Whence and Whither?: Methodology and the Future of Biblical Studies
Program Unit Type: Section
Accepting Papers? Yes
Call For Papers: A FIRST session will be devoted to Esoteric Readings of Genesis 1-3. For this session we are especially interested in papers that discuss, compare or analyze esoteric readings or appropriations of Genesis 1-3, from antiquity to the present, including esoteric literatures such as the Gnostic, Dead Sea, and Nag Hammadi libraries, the Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism, and Hermeticism, as well as esoteric thinkers, such as Jacob Boehme, Emanuel Swedenborg, Eliphas Lévi, Helena Blavatsky, Rudolf Steiner, René Guénon, etc. Possible topics are creation myths, issues of gender, fate and free will, concepts of knowledge/wisdom/gnosis, the origin of good and evil, life and death, the idea of a 'fall', the afterlife, as well as how esoteric interpretations address issues of gender or race, exoteric enactments of esoteric concepts of esoteric concepts of gender and/or race as well as other social categories, and explorations of experiential esoteric approaches of Genesis 1-3. Also welcome are more theoretical-historical oriented contributions, discussing the issue of how to connect esotericism with biblical studies, as well as discussions of what has been done in this respect in the past.=======For our SECOND session, which will focus on gender issues in early Christian extra-canonical writings, we solicit papers that focus either on methodological issues, such as for instance the relationship between apocryphal and canonical texts, the definition of orthodoxy and heresy, the interrelationship between gender and structures of authority, or on particular texts from the Nag Hammadi library.=======For a THIRD and final session we solicit papers for the theme "Nordic and Northern-European Perspectives on Jesus," especially some that will complement the current two invited papers dealing with "Jesus and Masculinity in a Norwegian/Nordic Context" and "Gender Issues and Recent Scandinavian Perspectives on Jesus."
Program Unit Chairs
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