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Meeting Abstracts

2008 Annual Meeting

Boston

Meeting Begins11/22/2008
Meeting Ends11/25/2008

Call for Papers Opens: 11/17/2007
Call for Papers Closes: 2/29/2008

Requirements for Participation

  Meeting Abstracts


The King and the Priestly Torah (Deuteronomy 17:14–20)
Program Unit: Pentateuch
Reinhard Achenbach, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster

The Law of the King in Dtn 17 usually is considered as a late dtr addition to the dtn Code. But it is obvious that Dtn 17,18-20 is an alternative message towards the narrative in 1 Sam 8,10-18; 11,25. If the author of 1 Sam 8 had known Dtn 17,18-20 even in connection with Dtn 17,14-17 there would not have been any reason for him to tell us a story about Samuel the prophet who thought it necessary to warn Israel and to give them a note about the king's rights! So there seem to be different layers in the development of critique concerning the kingship in the dtr school. 1st, the critique of dtrH (Book of Kings) against the cultic deviations in Israel and Judah, 2nd, the prophetic critique of Samuel who warned Israel because of the negative impact of kingship on Israel and preparing the king's mishpat for them, 3rd, the critical perspective in Dtn 17,14-17.18-20 responding to 1 Sam 8.10, which alters the concept of 1 Sam 10,25. This text should be seen in connection with the post-exilic redaction of Deuteronomy, because it is only here, that we find the concept of „hakkohanîm hallevijîm“!


The Deuteronomist(s) Interpretation of Exilic Suffering in African Perspective
Program Unit: African Biblical Hermeneutics
David T. Adamo, Kogi State University

This paper is a critical examination of Deuteronomic theology of suffering as it affects the disaster that befell Judah in 597 and 586 BCE. The reality of exile and the suffering of the children of Israel that accompanied it cannot be denied since we have ample biblical records and sufficient confirmation in non-biblical records. The events were abundantly illustrated in the archaeological discoveries in Palestine. The editor/compilers who probably experienced the exilic suffering, in an attempt to understand this untold disaster, tried to interpret the events in the light of disobedience to the law of Yahweh. Throughout this interpretation of the exilic suffering, the spirit and theology of Deuteronomy became the basis for the interpretation. This is, namely, that, exilic suffering is as a result of Israel's sin against Yahweh. In order words, the exilic suffering is retributive, divinely disciplinary, revelational, and probational. The purpose of this paper is to examine the Deuteronomistic theology in the light of African theology of suffering especially as it relates to the suffering associated with slavery in Africa when Africans were forcefully taken from their land like ancient Israel. Did or should Africans understand the suffering of slavery, that is the forceful exile of Africans, in accordance with the Deuteronomistic theology? Are Africans and African Diasporas in a better position to understand biblical theology of suffering in the light of Deuteronomistic interpretation?


Reading of Luke 15 in Narrative Context and Septuagintal Intertext
Program Unit: Formation of Luke and Acts
Dwayne H. Adams, Cornerstone University

Luke 13:22-15:32 merges the themes of "table fellowship" and the eschatological "kingdom banquet". In Luke 13:22-30 Jesus" table fellowship with the responsive "toll collectors and sinners" becomes an anticipatory celebration of the kingdom banquet. The "kingdom banquet" image (13:22-14:24) and the issue of Jesus" "receiving sinners" in meal fellowship (sunesqivei) opens the Luke 15 narrative (15:1-2). The Pharisees grumble over Jesus" eating with tax collectors and sinners. Jesus uses parables linked to LXX pictures of the promised Davidic Shepherd and the abundant mercy of God. The final parable is a rebuke against the failure of the Pharisees, like the elder brother, to rejoice over Jesus" mission to rescue them. The dual themes of the "celebration" of the kingdom banquet and of "rejoicing" over the forgiveness of sins appear to have merged.


The “Wandering Stars” of Jude 13: A Retrograde Interpretation
Program Unit: Letters of James, Peter, and Jude
Edward Adams, King's College London

In Jude 13, the writer calls his opponents "wandering stars" (asteres planetai). It is almost unanimously agreed that he is comparing the false teachers to fallen angels. In 1 Enoch, which Jude knows and on which he depends, angels are represented as falling/fallen stars (1 Enoch 10; 18.13-16; 21.3-6; 88.1-3). However, a reference to evil angels does not fit the immediate context, in which the author likens his adversaries to irregularities in the natural world: waterless clouds; barren trees; wild waves casting up filth (vv. 12-13). Also, the author does not talk about "falling" stars, but "wandering" stars, which is less suggestive of bad angels. It is argued in this paper that Jude is thinking of actual astronomical bodies, namely the visible planets. The specification "wandering" serves to indicate the planets as distinguished from the fixed stars. From a geocentric perspective, the visible planets seem to deviate occasionally from their rotations, turning back from their eastward progression and moving westward for a while – a phenomenon known as retrogression. This constituted a problem for Greek and Greek-based cosmology, which assumed a wholly "ordered" cosmos. Plato, Eudoxus and Aristotle sought to account for this planetary trait in a way that saved the appearance of cosmic orderliness, the latter two (and Eudoxus in particular) with amazing mathematical dexterity. But Graeco-Roman astronomers continued to wrestle with the problem until Ptolemy in the second century CE. It is suggested that Jude's reference to "wandering stars" alludes to this well-known phenomenon, adding to his comparison of the opponents to seemingly aberrant features of nature in the foregoing lines.


African Paul? An Alternative Interpretative Grid for the Understanding of Paul's Letters
Program Unit: African Biblical Hermeneutics
J. Ayodeji Adewuya, Church of God Theological Seminary

It goes without saying that all readers of Scriptures do so from various socio-cultural perspectives. This paper contends that on various levels, there are many concepts and themes in the Pauline corpus that are better understood when read as an African. To test the hypothesis, the paper will examine specific passages in the Pauline corpus.


Alexander Polyhistor as a Mediator of Eastern Wisdom
Program Unit: Hellenistic Judaism
William Adler, North Carolina State University

This paper will consider the principles for selection and practices of excerption that shaped Alexander Polyhistor's Concerning the Jews as well as his motivations for collecting this material.


The Quality of Vaticanus in 1 Samuel: Between Old Greek and Kaige
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Historical Books
Anneli Aejmelaeus, University of Göttingen

Codex Vaticanus has the reputation of being the best of all manuscripts of the Septuagint – with the consequence of being regarded as practically the original text by many. On the other hand, Vaticanus is known to represent an early revision of the text in Judges as well as in 2 Samuel 11:2 – 1 Kings 2:11 and 1 Kings 22 – 2 Kings 25. But what should we think of the quality of Vaticanus in the rest of the historical books? As a matter of fact, most of the cruces in the textual criticism of the Septuagint of 1 Samuel concern the status of Vaticanus. One of the key texts that opened my eyes in this respect is 1 Samuel 2:14 – one of those rare cases showing a lucky coincidence of different recensional readings in the various witnesses.


Ritualization, Hybridity, and the Canopus Decree: Social and Political Strategies of Cultic Practice in Ptolemaic Egypt
Program Unit: Greco-Roman Religions
Patricia Ahearne-Kroll, Ohio Wesleyan University

In the Canopus Decree (238 BCE), several ritual practices are instituted on behalf of the deceased princess Berenike, daughter of Ptolemy III Euergetes and Berenike II. These particular practices are interwoven with Egyptian cultic traditions that were performed at Canopus (and elsewhere in Egypt) during the months of Choiak and Tybi. As other scholars have discussed, the decree incorporates princess Berenike into the dynastic pantheon alongside Egyptian gods, and it describes the design of her temple statue in terms that reflect a combination of Egyptian and Greek representational elements (F. Dunand, F. Goddio, P. Stanwick). In this paper, I will argue that the Canopus Decree does not simply prescribe the advancement of Ptolemaic political power through the use of the influential Egyptian temple system, but it also produces ritual traditions that had temporal, agricultural, and otherworldly significance for both Egyptian and Greek-speaking participants. Egyptian cultic leaders and the Ptolemies negotiated and constructed ritual practice that was primarily rooted in Egypt but also resonated with Greek ritual traditions, and the particular “ritualization” (as defined by C. Bell) that the Canopus Decree helped to produce lasted for centuries in Egypt. Canopus itself was a well-supported and active ritual place during the Ptolemaic period; representations of the Ptolemies depicted with both Greek and Egyptian details have been documented in archeological excavations from this location (E. Breccia, F. Goddio), and ancient sources refer to the cultic significance of Canopus (e.g., Strabo). Given this effect of the collaboration between the Ptolemies and the Egyptian priesthood, I will examine the ritual hybridity that the Canopus Decree reflects and the possible impact that this performance activity had on the inhabitants of Egypt (Egyptian and Greek-speaking) who participated in these festivals.


Birth and Memory: Platonic and Johannine Epistemologies in Dialogue
Program Unit: Johannine Literature
Stephen P. Ahearne-Kroll, Methodist Theological School in Ohio

One aspect of Platonic epistemology claims that memory is integral to knowledge. In Phaedrus 246a-249d, Plato paints images of the otherworldly journey of the disembodied soul. What is experienced in varying degrees in this otherworld—beholding the ideal forms by following the gods—affects the health and status of the soul in its embodied existence after its birth as a living being (zoon, Phaed 246c). Key to living well as a living being is creating understanding through consolidation of the sense perceptions, which Plato describes as “a remembering (anamnesis) of those things which our soul saw (eidon) when it journeyed along with god (sumporeutheisa to theo) and despised the things that we now say exist and rose up into that which truly exists” (Phaed 249b-c). The categories of memory, understanding, seeing the divine world by “journeying with” a divine being, birth, and life are all present in the Gospel of John, and comparison of its thought system with Plato's as expressed in the Phaedrus can be instructive for contextualizing John within its greater philosophical world. Where Plato expresses learning as a function of post-birth memory of beholding the divine world of ideal forms, John expresses learning as post-(re)birth memory of beholding the divine world of the Father through remaining with Jesus the divine being. In Plato, the more one can remember, the higher the social status of the living being upon birth (Phaed 248c-e). In John, the ability to remember depends upon the Spirit which facilitates (re)birth and reminds the disciples of all that Jesus said while they encountered him as a physical embodiment of the divine world. The abiding Spirit, then, acts to mark one's status as disciple and raise the level of knowledge of the divine world, thus legitimating the community"s existence as Jesus" followers.


The Demonstrative Adverb Šm: Where Is “There"?
Program Unit: Biblical Lexicography
John Ahn, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary

Across the pages of the biblical corpus, the demonstrative adverb šm is found everywhere. “There” appears a little over 1400 times. But in specific texts, the lexeme is not only a generic locative marker, but also a unique signature signifying the mark of its redactor and social location. Here are a few examples: By the waters (irrigation canals) of Babylon, “there” we lived and wept…and “there” we hung our lyres (Ps 137.1, 3); “…found a plain in Shinar and settled “there,” because “there” the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From “there,” the LORD scattered them over the face of the earth” (Gen 11.9). “There” he gave them statues and ordinances, and “there” he tested them (Ex 15.25); “the glory of the LORD was standing there,” (Ezek 3.23). By the time of Ezra-Nehemiah, “There” was inevitably codified with a specific place in mind. “There,” by the Ahava Canal, I proclaimed a fast…” (Ezra 8.21). This presentation, which is an important excursus from my dissertation/monograph, will be presented in three parts. First, after a brief syntactical and lexical overview of the demonstrative adverb šm, a comprehensive record of texts that have preserved our lexeme will be relayed. Then, I will address the following questions (below) while providing the social-location which assists, illuminates, and then calls for a re-reading of the aforementioned texts keeping in mind: Why would the redactor opt to pen “there”? Was there a (theological) significance of not wanting to call a place by its rightful name? Is this redactor Deuteronomic or Priestly? What is the possible timeframe when the term came into being or usage? And lastly, but not least, where is "there?"


Forced Migration Studies as a New Approach to the Study of the Exilic Period
Program Unit: Exile (Forced Migrations) in Biblical Literature
John Ahn, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary

Since the beginning of critical Old Testament scholarship, “the exile,” “deportation,” or now, the “forced migrations” period, has been a “watershed” for understanding biblical theology and the formation of biblical literature. Over the years, scholars (e.g. J. Wellhausen, W. Robertson Smith, M. Noth, E. Janssen, C. F. Whitley, M. Noth, P. Ackryod, T. Raitt, R. Klein, B. Oded, D. Smith-Christopher, R. Albertz, H. Barstad, etc.) have weighed in their opinion. The Hebrew terms referring to the exile has traditionally been rendered “uncover, remove, exile, captive, captivity, carried away, deported, and gone, carried, or taken into exile.” The root glh can also mean “to open, to become visible or audible.” When we meticulously follow the entry glh in the BDB, we come across the definition "emigrate" (cf. Arabic). Unfortunately, this definition has gone unnoticed because of the popularity of the nomenclature “exile.” In Koehler and Baumgartner, the entry also records “to penetrate, to go to, to uncover, to open, to make public, to make clear, become clear, to emigrate, to go into exile.” In Gesenius" lexicon, glh in Middle Hebrew is “…offen sein, auswandern, verbannt warden; Qumran, öffnen, offenbaren, weggehen, de Verbannung gehen, sich zeigen, erscheinen…” Without deposing our classical rendering of "exile," the definition I wish to emphasize is "emigrate" or "migrate." Thus what is usually thought of as the exile will be considered here a migration. Because Judah's migration was not voluntary, it can be termed "forced migration." This presentation will provide the tenants of forced migration studies and its tangents to help scholars better understand the context of “Judah in Exile,” during the 6th century B.C.E. (597-538 B.C.E.).


The Virtual Bible
Program Unit: Reading, Theory, and the Bible
George Aichele, Adrian College

The Bible has always been virtual but only now are we becoming aware of it, and we have not yet thoroughly examined the implications of that concept. The impact of “electronic culture” on the Bible raises the question of whether “biblical studies” retains any meaning in a postmodern world where “the Bible” as a discrete object (the printed codex) no longer has any privilege or place. Just as the computer and the Internet dissolve the Bible into streams of binary code, so poststructuralism deconstructs the play of biblical intertextity and semiosis. Meanwhile, popular culture rewrites and redistributes the canon. The Bible becomes one commodity alongside many others in a global economy increasingly dominated by transnational ideologies. Yet just as the WWW finally transforms the Bible into a global phenomenon (and thereby liberates it from the church), the Bible's inevitable virtuality keeps it local and partial, fragmentary, perpetually incomplete and thus subversive of any totality. This essay draws upon the writings of Katherine Hayles, Gilles Deleuze, and Jean Baudrillard among others.


Singing in a Heavenly Vision: Scriptural Practices in the Songs of Revelation
Program Unit: Wisdom and Apocalypticism
Ellen Bradshaw Aitken, McGill University

In the study of the book of Revelation, it is customary to speak of the “seer” and the “audience,” whereby “seer” refers to the inscribed recipient of the heavenly revelations and “audience” denotes the imputed and actual recipients of the text. This terminology, however, obscures important performance features contained within Revelation: the revelations given to the “seer” include several auditory events, notably a sequence of song texts sung by the inhabitants of heaven. Likewise, the hearing of the Book of Revelation activates the “audience's” capacity for visualization by picturing otherworldly scenes. This paper focuses on the song texts of Revelation in order to explore the performance modes by which scriptural traditions are deployed within this apocalypse. It analyzes how various traditions and materials contribute to the construction of these song texts and considers, in addition, the performative terminology marking the songs. In so doing, I seek to locate the composition of these song texts in relation to the spectrum of practices seen in the sapiential and apocalyptic texts explored throughout this Section's work.


Finding Words for the Suffering of the World
Program Unit:
Ellen B. Aitken, McGill University

The life of stories in communities has been a theme in Richard Horsley's scholarship on Jesus and the gospels, as he has explored oral performance, the persistence of covenantal traditions of resistance and renewal, social memory, and the proclamation of Jesus" prophetic voice. This homage to Horsley takes up the question of how we learn to speak of suffering, pain, and death, drawing up the riches of early Christian practices of narrative. It does so in the conviction, following Elaine Scarry, that giving voice to suffering, telling the story of what is deathly and marked by horror, is itself a profoundly creative act that participates in practices of healing and restoration. The traditions of Jesus" suffering and death, as they are uttered through the enactments of early Christian memory, teach us how us in our time how to find words for the suffering throughout our world and societies.


Inter-textuality or Not? The Case of Wisdom Vocabulary
Program Unit: Greek Bible
James K. Aitken, University of Cambridge

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The Controversy about Judean versus Israelite Identity and the Persian Government: A New Interpretation of the Bagoses Story (Antiquities 11.297–303)
Program Unit: Literature and History of the Persian Period
Rainer Albertz, Universität Münster

With the loss of Egypt in 404 B.C.E., the Persian authorities seem to have become more interested in the stability of their southwestern border, including the provinces of Samaria, Judah, and Idumea. Reconsideration of the Bagoses narrative as reported by Josephus against this background reveals that the Persian govenor of Judah was no longer ready to tolerate religious tensions, which could disrupt relations between the provinces of Judah and Samaria. Therefore, he intervened in an inner Judean conflict in order to limit a Judean claim for religious leadership. It is possible that the compromise found in the Pentateuch - if delivered in 398 by Ezra - has to do with the stabilizing policies of the Persians.


More than a Myth: The Reality and Significance of Exile for the Political, Social, and Religious History of Judah
Program Unit: Exile (Forced Migrations) in Biblical Literature
Rainer Albertz, Universität Münster

After having dealt with nearly every aspect of exile, one arena of discussion that is still very relevant is the aspect of historicity—more than a myth.


Slavery and Sexual Ethics in Islam
Program Unit:
Kecia Ali, Boston University

Slavery is deeply embedded in Islamic texts and Muslim history. Indeed, even men's sexual use of unfree women is approved in the Qur'an, attested in the sunnah-that is, the exemplary practice of the Prophet Muhammad-and explicitly sanctioned by classical Islamic jurisprudence. Yet the vast majority of contemporary Muslims forcefully reject slavery as unacceptable in the modern world. This leaves Muslims with a puzzle: How is it possible to resolve tensions between classical Islamic law, which many Muslims still treat as authoritative, and contemporary values? Considering the early Muslim acceptance of slavery to be a product of its time that is not integral to the tenets of the faith opens the way for a solution. Rejecting the historical acceptance of slavery frees Muslims to consider the history and context behind the development of other elements of Islamic law as well, such as regulations governing polygamy and unilateral male divorce. Thus Muslims become able to treat the Qur'an as revelatory guidance rather than literal law. This is a step toward thinking through an Islamic ethics of sex.


The Forgotten Spirit? A Pentecostal Reading of the Letter to the Hebrews
Program Unit: Society for Pentecostal Studies
David M. Allen, Queen's Foundation

Although Hebrews uniquely casts the Spirit as one who speaks the words of Scripture, its conception of pneuma elsewhere in the letter has traditionally been regarded as anthropological or angelic, rather than overtly “trinitarian.” Unsurprisingly, therefore, discussion of how Hebrews treats the persons of the trinity tend to concentrate upon (with perhaps some justification) the respective roles of God and Christ, with the Spirit invariably set to one side. This paper seeks to redress the balance and aims to discuss the role of the divine Spirit in Hebrews, particularly building upon the intriguing allusion to the plural distributions of the Spirit as the mark of the new covenant salvation (Heb 2:4). What did the author of Hebrews understand by such “distributions”, and do they represent a particular Pentecostal process of salvation, with parallels to the Lucan Pentecostal framework? The paper will also consider how such Pentecostal affirmation impacts upon the interpretation of the letter's other (putatively) trinitarian references to pneuma (9:8, 9:14, 10:29), and will discuss the extent to which Hebrews bespeaks a distinctively “Pentecostal” discourse.


The Naming of God: Exodus 3 beyond the Hellenization Thesis
Program Unit: Christian Theological Research Fellowship
Michael Allen, Wheaton College

Perhaps no text has stood amidst the debate regarding the “theory of theology's fall into Hellenistic philosophy” (Paul Gavrilyuk) more than Exodus 3, which recounts the giving of the divine name to Moses. Post-Heideggerian philosophical theology has rightly critiqued the apologetics of neoscholasticism, apologetics which were typically rooted in the analogia entis and, ultimately, in Exodus 3:14. Fergus Kerr and others have shown that this neoscholastic, post-Wolffian model of the analogia entis severely distorted the older (pre-Suarezian) Thomist approach by interpreting divine transcendence and analogy in quantitative fashion (subsuming divine and human under the common category “Being”). This neoscholastic approach provided access to the divine in virtually unlimited fashion, thereby minimizing the narratival import of the divine covenantal presence amidst Israel, in Jesus Christ, and through the church. Harnack and others interpreted the development of classical theism as the unknowing adoption of this Greek view of analogy. Contemporary biblical commentary on this text has shied from any ontological implications (see, e.g., T. E. Freheim), undoubtedly, assuming that the neoscholatic accretion is the only ontological option. The divine name has been interpreted as a simple identification of the Israelite deity with the particular story of Israel's sociality—an attestation of immanent presence assumed to be understandable apart from metaphysical specification. As of yet, however, study has not been done relating the so-called “metaphysics of Exodus” (Etienne Gilson) to the narratival approach dominant in contemporary biblical studies. This paper will seek to explicate the metaphysical logic of the divine name revealed in this locus classicus, avoiding both (1) the univocal metaphysics of neoscholasticism and (2) the ontological reticence of much narrative theology. In some sense, then, I will attempt to navigate the dangers in both modern and postmodern philosophy in provding a dogmatic ontology and concomitant theory of God-talk. I will demonstrate how the exegesis of Exodus 3:14 played a formative ontological role in the theology of St. Augustine. Furthermore, I will follow Augustine in interpreting the divine self-disclosure in Exodus 3 as manifest in the giving of two names. The first divine name, “I am who I am” (Ex. 3:14) notes divine independence, implying doctrines of aseity and perfection. The second divine name, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Ex. 3:15), nonetheless, ties this transcendent God"s identity to these particular narratives. Thus, the doctrines of perfection and presence (or transcendence and immanence) are both rooted in this dialectical self-manifestation. Furthermore, the doctrine of analogy must be construed along qualitative, not merely quantitative, lines so as to honor the thoroughgoing dialectical nature of divine perfection. My dogmatic commentary on Exodus 3 will suggest that many classical readings of Exodus 3 critically appropriated philosophical resources and might be helpfully emulated in our own post-Heideggerian context. In so doing, I argue that the insights of narrative theology can be aligned with a sustained ontological account of God"s perfection and a qualitative view of divine transcendence.


Another Persian Word in Ezra 7:13–26?
Program Unit: Biblical Lexicography
Spencer L. Allen, University of Pennsylvania

A thorough reading of Ezra 7:13-26 in the context of the extant comparative material (e.g., the Demotic Chronicle #215 & Xerxes" “Daiva Inscription”) and the imperial Persian environment in which it was written sheds new light on the translation of vv. 25-26. In particular, the words d-y-n-y-n, d-"-n-y-n (Ketiv) and d-t in the phrases typically translated “judges who judge,” “the law of your God,” and “the law of the king” should be understood with Persian nuances. Of course, data, “decree,” has long been recognized as a Persian loan word, and a new analysis of the word and its transformation upon its import into Semitic target languages (i.e., Aramaic, Phoenician, & Akkadian) suggests that the word as used here likely refers to a one-time decree relating to temple matters. Additionally, the meaning of d-"-n-y-n d-y l-h-w-n d-"-n-y-n in the specific context of this passage should be reconsidered in light of the Iranian daena, “religion.” Reading the passage in this way, Artaxerxes has given Ezra full authority only over the temple's economy, activities, and regulations, while granting him neither the authority to establish a civil law corpus nor the right to appoint civil “judges who would judge all the people in providence beyond the river” (v. 25). The meaning of the word d-"-n-y-n here is borrowed from daena rather than taken from its homograph, the Aramaic word meaning “judges.” Since each of the 14 verses in Ezra 7:13-26 is best explained in its relationship to the cult, with 7 of these verses making explicit reference to cult maintenance or funding, the phrase d-"-n-y-n d-y l-h-w-n d-"-n-y-n in v. 25 should likely be translated “religious instructors who instruct religious (practices)” rather than the traditional “judges who judge,” which suggests a civil concern completely foreign to the rest of the passage.


Using Sargonid God Lists to Evaluate the Neo-Assyrian Pantheon
Program Unit: Assyriology and the Bible
Spencer L. Allen, University of Pennsylvania

The Neo-Assyrian god lists offer a glimpse of several processes at work, among them the syncretism of various deities, both local and foreign; the reorganization of the divine hierarchy; and the splintering apart of single god into several different deities. These processes are placed at varying stages of completion, depending on the nature of the source in which a god list is contained. A careful study of Sargonid dynasty god lists reveals several important differences between those lists contained in state-sponsored inscriptions and those contained in letters, whether written by private citizens or public officials. The former continue to list both Assur and Enlil during the reigns of Sargon, Sennacherib, and Esarhaddon, dropping the distinction only in the reign of Assurbanipal, while the latter already cease distinguishing between Assur and Enlil by the reign of Sargon. More complicated than the syncretization process of Assur and Enlil is the problem of Ishtar's nature, role, and status during this period. In addition to her incomplete syncretization with Mullissu at Nineveh, Ishtar has been suggested by B. Porter to have had several fundamentally independent manifestations at this time. Based on the extant evidence, I make the case for exactly such a multiplicity of Ishtars during this period. Unlike the names of other deities in the lists, the name Ishtar, often with an accompanying epithet, appears multiple times in god lists contained in both state-sponsored and personal correspondence, one instance often being separated from another by one or more intervening deities.


The New Testament and Its Consequences
Program Unit:
Dale Allison, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary

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Material Culture and the Symbolic Meaning of Meat in Deuteronomy 12
Program Unit: Biblical Law
Peter Altmann, Princeton Theological Seminary

Deuteronomy 12:13-27 obviously suggests movement towards a central place, but there is also centrifugal movement back to the villages of the divinely given land. Both the centrifugal and centripetal directives focus on offerings, particularly their consumption and enjoyment. However, while the ordinances dealing with the central place highlight offerings in general, the primary concern in the “gates” is communal meat consumption. In this paper, I will argue that Deuteronomy's narrow focus on meat consumption functions as a direct and incisive response to the felt concerns of residents in Judea during the time of the Assyrian hegemony in the late eighth through the seventh century B.C.E. Deuteronomy 12 keys in on the “promise” of meat consumption in local villages in order to show that the LORD is a beneficent deity who deserves full allegiance. This promise becomes especially attractive in the face of the restricted amount meat available for consumption due to the Assyrian hegemony. The Deuteronomic provision for local meat consumption inherently offers the Israelites a desirable commodity. In order to work out this proposal, I will discuss the symbolic importance of meat in the biblical and ancient Near Eastern texts, iconography, and Iron Age II material remains. Finally I will present a reading of Deuteronomy 12 showing the symbolic importance of “meat” as a focusing element for the concerns of the Iron Age II audience.


Forced Migration and Israelite Families: Ancient and Modern Patterns
Program Unit: Warfare in Ancient Israel
Frank Ritchel Ames, Rocky Vista University College of Osteopathic Medicine

The displacement of families in war is a past and present social phenomenon. This paper applies social-scientific methods to biblical texts and compares patterns and effects of forced migration on ancient and modern Israelite families.


Premarital Sexual Intercourse in Biblical Law and the Dead Sea Scrolls
Program Unit: Qumran
Aryeh Amihay, Princeton University

The laws in Deuteronomy 22:23-29 list different cases of pre-marital and ex-marital sexual intercourse. The paper begins by discussing the motivations and logic that seemingly lie in the background of this group of laws. After offering an analysis of the biblical law, it moves to examine two texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls that include reference to the cases described in Deuteronomy 22. These texts are the Damascus Document (drawing on 4Q271, Frg. 3) and the Temple Scroll (11Q19). Each of these texts does not simply list the biblical law, but rephrases it and offers changes that address lacunae in Deuteronomy discussed in the introduction. Bu noting the divergence from the biblical law, one can uncover the motivation and logic of these texts as well, pointing to changes from the biblical thought, as well as differences between the different scrolls. Upon conclusion, some remarks on the nature of each of the scrolls and its target audience is made, arguing for a priestly and sectarian provenance of the Damascus Document, but only a priestly provenance of the Temple Scroll.


The Ancestral Covenant in Psalms 105 and 106: Their Function as the Conclusion to Book Four of the Psalter
Program Unit: Book of Psalms
John Anderson, Baylor University

Psalms 105 and 106, two of the grand recitations of ancient Israel's history, close Book IV of the Hebrew Psalter in a way that scholarship has heretofore unrecognized. An overemphasis on exodus and land motifs has led to the missing of what I contend to be hermeneutical key to understanding not only Book IV but the overall movement of the canonical Psalter, namely the remembrance of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That the ancestors occur only here in the Psalter (save one other mention of Abraham in 47:9[10]) belie their significance. Given that the ancestors emerge on the literary scene at this point speaks to the pervasiveness of the ancestral covenant as an operative theme in these two psalms as well as the remainder of the canonical Psalter. As I see it, the ancestral covenant forms an inclusio around both psalms, beginning in 105:8 and ending in 106:45, a point contested within scholarship, which often takes Psalm 106 as a reference exclusively to Sinai. Within its new interpretive context in the Psalter, however, Psalms 105 and 106 are intended to be read together as a recounting of the same history from utterly different perspectives. When taken together, these psalms are reminiscent of the entirety of the ancestral covenantal promises—presence and protection especially—and not limited solely to the land. Moreover, the patriarchs assume the titles of "anointed" and "prophet" from David in Psalm 78, hearkening back to a period when unabashed trust in YHWH typified Israel's life of faith. The ancestral promise anticipates the exodus, as is evident from the canonical movement of the Pentateuch, and when read alongside Psalms 105 and 106, point to an uninterrupted history of YHWH"s covenantal fidelity that would have been seminal to ancient Israel"s identity formation in its post-exilic context.


Jesus and the Patriarchs: The Imminent Fulfillment of the Patriarchal Promise in Matthew 8:5–13
Program Unit: Matthew
John Anderson, Baylor University

The Gospel of Matthew has often been regarded as a theological anomaly, considered to be both the most Jewish of all the gospels as well as providing some of the harshest anti-Jewish rhetoric in all of Scripture. This study seeks to bring together these two seemingly incompatible strands through the lens of Matthew 8:5-13, a text that the majority of scholarship has regarded as the evidence for a shift in Jesus" desired audience from ancient Israel to gentiles. Rather than severing Jesus from his own historical context, I interpret this passage in line with the insights of Segal, Boccaccini, and Boyarin that the early Christian movement was a sect within Israel. The Matthean Jesus, then, also operates within this wholly Jewish context to bring about a wholly Jewish concern: the mutual inclusion of the gentiles alongside Israel. I take 8:11, especially the mention of the patriarchs, to be the hermeneutical key to unlock the understanding of both this passage and much of Matthew's gospel. By mentioning the patriarchs, the Matthean Jesus hearkens back to the original promise given to Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3 and carried forward, as Matthew's genealogy demonstrates, all the way to Jesus. It is this original patriarchal promise that bookends Matthew"s gospel and thereby relies upon the memory of both God"s fidelity to ancient Israel as well as ancient Israel"s unique task of bringing her God to the gentiles. In 8:5-13, Jesus does just that, presaging the ultimate fulfillment that closes the gospel with the Great Commission. The Matthean Jesus" encounter with the centurion in 8:5-13 reveals that he surely sought the inclusion of gentiles, but not to the detriment of Israel. From the perspective of the Matthean Jesus, only when taken together do Israel and the nations constitute the fullness of God"s true covenantal people.


Healthy Economies? The Structural Economies of Four Matthean Healing Stories
Program Unit: Matthew
Laura Anderson, Graduate Theological Union

This paper provides a close reading of the four Matthean healing narratives wherein a supplicant requests a healing on behalf of someone else (8:5-13; 9:18, 19, 23-25; 15:21-28; and 17:14-18). While the paper examines in depth the formulaic and narrative elements of each account, it interprets the structural patterns that emerge in terms of economics, understood throughout the paper in its basic meaning of “exchange.” Three broad types of narrative and formulaic exchange – locational, healing and conflict – are traced in each of the healing accounts, and variations in the sub-types of these categories, such as titular addresses, requests for healing, statements of healing intent, and time of healing, are highlighted. In addition to schematizing the healing dynamics of each story, the paper also considers the differing structural economies towards which the narrative exchanges point. Drawing upon the actions and words of Jesus as written by the Matthean author, this work explores the economics of healing that undergird the four narratives. For example, the account of the centurion reveals a command economy that is also constructed by Jesus as exclusive, while the exchange with the “Canaanite” woman indicates that Jesus" proposed model of economic insufficiency is successfully supplanted by an economy that is both sufficient and inclusive. The four proposed structural economies are considered both in terms of the socio-political economies of the first century C.E. and in terms of their ethical and theological implications for modern interpreters.


Running Half-Naked through the House(hold Code): A Feminist Deconstruction of 1 Peter 3:1–6
Program Unit: Letters of James, Peter, and Jude
Laura Anderson, Graduate Theological Union

This paper offers a close reading of the wife discourse of the Petrine Haustafel through the theoretical lenses of feminism and deconstruction. Reading through a feminist lens, the paper traces how power circulates unevenly not only between husbands and wives but also between wives and slaves. Here, then, the wife discourse reveals itself to be one that is categorically neither fixed nor unitary; instead, the boundaries between superior and subordinate groups and between subordinate groups themselves are discursively blurred and unstable. Reading through a deconstructive lens, the paper explores how the text, while appearing to desire decorous and modest behavior from wives, in fact resists the categorical mandates it sketches, thereby refusing to submit discursively to the household code it is writing. By focusing on the phrase, kai "ei tines, especially as it resides within the "ina clause (3:1), by considering the letter's imperative that wives be unbraided, unplated and undressed (3:3), and by reckoning with Sarah and Abraham as exemplary misfits (3:6), the deconstructive reading uncovers a text whose semantic and syntactic claims concerning wifely behavior are naught but a “textual rouge,” an enactment of the very exteriority that the text claims to reject. In the end, the text reveals itself to be performing the wifely behaviors it proscribes. Running half naked and well rouged through the house(hold code) it is trying so hard to build, the text itself destabilizes the whole endeavor. The paper concludes with a consideration of theoretical and readerly implications.


A Chronicle of a Pre-known Destruction, Analysis of the Stages of the Conquest and Destruction of City of Bethsaida by Tiglath Pileser III
Program Unit: Warfare in Ancient Israel
Rami Arav, University of Nebraska at Omaha

The Assyrian conquest of the Southern Levant was recorded in text, artwork and found in archaeological discoveries. Despite this wealth of information, there are neither records nor excavated sites pertaining to the various stages of the conquest and the destruction of the cities. The excellent state of preservation of the city of Bethsaida yields enough evidence to support an analysis of the physical remains and to propose a detailed reconstruction of the different stages of the conquest and the ensuing process of the destruction of the city. Evidently, after a long siege the heavily fortified complex of the city gate was breached and conquered. Dozens of arrowheads and projectiles testify to a violent battle in this area. Following the battles, the citizens were deported and their possessions had been confiscated. At the next stage a deliberate destruction of all the objects remained in the gate took place. Among which all pottery vessels were brutally shattered and scattered and seven steles that decorated the gate were “beheaded”. At the next stage the Assyrians set the city gate in fire. A fierce conflagration consumed the entire structure, caused the bricks to meld down and clinkers were created. During this stage the building collapsed, burying and thus preserving the first floor under a large heap of rubble. In the final blow, a designated unit of the Assyrian army excavated and removed the entire eastern side of the gate to a depth of 2 meters below the floor and dumps it into the ravine.


Fresh Water Rituals at Bethsaida
Program Unit: Archaeological Excavations and Discoveries: Illuminating the Biblical World
Rami Arav, University of Nebraska at Omaha

Four objects discovered together, in situ, at Bethsaida play an important role in the hypothesis of Fresh Water Rituals. They are (1) two three legged cups found in (2) a basalt basin on top of (3) a high place, decorated with (4) a stele which was dedicated to the moon-god. Undoubtedly all are connected to one and the same ritual. No other sites yielded all these objects in a similar constellation. The method of scholarship used in this research is to deduce from the best preserved, in situ finds to the fragmentary, the incomplete and ill-preserved. Three legged vessels are frequent in the kingdom of the Ammonites and among the Aramean kingdoms. They were found in Bethsaida, Ein Gev, and in Iron Age sites in the Baqa valley in Lebanon. Relatively few were found in the Kingdom of Israel and they are extremely rare within the kingdom of Judah or among the Philistines. Based upon out of context finds, and judging on the pierced holes on the walls of many three legged vessels, scholars hypothesized, that they were used for incense burning and that they originate in the Aegean world. This presentation refutes this suggestion and proposes to view the entire complex of objects, the three legged cups, basins, altars and stele as one whole and to link it to similar practices in Mesopotamia. Fresh water rituals invoking Abzu/Abpsu, were common in Mesopotamia and were recorded from the third to the first millennium BCE. This presentation proposes that the Southern Levant three legged vessels were a local version of Mesopotamian rituals, in which fresh water stored in the basins were drawn by the three legged vessels and sprinkled over the steles.


On Enoch-Metatron of 3 Enoch
Program Unit: Mysticism, Esotericism, and Gnosticism in Antiquity
Daphna Arbel, University of British Columbia

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Acts 2: Signifier of a Pentecostal Narrative Theology
Program Unit: Society for Pentecostal Studies
Kenneth J. Archer, Church of God Theological Seminary

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Warriors, Politicians, and Great Families: The Audience of Philodemus' On Death
Program Unit: Hellenistic Moral Philosophy and Early Christianity
David Armstrong, University of Texas at Austin

Recently, in his book Live Unnoticed: the Vicissitudes of an Epicurean Doctrine (2007), Geert Roskam has accounted for Philodemus" occasional friendly comments on politics (contradicting the usual Epicurean hostility to political life) as a noble profession and natural at least for those who are born to it (On Rhetoric, esp. III fin., On the Good King According to Homer). It is acceptable to consider this sort of flexibility to the life his noble patrons led by necessity of birth and station under the heading of 'salonfähigkeit," accomodating his docrine to presentation directly before them. Most ancient writings on the fear of death are addressed to a minority: the literate, the free-born, the prosperous who have something to lose, above all to men rather than women, and Philodemus" On Death is no exception. But my paper will illustrate its Salonfähigkeit in three ways: considering the emphases on understated bravery without striving for glory in the passages about death in battle, on indifference to survival of one's great name or to reputation after death except among friends, and especially to risking life and fortune before tyrants or irrational popular assemblies, and remaining imperturbable by disgrace and death and attentive (again) only to the opinion of true friends. These form an attractive supplement to such passages as Torquatus" account of bravery and friendship in De Finibus I and offer a sympathetic model, taken together, of how Philodemus shaped a message on the life of the Roman nobility in the dangerous last century of the Republic for such acquaintances as Torquatus, Vibius Pansa and Cassius, the assassin of Caesar, who belonged to the school and whose lives display the kind of understated and un-fanatical heroism in public service that Philodemus inculcates by implication in On Death.


Theatricality in 4 Maccabees
Program Unit: Pseudepigrapha
Hans Arneson, Duke University

The author of 4 Maccabees infuses his narrative with both overt references and subtle allusions to the world of the theater: the ethical life is presented as a suitable drama played out by actors (6:17), figures in the story realize an already-fixed character ("as truly Eleazar", 6:5), the body is compared to a costume (15:15), the seven martyred brothers form a chorus led by their mother (e.g. 8:4; 8:28-9:9; 13:8-18; 14:7-8), the chorus engages in mimicry (e.g. 9:23-24; 13:9), and so forth. In each instance the theatrical language employed is a departure from the narrative of 2 Maccabees, the text the author is reworking. No previous study has considered the collective force of these allusions or explored possible roots of the author's penchant for dramatic categories; very few studies have even recognized the theatrical allusions at all. Each type of theatrical allusion in the aforementioned list finds a parallel in Stoic sources, often in the so-called 'Middle Stoic' authors to whom the author's philosophy bears its closest resemblance. This paper explores the Stoic concept of the ethical life as a scripted drama pre-determined by fate and nature, where sound performance consists of the rational, consistent realization of the character one has been assigned. Then, the paper analyzes the almost universally neglected contribution this theatrical vision of the world makes to the theological vision of 4 Maccabees, concluding that its author likewise conceives of the law-abiding life of reason as the performance of a script in total harmony with the natural order. The serial deployment of theatrical metaphors thus represents one further contact between this Stoic Jew and his philosophical predecessors, an insight that fosters both a better understanding of 4 Maccabees in particular and of the relationship between Jews and Greco-Roman philosophical traditions more broadly.


Epigraphic Evidence for Associations in Ephesos and Its Environs
Program Unit: Archaeology of Religion in the Roman World
Richard S. Ascough, Queens University

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The Evil Day: Aristeia and Derogation in Ephesians 6:13
Program Unit: Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti
Jeffrey R. Asher, Georgetown College

The phrase “evil day” in Eph 6:13 has commonly been interpreted as a reference to an eschatological day of tribulation, as a generic reference to any period of tribulation or temptation, and even as a metaphor for this present age of evil. In contrast, this paper will argue that contextually the phrase is best understood as an indirect reference to an aristeia, that is, an allusion to a traditional motif of the display or performance of one's excellence in a competitive, honorific sense. In support of this position, the paper will argue that there are allusions to the traditional literary and artistic motif of an “arming scene” where a warrior would “put on” his armor in preparation for his performance of excellence. As part of this argument, the literary motif of an “arming scene” will be explored in Homer and subsequent Classical literature in terms of its structure, recurrent themes, and symbolic expressions, especially with regard to an “arming scene” as preparation of a subsequent aristeia. Additionally, this paper will explore why the author may have ironically coupled this allusion with a non-traditional adjective that gives the sense of derogation rather than excellence.


Has the Coptic Tradition Been Properly Used in New Testament Textual Criticism?
Program Unit: New Testament Textual Criticism
Christian Askeland, University of Cambridge

The NA27 apparatus criticus cites the Coptic tradition 1057 times in John's gospel. The Armenian, Georgian, Gothic, Ethiopic and Old Church Slavonic versions are cited a total of fourteen times in the entire New Testament. This disparity stems from an editorial confidence in the Coptic tradition as “from the Greek … at an early period” (NA27, 63*). This paper will survey the Coptic citations in the critical apparatus to John's gospel, and summarize their current use. In particular, the survey will examine the criteria set out by the editors and will investigate whether it can be said that the Coptic is only used “where [its] underlying Greek text can be determined with confidence” and “where [its] readings are also attested by other Greek or independent versional evidence.” Additionally, the survey will examine the degree to which “idiomatic and stylistic differences are ignored” and whether due consideration is given to the history of the Coptic tradition (ibid., 63* f.). Initial research shows that no fewer than one third of the citations of individual Bohairic manuscripts in John's gospel fail to meet the above criteria.


New Aspects on Old Verbs: A Verbal Aspectual Suggestion for the Hebrew Verb System
Program Unit: National Association of Professors of Hebrew
George Athas, Moore Theological College

Dissatisfaction with past approaches to the Hebrew verb system, particularly those coming from a tense-based or Aktionsart-based approach, has led in recent time to a renewed focus on verbal aspect. This paper proposes a particular aspectual approach focusing on three criteria for the Hebrew verb: (1) proximity; (2) definiteness; and (3) narrative momentum. Each of the major verbal conjugations will be briefly analysed through these criteria, with comments on teaching with this approach.


Septuagint Translations as Constructs
Program Unit: Ideological Criticism
Kenneth R. Atkinson, University of Northern Iowa

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The Language of Benefaction in Ephesians 2:4–22
Program Unit: Intertextuality in the New Testament
Kristofer Atkinson, Asbury Theological Seminary

The subject of benefaction has been largely neglected in Ephesians 2:4-22. In this paper I will argue that this passage adopts the language of first century benefactorial inscriptions to describe the benefactor-beneficiary relationship which exists between the Divine Benefactor and believers. I will adopt the procedure of investigating the “intertexture” via recognizing the existence of first century social customs within the language and roles of God in Christ as described in Eph. 2. I will first briefly survey the “language” (i.e. words and concepts) of benefaction commonly found in honorific inscriptions. This provides one with a background within which to view Eph 2:4-22. Second, I will review the traditional roles that both benefactors and beneficiaries played in the reciprocal exchange of goods and honors within Greco-Roman society. Finally, with an eye toward the language discussed in section one and those roles discussed in section two, I will examine the language that Paul uses in Eph 2:4-22 in order to describe the various roles that are played by God, Jesus, and believers.


Fearing Rightly: Paul's Treatment of Fear in Romans
Program Unit: Pauline Epistles
David Charles Aune, Ashland University

Careful investigation of Paul's "fear language" throughout his letter to the Romans reveals a number of apparent contradictions. Whereas Gentile believers are freed from enslavement to fear as God's children (Rom 8:15), they are exhorted to fear rather than boast of their status in the community (11:20) and they remain subject to the fear of divinely instituted authorities (13:3-4, 7). Drawing upon both Jewish and Hellenistic moral instruction as well as relevant social and political factors, this paper provides a coherent assessment of both appropriate and inappropriate fears throughout Romans. A careful exegetical analysis of these passages reveals that those who had been previously enslaved to the fear of condemnation are now exhorted to experience substantially different kinds of fears by displaying humility and voluntarily subordinating themselves to the governing powers. Following conventional rhetorical practices, Paul proclaims victory over servile fears while nevertheless appealing to other fears as a motivation toward virtuous behavior and positive action.


The Anthropology of Exile, Displacement, and Deportation
Program Unit: Warfare in Ancient Israel
Mark Auslander and Ellen Schattschneider, Brandeis University

This paper will explore anthropological dimensions related to exile and deportation as they appear in the broader discipline of anthropology outside of biblical studies.


Patterns of Presence and Cleansing in the Old and New Testaments
Program Unit: Biblical Law
Richard E. Averbeck, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

Leviticus 12-15 contain cleansing regulations for regular impurities (cleansing by water, e.g., Lev 15:16-18), irregular impurities (cleansing by blood; e.g., Lev 12), and severe impurities (expulsion from the community and then cleansing by water and blood; e.g., Lev 14:8-20). The concern is to “keep the Israelites separate (nzr; or "caution" them, zhr, SP, LXX) from their uncleanness so they do not die . . . by defiling my tabernacle which is in their midst.” It is all about the LORD's tabernacle presence in their midst (Exod 40:34-38). The Day of Atonement follows immediately (Lev 16) as the annual day of tabernacle and community purgation. In all their Jewish-ness, the New (or Second) Testament writings stand in various patterns of continuity, discontinuity, and transformation in regard to divine presence and cleansings. This extends from the birth of Jesus (Luke 2:21-24, blood) and the baptisms of John and Jesus (Luke 3:1-9, water; cf. John 1:19-34, 3:5-6; 3:22-4:2; Acts 1:5; 19:1-7) to the sacrificial death of Jesus (Luke 23; cf. Acts 21:26 with Heb 9:13-14), and on into the church as the Holy Spirit indwelt (John 1:14 with 17:22 and Eph 2:19-22; 3:14-21, etc.) and purified people of God (Luke 3:16; Acts 2:38; 1 Pet 1:22ff, etc.).


Economy and Social Structure in First-Century Galilee: Evidence from the Ground—Yodefat and Gamla
Program Unit: Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy
Mordechai Aviam, University of Miami

One of the continuing battlefields in recent scholarship has been the economy and social structure of first-century Galilee. The most common view has been that Galilee was composed of poor peasants in the villages, and that it was to these peasants that Jesus preached. Furthermore, it has been commonly maintained that Galilee was heavily oppressed by taxation stemming from both Roman authorities and the Jewish administration. This line of interpretation has been based mainly on an interpretation of the New Testament as developed through years of discussion in the field of historical Jesus studies. Lately, some new winds of interpretation have begun to blow and this paper is part of this new approach. It is based on evidence from the only two first-century towns that were excavated in the Galilee of Josephus, namely, Yodefat and Gamla. The finds at these sites, of which only part has been published, will be used to show not only what kind of life existed in the towns and villages of mountainous Galilee but also their social hierarchy.


Who is left among you who saw this House in its former glory? (Haggai 2:3): An adaptation of Deuteronomistic pattern to Persian period sensibilities
Program Unit: Literature and History of the Persian Period
Yael Avrahami, University of Sydney

The second prophecy of Haggai (2:1–9) was delivered to the people facing the newly build temple. Haggai seemed to respond to voices of depression and disappointment, by referring to the idealized past of the Deuteronomistic history and by anticipating a similar ideal future. The prophecy evoked the setting and terminology used in the description of the dedication of the Salomon temple (1Kings 8:1–13), which in turn had alluded to the revelation in Sinai. By using the well-known vocabulary and type scene, Haggai managed to deliver a multifaceted message, relevant to his contemporaries. The prophecy describes the present situation as an opposite to that of the past or the future, and reflects the experience of the people. The prophet stresses that it is not a complete opposite since "My [i.e. God] spirit is still in your midst (v. 5). His prophecy is normally explained, consequently, as a comfort that is achieved by the transformation of the memory of the First Temple into an expected possibility. Nevertheless, the use of vocabulary of sight and testimony, typical to the Deuteronomistic understanding of revelation, targets two more concerns of the people in the Persian period; Namely, the legitimacy of the temple and its exclusiveness. The presence of people who saw the First Temple with their own eyes legitimizes the Second Temple. It also marks their (and as an expansion the present community) ownership over the Second Temple. The claim for legitimation and ownership of the Temple is therefore directed not only to the ears of the people, but also to the ears of contemporaneous groups.


Aramaic Law in Persian Egypt
Program Unit: Assyriology and the Bible
Annalisa Azzoni, Vanderbilt University

This paper will review a few remarkable legal features of the Aramaic Papyri from the Egyptian island of Elephantine under Persian rule. In particular, the focus will concentrate on the legal rights of women as reflected in the documents of "wifehood," in comparison and contrast with similar documents from the Ancient Near East, and in connection with later Aramaic documents. While for the most part scholarship on the subject has focused on the direction of the possible dependence of various legal formulae vis-à-vis other Ancient Near Eastern legal traditions or, with regard to the legal rights of women, their possible connection with the Biblical material, the aim of the paper is to underscore the distinctiveness of a number of these features. The paper will devote particular attention to the peculiar environment of this military colony under Persian rule, and suggest possible reasons for the uniqueness of some of these features.


From Holy Land to Hollow Land: Rereading the Book of Joshua from a Refugee Camp in Nablus
Program Unit: Bible and Cultural Studies
Alice Bach, Case Western Reserve University

This paper will look at Israeli collective punishment with roots in the book of Joshua, where biblical boundaries are now Israeli borders. The Palestinian West Bank is under Israeli military control, as though Joshua had just conquered it, declaring the Jordan River the border of Israel on its east, the Mediterranean Sea on the west. Reading bifocally, through a biblical lens, and a colonial one, one sees present-day Palestinians as ancient Canaanites, intended by God's promise to Israel to be destroyed, or transported, or imprisoned. Threatened by the advancing Israelites, Rehab becomes a collaborator to protect her family while the king and people of Jericho are destroyed on the plains of Jericho, and Joshua is magnified in the sight of the people as the Likud government of present-day Israel has been deemed heroic by today's media narrative. Unlike the Bible, Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention forbids collective punishment and states that a person shall not be punished for an offense s/he has not personally committed. Israel has created prisoners of the entire Palestinian population, insisting upon God"s law instead of International law.


The Patriarchal Promises Revisited
Program Unit: Pentateuch
Joel S. Baden, Yale University

Since the work of R. Rendtorff, the promises to the patriarchs in Genesis have been widely accepted as an indication of the complex redactional reworking of the Pentateuchal traditions. This view has largely been based on the slight variations in wording among the promises formulae, as well as an a priori rejection of the classical Documentary Hypothesis. In this paper, I will reassess the promise formulae, with a closer eye on the variations in content and method of delivery and transmission, though without neglecting stylistic and terminological indications. Attention to these features supports the classical view that each of the promises can be assigned firmly to J, E, P, or the redactor of the Pentateuch. As each document will be shown to have a unique theological and historical concept of these promises to the patriarchs, the correct analysis of these passages provides us with a deeper understanding of the documents themselves.


New Graffiti from Smyrna and the Context of Early Christianity
Program Unit: Archaeology of Religion in the Roman World
Roger Bagnall, Columbia University

In the winter of 2003, excavations by the local Turkish authorities in the basement level of the basilica in the agora of Smyrna, modern Izmir, brought to light a large number of graffiti, both written in charcoal or ink and scratched on the two or more plaster layers over the stone wall. These appear archaeologically to date from the period between the late first and third quarter of the second century CE; the basement appears not to have been used after the earthquake of 178. One of the graffiti, on the uppermost plaster layer, has a date equivalent to 125/6 CE. The graffiti cover a wide range of subjects, including sports, sex, and politics; there are many drawings, including particularly of ships. Among those of interest for the study of religion are several referring to the healing of eyes, including references to what may be an otherwise unknown local divinity; a number of uses of isopsephism; and at least one clearly Christian graffito, using isopsephism, that would archaeologically seem to belong to the period before 125/6 CE. A couple of other graffiti offer less secure but tantalizing possible connections to Christianity.


Job's Rabbinic Descendant
Program Unit: The Bible in Ancient (and Modern) Media
Cynthia M. Baker, Bates College

The ancient Rabbis were masters of biblical preservation through adaptation. In adapting biblical traditions by means of midrashic interpretation and commentary, the Rabbis consistently demonstrated that everything found in the Bible, if understood “properly,” conformed to their own theology of a just and good God who promised reward and punishment in a life after death and the resurrection of the righteous. Of course, belief in a life after death and resurrection find almost no expression in the biblical texts themselves. The Book of Job poses particularly acute challenges to both standard biblical theology and the later rabbinic version of the same. Rabbinic tradition has bequeathed us no extended midrash on the poetry of Job and its scathing accusations against God's goodness and justice. But this does not mean that the Rabbis ignore Job's challenges altogether. Instead, I argue, we find these challenges adapted and transposed into a peculiarly rabbinic key through the talmudic stories associated with Elisha ben Abuya, the great rabbinic “apostate.” Not only are the rabbinic stories about Elisha liberally peppered with quotes from Job and intriguing debates about their proper interpretation, but the rabbinic “apostate” also appears to share Job"s strikingly non-rabbinic perspectives on theodicy, the Deuteronomic covenant, and the nonexistence (and moral irrelevance) of any world to come or resurrection. Moreover, the talmudic accounts of Elisha"s life and after-death serve, in themselves, to preserve and confirm the Joban author"s stark counter-theology, albeit with a striking rabbinic twist. In this paper I examine the ways in which the talmudic stories about Elisha ben Abuya represent a unique adaptation of Job that, unlike countless pious misreadings – ancient and modern – preserves the real challenges and dangers of the book for the Rabbis" own and future generations.


Genesis: The Story of the Flood in the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Exegetical Traditions
Program Unit: Qur'an and Biblical Literature
Carol Bakhos, University of California, Los Angeles

The story of the flood forces one to grapple with theological questions. Indeed, its sustaining power lies in the question of how God can destroy innocent animals and children along with the guilty people in the flood. The collateral damage is too high. Is God cruel? Actually, the problem is already confronted in the ancient Near Eastern story of the Flood. Here, too, the gods decide they have overdone it. The story, furthermore, suggests that God had imperfect power and/or no foreknowledge, for He created the thing he is repenting of having created. He changed his mind—bada', as the Muslims call it. This paper will explore the ways in which Muslim, Christian and Jewish exegetes addressed these theological questions and will highlight the similar and distinct approaches taken in each tradition. The paper will limit itself to the classical traditions.


Isaiah 28:9–13: An Approach Informed by Latter-day Saint Restoration Scripture
Program Unit: Latter-day Saints and the Bible
Terry Ball, Brigham Young University

The phrase "tsav letsav, qav leqav" translated as “precept upon precept, line upon line” in the KJV of Isaiah 28:10, 13 has seen may alternate translations and interpretations. Recent attempts to make sense of the enigmatic phrase have included characterizing it as the cries of drunks for more wine, an imitation of the lessons of a schoolmaster, the gibberish of babes, the speech of the Assyrians, or the chirping of a necromancer. This paper, informed by KJV language found in LDS restoration scriptures, interprets Isaiah 28:7-13 as an example of the “entrapment motif.”


The Book of Isaiah
Program Unit: Book of Isaiah
Klaus Baltzer, University of Münich

This paper discusses the conceptual unity of the Book of Isaiah and its literary and historical development. It will investigate the question, whether this book in its present form is a composition that follows the pattern of the four kingdoms. This would correspond to chapters 2 and 7 of the Book of Daniel: (1) The Assyrian period (Isaiah 6–37): Proto-Isaiah; (2) The Neo-Babylonian period (Isaiah 38–39); (3) The Persian period (Isaiah 40–55): Deutero-Isaiah; (4) The expected time of salvation (Isaiah 56–66): Trito-Isaiah. The entire work is designated by the introduction in Isa 1:1 as “The vision of Isaiah, the son of Amoz.” The book uses various pre-existing units of texts, such as the work of Deutero-Isaiah that is in itself complete and independent. With respect to its genre it can be designated as a 'liturgical drama'. Comparable units of texts appear in Isaiah 24–27 and 56–66. Other historical texts and biographical units have been incorporated into this composition. The results of this thesis in their significance for the understanding of the entire Book of Isaiah will be discussed.


Jewish-Christian Analogies in the Babylonian Talmud: A Reexamination Based on Comparison with Christian Monastic Texts
Program Unit: History and Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism
Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, Yale University

This paper will focus on one aspect of the complex web of cultural influences and contacts that shaped some of the main features of the Babylonian Talmud. The commonly accepted view claiming for an isolation of Babylonian rabbis from the Christian population has recently been challenged as an inaccurate presentation of the Jewish-Christian relations as it appears in the literature of late antique Babylonia. This paper will discuss the famous passage in the Babylonian Talmud (Avoda Zara 4a) which stood at the basis for the previous scholarly assumption of isolation. Based on my work which examines a number of literary analogies between Christian and Jewish sources and more specifically possible connections between monastic literature and the Babylonian Talmud, I shall attempt to reexamine this Talmudic source. My reading will suggest a way in which one can reject the isolation theory but still use the passage to better understand the relations between the Jews and their Christian neighbors.


You Do Not Know What Disaster May Happen in the Land: The City-Lament Mode in Qoheleth 12:1–8
Program Unit: Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
Jennifer Barbour, University of Oxford

Some of the earliest interpreters read Qoh 12:1-8 as an allegory of the destruction of Jerusalem, while recent commentators have identified here elements of eschatological or proto-apocalyptic language. This paper uses the city focus of these comparisons to suggest instead that Qohelet's closest literary affinities here are with the Hebrew Bible's city-lament mode, examining motifs of urban landscape and destruction, representative population, desertion and an end to agriculture, silenced songs, darkness, past temporal perspective, and the lament Kontrastmotiv. In the argument of chapters 11-12, historical accident is set alongside death as the future menace which gives rise to the present injunctions to rejoice and to remember: the contrast is not between youth and old age but between youth and trouble, in the shape of calamitous events here conceived of in city-lament language. Placed at the end of the book, this urban decline and fall is a mirror image to the construction of 'Solomon's' splendid establishment at the beginning: a late, wisdom author like Qohelet can still write under the shadow of the events which made the kingdom of Solomon into a tiny province of the Ptolemies, and his language is unavoidably coloured by the traditional language of that paradigmatic loss.


I Will Have Mercy on Whom I Will Have Mercy: Paul and Other Jews on Grace in the Desert
Program Unit: Pauline Theology
John M. G. Barclay, Durham University

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The Treatment of Numerals in the Early New Testament Papyri
Program Unit: Papyrology and Early Christian Backgrounds
Don Barker, Macquarie University-Sydney

According to C. H Roberts, Manuscripts, Society and Belief in Early Christian Egypt, Oxford University Press, 1979.12-22, early Christian books stand apart from secular books in that the copyists are more used to writing documents so that they write their numbers in figures rather than in words. K. Haines-Eitzen, Guardians of Letters, Literacy, Power and the Transmitters of Early Christian Literature, Oxford University Press, 2000, 66, continues this assertion by Roberts as do others. The situation however is far more complex than the one that has been indicated, firstly by Roberts, and then by others. This paper will explore this complexity and will seek to demonstrate from the way numbers are treated in the texts how they give us an insight into the differing abilities and backgrounds of the various scribes who copied them.


And Thus You Brightened the Heavens: A New Translation of KTU 1.5 i 4 and Its Significance for Ugaritic and Biblical Studies
Program Unit: Ugaritic Studies and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy
William D. Barker, University of Cambridge

This paper proposes a change in the standard translation of KTU 1.5 i 4, and then considers its implications for Ugaritic and biblical studies. Since it has long been acknowledged that Isa. 27:1 may be a direct quote from KTU 1.5 i 1-3, the passage is an important one for both disciplines. The history of translating KTU 1.5 i 1-8 is briefly noted, followed by an explanation of the proposed translation of line 4 and the supporting texts that strengthen the case for this proposal. This is followed by a consideration of its importance for Ugaritic studies, especially concerning Egyptian influence on the Ugaritic mythology, and the function of the Litan reference in Mot's battle taunt against Ba"al. The paper concludes by considering the implications of this proposal for biblical studies, especially concerning the function of the Leviathan imagery in Isa. 24-27.


Reimagining Catastrophe through the Lens of the Exodus
Program Unit: Exile (Forced Migrations) in Biblical Literature
Pamela Barmash, Washington University

Historical and theological dissonance arose in the aftermath of the destruction of the independent kingdom of Judah and the Jerusalem Temple, and one response was to re-imagine the destruction as leading to a new Exodus. A profusion of Exodus imagery in Deutero-Isaiah makes it the landscape upon which events occur, and the use of the miraculous aspects of the Exodus reinforces the prophet's message that redemption is near. When the events of Ezekiel's time are fitted into an Exodus pattern, a new shape for the Exodus emerges in the book of Ezekiel: the covenant and its stipulations were already made in Egypt, and the Israelites already transgressed them in Egypt, just as the Israelites of Ezekiel's time were already aware of the covenantal stipulations and had transgressed them. Jeremiah holds such esteem for the Exodus that he exalts it beyond all other events and condemns it as an utter failure. Only a completely new version, an Exodus from the lands of the north, and a new form of a covenant, written in the hearts of the people themselves, not on stone tablets, could be possible. The Exodus becomes the major pattern of history and deliverance. It is imposed on other events and conceptualizations, and to it history and theology are assimilated. At the same time, the Exodus is fluid and assimilates to different constructions. The use of the Exodus does not embody inertia but rather creativity and innovation.


Reinterpreting the Shema: The Battle over the Unity of God in the Fourth Gospel
Program Unit: Jewish Christianity / Christian Judaism
Lori Baron, Duke University

According to the Fourth Gospel, the community of Johannine believers originated as a group within the synagogue which, by the end of the first century, was perceived as "the enemy within." If John's narrative is to be believed, the Jewish leaders of the local synagogue excommunicated John's "too-Christian Jews," resulting in a situation of mutual hostility and heightened polemic. In this essay, I discuss the role of the Shema in the narrative rhetoric of the Fourth Gospel: John seems to counter Jewish anti-Christian claims of God's oneness with remarkable statements such as "The Father and I are one," statements that include Jesus in the divine identity and echo the words of the Shema (Deut 6:4f), the centerpiece of Jewish prayer. For the Johannine believers, Jesus' divinity does not contradict the Shema, but rather confirms Jesus' identity within the unity of God. I explore the radical assertions of Jesus' oneness with the Father in light of Jewish counterclaims. Furthermore, I take up the claims of some current scholars (e.g. Reinhartz, Hakola) that the Johannine Christians no longer consider themselves within the pale of Judaism, but rather have come to see themselves as a separate entity. John does indeed evidence striking discontinuity with the Judaism he depicts as being inferior to faith in Jesus: expressions such as "your law," and comparisons to Abraham and Moses surely portray Jesus as superior to Judaism and some of its institutions. But the way that John seems to work with the Shema, not denying its importance but including Jesus within God's unity, suggests that radical discontinuity with Judaism is not exactly an accurate picture of John's too-Christian Jews. Rather, in John, the Shema provides the basis for early heresiological discourse that will continue outside of the canon, particularly among church fathers and the rabbis.


Freedom and Coercion of Israel in Deuteronomy: An Exploration in Light of Isaiah Berlin and Emile Durkheim
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible and Political Theory
Rob Barrett, Durham University/Westminster Theological Centre

Deuteronomy's YHWH severely threatens Israel if the nation turns to other gods. Perhaps surprisingly, it is not a threat of utter destruction, but of coercive destruction with a goal of restoring Israel to its place as the people of YHWH. While understood within the canonical context as divine kindness, this denial of Israel's self-determination is troubling to the modern liberal ideal of freedom of worship. In this paper, I consider the presentations in Deuteronomy 4 and 32 of Israel's rejection of YHWH's covenant kindness, the provocation of his jealousy, his angry punishment, and Israel's subsequent return to YHWH through suffering. Can this heteronomic demand for Israel's loyalty be understood within modern political categories where freedom figures so prominently? Based on Isaiah Berlin"s classic division of liberty into its positive and negative forms along with Charles Taylor's critique of pure negative freedom, it is clear that modern liberalism also demands the acceptance of its core values. Emile Durkheim"s and Peter Berger's sociologies of religion are helpful in exposing the coercive force that a liberal society wields to maintain its “sacred” values. Along with this theoretical consideration, I present contemporary examples of the coercive imposition of “religious freedom” as a non-negotiable feature of modern liberalism. Helpful illustrations of the coercive nature of this “freedom” are the “International Religious Freedom Act of 1998” in the United States and the international rejection of an attempt at restricting religious freedom by the newly instituted government of Afghanistan in 2006. I conclude that YHWH's coercive demand that Israel conform itself to his core values is little different in kind, though vastly different in content, from the modern coercive demand of liberalism.


Thecla's Forbidden Love for Paul: The Telling of an Ancient Romance under the Shadow of the Empire
Program Unit: Ancient Fiction and Early Christian and Jewish Narrative
Jeremy W. Barrier, Heritage Christian University

The Acts of Paul and Thecla is best understood as an ancient romance. The literature has continued to grow that emphasizes this fact. Within this essay, I will provide extensive connections between the stock ancient novels and the acts of Paul and Thecla, especially in looking at some of the more difficult texts within the Acts of Paul and Thecla. In particular, I will be looking at the influence that the Roman Empire, colonization, and slavery had upon the stories within the ancient novels, and thus the impact it has upon how one interprets the Acts of Paul and Thecla. Moreover, a postcolonial reading of the narrative will help in illuminating several important details within the narrative and how one receives this text today.


Will the Servant “See Light”? A Reexamination of the 'ôr Variant in Isaiah 53:11
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible
John D. Barry, Trinity Western University

The Servant, in the book of Isaiah (Isa), is one of the most intriguing figures in the prophetic Scriptures. Many people have stood in awe of the book's prophecy, either because of its virtual theological un-precedence in ancient literature, or because of its seemingly correlation with Jesus of Nazareth. It is truly profound to think that an ancient writer viewed one person's suffering as a means for the iniquities of many to be lifted from them (Isa 53:12). How does the famous “he will see light” ("ôr and phõs) textual variant in Isa 53:11 of the Septuagint (LXX) and the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) expound upon and further explain the Servant"s suffering? It will be argued that the “he will see light” variant in Isa 53:11 is the most probable Urtext based on the structure of the poetic canticle in Isa 52:13-53:12 and that this variant suggests that the author of this passage believed the Servant would be resurrected after having suffered unto death. One may wish to argue that this is the less likely reading because of the two internal “canons” of textual criticism: (1) Lectio difficilior potior; and (2) Lectio brevior potior. Although these two “canons” do rule out “light” as the Urtext of Isa 53:11, thus making the internal and external evidence at odds with one another, the “canons” do not hold true in this instance because authorial skill and clarity must be taken into account. Isa 52:13-53:12 is perhaps the best poetry in the entire Hebrew Bible, written with the most skilled hand, thus it seems completely improbable that a poet of such skill would be so negligent as to leave out a direct object


The Exile: A Neo-Babylonian Perspective
Program Unit: Exile (Forced Migrations) in Biblical Literature
Hans M. Barstad, University of Edinburgh

Somewhat surprisingly, some biblical scholars who work with the exilic age tend to discuss the history of Judah in the Neo-Babylonian period in splendid isolation from Neo-Babylonian matters. This problem is particularly pressing as the texts of the Hebrew Bible are not really interested in the exilic period at all (Japhet). If based on the biblical texts alone, the mentality of the secondary literature has a tendency to operate with closing stages rather than with beginnings. However, the fall of Samaria in 721 BCE is also the beginning of the history of this city state as a part of the prospering Neo-Assyrian Empire. And the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BCE is the beginning of a new phase as part of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. One major issue of the discussions has been whether one should look for continuity in imperial policy in the way the Neo-Babylonian kings administered their empire or whether they behaved very differently from their predecessors. However, based on our knowledge of history in general, above all the Annales tradition (now in its 4th generation), continuity is a key word for understanding historical change. Also Assyriologists working in this area (e.g. Dandamayev, Dalley, Joannés, Sack) all regard continuity as a major factor of the mechanics of the ancient Neo-Babylonian Empire. Future studies of “Exilic Judah” need to take its role in the imperial system into consideration in order to reach a proper understanding of the history of Judah during the 6th century BCE.


Paul Did Not Teach “Stay in Slavery”: The Mistranslation of klh=sij in 1 Corinthians
Program Unit: African-American Biblical Hermeneutics
S. Scott Bartchy, University of California, Los Angeles

The NRSV renders the term klh=sij in 1 Corinthians 7:20 with “condition” – “Let each of you remain in the condition in which you were called..” The translators reflect a common view of Paul, based on an egregious mistranslation of the key term klh=sij, an error encouraged by Frederick Danker's uncritical echoing [again in the 3rd edition of BDAG] of Walter Bauer's original rendering of this word by the German Stand as an appropriate secondary meaning of klh=sij. But the term klh=sij never carried that extended meaning in ancient Greek. Within the NT and in every Pauline usage of this term and the cognate verb kale/w, the “calling” is God"s invitation and call to belong to Christ, except in Romans 11:29 referring to the analogous calling of Israel. Nevertheless, their false translation in 7:20 led the NRSV committee to have Paul in the following verse advise Christ-followers in slavery, “Even if you can gain your freedom, make use of your present condition more than ever!” While the ellipsis at the end of 7:21 is grammatically ambiguous, a solid grasp of the social-legal context of Greco-Roman slavery alone makes this “stay in slavery” completion nonsensical. Yet my experiences in both German and United States classrooms prove that it is often pointless to present my evidence and conclusions regarding Paul"s words in 1 Cor 7:21 without first dealing with his admonition in the previous sentence “to remain in Christ"s calling.” The historically contested completion of the ellipsis in 7:21 continues to be strongly colored by Luther"s original mistranslation of klh=sij. It is high time to revisit the evidence and revise our opinions of Paul"s putative social conservatism.


Prosopographic Exegesis and Narrative Logic: Psalm 69:22–23 in Romans 11:9–10, Origen, and Theodoret of Cyrus
Program Unit: Romans through History and Cultures
Matthew W. Bates, University of Notre Dame

Paul's use of the scriptures should not be studied in isolation from other interpretative practices in the early church. Too often, Paul's use of the scriptures is treated only in terms of poetics or rhetoric, or as a seemingly isolated phenomena, without looking at the broader interpretative strategies in the early church. This paper explores the interpretation of Ps 69:22-23 in Romans 11:9-10 via Origen's commentary on Romans and Theodoret of Cyrus' commentary on the Psalms in the hope of uncovering specific ways in which Paul's exegesis can be illuminated through conversation with patristic commenataries. By comparing Paul's exegesis through the lens of these two patristic commentaries, it is determined that patristic exegesis may help uncover Paul's use of prosopographic exegetical techniques as well as the narrative logic at work in Paul's interpretation.


Neither Gold Nor Braided Hair: Adornment and Honor in Antiquity and in Early Christian Texts
Program Unit: Social Scientific Criticism of the New Testament
Alicia Batten, Pacific Lutheran University

This paper examines attitudes towards women's and men's dress and adornment in antiquity, noting the discrepancy between male criticism of lavish adornment and the considerable evidence that elite women, in particular, would regularly wear jewelry and sport complicated hair styles. The paper concurs with the general model of honour and shame that male honour relies, to some extent, upon modest and demure female comportment, but also argues that women, who could also possess honour, may not have valued honour and shame in the same manner as men did. Building upon the work of Ria Berg, women's adornment was both a means of affirming status for women and a source of economic power, while simultaneously a target of satire and ridicule by men. The paper posits that in contrast to men, Greco-Roman women valued adornment as a means of communicating their status and honour in the community. Although a man might be worried about what his wife's adornment was indicating about him to the larger group, a woman might well value her jewelry and fine clothes because it affirmed her significance in the eyes of others. Several early Christian texts that address adornment and wealth display then receive some attention in light of these findings.


