must be replaced. Yet how did the Cainite line get off to such a bad start? If we trace through the early verses of this chapter to discover the reason for God’s response to Cain, expressions in the Masoretic Text make the passage challenging. There is, to be sure, the statement that Abel brought “the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof” (vs. 4) whereas no such qualifications are made of Cain’s offerings. Or, is there a difference between the vocations of a shepherd and a farmer such that God prefers the life of the shepherd over the settled life of a farmer? The translations of the passage into non-Semitic languages tend to make God’s ‘respect’ arbitrary, which fits well into theologies of God’s inscrutable omnipotence. Yet is this exactly what is being said? Targum Onqelos’s translation of the passage stresses, especially in its translation of vs. 9, that God is giving Cain alternatives to learn to do well and to repent, and thus Onqelos provides a more precise reason for God’s actions. The purpose of this essay is to show the effect of Onqelos’s translation on our understanding of the passage, and thus to show how Onqelos explains why the arts and sciences without justice are problematic.

Nock's models of conversion vs. adherence appear to rest on modern Protestantizing assumptions about the nature of religion and religious adherence and are in need of adjustments that take into account the social functions of what were formerly called ancient 'religions'.

Julia Kristeva’s seminal essay Σημειωτιχὴ has become a kind of Tower of Babel event. Kristeva introduced the term “intertextuality” into literary studies, and now it is polyvalent to the extent that one must define it before having a constructive conversation. While there have been attempts to remedy the issue by proposing distinctions in nomenclature (notably, David M. Carr “The Many Uses of Intertextuality in Biblical Studies: Actual and Potential”), these efforts have been heretofore unsuccessful. A contributing factor is that Kristeva has been saddled with the corpse of the “author” whom her colleague Roland Barthes congratulated her on killing. Her association with postmodernism has made her a persona non grata in some academic circles. However, killing the author (ironically) does not seem to have been her intention. This paper will integrate the work of Kristeva and Barthes with the systemic functional linguistics of M. A. K. Halliday in order to lay a critical groundwork for a system identifying and naming different intertextual phenomena, including quotation, allusion, and “echo,” continuing the excellent work of scholars like Armin Lange and Matthias Weigold.

The reformer Philip Melanchthon once coined the statement “Paulus in epistola, quam Romanis dicavit, cum doctrinae christianae compendium conscriberet.” This statement thus asserts that Paul was not understood historically during that time, but abstractly and in a timeless manner. For this reason, this assertion should be critically questioned. In a case study of John Calvin’s Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, this study will analyze the credibility of this claim and the extent to which it can be refuted. This presentation will demonstrate that during the Reformation there was a general awareness of Paul as a person in a specific historical and cultural situation—although this perception does not necessarily correspond to ours. Thus, this lecture contributes to the question concerning what image the Reformers drew of the historical person of Paul as well as to the reception history of the historical Paul.

Muqatil ibn Sulayman, in his tafsir on Q al-Isra’ 17:1, evokes two rocks within his narrative: the sakhra of Jerusalem and a hajar in Mecca. In the Islamic tradition, the sakhra comes to represent Jerusalem and the one, or two, hajars of Mecca, the black stone and/or the maqam of Ibrahim, come to represent Mecca, yet neither stone is evoked as such within the Qur’an. How do these rocks come to represent these cities’ sacredness and, moreover, what is their function within Muqatil’s tafsir? It will be suggested that Muqatil depends on a long lineage of prophets and their rocks with which Muqatil builds up Muhammad’s prophethood. This paper will explore the use of rocks and monumental stones as memorials or makers of sacred place in the Bible, the Qur’an, and the later interpretive traditions with particular reference to Jerusalem and Mecca. The biblical texts proliferate with rocky narratives and stony metaphors, particularly in relationship to patriarchal and prophetic narratives, but they also symbolically represent God. Jacob sleeps on a rocky-hard pillow at Beth-el (Gen 28:11, 18–19), Moses speaks to or hits a rock in the desert (Exod 17; Num 20), Joshua builds a memorial of rocks in the middle of the Jordan (Josh 4:9). Moreover, other texts invoke the idea of a rock as a metaphor. God is compared to a tsur, a rock-solid divine backer to the people of Israel (Ps 18:32); and Zion is likened to a corner stone, one that does not budge (Isa 28:16). In the Qur’an, the term sakhra appears three times, twice in reference to generic rocks, but once it refers to the rock upon which Moses sits where the two rivers meet in Q al-Kahf 18:63. Hajar, which also means rock or stone, appears more frequently in the Qur’an. It refers most often to generic stones, but on several occasions, it refers to the rock which Moses struck to produce water (Q al-Baqarah 2:60; al-A‘raf 7:160). In this paper I will compare various late ancient imaginations of prophetic personages and their sacred rocks to suggest that these two holy cities’ lythic realities, when overlayed with the stony metaphors of their shared textual traditions, permeated and helped to anchor the evolving Islamic epic narrative, as manifested in Muqatil’s tafsir.

Scholarship on Sumerian and Akkadian texts – and their social contexts – is generally more concerned with despair than with hope. A recent edited volume on emotions (Expression of Emotions in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, Brill 2020), for example, has several articles discussing emotions such as depression, jealousy, and fear, but only one on joy. This presentation investigates expressions for joy and hope as found in cuneiform literary texts. The former is first explored through a brief philological investigation of the terms typically used to express joy, such as ḫadû in Akkadian and hul2 in Sumerian, before moving to an analysis of their use in literary as well as ritual contexts, with the latter often invoked to introduce a favorably disposed deity. This analysis is closely tied to the second half of this paper, wherein attestations of "hope" are explored through two primary lenses. The first is once again that of literary and ritual contexts, which may express specific examples of hope as connected to temporal constructions that propose a future time. The second, more concrete avenue of analysis, emerges from ancient Near Eastern divination, particularly the body of prophetic and other divinatory texts found within first millennium, Neo-Assyrian contexts. Unsurprisingly, prophetic texts tend towards painting a picture of encouragement for the ruler for whom they were intended. When placed alongside texts that may have had more widespread appeal – such as horoscopes and other omens – we may begin to see an image of the future whereby negative omen outcomes were nevertheless often tempered by expressions of hope and wishing for better future days.

The Epistle of James experienced a turbulent history in terms of acceptance into the biblical canon and reception. In this paper, we will pay special attention to the process of accepting this writing in the church in Cappadocia in the fourth century, primarily with Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus. The church in Cappadocia used very little of James. Gregory of Nyssa thus does not use Jacob's epistle anywhere in his work, nor is there any indication that he knows it. His brother Basil of Caesarea, mentions the work of James only a few times (De Baptismo 1,3 [PG 31, 1529], referring to James 2:10). This omission is even more surprising since Basil himself developed topics in his speeches that were practically identical to the topics from the Epistle of James, e.g. Quod Deus non est auctor malorum (PG 31,329–353), De invidia (PG 31,372–385). Gregory of Nazianzus cites only a general reference to the Epistle of James (e.g. a reference to how 2.20 is found in Oratio 26 [PG 35,1233] and Oratio 40 [PG 36,425]), but we find the Epistle of James in the list of inspired books (PG 37,1597). It is possible that thanks to the influence of Athanasius of Alexandria, since the Council of Laodicea (held around 360), which places the Epistle of James as the head of the seven Catholic Epistles in the list of canonical books of the Old and New Testaments, Jame's work is generally accepted in the Greek East.

The study of the origin of the Qumran sectarian movement faces several challenges raised by the nature and number of the available resources, the temporal and cultural divide separating scholars from the ancient world of the movement, and the perceived development and diversity of the movement. In recent years, scholars have endeavoured to make progress in research on the movement by taking the wider cultural and intellectual environment of the Qumran scrolls into account. In this paper, I follow suit and focus on one aspect of this environment, the transmission of Greek translations in Judea. I look at scholars’ views on the Judean provenance of some of the Greek translations, the so-called kaige group of translations and revisions, and the Greek manuscripts among the Qumran scrolls. After discussing the transmission of Greek translations in Judea during the first centuries before and after the turn of the era, I offer a few suggestions how it might be relevant to the study of the nascent Qumran sectarian movement.

Commenting on the metaphor in Isa. 26:17–18, i.e., ‘we were with child, we writhed in labour, but we gave birth to wind,’ scholars usually note that it is purely symbolic. The ‘wind’ in it indicates ‘nothingness’ representing Israel’s powerlessness to bring about its own salvation, let alone salvation on a larger scale. This article interrogates Isaiah 26 in light of pseudocyesis or false pregnancy, a condition recognized by the obstetrical knowledge of ancient societies and confirmed by modern medicine. More specifically, it explores the passage alongside Mesopotamian medical texts which feature the presence of ‘wind’ in the body describing illnesses in general and cases of abnormal births in particular. Reading Isaiah 26 through the prism of reproductive anomalies allows for the diagnosis of the community’s condition as a psychosomatic aberration fraught with stigmatizing symptoms. This, in turn, helps elucidate the text’s function in its immediate and wider literary contexts.

Much has been made of the seemingly unique mention of the τόπον προσευχῆς in 3 Macc 7:20. Scholars have disagreed whether it refers to an early synagogue or a commemorative shrine for prayer (and potentially sacrifice). But must it be one or the other? 3 Maccabees consistently speaks of Jewish assembly spaces with the general spatial term of τόπος, which connects the specific Egyptian προσευχή of 3 Macc 7:20 with this spatial language, while also specifically stating that prayer and thanksgiving were not only performed in this space, but that they were physically inscribed on this ‘place’ during the concluding festival. Such inscribed and spatially embodied space may also be found in Josephus’ Vita 273–303 and certain texts in his so-called Roman acta, as well as the so-called Magdala Stone. These connections may also help us to clarify the use of the lexeme προσευχή as a term that referred specifically to some of the earliest Jewish assemblies as literally ‘places of prayer’, despite the paucity of prayer in the texts that speak of such spaces. Drawing on the ritual theories of Jonathan Z. Smith, the performative focus of these spaces of ritual will be analyzed as both the sacralizing element and the reason for being in these spaces that are literally defined by their spatial attentiveness in prayer, “as a focusing lens, establishing the possibility of significance by directing attention, by requiring the perception of difference” (To Take Place, 104). As the height of this book’s denouement, this pericope stands as the fulfillment of the need to secure spaces of Jewish prayer by focusing attention on the embodying context of prayer and ritual.

Robert Glenn Howard coined the phrase “Christian Vernacular Fundamentalism” to describe a cultural discourse focused on linking end time prophecy to specific historical events. Such discussions occur on internet message boards and apart from the mainstream evangelical churches, who avoid literal predictions of the end times in the wake of past failures. Without institutional support, the discussions themselves become sacred acts, which Howard called “ritual deliberation.” This paper examines current digital ritual deliberations about the book of Revelation. It studies Facebook groups devoted to end of times discussions, and their efforts to make sense of the beast and his mark in Revelation 13 and 14. Unlike the apocalyptic message boards of the nineties, these groups reach for the Book of Enoch to discern the schedule of the end times, and identify the major players of the apocalypse. Ritual deliberation about the identity of the beast and its mark is mediated by 1 Enoch’s narrative of the fallen angels. Their harmonization of 1 Enoch with Revelation leads to a remarkable consistency across disparate groups. The identity of the beast, and his mark, is not linked to a specific person or visible sign. Instead, the beast has come to symbolize a spiritual movement at large, and the mark invisible—a vaccine, a microchip, or perhaps even a microchip delivered by vaccine. By spiritualizing the beast and his mark, these groups can maintain an eschatological discourse of literal predictions without being beholden to a timeline and the possibility of prophetic failure.

When it comes to paratextual features of early Christian manuscripts, the category of miniature codex deserves more scholarly attention. At least by the third century, but reaching a peak in the fourth and fifth centuries, Christians began to utilize this tiny format for various types of writings. Although New Testament texts were produced in this format, it was a popular medium for non-canonical texts such as the Acts of Paul, the Acts of Peter, the Shepherd of Hermas, and even apocryphal gospels. One area of ongoing discussion is how to distinguish miniature codices from other small book formats such as amulets. How are these two literary categories different? And how are they similar? This paper will argue that these two formats, though distinct, occasionally overlap so that some books have the form of a miniature codex, but the content of an amulet. This overlap will be demonstrated by examining four “borderline” manuscripts: P.Ant. 54, P.Oxy. 2684 (P78), P.Vindob. G. 29831 (MPER N.S. 1710), and P.Yale 1.3 (P50). In the end, such overlap suggests early Christians sometimes used miniature books in “magical” ways, even if those books were not designed explicitly and intentionally as amulets.

The qur’anic perspective on material wealth (al-ghina) and poverty (al-faqr), central to modern debates on Islamic economic ethics and social justice, was a question of concern and disagreement among medieval Muslim scholars as well. In the course of their debates on this matter, two contrasting views manifested – one suggesting that the Qur’an highlights the vanity of all worldly possessions and exalts poverty, the other arguing for the Qur’ān’s endorsement of material riches, considered as a reward or a gift from God. Both views were supported by proofs (hujaj) from the text of the Qur’an. This paper examines how the proponents of these opposing views appropriated, adapted, and interpreted the qur’anic text in order to justify their respective positions. As its main source, the paper uses a hitherto unexplored treatise Hujaj al-Qur’an li-jami‘ ahl al-milal wa-l-adyan (The Proofs from the Qur’an for All the Sects and Religions) by the Hanafi jurist Aḥmad ibn Muhammad al-Razi (active in 631/1234). A list of a hundred and four qur’anic proofs compiled by al-Razi from various sources for his chapter on the wealth versus poverty debate forms the core material for this examination. To analyse how medieval Muslim authors used the Qur’an to argue for the precedence of wealth over poverty or vice versa, the paper engages with the following three questions. First, how did the structure of the debate and the logic of argumentation shape the processes of selection and adaptation of the qur’anic passages for proof-texting? Second, what strategies did the debating parties employ in assigning a desired meaning to these passages (e.g., polysemy, connotative meanings, semantic and syntactic ambiguity of the text)? Finally, to what extent do the resulting interpretations of these passages overlap with their interpretations as preserved in the qur’anic exegetical literature? Do they represent the readings independent from the exegetical tradition? Through the examination of these three aspects, the paper demonstrates how medieval Muslim authors engaged the qur’anic text to establish and justify particular views and values, highlighting a dynamic and context-dependant process of its reception in Muslim societies.

This paper problematises the ritual aspects of healing in indigenous African Pentecostalism. Healing and wellness in majority of African initiated Pentecostal churches take dramatic and ritualistic forms. From bizarre commands to congregants to eat grass like sheep (Reilly, 2014) to the instruction to drink Dettol or petrol and a church pastor stepping violently on the belly of a pregnant woman supposedly to expel diseases and demons (Okonkwo, 2015), the miracle healing extravaganza appears to have deviated radically from the apostolic tradition and pivoted significantly towards a heightened stage of religious capitalism. The phenomenon is compounded with a lot of innovations and creativities. Using the case study of PCU in Kenya, the paper explores the explanatory frameworks for these innovations, focusing on the interplay between African traditional practices and Bible in the innovations and creativities of ritual healing. The study is guided by the following questions: what is the point of intersection between African and biblical understanding of health and wellness? In the context of PCU, how does the use of the ritual items appeal to both African and Bible traditional and spiritual sensitivities on healing, health and wellness? What factors trigger off these creativities and innovations in African Pentecostal Christianity? The paper employs ethnographic observations of healing sessions, semi-structured interviews and textual and hermeneutical analysis of selected Bible texts—specifically 1 Kings 18:20-39.

The relationship between the preface and the visionary narrative of the Apocalypse of Paul has been a fraught one in the history of scholarship. Since R.P. Casey’s contention in 1933 that the preface, which recounts the miraculous discovery of the lost work during the reign of Theodosius I, likely postdated the text’s original edition by a century or more, scholars have vigorously debated the preface’s redactional nature and the implications of this question for dating and analyzing the apocalypse itself. While Casey’s view became the majority opinion for much of the 20th century, serious challenges to his thesis have been levied in the past thirty years, most notably by Piovanelli and Copeland. These debates over the integrity of the preface have coincided with a new wave of research on the social context that produced the narrative as a whole, with a wide base of scholarship situating it firmly in the milieu of late-fourth or early-fifth century Egyptian monasticism. This paper seeks to bring these two developments into conversation by addressing a question provoked by both of them: namely, the ideological function of the apocalypse for the community that wrote its preface in the late-fourth century environment it reflects. I propose that this function may be clarified by taking the preface itself as a hermeneutic key to the interpretation of the text’s narrative details. The first part of the paper maps the apocalypse’s preface alongside other Christian discovery narratives of the Theodosian era, in which purportedly lost texts and relics of the apostolic period are miraculously uncovered and brought to the attention of public authorities. I examine how rhetorical strategies of authorization incorporated by these texts were often used to promote and legitimate novel political interests by apostolicizing the animosities they entail, serving in turn as a kind of petitionary literature that was taken seriously by imperial and ecclesial officials. The second section utilizes the historical details provided by the apocalypse’s preface to engage in a further exploration of its own context than has yet been undertaken. It traces the relationship between the preface’s self-designated chronology, its choice of reference to specific imperial officials, and the narrative’s larger monastic background. Prosopographical analysis indicates a close connection between members of the Theodosian court, the culture of relic and text discovery, and specifically Egyptian monastic interests. The prominence of issues of special relevance to Egyptian monastic ideology in the political climate of the late fourth and early fifth centuries suggests a strong incentive to monastic investment in political developments and the utilization of imperial connections to influence policy. After detailing the precedents for reading text discovery literature as political commentary and establishing the close proximity of the Apocalypse of Paul’s world to the centers of imperial power, in the third section I examine the apocalypse’s visionary narrative in search of echoes of contemporary religio-political controversies. I offer several exploratory proposals regarding specific interests reflected in the text, in the hope of opening up particular avenues of inquiry to more detailed investigation.

For a modern audience, the Shepherd of Hermas comprises a rather odd set of texts, yet it was wildly popular among early Christian audiences. These texts were meant to be heard, imagined and experienced repeatedly in the context of community—not read from a logical, linear, individualistic perspective. Hermas’s Visions in particular were meant both to reflect and to affect the experiences of his hearers by intertwining, overlapping, and repeating images to deepen its effect over time. We may be able to access something of these experiences through the layers of embodied imagery found in the explanation of the three forms (μορφή) of the Woman Church (3.11-12). The explanation of each form reflects a paradox associated with the physical experience of the body in the context of the ancient Mediterranean life course—each in the form of embodied emotions. The ultimate paradox is the image of the reversal of the life course itself, conveying a communal sense of renewal and stability (3.13.4). By turning the familiar upside down, the desired transformation of the community became clear to its hearers. Although the main character is the female figure of the Woman Church, the images that explain the rejuvenation are subtly closer to the typical experience of the male life course, thus more closely reflecting the experience of Hermas as the one who receives the vision (rather than a female perspective). The religious experience of Hermas is mean to persuade his audience to choose the inner change of metanoia that ideally results in generosity and unity in the community—thus transforming religious experiences into tangible ones.

Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great, served as tetrarch over Galilee and Peraea from 4 BCE – 39 CE. Mark, however, titles Herod Antipas a “king” (Mk. 6:14, 22, 25, 26, 27), though he is correctly “tetrarch” (τετραάρχης) in Matthew (14:1) and Luke (3:19; 9:7) [And in historical fact]. Many commentators give little attention to the Markan title and usually consider it a lapse in Mark’s knowledge of Herod Antipas. Others gloss the title explaining it as a distinction given by locals out of respect. However, some scholars recognize the literary currency of the “king” title. Joel Marcus argues that Mark’s presentation of “King Herod” is ironic and intends to draw on antityrannical themes present in the Old Testament. Marcus also notes the influence of Plato’s Republic as a source for understanding the tyrant as a false king. Abraham Smith agrees by arguing that Mark may be casting Herod Antipas as a “king” type of Greco-Roman imagination. Smith continues, “the ancient king and the ancient tyrant were similar.” This leads Smith to differentiate between Herod Antipas as a “king” type and “tyrant” type. This evaluation fails to provide clarity on the shades of meaning between the Greek βασιλεὺς and τύραννος in relationship to the Roman rex. While Smith adequately discusses the “king” of Greek conception, he does not address the unique distinctions found in Roman kingship. The Latin, rex, could ebb and flow between positive and negative connotations depending upon the day’s political situation. Mark authors his gospel in Nero’s despotic shadow and the throes of a Roman Civil War, and adopts Roman conceptions of kingship which had recently found currency in political invective. As such, Mark implements Roman kingship invective – and the cultural memories of Roman despotism associated with it - when he applies the title, “king,” to Herod.

Accepted paper for IBR research group on Biblical Violence.

Leviticus 5:20-26 treats a case where a person admits to having sworn a false exculpatory oath regarding one of several property offenses. The law requires this person to bring a sacrifice and to pay not twofold compensation, as the Covenant Code mandates in cases of theft, but the principle plus 20%. In this paper, I interrogate the meaning of the root ’-š-m as a means for understanding the impetus for confession. Based on biblical and ancient Near Eastern evidence about the apodoses of oaths, I argue that the false swearer chooses to admit wrongdoing after experiencing misfortune and interpreting that misfortune specifically as the fruition of the apodosis of the false exculpatory oath. I further argue that the apparently reduced penalty of the false swearer is not a reward for coming clean, but rather reflects an adjustment of double compensation that takes into account the effects of the false oath that the offender has already suffered.

Biblical concepts undergirding care for the poor focus on the covenant obligation not to have anything before God (Exodus 20:2-3) and warn that putting riches in the place of God leads to idolatry and neglect of the poor (Psalm 10:2-4). “If riches increase, set not your heart upon them” (Psalm 62:10). Book of Mormon prophets develop these the biblical ties between the covenant relationship with God and how one should feel about riches and sharing them with those in need. These reflections and developments can be found in the teachings of Jacob, King Benjamin, Abinadi, and others. These prophets call people to repent of pride. They echo the biblical connection between the heart and the lack of action: “thou shalt not harden thine heart, nor shut thine hand from thy poor brother” (Deuteronomy 15:7). Jacob’s reflections about the greatness of God permeate his writing. In the Bible and in Jacob, when people focus on their own greatness instead of God’s greatness that attitude affects their treatment of others (Jacob 2:13-19). Jacob explains that covetousness of his people stems from their pride, saying: you “afflicted your neighbor, and persecuted him because ye were proud in your hearts, of the things which God hath given you” (Jacob 2:20), echoing Psalm 10:2: “the wicked in his pride doth persecute the poor.” Recognizing God’s greatness and generosity can lead people to “think of your brethren like unto yourselves, and be familiar with all and free with your substance, that they may be rich like unto you” (Jacob 2:17). King Benjamin also tells people that that they need to “remember, and always retain in remembrance the greatness of God” and explains that that a relationship of humility with God will lead them to “impart of the substance you have to one another” (Mosiah 4:21). He stresses that we are all beggars and need to remember our dependence on God “for all the riches which we have of every kind” (v. 19). Remembering this dependence on God can change hearts to see “how ye ought to impart of the substance that ye have one to another” (v. 21). Abinadi also stress the sin of setting hearts upon riches as a form of idolatry and forgetting God. In Exodus 20 remembering that Jehovah is “the Lord thy God that brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage” prefaces the command to “have no other gods before me” (20:2-3). Abinadi reviews the Ten Commandments and then calls them on their disobedience manifest in their lack of care for the poor and misuse of their resources. “If ye teach the Law of Moses why do ye not keep it? Why do ye set your hearts upon riches?” (Mosiah 12:29). Setting hearts upon riches is idolatry and a fundamental betrayal of the expectations of the Redeemer who provided for them and also commanded: “Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land” (Deuteronomy 15:11).

The so-called “Yahad Ostracon” was found during excavations at Khirbet Qumran in 1996. It was immediately presented as the missing link between the settlement and the scrolls, at a time when such connection was debated. The circumstances of its discovery are quite unusual, however, which raises the issue of forgery. In this paper, I take a closer look at this ostracon in order to assess its authenticity: provenance, medium, layout, script, language, content and relevance. I also discuss the skills required to forge such an ostracon and conclude as to the profile and motive of a putative forger.

In the creation of sacred or cultic space, groups need to establish who is in and who is out and highlight the importance of the ingroup in comparison to the outgroup. Often this is done by emphasising similarities between ingroup members and stressing the differences they have with outsiders. However, what if there is really nothing concrete to separate ingroup from the outgroup? No different ethnic background or gender, no differences in their citizenships, nor differences in socio-economic status – how then separate ingroup from outgroup, and create a sense of positive distinctiveness for the ingroup? This paper will tackle this issue through theoretical framework of symbolic boundaries. Symbolic boundaries are conceptual distinctions made by different social actors for the purpose of categorization of people, and practises, but also abstract concepts like time and space (Lamont and Molnar, 2002). As a case study, this paper discusses the Dionysiac association (Iobakchoi) mentioned in inscription IG II2 1368. Focus is at how this association created and maintained symbolic boundaries in ever changing socio-cultural settings of the second century CE. The paper will argue that strict regulations, different rituals, and mythical narratives remembered and re-enacted through rituals, were, in addition to being part of Iobakchoi’s meeting activities, the key elements forming their symbolic boundaries.

Jesus' famous saying "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's" (Mark 12:17 par.) enjoys a long reception history regarding Western conceptualizations of the relationship between church and state. This presentation analyzes the use of the saying in current political debates in the Nordic countries, particularly in Denmark where prime ministers have publicly endorsed it at a number of occasions, for example in the context of the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy (2005) and the 500th anniversary of the protestant reformation (2017). When mobilized by contemporary Nordic politicians, the Jesus saying plays into local and Western discourses regarding "the liberal Bible" (Yvonne Sherwood), religious freedom, the limits of religion in the secular state, the supposed alliance between Christianity/Lutheranism and secularism, and—as a subtext—the alleged inability of Islam to distinguish between God and Caesar.

This paper examines the late seventh-century East Syriac author Dadisho of Qatar’s On Solitude, an understudied treatise that contains instructions for monks seeking to live as solitaries, either permanently or for a predetermined time of several weeks. Scholarship on the East Syriac spiritual tradition has typically favored more theoretical and abstract writings on prayer, leading to conceptualizations of prayer that are noetic and transcendent but unattuned to the material and devotional contexts in which the praying subject was formed. Examining the bodily movements and gestures that Dadisho prescribes for the solitary, as well as the sensory language he uses in describing prayer before the cross, I argue that prayer for East Syriac monastics was a process of physically drawing near to, and conforming to, Christ. Even as the monk sought to stabilize his mind in contemplation of God, he was moving his body about his cell, his monastery, and his church, engaging with a God not just spiritually present, but also physically in the cross, eucharist, and other devotional objects. My interpretation of Dadisho thus challenges prevailing readings of the East Syriac mystical tradition by placing questions of movement, sensation, and materiality at the heart of understandings of prayer.

With the landmark citation formula of “let it be done according to the Law” (Ezra 10:3), the intertextual examples in Ezra 9-10 for many years have attracted much scholars’ attention. Discussion primarily focuses on the use of Deut 7 and 23 as the Pentateuchal basis for the prohibition against intermarriage in Ezra 9-10. In this paper, I will argue that the primary issue is not intermarriage, but rather the sanctity of the restored temple and city of Jerusalem. By examining the allusions to the land theology of Leviticus 18, and the idiosyncratic language for divorce, I will demonstrate that the problem is not so much about intermarriage, but the bringing of foreign women into the holy space of the city/temple and the threat to the sancta.

Charges of anthropophagy, ritual murder, and sexual immorality were not uncommon in the intermural rhetoric of ancient Roman politics and religious competition, and such charges regularly followed a particular logic. The charges of blood drinking and human-eating/sacrificing (often escalated to the sacrifice/eating of a child) appear frequently in descriptions of conspiracies and tyrants, in Roman descriptions of “uncivilized” foreigners on the periphery of Roman “civilization” (or dangerously encroaching into a Roman center), and in accusations of perverse ritual practices (sometimes labeled “magic”). Through such charges, those accused were associated with geographic “foreignness” (in relation to a centered Rome—i.e., Parthia, Scythia, Egypt, Judea, Ethiopia) and characterized as invasive and corrosive elements within Roman society, whether or not they had any actual ties to those locales or migrant people from them. Such charges of subversive consumption and associated behaviors seem to have attached especially to groups or individuals whose abstinent meal practices were at odds with their surrounding society (including those who rejected meat). This paper argues that the rhetoric of Revelation’s opposition towards particular Christ-following assemblies and members in Roman Asia (centering on meat-eating and sexual immorality) is entangled with the work’s more pervasive imagery of blood-drinking, (attempted) child-eating, murder, and sexual immorality, ambivalently drawing on these wider Roman rhetorical charges even while resisting similar rhetorical representations of Christ-followers and/or Jews with whom John identifies. Revelation’s oppositive rhetoric of anthropophagy and proper consumption, then, aligns with its wider representation of both rejected Christ-followers and the imperial government and cultic system as themselves “foreign” (e.g., attaching names like Balaam, Jezebel, and Babylon), communally invasive, and socially corrosive elements, while aligning John’s preferred (but socially marginalized) abstinent meal practices with a divine imperial center.

This paper examines Matt 5:23-26 in light of Jewish sacrificial practice, Jewish covenantal ethics, and the early Christian understanding of the relationship between sin, suffering, and atonement (particularly in Matthew and Paul). Beginning from the priestly understanding of purification offerings as prerequisite for full sacrificial communion in the Jerusalem temple, I argue that 5:23-24 implies that self-examination and consequent reconciliation with one’s accusers function in a manner analogous to a purification offering, removing obstacles to approaching God. Next, I argue that 5:23-24; 6:12, 14-15, wherein forgiveness of one’s offenders functions to atone for sins; and 18:15-17, belong to early Jewish interpretive traditions that develop the ethical requirements of cultic practices in order to lay a foundation for covenantal ethics. Finally, I argue that Matt 5:23-26 is consistent with the key elements of the early Christian eucharistic theology reflected in Paul’s advice in 1 Cor 11:27-32: an examination of one’s conscience is required before offering/participating in a sacrificial gift; failure to do so will only transform one’s effort to approach God with a sacrificial gift into an occasion for judgment of one’s sin and punishment by subsequent suffering and/or death. I conclude that Matt 5:23-26 originally served to shape the eucharistic theology of a mixed Gentile and Jew community: it prescribed a form of conflict resolution that was driven by self-examination before participation in a cultic meal that represented the possibility of either communion with God through Christ or judgment, and reflected an effort to establish peaceful cooperation based on the common dignity of a covenantal membership mediated through participation in Jesus’ eucharistic sacrifice.

This paper discusses the role of Christian faith in the context of COVID-19 by reflecting the socio-biblico-practical nature of separation theology – isolation and quarantine (Leviticus 13-14) through the lens of contextual biblical interpretation. With the recent Covid-19 outbreak, Americans have become accustomed to the unfamiliar terms of “isolation and quarantine.” According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the history of isolation and quarantine originated from the protecting coastal cities from plague epidemics before disembarking ships at Venice port in the 14th century. In the linguistic domain of modern people, “isolation” refers to separating a person who is already ill or suspected of being ill from others, and “quarantine” is to ensure that a healthy person is not exposed to the source of infection. It means restricting certain places or social gatherings (Webster-Merriam). In the context of ancient Israelite society, Leviticus 13-14 similarly define the separation process with two modes – ‘isolation’ and ‘quarantine,’ respectively. Specifically, Leviticus 13 presents ‘diagnosis and isolation process’ such as “be brought to (v2),” “examine (v.3),” “isolation (v.4),” “wash (v.6),” and “live alone outside the camp (v.46),” while Leviticus 14 mentions ‘cleansing and quarantine procedure,’ such as “be brought to (v2),” “examine outside camp (v.3),” “cleanse (v.7),” “wash (v.8a) and shave(v.9),” “isolate” (v8b),“ “offer guilt, wave, grain, sin, and burnt offerings (v.12-32), and “quarantine” (v.46). First of all, the Hebrew word säracat was commonly used to represent meanings of either “isolation” (Lev 13:14) or “quarantine” (Lev 14:46) in their original contexts. This research investigates their socio-biblico-practical significances in the ancient worlds, and connects them to present-day COVID-19 context in terms of textual, typological, theological, historical, and thematic analogies of contextual biblical interpretation. Second, amidst diverse readings of Leviticus 13-14, the ancient Israelite worldview of understanding priestly presentation and cultic-ritual implications of säracat needs to be discussed with regard to the current debate about ‘COVID-19 as results of sins (Num 12; 2 Sam 3:29; 2 Kgs 5; 2 Chr 26:19-21; c,f. Lev 13-14).’ Indeed, practical theology of separation (isolation and quarantine) must be understood with its proper standing in scholarly accounts of ancient Israelite views on sin, impurity, and disease, and the intersection of these views. Concerning the role of Christian faith, the key question is how the church interacts biblically with the disastrous situations of the world through the eternal God’s Word. This paper can provide an effective socio-biblico-practical bridge between the eternal Word and a changing world, because the bridge can function as a proper guideline for the role of Christian faith in these special occasions.

Proverbs 10-29 is always read as an unorganized collection of independent proverbial sayings. This paper is aimed at exploring the feasibility of structural studies by examining the rhetorical structure of Proverbs 22:1-24:22. 22:1-5 and 22:12-14 enable the readers to envision how YHWH controls and judges the unjust society which is full of the rich and the poor. 22:5-7 and 22:14-16 command the readers to teach the next generation about the right path so as to prevent them from falling into the traps of the wicked and the subsequent judgment of YHWH. 22:7-12 offers concrete examples for the path of oppressing the poor and the alternative path of helping the poor. In such an unjust society, the rich become the lords and oppressors of the poor (22:7-8). As a transformed parallel to the Instruction of Amenemope in the ancient Egypt, Proverbs 22:17-24:22 continues the practical teaching in a religious lens of YHWH. Having put the text's emphasis of the education and social injustice into consideration, this paper suggests a colonial context during the post-exilic period for Proverbs 22:1-24:22. This social need was probably reflected by the book of Ezra-Nehemiah in which the rich Jews subdued their brothers to be their slaves (Neh 5:1-13).

Talmudic texts and rabbinic literature (Midrash) of late antiquity are usually conceived as the main and unique Jewish corpus of exegetical traditions concerned with revealed Scripture (Torah) and religious lore and law. However, within this diverse body of primarily religious texts, the rabbinic authors included an abundance of technical or scientific knowledge that was altered and shaped by their concerns. Consequently, one finds in these late antique rabbinic traditions a neat intertwinement of religiously normative (Halakha) or ontologically interested (theology) discourse and medical concepts. In this paper, I will explore this complex discursive interlacing from three interconnected angles. First, in various instances rabbinic sources attuned ideas about illness and healing to the pertaining Halakhic discourse. Passages discuss religious concepts —such as God as the ultimate healer or Torah (study) as a remedy — or certain restrictions and rituals (i.e. Sabbath laws; prayers and blessings; recitation of biblical verses) and connect them to medical practice ‘on the ground’ (i.e. amulets, charms, bloodletting). Second, various texts address the thorny area of difficult but necessary interaction of rabbis and Jews in general with non-rabbinic and non-Jewish experts in different medical areas (pharmaceutics, incantations etc.). These exchanges in various sociocultural and spatial contexts (private houses, travel on the road, marketplaces or bath house) reveal not only polemical aspects but more often the fine nuances of transcultural and interreligious interaction. Finally, the paper will contextualize the rabbinic interest in and appropriation of medical knowledge as taking part in some broader intellectual trends in late antiquity. In a similar way, one finds a general popularization of medical knowledge beyond specialized, technical texts and contexts. This was paralleled by a change of paideia, also through Christianization, and active engagement of Christian religious experts (writers, clergy, monks, bishops, deacons) with medicine in theory and (healthcare) practice. This discussion will help to situate the Talmudic project of knowledge making as a blending of religious and scientific elements within the larger framework of Graeco-Roman, early Christian and Persian-Mesopotamian cultures in the ancient Mediterranean.

The phrase “paradigm shift” was coined in 1962 by Thomas Kuhn in his highly influential Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Biblical scholarship has experienced a number of paradigm shifts in the past 150 years, among them the documentary hypothesis at one end and the realization that the Israelites were Canaanites at the other. One paradigm, I contend, is still in the shifting stage, and it centers on the role of Samaria in our conceptualization of “ancient Israel” as well as in the formation of the Hebrew Bible. One of the celebrated heavy lifters in this endeavor, Gary Knoppers, dedicated much of his scholarship to a reconsideration of the land and people of Samaria, especially as their role had been framed within the discourse of the Hebrew Bible. A shift requires a lever, and the lever has been and is Persian Period studies. My talk will attempt first to map the current state of this shift-ing paradigm, looking in part through a Kuhn-ian lens, and then offering some suggestions from both archaeology and biblical studies as to how the Samarian paradigm shift presents biblical scholars with new questions and new perspectives on old ones.

This paper will extend Lemos's work on violence and personhood (2017) and genocidal violence (2015, forthcoming 2022). Utilizing a typology of forms of dehumanization found cross-culturally, it will investigate the specific ways in which violent acts are used, and not used, in biblical texts to dehumanize women and children.

In the first two tablets of the Babylonian poem Ludlul bel nemeqi the Job-like protagonist recites a litany of suffering in his social sphere and in his physical body. Although his suffering bears a specifically ancient Mesopotamian cultural imprint, we as modern readers have general points of contact with the protagonist’s experience that make an empathetic reading of his story possible. This paper mediates between his ancient and our modern experiences related specifically to our common physical embodiment while simultaneously advancing the interpretation of the poem. It does this through a comparative reading of the alû-demon’s attack on the protagonist in Tablet II 71–83 and modern clinical and anthropological studies related to sleep paralysis, a disorder that we as moderns may have experienced, and, in fact, that we as moderns still attribute sometimes to a demonic (or alien) attack. The goal is to understand the passage in Ludlul and its significance in the poem and also to connect this passage to our modern, contemporary contexts. Thus, this paper is a case study in bridging the ancient and modern contexts of reading. This mode of reading across time shares in many ways the challenges and rewards of reading a medical ethnography, a genre that translates human suffering across space, from one culture to another, in order to portray the frailties and vulnerabilities of being human.

