Social Sciences and the Interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures

Call For Papers: How can Medical Anthropology and Sociology be used in Biblical Studies? Since the publication of John Pilch’s Healing in the New Testament : insights from medical and Mediterranean anthropology, nearly twenty years ago, little scholarly attention has been devoted to the ways that the disciplines of medical anthropology and sociology can assist biblical exegesis. This panel encourages participants to engage with Pilch’s work but also to go beyond the parameters within which he worked. How might new scholarship in these disciplines be utilised, going beyond Pilch’s main interlocutors Kleinman (The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing, And The Human Condition) and Good (Medicine, Rationality and Experience: An Anthropological Perspective)? How do new methods in these areas contribute to Hebrew Bible/ Old Testament scholarship and scholarship in outside of the biblical material? This panel will have some invited senior scholars but the call for papers will remain open with a view to attracting some interesting new ideas from several less senior academics. The panel welcomes papers from the overlapping area of disability studies but the focus should primarily be on Medical Anthropology and Sociology. We also welcome proposals for papers in an open session: the section is a dynamic program segment of the SBL that provides a welcoming forum for investigation of the social world of ancient Israel. The section particularly encourages papers utilizing methods and theories from the social sciences for the interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures.

Program Unit Chairs

Propose a Paper for this Program Unit

Questions About Membership?

• Call 866-727-9955 Toll Free in the US
• Call 404-727-9498 Outside the US
• Fax us at 404-727-2419
• Email us at sblservices@sbl-site.org