Jeremiah (Who?): Body Politics in Reading/Writing Jeremiah
Program Unit: Writing/Reading Jeremiah
Angela Bauer-Levesque, Episcopal Divinity School

The multiplication of feminist and womanist interpretations of the book of Jeremiah in recent years—recent in terms of the history of interpretation (elsewhere the 1980s are considered retro and the 1990s outdated!)—has brought the body politics of interpreting Jeremiah to the foreground. In this paper I explore the multiple prophetic personae of Jeremiah created by various feminist, womanist, and queer readings of the prophetic book, in the process writing/drawing “jeremiah.”


Covenant as an Index of Identity in Yehud
Program Unit: Literature and History of the Persian Period
Richard Bautch, St. Edward's University

Jon Berquist defines social identity in postexilic Yehud as the pattern that multiple forces produce, and he explains identity formation as a complex process involving kinship as well as ethnicity, religion and politics. Imperialization and decolonization are included in the matrix of identity formation, not as two additional forces but as the overarching and subsuming principles. With this model, the impulses of kinship, ethnicity, religion and politics are all conduits of imperialization and decolonization. In adopting and expounding upon Berquist's model, this paper retains the emphasis on imperialization and colonization, and it posits between them a dynamic interplay whereby they jointly shape a group's identity. The paper adduces its data by exploring three accounts of covenant making in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. In the analysis of these texts, imperialization and colonization are related to the phenomena of Jewish nationalism, as it is conceived by David Goodblatt, and proto-sectarianism, as Joseph Blenkinsopp has described it. The paper concludes that covenant making is a crucial exercise for groups in Yehud. For a given group, covenant making can mediate the tension between nationalism and nascent sectarianism and thereby serve as an index of the group"s social identity in the postexilic period.


Divine Restraint in Ezekiel's Covenant of Peace
Program Unit: Israelite Prophetic Literature
Richard Bautch, St. Edward's University

As one element of certain creation myths in ancient Near Eastern literature, the covenant of peace signaled a reversal of prior divine anger and a new harmony between humans and their deity. The prospects of a peace treaty grounded in divine restraint appealed especially to the exiles in Babylon, as indicated by the salvation oracles of the prophets Deutero-Isaiah (54:10) and Ezekiel (34:25, 37:26). The covenant of peace that these prophets announce is loosely in the tradition of select Akkadian treaties and it represents a direct response to the experience of exile in the first half of the sixth century B.C.E. This paper explores how Ezekiel's covenant of peace attested in 37:26 is developed in the literary unit 37:23–28. Special attention is paid to the first verse of the unit as it juxtaposes the Deuteronomistic economy of sin/judgment/punishment with God's unilateral promise of salvation. Further analysis shows that the tension between divine commitment and failed human obligation is sustained throughout the unit. In terms of method, the prophet draws upon an array of covenantal formulae and allusions, such as the Davidic promises (37:24a), “God's judgments and statutes (37:24b),” the promise of land to the patriarchs (37:25a) and the eternal covenant (37:26a). The earlier, authoritative traditions of covenant in ancient Israel form the basis of Ezekiel's nuanced theology in 37:23–28, which is informed less directly by ancient Near Eastern traditions. The paper concludes that Ezekiel has synthesized a range of diverse sources to create a covenant of peace that aptly articulates the notion of divine restraint in an exilic context.


Revelation 5:1 and Revelation 10:2a, 8–10 in the Earliest Greek Tradition: A Response to Richard Bauckham
Program Unit: John's Apocalypse and Cultural Contexts Ancient and Modern
Leslie Baynes, Missouri State University

In The Climax of Prophecy: Studies on the Book of Revelation, Richard Bauckham claims that the scrolls of Revelation 5 and 10 are one and the same. This paper challenges that claim by investigating ancient Greek commentary on the “little” scroll of Revelation 10. While Bauckham's argument for the identification of the scrolls is multifaceted and complex, I focus on only two aspects of it, the use of diminutives and the function of allusions to Ezek 2:8-3:3 in Rev 5:1 and 10:2a, 8-10. The paper accomplishes three things important to evaluating Bauckham's argument. First, it brings to light obscure but significant ancient Greek commentary on Ezek 2:8-3:3 and Rev 10:2a, 8-10 from Origen, Oecumenius, and Andreas. Second, it demonstrates that while allusions to Ezek 2:8-3:3 may indeed link together the narratives of Revelation 5 and 10, they do not function to identify the two scrolls with each other. Third, and most importantly, it demonstrates that the earliest extant Greek interpreters used the various diminutive forms of bibl- to distinguish the two scrolls from each other.


Dressing the Priestly Clothes of Saturn: Traditional Cults and Romanization in Africa
Program Unit: Greco-Roman Religions
Giovanni Battista Bazzana, University of Milan

In the early third century CE account of the martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas, a puzzling passage has spurred some debates in the second half of the twentieth century. Before entering the arena, Perpetua and her comrades are asked by the authorities to dress the clothes of priests of Saturn and Ceres: the Christians refuse and Perpetua gives the tribune the odd answer that their liberty would be obscured if they had to dress in that way. Different interpretations of the event have been proposed: someone suggested that this would be a way to show Roman contempt for the national African cult of Baal-Hammon, while others would say that the murder of the Christian martyrs could have substituted the human sacrifices that the Romans had prohibited in Carthage. Trying to explain the reference in the martyrdom implies a fresh analysis of the ancient sources concerning the cult of Saturn in Roman Africa and of its social and cultural role in the region in the first centuries of our era. The cult of Baal-Hammon had been an ancestral Carthaginian tradition and it survived, through the identification with Saturn, well into the Roman period: careful analyses have demonstrated that the cult maintained a distinctive identity, frequently declined as opposition to the Roman dominance and cultural colonization. By reading this phenomenon employing the models of colonial criticism, one may observe that it fits perfectly into the ambiguous pattern of mimesis: while assuming the categories of a dominant culture, the mimetic subject acquires a great potential for critique and destabilizing parody. This reading may explain the continuing success of the cult of Saturn, its ambivalent relationship with the Roman authorities, and eventually the competition against Christianity, as the new, and more effective, representative of anti-Roman feeling in North Africa.


The Old Testament Background of the Eschatological Hour in 1 John 2:18
Program Unit: Greek Bible
G. K. Beale, Wheaton College

There is an eschatological use of “hour” (hora) in 1 John that is significant for the whole epistle. 1 Jn. 2:18 says, “children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have appeared; from this we know that it is the last hour.” As far as I am aware, no one so far has recognized an Old Testament background for the “hour” in this passage, This paper sets out to do just this and to contend that the “last hour” is best understood against the Old Testament background of Daniel 8-12. In particular, there appear to be no end-time uses of any Hebrew equivalent for “hour” and the only eschatological uses of “hour” (hora) in all of the Greek Old Testament occur in the “old” LXX, not Theodotion, of Daniel 8, 11, and 12 (old LXX of Dan. 8:17, 19; 11:35, 40; 12:1). In every one of these occurrences, “hour” (hora) refers not generally to the eschaton but to the specific eschatological time when the opponent of God's people will attempt to deceive them. John sees Daniel's prophecy beginning fulfillment among the churches to which he is writing. This Old Testament backdrop enhances John"s warning to the readers/hearers about the false teachers and the spirit of the Antichrist that threatens them. The use functions rhetorically to motivate them to guard themselves from the false teachers and to remain loyal to the truth that they have been taught.


Colwell's Rule Is No Longer Needed: Word Order and Deictics in the Johannine Corpus
Program Unit: Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics
Mark Beatty, Hawaii Theological Seminary

****In his famous 1933 publication “A Definite Rule for the Use of the Article in the Greek New Testament,” E. C. Colwell states: “In sentences in which the copula is expressed, a definite predicate nominative has the article when it follows the verb; it does not have the article when it precedes the verb.” This rule can be replaced parsimoniously with a theory of word order which interacts with a deictic theory of the Greek article. Consider the sentence Te?`? ?? ?? ??´??? where the subject is located after the verb. By principles of word order, such a syntactic position is to identify the third person singular morphology of the verb for an item that is not syntactically prominent. The author includes the article as a deictic to clarify that this is the same ?? ??´??? that he has been referring to in the previous phrases. By principles of syntax, a Greek object occurring before the verb is syntactically prominent. In John 1:1c, this prominence can be interpreted as focus. In contrast to ?? ??´???, Te?`? has no article. Consider the mechanical tension this position causes. If the author included the article, he would achieve deictic clarity, however under the restraints of the copulative verb, ambiguity would be added as to which nominative noun was the subject. Thus, Te?`? is anarthrous to avoid the ambiguity of two nominative arthrous nouns creating confusion about which one is the subject of the verb. Thus in Te?`? we see that a word can be in focus, but no have overt article to communicate deictic clarity. These conclusions will be supported by a study of similar structures in the Johannine corpus.


Mark 1:1 and the Debate on a “Markan Prologue”
Program Unit: Gospel of Mark
Eve-Marie Becker, Aarhus University

The debate on if or how to define a so-called Markan prologue within 1.1-15/1.1-13 (cf. e.g. H. J. Klauck) is still an open question of research in the Gospel of Mark (cf. A. Y. Collins, 2007, Hermeneia; J. Marcus, 2000, AncB). In this frame my paper will discuss the literary style and function of Mk 1.1: -To what extent can Mk 1.1 considered to be the Gospel's "title"? -Where does 1.1 come from in terms of motifs and "Werkeröffnungstopik"? -Which literary elements connect Mk 1.1 to 1.1-15? Are there any evidences in 1.1 for taking 1.1-15, 1.1-13, or simply 1.1-3 as a literary unit? -In which way is 1.1 related to its micro-context (1.1-3)? -Does 1.1 even give evidence for the question of the origin and development ("Traditionsgeschichte") behind the mixed quotations in 1.2-3?


Man as the Image of God in Light of the Mesopotamian Mouth-Washing and Opening Ritual
Program Unit: Hebrew Scriptures and Cognate Literature
Catherine Beckerleg, Harvard University

The creation of humans in the “image” and “likeness” of God has generated a tremendous amount of discussion for over 2,000 years. Do these terms refer to natural and supernatural likeness to God? Is the correspondence limited to spiritual qualities, or should these terms be understood in a purely corporeal sense? Or, as many recent scholars have argued, are they best understood in light of ancient Near Eastern royal ideology? Genesis 2-3 seems to describe human origins quite differently. Do the two biblical accounts simply represent different Israelite traditions? Alternatively, does Genesis 2-3 present an opposing view, or does it in some way offer an explanation of the opaque beselem elohim in Genesis 1:27? When read in light of the recently published (2001) ritual texts from Mesopotamia for the creation and animation of a cult statue, known as the “Washing (and/or Opening) of the Mouth”, it seems the latter is the case. That is, Gen 2-3 cleverly employed select aspects of the animation rituals, such as the centrality of the temple garden, the installation (nwh in Genesis 2:15) of the man in the garden-temple of Yahweh and the opening of the eyes as a means of becoming like Elohim (Genesis 3:5, 7, 22), as a way to redefine selem , not over and against Genesis 1:26-28, as some have argued, but in response to the pervasive understanding in the author's day that a selem of a god referred to its manifestation in the form of a cult statue. In short, an image, according not only to Gen 1:26-27 but also to Genesis 2-3, was not an inert, man-made cult statue (despite the claims in the Mouth-washing texts to the contrary), but a living human being who was God's royal son and divinely appointed king over creation.


Global Warming and the Babylonian Exile
Program Unit: Exile (Forced Migrations) in Biblical Literature
Bob Becking, Utrecht University

History is a narrative on the past that selects and connects evidenced events. Events assumedly take place in time and space; they are the results of human acts. Humans – both individually and collectively – try to cope with the problems of the day in order to remain alive and to continue culture. The Babylonian Exile has often been approached from a Judaean perspective using the available written and archaeological sources. In order to overcome this prejudice it would be more than worthwhile to look at the "Exile" from a Babylonian perspective, or to consider the period form an overarching point of view. The recent political emotion on global warming has opened my eyes for paleometereology: the climate in ancient times and how did people react to climate changes? It turns out that the period of the Babylonian Exile coincides with a period of global warming of an even grater magnitude than we experience nowadays. In my paper, I would like to ponder on the question what effect this global warming could have had on the conjectural history of the sixth century BCE.


The Myth of Marcion as Redactor: The Evidence of “Marcion's” Gospel
Program Unit: Redescribing Christian Origins
Jason BeDuhn, Northern Arizona University

This paper sets out to replace the traditional view of Marcion as ideologically-driven redactor of texts with a redescription of him in the company of other second century readers and (re)interpreters of received first century Christian writings. It makes the case that Marcion appropriated an existing first century "Gentile" redaction of the Gospel of Luke and proceeded to read it in light of his own emerging reconception of the Christian tradition. The argument starts from two observations: (1) the anti-Marcionite writers of the late second and early third century were in no position to ascertain whether Marcion had adopted an existing text of the gospel or had redacted it himself as they polemically charged, and (2) the text of Marcion's gospel shows no uniquely Marcionite tendencies and in many respects resists his interpretation of it. By outlining the features that distinguish Marcion's gospel from the Lukan text adopted by the non-Marcionites, we can begin to form a picture of the sort of community in which it would have found an audience. Once we find reason to doubt the later "orthodox" construction of early Christian history and development, we must consider a rehabilitation of Marcion as an heir (and developer) of an Anatolian Gentile Christianity that separated from Judaism earlier and more decisively than such communities as the one at Rome with which he famously entered into a conflict that marked a key moment in the second century defining of alternative Christian identities.


Marcion's Gospel and the Reconstruction of Q
Program Unit: Q
Jason BeDuhn, Northern Arizona University

The reconstruction of Q depends upon the independence of our two witnesses to it: the texts of Matthew and Luke. To any degree that the text of Luke may have been corrupted by harmonizations to Matthew, we may be misled as to the content of Q. To date, the work of Q scholars to safeguard their reconstruction from such harmonizations has depended upon text-critical assumptions that the proto-orthodox text of Luke, primarily reconstructed from manuscripts dating back at most to the early third century, represents the earliest Lukan witness to Q. But in fact we can substantially reconstruct a version of Luke from nearly a century earlier: Marcion's gospel of circa 140 CE. Close analysis of this gospel text makes the orthodox tale of its Marcionite redaction unlikely. Rather it would seem to be a pre-Marcionite version of Luke in circulation by the late first century. Since the priority of canonical Luke over Marcion's gospel in redaction history cannot be securely proven, in this paper I outline the difference the latter would make to the reconstruction of Q if it, rather than canonical Luke, were taken as the second witness alongside of Matthew. Certain anomalies in the current reconstruction of Q, and issues regarding its character, may be resolved in light of the evidence of Marcion's gospel; and this outcome of analysis may, in turn, reinforce the conclusion that this gospel represents a better second witness to Q, more secure from harmonization to Matthew than canonical Luke.


Constructs of Prophets and Prophecy in the Book of Chronicles
Program Unit: Prophetic Texts and Their Ancient Contexts
Pancratius C. Beentjes, Catholic Theological University of Utrecht

Reading the Book of Chronicles, one is struck by the fact that the Chronicler paid little attention to what we call the "Classical Prophets" of the Hebrew Bible. As far as prophets and prophecy are concerned, the author of Chronicles, on the contrary, appears to have constructed a system of his own that is rather intriguing. One of the clues of it is to be found in the final lines of 1 Chronicles (1 Chron. 29:29), another one in the final chapter of 2 Chronicles (2 Chron. 36:15-16). These two passages will serve as a starting point for an overview of how the author of Chronicles deals with Classical prophets and prophecy on the one hand and of how he constructs his own view of prophets and messengers of God on the other.


Serpent City, Copper City: Rethinking Glueck's Identification of Khirbat en-Nahas
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible, History, and Archaeology
Marc A. Beherec, University of California, San Diego

In 1940, Nelson Glueck proposed the identification of “The Biblical City of Copper” with Khirbat en-Nahas, the largest copper production site in the southern Levant. This paper reconsiders his idea, which has been influential over the more than sixty-five years since he wrote, and ultimately rejects the identification, as well as Abel's 1938 identification of the site. Moreover, this paper shows how the implications of Glueck's identification go far beyond what he envisioned, misrepresenting the very borders of Edom and Judah.


The Princeton Collection of Ethiopic Manuscripts
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible
Wendy Belcher, Princeton University

This presentation will be part of a larger session on Ethiopic Manuscripts in North America and their Availability for Research. Princeton University holds one of the largest collections of Ethiopic manuscripts in North America. We will discuss the provenance and nature of the collection as well as the status of the cataloguing and digitization, and plans for access to the collection. Finally, we will list the manuscripts of the Ge'ez Bible which we hold.


The Howard University Collection of Ethiopic Manuscripts
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible
Alice Ogden Bellis, Howard University

This presentation will be part of a larger session on Ethiopic Manuscripts in North America and their Availability for Research. Howard University holds one of the largest collections of Ethiopic manuscripts in North America. We will discuss the provenance and nature of the collection as well as the status of the cataloguing and digitization, and plans for access to the collection. Finally, we will list the manuscripts of the Ge'ez Bible which we hold.


Assaulting the Empire: A Refugee Community's Language of Hope
Program Unit: Writing/Reading Jeremiah
Alice Ogden Bellis, Howard University

The Jerusalemites who were exiled to Babylon in the latter part of the seventh century and early part of the sixth century BCE surely moved from relative comfort to religious and political alienation, forced labor, and worse. Two generations later, when the poetry of Jeremiah 50-51 was likely composed, the author(s) fantasized about returning to the homeland and God smiting their evil captors. Babylon, personified as a female figure, is more the focus than the male king of Babylon. A comparison of this material and its fantasies of anti-imperial violence and misogynistic tenor with the lyrics of some modern rap music may sharpen our understanding of both genres. Neither sits well with middle class sensibilities, or even feminist ones, but both express the extreme frustration of men oppressed in various ways by “empire.”


“Invite Me, Baal”: A Look at Ritual Failure in the Baal and Kirta Texts
Program Unit: Ugaritic Studies and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy
Daniel Belnap, Brigham Young University

In recent years there has been an increasing attention placed upon the ritual narratives found within both the Ugaritic and biblical texts. One such approach has been the study of ritual failures. In his discussion of the ritual narratives in the Aqhat epic, particularly the rituals associated with feasting, Dennis Wright discussed ritual failure, adopting the terminology of Ronald Grimes, to distinguish between felicitous (successful) feasts, and infelicitous (failed) ones. Though Dr. Wright only concerns himself with the Aqhat epic, ritualized feasts are found through the other mythical narratives as well, including feasts that fail in their purpose or in their presentation, though ritual "fail-safes" (assigned seating, rules of reciprocity, guest-host interaction, etc.) were in place. As Catherine Bell rightly points out, most ritual events describe a series of rituals, each one separate but connected, creating a ritualized process, eventually leading to transformation. Thus, greater sophistication can be applied to Grimes" typology as ritual failure in one part of a series of ritual events can lead to the failure of the ritualized process overall. This "cascade" can now allow his typology to apply to a series of ritual events following one another not just a single, ritual event. This study will explore the concept of ritual failure in the Baal Myth and in the Kirta epic, pointing out the role that "cascading" plays in the development of the narrative. Moreover, building upon the foundation laid by Wright, this study explores the ritual failures emerging from the "cascading" principle in the Aqhat epic, particularly in the role that meals play in the cascading principle where instead of bringing about the intended results of social cohesion, they fail, actually increasing the social and cultural ambiguities for which the feast were engaged in the first place.


Multiple Vocalizations in the Cairo Genizah Fragment TS A 39.3
Program Unit: Paleographical Studies in the Ancient Near East
Jason Bembry, Emmanuel School of Religion

The fragment TS A 39.3 in the Cairo Genizah collection exhibits interesting data concerning the Babylonian vocalization tradition combined with the standard Tiberian system. This fragment attests a more nuanced vowel system, and its combination with standard Tiberian within this text allows an interesting comparison of the two systems and may explain why the two pointing systems appear together.


One Size Does Not Fit All: Notes on the Different Ways in Which Chronicles Dealt with the Authoritative Literature of Its Time
Program Unit: Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah
Ehud Ben Zvi, University of Alberta

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The Destruction of Jerusalem at A.D. 70: Recent Discoveries from the City of David
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
Doron Ben-Ami, Israel Antiquity Authority

In March 2007 excavations began in the area located on the northwestern side of the City of David spur, along the eastern fringes of the “Tyropoeon Valley” – the Valley of the Cheese mongers according to Josephus" description [War of the Jews 5.4.1]). The excavation, on behalf of the Antiquities Authority and in cooperation with the Nature and Parks Authority and the Elad Association, is directed by Dr. Doron Ben-Ami and Yana Tchekhanovets. In the course of excavations, a complex of walls and installations that dates to the time of the Second Temple was discovered. The more the remains of this early phase were revealed the more we realized they constitute part of an extraordinary architectural complex that extends across a large part of the excavation area. It includes a large impressive edifice of which only its northeastern corner has been revealed to date. Adjacent to the northern side of the building were a number of plastered water installations, some of which are ritual baths (miqve"ot). These water installations were part of a designated wing of the building that was used for purification purposes inside the architectural complex. The entire building became the object of intentional demolition that brought about its end. Both the pottery vessels and the coins indicate that the building was demolished in the year 70 CE – with the destruction of Jerusalem at the end of the Second Temple period. The exposure of the remains of this edifice of striking proportions and characteristics from the end of the Second Temple period raises questions regarding its function and identification. These questions and others are the focus of this lecture.


Writing as Oracle and as Law: New Contexts for the Book-Find of King Josiah
Program Unit: Prophetic Texts and Their Ancient Contexts
Jonathan Ben-Dov, University of Haifa

The narrative of Josiah's book-find is relevant for the recent scholarly discussion concerning writings and speech in prophetic literature. Seeking to break through the impasse concerning the historical reality behind 2 Kings 22-23, the paper proceeds on the basis of minimal assumptions regarding the existence of pre-dtr sources in the narrative. A preliminary non-dtr narrative of Josiah's acts assigned an oracular role to the discovered book--a divine oracle sent to legitimize the king's actions. This role was traditional in Ancient Near Eastern court prophecies such as those known from Mesopotamia and Hatti. The narrative was subsequently refashioned in deuteronomistic circles in order to reflect the different role of the book as a comprehensive legal document. A similar transformation occurred with regard to the term torah in various Israelite traditions. This understanding of the pre-dtr Josiah narrative sheds light on oracular practices in Judaea and enriches the discussion concerning literacy in Israelite prophecy.


Metal Production and Social Complexity in Iron Age Edom: Preliminary Results from Excavations in Faynan, Jordan
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible, History, and Archaeology
Erez Ben-Yosef, University of California, San Diego, Thomas E. Levy, University of California - San Diego

The raison d"être of the Iron Age sites in the region of Faynan is the production of copper metal from the local copper ore deposits. These sites have been the subject of a systematic investigation conducted over the last five years by the University of California, San Diego and the Department of Antiquity, Amman. During two field seasons (2002 and 2006), large scale excavations took place at the site of Khirbat en-Nahas (KEN) ("ruins of the copper" in Arabic) and at the nearby site of Khirbat al-Jariya (KAJ). The former is the largest Iron Age copper smelting site in the southern Levant and a key site for understanding the region of Edom in the 11th – 9th centuries BCE. The excavations revealed ample archaeometallurgical remains, providing new insights about technology and society of this period in Faynan. The extent of the excavations at KEN and KAJ and the magnitude of the archaeometallurgical finds exceed the scale of previous investigations of Iron Age copper production sites in the southern Levant, thus making the current study a primary source for reconstructing the ancient technology and its associated social organization. This paper presents preliminary results of research concerned with the connection between technology and society in ancient Edom. The material exposed in KEN and KAJ reveals the use of complex copper production technology in the 10th century BCE (and probably even earlier), a major rearrangement of the mode of production in the early 9th century BCE and a second stage of intensive copper production throughout the 9th century BCE. Smaller scale metallurgical activities, probably for re-melting slag for further extraction of copper, took place in the late Iron Age at only a few locales in the Faynan district. The high intensity of the copper production already in its commencement, together with other characteristics of the archaeological remains, suggests a well organized society related to a complex society.


Finding Ourselves in Hagar's Story
Program Unit: Recovering Female Interpreters of the Bible
Amanda Benckhuysen, University of Du Buque Theological Seminary, Toronto

For the 19th century social advocate Josephine Butler, the biblical story of Hagar was a paradigm for the classism and oppression experienced by prostitutes of Victorian England. Butler used Hagar's story as a prophetic call to women in particular and to the people of England to end the oppression of the “outcast” woman. Such allegorical interpretation can also be found in womanist and liberationist readings of this narrative whereby Hagar's story becomes a source of empowerment for the marginalized and oppressed of our day. This paper will examine the different allegorical interpretations of Josephine Butler, Delores Williams, and Elsa Tamez and how they effectively engage the social realities of their respective communities with the word of God.


Advertising in Ancient Pompeii
Program Unit: Archaeology of Religion in the Roman World
Rebecca Benefiel, Washington and Lee University

Political campaign posters have long captured the attention of both scholars and visitors to Pompeii. These relatively easy to read inscriptions, painted in large red letters on the city's walls, inform us about Pompeii's local government and the broad spectrum of society that was involved with the political process. Thousands of examples make these political programmata the most common type of advertising posted on Pompeii"s walls. They were not, however, the only use of advertising. This paper explores less “official” forms of advertisements that were posted in the form of graffiti. Graffiti, scratched into the plaster that covered the city"s walls, could be written by anyone on the street and differ from the large painted inscriptions that were posted by teams of workers. The graffito carried the voice of the individual. Pompeian graffiti present various advertisements of individuals, publicizing the wares of shops, the availability of real estate, and even the existence of animals that have been lost or found. Yet the industry that appears to have made the greatest use of advertising through graffiti was that of prostitution. After considering the use of advertising more broadley, I highlight an individual named Isidorus who stands at the center of an extended advertising program. Wall-inscriptions detail not just Isidorus" services and his price, but also note that he was a verna, a home-bred slave, and that he hailed from nearby Puteoli. It is likely that these qualities made Isidorus" services more attractive. The reference to his origins, in fact, may be an attempt to appropriate the recent prestige accruing to Puteoli after Nero bestowed honors on the city in 60 CE (these honors are the subject of an acclamation inscribed nearby). From the texts featuring Isidorus I then consider advertisements for other purveyors of such services. I assess the various attributes used to advertise prostitutes of higher quality, the typical rates for prostitutes" services, and the geographical distribution of the establishments that used this type of advertising. The number, location, and form of these ads suggest at least functional literacy for a wide sector of the Pompeian population. More broadly, these graffiti provide a window into the practical application of parietal advertising and the epigraphic culture of Pompeian street life.


Transitivity and the Biblical Hebrew Niphal and Hitpael
Program Unit: Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew
Richard C. Benton, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Transitivity helps explain the distinction between the Niphal and Hitpael stems in Biblical Hebrew. Biblical Hebrew demonstrates a large area of overlap between these two stems. Moreover, some verbal roots prefer one stem over the other, while allowing some exceptions. For example, HPK "turn" appears 34 times in the Niphal, but only four times in the Hitpael. In contrast, KSH "cover" appears nine times in the Hitpael, but only twice in the Niphal. Scholars' definitions of these two stems do not adequately explain these preferences. I propose that transitivity allows us to understand the distribution of some roots between these two stems. Linguists have shown that voice relates to transitivity. Transitivity is a complex category, as Hopper and Thompson (1980) show, designating more features than the number of participants, especially the level of affectedness of the Patient, aspect (telicity), and individuation of the the Patient. Furthermore, Bakker (1994) demonstrates a complex relationship of the Ancient Greek middle voice to the transitivity of event type, and Kemmer (1993) claims that the middle voice across languages can be defined, at least in part, by the distinction between participants. Since Hebraists agree that the Niphal and Hitpael express voice alternations, including passive and middle voice, I will analyse the Niphal and Hitpael according to modern linguistic models of voice (namely, passive and middle voice) and the relationship of voice to transitivity. Once I demonstrate the transitivity traits of the Niphal and Hitpael, I will explain how transitivity explains the tendencies of some roots to appear in one root over the other. Furthermore, I will show how authors may express an atypical level of transitivity with a rarer stem for a given verb, which could explain rare occurrences of a root in a particular stem.


The Allusive Man of Macedonia
Program Unit: Book of Acts
Jennifer K. Berenson, Roanoke College

In Acts 16 Paul, Silas, and Timothy find themselves in Alexandria Troas, the most important city of the Troad, the region south of the Hellespont. Here Paul receives the famous vision of “a man of Macedonia,” who urges Paul to come help his compatriots (Acts 16:9). Taking this vision as a sign, Paul and his entourage make for Samothrace and eventually Philippi (vv. 10-12). This “man of Macedonia” has been variously identified as an angelic protector of Macedonia, a psychological manifestation of Paul's uncertainty, and a disguised representation of Luke himself. In any case, the passage is taken as a demonstration of ongoing divine guidance of Paul's mission, a recurring Lucan theme. But the vision stands out from other Lucan devices for signifying divine guidance (cf. Acts 9:10; 10:9-16; 16:6-7; 18:9; 23:11). An alternative approach, which highlights the significance of the geographical setting of Paul"s vision, may yield a more complete understanding of this vignette. The region around the Hellespont had long been understood symbolically as the boundary between Greek culture and destructive and chaotic “others,” and dreams concerning the crossing the Hellespont and uniting Europe and Asia were not uncommon; some of these dreams are even said to have taken place at the very spot. In addition, a Greek hero may be the most likely candidate for the identity of the “man of Macedonia,” as the Troad was the location of numerous tombs of heroes, who came to be seen as exemplars and protectors of all that is Greek from all that is not and were famous for appearing to the living (with both malevolent and beneficent effects). Thus the author of Acts may have composed this brief story to evoke a heroic invitation and thus Hellenic sanction for Paul to enter Greece with the gospel.


The Growth of the Book of Isaiah: Continuation or Combination?
Program Unit: Book of Isaiah
Ulrich Berges, University of Münster

Since the publication of “The Book Called Isaiah” by H.G.M. Williamson in 1994 the discussion about the main paradigm for the explanation of the growth of the Book of Isaiah has not stood still. Two alternative approaches play a central role in the formulation of the leading question: how did Isa 1-39 and Isa 40-55 join each other? Did it happen by way of continuation (Fortschreibung) or by way of combination of two mainly distinct bodies of literature (Vereinigung)? The solution of Williamson is clear: Isa 40-55 is to be judged as a continuation of Isa 1-39 filtered and modified by the exilic and early post-exilic situation. Without doubt there is in some cases a familiarity of style and vocabulary but are these strong enough to postulate that kind of internal continuity? Many of these evidences can be equally or even better explained as a general knowledge of the Isaianic style (“the holy one of Israel”) or by the process of joining the two formerly distinct bodies in late-exilic times. From my recently published commentary on Isa 40-48 (Jesaja 40-48, Herder, Freiburg in Br. 2008) I will present some texts and arguments which underline the proposal that the writers of Isa 40ff were closely attached to Jerusalem temple-singers and started their writing without an explicit desire to stand on the shoulders of the old Jerusalem prophet from the 8th century, even when they had a certain acquaintance with the Isaiah formulations. The concept of an individual exilic and anonymous writer “Deutero-Isaiah” should be abandoned. It was only from about 520 B.C.E. when the writing about hope and the future (Isa 40-48) reached Jerusalem with the first bigger wave of repatriates that the links between both parts grew stronger. Thus the merging of the two main parts was a “win-win-situation”: Isa 1-39 was helped over the gorge of Exile (see the break between Isa 39 and 40) and Isa 40-55 could rely on the authority of the old Jerusalem prophet.


Clement's Use of Philo and Claims about Jewish-Christian Difference
Program Unit: Philo of Alexandria
Beth Berkowitz, Jewish Theological Seminary of America

Scholars writing about Clement's use of Philo disagree on a variety of questions, such as the extent and purpose of Clement's borrowings, the reasons for his mostly anonymous quotation, and, perhaps most interesting, the ways that Clement transforms Philo. But what scholars share is the assumption that differences between Philo and Clement reflect differences between their religions--Judaism and Christianity. Examining a passage from Book 2 of Clement"s Stromateis in which Clement adapts a piece of Philo's Bible exegesis, this paper will propose that Philo and Clement effect in the passage a Jewish/Christian role reversal. In the passage, Clement reads the Pentateuchal text in ways that are considered typically Jewish for antiquity--systematic exposition, historicized reading, privileging of the Pentateuch over other texts, and emphasis on law, while Philo reads the passage in an exegetical style we might characterize as Christian in all the opposite ways. Working from the passage, this paper will argue that readers" expectations about Jewish/Christian difference should be less determinative in how they read this Christian author"s use of a Jewish one. Destablizing assumptions about religious difference will allow us to see more clearly the complexity and fluidity of Christian adaptation of Jewish themes and texts.


The Use and Abuse of the Bible in the 2008 Presidential Election: A Review and a Final Analysis
Program Unit: Use, Influence, and Impact of the Bible
Jacques Berlinerblau, Georgetown University

By all objective standards the 2008 presidential race featured more invocation of biblical verses and religious images than any in recent American history. In this paper, I attempt to review how the Scriptures were used by candidates in both the primaries and general election (a task I have been performing bi-weekly for the Washington Post Online). Some particular debates are explored with an eye towards the pitched, quasi-exegetical battles about proper interpretation that they set off. These include Mike Huckabee's oddly egalitarian reading of Ephesians 5:22-25, Mitt Romney's use of the Psalms in conversations about abortion, and Barack Obama"s determined invocation of the Book of Joshua in Church settings. More broadly, this paper aims to gauge Americans tolerance for scripturally based politicking by looking at the way that both Evangelical and secularist groups responded to Bible citations on the campaign trail.


Barack and the Bible
Program Unit: Bible and Popular Culture
Jacques Berlinerblau, Georgetown University

Barack Obama's 2008 presidential candidacy has been remarkable in many regards, one of which has been his aggressive insertion of religious and particularly biblical rhetoric into his campaign rhetoric. This presentation begins by noting how unusual it is for a Democratic candidate to engage in such intense Faith and Values policiticking. From there we explore Senator Obama's use of scriptural references and allusions in his oratory concentrating on his interest in the Book of Joshua. After looking at Obama"s approach to hermeneutics--an approach which grants him maximum flexibility when crafting policy--we close by looking at dramatic challenge to the Democratic Party"s orthodoxy of secularism that the Junior Senator from Illinois presents.


Pharaoh's Daughter in Sixteenth–Nineteenth Century Art
Program Unit: Bible and Visual Art
Joshua Berman, Bar-Ilan University

The episode of the rescue of Moses by Pharaoh's daughter (Exod 2:1-10) was a staple of European masters from the 16th-19th centuries. One reason for this scene's popularity was the large number of figures present at the moment of rescue (Phraraoh's daughter, the baby's sister and various maidens), giving the artist great freedom of interpretation in the composition of his piece. Another reason stemmed from the amibiguity surrounding the princess' motivation for rescuing the baby, again affording the artist lattitude in his interpretation. These paintings serve as an important resource for the biblical exegete, because the process of visualizing the scene allowed the masters to consider a facet of the episode long ignored by conventional written intrepretation: the role of the (silent!) maidens in informing Pharaoh's Daughter's decision. The paintings also implicitly consider an additional question, usually ignored in written interpretation: Is the hero of the story the princess, the sister, or the baby? The paper will consider works by Veronese, Gentileschi, Poussin, de Wet, Zugno, and Hogarth.


Who Was the Vassal King of the Sinai Covenant?
Program Unit: Biblical Law
Joshua Berman, Bar-Ilan University

In the fifty years since scholars first discerned that the Sinai covenant hews closely to the form of the Late Bronze Age suzerainty treaties of the Hittite empire, the assumption has been that within the Sinai covenant, it is the people of Israel whom assume the role of the vassal king. This assumption needs to be qualified: the parallels between the language and form of the Hittite treaties and those the of covenant passages in Exodus and Deuteronomy reveal that the individual Israelite is the vassal king, no less than the corporate body of Israel as a whole. The Hittite treaties themselves were always construed as the relationship between two individual kings, and, with a single exception, never between the Hittite king and a neighboring people. The Sinai treaty, moreover, demonstrates far greater affinity with the treaties between the Hittite king and his vassal king, than it does with the lone treaty in which the Hittite king engages an entire people as a vassal kingdom. The emphasis on God's relationship with each individual Israelite is seen in the locus classicus of the “treaty stipulations”, the commands of the Decalogue, all of which relate to individual Israelites with no commands that are to be executed by the nation as corporate entity. Further, the language used to describe the regular court appearances of the vassal king before the Hittite sovereign parallels the language of the command of pilgrimage to each Israelite male. Finally, the language calling upon the vassal king to have the treaty tablet periodically read in his presence, parallels the reading of the treaty with God before all members of the Israelite polity at Sinai (Ex. 24), and later at Shechem (Josh 8) and in the Deuteronomic mandate of Hakhel.


The Foreskinned Heart Metaphor of Leviticus 26:41 in Light of Ancient Near Eastern Extispicy
Program Unit: Assyriology and the Bible
David A. Bernat, Hebrew College

Baruch Levine, in his discussion of Leviticus 26, observes “It seems that whenever the image of the foreskin is employed, the physical condition original to the image peers through simile and metaphor.” Since antiquity, commentators have interpreted the “foreskinned,” or “uncircumcised,” heart metaphor as representing a blocked or hardened heart. While affirming Levine's presumption that a concrete physical image underlies the foreskin symbolism, my paper offers a new understanding of the metaphor in light of Ancient Near Eastern extispicy traditions. The lynchpin of my hypothesis is the use of the verb KN` in Lev 26:41 and the semantic equivalence of Hebrew KN` and Akkadian KANASHU.


Is the Genesis Apocryphon a Unity? It Depends What You Mean by Unity
Program Unit: Qumran
Moshe J. Bernstein, Yeshiva University

One of the questions which the Genesis Apocryphon from Cave 1 at Qumran poses to its interpreters is its apparent lack of unity on several levels. There appear to be various indicators of such non-unity, including the marker “the book of the words of Noah” in column 5, the very divergent ways in which it relates to the biblical text in the Lamech-Noah first section (colums 0-17) and the Abram second section (columns 19-22), and the dichotomous sets of epithets with which it refers to God in those two sections. In this paper we shall present the evidence which appears to underline the non-unity of the Apocryphon, on the one hand, and, at the same time, consider whether this evidence is sufficient to deny a sort of unity to the Apocryphon as a whole. Was the author/editor/compiler of the Apocryphon interested in creating a unity out of the disparate pieces from which he seems to have formed his work? Does it possess textual or thematic features which hold it together and prevent it from being merely a series of disparate units strung together? The answers to these questions have ramifications both for the Apocryphon in a narrow focus, and for other Second Temple works of related genre more broadly.


Philo's Perception of the Roman Empire
Program Unit: Philo of Alexandria
Katell Berthelot, National Center for Scientific Research

Although important works have been written about the perception of Rome by Jews in Antiquity, one aspect seems not to have received the attention it deserves. The Roman empire was frequently presented by Roman or pro-Roman writers as the result of divine providence, and its domination, as an eternal one supposed to bring everlasting peace and blessing to the world. Such ways of speaking represented a direct challenge to Jews living in the empire, insofar as the Roman claims to be a chosen people elected by the gods to bless the whole oikoumene strongly conflicted with Jewish ways of speaking about the election and call of Israel, and also very much looked like them. One may go so far as to affirm that there was a rivalry of election and universalism between Israel and Rome. In this paper, I would like to show that Philo, while appreciating the pax romana and the religious freedom generally enjoyed by Jews in the Roman empire, was critical of Roman ideas about Rome's election and destiny, as were other intellectuals from countries subdued by Rome. I shall also analyze the similarities and discrepancies between Philo's approach and that of Josephus.


New Testament Texts in Recently Published or Discovered Coptic Manuscripts
Program Unit: New Testament Textual Criticism
Hans-Gebhard Bethge, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Recent publications of Coptic scripts contain biblical texts or writings in which biblical quotes and references can be found. Papyrus Michigan 3520 published by Hans-Martin Schenke especially belongs to that group as well as the so-called Berlin Coptic Book published by Gesine Schenke Robinson. Furthermore unreleased handwritten material is existing written in Coptic with either biblical content or references to biblical texts. The paper aims at introducing certain important passages while concentrating on New Testament scriptures. Additionally a closer look is taken at the relevance of these evidences with respect to the research on New Testament texts.


The Reign of God Is of Such as These: Children in the Gospel of Mark
Program Unit: Children in the Biblical World
Sharon Betsworth, Oklahoma City University

In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus declares, “Whoever welcomes one of such as these little children in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me” (9:37). From 9:33 to 10:52, children are the central image and metaphor defining acceptable members of the Reign of God. The Reign of God and Jesus as the Son of God are two main themes in Mark's Gospel. In this paper, I argue that children in the Gospel of Mark clarify both of these themes. I focus upon the characters of Jairus" daughter (5:21-24, 35-43) and the boy with the spirit (9:14-29). First, I examine the lives of children in the first century CE. Then, I demonstrate how these passages illustrate that children are a key to Mark's understanding of the Reign of God. Next, by comparing children in Mark to children in the ancient Greek novels, I show that the children in Mark illuminate Jesus" identity as the Son of God, particularly the attributes of divine guardian and protector. Finally, I discuss the significance of these characters, particularly Jairus" daughter, for children in our world today.


Protecting One's Weapons: Bronze and Its Value in Iron I
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible, History, and Archaeology
Thomas Beyl, Hebrew Union College

Numerous studies in recent years have focused on authenticating and dating a corpus of alphabetically inscribed bronze arrowheads which have emerged on the antiquities market over the past century. All the arrowheads have been dated generally to the Iron I period through epigraphic studies rather than through archeological context. Despite the lack of provenance, these items attest to a unique practice of inscribing arrowheads not found in earlier or later periods. Additionally, these arrowheads come from a period which generally lacks alphabetic inscriptions. Given the unique historical context of these objects, the question raised by this paper is why these arrowheads were inscribed. In contrast to earlier proposals proposing a cultic function for these arrowheads, the current study will propose an economic motivation for the inscriptions in light of the archeological evidence for the state of metallurgy in Iron I. In addition, new insights will be proposed with regard to the economic context for the biblical description of Goliath's armor.


“Man of Constant Sorrow”: Rereading Jeremiah in Lamentations 3
Program Unit: Writing/Reading Jeremiah
Hannes Bezzel, Martin-Luther-Institüt, University of Erfurt

Why has the book of Lamentations been ascribed to Jeremiah the prophet? Usually, II Chr 35 is mentioned in this context, but at a close look this reference does not provide a satisfying answer. The short paper takes the approach of searching for a direct intertextual relationship between the book of Jeremiah and Lamentations instead. For this purpose the focus is set on Lam 3 and the figure of the lamenting “young man”. He appears to be the result of a kind of final shape-exegesis of the “confessions” of Jeremiah by the author of Lam 3. Thus, “rereading Jeremiah in Lam 3” can be understood in two ways: First, the entire chapter can be regarded as a specific innerbiblical relecture of Jeremiah, which, second, gives reason for modern readers to rediscover – and reread – the book of Lamentations as spoken or sung by the (literary) suffering Jeremiah.


Antoinette Brown Blackwell: Pioneering Exegete and Congregational Minister
Program Unit: Recovering Female Interpreters of the Bible
Beth Bidlack, University of Chicago

Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825-1921) was one of the first women to attend Oberlin College and receive a theological education, although she was not granted a degree. While she was at Oberlin, women were prohibited from public speaking, and one faculty member assigned Blackwell an exegesis on 1 Cor 14:35-35 and 1 Tim 2:11-12. Instead of keeping silent, she completed the assignment and refuted traditional understandings of these texts. Her essay was published in the Oberlin Quarterly Review, appearing in the same issue as an essay by one of the faculty members opposed to Blackwell's presence at theological school. While some woman's suffrage leaders distanced themselves from the Bible and religion, Blackwell, who was ordained in 1853, was recognized by the movement as someone who could refute biblical arguments against woman"s rights and instead use biblical texts to argue in favor of them.


Looking over Paul's Shoulder: 2 Corinthians Evidence for Paul's Theology in the Making
Program Unit: Second Corinthians: Pauline Theology in the Making
Reimund Bieringer, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Since the time of the formation of the canon, Paul's second letter to the Corinthians has played second fiddle to his first letter. 2 Corinthians is known as Paul's most personal letter opening up vistas into his psychological makeup rather than his theology. 2 Corinthians is perceived as a practical, not a theoretical letter. Moreover a large percentage of academic study of 2 Corinthians has been absorbed by historical and literary-critical discussions. Much energy went into introductory questions such as partition theories, reconstructions of the letter"s prehistory, the identity of the opponents. Consequently there was less attention for the content of the letter. While not contradicting the idea that 2 Corinthians is an eminently practical letter, in this paper which is meant as an introduction to this new seminar we shall look at 2 Corinthians as evidence to Paul"s theology in the making. While confronted with new, challenging questions in his dealings with the Corinthians, Paul develops theological concepts and vistas. Some of them, as, for instance, comfort, boasting, new creation, reconciliation, diakonia, gift giving, occur in 2 Corinthians for the first time in Christian history. They are occasioned by concrete circumstances in Paul"s relationship with the Corinthians. We shall study the various techniques Paul uses and the resources he has at his disposal (his biblical and Hellenistic background) to give deeper theological meaning to mundane everyday life experiences. Whether or not one considers Paul to be a theologian or 2 Corinthians as a theological document, depends largely on one"s own understanding of theology. In this paper we shall suggest that what Paul does in 2 Corinthians, namely to bring to bear the Christian faith on concrete issues of daily life in confrontation with aspects of the Bible and/or of the surrounding culture is the core task of any theology.


Gnostics under the Law: The Place of Gnostics in Codex Theodosianus 16
Program Unit: Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism
Mark Bilby, Point Loma Nazarene University

Codex Theodosianus 16 provides a significant yet underexamined source for understanding Gnosticism in antiquity. As is well known, this first major legal compendium of the Christian Roman empire gives privileged place to those conforming to the newly minted definition of Orthodox or Catholic Christianity. What is less known is that Gnostics are consistently the most harshly condemned, supressed and punished of all religious groups mentioned in the Codex Theodosianus, far more than Jews or adherents of classical Roman religion. They are refused the right to assemble, to show hospitality, to own property, to “imitate” Catholic worship, to re-baptize, to own distinctive religious literature, to teach their faith, to conduct business, to bequeth property or possessions, to hold political or military office, and are often physically punished and subjected to exile as perpetrators of a public crime. They are absented from the standard provisions for the protection of non-Christian groups. In short, they are legal non-entities. In addition to this overall treatment, the Codex Theodosianus also provides a valuable source regarding the cataloguing of various Gnostic groups in the fourth and fifth centuries. The author hopes that the presentation will provide opportunity for constructive criticism so as to prepare the paper for eventual scholarly publication.


Athenagoras, Scripture, and the Limitations of Hellenism
Program Unit: Christian Theological Research Fellowship
D. Jeffrey Bingham, Dallas Theological Seminary

Positive, detailed treatments of Scripture in Athenagoras have been lacking, sometimes because of the over-emphasis of Athenagoras's employment of Greek philosophy. Strong expressions of the absence of Scripture's influence in his Legatio have seemed to rule the modern prejudice. With Pouderon"s 1994 essay some helpful headway toward recognizing the presence of Scripture within the apologist"s argument was made, yet Pouderon left undeveloped an analysis of how Scripture functions within the Legatio to contribute to an argument for Christian self-definition. This paper, then, will explore how Scripture, sacred teaching, influences Athenagoras in his attempt to answer the Romans for their perceived misconception of Christianity and the hardships with which they burden the Christians. In particular, this paper will demonstrate how biblical passages function to manifest a conception of God the Father which emphasizes God"s distinction from earthly things and God"s spiritual essence. This is the accepted rational view of the deity within the broader Roman context. This emphasis comes forth as Athenagoras reads and employs pagan philosophical and poetic texts within a pattern of belief and conception delimited by Scriptural teaching. Scripture certainly functions to develop the absolutely unique claims of the Christians, but significantly, it also informs, in a prejudicial manner, how Athenagoras will read pagan texts in a somewhat distinctive manner, yet also one which, within allowable parameters, holds commonality with his non-Christian culture. For Athenagoras, Scripture, as inspired, regulates the Christian"s reading of the poets and philosophers and surpasses them as the ultimate foundation for religious knowledge and practice.


1 Peter's “Daughters of Sarah”: Fear-Full Subjects Indeed
Program Unit: Women in the Biblical World
Jennifer Bird, Greensboro College

As a part of a larger project that addresses the discursive construction of women/wives according to 1 Peter's Haustafel, this paper will address the fear-full Daughters of Sarah referred to in this passage. The issue of these women/wives as constructed subjects taps into numerous socio-political dynamics of social acceptability and sustainability, vertical and horizontal power relations, essentialism and representation, and even issues of mimicry and collusion with imperial expectations. Who subjects are constructed to be affects what they can know. What they can know is affected by the nature of the communities of which they are a part. The nature of the relationships within these communities is what we might expect within a kyriarchically structured society and empire: that of one-up/one-down or ruler/subject patterns of relations. That the culture in which this letter was written and received was so defined is not a surprise to anyone; that the communities within such a society will then emulate this example is something that is not often addressed in biblical scholarship. We should not be surprised to read or hear the author speaking from a place of “power over” to his recipients, and particularly within this section addressed to the women/wives and slaves. Unfortunately, the commands he pens are marked by elements of domination, control, fear, silencing and obedience, elements we also see in abusive spousal or partnered relationships today. Not only do these dynamics take on added dimensions under the light of imperialism or colonization, but they all subsequently contribute to the ethos of behavioral and role expectations within the communities that embrace and embody such a text.


Formless but Not Void: Some Reflections on the Psalmist-Subject from Clay-Level
Program Unit: Lament in Sacred Texts and Cultures
Fiona C. Black, Mount Allison University

This paper considers the figure of the golem, which appears in the disputed Psalm of Praise/Lament, Psalm 139. The speaker uses the term to refer to himself as a shapeless being in utero, but of course the golem has a rather elaborate (and particular) physical identity in the folklore of Judaism, most notably as the creation of the Maharal of Prague. As a means of exploring the subjectivity of the psalmist, I read this text, complete with its conflicting elements of lamentation and reassurance, against the backdrop of its interpretive tradition (scholarly and fictional). The question is whether the malleability of the psalmist-as-fetus, the blurred generic lines in the psalm, and the dynamics around the golem (created to stem persecution, but ultimately exceeding the terms of its creation) shed light on the conflicted subject of the Psalm.


The Pauline Machine: The Apostle and His Interpreters Meet Deleuze and Guattari
Program Unit: Biblical Criticism and Literary Criticism
Steve Black, Toronto School of Theology

For the most part, Paul has been analyzed using modes of thought developed within the context of modernity. What becomes of the apostle when other modes are employed? This paper will run Paul (and his interpreters) through some concepts and metaphors suggested by Deleuze and Guattari to consider some possible answers to this question. What happens if we look at Paul literary work as “a little machine” which has many constitutive parts, and works with other machines (Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, "A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia," Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987, 4)? The important thing about this machine is what it does, what other machines it works with, and not so much what it “means.” Looking at some important interpreters of Paul, this paper will consider how the Pauline machine is like the remains of a skeleton that has been reanimated to live new lives through history. In each reading the various interpreter's concerns and horizons of meaning have been imported into the machine as if it were gasoline. This machine has strange powers (civilizations have been built with it), as well as unusual flexibility to be reanimated in different ages to work in diverse and wondrous ways somehow connected to and yet very different from how it worked for the apostle. Scholars ask whether righteousness by faith or participatory eschatology was the core of Paul's thought? Such questions become meaningless if Paul is seen through the metaphor of the rhizome (Ibid., 7), something irreducibly multiple and uncentered. If viewed in this way, then the reader is invited to engage Paul where they find him, to enter anywhere into Paul"s machine, exploring contingent connections that appear between various other components both within and without.


Spirit and Covenant Renewal: A Pre-Pauline Theologoumenon
Program Unit: Second Corinthians: Pauline Theology in the Making
Thomas R. Blanton IV, Luther College

Jerry Sumney has outlined methodological difficulties involved in reconstructing the position of Paul's rivals in Corinth and proposed his own minimalist reconstruction. Following Sumney's method, the only data at one"s disposal for reconstructing the position of Paul"s rivals in Corinth is the text of 2 Corinthians. While in agreement with many of Sumney"s conclusions, I propose a new approach to this problem; one that draws upon comparative material that has hitherto remained unexploited. The comparative material that I draw upon comes from Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Jubilees, the Community Rule, and the Letter to the Hebrews. Each of these texts posits a future period of covenant renewal (i.e., a “new covenant”) in which it is expected that the presence of God"s spirit will enable individuals perfectly to fulfill the stipulations of the Torah. The polemical material in 2 Cor 3-4 includes a cluster of terminology and motifs (i.e., Moses, law/spirit, death/life and most importantly, new covenant or covenant renewal) that also appear in the comparative material that I adduce. The concerns that Paul addresses in 2 Cor 3-4 cohere closely with the concerns addressed in these comparative texts, although Paul at times draws strikingly different conclusions vis-à-vis the comparative material. The use of this data enables us to advance reasonable hypotheses about the position of Paul"s rivals in Corinth: they likely preached a variant of the traditional theologoumena advanced in these texts. By bringing these data into consideration, we are able to advance significantly beyond Sumney"s minimalist reconstruction of the position of Paul"s missionary rivals in Corinth. Not only that, but the reconstruction of the position of Paul"s opponents allows greater insights into the nature of Paul"s own methods as he constructed a theology that best served his interests and, as Paul construed them, those of the congregations in Corinth.


Paul among the Nihilists? Nothings and Nonbeing in Paul and the Philosophers
Program Unit: Pauline Epistles
Ward Blanton, University of Glasgow

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Abuse and Recovery: Telling the Story
Program Unit: Psychology and Biblical Studies
Adrien J. Bledstein, Chicago, IL

The Bible is full of traumatic events. Insights on how some people cope and thrive may provide clues to the identity of an ancient writer. In legend Joseph is abused by his brothers, becomes prime minister of Egypt, then reconciles with his family. Seven centuries later Tamar, wearing the coat of many colors, is abused by her half brother Amnon (2 Samuel 13). We hear her protest before and after the rape. Thrown out, Tamar does not shamefully slink into the shadows along the streets of Jerusalem as one might expect in a patriarchal shame culture. Instead, she tears her garment, strews ashes on her head, and laments, loudly bewailing her humiliation. When she arrives at her brother Absalom's, he hushes her. We do not hear her voice again within the narrative. Who wrote this intimate family story, parallel to Joseph? Tamar is a “daughter of the king” (2 Sam 13:18). At the king's request, she is performing a healing ritual (2 Sam 13:5, 7, 10) in a sacred garment. Innocent of wrongdoing, why does she suffer? My paper suggests that after this trauma, Tamar feels compelled to make sense of tragedies tearing apart her people. With divine inspiration and a sense of humor erupting from human grief, Tamar transforms her lamentation to storytelling. Beginning in Eden, she presents humans as vulnerable and satirizes those who behave as if they are gods. She focuses on trials and survival, revealing fundamental values. Perceiving Tamar as the “master” storyteller opens a reader to hear stories differently than if one assumes narratives were written by men. Understood in context of this woman"s perception of the past, “texts of terror” (Trible) may become sources of healing.


Thaumatgurgical Psychology: Jesus as Type versus Antitype of the Human Capacity for “Wonder Works”
Program Unit: Psychology and Biblical Studies
Kamila Blessing, Blessing Transitions Consultant

When John the Baptist sent to inquire whether Jesus was the one sent by God, what did he say? "Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight…” (Matthew 11:4-5, NRS). Not “believe in me,” but “believe your ears and eyes.” This passage is a challenge to us moderns – a challenge to be truly empirical. It is also a challenge to interpret a crucial but often overlooked passage of the NT. This paper looks at psychology's assessment of the "wonder worker" who cites empirical evidence; and of the human ability to bring about therapeutic change in body, mind, and spirit in ourselves and others. We review a selection of the literature in psychology and medicine, showing that this capacity is a reliable and much neglected resource for medicine as well as for the ordinary person. If this is the case, we can point the way to the next step for the physician who says, “There is nothing more we can do.” We also can use the recent developments in family systems psychology to prescribe a very different and therapeutic approach even to the time of death and its effects on the generations of the family to come. Will our view of the "naive" biblical attitude toward miracle result in pathological or therapeutic use of this text? Are we scientific enough to consider that Jesus' attitude did in fact result from an incisive understanding of the psychology and spirituality of the "whole person"?


Assyrians Abet Israelite Cultic Reforms: Sennacherib and Centralization of the Israelite Cult
Program Unit: Assyriology and the Bible
Elizabeth Bloch-Smith, Saint Joseph's University

Assyrian military campaigns may have done more to promote centralization of the Israelite cult than any priestly, prophetic, or royal initiative before or after. Assyrian conquest of the northern kingdom - by Tiglath-pileser III, Shalmaneser V, and Sargon II – supplied a rationale for Judahite cultic reform. Sennacherib's campaign in 701BC expedited its implementation. Cultic centralization in the capital city, the major political and administrative city left unscathed, was the most feasible and logical response. This presentation examines the archaeological evidence for the military campaigns detailed in both biblical and Assyrian records.


Acculturating Gender Roles: Images as Conveyors of Culture in Ancient Israel
Program Unit: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Bible
Elizabeth Bloch-Smith, Saint Joseph's University

Images may be viewed as cultural creations that fabricate, legitimate, inculcate, and perpetuate gender roles. Images of deities, in particular, suggest that gendered features existed from the beginning of time, are divinely ordained, and model desirable traits for the god or goddess´ followers. Changes in images of gods/goddesses, the adoption of foreign deity representations, and shifts in the cultural contexts in which images are found or (not) displayed all raise questions regarding the development of ancient Israel's gendered roles.


Is P.Oxy. 3057 the Earliest Christian Letter?
Program Unit: Papyrology and Early Christian Backgrounds
Lincoln Blumell, University of Toronto

When P.Oxy. 3057 was first published in 1974 the editor, Peter Parsons, tentatively raised the possibility that it may have been written by a Christian since it contained a number of peculiarities that could have derived from a Christian milieu. Due to the fact Parsons dated this letter to the late first century it initially attracted some interest. However, given that many of the apparently “Christian” features of the letter were later judged to be rather ambiguous, it did not receive much attention as a source for early Christianity in subsequent scholarship. Recently, interest in the letter has been renewed as attempts have been made to reopen the debate surrounding this letter as they have attempted to show that it contains a number of features that decidedly favor Christian authorship. This paper will therefore evaluate the validity of such arguments and will reconsider whether P.Oxy. 3057 could be the earliest extant Christian letter.


The Case against New England Clam Chowder and Other Questions about “Theological Interpretation”
Program Unit: Theological Interpretation of Scripture
Markus Bockmuehl, Keble College, Oxford University

The past decade has witnessed the emergence of a new growth industry in biblical scholarship that is self-consciously styled as “theological interpretation.” The desire that biblical interpretation should become more articulately engaged with its subject matter undoubtedly expresses a long-overdue reaction against exegetically inedible excesses of the critical or ideological sort. On that front I shall seek to highlight the promise and key strengths of these current endeavors. At the same time, granted that earlier reductionisms may have been appear intellectually and experientially malnourished, what in fact is the distinctive contribution and benefit of this newly fashionable dish called theological interpretation? What, indeed, makes it “theological” – at least, any more so than other kinds of interpretation? And is it, as the adjective might imply, mainly a particular flavor or style of doing whatever it is that interpreters do? In other words, is “theological” interpretation mainly a more wholesome-tasting dish, in much the same way that other hermeneutical diets might pride themselves in menus that are “green,” “organic,” or “inclusive”? And what if the “theological” label turns out to conceal significant shortcomings in substance and ingredients? To succeed, this paper will argue, theological interpretation will do well to demonstrate in what ways it offers a genuinely distinctive, richer, and more disciplined fare that can be seen by both well-wishers and detractors to constitute more than a regional variation on an all too conventional dish. I hope in conclusion to suggest a couple of fresh ingredients to that end.


The Sovereign Mercy of a Covenantal God: Prophecy, Sin, and Grace in the Prophets
Program Unit: Israelite Prophetic Literature
Mark J. Boda, McMaster University Divinity College

Across the prophetic corpus one can discern a basic rhythm of divine and human interplay which is prompted by human sin (e.g., Judges, 1 Samuel 7, 1 Kings 8, 2 Kings 17, 2 Kings 22–23; Isaiah 6; Jeremiah 18, 25; Ezekiel 2–3, 20, 33; Amos 4, Joel, Jonah, Zechariah). This basic rhythm shows how God remedies human sin either through acts (judgment) or threats (prophecy) of discipline. The goal of this judgment or prophecy is to lead the people to respond to the grace and justice of Yahweh in repentance. These various components of the basic rhythm include: prophetic call/divine discipline, human penitence, divine grace. This large collection, however, is diverse and although this rhythm appears at key rhetorical places within the prophetic corpus, other perspectives often dominate. The prophetic books present a God who remains free in relation to this process. In spite of the articulation of this pattern at key moments in the corpus, Yahweh at times responds by offering grace to a seemingly impenitent people and by refusing mercy to a seemingly penitent people. This other testimony within the prophetic corpus is expressed succinctly in the “who knows” or “perhaps” on the lips of David in 2 Samuel 24, the sailors and Ninevites in Jonah, and the prophet in Joel 2:14, Amos 5:15 and Zeph 3:3. It echoes the foundational experience of Israel with Yahweh in Exodus 32-34, at the heart of which is that declaration related to Yahweh's name: “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” This other testimony is an important reminder that the prophetic corpus does articulate an impersonal retribution principle and procedure, but rather rhythms based on covenantal relationship between Yahweh and Israel.


A Map of Misbreeding: Israel's First King and the Chronicler's Innovation
Program Unit: Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah
Keith Bodner, Atlantic Baptist University

Numerous scholars describe the genealogical material of 1 Chronicles 1-9 as a “map,” highlighting an emphasis within the text on geography as well as genealogical descent. Contained within the opening genealogy, it is often asserted, are clues to understanding the Chronicler's work as a whole. One of the more startling discoveries in 1 Chronicles 1-9 is that Israel's first king has indigenous Canaanite roots: Saul is from Gibeon (a lineage that certainly is not clearly articulated in the books of Samuel). How can one best make sense of this “innovation” in terms of the overall composition of Chronicles? In his maverick work of literary criticism, Harold Bloom"s A Map of Misreading outlines a theory of poetic influence that, when broadly appropriated, can function as a helpful way to read the opening segments of the Chronicler"s story. This presentation analyzes two sets of texts and some attendant questions raised by each. First, I will survey the genealogical portion of 1 Chronicles 1-9 that present Saul as a Gibeonite, and expand this discussion to inquire how the typology of Gibeon is configured in the text. The second part of the paper turns to 1 Chronicles 10, and explores some possible reasons as to why the Chronicler begins the narrative portion of the book with this particular chapter, the network of allusions that the chapter evokes, and the how the death of Saul creates a transition to the life of David.


The Dynamic Equivalence Caper
Program Unit: Ideology, Culture, and Translation
Roland Boer, Monash University

About a decade ago I was presenting a paper criticizing the dominance of “dynamic equivalence” among Bible translators. My particular target was Eugene Nida, who I assumed would be on death's doorstep, if not already past it (he was born in 1911). However, at the end of my paper I got the fright of my life: Nida himself stood up to ask me a question. A decade later I would like to return to that unfinished critique, especially since the ghost of Nida still haunts me (and since my Last Stop Before Antarctica, in which that paper became a chapter, is about to appear in a revised edition). Dynamic (or functional) equivalence, as is well known, focuses on the message. Everything may be sacrificed – words, syntax, grammar – as long as the essential content of the original text is rendered in an acceptable way in the target language. You may pour the water from a bucket to a cup, but the water remains the same. To my knowledge, dynamic equivalence is the dominant method used by both The Bible Society and Wycliffe Bible Translators, especially with translations into indigenous languages. Yet there are some strange paradoxes about this theory and practice. I list them here and will deal with them in more detail in the paper. My approach is heavily influenced by Theodor Adorno's practice of theological suspicion: (1) Dynamic equivalence is a return of the once favored approach to translation from the 19th century, namely paraphrase. DN, however, is not quite the same as paraphrase. (2) DN may be seen as a conservative evangelical appropriation of paraphrase, especially when it challenges the assumption that a “literal” translation (metaphrase) is the more “faithful” one. (I remember my father scoffing at any translation that was felt to be a “paraphrase.”) (3) DN follows a Gnostic incarnational model: while the “Word” remains the same, it may move from body to body. (4) DN has a far too instrumental view of form. The form of a language is not merely a container for a message.


Jewish and Not Jewish: The Renegades in 1 Maccabees
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible and Political Theory
Francis Borchardt, University of Helsinki

This paper examines the concepts of nationhood found in the first book of Maccabees particularly in relation to the renegade Jews who forsook the torah and practiced the customs of the gentiles. This paper will show that there are multiple concepts of the Jewish nationhood in 1Maccabees, these depend not only on the point of view but also upon different literary layers of the text. In some places the renegades are clearly members of the Jewish nation, while in others they are excluded from the community of Israel.


Questions on the Use of Psalm 79 in 1 Maccabees
Program Unit: Use, Influence, and Impact of the Bible
Francis Borchardt, University of Helsinki

In the midst of a description of the atrocities committed by the high priest Alcimus, the narrator of 1Maccabees states that these events came to pass in accordance with the psalm that Alcimus wrote (1Macc 7.17). The narrator then goes on to quote two verses from the beginning of Psalm 79. In this paper we examine both the narrator's claim that Alcimus wrote the psalm, and the way the psalm is used in 1Maccabees. We will attempt to bring the work of Benjamin Scolnic into conversation with our own findings and come to a reasonable conclusion concerning the impact of the psalm on the text and the identity of its author.


Contextual Readings of Exodus in Africa: Negotiating Identity amidst Contending Narratives of Origin and Migration in Africa
Program Unit: Contextual Biblical Interpretation
Hendrik L. Bosman, University of Stellenbosch

The narratives describing the Exodus events echo throughout the history of Israel as a nation and the post-exilic Jewish believing community as a recurring influence in their ongoing negotiation of identity. In Africa Exodus can not only be read as a liberation text, but also as a constructive influence in the negotiation of identity in different cultural contexts. This paper reports on a two year research project that investigated the possibility that knowledge about African narratives concerning origin and migration enables African readers to come to a more profound understanding of the book of Exodus and of its impact on the "hybrid identities" that emerges from the interactions between African and Old Testament narratives concerned with origin and migration. Empirical research was done amongst the Ngoni (Zambia) and Zulu (South Africa), as well as the Tiv and Yoruba (Nigeria) who share corresponding and diverging narratives concerning origin and migration. South Africa was bogged down for decades in multiculturalism as a form of state-sanctioned cultural pluralism. This research project indicates how the contextualized readings of Exodus in four African contexts illustrate "interculturalism" that bridges the gaps between cultures and their respective processes of negotiating religious identity.


Are You Sure You Can Say That?! Fresh Considerations in Translating Euphemisms
Program Unit: Bible Translation
Freddy Boswell, SIL International

Human communication is replete with euphemisms. It is thus no surprise that every translator of the Bible must appropriately deal with euphemisms that occur in the original text and which also arise in the receptor language. The author surveys basic exegetical, theological, and translational issues related to handling euphemisms, and then specifically applies the translation of euphemisms in the context of Bible translation programs in Solomon Islands. This is done through a foundational survey of general word taboos in Melanesia and the Solomons, noting various techniques for translation, including such devices as code-switching and ellipsis. The principles discussed are applicable cross-culturally and cross-linguistically.


Disguising the Making of Divinities: A Discussion of Some “Debates” from Imperial and Late Antique Times
Program Unit: Greco-Roman Religions
Pieter J. J. Botha, University of South Africa

Senators discuss apotheosis of (deceased) colleagues, bishops vote about God and rabbis deny the contribution of the bat qol. Our texts do not talk about the actual creation of divinities; however, they do create the metaphors for viewing God(s) as objects of manipulation. This paper analyses a selection of texts that show that the values that are implicit in them can lead to a climate of social convention that tolerates and encourage creatures creating creators. These values relate to a series of assumptions about alterity and possible alternative visions about the "other" which justify force as a form of social control. In addition, pertinent humans are often identified as the vehicle (or as manifestation) of the cause of all human suffering, as responsible for the fall from grace and disrupting the relationship with the purported divine powers at stake.


Reexamining Honor-Shame in New Testament Scholarship: Texts, Contexts, Language, and Interpretive Anthropology
Program Unit: Social Scientific Criticism of the New Testament
Pieter J. J. Botha, University of South Africa

The conception of honor brought into biblical scholarship was always fairly vague and polysemous — this was its theoretical attraction as it could incorporate anything from criminal aggression to pious virtue, and its forms could be extended into gender relations and equally into the politics and economics of patronage. From a cultural-anthropological point of view the data and the model largely overlap, hence paraphrasing of ancient discourse (and not interpretation) results. Additionally, the mismatch with local vocabularies blunt their usefulness for historical research and for comparison. As honor amounts to socially appropriate behaviour, the anthropology of self and emotion should receive close attention.


Spectacles of Imperial Suffering and the Making of a Jewish Minority Culture in Late Antiquity
Program Unit: Violence and Representations of Violence in Antiquity
Ra'anan Boustan, University of California, Los Angeles

This paper analyzes a group of Jewish sources from the fifth century and later that present graphic accounts of the gruesome suffering and deaths of the Roman emperor and the imperial household. These imaginative accounts invert the power relations that otherwise governed social and political life in the late Roman Empire. I argue that these sources represent a significant departure from earlier Jewish criticism of Roman rule, which, though hardly new as a general phenomenon, had not previously taken such acute and pointed form. These expressions of Jewish hostility to the imperial authority coincided with the intensification of the process of Christianization and constitute a novel Jewish response to the emerging Christian discourse of empire. Yet, while these sources reflect the emergence of Jews in the Roman-Christian empire as a minority culture, they also demonstrate the degree to which Jewish strategies of opposition drew on long-standing Roman idioms of spectacular violence.


From the State of Vermont to Cyprus: A New Witness to the Acts of Philip
Program Unit: Christian Apocrypha
François Bovon, Harvard University

There are few witnesses to the Acts of Philip from Late Antiquity and the Byzantine period. A newly restored icon from Cyprus, however, attests to the existence and knowledge of this apocryphal work. This icon has been ignored by all the scholars who worked on the Acts of Philip from the time of Fabricius till today. Contrary to the majority of references witnessing only part of the book, this so-called “decorated” icon presents scenes of practically all the episodes. Moreover, this piece of art is connected with a place where the cult of Saint Philip has been known to be celebrated for more than seven centuries. Even if both the description and interpretation of this icon readily connect it with the literary evidence of the Acts of Philip, questions remain on the meaning of some depicted episodes. As it stands the icon nevertheless constitutes a superb witness to the presence and relative success of the Acts of Philip during the Byzantine era.


The Future of a Field and Our Unit
Program Unit: Rethinking the Concept and Categories of 'Bible' in Antiquity
James E. Bowley, Millsaps College

This presentation and open discussion will consider the future of the field of "Biblical Studies" and anachronistic terms such as "Bible." What will we hear in the future? When will historical and literary scholarship advance toward better historical categories? What terms and ideas will hold us back? What will add new light?


Future Imaginination: Utopianism in the Book of Jeremiah
Program Unit: Writing/Reading Jeremiah
Barrie Bowman, Sheffield University

This paper reexamines the book of Jeremiah using utopian literary theory. Specifically, there is an emphasis on a different reading of the "dystopian" text of Jeremiah 1-20 and further analysis into the utopian nature of other texts in Jeremiah, including chapters 27, 32-33 and 51. These passages and the critique of them offer a new and unique perspective into Jeremiah's imagination, especially in regards to the hope for a positive future. In addition, there is an argument for the use of the creative power of Yahweh, in spite of the despair of the contemporary situation regarding the exile, as a utopian motif.