Deuteronomy’s law of the king (Deut 17:14-20) famously restricts the role of the monarch in Israelite society. The only constructive vision for the king is to copy and study torah. This law, as has been widely acknowledged (e.g., Knoppers 2001; Levinson 2001), contravenes the expectations of the royal ideologies found elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, as well as in the neighboring cultures of Anatolia, Assyria, and Babylonia. This study examines how Deuteronomy’s law of the king subverts prevalent royal ideologies by specifically manipulating widespread tropes about royal monumental writing practices. It argues that the role of writing in Deut 17:14-20 is best understood against the cultural backdrop of royal monumental inscriptions rather than ancient Near Eastern law. First, while the production of publicly displayed inscriptions was one of the most efficacious ways of performing a royal identity in the ancient Near East, Deuteronomy describes an interactive relationship between the future monarch and the inscribed law code that enacts submission and obedience rather than advertising great deeds. Second, the image of royal writing offered in Deut 17:18-20, wherein a king is commanded to copy a law code that explicitly curtails his own authority, is exceptional within the corpus of cuneiform law (Sonnet 1997). This type of command to a future royal figure, however, is widely attested in the instructions for future viewers found on many royal monuments, including examples from Syro-Anatolia, Byblos, and Babylon. Like monumental inscriptions, the rhetorical force of Deut 17:18-20 derives from a poetics of proximity and submission: as a physical object, the royally inscribed law code embodies the king’s obligation to the substance of torah even while its status as copy distances him the original torah document produced by Moses himself. Read against the cultural backdrop of monumental inscriptions, the king’s copy of the mosaic torah is Deuteronomy’s anti-royal inscription.

In this paper, we propose to revisit Deuteronomy 22:5, a text commonly understood as a prohibition against cross-dressing. Building on the seminal study of Fox (2009), as well as recent works on dress and adornment in the Hebrew Bible (Berner et al. 2019; Finitsis et al. 2019; Quick 2021), we look into the “haptic connections” (Levitt 2020; cf. Smoak 2019) between the body of the wearer and their personal objects: the gèbèr’s kelî and the woman’s simlāh. We wish to delve deeper into the idea that “clothes were believed to bear aspects of their owner’s very being” (Fox 2009: 71), including the daily gender performances imprinted on these worn objects. With a few possible exceptions (ex.: veils), the Israelite/Judean wardrobe, or at least what we can make of it based on biblical texts and a very few iconographic representations, does not appear to be inherently “gendered”. Touch and manipulation engender them. This paper investigates this idea in three complementary ways. First, while Deut 22:5 has often been read closely with the following verses on the respect of boundaries and things not to be mixed (v.6-11), such as textiles, we suggest exploring this passage in connection with verses 1-4, displaced animals and objects, including a man’s simlāh. We contend that these verses about lost property constitute an interesting “proximate text” to look into the intimate connection of bodies with items of clothing and other implements. Are we to understand the objects of verse 5 as having been removed or discarded and not to be “touched” by the wrong gender? Second, we examine the “gendering” of the woman’s simlāh in Deut 22:5 through an intertextual study of this piece of cloth[ing] in the specific literary context of the book of Deuteronomy. This item is mentioned 6 times in the book, half of them in association with women: the ishshāh of our verse, a war captive (Deut 21:13) and a young woman whose virginity is on trial (Deut 22: 17). This textile network gives us an insight into the un/doing of different biblical femininities to which dress items – especially the simlāh – contribute as “evidence” of constrained and changing identities and bodies. Third, we consider one of many afterlives of Deut 22:5 with a small foray into a Qumran fragment, 4Q159 (Ordinances), from the Herodian period. We especially look into the “new” clothes acquired by the woman in this passage – salmāh and ketōnèt –, as well as the new literary context of this prohibition, now in even closer proximity with the testing of a woman’s virginity (Tigay 1993). This will be an opportunity to examine how genders and bodies are done differently depending on the dress items and texts they connect with.

According to 2 Sam. 5:11, right after David’s conquest of Jerusalem, King Hiram of Tyre sent envoys and supplies to David, and built him a palace in Jerusalem. This, together with its parallel in Chronicles, is Hiram’s only appearance in the David story. There is no mention that David ever reciprocated, but 1 Kings 5:15 [Eng. 5:1] mentions that Hiram had been a friend of David “for all time”, and “the fortress of Tyre” is mentioned in the description of Joab’s census in 2 Sam. 24:7. Solomon’s relationship with Hiram is much more complex: they begin as allies and business partners, but Solomon eventually ends up paying Hiram, in goods, in labor and eventually in land, for what he received. The “Land of Cabul” that Solomon is said to have given to Hiram, is usually identified as the area including Cabul, a town of Asher in the western Galilee in Josh. 19:24-31, which also includes “the fortress of Tyre”. This area, the coast from Tyre to the Carmel, the biblical territory of Asher, sets the stage for the biblical view of the relationship between the Phoenicians and the early Israelite monarchy. This paper will examine the way in which the relevant biblical texts understand that relationship, as a reflection of the geography of the area.

Margaret Atwood’s engagement with the Bible has long been recognized, most recently in the edited volume “Who Knows What We’d make of It, If We Ever Got Our Hands on It?” The Bible and Margaret Atwood (Graybill and Sabo, 2020). This engagement continues in Atwood’s latest novel The Testaments (2019), the long-awaited sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale (1985). The Testaments is indeed a sequel as it portrays the lives of Gilead’s daughters, the second generation (Agnes, Becka, and Nicole). At the same time, it also functions as a prequel because it provides horrifying narrations of the foundation of Gilead and the story of the regime’s most prominent woman, Aunt Lydia. In this paper I argue that similarly to how The Testaments serves both as a prequel and a sequel for The Handmaid's Tale, “Bible” establishes the regime of Gilead and brings about its end. The “Bible” that is foundational to the regime is not the same “Bible” as the one that threatens it. The idea of several Bibles in Atwood’s work has been suggested by Richard Walsh (in Graybill and Sabo) and will here be extended to the discussion of The Testaments. I argue that the threat to the regime comes from the access to, and the act of, reading the Bible. The threat comes to a less extent from an alteration of the canon. The Bible of the Gilead regime consists primarily of texts from the Hebrew Bible. It provides characters’ names and roles in the society, access to it is limited, and it functions as a cultural artifact. Selected texts, and a certain reading of them, are foundational for the repressive regime. The story of Rachel and Leah and their handmaids (the enslaved women of Genesis 30) provides the legitimation for the institution of the handmaids in Gilead, eponymically names the “Rachel and Leah Center,” and is read on the night of the Ceremony. The story of the rape of the Levite’s concubine (Judges 19) is taught in Gilead’s schools as: “one of the most important stories in the Bible – important because it was a message from God especially for girls and women” (The Testaments, 78). Atwood’s use of these texts is terrifying, but her reading of these narratives also affects how I in turn read and respond to them. Her reading changes my own. This process of reciprocity between the original biblical texts and their reception and reuse has been productively described as “reversing the hermeneutical flow” (Larry J. Kreitzer). Agnes and Becka learn to read in their training to become Aunts, a training that includes reading the Bible. Reading and writing is otherwise not permitted for the women in Gilead. Their discovery that “It [the Bible] doesn’t say what they say it says” (The Testaments, 302) and that “They leave things out…” (The Testaments, 295) contributes profoundly to the deconstruction of their beliefs in the regime and their freedom from indoctrination. Real access to the Bible eventually brings oppressive Gilead down.

This paper looks at the role of the vineyard in the Yahwist's narrative of Noah, arguing that the fruit from Noah's vine represents a partial return to Eden and a time when fruit trees fed people before the cursing of the ground brought on a famine in the land (Gn 3:17). The paper traces the events described by the Yahwist—from the sprouting of all kinds of fruit trees in Eden from the ground ('adamah) to Noah the man of the 'adamah planting a vineyard—showing that the key words and motifs of the Yahwist work as an aetiology to explain the role of fruit-tending in the Levant. The paper also looks at the role of viticulture in Canaan and how vinekeepers trained vines to shade the harvesters, alleviating the pain and sweat that marks the workers of the plants of the field (Gn 3:18–19). Throughout, the paper examines the way the vine is portrayed throughout the biblical texts, tracking its role as a signifier of blessedness in the prophets and also how in post-exilic texts Eden comes where one might expect a vineyard in pre-exilic texts. The historical reality of viticulture and what the grapevine symbolizes in the Torah and the Prophets signifies an ongoing relationship between the vineyard of Noah and the orchard of Eden in the biblical imagination.

In 2 Corinthians there is no shortage of emotional terminology. Paul lists traumatic events throughout the letter that evoke powerful emotional responses from his readers. In the opening verses suffering (θλῖψις) is balanced with consolation (παράκλησις) and then, in 1:8 Paul delivers some difficult news. He and his colleagues had experienced such affliction that they were “unbearably crushed” leading to a stark emotional response. Paul says that they despaired of life itself (ἐξαπορηθῆναι ἡμᾶς καὶ τοῦ ζῆν). The sincerity of this claim, balanced with the defense of Paul’s apostleship in chapters 2 and 3 seems out of place. Would Paul’s position be enhanced before the Corinthian congregation if he admitted to such despair? This makes the appearance of the same constellation of terms in 2 Corinthians 4:8 all the more interesting. Here, Paul states, “8 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair” (ἐν παντὶ θλιβόμενοι ἀλλʼ οὐ στενοχωρούμενοι, ἀπορούμενοι ἀλλʼ οὐκ ἐξαπορούμενοι). Curiously, with the same terms in view, Paul negates the possibility of despair amid the afflictions familiar to the apostolic life. While traces of the emotion of despair and hopelessness are hard to identify in Paul’s correspondence, Colossians 3:23 does offer a negation of the possibility of hopelessness. In no other places, however, does Paul’s emotional language verge to the level it does in 2 Corinthians 1:8. As L. L. Welborn has pointed out, Paul’s language of pain corresponds to other voices in the ancient philosophical literature of the emotions. Pain can lead to growth. Paul’s letter to the Philippians shows the apostle laid bare by the possibility of his own death and yet he does not characterize that prospect with the emotional character that he does the sufferings of 2 Corinthians 1:8. This paper will explore Paul’s use of the term “despair” (ἐξαπορέω) along with related emotions and will offer an explanation as to the differences registered by Paul only a few chapters later in 2 Corinthians 4:8.

In search of the women of ancient Dura there are few traces, most of which pertain to public religious contexts. These vestiges of female religious participation are attested in the temples dedicated to the Palmyrene, gods, Zeus Theos, Artemis, Azzanathknoa and Atargatis, as well as in a list that may enumerate thiasic participants. Most famously there are the names of women recorded on the first-century salles á gradins, which are presumed to reflect a ritual use of the architectural space in three sanctuaries. In addition several graffiti preserve female names, and a handful of portraits accompanied by inscriptions, typically appear in family contexts within sanctuaries. The remaining evidence for women at the city primarily derives from the papyri that document a variety of life circumstances such as divorce. However, if we include non-biographical representations of women, the Christian and Jewish buildings at the site preserve further evidence for the presence of women at Dura. Notably the procession of women in the baptistry, and the depictions of biblical heroines in the synagogue would have offered the third-century female viewer allegorical exempla. The evidence spans some two and a half centuries at the site, so what I propose is not a linear survey of the archaeology of Durene women, but rather a selection of case studies that foreground the presence of female participants in religious contexts at the site. Material from other Syrian contexts such as Palmyra and Tyre provide critical leverage.

Early Christian shrines were often repositories of objects. The presence of these curated objects, as well as the explicit comments of pilgrims, attests to their perceived potency. Thanks to literary descriptions and material finds, we also have some idea of the ritual gestures that these objects evoked. But what we know far less about is the affective impact of the objects, how they were believed to influence pilgrims. In several passages, however, John Chrysostom speaks precisely to this question. He is clear on the emotional impact of objects. He notes how the clothing and shoes of beloved persons—even their street—fuel feelings of love. And he lingers on the shoes of the martyrs, left lying on the river bank, as a means of evoking complex feelings of pity and admiration. But perhaps most intriguing is his own openly expressed desire to know every aspect of the lives of the apostles (“what they ate, where they sat, where they lodged, what they did every day”), and his equally fervent wish to visit the relics of Paul, (to see his chains, place of imprisonment, and especially the "dust" from his various body parts). These, he insists, would inspire "compunction," a "pricking" of the conscience akin to remorse. Clearly, he believes that objects can shape the way in which historical figures are imagined and that they can be more arousing—even more real—than words. Relying on Kotrosits’ work (especially her thesis that the apparent stability of objects is a product of psychological work), and on museum studies focusing on the power of the tangible fragment, this paper will develop Chrysostom’s understanding of objects as goads that can rouse people from their usual state of carelessness and inertia.

Perhaps more than any other book in the New Testament, the book of Hebrews can be connected to the doctrines expressed within the Nicene Creed. This paper proposes that preaching from Hebrews could counter the well-documented decline of biblical literacy and lack of theological formation in today’s churches. To illustrate how the book overlaps with doctrines found in the Nicene Creed, this paper will consider three christological themes in Hebrews: Jesus’s divine sonship (“the only Son of God”), his humanity (“was made human”), and his high priesthood (“at the right hand of the Father”). Beyond mere mental acknowledgment of these doctrines, those who are taught by Hebrews will be encouraged to draw near to God in prayer, assured that they can approach God boldly because the Son of God became human, “for us and for our salvation,” and as high priest is able to sympathize with the weakness and suffering of humanity (Hebrews 2:17-18; 4:14-16; 5:7-10). By attending to the theology of this neglected sermon, preachers will nurture the scriptural and theological imaginations of their congregations.

With the epic reach of Digital Humanities now secure, it is sometimes easy to forget that the literal Father of our discipline, Fr. Roberto Busa began our collective journeys by collaborating with IBM on a text search engine for his eventual 56 volume Index Thomisticus. In this session we stay close to Father Busa’s text search and computational roots by premiering three soon-to-be released Digital Humanities technology tools. In one sense these tools are not new in that I have presented earlier editions of them in eleven SBL sessions since 2007. In another sense they are very much new since they have been substantially updated from all their prior versions and will finally be available to the scholarly community in early 2022 through the author’s upcoming digital humanities portal on Github. The first of these tools, the updated Manuscript and Textual Identification System (METIS) engine, is a tool to identify heavily damaged Greek papyri by taking into account stichometry, different scribal hands, and the presence of Nomina Sacra. In this session we will demonstrate METIS running upon 7Q fragments (fragments from cave 7 in Qumran.) The second tool, PositionSolve, is a data reduction engine that allows the user to plot Biblical books, chapters or sections by overall linguistic similarity using advanced multivariate (MVA) data reduction analytics. These MVA algorithms include, but are not limited to, factor, correspondence, principal components and discriminant analysis. The end result of PositionSolve’s labors is a 3-D “map” of textual similarity determined by whatever linguistic measures are chosen to create the space. It should be noted that PositionSolve, originally written by the author, has since been substantially updated with numerous options to clean the data and optimize the underlying mathematical models. In terms of the biblical literature, PositionSolve is useful in making linguistic inferences related to historic issues of occasion and introduction. The third tool, the Digital Humanities Data Landscape Mapper (DHDLM), has not been demonstrated at SBL before. This tool is a data exploration engine which creates visual data landscapes of the association between the linguistic features of texts (words, phrases, semantic domains, etc.) and any desired groupings the user chooses to analyze (e.g. by book, chapter, genre, authorship, or any other categorical text-oriented variable). The DHDLM produces undulating landscapes where the height of a point on the landscape is any one of over 20 measures of association or information theoretic measures (measures from information theory). The two axes of the landscape are any linguistic measures desired by grouping variables – where a grouping variable can be any text-oriented definitions (e.g. grouping by date, author, genre, chapter, section, redaction units, Q vs. non Q, etc.) All three digital humanities tools will be demonstrated via a worked example addressing a live, contemporary issue in biblical scholarship.

The Shafi‘i jurist al-Mawardi (d. 1058) is best known today for his works on Islamic law and political thought. But his work of qur’anic exegesis (tafsir), al-Nukat wa-l-‘uyun fi tafsir al-Qur’an, remains understudied, especially when compared to those of al-Tabari, al-Zamakhshari, and al-Razi. Yet among al-Mawardi’s writings, the Nukat was the work on which most of his biographers fixated when they accused him of espousing Mu‘tazili views on certain matters of theology. For instance, Ibn al-Salah (d. 1245), the author of a biographical dictionary of Shafi‘i jurists, devotes half of his biographical entry on al-Mawardi to this very issue, deeming the Nukat to be harmful to its reader’s faith because it contains “unorthodox” Mu‘tazili views presented in a concealed fashion. Ibn al-Salah’s allegations that al-Mawardi’s harbored closeted Mu‘tazili views would be transmitted in later biographical dictionaries, including those by al-Subki, al-Suyuti, and al-Dawudi. This paper evaluates these allegations by revisiting al-Mawardi’s Nukat, particularly his commentaries on verses pertaining to three theological issues: God’s attributes (sifat Allah), the createdness of the Qur’an (khalq al-Qur’an), and predestination (qadar). With regard to the verses on God’s attributes, although al-Mawardi does introduce a myriad of interpretations that are metaphorical in nature and in line with the Mu‘tazili belief that God cannot have any human attributes, for the most part, he avoids wading into controversial discussions and does not delve into the debates that surround these verses. At times, he simply glosses over a verse without providing commentary. This approach of sidestepping controversy is also observed in his views on the createdness of the Qur’an and predestination, topics that have garnered the Mu‘tazila much heat from traditionalist Sunni circles. Its notoriety among later scholars notwithstanding, al-Mawardi’s Nukat remains an important milestone in Islamic intellectual history. It serves as a testament to a moment in Islamic history when Mu‘tazili ideas were in such vogue that they entered the tafsir work of a prominent Shafi‘i jurist. Furthermore, it speaks to the intellectual flexibility and experimentation that was characteristic of the Buyid period, such that Mu‘tazili theological views co-existed side by side with views considered “orthodox” by later Sunni scholars.

The Book of Hosea features prominently in Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko. In the novel, the young pastor Baek Isak, upon reading and reflecting on the message of Hosea, decides to propose to Sunja, who was seduced by the older, wealthy, and married Koh Hansu. Once pregnant by him both she and her child face a future of ostracism and destitution she refuses to continue to be his mistress. Sunja would be disgraced by her community because she, in her words, “behaved like a whore,” and without a legitimate father, her child would lack a family name. These motifs of marrying a “woman of whoredom” and having “children of whoredom,” along with having a son whose name signifies “Not my people,” occur in the book of Hosea. Lee has woven the tale of Hosea, Gomer, her additional lovers, and her children into the very fabric of her novel. Both tell stories of families who struggle for survival in the context of imperial forces. This paper will describe how Lee’s novel intersects with the book of Hosea and identify its points of convergence and divergence. The story of Hosea and Gomer has been interpreted in a myriad of ways by theologians and biblical scholars because of the opaqueness of the biblical text. Lee adopts a particular reading of Hosea and attention will be given to which interpretation of the book of Hosea Pachinko aligns.

It has been said that the U.S. experienced the outbreak of two viruses in 2020-21: COVID-19 and AAPI hate. Their coterminous rise is not coincidental given that the former President Trump repeatedly referred to the Coronavirus as the “Wuhan virus” or “China virus,” relentlessly blamed China for the disease, and made racially derogatory statements such as “kung flu”. Anti-Asian racism surged in tandem with the spread of the virus, and while the country the end of the pandemic is in sight in 2021, no vaccine for Anti-Asian racism currently exists. In the case of both the Coronavirus and Anti-Asian racism, many in the public doubted reports of their legitimacy and the severity of the harm they both inflict. What some assumed to be just the common flu, resulted in over a half a million deaths, and what started off as verbal insults hurled at Asian Americans, escalated into physical violence and even mass murder. These themes of suffering due to disease, social stigmatism of the infirm, rejection culminating in death, and the unwillingness to acknowledge the suffering of others all occur within the Servant texts in Isaiah 49-53. These texts convey a community’s struggle to acknowledge YHWH’s servant who was socially stigmatized due to his disease and experienced an ignominious death and burial. By reading Isaiah’s Servant texts in light of the trauma experienced due to the Coronavirus and Anti-Asian Racism, readers can better grasp the physical and social dynamics of the Servant’s suffering in Isaiah and sympathize with all who suffer in a similar manner. I would be interested in having this paper published in an edited volume.

This essay explores transformative parenting at the borders of privilege in Mark 7:24-30. Traditional readings tend to describe Jesus’ response to the Syrophoenician woman to suggest that he always intends to heal her daughter and maintains a consistent posture of authority and power throughout the text. Recently, ideological readers have drawn out the power of the Syrophoenician woman who, though marginalized by Jesus, resists his authoritative dismissal of her request and, ultimately, transforms Jesus’ mindset as a result. Our reading builds upon this relationship, complicating these power binaries to suggest that marginalization occurs at multiple levels within the text. Close attention to the social context reveals that the Syrophoenicians may have been perceived as having more power than the Galileans, even given gender differentials. As such, we argue that both adult characters are simultaneously more powerful and less powerful than one another because of the intersection of multiple power dynamics. The mother and Jesus’ identities intersect at five overlapping poles of power representative of their relationships within the Roman imperial world: Syrophoenician/Galilean, wealthy/poor, female/male, Greek/Jew, and supplicant/religious authority. In addition to this, the role of the daughter within the text suggests a sixth power relationship: adult/child. In this context, as previous readings have shown, the woman’s decision to engage with Jesus at this borderland of power differentials enables the release of the child from the demon that possesses her. From a child-centered perspective, we read such interaction as motivated and enabled out of concern for the well-being of the child who, given demon possession and her own social marginalization, is not able to act for herself. Our new reading of these intersectional power relationships between all three characters suggests that in terms of ethnicity and socioeconomic status, a mother, for the sake of her child, crosses the borders of power differentials and models a border-crossing parenting that transcends them. The mother’s willingness to cross these borders of power differential for the sake of her daughter directly results in the transformation of the child who stands at the center of the narrative, through her release from the demon that the intersectional borders of power hold in place. It is this transformation of the child that shifts the perspectives of both adults (i.e, Jesus and the mother) in terms of their understanding of power relationships and authority.

In Revelation 20, “books were opened” for the judgment of the dead – books of deeds and the Book of Life. These divine records, an ancient apocalyptic motif, form a barrier and test at the point of entry into the heavenly city. In tracing the ideation of the United States as the New Jerusalem, I argue that American conceptualization of immigration record-keeping and the requirements of naturalization echo and borrow from the logics of Revelation’s heavenly records – their necessity, consultation, and arbitrary power.

This paper assesses the mutually informative influences of traditions from apocryphal acts of the apostles and hagiography concerning John the Evangelist on the textual transmission of the Gospel of John in medieval gospel books. As an illustrative case study, this paper examines the Memorial of John (BHG 919fb) preface to the Gospel of John in the thirteenth-century Georgius Gospels (Chicago, University of Chicago, MS 727 [Goodspeed], GA 2266). This gospel preface presents a helpful microcosm for understanding the continuity of apocryphal acts and hagiography in their traditions concerning John the Evangelist. The Memorial of John here follows such literature in expanding upon the biography of the evangelist, in notable contrast to the same manuscript’s shorter synoptic gospel prefaces, which rather focus on summarising gospel contents. Most notably, the Memorial of John reimagines the dictation of the Gospel of John by the evangelist to Prochorus amid thunderous revelation on a mountain in Patmos. This tradition most obviously corresponds to the Acts of John by Prochorus, but it can also be compared with the example of an eleventh-century hagiographic manuscript, Commentary on John by Pseudo-Symeon Metaphrastes (London, British Library, Add. 11870), which features an artistic representation of this same scene of John and Prochorus together with its title. Using these examples, this paper aims to illustrate the continuity of apocryphal traditions concerning John the Evangelist in apocryphal acts of the apostles and hagiography, as both can be seen reflected in the Gospel of John’s own textual transmission.

Deuteronomy 23:10-15 provides instructions on how to preserve the holiness of a military camp, opening with a general guideline to be on guard against anything rāʻ. The passage then focuses on two issues: what to do if someone is rendered unclean by a nocturnal emission and how the camp should handle defecation. The reasoning behind these instructions is given in v. 15: "Because YHWH your God walks about in the midst of your camp to protect you and to deliver your enemies to you, your camp shall be holy; let Him not see among you ʻerwat dābār and turn away from you." This paper will consider several questions raised by this passage. How should the terms rāʻ and ʻerwat dābār be understood in this context, and to what do they refer? Are nocturnal emissions and defecation being singled out as issues of particular concern, or are they simply intended to be two examples of the kinds of things the camp must be vigilant about? Is there a relationship between the two? While the text provides some insight as to what the concern is with nocturnal emissions, it is not clear what the issue is with defecation. Is excrement considered impure, profaning, and/or unhygienic, or is there another reason it is necessary for defecation to take place outside the camp? What is the conception of holiness in this passage, and who or what is holy? Is the military camp conceived of as a holy space, or is it the individuals within the camp who are holy, or is it both? Were these guidelines ever intended to be put into practice? If so, how likely is it that they were? If not, what was the intent behind them? Lastly, how does this passage fit within the larger context of Deuteronomy in terms of its views regarding purity and holiness?

Review of David Brakke, The Gnostic Scriptures

In this paper, I examine the Matthean Jesus’s impressive use of Hebrew Scriptures in response to the devil’s temptations, in particular his application of key phrases from Deuteronomy that recall biblical Israel’s similar experience of “testing” in the wilderness, and identify two socio-rhetorical functions: 1) to establish a Jesus-Israel typology so as to emphasise Jesus’s “fulfilment” of Israel’s religious tradition, and 2) to reinforce Matthew’s portrayal of Jesus as the legitimate Teacher of Israel par excellence who is an expert of God’s Law in more ways that one. In addition to the other typologies that may exist in Matthew’s gospel (e.g. Jesus and Moses, Jesus and David, etc.), “Jesus and Israel” is also an appropriate typology. From the concept of corporate solidarity, the parallels between Jesus’ temptations and Israel’s wilderness experience (Disobedience at the Wilderness of Sin, Testing God at Massah, the Golden Calf Incident), and relating the narrative with Jesus’ baptism, I contend that Matthew presents Jesus as the true “Son of God” who emerges victorious out from the wilderness, approved and ready to do God’s work. Jesus’ use of the OT not only endorses the authority of the Mosaic Law, but also embodies what the Law emphasizes: loyalty to God, especially in the face of uncertainty and adversity. Matthew’s depiction of Jesus’ use of the OT also contributes to his status as the legitimate Teacher of Israel. Not only does Jesus quote Scripture accurately and correctly, his actions are consistent with his use of Scripture, unlike his Jewish opponents in Matthew’s Gospel, the scribal elite who allegedly do not practice what they teach. Matthew presents Jesus as much more of a teacher than the Pharisees in essence, but he is certainly not inferior to them in his knowledge of the Scriptures or his ability to skilfully apply them.

The methods of the new philology have increasingly directed scholarly attention to the immediate material and cultural contexts in which early texts are preserved before turning to the construction of a hypothetical earlier form of the text. In many cases, this early material context comes in the form of manuscripts, some of which contain many texts whose relationship to one another and to the scribe(s) who included them in the manuscript deserve attention. This paper draws attention to these such relationships in a particular Syriac manuscript from the British Library: Add. MS 14,644. This manuscript, which was probably copied in the late fifth or early sixth century, contains a fascinating hommage to the city of Edessa: the Doctrine of Addai, the Teaching of Apostles, the Doctrine of Simeon Cephas at Rome, the Invention of the True Cross by Helene, the Martyrdom of Judas Kyriakos, the Martyrdom of Sharbel, and the History of the Man of God with whom Bishop Rabbula (411-435) interacted. In other words, the manuscript is a collection of apocryphal and hagiographical narratives. When studied individually, the texts appear to have little to do with one another, set in different times, places, and containing different characters. When read as a collection, however, some connections reveal themselves. I argue that this collection of apocryphal and hagiographic narratives, taken in situ in the manuscript, offers a story of the Christianization of Edessa and the “Blessed City’s” place within the wider story of Christianity. The texts are arranged in a loose chronological order and share some important thematic elements, including the patronage of Edessa’s nobility and the reoccurring insistence that the texts themselves come from the city’s archives. The narratives have been edited to provide continuity between the different times, locations, and characters. The manuscript begins with the coming of Christianity to Edessa by Addai and ends with the figure most responsible for Christianity’s solidification in the city, Bishop Rabbula. The result is, I suggest, a history of Christian Edessa told through the medium of stories. The use of apocrypha and hagiography as mediums for telling history is indicative of how myths function for the construction and reinforcement of cultural identity (e.g., Bruce Lincoln), but is also instructive of how scribes sought to forget connections between a present community and a constructed, imagined past (e.g., Elizabeth Castelli). B.L. 14,644 may be representative of an alternative form of historiography, one that explicitly employed apocryphal and hagiographic narratives, that continues to problematize scholarly generic categories.

The book of Colossians is many things. At times it is direct, yet it is often confounding. It is theology, rhetoric, poetry, instruction, and encouragement. It is both eschatologically intimate and temporally distanced. And while much has been written on the book of Colossians, one pericope has ostensibly demanded more attention than any other: Colossians 1:15-20. A microcosm of the last fifty years of scholarship on this pericope can be seen in the words of N.T. Wright, “The obvious starting point in the analysis of the passage is the parallelism between words and phrases in the different sections.” Ostensibly, this “obvious” starting point is without flaw. However, this methodology is based in the false premise that we can assume what the pericope says before we know what the pericope is. In error, even the most-diligent readers have researched the epistle’s most-pregnant pericope without contemplating its encomiastic structure. This articled seeks to challenge common understandings of Colossians 1:15–20 and to offer a new interpretation with further inclusion of its oldest known manuscript: 𝔓46. First, we will discuss the importance of rhetoric in the oral-aural culture of the Roman world. Second, we will analyze the rhetorical topoi of the encomium and the importance of the text offered in 𝔓46 in Colossians 1:18. Lastly, we will offer a new interpretation of the encomium.

While major ancient cites were protected by walls and accessed through gates, a more ideological boundary continued past urban entries to mark the difference between rich and poor—the boundary of the street. Recent attention by historians, archaeologists, and demographers of ancient Roman cities explores the urban street as a public space of business demarcated not only from house, building, and shop but also vehicular traffic, understood as private space separating rich from poor. As such, vehicular traffic is repeatedly restricted in Roman law to preserve this distinction. Streets and bridges were locations for beggars; while the homeless are rarely noted as such in ancient sources, those driven from their homes by destitution or debt were to be found in the street. In sources associated with Paul, we find a bifurcation between public and private activity. In his letters, Paul focuses on his ministry in the households of his followers, likely as a way to assert his legitimacy and leadership. Attempts to reconstruct Paul’s entry into a city and establishment of his material work and apostolic mission remain largely speculative. Nevertheless, his attachment to households becomes a significant if contested aspect of his strategy—indicated, for example, by the material and ideological description of the “opened door” (1 Cor 16:9, 2 Cor 2:12). By contrast, the Paul of Acts works largely in public and outdoors, with his entry into households marking major reflections on his identity as apostle. Thus, for Acts, while entry into a city was an important step in apostolic travel, transgressing the boundary between street and house similarly marks the success of the Way.

This paper addresses an interesting tension in the study of Christian identity in antiquity: on the one hand, modern scholars can only seldomly recognize Christians, apart from clergy, through external markers of identity in papyrus documents, and on the other, we have clues in primary sources that indicate most contemporaries knew well who the Christians were in their surroundings. Scholarship on Christian identity can give the impression that Christians kept their identities secret and that it was difficult to recognize Christians in antiquity because they were not recognizable by outside markers. Through an examination of a letter by Dionysus of Alexandria, a letter by priest Leon of Oxyrhynchus (P.Oxy. VIII 1162), and the archive of flax merchant Leonides, this paper argues that people knew who in their neighborhood identified as Christians.

When the so-called «New Philology» was launched within Medieval Studies it was as a reaction against a number of unfortunate consequences of the quest for origins inherent in traditional philological practices. By focusing the philological enterprise on hypothetical originals, and subsequent interpretation on contexts of authorship, the texts as they are physically manifested in manuscripts had become more or less ignored as evidence in their own right, for their own contexts of production and use. Taking as its starting point the realization that no literary work ever exists apart from its material manifestations, material philology embraces the full spectrum of these manifestations, with all their peculiarities and imperfections, seeing textual fluidity as the norm, and as a window into processes of transmission, reception, and use, rather than as anomalies or mere stepping stones in the quest for the archetype. This paper will focus on the richness of research possibilities that emerge once we take textual fluidity and the multifaceted information to be gained from properly close attention to the manuscripts in all their materiality fully into consideration.

The role of the D stem in the Semitic verbal system has been the subject of much debate. A number of different functions have been ascribed to the D stem, including factitive, intensive, and pluractional; however, the question of how these functions are related to each other (if they are) remains largely unanswered. The current paper attempts to add to the ongoing research by first laying out an integrated approach to understanding these different functions of the D stem, and then applying this approach to examine the use of one verbal root in the Syriac of the Peshitta. These different functions can all be understood as manifestations of a general transitivity-raising operation encoded in the D stem. Semantically, transitivity is the degree to which an action is transferred from an agent to a patient. It is affected by a range of syntactic and semantic features including valence of the verb, agency and volitionality of the subject, patientivity of the object, aspect and Aktionsart of the verb, and the presence of adverbial modifiers signifying features such as plurality and completion of the action. The use of the D stem in the Peshitta coincides broadly with the high-transitivity values of these features; furthermore, the particular function exhibited by the D stem is conditioned by the semantics of the corresponding G stem verb, such that stative and other low-transitivity G stems tend to correlate with factitive/causative D stems, while G stems that already exhibit high transitivity may produce intensive, completive, and/or pluractional D stems. This connection between the D stem and high transitivity is then demonstrated for clauses containing the root *knš. This root is an excellent test case for this hypothesis, because it is extremely commonly attested in both G and D stems, allowing a robust sample size of clauses to examine. In addition, it is notable among Syriac verbal roots because its G stem exhibits a remarkably wide semantic field, encompassing both transitive and intransitive uses; this allows the corresponding D stem to attest both factitive and pluractional functions.

This paper explores the land’s responses to human-on-human violence in Genesis and Job. It focuses on consistent response patterns that the land exhibits in Genesis 4-6 and in Job 18, 20, and 31. It suggests that the land is not only a victim to violence, but that it also acts as advocate for victims and as avenger of blood. Using the concept of moral-somatic ecology, I suggest that these texts presuppose a unity between humans and the earth that is both moral and physical, such that violence between humans inevitably involves and affects the land’s body.

The publication of the Handbook of the Food in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel marks the coming of age of the study of foodways in our field. In this paper I will consider what has happened over the past fifteen years and reflect on some of the prospects for future work

This paper traces the concept of collection and division as mathematical processes that underlie the epiphany of a mystery, a mystery found in the flesh. The processes begin in Plato's late dialogues and unwritten doctrines, where he is at his most Pythagorean and makes the most use of the concepts of peros and apeiron, also called the One and the Unlimited Dyad. These ideas are taken up by Middle Platonism, which emphasizes Plato's Pythagorean side and will be taken up in turn by some late ancient Christianities. Valentinian Christianity, regarded by heresiologists as Gnostic and by its adherents as orthodox, makes especially interesting use of this NeoPythagorean approach. In a notable divergence from many (other) forms of Gnosticism, Valentinianism is not dualistic; David Brons even argues that it is intensely monist. Its oneness, however, is of a kind that is also the number of the unlimited dyad. The revelation of the redemptive knowledge of one and dyad is learned from the savior, as both a teacher and an (peculiar) body. In the Gospel of Truth, the savior is one who teaches and is crucified, but is also the taught book, published on the cross. The book, in turn, contains the names of all who read it. In similar fashion, as we find in the Epistle to Rheginus, the savior's body is made up of all of the members of the church, though no member forms a particular part. The names both gather to spell out the name of the unnameable Father and multiply at every division: each letter is its own perfect book. The parts gather the body that is whole in each part. This echoes the strangeness of Valentinian cosmogony. Here Limit is the image of the illimitable Father. Like Plato's peros, Limit is necessary to both creation and knowledge, especially the revelation of unity and unlimitedness as necessary first principles. Such a revelation exceeds formulation in propositional logic, but, like the strictly-kept mysteries of the Pythagoreans, it begins in arithmetic. What is revealed is not sharply distinct levels, nor a world cut off from its source, but active delimitation that constantly multiplies the image of that source, a source that cannot be divided but has Limit as its image. Any point in the world offers both the whole divine image and a fragment of that image, both one with all and cut off as a distinct copy. The mathematics of this world strikingly resembles that proposed by Benoit Mandelbrot in what he called the fractal geometry of nature. Any minute portion of a fractal is an image of the whole of it; dividing that image just results in smaller and more multiple versions of the whole again. Though the Valentinians would hardly have had access to Mandelbrot's theories, they did have Neopythagorean Middle Platonism, and the use that they made of it was at once deeply mystical and mathematically sophisticated.