No “Nonsensical Allegories”: Narrative Criticism and Luther's Commentary on Jonah
Program Unit: History of Interpretation
Richard G. Bowman, Augustana College and Chris Croghan, Augustana College

A summary of the research presented at the 2007 International Congress for Luther Research suggests that "in dealing with the Bible Luther emphasized the narrative character of the message of Jesus Christ…" Luther's Genesis commentary offers further confirmation to this conclusion: “In the interpretation of Holy Scripture the main task must be to derive from it some sure and plain meaning…Almost all (interpreters) not only do not concern themselves with the story but bury it and confuse it with their nonsensical allegories.” Given these references to the hermeneutical importance of story, we suggest that a comparison of Luther's biblical exposition with the contemporary literary method of narrative criticism offers new insights into Luther's interpretive method. This paper will argue that when Martin Luther focused his interpretive attention on "the story," he appropriated concepts consistent with those of the contemporary method of narrative criticism. In developing this thesis we will use his 1525 and 1526 Latin and German commentaries on Jonah. An analysis of Luther's exposition of Jonah reveals that Luther"s work mirrors aspects of contemporary narrative criticism in a number of ways. He attends to aspects of the plot, considers the portrayal of characters, and is aware of how compositional techniques such as dialogue and narration, repetition, and the sequencing of events shape an understanding of "some sure and plain meaning." Furthermore, we shall suggest that Luther's notion sui ipsius interpres resonates with a narrative critical, intertextual analysis of themes and motifs. To be sure, our work will not suggest Luther was a 16th-century intentional narrative critic, that is, a precursor of the contemporary narrative critic. Yet our comparison of Luther"s exegetical approach with contemporary narrative criticism does offer new insights into Luther's hermeneutical method. Moreover, it may show how Reformation Era insights can inform the contemporary interpretation of Jonah.


De-Christianizing Judaism
Program Unit: Construction of Christian Identities
Daniel Boyarin, University of California, Berkeley

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Codex Ambrosianus and the Hexapla
Program Unit: International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies
Cameron Boyd-Taylor, University of Cambridge

Codex Ambrosianus (F) has undergone at least two stages of correction and the margins contain various readings and scholia. It may thus be likened to an archaeological tell in which various layers of material have accumulated over time. These layers arguably record a history of interaction between the Greek text and its Hebrew source extending from before the time of Origen through to the Middle Ages. That the Hexapla figures in this history is generally assumed, but its exact role has yet to be delineated. In the proposed paper, I shall analyse the textual character of Ambrosianus, its correctors and marginalia, with special reference to the Hexapla. To focus the discussion, I identify three key issues. 1) The relationship of F to Vaticanus (B) and Alexandrinus (A) is of considerable interest. Kenyon observed the general agreement of F with A where this manuscript differs from B. There is also some degree of affiliation between F-A and Coislinianus (M). Where A-F-and-M share a secondary reading, does this represent a pre-Origenian revision of the Greek? 2) The correctors of F may be distinguished on the basis of their script: those in a small uncial script are designated Fa, those in cursive script Fb. In numerous instances Fa corrects F to a text with the form of B over against an A-F-and-M reading. Did Fa correct the recensional text of F back to an earlier textual form? 3) The material of Fb represents a veritable miscellany of late readings. Since the time of Swete, they have been viewed as Hexaplaric. Yet the work of Wevers and Fernández Marcos has called this into question. Does Fb draw upon readings of the Three independently of Hexaplaric tradition?


Earth Community in Joel 3–4
Program Unit: Ecological Hermeneutics
Laurie J. Braaten, Judson University

Joel 3–4 (2:28-3:21 in English translations) is often regarded as a compilation of apocalyptic or proto-apocalyptic texts. Substantiation for this view is found in an eschatological outpouring of the spirit on God's people, followed by cosmic signs portending the great and terrible Day of Yhwh, which will be the final judgment on the nations and abundant blessing for Judah. The resulting picture consists of the Last Judgment on enemy nations with Judah living in bliss in an eschatological epoch, prophesying to one another in the presence of God in a new Jerusalem. This view, however, largely depends on an interpretation of Joel 3-4 in isolation from Joel 1-2. If this context is taken seriously, however, a different reading of Joel 3-4 is viable – one including Earth Community, represented by all-flesh and Land, Sky and Atmosphere, and Sun and Moon. Joel 1-2 recounts the suffering of creation, human and non-human, and God's response. Joel 3-4 depicts God"s further response to Earth Community"s suffering at the hands of unrepentant humans in the present age. Yhwh"s continued response to Earth Community begins with God pouring out the spirit on all flesh, i.e., “all creatures.” God"s impending actions will be announced both by the resulting prophetic community and by portents warning of judgment on those who violate Earth Community. Furthermore, these portents not only indicate ongoing human violence against members of creation (Joel 4), but also reveal that nonhuman creation, as in Joel 1-2, is in mourning. As in Joel 1-2, humans should mourn with the rest of creation and call upon the name of Yhwh, and so escape the day of God"s judgment. Finally, God will deliver Earth Community from the destructive actions of humans who remain hostile to God and the rest of creation.


The Development of the Character of Ruth in Targum Ruth
Program Unit: Aramaic Studies
Christian Brady, Pennsylvania State University, University Park

This paper will examine how the character of Ruth is developed and transformed in TgRuth. The paper will involve a very brief survey of the biblical character followed by an analysis of how the targumist has changed this figure and her role in the story in order to meet his exegetical goals.


A Case of Spousal Abuse: A Study of the Marriage of Jeroboam I (1 Kings 14:1–18)
Program Unit: Psychology and Biblical Studies
Robin Gallaher Branch, Crichton College

The biblical text introduces Jeroboam with high praise as a hayil, a man of standing (1 Kings 11:28). From this singular honor, the text chronicles his downfall. A vignette showcasing his marriage (1 Kings 14:1-18) functions as the concluding event in his 22-year reign. Something is clearly wrong in his household. Using a cross-disciplinary approach incorporating a close textual reading and psychology, this paper focuses on the unnamed, silent wife of Jeroboam and argues that she and her marriage reflect the classic signs of a kind of suffering now termed spousal abuse. Granted, the vignette recounts no evidence of physical beating. However, textual evidence supporting the view that the wife of Jeroboam experiences abuse includes the following: her isolation, passivity, and instant obedience. Most indicatively, she returns home after hearing the prophet Ahijah's three-fold announcement of doom. Textual evidence that Jeroboam operates as an abusive husband includes his control over her comings and goings; his command-mode mentality in addressing her; his lack of compassion toward her; his cowardice in sending her to Ahijah instead of going himself; and his earlier violence toward the man of God (1 Kings 13). Via Ahijah's prophetic word, God lists Jeroboam"s sins as disobedience, making idols of metal, provoking God to anger, and thrusting God away. Shortly after Jeroboam"s reign ends, his name is ignominiously paired with evil and sins (2 Kings 13:2; 13:11; 14:24; 15:9). If indeed the wife of Jeroboam is an abused woman as this paper claims, then God"s assessment of Jeroboam"s reign as evil (1 Kings 14:9) encompasses more than is commonly held: it encompasses the sin of spousal abuse.


The Perfection of the Self in Musonius Rufus and the Sermon on the Mount
Program Unit: Hellenistic Moral Philosophy and Early Christianity
George Branch-Trevathan, Emory University

My paper will argue that Musonius Rufus and Matthew's Sermon on the Mount (5-7) propose very similar training regimens for perfecting the self based on similar anthropologies. Musonius Rufus argues that moral failings result not from human ontology but from improper socialization (Discourse 2) and he urges his students to memorize pithy, prefabricated arguments, or proofs, and practice employing them to distinguish in new situations between the true good and what one has wrongly learned to believe is good (Discourse 6). Matthew's antitheses (5:21-48) likewise contrast common opinions with the views needed to reach moral perfection and then offer concise, imagistic, rhetorically balanced—and so easily memorizable—proofs that Matthew's audience could keep ready to discern in varied situations the true from the apparent good and thereby reach perfection (5:48). Other sections of the Sermon contain proofs that play the same, formative role. These similarities between Musonius and the Sermon on the Mount suggest that many ancient auditors and readers would have understood the Sermon as moral training literature, literature that facilitated the perfection of the self.


Seeking Salvation: The Gnostic Cry for Help in Context
Program Unit: Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism
Johanna Brankaer, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

The only partially preserved text called "The Book of [Allogenes?]" from the Codex Tchacos represents its protagonist in a situation of “oppression” from which it needs to be saved. The representation of a character's calling out for help and the answer it receives is also found in other Gnostic writings. In this paper I would like to explore some examples starting from (Allogenes) and extending my interest to the tale of Norea in HypArch and the repentance of (Pistis) Sophia in PS. Between these texts there are some striking resemblances as to the representation of the main characters, the situation in which they cry out for help and their interaction with a higher entity. Interestingly the call for help occurs at a moment where the protagonists already know they belong to the “saved”. Allogenes and (Pistis) Sophia can certainly be seen as “generic” characters; this might also be the case of Norea. I will argue how the “cry for help” might be a paradigm for some kind of liturgical epiclesis that was at some stage acted out by the people using these texts.


Healing in an Imperial Colony: Jesus and the Syrophoenician Woman in Mark
Program Unit: Jesus Traditions, Gospels, and Negotiating the Roman Imperial World
Kathleen Brennan, Brite Divinity School

The story of Jesus' encounter with the Syrophoenician woman in Mark 7:24-30 has often been interpreted in terms of a border crossing on the part of Jesus. The Syrophoenician woman is one of the few female characters in the gospel of Mark who has direct dialogue with Jesus; it has been interpreted as a way to empower the female voice in scripture. However, these interpretations can paint a picture of Jesus that is difficult to understand; one that puts him in a negative light, for he blatantly derides the woman. Jesus implies that she and her possessed daughter are nothing better than dogs waiting to be fed scraps (7:27). The story may be read in a different light. Mark's placement of the story in the region of Tyre and Sidon and Jesus" encounter with this particular woman suggest that Jesus" entering, occupying the space, and ultimately, even his healing function as a hidden transcript to subvert and respond to the larger Roman (and Tyrian) imperial context. Literarily, in the story of Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman, Mark provides for his community a space for a hidden transcript and a means to resist, even if subtly, themes of domination. Through an explication of New Testament studies and the work of James Scott, an exploration of Mark's story of the Syrophoenician woman through her social status and the geopolitical status of the story"s context, it will be revealed that the actions and words of Jesus function as a hidden transcript of resistance and for Mark, function to continue to reveal who Jesus is in light of the larger Roman imperial context. A further ironic twist is contained in the words and actions of the Syrophoenician woman herself.


Who God Is Not: An 'Idolic' Reading of Isaiah 45:18–19
Program Unit: Book of Isaiah
Ginny Brewer-Boydston, Baylor University

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Abundant Mercy and/or Abounding Favor: Reflections on Paul's Gospel
Program Unit: Pauline Theology
Cilliers Breytenbach, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

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The Analysis of Sound Patterns: Exploiting Aural Exegesis of Ancient Texts
Program Unit: Performance Criticism of the Bible and Other Ancient Texts
Jeffrey E. Brickle, Urshan Graduate School of Theology

In recent decades, biblical scholars have become increasingly attentive to the oral/aural nature of ancient texts. In antiquity, texts were typically performed before audiences by being read aloud or recited from memory. Authors thus composed principally for the aural medium, incorporating an array of sound patterns that facilitated retention, interpretation, and response. Although noteworthy advances have been made in identifying these patterns and investigating their role in the composition and auditory reception of documents, the potential of aural exegesis for probing biblical texts still remains largely untapped. This paper attempts to redress this issue by describing various aural devices and underscoring ongoing efforts by scholars to develop methodological approaches to sound analysis. It will also consider how the nature of Greek grammar and syntax lends itself well to aural manipulation, and ways in which pronunciation impacts the overall enterprise. The paper seeks to stimulate discussion on how ancient works were composed for the ear as well as promote the further refinement and application of aural exegesis to biblical texts.


Binitarianism in Justin Martyr: The Exposition of Isaiah 11 and 1 Corinthians 12
Program Unit: Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity
Anthony Briggman, Marquette University

Over the last hundred years scholars have debated the degree to which Justin Martyr distinguishes the activity and identity of the Word and Spirit. This paper connects and builds upon the studies of E.R. Goodenough (The Theology of Justin Martyr) and C. Oeyen (“Die Lehre der göttlichen Kräfte bei Justin,” Studia Patristica 11 (1972): 215-21) to establish Justin's common classification of the Word and the Spirit as “Powers.” As a result of this classification, Justin interprets Isa 11:1-3 and 1 Cor 12:8-10, 28 as expressing a Spirit-Christology, which reveals in him a binitarian orientation. The presence of a binitarian tendency in Justin's logic explains why he fails to distinguish the identities of the Word and the Spirit in Dialogue with Trypho 39 and 87-88.


Gender, Slavery, and Technology: The Shaping of the Early Christian Moral Imagination
Program Unit:
Sheila Briggs, University of Southern California

From where did early Christians get their sexual ethics? The major but often neglected source was their experience of daily life in the Roman Empire. This experience included the all-pervasive institution of slavery and the sexual exploitation it entailed. Both enslaved persons and sexual exploitation were literally on show in the amphitheatre, where Christians found themselves caught up in the spectacle--both as audience and as victim. Those brutal and often sexual spectacles had a profound effect on the sensibilities of ancient people, including Christians. Their moral imagination was shaped by the amphitheater and what went on inside it, and the amphitheater's influence on their attitudes toward slavery, sexuality and much else would long outlast the Roman Empire. The amphitheater's messages about the character of enslaved people, their sexual availability, their promiscuity, and their criminality still haunt the predominantly Christian society of contemporary America.


Jew against Jew: The Critique of Some Pharisees in the Sayings Tradition Q
Program Unit: Q
Edwin K. Broadhead, Berea College

Recent debates about the character and compositional history of the Sayings Tradition Q sometimes pose sapiential materials over against eschatology. Some argue that sapiental material is foundational to Q and to Jesus, while eschatological material is a later alteration. The implications of some forms of this proposal are noteworthy: the lack of parallels implies the Cynic Jesus is essentially non-Jewish. Seeking to move beyond the false dichotomy of wisdom versus eschatology, this paper argues that the thoroughly Jewish nature of the Sayings Tradition Q—and thus the Jewish identity of its tradents—is laid bare in its critique of some Pharisees. While the Pharisaic heritage is seemingly affirmed, the practice of specific opponents is condemned. This is particularly evident in Q 11.39-42. Jesus does not condemn tithing and vessels of purity: indeed, he expands these images by connecting them to mercy, justice, and integrity. Opponents are criticized for not pursuing the ethical dimensions of regulations and piety. In essence, they are criticized for not being Jewish enough. The second critique addresses the heritage of Israel. Jesus is portrayed as the persecuted prophet and the rejected messenger of Wisdom. Opponents are critiqued for their rejection of a figure who embodies key themes in Israel's story. In essence, they fail to be properly grounded in Jewish history. These lines of critique confirm what other evidence suggests: the Sayings Tradition originates among followers of Jesus who locate themselves fully within a prophetic strand of Judaism. Moreover, the Sayings Tradition is noteworthy for what it does not say. Various issues which elsewhere strain the relationship with other Jews are notably missing from this discourse. Both the tone of debate and the conspicuous silence testify to the Jewish quality of the Sayings Tradition Q and to the Jewish identity of its tradents.


Facing Death and Drawing Followers (Luke 9:51–62): An Adaptation of Elijah (1 Kings 19; 2 Kings 1:1–2:5 ) Not of L or Q
Program Unit: Formation of Luke and Acts
Thomas L. Brodie, Dominican Biblical Institute, Limerick

Luke's dramatic account of how Jesus first faces death/assumption (9:51-57) and then encounters would-be followers (9:57-62) is often said to be based on two hypothetical sources—L (Luke's special source) and Q. However, close inspection shows that Luke's text is a distillation and adaptation of the texts concerning Elijah"s facing of death and assumption (2 Kings 1:1-2:6; 1 Kings 19). The likelihood of such adaptation is increased by the overall context: Luke"s general imitation of the LXX; Luke"s unique similarity of overall structure to that of the Elijah-Elisha narrative—balancing halves bridged by an assumption, the only instance of such structure in ancient literature; and the placing of Elijah"s name at key places (Luke 1:17; 4:25-27). The paper summarizes the criteria for establishing literary dependence, and then, in applying the criteria, indicates in some detail how Luke has systematically adapted the older text to develop the narrative concerning Jesus. To explain this Lukan text, therefore, Q is unnecessary.


Anxiety and Pseudepigraphy: Textual Longevity and Organic Literacy
Program Unit: Pseudepigrapha
George J. Brooke, University of Manchester

This paper is an attempt to appreciate that many of the discourses of the Second Temple period and beyond that are captured in various written forms with pseudonymous attribution, implied or actual, have textual characteristics that show them to be in ongoing dialogue with worlds beyond the columns of writing. To free some of those compositions from the tyrannical anxieties of modern historical criticism this paper will explore various reading strategies that will allow pseudepigraphy to be seen as a hallmark of integrity through which literary traditions are given length of days. Amongst such strategies will be reflections on textual influence and literary borrowing; on intertextual, hypertextual and hypotextual constructions; on oral and written cultural pointers; on the primacy of ongoing processes of renewal; and on texts as transitional objects.


Charismata in an Anti-Christian Midrash? The Case of Simon Peter
Program Unit: Society for Pentecostal Studies
Buzz Brookman, North Central University

This paper considers a rather obscure, minor midrash in which Simon Peter plays the lead role. While the midrash is seemingly an anti-Christian polemic, it portrays Simon Peter in a rather curious and positive light. Within the text Simon heals the sick, raises the dead, and manifests the bat kol. In addition, there is a scene in which Peter, while in the Temple, performs a rather curious ritual. Whereas in early Christian literature one hears of charismata, how might non-Hellenized Jews have conceptualized the nomenclature necessary to articulate had they, in fact, been witnesses to signs and wonders? This little-known midrash, with a complicated history, presents a rather intriguing look at charismata manifested through the Apostle Peter from a later, Jewish perspective.


Early Christian Canon Law on Enslaved Women
Program Unit:
Bernadette Brooten, Brandeis University

Can chastity coexist with the institution of slavery? Rarely. The early bishops who created church discipline did not intervene in the sexual dynamics of slavery, in sharp contrast to their extensive penalties for other sexual infractions. They knew that Christian masters legally controlled the bodies of their slave women in every way. Such Christian authors as Lactantius, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine vehemently (although rarely) discouraged Christian masters from sex with their slave women. Ultimately, however, the creators of early canon law hesitated to undermine slavery. Thus, the 4th-C. Synod of Gangra anathematized those who encourage enslaved persons to flee their owners. Basil of Caesarea (4th C.) acknowledged that masters can force sex on their slave women, but chose not to penalize Christians for so doing, instead simply pronouncing these slave women not guilty (canon 49). Further, Basil defined enslaved women's choosing their own partner without the owner's permission as a “great sin” (canon 18; cf. 40, 42). The 4th-C. Apostolic Constitutions placed the penalty of excommunication on Christians who refused to break off sexual relations with an enslaved person, but did not penalize them for having had such relations. Basil and the AC did not define the problem as the harm to the enslaved person. Instead, they left enslaved women and men without community protection, leaving them on their own to try to fend off a master"s assault, to submit to the master"s choice of sexual partner, or to refrain from a relationship with a free person (which could have improved their lot in life). Enslaved Christian women may well have resisted and sought to create their own Christian mode of bodily holiness, such as by fleeing slavery, by choosing their own life partners, or by persisting in a relationship with a free person.


Divine and Human Agency in the Corinthian Correspondence
Program Unit: Pauline Theology
Alexandra R. Brown, Washington and Lee University

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Fifty Years of Befuddlement: Ten Enduring Misconceptions about the “Secret” Gospel of Mark
Program Unit: Synoptic Gospels
Scott G. Brown, University of Toronto

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Image of God and Ground: Humanity's Place(s) in Creation
Program Unit: Ethics and Biblical Interpretation
William P. Brown, Columbia Theological Seminary

The Hebrew Bible offers a variety of perspectives for understanding creation and particularly for discerning humanity's place and role. As a preliminary step toward constructing a biblical environmental ethic, this paper surveys and synthesizes the various perspectives.


Memories, Myths, and Historical Monuments: Their Diversity and Development in the Psalms
Program Unit: Biblical Hebrew Poetry
Craig Broyles, Trinity Western University

In the Psalms we must distinguish collective memory from individual memory. Generally the lament psalms of the individual do not share in the corporate traditions, such as those related to divine kingship or “salvation history.” Instead, they appeal to “my God,” that is, the personal guardian deity who is expected to answer when called upon. Their vows of praise and the subsequent expression of that praise in the individual thanksgivings endeavor to memorialize God's rescue on behalf of individuals. Not until the exile are Israel's collective memories incorporated into psalms of the individual. Some of Israel"s most ancient memories, such as those of Shaddai and Elyon, have been conserved in corporate poetry. The corporate memories of pre-exilic psalmody include both historical deliverances and mythological symbols, such as the kingship of the God of the skies and the inviolable sacred space of Zion. We might expect a lack of memory to correlate with lament and a rich memory with praise, but the corporate lament psalms are actually structured upon memory, because it is the memories of God"s earlier deliverances and promises that engender high expectations for the present. In the postexilic psalms the historical, collective memories predominate, where they conform to the pentateuchal pattern. And the nature of Yhwh"s rule is reshaped from cosmic kingship over chaotic forces to political kingship over Israel and the nations. Finally, we shall observe how psalmic poetry tends to “typify” historical memories by omitting particulars and by foregrounding God"s activity, even to the point of ascribing to God"s intervention events that are simply narrated in the Pentateuch as an incidental chain of events. By means of these shifts the praise of God is heightened and the collective memories become ready paradigms for worshipers to interpret their own individual and collective experiences of God.


Performing Myth, Performing Midrash at Rabbinic Meals
Program Unit: Meals in the Greco-Roman World
Jonathan Brumberg-Kraus, Wheaton College

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The Cost of Utopia: The Violence and Vision of Jeremiah in a Postcolonial Perspective
Program Unit: Writing/Reading Jeremiah
Mark Brummitt, Colgate Rochester Divinity School

One may trace in the book of Jeremiah a theological trajectory driving from or through the destruction of pre-exilic Judah (functioning as an exemplar of religious shortsightedness) to the (still-future) establishment of an idealized nation in “new covenant” with its God. The considerable pain and loss involved in this process—expressed time and again in lament—means that far from being a liberation from tragedy this is a liberation in which tragedy is an important component. But one may then ask whether this end, however superior in relation to the point of origin, justifies such a violent journey. Given that the agent of destruction is a divinely endorsed (then overturned) empire and the theology (in which Yhwh is the ultimate king) imperially structured, in this paper I shall in part frame the question and subsequent discussion in relation to postcolonial critiques and enquiries. From such a perspective lament is recognized as the voice of those experiencing the force of empire under Babylon (the force of Yhwh through his servant Nebuchadnezzar?): a voice that protests against unquestioning alignment with the violent vision (tendenz) of the book.


The Creation of False Texts within a False Text: Authorial Deception in the Epistle of Titus
Program Unit: Religious World of Late Antiquity
Debra Bucher, University of Pennsylvania

The Epistle of Titus, a fifth century Latin text concerning the appropriate behavior of male and female ascetics, is a false text filled with an extraordinary number of quotations of other false texts and biblical material alike. It is preserved in a codex, itself containing even more false texts, meant to instruct late-eighth century clergy. In the Epistle of Titus, we find the use of quotations circulating under the names of authoritative figures such as Elijah, Peter, Paul, and Thecla. For the author, and presumably the audience, of the Epistle of Titus, the “false” texts hold as much authority as the biblical material. The author envisions no hierarchical division between types of sources. So, while some may call his source material “false,” in this paper I suggest that the falsehood occurs in the re-formulation of the material for the author's ascetic agenda. The often subtle and deceptive re-fashioning of his “false” sources allowed the author to make himself the authority for correct ascetic practice. The two examples that are the focus of my paper are sources attributed to figures who were already established as ascetic authorities in Christianity: Peter and Elijah. The use of a story about Peter and the daughter of a gardener demonstrates how the author augments a source in order to assert his own ascetic authority. The use of an Elijah apocryphon that details punishments awaiting sinners in a tour of hell exemplifies the adoption of a visionary version of hell in order to deal with an ascetic problem. Both of these examples show the author's deft and deceptive editorial work in using prestigious names and texts, false or otherwise, to assert his own ascetic agenda and, more importantly, his authority based on the power already accorded the names.


Some Remarks on the Reception of Septuagint Vocabulary Subsequent to the Translation of the Pentateuch
Program Unit: Greek Bible
Dirk Buchner, Trinity Western University

This paper will propose the following hypothesis: If Greek words assumed to be standard koine be given meanings-in-context by later Jewish and Christian authors, that correspond to their Hebrew counterparts in the Septuagint Pentateuch, then those meanings should be discounted for Septuagint lexicography until further evidence can be found. This hypothesis will be tested using data from the rest of the LXX, Philo, Josephus, the New Testament and beyond.


Unwelcome Fieldwork: Lady E. S. Drower on Oriental Jews and Christians
Program Unit: Ideological Criticism
Jorunn J. Buckley, Bowdoin College

Lady E. S. Drower (1879-1972) known as the foremost specialist on the Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran, also published much on other aspects of the Middle East. From the 1940s on, she was engaged in trying to publish her work Water into Wine, a fieldwork-based book on comparative ritual meals in the Middle East. In the form that Drower envisioned it, the book was never published, for the 1956 Water into Wine (London: John Murray ) was forced to omit almost all of the Jewish material, and to tone down much in the descriptions of Middle Eastern Christian rituals. In 1989, I helped publish the censored Jewish section in a volume edited by J. Neusner and E. S. Frerichs. As keeper of the Drower archives and as editor of selections of Drower's scholarly correspondence, I will show why Drower's Jewish material was excised from Water into Wine, and why some of the Oriental Christian material made Christian authorities in England very edgy. The large heap of Drower"s correspondence on Water into Wine stems from 1943-1972, and it shows that Western Orthodox Jews, defensive of Israeli political objectives after 1948, wanted no information on ongoing Oriental forms of Judaism, and that Christian authorities in England saw “pagan survivals” in Oriental Christianity as a threat. Importantly, Oriental Jews and Christians were not hostile to Drower"s fieldwork in their cultures, but Western Jews and Christians, in “colonialist” fashion, appointed themselves as dogmatic defenders of Biblical uniqueness. This paper presents a view into censorship in scholarship; into politics and the Bible; and into the issues of ownership of the Biblical traditions. Quotations from Drower"s correspondence on Water into Wine demonstrate how such censorship was active in mid-20th century England.


Biblical Interpretation in Byzantine Iconography and Hymnography
Program Unit: Bible and Visual Art
Bogdan G. Bucur, Duquesne University

Augustine's novel interpretation of biblical theophanies spread throughout the Christian West. East of the Adriatic, however, the pre-Augustinian (and indeed pre-Nicene) exegesis of biblical theophanies remained normative. Its most fascinating expression is not found in the sophisticated theology of the councils (which makes relatively little use of it), but rather in iconographic depictions and in their florid hymnographic counterpart. In our joint presentation we intend to discuss the manner in which Byzantine and Armenian iconography and Western Bible illuminations “re-present” the biblical accounts of Paradise, the patriarchal narratives, the exodus and the giving of the Law, and the various throne-visions, and how this exegesis corresponds closely to the exegesis present in Byzantine hymnography. We argue that hymnographic and iconographic exegesis can be understood as a case of “rewritten Bible,” and that, shaped by the ascetic and liturgical context of the Byzantine melting-pot, this biblical exegesis is also a matter transfigurative vision and liturgical participation in the text.


Sinai and Zion and Tabor: A Byzantine Perspective on Entering the Bible
Program Unit: Theological Interpretation of Scripture
Bogdan G. Bucur, Duquesne University

A less explored strand in the reception history of the synoptic account of the Transfiguration understands the latter not simply as a vision that the disciples have of Christ, but as a vision of Christ granted to Moses and Elijah, which is also witnessed by the disciples. Relating the Sinai theophany and the Transfiguration on Tabor was crucially important for early Christian theology: it underlay the Christian appropriation of the Hebrew Bible as "Old Testament"; it lent itself to polemical use against monarchianism; finally, through Romanos the Melodist, it was absorbed into Byzantine festal hymnography and thereby into the mainstream of theology as performed and experienced in liturgy. Similar interpretative strategies are at work in early Christian works and later Byzantine festal hymns and icons that take up theophanies centering on God's throne in Zion (e.g., Isa 6; Ezek 1; Hab 3). Following the discussion of texts and images dealing with Sinai, Zion, and Tabor, I will sketch out a few ways in which today's readers can benefit, both exegetically and theologically, from the Byzantine hymnographic and iconographic exegesis.


What Counts as De-Judaization? Revisiting Rhetoric about Intergenerational Transmission of Customs and Laws
Program Unit: Construction of Christian Identities
Denise K. Buell, Williams College

I'll be drawing especially from texts such as the Acts of Thecla, the Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs, and the various recensions of the account of the Trial of Justin and his Companions to examine how these sources represent/appeal to the intergenerational transmission of customs and laws not only as a way to distinguish Christians from non-Christians (in these texts "gentiles") but also to define what it means to be Christian. I shall place these texts in conversation with modern discussions of where and how to identify "de-Judaization." Since "law" and intergenerational transmission are frequently invoked as features associated with ancient Judaism, I want to examine the question of de-Judaization by deliberate juxtaposition with "gentile" formations to sharpen our discussion of how we identify what even constitutes de-Judaization. In two of these texts, this can be explored also by means of how Paul gets represented or invoked.


The Excavation of Tell er Ras on Mount Gerizim
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
Robert J. Bull, Drew University

Prior to the close of the Tell Balatah (Shechem) Excavations, Director G. Ernest Wright of Harvard University asked Prof. Robert J. Bull of Drew University and a small team of volunteers to survey the area around the village of Balatah and the nearby northern slope of Mount Gerizim, for unrecorded archaeological materials. On the north face of Gerizim the survey team discovered sections of a severely eroded stairway, the steps of which were cut into the bedrock of the slope and their line of assent was from the walls of Neapolis (Nablus) to the top of the northernmost peak of Mount Gerizim. At the summit of that peak the survey examined and probed the artificial mound that is Tel er Ras. The tell at 831m is at the summit of the third highest peak and is located 700m due north of the highest and most central peak. Permission to excavate Tell er Ras was received from Dr. Awni Dajani, Director of the Department of Antiquities of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and later from Dr. Avraham Biran of the Israeli Department of Antiquities. We began excavations on July 26 1964. Excavations revealed two structures on the third highest peak of Mount Gerizim: (a) a Greek style temple surrounded by ashlar walls, built with Roman engineering in second century, both of which are referred to as Structure A. And (b) a very large block of coursed limestone slab rock and soft limestone mortar (huwwar) that measures 18.21m wide by 20.04m long with a bedrock base measurement of 381.32 square meters. The height of this structure, called Structure B, measures from its prepared bedrock trench to the top of the structure (at sixteen courses), a height of 8.58m. Structure B contains no internal structuring such as rooms or entrances. It is surrounded by a rectangular wall of small rock and mortar (no ashlars), both of which are referred to as Structure B. The second century AD Roman temple (probably built for Hadrian), Structure A, is built directly on a thick layer of lime mortar that also covers the top of Structure B. Structure B rests in a foundation trench cut into bedrock. The archaeology and identity of Structure A are reasonably clear, but the identity and archaeology of Structure B is subject to debate. When first uncovered, Structure B was thought to be only the foundation of Structure A, but later thought and archaeological inquiry suggested that Structure B was a center of worship for the Samaritans and possibly the Samaritan Altar.


A Consensus Religion in Tune with the Decalogue: Hugo Grotius's Biblical Hermeneutics
Program Unit: Use, Influence, and Impact of the Bible
Christoph Bultmann, University of Erfurt

From his early treatise on "the points of agreement between Christians" (Meletius sive de iis quae inter Christianos conveniunt epistola, 1611, ed. 1988), Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) tried, as a philosopher of religion and a natural-law theorist, to stear a course between a confessionalist overdetermination of religious ideas and a critical concept of so-called natural religion which would not do justice to the biblical tradition. Against this background, Grotius in his seminal work on international law, i.e., "The Rights of War and Peace" (De Jure Belli ac Pacis, 1625), refers to the decalogue as a point of reference for "the true Religion which has been common to all Ages". This, he claims, is "built upon four fundamental Principles" which are "expressed in so many Commandments of the Decalogue" (Book 2, Chap. 20, Sect. 45; ed. by R. Tuck, 2005, p. 1032). With this as well as several hundred further biblical references Grotius draws the biblical tradition into a philosophical debate about a universalist ethics which otherwise is mainly informed by ancient classical sources. Conversely, in his Annotations on the Old Testament (1644; as well as his Annotations on the New Testament, 1641/1650), he provides a rich array of quotations from classical authors in order to shed more light on the works of the biblical scribes. Grotius offers a model of biblical hermeneutics which aims at establishing an understanding of the biblical tradition according to which the "Prophets and Apostles" connect to the "poets and philosophers". His orientation towards basic religious principles and, corresponding with these, universal moral principles must be regarded an original response to the structure of the Decalogue.


And the Beat Goes On: Studying the Bible through the Lens of Music
Program Unit: African-American Biblical Hermeneutics
Theodore Burgh, University of North Carolina at Wilmington

Music is a universal that we find in countries ancient and modern. It is an artform, or what some would call a language, that helps to convey information, express ideas, and entertain. The biblical world, particularly the one from which the Hebrew Bible comes, displays cultures that creatively wove music into various facets of life. While the sounds of music from these past cultures are for the most part lost to us, scholars still employ this craft to gain insight regarding past lifeways. Archaeomusicology, also known as music archaeology, is the study of past cultures through examination of music, musical practices, and musical instruments. This sister discipline of ethnomusicology and archaeology employs interdisciplinarity to address questions regarding music and the past. With focus on the Hebrew Bible, this paper will explore how we can employ archaeomusicology and related disciplines to explore the biblical text and incorporate our findings in generating effective hermeneutics.


Q Material Unique to Luke
Program Unit: Q
Delbert Burkett, Louisiana State University

If Q was a source (or sources) used independently by Matthew and Luke, then some Q material included by one evangelist may have been omitted by the other. Reconstructions of Q therefore often include some material that occurs only in Matthew or only in Luke. A few scholars have tried to establish criteria for detecting Q material unique to one Gospel, but no criterion has been widely accepted. This paper attempts to formulate a more effective criterion, the criterion of style and theme. That is, if a passage unique to Matthew or Luke exhibits the same distinctive features of style and theme as Q material, the chances are good that it came from the same source. While this criterion would seem to offer the best method for identifying Q material unique to one Gospel, apparently no one has previously applied it in a systematic manner. This paper applies it to the Gospel of Luke. It identifies several passages unique to Luke that share distinctive recurring features of style and theme with Q. The chances are good therefore that these are Q passages that were included by Luke but omitted by Matthew.


Exploring Reading Strategies with Genesis 22
Program Unit: Academic Teaching and Biblical Studies
Rhonda J. Burnette-Bletsch, Greensboro College

This teaching tip employs a “bait-and-switch” technique in the presentation of Genesis 22, which is intended to help students recognize the unconscious reading strategies that readers often bring to biblical texts. Students in my introductory Bible classes (situated at a small, southern, church-related college) often resist passing judgment on biblical heroes who act in morally questionable ways and are most especially reluctant to condemn the morally questionable actions of God. For this reason, I find it helpful to start with parallel stories from nonbiblical contexts. In this case, before students read Genesis 22, I have them read aloud a version of Iphigenia's sacrifice in small groups. Each group is asked to imaginatively place themselves in the story as a different character (Agamemnon, Artemis, Iphigenia, or Achilles) and then answer a series of questions from that character's perspective. Almost inevitably, students condemn Agamemnon for agreeing to sacrifice his daughter and condemn Artemis for demanding the sacrifice (although, unlike Yahweh, she has an acknowledged motive). Responses to Iphigenia and Achilles usually range widely from empathy to scorn. Groups are then asked to read aloud Genesis 22 and find similarities between the classical and the biblical stories. Most students are able to connect Agamemnon to Abraham and Iphigenia to Isaac as well as identify basic similarities in the plot (e.g., child sacrifice averted by animal substitution). Interestingly, however, they often require prompting to connect Artemis to Yahweh and Achilles to Sarah. As discussion proceeds I make note of students" protests against similarly judging the biblical deity (e.g., “it was only a test”) and identify these arguments as reading strategies selectively applied to a particular text. I reinforce the exercise by briefly reviewing the reception history of this “moving text” in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim interpretive history.


What Is an Old Latin Manuscript?
Program Unit: Novum Testamentum Graecum: Editio Critica Maior
P. H. Burton, ITSEE, University of Birmingham, U.K.

Latin manuscripts of John have traditionally been divided into so-called Old Latin manuscripts and Vulgate manuscripts. However, this categorisation is not always a useful descripion of the facts. This paper seeks to evaluate alternative methods for categorising them, which may mean exploding the traditional categories.


Resurrection in Mark, or Not
Program Unit: Bakhtin and the Biblical Imagination
Austin Busch, State University of New York College at Brockport

In Mark, unlike the other canonical gospels, no one indisputably rises from the dead—not even Jesus himself, whose resurrection is only guaranteed by the ambiguous empty tomb (cf. Matt 28:11-15) and a young man proclaiming he has risen (16:1-8) (unless one presumes a lost ending). Indeed, while the other gospels both portray Jesus himself as risen and represent him raising others from the dead as well (cf. Matt 27:50-54; Luke 7:11-17; John 11:1-44 ), in Mark, on the contrary, Jesus actually insists that he does not resurrect a girl (5:39) even when he appears to be doing precisely that (5:21-24a, 35-43). And unlike the other Synoptics, Mark offers no information that belies that denial (cf. Matt 9:18; Luke 8:55). On the other hand, Mark's Jesus thrice prophesies that he will rise from the dead (8:31; 9:31;10:34) and his harshest rebuke of his disciples (9:33) follows immediately on the heels of the second prediction. As my analysis of 8:31-9:13 will show, this rebuke is intimately related to Peter's inability to understand Jesus" predicted resurrection, even though most scholars emphasize Peter"s resistance to Jesus" impending death. I shall draw on the theoretical writings of Mikhail Bakhtin to examine this grand tension Mark displays between narrative elements insisting on resurrection and those resisting it as a dialogue between voices articulating differing theological positions on life after death, and I shall consider the theological and literary implications of the evangelist"s decision to leave open-ended his dialogic discourse about whether or not Jesus does guarantee death"s defeat.


The Personal Nature of Biblical Characters
Program Unit: Theology of the Hebrew Scriptures
Martin J. Buss, Emory University

A prominent feature of biblical as of many other narratives is that the characters appearing in them are presented as "persons." What does that mean? The word "person" usually means that an internal process is attributed to the being described--even if only metaphorically, as in personification. The term can also refer to rights and duties, such as for a corporation. I propose that personification--in the Hebrew Bible as elsewhere--be understood metaphorically as expressing the dignity and agency of a being. A personal conception of God is then quite appropriate, especially since any description of God needs to be metaphorical. I will discuss levels of intrinsic dignity and agency in the Genesis creation account and related texts.


Solent litterae aliud uideri significare (Ambrosiaster, QVNT 127.12): An Attempt at Experiencing the Sensus Plenior with Ambrosiaster
Program Unit: History of Interpretation
Marie-Pierre Bussieres, University of Ottawa

As the president of SBL remarked in her 2006 plenary address, the earlier interpreters of the Scriptures—as those of today—were led “to ask of the biblical text: But what does this have to do with life today?” (C. Osiek, JBL 125 [2006] 5-22). In that context, interest in the sensus plenior has never really faded, as the bibliography of work done over the past decade (listed by Dunn, SR 36 [2007] 531-551) on this method of exegesis can attest. The debate surrounding the definition of this method often seems like a quadrature and the interest in it is largely theoretical: contemporary biblical interpretation does not really use the sensus plenior. Nevertheless, the definition of the sensus plenior as a “new literal sense” (thus the Pontifical Biblical Commission, The Scripture Document, 2002, p. 283) fittingly describes the historical perspective in which the 4th century Ambrosiaster tied the various books of the Scriptures with the catechesis of his time. Estimating the uerba of the Scriptures to be the res of the faith, this author very seldom allowed himself a typological commentary. Not that he failed to see prefiguration of the NT in the OT, but he certainly always tried to see “what it had to do with life” during his time. Accordingly, this author represents a good example of sensus plenior before the term existed. Ambrosiaster explains (127.12-13) the harmony he sees between the two Testaments. We"ll study his exegesis of this harmony in (notably) chapter 93, on the possession of the Spirit by the Apostles, and its parallel chapter 90 in the other extant version of the QVNT.


Hebrew Training and Teaching: The Next Generation
Program Unit: National Association of Professors of Hebrew
Randall Buth, Biblical Language Center, Israel

In the next generation efficient language teaching will require teachers who control the language and can use it fluently in the classroom. This has obvious implications for the training of teachers. Less obvious is the effect that this training has on language perception. Some of the grammatical categories and terms bandied about in a “grammar-translation” class appear in a different light when the language is used -- the grammatical Tower of Pisa looks different when gravity and background are added to the picture. The search for appropriate biblical Hebrew expression can lead to discoveries and corrections to the Tower. Finally, this training can lead to considerably higher levels of internalized language control than are attainable with grammar-translation. The obvious benefit here is a heightened language sensitivity in exegesis that can only benefit the field. That sensitivity comes from two sides. On the one side, there would be better control of what we currently see in our reference materials, On the other side, a less-visible side, students would more consciously interpret material from within internal oppositions, lexically, morphologically, syntactically. The meaning of a structure or lexeme is not just a second-language gloss, but also their relationship to other points within their morpho-semantic fields. All of this is merely to put into words why specialist students of literature the world over are expected to actively control the language of the literature that they study. So could biblical Hebraists.


Luke the Compiler and Writer: Evaluating Unnatural Greek, with a Special Look at Connectives
Program Unit: Formation of Luke and Acts
Randall Buth, Biblical Language Center, Israel

The discourse parameters of connectors have long been included in textlinguistics. However, sources and outside language interference create kinds of turbulence that raise special methodological problems. Luke has provided us with two works, his gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, that allow us to observe his diverse patterns in language use. Luke's use of connectives is measurably distinct in the gospel, in the first half of Acts, and in the second half of Acts. A concept of 'threshhold' is necessary to bring to a discussion of the connectives. Major connectives like ?a?, d?, ???, te, µ??, ???, t?te, ?ste, ????, and p???, will be joined to the boundary material of the genitive absolutes and the indefinite-subject ????et? clauses in order to present an integrated picture of what Luke is doing. Some of this data is incompatible with the common assumption that Luke was imitating the Septuagint. We will discuss the incongruencies within the connective framework, as well as associated structural phenomena, in order to highlight both non-Lucan features and data incompatible with the 'imitation' theory, This has implications for reading Luke. The surprise from this study may be that Luke is not trying to imitate the Septuagint, but in fact is partially smoothing out his souces.


The Influence of LBH B-R-R on the Greek Translators
Program Unit: International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies
Seulgi L. Byun, Cambridge University

The LXX rendered forms of the root B-R-R variously, often times diverging from the intended Hebrew meaning. In this paper, I shall argue that (1) most of the Greek translators were not aware of some of the BH meanings for B-R-R ('purify, cleanse', 'lye', 'grain', 'sharpen', etc.) and (2) that B-R-R underwent semantic change as early as LBH with e???e?t?´?/e???e´?? as the primary meaning for this root in the LBH and PBH periods. Thus, the translators of the LXX, minor Greek versions and Syr were often times adversely influenced by the LBH/PBH meaning of B-R-R where a BH meaning was intended.


Heavenly Sanctuary and Heavenly Sabbath in the Epistle to the Hebrews
Program Unit: Mysticism, Esotericism, and Gnosticism in Antiquity
Jared Calaway, Columbia University in the City of New York

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The Letter of Mithridates: A Neglected Item of Ancient Epistolary Theory
Program Unit: Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti
Robert Matthew Calhoun, University of Chicago

The ancient corpus of Greek letters attributed to Marcus Junius Brutus includes a cover letter by its second editor, who also composed pseudepigraphic responses on behalf of Brutus' correspondents. This letter includes discussion of ancient epistolary theory, as well as of the author's methods of composing pseudepigrapha. My presentation will (1) provide the first English translation of the cover letter; (2) wrestle with problems of authorship and dating; and (3) address its implications for our understanding of the canons of epistolary style and for the production of pseudepigrapha in the NT.


Peering inside Jeremiah: How Early Modern English Culture Still Influences the Way We Read Jeremiah
Program Unit: Writing/Reading Jeremiah
Mary Chilton Callaway, Fordham University

How might our historical context "this side" of historicist paradigms be a lens through which we unwittingly read ourselves into the book of Jeremiah? Significant progress in making visible our horizons of expectation has enriched Jeremiah studies, notably by untying the concept of literary coherence from its moorings in western literature. But invisible assumptions of course remain. This paper argues that the discourse of early modern English spirituality became inscribed onto the vernacular Jeremiah and still persists today. Two powerful cultural forces between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries intersected to create a new interpretive context. The first was an intense and wide-spread desire to cultivate the "innere man" through "inward beholding." The phenomenon is documented by the volume of devotional writings produced and consumed in early modern England that instructed readers in the practice of affective religion and "inwardness." The second cultural force, closely allied to the first, was translation of the Bible into English. Seeded by John Wycliffe's popular translation of the Vulgate in 1380 and flowering into several widely circulated translations in the sixteenth century, the English Bible was created in the cultural context of attention to the landscape of the inner self. The discourse of "inwardness" was inevitably mapped onto the biblical text. Much of it remains today, because the origins of the 1989 NRSV are in 1611. The vocabulary of "inwardness" was also carried forward in Robinson's 1836 translation of Gesenius" Lexicon, and remains in current editions of BDB. Examination of ways that Hebrew words were rendered into English and examples from the poetry of Jeremiah illustrate this history. Visuals from early English Bibles illuminate the historical context for a horizon of expectation still influencing readings of Jeremiah.


“Myth” and “Scripture”: From Dissonance to Convergence?
Program Unit: Bible, Myth, and Myth Theory
Dexter E. Callender Jr., University of Miami

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Antics at Antioch: The Genesis of Paul's Law-Free Gospel
Program Unit: Pauline Epistles
Douglas Campbell, Duke University

It is clear that the apostle Paul was largely responsible for developing the law-free mission to pagans in the early church—a radical praxis he had to defend on numerous occasions. Although not all Jewish practices were abandoned in the ethic Paul prescribed for converts to "Christianity" from paganism, key Jewish signature customs were, like circumcision and various dietary prohibitions. However, it is less clear just when Paul developed this extraordinary approach. Many scholars argue—or even just assume—that this transition took place on the road to Damascus, at the time of his call. And certainly this dovetails with any broader “Lutheran” explanation of Paul's gospel. I suggest, however, that three pieces of evidence indicate in concert that Syrian Antioch, not Damascus, was the critical locus. Hence, this radical approach also developed roughly three years after Paul's call (so somewhere from late 36-early 37 CE)—a significant problem for “Lutheran” readers of Paul. Prior to this point Paul's gospel seems to have preached full law observance. Those pieces of evidence are: (1) the broad narrative of Paul"s relationship with Jerusalem found in Gal. 1:18-2:10, including its silences; (2) the tell-tale rejoinder found in Gal. 5:11a; and (3) the intriguing comment made in Acts 11:26c. These largely overlooked snippets of evidence point together toward the intriguing conclusion that the transition to a law-free gospel for pagans took place in Syrian Antioch some time in the winter of 36-37 CE. Paul"s subsequent preaching and teaching then seems to assume this praxis, along with its sophisticated justification in terms of participatory eschatology, which should be dated to this location and time period as well.


The Samarian Chariotry
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
Deborah Cantrell, Vanderbilt University

Following the capture of Samaria, Sargon II took a large contingent of chariots and officers from the Israelite army and immediately redeployed them in the Assyrian forces. Some of these soldiers were promoted to high-level positions in the Assyrian army, with at least one of them becoming a provincial governor. How and why did these "horsemen of Israel" come to achieve greatness in Assyria? When was the Samarian chariotry formed and what was its function in Israel before Sargon arrived? This paper traces the archaeological and textual evidence for the development of the Samarian chariotry and discusses its role in the Israelite army and later the Assyrian army during the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.E.


Fourth Ezra in Space and Time
Program Unit: Rhetoric of Religious Antiquity
Greg Carey, Lancaster Theological Seminary

The literary apocalypses insist upon a reality that transcends the present phenomenological order. They locate that alternative reality in terms of space and/or time. This paper interprets Fourth Ezra in terms of Critical Spatiality Theory. Not only does this apocalypse envision a theoretical reality as an alternative to the present crisis of Jerusalem's devastation, it insists that its future and heavenly order transforms the present moment.


The Juxtaposition of Deuteronomy 27:26 and Leviticus 18:5 in Galatians 3:10–13
Program Unit: Intertextuality in the New Testament
James Carlson, Fuller Theological Seminary

This paper focuses on the juxtaposition of Deut 27.26 and Lev 18.5 in Galatians 3.10 and 3.12. Paul brings these two verses together conceptually and verbally in this passage, and thus I intend to examine other literature from ancient Israel's traditions to see how other texts juxtaposed these two verses. Deut 27.26 is quoted in Jeremiah 11.3-4; Leviticus 18.5 is quoted in Ezekiel 20.11, 13, 21; the latter is also quoted in Nehemiah 9.29, and Deut 27.26 seems to be quoted/alluded to in Nehemiah 10.29. I will compare and contrast this information with Paul to see if he has drawn on any of these interpretations or others.


Can the Academy Protect Itself from One of Its Own? The Case of Secret Mark
Program Unit: Synoptic Gospels
Stephen C. Carlson, Duke University

Fifty years ago, one of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century, Morton Smith, returned from a manuscript hunting expedition to Mar Saba with photographs of a text no one had ever heard of before—a sensational, even scandalous Secret Gospel of Mark. Though doubts about its attribution surfaced immediately, fifteen years later these doubts turned into questions of a modern forgery shortly after Smith published his authentication and interpretation of his text. As Quentin Quesnell, who challenged Smith's text in 1975, put it: “What Smith is able to "authenticate," the "mystifier" would have been able to imitate.” As a result, Secret Mark persisted in a state of limbo for another twenty years, until two books came out showing that it was Morton Smith's own fake, based in part upon finding anachronistic conceptions of early Christianity. The case of Secret Mark has engendered many mysteries, but it answers one puzzle well: Can the academy protect itself from one of its own, even one of its most brilliant members? As the events of the past few years indicate, the answer is yes: the academy can protect itself because it has something on its side that the faker lacks—the passage of time. As time passes on, we are able to stand on our predecessor"s shoulders and see the past better than even the sharpest minds of the previous generation.


Some Remarks on Rabbinic Echoes in Josephus's Diaspora Jewish Summary: Against Apion 2.190–219
Program Unit: History and Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism
George P. Carras, Washington and Lee University

This paper will consider Josephus' Against Apion 2.190 - 2.19 and investigate rabbinic connections between Josephus and the rabbis in this Hellenistic document. The practice of considering AG in relation to Jewish Hellenistic documents (notably Philo´s Hypthetica and the Ps.-Phocylides) is well-known. The most recent translation and commentary on AG in more than 80 years includes an appendix on potential sources of the document Bk 2.145-296. He investigates these Diaspora sources and a few that are Judean. What is striking however is that he does not investigate rabbinic connections. Indeed, one of the past studies to draw connections to rabbinic ideas in relation to AG 2.190-219 was Geza Vermes and this study appeared in 1982. In light of the newly produced commentary and translation by Barclay, it is timely to raise the question of connections and allusions to a body of material not pursued, the rabbinic ideas in AG, 2.190-219. First, most would agree that in some measure the paragraphs reflect admonitions drawn from a pool of Jewish traditions, Diaspora or Judean in nature. Second, rabbinic affinities are worth investigating since in Josephus´ Life he claimed that as part of his education he gained expertise in the philosophic schools and among them was the Pharisees. I have isolated nineteen paragraphs in which include rabbinic echoes are present in AG. I will first isolate the material and determine each idea´s literary trajectory - the idea´s origin and affinities, should they exist, in relation to shared rabbinic ideas. Then I will determine their relevance for a few literary, religious and historical issues surrounding Josephus as a Diaspora Hellenistic writer. For example, does the summary of the law reflecting rabbinic overtures share roots in Josephus´ early past - his Pharisaic dabbling? According to the Life he considered a few of the philosophical schools including the Pharisees but rejected them all before returning to Pharisaic ideals. Has the literary architecture of Jewish summary (AG 2.190ff) been recast for Diaspora sensibilities? If so, can reasons be postulated for inclusion of rabbinic echoes? Does the inclusion of rabbinic ideas inform us about issues of audience - Judean, non-Judean or both? Do the rabbinic echoes tell us anything about the degree to which Josephus was bound to Judaism during the period of his Roman Flavian allegiance?


Outside the Lines: Nuancing a “Biblical Ethic” of the Economically Marginalized
Program Unit: Ethics and Biblical Interpretation
Charles E. Carter, Seton Hall University, and Ki Joo Choi, Seton Hall University

Contemporary theological and ethical reflections on social justice have often based on a particular reading of YHWH's relationship with and commitment to the people of Israel. Rooted in the biblical narrative, this interpretation in turn places special emphasis on the treatment of the alien and/or economically marginalized and serves as the measure of a community's commitment to and embodiment of social justice. In this paper, Carter-a biblical scholar-and Choi-a Christian ethicist-provide a critical assessment of some of these theological and ethical appropriations of scripture that are foundational to this discourse. Using the concept of the preferential option for the poor as a test case, we examine ways in which contemporary biblical scholarship might deepen the Christian community"s understanding of the nature and complexity of God"s action in the world. In doing so we address several perplexing questions. To what extent is it appropriate to view Israel as the exemplar of the alien, marginalized, or outcast? Have some theological and ethical attempts at a scripturally-informed conception of social justice approached the biblical account of God"s treatment of Israel in a too unilateral fashion? How are we to understand texts that present God as showing a preferential concern toward Israel while “othering” Israel"s neighbors? Can Israel serve as an example of God"s concern for the alien and economically marginalized when its own social institutions favored the elite over the “righteous poor”? Is it possible that a more nuanced reading of biblical traditions would destabilize conventional conceptions of “biblical social justice”? And might scripture even “disempower” itself as a concrete source of moral understanding with respect to economic ethics? We close by addressing the prospects of scripture informing a meaningful call to social justice as a special concern for the outsider.


The Tyranny of the Golah Community: Exiling the “Other” and Constructing the “Past”
Program Unit: Exile (Forced Migrations) in Biblical Literature
Charles E. Carter, Seton Hall University

The last decade of Hebrew Bible scholarship has increasingly questioned the traditional consensus that the “exile” marked the turning point in Israelite history and self-understanding. Based in part on the framework proposed by C. C. Torrey in the early 20th century, Davies, Barstad, Grabbe, and Carroll, among others, have proposed an alternative understanding of the history of Israel and Judah in the late 8th through mid-fifth centuries. This paper examines the role of the golah community as a social and religious minority that promoted a vigorous recasting of identity through an ideology of exile in the aftermath of the deportations to Assyria and Babylon. It identifies ways in which the “golah group” and its ideology suppressed if not silenced alternative voices and eventually came to dominate the socio-religious landscape in the Persian period as reflected in the literature it produced and/or sanctioned.


Jesus and Pilate (John 18:28–19:16)
Program Unit: John, Jesus, and History
Warren Carter, Brite Divinity School, Texas Christian University

This paper will explore John's scene involving Jesus and Pilate, often refered to as Jesus' (Roman) trial. The central question to be engaged concerns whether the scene might function in any way as a source for information about the historical Jesus.


Christian Spectacle Revisited
Program Unit: Violence and Representations of Violence in Antiquity
Elizabeth A. Castelli, Barnard College

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Marius Victorinus's Theological Vocabulary and the Nag Hammadi Library
Program Unit: Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism
Serge Cazelais, Université Laval

This paper examines specific expressions and words used by Marius Victorinus, a platonic philosopher, theologian and master of rhetoric who lived in Rome in the second half of Fourth century. While he is still often considered as a link in transmission of porphyrian neoplatonic metaphysic, an important amount of rare words, expressions and concepts he used are attested in Nag Hammadi treatises. Some of these occurred in the Trimorphic Protennoia (hylical soul), in Eugnostos (masculofeminity of the second principle) and in the Gospel of Truth (the name of the Father is the Son) and many others. This is not surprising since Majercik, Tardieu and Turner showed that there is in Victorinus works a synoptic parallel with Zostrianos. The second part of this paper exposes the significance that took these materials and concepts in Victorinus and the links that he did with Biblical terminology will be exposed, especially with the book of Genesis and the Gospel of John. The last part of this paper examines the historical context in which Victorinus composed his work, that is the anti-arian Christological controversy and proposes some explanations to understand why so-called Gnostic terminology and concepts find their path into his theology.


Elaborated Tradition Revived? The Present God in Hellenistic Judaism, Greco-Roman Folk Religion, and Paul's Letters
Program Unit: Poster Session
Manuél Ceglarek, Georg-August-University, Göttingen

This poster will take a look on Paul's idea of the present God and parallels in the corpus of Hellenistic Judaism and ancient Greco-Roman folk religion. How was the present God imagined in important selected Hellenistic Jewish works? How eminent was the imagination of a present God for their content and major message? How are Gods present for Greco-Roman folk religion? How is God present in Paul's letters? How can we read the Pauline correspondence comparing it to ideas of the present God in Hellenistic Judaism? What are direct parallels and differences? The poster will sum up most recent research and will illustrate the importance of God's presence for the understanding of Paul"s letters.


Quinta in the Book of Canticles
Program Unit: International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies
Reinhart Ceulemans, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Although Origen's Hexapla occupies a rather prominent position in current Septuagint research, all its questions are still far from being answered. One aspect that still awaits scholarly consensus is that of the anonymous Greek versions Quinta, Sexta and Septima. The book of Canticles is one of the few biblical books for which variants from all three columns are preserved. Nevertheless the readings of this book have hitherto not received any attention whatsoever. In an attempt to fill this scholarly gap this paper addresses some aspects of Quinta, the text version named after its assumed position as the fifth Greek column. In Field's edition (1875) the book of Canticles features some forty Quinta readings. Some of them resemble readings from other minor versions, but others are rather peculiar. Some can be explained by a diverging Vorlage (see e.g. Ct 6,10), but others call for a closer analysis (see e.g. Ct 1,3). Field found the lion"s share of his Quinta readings in the Syro-Hexapla. Thanks to the manuscript evidence of the Greek catenae unknown by Field some of his retroversions can now be confirmed or adjusted by variants attested in Greek (e.g. Ct 1,4). This presentation firstly presents the briefest of overviews of the scholarly interpretations of the characterizations of Quinta, Sexta and Septima offered by Origenes (the famous prologue to several catenae on Psalms) and Eusebius (HE 6, 16, 2-3), resulting in some specific critical remarks on the interpretation given by Nautin (1977). Secondly a number of Quinta readings from the book of Canticles are examined, especially those for which the catenaric manuscript materials can update the evidence printed in Field. Thirdly and finally the conclusion demonstrates the way in which these readings can add to our knowledge of the Quinta version.


Technologies of Power and David's Rise: Using Foucault to Interpret 1 Samuel 16–2 Samuel 5 Sociologically
Program Unit: Social Sciences and the Interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures
David Chalcraft, University of Derby

What type of power is being exercised by various individuals and groups within the narrative of David's Rise and what can analysis of power convey about the narrative itself, its relations to social realities, and possible social realities themselves? I will experiment with the work of Foucault as a unique and important way of thinking about power and how it can be conceptualised and analysed (especially in a narrative). One consequence of using this approach will be to perhaps challenge what we (and other sociologists) commonly mean by power. The narrative might then be considered to be less about what David attains and at whose expense, and more about how power might and might not work/circulate -through techniques (e.g. disciplining the body; torture; surveillance), technologies, strategies, tactics, discourses- throughout Hebrew society (at this/various time/s). By noting that Foucault argued that certain types of power only emerged at specific historical junctures, and by critically locating Foucault's conceptions of power in relation to other sociological formulations (e.g. honour-shame models, Weber, Giddens), I will attempt to show (if time allows!) how a sociological imagination might operate to the benefit of both Biblical Studies and Sociology (the comparative analysis of power).


The Deity Bethel in Elephantine and the Hebrew Bible
Program Unit: Israelite Religion in its Ancient Context
R. Scott Chalmers, Judson University

This paper will explore the significance of the deity Bethel in Israelite religion. An examination of the places where this deity is most prominent, especially Elephantine, may help to locate a cult of this deity in the (former) Northern Kingdom after the Assyrian deportations. If the religion of the Elephantine community can be traced back to the (former) Northern Kingdom, what can that teach us about the religion of the Northern Kingdom itself before 722 BCE? Because the origins of Bethel seem to be closely linked with El, at a later time Bethel and Yahweh come to be virtually identified as well. Evidence for this can be seen in the divine names Anat-Yahu and Anat-Bethel found in the Elephantine Papyri, as well as the abundance of personal names with the theophoric element Bethel in those same texts. The close relationship of the religion of the Aramean community at Syene (with its temple of Bethel) with the worshippers of Yahu in Elephantine may also be traced back to the territory of the (former) Northern Kingdom. Finally, this paper will address the issue of whether or not the Hebrew Bible is aware of the existence of the deity Bethel. Unlike earlier research, I will contend that that there are no references to this deity prior to the Assyrian repopulation of the Northern Kingdom. While there is one explicit reference to the deity Bethel in the Hebrew Bible, (Jer 48:13), the LXX expansions of the Genesis texts dealing with Jacob and Bethel betray a concern that the sanctuary at Bethel not be associated with the deity that may have been revered there post 722 BCE. This new perspective may shed further light on the continual polemic against the sanctuary at Bethel in much of the Hebrew Bible.


The Beginning or the End? The End of Acts and the Beginning of Isaiah
Program Unit: Formation of Luke and Acts
J. Bradley Chance, William Jewell College

The paper explores Luke's use of Isa 6:9-10 in the context of Paul's concluding statement to the Jewish leaders of Rome (Acts 28:25-28). Do the concluding words of Paul close the door on an active mission to Israel or leave the door open? The paper argues that the exploration of the text within the larger context of these text's respective functions and locations in both Isaiah and Acts leads to the conclusion that the Jewish mission is, effectively, ended, while Israel's future in relation to God is not. The paper explores other texts within Luke-Acts that employ intertextual quotations of or allusions to Isaiah (e.g., Luke 3:4-6 and Isa 40:3-6; Luke 7:22-23 and numerous Isaianic echoes; Luke 13:22-30 and Isa 43:5-7; Acts 13:47 and Isa 49:6). These intertexts, combined with other texts rich in echoes from Jewish scripture and tradition (e.g., the Magnificat and Benedictus and texts such as Acts 3:17-26 [cf. Deut 18:15-18]) argue that Luke-Acts portrays the mission of Jesus and Jesus' earliest followers as inviting Israel to bring to an end its exile, an invitation that Israel rejects. Hence, the exile continues—in that sense, the "mission to Israel" is effectively ended. Yet, the promises offered in Isaiah that God will bring Israel's exile to an end remain in force, even if yet unrealized.


The Synoptic Gospels: Problem, Proposals, and Pedagogical Practice
Program Unit: Synoptic Gospels
J. Bradley Chance, William Jewell College

The paper explores pedagogical strategies for the introduction of the Synoptic Problem and applications of the critically orthodox Two-Source Hypothesis in an undergraduate, liberal arts context, most specifically a general education course pitched at non-majors. The goal of the exploration of the Synoptic Problem, its 'solution," and applications is to lead students to understand the crucial role that humanly constructed observations and hypotheses play in understanding the nature of texts that students and much of western culture consider sacred, as well as how one understands the figure to whom these texts point, Jesus of Nazareth.


Disputed Issues in the Study of Cities, Villages, and the Economy in Jesus' Galilee
Program Unit: Historical Jesus
Mark A. Chancey, Southern Methodist University

This paper will explore specific economic issues in rural-urban relations in first century Galilee and how these illuminate our understanding of the historical Jesus.


Love Your Neighbor as Yourself (Leviticus 19:18b) in Early Jewish-Christian Exegetical Practice and Ethical Formulation
Program Unit: Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity
Christopher N. Chandler, University of St. Andrews-Scotland

The exhortation to “love your neighbour as yourself” from Leviticus 19:18b is a central maxim of Jesus and the early Christian movement. Yet the meaning of this expression attributed to Jesus and the NT authors is often taken for granted as a universalizing principle. The central ethic of the Jesus movement, "love," is therefore either understood as a kind/gentle attitude or is left rather undefined and vague. This discussion needs more nuance. Drawing upon Jewish exegetical traditions surrounding Leviticus 19:15-18, I shall suggest that both Jesus and his brother James understand Leviticus 19:18b not merely as a summary of the entire Torah, but firstly as a summary of the laws governing just legal judging in Leviticus 19:15-18a. Although Paul and Luke, engaged as they are in the Gentile mission, apply with rigour this principle of "love" in a much broader universalizing manner in order to promote inclusiveness among Jewish/Gentile relations, this interpretation of the love commandment should not necessarily be assumed to be the sole view or use of Lev 19:18b in every case in the NT. The conclusion argued for in this paper, therefore, is that “love your neighbour as yourself” was not only viewed by early Jewish Christians as an ethical principle of universalizing peaceful relations between ethnicities, but was also seen to have ethical implications to do justice to one's neighbour in the judicial system as well.


Jesus and James on Justice in the Courts: A Reconsideration of the Ward/Allison Proposal
Program Unit: Letters of James, Peter, and Jude
Christopher N. Chandler, University of St. Andrews-Scotland

When interpreters of James come to the discussion about the seating of the rich and the poor in 2:1-13, they are faced with two interpretive options. The majority of recent interpreters, based upon parallel passages in later church orders, opt to understand this to be about seating arrangements in an early Christian worship service. A minority position, which is often noted but rarely taken seriously, is that 2:1-13 depicts an ancient judicial setting between two litigants. This latter position was argued for by R. B. Ward in his 1966 dissertation and a subsequent article in 1969. D. C. Allison demonstrated convincingly in 2000 that Ward's position, far from being new, was a viable interpretive option among a majority of scholars prior to the 20th century. This paper seeks to build upon the "Ward/Allison" thesis that 2:1-13 depicts an ancient litigious scene in two ways: 1) by demonstrating a significant but rarely noticed parallel between James 2:1-13 and Matthew 7:1-5, and 2) by uncovering the exegetical underpinnings of both of these passages in their halakhic, midrashic engagement with Lev 19:15-18—a section of laws governing just legal judging. Some of the theological implications such an interpretive shift of 2:1-13 might have upon the discussion of faith and works in James 2:14-26 may also be explored.


The Roman-Byzantine Transition at Decapolis Abila and the Rise of Christianity in the Transjordan
Program Unit: Archaeological Excavations and Discoveries: Illuminating the Biblical World
David Chapman, Covenant Theological Seminary

With its fertile location, twin tells, and proximity to trade routes, Abila (modern Qweilbah) was considered an eminent Decapolis city. Archaeological work at the site since 1980 has verified the importance of Roman Abila. Yet, the Byzantine finds are even more substantial. In particular, the social significance of Byzantine Christianity is manifest through the five impressive Byzantine churches currently under excavation. This paper illustrates the social implications of this transition from the Roman to the Byzantine era in the Transjordan as reflected at Abila.


Bodmer Papyrus and Ode of Solomon 11: What Function or Functions Did the Collection Serve?
Program Unit: Function of Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
James H. Charlesworth, Princeton Theological Seminary

Bodmer Papyrus V (= VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XX) contains canonical and extra-canonical texts, thereby warning that these categories are misleading. Who and for what reason would one bring together the following texts: Nativity of Mary (V), Jude 1-25 (VII), 1-2 Peter (VIII), Psalms 33-34 (IX), 3 Corinthians (X), Ode of Solomon 11 (XI), a liturgical fragment (XII), Melito of Sardis" Peri Pascha (XIII), and Apology of Phileas (XX)? What seems “common” to all these texts, if anything? Who brought the texts together, and what function did the collection serve? What collections antecede this collection; do excerpted texts at Qumran help explain the need for a “canon” or rule for study or devotion? Is the question of function crucial for warning us that our concepts need improvement?


The Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the Jacobite Syriac Tradition
Program Unit: Christian Apocrypha
Tony Chartrand-Burke, York University

Though composed in Greek, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (IGT), in its earliest form, is best represented in Syriac. The first published Syriac manuscript of IGT is of considerable antiquity: the sixth-century Br. Libr., Add. 14484 published in 1865 by W. Wright. It contains the fifteen-chapter version of the text believed to be closer to IGT's original form than the nineteen-chapter version well-known to readers of the text. Three additional Syriac manuscripts have appeared over the past century: Göttingen, Universitätsbibliothek, Syr. 10 (fifth/sixth-century), Vat. syr. 159 (dated 1622/1623 and published, in part only, in a French translation), and an unnamed thirteenth/fourteenth-century manuscript published by E. A. Wallis Budge. None of these manuscripts contain the entire text. But the entire text can be found in manuscripts of the so-called Jacobite tradition of the Life of Mary. This compilation features the Protevangelium of James, the Vision of Theophilus, IGT, and the Assumption of the Virgin. To date, this tradition is known in at least eight manuscripts, though they have yet to be analyzed and published. This paper will provide an overview of the publishing history of the Syriac tradition of IGT, an edition of the text from the Jacobite Life of Mary manuscripts, and an assessment of what this new version of the text contributes to our knowledge of this gospel.


Retelling Ruth's and Naomi's Journeys Home
Program Unit: The Bible in Ancient (and Modern) Media
Emily Cheney, Spelman College

A number of modern authors have retold the book of Ruth. Their retellings of this book range from embellishing the setting and the characters" motives in the biblical account to contemporizing the book by placing the setting in a U.S. town. For example, Brett Lott's A Song I Knew By Heart (2004) focuses on Naomi's internal psychological struggle as she moves from Massachusetts to South Carolina, and Nancy Crowe's New Bethlehem Road (2002) characterizes Ruth and Boaz as a lesbian couple in Indiana. Lois Henderson"s Ruth: A Novel (1981) and Francine Rivers" Unshaken Ruth (2001), on the other hand, attempt to follow the biblical narrative closely, but nonetheless have also transformed the narrative in order to make it meaningful and relevant to modern readers. Through examining the setting, the plot, and the characters, this paper will focus on how several modern novelists have transformed yet preserved the book of Ruth as a story that displays how two women enable each other to rebuild their lives and how modern readers can do the same. The novels examined will include Lois Henderson"s Ruth: A Novel (1981), Brett Lott"s A Song I Knew By Heart (2004), Francine Rivers" Unshaken Ruth (2001), Nancy Crowe"s New Bethlehem Road (2002), Lee Ann Setzer, Gathered: A Novel of Ruth (2003), Nora Hobbs" Ruth: The Moabite (2006), and Eva Etzioni-Halevy"s The Garden of Ruth (2007).


Erasmus, Luther, and the Hermeneutics of Pauline Theology
Program Unit: Pauline Epistles
Stephen Chester, North Park Theological Seminary

Apparently limited exegetical disagreements are sometimes indicative of far deeper differences. Such an instance can be found in the early years of the Reformation. Erasmus and Luther understand the nature of the dispute at Antioch (Gal. 2:11ff.), particularly the motivations of Paul and Peter, differently. These exegetical contrasts reflect deep hermeneutical differences concerning the nature of the Bible and the correct approach to its interpretation. The first half of the paper traces these hermeneutical differences through Erasmus' and Luther's writings against one other in the mid-1520s. In the second half of the paper an assessment is made of the relevance of their hermeneutical differences for contemporary Pauline theology. Although some aspects appear redundant, others remain germane. The discussion focuses firstly on the issue of the appropriate goal(s) of Pauline theology. Despite the centrality of Paul's texts for their arguments, neither Luther nor Erasmus construct a Pauline theology in the modern sense. In dialogue with Douglas Campbell's recent book 'The Quest for Paul's Gospel' it is suggested that the quest for a theological center underlying Paul's texts serves ultimately only to distract from the task of theologically interpreting the texts themsleves. The issue of conflict in interpretation is also repeatedly raised by Erasmus and Luther. Here criteria are identified for evaluating competing interpretations and it is argued that, although still important, historical plausibility is not the only one. The paper is an attempt to use the intellectual resources provided by two great figures of a previous era to think constructively about the task of Pauline theology today.