In his excavations at Qumran, Roland de Vaux identified as a toilet an installation in L51, a large room on the eastern side of the main building to the north of the miqveh (ritual bath) in L48-L49. A terracotta pipe set into a conical, mud-lined pit that was filled with thin layers of coarse, dirty soil was embedded in the floor of this room. Based on comparisons with cesspits of other ancient toilets, I have suggested that de Vaux was correct in identifying the installation in L44 as a toilet, and I have discussed the presence of a toilet at Qumran in light of sectarian concerns with the impurity of excrement. In this paper, I identify a recently-published pierced stone block from L44, which is adjacent to L51, as the missing toilet seat from the cesspit in light of comparisons with similar toilet seats from the City of David in Jerusalem. I also consider the possible significance of the large number of toilet installations found in the City of David.

Jacques Liébaert attempted to give readers a vision of the Christology of Cyril of Alexandria prior to 428, and he noted helpfully that already at this stage of Cyril’s thought the notion of Christ’s self-emptying was prominent. Liébaert and Paul Henry in his long article on “Kenosis” in the “Dictionnaire de la Bible” both survey Cyril’s writings and uncover trenchant passages and formulations, but their desire to make clear that Cyril is not a 19th century German or English “kenoticist” conceals as much as it reveals about Cyril’s use of the passage. In this contribution I will show how Philippians 2:5-11, and particularly the notion of kenosis, is important for Cyril in the way that it helps him rehabilitate the notion of Christ’s mediation. Non-Nicene theologies had stressed Christ’s mediation and the consistency of the Word as the subject across the event of the incarnation. Eunomius had charged Nicenes like Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa with dividing Christ into two because they and other Nicenes wanted to stress the different things that could be predicated of the Word in relation to the incarnation and in distinction from it. Cyril, in his writings against non-Nicene theology prior to 428, shows already a real development from Basil and Gregory precisely in his interpretation of Philippians 2:5-11. In the first place, he responds to non-Nicene charges by continuing to emphasize the distinction of theology and economy and of the two “times” (kairoi) that are proper to the Word. Secondly, however, he raises the question of the subject of the phrase, “he emptied himself” (Philippians 2:7), and asserts that the subject has to be the Word, and must be the same across these verses. This conception of the single subject in Philippians 2:5-11 anchors Cyril’s explanation of what Christ’s mediation entails. Christ is not a being metaphysically in between the one God and the rest of creation, but instead his mediation is founded on “taking a middle place” through a union of God and creation, in the fact that the Word makes creation his own and can become the subject of everything entailed in created reality, including suffering. In a striking image in his “Dialogues on the Trinity,” Cyril takes Philippians 2:5-11 to be a sort of mystical key for understanding the mediation that Moses and Aaron undertake for the people in Numbers 16 and 17: Aaron’s offering of incense to put off the plague symbolizes how Christ has put on humanity, walked among the dying, and offered true worship to the father to save people from death. Philippians 2:5-11 becomes they key for Cyril in his christology that continues to sharply distinguish theology from economy, one “time” from another, while also continuing to stress the one subject of the emptying, God the Word, who mediates on behalf of humanity. This reconception of mediation points toward a reexamination of Cyril’s interpretation of kenosis as presented by Sarah Coakley and others.

3) "Religious landscapes of city and hinterland" This paper explores the intersections of biblical concepts of “Promised Land” and biblical archaeology’s participation in the construction of a national-biblical narrative of the land of Israel. It seeks to analyze the excavation and preservation practices carried out at the sites of Megiddo, Masada, and the City of David as case studies for examining the eco-colonial role biblical archaeology has and continues to play in altering the geographic and biblical narratives of the land of Israel/Palestine. My methodological approach is to read key biblical texts alongside landscapes in modern Israel and interpret particular historical-biblical sites in the land as texts themselves. I begin by exegeting these sites’ histories of scripturalization and greenwashing, a process I am terming “scriptural green(line)ing.” I define scriptural green(line)ing as the scripturalization of politically-strategic places; in this process, biblical archaeological sites, and their curation/preservation as tourist sites and green spaces, serve to alter the land’s physical aspects and biblical-historical narrative to further concretize Israel’s colonization of it. This paper builds upon Nadia Abu El-Haj’s theorization of Israeli archaeology as a practice of territorial self-naming, as well as Nur Masalha’s work on biblical archaeology’s relationship to the “promised land-chosen people” paradigm, to expose the role of biblical archaeology in altering and colonizing the land of Palestine. Additionally, both Vincent Wimbush’s notion of scripturalization—or, the social-psycho-political practice of using the Bible to establish colonial realities—and Israeli NGO Emek Shaveh’s recent reporting on the Israeli tactic of annexing land by creating green spaces along the 1948 Green Line will be critical sources in this analysis. This project seeks to substantiate the claim that the phenomenon of scriptural green(line)ing has served to construct narratives of Promised and Holy Land in the present and erase the history of Palestinian displacement and the ongoing violence of settler colonialism. By reading the excavated, curated, and colonized lands of Israel/Palestine as texts themselves, this project will analyze the gaps between these various fields of study to theorize the Bible’s many, and often covert, roles in scripturalizing and greenwashing the colonization of Palestine.

The exact content of the Apocalypse of Peter still puzzles researchers today. Especially the fascinating descriptions of the topography of paradise and its inhabitants were transmitted in significantly different ways in the Greek and Ethiopic versions of the text. By focusing on a tradition of transmission of the text other than the Greek and Ethiopic versions, I would like to contribute to the determination of an early form of the Apocalypse of Peter. Thereby, I take advantage of the fact that an essential source for an early stratum of the text has been largely overlooked in previous research. While the Greek and Ethiopic texts have been the objects of illuminating studies, the Pseudo-Clementine narrative framework in which the Ethiopic work was transmitted remains neglected by most scholars. In my paper, I want to exemplify that this approach is unjustified. Instead, the Pseudo-Clementine narrative functions as an early commentary on the Revelation to Peter and is, therefore, a valuable resource for further information about a more original redaction of the text than we find today in the Ethiopic form or the Greek fragments. The full utilization of all three transmission carriers allows us to place statements about the text's original form, which were previously inconceivable in this way, on a secure foundation. I want to use this mainly for analyzing the paradise passages in Apoc. Pet. 15–17, since this part of the text has been largely overlooked by biblical scholars for the analysis of the early Christian understanding of the afterlife. Such an approach makes it possible to situate the unique concepts concerning the fate of the deceased in a larger context. Overall, an innovative methodology can thus be developed and applied directly to an early second-century theological issue, which in turn sheds fresh light on New Testament conceptions of paradise.

Praying with Virgins: Experience, Body, Space, and Prayer in the Shepherd of Hermas In Similtude 9.11.1-11 Hermas spends a night with twelve virgins whom earlier in the vision he sees constructing a tower, which in the Shepherd is the assembly of believers. As the vision unfolds we understand that the women represent spirits which both inhabit Hermas and which he sees outside of himself. Further, the stones which go into the construction of the tower come from mountains that have a variety emotionally positive and negative properties. As they go into the tower, it becomes “cheerful and beautiful” even as the best stones come from a mountain that is hilara lian (“exceedingly cheerful”). This theme of cheerfulness continues through Hermas’ night with the virgins, accompanied by kissing, hugging, playing, dancing, singing, and having a merry time. At the conclusion of their happy time together, Hermas spends the rest of night in prayer with the maidens. This vivid and memorable sequence has been surprisingly under theorized and furnishes the backdrop for this paper on considerations of prayer as they relate to body, space, performativity, and experience. With the help of the affect theory of Gilles Deleuze, the anthropological theory of Marilyn Strathern concerning dividual selves and partible objects and places , and the theorization of happy and sad objects and spaces of the queer spatial phenomenologist Sarah Ahmed, the paper theorizes religious experience and ancient prayer with attention to corporeal, spatial, and experiential dimensions. The paper further considers the model of the self at prayer in Hermas, with particular attention to the motif of “double-minded” and purity (which in Hermas relates to having a pure house, heart, and so on), and the role of the maidens who later in Sim. 10 live with Hermas in his purified house. The picture of prayer, experience, self, body, and space that emerges in the Shepherd is of a dynamic set of interpenetrating realities amongst which the self can be refracted and which Hermas’ revelations seek to bring into a self-consistent whole. Taken together, the Shepherd of Hermas, one of the most sustained narrative treatments of religious experience in the early emergent Christian literature, raises interesting questions about understandings of prayer and experience in antiquity and the models of the self they presuppose.

Inter-generational ethical obligations take different perspectives within biblical traditions. Some explicitly focus on generational relations such as Ezekiel 31:29-30 (with the present generation looking negatively on the past). Others, e.g., eighth-century prophets, utilize future punishments to indict contemporary practices. This implicitly provides obligations to transform the present and consequentially affect future generations. Concern for the future generations is mostly implicit, however, without explicit commitments to them. Apocalyptic perspectives could further relativize concern for the future generations because justice is turned over to God or angelic forces and thus not the immediate concerns of the present generation. The present situation and divine rescue can deflect explicit attention away from future concerns and thus could feed future resentment. While there are embedded generational commitments to future generations (apart from selfish focus or very limited identified future beneficiaries), the modern world also brings notions of ecology which can cut two ways: either recognizing obligations to future generations, e.g., sustainability, or inaction thinking it’s too late or future technology will save them. There are, however, other traditions to examine, biblical and extra-biblical, that seek to construct alternative social-political-religious institutional spaces in opposition to the dominant structures. This paper uses two of these, the Gospel of Mark and the Acts of Thecla, to evaluate implications of the alternative social-political-religious institutional spaces they construct in opposition to dominant Greco-Roman patriarchal-enslavement institutions. Both of these traditions contrast with the reinscribing and reinforcement of the dominant Greco-Roman institutions via the incorporation of the Household Codes within the Deutero-Pauline traditions. This contrast provides a tension from which to examine ethical commitments to future generations, from radically distinct value perspectives. The former traditions support creating, in the here and now, alternatives to the patriarchal-enslavement institutions, aligning these alternatives with the reign of God. The other tradition supports reinforcing the patriarchal-enslavement institutions by making the Greco-Roman Household Codes a blueprint for the church. Both, it could be argued, have concerns for future generations. Why else carve out or reinforce present institutional space? This contrast and its tensions within the tradition raise significant challenges for Biblical Ethics. What values are appropriate for bequeathing to our future generations? What criteria do we use to decide? This paper surveys some of the perspectives on inter-generational commitments, including Hebrew Prophets and apocalyptic. The primary focus, however, is on Mark, Thecla, and the Household Codes in relation to the institutional spaces they construct and their ethical stances vis-à-vis Greco-Roman patriarchy and enslavement economy. These prophetic, apocalyptic, and institutional spaces can be compared to contemporary generations with respect to the ethics of the values we (plurally) espouse and the implications those have for our institutions, including how the present generation relates to the future and the future to its past generations. There are no simple answers, but hopefully, some clarification of the relationship between ethical commitments, tradition, and the inter-generational stakes can emerge.

Confusion in key passages of 1 Kings 11, especially verses 14-25 where the “adversaries” Hadad and Rezon are introduced, lead to interpretive dilemmas related to our understanding of Solomon’s international affairs. The determinations of textual and source critical scholars (e.g., Richelle 2016; Van Keulen 2005) necessarily lay the foundations for others who rely on the biblical text for historical and archaeological questions. At the same time, reconstructions of biblical eras contribute to evaluation of the text, particularly in cases of figures’ personal names, titles, and political relationships. For example, one’s position on the nature of an Edomite state at the time of Solomon impacts whether or not we consider Hadad’s story to be about tenth century opposition from Edom (Naaman 1992), an early king of Aram (Lemaire 2001), or reflections of later politics (Edelman 1995). My paper examines how the currents of historical and archaeological debate refer and relate to discussions of textual difficulties.

The kitchen garden, whether a window box in a Roman period apartment or a cultivated space within a complex villa, appears both in urban contexts and in the hinterland. This space provides necessities for the kitchen table and is a microcosm of how the rabbis imagine transforming the countryside writ large. In the Mishnah and Tosefta, particularly in discussions related to the biblical prohibition on “mixed-kinds” (kil’ayim, Lev. 19:19; Deut. 22:9-11), the early rabbis (c. 2nd-3rd centuries CE) create a literary and religious landscape, wherein idealized Jewish farmers make their marks on the countryside in visually and performatively distinct ways. “Landscape” is an important concept for interpreting rabbinic prescriptions about farming and gardening as landscape combines the material, the ideological, and the performative aspects of exurban space (cf. Cosgrove, Minca, and Wiley). In this paper, a quite small space, the kitchen garden, will be analyzed as a microscopic view of this rabbinic landscape. In the ideal, the borders of the garden are clearly demarcated, seeds are precisely planted, human access is provided and regulated, and unruly vines are tamed. As in larger spaces, such as the grain field or vineyard, the rabbinic farmer is expected to show his adherence to biblical law, as the rabbis define it, and thereby create a Jewish landscape that transforms the Late Antique countryside. While such landscape design is found as textual prescriptions, such normative statements about Jewish gardening allow us to speculate about Jewish gardens in their Roman context. Thus, the innovations and spatial imaginings of the early rabbis can be fruitfully compared with Roman gardens, such as those at Pompeii and Herculaneum, where on the one hand we can interpret the remains of such kitchen gardens, and on the other hand, consider the idealized aesthetics of the garden in frescos, which often combine and juxtapose the ordered human realm with “wild” nature. Such comparison with Roman garden practices and aesthetics will highlight those material and spatial features that mark each handsbreadth of the garden as distinctly and normatively rabbinic.

Paul, the diasporic Jewish apostle to the nations, writing to and traveling among the colonized, could be an apt ancient analogue to the more recent “melancholic migrant” (Sara Ahmed). While his letters reflect a few ways these ancient people were subject to trauma and loss, this analogy falters when one recognizes two of the strategies Paul adopts for dealing with these conditions. First, the letters recirculate stereotyped imperial-colonial figures of disgust and target various members of the assembly with them, a displacing gesture that corresponds to some recent studies of Paul’s colonized abjection (Liew) and grief (Nasrallah) in the Corinthian correspondence. Second, the letters aim to move past loss, even convert loss into gain (see 1 Cor 9 and especially Phil 3), a disavowing move that refuses a melancholic sort of dwelling. Paul lists the sorts of things Ahmed and David Eng would expect a melancholic migrant to mourn: homeland, family, language, and status (Israel, Benjamin, Hebrew, and Pharisee in 3:5). But they are nothing now to the apostle who has gained Christ and the power of his resurrection (3:8-11). We can begin again, then, given Paul’s anxiety that his gentile audiences included Ahmed’s “affect aliens,” disgusting because they do not desire the right way, as one way to feel otherwise for their assembled losses. The histories of sites like Corinth and Philippi reflect catastrophic colonial violence, even as recent cultural studies approaches (like Cvetkovich) signal how affect can also function as a hinge between larger sociopolitical structures/events and more quotidian embodied experiences. These dynamics suggest alternative approaches to the materials that likely pre-circulated the letters to those communities -- the hymn in Phil 2:6-11 and the slogans in 1 Cor 6:12; 7:1; and 8:1 -- materials that reflect everyday practice and index a communal melancholia. Affect-oriented, queer, and minoritized scholars have dwelled upon the potential of melancholia as an affective and ethical mode of being: a refusal to forget loss or lost objects or to relinquish alterity, even as an everyday way to deal with trauma. Such slogans and hymns could be ways to negotiate difficult conditions (of loss, of death, of humiliation, of unwanted touch, or a lack of authority) without forgetting. The recitations of these materials might, then, be one way to share losses in these assembly communities, without disavowing, displacing, negating, or pathologizing. This may even surface an alternative affective accounting for why these non-Jewish people would negotiate an identification with violated Jewish subjects like Christ (not because they make Christ great again, as Paul claims to do in Phil 1:20), but as a way of dealing with disasters, the deadly and the daily, and stay linked to other dead, abject figures as lost-but-not-lost objects. The letters then signal a refusal to give up, get over, or convert loss into something else. Basic inclusion rider: If this abstract is accepted, this presenter will decline to participate if placed on an all white male panel.

The programmatic statement in 5:17-20 is vital for understanding Matthew’s view of the Law of Moses, but so are the qualifications introduced by the Antitheses in 5:21-48. The paper will examine the relevance of the Antitheses and other Matthean texts relating to the Mosaic law to the “Matthew within Judaism” position advocated in the two books under review. Comparisons and contrasts will be made between the form and content of the Antitheses, on the one hand, and ancient Jewish texts such as the Temple Scroll, 4QMMT, and the rabbinic story about Moses’s amazement at Aqiba’s exegesis of the Torah. Crucial to addressing the “Matthew within Judaism” issue is the question of the definition of “Judaism.”

Joachim Schaper’s thesis that monotheism rose because of developments in the use of media (Media and Monotheism: Presence, Representation, and Abstraction in Ancient Judah, Tübingen 2019) has revived reflection on the historical reasons for the emergence of monotheism in the Persian period. One may argue that Schaper undervalued the impact of the cultural trauma inflicted by the destruction of Jerusalem and forced migration (cf. D. Markl, “The Babylonian Exile as the Birth Trauma of Monotheism”, Biblica 101 [2020] 1–25). This paper will explore yet another aspect worth considering: the political implications of claims to the non-existence of other gods besides Yhwh in the context of the Persian empire, specifically the notion of Yhwh as divine overlord in Isaiah 45 and the concept of the unsurpassable authority of divine law in Deuteronomy 4. The paper will propose that the development of media did play a role in the rise of monotheism, which, however, needs to be seen in a wider set of socio-psychological and political dynamics.

This paper contributes to the discussion of Luke's status as a historian by considering the Third Evangelist's editing of his Markan Vorlage in the composition of Luke 22:1–6. While some interpreters hold that Luke’s inclusion of non-historical material is at odds with his stated historical purpose (Luke 1:1–4), an analysis of 22:1–6 shows that the evangelist appealed to the supernatural with historiographical ends in view. Luke fashioned 22:1–6 from discrete Markan pericopes and wove them into the fabric of his gospel with the introduction of the satanic possession of Judas. Luke used this possession as a historiographical device to alleviate a narrative tension in his Vorlage and to produce a more logical succession of events in his own work. Whereas the betrayal of Jesus stands as an unmotivated event in Mark’s Gospel (Mark 14:10), Luke introduced Satan’s possession of Judas as the motivation for this betrayal and the key that enables the previously fruitless plots against Jesus to succeed. Satan's possession of Judas is, strictly speaking, a non-historical datum, yet Luke's appeal to Judas's diabolical associations is in keeping with the practices of some ancient historians. As an example, this paper will consider the historian Herodotus's appeal to divine retribution to explain the relationship between discrete events in the life of Croesus. Luke was not a historian in the same league as Herodotus in terms of methods, sources, and the scope of historical vision, yet the fact that Luke invoked non-historical factors to explain the "historical" relationships between events indicates that he had genuine historiographical ambitions that were absent in Mark's Gospel.