Jesus, the Alleged Nazirite
Program Unit: Biblical Law
Bruce Chilton, Bard College

Within the New Testament's portrayal of the status of being a Nazirite, there is a marked difference between a direct and practical depiction, and an evidently metaphorical characterization. Descriptions in Acts, seconded by Paul, agree with what may be surmised, on the basis of Josephus and Rabbinic literature as well as Numbers 6, of how the vow was kept in Second Temple Judaism. The Synoptic Gospels, however, identify Jesus as a Nazirite, although he nowhere dedicates himself as such, and regularly engages in conduct contrary to the requirements of Numbers 6. This conflict of presentations tells against the view that Jesus was a literal Nazirite, and suggests a contradiction within the practices and sources of earliest Christianity, which it is the purpose of this paper to trace.


Jacob Neusner and the Study of Comparative Religion and Theology
Program Unit: History and Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism
Bruce Chilton, Bard College

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The Death of Herod (Acts 12:19b–23) in Jewish and Hellenistic Religious Contexts
Program Unit: Korean Biblical Colloquium
Jaecheon Cho, University of Notre Dame

Luke's account of the death of Herod has multiple functions within the entire narrative of the book of Acts. It is not by chance that the scene marks the division by which the book is structured into two parts. The series of events reported in chapter 12 occasions the opening of the first full scale Gentile mission by Paul (12:24-25). In form, the Lukan narrative resembles many other Death of Tyrant type-scenes from Greco-Roman and Jewish literature, all conveying a theological message of divine retribution. Luke's message in this story should be read against backdrop of the contemporary religious milieu. Our investigation of the Hellenistic ruler cult and its developed form in the Roman imperial cult enables us to contextualize the religious consciousness and behaviors of both Herod and his subjects.


Sticks and Stones: The Economy of Roman Galilee in Its Physical Environment
Program Unit: Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy
Agnes Choi, Wycliffe College, University of Toronto

Early studies of the ancient economy, which were primarily concerned with the question of whether it was modernistic or primitivistic, can be characterized as “low magnification,” for the economy of the Empire as a whole was discussed in broad and general terms. More recently, however, there has been an increasing awareness of the need for “high magnification” studies, that is, studies not of the economy, but of the economy of a particular region and at a particular time. Literary and material evidence have contributed to our understanding of the economy in certain regions. Nevertheless, there are practical limits to the contributions that these bodies of evidence can make. With respect to literary evidence, their provenance is neither assured, nor is their interpretation undisputed. With respect to material evidence, as not all sites can be excavated and not all materials are preserved, it can never provide an exhaustive view of a region. Thus, another source of data must be tapped, for even when literary evidence is augmented by material evidence, our knowledge about the economy of a region remains incomplete. Agricultural goods constituted a significant sector of the ancient economy. As agricultural products require certain conditions in which to grow and as soils and environment of different regions are marked by different features, the fields of pedology, the study of soils, and of climatology allow a determination to be made concerning the limits that the physical environment placed upon the agrarian sector of particular regions. Using the regions within Lower Galilee as test cases, this paper will argue that the limits of the physical environment of a region impacted the region's economy as well.


Choosing a Speciality: An Investigation of Regional Specialization in Galilee
Program Unit: Historical Jesus
Agnes Choi, University of Toronto

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The Naked Body's Cry: A Resistance to Theatrics of Terror
Program Unit: Bible and Cultural Studies
Jin Young Choi, Vanderbilt University

This presentation's primary concern is with the body in prisons, both the prison in the contemporary penal system and the Roman prison as represented in Paul's letters. Michel Foucault demonstrates that political anatomy has controlled the soul to more effectively exercise power over the body by humanizing punishment. The penal system aims to shame people rather than cause them physical pain. According to David Tombs, even crucifixion in the Roman Empire was not just about physical pain but also about public shame. The strategy of terrorizing people into fatalistic submission is well illustrated in the “theatrics of terror” that Mark Taylor demonstrates in The Executed God, as well as in Paul's description of his existence as an apostle sentenced to death and exposed in a spectacle (theatron, 1 Corinthians 4:9, 11). And this theatre is inscribed into the body in chains. Thus, special attention is given to not only how Paul represents the Roman prison as imagined as both a closed and disclosed space, but also how the imagery of the body—particularly, the naked body—under the conditions of Roman penal system and institutional violence operates in Paul"s letters, specifically, 1 Corinthians 4 and 2 Corinthians 11. Moreover, the exhibition of naked docile bodies will be disclosed in the theatrics of contemporary imperial terror. Finally, I will try to reach practical insights and applications, investigating how the dominated and humiliated body can be the agent of resistance, rather than only remaining the victim, as well as what Christians today should do for and with people in prison.


Blessings Crossed: Rethinking Isaac's Blessings to Jacob and Esau
Program Unit: Korean Biblical Colloquium
Il-Seung Chung, University of Sheffield

As with the divine oracle given to Rebekah (Gen. 25:23), Isaac's blessings for Jacob and Esau (Gen. 27:27-29, 39-40) form one of the key passages in understanding the narrative roles of the two characters. Many Genesis commentators have simply assumed that Isaac's blessing for Esau (Gen. 27:39-40) shows Esau's inferiority to Jacob (or Edom"s inferiority to Israel at a national level). Isaac"s blessing for Esau has been often misunderstood as implying Esau"s negative or insignificant narrative role. However, a close reading of the lives of Jacob and Esau in light of Isaac"s blessings can reveal completely different portrayals of the two brothers. Analyzing the plot development, this paper argues that blessing given to Esau is worked out in the life of Jacob, and vice versa. Isaac"s blessings are crossed ? in other words, they worked as initially intended by Isaac. Jacob, who has stolen Isaac"s blessing intended for Esau (Gen. 27:27-29), is ironically within the influence of Isaac"s blessing given to Esau (Gen. 27:39-40). To explain this further, this paper will interpret three major elements of Isaac"s blessing for Esau in light of the lives of Jacob and Esau. First of all, it is not Esau but Jacob whose life can be depicted as “living by the sword” (Gen. 27:40). Secondly, it is not Esau who comes to “serve his brother” (Gen. 27:40). Thirdly, the aspect of “wandering” and “breaking his yoke” fits better for Jacob"s life (Gen. 27:40). As far as Jacob is concerned, the stolen blessing does not secure anything for Jacob the deceiver. In view of this, I will finally challenge a widespread belief in Korean Christianity that success and prosperity are an indication of God"s blessing.


Placing Ritual: The Roman House as Early Christian Meeting Place
Program Unit: Space, Place, and Lived Experience in Antiquity
Jenn Cianca, University of Toronto

Understanding the spaces in which the earliest Christians met is integral to the understanding of the community's identity. However, most discussion about the rituals and practices of earliest Christianity has tended to focus predominantly on textual evidence. This lack of engagement with the material evidence leads to a reconstruction of early Christian ritual practice which does not correspond with existing knowledge of spatial practices in the ancient house. Therefore, it is necessary to reconcile what is known about the early Christians" meeting places from New Testament evidence with what is known about the structures and spatial practices of ancient houses. In this paper, I will discuss the relationship between the Roman aristocratic house and the emerging Christian community which met within its walls in the first three centuries C.E. Examining the space of the Roman house – its size, its inhabitants, and the activities taking place within it – makes possible a more accurate placement of the rituals in the house church. In addition, reconciling material evidence with textual evidence will highlight further areas of investigation. For example, placing the shared meal of the early church in the dining room of a typical Roman house, raises questions concerning social status, rank, and gender, at times in conflict with the language of equality evident in some of the writings of Paul (Gal 3:28; Col 3:9-11). In short, the paper will underscore the importance of space and place in the (re)construction of early Christian house church communities.


The Early Christian Family in the Nineteenth-Century American Protestant Imagination
Program Unit: Early Christian Families
Elizabeth A. Clark, Duke University

Nineteenth-century Protestant professors in America argued that one of the "great blessings" that Christianity brought to the world was the idea, as well as the reality, of the "Christian family." These professors stressed the licentiousness prevailing in the Roman Empire at the time of Christianity's advent as a foil against which the alleged purity of Christians could shine forth. They were also keen to note that this new morality was intended by Jesus and the apostles to be centered in the home--not in the desert or in monasteries, as the developing Catholic Church claimed. That their description of the early Christian family--one in which wives were companions to husbands, children were not tyrannized by parents, and 'servants" were treated as brothers and sisters--resonated with new notions of the family developing in nineteenth-century England and America is no accident. In addition, early Christians' supposed regard for the sanctity of the family could be pitted against the allegation of present-day Roman Catholic vice and desecration of family life via the confessional. This paper is based on archival sources from various Protestant seminaries, as well as on printed sources.


Jesus as Outsider: Rethinking the Ethical Implications of Augustine's Allegorical Exegesis of the Good Samaritan Parable
Program Unit: Ethics and Biblical Interpretation
Patrick Clark, University of Notre Dame

The parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10 appears on its face to hold great potential as a means for continually renewing the ethical recognition of the outsider as “neighbor.” By inducing the acknowledgment of an outsider's response to the needs of an “other” with whom we identify, the parable draws us toward a reciprocal recognition of the humanity of that outsider, and so invites us to broaden our understanding of the ethical demands of neighbor-love. However, prominent patristic exegetes forego this reading in favor of an allegorical interpretation that construes the downtrodden man as a picture of fallen humanity and the Good Samaritan as Christ. By assimilating the identity of the outsider-Samaritan to that of Christ, this interpretation homogenizes the ethnic identities in play and thus seems to exempt the audience from confronting the concrete social boundaries of their own neighbor-love. Is the allegorical interpretation therefore ethically inert? Is there anything that this reading can still offer in support of the ethical recognition of the outsider? This paper takes up these questions in relation to Augustine's exegesis of the parable. It attempts to relate the ethnic alterity emphasized in the parable itself with the divine-human alterity highlighted in the allegorical adaptation. Then calling upon the account of diachronic reciprocity that ethicist Eva Kittay has developed as a part of her larger theory of care, it argues that the allegorical acknowledgment of a transcendent other's identification with humanity may in fact provide a sound motivational foundation for a corresponding ethical identification with the outsider. I conclude by appealing to Jesus" love command in John 15 and his self-identification with the downtrodden in Matthew 25 as further support for the claim that both readings are not only ethically operative in the encounter with the outsider, but mutually reinforcing.


A Contract with God: On Whose Terms?
Program Unit: SBL Forum
Terry Ray Clark, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs

This paper analyzes Will Eisner's seminal graphic novel in light of biblical notions of covenant. The novel explores such themes as covenant blessing, curse, and death, and draws upon imagery related to the Noahide Flood to explore the notion of human depravity. Apparently, Eisner argues here that "with great power [(i.e., God's power)], comes great" freedom to avoid any strings attached. Unless God initiates the covenant, all bets are off. More importantly, Eisner explores the universal human need to secure a sacred source of justice in the world, and the angst often associated with finding that human notions of justice apparently are not binding on the activity of the sacred realm.


“Examine This Vine”: Psalms and Structure in the Liturgical Worship of the Ancient Eastern Church
Program Unit: Bible in Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Traditions
Timothy Clark, Emory University

Sacred writings and theological treatises make overt, if often idealized, claims about the relationship between religious communities and the texts to which they adhere. Observing the liturgical orders of religious communities allows interpreters of these groups to analyze their religious commitments as they are manifested in concrete ritual action. In the early Eastern Christian church, the organizational structures and ritual reflexes of the eucharistic liturgy clearly articulated the worshipping congregation as a reconstituted version of the assembly of biblical Israel, basing this vision on selected texts and motifs of the Old Testament. Liturgical action defined the community not as an inheritor of historical Israel, but rather as a textual entity, drawing the essential features of its existence from the performance of its adopted scriptural heritage. This paper examines several of the key texts and actions of evolving early liturgical rituals in an attempt to illumine several aspects of the scriptural principles animating the development of early Christian worship.


The BibleWorks Biblical Manuscript Transcription and Collation Project
Program Unit: Computer Assisted Research
Kent Clarke, Trinity Western University

The BibleWorks Manuscript Project seeks to provide over the next four years scholar-produced transcriptions of two hundred New Testament papyri, uncial, and minuscule manuscripts. These new transcriptions, which will be based upon digital images of the actual manuscripts or their facsimiles, will serve as the foundation for the development of a New Testament Textual Criticism software application. This project will (1) develop a module that incorporates new technology and processes that more accurately and effectively allow for manuscript transcription and collation; (2) provide extremely accurate representations of the manuscripts being transcribed; (3) make the raw transcription data available without charge for personal or academic use; (4) effectively enable program users to immediately compare, contrast, and fully collate any desired selection—either partial or full text—of these manuscripts; (5) allow for a broad range of detailed statistical queries relating but not limited to such issues as textual affiliation and congruity of the New Testament manuscript tradition; (6) link directly to the manuscript transcriptions their corresponding high resolution digital images where publication permissions have been granted; (7) be “open-ended” in that ongoing transcription and imaging work, as well as the recording of relevant extra-textual features such as sociological and codicological details, can be seamlessly incorporated into the software; and (8) serve as the groundwork for published volumes containing full transcriptions of each manuscript, as well as complete collations for each book of the New Testament. As this fully-funded project draws to the close of its inaugural year, the contributing scholars would be grateful for the opportunity to share with the broader academic community the considerable “fruits of its labors”.


The Trinity Western University-Wikene Papyri “Rediscovery”
Program Unit: Paleographical Studies in the Ancient Near East
Kent Clarke, Trinity Western University

In late 1996, TWU acquired approximately 175 small papyri fragments and additional cartonage. Remarkably, the papyri were actually “rediscovered” in a second hand thrift store located in Vancouver, Canada by a young gentleman who had the good sense to understand that they were something of importance. The gentleman initially purchased two small “cigar type boxes” filled with the various written fragments and cartonage, and intended to sell them piecemeal on E-Bay. Each box is written upon and contains the place, date, and price of the original purchase (Cairo Museum; Dec. 27, 1928; 50 cents or 10 Piasters). There are also what appear to be inventory numbers on each of the boxes, as well as the place name “Bahnassa” (possibly the Egyptian Al-Bahnassa). As well, the name “M.D. Davidson” is found on each of the boxes, and may refer to the individual who bought the boxes in 1928. A written claim that the papyri are “Ancient Egyptian 1500 B.C.” is also recorded on each box. Though all contain some trace of ink, the papyri are in a very fragmentary state. However, about thirty of these fragments have either interesting textual elements such as illustrative artwork, or multiple lines of text containing a significant number of individual characters, so as to make some identification possible. Several are written in a rough Greek cursive hand; a few in a Greek uncial hand; and still others perhaps in Coptic and Demotic. Each fragment has now been photographed, and a basic conservation process is almost complete. Once finished, all efforts will go into determining the textual content. As a textual critic specializing in uncial manuscripts rather than a papyrologist, I would be grateful for the opportunity to present these papyri and the story of their “rediscovery” to a group of specialists.


Remembering in Community Psalms of Petition (Lament)
Program Unit: Biblical Hebrew Poetry
Richard J. Clifford, Weston Jesuit School of Theology

The verbs "to remember" and "to meditate" can in certain contexts refer to public recital, not only internal reflection. In some community petitions the speaker recites a narrative of God's past work in order to persuade God to renew that work in the present situation of distress. The description of the ancient act is not general, but precisely tailored to the present distress.


Job's Crafty Conclusion
Program Unit: Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
David J. A. Clines, University of Sheffield

Job's final response to Yahweh (42:2-6) is more crafty than it appears, ensuring that in the guise of a concession of defeat he keeps open his charge of injustice against God. He says three things: (1) “I know that you can do anything” (42:2). This apparently bland statement has a sharp edge: I now recognize that no other consideration weighs with you except power. (2) “I have spoken things too wonderful for me” (42:3). Justice is not a straightforward matter, he now recognizes: it is “wonderful”, a “marvel” beyond comprehension, like the structure of the universe or the ways of Yahweh in wind and rain and crocodile creation. Justice is not a principle to which Yahweh is subject, nor a value superior to Yahweh. It is no more than another sphere of divine might. Job must submit to God's power, but he is at the same time victorious: he has won from Yahweh an admission that Yahweh does not care about justice, and so is no just God. (3) “So I submit, and I accept consolation for my dust and ashes” (42:6). He does not “reject” something (ma"as), for no object is expressed, but rather “melts” or “submits” (masas), i.e. he admits that he has lost his lawsuit, since its outcome has been determined by divine power. But he has not lost his argument, which was about justice. On that subject, Yahweh has said not a word, and so has effectively ruled the issue of justice out of order. But the Book of Job records Job's words—which ensures that the issue must remain on the agenda, for ever. In accepting consolation, he will cease his period of mourning for his dead children. He means: it is only the mourning, and not the grievance, that is coming to an end.


Reconsidering P75 in the Frame of a Various Egyptian Tradition
Program Unit: New Testament Textual Criticism
Claire Clivaz, University of Lausanne

Few manuscripts of the New Testament are as famous as P75, the earliest existent witness of the Gospel of Luke and a very early witness of the Gospel of John. In a very enthusiastic way, Kurt and Barbara Aland claimed that P75 was «the key» for understanding the primitive textual history of New Testament. The paper will begin first by considering the «Papyrus 75-effect» since the time of its discovery and edition, underlining its perception by scholars, for example in the way which they evaluated the hand of the manuscript. Such scholars as Koester, Peterson and Epp have nevertheless begun to relativize P75's absolute status in research. Haines-Eitzen underlined rightly that P75 shows traces of a liturgical use, more than P45 does, and could testify of a network of scribes, more than of an already established Didaskaleion at the end of the second century C.E. Consequently, this paper will try secondly to reconsider P75 in the frame of what I propose to call the «various Egyptian tradition». The evidences of Lk 22.34a and of Lk 22.43-44 will allow us to situate this papyrus at the crossing of diverse traditions and readings, as well as the particular case of Lk 24.51b, this portion of verse is usually considered as a «Western non-interpolations», but it is absent from this list in the Sinaiticus. Thirdly, this paper will propose to link P75 with a potential milieu, thank to an information coming from Clement of Alexandria: in Strom 6, he deplores the ignorance of people who are nicknamed orthodoxastai, «people of right opinion». Finally, I will claim that P75's evaluation can only lead us to consider seriously this major gap in early Christianity research: the silence about the presence of Christians -or Judeo-Christians or Christiano-Jews- in Egypt before the second half of the second century C.E.


The Enthroned Entourage: Exploring the Origins of a Motif
Program Unit: Mysticism, Esotericism, and Gnosticism in Antiquity
Kelley N. Coblentz Bautch, St. Edward's University

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The Red Sea and the Sea of Reeds, Yam Suph and Yam Soph: Biblical Criticism from a Geographer's Viewpoint
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible
David Ben-Gad Hacohen, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The geographical data can be used as a powerful tool in identifying the biblical sources. The method of investigation is identical to the one used in literary criticism: finding changes in place names and looking for conflicts and inconsistencies in topopnym chains or itineraries. Any slight change in place names may prove to be very meaningful. Geographical Criticism will be demonstrated through the 'Miracle on the Sea' and the quest for its location and name: the Red Sea, the Sea of Reeds or the Extreme Sea (Yam Soph).


Masoretic Marks as Evidence on Pronunciation of Problematic Sheva Signs
Program Unit: Masoretic Studies
Miles B. Cohen, Jewish Theological Seminary

The sheva sign as used by the Tiberian Masoretes is an ambiguous symbol, sometimes representing vocal sheva and sometimes representing silent sheva. The general rules for distinguishing these are well known and set out in the grammar books. But the identification of sheva in certain words is problematic, even controversial. At times the Masoretic accents and other marks shed light on the Masoretic pronunciation of these words. Relevant rules of the various mark will be explained, and notable examples will be presented.


Translating from This Place: Social Location and Translation
Program Unit: Ideology, Culture, and Translation
Jason Coker, Drew University

Bible translation has always been and continues to be a text centered endeavor. Primary issues in Bible translation revolve around what the original author/editor wrote and how best to convey/translate that in a modern context. Theories of translation based on dynamic equivalence and literal translation have been the major concern. As recent scholarship has shown in hermeneutics, a simple shift of emphasis from text to translator can radically challenge the foundations of the discipline. Decentering the text, focusing more attention on the social location of the translator and emphasizing translation as a place of intersection between text and translator can offer new possibilities for Bible translation.


Artapanus Revisited
Program Unit: Hellenistic Judaism
John J. Collins, Yale University

This paper will offer a reassessment of the Jewish identity, date and purpose of Artapanus, in light of the recent contributions by Howard Jacobson and Holger Zellentin.


Critical Reflections on New Trends in Theological Interpretation
Program Unit: Theological Interpretation of Scripture
John J. Collins, Yale University

This paper will provide critical reflections on the contributions of Walter Moberly, Markus Bockmuehl, and Christopher Seitz to theological interpretation.


A Rhetoric of Replacement: Reading the Christ-Empire versus the Roman Empire in Colossians
Program Unit: Disputed Paulines
Matthew S. Collins, Society of Biblical Literature

The majority of scholars focus on one or more aspects of Colossians related to the so-called Christ hymn, the opponents in Colossae, or the Household Code. Yet each of these elements is considered in isolation or only placed in literary or rhetorical context as an afterthought. The inabilitly of modern scholars to find a unifying theme or subject of the letter is often cited as evidence against authenticity. The shift in focus enabled by Empire studies provides a means of reading the letter as a unified whole. In this paper I will argue that the replacement of the Roman emperor and empire with Christ and a Christ-centered understanding of the cosmos provides a consistent and coherent means of understanding the entire letter. This rhetoric of replacement is articulated at the three separate sites of most contention - the hymn, the opponents, and the Household Code (and paranesis).


The End Is Not Near: The Surprising Use of Apocalypse Interpretation during the Traumatic Times of the Early Seventh Century Eastern Roman Empire
Program Unit: Use, Influence, and Impact of the Bible
Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou, University of San Diego

The early seventh century Eastern Roman Empire saw plague, civil war, famine, and catastrophic barbarian invasions. Eschatological fervor ran high as people were convinced the end of the world was near. Within this climate, the most important Greek patristic commentary on the Apocalypse was composed by Andrew, Archbishop of Caesarea, Cappadocia. Andrew's commentary was written only after the first Greek commentary on Revelation appeared a few years earlier, authored by Oikoumenios, a Monophysite. Oikoumenios" inadequate interpretation erred to the opposite extreme of public hysteria and so allegorized Revelation as to rob it of its legitimate and powerful message, and deprive it of its prophetic quality. But without an alternative orthodox Greek commentary, Oikoumenios" interpretation stood unanswered. Sergius I, Patriarch of Constantinople, is revealed as the heretofore unidentified recipient of the commentary and the individual who assigned Andrew the unenviable task of interpreting Revelation. Andrew concluded that the end was not near, refusing to apply the images of Revelation to his own times. Andrew situated the eschaton in the future, providing the populace with a balanced interpretation of Revelation, possibly inspiring Sergius himself with confidence in the positive outcome of troubling current events. Andrew encouraged people to pursue lives of virtue and assured them of the love of God for humanity. Sergius saved the Empire by boosting morale, encouraging them not to resign themselves to defeat, even when surrounded by barbarians and all hope seemed lost. The Empire prevailed and survived, but Andrew's contribution was even more enduring. Andrew and Sergius won the psychological battle with doomsday naysayers, the theological battle with Oikoumenios and firmly fixed the general eschatological attitude for the Orthodox Church. Andrew's commentary became the accepted Orthodox interpretation for Revelation. For the first time, the motivation behind the most important Greek patristic commentary on Revelation is revealed.


On Future Directions of Literary Criticism of the Fourth Gospel
Program Unit: Johannine Literature
Colleen Conway, Seton Hall University

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From Objective Observation to Subjective Participation: Daughter Zion and the Speaker in Lamentations
Program Unit: Biblical Hebrew Poetry
Mary L. Conway, McMaster Divinity College

The book of Lamentations has often been interpreted with an almost exclusive focus on the third chapter, emphasizing the geber at the expense of Daughter Zion, or as an anthology of disparate poems relating to the destruction of Jerusalem. However, interacting with recent research by Carleen Mandolfo, Kathleen O"Connor, Tod Linafelt, and Nancy Lee, this paper will argue that the book only conveys its full meaning when the poems are read as a poetic literary whole, with a particular focus on its metaphoric language and the dialogical interaction among all the voices: the Speaker, Daughter Zion, and the community. When viewed in this way a progression of ideas becomes evident in which the people of Jerusalem struggle to come to terms with discipline, suffering, and hope. In the early chapters, the interaction of Daughter Zion and the unidentified Speaker plays a significant role in leading the community through its suffering and along the first steps toward forgiveness and mercy. Significant here is the Daughter Zion metaphor complex itself, which evokes contrasting responses of both judgment and pity. These attitudes are experienced by the Speaker as he dialogues with her and as he subsequently moves through detachment, sympathy, and empathy. Ultimately he comes to identify personally with the suffering of Zion and her search for hope as the imagery moves from the corporate to the individual. Having assimilated these insights, he is then able in the final chapters to effectively lead the suffering community forward from within in their first steps toward redemption. Thus, through the use of structure, metaphor, and dialogue the book of Lamentations demonstrates movement from judgment to pity, from detachment to empathy, from suffering to hope, and from the corporate through the individual back to the corporate perspective once more.


4Q541, Fragment 24 Reconsidered (Again)
Program Unit: Aramaic Studies
Edward M. Cook, Cincinnati, OH

The mysterious fg. 24 of the Aramaic text 4Q541 (4Q Apocryphe de Lévi B) has been the subject of a number of scholarly treatments. Most of them struggle with the difficult wording of the text, and the result is often wildly improbable. Taking its departure from the treatment of the fragment in DJD 31, the present study surveys the research and offers an understanding more in line with the text as a whole and the expectations of the sapiential genre the fragment belongs to.


P50 and the Question of Its Function
Program Unit: Papyrology and Early Christian Backgrounds
John Granger Cook, LaGrange College

The purpose of P50, which comprises two selections from Acts (8:26-32, 10:26-31), has long been debated. The first editor, Carl Kraeling, believed that the text might have been for “missionary or homiletic purposes or both.” Subsequent scholars such as Joseph van Haelst and Kurt Aland have concluded that it was an amulet. The criteria used for evaluating texts as Christian amulets need to be reevaluated. One is left with the impression that some scholars after Kraeling have used the category “amulet” as a sort of panacea, when left in a quandary over what to do with texts such as P50. There are several indications that P50 may have had a function other than use as an amulet. One is the nature of folded documents in antiquity. The other is the use of the texts from Acts in ancient Christian literature.


A Sign and a Portent: The Redactional Formation of Isaiah 18–20
Program Unit: Book of Isaiah
Paul M. Cook, University of Oxford

This paper will examine the redactional grouping of Isaiah 18-20 within the larger collection of oracles about nations in Isa 13-23. These chapters contain an oracle about Cush (Isa 18), followed by an oracle about Egypt (Isa 19), and finally, a brief narrative in which the prophet Isaiah protests against dependency on Egypt and Cush for deliverance from Assyria (Isa 20). Even a cursory survey suggests chapters 18 and 20 are subsequent additions to the larger collection. Isaiah 18, the oracle about Cush, is introduced by the Hebrew particle hôy, whereas nearly all the other oracles in the collection have the superscription massa". Chapter 20 comprises the only narrative account within the larger collection of oracles (13-23). This paper sets out to demonstrate, first of all, that although the narrative in Isa 20 does not recur within the Deuteronomistic History, it nevertheless reflects Deuteronomistic influence, and therefore has origins outside the Isaianic tradition. Also, a closer examination of Isa 20 suggests that the redactor who inserted the narrative also introduced the Cush oracle (Isa 18) to its present location before the Egypt oracle (Isa 19). Finally, some conclusions may be drawn from the redactional approach of surrounding the Egypt oracle with the Isaiah narrative and the Cush oracle.


The Fecundity of Zion and Spiritual Fulfillment
Program Unit: Biblical Hebrew Poetry
Stephen L. Cook, Virginia Theological Seminary

The ideal, fulfilled Daughter Zion of biblical Hebrew poetry exudes traits of fecundity and effortless bounty. These traits reveal Zion to be a thriving Garden of Eden, a preternatural habitat of blessing, a boon to human reverence, mutuality, and intimacy. Zion's effortless bounty fosters a transformative spirituality of reverence, but the internal dynamics of this process are less than fully obvious. In this presentation I explore such inner workings and attempt an explication. I plan to engage the thought of Carleen Mandolfo and her new book, Daughter Zion Talks Back to the Prophets.


Astral Religion and Celestial Divination in Ancient Israel: A Reassessment
Program Unit: Israelite Religion in its Ancient Context
Jeffrey L. Cooley, Xavier University

Studies of the religion of Iron Age Israel usually note the existence of astral religion (see, e.g. Deut 4:15-19; 2 Kgs 21:3-5; 2 Kgs 23:4-5; Jer 19:13; Zeph 1:2-6), often arguing that it is a foreign tradition introduced to Israel and Judah during periods of Assyro-Babylonian domination. Scholars often connect this astral religion to the practice of celestial divination. This practice, too, is often assumed to have been imported together with Assyro-Babyonian astral religion or, alternatively, to have been part of Israel's Canaanite heritage. This paper first confirms that astral religion was part of Israelite religious life, both at the state and at the domestic level and argues that this worship has its origins in Israel's Canaanite heritage, rather than in Mesopotamia. To this end I discuss Bronze Age textual material from ancient Syro-Palestine (namely, Ugarit), iconographic material from the southern Levant in the Iron Age, and, of course, the biblical text. Second, I contend that, in contrast to scholars who link it inextricably to astral religion, celestial divination was not a common part of Israelite religion to any appreciable degree before the exile. Here too, my evidence will be Ugaritic and biblical material.


“The Savior's Cross Is the Jews' Sin and a Curse upon Them”: Ambrosiaster on Galatians 3:13
Program Unit: History of Interpretation
Stephen A. Cooper, Franklin and Marshall College

Ambrosiaster's commentaries on the corpus Paulinum, written during the pontificate of Damasus (366-384) and the first complete Latin series, have been recognized as the most influential in the western church until the Renaissance. His commentaries exist in multiple recensions, all from the author's hand, suggesting a high level of intentionality and willingness to rethink and revise his exegesis. Beginning with Erasmus" rejection of their ascription to Ambrose, these works fell progressively into oblivion as biblical criticism strode forward, despite the fact that modern critics recognized Ambrosiaster's predilection for literal and historical exegesis. In particular modern scholars have praised the anonymous exegete"s knowledge of—and grudging respect for—Judaism and Jewish practices, to the extent that in the early 20th century some attempted to identify him with Isaac the Jew who converted to Christianity, filed suit against Pope Damasus, and was exiled for his pains. While this identification was quickly abandoned, the sense of Ambrosiaster as outside the mainstream of Christian anti-Judaism has persisted. This proposed paper will examine Ambrosiaster"s exegesis of Gal. 3:10–14 with a view toward ascertaining the relationship between textual considerations and extra-textual, social and historical factors that may have brought Ambrosiaster to revise his comments on these verse and add in vehement anti-Jewish remarks (such as the quotation in my title). His remarks about the Law as a curse provide a counter-point to his presentation of Christianity as religion a whose ruling principle justification by faith. To ascertain the extent to which Ambrosiaster"s exegesis is typical or eccentric, I will survey the exegetical suggestions of other early Christian commentators. In conclusion I will take a look at Reformation and modern exegetes to see if Ambrosiaster"s line of interpretation found any echo in the modern period.


Maria Stewart, Boston, and the Bible: A Rhetoric of African American Rights
Program Unit: African-American Biblical Hermeneutics
Valerie C. Cooper, University of Virginia

Believed to have been the first American woman of any race to present a political speech to a “promiscuous audience”—one containing men and women—and to leave extant copies of her address, Maria Stewart was a pioneering political speaker, but also a deeply religious thinker. Beginning in 1831, with an essay published by Boston's William Lloyd Garrison, and ending in 1833 with “Mrs. Stewart's Farewell Address To Her Friends In The City Of Boston”, Stewart wrestled with the concept of rights for African Americans and for women in the cradle of American democracy, finally concluding that they were a charism given by God. In rhetoric that challenged the slaveocracy, American republican thought and the oppression of blacks and women, Stewart used the Bible to argue that blacks were a people who enjoyed a special covenant with God and ought also to enjoy all of the benefits of American citizenship.


Poetic Analysis, Context, Spirituality: Theology of the Psalter?
Program Unit: Book of Psalms
Christopher M. Corwin, New College Berkeley

This paper combines a variety of strands of thought present in the current scholarly discussion of how to approach the theology of the Psalter. One major consideration is the issue of what level to address as most central in locating theology in the Psalms: the Psalter as a whole, individual books, large collections, individual sequences, or individual psalms. I will consider the major approaches to the Psalter as a whole: royal redaction (Wilson), wisdom redaction (Whybray), and others (Westermann), and raise questions about whether a Psalter-wide theology is possible, given the formation of the text. For sequence level work, I"ll primarily consider Psalms 90-109 (Howard) and the Song of Ascents. I defend a modified version of "new criticism" close reading (Alonso Schokel, Robert Alter, T. S. Eliot), which focuses on individual psalms as an essential element in ANY approach, but insufficient in itself. Finally, I will consider the role of the theology of the Psalms in theology of the Hebrew Scriptures, and the intersection of poetic/theological analysis and spirituality.


The Text of the Gospels in Clement of Alexandria
Program Unit: New Testament Textual Criticism
Carl P. Cosaert, Walla Walla University

Although the importance of patristic citations for establishing the text and the transmission history of the New Testament has long been recognized, it is only until recently that major methodological advances have made access to the patristic evidence more accessible and reliable than ever before. Since the publication of Bart Ehrman's study of Didymus the Blind's text of the Gospels in 1986, a slow but ever steady number of published and unpublished dissertations have continued to provide invaluable patristic evidence about the form of the text in specific locations around the Mediterranean. Several of these studies have suggested a correspondence exists between the Gospel citations of several Alexandrian Fathers and the manuscripts traditionally labeled as “Alexandrian.” Unfortunately, one important piece of the patristic evidence has been missing--a reevaluation of Clement, the earliest of the Alexandrian Fathers, on the basis of the latest methodological advances. Without an analysis of Clement's Gospel citations, it is impossible to know what form of the New Testament text existed in Alexandrian at the end of the second century. Did the "Alexandrian" text exist in Alexandria at that time, or did it emerge at a later time? Moreover, did Clement's textual tradition have any influence on the textual inclinations of later Alexandrian Fathers? It was these kind of questions that ultimately led to a decision to reevaluation Clement's text of the Gospels as a doctoral dissertation project at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2005. This paper will present the revised results of the analysis of Clement's text of the Gospels with special attention given to the significance of the findings on the transmission history of the New Testament in Alexandria, Egypt.


The Disabled Body Politic in Isaiah 3:1, 8
Program Unit: Healthcare and Disability in the Ancient World
J. Blake Couey, Millsapps College

****The book of Isaiah contains several references to disability, most prominently blindness and deafness. As interpreters have noted, many of these texts do not have actual disabled persons in mind but rather use disability as a literary image. One such image that has not received much attention occurs in Isa 3:1-15, a prophetic critique of Judah's ruling classes. In the opening lines of the poem, the prophet depicts the nation's leaders as a “staff” (?????/??????), which YHWH threatens to take away (v. 1); several lines later, Jerusalem and Judah are said to have “stumbled” and “fallen” (v. 8). A number of stylistic features connect these lines, which invites the reader or hearer to consider further thematic connections between them. Taken together, the images in vv. 1 and 8 portray the nation as a person who needs a crutch in order to walk, thus introducing disability imagery into the poem despite the absence of standard biblical Hebrew terms for lameness. This paper will discuss the development and function of this metaphor in the contexts of the larger poem in Isa 3:1-15 and Isaianic discourse about disability more generally.


Salvation History in Matthew?
Program Unit: Synoptic Gospels
J. R. C. Cousland, University of British Columbia

Contemporary Matthean scholarship remains curiously fractionated. On the one hand, salvation-historical approaches to the Gospel are very much in eclipse and according to Donald Senior, “scholarly interest in them seems to have waned.” On the other, a number of recent studies of Matthew implicitly invoke heilsgeschichtlich terminology to account for temporal phases within the Gospel. In particular, Jesus's death or resurrection is often described as the “turning point in history” or the “beginning of a new aeon.” The question arises, therefore, how these perspectives are to be reconciled. What is to be made of the above descriptions? Is salvation-history an approach that is best dispensed with when interpreting the First Gospel? The purpose of this paper is to attempt to argue, if not for Heilsgeschichte, for “periodicity” within the Gospel.


Hebrews 5:11–6:12 as “Frank Criticism” (Parresia)
Program Unit: Hebrews
Ronald Cox, Pepperdine University

In this paper I focus on the function of harsh language in Hebrews,esp. 5:11-6:12, arguing that such language is best understood as conforming to the philosophical topos of parresia (frank speech or criticism). I draw from the discussions of that topos by Plutarch ("How to Tell A Flatterer From A Friend") and Philodemus ("On Frank Criticism") to describe how and why such speech was employed as well as what was done to offset its more negative aspects. My paper demonstrates that the harsh language used in this Hebrews passage is a rhetorical move meant to stir the addressees to action rather than a pressing warning


Life after Death in Social-Scientific Perspective: Some Insights from the Cognitive and Neurosciences
Program Unit: Social Scientific Criticism of the New Testament
Pieter F. Craffert, University of South Africa

Some form of life after death (or afterlife) belief is one of those rare ideas that occupy almost universal support among the world's populations. Besides for their high emotive value, such beliefs are crucial for behavior and have accrued considerable socio-political currency in being associated with the worldwide ecological crises and some political programs. The aim of this paper is to look at such beliefs from a social-scientific perspective. By means of insights from anthropological and especially the neurological sciences the idea of life after death in the Christian tradition will be analyzed as the product of various altered states of consciousness experiences (ASC experiences) interpreted within a particular cultural setting. Specific notions about the human “self” connected to ASC experiences will be analyzed. It will be suggested that biblical afterlife beliefs were manufactured in a complex interaction of the bodily hardware and cultural software humans are equipped with.


Remembering the Past in the Psalms
Program Unit: Biblical Hebrew Poetry
Toni Craven, Brite Divinity School

Memory is essential to the way in which meaning is made. In the Psalms, personal memory and public memory contribute to the construction and determination of how the past makes meaning. This paper will explore notable examples of remembering the past in the psalter.


The Agency of Ritualized Art and Architecture in the Hebrew Bible
Program Unit: Ritual in the Biblical World
Cory Daniel Crawford, Harvard University

One of the most provocative theories of art to emerge in the past century has gone almost totally unnoticed by biblical scholars. Alfred Gell, in his anthropological theory of agency in art, sought to obviate the distinction between western and “primitive” art and to articulate a theoretical model whereby the role of artistic production could be accurately grasped for any society without recourse to linguistic analogies of meaning. Gell suggested that we look at art objects as social agents, “capable of acting on and for their social universes, both psychologically and physically.” In the Hebrew Bible, ritualized settings constitute almost exclusively the space in which artistic agency can be discerned, and Gell's theory allows the biblical scholar to assess the position of cultic objects and images within a given social universe. Relying on Irene Winter's correctives and related concepts in the work of W.J.T. Mitchell, I examine the idea of object agency in ritual contexts situated within the aniconic tradition of the Hebrew Bible, beginning with texts in which agency is explicitly marked with respect to cult objects, such as in Exodus 32 and in the Ark Narrative. I then move to an exploration of agency in empty space aniconism. Can agency be ascribed to “empty” space? Furthermore, can it be ascribed to ornamental decoration and to architecture? The question of empty space raises the issue of the agency not just of objects, but also of groups of objects and images within their spatial contexts. I thus conclude with an incorporation of ritual-architectural settings as analytical foci. Gell's study, when coupled with the work of ritual theorists, such as Catherine Bell, provides a powerful way of integrating artifact, architecture, and behavior within a social nexus and opens new avenues in the study of ritual in the Hebrew Bible.


The Formation of the Canon in the Second Temple Period
Program Unit: Ideological Criticism
Sidnie White Crawford, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

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The Destiny of the Righteous and the Theology of the Psalter
Program Unit: Book of Psalms
Jerome F. D. Creach, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary

****This paper argues that the concern for the destiny of the righteous is the primary theological interest in the Psalter and thus provides a fruitful entreé into the book as a whole. The concern is that the righteous suffer at the hands of the wicked while the wicked prosper (see for example, Pss 9-10; 49; 73). The sheer frequency of the terms qydc (plural Myqydc, "righteous;" 52 occurrences) and (#r (plural My(#r, "wicked;" 82 occurrences) suggests that this subject is crucially important to the Psalter (see also related terms such as yn(, "poor"; r#y, "upright"). But the structure of the book also indicates the centrality of the topic. For example, Psalms 1 and 2, which serve as an introduction to the Psalter, are bound together precisely by their interest in how life will turn out for the righteous vis-a'-vis the wicked. Other important subjects in the Psalms come into focus when the Psalter is read with the destiny of the righteous as an organizing rubric. For example, God's reign and God's justice are rightly understood in the context of the larger concern for the righteous" future (Ps 5). The king, Zion, and torah may be understood as the embodied hope of the righteous. Indeed, the anointed (Ps 2:2b) appears both as one of the righteous who suffers (Ps 3) and as their savior (Pss 72; 101). Zion is the place the righteous experience God's reign and God's justice (Pss 15; 24) and thus is the place for which they long (Pss 42-43; 63). Torah, which eventually becomes a surrogate for Zion and its temple, is the righteous" ultimate refuge (Ps 1:2).


Memory of the Conquest or the Conquest of Memory? The “Conquest Tradition” of Joshua in the Book of Psalms—A Social Memory Reading
Program Unit: Mapping Memory: Tradition, Texts, and Identity
Ovidiu Creanga, King's College London

Returning to a classical debate regarding the "re-presentation" of history in the Book of Psalms, well established in the German scholarship of the latter half of the last century (Lauha 1945; von Rad 1958; Noth 1960; Westermann 1981), this paper investigates the depiction of Joshua's conquest of the land (Josh. 1-12) in the Psalter from the point of view of social memory theory. While it is generally known that references to the Mosaic period occur frequently in the historical Psalms, the conquest of the land by Joshua struggles to achieve literary expression. Briefly, the situation can be presented in this way: references to the exodus from Egypt occur far more frequently than those to the conquest of the land, and allusions to the conquest of Transjordania under the leadership of Moses crop up far more commonly than to the conquest of Cisjordania by Joshua. This state of things invites a close examination of why the Psalter dis/(re)members Joshua's conquest tradition in the way it does, and how to relate the Psalms" portrayal of Israel's settlement with that of the Hexateuch and/or the Deuteronomistic History. Starting with the newly developed theory of "repositioning of cultural memory in literature" (van Gorp & U. Musarra-Schroeder 2000; Grabe 2005), the paper first identifies which layers of the memory of settlement exist in what literary genres. Since the cult is the main laboratory of Israel"s public memory, offering "un cadre social and mate´riel" to the settlement tradition, tracing its reformulation in the preexilic, exilic and postexilic psalms offers an opportunity to reveal, in the second part of this paper, the intricate politics of remembering/forgetting with the tradition of Joshua's conquest and the re/formation of Israel"s identity as a settled people.


“Have I Not Commanded You? Be a Man, Not a Woman…”—Joshua, the Warrior, and His Female Side: Revisiting the War on (Male) Gender in the Conquest Narrative (Joshua 1–12)
Program Unit: Warfare in Ancient Israel
Ovidiu Creanga, King's College London

Coming to fill a gap in the existing scholarship dealing with the representation of pre-monarchic warriorship, this paper examines the military Joshua through the lens of gender. It does so within the cultural and ideological framework of exile in which Joshua emerges as a character in the story of the conquest of the Land found in the Book of Joshua (chaps. 1-12). Drawing from the theoretical debates about gender formation, but questioning one general working assumption, the paper examines primarily how the warrior Joshua is 'manned' and what/who feminizes him and his enemies (the "inhabitants of the land"). While constructing the male and female gender in oppositional terms, this paper also teases out the issue of "double" gender, more specific to a leadership that rests on a military and cultural mandate, like Joshua's. The notion in view is especially noticeable in the transmission of Israel's memory as the Torah of Moses. While observance and transmission of the Law (Josh. 1:7-8) is written into Joshua's masculine code, the perpetual receiving of the Law in learning feminizes him. This gender paradox is inescapable as far as Joshua is concerned, since the successful performance of his military leadership (i.e., his masculinity) is dependant on the faithful observance of the Law. This case-study, therefore, complicates the concept of "gender opposition" commonly found in gender treatments of warfare in the Hebrew Bible (Washington 1998; Chapman 2004 & 2007), and proposes a view of feminization of the male warrior that is not only acceptable "in the eyes of YHWH," but also compensatory for the disempowering "feminization" experienced with the loss of land and deportation.


Shenoute of Atripe on Christ the Physician: Healing and Theology in an Ancient Coptic Monastery
Program Unit: Christianity in Egypt: Scripture, Tradition, and Reception
Andrew Crislip, University of Hawaii at Manoa

The present paper explores Christus medicus imagery in several theological works by the Coptic monk Shenoute of Atripe (fl. ca. AD 385-466), a writer whose homiletic appropriation of the theme has been heretofore neglected. The primary texts under investigation here, “I Am Amazed,” “The Spirit of God,” “A Priest Will Never Cease,” and to a lesser extent “As I Sat on a Mountain,” are connected bibliographically by their sequential arrangement in a volume of Shenoute's Discourses. In these works, variously delivered as public sermons or treatises intended for a mixed nonmonastic and monastic audience, Shenoute reveals himself to be actively engaged in theological issues and theological discourses shared among the Greek, Syriac, and Latin Christian cultures of the greater Mediterranean world, including extensive reflection on the Christus medicus motif, to which Shenoute adds his own personal and perhaps distinctively Upper Egyptian perspectives. Shenoute's adaptation and deployment of Christus medicus theology is important for contextualizing Shenoute within the theological culture of late antiquity. But the Christus medicus theology of Shenoute's Discourses is not of interest merely as a supplement to the intellectual history of late antique theology. Rather, I show that Christus medicus theology as a discursive element runs throughout Shenoute"s varied works and reflects both the complex and multifaceted roles that Shenoute played in Upper Egypt and the significant place that illness and its meaning held in Shenoute"s long and still poorly understood career, as well as in the history of monasticism in general.


Renovating the House That Bruce Built: Remodeling Ascribed and Acquired Honor
Program Unit: Social Scientific Criticism of the New Testament
Zeba A. Crook, Carleton University

The traditional formulation of the model of Honor and Shame maintains that agonistic challenges and ripostes did not occur between parties of unequal status: common people and elites, slave and free, male and female, even humans and the gods. In this paper I shall question that aspect of the model by focusing on ways in which women aspired to public honor and sometimes engaged successfully in challenge and riposte contests with men.


When Is the Ancient Mediterranean Not the Ancient Mediterranean? When It's the Contemporary Middle East! (Re-)constructing “the Middle East” in New Testament Studies
Program Unit: Reading, Theory, and the Bible
James Crossley, University of Sheffield

Developing the recent work on the construction of "violent geographies" associated with Derek Gregory, Allan Pred and others, this paper will look at how Orientalist rhetoric in Anglo-American culture has influenced scholarly (re-)constructions of the social world of Christian origins. In particular the focus will be on the (re-)constructions in recent New Testament scholarship of "the Middle East" and "the Arab world" (with accompanying comments on "the Arab mind") as the backdrop for the study of Christian origins. Much of the scholarship used by New Testament scholars in such (re-)constructions of the social world of Christian origins is grounded in post-war government and military endorsed/sponsored social-scientific studies of the "national psyche" and certain outdated Orientalist scholarship (e.g. Raphael Patai) believed to be used in the strategic thinking behind the Iraq war. It is perhaps no surprise, then, to find that recent scholarly (re-)constructions of the social world of Christian origins make numerous ideological generalisations about "the Middle East" that cohere remarkably closely with recent intellectual defences of Anglo-American actions in the contemporary Middle East and in the "war on terror" (e.g. "the Arab world" supposedly incapable of democracy, the supposed importance of "humiliation" in understanding "the Arab world", a supposed lack of interest in human rights etc.).


Pictorial Propaganda: The Assyrian Palace Reliefs and the Ethics of Warfare in the Ancient Near East
Program Unit: Assyriology and the Bible
Carly L. Crouch, University of Oxford

Due to the cultic focus of Kings and Chronicles, the unclear relationship of the Deuteronomistic History to the royal elite (and the varied origins of its constituent parts), and the largely marginal character of the prophets, the Hebrew Bible offers only the smallest of windows into royal military ideology and ethics, namely the psalms. Unfortunately, while there are numerous psalms which refer to war, concrete details border on non-existent, and they are thus of limited assistance in articulating a practical royal military ethic. The monumental palace reliefs from Assyria, however, offer a unique visual avenue into royal ideology, royal propaganda, and their interaction with ethical thinking about military practices. Their pictorial nature is especially relevant, revealing details – such as the demographics of an execution's audience – normally excluded from written texts. The Assyrian reliefs, therefore, are an opportunity to extend the little which is known of Judahite royal ideology into a more concrete discussion of actual military practices and ethics. Once this elite perspective on ethics in warfare is fleshed out, it may serve as a counterpoint to the more peripheral perspective(s) preserved in the Hebrew Bible, such as Amos.


Good Girl, Bad Girl: A Postcolonial Analysis of Foreign Women in the Deuteronomistic History
Program Unit: Women in the Biblical World
Brad Crowell, Drake University

One distinctive feature of colonial narratives is their treatment and portrayal of foreign women.  Women from neighboring or conquered peoples are typically presented in a dichotomistic manner: women who comply with the colonial power are seen as heroic converts to the purposes of the conqueror, while women who defy the colonial power to remain within their own culture and continue its practices are hyper-sexualized and seductive.  The Deuteronomistic History, the biblical narrative from Joshua through 2 Kings recording the Conquest of Canaan through the destruction of Jerusalem, has many features of colonial and post-colonial discourse.  One of these characteristics is its treatment of foreign women.  For example, the Canaanite prostitute Rahab is praised when she aids the Israelite spies as they scout out the land of Canaan before their imminent invasion. On the other hand, women like Delilah the Philistine and Jezebel the Phoenician are consistently presented as seducing Israelite men into breaking the covenant with Yahweh and misleading the people.  While this is a consistent theme in the narrative, the portrayal of foreign women provides modern scholars with insight into the colonial stance of some themes within the biblical narrative.


Discussion and Sharing of Resources and Ideas
Program Unit: Best Practices in Teaching
N. Clayton Croy, Trinity Lutheran Seminary

The final 30 minutes of the workshop will be devoted to discussion of methods, resources, and ideas for teaching biblical exegesis/interpretation.


Hosea 6:7: A Janus Solution to a Crux Interpretum
Program Unit: Israelite Prophetic Literature
Byron G. Curtis, Geneva College

One of the advances in scholarship in recent decades has been the discovery of various types of wordplays in the Hebrew Bible. One of the newer types has been called pivotal polysemous parallelism, or, evoking the two-faced Roman god of entries and exits, “Janus” parallelism (Cyrus Gordon, 1978). In Janus parallelism, there may appear three lines of poetry, and a term in the middle line is delightfully or disturbingly ambiguous: it pivots. Tracked with the prior line, it takes one meaning; tracked with the following line, it takes another meaning. Such a case is labeled “symmetrical,” i.e., there is balance fore and aft. Some cases are labeled asymmetrical. This sort might have only two lines, or in some other way lack the balance of the first type. Scott Noegel (1996) has shown that Janus parallelism is a sometime weapon in Hosea's poetical arsenal. Regarding Hosea 6:7, no consensus translation exists, a dispute that goes as far back as LXX and Vulgate. Two approaches are mainly evident today, one using the personal name Adam, as in the Vulgate (“like Adam,” NIV, ESV), the other reading "adam as a reference to the Jordan Valley town, following Wellhausen's textual emendation (“at Adam,” NRSV). The long contested translation can be resolved by recognizing an asymmetrical Janus parallelism. The first clause tracks (rightly) as a reference to the first human; the second clause tracks (rightly) as a reference to the Jordan valley town (note the sham, “there,” in verse 7b). Thus the author of Hosea 6:7 conceived of Yahweh's covenant with Israel as in some sense parallel to a covenant with Adam; both covenants were violated, with disastrous results: “Like [their ancestor] Adam, they broke the covenant; Like [the residents of the town of] Adam, they double-crossed me there.”


Religious Experience and the Cognitive Science of Religion
Program Unit: Religious Experience in Antiquity
István Czachesz, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies

The first part of this paper offers an overview of the field of the Cognitive Science of Religion from its beginnings in the late 1980s to its most recent developments. In particular, we will survey four research areas that are focusing on four different domains of religion, respectively: religious experience, religious beliefs, texts, and rituals. In the second part of the paper, we will discuss research on religious experience within the cognitive paradigm. Experimental studies of religious experience started as early as the first half of the last century. In our days, advanced brain imaging technologies are used to observe the brain while people are having religious experience. We will survey theories that locate religious experience in particular emotional states, different perceptions of the self, or the activation/inhibition of particular brain areas. Finally, we will suggest that religious experience might not constitute a particular kind of experience at all, but rather result from interpreting experience as religious by connecting emotional states with beliefs about religious entities, such as superhuman agency.


Revisiting the Context of Pseudo-Phocylides
Program Unit: Pseudepigrapha
Mary R. D'Angelo, University of Notre Dame

Pseudo-Phocylides has for some time been seen as a Jewish work most probably located in the first century BCE or CE, though doubts remain about both its Jewish character and its date. This essay will point to aspects of the text which strongly suggest a post-Augustan date, enumerating aspects of the moral teaching which respond to imperial family values campaigns, and evoke a context in the mid first century, noting especially rather specific commonalities with Philo. It will then suggest the possibility of another very different context: ethical "paganism" in the mid-fourthth century.


Imperial Sexual Politics, Christian Polemic, and Same-Sex Commitments in Christian Origins: Rereading the Letter to the Romans
Program Unit: LGBTI/Queer Hermeneutics
Mary R. D'Angelo, University of Notre Dame

In his recent book _The Friend_, the late Alan Bray confirmed John Boswell's reading of at least some of the partnerships he described as same sex unions by examining monuments of and narratives about friends who had chosen to be buried together. In light of his investigations, this (slide) essay brings together prosopographical readings of Rom 16 with studies of the funerary portraits produced by and for freedpersons at from Rome in the very late Republic and early Empire, which show a similar mix of multiple portraits, opposite sex couples and same sex pairs. The letter to the Romans offers an avenue into rethinking the relationship of sexual mores, theological polemic and imperial politics in the origins of Christianity. Romans 16 has been an important venue for investigating the first urban Christians. There Paul greets a surprising number of men and women, by name, and often with descriptors or epithets that suggest missionary labor. These greetings are addressed to individuals, to male-female pairs, to mixed groups, to one all-male group, and to two same sex pairs: one pair of two women and one of two men. Examining Rom 16 in the social and political context of these portraits offers significant insight into social conditions and imperial propaganda that helped to form these groupings. These portraits illustrate the ways that freedpersons constructed and reconstructed families. The conjuncture of social displacement and innovation with moral rectitude, of resistance and accommodation conveyed in the portraits is also a factor in Romans. The portraits offer an analogy that illuminates the combination of social innovations reflected in Romans 16, concession to imperial power expressed in Rom 13:1-7 and moral strictures voiced in Rom 1:18-31.


From Recitation to Revival: The Place of the Qur'an in Muslim Life
Program Unit:
Caner Dagli, College of the Holy Cross

This presentation will will describe the process of the revelation of the Qur'an to the Prophet Muhammad and its dynamic reception by his earlier followers as part of the unfolding early history of Islam. She will note how the Islamic scholarly tradition has accounted for the Qur'an's transmission and variant readings/interpretations, and remark on the scripture's central role in shaping numerous aspects of Muslim life.


Demonstration of a Sample Module from a Communicative Classroom
Program Unit: National Association of Professors of Hebrew
Hélène Dallaire, Denver Seminary

Several communicative principles employed in the project will be illustrated in a mock-classroom, e.g. total physical response (TPR), aural, oral, and visual interactive exercises.


Kierkegaard and Abraham
Program Unit: Søren Kierkegaard Society
Timothy Dalrymple, Harvard University

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The Memory of Moses and the Israelites in Paul's Appeal to Reconciliation in 1 Corinthians
Program Unit: Mapping Memory: Tradition, Texts, and Identity
Finn Damgaard, University of Copenhagen

I take as my starting point, Margaret M. Mitchell's illuminating approach to 1 Corinthians as an appeal to reconciliation in her "Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation" (Louisville 1992). It is my thesis that the memories of Moses and the Israelites" seditions in the wilderness play a crucial role for Paul's appeal to reconciliation not only in 1 Cor 10:1-11 but throughout the letter. In the paper, I examine the way these narratives function as master commemorative narratives. By pointing to the narratives of Moses and the Israelites as a narrative frame for the founding of the Corinthian congregation and the present conflict, Paul tries to revise and re-establish the identity of the Corinthians. It is argued that the factions with which Paul is concerned in 1 Corinthians are keyed to the memories of the factions against Moses. Paul read these narratives in 1 Corinthians in the light of the ancient topos of factionalism (stasis) and uses them to make certain points about the proper behaviour of the Corinthian community. Just as he propagates a memory of Moses as struggling for concord (omónoia) among the Israelites in the wilderness, so Paul pictures himself as playing a crucial role in this strategy of identification as the one who continues the struggle of Moses in his own day. By invoking a memory of these narratives that fits Paul's aim, he seeks to structure the collective memory of the Corinthians and reconstruct their identity as a unified community. Paul"s appeal to reconciliation is an appeal through collective memory.


The Sex-Trade and Slavery at Meals
Program Unit: Meals in the Greco-Roman World
Carly Daniel-Hughes, Concordia University-Montreal

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Mark 1:1–15 as “Introduction”: A Grammatical, Narrative, and Rhetorical Study
Program Unit: Gospel of Mark
Paul Danove, Villanova University

****This paper uses grammatical, narrative, and rhetorical methods to identify Mark 1:1-15 as a cohesive introduction to Mark, to resolve Mark 1:1-15 into constituent narrative units, and to develop the implications of this introduction for the interpretation of the Gospel. The study uses grammatical and narrative criteria to establish the continuous and linked characterizations of God, John the Baptist, and Jesus within 1:1-15 and the definite break in this continuity and linkage in 1:16. The discussion then uses narrative criteria to resolve 1:1-15 into three units, 1:1-3, 4-8, 9-15. This discussion addresses the punctuation of 1:1-3 and the internal structure of all three units. The study then uses rhetorical criteria to develop the implications of the repetition of of eu0agge/lion (gospel) and o(do&j (way) within 1:1-15 and the punctuation of 1:1-3 for the interpretation of the Gospel as a whole.


Differentiation or Dissociation? The Social Function of Virtues and Vices in Ephesians 4:25–5:5
Program Unit: Disputed Paulines
Daniel K. Darko, University of Scranton

The notion that virtues and vices in Ephesians 4.25-5.5 is part of a social/ethical comparison that calls for or legitimates separation from outsiders is re-examined in this study. In other words, is there any validity to the claim that the author uses this device alongside old-new, light-darkness and wise-fool antithesis to call for withdrawal from outsiders? If so, are the virtues being promoted counter-cultural, suggesting that by observing them the readers will be set apart or look odd, as some claim? Our text contains and constitutes the bulk of the use of virtue-vice device in the letter with expansions at various points. The focused study includes a comparison between the substance of ethics being promoted and prohibited, and similar features in Greco-Roman literature to establish the extent to which it departs from conventional norms. Moreover, an attention will be given the rhetorical strategy and theological framework in the attempt to establish whether the virtue-vice antithesis is employed here to demarcate social boundaries, call for social separation or promote shared ethical values that would ultimately enhance solidarity in the readership.


Israel's Eastern Neighbors: Ammonites and Moabites in Central Jordan
Program Unit: Archaeological Excavations and Discoveries: Illuminating the Biblical World
P. M. Michèle Daviau, Wilfrid Laurier University

Archaeological excavations at the sites of Tall Jawa and Khirbat al-Mudayna on the Wadi ath-Thamad have revealed two distinct Iron Age cultures in the region between Amman and Dibon. Both sites were contemporary with the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Ammonites and Moabites shared certain features of their language, religion, construction techniques, and objects of daily life with each other and with their western neighbors. At the same time, clear differences can be seen in these same aspects of their material culture. The discovery of a temple building at Khirbat al-Mudayna with an inscribed incense altar and of a wayside shrine three miles to the west (Site WT-13) sets these sites apart from Tall Jawa, where only domestic buildings were unearthed. This paper will compare these sites to each other and to certain sites in Israel and Judah in terms of their architecture, pottery and religious artefacts.


Bakhtin's Carnival-esque-Grotesque in the Book of Judges
Program Unit: Bakhtin and the Biblical Imagination
Edith T. A. Davidson, Oneonta, NY

All of characteristics of the carnivalesque-grotesque as defined by Mikhail Bakhtin in his book "Rabelais and His World" (1965, 1968) can be found in Judges. The main aim of the this genre, according to Bakhtin, is liberation: "The function of the carnival-grotesque form is to consecrate inventive freedom, … to liberate from the prevailing point of view of the world, from conventions and established truths, from clichés, from all that is humdrum and universally accepted. This carnival spirit offers the chance to have a new outlook on the world, to realize the relative nature of all that exists, and to enter a completely new order of things" (34, my emphasis). Bakhtin was convinced that “folk culture was always based on the indestructible confidence in the might and final victory of man” (336n.) and that laughter was one route by which the folk overcame their fear of established authority and truth. Judges has perfect examples of all these characteristics. I will list, define, and exemplify the characterstics as found in Judges. 1. Body parts; 2. Dismemberment and mutilation; 3. Food, wine, and banquets; 4. Degradation, or the downward slope; 5. Positive aspect of this degradation; 7. Topsy-turvy world; 8. Wrong use of common objects; 9. Suspension of normal rules of behavior; 10. Suspension of normal rules of behavior; 11. Exaggeration of numbers; 12. Heterogeneity; 13. Madness; 14. Parody, travesty, and burlesque; 15. Irony; 16. Satire; 17. Riddles, puzzles, and games; 18. Women as destructive of men or as foils; 19. Focus on the common people; 20. Accurate topography of the world; 21. Nomenclature. Oddly, a characteristic not mentioned by Bakhtin, but important to Judges, is that of the Trickster. And although Bakhtin was interested in the origins of the genre, he does not mention either Judges nor the great prototype of the carnivalesque-grotesque–Samson.


Exploring Compatibilities: Prophetic Books and Postcolonial Theory
Program Unit: Israelite Prophetic Literature
Steed Vernyl Davidson, Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary

This paper will explore the possibilities and limitations for the use of postcolonial theory in the reading of prophetic books. It will engage the difficulty of using a modern reading strategy presupposing modern constructions of empire to read ancient texts that make oblique and obscure references to ancient empires. The paper will also present an assessment of the ability of postcolonial theory to shape a comprehensive approach to prophetic books and outline insights gained from this approach that are not currently provided from other approaches to these texts. An initial exploration of postcolonial theory grounding it in the work of Frantz Fanon, CLR James and other theorists will assert a claim for reading prophetic books as anti-imperial discourse. This view, though, can lock the reading of prophetic books into a historicist cul-de-sac. Having engaged this and other limitations, the paper will then go on to show how postcolonial theory can be used in reading the prophetic books, maintaining the claim to anti-imperial literature and breaking out of a purely historicist approach to prophetic books. The paper will then draw upon the theories of Edward Said, Homi Bhabha and other postcolonial theorists to articulate the contours of the anti-imperial rhetoric paying attention to concerns such as displacement (exile), cultural identity and nationalism. Reference will be largely made to the books of Jeremiah, Isaiah and post-exilic prophets such as Haggai and Zechariah.


Ambivalence and Temple Destruction in Jeremiah 7 and 26
Program Unit: Writing/Reading Jeremiah
Steed Vernyl Davidson, Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary

The oracles in Jeremiah (chs. 7 and 26) predicting the destruction of the temple by YHWH in whose name the temple is erected looks like an oddity. This peculiar theological reflection of divine destruction of a cultic site will be investigated for its uniqueness within the Jeremiah traditions, other prophetic traditions such as Ezekiel and the deuteronomist name-theology traditions. Homi Bhabha's notion of ambivalence provides one way of reading the puzzling idea of a deity destroying its own cultic site. Bhabha's use, in the context of imperial discourse, of the psychoanalytic concept of ambivalence as wanting one thing but desiring its opposite serves as a useful reading strategy for chapters 7 and 26 of Jeremiah. This notion helps to ground these texts in the Babylonian imperial contexts and to interrogate the odd claim that YHWH destroys the temple in the face of the historical reporting that the Babylonians razed the building. In these two chapters, calls for reforms to save the temple and predictions of its demolition following the historical precedent of Shiloh appear together. These conflicting calls will be presented as reflecting Bhabha's understanding of ambivalence - a discourse that disrupts imperial claims to untrammeled power. The paper will explore a reading of these texts showing how the ambivalent discourse of salvation/destruction regarding the temple can be read in light of Babylonian imperial action relating to the ultimate destruction of the temple.


The Bible under the Joshua Tree: Biblical Imagery in the Music of U2
Program Unit: Use, Influence, and Impact of the Bible
Andrew Davies, Mattersey Hall

2007 saw the 20th anniversary re-release of U2's international best-selling recording, The Joshua Tree. Immensely significant in terms of the history of popular music, Joshua Tree is also important for biblical scholars working in reception history and cultural criticism as an excellent illustration of how musicians can take up biblical themes and imagery and reinterpret and reapply them to contemporary society in a creative manner, which can highlight anew their relevance and significance to secular as well as religious listeners, and provide new contexts for fundamental biblical concepts. This paper will highlight some of the biblical themes and images that are evident in the music and the lyrics of the album, with a particular emphasis on its many ethical themes, and seek to show how music is a valid and valuable way of reinterpreting the Bible particularly for popular and biblically-illiterate audiences.


The Book of Revelation and the Hekhalot Literature
Program Unit: Mysticism, Esotericism, and Gnosticism in Antiquity
James Davila, University of St. Andrews

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David as Lion Slayer in 1 Samuel 17:34–35 and the Iconography of the Royal Seal of the Neo-Assyrian Empire
Program Unit: Assyriology and the Bible
Michael T. Davis, Princeton Theological Seminary/Rider University

In David's response to Saul's question in 1 Sam 17:34-35, as to whether he is competent to go into battle against Goliath, David portrays his prowess as a protector of his father's flocks in graphic terms. David states that he has proven himself a warrior by defeating the lion and the bear when they have attacked the sheepfold. There is a detailed accounting of just how these beasts are fought and slain—with apparent emphasis on the confrontation with the lion. “…When he [the lion] rose up against me, I took hold of the mane below his jaw [literally “his beard”], then I dealt him a blow and he died.” When one considers this tableau in light of Neo-Assyrian depictions of royal power one is struck by its similarity to the iconography of the king-lion confrontation found upon the so-called royal seal of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which, in turn, is incorporated in bas reliefs of Assurbanipal"s royal lion “hunts.” In fact, Julian Reade remarks that in the incorporation of this scene in Assurbanipal"s royal hunt, one sees “…the symbolic act of the royal seal translated into reality.” The question may be posed, has the author of David"s depiction of himself as warrior incorporated elements that ultimately derive from the visual iconography of Neo-Assyrian royal propaganda—specifically that of the royal seal and lion hunt? In exploring this possibility, this paper will deal with the geographical and cultural diffusion and appropriation of the lion-king conflict tableau of the royal seal of Assyria—not only in monumental art, but in, perhaps, more importantly in “movable” objects—decorative ivories, vessels, seals and jewelry. Since this tableau/motif is a durable one and survives the Neo-Assyrian period, and given questions concerning the date of the material found in the so-called Deutronomistic History, where David"s response is found, the appearance of this iconography in the Persian context will also be addressed. Special attention will be paid to the studies of Irene Winter, Margaret Cool Root, Julian Reade, John Boardman, and Suzanne Herbordt, among others.


The Power of the Press: Boston Publishers and the Rhetoric of Freedom, 1850–1860
Program Unit: African-American Biblical Hermeneutics
Stacy Davis, Saint Mary's College

In the years leading up to the Civil War, rhetoric on both sides of the slavery debate intensified. Boston, as the primary home of the radical abolitionist movement, played a role in these debates. This paper will analyze texts published between 1850 and 1860, with a specific focus upon two arguments - the argument in favor of claiming the Declaration of Independence as an abolitionist document and the argument against the Fugitive Slave Act. Both African American and European American abolitionist authors found themselves engaged in a war of words with pro-slavery writers about the nature of the United States, with Southerners and their allies insisting that the Declaration of Independence was an atheistic text and therefore superfluous. Boston publishers gave abolitionists a forum to defend themselves and their nation as they saw it, thus playing a critical role in the political and social life of their city and their country.


Jesus and His Mother (John 19:25–27)
Program Unit: John, Jesus, and History
Esther A. de Boer, Protestant Theological University Kampen

The presentation of Jesus and his mother in John 19:25-27 calls forth many questions. How many women accompany her under the cross; three, two or one? Why are they mentioned, whereas Jesus addresses only his mother? What does it mean that Jesus makes his mother the mother of the disciple whom he loved, who suddenly also appears to be there? Traditionally, John is said to draw on the Synoptic Gospels for the presence of women at the crucifixion and John's redaction is meant to make a symbolic statement about the church. According to Roman Catholic exegesis, before he dies, Jesus wants to proclaim that his mother is from then on the mother of the church. Protestant exegesis maintains that the church is not about blood relationship; from John 19:25-27 it emerges that, through the church, people become a new family. No one is left alone; they all have the care and love of and for one another. In this paper, I want to leave the redactional and symbolic level of interpretation and, by using historical imagination, focus instead on John's presentation of Jesus and his mother in their historical context. Is it historically plausible that Jesus" mother is standing under the cross, hearing Jesus" last words to her? And if so, how does she understand these words and what do they mean to her view of Jesus and his immanent death and to her view of her life after this traumatic experience?


Pistis in Galatians
Program Unit: Pauline Epistles
M. C. de Boer, Vrije Universiteit-Amsterdam

In recent scholarship there has been an ongoing debate about the proper interpretation of the phrase "pistis ('Iesou) Christou" in Gal 2:16 (cf. 2:20; 3:22). Is Paul referring to "faith in Christ" or "the faith(fulness) of Christ"? This paper explores the implications of choosing the second alternative for understanding the remaining instances of the term "pistis" in Galatians, especially in chapter 3 (vss 2, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 24, 26).


Ambrosiaster's Interpretations of Roman 1:26–27
Program Unit: History of Interpretation
Theodore de Bruyn, University of Ottawa

The publication of John Boswell's Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality sparked a lively debate about the interpretation of Romans 1:26-27. While much of the ensuing literature dealt with differing interpretations of Paul's argument, some of it treated patristic interpretations of the passage, querying or contesting Boswell's reading of the evidence. One of the patristic commentators noted (but not discussed in detail) in this literature is an anonymous author, now called Ambrosiaster, who was active in Rome in the 370s and 380s. Ambrosiaster"s commentary on Romans is the earliest extant Latin commentary on the epistle. In referring to Ambrosiaster"s comments on Romans 1:26-27, scholars have overlooked the fact that the commentary exists in three versions, all of which appear to have been authored by Ambrosiaster. In his initial comment on Romans 1:26, Ambrosiaster understands Paul to say that women submitted to unnatural sexual relations with men. In the second and third versions of this comment, Ambrosiaster argued that Paul meant that women engaged in sexual relations with women. My paper will discuss the authenticity of the several versions of the comment, the nuances of Ambrosiaster"s reconsideration of Paul"s meaning, and possible explanations for Ambrosiaster"s change of mind. I will also consider the significance of his remarks, which attest to alternative contemporary interpretations of Romans 1:26, for our understanding of patristic interpretation of this passage.


Criteria for Identifying Biblical Inscriptions as Amulets
Program Unit: Papyrology and Early Christian Backgrounds
Theodore de Bruyn, University of Ottawa

Scholars have differed in the criteria they employ to identify formularies and amulets containing Christian motifs. Van Haelst's catalogue of Jewish and Christian papyri included amulets consisting of prayers, acclamations, or citations from the Bible or the Christian liturgy (Catalogue des papyrus littéraires juifs et chrétiens, 1976, 414), whereas these were excluded from the more recent compilations of Brashear (ANRW II.18.5, 1995, 3492-3; cf. 3480 n. 486) and Daniel and Maltomini (Supplementum Magicum I, 1991, ix). Both approaches have their merits. While the latter focuses on the unique or specific features of magical texts, the former is more inclusive of the entire range of materials that were used as amulets. The more inclusive approach requires that one distinguish between inscriptions used as amulets and inscriptions used for some other private purpose. When the inscription consists only of a biblical passage, this judgment may be tentative or provisional. My paper will discuss criteria used to identify materials inscribed with one or more biblical passages as amulets, and will present a list of papyri, parchments, ostraca, and tablets from the 4th to the 8th century C.E inscribed with biblical passages in Greek and deemed to be amulets.


Nineteenth-Century Feminist Responses to Laws in the Pentateuch
Program Unit: Recovering Female Interpreters of the Bible
Christiana de Groot, Calvin College

Women read the laws in the Hebrew Bible in the context of the many societal changes occuring in England and United States in the nineteenth century. A variety of positions will be discussed including Freethinker Annie Besant's harsh criticism of biblical laws as impediments to women's progress, Grace Aquilar's Jewish defence of the laws as supporting the dignity of women and Elizabeth Cady Stanton's reading of the Decalogue in light of the institution of slavery. Each interpreter illuminates features of the passage through her subjective engagement, and in turn uses scripture to shed light on her social situation. Whether perceived as an obstacle to emancipation or a beacon of light on the path to justice, interpreting the laws in the Pentateuch is a strategic part of the struggle for justice for Jews, African Americans and women.


What Do Iconographic Approaches Yield? A Taxonomy of Historical Iconographic Exegesis's Contributions
Program Unit: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Bible
Izaak J. de Hulster, University of Utrecht

Historical exegesis focuses on the emergence of the text and is interested in any evidence that can contribute to a better historical understanding of the text. Therefore, the exegete must consider the impact of climate and the complex (direct and indirect) influences (and on!) societies and cultures including the "mental map" of the people among whom the text was communicated. In spite of this complexity, scholars often interpret biblical texts only through inner-biblical references and with the help of non-biblical texts. In order to correct and corroborate current conclusions and to construct creative contributions that are coherent with the conceptual cognitive circle in which the text was created and communicated, it is necessary to consider material evidence from the past and scrutinize how this can shed light on the text and its cognitive environment. Pictorial material is particularly useful in this effort. This paper will point out how images can illuminate interpretation of many different aspects of the text. When historical exegesis aims to deal with every possible relevant aspect of the context of the text, it cannot do without iconography!


From Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy to Biblical Prophecy and Back Again
Program Unit: Hebrew Scriptures and Cognate Literature
Matthijs J. de Jong, Netherlands Bible Society/Leiden University

Recent publications on prophecy allow one to gain a general view of the phenomenon of prophecy in the ancient Near East. Prophecy functioned as one form of divination among others and prophets functioned as mediators supposedly receiving direct messages from gods by various means, which they communicated to whom it concerned. The Hebrew Bible contains many glimpses of prophecy as a socio-historical phenomenon. These elements are reminiscent of ancient Near Eastern prophetic practice and support the view that prophecy in ancient Israel and Judah is to be regarded as representing local variants of the broader phenomenon of ancient Near Eastern prophecy. Yet the dominant picture of prophecy in the Hebrew Bible is profoundly different. It has therefore often been taken for granted that the true prophets whose words are embodied in the biblical prophetic books represent a different type of prophets. However, I will argue that most traditions concerning prophets in the Hebrew Bible are not descriptions of how prophecy actually was, but a reflection of prophecy based on later perception. Images of the prophets in the Hebrew Bible, although not complete imagination, should not be taken as descriptions of prophetic practice in Judah and Israel. The paper will discuss various biblical images of prophecy – such as the prophets as true servants of YHWH and the prophets as false and deceptive smooth-talkers – and explore their origins. Finally, some suggestions will be made with regard to the question how one can go back again from the biblical portrayals of prophecy to prophecy as a historical phenomenon.


The Undoing of P
Program Unit: Pentateuch
Albert de Pury, University of Geneva

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Jerusalem in the Persian Period: The Archaeological Evidence
Program Unit: Literature and History of the Persian Period
Alon de Groot, Israel Antiquities Authority

The focus of this lecture is the archaeological evidence in Jerusalem for the Persian period which was mostly found in excavations that took place in the last 40 years (post-K. Kenyon). After presenting this evidence I will suggest interpretations that will shed light on current issues and debates. Most of the new evidence comes from the eastern slope of Y. Shiloh's excavations in the City of David, some of which is already published, some of which is in press. These finds include three phases; first, reuse of a large Iron Age public building ("the Ashlar House") that was destroyed in the Babylonian destruction of 586 BCE; a layer of quarry chips that covered a large part of the eastern slope, in Areas E and D of Shiloh and Area A of Reich and Shukron; and a fill layer supported by terrace walls. The finds from Shiloh's excavation include a rich ceramic assemblage, several seal impressions, a coin and an ostracon. Our interpretation of the finds suggests that the city spread out on the entire southeastern hill (City of David), not extending as far as the western hill. The isolated finds from the western hill should be attributed to agricultural activities as evidenced elsewhere in the vicinity of the city. The reuse of the "Ashlar House" may be attributed to a squatter's occupation in the early stages of the period. The quarry chip layer provides evidence for significant construction activities that took place on the top of the hill; this might be attributed to the building of the city wall (Nehemiah's wall). In the past, Kenyon claimed that she found evidence of that wall, but a careful reading of her preliminary reports and the final report published by Franken and Steiner show that there is no direct connection between the wall built on the top of the slope and the Persian period layer excavated by her. The layer excavated by Kenyon was the same layer revealed by Shiloh in Area G and most recently by E. Mazar; this layer relates to one of the terrace walls mentioned above. Therefore the quarry chip layer is probably the only feature that can archaeologically indicate the existence of the wall.


On the Formal Definition of “Long Word” in Tiberian Hebrew: Diagnostic, Database, Generative Analysis, and Implications
Program Unit: Masoretic Studies
Vincent DeCaen, University of Toronto

Dresher's programmatic analysis of the Tiberian Hebrew cantillation system(s) as some sort of prosodic representation (1994) is the basis for the present study. A desideratum in Dresher's programme is a rigorous formal definition of the prosodic foot as revealed by the behaviour of the so-called “long word” and related phenomena. The chant of the three poetic books provides a systematic diagnostic of the long word, and consequently an exhaustive database of short versus long words can be compiled. In this light, no previous definition of long word is empirically adequate. This paper offers a generative analysis of the distinctions found and a formal definition based thereon. The problematic nature and implications of the proposal are examined by way of conclusion.


What Can the Gospel of Judas Tell Us about Judas and Why Is This Important?
Program Unit: Future of the Past: Biblical and Cognate Studies for the Twenty-First Century
April D. DeConick, Rice University

This paper will provide a general summary of what the Gospel of Judas says about Judas. The discussion will be framed around three questions. What - if anything - might this gospel tell us about the "historical" Judas? What does the text tell us about portrayals of Judas in the second century, especially within Sethian Gnostic literature? What difference does any of this make to us today?


Private Collections of Ethiopian Manuscripts in North America
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible
Steve Delamarter, George Fox University

We will provide an overview of the private collections of Ethiopian manuscripts that exist in North America, with special attention given to those with more than 40 manuscripts. Most of these are in the hands of dealers who have cooperated with the Ethiopian Manuscript Imaging Project, which Delamarter heads. We will describe the history of the digitization and cataloguing of these manuscripts and their access through the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library's website Vivarium.


What Isaiah Saw; What Isaiah Envisioned: The Dynamism of Prophetic Vision
Program Unit: Biblical Hebrew Poetry
Carol J. Dempsey, University of Portland

In the superscription to the book of Isaiah, the narrator proclaims: "The vision of Isaiah son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah" (Isa 1:1). This paper examines the poetics and fabric of the text of Isaiah in order to assess what is understood by prophetic poetic vision, and to determine to what extent Isaiah's vision remains prophetic today. Central to the study is the role that imagination plays in the poet's proclamations. The study also tries to uncover the interplay that exists between past and present times in light of the poet's vision, an interplay that can set the stage for new directions for all communities of life today. Have the images of "former things" really come to pass? Is the motif of "new heavens and a new earth" merely a pipedream or has its time come of age? This paper seeks to address such questions and others in the context of the grand schema of Isaiah's vision whose poet sees the inevitable, proclaims the shocking, and dreams the unthinkable.


"he Path of Total Surrender": Karl Barth and the Spiritual Nature of Theology
Program Unit: Karl Barth Society of North America
Michael Dempsey, St. John's University

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From Writing Exercise to Literary Composition: The Book of Lamentations
Program Unit: Orality, Textuality, and the Formation of the Hebrew Bible
Aaron Demsky, Bar-Ilan University

Since deciphering the "Izbet Sartah ostracon in 1976, it has been clear to me that there is a close affinity between writing exercises and some biblical genres, particularly between abecedaries and acrostic poems. They are two ends of scribal training. We will take a closer look at the structure of the Book of Lamentations which is a product of “alphabetic thinking”. The author has allowed the twenty-two letter alphabet to shape the structure of the individual laments as well as that of the whole book. We will attempt to show the use of certain elementary drills in the hands of the master poet who lamented the great calamity that befell his people.


Wa and Asyndeton as Guides to Macrostructure in the Reported Speech of Deuteronomy
Program Unit: Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew
Jason S. DeRouchie, Northwestern College, MN

One challenge with most stylistic and textlinguistic approaches to literary structure in biblical prose has been the lack of formal criteria for discerning text hierarchy and embedding at the macro-level. While stylistic analysis draws attention to the literary artistry of the biblical text as a whole, its conclusions too often fail to account for formal structuring features in the text that were apparently intended to help guide a reader's understanding of discourse organization and flow-of-thought. Similarly, while textlinguistics has shown the fruitfulness of identifying mainline and offline predication patterns within a given text type in order to distinguish features like paragraph divisions and background material, little work has been done to clarify how macro-structure is to be discerned in texts like the reported speech of Deuteronomy where numerous discourse types are strung together within a single address. This study argues that the first step in analyzing text hierarchy and macrostructure is to observe how wa and asyndeton (Ø) shape discourse blocks. The connector wa creates a coordinated chain of clauses that are to be read together, whereas Ø breaks the chain, either to start a completely new unit or to signal an embedded (appositional or parenthetical) unit within the higher unit of discourse. Having established the primary and supportive units on the basis of these two formal features, the interpreter can then analyze each text block for shifts in predication patterns to distinguish smaller paragraph divisions and inner-paragraph comments.


“So Why Does This Matter Anyway?” The Challenges (and Rewards) of Teaching the Synoptic Problem at a Theological Seminary
Program Unit: Synoptic Gospels
Robert Derrenbacker, Regent College

This paper will explore both the challenges and the rewards of teaching the Synoptic Problem at a theological seminary or confessional graduate school. In particular, this paper will suggest some aids and resources that may allow students to grasp the issues at work in Synoptic source criticism, including establishing literary relationships, arguments from order and the positing of hypothetical sources. In addition, this paper will examine source-critical “phobias” as well as the relevancy of the Synoptic Problem for students at confessional institutions.


Out of Our Minds? Appeals to Reason (Logos) in Revelation
Program Unit: Rhetoric and Early Christianity
David A. deSilva, Ashland Theological Seminary

Many scholars pass over the possibility of discovering rational argumentation in what is admittedly one of the least rational texts of Scripture. While narrative art contributes much to the persuasive force of Revelation, it is not the case that Revelation completely lacks argumentation. Taking as its starting point the observation of “inferential particles” and other markers of argumentation in the seven oracles, this paper seeks to explore both the explicit and implicit enthymematic-argumentative elaboration in three selected oracles, analyze how the argument “works” in terms of employing common topics and deductive patterns, and examine what ends such reasoning seeks to serve. An important facet of this investigation involves the assessment of the cultural premises and ideological convictions John presumes that his hearers will share and will be willing to supply in order for John's logic to be persuasive.


How Greek Is the Author of the Letter to the Hebrews?
Program Unit: Hebrews
David A. deSilva, Ashland Theological Seminary

This paper seeks to position Hebrews within its Greco-Roman context by inquiring into the paideia of the author as reflected in the author's product. The paper will examine the signs that the author has at least participated in education at the Progymnastic level. Striking in this regard is his use of significant elements of a formal elaboration pattern in 12:5-11, ending with an amplified recitation of a well-known maxim that appears itself as the model thesis in a number of similar exercises in a number of different Progymnasmata. Equally striking is his repositioning of this Greek maxim to the level of concluding maxim in support of a "chreia" derived from a Hebrew sage. The author's use of argicultural imagery to speak of responses to benefaction, of human developmental imagery to talk about progress in Christian discipleship (i.e., in a "philosophy"), and of liberation from slavery to the fear of death as a topos praising a philosophical teacher, also speak to the question of his relationship to Greco-Roman philosophical culture, making possible some observations concerning realms of Greco-Roman discourse from which he drew comfortably, and realms from which he notably avoids drawing (e.g., Greco-Roman cult).


“De-Judaization” of Early Christian Groups as a Cultural Phenomenon
Program Unit: Construction of Christian Identities
Adriana Destro, University of Bologna

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The Interpreter as Intertext: Origen's First Homily on the Canticle of Canticles
Program Unit: Religious Experience in Antiquity
Celia Deutsch, Barnard College

Origen delivered his homilies on the Canticle of Canticles in third-century Caesarea. In conversation and dispute with Jewish interpreters, Origen illustrates ways in which Church and individual Christian play the role of the Bride. This paper attempts to explore Origen's use, in the first homily, of his own experience as an intertext with the biblical text and his invitation to his hearers to enter that process. Origen writes himself into the text at Ct 1:7 (Hom 1.7), where he makes an autobiographical statement about his experience of the presence and absence, approach and withdrawal of Christ the Bridegroom. Origen's Commentary on the Canticle of Canticles, written prior to the homily, suggests that the experience of presence and disappearance has to do with the hermeneutical process. In the Commentary, as in the Homilies, Origen speaks of both Christ and the biblical text as the "Word." In the Commentary, he locates Christ as present in the Word of Scripture. Correct reading allows the interpreter to perceive Christ there and interpretation is understood as an act of intimacy between Bride and Bridegroom. Origen's use of allegorical method and his teaching concerning the spiritual senses as well as his understanding of the text as a kind of embodiment of the Word facilitate such a hermeneutic. Speaking of the Canticle of Canticles as both drama and wedding song, Origen provides a way for listeners/readers to enter the text and themselves become intertexts. His autobiographical statement becomes an exemplar, and the homiletical context indicates that such experience is meant for the community's aspirations. Experience thus interprets text and text interprets experience.


The Hebrew Fiscal Bullae from the Time of Hezekiah King of Judah
Program Unit: Paleographical Studies in the Ancient Near East
Robert Deutsch, Tel Aviv University

The ancient site of Keilah was a biblical fortified town (Josh. 15:44), located 13.5 Km. north-west of Hebron. The city has preserved its name in Arabic at the site of Qila. The name of this city is also mentioned in the Amarna letters as involved in the conflict between Abdi-Heba of Jerusalem and Shuwardata of Hebron (ANET 489, nos. 289-290). David established his headquarter at Keilah and used the town as a place of refuge from Saul (I Sam. 23:1-13). During the First Temple Period the town of Keilah was a part of the district of Mareshah and later, during the Persian Period, Keilah was a district capital in the province of Judah. At the turn of the millennia, over one thousand Hebrew bullae were recovered in non-professional excavations at the site and find their way to several private collections. The rich assemblage is the reminiscence of a library from the time of Hezekiah, King of Judah. This epigraphic treasure contained many royal bullae, as also bullae of high officials in the royal court. Over five hundred bullae were published in the past (Deutsch 2003), and several hundred are still to be published this year. The discovery is of prime importance for the study of ancient Israel. The author will present a group of the so called "fiscal bullae", seal impressions used for taxation, revealing many names of biblical towns, some previously unknown from extra-biblical sources, and their connection with the LMLK jars.


Hebrew Fiscal Bullae from the Time of Hezekiah
Program Unit: Ugaritic Studies and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy
Robert Deutsch, Tel Aviv University

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Paul's Intimations of Mortality
Program Unit: Healthcare and Disability in the Ancient World
Arthur J. Dewey, Xavier University

Readers of Paul often overlook the Apostle's sense of the revelatory aspect of human mortality. This paper investigates the implications of 2 Cor 4; 2 Cor 12. What does Paul mean that our mortal condition conveys hope and radiance? How is this related to Paul's understanding of the fate of the anointed one? What contribution can Paul make to the contemporary discussion of disability and health care?


Divine Covenant and Kingship in the Ancient Near East
Program Unit: Assyriology and the Bible
Michael Dick, Siena College

It was common throughout the ancient Near East that the King ruled by divine approbation, which could be expressed with at least two primary theologoumena: (1) Divine Sonship (Psalm 2:7; Kirta, Lipit-Eshar), and (2) a divine covenant with the dynasty (2 Sam 7:16, the Covenant of Ashur). Often these two are combined as in 2 Sam 7:14-16 and Psalm 89. This paper focuses on the latter, the divine covenant with a dynasty. I shall present Mesopotamian archetypes and submit them to a form-critical analysis to further refine our understanding of both the form and content of the Davidic Covenant.


Zion's Redeemer: Isaiah 54:1–8 in Light of Levirate Custom
Program Unit: Biblical Hebrew Poetry
Sarah J. Dille, Gustavus Adolphus College

The feminine figure of Isaiah 54:1-8 is Zion. The reference to the “widowhood” of Zion in Isaiah 54 points to her loss of her husband Yhwh. Divine abandonment of the city by its god was a theme of biblical literature and of the Ancient Near East as an explanation for the destruction of a city. The “widowhood” language of Isaiah 54 interacts with other elements of this unit to create a picture of Zion as the childless widow who is “redeemed” by God. Drawing on the common identification of God as go"el (redeemer) in this collection of exilic texts, Isaiah 54 uniquely highlights the levir role of the go"el. While the notion of God as Zion's levirate husband may seem problematic, the imagery advances Second Isaiah's theme of God as go"el.


The Reception of the Law in Early Christianity
Program Unit: Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity
Paul Dilley, Yale University

In this paper, I examine key aspects of the early Christian reception and rewriting of the Law, broadly conceived, building on the interpretation of both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament. I discuss how discourses and practices relating to the Law shaped ancient Christian identity, especially over and against Judaism. The first part of the paper outlines the collection and use of precepts culled from the Pauline epistles, and commandments of Jesus taken from the Gospels. I explore how such passages were understood to complement the Mosaic Law, especially by authors such as Clement of Alexandria and Origen, and the ascetic and monastic communities which inherited their ideas. Two traditions emerge, interpreting Pauline views of the Mosaic Law in different ways: rewritten Law codes, on the model of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, based on the notion of monastic communities as a new Israel, and intended especially as a pedagogue for novices without spiritual gifts; and collections of precepts, such as Mark the Monk's On the Spiritual Law, closely related to philosophical antecedents, and intended to aid in the elimination of the passions, as well as the reception of the Spirit, through various exercises and meditations.


The Invention of Christian Tradition: Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, and Anti-Jewish Propaganda in Late Antiquity
Program Unit: Religious World of Late Antiquity
Paul Dilley, Yale University

In this paper, I argue that apocryphal and pseudepigraphical writings, once associated with esoteric, heretical Christian groups, in Late Antiquity came to be presented as public documents, even civic archives and imperial decrees, in a process I call the invention of Christian tradition; and were circulated as propaganda, with the purpose of inciting hatred on the basis of the tendentious historical events which they describe. These texts often advocated for imperial policies restrictive of Jewish rights, or protested those which upheld them, by presenting narratives that alluded to relevant new legislation or recent events. I show that many apocrypha and pseudepigrapha can be dated precisely with reference to these sources; most support the conversion or expulsion of Jews.


Adam, an Image of the Future Economy: Romans 5:14 in the Context of Irenaeus's Christological Exegesis of Genesis 1:26
Program Unit: Romans through History and Cultures
Steven DiMattei, University of Houston

It has often been said that Irenaeus follows Paul in reading a typological relationship between Adam and Christ as Paul himself had allegedly established. This paper, in short, challenges this traditional reading of Ireneaus" reading of Paul's use of Adam as a “tupos tou mellontos” (Rom 5:14). Firstly, Irenaeus displays no knowledge of some hermeneutical sense of the term tupos that, since Goppelt, the secondary literature on typology repeatedly affirms was handed down to Irenaeus via Paul. The sense of Irenaeus" reading of Paul's use of tupos in this verse and within the context of his Christological reading of Genesis 1:26 must ultimately be understood as “image.” Thus, Ireneaus" combined reading of Genesis 1:26 and Romans 5:14, within the specific context of his refutation against gnostic claims that Adam will not be saved and Christ was not born of the flesh, works as a refutation by claiming, in short: Christ as preexisting Logos formed Adam in his “image and likeness” (Gen 1:26), and thus Adam carries with him an “image of the future economy” (Rom 5:14), i.e., Christ's future incarnation. Irenaeus" understanding of the genitive participle in its neuter, “what shall come” specifically takes on the issues of how Christ will be incarnated, since Adam is an image of this future incarnation, in other words, in the flesh and by a Virgin as Adam himself was created by the virgin earth. The Greek word tupos is thus understood by Irenaeus as synonymous with eikon, as in fact it was understood in cosmological and exegetical uses by the Gnostics themselves (Adversus haereses I,7). Furthermore, I note that Irenaeus" reading of Paul does not necessarily highlight Paul"s intention in his use of the expression tupos tou mellontos, but rather highlights Irenaeus" own theological reflection. Secondly, what is usually labeled here as an extension of an Adam-Christ Pauline typology is more accurately Irenaeus" theology of the recapitulation of Adam, again born from the refutation Irenaeus is constructing, wherein Paul is invoked as authoritative representative. I will also briefly look at how Romains 5:14 is read by Origen and John Chrysostom. In both cases, there is again no presence of a Pauline Adam-Christ typology, but rather the existence of each of these author"s use of Paul"s expression in the context of their own scriptural hermeneutic and theological reflection.


Origen on Paul on Scripture: If You Want to Be a Christian and a Disciple of Paul, Don't Read Scripture Like a Jew!
Program Unit: Early Jewish Christian Relations
Steven DiMattei, University of Houston

This paper explores the impact of Origen's perception of Paul's scriptural hermeneutic on the relationship between Jews and Christians. Having to contend with Jews and Jewish literal readings of the law as well as Hellenistic authors like Celse who note the folly in such literal interpretations, Origen, in his attempt to defend Scripture, is thus pressed to accentuate a Christian allegorical scriptural hermeneutic, invoking Paul as authoritative representative. What is most significant is how Paul is brought into the interpretive disputes of the early church as a champion of Christian exegetical practices, as outlined by Origen, and thus conversely is set up in opposition to Judaism and Jewish readings of Scripture. Thus, Origen's own anti-Jewish scriptural hermeneutic, forged together from a select number of Pauline and non-Pauline texts (e.g., Heb. 8:5 and 10:1), is presented as Paul"s scriptural hermeneutic. Origen"s construal of Paul"s engagement with Scripture, therefore, is none other than a construct which reflects this apologetic and polemical dynamic. Nevertheless, to a large extent this image of Paul as hostile to Jewish scripture or Jewish hermeneutical conventions, here forged for the first time by Origen, is unfortunately perpetuated in modern scholarly views of Paul and his relationship to Scripture (although this has certainly been changing in recent years). Thus, I shall also like to explore how Origen"s apologetic and polemical invocation of Paul as champion of Christian exegesis shapes our modern understanding, consciously or unconsciously, of Paul"s relationship to Scripture, to Judaism, and to Christianity.


Legalists, Visionaries, and New Names: Sectarianism and the Search for Apocalyptic Origins in Isaiah 56–66
Program Unit: Social Sciences and the Interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures
Brian Doak, Harvard University

This essay is an attempt to re-examine the difficult questions that pertain to the origins of apocalyptic literature and to the rise of Jewish sectarianism. Since the publication of O. Plöger's Theokratie und Eschatologie and P. Hanson's The Dawn of Apocalyptic, the search for proto-apocalyptic origins in early post-exilic period sectarian conflict has generated a fair amount of debate and controversy. The most cogent and sustained response to Hanson's and Plöger's theories, S. Cook's Prophecy & Apocalypticism (1995), came nearly twenty years after Hanson's work and attempted to purge the influence of "deprivation theory" from the field of biblical studies, and, more broadly, social anthropology. Despite the fact that Cook's work represents some definite theoretical advances in the field, several aspects of this ongoing discussion warrant critical re-investigation. One must question whether, despite the frenzy to discredit "old" or "outmoded" theories, several aspects of the older studies can (or should) be rescued. Toward this end, the present essay makes a fresh study of some central lines of thought in these works, especially as they relate to the issue of sectarianism and the sociological framework used for drawing exegetical conclusions. Our goal here will not be to explicate all the nuances of early post-exilic sectarianism, nor to posit a new theory for the origins of the proto-apocalyptic material per se, but rather to explore the very difficult question of a possible interrelationship between emerging sectarian phenomena and the material in Isa. 56-66. In particular, we shall review one prominent theory of the symbolic—in our case, textual—expression of sectarian groups, that of the anthropologist Mary Douglas, and then apply this model to a series of enigmatic and highly debated texts in Trito-Isaiah in order to show the continued viability of the 'sectarian" interpretation of these passages.


Philo's Therapeutae and Jewish Law
Program Unit: Philo of Alexandria
Lutz Doering, King's College London

At first sight, Jewish Law (or halakhah) does not seem to play a significant role in Philo's portrayal of the Therapeutae in De vita contemplativa, to say the least. However, Philo himself asserts that the Therapeutae conduct their contemplative life "in accordance with the most sacred precepts of the prophet Moses" (Contempl. 64). Moreover, closer analysis of the treatise shows that there are a number of points where halakhic concerns shine through Philo's heavily philosophical colouring of the Therapeutae. Together with other observations (e.g., on details of their location close to Alexandria), this suggests that Philo's Therapeutae were not merely characters in "a philosopher"s dream" (as per Troels Engberg-Pedersen) but reflect an extant Jewish group in first century Egypt. After methodological remarks, the paper will focus on the following areas of Jewish Law mentioned in De vita contemplativa: the Sabbath, the festival at the end of seven weeks and its implication for the festival calendar, purity and the sacred realm, and dietary laws. It will be argued that the Therapeutae in their peculiar allegorical interpretation affirmed core notions of Jewish Law and corresponding praxis, while Philo"s selectivity and angle in his portrayal need to be acknowledged sufficiently. Building on this, the final part of the paper will offer some reflections on the place of the group in ancient Judaism.


The Judean Pillar Figurines: Interpreting Iconography
Program Unit: Israelite Religion in its Ancient Context
Shawna Dolansky, Northeastern University

Are They goddesses or women? Are they Asherahs, or votive “prayers in clay”? Part of official religion, or in opposition to it? Are they remnants of a domestic woman-centered cult, or of a legitimate corollary to state-sponsored Yahwism? These are the questions currently being asked about the JPFs, and interpretations and conclusions regarding their meaning and function abound in contemporary discussions of ancient Israelite religion. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be any solid evidence available that justifies one interpretation of the JPFs as being more valid than an opposite conclusion about the same artifact. This paper proposes a corrective to aid scholarship beyond this impasse. Instead of asking either/or questions which may themselves have little meaning for the original producers and consumers of these goods, this study effects a cross-cultural (West Asian) analysis of the symbolism of a female figure holding her breasts in order to raise possibilities concerning what this kind of iconography might have meant in ancient Israel.


The Apostolos of Athanasius: A Model for Multivariate Textual Analysis in the Greek Fathers
Program Unit: Computer Assisted Research
Gerald Donker, Macquarie University-Sydney

Alongside the 'traditional' Quantitative and Qualitative (Comprehensive Group Profile) analysis in textual studies of the Greek Fathers, the alternate methodology of multivariate analysis will be demonstrated using the full data of the Apostolos of Athanasius as a model. Such an analysis has the potential to provide a more refined, statistically cognizant methodology to determine the character and affinity of a Father's New Testament text with the results being conveniently displayed in 3D Multi-Dimensional Scaling (MDS) maps. The advantage of adopting this methodology for studies of the Fathers is that since they can be "located" both geographically and chronologically, they can serve as fixed points of reference in comparative New Testament text-critical studies.


Structuring the Fragments of the Gospel of the Egyptians
Program Unit: Christian Apocrypha
Robert Doran, Amherst College

The fragments of the "Gospel of the Egyptians" found in Clement of Alexandria have long been seen as belonging to a dialogue form in which Jesus instructed Salome. Usually scholars have been content to follow the sequence of quotations as found in Clement; while admitting that the order of the texts may have been different in the actual, they treat the fragments as isolated units. After a close reading of the fragments, however, I propose that they should be seen as forming a self-contained argument. The complex begins with an enigmatic statement attributed to Jesus (“I have come to bring female works to an end”) and then an attempt is made to interpret it through a series of questions and answers. An originally misogynistic attack moves to an attack on procreation and then to a yearning to imitate Eden where gender categories will be eliminated.


Presidential Address: Masoretic Studies as a Helpful Approach to the Biblical Text
Program Unit: Masoretic Studies
Aron Dotan, Tel Aviv University

The Masora originally developed and functioned in ancient times as an auxiliary tool for the use of the Hebrew biblical text. After centuries of neglect it has seen, in recent decades, revival through important findings and new publications of biblical and Masoretic texts, of independent works on Masora and affiliated subjects, and of growing attention to the meticulous study of the marginal notes, Masora parva and magna. The progress and new insights that have been achieved today make the Masora an even more handy tool to aid biblical scholarship. By actual demonstrations of various Masoretic notes, which will be visually displayed, deciphered and explained in this lecture, the usefulness of the Masora in various fields of textual study will be made clear: orthography and orthographic rules, syntax and syntactical sequence, stylistic constructions, exegesis and midrashic exegesis as well as semantics. It is hoped that the renewed interest in the Masora will be of help to the individual scholar in his biblical studies, encourage him to benefit from the advantages of the Masora, and perhaps even urge him to make his own independent attempt of research in this vast, hitherto unexploited, field.


The Contribution of the Modern Spanish School to Masoretic Studies
Program Unit: Masoretic Studies
Aron Dotan, Tel Aviv University

Modern Masoretic research in Spain, initiated mainly by Prof, F. Pérez Castro around the second half of the last century, has been carried out by his disciples, who developed this field of study and brought it to its flourishing present state. The scholarly achievements made Madrid a very important center of research, to the extent that it must be today recognized as an independent School - the Madrid School. The paper will try to review the bulk of research work that has been going on there during recent decades, and evaluate the contribution of various publications of its most central scholarly figures. The benefit of the field of Masoretic studies from the modern Spanish school will then become evident.


Rewriting the Cultural Myths: Clarence Jordan and the Cotton Patch Gospels
Program Unit: Contextual Biblical Interpretation
Frederick L. Downing, Valdosta State University

Clarence Jordan was a white southerner who became profoundly concerned about the "ordinary reader" of the gospels. So much so that 13 years before the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement, Jordan established an interracial farm in SW Georgia between Americus and Plains as a "demonstration plot" for the true kingdom and eventually began to write a "cotton patch" version of the New Testament. The purpose of this paper will be to "contextualize" Jordan's re-writing of the gospel and to show that his re-working was at the same time an effort to rewrite the cultural myths and present a new portrayal of the humanity of God. Though Jordan lived at a time of the "Death of God" theology, his abiding concern was the demise of the church. For Jordan, the "ordinary reader" was under the powerful sway of a failed institution: the established southern church. It had failed, he thought, because it had allowed a bifurcation between the life of the spirit and daily life. Jordan's solution was to re-write the gospel in a southern idiom and place the ordinary reader in the midst of the narrative thereby making the reader a "participant" rather than an observer. In this way Jordan sought to recreate the Jesus event and help southerners experience the God Movement as "news" rather than history. Known for its orthodox theology,world missions, and hospitality, the church was propped up and controlled by a "plantation mentality" which acted as a "god above God"--a powerful set of cultural mores and values which mitigated against a true spiritual life and therefore gave a perverse understanding to issues of race, wealth and property, and war. Jordan's reading of the gospel through the lens of the "cotton patch" was juxtaposed to the plantation mentality and was meant to subvert it. The demonstration plot as a "koionia" (a place where all things were held in common)was directly aimed at destroying the plantation system in the lives of ordinary readers. To achieve the sense of desired confrontation in the life of the ordinary southern reader, Jordan focused on the racial situation in the American south. He translated the words "Jew" and "Pharisee" as "white man," and the words "gentile" and 'sinner" as "black man" or "Negro." The geography of ancient Palestine became the Georgia countryside. Jesus was from "Valdosta" and was born in "Gainesville." The "crucifixion" became a "lynching." The center piece to Jordan's koinonia theology was the Sermon on the Mount given by "Jesus the Rebel" who was an incarnation of the humanity of God and sought to bring a revolution of values concerning race, property and wealth, and issues of war and peace. Jordan's re-writing of the gospel story was intentionally subversive and directly aimed at the cultural mores of the established church. During a time of the death of God language, Jordan gave the humanity of God new focus. One could now meet God in the day to day encounter with one's neighbor.


Is God Paul's Patron? The Economy of Patronage in Pauline Theology
Program Unit: Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy
David J. Downs, Fuller Theological Seminary

Several recent studies have applied a model of patron-client relations in the attempt to understand the apostle Paul's theology in its socio-cultural context (Neyrey, Render to God, 2004; Lampe, “Paul, Patrons, and Clients,” 2003). This model identifies God as the patron, Christ as the broker, and human beings as the clients. This paper will contend, however, that such a model of patron-client relations does not ultimately help to illuminate the contours of Pauline theology. First, I shall suggest that most studies of patronage in Pauline theology view patronage as a dyadic, vertical relationship of reciprocal exchange. A more nuanced understanding of patronage recognizes that patronage is “a system of such relations, constituting a social mechanism which functions strategically in the reproduction of the major social institutions of power” (Johnson and Dandeker, “Patronage: Relation and System,” 220-21). Yet for the apostle Paul, believers do not compete with one another for resources distributed by any number of divine patrons. Applying a model of “patronage” to Pauline theology introduces problematic assumptions in Paul's own cultural context and violates Paul's axiomatic christological monotheism (1 Cor 8:6). Second, this paper will highlight the extent to which Paul tends to avoid the terminology of patronage in discussions of both divine and human activity. Paul"s primary metaphor for God is not “patron” but “father.” I shall suggest that Paul"s consistent identification of “God our Father” (Rom 1:7; 1 Cor 1:3; 2 Cor 1:2; Gal 1:3) functions to frame the identity of God outside the Greco-Roman patronage system. Moreover, although Paul does refer to Phoebe as prostatis in Rom 16:2, the frequency of fictive kinship language in the Pauline epistles, combined with other attempts to characterize acts of human beneficence as deeds of love and worship, fundamentally subverts the development of patronal relations within the community of believers.


The Two Ways and Eschatological Hope: A Contested Terraine in Paul and the Didache
Program Unit: Didache in Context
Jonathan A. Draper, University of KwaZulu-Natal

This paper argues that the polemic in Galatians 5 echoes key themes and concerns of Didache 1-6, which show that Paul was aware of the Two Ways catachesis and its relationship to Torah, whatever the date of the final redaction of the Didache as a whole. The point of contestation, however, may relate as much to different understandings of eschatological hope as to different interpretations of Torah.


Baptismal Themes in the Exegeses on the Soul (NHC II, 6) in the Light of the Church Fathers
Program Unit: Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism
Moa Dritsas-Bizier, Laval University

Focusing mainly on the myth it contains, most works dedicated so far to the Exegesis on the Soul (ExSoul) suggest that it is a presentation of the Gnostic myth of the soul aiming to explain some general aspects of Gnosticism. However, the structure of ExSoul, in which all materials seem directed according to the final paraenetic section, suggests that the presentation of the myth is not the final goal of this text but that it is rather instrumental. Thus, according to its general aim suggested by the calls for repentance towards which leads its entire composition, ExSoul should most likely be understood as a piece of paraenetic literature. Furthermore, my analysis of the tractate's rhetorical setting highly supports the hypothesis that it is a homily on repentance built around the theme of the Exodus, written to be used as a baptismal preparation for former pagan catechumens. In this presentation, I intend to demonstrate that the argumentation of ExSoul is built around certain themes and motives whose use often refers, in the language of the Church Fathers, to the baptismal symbolism. For this purpose, we will be focusing on four major themes which, through their various implications, cover the entire tractate's argumentation. We shall therefore deal with the themes of repentance, divine grace, wedding and regeneration, as they occur in the ExSoul, as well as in different patristic writings dealing with baptismal issues. Pointing out the parallels between the approach of ExSoul and that of different catecheses from the early centuries, this thematic analysis aims to extend the study of this text beyond the borders of Gnosticism and establish its importance as a source for our knowledge of ancient Christianity


Imperial Ambition: The “Gospels” of Augustus and Mark
Program Unit: Jesus Traditions, Gospels, and Negotiating the Roman Imperial World
A. J. Droge, University of Toronto

The paper explores the structural and rhetorical symmetry between Augustan and Markan myth-making, and in particular the imperial aspirations of each. Beginning with key terminological similarities (euangelion, soter, theos), the analysis takes into account their prophetic conception of past, present, and future, their characterizations of the “kingdom” (including the reckoning of “winners” and “losers”), and the man-made-god at their imperial epicenter. The paper concludes that the Markan myth—however much it may have represented a counter-discourse—was every bit as imperialistic as the ideology it failed to subvert.


From Divus to Deus: The New Ideology of the Augustan Forum
Program Unit: Art and Religions of Antiquity
A. J. Droge, University of Toronto

The paper proposes a new reading of the forum of Augustus and in particular its temple of Mars the Avenger. The temple and forum have been judged one of the most potent displays of the substance of Augustan ideology. But the forum complex is much more than the culmination of Augustus" building program; it represents a significant departure from previous Augustan myth-making. The forum and temple functioned as a microcosm, underscoring Augustus" role as demiurge and articulating the reach of his imperium: both “horizontally” (geographically and historically) and “vertically” (metaphysically). The analysis focuses on one of the most unusual and innovative architectural features of the temple—the apse—said to contain cult statues of Mars, Venus, and the divine Julius. Neither the size nor substructure of the apse could have accommodated such a statuary group. But then who (or what) inhabited the apse? The answer to that question provides the basis for a reappraisal of Augustus" self-representation: no longer divus (the “godlike man”), but deus (the “god-made-man”).


Reconciliation and God's Victimization in the Death of Christ: Some Notes on 2 Corinthians 5:17–21
Program Unit: Second Corinthians: Pauline Theology in the Making
Sebastian Duda, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

My main working hypothesis is that God may be a victim of a human offence. While classic theology tends to speak more of God's power than of God's “weakness,” more of eternal majesty than temporal engagement, the key fact of Christian faith, so clearly expressed by Paul in 2 Corinthians is that God reconciled us to himself through Christ, a dramatic statement of God's relational engagement and changing unchangeability! In the paradox of this changing and unchanging lies the pulsating heart of biblical revelation, which includes both the sovereign God who stands above creation and the compassionate God who stoops to significant involvement with creation. Thus, God is a moral agent in the process of reconciliation with humankind. God is the victim who forgives and reconciles. When one seriously takes the claim of some contemporary thinkers (Ricoeur, Girard, Derrida) that the complete forgiveness as expressed in the realization of reconciliation between the victim and the perpetrator could be only possible with the—apparently impossible—response of the dead victim, one should refer again to Paul"s statement that God reconciled us through Christ. For Paul used the expression dia Christou in 2 Cor 5,18 (which is a good example of his theology in the making) without any elaborated description but in Rom 5,10 the Apostle said that we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son. Thus, my claim is that God is represented by Paul as the absolute victim of human offence in the death of Christ.


Service-Learning: History and Theory
Program Unit: Service-Learning and Biblical Studies
Robert R. Duke, Azusa Pacific University

This presentation will overview the history of Service Learning in Higher Education, which is becoming an accepted and preferred pedagogical strategy by many educators. With a focus on the theory behind Service Learning, educators in biblical studies will see the potential for incorporating service into their curriculum.


Sin and Sinlessness in 1 John: Theory and Practice
Program Unit: Johannine Literature
Ismo Dunderberg, University of Helsinki

The author of 1 John claims both that sinlessness is impossible and asserts that no one born of God can sin. These conflicting statements can be better understood, if we take into account the double discourse of sin in the Hebrew Bible, and the ideal of a therapeutic community in the ancient schools of thought. In the Hebrew Bible, it is affirmed that all humans are sinners, but “sin” is also a social boundary marker used to distinguish between “us” and “them,” the righteous and the sinners. The author of 1 John makes use of this double discourse on sin to prevent more people drifting away from the in-group to the opposed front. First, he makes use of the “sin-as-a-boundary-marker” discourse to maintain those who have left the in-group are per definitionem “sinners.” Second, the author seeks to reinforce the in-group from within by insisting upon the “all-of-us-are-sinners” discourse. Here the author's tone turns from judgmental to therapeutic. The author's therapeutic concern, in turn, connects 1 John with ancient schools of thought, in which students had to subject themselves to moral reproach and were required to confess their sins. One of the best descriptions of such practices is the treatise On Frank Criticism by the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus. In comparison to this text, the author of 1 John remains strikingly cautious as regards the discipline to be professed in the case of in-group sinners. Instead of reproaching these people, the author only recommends praying for them. This suggests that, in addressing the situation of apostasy, the author of 1 John could not take the risk that someone, who was still in the in-group, would be offended at being reproached.


Realizing the Benefits of Semantic Integration
Program Unit: Computer Assisted Research
Patrick Durusau, Consultant

Computers were supposed to make it easier to find information. But relevant information seems to get harder to find with each passing day. Not only do other people use different terminology (from our own) for relevant information but they also mis-use our terminology to mean other things. What is worse is that the average biblical scholar has enough to do already without yet another "technical" solution. Yes, there are complex solutions for semantic integration but topic maps offer some simple solutions that can serve for more complex systems, if desired, later on. The important thing is that creating a starting point isn't hard to do or difficult to use. This presentation explores the authoring and use of Published Subject Identifiers as a low cost path to semantic integration. It will conclude with a demonstration of a starter set of such identifiers.


Paul's Letter to Philemon: Persuasion or Manipulation?
Program Unit: Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics
James D. Dvorak, Oklahoma Christian University

There are two important issues I would like to deal with in this paper. First, I intend to demonstrate that certain discourse systems are foregrounded in the text which indicate that the letter to Philemon was meant to be persuasive. Thus, (potential) persuasiveness is based on linguistic analysis rather than on the shaky foundation of intuition and impressionism. The second issue I wish to address is whether or not Paul was trying to manipulate Philemon into receiving Onesimus. On this point, my analysis will highlight some key features in the text that acquit Paul of the charge of abusing his authority as an apostle and leaving Philemon no choice but to grant Paul's wishes. To accomplish both of these tasks I will employ a model of discourse analysis based on Systemic-Functional Linguistics. SFL is best suited for this kind of analysis because the issues raised here are issues of social meaning, and the SFL model is based on the idea that language is a system that humans use to create and exchange social meaning. Further, I will call upon principles of Critical Discourse Analysis to make a distinction between legitimate persuasion and manipulation, as well as to demonstrate that Paul does not manipulate Philemon in the letter. In fact, certain features of the text clearly indicate that Paul intentionally and carefully avoided manipulation.


A Defense of Paul's Roman Citizenship by “Epiphanius”
Program Unit: Book of Acts
David L. Eastman, Yale University

At critical moments in the narrative of Acts, the apostle Paul invokes Roman citizenship as a means of escaping punishment and, eventually, of appealing his case to the emperor. Interpreters of the text have long wondered how this “Hebrew of Hebrews” from the tribe of Benjamin could have become a “citizen of no obscure city.” Various explanations have been proposed, including denying the historicity of Paul's citizenship. According to an obscure Syriac fragment, Epiphanius provided a solution. The text recounts a curious tale of Paul's mixed lineage and accounts for his dual identity, for he was the son of a Hebrew woman and a Roman soldier in the army of Vespasian(!). In this paper I will first present the story, with all its peculiarities and historical difficulties. I will then propose two ways of contextualizing the text, either as a positive defense of Paul's citizenship or as a polemical assault on the apostle"s pedigree. I will argue for the former reading and will suggest why such an account, which I take to be pseudepigraphic, came to be associated with Epiphanius.


To Atone or Not to Atone: The Meaning of KPR in the Hebrew Bible and Atonement Concepts in 2 Corinthians
Program Unit: Second Corinthians: Pauline Theology in the Making
Christian A. Eberhart, Lutheran Theological Seminary

The concept of atonement (Hebrew root KPR) occurs throughout the Hebrew Bible and is central to Israelite sacrificial worship. Rather a “hypernym” (Gilders), this concept resists being reduced to a single definition or translation. In this paper I intend to survey how the Hebrew root KPR is used in the Hebrew Bible, and suggest that the scholarly perception of atonement needs to be broadened to include aspects such as elimination rites, the sacrificial burning rite, and various non-cultic phenomena. New Testament scholars have for some time debated whether atonement can be considered central to Pauline soteriology concepts, and which Christological expressions fall under this category (Breytenbach; Anderson/Culbertson; McLean). Basic for this ongoing scholarly discussion is the insight that the term “atonement,” referring to more than just the NT occurrences of Greek hilaskomai, is used as a larger interpretive category and a theological-conceptual abstraction. As such the term refers to expressions derived from various cultic and secular backgrounds to imagine human salvation through Christ, such as vicarious death (2 Cor 5:14–15) and existential substitution (5:20f). Furthermore, allusions to HB atonement concepts are manifest when Paul refers to his own mission as messenger of the Gospel (2 Cor 2:14-16).


Sacrifice? Holy Smokes! Implications of Hebrew and Greek Terminology (Qorban, Minhah, Thusia) for a Definition of Sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible
Program Unit: Sacrifice, Cult, and Atonement
Christian A. Eberhart, Lutheran Theological Seminary

Cultic sacrifices are mentioned throughout the Hebrew Bible, they are central to Israelite/Judean worship, and they are a treasury for metaphorical language. Yet their definition and function cause much debate among scholars. In this paper I intend to describe sacrifice based on an assessment of the central terminology in both the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint. With this approach I aim at broadening the scholarly perception of sacrifice by suggesting that the burning rite is the constitutive element of cultic sacrifice; a sacrifice then emerges as a dynamic process of approaching God. This definition is corroborated by occurrences of the term sacrifice in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Rabbinic literature, as well as its metaphorical usage in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament.


Intertextuality, Literary Competence, and the Question of Readership
Program Unit: Orality, Textuality, and the Formation of the Hebrew Bible
Cynthia Edenburg, Open University of Israel

Recitation and memorization of texts undoubtedly played a key role not only in the diffusion of texts and the enculturalization of their audience, but also in the process which resulted in establishing a body of recognized scripture or readings (miqr?a). While writings became 'scripture" because they were taught as authoritative texts, they continued to be taught because they were considered scripture. These insights on the contribution of recitation and memory are valuable in understanding the process behind the end result, namely how a body of recognized scripture emerged, which is publicly and privately read, recited, memorized and expounded, while other writings eventually ceased to be copied, or survived in limited copies circulating in isolated groups. It is necessary, however, to examine the extent recitation and memorization played a role in the process of in literary composition and text production, and to distinguish between the purpose of a text as composed for its target audience, and the evolution of its purpose and audience through the course of textual transmission. In this paper I shall discuss signs which might indicate that a text was composed for a textual oriented audience. As a basis for the discussion, I shall clarify types of intertextuality in order to distinguish between aurally recognizable echoes, as opposed to literary patterning based upon visual recognition. The concepts of literary competence and "aural competence" are brought into play as a means to identify to what extent a text was composed for a reading or hearing audience. Specific examples will be discussed as test cases for developing criteria which might indicate when it is likely that an intertextual composition was produced through reference to written texts and when intertextuality might be based upon an author's memory of texts.


“So That by Steadfastness and by the Encouragement of the Scriptures We Might Have Hope”: What Does Paul Refer to When He Refers to the Scriptures?
Program Unit: Function of Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
Kathy Ehrensperger, University of Wales, Lampeter

Embedded in the traditions of his ancestors, Paul refers to such traditions in their written in his letters form and labels these as "the scripture/s". Such references have been taken as self-explanatory in that it was assumed that these were references to writings which in Jewish and Christian tradition have acquired the status of canonicity. Since such a perception of the scriptures as canonical is anachronistic for the first century the question needs to be asked what Paul is actually referring to when he refers to the scripture/s. Which parts of which canon (LXX/Tanakh) encompassed "the holy scriptures" which Paul refers to e.g in Rom 1.2 ? In addition to issues of divergent interpretations of scriptural texts could there also have been issues under debate concerning which written traditions were perceived as 'scripture" ? The issue of the fluidity of the collection deemed "holy" in first century Judaism has an impact on the question of how the authority of such a collection is perceived, particularly since Paul clearly aims at enculturating gentile Christ-followers into the world of the scriptures. This paper will explore the Pauline letters for indications as to which texts were 'scripture" for Paul, and what impact the fluidity of the collection may have had on the addressees of the letters who were assured/reminded by Paul that "whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction." (Rom 15.4a).


Embodied Theology: Vulnerability and Limitation in Paul's Perception of Leadership
Program Unit: Second Corinthians: Pauline Theology in the Making
Kathy Ehrensperger, University of Wales, Lampeter

Paul in the challenge to his role as an apostle which permeates much of 2 Corinthians seems to defend himself at a very personal level, thereby giving the impression of reacting out of a sense of personal offense. In making his own weakness an issue of "public" debate he seems to move himself to the centre of attention despite his assurance that his argumentation is intended to serve the up-building of the Corinthian community. On the other hand Käsemann interprets Paul's references to power and weakness in e.g. 2 Cor 12.9 theologically and takes these as implying that weakness is the Lord's "Offenbarungsart der Kraft". In this paper I will propose a reading of 2 Cor 12.7-10 which moves beyond such a personal/theological dichotomy. Paul's argumentation here is seen as closely intertwined with the core of the gospel. He tries to get the Corinthians to understand that to be in Christ implies learning to live according to values which radically differ from those of the dominating value system. The vulnerability and the limitations of a leader then are not credentials against his/her leadership but rather a symbol/indication of the leader"s embodiment of the gospel. It is a perception of leadership which resonates with leadership perceptions represented by Moses (cf. Deut. 3.25-26) , and emphasized by Gospel narratives (cf Mt 20.24-28; Lk 22.24-27). Although the issue at stake in 2 Cor is the acceptance of Paul as an apostle the issue is not so much personal as theological. In Paul"s view the Corinthians" perception of leadership represents a radical misunderstanding of the implications of being in Christ and, as such, a misconception of the gospel. Paul"s references to himself as a leader who had to learn to accept his vulnerability and limitations could be described as references to embodied theology.


The Historical Figure of Judas
Program Unit: Future of the Past: Biblical and Cognate Studies for the Twenty-First Century
Bart Ehrman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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The Role of Anonymous Enemies in the Book of Isaiah
Program Unit: Israelite Prophetic Literature
Göran Eidevall, University of Uppsala

In the book of Isaiah, passages mentioning or addressing anonymous enemies and evildoers of various kinds are plentiful. In this paper, I primarily address the following question: What are the functions of enemy images within ideology production and identity construction? Which is the role of the anonymous enemies within the overall structure of the book of Isaiah? To begin with, I present a brief survey of some central aspects of characterization: Which epithets, accusations, motifs, and metaphors are used in depictions of the enemies and evildoers? What does this indicate as regards the function of the depictions of these anonymous enemies? Subsequently, I study the distribution of references to named and unnamed opponents in Isaiah 1-66, on a macro-structural level, and discuss some possible implications for the understanding of the ideological concerns that lie behind the overall composition of the book of Isaiah. The envelope structure detected (with sections referring to named opponents framed by sections dealing with anonymous enemies) might, I conclude, indicate that the final editors wanted to underline both the transience and perishability of all named enemies (such as the Assyrian empire) and the durability (or: continuous re-applicability) of the prophetic words of the past.


The Oral Origin of the Resumptive Repetition
Program Unit: Orality, Textuality, and the Formation of the Hebrew Bible
Amir Eitan, Ben Gurion University of the Negev

In folkloristic study, Resumptive Repetition (RR) is a well known phenomenon, which follows digression made by the storyteller. This paper suggests that the origin of RR in the biblical narrative should be related to the oral phase of the text. As such, RR is attached to the oral mentality of the Israelite scribes. This assumption is supported by epigraphic finds as well as by the ancient practice of the public "reading aloud".


“Give” Structures in the Book of Numbers: A Case Study of Information Structure in Biblical Hebrew
Program Unit: Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew
Rachel Eitan, Ben Gurion University of the Negev

Information Structure (IS) has been an increasingly lively research area in linguistics in recent years. Various studies suggest approaches from different subfields of linguistics and different theoretical perspectives have been developed. Recent studies of the Biblical Text indicate the importance of IS to the understanding of the overall cognitive development of a text. While previous studies of IS in biblical text concentrate mainly on the location of NP's with respect to the verb (e.g. Topicalization and Verb inversion), this study focuses on Ditransitive verb constructions. More specifically, this study investigates the different structures available in the biblical text for the verb 'give'. Initial observation of a corpus including the occurrences of the verb 'give' in the book of Numbers suggests three main structures: a. (Full NP) Direct Object -> (Full NP) Indirect Object (e.g. Num. 3: 9)1; b. (Pronominal) Indirect Object -> (Full NP) Direct Object (e.g. Num. 27: 7); and c. Direct object Relative clause (e.g. Num. 20: 24). The goal of this study is to explain this word order variation by IS theory, and to provide a possible account for deviating word orders.


Opposing Paul with Feminine Virtues: Aemilia Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum
Program Unit: Recovering Female Interpreters of the Bible
Hilary Elder, Durham University

Aemilia Lanyer, writing high-class poetry and seeking noble patronage in early Jacobean England, produced a rewriting of the Passion in highly biblical language that both exemplifies and challenges the conventions and traditions of her time. Its main challenge was that the new world ushered in by the Christ event should involve an end to patriarchy. While she does not discuss Pauline texts on gender as such, she does offer a corrective to patriarchal interpretations of these texts by focusing on women who remained with Christ during the Passion and who were vindicated by him when he appeared first to them and sent them to establish the new Church by inaugurating the Gospel of the resurrection. Lanyer also uses Pauline ideas about the paradox of the Christ event and about the nature of love, and adopts his strategy of the paraenetic epistle to encourage her readers to follow her feminine theology that was based on Christ's feminine virtues.


“Holding an Object”: The Coming of Age of Scripture as Holy Artifact
Program Unit: Scripture as Artifact
Zeev Elitzur, Ben Gurion University of the Negev

According to Wilfred C. Smith, the so called 'scriptural Movement" of Mediterranean Late Antiquity reached its peak with the advent of Islam – the Religion of the Book par excellence. Research focusing on Scripture as artifact may offer another historical peak, namely the Fourth-Fifth centuries, in which holy books acquired new properties of sacred objects. Recent studies, by Claudia Rapp and others, suggest that such a process took place in Post Nicaean Christianity, and there are reasons to believe that a similar process took place in Talmudic Judaism. This paper will focus on the origins of oath-taking on holy books ("holding an object" in Talmudic parlance) – first mentioned in sources from both religions in this era. It will suggest that this custom, in both religions, was influenced by the Roman custom of taking an oath while touching a holy object. The choice of using Scripture as a means of bolstering an oath, made in approximately the same time in Jewish and Christian circles, represents the true "coming of age" of Scripture as a holy artifact. The paper will also explore the connection between Scripture's reified qualities and its textual functions in this context – a complex relation working differently in the two respective traditions.


Jesus' Psychosis: What did Schweitzer Really Say and Why?
Program Unit: Psychology and Biblical Studies
J. Harold Ellens, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

Albert Schweitzer was concerned about whether Jesus was delusional. He faced honestly the fact that Jesus had a vivid sense reality that would call his sanity into question. He believed that he heard other-worldly voices that humans around him did not hear. He was sure God was speaking to him from a transcendent world. He became certain that God was calling him to a tragic journey that would result in an apotheosis of exaltation to heavenly status. He envisioned that after this exaltation he would return as the agent of God to end history. At that occasion he would give history its ultimate meaning, paying off the unrighteous with the extermination, while his angelic agents gathered the righteous into a divine domain. Schweitzer thought that sounded like psychosis. But there was another, admirable, side to the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth, which prompted him, to examine how one might understand this apparent psychosis while salvaging the admirable Jesus. Schweitzer solved this problem with a "thoroughgoing eschatology" The Jesus with whom we have to deal on the pages of the NT is a character in a story, not a person in history. In his story this character posits a vision that is 1) radically visionary, 2) apocalyptic, and 3) eschatologically idealized. It is rooted in identifiable Second Temple Judaism sources and traditions, particularly regarding the Son of Man. As the ardors of his life ordeal intensify, this character in the story raises the ante on his apocalyptic vision. At first he is proclaiming the impending divine order in the world, as the Son of Man does in Ezekiel. From Mark 8 forward he predicts a season of suffering, as do the Messianic figures at Qumran (War Scroll and Hodayot - Thanksgiving Hymns). As it becomes clear that he is on a collision course with the authorities, he envisions deliverance from suffering and death as the exalted Son of Man like Daniel 7:13ff. Finally, in the courtroom of Caiaphas and Pilate, when all is obviously lost, he envision himself as the Son of Man, who will reign in his own heavenly kingdom, and who will be seen again as the eschatological judge. As Judge, he will return from heaven with "power and great glory," as in I Enoch 37-71. As this story progresses in the mind of the Jesus character, he progressively loses his poetic distance from the narrative and slides into the dramatis persona of the main character in the story, achieving the delusional state in which he foresees his tragically painful demise as a triumph. The hopeful delusion crashes in those bitter words of reality from the cross, "My God ... why have you forsaken me." Then "Jesus declared [it or] him to have been finished off, and the head dropping, gave up the spirit."


Leviticus between Fifth-Century Jerusalem and Ninth-Century Merv
Program Unit: Bible in Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Traditions
Mark Elliott, University of St. Andrews-Scotland

To begin with a quick sketch of Hesychius" contemporaries, Cyril uses the texts of Leviticus after long homiletical introductions which all have to do with soteriology, to show how Christ is the hostia sacrificiale of Leviticus. Theodoret's commentary has more of a moralising tone though without forgetting a specific literal concreteness in his instructions. Hesychius defended the letter by showing how its historical sense was continuous with its "higher" sense,. In this aspect he reveals himself to be more a disciple of Origen than either contemporary. Like Origen who worked in Caesarea, he was in a place where Judaism strong. Yet I would define his understanding of as 'sacramental". Hesychius was more interested than any in how the law was considered by those who first received it, as part of what it is In that respect he is closer to Augustine's Quaestiones in Heptateuchum than to his more Eastern neighbours. Isho"s dad comes from a very different theological tradition (Hesychius had miaphysite tendencies) and four centuries later. "Strange fire" (against the Zoroastrians), baptism, angelology and the doctrine of God"s justice and mercy (but not Christology) in the context of the atonement passage of Lev16 are flashpoints for more extended discussion. His use of the book is "defensive": Leviticus serves then to help give some answers to particular troubling questions which have come from previous interpretations of the text itself and there is little sense that sense has to made of the whole of Leviticus, much less the question of the need to think what sacrifice might mean for his church. There is a bit of a giveaway in his comment on Lev 4, 12 where the priests are instructed to throw out the ashes of the sacrifice: he explains that this is so nobody believes it is the sacrifice which procures the pardon but God. Here we see the wide diversity of "Eastern" views of this Pentatuechal book.


Leviticus and Priestly Mediation of Sacrifice in the Church Fathers
Program Unit: Sacrifice, Cult, and Atonement
Mark Elliott, University of St. Andrews-Scotland

The fathers provide the bedrock for subsequent Christian interpretations of Leviticus, of both literal and figurative approaches. Hebrews provides a controlling hermeneutic. Commentators selected will be for the most part pre-500 CE: Origen, Augustine, Theodoret, Cyril of Alexandria, Hesychius of Jerusalem. I shall be especially concerned with their representations of the role of priests as facilitators of sacrifice and the extent to which the offering of prayer, eucharist, mortification is viewed less in physical or metaphysical terms of "what gets achieved" but rather "ecclesiologically" in the sense of binding the community in proper order. In other words, although Christ the High Priest's sacrifice is the causa sine qua non of all forgiveness, that which the church offered had to do with order "on earth as it was in heaven". There is a pastoral and even a humanitarian side to these interpretations of the theology of Leviticus. Some consideration of the significance of the contribution of what one finds in Sifra, Leviticus Rabbah and the Targumim will be afforded in order to see where there are common influences and also where the Christian vision is distinct.


Translation, Narratology, and Reading the Bible
Program Unit: Ideology, Culture, and Translation
Scott S. Elliott, American Bible Society

Translation Studies and Narratology (i.e., the structuralist-inspired theory of narrative) have experienced similar changes in scope and application as a result of engagements with critical theory. Both have come to be seen as ubiquitous, multifunctional, integral to cultural mediation and human cognition, and fundamentally and inescapably ideological. Translations and narratives are both marked by an inherent paradox. Each purports to give voice to an original text or story, to represent something that precedes the translation or narration itself. However, a source text needs a translation in order to come into being as a source text, and any ostensibly preexisting story or historical event is expressed, described, and conveyed (or translated) only by means of the narrative discourse that claims to represent it. Therefore, translations and narratives also have within them the seeds of their own subversion as each possesses an inherent countertendency to prevent access to that which they claim to recount (O"Neill). Translation Studies and narratology intersect with one another in and around the Bible in especially interesting ways. In the gospels, for instance, we are presented not only with double translations wherein the utterances of Jesus are translated from speech to writing and from Aramaic to Greek (Aichele), but in fact triple translations whereby Jesus himself is translated into a character, a literary figure, as he is discoursed through narrative. This paper explores the implications and consequences of this intersection between translation and narratology in the characterization and emplotment of Jesus.


Jeremiah 44: What if “the Queen of Heaven” is Y•H•V•H?
Program Unit: Reading, Theory, and the Bible
Teresa Ann Ellis, Brite Divinity School/Texas Christian University

The biblical book of Jeremiah presents readers with a claim and a counter-claim: the character Jeremiah claims that a group of Judeans who revere “the Queen of Heaven” are idolaters, and the group itself denies the accusation of idolatry and claims that they worship “Y•H•V•H our God.” Either assertion could be valid—but what if we read the claim by the Queen-of-Heaven group as "true"? In that case, as a minimal formulation, worshipping “the Queen of Heaven” does not preclude worshipping Y•H•V•H, and to put the proposition in its most extreme form, worshipping “the Queen of Heaven” is identical with worshipping Y•H•V•H. I will discuss Jeremiah's claim and the counter-claim as parts of two distinct strands of discourse that construct different limits to the legitimate worship of Y•H•V•H. Both discursive strands—Jeremiah's and the Queen of Heaven's—develop across many chapters of the book. Although the viewpoint that favors Jeremiah dominates in terms of its textual expanse and the violence of its rhetoric, it is, to some degree, a self-defeating polemic that allows both views to be equally present in the text. The goals of this demonstration are to expand the range of possible identifications for “the Queen of Heaven” and to position the topic for further discussion in the larger context of the prophetic divine-marriage metaphor that figures worshipping “other gods” as adultery. My hermeneutical tools are discourse analysis (including the role of taxonomies in the construction of polemical discourse) and feminist theory (responding to work by Athalya Brenner and Yvonne Sherwood). To accommodate the graphical nature of the material, I will deliver two concurrent sets of information: a verbal presentation and a related-but-not-identical PowerPoint.


Does Bourdieu Show Us How to Find References to Religious Experience in Ancient Texts?
Program Unit: Religious Experience in Antiquity
Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Copenhagen University

Many analysts of religion find talk about religious experience highly problematic: unclear, potentially misleading, in any case otiose. Others think that we need it in order to give an adequate account of religious phenomena. (1) But what is “it”? (2) And how may we access “it” – for instance, in texts that are several millenia old? The paper explores whether a perspective derived from Pierre Bourdieu may help us answer these questions in such a way that use of the contested concept may become operative in relation to early Christian texts, e.g. Paul. On the one hand, the relevant concepts in Bourdieu (e.g. habitus) are so general that they should be applicable across time spans and cultures. On the other hand, they are also concretely tied to the body and may therefore be able to deliver a sufficiently precise definition of “(religious) experience” that will also yield criteria for accessing it in remote texts. The paper investigates to what extent these hopes are fulfilled.


Penderecki's Iron Maiden: Intimacy and Other Anomalies in Musico-Biblical Exegetics
Program Unit: Reading, Theory, and the Bible
Heidi Epstein, St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan

How might "reading" musical treatments of biblical texts enrich biblical hermeneutics? Since the late 1980s, New Musicologists have rejected formalistic, 'score-driven" analysis of musical works--chronicling instead how musical conventions “circulate social energies” (Greenblatt) in ways that reinforce or transgress cultural norms of subject formation. Music comprises “models of the self performed,” “fabrications of sexuality” (McClary). This paper engages New Musicology and feminist theory to analyse renowned composer Krzysztof Penderecki's jarring "deconstruction" of the Song of Solomon, archiving thereby another episode in the Song's formative career within the history of subjectivity. Penderecki"s musical exegesis will also constitute a set of performative practices that anticipates biblical scholars" more recent attempts to develop “carnal allegories” of the Song that unsettle normalizing pleasures and relational dynamics (Boer, Moore, Burrus, and Black). Initial reception of Penderecki"s cacophonous soundscape seemingly dashes any desire for intimacy with the Song"s sensual delights. However, "reread" with attention to the politics of representation—both cultural and musicological--Penderecki"s fantasia becomes an ardent invitation for unconditional intimacy with the text—its violence, grotesqueries (Black), and discomfiting indeterminacies: 1) Where caricatures of the Song"s "happy" lovers generate both distance between readers and the text, and alienating relational models that “stabilize [false] assumptions and expectations” (Miles, Carnal Knowing, 10), Penderecki"s couple—conceived under Communist rule in 1970s Poland—reconnects readers to a “complex and contradictory reality”--banishing those “cumulative representations” that (ironically) made the lovers “disappear” (ibid.). 2) Distance dissolves through post-war recontextualisation of the work, and by puncturing the “virile” “mystique of difficulty” that many avant-gardists espoused (McClary)--an ideology that actually precipitated dismissals of Penderecki"s “effeminate” sensualism. 3) Shifting listening postures via queer musicologists" revalorization of previously neglected musico-analytical components--texture, timbre, and bodily performance—opens auditors to accept these lovers" more dissonant, highly complex, and literally penetrating musical bodies.


The Enoch Cycle in the Genesis Apocryphon and Other Related Texts
Program Unit: Qumran
Esther Eshel, Bar-Ilan University

The Genesis Apocryphon, is an Aramaic parabiblical work that relates, with additions, omissions, and expansions to the narratives corresponding to Genesis 5:18-15:5, that is from Enoch to Abram's vision of the stars. The work is generally attributed to the second or first century BCE, but an earlier date in the third century BCE should not be ruled out. The survived text of the Genesis Apocryphon can be divided into three cycles: The Enoch cycle, The Noah cycle and The Abram cycle. The physical marker of blank lines left between the cycles, supports this division in Col. 5 line 28, at the end of Enoch cycle, and in Col. 18 line 23, at the end of the Noah cycle. Since the beginning and end of the scroll have not been preserved, it might have originally included additional cycles, which are lost. From the extant text, we can see a well-written story, with smoothly connected individual components, which employ shared themes and terminology. Thus, each cycle does not seem to be an independent composition taken from written sources that were only introduced to the Genesis Apocryphon. This, in turn, does not exclude the possibility that the author of the Genesis Apocryphon used earlier sources, which is probably the case in the Enoch cycle, where clear connection with 1Enoch is found. Having significant parallels between the main characters might indicate that the literary technique used by the author of this text could be termed as "Chain of Traditions". Enoch cycle did not survive in it original length. It surviving parts covers Cols. 0-5:27. The beginning of the scroll, starting in Col. 0, seems to quote the Watcher' appeal, and further includes various visions regarding Noah's future and the misdeeds of humanity (5:16-19), as well as apocalyptic visions referring to God's deeds that will take place "at the Great Day of Judgment and End" (4:12). In my lecture I will focus on the Enoch cycle, mainly on the myth of the Watchers as found in the Genesis Apocryphon, comparing it to other related texts, primarily to 1 Enoch.


The Process Which Brought the Samaritans to Believe in the Sanctity of Mount Gerizim
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
Hanan Eshel, Bar-Ilan University

There is no evidence that the people who lived in Schechem or Samaria during the Persian period believed in the holiness of Mt. Gerizim. Therefore it seems that during the persian period the residens of the region of Samaria had not yet formed that belief. It is difficult to imagine that Jerusalemite compositions from the fourth century BCE, such as Chronicles or Ezra 1-6, would have ignored the claim that Mount Gerizim was the place God had chosen. From the end of the Persian rule, and more specifically from the time that followed the revolt of the Samaritans against the Macedonians in 331 BCE to the end of the third century BCE, there is no evidence of the history of the area of Samaria. When the picture became clear, after this dark period that lasted nearly 130 years, we find that at the beginning of the second century BCE there is a religious group in the area of Schechem that believes in the holiness of Mount Gerizim.


A Preliminary Survey of Christian Literature Found in Oxyrhynchus
Program Unit: Function of Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
Craig A. Evans, Acadia Divinity College

This paper surveys all of the Christian literature from Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, discovered and thus far published. This includes Jewish Scripture (including the so-called OT Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha), Christian scripture (including the so-called Apostolic Fathers and NT Pseudepigrapha), Christian letters, ecclesiastical letters, homilies, and business papers, prayers, and magical texts. The purposes of this survey are several: (1) To identify the nature and range of literature to which Christians in and around ancient Oxyrhynchus had access; (2) to infer from the sample of documents thus far published what Christians of Oxyrhynchus regarded as sacred and authoritative; and (3) to infer from these materials aspects of Christian piety, worship, and daily life. This preliminary survey, which may grow into a monograph, welcomes criticism and suggestions.


Did Slaves Ever Recline at Meals?
Program Unit: Meals in the Greco-Roman World
Nancy A. Evans, Wheaton College, Norton, Massacusetts

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The Chronicler's Ahaz Account in Bakhtinian Perspective: A Rejoinder to Both the Deuteronomist and Isaiah
Program Unit: Bakhtin and the Biblical Imagination
Paul S. Evans, Ambrose University College

The Chronicler's account of the reign of Ahaz of Judah (2 Chronicles 28) has invariably been read in comparison with the account in 2 Kings 16 (his putative Vorlage). Though the Chronicler follows the general outline of 2 Kings 16 there are numerous differences between the accounts which interpreters have explained in various ways. Interestingly, 2 Chronicles 32:32 references the “vision of Isaiah” (which is the editorial incipit and natural title of the canonical book) as a source employed by the Chronicler, inviting the interpreter to view Chronicles in dialogue with the book of Isaiah. Following this lead, this study will examine the relationship between 2 Kings 16, Isaiah 7 and 2 Chronicles 28, drawing on Bakthtin's ideas of dialogism. Such an approach allows a new perspective on the differences between the Chronicler's and the Deuteronomist"s Ahaz accounts. In the context of the Syro-Ephraimite threat, Isaiah 7 emphasized the need for Ahaz to trust in Yahweh or he would not stand at all (Isa 7:9). The prophet also clearly predicts that Assyria will trouble Ahaz severely (Isa 7:17). However, in 2 Kings 16 Ahaz"s trust in / appeal to Assyria appears to successfully end the Syro-Ephramite threat as Assyria comes to his aid. The potential for conflict between these texts is obvious. This study suggests that the texts of Isaiah and 2 Kings are positions that are answered by Chronicles and in turn, have their own meanings changed through this dialogic relationship.


Fallen Angels: From 1 Enoch to Pseudo-Jonathan
Program Unit: National Association of Professors of Hebrew
David L. Everson, Hebrew Union College

In order to understand the respective angelologies of the Pentateuch targums, an attempt should be made at situating these beliefs within the various corpora of Second Temple Literature, classic Rabbinic Literature, and later Rabbinic Literature. To that end, this paper will provide a comparative analysis of the key issues regarding “fallen angels” within these corpora. That is, what were the nature, extent, and effect of the angelic rebellion? (e.g. How many angels rebelled? What was their purpose? Was the rebellion an enduring one?) Having done this, the respective ideologies regarding “fallen angels” within the Pentateuch targums may be evaluated. A careful tradition-historical analysis of targumic ideology is a worthwhile endeavor in that a certain amount of debate exists regarding which traditions are reflected within the various targums (cf. Vermes, Hayward, Flesher, Shinan, and Azuelos). For example, when Targum Pseudo-Jonahathan mentions Shamhazai and Azazel as fallen angels in Gen 6:4, is the targum drawing upon an enochic or a rabbinic tradition?