It is a great loss that the Syrohexapla (SH), the Syriac translation of the recension of LXX first initiated by Origen, survives only in lectionary fragments for the books of First and Second Samuel; these, unfortunately, amount to very little. As a result, one of the principle sources for the hexaplaric recension is missing, and the textual history of these books is impoverished. Despite this large gap in the MS history, there are other potential sources of Greek-derived readings found in the wider Syriac biblical MS tradition. These include: (1) BL ADD 12,168: an unpublished patristic catena (often called the “London Collection”); (2) VAT. SIR. 103: the so-called Severus Catena which transmits the Pseudo-Ephrem Comm. on 1-2 Sam; (3) the Syriac commentaries written by Barhebraeus (published), Ishoʿdad of Merv (published), and Dionysius bar Ṣalibi (unpublished); and finally, (4) the biblical recension created by Jacob of Edessa (published), whose revision has been shown to incorporate elements from the SH elsewhere, namely in his Pentateuch and Book of Daniel. In this paper, I intend to provide a short pilot-study, briefly outlining these sources and evaluating their potential utility to reconstruct readings from the SH as well as other recensions of the Greek Old Testament (e.g., the Lucianic recension). It is hoped that the editors of future editions of the LXX will consider these sources when collecting witnesses for their apparatuses.

If ‘not repudiating Judaism’ is a necessary criterion for adjudicating texts – and, by extension, their authors – ‘within Judaism,’ Galatians is widely regarded as a falsifying example for Paul. Some argue that this verdict can be avoided if his negative comments about Law are intentionally limited in their application to Gentiles. But none so far have offered an exegetically satisfying explanation for the extremity of his warnings on this basis. This paper tackles the problem from a new start-point, focussing on Paul’s curious obsession with the idea that, by embracing Jewish Law, his readers are returning to familiar patterns of behaviour. Regression is a central theme in Galatians (Gal 3.3, 23-29; 4.1-7, 8-11; 5.1) but its importance for exegesis has rarely been appreciated, partly because the diagnosis itself is so problematic. In what possible sense could embracing Jewish Law have involved a return to the norms of the Galatians’ pagan past? In the light of a comprehensive new study of Paul’s στοιχεῖα vocabulary, this paper argues that Paul uses the term as a bridge capable of spanning Jewish and pagan experience. It refers to elements of religious practice associated with both worlds – keeping a sacred calendar, making vows, establishing tangible and enduring memorials of religious devotion, maintaining ritual purity, etc. References to the negative impact of past practices on present religious experience in other Pauline letters augment these observations, illuminating the enduring power of habituated religious assumptions and their destructive effects when reawakened. Might this more-widely-attested Pauline anxiety about the reanimation of entrenched religious expectations through exposure to the practices associated with them in the past also be driving the extremity of his concern in Galatians? Whatever the underlying motivations of the Jewish Christian Influencers in Galatia, this paper argues that Paul was concerned about his readers’ response to their ministry. However benign Jewish rites were for Jews, Paul judged them dangerous for Gentiles because they were close enough in form to their former practices to reawaken the expectations they had associated with them in the past. While providing an exegetically and contextually coherent basis for rejecting the charge that Paul rules himself outside Judaism in Galatians, this reading also carries striking consequences for several other key issues in Pauline theology. On faith and works, Paul doesn't contrast the way he thinks about justification with the way the Jews who are influencing his readers think about it (justification involves reconciliation with God obtained by doing good works, perhaps – or acceptance in the community of God’s people obtained by adopting certain boundary markers). Instead, Paul contrasts the way he and all other Jews think about justification with the way his readers think about it in the light of their entrenched religious preconceptions (Gal 2.16). Accommodation also emerges as a more dominant concern for Paul than has previously been acknowledged and Paul as a pastor with a strong intuitive understanding of religious psychology – capable of recognising the vital connection not just between belief and practice, but also between practice and belief.

The scribal "script" in the drama of Huldah and Josiah contains many clues of tension, turmoil, and transformation. From Josiah's standpoint, there is anguish, grief, and, perhaps the afterglow of childhood trauma caused by witnessing the murder of his parents. There are hints that Josiah is a virtual hostage of the very men who orchestrated those murders, which enabled them to rule for 12 years as regents in the name of a figurehead child king. Huldah's character disrespectfully responds to "the man who sent you," which implies resentment towards at least one of the regents who are isolating Josiah so that she cannot speak to him in person. Like Micaiah, Huldah makes a proclamation which contains a phrase which is identical to a phrase which was earlier pronounced in the presence of the king This raises the possibility that her response is compulsory, like the initial response of Micaiah upon being summoned to court. The idea that her prophecy, like the initial prophecy of Micaiah, is not her true opinion is bolstered by the fact that her prophecy is wrong. In fact, as explained by Jeremiah and Ezekiel, Jerusalem's doom is contingent, and not deterministic. (See, Ezekiel 17:11-16) In reality, the talented elites are to be carried away to Babylon without any substantial violence and the next generation of elites are to return in 70 years as Ezra's "Holy Seed" by virtue of their experiences there. Those left behind have only to keep the place clean. This discrepancy calls for an explanation that performance criticism is best capable of supplying. Huldah volunteered another unsolicited prophecy, which amounted to maternal reassurance to the traumatized Josiah that he will die in peace. This prophecy is also not true. In fact, Josiah dies violently during a foolhardy expedition to interfere with the army of the Pharaoh on its way to assist the remainder of the Assyrian Empire at the battle of Carchemish. Again, this calls for an explanation that performance criticism can best supply. Why does Huldah, who is plainly capable of being rude and dismissive, gently issue a motherly reassurance to the tormented young king? Is it possible she understands that Josiah is basically a hostage of unscrupulous men who will do anything to maintain themselves in power? Finally, why, after both of her prophecies have proven false, was Huldah given such a prominent position in the Deuteronomic reforms? Why was her tomb placed at the southern entrance to Jerusalem so that women passing into the "Huldah Gates" would be reminded of her role in suppressing the veneration of a feminine aspect of God, which, prior to the Deuteronomic purge, had been abstractly symbolized by mere poles near the Temple altar - poles commemorating Asherah, a feminine form of the name Asher (son of Leah), meaning happy one? Using mime with narration and only one spoken part, I will storyboard a stage partitioned with an obvious barrier in the middle between Josiah and Huldah which only the regents can cross.

This paper has its origin in the 2020 SBL Annual Meeting. At the end of my presentation on the different hands identified in the Masora of manuscript Leningrad B19a, I was asked about how to deal with those annotations in the ongoing edition of this manuscript in the Biblia Hebraica Quinta. Since then, I have been thinking about this question and some more general ones. What does the existence of the annotations written by different hands in one manuscript mean for the study of the Masora? Do they imply the existence of more than one person involved in the copy of that particular Masora? Or are the later additions made by readers who add information when they were using the manuscript? Could those annotations shed light on the function and use of the Masora? And for practical purposes, how should we deal with the annotations written by different hands when working with and editing the Masora? Should we ignore that they were written by different hands other than that of the principal scribe and merely focus on their content? Should we just integrate them with the rest of the annotations, and treat them, and study them in the same way? Or should we first identify the scribal hands and characterize them? In this paper, I’ll try to address these questions and make some proposals through selected examples.

Accepted paper for the IBR group on Biblical Violence

Certainly Romans 13:1-7 is one of the most abused and abusive texts in the Christian sacred tradition, especially in terms of the power dynamics as used by political authorities to justify their agendas (Luther’s call to suppress the Peasants’ Revolt, James I’s Divine Right of Kings, the justification for acquiescence to the Shoah, and now Jeff Sessions’ justifying family separations). In response, scholarship of the past century has worked to come to terms with the iconic and unique aspects of the divine right of kings that seem so distant from the rest of the Pauline literature and NT overall. E. Kaesemann focused on the term “conscience” to mitigate Christian obedience to Empire and many have followed his lead to find ways to delimit the supposed unqualified command to be subordinated to “governing authorities.” Mark Nanos has suggested that the “authorities are not political but rather Jewish authorities,” which has the merit of embedding the text in the larger argument of the letter. There is a significant group of scholars, who argue for the passage being an interpolation, though the textual evidence does not lend support for this. More recently, Neil Elliott has proposed focusing on taxes and their unjust implementation as the context of Paul’s appealed to the Roman communities for compliance for the sake of their Torah-observant fellow-members. Yet all, at some point, acknowledge the idiosyncratic nature of the passage within the Pauline corpus. The present proposal seeks to challenge some of the common assumptions to all of the major proposals—who is Paul envisioning when he discusses “authorities,” what is the purpose for the Roman Jesus-followers to submit to the “authorities,” and how do the activities of these “authorities” fit in the umbrella of God’s service. To address these issues this paper will look at what Roman historians have uncovered in terms of the daily impact of Roman authority in Roman neighborhoods. For instance, if estimates of the population in Rome are anywhere near accurate (over one million by the first century c.e.) then how was public order accomplished? If the Roman garrisons were not used for civil control, then who was in charge of maintaining order? In the absence of a professional police force in the city of Rome, then how did society resolve disputes and bad behavior? While the social structures of the city of Rome were undergoing change initiated by the establishment of the imperium beginning in the first century c.e., the importance of the neighborhood system and its semi-autonomous functioning and quasi-formal structure within the total governmental set up allowed for neighborhoods to thrive without direct imperial oversight. Looking at Paul’s appeal in Romans 13:1-7 from this perspective provides space for a fresh perspective on what Paul is trying to communicate to the communities at Rome and perhaps Paul words are not so idiosyncratic in terms of his relation to Empire as recent interpreters are driven to conclude.

This paper will explore the function of emotion in Jeremiah through the lens of Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT). The Bible and emotion have played a more prominent role in biblical studies in recent years. The prophet Jeremiah expresses a range of emotions, from weeping to rage. Emotions are a necessary aspect of the human experience and a critical reflection of an individuals’ core values. Along with the prophetic role, the book of Jeremiah functions as a travelling literary monument, as a didactic retelling of loss and hope. Thinking alongside the therapeutic model of Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT), founded by Steven C. Hayes with contributions from Kelly Wilson and Kirk Strosahl, the emotions of weeping and rage in the life and text of Jeremiah will be analysed as an expression of the deep care and values of the prophet and a community in exile. The ACT model focuses on accepting emotions and harnessing them in the service of behavioral change as a normal part of the human experience. Expressed emotion can be destructive and constructive. Jeremiah is encouraged by YHWH to express his emotions (e.g., חמה 'rage' in Jeremiah 6:11). The expression of emotion can be constructive and alternatively, destructive. In this manner, emotions can become a vehicle that does not reflect the true values of the one expressing strong emotions. By expressing rather than repressing emotion, Jeremiah was able to process his pain, cultivating psychological flexibility and continued to move forward through the continual resistance around him. Thinking alongside the ACT model, possible core values will be explored.

This paper examines the characterization of the “itinerant Jewish exorcists,” also designated as the “Seven sons of a Jewish high priest Sceva,” according to two vectors. First, it considers the seven sons as a fabulous construction of the author, in view of the lack of verisimilitude such a characterization possesses. Here some assessment of the scene in comparison to other characterizations in Acts lacking verisimilitude will be given. Second, it notes that to depict the Jewish exorcists as fleeing from the house, naked and wounded is to feminize the exorcists. It will be shown that this feminization of Paul’s opponents in an exorcism account is consistent with the gendered nature of the battle with demons across the two volume work.

The second column (Secunda) of Origen’s Hexapla sometimes shows a different vocalization from the Tiberian tradition. In spite of the nature of Mercati’s palimpsest and the possibility of letter interchanges, haplography, or dittography mistakes, it is possible to observe a degree of consistency in some vocalic transcriptions different from the same pattern in Tiberian tradition of Hebrew: this involves both phonological and morphological features. For the first category, the Secunda often exhibits a long Greek vowel in correspondence to Hebrew guttural phonemes: this is perfectly coherent with the presence of an extra-long vowel in correspondence with gutturals in Samaritan Hebrew. In the case of morphological patterns, a certain affinity to the Babylonian tradition is evident: for example, in the second syllable of the Qal imperfect, Secunda verbs often present an omicron, corresponding to šewa in the Tiberian tradition. The o-vowel in this position coincides with mater waw in the Qumranic tradition. But this is true not only of strong verbs in the Secunda, but for פ"י verbs also, whose vocalic rendering has similarities with Babylonian tradition. The principal reason for a vowel in the Secunda corresponding to šewa in the Masoretic Text lies in the syllabic structure: the Secunda has the tendency to maintain the original vowel when the syllable is open. Many times, this coincides with a vowel in the Babylonian tradition of Hebrew; but not only: in Samaritan Hebrew, we do not see development of šewa, but of a full vowel of varying quality instead of Tiberian šewa. Therefore, a comparison between the Secunda and Samaritan Hebrew is very useful, and sometimes the vowel of the two sources is the same, against šewa of Masoretic Text. However, there are some features from the perspective of which the Secunda seems more conservative than other Biblical Hebrew traditions: these include, for example, the case of the -מִ prefix, which in the Secunda is always rendered μα-, showing no attenuation; sometimes it is verified in Babylonian Hebrew, too, but in some specific cases the Secunda presents an α-vowel where Babylonian Hebrew exhibits a shift from aC to iC, also typical of Tiberian Hebrew: this is the case of מִזְמוֹר/μαζμωρ, for example, which presents an /i/ in both the Babylonian and Tiberian traditions, but always has an alpha in the Secunda. The only exception to maintenance of α in the Secunda are מִשְׁחָר/μεσσαὰρ (Ps. 109.3) and מִשְׁכְּנֵי/μισχνη (Ps. 45.5), because of sibilant influence on the preceding vowel. In these last circumstances specifically, the Secunda may show a proper, independent tradition, more conservative than the others, a hypothesis confirmed by epigraphic data and transcriptions of proper names in the same geographical area.

"In recent years, the formation and opening of the Museum of the Bible in Washington D.C. has incepted a wide discussion on the way biblical antiquities, in particular manuscripts, are collected and exhibited. This paper is going to look at other institutions, especially museums and libraries in the United Kingdom, with longer and more complex institutional lives. It will be argued that the way biblical papyrus fragments and other early Christian items are presented to the public in online catalogues and exhibition displays tends to erase key information about their recent biography and is guided by religious and political narratives and agendas. In conclusion, it will be argued that transparency on provenance and space for alternatives interpretations are needed to create a more dynamic exchange between the custodians of these items, academics, and the public.

Jewish, Christian, and Islamic legends about Gog and Magog – unclean peoples who resided beyond the geography of the known world – lay at the heart of mediaeval apocalyptic understanding of the ‘Other’. The validation and reinforcement of a sense of group identity, as well as drawing a clear line in the sand between the “Elect” and the “Other,” are primary functions in the production of apocalyptica, both now and in the Middle Ages. Through a survey of the textual corpus, we will see that, over the course of the mediaeval millennium, the treatment of the Gog/Magog topos in the Revelation commentaries gradually moves away from the spiritualizing tradition that had emerged during the patristic period, to embrace an historical-eschatological outlook. During the “fragmentation and dissolution” stage of the common mediaeval apocalyptic model, we observe that Gog and Magog are increasingly posited as real political enemies, a strategy of defining “Us” versus “Them” during the formation of the embryonic nation-states.

This paper first interrogates the rhetorical function of Christ’s quotation of Hosea 6:6 in his call in Matthew 9:13 for the Pharisees to “go learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice” (KJV). Hosea’s statement will be historically and rhetorically contextualized within the Hebrew Bible’s prophetic material, particularly in regard to its framing of the function of the Law of Moses and the role of the widow and the orphan. I will demonstrate that the biblical prophets consistently conceptualized the law as a means of changing the individual’s heart, orienting it towards mercy and social justice. The paper will describe the main symbols and conceptual frameworks employed within the related rhetoric, as well as the historical circumstances and power structures that catalyzed that prophetic critique. The second part of this paper will address the use of the widow, the orphan, and other symbols of social marginalization in rhetoric related to social justice in the New Testament gospels. Their elaboration of these symbols within historical narratives will be shown to be rhetorically significant to the New Testament authors’ deployment of the prophetic critique of power, to their presentation of Christ’s gospel, and to their centering of the role of a changed heart in the two great commandments. The paper will conclude by situating the Bible's conceptualizations of social justice and the widow and orphan within the scriptural and traditional heritage of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

First Samuel 15:28 and 16:12 can be read as Yhwh giving the leadership of the kingdom to Saul, and then, David because of their appearances. Using New Literary criticism (cf. D. Gunn, The Fate of King Saul) and Queer Theory (cf. H. Eilberg-Schwartz, God’s Phallus; S. Moore, God’s Gym) we can read the initial choice of Saul, and then David, to be Israel’s leader as the result of an all-male, all-Israel beauty contest. Reading Saul’s selection in 1 Sam 9 along with other biblical beauty contests (e.g., 1 Kgs 1:1-4; Esther 2) normalizes this notion as well as highlights the heterosexual and patriarchal nature of other biblical beauty contests. These women, Abishag and Esther, get to marry kings. Samuel’s beauty contest, on the other hand, seeks to find a man to sit on Yahweh’s throne. Saul is selected first. He stands out because he is larger and more handsome than the others. David’s choice in 1 Sam 16 is not so much about size. Instead, David’s skin color, his eyes, and his beauty are unparalleled, even for Saul. But, unlike other modern pageants, Mister Israel plays its pageantry out in martial combat. Between Saul trying to dress David up in his costume to kill a giant and David slicing Saul's fancy robe, this beauty contest for Israel's throne has all the intrigue of a modern beauty pageant. And, like M. McMichael’s (Miss America's God, 2019) discussion of how the Miss American Pageant leads to personal, religious discovery, both Saul and David stumble their way through relationship with Yahweh-the-judge during this bout. Further, like the Miss America Pageant, the presentation of Saul and David is meant to demonstrate a kind of ideal typology, in Samuel Scroll for Israelite masculinity, similar to the role that modern beauty pageants have for American femininity since its modern inception. The final straw in this back-and-forth takes place when Saul's beautiful body is killed and mutilated; a grotesque, dismembered body is not beautiful. David maintains his beautiful physique and gets to keep the throne, until his libido runs out. And, since both men’s successes as leaders are tied to divine help (e.g., 1 Sam 11:6; 16:13), and not some innate prowess, this particular take on Israelite kingship undercuts classic scholarly discussions about why Yhwh chose Saul, then David. Perhaps, in the end, Yhwh just picked the most beautiful Israelite male he could find?

The term “Rewritten Bible,” first coined by Geza Vermes in 1961 to categorize newly discovered Qumran texts—particularly the Genesis Apocryphon—has fallen on hard times. The chief criticism is that the Bible, either as a fixed canon of books or as a stable text, did not exist in the Second Temple period. Another persistent problem is whether the term denotes a genre or a process. Since “Bible” is not a genre, a variety of generically different texts could be considered “Rewritten Bible.” The first criticism presumes that the Rewritten Bible is a phenomenon exclusive to the Second Temple period, but this is not the case. Vermes’ inaugural article on the subject does not study a Second Temple work like the Genesis Apocryphon but rather Sefer ha-Yashar, a medieval text. Furthermore, the titles of his other examples (Jubilees, Josephus’ Antiquities, and Liber antiquitatum biblicarum) evoke chronological systems and documentation of the ancient past, suggesting that the “Bible” being rewritten is not the biblical text but the biblical history. They are a form of historical writing and, hence, a distinct genre separate from other ways one could rewrite Scripture (e.g., translation, rhetorical paraphrase, versification, abridgment, dramatization, and, in our days, novelization). Decades before Vermes coined the term “Rewritten Bible”—and, hence, before contemporary debates about its accuracy and utility—Moses Gaster, in his Ilchester Lectures on Greeko-Slavonic Literature, posited that the various Paleias (Historica, Interpretata, Chronographica) were an Eastern European manifestation of what he called the Bible historiale—medieval “History Bibles” whose ultimate origins were Second Temple works such as Jubilees and Josephus. His description of the Bible historiale is nearly identical to the definition of “Rewritten Bible” elucidated by Philip Alexander and based on Vermes’ examples. I maintain with Gaster that the link between Second Temple Rewritten Bibles and their medieval counterparts is not merely formal but genetic: One can diagram a family tree with three major branches: 1) Those descended, whether directly or through intermediary sources, from the work of Josephus (in Western Europe); 2) Those descended from Jubilees (in the Near East); and 3) Those descended from both (the case of the Paleias). The individual elements of this family tree cover both Europe and the Middle East across every century until the early modern period. In this paper, I will use this genealogical model to argue that the Rewritten Bible has never truly disappeared. I will further argue that its primary concern is history rather than exegesis. To this end, it was a means of legitimizing apocryphal texts, including the Pseudepigrapha, which were then viewed as historically true even if they did not become part of the biblical canon.

There is arguably no clearer testimony to God's corporality than Paul's claim that in the person of Jesus: "the whole fulness of deity dwells bodily" (Col. 2:9). In the face of such language, it will not do to interpret the Word's becoming flesh (John 1:14) as a partial - and thus inherently incomplete - manifestation of the divine in physical form. And yet the Bible also bears witness to a doctrine of divine immensity that precludes the possibility that God's fulness might be contained in any finite physical form: "But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you" (1 Kings 8:27). A central challenge for the Christian doctrine of the incarnation is thus to give an account of how fulness of God's presence does not entail the containment of God's substance. This paper will argue Chalcedonian distinction between hypostasis and nature provides a conceptual framework for addressing this particular question that also helps bring clarity to the broader question of what it means to see God.

The last of Paul’s extant letters was addressed to a community he did not found, in a city he had not visited, while he was preparing for a journey that would end up not only unsuccessful but personally disastrous. A more inauspicious setting for the Letter to the Romans could hardly be imagined. The letter’s ominous origins ought to give commentators pause when making pronouncements about its contents. Yet surely “fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” Romans remains Paul’s most widely discussed and hotly contested letter. In recent years, a section of Romans 1 has become a “bludgeon text” in relation to LGBTQ+ issues used to marginalize certain members of our society, both within and outside of the Christian community. In this essay I challenge that oppressive use of the text by viewing Paul’s remarks against his own cultural context as a Jewish subject of the Roman Empire ca. CE 58. The contemporary “anti-gay” reading of Romans 1:18–32 mistakes Paul’s agenda in this letter. By recontextualizing those remarks in light of contemporary issues in the late 50s and widespread rumors about the Imperial City, we see that Paul was condemning practices associated with human trafficking, not loving relationships between consenting adults.

In this paper, I analyze the book of Job’s various structures of cursing and blessing in Job. The term, ברך occurs six times in the prologue, including four as curse (1:5, 1:11, 2:5, 2:9) and two as bless (1:10, 1:21). These six uses anticipate a climactic seventh, as the Satan predicts Job will ‘curse’ God to God’s face and as the reader anticipates further testing. But there are several “sevenths,” which indicate both building action and anticlimax. Job curses (קלל) not God, but the day of his birth (3:1). Thus, the ambiguity of ברך as bless or curse is replaced by the clear קלל, that gains the new ambiguity of targeting creation and implicating the creator. The “second seventh” is Job’s self-imprecations of Job 31. For these to go unanswered would logically conclude in cursing God. Their escalation thus triggers the climactic whirlwind speech, where Job has the opportunity to curse God to his face or accept divine prerogative. Job’s curses, as including the apodoses, are highly unusual in the Hebrew Bible, and seem to allude to various divine curses (Gen 3:18, Lev 26:16, Hos 4:14), indicating Job’s willingness to submit to divine justice but not divine caprice. Job’s reckless rhetoric and unusual apodoses contrast with the Satan’s restrained rhetoric (1:11, 2:5). The Satan’s self-imprecations reveal a second hexadic structure within the prose, as his two curses offset the benedictive uses of ברך. These alternative hexads thus provide rival literary structures, and their potential fulfillment corresponds to Job’s potential to succeed or fail the test and to the book’s potential final meaning. Job’s climactic statement in 42:2–6 is similarly ambiguous. The final “seventh” is God’s blessing of Job (42:12).

Over the past century, New Testament scholars have recognized that eschatology was foundational to the earliest Christianity communities. It is highly likely that the historical Jesus believed the end to be coming within a generation. And textual evidence from the earliest Christian authors, Paul and the Gospel of Mark, show that both thought the parousia would occur within their lifetimes. If New Testament texts contain ethics that assume the end of the world is less than a generation away, then how can these texts be used for inter-generational ethics today? How can the final generation inform an inter-generational conversation? In this paper I will raise this final-generation/inter-generational dilemma and suggest some avenues forward. First, I will briefly recount and evaluate the development of eschatological centrality in New Testament scholarship. This theme began with Reimarus, progressed through Weiss, Schweitzer, Kasëmann, and is still influential in scholars such as Martyn and Allison. While these scholars may conceive of the heart of apocalyptic eschatology in divergent ways, it is common to hold that the earliest Christians anticipated the imminent end of the age. I will argue this stream of New Testament scholarship is the correct reconstruction of the earliest communities and appropriate interpretation of the New Testament texts. As such, New Testament, inter-generational ethics must take it into account. The second part of the paper will examine two thinkers, the theologian Philip Ziegler and the biblical scholar Leander Keck, and their attempts to build apocalyptic ethics. The book Militant Grace: The Apocalyptic Turn and the Future of Christian Theology by Ziegler does not directly address the final-generation/inter-generational dilemma, but his work provides some helpful theological categories for further reflection, especially discipleship and militant piety. In various articles, Keck has helpfully reframed biblical ethics. He argues, “Then the primary question would be not, What must/ought/should/may I do? or What is the right moral calculus for deciding it? but rather, To whom am I accountable, and for what?” The third part of the paper will offer some suggestions for how to approach the final-generation/inter-generational dilemma by building upon Ziegler and Keck and using Mark 13 and 1 Thessalonians 4:13-5:11 as test cases. The warrant for the ethical injunctions in these two texts is the belief in an imminent end (Mark 13:30; 1 Thess 4:15, 17). As such, this position is central to the ethics of these texts, not a hinderance. The moral behavior for both of these authors is consolation and watchfulness. And the telos is a generation prepared for the final eschatological work of God. In short, apocalyptic discipleship requires inter-generational edification with the goal of faithful formation in light of the divine eschatological acts of the past and future.

In spite of a growing collection of knowledge, relatively little consensus exists about the history, theology, and scriptural production in exilic and Persian period Yehud. Increasingly however, Old Testament scholarship is recognizing the significance of supplementation and reuse of scriptural texts to understand these centuries. How does scripture address the effects of exile and post exile on the theology and expectations of the period? Employment of the phrase, “eternal covenant” in the books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel reveals a significant shift in the period from a historically or nationally oriented hope in the monarchy or nation’s other institutions to a future age. Scholars have attempted to discern the origin of the phrase with varying results through comparative texts from the ANE and tradition criticism. Moreover, scholars have proposed the phrase’s incorporation into its various redactional contexts from many perspectives. Yet, few answers have emerged concerning the textual appropriation(s), time frame(s), and purpose(s) of such a significant phrase as “ברית עולם”. The intertexts of this phrase in the books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, which develop in the pre-exilic, exilic, and post-exilic periods, divulges a shift from a focus on Jerusalem, Israel, and the nation’s monarchy to an eternal covenant with YHWH who will be in their midst. The analysis first examines this phrase in each of its four literary contexts in the books of Jeremiah (32:40, 50:5) and Ezekiel (16:60 and 37:26) by utilizing a method of close reading and subtraction. Common features in the individual passage manifest the topic or motif that enjoins a unified figure throughout the developments. Diverse elements divulge the shifting content or expectations, which lead to a relative chronology in each passage. This step also yields shared lemmata, nuances in content, aspects of textual production, approximate time frames, and purposes within each individual passage for the phrase. A second step compares the distinctive content of the phrase and the method of its appropriation into the individual passages. This latter step further reveals the intertextual relationship between these four usages. The conclusion summarizes methods of scriptural production, advances different settings and motivations for the developing hopes and expectations of the period, and suggests similar shifts in expectations for other occurrences of the phrase in the biblical literature.

This essay proposes a novel hypothesis: that for most of its compositional history, the so-called “Ark Narrative” (1 Samuel 4:1b—7:2) did not feature the ark at all. Rather, in one of the latest stages of its composition, a scribe intervened to systematically insert the word ארון in each place where a physical image of Israel’s god was implied in the pericope. This move transformed the absolute references to the deity into construct phrases, with ארון as the nomen regens, thus softening the original iconism of the narrative. While there is no empirical evidence of such a scribal intervention, the essay discusses several of the difficulties in the final form of the pericope, which are resolved by the hypothesis of an “ark overlay.” The hypothesis offers an explanation for the absence of any physical description of the ark. It accounts for the iconic-aniconic tension in the story, by which the reader is forced to both acknowledge the distinction between the ark and the deity and, at times, to suspend that conceptual distance for the sake of the narrative. It explains the disparity in the characterization of YHWH and Dagon in the final form, and gives a plausible reason for the way the Philistines, Israelites, and narrator treat the god of Israel as if he is represented by a divine image. An early, iconic version of the story would also align better with the generic expectations of Ancient Near Eastern godnapping tales. The ark overlay hypothesis addresses some of the strangeness of the ark’s unexplained disappearance from the biblical narrative in 2 Kings, for it supplies a theological motive for the literary retrojection of an aniconic symbol of God’s presence into the premonarchic tradition. Finally, the essay addresses indirect evidence for such an ark overlay found in text critical study, and demonstrates a model for such a scribal “overlay” by comparison with other, more empirically-established biblical redactions in Jeremiah, Kings, and elsewhere.

In Classical Hebrew, the word ˀašrê is mostly found in poetry, and often in so-called wisdom literature. While interpreters generally agree on translations like “happy” or “blessed” (and their equivalents in Greek, Latin, Syriac, etc.), the grammatical form of ˀašrê has been somewhat troubling to scholars. Most grammars understand ˀašrê to be a masculine plural noun in the construct state, as it is vocalized in the Masoretic tradition with the tsere and yod expected of this form. However, in many instances, we find ˀašrê in grammatical or syntactical constructions where Classical Hebrew does not allow a construct plural. Some have sought to solve this problem by suggesting that the mis-pointed ˀašrê is a singular noun with a rare, archaic feminine -ay ending—citing words like śaray and ‘eśrēh (e.g., Joüon-Muraoka’s A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew). Another suggestion by Aaron Rubin is that ˀašrê follows the ˀaqtal adjective pattern (rare in Hebrew, but more common in other Semitic languages). This solves some of the grammatical issues (and provides better proto-Semitic cognates for ˀašrê), but this view does not account for the pronominal suffixes found in forms like ˀašrêkā and ˀašrāyw. In this paper, I examine problems with both proposals and I suggest, instead, that ˀašrê is best understood as an interjection; then, I substantiate this claim by examining features of other “canonical” interjections in Classical Hebrew (i.e. ˀallay, ˀăbôy, ˀāḥ). I also show examples in Aramaic and Ge’ez where pronominal suffixes are found on interjections (i.e. ˀällel-o, woe to him!). I further suggest that the fixed form we see ˀašrê in might have developed in a similar manner to some other Hebrew interjections, and that this interpretation best accounts for the data we do have.

The Book of Torture: The Gospel of Mark and the Body in Pain

The individual lament Psalm 13 shows a movement from lament to praise. Vv.2/3 contain a complaint, vv.4/5 the supplicant’s pleas and v.6 an affirmation of trust and a praise of God. The Book of Job tells the story of the paradigmatic man Job, whose trust in YHWH is deeply shattered. Over the course of the book his relationship with God goes through a change. This transformation is comparable to the movement from lament to praise in the individual lament Psalms, but shows nuances of its own as well. After having lost his wealth, his children and his health, Job curses his life and wishes he had never been born (Job 3). While lamenting and accusing God his relationship to YHWH changes. This change leads from the wish to die (Job 6:8-10) and to escape God’s painful presence (Job 7:19) to the wish for God’s presence (Job 14:15), the longing to see God (Job 19:25-27) and the plea to receive an answer from him (Job 31:15). In Job 38-41 YHWH answers Job in a theophany. After having seen him Job confirms like the Psalmists that God does miracles (Job 42:3 and e.g. Ps 72:18). Furthermore, in Job 42:4 he proclaims his trust in YHWH and declares his intention to turn to God in all afflictions as the petitioners in the Psalms do. In Psalm 13 the shift from lament (vv.2/3) and pleas (vv.4/5) to trust in God and praise of God (v.6) appears very sudden. Thus, this shift is often called change of mood in Old Testament studies. Job’s long laments slowly shift from complaint to trust in God and praise of God. They show that there is a prayer-process behind the movement from lament to praise. Hence, this paper reads Psalm 13 in light of the Book of Job. Moreover, it compares the dynamic of the Book of Job to the movement from lament to praise in the individual lament Psalms. Furthermore, it points out that the Book of Job illustrates the prayer-process and the situation between lament and praise, which lies behind the so-called change of mood in the Psalms. Overall, this paper examines how the authors of the Book of Job shed light on and reinterpret psalmic theology of prayer.

After the idolatry of the golden calf, God tells Moses that the covenant is effectively canceled and that he intends to destroy the Israelites and start over with Moses. Not only does Moses refuse the offer, he convinces God not to destroy Israel, and even to accompany them on the journey to the Promised Land (which God initially refused to do). Finally, Moses receives from God a personal theophany (a revelation of divine glory), accompanied by a new revelation of the meaning of the divine name (beyond that given in Exodus 3). This new revelation signifies a change in God’s modus operandi with Israel, evident from a comparison of Exodus 20:4–6 with Exodus 34:5–7. This paper will explore the nature and significance of the change and the role of Moses in precipitating the change. Although Moses certainly has a crucial role to play as Israel’s intercessor (especially highlighted in many midrashim), this paper will argue that not only did God invite the intercession in the first place, but that the divine shift seen between Exodus 20 and 34 is part of a pattern found in other places in the Bible. The paper will conclude by asking what the significance of this pattern might be for understanding the complicated characterization of the God of Israel.

Accepted paper for the IBR research group on Difficult Texts in the OT.

This paper will argue that any robust theory of intersectionality must take into account an often-forgotten intersection: species. Contemporary discourse rightly challenges the oppressive dualisms of, e.g., male-female, and white-black. It thereby questions the dominance of the disembodied, rational intellect, historically associated with whiteness and maleness. But it often leaves intact a basic dualism of human (rational)-nonhuman (irrational). Nonhuman animals, it is assumed, are a rightly dominated Other. But what if, instead, nonhuman animals are a valuable, vulnerable, sentient Other, whose subjugation is problematic? The pioneering studies of vegetarian ecofeminists like Carol Adams and Josephine Donovan are adding “species” to the intersectional mix. All societies are structured by multiple axes of identity and difference, which interact in complex ways to produce hierarchies of privilege and oppression — and nonhuman animals participate in this matrix. Humans have evolved together with companion species (Donna Haraway), and these species carry social, cultural, economic and ideological weight. Historically and in the present day, the multiple media which ensure human domination over nonhuman bear striking resemblance to those which have ensured, e.g., male domination over female, and white over black. What is more, these power dynamics are entangled, interdependent, and mutually generative. For example, the “domestication” of nonhuman animals went hand in hand with the “domestication” of other humans as slaves and wives. Even the simple ascription “human” is already circumscribed within dominant discourse to refer to only a small subset of the species. Non-white, -male, -heterosexual, and -able-bodied Others have throughout history been ascribed varying degrees of animality. After theorising an intersectionality inclusive of species, this paper will survey three case studies from the books of Samuel to demonstrate the approach. (1) SPECIES AND ETHNICITY: In the battle account of 1 Sam 14–15, Yahweh dissects the ideological category of “foreigner” by commanding death for the Amalekites and life for the Kenites. All animals he condemns to destruction. Saul, however, dissects the category “animal”, sparing the best livestock out of perceived religious duty to sacrifice. This clash of religious, ethnic, and species-based ideologies results in Saul’s dethronement, and the physical sacrifice, not of an animal, but of the foreign king Agag. (2) SPECIES AND FEMININITY: Insights from Carol Adam’s “Sexual Politics of Meat” (1990) can be applied to 2 Sam 11-12, in which Bathsheba – the sexualised, female Other – is figured as a lamb – the edible, animal Other. This ideology of consumption is however deconstructed, as the narrative invokes an ethic of animal and female care. (3) SPECIES, MASCULINITY, AND DISABILITY. The stories of Mephibosheth and Absalom intertwine, and both employ equids at their pivotal moments (2 Sam 18-19).

The purpose of this presentation is to introduce the concept of Bible simulation in an academic context and to illustrate how it can particularly engage the hearts and minds of undergraduate Gen Z students from a variety of learning styles. I teach at a small liberal arts college with a religiously diverse student body of about 550. About half the students choose a one-semester Bible survey course as part of the core curriculum. Many students also choose to take elective Bible courses that cover various parts of the biblical canon. A Bible simulation is a dramatic event that reconstructs the basic setting and premise of a Bible story, assigns specific roles to the participants, gives a few guidelines, and then turns it loose without a predictable process or ending. It is not necessary to make the story resolve “like the Bible says.” It also functions similar to a debate involving four teams who must defend their own approach to the issues and seek to persuade those on the other teams. I will reflect on my experience of over two dozen years engaging students through this pedagogical tool, including narratives in Genesis, the Deuteronomistic History, the prophets, Job, the Gospels, and the Book of Acts. It engages the competitive motivations notable of Gen Z students, yet also involves collaboration, creative thinking, and research concerning the historical and cultural context of the Bible focus text. Students get inside the story, experiencing the emotions as well as the intellectual challenges of the issues being raised. Bible Simulations have been successfully employed with students being introduced to the Bible and biblical studies as well as in upper-level courses. They can flex for use with as few as half a dozen to as many as three dozen participants. They are engaging for the instructor as well, since the strategies and results are unpredictable. My experience is that though students begin a bit hesitantly, they quickly catch the spirit of the exercise, find it enjoyable, and report that it has been very effective as a learning event.