Samson in the Islamic Tradition and in the Old Testament
Program Unit: Hebrew Scriptures and Cognate Literature
Erik Eynikel, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen

Shamsun (Samson) is not mentioned in the Qur"an, but Al-Tabari locates him historically in the Christian era, just before St. George. The location is probably the result of the use of Christian sources for the story. Samson's status as a Nazirite may also have suggested a Christian connection to some Muslims because of the similarity of the name of his vow and the name of Nazareth, the home of Jesus and Nasara the Qur"anic term for Christians. This paper will compare the presentation of Samson in the Islamic tradition with the Old Testament and attempt to explain the differences as a result of influence by later Christian traditions.


Roman Arenas and Crowd Dynamics
Program Unit: Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti
Garrett G. Fagan, Pennsylvania State University

In popular perceptions, the gladiator is one of the most characteristic symbols of Roman civilization. The popularity among the Romans of arena games - incorporating animal hunts, executions, and gladiatorial bouts - is not in doubt. Explanations thus far offered by scholars for this popularity have rested on anthropological, sociological, or symbological interpretations of the arena's function in Roman culture. Yet even a cursory glance at comparative evidence shows that people beyond the Romans have long found the sight of animals and people pitched against each other in bruising and/or lethal encounters both appealing and intriguing: think of combat sports, the medieval tournament, public executions, bullfights, bear-baiting, cock- and dog-fighting, etc. Psychological factors offer the likeliest explanation for the transcultural and transhistorical appeal of violent spectacle. In this lecture, I examine the social psychological components of the Roman arena's lure, with a special emphasis on crowd dynamics. I examine how recent understandings of crowd dynamics, and understanding that builds on basic group processes, led spectators at arena events to a heightened excitement and elevated their emotional pitch. Other factors were at play too - such as sating prejudices or excitement at sports spectatorship - but crowd dynamics served to channel and focus the spectators' energies, and this was an attractive prospect in itself.


Thus Spake Ahiqar: Assyrian, Aramaic, or Pidgin
Program Unit: Assyriology and the Bible
Frederick Mario Fales, University of Udine

The period of the Assyrian empire (from the latter part of the 8th through the 7th century BC) shows, through its abundant textual material, the quite remarkable development of a double linguistic standard: while the majority of documents on clay tablets which have come down to us are made out in the Assyrian language in cuneiform script, a certain number of the same show the parallel use of the Aramaic language through alphabetic writing. It is widely believed that this limited production of Aramaic texts on clay tablets represented the mere "tip of the iceberg" against a possibly immense corpus of contemporary writings in the same West Semitic language and in alphabetic characters on pliable and non permanent media, such as parchment, papyrus and rewritable wax covered wooden tablets, which are in the main fatally lost to us. To the extent that this may have been so, and considering that Assyrian was the main official language of the imperial ruling class (but not the only one, since Aramaic also had an official status), it behooves us to ask a number of questions (mainly theoretical, since they are based on very slim clues within the written evidence) concerning the various languages which could have been spoken within the Assyrian empire. Was Assyrian also a widely disseminated spoken language throughout the vast territoriesencompassed by the Empire? Or was its use restricted to specific social or political classes? How did Aramaic fare by comparison? Did it represent a fully alternative linguistic reference point for some segments of the population? Or did it merely represent the "in house" languages of people who at the same time used Assyrian for official purposes? Could there have been some communities or groups within the empire which were only conversant in one or the other language? Or, alternatively, did a mixed jargon Ba sort of Assyro Aramaic pidgin develop as the main spoken variety for everyday communication? The title thus spake Ahiqar hints at this overall very complex problem of possibly parallel linguistic varieties and usages, through the well known literary figure of a high official at the Assyrian court, albeit bearing a fully Aramaic personal name, whose story of suffering and ultimate redemption has come down to us through a long series of versions and translations, starting from an Aramaic original of the 5th century BC, i.e. made out quite shortly after the demise of the Assyrian empire itself.


Aesthetics and African Biblical Hermeneutics
Program Unit: African Biblical Hermeneutics
Elelwani B Farisani, University of Kwazulu-Natal

Recognizing the centrality of the interplay between the bible, the body and power for African religious thought and life, this paper explores the role of African Biblical Hermeneutics in a conversation concerning various dimensions of the aesthetic considerations and qualities of African Religion(s).


Exile and Demography in Sixth-Century BCE Judah
Program Unit: Warfare in Ancient Israel
Avraham Faust, Bar-Ilan University

The paper will initially discuss the role exile(s) filled in the discussion over the "reality on the ground" in sixth-century BCE Judah. This will be followed by an examination of the demographic significance of exiles and the various possible mechanisms of population decline. The paper will argue that the exile, as a mechanism of demographic decline, is actually a red herring, distracting attention from other processes, more significant demographically, that were operating at the time.


Service-Learning Pedagogy: What Can Be Learned from Religious Studies?
Program Unit: Service-Learning and Biblical Studies
Joseph Favazza, Stonehill College

The paper will discuss why service-learning is a compelling pedagogy for religious studies as a discipline and what we have learned about the most effective practices in incorporating a service-learning component into a course. It will also address the barriers that are sometimes raised to embracing service-learning pedagogy, such as lack of institutional support, increased faculty work, the impact on tenure and promotion, and threats to academic rigor.


Crossing Male and Female Bodies: Body Concepts in the Book of Ruth
Program Unit: African Biblical Hermeneutics
Stephanie Feder, Westfaelische Wilhelms-Universitaet Muenster

Readers of the book of Ruth are confronted with different gender-roles. As Cheryl Exum pointed out in her article “Is this Naomi?” on the canvas of Philip Hermogenes Calderon (1902) the classification on male and female figures in the story of Ruth is not easy. The canvas “Ruth and Naomi” shows three persons, two embracing each other and one aside, looking at the couple. Exum's article discusses the constellation of the painted figures Calderon has painted. Is it Ruth embracing Naomi and Orpah standing next to them? Or is it Boaz and Ruth who are “locked in a romantic embrace” while Naomi watching them? The canvas gives no clear indication. Exum figured out that the gender roles in the book of Ruth vary in many forms. In order to support the thesis that Ruth takes different gender-roles, I want survey the body-concept of the Ruth character. I mainly consider methodological approaches of German theologians like Uta Schmidt, Michaela Geiger and Stefanie Schäfer-Bossert. The definition of body-concepts according to Geiger and Schäfer-Bossert regards pic-tures of the body, ideas and imaginations, constructions of bodies and the experience of and with the body. I will focus on Ruth's body, how it is presented in the narrative, which verbs of action are linked with Ruth's body, and how the body of Ruth is shaped in the story. It is important to say that concepts of body can only be derived from the text; the character of Ruth which is surveyed is a literary construct and can only be seen as a body in the text, not as a real body. The book of Ruth starts with Elimelech and his family. At first the male characters and Naomi are the focus of the story. Except the oath of Ruth in verses 16 to 18, the character of Ruth is not presented at full length. Ruth is introduced as Naomi"s daugh-ter-in-law. Besides mentioning her name, there is no further information about her character and her outward appearance in chapter 1. Even as her husband dies there is nothing said about her sadness, her grief or her way of coping with the new situation. The verbs mentioned in verses 6 and 7 are verbs of movement like “return” (v. 6),”leave” (v. 7) “set out on the road” (v. 7). Not until verse 8 Naomi is speaking di-rectly to her daughters-in-law. In verse 9 the first verb of action for Ruth and Orpah is mentioned: They weep aloud as a reaction on Naomi"s proposal to return to Bethle-hem without her daughters-in-law. Then Ruth and Orpah are speaking to Naomi. As Naomi repeats her proposal to return by her own and explains her reasons the reac-tion of Ruth and Orpah in verse 14 is the same as in verse 9: they weep. Then the conjunction of Orpah and Ruth as presented in the verses before, splits up now: Or-pah kisses Naomi and Ruth clings to her mother-in-law. The verb “to cling” (qbd) is not a verb of action, but it is intertextually connected to the second account on creation (cf. Gen 2:24). In Gen 2:24 it is said that the man will leave his parents and will cling to his wife. Therefore the verb “to cling” is (biblically) associated with a man"s activity. By linking the verb “to cling” with the character of Ruth, Ruth adopts male attributes.


Sexual Pollution in the Hebrew Bible: A New Perspective
Program Unit: Biblical Law
Eve Levavi Feinstein, Harvard University

The subject of purity and pollution in biblical Israel has been widely studied, and numerous schemata have been proposed for understanding the biblical purity “system.” However, none of these studies has closely examined the theme of sexual pollution, nor has any proposed schema fully accounted for its attributes. I will argue that sexual pollution, while it shares a basic conceptual framework with ritual pollution, is a concept unto itself with its own distinct characteristics, and that scholars who have subsumed it under a broader category of “moral,” “spiritual,” “metaphorical,” or “prohibited” pollution have generally failed to fully appreciate its character. An analysis of the biblical texts in which pollution terminology is used to describe sexual unions indicates that in biblical Israel, any sexual union that departed from the ideal of lifelong marital fidelity of a female to a male was considered polluting, regardless of its legality. Sexual pollution was generally understood as a condition that affected females alone. The Holiness legislation (H) expands the concept dramatically, applying it to males as well as females, using it to describe a wide variety of sexual relationships, and linking the idea of sexual purity to the theological narrative of Israel's conquest and retention of its land. The significance of these expansions has not been fully appreciated because of a failure to discern the parameters of sexual pollution in the rest of the Bible.


Signs of Wonder—Traces of Doubt: The Exodus Narrative as a Fantastic Text—and as a Religious Narrative
Program Unit: Biblical Criticism and Literary Criticism
Laura Feldt, Aarhus University

This paper takes the strong religious reactions to fantasy literature witnessed recently as an impetus for a re-examination of traditional religious narratives in the light of fantasy theory. In literary criticism, theories of the fantastic abound, but fantasy theory is relatively little used as an approach to religious narratives (cf. interactions with primarily New Testament literature in Aichele and Pippin 1992, 1997, 1998). This paper applies the fantasy theory of R. Lachmann (2002) to the Exodus narrative of the Hebrew Bible (Ex 1-18) in order to test fantasy theory as a stimulus for new understandings of religious narrative. The approach has not been applied full-scale to this material before. The paper primarily aims to offer a new framework for discussions of the Exodus narrative's literary qualities. However, it also offers suggestions that counter the tendency to stress the closure, stability, and hegemony of religious narrative, a tendency that offers little theoretical space to openings to destabilization, transformation, and possibility in religious narrative. The Exodus narrative uses many different literary-fantastic strategies - metamorphoses, paradoxes, inconsistencies, hyperboles, and improbable coincidences – each with particular effects. These strategies not only generate many, varied reactions in the personae of the narrative, but they also contain ambiguity, a double readability (hope vs. horror, utopia vs. dystopia), and what may be termed "detectivism" (a search for meaning) in their phenomenology. The abundant fantastic strategies contribute to a strong foregrounding of doubt and uncertainty in the narrative and this in-woven uncertainty performs important functions in the Exodus imaginary. Using Santner and Zizek as philosophical inspiration, the narrative's excessive fantastic elements may read as openings to possibility and transformation, and the Exodus narrative itself may be characterised by more of an epistemology of uncertainty than is often allowed for in critical discourse, which emphasises its founding/orienting qualities.


The Spanish Translation of the Septuagint
Program Unit: International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies
Natalio Fernández Marcos, Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales

In 2008 the first volume (Pentateuch) of the Spanish translation of the Septuagint will be published by Ediciones Sígueme of Salamanca. It has been carried out by the Madrid team of the Greek Bible. In fact, some previous attempts have been made. The Spanish translation made by Guillermo Jünemann in 1928, and first published in Santiago (Chile) 1992 will be especially discussed. Some reflections on the characteristics of the new Spanish translation will follow, including the question of the title, that is, whether the new translation can be considered the first translation of the Septuagint into Spanish.


Towards the Present and Future of Masoretic Studies
Program Unit: Masoretic Studies
Emilia Fernandez Tejero, Instituto de Filologia, Madrid

This is not a paper sensu stricto. The author analyzes the present state of Masoretic studies in order to hold a dialogue with people attending the meeting. The purpose is to know if (and if so, how) the contact among the members of IOMS can be improved. To build a web site and a database appears to be most essential, but other subjects may come up for discussion, as the appreciation of our field of research (there are still people who underestimate it); the form of our congresses and their content (for instance, reports on ongoing research), where they should take place, taking into account the expenses that we have to afford.… So, the author asks the audience to think about these or other matters that could be useful for us and for IOMS.


How Students and Teachers are Responding
Program Unit: National Association of Professors of Hebrew
Lee M. Fields, Roanoke Bible College

Field test team members will outline their experience adapting to a novel pedagogy and will provide an overview of student responses.


The Nature of the Galilean Economy in the Late Second Temple Period: The Sociological-Archaeological Debate
Program Unit: Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy
David A. Fiensy, Kentucky Christian University

Some scholars view Galilee in the late Second Temple Period through the lenses of cultural anthropology and macro-sociology. Others consider Galilee in light of the material remains and reject the use of (“Marxist”) social science theories. The former group usually has concluded that the peasants were poor, exploited, and usually angry at the elites. They surmise that the agrarian economic system could bring about no other result. The latter group argues for a rather prosperous economy in Galilee during this period. One archaeologist has even characterized Galilee as an “egalitarian society”. The archaeologists that hold this view base their conclusions on two lines of evidence: First, they offer the wide distribution of the pottery manufactured in Kefar Hananya and Shikhin. Second, they point to the excavations of Khirbet Qana and Yodefat. I will survey the evidence and arguments of both sides and attempt to reach a reasonable assessment.


Samaritan Synagogues of Late Antiquity: A Holistic Interpretation
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
Steven Fine, Yeshiva University

In recent years important Samaritan synagogues dating to late antiquity have been discovered in the Land of Israel, with the greatest concentration in Samaria itself. These structures have transformed our understanding of Samaritan architecture and art, and have served as a stimulus to reevaluate the nature of Samaritanism as a late antique religion/religious community. In this lecture I will set these buildings within the contexts of late antique Samaritan liturgical and homiletical texts, with emphasis upon the extensive preserved homiletical and liturgical writings of Marqe. I will then compare this Samaritan evidence to contemporaneous Jewish and Christian archaeological and literary sources.


Bezalel Son of Uri: A Biblical Artisan with a Rabbinic “Union Card”
Program Unit: Midrash
Steven Fine, Yeshiva University

The ancient Rabbis struggled with the image of Bezalel son of Uri. On the one hand, he was an artisan, and they imagined him in light of the somewhat low status of artisans in their own day. On the other, they were confronted with Scripture's positive portrayal of Bezalel. In this paper I will explore the ways that midrashic literature responded to these two pulls, and in so doing constructed a uniquely late antique image of the divinely-empowered biblical artisan.


The Administrative Policies of the Persian Empire
Program Unit: Literature and History of the Persian Period
Antonios Finitsis, Pacific Lutheran University

The Persian empire covered vast geographical territory, the question always remained how were the Persians able to control effectively diverse ethnic populations. Having looked closely at their tactics we propose that we call their administrative policy "adaptive reduplication:" adaptive because this policy would be modified to fit the socio-religious context of each land and reduplication because the goal of this administrative policy was to recreate in the various lands the conditions that would inspire faith and allegiance to a markedly multinational empire. This was a policy that aimed to promote unity despite the lack of uniformity. The Achaemenids took both internal and external measures to secure the stability and order of the empire. Internally, each administrative unit had a personal representative of the king who was aptly called a Satrap, which in Old Persian means "protector of the realm [kingdom]." Externally, the Persians promoted the cohesion of the empire by following a three-fold policy designed to promote unity by taking advantage of national, political, and religious sensibilities. First, they made an effort to create a sense of dynastic continuity between what went on before and the new order. This was a measure aimed at enhancing the ruler's legitimacy by connecting local traditions with imperial symbols. Second they tried to make allies out of the local aristocracy in order to incorporate indigenous trained personnel into the Persian bureaucratic machine. Third they sought the good will of the local sanctuaries because through them they could manipulate group loyalties as well as gain revenue that would provide support for their goals and policies. In light of the policies employed by the Persians throughout the empire, the events in the province of Yehud are cast in a slightly different light. The edict of Cyrus was not prompted by divine intervention alone, as the writer of Ezra would have us believe. The return of the exiles, the collaboration of the Persians with the Judaean leaders and the support provided for the rebuilding of the Temple are all typical elements of the administrative policy of adaptive reduplication and indicate the Persian attempt to integrate Judah organically in the empire. Scholars have focused mainly on strategic and financial reasons in order to explain why this was the case. Pierre Briant believes that this geographical area was of interest to the Achaemenids because it played a key role in the profitable Arab and Mediterranean trade. Amelie Kuhrt offers that the Old Persian rulers quite possibly wanted to use Judah as a buffer against Egypt. Kenneth Hoglund adds that in the decade 460-450 BCE the Persians had to contend not only with the Egyptian revolts but with the intervention of Athenian forces in the Mediterranean. Jon Berquist maintains that Persia's concern was not only defensive but also fiscal; it was generated by their desire to enhance their tax base. It is most probable that all these reasons contributed to the Achaemenid decision to develop and maintain a relationship with the community in Jerusalem. However, one has also to keep in mind that the Persian administrative policy that was intended to promote the cohesiveness and thus ensure the stability of the empire played an equally important role in this development. The fact that similar administrative tactics were followed consistently in many other lands reveals that these measures were standard policies of the Achaemenid imperial administration system.


The Use of J.W. 2.119–161 in Hippolytus and Porphyry
Program Unit: Josephus
Doug Finkbeiner, University of Pennsylvania

In the introductory section of the presentation, I will note the usage of J.W. 2.119-161 both by the Roman Christian Hippolytus (170-ca.235 C.E) and the Neo-Platonist Porphyry (233-309 C.E.). Due to the controversy over Hippolytus' text, I will discuss the various theories of influence between Josephus' text and Hippolytus' text. The balance of the presentation, though, will consider the textual differences and similarities between J.W. 2.119-161 and the two other accounts. In the concluding section of the paper, I will discuss several factors. First, I will consider the possibility of correcting J.W. 2.119-161 from either of the other two accounts. Second, I want to explore the rhetorical agendas of Hippolytus and Porphyry (and Eusebius who quotes Porphyry) that would help to explain their differences with J.W. 2.119-161. Perhaps this study will contribute to the use and possible abuse of ancient works by later authors in antiquity.


Early Rabbinic, Christian, and Qumranic Witness to Masoretic Concerns of Biblical Text
Program Unit: Masoretic Studies
Asher Finkel, Seton Hall University

The Masorectic concern for a textual transmission and its public reading appear before and after the Destruction of the Second Temple. Their witness is found in Qumranic texts, Gospels and Epistles as well as Tannaitic literature including Palestinian Targum. They govern their normative and interpretative tradition as they relate to the reading and preaching the text. The Masoretic determinants guide the religious praxis and thought. Examples will be drawn from the early witness as how a canonical text was read and understood by its vocalization, division, correlation and juxtaposition. The dual phenomenon of written (masoret) and reading (miqra) guided the teachers of varied biblically oriented communities via public preaching and private study.


Jerusalem in the Persian Period and the Wall of Nehemiah
Program Unit: Literature and History of the Persian Period
Israel Finkelstein, Tel Aviv University

Archaeology indicates that Persian period Jerusalem was a small settlement, with a limited population of a few hundred people and that it was unfortified. No remains of the wall described in the Book of Nehemiah have ever been found. The paper will deal with the archaelogy of Jerusalem and with the reality behind Nehemiah 3.


Megiddo Update: The Late Bronze and Iron Ages
Program Unit: Archaeological Excavations and Discoveries: Illuminating the Biblical World
Israel Finkelstein, Tel Aviv University

Since 1992, Tel Aviv University has been conducting excavations at the site of Megiddo in Israel. This paper will present some of the data which has been uncovered and which has relevance for discussions concerned with the Late Bronze and Iron Ages. Along with the principal author, Israel Finkelstein, the paper is co-authored by David Ussishkin and Eric H. Cline.


A Hebrew of Hebrews: Paul's Use of Scripture in Light of Contemporary Jewish Interpretation
Program Unit: Paul and Scripture
Bruce N. Fisk, Westmont College

Paul and his non-Christian Jewish contemporaries inherited many of the same exegetical traditions, adopted some of the same interpretive techniques and generally inhabited the same hermeneutical space. This paper will consider ways in which Paul's use of Scripture in 1 Corinthians 10 and Romans 11 shares this exegetical heritage with the authors of (so-called) Rewritten Bible, in terms of shared techniques and parallel appeals to post-biblical tradition, and in terms of their shared understanding of the nature of Scripture (as gapped, relevant, harmonious, self-interpreting and inspired) and of God (as trustworthy and fundamentally loyal to Israel).


Historical Perspectives on the Textual Criticism of Isaiah
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible
John P. Flanagan, Leiden University

The Book of Isaiah has been the subject of serious text-critical inquiry throughout history. Since the advent of Gesenius" commentary in 1821, textual work on the book of Isaiah has been particularly fruitful. This paper will seek to give a broad overview of the various contributions of specific scholars to the textual criticism of Isaiah during this period. Attention will be given to specific methodologies, the selection of textual cases within Isaiah, and the use of the ancient versions. The central aim of this paper will be to demonstrate how textual scholars influenced the critical editions of Biblia Hebraica Kittel (1-3), as well as the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia and vice versa. Influences of the current Biblia Hebraica Quinta project will also be discussed. The paper will conclude with some proposals concerning future methodology and selection of text-critical cases with regard to the book of Isaiah.


Secret Wisdom and Rituals in 4 Ezra: The Struggle against Rabbinic Wisdom
Program Unit: Wisdom and Apocalypticism
Frances Flannery, James Madison University

Fourth Ezra is a text that strategically encodes a series of mystical rituals through which the main character Ezra passes. This esoteric level of narrative operates alongside a publicly accessible layer of narrative. On the exoteric level Ezra receives eschatological revelations of an impending endtime in which the righteous will receive rewards, and on the esoteric level of exegesis–available to ritual experts in certain visionary traditions– eschatology is reinterpreted on behalf of an elite minority through a mystical hermeneutic. For the author, as revealed through the pseudepigraphic character of Ezra, and for the elite, mystically-initiated portion of the audience, access to the divine throneroom and personal transformation is available here and now. For the mystically initiated exegete who understands both levels of interpretation, these narratives are mutually reinforcing. My main tasks in this paper are to show the process by which 4 Ezra encodes mystical rituals and to use the practice theory of Pierre Bourdieu and the ritual theory of Roy A. Rappaport to investigate the strategy behind this encoding. I argue that the rituals portrayed in 4 Ezra reflect real rituals, reworked in light of a multi-faceted Traditionsbruch, to coin Assmann's phrase, occurring in the author's generation as a result of the destruction of the Temple and the imperial rule of Rome. The encoding serves a multi-faceted purpose that sheds light on the social history of the struggle between the ritual experts behind 4 Ezra's mystical approach to wisdom and the rabbinic experts at Yavneh, represented by 4 Ezra"s cousin text 2 Baruch, with its democratic, Torah based approach to wisdom.


The Doublets in Luke
Program Unit: Q
Harry Fleddermann, Alverno College

The large number of doublets in Matthew and Luke has played an important role in establishing the two-source theory, for the doublets indicate that Matthew and Luke drew continuously on two forms of the Jesus tradition, deriving one form from Mark and one from Q. Matthew and Luke, though, treat the doublets differently. Matthew, for example, frequently conflates the two forms of the doublets he takes over from Mark and Q. According to some scholars Luke avoids doublets, and we can easily find evidence that Luke eliminates doublets in taking over his sources, but Luke can also create doublets on his own and he often assimilates the two forms of the doublets he takes over to each other. By forming new doublets and enhancing the doublets he finds in his sources Luke pursues his own themes. This paper will strive to clarify the argument from the doublets in synoptic source criticism by treating all the doublets in Luke and contrasting Luke's approach with Matthew's, and it will also explore the contribution of the doublets to the study of Luke's redaction, for the doublets give us one more lamp to illuminate the sprawling complexity of Luke-Acts.


Bits of Bethel Cult behind the Golden Calf Complaint
Program Unit: Pentateuch
Daniel Fleming, New York University

Study of the calves in Exodus 32 and 1 Kings 12 must begin with the fact that the authors did not approve of them. During the monarchies, it seems that calf images were part of Israelite practice but were rejected by Judah, with its Yahweh sanctuary at Jerusalem. In its context, the calf of Exodus 32 is considered the product of religious infidelity. Yet some specific practice is condemned here, and the question is how much of the text preserves a rendition of that practice. I propose that Exod 32:1-6 as a whole provides that rendition, with no more than the calf itself cast in negative terms. In particular, the statement, “they got up to play” (v. 6) is appropriate to normal festival procedure, and was not composed as criticism. Short descriptions of local Hittite festivals often include entertainment for the god after sacrifice and feasting. One well-known example has a battle drama celebrating Hatti's victory over enemy Masha. In the Bible, Samson is brought out to “entertain” the Philistines at the Dagan feast when the hero pulls down the temple (Judg 16:25), and the same verb appears with the ritualized battle between 24 men of Abner and Joab at Gibeon (2 Sam 2:14). In Exod 32:6, the feast involves no sex, and its description is completely neutral. It appears that the critique in Exodus 32 takes up an entire narrative fragment about the making of the calf and its first use in a festival for Yahweh. 1 Kings 12 and Hosea attest to worship with calves at Bethel. Exodus 32 may then pick up a fragment that describes a Bethel feast, perhaps even for departure from Egypt, in service of a wider attack on idolatry.


Shaping Monet's Eyes: Theological Vision and the Formation of Prophetic Preachers
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Matthew Flemming, Harrisville, PA

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Navigating “Deuteronomistic History” as Cultural Memory
Program Unit: Rhetoric of Religious Antiquity
Gaétane-Diane Forget, Saint Paul University

This paper suggests a way of reading one set of important textual materials arising in Biblical Israel, namely, the so-called Deuteronomistic History (DH). While the DH has been extensively studied by redaction criticism, philology and the different formulae that shape and pattern it (as recently as J. Geoghegan), these discussions largely focus on what texts belong in the DH and which dating is best. Without denying the importance of the methods that have contributed to this body of scholarly literature, this paper will suggest a new approach to the DH, one that views this corpus through the lens of its tradents or custodians – the scribes. In doing so, I will suggest how the DH may be understood as a cultural memory constructed by the scribal custodians who shaped and patterned oral materials into the cultural memory of an exclusive Yahwism. I will do so by building on the recent suggestions for considering temporal issues (such as those raised by Eviatar Zerubavel) in RSI. As a result, this presentation will set forth the SRI-inspired rhetorical shape of DH, identify the rhetorical effect that the DH might have had on a constructed audience, and suggest the possible significance of this reading for a contemporary audience seeking to understand Biblical Israel and its God.


The Concept of Reward in Proverbs: Divergent Paradigms of Thinking?
Program Unit: Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
Tova Forti, Ben Gurion University of the Negev

This paper deals with the various expressions of the concept of reward in the Book of Proverbs. The two conceptual paradigms that shape this concept – i.e., the "deed-consequence nexus" and divine retribution– were often taken by scholars as providing evidence for conceptual stratification in the book. According to this school of thought, the older stratum promotes empirical wisdom and pragmatic thinking and is thus akin to the "deed-consequence nexus". The later stratum exemplifies a secondary theological elaboration of the old secular wisdom, in line with the quest for the fear of God and His reward. As opposed to a diachronic approach, I opt for a synchronic approach that recognizes the existence of divergent paradigms of thinking at one and the same time within the didactic framework of Proverbs, that is, a religious-moralistic (theocentric) view, and a didactic view that grants humans responsibility for their fate (anthropocentric). One should view the didactic personality of the teacher in Proverbs as reflective of a multi-faceted outlook which is both pragmatic and dogmatic.


Traces of Jesus in the Johannine Passion Narrative
Program Unit: John, Jesus, and History
Robert T. Fortna, Vassar College

Using criteria generated by the Jesus Seminar, an appraisal of the historical value of John 18-21, along with segments of chapters 13 and 14. Emphasis will be on items in John's account that most likely stem from the events at the end of Jesus' life--i.e., material that might merit a "red" or "pink" vote by the Seminar.


The Child Mary in the Protevangelium of James
Program Unit: Function of Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
Mary F. Foskett, Wake Forest University

With its sustained focus on the figure of Mary, the mother of Jesus, the Protevangelium of James has been attributed a purpose most often considered either apologetic, encomiastic, or both. In either light, the narrative's early chapters, which tell the story of Mary and her childhood in terms that stand quite apart from canonical portrayals of Jesus" mother, can be read as rhetorical recasting aimed at elevating Mary above criticism and/or bestowing upon her great praise and honor. However, when read in the context of ancient constructions of childhood and Greco-Roman biographical depiction of the early lives of its famous subjects, ProtoJas 1-7 emerges not only as the idealization of Mary's childhood, but as a representation of ancient ambivalence about children and the relationship between childhood and adulthood.


Is Q a Jewish-Christian Document?
Program Unit: Q
Paul Foster, University of Edinburgh

This discussion will consider the classification of the Q document as a Jewish-Christian text. To this end it will look at recent research into the nature of Jewish-Christianity and consider the identifying features of such groups. In large part this will involve considering the issue of definition of categories. Next, the history of Q scholarship will be considered - in particular the trend away from Streeter's theory that Q was a product of a Gentile community located in Antioch. The paper will then look at those aspects of Q which may reflect a Jewish-Christian outlook and those saying which are problematic for such a categorization. This section of the paper will interact with the work of William Arnal in M. Jackson-McCabe (ed.), Jewish Christianity Reconsidered (2007). Finally the paper will consider how understandings of early Christianity may be potentially enhanced by determining whether or not Q should be classified as a Jewish-Christian text.


A Desperate Search for Wise Speech: The Rhetoric of the Book of Job
Program Unit: Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
Robert L. Foster, Southern Methodist University

The question of the unity of the book of Job continues to trouble Jobean studies. To my mind this trouble emerges because many consider the book's central problem as the issue of theodicy. Attending carefully to the rhetoric of the book indicates that the major issue is wise speech, particularly speech about God, which ties the disparate parts into a unified whole, however. The narrative frame shows grave concern for speech, including Job's concern that his children may have cursed God, the “Accusers” challenge that Job might himself curse God, which Job's wife encourages, though Job avoids sinning with his lips. Job"s friends come to comfort him but fail as miserably as comforters as they do in their speech about God (42:8). In the end, other friends and family comfort Job. The speech cycles contain the book"s great irony: Job and company argue for 29 about something of which they know nothing. The friends begin hoping not to offend Job, but soon throw caution to the wind, considering Job full of windy, empty words, in the end linking Job to the wicked of old who asked God to turn away and wondered what God could really do (21:17). Job rebukes the friends for reproving him, accuses them of speaking falsehoods about God, and considers their efforts at consolation absurd speech making. Elihu"s speeches move the discourse forward because he recognizes that God does not speak solely through affliction, but also through dreams (33:15-18) and creation (36:24-37:6), a discourse that ought to give Job pause in his own speech-making. God speaks along this latter line, challenging Job"s words, which lack knowledge, through a discourse about his care and restraint of creation. Job puts his hand over his mouth and repents for speaking of what he did not know.


No Book beyond the Bounds of Empire? Structuring Heavenly Realities through Imperial Metaphor in the Letter to the Ephesians
Program Unit: Disputed Paulines
Robert L. Foster, Southern Methodist University

Recently Fredrick Long has proposed that the letter to the Ephesians includes “presumably deliberate "trumping" moves against competing political ideologies in circulation during the middle of the first century.” I argue that, although the letter contains a density of imperial language, the letter does not intend to subvert political ideologies but rather develops a complex metaphor to structure the heavenly realities, helping the Ephesian ekklesia comprehend their experience of these realities and understand the import of this experience for their way of being in the world. Ephesians lacks language aimed at mitigating imperial ideologies of the kind found in Matthew, Romans 13, or the Apocalypse. More importantly, Ephesians is clearly less concerned to undermine earthly realities as to help the Ephesian ekklesia negotiate their earthly existence in light of heavenly realities, from beginning ("every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies," 1:3) to end ("our struggles is not against blood and flesh but against...spiritual forces of evil in the heavenlies," 6:12). Furthermore, politeia language is obviously metaphorical (the Ephesians do not become actual citizens of Israel; 2:12, 19) and aims, not to undermine political ideologies, but to affirm the place of the Ephesian ekklesia among the saints (2:19). Finally, the rhetorical situation of the letter--the struggle of the Ephesian ekklesia against spiritual powers reflected in the concomitant struggle to no longer walk as [other] Gentiles--and the rhetorical aim of the letter--to convince the Ephesians to walk worthy of their calling--indicate minimal concern to undermine political ideologies. In other words, cognizance of imperial language illuminates how the metaphor structures heavenly realities but to conclude that this language trumps competing political ideologies stretches the use of NT research into the Roman Empire beyond its boundaries.


Grabbing and Being Grabbed: Gift, Transformation, and Formation in Paul
Program Unit: Pauline Theology
Stephen E. Fowl, Loyola College in Maryland

Invited Paper.


The Use of the Septuagint in the Peshitta of Proverbs
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible
Michael V. Fox, University of Wisconsin-Madison

G playsa demonstrably important role in the Syriac translation of Proverbs (“S”), more so than in any other biblical book. S negotiates flexibly and creatively between M and G. S's impact is seen in several ways: (1) Borrowing from G for direct help with exegetical difficulties. (2) Taking interpretive cues from S, while moving S's own reading in a different direction. (3) Supplementation and enrichment of S's own translation. (4) Dependency on G"s word choice and syntax, even when the interpretation may differ. (5) Fusion of components from M and G. (6) Incorporation of some G-pluses. (7) Very rarely, omissions, in places where an absence in the source-text is unlikely. In general, S works from a Hebrew source-text but seems free to choose and combine components of both sources, as if G had a semi-canonical status. Understanding how S uses G allows us to formulate criteria for the retroversion of variants and gives a clue to the translation"s origins.


Neusner as Reader of the Mishnah, Tosefta, and Halakhic Midrashim
Program Unit: History and Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism
Steven D. Fraade, Yale University

Invited paper for the session “Jacob Neusner and the Scholarship on Ancient Judaism.”


Assessing the SIFT method of Biblical Hermeneutics and Liturgical Preaching
Program Unit: Psychology and Biblical Studies
Leslie Francis, University of Warwick and Andrew Village, St. John University

The SIFT method of biblical hermeneutics and liturgical preaching draws on the insights of psychological type theory as proposed by Jung and developed by instruments like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. The bases of this method, grounded in hermeneutical theory and in Jungian understanding of the perceiving process (sensing and intuition) and of the judging process (feeling and thinking) are discussed and evaluated by Francis and Village (2008), and displayed by Francis and Atkins (2000, 2001, 2002) in their reflections on the Sunday Gospel readings proposed by the three year cycle of the Revised Common Lectionary. The aim of the present paper is to test the underlying principles of the SIFT method in an empirical study. Data were provided by 266 churchgoers who completed the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and evaluated interpretations of Mark 1.29-39 developed from the distinctive perspectives of sensing (S), intuition (N), feeling (F) and thinking (T). The analyses provided support of the theory


The Proto-Aeolic Capitals from Samaria and Gerizim: A Different Perspective
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
Norma Franklin, Tel Aviv University

More than forty “Proto-aeolic capitals” have been found at 12 sites in modern-day Jordan, Syria, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority. This paper challenges the accepted concept that “proto-aeolic capitals” are purely structural items. The “Proto-aeolic capitals” did not have a uniform structural function rather “Proto-aeolic capitals”, with their volute motif, originally had a cultic connotation. Seven “capitals” dating to the period of the northern Kingdom of Israel were excavated at its capital Samaria. Recently two “capitals” were excavated at the later site of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim. The question must be raised; do the “proto-aeolic capitals” from Samaria and Gerizim show a continuity of cult between these two sites?


Leviticus: Poking Holes in Israel's Holiness: Islamic Interpretations of Motifs in Leviticus
Program Unit: Qur'an and Biblical Literature
David Freidenreich, Colby College

"I have set you apart from other peoples," God says to the Israelites in Leviticus (20:26). In the mind of Leviticus' authors and in the view of its Rabbinic interpreters, this sentiment reflects the unique and elevated status of Israel. Islamic literature undermines Jewish claims to divine privilege not only through supersession but also and especially by challenging the presumptions on which these claims are built. Islamic sources apply to all humanity many of the norms that Leviticus applies specifically to Israelites and, at the same time, portray distinctively Israelite/Jewish norms as signs of divine disfavor. This paper explores the evisceration and inversion of Israel's distinctiveness manifest in Quranic and Sunni texts about subjects that are central to Leviticus itself: sacrifice, purity, dietary practice, and sexual activity.


Prodigal Sons and Estate Clearance at Ugarit: Another Look at RS 16.129
Program Unit: Ugaritic Studies and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy
Daniel A. Frese, University of California, San Diego

This paper will look at various scholars" understandings of tablet RS 16.129, which deals with the legal “clearance” of one Nuriyanu. The text of this tablet, written fairly clearly for the most part, has nevertheless not yielded a consensus as to its interpretation. The problematic points of the text will be discussed, and the concept of estate clearance and legal “return” within the larger Ugaritic legal corpus will be elucidated by comparison to other similar tablets. The results of this comparison show that the term zaku in RS 16.129 (and in the legal texts in general) has nothing to do with Nuriyanu's inheritance, as is commonly asserted.


God Created the World Good, Not Perfect
Program Unit: Ethics and Biblical Interpretation
Terence E. Fretheim, Luther Seminary

How one thinks about the kind of God who created the world, and the nature of the world that resulted, will deeply affect one's environmental reflections.


“Building a Temple in Time”: The Verb עשׂה in the Concept of Sabbath, Temple, and Divine Rest
Program Unit: Sabbath in Text and Tradition
Mathilde Frey, Andrews University

Analysis of the verb עשׂה (do, make) in the concept of Sabbath, temple, and the motif of rest demonstrates its significant role in Exod 31:12-17. Within the tabernacle building instructions the verb עשׂה (do, make) occurs 112 times. Suddenly, on the seventh day making is prohibited and resting required. At the same time the people are to make the Sabbath. While the rabbis noticed this particular usage of the infinitive in Exodus 31:16 modern scholarship more or less avoids engaging in such interpretation. The present paper has the purpose of demonstrating, that the infinitive לַעֲשׂוֹת (to make the Sabbath) in connection with the verb שׁמר in Exod 31:16 (cf. Gen 2:3; Deut 5:15) forms the real intention and concept of the Sabbath as climax of the temple building text (Exod 25-31) with the significance of Israel"s active involvement in founding holy time, namely in building the sanctuary in time. It is because of the infinitive לַעֲשׂוֹת (to make) in connection with the preceding verb שׁמר (keep, observe, guard) that the Sabbath will be observed and performed not only in the wilderness generation but also in the future, in the generations to come. Even when the temple does not exist anymore, the Sabbath as everlasting temple in time supersedes it.


City and Village in Roman Galillee: Reexamining the Literary Evidence
Program Unit: Historical Jesus
Sean Freyne, Trinity College-Dublin

This paper will explore the nature of rural-urban relations in first century Galilee through a comparative analysis of Josephus' Vita and the gospels of the New Testament.


Who Was a Jew? Perceptions of Ethnic Identity at Elephantine
Program Unit: Hebrew Scriptures and Cognate Literature
Lisbeth S. Fried, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

As is well-known, members of the Persian garrison at Elephantine in the 5th century BCE were variously known as Yehudi and Arami, with the same person at different times receiving both designations. Nevertheless, even after 100 years of living on the island, they were never called Egyptian. Judeans raised money for the temple of YHW, and also for the Syene temples of Bethel, Ashimbethel, and Anatbethel, but never for Khnum or any Egyptian god. In anthropological terms, these and other data (personal names, oaths) suggest low boundary maintenance between the Aramean and Judean ethnic groups in upper Egypt, but high boundary maintenance between both these groups and the Egyptians (Barth 1969). According to McGuire's (1982) theory of ethnic boundary maintenance, boundaries between ethnic groups result from power discrepancies. The greater the disparity of access to wealth, power, and prestige between ethnic groups, the more intent the dominant group is on maintaining the boundary between them. This theory well describes ethnic boundary maintenance at Elephantine which resulted finally in the Egyptian-led destruction of the Jewish temple.


“Invoke at Any time…”: Apotropaic Texts and Pseudepigraphic Literature in Qumran
Program Unit: Pseudepigrapha
Ida Frohlich, Pázmány Péter Catholic University

Apocryphal psalms and 'sectarian" apotropaic compositions from Qumran refer regularly to a specific tradition about the origin of evil spirits and their characteristics. Opinions on the origin of evil and demons are outlined in the narratives of two Pseudepigraphic works, 1 Enoch and Jubilees which were not only known in Qumran but may have belonged to the core tradition of the community, and inspired many 'sectarian" works. 1 Enoch 6-11, the story of the Watchers is a narrative on the origin of the evil. Originators of the natural evil (the Watchers) as well as its representatives (the Giants) show demonic features. The rationale of the evil and demons is impurity. 1 Enoch 6-11 offers an alternative to the theology of the origin of the evil in Genesis. Jubilees" author(s) merge the traditions of Genesis and that of 1 Enoch. The figure of the demonic evil is called here Mastema. He is the head of a demonic hierarchy, and a representative of both natural and ethical evil. Humans who have power over evil demons are the righteous, endowed by special knowledge. Qumran apotropaic works reflect the ideas on demonology and methods of keeping away evil spirits shaped in the two pseudepigraphic works.


First Samuel 1–8: The Prophet as Agent Provocateur
Program Unit: Prophetic Texts and Their Ancient Contexts
Serge Frolov, Southern Methodist University

The paper argues that in the opening chapters of 1 Samuel, Yhwh twice uses Samuel's firmly established prophetic reputation to mislead his audience, on one occasion with disastrous consequences. These largely overlooked instances of divine deception do not readily fit in with the Deuteronomic commandment that a prophet who has proved himself as Yhwh's reliable mouthpiece should be obeyed under the fear of divine retribution (18:18-22). Exploring the synchronic and diachronic aspects of the tension between the concepts of prophecy in Deuteronomy and 1 Samuel 1-8, the paper concludes that although the Former Prophets may have originated as a Deuteronomistic composition in its received form the corpus does not qualify as such.


Beyond Ideology? The Neo-liberal Turn in Recent Feminist Biblical Scholarship
Program Unit: Ideological Criticism
Esther Fuchs, University of Arizona

This paper analyzes and critiques the resurgence in the last decade of a neo-liberal feminist approach to the Hebrew Bible. This approach conceptualizes “women” as a self-evident category and excludes ideology from discussions of agency, voice and literary representation. Women's “experiences” (e.g. desire, birthing, pain, death) are presented as universal, natural and essentialist transcending the confines of historicity and discourse. These discussions of women's “experience” preclude analysis of the workings of patriarchal ideology, thus reproducing its terms. Biblical women's “countertraditions” are framed in 19th century liberal terms as manifestations of independence, equality, rationalism and individualism. In this paper I draw on Joan Scott"s deconstruction of the category of “experience” and on Elizabeth Grosz"s critique of neo-liberal feminist theory. The paper traces the root of the latter approach to Elizabeth Cady Stanton"s Woman"s Bible which was grounded in humanist, liberal ideals of European emerging capitalist modernism. Contemporary approaches modeled on this book work with the premise that the text can yield ancient women"s experiences naturally and directly, that the presentation of women"s traditions and “voices” are presented without ideological mediation or framing. Such approaches argue that women"s “voices” can be retrieved simply by reading the biblical text (e.g. Ilana Pardes), that women"s “archetypes” are retrievable from reading ancient Near Eastern texts (e.g. Susan Ackerman) and that women"s authentic lives and historical contributions can also be retrieved (e.g. Tikva F. Kensky) without the mediation of ideology. As I claim in my book, Sexual Politics in the Biblical Narrative (2000), such approaches are reverting to early rhetorical and literary theories as the “proper” or “correct” interpretations of biblical women, repudiating “ideology” as alien to the biblical text, while endorsing older critical terms prevalent especially in the 1960s (e.g. type, voice, structure, frame) as somehow more appropriate for feminist biblical scholarship.


The Israelite Woman's Body as National Border: Intermarriage, Hybridity, and Gender
Program Unit: National Association of Professors of Hebrew
Esther Fuchs, University of Arizona

Recent feminist postcolonial work on “foreign” wives (e.g. Claudia Camp, Fewell, Musa Dube, Judith McKinlay) adds to gender a consideration of race and class. While these perspectives contribute to our appreciation of the hybridity of the foreign woman as insider and outsider, the construction of the Israelite woman did not so far benefit from postcolonial studies of the nation and its imaginary borders. Drawing on work by Nira Yuval-Davis and Tamar Mayer, this paper argues that the biblical gendering of exogamy, constructs the Israelite woman as national border. The Israelite woman's body is not permitted to foreign men, while foreign women's bodies cross national boundaries and violate laws of endogamy. The bodies of foreign women subvert and confuse national borders, from Hagar the Egyptian to Ruth the Moabite. The description of such exogamous marriages is naturalized or justified through multiple references to the insufficiency of the Israelite woman's body. The acceptance, cooptation and inclusion of "foreign" wives into the national body politic suggest that men were exempted from the endogamous restrictions applied to Israelite women. This explains the frequent prophetic stigmatization of the Israelite wife in search of foreign male partners. This castigation is often projected on the national body politic at large. Exemplified by the repressed sexuality and elimination of exogamy of the likes of Sarai, Rebekah, Dinah, Bathsheba and eventually Esther—the borders of the Israelite nation are sexually and morally demarcated in contrast to foreign women"s sexuality. This paper then develops the analysis of the biblical wife in my book Sexual Politics in the Biblical Narrative (2000) to include theories of the nation, of the body and of borders. Tangentially, it questions recent work on Israelite ethnicity and nationhood that does not use comparative and intercultural shuttling.


David's Alliance with the Philistines: Balancing a Loyal Israelite with a Shrewd Politician
Program Unit: Poster Session
Stephen Fugitt, Missouri State University and Columbia College

This poster will emphasize acculturation visible in the David and Philistine stories in at least three ways. First, the fact that collaborative interaction is mentioned at all is evidence of the reality of some level of cultural exchange. The biblical reference to this interaction conveys the perspective of the writers themselves regarding the times they were writing about. Second, the ease of this contact as seen in the texts is an evidence of acculturation. The lack of linguistic and other cultural obstacles again communicates that these were not major issues to overcome during biblical times. Finally, the willingness of both parties, specifically David and Achish, to enter into alliance is further evidence of where the two had arrived in their thinking. Much had changed in a relatively short space of time. The narrative has moved the reader from David and Goliath to David and Achish. From David the giant killer to David the do-what-it-takes-to- survive politician. The former is defeated with a sling and stone and his own sword, while the other is brought down through more covert methods of deception and cunning.


Organizing the World: The Construction of Persian Period Place-Name Lists
Program Unit: Literature and History of the Persian Period
Deirdre N. Fulton, Pennsylvania State University

Lists were common throughout the history of the ancient Near East, particularly genealogies and place-name lists. This trend continued into the Persian Period, when Persian kings kept administrative records as well as extensive lists of place-names found in monumental works like the Persepolis inscription of nations, the Susa foundation charter, and also the Xerxes inscription. The construction of place-name lists served as a way for the Persian monarchy to organize the different nations that they had administrative contact with. In this paper, I will explore the process of the construction of these place-name lists as well as examine the organization behind their construction. I will also examine the context in which these place-name lists appear. Finally, I will also seek to answer why these lists were ordered in the manner in which they appear in the inscriptions and what this reveals about how the Persian kings ordered the world around them.


The Fictionalization of the Text (as if—“ke-illu”) as a Hermeneutic Method of Rabbinic Interpretation
Program Unit: Midrash
Eszter K. Fuzessy, University of Chicago

There are several hundred texts in tannaitic and amoraic literature that make use of the term “ke-illu” (as if) for the express purpose of transferring a statement to which the expression is prefixed, on the literary level of the text, from the world of “reality” to the world of “fiction”. There are two basic types (with numerous subtypes) of “ke-illu” texts: the one type is written in “mishnaic” form, which is substitutive and the other in “midrashic” form, which is hermeneutical. However, most “ke-illu” texts, as we have them today, are a mixture of the two types. In this paper, I would like first to propose a classification and description of the two basic types of “ke-illu” texts. Then I would like to focus on the following questions, mainly with respect to the hermeneutical type of “ke-illu” texts: 1. How do “ke-illu” texts, which are expressly fictitious texts, differ in form, methods of interpretation and expressions, from texts that are not fictitious (either because they are considered fictitious by neither the editors nor the readers of the texts, or are taking pains at “disguising” their fictional nature and appearing nonfictional)? 2. What are the indicators (form, special expressions, etc.) in “ke-illu” texts which are meant to draw the reader's attention to the fact that what he is reading does not correspond to “reality”? 3. What is the function of “ke-illu” texts of the hermeneutical type in the interpretation of rabbinic literature? Is there a difference between the validity of interpretations of, on the one hand, texts which are meant to be read as “historical” texts and, on the other hand, texts that are expressly fictitious?


Matthew's “Golden” Gospel? The Rich, the Poor, and the Privileged in the Synoptic Gospels
Program Unit: Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy
Aaron M. Gale, West Virginia University

Evidence is strong that Galilee was prosperous and very involved in trade and commerce by the first century. Many goods were imported and exported to and from the region. In this paper I will argue that the Matthean community, itself a conservative Jewish-Christian group located in Galilee, was prosperous as well. In fact, when placed alongside the other Synoptic Gospels, Matthew alone clearly suggests a distinct and unique preference for money and wealth in general. First, I will provide a brief sketch of ancient Galilean economic activity. Second, I will summarize the status of current scholarship concerning Matthew and money, which will include a brief discussion of the various denominations of coinage mentioned in the Gospel. Finally, I will examine and analyze Matthew's views of the rich and poor and their relationship/correlation to those found in the other Synoptic Gospels. In particular, I will look at three important issues: Matthew's usage of the terms “rich” and “poor,” or the lack thereof (as found in Matt 5:3; 11:5; 19:16-22; 20:1, 29-34; 22:9; 27:57), the context and meaning of “wealth” contained in the Gospel (as found in passages such as Matt 2:11), and Matthew's understanding of wealth as it relates to the Torah, and subsequently to Mark and Luke (Deut 28:1-14; Prov 13:18; Matt 6:19-21; 19; 20:29-34; 27:57). The evidence provided in this paper will make it clear that the author(s) of Matthew"s Gospel understood wealth from within the context of a Jewish perspective, and that the Matthean community itself must have been far wealthier than the communities associated with either Mark or Luke"s Gospel.


The Cult of the Roman Emperor: Uniter or Divider
Program Unit:
Karl Galinsky, University of Texas

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Feminine Beauty and Adornment Represented in Levantine Ivory Sculpture and the Old Testament
Program Unit: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Bible
Amy Gansell, Harvard University

Ideals of feminine beauty are both physically and metaphorically described in the Old Testament. Early first millennium BCE Levantine ivory images of women embodied and communicated related characteristics and properties. Adornment, bedecking women from head to foot, enhanced, protected, and expressed beauty through its preciousness, luminosity, iconography, and position on the face and body. Using the visual record as a starting point, this paper shall explore the beauty of women represented in ivory and the role of adornment in relation to their beauty. Visual interpretations are enriched and expanded by textual evidence. Biblical references also serve to establish cultural perspectives on feminine beauty, bringing to light its values as well as its dangers.


The Descriptions of the Redemption of Israel in Ezekiel
Program Unit: Book of Ezekiel
Tova Ganzel, Bar-Ilan, Israel

This lecture focuses on Ezekiel's descriptions of the redemption of Israel. I begin by examining inner-biblical parallels to Ezekiel's prophecies of redemption. This both helps to determine with which biblical writings or traditions Ezekiel was familiar and sheds light on whether Ezekiel relied on previously existing elements in formulating his prophetic message. In addition, my investigation of the descriptions of redemption scattered throughout the book of Ezekiel impacts on the question of the extent of Ezekiel's originality in formulating his own position. By comparing Ezekiel"s portrayals of redemption to Jeremiah"s similar depictions, we can better appreciate Ezekiel"s originality. Whereas Ezekiel"s prophecies of redemption lack the motif of consolation as Baruch Schwartz has shown, Jeremiah utters prophecies of consolation without the motif of redemption. This contrast is a reflection of the distinctive nature of each prophet"s message, which is consistent with each prophet"s unique description of the destruction of the Temple.


Service Learning and Hebrew Bible Interpretation
Program Unit: Service-Learning and Biblical Studies
David G. Garber Jr., McAfee School of Theology, Mercer University

In this presentation, I will discuss how I integrate service-learning activities into my course on Social Justice in the Hebrew Bible for seminary students. I will discuss strategies I have developed over the past two years and invite conversation to generate new approaches. Such strategies include: individual service requirements and writing assignments in which the students reflect on the integration of service and biblical interpretation, service experiences that involve the class as a whole and the conversation they evoke, and research projects aimed at developing interpretation of biblical texts that can motivate social change. As a example of service to the community growing out of this setting, I will share how both students and professor have embraced one particular issue—the problem of underage sex-trafficking in metropolitan Atlanta—and have begun to address the issue in different ways.


Michael and Samael: Experiencing Angelosophy
Program Unit: National Association of Professors of Hebrew
Zev Garber, Los Angeles Valley College

By “Angelosophy,” I mean viewing and decoding the role of Hebrew-Jewish heavenly messengers, which occurs in rabbinic material aligned with selected biblical verses, in theosophical units of paradigmatic and pragmatic faith knowledge. In rabbinic tradition, Michael and Samael, respectfully, the guardian angels of Jacob/Israel and Esau/Rome, are defender and prosecutor of Israel's fate until the end of days. In the short view, they are active at the Akedah (“Binding”) of Isaac, the birth of Esau and Jacob, the crossing of the Sea, and in the long view, the Nazi inferno in the bosom of Christendom. The strife between Israel and the Nations (then and now) and the debatable continuity of the Covenant People because of planet Auschwitz are projected into the cosmic battle between Michael and Samael. And in the end as in the beginning, the supernal light that sustains Israel does not consume nor diminish, neither at the ford of Jabbok, nor at the Burning Bush, nor at Auschwitz. How and why is the purport of this presentation.


Revisiting Judges 11: A Cuban-Feminist Reading of the Story of Jephthah/Jephthah's Daughter
Program Unit: Feminist Hermeneutics of the Bible
Cristina Garcia-Alfonso, Brite Divinity School

When reading Judges 11 through a lens of resolviendo (survival) as it pertains to the daily realities in contemporary Cuba, a different understanding of the narrative emerges. Unlike Euro-American feminist interpretations, my Cuban feminist reading arrives at a more nuanced portrayal of Jephthah's daughter and her father amidst the social dynamics present in the narrative. Thus, I shall propose a distinct methodology that connects particularities of contemporary contexts with the dynamics presented in ancient texts to offer new insights.


Biblical Memories, Archaeology, and Texts: The Reimagination of Ancient Israel by Ben Sira
Program Unit: Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity
Gregg Gardner, Princeton University

This paper explores the reinterpretation of biblical traditions on the Israelite past in the last eight chapters of the Wisdom of Ben Sira, the so-called “Praise of Israel's Great Ancestors” that recounts the deeds of Israel's major personalities. In particular, this paper focuses on Ben Sira's reinterpretation of biblical traditions on King Hezekiah"s preparations for war against the Assyrians, teasing out the conceptual nuances of Ben Sira"s approach to the Hebrew Bible through the employment of three related, complementary methodological approaches. First, an intratextual comparison between Ben Sira"s characterization of Hezekiah"s defenses (ch. 48) and the building projects of the second century B.C.E. Jerusalem high priest Simon II (ch. 50) demonstrates how the accomplishments of the former are minimized in order to exalt the deeds of the latter. Second, an intertextual exploration with other Hellenistic Jewish texts demonstrates that Ben Sira was deeply engaged in second-century B.C.E. discourse on the memory of the bygone king of Judah. Lastly, reading Ben Sira extratextually with archaeological remains locates the author"s methods and idiosyncratic approaches within his distinctive Jerusalem context. These vectors serve to plot a three-dimensional configuration of Ben Sira"s authorial and exegetical methods, illuminating the ways that he reshaped received biblical traditions and reimagined a prominent Israelite who had already become a figure of the distant past.


This Little Light of Mine: The Menorah and Oil Lamps in Byzantine Jerusalem and Late Antique Jewish-Christian Discourse
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
Gregg Gardner, Princeton University

A close examination of archaeological finds from Jerusalem, together with recent scholarship on Byzantine-era literature, casts new light on the role of material culture and artistic expression in late antique Jewish-Christian discourse. A reevaluation of excavated remains at the base of the southern retaining wall of the Temple Mount demonstrates the area's Christian orientation during the sixth and seventh centuries. Among the finds were numerous “candlestick” lamps, complete with highly-charged religious motifs, including crucifixes and representations of the menorah – the candelabrum that once stood in the Jerusalem Temple. The provenance of menorah-laden candlestick lamps in Jerusalem is consistent with their distribution throughout Palestine, as they are found exclusively in Christian settlements. The candlestick lamps" absence from Jewish sites is conspicuous in light of the menorah's preeminence in other forms of ancient Jewish art. This tension between distribution and design is relieved by recent scholarship on late antique texts that demonstrates the use of the menorah as a literary trope in Byzantium's discourse on empire with late antique Judaism. These Christian works appropriate the cultic vessels and fill them with Solomonic prestige and Roman glory – a combination tailored to fit the Byzantines" idiosyncratic preferences for imperial identity. This rhetorical trajectory, the present paper argues, is paralleled in the archaeological and artistic record. By decorating distinctively Christian lamps with the menorah, the Byzantines have appropriated and domesticated a previously Jewish symbol, reorienting it to express idiosyncratically Byzantine-Christian imperial ideals – all in terms that would resonate with late antique Jews.


The Royal House of David: Romans 1:1–5 and “the Holy Scriptures”
Program Unit: Intertextuality in the New Testament
Don Garlington, Tyndale University College and Seminary

In the opening paragraph of Paul's letter to the Romans, the words that summarize so much of the epistle are those of Rom 1:5: “the obedience of faith among all the nations for his name's sake.” Paul's statement of his missionary goal follows hard upon his declaration that his gospel is christological. Jesus, the subject of the gospel, belongs to the house of David as the son of David, i.e., king of Israel. He is also Son of God and none other than the “Christ” and the “Lord” who has commissioned Paul to promote faith"s obedience among the nations for his name"s sake. This backdrop to Rom 1:5 has not been explored, or even noticed, by the commentators. This setting is provided by a number of passages from Tanakh that anticipate a king/son who would take the nations in captive obedience to himself.


Original Sin: Meditations on Evil in Recent Hollywood Film
Program Unit: SBL Forum
Greg Garrett, Baylor University

2007 saw the release of five powerful films exploring the nature of evil. In Best Picture nominees There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men we find a transcendent evil, while in 3:10 to Yuma, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and The Bourne Ultimatum we discover a more hopeful (and, perhaps, more Biblical) understanding of the place of evil. In discussing these films, we will see that evil is powerful and seductive, but that redemption and transcendence remain dramatic possibilities.


Didache 10 and the Book of Revelation
Program Unit: Didache in Context
Alan J. P. Garrow, Bath Abbey

After a description of a set form of eucharistic prayer, Didache 10.7 notes that prophets may give thanks 'as much as/however they wish'. This paper will argue that a prophet, exercising this prerogative, expanded on themes outlined in Didache 10.1-6 to create the Book of Revelation; which may otherwise be understood as a series of six expanded eucharistic prayers.


Newly Found Moabite Inscriptions: Linguistic and Historical Implications
Program Unit: Hebrew Scriptures and Cognate Literature
Erasmus Gass, University of Tübingen

Since the discovery of the famous Mesha inscription in 1868, many new Moabite inscriptions have come to light, especially in the last few years. The unprovenanced Moabite Royal Inscription, now on display in the Israel Museum, is the second longest Moabite text, posing several major linguistic, content-related and syntactic problems that have not been solved so far. This inscription might be a modern forgery. But only a test of its authenticity with scientific methods could clear up this question. However, problems with Moabite texts are no clear indicator for forgeries. There are three further texts found in the context of regular excavations at Kh. el-Mude-yine and at el-Ba-lu-? that also have linguistic traits so far unattested in Moabite. These problems will be discussed in detail because they are important for the linguistic classification of Moabite as a peripheral subtype within the broader family of Northwest Semitic languages. As a group, the Moabite texts also shed light on historical problems related to the presence of Israel in the Transjordan.


David and Achish against the Background of the Political Situation in the Shephelah
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible, History, and Archaeology
Erasmus Gass, University of Tübingen

Based on the archaeological record of the Shephelah several indications for the dating of the biblical Achish stories in 1 Sam 21; 27; 28 are presented. The historical reconstruction of the political and economic conditions in the 7th century BCE provides a motive for the biblical hatred of the Philistines. The sharp contrast of the Philistines as opponents of Judah is conceivable only since the 7th century BCE. Such an antagonism is excluded for the time of David. Moreover, the biblical Achish stories portray Achish as a political laughing stock. The ruler Achish/'Akayus/Ikausu of Ekron, the most important economic and political center of the Shephelah, is mocked through the invention of a former ruler of Gath bearing the same name. This was unproblematic, however, since Gath was destroyed in the 7th century BCE.


The Gospel of Thomas as a Source for Early Christian History
Program Unit: Extent of Theological Diversity in Earliest Christianity
Simon Gathercole, University of Cambridge

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Egyptology and Source Criticism
Program Unit: Egyptology and Ancient Israel
John Gee, Brigham Young University

In 1937 Joachim Spiegel became the first, and perhaps only, Egyptologist to apply source criticism to Egyptian texts. To date no other Egyptologist seems to have found source criticism useful for understanding Egyptian texts. I will look at the Egyptian textual basis of that rejection and the problems that it presents for the method of source criticism.


Creating Space through Imagination and Action: The Conception of Space in Deuteronomy 6:4–9
Program Unit: Space, Place, and Lived Experience in Antiquity
Michaela Geiger, Philips-Universität Marburg

In the book of Deuteronomy, Moses creates a conception of space for Israel's future life in the Promised Land. Deut 6:4-9 can be understood as a summary of this conception, which highlights the spatial concepts HOUSE, JOURNEY, DOORPOST, and GATE as well as the body concepts HEART, HAND, and EYES. Using the terminology of the German sociologist Martina Löw, each of these spatial concepts is determined by the interplay of two processes, which can be discerned as 'spacing' (the act of creating and shaping space by spatial practice) and 'synthesis' (the act of perceiving and interpreting something as space). In this paper, Löw's theoretical approach on spatial practice will be exemplified by the concept HOUSE in Deuteronomy that is produced by several acts of 'spacing': “building the house” (Deut 22:8), “talking to your children”, “sitting”, “lying down”, “rising” (Deut 6:7), and “writing these words on the doorposts of your house” (Deut 6:9). The process of 'synthesis' includes the constitution of the house by the community of parents, children, and slaves (Deut 12:7, 12). The Deuteronomic perception of the HOUSE is based on the reminiscence of Israel's deliverance from the house of slaves. Living in houses “full of all good things” (Deut 6:11), Israel is called to routinely memorize this foundational past experience by writing „these words on the doorposts” and “talking to your children about these words.” Through the instruction to frequently repeat these spatial practices, the HOUSE becomes a constitutive space that is tied to Israel"s faith.


Sitting at the Gate: An Exploration of the Book of Ruth through the Use of Socio-rhetorical Interpretation and Critical Spatiality Theory
Program Unit: Rhetoric of Religious Antiquity
Priscilla Geisterfer, Saint Paul University

Recent discussions in the Rhetoric of Religious Antiquity seminar have managed to reach a certain level of consensus that the rhetorical use of language, connoted in the term rhetorolect, in religious discourse is not inscribed into texts during the process of writing, but rather emerges as a result of the text. Rhetorolects are thus understood as emerging within the mind of the hearer/reader/interpreter through their encounter with the text. They are emergent conceptual spaces. This insight came as a result of discussions about the usefulness of critical spatiality theory for socio-rhetorical interpretation. Within these discussions, the work of Claudia Camp and Wesley Kort, which examines the reading of narrative as occupying the space of lived reality, was foundational for it highlighted the need to pursue the relationship of critical spatiality theory to socio-rhetorical interpretation with particular focus on rhetorolects. Critical spatiality theory, as it is used for biblical interpretation, suggests that biblical texts create space and use time in specific ways which affect the meaning making process within the hearer. The emergence of rhetorolects is a result of this process. This paper, therefore, will reflect on the emergence of a wisdom rhetorolect as a result of the Book of Ruth and will consider the critical use of space and time in the text and its relationship to a rhetorical use of language to express wisdom ideas.


Articulating a Wisdom Rhetorical Discourse for Ancient Israel
Program Unit: Rhetoric of Religious Antiquity
Priscilla Geisterfer, Saint Paul University

Scholarship on wisdom in Ancient Israel has focused in large part on identifying certain bodies of literature methodologically in terms of genre, structure, linguistics, Sitz im Leben, etc. These methodological boundaries have persistently relied on a texts use of certain terms, such as wisdom or the wise, and have struggled with the relationship of Ancient Israelite wisdom to that of its Ancient Near Eastern neighbors. While many interesting interpretations have resulted, a recurrent lacuna in terms of methodological precision has suggested that more scholarship needs to attend to the social and cultural setting of Ancient Israelite wisdom. This paper will respond to this lacuna through an exploration of Ancient Israelite literature through the use of socio-rhetorical interpretation. The main focus of this exploration will be to articulate a wisdom rhetorical dialect for Ancient Israel based on, among other aspect, a precise analysis of social and cultural setting. Rather than a definition for identifying bodies of literature, the articulation of a wisdom rhetorical use of language functions as a heuristic device enabling interpreters to identify wisdom rhetorical uses of language in the Ancient Near East and, more specifically, the distinctive use of it in Ancient Israel.


MS 159 (Rahlfs): Reading the Missing Pages
Program Unit: International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies
Peter J. Gentry, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

In preparation of a critical edition of Ecclesiastes for the Göttingen Septuaginta Series, photographs of manuscript Rahlfs Number 159 have been acquired recently. This is a Catena Manuscript of LXX Ecclesiastes, Proverbs 25-28:12, and Canticum, and has not been consulted since the collation of G.L. Spohn in 1785 and the disserta­tion of E. Klostermann in 1982. Recently the manuscripted was re-identified in a Library in Moscow. It is poorly preserved in places, yet missing pages can be read. This presentation will describe the re-identification of the manuscript and the method used for reading missing pages.


“The Voice So Dear to Me”: The Epistle to the Romans in the Antiochene Tradition
Program Unit: Romans through History and Cultures
George Kalantzis, Wheaton College

****This paper examines the reception and use of the Epistle to the Romans in fourth and fifth century Antiochene tradition, especially in the writings of Diodore of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia, John Chrysostom, and Theodoret of Cyrus. Particular attention is paid to the twin loci of Greek patristic ambivalence with the concept of predestination (especially as that is expressed by Augustine and later Western traditions), namely, “this body of sin” in 6:6-8 and the concept of p??a??es??, the free choice between good and evil as an innate property of human nature.


Anti-Babylonian Polemic in the Primeval History?
Program Unit: Pentateuch
Jan Christian Gertz, University of Heidelberg

The reception of ancient Near Eastern traditions in the Priestly version of the primeval history in Genesis 1-11 has often been described as a treatise with a polemic undertone against the Babylonian religion. The paper questions this consensus. It attempts to elaborate the communicative and inclusive tendency of the biblical text and self-clarification of the Priestly concept of God.


Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: Seeing Gods in CAT 1.90, 1.164, and 1.168
Program Unit: Ugaritic Studies and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy
James R. Getz Jr., Brandeis University

****Within the larger corpus of Ugaritic rituals, CAT 1.90 1.164 and 1.168 constitute a distinct group. These texts contain unique rites in which the king “sees” or “visits” (vPNY) specific deities. Scholars are divided as to what these rites entail, how they function and what purpose they serve in the Ugaritic cult. The rituals have been characterized variously as contemplation rites, visitation rites, and oracular/divination rites. The present paper posits a new way forward by examining these texts within the larger social and political world of the Late Bronze Age, in which Ugarit was a small kingdom always beholden to one of the “Great Kings.” These ritual texts, where the king sees or visits the deity, have close affinities to the covenant stipulations placed upon the Ugaritic kings by their Hittite suzerains. Additional specific ritual actions in the texts confirm this understanding by using movements and gestures elsewhere equated specifically with deference to a suzerain covenant partner rather than worship of a deity. This new understanding of these texts provides a ritual correlation to the limited kingship observed in Ugaritic mythological texts such as the Ba?lu cycle and contributes new insights into the mechanics of the cult at Ugarit.


Is the Synagogue Liturgy the Matrix of the Lord's Prayer?
Program Unit: Synoptic Gospels
Jeffrey B. Gibson, Harry S. Truman College

This paper challenges the validity of two claims made by many commentators on the Lord's Prayer (1) that the thematic and theological matrix of this prayer—the setting from which its form, its themes, its sentiments, and even the materials within it are drawn—is the liturgy of the Jewish synagogue, and more particularly the prayers of this liturgy known as the Amidah, the Kaddish, and the Evening Prayer; and (2) that the assumption of such a matrix for the Lord's Prayer necessarily entails that the prayer be seen as "eschatological" in orientation and aim.


The Fisherman: The Use of Text Analysis Research (TAPoR) for Identifying Identical Patterns in Platonic and Biblical Narratives
Program Unit: Computer Assisted Research
Twyla Gibson, University of Toronto

In his book, Does the New Testament Imitate Homer? (2003) and other recent works, Dennis R. Macdonald argues that the authors of the Gospels and Acts took Homer's Illiad and Odyssey as their primary “literary” models. He devised criteria for identifying imitation in ancient texts, and enlists this method of “mimesis criticism” to support his argument that New Testament narratives should be read in light of Greek literature and mythology (rather than history and prior Christian tradition). His work has major implications for the interpretation of Biblical narrative, and has sparked a current debate in the literature. Though MacDonald pointed to parallels between the Acts of Andrew and Platonic models in his Christianizing Homer (1994), he focused primarily on correspondences between Homer and the New Testament; the mimetic relation between Greek philosophy and other Biblical narratives received less attention. Utilizing recent developments in text analysis, and bringing together information theory with comparative research on the communication significance of ring composition by Mary Douglas (2007) and others, I offer a close reading of the explicit instructions presented in Plato's Sophist for drawing the lines that generate a geometric ring and the rules for mapping onto this structure key ideas in the series of classifications for the definitions of the fisherman and for mimesis. I then use the diagrams of the two sequences as templates. Employing TAPoRware (Text Analysis Research) tools such Synonym Finder, Find Collocates, Words Relation Component Analysis, Pattern Distribution, Text Comparator, Diff Transformer, I compare texts and identify identical patterns in other Platonic discourses, in Genesis, and then in New Testament narratives. Arguing that the divisions and definitions were a communication technology for organizing, preserving and transmitting information in pre-literate culture, I propose that the system was widely used throughout the ancient Greek world, I show how repetitions of parallel sequences over numerous instances serve not just an aesthetic but an exegetical function, cutting through ambiguity and transforming the meaning in crucial passages. These findings confirm MacDonald's hypotheses concerning imitation even as they challenge his “literary” assumptions about New Testament narratives as well as his claims for their fictional status.


Jewish Mysticism and the Gospel of John
Program Unit: Mysticism, Esotericism, and Gnosticism in Antiquity
Charles A. Gieschen, Concordia Theological Seminary - Fort Wayne

The 20th century brought forward several proposals for understanding the influence of Jewish mystical traditions upon the origin of the Gospel of John. After briefly reviewing this research, this paper will argue that this gospel is polemically addressing second temple Jewish mystical ascent traditions that developed concerning the revelation experienced by the patriarchs Abraham and Jacob, as well as the prophets Moses, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. Against testimony to the ascent experiences of such individuals, this gospel points to the repeated descent of the Son of Man—climatically in the incarnation and death of Jesus—as the exclusive source of divine revelation.