“The fluid text is a fact,” writes John Bryant. But “textual fluidity” (a metaphor for manuscript variation and complex literary relationships) is not a simple binary. All written works – as Bryant claims – may be “fluid,” but not all in the same way or to the same degree. Rather “textual fluidity” can be analyzed as several continua along sometimes-independent axes. Scholars have rightly emphasized the “fluidity” of gospel literature as it continued to be written, rewritten, and revised into late antiquity. These same scholars, however, have done relatively little to situate this “textual fluidity” relative to ancient and late antique comparanda. This study proposes three useful axes for characterizing the fluidity of a text tradition and, with these, contextualizes the gospels relative to other more-or-less fluid corpora. In the study of gospel literature, claims about the implications of “textual fluidity” for understanding a work’s historical situation remain undemonstrated. Scholars of gospel traditions have marshaled “fluidity” as a warrant for skepticism concerning textual and source critical analyses as well as questions of authorship, occasion, and audience. Putting the gospels into perspective – that is, alongside comparable literary corpora – clarifies whether and to what extant these traditional lines of inquiry are undermined by recognizing the “fluidity” of the text tradition.

The paper focuses on Greek and Syriac Christian literary sources that originated in or related to the dynamic linguistic and religious milieu of the late Roman Near East; most of them (but not all) represent the hagiographical genre. In particular, I will analyze and compare the instances of code-switching into Greek in the utterances of Syriac-speaking characters and the remarks on the use of Greek in Syriac narratives, on the one hand, and the instances of code-switching into Syriac in the utterances of Greek-speaking characters and the remarks on the use of Syriac in Greek narratives, on the other hand. As is often the case, the language in which a literary account is written and, correspondingly, consumed differs from the language spoken by the historical prototypes behind the story’s protagonists. The canonical Gospels were written in Greek and the character of Jesus expresses himself perfectly in this language for the most part, except for a few (and yet strategically placed, as one can speculate), instances when he switched into Aramaic. This likely reflects the real language spoken by the historical Jesus. Yet, the choice of language is an important performative act that is closely related to issues of social differentiation, power, and control in a multilingual society. In any religiously-colored narrative and especially in hagiography, the author is often the one who carried out this performance and “used” the language. In addition to simply reporting on a character’s linguistic background or competence, the author could and often did employ the remarks on one’s code-switching intentionally in order to advocate for a specific issue or to present a certain case – be it the creation of a well-rounded and appealing image of a holy person or the claims concerning confessional identity, cultural legacy, and social prestige. Moreover, the author could occasionally “forget” to comment on someone’s code-switching, thus ignoring the language barrier that must have been present between characters and giving the impression of their effortless communication. In all these cases, language becomes an instrument that creates a special relationship between the author, his audience, and the character of a literary composition. In this paper, I will inquire about the authorial intentions behind these choices and ask: What do the ways in which cross-linguistic communication is depicted in Greek and Syriac literary traditions add to our understanding of the linguistic and religious processes in the late antique Near East? The preliminary selection of Greek sources includes: Theodoret of Cyrrhus’s Religious History, Mark the Deacon’s Life of Porphyry of Gaza, the Life of Alexander Akoimetos, the Life of Daniel the Stylite, Cyril of Scythopolis’s Lives of the Monks of Palestine, John Moschus’s Spiritual Meadow, Leontios of Neapolis’s Life of Simeon the Holy Fool, Nikephoros’s Life of Andrew the Holy Fool. The Syriac sources are represented by the Life of Simeon the Stylite, the Chronicle of ps.-Joshua the Stylite, writings of Philoxenus of Mabbug, the Life of John of Tella by Elias, John of Ephesus’s Lives of the Eastern Saints and Church History.

Sumerian (Emesal dialect) prayers were written and sung from the early second millennium BC until ca. 100 BC. Certainly during the first millennium BCE, they were performed regularly in the temples of ancient Mesopotamia. In the last few centuries of their transmission, the kalû-priests who both wrote and performed such prayers added complex annotations concerning their performance. From the 5th century CE onwards Syriac, and later Hebrew, Biblical manuscripts begin to include various systems of accents. Such accents functioned as a means of indicating the correct recitation of the text. It remains an open question why such Babylonian or Biblical annotations were added in the specific periods in question. Furthermore, it is a matter of debate to what extent if any, the Biblical traditions of accentuation were modelled on Babylonian traditions.

The Curious Use of Red Ink in Georgian Biblical Manuscripts

“Although Paul leads people away from wrath and persuades them to have clemency and be measured in their behavior with their neighbors, here he’s instead encouraged beastly behavior and roused them to anger. To say, ‘If your enemy is hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them to drink’ (Rom 12:20a) is a command that’s good and full of philosophical virtue, of benefit both for the one who performs the kindness and the one who experiences it. But the rest of the verse from there on is very perplexing and seems not to agree with the intent of the man who had said the former things.” What statement is that? To say, “by doing this, you will heap burning coals upon their head.” After all, with these words, Paul has done harm both to the one who does the act and the one who suffers it.” In a sermon from Antioch on a hot Sunday morning, with these carefully chosen words John Chrysostom gives voice to a moral objection to the Pauline words of Romans 12:20. The text is a problem. How will the preacher rescue Paul’s character from what looks like a brutal appeal to human vindictiveness? And in turn how will he demonstrate that the author of the first part of the verse is not entirely inconsistent with himself in the second? And how will he persuade his congregational audience that retribution is not sanctioned by the apostle? This paper will provide an analysis of key passages in the long and important (and under-studied!) occasional homily by John Chrysostom on Romans 12:20. It will also introduce my translation of this homily (the first in over 150 years!) in a volume now in press with SBL’s Writings From the Greco-Roman World series, John Chrysostom on Paul: Praises and Problem Passages (2022).

Prof. Dinkler’s exquisite study of the major contributions of literary criticisms, while simultaneously demonstrating the requisite integration of literary theory into the process of the hermeneutical task—from the ground up—is an invaluable resource for the study of the NT. In Literary Theory and the New Testament, Prof. Dinkler delivers nothing less than her own manifesto on the indispensability of a deep knowledge of and facility with literary theory for every critical interpreter of the Bible, lest biblical exegetes flounder in their own “muddled multidisciplinarity.” Dinkler’s summons rings nowhere truer than for the theory and hermeneutics of the interpretation of the NT’s narrative gospels. My own work argues precisely for this necessity of combining both ancient literary theory of diēgēsis and a corresponding hermeneutics of Hellenistic diēgētic rhetoric as indispensable pretexts for historical-critical analyses of the gospels qua narrative. Dinkler’s work now provides the most thorough and illuminating explanations of why historically sensitive literary theory and hermeneutics must be combined uncompromisingly in the study of NT texts, including the narrative gospels.

In his early exegetical works, Augustine hesitated to discuss the figure of Moses. This hesitation can be partially explained by Augustine’s Manichaean past: harsh criticism of Moses’ immoral behavior (robbery, bigamy, etc.) was frequent among North African Manicheans. Indeed, some thirty years after his conversion, in Locutiones in Heptateuchum (418-419), Augustine still acknowledged difficulties present in the historical books of the Bible, including some episodes involving Moses. It was not until Augustine had to confront the writings of his former coreligionist, the Manichaean Bishop Faustus of Mileve, that the figure of Moses came to the center of his attention: in Contra Faustum, the issue of Moses’ prophetic status becomes a battlefield between the two theologians. In this talk, we will study the polemics preserved in Contra Faustum from both sides and see how Faustus and Augustine defend the teachings of their respective Churches while advancing their own theology pertaining to the notion of a true prophet. While their argumentation involves multiple lines including the veracity of Jn 5:46 and the connection between Moses and Christ, we will primarily concentrate on the contentious issue of morality in these polemics. This issue is especially important for Faustus, who maintains that an immoral person cannot be a true prophet. For Augustine, in contrast, a prophet is a tool in the hands of God: while not endorsing sinful behavior, Augustine argues that God can act through both good and bad human deeds.

The authors of the Hebrew Bible assumed that their readers knew the land and cultures of the events that they were describing. Over the past 150 years the explosive growth of archaeological discoveries and the quest for site identification has in some ways eclipsed the study of obvious and specific geographical realities embedded within the biblical text. Any number of biblical expressions remain riddles until one is immersed in the land itself, with Bible in hand. In this visual presentation we propose new understandings of three such geographical terms and describe a method through which they are derived.

The association between the “name,” whether of Christ or of the Trinity, and baptism is common throughout the New Testament. Paul (1 Cor 1:13; 6:11), Acts (Acts 2:38; 8:16; 22:16 et passim), and Matthew (Matt 28:19) all attest to this connection. Various explanations have been proposed for the formulation of baptism “in the name.” In the early twentieth century, Wilhelm Heitmüller suggested that the language comes from the economic realm. Those baptized “into the name” are transferred into the register or account of the one named. More recently, Lars Hartman proposed a simpler interpretation, that the formulation simply means “with respect to” the one named. Both of these solutions are unsatisfying in that they fail to take into account the significance of the name, particularly in light of the Old Testament theology of the name of the Lord and its cultic connotations. This paper will argue that the cultic associations of the “name” in the Old Testament are key to understanding baptism “in the name.” Numerous Old Testament texts associate the “name” with sacrificial worship, from the patriarchs’ acts of setting up altars and calling upon the name of the Lord (Gen 12:8) to Elijah’s contest with the prophets of Baal (1 Kgs 18:20-40) to the psalmist’s sacrifice of thanksgiving (Ps 116:17-19). Moreover, in the Old Testament the “name” designates the mode of God’s presence in the midst of Israel. Deuteronomy speaks of the Lord appointing a place for his name to dwell (Deut 12:5-6), and Solomon’s dedication of the temple repeatedly underscores the importance of God’s name dwelling there (1 Kgs 8:15-21 et passim). These aspects of Old Testament name theology contribute to the various uses of the name in conjunction with baptism in the New Testament. The first and the last references to baptism in Acts appear in close conjunction with an appeal to call upon the name of the Lord (Acts 2:21, 38; 22:16). The use of this phrase in the context of temple imagery of the tongues of fire descending on the disciples implicitly suggests that baptism has a cultic dimension, particularly in connection with the notion of God’s presence. Paul’s allusion to baptism in 1 Cor 6:11 (“You were washed… in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ”) both appeals to the name and is followed by a description of the Corinthians as a temple (1 Cor 6:19). The mountain setting of Matt 28:19-20, combined with language of “nations” and the “name” overlapping with Mal 1:11, similarly suggests a cultic background. These associations between the name and baptism shed light on both the theology of baptism and the New Testament image of the church as a new temple. It is by baptism in the name that believers are incorporated into the new temple of God’s presence in the midst of his people.

In light of the current revival of interest in the relationship between the John’s gospel and Mark’s, this paper revisits the raising of Lazarus and considers why, at an equivalent point in his narrative, the writer may have chosen to replace Mark’s story of the transfiguration of Jesus with this resurrection miracle and its accompanying discourse.

Because the BHQ constantly cites the Peshitta, Targum and Vulgate, its apparatus also makes available to its users the trajectories of interpretation. The activities of the sons of Eli and their servants at Shiloh (1 Sam 2:13-17) is one such case as varying accounts are presented in the versions and 4QSama. In the Peshitta, the scene opens with a clarifying plus in 2:13, the length of which is very much out of character for the Peshitta translator (ܘܥܒܕܘ ܠܗܘܢ ܡܫܠܝܐ ܕܬܠܬ ܫ̈ܢܢܢ “they [Eli’s son] made for themselves a three prong fork”). In 2:15 in the MT and Targum, the priest wants raw meat (2:15) but the Peshitta and the Vulgate shift the responsibility for this demand to the servant, shielding the priest. In 2:16 the Targum ensures the cultic infraction is clear when the person sacrificing orders the priest’s servant to wait (אוריך עד דיתסקון). This paper will consider these different accounts and ask what these versions can reveal about the authority of the proto-MT for each translator.

Gustavo Gutiérrez, Peruvian Dominican priest and liberation theologian, once remarked that, “theology is a matter of the stomach.” One speaks differently about God on a full stomach than on one which is perpetually empty, especially when that emptiness is a result of injustice. More than constructing axiomatic systems which frame and guide one’s thoughts about God, theology, for Gutiérrez, seeks an appropriate language or manner of speaking about God from a particular perspective and thus treats the biblical text in more dialogical or personal terms. He went on to explain that theology, in his understanding, ought to speak about God, to proclaim a God of hope, in the midst or from the perspective of unearned suffering. Theology, he said, seeks an answer to the question, how should one speak about God in a world of violence? What kind of speech should we adopt for such a monumental task? It is common among those from Christian traditions to respond to innocent suffering with platitudinal gestures about a “greater good” or “everything happening for a reason,” perhaps even citing Romans 8:28 as an ostensible cure for the anguish of innocent suffering. Others draw on the passion of Christ in an attempt to re-frame suffering into a broader, more abstract, paradigm in which innocent suffering is thought to yield greater goods which are worth enduring for silently. As Dorothee Soelle notes, such advice expresses an “inner interpretation of suffering in a way that is downright sadistic.” In other words, simply to acknowledge the horror of unjust suffering without attempting to remove the conditions by which it exists is tacitly to endorse it. Gutiérrez, whose liberation theology explicitly takes the perspective of the poor in Latin America as its starting point, develops a two-fold response to unearned suffering through his reading of Job. In contrast to the traditional, retributive language of his friends, Gutiérrez identifies two languages: prophetic and contemplative. He insists that both languages must be given full expression or else one’s response to innocent suffering will fail in significant ways, either failing to ground the pursuit of justice in the reality of God or failing to pursue justice via overemphasis on God’s transcendence. For Gutiérrez, the only constructive response to innocent suffering will forcefully reject and seek to remediate injustice while grounding that pursuit in God’s gratuitous love. This paper traces Gutiérrez's approach through his commentary on Job, suggesting his paradigm can be a model for responses from a Christian perspective to violence.

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In 2019-2020, I worked with the Baylor University Libraries Digital Scholarship department to develop a pair of data visualization tools meant to function as lecture aids in the Biblical Studies classroom. These in-browser web applications provide interactive platforms for real-time visual demonstrations of complex concepts like source criticism, so-called “Deuteronomisms,” and the dating of texts via Late Biblical Hebrew (LBH). The intention was to develop a series of semi-structured class exercises, in which an instructor would graphically depict relevant biblical data (e.g. lemma frequency/distribution, diachronic text development) and ask the students to extrapolate conclusions from the presentation. Such exercises would reinforce content comprehension by fostering inductive learning (Smart et al., 2012) and engaging multiple learning styles (Pritchard, 2014). Unfortunately, The in-person deployment of these data visualization tools was to be short-lived. As instruction moved online in March 2020, these in-browser applications remained viable teaching tools only for synchronous virtual meetings, and such meetings can be poor venues for discussion-focused class exercises. In the process of reconfiguring my instructional practices for this new online modality, I began to realize that the interactive potential of these tools is not limited to mere lecture aids. Data visualizations can be powerful instruments for asynchronous, unstructured, exploratory learning as well. With minimal guidance (and some encouragement), students can freely “play” with the biblical data, developing analytical skills and occasionally coming to novel and exciting conclusions along the way. In this presentation, I demonstrate how freely-available interactive data visualization programs like term/phrase frequency charts, source and redaction analysis tools, passage-specific word cloud generators, and cross-reference charts can augment Biblical Studies curricula in both synchronous and asynchronous contexts. Furthermore, I suggest that the sense of “play” facilitated by unstructured, asynchronous exploration of the data can contribute meaningfully to the development of higher-order critical skills and a culture of curiosity—even as instruction returns to the classroom. I conclude by offering some examples of assignments and exercises using data visualization tools for the introductory and upper-level Biblical Studies classroom.

Characters in the book of Acts navigate overlapping boundaries of authority. At any given time, an individual is subject to multiple authorities, each with their own context of jurisdiction. So, while subjection to these authorities is constant, only specific actions fall within the juridical boundaries of each authority. Using the method of critical literary geography, I examine the boundaries of authority within the book of Acts in this paper. The Jewish people as depicted in Acts are subject to multiple authorities: e.g., the temple, the synagogue, and civic leaders. Therefore, the synagogue participates in what Fábio Duarte (2017) calls “territorial coexistence,” that is the presence of overlapping territorial boundaries of authority on the same space or people. Each boundary of authority emerges from a central locus of authority. In this paper, I examine the territorial coexistence between the synagogue, the temple, and the civic authorities in the book of Acts. Using Acts 9:1–2, 18:1–17, and 28:17–22 as test cases, I will demonstrate how Luke depicts territorial coexistence within his narrative. These territorial authorities have specifically demarcated powers which are non-contradictory in Luke’s narrative. Each authority acknowledges the others’ power and refrains from overstepping their own boundary of authority. In such cases when authority may be exerted within another power’s boundary of authority (e.g., Acts 9:1–2), cooperation between territorial authorities is the desired method. Boundaries can be crossed with reason but not transgressed without cause. In Acts, Luke depicts the synagogue as a member of a coordinated web of territorial authorities within the Greco-Roman world. His characters are both subject to and must navigate among these topographies of territorial authorities.

Two biblical canticles attested in the Ethiopic tradition, the Prayer of Hezekiah and the Song of Isaiah, come from the book of Isaiah. Although these canticles were likely translated independently from the biblical text, they were in contact with the biblical manuscripts of Isaiah for an extended period of time. In this presentation I will show how despite the interaction between the two texts, the canticle manuscripts remain a stable text with only minor changes appearing over centuries. On the other hand, the biblical manuscripts appear to have a considerable number of variations. I show these results by comparing examples of the earliest extant and the most recent biblical witnesses against the form of the text attested in canticle manuscripts.

The influence of Second and Third Isaiah in the activity of Jesus recorded in the Synoptic Gospels cannot be understated. Among these, allusions to Isaiah 56 stand out. For example, each of the Gospels depicts the disturbance at the temple, and in conjunction they depict Jesus quoting from Isaiah 56:7, “for my house shall be called a house of prayer.” Luke depicts Jesus reading from Third Isaiah in the synagogue at Capernaum (Isa. 58:6; 61:1–2) and allusions to Jesus interacting with outcasts may have been influenced in part by Isa 56:8. This paper will argue that Isaiah 56 was likely one source for Jesus’ seeming celibacy by examining Matthew 19:12 (Eunuchs for the Kingdom) as a reflection of Isaiah 56:3–5 as viewed by Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels. Jesus was celibate because he symbolically enacted or was preparing to enact entering the house of YHWH as envisioned in Isaiah 56, wherein the writer decrees that God will give eunuchs “a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; …an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.” Clarity of such an action emerges against a backdrop of exaltation theology. The paper will begin with a cursory summary of contemporary expressions of exaltation theology. A more detailed discussion of treatments of Matthew 19:12 will be followed by a historical and ideological examination of Isa. 56:3–5 and the politics of sexuality and Restoration in the early post-exilic period. The paper will conclude by arguing Isa. 56:3–5 became significant in the developing sexual ethic in Jesus’ enactments of “restoration” in the early first century.