Reversing Fortunes: Isaiah 61's Intertextual Convergence and Divergence with Isaiah's Call in Isaiah 6
Program Unit: Book of Isaiah
Mark Gignilliat, Beeson Divinity School, Samford University

Form-critically speaking, Isaiah 61 is a call narrative that follows a similar pattern to other call narratives within the prophetic literature (e.g., Isaiah 6, Jeremiah 1, Amos 1), with the exception of an identifiable historical personage with whom to align the call. This paper proposes that Isaiah 61 functions with the final shaping of the material as a marked reversal of prophetic 'success" in convergence and divergence with Isaiah's call in chapter 6. Interpreters given to seeing the overarching unity of Isaiah's 66 chapters have demonstrated the central role Isaiah 6 plays intertextually in the developing of the material, especially as it pertains to Isaiah 40-55 (e.g., Clements, Williamson, Childs, Seitz, Beuken). Likewise, Beuken has demonstrated the intertextual links of Isaiah 61 to Isaiah 40-55 and the servant figure depicted therein. This paper seeks to fill out the picture by showing the ways in which Isaiah 6"s negative presentation of Isaiah prophetic ministry is a word alive in Isaiah"s traditions heard most fully in conjunction with Isaiah 61"s reversal of this presentation. The intertextual links between Isaiah 6, 40-55 and 61 reveal a mutually informing cross-reference of images that allows the prophetic word of the Lord its full say. Of particular interest is the lexical connection between Isa 6:11 and Isa 61:4. “Desolation” (smm) in its nominal and verbal senses is deployed as an image of coming judgment and God"s overturning of that judgment. Also, the image of oak trees ("l) as both cut down and firmly established reveal the reversal of fortunes presented in the prophetic ministry of Isaiah and its reception into a new era of Israel"s canonical history (cf. Isa 1:29-31). Here in Isaiah 61:1-4, the prophetic word of the Lord is allowed a life beyond the primarily negative ministry of Isaiah, as the divine “yes” triumphs over the divine “no.”


Revisiting the Origins of the Additions to Ben Sira
Program Unit: Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
Jason Gile, Wheaton College

The Wisdom of Ben Sira contains over three hundred lines added to the book during transmission. The origin of these additions is unknown, and few scholars have attempted to uncover their history. Were they added haphazardly by random scribes throughout the ages, or did one person or one group of people systematically insert these lines with a specific purpose? This study seeks to answer these questions by analyzing the textual evidence and the content of the additions. In a 1951 doctoral dissertation, Conleth Kearns argued that the additions to the book originated in a systematic revision of the Hebrew text, and from there made their way into the Greek, Syriac, and Latin versions by translation. He reasoned that there is such a remarkable continuity in the content of the additions that they must have come from one person or one group of people with a common ideology. This explanation has since become the majority view throughout scholarship. In this paper I argue against that view on two grounds: the textual relationship of the additions among the versions and the lack of evidence in the content of the additions for a single source of origin. In place of the current view, I offer a new proposal for understanding the textual history of Ben Sira.


Revisiting the “Monasticism” of the Community Rule: Sociological and Scriptural Models for the Common Life of the Yahad
Program Unit: Biblical Law
Yonder M. Gillihan, Boston College

****The idea that members of the yahad governed by the Community Rule were celibate men who lived an ascetic, cenobitic monastic life has recently come under attack by scholars who point out that cenobitic monasticism does not appear in the historical record until the emergence of Christian Syriac and Egyptian communities in the fourth century CE. While the argument is a radical departure from mainstream views, it raises important points. What do we mean when we talk about the yahad as a "monastic" or "cenobitic" community? How useful are models of later Christian monasticism for our understanding of the yahad? Is it historically implausible to imagine that a group of sectarian Jewish men separated themselves en masse from mainstream Jewish society, established spatially separate living quarters, and subjected themselves to the rigors of celibacy and a regimented lifestyle, when we find no evidence for similar voluntary associations, Jewish or otherwise, engaging in similar activities in the several centuries on either side of the Covenanters' floruit? In this paper, which elaborates on the findings of my forthcoming monograph in the STDJ series, I argue that while historical precedents for a celibate, ascetic, highly regimented communal life among voluntary associations are missing, revisionist scholars are mistaken in their fundamental assumptions about how the formation of voluntary associations in antiquity occurred: associations did not develop their organization and rules through the "influence" of one association upon another. Rather, as modern sociological models of associational formation predict, associations draw upon the organization, protocol, and law in the various spheres of the state. The most basic forms and ideals of military organization offer compelling analogies to the "monasticism" of the yahad: in Jewish, Greek, and Roman military encampments we find all-male communities that were spatially separate from the rest of the population, ideally celibate, subject to rigorous discipline and a system of authority, and "communitarian" in their property, meals, and daily cultic practices. If the general analogies between the yaúad and contemporary military practice are intiguing, militaristic language in the Rule Scrolls should provide convincing evidence that the Covenanters drew a great deal of inspiration from the military sphere of the state as they developed their particular form of "monasticism." Finally, in addition to the contemporary practices of armies in the Hellenistic-Roman era, the yahad seems to have drawn upon the laws of the war camp in Deuteronomy to explain and justify their particular way of life. Ultimately the term "monasticism" remains satisfactory as a description of the yahad's way of life, but our understanding of its particular form and origins may be improved through careful attention to the models of associational formation through which we understand the sect.


The Jewish Quest for a German Bible: The Nineteenth-Century Translations of Josef Johlson and Leopold Zunz
Program Unit: Bible Translation
Abigail Gillman, Boston University

Between 1780 and 1937, German Jews produced at least sixteen translations of the Hebrew Bible into German, not counting translations of individual books and revised editions. These translations were intended for Jews who were trilingual (Yiddish, Hebrew, German) in varying degrees. They were not primarily vehicles for religious observance, since the Hebrew Torah retained its preeminence. In keeping with the rapidly changing social and political reality of the German Jewish population in this period, translation promoted a range of religious, educational, and linguistic goals. This paper focuses on two of the four Bible translations produced in the 1830s and 1840s: the translations of Joseph Johlson (1777-1851), a Hebraist and teacher in Frankfurt, and Leopold Zunz (1794-1886), an independent scholar who devoted his life to promoting the scientific study of Jewish history and religion. These two Bibles, the first appearing in 1831, the second in 1838, shared an underlying purpose: to provide an alternative to Moses Mendelssohn's “free” or idiomatic translation of the 1780s. The Mendelssohn Bible continued to be reprinted, revised, and disseminated. It was used by orthodox Jews in Western and Eastern Europe throughout the nineteenth century. Yet Johlson and Zunz had a different audience in mind: liberal assimilated German Jews, fluent in German and ignorant of Hebrew, for whom the Hebrew Bible had little innate appeal. Their shared overarching impulse was to produce a more Hebraic German Bible. Yet a comparison of Johlson's Bible and Zunz's Bible reveals two very different visions of what such a Bible entailed. The differences between these two Bibles illuminate two distinct paths that emerge from the Enlightenment—education and philology, culture and Wissenschaft —both continuing the goals of Mendelssohn, yet driven by distinctly nineteenth-century concerns.


An Iron Age II Pictorial Inscription from Jerusalem Illustrating Yahweh and Asherah
Program Unit: Israelite Religion in its Ancient Context
Garth Gilmour, University of Oxford

During the PEF excavations at the Ophel in Jerusalem in the 1920s, directed by R.A.S. Macalister, a large sherd of an Iron Age II jug was found with a pictorial design incised on the surface. The design shows two individuals above a series of semi-circles bordering the broken edge of the sherd. The individuals are joined by rough lines above and below the waist. The details of the individuals include traditional Canaanite elements that indicate they are deity figures, one male and one female. It is proposed that the figures represent Yahweh and Asherah. If so, this carved illustration would represent the earliest recorded image of Yahweh, the God of Israel, and the only image of Yahweh from the biblical period. It would also add to the growing record of textual and symbolic imagery of Yahweh and Asherah together. Furthermore, the semicircles at the base of the image may be interpreted as either mountains or water, suggesting that the entire image reflects ancient Canaanite imagery that recurs in later Israelite literature, such as in Psalms 29 and 68, of Yahweh as Lord of War allied to his status as Lord of Nature. This sherd and its inscription are critical to our understanding of early Israelite religion, its relationship to its Canaanite antecedents, and to the nature of folk religion in Judah, and Jerusalem especially, in the period of the monarchy.


Arcade Fire's Parodic Bible
Program Unit: Bible and Popular Culture
Michael Gilmour, Providence College (Canada)

Arcade Fire's 2006 album Neon Bible is currently one of the darlings of the entertainment world, praised by critics and commercially successful. The album includes a surprisingly harsh critique of contemporary American church life, though not of Christianity itself. What is interesting about Arcade Fire's approach to religious subject matter is the way they construct their commentary on church and society. Neon Bible is a clever parody of Christianity, one that recalls Mikhail Bakhtin's descriptions of medieval carnivals (Rabelais and His World). According to Bakhtin, carnivals introduced “a second world and a second life outside officialdom” (6). The band does this very thing, ridiculing the official ecclesial authority by usurping its rightful place through unofficial, popular culture; they not only recorded their album in the sacred space of a church (literally), they even called it a "bible." There is a further Bakhtinian quality to the ridicule found in this bible, namely its dialogic nature. This album's lyrics are rich in biblical imagery. At times, we hear references to the Bible as spoken by representatives of the commercially driven churches the album ridicules. However, we also hear a biblically based ethic supporting this ridicule, one demonstrating that the behaviour of some Christians is at odds with their own sacred texts. These songs do not merely challenge the church through a monologue, rather, they allow for a conversation between two distinct religiosities – one spiritually genuine, the other, tainted by society.


Passover/Paschal Hermeneutics: The Allegory and Typology of Exodus 12 from Philo to Origen
Program Unit: Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity
Dragos-Andrei Giulea, Marquette University

Philo's treatise Questions and Answers on Exodus incorporates a commentary on Exodus 12, the foundational biblical passage for Philo's commentaries on Passover as well as for the early Christian Paschal homilies and rabbinic targums. While Philo gives an allegorical interpretation and envisions the Passover as the passage from the sensible to the intelligible realm, from the literal meaning of the text to its deeper sense according to reason, Melito and Ps-Hippolytus conceive of a difference between the old and the new Pascha primarily by the method of typological interpretation. For them, types, symbols, and mysteries occurred before the Incarnation in a visible way and reached their completion in the Christian Pascha in an invisible, mystery manifestation. Indebted to Melito, Ps-Hippolytus divides mysteries into old and new and envisages the divine economy as developed over two stages, the border between them being the event of the Incarnation. Unlike them, Origen reconsiders Philo's allegorization from a Christian angle. However, a commonality of Philo and the Christian authors consists in the mystery exegesis. They are wise mystagogues, know the mysteries of Scripture, guide their initiands on the traces of scriptural mysteries. The technique is especially developed by the Christian authors who reconstitute the development of the divine economy as a history of divine mysteries and manifestations. The mystery of the figures/types pre-announced the truth and brought into being only the shadow of the things to come. Part of the liturgical context of the paschal night, Exodus 12 becomes the Christian hieros logos. Christian homilies, declaimed immediately after that, and thus the process of Paschal interpretation, become the sacred explanation of the hieros logos of the mystery.


Eating Mysteriously a Divine Body: Origen's Peri Pascha and the Jewish Tradition of the Dismembered Heavenly Body
Program Unit: Early Jewish Christian Relations
Dragos-Andrei Giulea, Marquette University

In his Peri Pascha, Origen explains how every partaker of the Paschal Eucharist should assume a priestly condition, sacrifice, and eat the invisible, intelligible, and mysterious body of Christ. He explains to his readers what eating of the divine blood, flesh, bones, or entrails means, and persuades them how especially eating the entrails leads to the vision of the depths of God and to the transformation of the visionary into an initiate of the deepest mysteries of the divine. This paper will try to connect this passage with the Jewish tradition of the dismembered divine body. Perhaps having roots in the story of Marduk and Tiamat, the Jewish myth is developed for example in 2 Enoch 25-26, where God uses in the process of creation the dismembered bodies of Adoil and Archas in order to make them the highest and the lowest foundations of the universe. Likewise, the bodies of Leviathan and Ziz in the Legends of the Jews will be “pickled” until the end of days in order to be used as food for the righteous. Origen most likely re-semantized this tradition in a Christian environment and, as an opponent of any literal idea of heavenly body, treated it allegorically and by the means of mystery terminology.


Slavery and Sexual Coercion in Early Christianity
Program Unit:
Jennifer Glancy, Le Moyne College

The presence of slaves in the first Christian communities does not pose a moral challenge to Christians today. The presence of slaveholders in those communities does. Understanding the dynamics of ancient slavery, especially the dynamic of sexual exploitation, helps us recognize the lingering impact of slavery on contemporary Christian thought and practice. Feminist philosopher Linda Martín Alcoff argues that “social identities are correlated to certain kinds of perceptual practices and bodily knowledges that, as such, may fall below the cracks of the sort of explicit beliefs and assumptions that can be assessed in rational debate” (Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self, p. 92). I argue that Roman slavery, which structured perceptual practices and bodily knowledges for both slaves and free persons, deformed the moral imaginations of Christian theologians, who were typically elite free men for whom the embodied experiences of female slaves fell below the cracks of explicit beliefs and assumptions that could be assessed in rational debate. I trace the impact of habituation to slaveholding values in readings of the Hagar story by both Paul and Ambrose; I contrast Ambrose's endorsement of suicide by elite women threatened by sexual violence with his concern that enslaved women who were used sexually by their Christian masters would become haughty toward their Christian mistresses. In posing these questions I hope to invite reflection on the various ways that status distinctions based on race and class continue to deform contemporary perceptions of the harm of sexual violence and coercion.


The Letters of Ignatius of Antioch: An Epistolary Novel on a Martyr Bishop and the Quest for Christian Identity
Program Unit: Ancient Fiction and Early Christian and Jewish Narrative
Timo Glaser, Philipps Universität-Marburg

With this paper on the letters of Ignatius of Antioch I aim at showing how the genre of the epistolary novel can help to apprehend early Christian epistolary pseudepigraphy more precisely. I have chosen these letters as a test case because their traditional dating to the era of Trajan has recently been challenged as well as their authenticity: R. Huebner and others have argued that the letters were written in the 170s as a pseudepigraphical collection. However, the literary character of this corpus and the importance of this specific character for its purpose has not yet been analysed properly. The argument of my paper is to elaborate the narrative technique used in this collection to depict the hero (the letter writer) as well as the narrative world he lives in. Thus, it cannot only be corroborated that these letters are a deliberately designed collection of letters, but it can also be explained why the author chose such a novel to promote this specific picture of a martyr bishop in dealing with the question of Christian identity. Dating the Ignatian letters in the time of Marc Aurel, they represent a voice in the debate on the relevance of the charismatic character of prophecy, of the martyr/confessor and the resulting conflicts with ecclesiastical authorities. Such a narratological approach to pseudepigraphical literature helps to read it as historical fiction and is thus not forced to assume a fraudulent intend by the author. In the guise of historical fiction, epistolary novels disclose new possibilities of self-perception.


Reading Mark 2:18–22 from a Chinese Malaysian Cultural Context
Program Unit: Contextual Biblical Interpretation
Meng Hun Goh, Vanderbilt University

This paper explores Mark 2:18-22 and Mark 1:9-11 from an honor-and-shame cultural context. Through such inculturation reading, I look at how different Gospels portray Mark 2:18-22 and Mark 1:9-11 and how the representation of John changes over time in an honor-and-shame Jewish culture, especially in the context of power struggles in the Roman Empire. This reading of John shows how negotiation is made in culling support and how collaboration is formed in carving out breathing space in the midst of dominant forces. Given my Chinese Malaysian cultural background, I show that this tactic is not a stranger to a minority group striving to maintain its identity while trying to keep up a good relationship with other groups as much as possible.


Wives and Sisters: Burying Other Gods and Other Peoples
Program Unit: Pentateuch
Amy Gohdes-Luhman, Saint Olaf College

In 1990 David Clines suggested laying down our pens and calling in the deconstructionists—a call he has answered himself. This specific call was made after a readerly analysis of the sister-wife swap story in Genesis 26. In 2003 Ellen van Wolde read the story of Dinah and Shechem (Genesis 34) contextually as a story illustrating the danger of a cultural move toward mono-ethnicity. In 2004 Carleen Mandolfo read the cross-handed blessing of Joseph's sons (Genesis 48) by their grandfather Jacob via Bakhtinian lenses and discovered two disparate voices at work in the greater narrative. Relying on David Carr's “geological” approach to the fractured text of Genesis, this paper will explore what wives and sisters and Israel's narrative relationship to the autochthonous people have to do with each other. When is sister-swapping helpful and when is it harmful? How is the injunction against intermarriage in the Former Prophets related to the stories in Genesis? And are Mandolfo"s disparate voices still vocal outside of Genesis?


Some Functions of Angels in the Rabbinic Literature
Program Unit: National Association of Professors of Hebrew
Edward A. Goldman, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion

When we think of angels today, our minds evoke mental images of medieval religious paintings replete with cherubs, or television advertisements with figures dressed all in white with big feathery wings living on lazily floating white fluffy clouds. Yet these are hardly the representations of angels in the rabbinic literature. They oversee natural phenomena in the universe; they serve as teachers, heavenly bookkeepers, and members of God's heavenly tribunal; they are assigned to guard both individuals and groups; they sometimes are called upon to chastise the unrighteous; and the angel of death is entrusted with the weighty responsibility of terminating earthly lives. The goal of this brief paper is to present and exemplify some of the more characteristic roles of angels found in the rabbinic literature, and to analyze and interpret their functions.


The Vision of Dorotheos—An Early Christian Example of Heavenly Journey
Program Unit: Mysticism, Esotericism, and Gnosticism in Antiquity
Alexander Golitzin, Marquette University

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Dating the Crucial Sources for Early Christianity
Program Unit: Extent of Theological Diversity in Earliest Christianity
Mark Goodacre, Duke University

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Neusner and the History of the Jews in the Land of Israel and Babylonia
Program Unit: History and Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism
David Goodblatt, University of California, San Diego

The talk will focus of the first decade or so of Neusner's publications. In the years 1962-73 his focus was still largely historical, although a discernable "literary turn" soon became visible. The work from this period yielded some lasting achievements both substantively and methodologically.


The Johannine Prologue and Hymnic Reviews of History
Program Unit: Johannine Literature
Matthew E. Gordley, Regent University

It is widely acknowledged that the portrayal and description of Wisdom in a number of Second Temple Jewish writings provide a conceptual framework that can help to illuminate features of the prologue of John's gospel. In spite of this recognition, there is still a segment of material in some of these writings which has gone largely unnoticed. The reviews of history in hymnic form found in a number of Second Temple Jewish texts constitute an under-explored storehouse of comparative material that can shed additional light on the prologue of John's gospel. Reviews of history in psalms, hymns, and prayers are found in such places as the Wisdom of Ben Sira, Wisdom of Solomon, Psalms of Solomon, Hellenistic Synagogue Prayers, and some Qumran texts as well. Reading the Johannine prologue alongside other early Jewish hymns that review major events in the history of Israel yields several significant results. First of all, this kind of comparative analysis leads to new insights regarding both the form and function of the prologue. More importantly, when one views the prologue as a whole as a hymnic review of history the major emphases of the prologue are clarified, while secondary themes take their proper place. Finally, the connections between the prologue and Jewish theology become more pronounced, including the writer's intentionally positive portrayal of the nature of the relationship between Jesus and Moses. Ultimately, this paper argues that the prologue presents a comprehensive review of the manifestations of God"s redemptive work in history through the Logos.


Hymnic Reviews of History in Second Temple Psalms and Prayers
Program Unit: Pseudepigrapha
Matthew E. Gordley, Regent University

Reviews of history in hymns and prayers are a common feature in a wide range of Second Temple Jewish texts. A study of hymns and prayers which incorporate a review of historical events reveals that these function in one of two primary ways. On the one hand, the rehearsal of history in hymnic form can serve as an implicit exhortation for the present community to continue to trust in the saving power of the Lord (e.g., Wis 10, Sir 44-50). On the other hand, it can provide the foundation for building a theological framework that helps make sense of more recent events (e.g., Pss. Sol. 8, 9, 17). In either case the review of history gives the hymn or prayer a clear didactic function that moves it beyond simply an address of praise or prayer to God and shows that the hymn is also intended to instruct the community. As one might expect there are a number of prayers and psalms within the Qumran literature that include references to historical events (e.g., Words of the Luminaries, Festival Prayers, and Non-Canonical Psalms B). This paper examines two passages to explore different ways that Second Temple Jewish authors utilized reviews of historical events in their psalms and prayers. In a prayer in the War Scroll (1QM 10:8-12:18) the author derives confidence for the coming battle as he rehearses some great victories of the past. In a psalm in the Barkhi Nafshi texts (4Q434 frag. 1) the author describes events of recent history using language and imagery of exile and restoration. These passages illustrate two different strategies for utilizing historical examples in psalms and prayers: one provides inspiration and hope for the future based on the past; the other uses the imagery of the past to create a framework for understanding the present.


The Sign of Jonah
Program Unit: Art and Religions of Antiquity
Rachel Gostenhofer, University of Toronto

The figure of Jonah was a popular site for experimenting with identity formation in the heterogeneous and diverse world of the first four centuries CE (i.e. prior to the formation of Rabbinic Judaism and Constantinian Christianity). Where we first encounter Jonah in the Hebrew Bible, he is a virtual parody of a prophet. In early Christian literature Jonah is invested with an entirely new meaning, serving as a proleptic paradigm of Christ's death and resurrection. In contemporary artwork, an equally popular iconic Jonah is discernable, this time articulated in a tripartite pictoral cycle. Assimilated to a (fe)male Orante in the first panel, and to the erotic Endymion in the third, iconic Jonah raises a whole host of interesting problems ranging from cultural translation of “Greco-Roman” mythology, to questions of nudity and the erotic, different conceptions of soteriology, and the interaction between text and image. Jonah's association with Eros is of particular interest. As cultural historians of antiquity have demonstrated, the advent of Christianity coincided with far-reaching transformations in society at large. Some of these changes are reflected in a wide variety of artistic media, as eroticized images of carnal humanity are gradually replaced by those denoting abstract speculation, intellection, and spirituality (however this might be defined). The body of Jonah-as-Endymion stands at the cusp of this transformation, and helps us understand how changing sensibilities and mentalités vis-à-vis nudity, erotics and desire, organic form and le souci de soi, were differently conceptualized and negotiated within the context of these overarching socio-cultural developments.


Do Not Fear What They Fear: The Bible and 9/11
Program Unit:
Norman Gottwald, Pacific School of Religion

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“They Never Returned”: Were the Babylonian Jewish Settlers Exiles or Pioneers?
Program Unit: Exile (Forced Migrations) in Biblical Literature
Lester L. Grabbe, University of Hull

The standard assumption is that those Judahites taken to Babylonia were exiles desperately wanting to return to Judah. Yet migrants in history have often had other views about the countries they left or in which they settled. The fact that these Jews were deported complicates the issue but does not negate the basic question: Did those who never returned see themselves as exiles? This will be an anthropological study in the light of other ancient and modern examples.


The Image of the King in 1 Esdras
Program Unit: Transmission of Traditions in the Second Temple Period
Sebastian Grätz, University of Mainz

An investigation of the relevant passages in the Massoretic Text of the book of Ezra and 1 Esdras shows that the predominant positive image of the (Persian) king in the Massoretic Version is even amplified in 1 Esdras: The Persian king is portrayed as a generous, wise, and reliable person, comparable to the image of the king in the Letter of Aristeas. On the other hand, however, the Books of Daniel and Esther, written about the same time as 1 Esdras display an entirely different attitude towards foreign rulers where they are mainly sketched as faithless and licentious. It seems that there may have been different conceptions of loyalty and faithfulness towards an enduring foreign rule in post-exilic Judaism. On the one hand, there are the reactions to the concrete behaviour of certain kings, e.g., to the behavior of Antiochus IV, which are visible in the books of the Maccabees and Daniel. On the other side, the narrative of 1 Esdras (as also the Letter of Aristeas) may function as a plea for a general positive attitude to the current government within postexilic Judaism.


Stakeholders in the Interpretation and Proclamation of Texts: Bridging the Unnecessary Divide between Biblical Studies and Homiletics
Program Unit: Homiletics and Biblical Studies
Mike Graves, Saint Paul School of Theology

Biblical studies and homiletics share a similar interest in the interpretation of texts, though not an identical interest. The two disciplines also share a similar interest in the church's proclamation of those texts, though not all biblical scholars. While it would be easy for homiletics to vilify some scholarship as esoteric and of no practical value, not all preachers value serious scholarship. This paper will explore the complex relationship between these two disciplines, as well as several other stakeholders who bear responsibility for the unnecessary divide: 1) the preachers who must interpret and proclaim texts; 2) the congregations, many of whom long for more serious engagement with the Bible, albeit in an accessible manner; 3) the seminaries that train ministers to interpret and preach from texts; 4) the doctoral programs that train specialized scholars; and 5) the presses that publish their works, and which some preachers read.


God as a Necessary Authority in Wisdom Literature: A Critique of Carol Newsom's “Polyphonic” Bakhtinian Reading
Program Unit: Bakhtin and the Biblical Imagination
Emily O. Gravett, University of Virginia

In 2003, Carol A. Newsom published a provocative book entitled The Book of Job: A Contest of Moral Imaginations, which applied of Mikhail Bakhtin's popular theory of polyphony to biblical wisdom literature. This theory, which prioritizes interactions of myriad independent and fully valid voices, has been applied to non-canonical literature, such as E. L. Doctorow's City of God, but Newsom would like us to find this polyphony even in sacred scriptures like the book of Job. The first chapter of Newsom's text invites criticism, and it is this invitation that this piece takes up. Following a brief delineation of the amorphous genre of wisdom literature and some of its most salient attributes, the paper will move on to the biblical text itself, presenting Newsom"s application of Bakhtin"s ideas, with assistance from another literary critic, Erich Auerbach. It is through this examination that we will discover what is problematic with this kind of literary interpretation. Important to many pieces of wisdom literature is its didactic nature and its ability to be safely transmitted down generations. One important aspect of didacticism then must be an authoritative voice that lends weight and unity to wisdom, which, in this biblical context, is invariably God"s. By claiming that multiple genres and perspectives equally intermingle in a polyphonic way, Newsom"s interpretation obfuscates this dominant voice that is both present and necessary in wisdom literature (and, we might argue, in many other parts of the Bible). Therefore, this paper will argue, Bakhtin"s notion of polyphony, as compelling and useful as it is in other disciplines and texts, provides only limited illumination in analyzing wisdom texts like Job. This paper will help us to become aware of how carefully and cautiously we must attend to the more theological implications that a Bakhtinian reading of the Bible may compel.


Marriage Counseling in Jeremiah 2–9: Human and Divine Spouses, Prophetic Therapist, Reading Interns
Program Unit: Bakhtin and the Biblical Imagination
Barbara Green, Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology

Making use of Bakhtinian dialogic and utterance strategies, I will explore briefly the questions buried here: How is it God we are talking about, and can we hear the “spouses” in Jeremiah differently than has been done recently? The point is not to weaken the impact of the conversation but to see better how it may play. This is “in extremis” poetry and has to be desperate, strong. Ours is not to “fix it” but to hear it–skillfully, and alert to our own constructive processes.


Cognitive Linguistics and the Idolatry-Is-Adultery Metaphor
Program Unit: Biblical Hebrew Poetry
Barbara Green, Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology

Carleen Mandolfo's Daughter Zion Talks Back… raises excellent issues skillfully: How does the Bible speak of God? How do gender and violence construct social reality (past and present)?. Mandolfo asserts (p. 19): “God does not author responsibly.” But to paraphrase Ezekiel 18:25: Are God's authorings unjust? Are not our constructions involved as well? The particular strategies of cognitive linguistics will be brought to bear on this volatile metaphor to see whether and how fresh insights can emerge and to suggest how the text can be asked to disclose valuable information about God and us.


From Genesis to Joshua: The Septuagint Joshua's Dependence on—and Independence from—the Greek Pentateuch
Program Unit: Greek Bible
Leonard J. Greenspoon, Creighton University

In this presentation I will discuss a number of renderings in LXX Joshua that show probable dependence on the Greek Pentateuch. I will also present examples of LXX Joshua's independence from the same material. Of course, in any given case, it is difficult to be certain about such matters; it is only the accumulation of examples of what appear to be rare equivalences that can demonstrate such points. In any case, I will also attempt to describe the environment (historical, cultural, social, political, and religious) in which the LXX translator would have operated in order to produce the text he did.


The Poetic Use of Akkadian in the Book of Job
Program Unit: Assyriology and the Bible
Edward L. Greenstein, Bar-Ilan University

The poetry of Job abounds in Semitic words and forms that appear to derive from languages other than Hebrew, especially Aramaic. In an earlier study (published in JBL 122 [2003] 657-72) I endeavored to show that the use of Aramaic in Job serves a variety of poetic functions, including wordplay, punning, double entendre, and rhetorical allusion. In the present paper I adduce several examples in which the poet of Job employs expressions deriving from or influenced by Akkadian. These usages of Akkadian, it is suggested, serve the function of producing double entendre by means of puns and polysemy. The plausibility of this suggestion can be supported by pointing to at least two instances in which the poet exhibits an acquaintance with Enuma Elish IV.


An Unidentified Biblical mizraq?
Program Unit: Israelite Religion in its Ancient Context
Jonathan Greer, Pennsylvania State University, University Park

This paper argues that the mizraq, a ritual vessel described in the Hebrew Bible, should be identified with the shallow metal drinking-offering bowls typical across the ancient Near East from the Iron Age on. It further proposes the probable identification of a specific vessel known from published excavations with a mizraq and discusses the significance of such an identification for points of textual interpretation and biblical history including the possibility that this mizraq may actually have come from the First Temple in Jerusalem during the ninth century BCE.


“A Light to the Nations” and Missionary Motivation in Luke-Acts and Ancient Judaism
Program Unit: Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity
Adam Gregerman, Connecticut College

While studies of early Christian proselytism to Gentiles are largely focused on missionary methods or the socialization / education of converts, less attention is given to missionary motivation. It is often assumed that Christians naturally assigned a positive value to preaching to Gentiles, but the reasons for this are seldom explored. However, Christians" theological justifications for supporting missionary activity need further investigation, for they rest on complex ideas about the religious status and fate of the Gentiles, and the practical needs of emerging Gentile churches. Using Luke's writings, which are devoted to demonstrating the legitimacy and desirability of mission, I investigate the issue of missionary motivation, and focus on Luke's use of Isaiah's idea of a “light to the nations” (Lk 2:32; Acts 13:47; 26:18, 23). Luke, I argue, interprets this idea in soteriological and ecclesiological terms for a late-first century majority- or exclusively- Gentile church. The Gentile mission is a prophesied extension of the Jewish covenant with God, and motivated by a desire to extend to Gentiles the spiritual “benefits of membership” formerly limited to Jews. Importantly, these benefits, while soteriological (salvation, eternal life, forgiveness of sins), are not primarily eschatological. Rather, Luke, drawing on Isaiah, emphasizes the present desirability of bringing Gentiles into originally Jewish churches; God wants the “light” to go to them now. To highlight Luke"s emphases, I employ a comparative method, situating Luke"s views in Jewish discourse about proselytism and the Gentiles" fate. I contrast Jewish interpretations of Isaiah"s idea (Targum and LXX Isaiah; 3 SibOr; WisSol 18; Tobit 13; 1 Enoch 48). This comparison is illuminating because the Jewish texts, by contrast, reveal little interest in proselytism and emphasize eschatological hopes. I therefore consider the historical and theological reasons for such differences from Luke"s use of Isaiah to encourage proselytism and inclusion of Gentiles in contemporary churches.


Defending Christianity on Jewish Grounds: Origen's Surprisingly Positive Citation of Jewish Christian Law-Observance in Contra Celsum
Program Unit: Early Jewish Christian Relations
Adam Gregerman, Connecticut College

While Origen is well-known for his advocacy of a “spiritual” (i.e. Christian allegorical) interpretation of Mosaic Law, his views on so-called “literal” (i.e. Jewish) observance of the commandments are sometimes more nuanced and less hostile than they are often described by scholars. When defending Christians against a Jewish critique that Christians paradoxically claim the Bible as their own text but refuse to follow its commandments, he provides an unexpectedly positive portrait of literal Law-observance. In my paper, I focus on Origen's response to this critique—presented by Celsus" hypothetical Jew in Origen's Contra Celsum 2:1-6—that Jewish Christians have “rejected the Law of their fathers.” Contrary to what one might expect from a third-century, non-Law-observant Gentile Christian, Origen, in his defense, relies on the examples of two groups of Law-observant Christians—Jesus" earliest followers, and contemporary Jewish Christians (especially Ebionites). He does not deny the deeper truths of a spiritual interpretation of the Bible. However, I argue, he seeks to meet a Jewish critic (real or imagined) on explicitly Jewish grounds, by claiming not just that Christians follow the commandments spiritually, but that some Christians do so literally. This allows him to neutralize accusations of unfaithfulness to the Law, even within a larger argument for Christian interpretation and Christian supersessionism. To understand this complex response, I relate his claims to the apologetic context and likely audience of Contra Celsum, and consider the reasons for a shift away from positions found elsewhere in his writings. More broadly, I argue that Origen's surprising decision to mention in favorable terms Christians who observe Mosaic Law reflects the challenges faced by Gentile Christians who simultaneously seek to establish both continuity and discontinuity with Judaism and the biblical tradition.


The Oxford Early Christian Gospel Texts
Program Unit: Christian Apocrypha
Andrew Gregory, Oxford University

Recent years have seen a significant increase in interest in non-canonical gospel texts as part of the study of early Christianity. Yet there is still no single volume or series of volumes in which readers may find a critical edition of surviving gospel texts or fragments of texts in their original language(s), together with an English translation, substantial introduction, and commentary. The new series, Oxford Early Christian Gospel Texts, intends to meet this need. In this paper I will outline the rationale and scope of the series, and compare it with some other works that are already available or in progress.


“The Sennacherib Error” in Theodore of Mopsuestia's Commentary on the Twelve Prophets: Light from the History of Interpretation
Program Unit: History of Interpretation
Bradley Charles Gregory, University of Notre Dame

In his commentary on the Twelve Minor Prophets Theodore of Mopsuestia attributes the exile of the northern kingdom to Sennacherib rather than to Shalmaneser as 2 Kings 18 reports. Yet, what seems to be a simple historical error actually stems from a very ancient theological understanding of the significance of the fall of the northern kingdom in God's guidance of history. By understanding how typological concerns regarding Assyria's ongoing theological relevance contributed to an expanded understanding of Sennacherib's role and significance in the history of Israel, the "error" in Theodore's commentary is set in a more understandable context, one that highlights how historical recollection always has a theological/ideological component.


Man of Light: An Alchemist's Interpretation of the Anthropos Myth
Program Unit: Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism
Shannon L. Grimes, Meredith College

The Greco-Egyptian alchemist, Zosimus of Panopolis (fl. 270 CE), is regarded as the first to frame alchemy as a spiritual practice in which the transmutation of metals corresponds to the transmutation of the soul. His religious ideas are deeply influenced by Hermetic and gnostic teachings, and this paper analyzes Zosimus's treatment of the myth of the Anthropos, the primal human who serves as a divine mediator between heaven and earth, which is found in his text, On Apparatus and Furnaces (also known as On the Letter Omega). He draws upon Hermetic and gnostic myths, as well as Hesiod's myth of Prometheus and Epimetheus, in order to present a “universal” doctrine of the Anthropos, and I show how he uses this myth to bolster his “natural methods” of alchemy, which he believes are spiritually and technically superior to the “unnatural methods” of his competitors. Scholars have argued that in this text Zosimus is essentially attacking his competitors for their belief in astrological determinism. However, I argue that Zosimus's polemics are targeted not at astrology, per se, but rather at different understandings of cosmic sympathy and how knowledge of the cosmos is best attained, and that he uses the Anthropos myth to illustrate these points.


Under a Star-Spangled Banner: The Politicization of Astral Religion in the Roman Empire
Program Unit: Greco-Roman Religions
Shannon L. Grimes, Meredith College

The belief that the stars and planets are gods—a notion borrowed from ancient Near Eastern cultures—entered into Greek thought with a force in the fourth century BCE. This paper briefly describes the rise of astral religion in the Hellenistic age, but focuses particularly on how the stars were represented in Roman political discourse. Not only were the Roman emperors portrayed as astral gods on earth (Sol invictus, for example), but I also argue that astral religion was often used by the political elite to symbolize and “naturalize” the universalizing goals of the Pax Romana. Drawing on post-colonial theories that aim to recover the voices and perspectives of the colonized, I argue that the political dimensions of astral religion might have some bearing on the rise of cosmic dualism in the first centuries CE, particularly in Jewish and Christian “Gnostic” writings that negatively portray imperial astral imagery, viewing the cosmos as prison for the human spirit, presided over by despotic rulers and false gods.


Jerusalem and Athens: Jerusalem Defended
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible and Political Theory
Steven Grosby, Clemson University

A putative contrast between “Jerusalem,” understood as representative of biblical revelation, and “Athens”, understood as representative of reason has been posited by various political philosophers. The question examined in this paper is whether or not a careful examination of the biblical material supports such a contrast. And if it does not, to what end might such a contrast serve.


The Judean Desert Documents as a Regional Subtradition in Aramaic Common Law
Program Unit: Aramaic Studies
Andrew D. Gross, University of Pittsburgh

The documentary discoveries from the Judean Desert include numerous deeds of sale composed in Aramaic, among which are the Wadi ed-Daliyeh papyri, the Jewish Aramaic papyri from Nahal Hever and Wadi Murabba"at, and the Nabatean Aramaic papyri from the Cave of Letters. The sale formularies used in these deeds vary greatly from corpus to corpus, each representing divergent scribal traditions. Nonetheless, these traditions share certain basic features. Previous scholarship on these sale formularies has suggested that these Judean Desert corpora collectively encompass a stream of tradition that is distinct from other corpora of Aramaic legal materials such as the Elephantine papyri. This paper will systematically assess the features that tie the sale formularies of these Judean Desert corpora together and will attempt to place this regional sub-tradition within the broader Aramaic legal tradition as a whole.


The Rejection of Angels in Modern Judaism
Program Unit: National Association of Professors of Hebrew
Mayer Gruber, Ben Gurion University of the Negev

It is commonly assumed that invoking of angels and even recognition of their existence somehow compromises monotheism and that modern forms of Judaism such as Reform Judaism, which have totally eliminated angels from the liturgy and other modern forms of Judaism, which have curtailed the invocation of angels and almost totally eliminated angels from the liturgy represent a more perfect monotheism. The proposed paper will suggest that the almost total elimination of angelology in modern forms of Judaism reflects an exaltation of humankind rather than a more perfect monotheism.


Constructing Monastic Identities: Ethnicity in the Lives of Anchoritic Monastics
Program Unit: Construction of Christian Identities
William “Chip” Gruen, Muhlenberg College

The late third and early fourth centuries saw the advent of anchoritic monasticism within the Christian context. Not long thereafter, hagiographies of these ascetics started to circulate, relating the words and deeds of these solitary monks. In addition to the miracles and sayings attributed to these figures, the authors of these texts also included information on the background and family history of the ascetics. One of the most persistent of these characteristics is ethnic identity. Should we imagine that these ethnic designations are an attempt to provide demographic information about the anchorites? Or might these ethnic identifications be offered by the authors for theological or political reasons? This paper seeks to understand the confluence of several markers of constructed identity within the context of ancient hagiography of anchoritic monasticism, focusing on the ancient associations of particular ethnicities with religious identities, intelligence, and socio-economic status.


More Bull-Leapers, Some Bouncing Kids, and Less Scorpions
Program Unit: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Bible
Philippe Guillaume, Sheffield University

The magnificent CSAP and CSAJ collections are invaluable tools, but they entail all the dangers of canonizing efforts. They tend to impose a standard reading on depictions that are more ambiguous than it seems. “Scorpiomania” is one example of this tendency.


A Non-Christian Jesus: The Late Ancient Roots of Manichaean Jesus Iconography
Program Unit: Art and Religions of Antiquity
Zsuzsanna Gulacsi, Northern Arizona University

While in modern scholarship Manichaeism is recognized as an independent missionary world religion with a unique cosmology, eschatology, and ritual system, certain elements of Manichaean teaching do overlap with those of other religions, including the worship of the prophet Jesus. Already for Mani in mid 3rd-century southern Mesopotamia, Jesus was of great importance, whose crucifixion provided the basis for the metaphor of the “Cross of Light,” symbolizing the suffering of Light among the forces of Darkness on earth. Narratives on Jesus" life, as well as hymns and prayers to him, are documented by Manichaean textual sources from 4th-century Egypt to 13th-century southern China. Further evidence of his continued devotional importance is found in a small group of Manichaean visual sources – devotional and didactic images of Jesus. One of them is a textile painting from 8th/10th-century East Central Asia with a visual language too archaic for its time and place. Through a comparative art historical study of the latter image, this paper explores the late ancient West Asian roots of the Manichaean depictions of enthroned deities, with special attention to Jesus. It points out that such depictions follow specific iconographic and compositional characteristics shared with Sasanid and Kushan royal as well as religious imagery, predating Roman analogies by as much as 200 years. Based on this evidence, this paper explores a new way to think about the origins of Jesus iconography by emphasizing the possible contribution of late ancient West Asia, whose vibrant and diverse communities worshiped Jesus without the threat of persecution along and beyond the eastern Roman frontier.


Hippo Books: A New Series of Theological Books by African Authors
Program Unit:
Katya Covrett, Zondervan

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A New Vision of God: The Power of Cultic Metaphors and Paul's Call for a Cruciform Epistemology in 2 Corinthians
Program Unit: Second Corinthians: Pauline Theology in the Making
Nijay Gupta, Durham University

About a decade and a half ago, an SBL group convened on the topic of Paul's theology and S. Kraftchick proposed that a key to comprehending 2 Corinthians is an understanding of how metaphors can shape meaning. He offered the pivotal themes of death and life as the key to unlocking the theology of this rich letter. As his paper and responses to it were published shortly after, it became clear that while Kraftchick's exploration of the power of metaphors helped to shed light on the significance of the pauline symbolic-paradigms, there seemed to be something more there beyond, though not excluding, an exploration of death and life. I concur that we must begin with Paul's rich symbolic language, but turn our attention to two interrelated key themes that recur in the letter: sight/perception and temple/sacrifice. Or, put another way, a new epistemology and a new understanding of cult. The relationship between these two themes would have been clear to a Jew of Paul"s time: the temple is the place where God appears. Paul"s message in 2 Corinthians revolves around his insistence that his readers appropriate new eyes (2 Cor. 5.16) that see God"s holy temple (6.16) in the image of the crucified Christ (4.4) and his faithful servants (2.15-16) who bear his sacrificial conformity to death (nekrosis; 4.10).


Jerusalem in the Byzantine Period: New Aspects of the Cardo and the Nea Church
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
Oren Gutfeld, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

Among the numerous finds exposed during the late Prof. Avigad's excavations of the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem were the remains of two outstanding structures of the Byzantine period: the Cardo Maximus and the Nea Church. The Cardo was the southern continuation of the Roman colonnaded thoroughfare that crossed the city from north to south. The Nea Church was one of the largest and most impressive building enterprises undertaken by the emperor Justinian. These two monuments shaped the urban layout of Jerusalem of the sixth century CE. The excavation finds have not been published in the form of a scientific report, and many questions remained unanswered. One of the main controversies is whether or not the 180-m long Byzantine-period southern section of the Cardo superimposed a Roman period Cardo. Stratigraphic analysis of the excavation areas along the Cardo revealed a striking paucity of finds from the Late Roman period, leading me to conclude that the exposed Cardo was not built over a Roman one. Salvage excavations that I undertook together with Geva in the Hurvah Synagogue in the center of the Jewish Quarter presented me with an opportunity to examine this stratigraphic conclusion. As in other parts of the quarter, the lack of a Late-Roman level in this area was striking. New reconstructions and changes in the plan of the Nea church are suggested. The most conspicuous change is in the location of the basilica's western wall and as a result changes in the locations and dimensions of the narthex and atrium. This proposal calls for a spacious atrium that befits a massive church like the Nea, without its eastern side spilling over into the Cardo, as was suggested by Avigad. Based on literary sources from the Byzantine and the Early Muslim periods, together with the archaeological finds, the final destruction of the church can be dated to the second half of the eighth century CE.


Back to the Future: Studying Biblical Men as a Feminist
Program Unit: Feminist Hermeneutics of the Bible
Susan E. Haddox, Mount Union College

What makes an interpretation feminist? Is it the reader, the method, the subject, the goals? This paper will focus on the latter and, in particular, will consider the goal of articulating the role gender plays in the rhetoric and assumptions of a text. As feminist criticism moves forward, while the previous goals of highlighting overlooked women, oppressed women, missing women, and maligned women should be continued, it may be time to turn attention more fully to the men in the text. Masculinity studies is an emerging field within biblical scholarship and holds great potential as a feminist reading. I will consider as a case study the book of Hosea. While feminist readings of the book have traditionally focused on the marriage metaphor and the battered wife, reaching very negative conclusions, examining the book through the lens of masculinity studies provides a different and somewhat more liberating perspective on the text (at least for women!). By explicitly considering how the male gender is socially and textually constructed, scholars can study the large number of texts that focus on men, while continuing to pursue the goals of feminist criticism, opening the texts to a gender-conscious interpretation that may allow the reader to get beyond the gender constraints of the text.


Rebellious Sons and Not-Pitied Daughters: Children as Symbols and Sufferers in Hosea
Program Unit: Children in the Biblical World
Susan E. Haddox, Mount Union College

Imagery relating to children is prevalent in Hosea. While in some cases, the children are agents, making their own decisions, in the majority of occurrences in the text, the children are objects, suffering the consequences of the misdeeds of the parents. Both ostensibly real and metaphorical children carry symbolic significance. At one level are the children of the prophet. Through their symbolic names, “Jezreel,” Not Pitied,” and “Not My People,” they represent the judgment against Israel. Likewise, the restoration of the nation is imagined through their renaming and reclaiming. These children take on a more metaphorical role in chapter two, where they serve as foils for the husband's contentions with their mother. Their presence, though passive, reveals the characters and relationships around them. They flesh out the role of the mother, whose crimes are passed along to her children, and they shed light on the role of the father, who names, rejects, and then restores the children. At a second level are the children of the people of the nation. As objects in the text, their fate mirrors that of their parents. The daughters committing fornication do not bear the responsibility for their own actions, because their fathers have turned aside to prostitutes. The children will be slaughtered in the judgment of the nation because of the offenses of the parents. At a third level is the metaphor of the son in chapter 11, which powerfully symbolizes the relationship between Israel and YHWH. The son, here showing agency, is tenderly cared for and called out of Egypt, but turns away from the father, as the nation has turned from YHWH. Children thus serve as markers throughout Hosea, showing where the relationship with YHWH has gone wrong, but also showing the potential for restoration of that relationship.


Psychological Identity Theories and the Formation of Early Christianity
Program Unit: Psychology and Biblical Studies
Raimo Hakola, University of Helsinki

Many scholars have recently emphasized that the formation of early Christianity as a religion independent of Judaism was a far more complex process than was once thought. It was earlier usual to identify topics separating Christians from Jews in order to pinpoint a more or less clear date for the parting of the ways of these two religions. It has become clear, however, that the models based on a definite parting of the ways match ill with the evidence showing an intense and ongoing intellectual and social interaction between various Jewish and Christian communities during the first centuries CE. According to some proposals, we should not speak of Christianity and Judaism in late antiquity as separate religions at all. It can be asked, however, whether this position renders almost meaningless a sense of distinctive identity advocated in various early Christian sources. In this paper, I suggest that some recent psychological identity theories could prove helpful in understanding the dynamics of early Christian identity formation. The classical identity theory formulated by Erik H. Erikson emphasizes the sense of personal sameness and historical continuity in identity formation. According to this theory, a relatively coherent identity serves to integrate possibly conflicting personal identifications. This Eriksonian model has recently been challenged by many psychologists. Many theoreticians have contested that consistence, inner sameness and continuity should be taken as self-evident products of identity formation. Various alternatives to the Eriksonian identity theory emphasize that individuals living in a fragmented and complicated socio-cultural context are required to cope with different multifaceted and contradictory tendencies in their self-concepts. These theories could help us to appreciate the complex formation of early Christian identities comprising incoherent and paradoxical elements especially in how Christians understood themselves in relation to Jews.


What Is Exile in Jeremiah's Book of Consolation?
Program Unit: Exile (Forced Migrations) in Biblical Literature
Martien A. Halvorson-Taylor, University of Virginia

By the late Second Temple period, the Babylonian Exile will emerge as a potent metaphor for, among others, divine alienation, socio-religious marginalization, and the existential condition. This paper examines Jeremiah's Book of Consolation and, more specifically, the redaction of its sixth poem, Jer 31:15-22, to trace how the concept of exile changes over the course of the text's development and the implications this has for understanding the description of exile in the Book of Consolation as a whole. The literary and historical examination reveals the process by which exile takes on metaphorical meanings and the nexus of its early associations.


Empowering Students to Engage Scriptures Meaningfully (Study of the Qur'an as a Case Study)
Program Unit:
Jamie Hamilton, Philips Exeter Academy

This presentation will reflect on the presenter's experience as an educator in teaching about the Qur'an to high school students as part of a World Religions course. She employs proven innovative techniques and strategies to enable students to engage scriptures in ways that emphasize historical understanding, critical thinking, and personal reflection, while maintaining respect for religious traditions whether one is a faith practitioner or not.


At Whose Table? Elite Lives in 1–2 Samuel
Program Unit: Deuteronomistic History
Mark Wade Hamilton, Abilene Christian University

1-2 Samuel and indeed the entire Deuteronomistic History include several stories of elite members of society and their lifeways, concentrating on their use of economic resources, proper self-display as rhetors, and the obedience or otherwise of those around them. Like other traditional societies, ancient Israel had a fairly deeply articulated sense of appropriate behavior by such persons. This paper draws on contemporary studies in both sociology and rhetoric, as well as comparative evidence from the ancient Near East and other Israelite texts, to examine the stories of Nabal (1 Samuel 25) and Barzillai (2 Samuel 19) in their ancient social settings and their locations in 1-2 Samuel. It argues that stories of such landed gentry reflect the interests of the readers and authors of these texts and reveal part of the social location of the entire DH. As such, they allow us to question a simplistic attribution of these texts either to the royal court or its critics, illustrating the complex interrelationships among various settings in Israelite life.


Novel Stories: A Preliminary Assessment of Late Antique Hagiographic Narratives
Program Unit: Ancient Fiction and Early Christian and Jewish Narrative
S. Laine Hamilton, Independent Scholar

Many of the recent studies of the ancient novel and Early Christian and Jewish narratives have focused on defining genre, making conventions contained within the text more accessible to the historical interpreter. Few of these studies have simultaneously assessed how elements of earlier biographical narrative worked in conjunction with aspects of the ancient novel to contribute to the rise of Late Antique, Christian hagiographic narratives. The blurring of boundaries between the genres of novel and narrative by Late Antique writers resulted in a familiar, but different, creation; biographical narratives which read like a novel and served to edify the audience in matters of life and faith. The didactic function, or paidea, of the Late Antique hagiographic narrative is a major point to consider. Aspects of biographical narrative fit into the developed thematic schema that characterized the stylistic form of the ancient novel. There is no doubt this contributed to both the popularity of the novel in the Hellenistic Era, and the rise of hagiography as a form of popular literature in the Late Antique World and the Middle Ages. Broader social, religious, and cultural change is often represented in the written word. The purpose of this study, ``Novel Stories,`` is to explore the human impetus toward continuity and adaptation of recognized themes in a range of genre to better serve the audience.


Swinging Sway: King Mocking in Judges 9
Program Unit: Biblical Lexicography
Jin H. Han, New York Theological Seminary

Jotham's fable in Judges 9:8-17 breaks an antimonarchic jest with multiple layers of meaning. It reflects the thrust of the book of Judges that displays ambivalence toward the monarchy. On the one hand, the fable sarcastically caricatures the kingship as an institution coveted by the worst represented by the bramble. On the other hand, the rejoinder of the olive, the fig, and the vine hints at what a good king will bring—wealth, prosperity, and stability. Jotham's ambiguity is cleverly embedded in the word nw", a vocabulary item repeated three times in the fable (9:9, 11, 13). The term often associated with "wave" or "wandering" produces a double-edged picture that portrays either the royal sway or the king's jittery vacillation.


Mayhem in Nahum
Program Unit: Performance Criticism of the Bible and Other Ancient Texts
Jin H. Han, New York Theological Seminary

The book of Nahum makes a harsh reading due to its gruesome discourse of devastation. In the Masoretic Text, the scene of destruction is further augmented by the grouping of consonants with plosive qualities (e.g., Nah 1:1; 2:2) and the use of onomatopoeia (e.g., 1:4, 6). Versions and translations leave this feature largely unrepresented except in 2:10a (cf. bûqâ ûmebûqâ ûmebullaqâ “Desolation, devastation, and destruction!” JPS; “Devastation, desolation, and destruction!” NRSV). The paper demonstrates how the audible quality of the Hebrew text of Nahum heightens the portrayal of Nineveh's downfall.


The Vicissitudes of Job's Desire for God in the Dialogue
Program Unit: Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
C. Davis Hankins, Emory University

'schizophrenic" is one (anachronistic but nonetheless suggestive) way to describe Job's position toward the deity in the dialogue. Job stands torn between two desires: the one for absence, any space from the overwhelming presence of his divine tormentor (e.g., 7:12-21: “Why won"t you look away from me…”), the other for presence, any sign of a divine witness to his complaint and suffering (e.g., 23:3-9: “Oh that I knew where I might find him…”). We might call the former re-pulsive and the latter pro-pulsive so as to highlight their unity (as desire/pulse) as well as their difference (the sources of the impulse's pressure). In his repulsive expressions, Job is subject to God"s excessive presence, whereas in his propulsive expressions, Job is driven to find God"s missing presence. This paper sketches various responses to this antinomy which inconsistently refer to multiple, often contradictory causes (when they do not simply summarize the text). Such causal references include Job"s theology (as unsettled by his experience, contradicts itself), his mode of speech (prayer v. legal discourse), the experience of suffering (a catch-all, able to function as cause for virtually any of Job"s utterances), etc. Each of these explanations may be variously helpful or even true, but they leave the critic frustrated with their apparent arbitrariness insofar as they are never accompanied by any justification for their particular and unique appropriateness. Ultimately, what is thereby sacrificed is the basic homology that led us to unite and divide the various speeches in the first place. In this paper I argue that a critical understanding must theoretically "short circuit" and so connect these two apparently incongruous subjective positions as expressions of one and the same desire, thereby cutting across each of the various explanations (experience, theology, tradition, etc.) and providing us a way to adjudicate among them.


Toward Algorithmic Generation of Scripture-Like Texts
Program Unit: Poster Session
Eric G. Hansen, Fairless Hills, PA

This poster describes an algorithm for generating texts with limited, but interesting, similarities to diverse scriptural texts. The algorithm is based on earlier work that has identified a literary-historical pattern common to a range scriptural texts, for example, (a) the World (most notably in the books of Genesis and Revelations), (b) the Lehite Nation (as found in the Book of Mormon), (c) the Abrahamic Nation (as found largely in the Hebrew Bible), (d) Esther's Jewish Nation (in the Hebrew Bible), and (e) the ancient Egyptian opening of the mouth ritual. The poster describes basic features of the algorithm, illustrating it with simple examples. It further describes additional factors that, if implemented, would capture additional nuances of the texts.


Prophetic Intertextuality and Divine Speech in the Book of Job
Program Unit: Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
James Harding, University of Otago

This paper builds on recent scholarly interest in the relationship between Job and the prophetic literature (e.g. Nam 2003; Ticciati 2005), and in the notion of divine speech in general (e.g. Meier 1992, chs. 4-5; Houston 1993; Wolterstorff 1995; Moberly 2006), by examining the motif of divine speech in Job in connection with the prophetic corpus, particularly Jeremiah. Mayer Gruber has argued (1998) that in Job 42:7-8 the deity simultaneously rejects the human, experiential wisdom of the Gentiles (represented by the friends) and affirms the divine wisdom possessed by Israel (represented by Job). Gruber thus rejects the view that the book is challenging an orthodox theodicy within the traditions of Israel. Gruber's position is too simple, because it both depends on the questionable attribution of the vision in 4:12ff. to Job rather than Eliphaz, and by-passes the significance of the motif of divine speech in 42:7-8 (cf. 13:7), which resonates with the divine council traditions alluded to earlier in the book (1:6-12; 2:1-6; 4:12-21; 15:7-16). In fact the book does reject “orthodox” theodicies. The focus is not on theodicy per se, however, but on the epistemological foundation of the theodicies offered in the deuteronomic and prophetic literature, namely the claim that the problem of theodicy can be settled by appeal to what Israel's G-d has spoken, especially via a mediator such as Jeremiah who claims to have been granted access to proceedings in the divine council. Despite the deity"s speech to humans in 38:1-41:26; 42:7-9 (cf. 28:28), the proceedings in the divine council in 1:6-12; 2:1-6 remain concealed to all the human participants in the book of Job. The motif of divine speech in Job thus subverts the notion that a particular human being, i.e. a prophet, may have authentic access to knowledge about the deity"s involvement in human suffering.


Textual Ambiguity and the Nachleben of David and Jonathan
Program Unit: Biblical Criticism and Literary Criticism
James Harding, University of Otago

This paper explores the continuity between the book of Samuel “as a work of literary art” (Bar Efrat 2004: 559) and the after-life of its characters, focusing on the material concerned with David and Jonathan (esp. 1 Sam 18:1-21:1; 23:14-18; 2 Sam 1:17-27). Modern scholarship is divided on the question of the nature of the relationship between David and Jonathan, based largely, though not exclusively, on how the language used to describe it is construed: should it be construed in relation to the domain of political alliances (e.g. Taggar-Cohen 2005; Tsumura 2007), or in relation to the domain of human sexuality and male bonding (e.g. Schroer and Staubli 1996; Jobling 1998)? The latter raises the question of whether modern essentialist understandings of sexuality risk distorting the evidence of the text (cf. Heacock 2007). However, too little attention has been paid by scholars to ambiguity as a dimension of the literary art of the David and Jonathan narrative (but cf. Ackerman 2005), and to the role of this ambiguity in relation to the tragic dimension of the story of Saul (on which see eg. Gunn 1980; Exum 1992). This paper argues that the ambiguity of the relationship between David and Jonathan is a literary device used to signal an intensification of the paranoia of the rejected Saul, who is threatened by the uncertainty surrounding the nature of their relationship, and who uses explicitly sexual language in a final, futile attempt to control this relationship by disambiguating and naming it (1 Sam 20:30-34). Furthermore, this ambiguity is the very aspect of the text that makes possible the appropriation of the David and Jonathan narrative as a source for the reconstitution of gay history (eg. Fone 1998), and as a basis for subsequent (homo)erotic retellings (eg. Schecter 1996).


Iconography of the Crucifixion in Late Antiquity
Program Unit: Art and Religions of Antiquity
Felicity Harley McGowan, University of Melbourne

The scarcity of images depicting the Crucifixion of Jesus in early Christian art is well recognized, but not necessarily well understood.The apparent absence of such images in the first few centuries of the Common Era has traditionally been attributed to a strong aversion, or rejection on the part of the earliest Christians, to the representation of the Cross of Jesus, variously regarded as shameful, dangerous or scandalous. These common understandings are thrown into question by a number of engraved gems older than better-known images such as the doors of Sta Sabina in Rome or the Mascall Ivories, and which depict the Crucifixion. Granted important questions of date and provenance, these gems not only constitute the earliest evidence for the depiction of Jesus crucified, but indicate that a sophisticated iconographical tradition for this scene existed, at least in the 'minor' arts, considerably earlier than assumed. The delay in wider and more public depictions of the scene of Jesus' death is therefore less a matter of avoidance or rejection of a shameful image than a subtler issue of preferences and emphases in private devotion over against more public media, and the growth in opportunities wider than funerary and minor arts after the conversion of Constantine.


What Is the Purpose of Ritual Ablutions in Ancient Judaism?
Program Unit: Ritual in the Biblical World
Hannah K. Harrington, Patten University

While the subject of ritual ablutions in Second Temple Judaism has found a steady press in the last decade, few scholars have addressed the question of their basic purpose. The easy answer is that it removes ritual impurity, but what is involved in that process? And, why are ablutions performed sometimes even when no ritual impurity is present? Ritual studies experts claim that ritual is a “wordless channel of communication” (Douglas 1970) which can convey a rich “density” of meanings (Bell, 1997). Some aspects of the Jewish ritual are cross-cultural conveying messages of purgation, innocence, and inclusion. The aspect of regeneration is sometimes squelched but, being organic to water purification, lies not far below the surface. Manipulation and prophylaxis are rare. A common purpose or “message” underlying ablutions in ancient Judaism may seem unwarranted given its present over-compartmentalization (cf. Neusner's “Judaisms”). Recently, it has been suggested that ritual washing was not even practiced in the First Temple period and that the ablutions of the Priestly Code reflect Second Temple practice only (Lawrence, 2006). In another category, the Qumran sect and John the Baptist supposedly diverge from Second Temple practice by using immersion for spiritual renewal (Webb, 1994). Furthermore, the Rabbis are said to view immersion as simply a halakhic requirement in contrast to Pauline Christianity which regarded baptism as an initiation into a divine mystery (Klawans, 2000). However, while each of these Jewish groups had their distinctives, they are not as polarized as it seems. The foundational biblical data on ablutions, together with insights from ritual studies, bring into relief the commonality in Jewish purification practice in Second Temple times. Even with sectarian differences, ritual ablutions in Second Temple Judaism dramatize the individual's innocence before God, facilitate access to the deity, and anticipate the receipt of divine blessing.


“And It Goes Like This in German”: Meister Eckhart's Translation of Bible Verses in His Vernacular Sermons
Program Unit: Bible Translation
Tod Harris, Church of Jesus Christ Translation Division

There is continuing interest in the works of Meister Eckhart, and extensive treatments of the theological, philosophical, and even literary aspects of his writings abound. The debate about whether Eckhart is a philosopher, a theologian, or a mystic is ongoing. But there is an interesting question that has not been well addressed in the literature: What about Eckhart as Bible translator? Eckhart quotes at least one verse from the Bible in each of his vernacular sermons, and in many cases states that he is translating from the Latin into German, yet to date there has been no systematic treatment of this aspect of Eckhart's work. This paper begins with a survey of the books of the Bible from which Eckhart quotes and the verses he cites. This is followed by a brief analysis of Eckhart's translation methods by examining representative samples of some of these verses. Though an extensive treatment of the question remains beyond the scope of this forum, it is still possible to draw some preliminary conclusions about Meister Eckhart as Bible translator. As a result, this paper illuminates another facet of the works of this important Christian writer, and perhaps more importantly, provides an interesting glimpse into an overlooked historical translation.


The Brothers as the “Glory of Christ” (2 Corinthians 8:23): Paul's Doxa Terminology in Its Ancient Benefaction Context
Program Unit: Second Corinthians: Pauline Theology in the Making
James R. Harrison, Wesley Institute

The presence of doxa terminology in 2 Corinthians has captured the attention of scholars in recent years. L. L. Belleville has investigated the Sinai glory traditions in the epistle (2 Cor 3:11-18), arguing that Paul was countering Jewish traditions attributing an ever-increasing glory to Moses. C. C. Newman has claimed that in Paul's Glory-Christology (1 Cor 2:8; 2 Cor 3:4-4:6; 8:19) the various strands of the Glory tradition in the LXX and Second Temple Judaism coalesce: divine theophany, the revelation at Sinai, the Messianic and prophetic hope, and apocalyptic throne visions. A. Segal proposed that Paul, an apostate Pharisee, identified the risen Jesus with an angelic heavenly embodiment of God's glory (2 Cor 3:16-4:6). In sum, the Jewish context of doxa in 2 Corinthians has been extensively explored. Paul"s reference to the brothers accompanying the Jerusalem collection as "the glory of Christ" (2 Cor 8:23; cf. 8:18; 1:23), however, has not commanded the same attention. Where the text has been discussed, it has been understood against the backdrop of the Isaianic prophecies (Isa 60-62) and "servant" theology (M. Carrez; C.C. Newman). Alternatively, the text is explained contextually as referring to the embodiment and promotion of Christ"s glory (2 Cor 3:18; 8:19: M.J. Harris; M.E. Thrall). Strangely, the benefaction context of doxa in the honorific inscriptions and in the popular philosophers (e.g. Dio Chrysostom) has been bypassed in discussion. Even F. W. Danker, in his magnum opus (Benefactor, St Louis, 1982), does not analyse the semantic field of doxa. This paper proposes that the honorific inscriptions, which refer to the doxa of benefactors (e.g. I. Ephesos Ia 6; OGIS 339; SEG XXVIII 143), provide us insight into why Paul described his colleagues in beneficence as the "glory of Christ". Paul works within the rhetorical conventions of the honorific decrees but upends their eulogistic rationale.


From Pentecost to Persecution: An Investigation of Political and Economic Dynamics in Acts 2–8
Program Unit: Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy
Douglas Harrison-Mills, University of Birmingham

It is possible that scholars have created a range of exegetical problems by accepting and perpetuating the narrow, charity-focused interpretation of 'trapeza' in Acts 6:2. On the other hand, when the more established interpretation of this word is applied (as used in five other places in the NT, all of which are in agreement with how it had been universally understood throughout the Greco-Roman world since the fourth century BCE), the pivotal episode involving the Hellenist widows can be seen to highlight nothing more complicated than a “competency” problem: i.e. the twelve apostles" inability to manage the church's burgeoning financial activity. However, it also raises the prospect of a “bank” operating in the Temple area known as Solomon's porch, which in turn offers a variety of interesting scenarios within the Lucan text. In particular, it would have posed a serious threat for the Sanhedrin Sadducees, who controlled the Temple, the Temple cult and the Temple Bank. For them, politics had become more important than religion; and their disbelief in life after death drove them to acquire and maintain power and wealth during their earthly lifetimes. Consequently, if we apply the commercial interpretation of 'trapeza', it means that these priestly and lay aristocrats would have seen the remaining vestiges of their power and privilege seriously threatened by the emergence of a competing banking operation – run by wealthy Hellenist members of the new (Christian) sect and, more significantly, operating successfully within the very Temple precincts they thought they controlled. Therefore, in the theological, political and economic environment of Jerusalem in those days, the success that started with Pentecost had only one possible outcome: the persecution in Acts 7-8.


Thomas's Confession (John 20:28) and the Christology of the Gospel of John
Program Unit: Johannine Literature
Judith Hartenstein, Philipps Universität-Marburg

When Thomas meets Jesus after his resurrection, he calls him “My Lord and my God”, a sharp contrast to the former disbelief he showed regarding the resurrection of Jesus. This confession is often considered as the climax of the Gospel of John and as a most adequate expression of faith. But does the Gospel of John really lead its readers to believe that Jesus is God? In my opinion, the context of Thomas" statement does not strengthen this interpretation. Only a few sentences later, the purpose of the gospel is given explicitly, and this purpose is belief in Jesus the son of God. To understand why Jesus is called God, the person of Thomas as the speaker of this statement must be taken into account. Thomas is a prominent person in parts of early Christianity and the Gospel of John treats him as a person already known to the readers. There might be connections to Thomas traditions as preserved, for example, in the Gospel of Thomas. In my paper, I will use this background about Thomas and his general portrayal in the Gospel to illuminate the meaning of his confession. Furthermore, I will examine other passages (in John 10 and in the Prologue) often seen as examples of “high Christology”. I will show that the Gospel of John plays with the idea of an identification of Jesus with God, but it does not actually favour it.


Legenda Aurea and Josephus
Program Unit: Josephus
Gohei Hata, Tama Art University

One of the most important sources of information about the use of Josephus in Europe (or in Italy at least) in the Middle Ages comes from the Legenda aurea written by Jacobus de Voragine towards the end of the thirteenth century. The author used not only the legendary stories of the saints but also the written sources produced in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. In my paper, I will try to pay a special attention to the use of Josephus and discuss the way he used Josphus, and a possible influence of this work upon the later generations.


A Canine Conundrum: Luke 16:19–31 and the Theme of the Mutilation of the Corpse in the Iliad
Program Unit: Ancient Fiction and Early Christian and Jewish Narrative
Matthew R. Hauge, Claremont Graduate University

The peculiarities of the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19-31 has drawn the attention of biblical scholars throughout the interpretive history of this text; most notably, the named character and the otherworldly setting. Unfortunately, despite its unique presence in this two-volume work and interpretive significance with the parable proper, the role of the dogs in the story has largely been ignored or misunderstood. Recent developments in the study of Luke-Acts have re-imagined the evangelist, not as a mere collector of received traditions, but rather as an innovative literary artist. In the field of classical studies, the role of mimesis has long occupied an important place in compositional analysis of literary texts from antiquity, given its ubiquitous presence in the educational system. Dennis R. MacDonald has championed the role of literary imitation in early Christian literature, focusing specifically on the Homeric epics and their role in the composition of the Acts of Andrew, the Gospel of Mark, and most recently, the book of Acts. In 1971, Charles Segal published a small monograph, The Theme of the Mutilation of the Corpse in the Iliad, in which he argues that the maltreatment of the dead dominates the final third of the epic. Within this theme, the “dogs of Troy” play an instrumental role, affecting the major figures of the poem, Achilles, Hector, and Patroclus. Given the work of MacDonald and Segal, I argue that the presence of the dogs in the parable is best understood through the lens of the bard. The arrival of the dogs in 16:21 is a signal to the reader of the impending death of Lazarus and the subsequent mutilation of his body, which carries with it significant implications for the character in the netherworld.


Neusner's Methodological Contributions to the Study of Rabbinic Texts
Program Unit: History and Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism
Judith Hauptman, Jewish Theological Seminary of America

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The End of Moses
Program Unit: Qur'an and Biblical Literature
Rachel S. Havrelock, University of Illinois at Chicago

At the conclusion of the People of Israel's wandering in the wilderness, the Prophet Moses meets a mysterious end east of the Jordan River. Biblical literature contains at least two strains of tradition that describe Moses's end, at least one of which grants him a form of immortality, and proposes two different accounts of why the Prophet does not cross the Jordan River. The midrashic tradition reads aspects of Moses"s relationship with God into the event of his death. The Islamic exegetical tradition, primarily in the Stories of the Prophets corpus, describes Moses"s resistance to death and in one case his violent confrontation with the Angel of Death. The Jewish and the Muslim traditions are further invested in the issue of Moses"s corpse insofar as it has contributed to national formations. According to Jewish tradition, Moses"s grave remains unknown because Jews cannot recognize a sacred site outside of Israel"s borders. The area of Moses"s demise then sets a limit of sorts on Jewish territorial aspiration and focuses it to the west of the Jordan. According to a Palestinian Muslim tradition, following the death of Moses Allah lifted Moses"s body, carried it across the Jordan and buried it near Jericho. The Nabi Musa (Prophet Moses) Mosque is not only an important site of pilgrimage and burial, but it has also been a rallying place for Palestinian nationalism since at least 1920. In the Palestinian context, the body of Moses buried in the desert between Jerusalem and Jericho stakes a religious claim to the territory. This paper will consider comparative death of Moses traditions, probing the thematic lexicon shared by Muslim and Jewish interpreters as well as how the differences in traditions inform the particular national claims.


Reconsidering the Location of Mount Gerizim
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
Ralph K. Hawkins, Sack School of Bible and Ministry, Kentucky Christian University

In Deut 27:4, where the Israelites are commanded to build an altar upon their entrance into the land of Canaan, the Samaritan Pentateuch reads Mount Gerizim, in contrast to the location of Mount Ebal given in the MT. Debate about the discrepancy between the SP and the MT on this matter is quite ancient. This paper will review the ancient discussions of the matter and consider the possibility, also raised in ancient times, that the identification of Jebel et-Tor as Mount Gerizim may itself be incorrect. The paper will conclude by considering a new proposal for an alternate identification for Mount Gerizim.


Identifying Israelite Ethnicity in Iron Age I: Can Morpological Data Still Contribute?
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible, History, and Archaeology
Ralph K. Hawkins, Sack School of Bible and Ministry, Kentucky Christian University

In the transition from the Late Bronze Age to the Iron Age I, clear demographic changes occurred when the population of the central hill-country dramatically increased. The question is: who was this new population group? The discussion of Israelite ethnic identity has been one of the most intensely debated issues in modern biblical and archaeological studies. Since the 19th century, it has been assumed that specific peoples could be linked with the artifacts they used. The forms these artifacts took, as well as other morphological traits, were understood to be ethnic markers – and came to be customarily applied to the identification of ancient Israel. These long held assumptions about using morphological data for Israelite identification came under challenge in the 20th century. Despite the difficulties of using physical data for ethnic identification, however, not all scholars have abandoned the idea that morphological data can be used in the identification of ethnicity. This paper will specifically explore whether or not settlement patterns, site layout, the four-room house, pottery, and/or foodways can be used to identify the ethnic identity of central hill-country sites in the Iron Age I.


From Lowth to Kugel and Beyond: A Cognitive Linguistics Approach to Biblical Hebrew Parallelism
Program Unit: Cognitive Linguistics in Biblical Interpretation
Elizabeth R. Hayes, Fuller Seminary Northwest

Recent cognitive linguistics research offers new paradigms for revisiting Lowth's 1787 Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews, where Lowth originally categorized Biblical parallelism as synthetic, antithetic or synonymous. This study argues that certain aspects of Lowth's tri-partite categorization scheme are supported by a cognitive linguistics analysis, as are certain aspects of Kugel's 1989 counter-claim that "there is one kind of parallelism, or a hundred, but not three". First, this study argues that prototype theory offers a fresh way to assess the criteria utilized for analysing and describing BH parallelism. Because this is the case, it can be demonstrated that Lowth"s original categorization of BH parallelism and Kugel"s recent response have each captured certain aspects of this fundamental cognitive process. In short, while Lowth first notices two distinct categories, and then discovers a plethora of examples that fit neither, Kugel notes the overarching nature of the "neither" category, and argues that all examples are actually members of that category. Additionally, this study argues that Conceptual Blending Theory offers a unique resource for analysing and describing the complexities parallel line forms. For this reason, a conceptual blending method is utilized to reexamine examples taken from Lowth"s original study. In addition to clarifying key differences between the categories of synonymous and antithetic parallelism, these examples demonstrate the value of conceptual blending theory methodology for studying, teaching and learning Biblical Hebrew grammar.


Resumptions of Radicalism: The Effective History of the Lukan Economic Ethics
Program Unit: Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy
Christopher Hays, University of Oxford

The darling of liberation theologians and biblical ethicists alike, the works of Luke have long been doted upon as sources for historical research and creative inspiration in economic ethics. Nonetheless, Luke is often considered the step-child of second and third century Christianity, neglected by the Fathers who favored Matthew, and thus attracting the eyes of unsavory early Christian rebels (heretics). To evaluate and inform this common conception, I propose to examine the Wirkungsgeschichte of the Lukan wealth ethic, the manner in which Luke's Gospel and Acts were drawn upon by members of the early Church in their various ethical formulations. Attention will be given to two ante-Nicene Church Fathers, Clement of Alexandria, and Cyprian of Carthage, who are both significantly influenced by Luke, and yet integrate his teachings into two contrasting ethical frameworks owing to their unique philosophical interactions, theological convictions, and historical locations. Alongside these “orthodox” theologians, I will also contend that Lukan influence can be felt, albeit in a more attenuated fashion owing the paucity of primary source literature extant, in the economic ethics of “heterodox” Christianities of the second and third centuries, particularly the Marcionites, Carpocratians, and the Ebionites. It is my hope that this paper might both highlight the complex factors contributing the variegated practices of early Christian economic ethics, and emphasize the footprints left by one New Testament author who was often thought to be of nominal import in the Ante-Nicene era.


Divestiture, Generosity, or Socialism? A Narrative-Exegetical Account of Lukan Wealth Ethics
Program Unit: Synoptic Gospels
Christopher Hays, University of Oxford

A tangled mass of vociferous invectives and imperatives, Luke's teachings on the proper use of wealth have attracted the attention of numerous scholars in the past century. Like the ends of the rope in Gordias" knot, the interpretive keys seemed hidden under the layers of the text and history, and the various proposals hitherto submitted have appealed to intricate distinctions in semantic fields, eclectic sampling of Cynic and Christian teachings, or audiences of heterogeneous social composition. The proposed essay will take a swing at the Lukan ethical knot, not by attempting to surpass the adroit maneuvering of previous scholars who systematized the propositions of the text, but by bringing to bear narrative criticism, which has been profitably applied to Lukan theology more than Lukan ethics. In continuity with previous narratological studies, I will contend that Luke depicts Jesus, his followers, and the villains of his narratives as Identifikationsfiguren, characters with which the readers were to identify either idealistically (i.e. Jesus in the Gospel, Peter and Paul in Acts), realistically (the disciples in the Gospel), or negatively (scribes, Pharisees, rulers). Within this narrative world I will consider the propositions of Luke, allowing the characters in the story to provide the standard against which to evaluate Luke's sometimes hyperbolic, but inescapably radical imperatives. The Gospels (and Acts) were not just sources from which to draw axioms for systematic scholarly constructions, but also stories for the benefit of the less educated laity, for whom the illocutionary force of the text arose not only from the discrete apothegms, but from the accounts as cohesive wholes. From this perspective, Luke"s narrative exemplars, parables, and maxims cohere as a diverse and flexible ethic encompassing and guiding Christian use of wealth in a variety of situations and vocations.


Nomina Sacra in P66
Program Unit: New Testament Textual Criticism
Peter M. Head, Tyndale House

Recent debates about the origin and function of the so-called nomina sacra (not least between Professor Hurtado and Professor Tuckett) have focused on our ability to generalise about the nomina sacra from a large collection of evidence. But the individual approaches of the scribes are also worth investigating in order to see how the phenomenon actually functions within a given text. This paper is based on a comprehensive examination of the use of the nomina sacra in one of our earliest extensive texts, P. Bodmer II (P66). The function and usage of the different forms of this contraction is traced and analysed, with particular reference to the extensive flexibility in the use of the nomina sacra in this manuscript. Once the individuality of the practice of this text is credited, then several important implications for the debate about the origin of the practice do emerge.


A Letter from Tryphon to Asklepiades (BGU 1208 from 27–26 BCE) and the New Testament
Program Unit: Papyrology and Early Christian Backgrounds
Peter M. Head, Tyndale House

This letter (Berlin, Ägyptisches Museum P. 13143) has often been appealed to by New Testament scholars since it appears to have the only definitely pre-Christian occurrence of the verb au0qentei=n (which also occurs in 1 Timothy 2.12). This paper offers a fresh reading of the text, a first complete English translation, and a general discussion of the letter as a whole (and in relation to the Asklepiades archive) in its relationship to the language and milieu of early Christianity, before discussing the use of au0qentei=n and its potential relevance to the interpretation of 1 Timothy.


Decoded, Debated, Debunked: Reviewing the Exodus Decoded
Program Unit: Archaeological Excavations and Discoveries: Illuminating the Biblical World
R. Christopher Heard, Pepperdine University

In August 2006, the History Channel aired The Exodus Decoded, a "documentary" by Simcha Jacobovici. In the program, Jacobovici attempts to depict the biblical exodus as a series of historical events confirmed by archaeological and scientific evidence. The heavily-promoted, multi-million-dollar production attracted some scholarly attention, virtually all of it negative. In this presentation, I will review some of the (ab)use of archaeology in The Exodus Decoded and reflect on the experience of writing a fifteen-part online review of the program.


Survivors of the Crucifixion Searching for Profiles in the Parables
Program Unit: Historical Jesus
Charles W. Hedrick, Missouri State University

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the parables as realistic narrative fictions and to argue that Jesus' narrative fictions may be used to profile the earlisest survivors of the crucifixion crisis among Jesus' associates.


Past, Place, and Identity: Memory in Exilic Period Biblical Texts
Program Unit: Exile (Forced Migrations) in Biblical Literature
Katie M. Heffelfinger, Emory University

In light of the insights of Paul Ricouer and Elie Wiesel into the work of memory and the ability of memory to help communities build and maintain a sense of identity, connect with particular places, and to reconcile the future and the past, this paper examines the trope of memory in several key Biblical texts produced or heavily redacted during the Babylonian exile. Memory language is not only present in these texts, it is also relevant to the historical situation which produced these texts. However appropriate, the use of memory language in these texts is not univocal. Deuteronomy, Psalm 137, Ezekiel, and Second Isaiah each employ memory language in distinctive ways and for distinctive rhetorical purposes illustrating the divergent ways in which memory was discussed and imagined in this period. Deuteronomy's distinctive use of memory language centers around its focus on imploring the Israelites to act in obedience to the commands of the LORD with the apparent goal of preventing the future from mirroring the past catastrophe of exile. Ezekiel is likewise concerned that the future not repeat the past and employs memory language strikingly paired with shame as a solution to future rebellion. Psalm 137 deploys the trope of memory as a means for calling forth divine justice and an overturning of the present circumstances of the exiles. Second Isaiah utilizes memory in a variety of ways but most potently to assert the constancy of relationship between the people and their God. These variant uses to which memory language is put by these exilic texts testifies to the existence and nature of discourse about memory from within the community of the exiles themselves and highlights both the flexibility and relevance of memory for the exilic project of making sense of the relationship between the future and the past.


The Testament of Abraham: Towards an Edition of the Ethiopic and Arabic Versions
Program Unit: Function of Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
Martin Heide, University of Munich

The Testament of Abraham (TestAbr), also known as the most important writing of the "Testaments of the Three Patriarchs", belongs to the pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament. The TestAbr was written about 150 BC in Greek. It is an important witness of a "universal" Judaism and favors general virtues such as hospitality and charity, and the avoidance of sinful attitudes. The TestAbr ist known in two recensions, a longer recension A and a shorter recension B. Recension B has been the Vorlage of the Coptic, Arabic and Ethiopic versions. A critical edition of these versions, especially of the Arabic version and its descendant, the Ethiopic, is still a desideratum: "Un seul manuscrit publié partiellement, plusieurs témoins inédits: c'est dire la nécessité d'une édition complète du Testament d'Abraham arabe; de toutes les versions de cet écrit, c'est à l'heure actuelle la plus méconnue" (F. Schmidt, Le Testament grec d'Abraham, Tübingen 1986: 43). This paper will give insights into the supply of Arabic and Ethiopic manuscripts and present preliminary studies towards a critical edition of the Arabic and Ethiopic versions of the TestAbr.


The “Godfearers”: A Phantom in the History of Early Christianity
Program Unit: Book of Acts
Christoph Heil, Universität Graz

The "Godfearers," which are mentioned in the NT only in Luke-Acts, are often used to explain the missionary success of early Christianity. According to this scenario, many Gentile Christians had previously been "Godfearers." They readily embraced Christianity since here they found Jewish monotheism and ethics without social identity markers such as circumcision and purity rules. After a short overview of the literary and epigraphic references to "Godfearers," seven reasons are presented why the impact of "Godfearers" on the Christian mission should not be overestimated. (1) There was no Jewish monopoly on monotheism and ambitious ethics in antiquity. (2) The widespread ancient Anti-Judaism makes the existence of a large number of Godfearers very improbable. (3) There was no organized Jewish mission in antiquity. (4) The term "theosebeis" usually designates Jews, not "Godfearers." (5) Jewish inscriptions and literature use the term Godfearer" with apologetic intentions. In the Aphrodisias inscription pagan patrons are called "Godfearers" in a flattering and monopolizing way. However, "gentile Godworshippers who gave money to Jewish institutions may have done so for a variety of reasons, without approving of either Judaism or Jews" (M. Goodman). Philo and Josephus very often mention "Godfearers" to underline the attraction of Judaism to gentiles. (6) A clear theological agenda causes Luke to introduce "Godfearers" in his story; they are an important link between Israel and the gentile church. In Paul's letters and in the rest of the NT, however, they are not mentioned. Paul addresses "real" gentiles, not Godfearers. (7) The silence of the Christian apologists and the Jewish rabbis regarding "Godfearers" makes it very unlikely that they played a major part in the Christian mission. In conclusion, the existence of "Godfearers" cannot be denied, but they were not an important factor in the growth of early Christianity.


The “Godfearers”: A Phantom in the History of Early Christianity
Program Unit: Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti
Christoph Heil, Universität Graz

The "Godfearers," which are mentioned in the NT only in Luke-Acts, are often used to explain the missionary success of early Christianity. According to this scenario, many Gentile Christians had previously been "Godfearers." They readily embraced Christianity since here they found Jewish monotheism and ethics without social identity markers such as circumcision and purity rules. After a short overview of the literary and epigraphic references to "Godfearers," seven reasons are presented why the impact of "Godfearers" on the Christian mission should not be overestimated. (1) There was no Jewish monopoly on monotheism and ambitious ethics in antiquity. (2) The widespread ancient Anti-Judaism makes the existence of a large number of Godfearers very improbable. (3) There was no organized Jewish mission in antiquity. (4) The term "theosebeis" usually designates Jews, not "Godfearers." (5) Jewish inscriptions and literature use the term Godfearer" with apologetic intentions. In the Aphrodisias inscription pagan patrons are called "Godfearers" in a flattering and monopolizing way. However, "gentile Godworshippers who gave money to Jewish institutions may have done so for a variety of reasons, without approving of either Judaism or Jews" (M. Goodman). Philo and Josephus very often mention "Godfearers" to underline the attraction of Judaism to gentiles. (6) A clear theological agenda causes Luke to introduce "Godfearers" in his story; they are an important link between Israel and the gentile church. In Paul's letters and in the rest of the NT, however, they are not mentioned. Paul addresses "real" gentiles, not Godfearers. (7) The silence of the Christian apologists and the Jewish rabbis regarding "Godfearers" makes it very unlikely that they played a major part in the Christian mission. In conclusion, the existence of "Godfearers" cannot be denied, but they were not an important factor in the growth of early Christianity.


Prisoners and Preachers: Pauline Perspectives
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Gregory Heille, Aquinas Institute of Theology

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“The Travailing Woman”: Childbirth Imagery in the Hebrew Texts
Program Unit: Biblical Criticism and Literary Criticism
Helena Bolle, Macquarie University-Sydney

This paper addresses the imagery of childbirth in the Hebrew Bible with particular attention to the literary topos of the "travailing woman". Childbirth imagery in the prophetic tradition is associated with national threat and situations of high emotion. This paper assesses three select instances of the "travailing woman", from Hosea, Jeremiah, and 1QH of the Dead Sea Scrolls, in order to establish a typology of the imagery and analyse the development of the tradition over time. The image of the "travailing woman" is striking not only because of the frequency with which it is employed but the adaptation of the image to suit various eras. It is also of consequence that the portrayal of an exclusively female experience was so regularly employed by male writers in these androcentric texts.This study is part of my post-graduate research that aims to further understanding of the Hebrew conception of the body through analysis of metaphorical language.


Family Values in the Second Temple Period
Program Unit: Qumran
Charlotte Hempel, University of Birmingham

Sivertsev and others have rightly emphasized important elements of continuity between social developments in the early Second Temple period and the Dead Sea Scrolls. In this paper I would like to focus on the role of the family and the household in the Damascus Document and Ezra-Nehemiah. In the Laws of the Damascus Document we can see the family gradually being taken over by the overseer. Sivertsev is inclined to liken the overseer's role to that of Nehemiah. Although it is true that both Nehemiah and the overseer have a say in matters of trade and marriage in their respective communities, there does seem to me an important difference. Nehemiah does not lay claim to being consulted in the everyday arrangements of marriages, but addresses a particular crisis or a sequence of crises. In the Damascus Document, by contrast, the overseer demands to be consulted in every act of trade and in every marriage arrangement. Whereas both texts still have their members arranged by family, in the Damascus Document we see a system evolving where someone else is calling the shots in everyday life – not just in extraordinary cases. Another extreme example of the way in which the authorities are almost literally entering the marital bedroom in the Damascus Document community is the law stipulating expulsion from the community for a man who fornicates with his wife contrary to the law. Whatever it may mean, it is clear the community behind the Damascus Document eventually wanted to control the most intimate parts of family life. The level of control we witness in Ezra-Nehemiah is a soft option by comparison.


Torah-gnomai in Argumentation in the Jesus-Tradition: A Marcan Sample
Program Unit: Biblical Law
Ian H. Henderson, McGill University

Argumentation is the necessary link between Law and Rhetoric. Klaus Berger long ago emphasized the importance of Torah-gnomai for Mark's representation of Jesus" argumentation on topics of Biblical and religious law. Such logia as Mark 2:17a, 19, 27; 3:4b; 7:15 and 10:9 refer argumentatively to Torah in Jesus-related contexts (not just in Mark, see Matthew 8:22), but are not directly statements of biblical Law. They are of interest not just because they are often perceived as in principle "Torah-critical" (Dormeyer), but first as a form of Torah-argumentation which is neither bookish nor sub-literary. Some use of Torah-gnomai can plausibly be attributed to Jesus, but as Berger pointed out, "[t]he basic maxims are distinguished by the fact that they convince the hearer by their compelling intrinsic logic, and not initially by reasons of the authority of the Lord who utters them." ("Law" in Sacramentum Mundi 3. 280-1, one of the few things by Berger on this topic to appear in English). Here we will examine the relation between "intrinsic logic" in such formulations and their argumentative application in, especially, Marcan representation of Jesus" Jewishness.


Teaching Tip: Gospel Truth? Taking the Bible on Its Own Terms
Program Unit: Academic Teaching and Biblical Studies
Suzanne Watts Henderson, Salem College

This is a highly effective class that helps to set the terms for our study of the gospels in my introduction to the NT course. It involves three stages: 1) I have students write as detailed an account as possible of their recollection of the events of 9/11. I then have students break into small groups to share their accounts and to tally their similarities and differences. As a large group, we then consider the factors that influence the differences among the class members' accounts. 2) I then break students into small groups to read and discuss quotations from three ancient sources on historiography (Thucydides), biography (Plutarch), and gospel writing (Papias). As we unpack these texts, students confront the fact that even Papias (a Christian) was not a 'literalist' in his understanding of gospel literature. 3) Finally, we examine a story whose details differ in two different gospels (I've often used the death of Jesus in Mark and John, which Ehrman addresses in his textbook). Once we recognize that certain details simply cannot be reconciled, we work to arrive at the kinds of questions with which we will study the gospels, questions that are shaped largely by the first two group exercises. This is a particularly useful tool in courses whose population is influenced by fundamentalist/literalist readings of the gospels.


Philodemus On Death
Program Unit: Hellenistic Moral Philosophy and Early Christianity
Benjamin Henry, University of Texas at Austin

The paper will discuss recent insights on the text and meaning of Philodemus's On Death.


Reading Luke 12:8–12 through Social Crises: A Case-Study in Wirkungsgeschichte
Program Unit: Use, Influence, and Impact of the Bible
Jonathan Henry, Calvary Baptist Theological Seminary

Relying on Hans-Georg Gadamer's concept of Wirkungsgeschichte, this paper surveys potential meanings of Luke 12:8-12 that were discovered during four different social crises. Interpreters have approached this passage to answer specific questions, which were pre-determined by whether they were persecuted or were themselves active in the role of the oppressor. Use of this text is traced through the fourth book of Clement of Alexandria's Stromata, a homily by Augustine of Hippo, the writings of Martin Luther and John Calvin, and medical journals of an American physician from the time of the Second Great Awakening. In the first example, the recently-persecuted Clement discusses the power and responsibilities of believers who stand on trial for their faith, and focuses his attention on Luke 12:8-9 and 11-12. The trend of successive generations is to ignore the courtroom scenario that is pictured in the text; to emphasize Luke 12:10 and conflate it with its synoptic parallels; and to progressively apply the text in a pietistic, individualistic manner. By the time the final example is considered, individuals use the vague concept of an unpardonable sin as justification for self-punishment and suicide. Implications for modern interpreters are discussed in this survey, which is designed to increase consciousness of how prior interpretations interact with and influence contemporary readings of the text.


The Other Synoptic Problem: 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra
Program Unit: Wisdom and Apocalypticism
Matthias Henze, Rice University

2 Baruch and 4 Ezra bear a close relationship. The two contemporary apocalypses are linked by several shared rhetoric strategies (e.g., both texts purport to be written by biblical scribes; both are set in 587 BCE) as well as by many structural and verbal, at times verbatim parallels. Still, there is no agreement among students of the texts on how best to explain these obvious affinities. The scholarly discourse has been hampered by the fact that the parallels have been addressed exclusively as a textual/literary phenomenon. Building on recent advances made in the field of oral literature/the interplay of orality and textuality, I wish to broaden the scope of the inquiry and discuss whether the parallels between 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra can be more fruitfully explained when we keep an eye on the oral dimension in these two texts.


Three's Company in Shunam but a Crowd at Mamre: Tripartite Breeding in Genesis and Kings?
Program Unit: Women in the Biblical World
Gershon W. Hepner, Los Angeles, CA

Parallels between the birth and near-death of Isaac (Gen. 17:15–22:19) and Elisha and the Shunamite (2 Kgs. 4:1–37) have long been recognized (2 Kgs. 4:1-37 is the designated haftarah for Gen. 18:1–22:24). Both narratives feature a childless couple, at least one of whom is old; the announcement of a birth following the visit of a man or men; and the near-death of the son. Although the Bible mentions many barren women, it makes no explicit reference to impotent or infertile men. Barren women, such as Sarah, are sometimes reported to have conceived following divine intervention (Gen. 30:22; Judg. 13:1–24; 1 Sam. 1:19–20). The Elisha/Shunamite encounter hints at how a woman conceives when her husband is infertile: she is impregnated by a third party (Elisha. This interaction corresponds, I think, to Jackson's “tripartite breeding relationship” paradigm, evidenced in Exod. 21:1–11, where a Hebrew slave can produce offspring for his master (2007). Reasons for suggesting that Elisha was a surrogate for the Shunamite husband include: (a) sexually suggestive language (2 Kgs. 4:8, 10, 11); (b) Elisha's physical involvement with the child's revival (2 Kgs. 4:34), which implies a parallel involvement with the child's conception––the man who gave life to the Shunamite child restores it, just as God gave Isaac life (Gen. 21:1) and restored it (Gen. 22:16); and (c) the Shunamite husband is the structural equivalent of Sarah, whose barrenness ends following a divine visit (Gen. 21:1)––emphatically not after her visit to a human king (Gen. 20:18; 21:2–5). By contrast, the Shunamite husband"s infertility ends not following a divine encounter, but after the arrival of a man of God who visits his wife in more ways than one. Abraham and Sarah remain a couple, but the Shunamites become a tripartite crowd.


A Forgotten Early Byzantine Textual Critic: Andrew of Caesarea on the Apocalypse
Program Unit: New Testament Textual Criticism
Juan Hernández Jr., Bethel College

Textual critics today attend to a variety of pressing questions related to the transmission of the Greek NT. No longer limited to the quest for the “original” text, current practitioners pursue a variety of interrelated interests. Scribal activity, theological variation, the NT canon, and the socio-historic worlds of manuscripts are now commonplace in text critical discussions. These questions, however, are not altogether new. Neither have they been evenly applied to the full corpus of the NT. The text of John's Apocalypse remains an area in desperate need of attention. Ironically, the past may hold the key to the future in this case. Writing at the threshold of the early Byzantine era, Andrew of Caesarea already displays an awareness of competing variants within the Apocalypse's MS tradition, comments on their theological significance, and even anathemizes those scribes who “atticize” the biblical text. In fact, Andrew"s Greek commentary reflects the very integration of issues that characterizes today"s text-critical research. This paper will explore the relevance of Andrew"s use of the Apocalypse for discussions of its textual history and interpretation.


Demeter-Io-Isis in Samaria-Sebaste
Program Unit: Art and Religions of Antiquity
John J. Herrmann, Boston Museum of Fine Arts

The cult of Kore played a major role at the city of Samaria, renamed Sebaste (Augustus) by Herod the Great. Inscriptions in honor of Kore and a marble statue of Demeter have been excavated at the site, and coins of the Antonine and Severan periods issued at Sebaste show Demeter and the rape of Kore (Persephone). The specific image of Demeter used at Sebaste makes it clear that the cult there had its roots in Egypt and represented the fusion of Greek and Egyptian ideas of the mother goddess, the male sovereign of the Underworld, and their offspring. The rich iconography emanating from Egypt equates Demeter and the wandering cow-goddess Io, and this combined goddess is either equated to or paired with Isis. In many iconographic formulations, Isis is also equated to Kore, and Demeter-Io replaces Isis" colorless sister Nephthys. Frequently the two “bilingual” goddesses are placed beside Sarapis-Hades and/or Harpokrates-Triptolemos in rich iconic assemblages.


“A Bishop … Must Manage His Own Household Well” (1 Timothy 3:4): Household Management and the Moral Status of Church Leaders in the Pastoral Epistles
Program Unit: Hellenistic Moral Philosophy and Early Christianity
Jens Herzer, University of Leipzig

Greco-Roman household management provides a major pattern for the interpretation of the Pastoral Epistles. For many scholars, the household terminology of the Pastoral Epistles establishes a significant dissimilarity to the original thinking of Paul. Yet, the apostle himself used household terminology in order to describe his own and other leaders" role with regard to the community. The paper asks for the relationship between the household terminology in the Pastoral Epistles and other writings of Paul and the so-called Pauline school. It aims at considering possible developments in general as well as specific differences within the Pauline tradition and the consequences that emerge from those differences.


Character Formation and Community Ethics in Canaanite Literature
Program Unit: Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
Richard S. Hess, Denver Seminary

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Sacrifice, Discourse, and Social Power in Roman and Early Christian Rhetoric
Program Unit: Sacrifice, Cult, and Atonement
George P. Heyman, St. Bernard's School of Theology and Ministry

Since the ideological complex connected with the notion of sacrifice is as much about power as it is about religion, this paper will argue that the clash between Rome and Early Christianity was steeped in competing notions of what I will call 'sacrificial discourses." Discourse, I will argue, is more than a collection of words or an extended soliloquy, it is a means that generates and constitutes social identity through the exercise of power. Polyvalent at its core, sacrifice is so deeply rooted in the human religious consciousness that its association with specific social behaviors has produced a sense of identity and stability for peoples throughout the ages. Whether it was the pouring of wine at official Roman banquets in honor of Caesar, the burning of incense to the ancestors of the Roman house, or the slaughter of a domestic animal as part of the Imperial Cult, the Romans used their sacrificial discourse to maintain political power and craft a specific Roman identity. Without the proper exercise of these religious rites, the fragile balance of the cosmos (and the Empire) would cease to exist. While those who presided at the imperial cult sacrifices displayed political and social power, those who wrote about the deaths of the early Christians were able to invest Christianity with its own form of social power through the use of a sacrificial discourse that would challenge Roman hegemony. Precisely fashioned for discourse, the sacrifice of Jesus and the rhetorical complex surrounding the sacrifice of the martyr all invested Christianity with a unique challenge to the Pax Deorum. This paper explores how the idea of a 'sacrificial discourse" was pivotal to both Rome and the early Church during the first two hundred years of Christianity.


YHWH Saves: From Name to Book
Program Unit: Book of Isaiah
J. Todd Hibbard, University of Notre Dame

This paper examines the use of the various forms of the root yasha' (to save; salvation) in the book of Isaiah, with particular reference to its relevance for the formation of the book. It is argued that the use of this term is part of the development of an important theme in the book that offers another way of thinking about the composition and growth of the book. In short, the term and idea appear, albeit relatively infrequently, in Isa 1-39 (especially in putatively early texts), usually connected with the prophet's name. In Isa 40-55 and 56-66, however, various forms of the root and theme appear much more frequently and in interesting configurations. It is argued that the Isaiah tradition, whose namesake means "YHWH Saves," may have developed, in part, as an appropriation of this theme in the later contexts of the exilic and postexilic situations. To the degree that this conclusion is persuasive, it may offer readers another way to think about the composition of the canonical book, one which complements the standard critical tripartite picture of the book.


“The River at Its Source Sang”: Reading Ecological Selves in Aztlán and the New Jerusalem
Program Unit: John's Apocalypse and Cultural Contexts Ancient and Modern
Jacqueline M. Hidalgo, Claremont Graduate University

Global climate change has already caused states and cities throughout the southwestern United States to enter into litigation over the most valuable resource in the desert landscape, the fresh water of rivers. These same rivers have long been deeply informative of how people have understood themselves and their places in the region because rivers symbolize borders as well as a crucial source of life. One of the clearest examples of this can be found in Rudolfo Anaya's Heart of Aztlán where the main character recognizes himself through conversation with the river and the wind of the New Mexican landscape. Here the river provides a healing alternative to the economic exploitation of daily life while allowing the main character to claim a belonging to the land on which he lives. In a similar vein, some scholars of Revelation have noted the importance of the river of life's water for elucidating the contrasting political and economic vision of the New Jerusalem in relationship to ancient Rome symbolized as Babylon. Like Aztlán, the idea of the New Jerusalem has also informed how peoples have imagined themselves in relationship to the Southwest. Given the importance of these two utopian visions in imaginations of the Southwest, this paper investigates what possibilities and dangers reside in locating communal selves in utopian visions of rivers. Since Anaya"s Aztlán and Revelation"s New Jerusalem present this life-giving water as being both “without cost” and essential, what resources can be drawn from these imagined rivers of communal import? What considerations need to be put forth as the rivers of life in the Southwest fall under increasing and unequal ecological and economic pressures?


Egyptian Prophecy in Broader Ancient Near Eastern Perspective
Program Unit: Hebrew Scriptures and Cognate Literature
John W. Hilber, Dallas Theological Seminary

Previous studies on Egyptian “prophecy” have depended upon a “prognostics” definition derived from biblical prophecy, consequently limiting consideration to a genre of quasi-apocalytic Egyptian wisdom literature. However, Egyptian cultic practices offer implicit evidence of performance by prophetic functionaries, and the definition of prophecy currently used in broader Levantine and Mesopotamian studies raises new possibilities for regarding certain Egyptian texts as prophetic. This reconsideration opens new avenues for exploring the comparison between Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and biblical texts.


The Bible and Context: An Antipodean Angle
Program Unit: Contextual Biblical Interpretation
John Hill, Yarra Theological Union

Land is a central theme in the Hebrew scriptures and in public debate in Australia in both indigenous and non-indigenous communities. Writing as a non-indigenous Australian, I will explore some points of intersection between representations of the land in non-indigenous Australian literature and representations of the land in the Hebrew scriptures. My paper will focus on the novel/film Picnic at Hanging Rock and two Pentateuchal passages, Gen 28:10-22 and Exod 19:10-25. My reading will explore how the representation of the land in Picnic can be seen as a metaphor for the transcendent (similar in some ways to Rudolph Otto's idea of the mysterium tremendum). The text of Picnic thereby provides an interpretive window through which we can read Gen 28:10-22, a text which speaks of the power of land/place in disclosing the transcendent. My reading will also show how in Picnic the land is represented as something which threatens a European sense of order, and resists their attempts to dominate and subdue it. In this regard Picnic provides a window through which we can read Exod 19:10-25, behind which lie ideas of the sacred as a power which can overwhelm and might even destroy human beings. A biblical text such as Gen 28:10-22 can also act as a corrective to a common theme in Australian literature, i.e., that the land is duplicitous and dangerous, to the point of being lethal. The paper forms part of a larger project driven in part by the current environmental crisis in Australia, and which has the aim of reimagining the relationship between the land and non-indigenous Australian soceity.


Jeremiah the Book
Program Unit: Writing/Reading Jeremiah
John Hill, Yarra Theological Union

Recent studies on the composition of prophetic books (e.g., M. H. Floyd and R. D. Haak, eds., Prophets, Prophecy and Prophetic Texts, LHBOTS 427 [New York: T & T Clark, 2006]) have argued that they are essentially the product of the literati of the Persian period. In this paper I will take up this argument in the context of the book of Jeremiah and its compositional history. A long-standing approach to the book has been to situate it against the backdrop of the events either leading up to 587 BCE or those immediately following. In this approach the emphasis has often been on the prophetic message as an oral performance. However developments in the study of the book's two recensions suggest the need for a shift in focus, which I will take up in this paper. The first shift is from the pre-exilic to the post-exilic (i.e. Persian period) as a backdrop for the book's composition. The second is the shift from an understanding of the prophetic message as oral performance to a process of re-reading. The paper will explore the significance for the community of Yehud in the Persian period of Jeremian texts such as 1:4-10 (prophet to the nations), chap. 7 (the temple sermon), and 33:14-26, and the books representation of the figure of Babylon.


Pseudepigrapha in Context: The Dead Sea Scrolls and the “Pseudepigrapha in Christianity”
Program Unit: Pseudepigrapha
Martha Himmelfarb, Princeton University

In 1976 Josef Milik published the Aramaic fragments of 1 Enoch from among the Dead Sea Scrolls. As the entire corpus of Scrolls was published in the decades that followed, it turned out to contain fragments not only of pseudepigrapha already known to us but also of a number of previously unknown works with affinities to texts and genres found in the pseudepigrapha. At about the same time that Milik published the fragments of 1 Enoch, Robert Kraft called our attention to “the Pseudepigrapha in Christianity,” that is, the relatively late, usually Christian, context in which most of the pseudepigrapha are found. In my paper I would like to sketch some of the implications of the two development just noted, the new evidence of the Scrolls on the one hand and the insights of Kraft and scholars who followed in his footsteps on the other, for our understanding of ancient Judaism.


In the Eyes of the Beholder: Unmarked Attributed Quotations in the Book of Job
Program Unit: Biblical Hebrew Poetry
Edward Ho, McMaster Divinity College

****An attributed quotation consists of words that are meant to be understood as belonging to a person other than the primary speaker, regardless of their actual source, and only repeated by the primary speaker. In this type of quotation, the voice may change significantly, even in total opposition to that of the primary speaker, especially in disputation. The correct identification of attributed quotations is thus crucial in interpretation. Such a quotation can be marked by a verbum dicendi, an explicit verb of speaking or thinking, such as ???. Sometimes it can also be signalled by certain virtual markings. Any attributed quotation that falls outside the above criteria is recognized as unmarked. It is almost universally held that the book of Job contains unmarked attributed quotations. This paper calls into question this assumption. Moreover, Job 42:3a and 42:4 are almost unanimously interpreted as unmarked citations of Yahweh's former words by Job. In my observation, two assumptions are generally shared among these interpreters. First, the book of Job, they believe, undoubtedly contains unmarked attributed quotations. Second, Job has understood something transformative from the divine speeches and Job 42:2-6 represents a reversal of Job of some sort. To a certain extent, these two presuppositions in fact reinforce one another. As a corollary to my thesis, therefore, the hypothesis that Job has undergone a significant change of mind after the theophanic encounter might be put into jeopardy.


Theologizing from the Sweat House: Re-membering Kinship, Spirituality, Liturgy, and Land
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Robert Hoch, University of Dubuque Theological Seminary

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Word Order and Prominence in 2 Peter
Program Unit: Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics
David H. K. Hoe, Dallas Theological Seminary

This paper will look at the relationship between word order and prominence and its overall contribution to a discourse analysis of 2 Peter. The relationship between word order and topicalization is analyzed. Some criteria are proposed for determining the topic and comment of a Greek sentence based on given-new status, position, and function of the grammatical subject. The information status of discourse entities using Ellen Prince's taxonomy of new, invoked, and inferable is utilized. In analyzing clauses for word order in 2 Peter, the interesting cases involve the explicit expression of a grammatical subject. Two significant cases are noted. First, the subject seems to have focal prominence when it has new status and follows the verb since in this case it forms part of the comment and functions as a major topic marker for subsequent clauses. Second, when the evoked subject occurs before the verb, the tendency in 2 Peter is to express it as a pronoun, usually to bring attention to one of the main participants as the topic. In dependent clauses in 2 Peter, the default word order appears to be subject-verb-(complement) when the grammatical subject is explicitly encoded. In these cases, the subject typically introduces new or inferable information to support a statement in the main clause or to introduce a topic shift for subsequent clauses. Specific examples that are significant for exegesis are considered: 2 Peter 1:11; 1:18; 2:20-22. In sum, this analysis shows that one can not merely gather statistics on word order to determine prominence but information flow and topicality must be considered. Word order is one contributor to an understanding of what an author is highlighting as focal or thematic. Concurrence with other signifiers of prominence must also be considered before making a final assessment on the significance of word order.


Visions of Abraham: Pictoral Representations of the Aqedah from Mosaics to Moderns
Program Unit: Bible and Visual Art
Victoria Hoffer, Yale University

The Binding of Isaac (Genesis 22:1-14, 1-19, or 1-24, depending on how one reads it) is a story populated by few characters that progresses evenly paced and ever forward. Its language, devoid of adjectives and adverbs, is grammatically, lexically, and syntactically uncomplex. In contrast to its narrative simplicity is its emotional intensity. The tension between spare style and difficult content has stimulated the imagination of artists from earliest times. Even until today, the range of artistic exploration and exploitation of this text continues with unabated vigor. This presentation will examine a diverse assemblage of artwork and illustration inspired by the Aqedah. The discussion of each artistic production will include an analysis of the work, its use of the text, and the effect of the fusion of biblical and artistic inspiration. Then, with input from the audience, we will consider the ways artistic representations can affect and expand one's appreciation of this classic but ever elusive biblical chapter.


Digital Resources for Biblical Maps and Mapping
Program Unit: Computer Assisted Research
Mark G. Vitalis Hoffman, Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg

There is an abundance of digital resources now available for biblical maps and mapping. This presentation will provide an overview of the kinds of maps that are available and review mapping options on the Internet, as freestanding programs, and as modules within Bible software packages. Particular attention will be paid to the use of mapping tools for classroom purposes.


Elusive Wisdom and the Nations in Baruch
Program Unit: Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
Karina Martin Hogan, Fordham University

The book of Baruch in the Apocrypha is generally agreed to be a composite work, consisting of a narrative introduction, a penitential prayer, and two poems, the first of which (3:9–4:4) is usually called a wisdom poem and the second (4:5–5:9) a prophetic poem or poem of consolation. This paper focuses on the central poem, arguing that it is really an anti-wisdom poem, since it is opposed to the international wisdom tradition in which the biblical wisdom books participate. Identifying wisdom exclusively with the Torah, it claims that nations other than Israel are devoid of wisdom. The ethnocentric message of the central poem is mitigated by a more nuanced view of other nations in the other parts of the book. Certain allusions within the central poem connect it to the Deuteronomic prayer that precedes it and to the prophetic poem that follows it. The tendency of recent scholarship to emphasize the thematic unity of the book of Baruch lends support to a contextual reading of the central poem.


The Pagan Economy in the Late Republic and Early Empire
Program Unit: Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy
David Hollander, Iowa State University

While the New Testament contains a considerable amount of what might be termed economic advice e.g., "render unto Caesar" and "do not store up for yourselves treasure on earth," the pagan religions of the Roman Empire seem to offer little guidance about proper economic behavior. Nevertheless, Greek and Roman religious and economic institutions were closely interconnected. Temples functioned as banks, managed properties and created markets. Sacrifices and other religious observances generated considerable demand for certain commodities. Also, as Nicholas Rauh has shown, “religious fraternities served as the prevailing means of commercial organization” at Delos and elsewhere (Rauh 1993). My paper will examine the relationship of Greco-Roman paganism to the ancient economy in general and consider, in particular, how religious considerations influenced Roman economic behavior in the late Republic and early Empire.


Social Prejudice and Christian Origins
Program Unit: Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti
Paul A. Holloway, University of Glasgow

The conflict surrounding the emergence of Christianity in the early Roman Empire has traditionally been approached with judicial questions foremost in mind. Initially, these questions focused on the legislative powers of the emperor, but since the late 1960's and the publication of a spate of important articles by A. N. Sherwin-White, G. E. M. de Ste Croix and T. D. Barnes, emphasis has shifted more and more to the provincial governors and their courts. But there remain other equally vital questions to be asked, especially as regards the social origins of persecution, a point that Barnes himself anticipated: "It is in the minds of men, not in the demands of Roman law, that the roots of the persecution of the Christians in the Roman Empire are to be sought." In this paper I wish to pursue further the question of social origins. I shall focus in particular on the everyday conflict between Christians and their neighbors, which I believe can be helpfully analyzed in terms of what we today would call social prejudice. My paper will fall into two parts. I begin with a brief description of the nature and causes of social prejudice as these have been identified by modern social psychology, after which I apply these findings to the major evidence (both pagan and Christian) for the persecution of Christians up to the first general persecution by Decius in 250-51 C.E. My thesis is that social prejudice played a determinative role in these early persecutions and that a careful comparison with modern prejudice studies casts significant light on the ancient evidence, while at the same time lending conceptual clarity and a certain descriptive precision to our analysis.


The Syntax and Pragmatics of Pronouns in Northwest Semitic Texts
Program Unit: Ugaritic Studies and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy
Robert D. Holmstedt, University of Toronto

Attention to the pronominal system in NWS languages has focused mostly on morphological issues, such as the development of 3ms suffixed pronouns or the variation in the forms of the accusative and genitive pronouns. In this paper I will instead focus on the syntactic and pragmatic roles of independent pronouns, including the development of the pronominal copula in NWS.


King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon, My Servant, and the Cup of Wrath: Jeremiah's Imperial Fantasies and the Hope of Violence
Program Unit: Writing/Reading Jeremiah
Else K. Holt, University of Aarhus

Jer 25 (MT) creates the culmination of the diatribes against Judah in Jer 1-25, expanding the threat of divine punishment to cover the whole world and containing what seems at first glance to be just a scarce vestige of hope for Judah. My contribution intends to present an intra-textual re-reading of the (very diverse) metaphors of the chapter and a reformulation of the question of the fairness of these dire threats against nations which have served as God's own weapon against his unfaithful people.


Biblical Studies and Service-Learning: A Match Made in Heaven
Program Unit: Service-Learning and Biblical Studies
Michael M. Homan, Xavier University of Louisiana

Service Learning enables students in Biblical Studies to model the behavior of biblical authors and characters who, thousands of years ago, sought to improve the worlds in which they lived. I ask my students to make the world a better place by identifying a problem in the world and then to implement a solution. Throughout the semester, students perform their service learning project and reflect on how various biblical authors addressed similar issues. They write extensively about their project and course material in a published blog. Students are encouraged to pick projects that relate to their majors, and so this helps make the course material meaningful for their projected career plans. Moreover, this breaks down the barriers separating the classroom from the outside world, and while students learn that changing the world is not easy, they are taught the importance of trying make the world a better place.


Tool Time for Freshmen in Biblical Studies: A Pragmatic Approach to Hermeneutics
Program Unit: Academic Teaching and Biblical Studies
Renate Viveen Hood, LeTourneau University

This is a TEACHING TIP. I will (1) present the following paper, (2) provide handouts with an index of interpretive tools and the students" evaluation sheets, and (3) I will show a two-minute clip with an actual compilation of student presentations! My challenge in teaching the course “Biblical Literature” for freshmen undergraduate students is manifold: (1) I have a limited period of time to familiarize freshmen students with a broad body of literature, (2) I have to touch on matters of interpretation, and (3) a fair number of my students tend to be suspicious of critical methodologies and have been taught simply to “say what the text means.” The objective of this activity, “Tool Time,” is to provide the students with a hands-on group experience that requires them to focus on the means of the interpretation of biblical literature. Tool Time requires the students to consider a variety of critical methodologies as if they were to have a toolbox at their disposal. The task is to find the best tools (i.e. critical approaches) that will unlock the meaning of the given text. The students learn to use and evaluate critical tools. They must meet at least once outside of class time and use a handout with an index of tools available to interpret "their” passage. Herein is the catch: the students must come to a consensus regarding the most appropriate tools and resources for interpreting the text. Their conclusion, along with a rationale as to their choices, must be presented in a ten-minute class presentation. The class evaluates the presentation and the tools presented on individual evaluation sheets provided. Tool Time takes the fear out of the use of critical methodologies, encourages a group approach to interpretation and results in a better understanding of the genres of biblical literature.


Performance as a Bridge between Biblical Interpretation and Proclamation
Program Unit: Homiletics and Biblical Studies
Ruthanna Hooke, Virginia Theological Seminary

Preachers struggle to determine how best to bridge the hermenutical gap between reading biblical texts for their meaning in their initial historic contexts, and interpreting them as a living word for today's congregations. Using resources from the fields of systematic theology and performance theory, I propose to explore ways that memorizing and performing biblical texts is a means of interpreting texts for proclamation that holds promise for bridging this hermeneutical divide. Significantly, performing biblical texts engages the preacher's body as an instrument of exegesis and interpretation. I make the theological argument that the engagement of the body and specifically of the breath allows for the biblical text to become a holy word, in that these performance practices create conditions within which the Holy Spirit can vivify the word. Thus the argument of the paper involves outlining a doctrine of the Holy Spirit as that aspect of divine presence and agency that works through human bodies to make the divine word present and active through human words. The argument also draws on work in performance theory that explores the ways in which the body is involved in practices of interpretation. The paper also has a practical dimension, in that it recommends practices of performance as beneficial for preachers who seek to bridge the gap between biblical text and proclamation.


Diagnosing, Treating, and Healing the Sick and the Disabled Child in Early Christian Texts: Who, How, Why, and For Whose Sake?
Program Unit: Early Christian Families
Cornelia Horn, Saint Louis University

Set against the background of ancient medical theories and practices of caring for sick children, especially those suffering from epilepsy, this paper examines the role of the sick or disabled child and its treatment in the construction of the early Christian worldview. The approach of this study is comparative, analytical, and synthetic, relying in part on insights derived from medical anthropology. On the basis of data on cases of children's sickness and disability gleaned from the ancient novel, the New Testament, early Christian apocrypha, and selected patristic writings, the paper examines the availability of appropriate medical knowledge, ancient pediatric skills, concerns of patient care, the role and identity of the healer, and especially the effect of the diagnosis, treatment, or even healing of the medical condition on the child and its family. Problems that emerge in ancient texts are the difficulties encountered in finding diagnosis and appropriate treatment, issues of honor and shame in parenting a child suffering from a disease or disability, the family's crisis in the face of the loss of a child to a potentially fatal disease, the family members" extensive involvement with the sick child, or also the only relative value of the child"s life. This study contributes insights to at least two areas of knowledge at the intersection between childhood studies, healthcare, disability, and religion in the ancient Christian world. It assesses the practical knowledge of children"s health care needs displayed in the texts. It also shows how children, the weakest members of society, in situations of great adversity (disease, disability, or potential death) were perceived as posing both the greatest threat to the identity and continuance of their surroundings, as well as the greatest opportunity for bringing about change in a family or even tribal structure.


Neglected Figures in Neglected Apocrypha: Christian Arabic and Syriac Traditions
Program Unit: Christian Apocrypha
Cornelia Horn, Saint Louis University

Early Christian apocryphal texts in Syriac and Arabic shed light on the cultural milieu of Jesus" life that occupied ancient readers" imaginations. This early audience detected and in part recreated Jesus" world through recourse to their own lives" realities. Through creating the seemingly insignificant “other,” they opened up a space for themselves and their families" concerns in the text. This study surveys important witnesses to the text corpus of Christian apocrypha in Syriac and Arabic that highlight traditions related to Jesus life, from birth to crucifixion and resurrection. Other than the Arabic Infancy Gospel, texts like the Syriac Life of the Virgin Mary (“Nestorian” and “Jacobite” recensions) or the Apocryphal Arabic Gospel of John have hardly been taken note of by scholars. Yet these texts offer important data for the reconstruction of the portrayal of Jesus in the linguistic milieu that comes closest to the intersection between Christian and early Islamic literature (Horn, 2006, 2007, and forthcoming). They also are a treasure-trove for scholars probing the imagination of ancient interpreters of the biblical text who fit some of their own lives" concerns into the story. These texts bring into focus seemingly marginal figures, like the young volunteer woman who served the Holy Family on their travels through Egypt, the children accompanying Jesus on his last journey into Jerusalem, Mary's little sister Parroghita, or the perfume-seller and her son, whose commercial activities supplied the ointment for Jesus. Themes of every-day life, like slavery, adult affectionate recognition of the wisdom of children at play, parents" desire for offspring in conflict with the rising challenges of ascetic life, and the commercial side to aspects of salvation history throw unexpected, new light on ancient perceptions of people and factors that reshaped and transformed Jesus" ministry and life.


The Themes of 1 Peter: Insights from the Earliest Manuscripts
Program Unit: Letters of James, Peter, and Jude
David G. Horrell, University of Exeter

Recent developments in textual criticism have encouraged NT scholars to regard the various NT manuscripts not merely as sources of variant readings to enable a reconstruction of the original text but as interpretative renderings with their own intrinsic interest and as important material evidence for early Christianity. Taking up this cue, this paper examines what the earliest two manuscripts of 1 Peter indicate about the status of this writing, and what early readers took to be its key themes, and thus calls for some rethinking concerning the character and content of 1 Peter. In particular, the insights made possible by a recently published Coptic manuscript of (probably) the third century – as yet virtually unnoticed in recent commentaries, etc. – need to be brought to the attention of students of 1 Peter.


Evidence from Qumran on the Social History of Scribal Practice in Second-Temple Judea
Program Unit: Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism
Richard A. Horsley, University of Massachusetts Boston

Evidence from Qumran offers much light on the social history of scribes, both within the community itself, and more significantly in the wider history of second-temple Judean society. I would like to explore the subject in four steps. First, on the basis of recent critical studies of the social role of scribes in Judea and the earlier ANE (e.g., Carr 2004; Horsley 2007), it is increasingly clear that scribes served the Temple/high priestly aristocracy as advisers knowledgeable in the Judean cultural repertoire, including authoritative texts (e.g., Sir 38:24—39:11). This set up a conflict between their dependency on the priestly aristocracy and their loyalty to Mosaic Torah and other cultural traditions to which they were committed. Several circles of scribes (the maskilim; the “Enoch” scribes) acted out of loyalty to the latter when their high priestly patrons compromised too much with the dominant Hellenistic imperial culture to which they were vulnerable. The scribes and priests who withdrew to Qumran were thus the latest and most “radical” group of dissident scribes with a sense of (a higher) authority of their own who opposed the policy and actions of incumbent high priests. Second, it has become clear from the Scrolls found at Qumran that scribes cultivated all segments of the Judean cultural repertoire, i.e., prophetic and historical materials and texts as well as texts of Torah and different kinds of wisdom. Moreover, that this cultivation was oral as well as written can now be discerned in Qumran texts, with the help of recent studies of scribal training elsewhere. Third, that scribal cultivation of texts was oral in close interaction with writing enables us to understand certain texts discovered at Qumran as the continuing composition of alternative texts of Torah rather than as “rewritten Bible/Pentateuch.” Fourth, the oral as well as written cultivation of legal Torah helps us understand the importance of rival scribal circles (Qumran scribes vs. the “smooth interpreters”) in ongoing generation of legal rulings in the cultural tradition. All of these facets of scribal practice reveal more clearly than ever the importance, when the priestly aristocracy was increasingly compromised under imperial rule, of competing/ rival scribal circles in both the continuing development of authoritative texts and the continuity of Judean cultural tradition.


“Cosmic Catastrophe” or Political Crisis
Program Unit: Ecological Hermeneutics
Richard A. Horsley, University of Massachusetts Boston

Biblical scholars have tended to read Judean apocalyptic texts through the lens of the modern synthetic construct of “apocalypticism.” The various lists of typical features include its negative attitude toward the earth and earthly life. “The end appears as a vast cosmic catastrophe” (Koch, 29). Apocalypses supposedly feature “judgment/destruction of the world” and “cosmic transformation” (Collins, 6). These particular features in the modern scholarly construct of “apocalypticism,” however, appear to be the result of overly literalistic piecemeal reading of texts with little attention to standard Israelite cultural traditions. When we read the texts as complete documents with attention to literary mode, cultural tradition, and social-political context, such features disappear. We see instead two sorts of variations on traditional cultural materials: (1) New announcements of God's appearance to straighten out a history that has run amuck that draw upon Israelite traditions of theophany. (2) Drawing on long-standing scribal cultivation of cosmological wisdom, visions of the divine governance of the universe (heaven and earth), its disruption by rebel heavenly forces, and reassurance that God is still in or will regain control. Far from being negative about the earth and societal life, apocalyptic texts affirm the creation. They focus rather on historical crises, specifically war, destruction, and oppression imposed by imperial kings. And they portray the resolution of the historical crisis as God's renewal of the creation as the place where people can finally have peace in order to practice justice. The textual focus of discussion will be on the Book of Watchers in 1 Enoch 1-36, the Testament of Moses, and the Similitudes of Enoch. Judean apocalyptic texts, far from being problematic, can bolster our current ecological concerns. For example, the visions and interpretations condemn the kings of the earth, and the rebel heavenly powers that inspired them, for transforming earthly minerals into weapons of destruction (and devastating the earth in warfare) and precious metals (for conspicuous consumption and display).


Crossing the Threshold: The Bent-over Woman as Liminal Imaginative Space in the Gospel of Luke
Program Unit: Healthcare and Disability in the Ancient World
Natalie Houghtby-Haddon, George Washington University

The Bent-Over Woman pericope (Luke 13:10-17) is found only in the gospel of Luke. Consequently, it has received relatively little scholarly attention. At first glance, the story seems to be similar to many of the other healings, exorcisms, and Sabbath controversies recorded throughout the gospel corpus. I argue, however, that the story is carefully crafted by the author of Luke to provide a narrative space in which the hearers of the gospel can imagine their lives differently. Using Victor Turner's dual concepts of liminality and social drama and recent theoretical work in disability studies, in addition to more traditional historical-critical exegetical methods, I explore how the liminality of the woman herself (female, disabled, “bound”), the liminality of the location in which the encounter takes place (a synagogue “on the way”), as well as the liminality of the time on which it occurs (Sabbath) and of Jesus" actions themselves (does he heal? Cure? Liberate?) all work to create a fluid setting in which traditional social expectations and assumptions can be examined, tested, and, perhaps, renegotiated. With this data in hand, I then explore how the story serves as a focusing lens through which themes seen in other stories throughout the gospel and Acts come together to present a coherent vision for how the community for whom this gospel is written might choose to organize its life together.


New Discoveries for the Old Latin Text of John
Program Unit: Novum Testamentum Graecum: Editio Critica Maior
Hugh Houghton, ITSEE, University of Birmingham

As part of work on the critical edition of the Vetus Latina Iohannes, some of the "mixed text" manuscripts have been transcribed in full, apparently for the first time. One has been identified as having an Old Latin text in portions of John, and features a couple of significant readings unique in the Latin tradition. Others appear to form a sub-group which may be of significance for the early history of the Vulgate.


Teaching the Synoptic Problem: Teaching Students to Think Developmentally and Critically
Program Unit: Synoptic Gospels
David B. Howell, Ferrum College

According to developmental psychologists, every person has an “epistemological theory” – some way of construing the nature of truth and knowledge. Studies of college students show that most students enter colleges as received or absolute knowers who develop more complex ways of knowing through their college experiences. Developmental theory can not only provide teachers with a helpful heuristic framework for understanding student responses to the academic study of the Bible, it can also help teachers design assignments that facilitate development. Teaching the Synoptic problem with the different versions of stories and sayings of Jesus provides a fruitful context for challenging students to think critically and in more complex ways. For example, if one of the hallmarks of students thinking at the dualistic level is the difficulty they have in recognizing that multiple perspectives exist legitimately, they will be challenged by multiple perspectives. I thus organize my New Testament class so that we look not at a canonical Jesus, but a literary Jesus. That is to say, students study the different portraits of Jesus painted by each gospel rather than a harmonized and synthesized picture. That step comes only after students have read the different gospels. In this paper, I will discuss some exercises I use with the Synoptic problem to introduce the gospels as literature of faith and thus help students see that the evangelists have their own voices and portraits of Jesus.


The Idea of “A Prophet like Moses” in Deuteronomy
Program Unit: Deuteronomistic History
Wan-Lin Hsu, Taiwan Theological College and Seminary

This paper seeks to provide a plausible answer to the question, “how can priests be identified as the interested party in the idea of "a prophet like Moses"”? The suggestion is that the narrow, limited function of the idea of "a prophet like Moses" is likely to be a construct created by a late editor with a priestly background. A possible reason for limiting the office of prophet would have been a power conflict between priestly factions in the contemporary society. I propose that the phrase, 'a prophet like Moses', is a Deuteronomistic construct designed to limit the role of the prophet to that of a one-way mediator and an interpreter of Moses" Torah. It probably was added to the book in the post-exilic period by someone of priestly origin, who wanted to give authority to the changing role of the prophet at that time, by placing a divine pronouncement concerning the future development back in time, in association with the giver of Torah, Moses.


Revealing a Queer Hermeneutic: Or, How Gazing at the Whore Made Me a Better Biblical Interpreter
Program Unit: LGBTI/Queer Hermeneutics
Lynn Huber, Elon University

Revelation is a book that has been and continues to be dismissed. As early as the fourth century interpreters had debated whether it really could be described as a “revelation” and even some modern biblical scholars dismiss the text on account of its violence and its “poor vision of future justice,” among other reasons. For many, Revelation is either incomprehensible or unredeemable. In this way, the book that sits at the edge of the canon shares something with many lesbian, gay, queer, transgendered and bisexual people, who have been and who continue to be dismissed by cultures that finds those who do not fit into the heterosexual mold incomprehensible and unredeemable. This shared experience of dismissal and marginalization is not the only reason that a queer audience might be drawn to Revelation. Even though Revelation's imagery and language may not be easily or literally translated into visions of LGBTQ liberation (a characteristic that Revelation shares with other parts of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian canon), it can be read as an attempt at both subverting the social and political realities in which it is situated, including normative views of gender and the family. Revelation's subversions of dominant political and social perspectives can be understood as part of a liberative vision in which those oppressed by the dominant culture are vindicated by God. In view of this, this essay explores the possibility that Revelation might serve as a heuristic for thinking about queer biblical hermeneutics. This is not specifically an attempt at recouping elements of Revelation"s vision for a queer Christian theology, but an attempt at learning from the rhetorical moves of this text. By examining, 1) how Revelation works to reveal what has been hidden (both the true nature of the dominant culture and the possibility of an alternative reality), 2) negotiates ancient gender and sex norms by depicting the ideal community as males virgins who become the bride of the Lamb and 3) employs queer desire as a means of persuasion, I argue that Revelation can help us think about strategies for queer hermeneutics. Even though LBGTQ interpreters might ultimately reject aspects of this text, perhaps Revelation can provide queer interpreters a resource for building a hermeneutical framework aimed at dismantling oppressive structures and building liberative possibilities.


Luke 24:13–35 and Social Memory in Luke
Program Unit: Mapping Memory: Tradition, Texts, and Identity
Sandra Huebenthal, Aachen University

Social and cultural memory theory has brought new insights into New Testament research. It is interesting to analyze how these ideas can by applied to Luke, a Gospel that is usually understood to be rather a historiographic work than a chronicle of collective memory. Maybe this aspect of Lucan writing has been underestimated in the past. Luke 24:13-35 can be a key text for a fresh approach to the whole Gospel. Read in the light of social memory theory, »the eleven and those who were with them« can be understood as a community of memory who formulates their criteria for participation. Before anyone else could speak, they tell their founding story: »The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!« Whatever the two disciples are about to say, there is no way of becoming members of the group against this testimony. In fact: whoever wants to belong has to subordinate to the group's power of naming and find a place where his/her own memory is abrogated in the group's identity. The Emmaus account shows this dynamic specifically as it works on two levels: it is addressing the characters in story as well as the readers. The paper starts at this point and explores in how far the Emmaus account is a pattern that can also be found in other parts of the Gospel.


Experimental Intertextuality, Patristic Sarah-Mary Typologies, and Matthean Christology
Program Unit: Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity
Leroy Huizenga, Wheaton College

Patristic interpreters such as Ambrose, Chrysostom, Ephrem Graecus and the author of the Opus Imperfectum in Matthaeum perceived and presented striking thematic connections between the Virgin Mary's conception of Jesus and barren Sarah's conception of Isaac. Appropriating the insights of triadic semiotics and reader-oriented textual theory as developed in Stefan Alkier"s conception of “experimental intertextuality,” these patristic observations help us recover a neglected Matthean allusion: the angelic announcement to Joseph concerning Mary"s virginal conception of Jesus (Matt 1:18-25) exhibits significant syntactic and thematic parallels to God"s announcement to Abraham concerning barren Sarah"s promised conception of Isaac (Gen 17:19 LXX), thus establishing an apologetic typology between the two holy families. This Matthean passage is therefore the first instance of the tradition linking Sarah and Mary and an example of patristic interpretation standing in fundamental continuity with canonical Christian Scripture.


Synoptic Interpretation and Model Readers
Program Unit: Semiotics and Exegesis
Leroy Huizenga, Wheaton College

Although redaction criticism is at present the dominant methodological paradigm for interpreting the synoptic Gospels, it suffers several defects. In attempting to determine authorial intention as propositional content on the basis of perceived changes to presumed sources, it separates content from the narrative form in which the evangelists intended their Gospels to be read and thus does not give sufficient attention to the syntactical arrangement of the lexematic surface of the text. This paper will contend that a disciplined, reader-oriented triadic semiotic approach can do justice to both the literary and historical aspects of the Gospels.


Undergraduates' Responses to Matthean Parables Attributed to and Not Attributed to Jesus
Program Unit: Poster Session
John Hull, Bethany College

In a follow-up and extension of a poster presentation at last year's SBL meeting, 44 college students read several parables attributed to Jesus in the gospel of Matthew, then evaluated those parables on 17 dimensions (e.g., The passage is critical of others; The tone of the passage is very loving) from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree. All participants read a set of “pink-letter” parables, judged by the Jesus Seminar (The Five Gospels, 1993) to be similar to what Jesus probably said, and a set of “black-letter” parables, judged by the Jesus Seminar to be things Jesus did not say. Pink-letter parables were rated significantly less: judgmental, critical, aggressive, focusing on sinfulness, “doom and gloom,” and pessimistic than the black-letter parables. In addition, pink-letter parables were rated significantly more: loving, comforting, and passive. Women and men did not differ significantly in their average responses on any of the 17 dimensions. This poster presentation includes suggestions for using this methodology in a wide variety of interpretive contexts.


Grand Entrance: Entrance into Worship as Rhetorical Invitation and Liturgical Precedent in the Old Testament
Program Unit: Bible in Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Traditions
Edith M. Humphrey, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary

This study represents the first stage in a project addressing controversies concerning worship in North American ecclesial communities. My working hypothesis is that the Western “worship wars” need to be contextualized by the recognition that worship has, since the earliest days of the Church, been understood as something entered into, not created out of whole cloth. My point of departure is biblical analysis, in this case of Old Testament texts, not only of passages where worship is directly described, but also where “entrance” emerges as visual symbol, rhetorical invitation or theological insight. Applying a literary-rhetorical method to those passages where the motifs of “entrance” and worship converge, I will demonstrate how this idea is deeply embedded in the tabernacle/temple worship of the OT, (an understanding that carried over into the NT communities) and in the underlying view of God's cosmos as inter-connected. In particular, the Psalms, Chronicles and Isaiah picture the boundary between heaven and earth as startlingly permeable, and invite God's people to join in a synaxis that goes beyond this world. Pursuant to the Biblical analyses, I will trace a continuity of approach between the first century and next formative centuries, without ignoring the variety evident in the early Church, and without blurring the historical complexities. An understanding of worship as corporate entrance into the presence of God was nurtured variously in West and the East, with the strongest note being sounded in mature Eastern liturgies, but with apparent analogues in the West. The prominence of this concept in the Bible, in various liturgies, and in the Eastern Church today offers a salutary perspective for those seeking to understand the fullness of Christian worship.


To Be or Not to Be: A Reexamination of the Divine Presence in Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic History
Program Unit: Deuteronomistic History
Michael Hundley, University of Cambridge

Although name theology remains the consensus, scholarly critiques of the theory have become increasingly trenchant, especially those of Wilson and Richter. This paper reassesses divine presence in light of and in response to these proposals. It first looks to texts outside Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic History to provide a range of meaning for the name. It then builds on Wilson's work by examining divine presence in Deuteronomy, 2 Samuel 7 and 1 Kings 8 without reference to the disputed name formulae, positing that in each God is present, at least in some form, on earth, and, in Deuteronomy and 1 Kings 8, he is also present in heaven. With this foundation in place, my argument returns to name formulae. After accepting Richter's basic premise that lešakken šemô šam and lasûm šemô šam mean 'to place the name' on the basis of Akkadian parallels with some qualifications, I reexamine her ANE data and come to different conclusions regarding its import. Instead of merely connoting ownership and by extension hegemony, as elsewhere, the name in the name formulae is multivalent. In all of its various manifestations, placing one's name shares a common basis; it ensures that the named gets whatever benefits are to be had, with the result that the named accrues certain obligations and consequences. Finally, the paper reexamines the usage of the name in 2 Samuel 7 and 1 Kings 8, concluding that the name has a dual role, connoting practical presence and simultaneously shrouding the nature of that presence in mystery.


Response to Barclay and Breytenbach
Program Unit: Pauline Theology
George Hunsinger, Princeton Theological Seminary

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Beyond Anthropocentrism: Towards a Rereading of Pauline Ethics
Program Unit: Ecological Hermeneutics
Cherryl Hunt, University of Exeter

Appeals to Pauline texts in ecotheology and environmental ethics have understandably concentrated on certain favourite texts. Romans 8.19-23 and Colossians 1.15-20 are the best-known and most cited examples, important due to their insistence that the whole creation is bound up in the liberating and reconciling work of God. These texts provide a starting point, a hermeneutical lens, with which to begin a further, important task, that of re-reading Pauline ethics more generally, to see whether and where there might be potential for developing and extending these beyond their (obvious) anthropocentric focus. Themes such as imitation of Christ's self-giving for others, koinonia, reconciliation, freedom, and so on, invite reconsideration. Such a re-reading does not pretend that Paul himself intended or envisaged such a broadening of the ethical scope of his teaching. Rather, following the approach outlined by Ernst Conradie, it is shaped by a hermeneutical perspective that emerges from a reading of the texts in our present context, with its pressing ecological issues, and which in turn opens up possibilities of further fresh readings.


Psalms at Sukkot: The Use of Psalms in the Jerusalem Cultus of the Late Tanakh Period
Program Unit: Book of Psalms
Alastair G. Hunter, University of Glasgow

Many claims are made about the cultic use of psalms, based primarily on two assumptions: the existence of a body of psalms deployed in the royal worship of pre-exilic Judah; and the relevance of the Mishnah evidence to the actual performances of the festivals prior to the destruction of the temple in 70 CE. In this paper I examine the evidence, as far as it exists within near-contemporary documents, for liturgical usage in the period from 300 BCE to the 70 CE, and propose that the period of the festival of Sukkot is a key to understanding how particular psalms may actually have contributed to the cult.


Sex and Prayer in 1 Corinthians 7: Ambrosiaster and the Development of Clerical Sexual Continence
Program Unit: History of Interpretation
David G. Hunter, University of Kentucky

Paul's advice on marriage and celibacy in 1 Corinthians 7 has been a source of difficulty for commentators, both ancient and modern. 1 Cor 7:5 has been especially troubling because of Paul's recommendation that married couples abstain from sex “for a set time to devote yourselves to prayer.” The verse has inspired radical encratite interpretations, such as that of the second-century Tatian (in Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 3.12.81), who argued that Paul"s advice precluded sexual relations for serious Christians. Later, Origen of Alexandria suggested that Paul"s admonition might apply to reception of the eucharist, noting that “the prayer of a man and woman who live in purity is not the same as the prayer of those who engage in sexual relations” (Fr. 34 on 1 Cor). Origen"s interpretation directly influenced fourth-century Christians, such as Jerome, who claimed that “in view of the purity of the body of Christ, all sexual intercourse is unclean” (Against Jovinian 1.20). By the later years of the fourth century, 1 Corinthians 7:5 was being invoked to support a requirement of sexual abstinence for higher clergy in the Western church (Damasus, Ad Gallos episcopos II.6; Siricius, ep. 5.9). The fourth-century biblical commentator known as the “Ambrosiaster” is one of the earliest sources of evidence for the requirement of clerical sexual continence. He also discussed 1 Corinthians 7:5 in several places: in his commentary on 1 Cor 7:5, in his commentary on 1 Tim 3:12-13, and in his Quaestio 127, De peccato Adae et Evae. Unlike many of his contemporaries, however, Ambrosiaster offered a more moderate assessment of sexual relations between married Christians. This paper will examine Ambrosiaster"s interpretation of 1 Corinthians 7:5 and its import for the question of clerical sexual continence.


“Long Live the King!” 1 Samuel 10:17–27 in Light of Ahansali Intra-Tribal Mediation
Program Unit: Social Sciences and the Interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures
Jeremy Hutton, Princeton Theological Seminary

In his study of the Ahansal tribe of 20th c. Morocco (The Saints of the Atlas), Ernest Gellner analyzed the hereditary office of agurram ('saint"), an office that consisted primarily of inter- and intra-group mediation. This mediation occurred in three dominant areas of Berber social life: the seasonal competition between systems of production predicated on their respective assertions of land-use rights, the arbitration of the blood feud, and the selection of tribal leaders. It is this last function of the Saints that this paper explores: the Ahansal agurram functions as an external arbitrator in the yearly "elections" of Berber chiefs. Elections are governed by principles of “rotation and complementarity” between Berber moieties (Gellner, p. 81), so that in theory the “Saints think and claim they appoint [the tribal leaders], when in fact they [only] ratify and mediate” the elections (ibid., p. 98). This model provides two significant parallels to the lot-casting ceremony of 1 Sam 10:17-27. First, a similarly segmentary social structure is implied in that ceremony (esp. vv. 20-21). Second, Samuel fulfills a role similar to that of an Ahansali agurram through his arbitration of the ceremony. These two parallels lead to two final conclusions: a) in the posited original form of the account, the office to which Saul was selected was plausibly and most likely a function of rotational and complementary ad hoc leadership, and was not intended as a hereditary monarchy; and b) the claim made by the prophetic redactors of 1 Samuel 7-15 to have been instrumentally involved in the establishment of the monarchy (with, e.g., B. Birch, The Rise of the Israelite Monarchy) is an idealistic retrojection of absolute prophetic authority onto a much more reserved historically- and socially-circumscribed reality.


What Is the Reader Expected to Know? The Case of Joseph, Zulaika, and Women with Knives
Program Unit: Qur'an and Biblical Literature
Rodney R. Hutton, Trinity Lutheran Seminary

Quite commonly the Quran presents brief allusions to biblical stories and to related traditions that only hint at larger narrative complexes, leaving the reader to wonder what was assumed to have been the larger narrative context known by the Qur"anic presentation and what it is that the reader was and is supposed to know. This study will struggle toward an analysis of that question, using as an example the story of the seduction of Joseph by Zulaika, the wife of Potiphar, and in particular the reference to the scene in which the gathered women cut their hands with knives.


The Literary Relationship between Samuel and Kings
Program Unit: Deuteronomistic History
Juerg Hutzli, University of Bern, University of Zurich

In recent research on the literary history of the Former Prophets several scholars argue for a first deuteronomistic history book consisting of 1 Sam–2 Kings. In 1 Sam 1:1 they see a suitable beginning of the whole work. C. Westermann's view contradicts this model. He puts emphasis on the different genres. While 1-2 Sam above all includes stories, 1-2 Kings, consists mainly of historycal accounts. In regard to the question concerning the literary relationship between Sam and Kings we should also take into consideration important theological divergences between the two books. The purpose of the proposed paper is to show the evidence of such discrepancies as well as to reassess the literary historical rapport between Sam and Kings. Certain tendencies of the stories of Samuel – the positive interest for northern cult-places (i.e. Shilo, Rama, Bethel, Gilgal, Nob), the drawing of a very ambiguous image of David – are in conflict with the main principles of the authors of 1-2 Kings: essential for their judging of Israelite and Judean kings is the strict observation of the command of cult centralization and the imitation of a king David who in 1-2 Kings is seen absolutely positive. As for the missing idea of the cult centralization in 1-2 Sam one might be inclined to argue, that in 1-2 Sam the First Temple has not been built yet. However, if we had to assume the ideology of cult centralization also behind 1-2 Sam, we would expect for 1-2 Sam such explanatory-apologizing remarks as in 1 Kings 3:2-3 too, but they are lacking.


The Lukan Jesus at Table: A Lowland Filipino Christian Reading
Program Unit: Asian and Asian-American Hermeneutics
Marilou Ibita, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

This paper explores a Filipino way of reading the Lukan meal scenes of Jesus. Luke's narrative presents Jesus in a cyclically changing role at table from guest to host and servant and food and drink himself. From this perspective, a facet of Jesus" mission can be described as a meal ministry. A vision of the kingdom of God that he proclaims can be seen as a banquet for all. It follows that the challenge of discipleship can also go in the same direction. The most important example of this is found in the story of Jesus" Last Supper. This picture of Jesus at the Last Supper is very dear to Filipinos and the Lukan portrait of Jesus" changing roles at table is not alien to them. Their own rich food culture which also shows table fellows growing from being guest to host and servant express the importance of table fellowship for them- sharing of life. Given this food culture and penchant for the Christological image of Jesus at table as well as the Filipinos fondness for story-telling make a characterization of Jesus" at table one of the culturally significant ways of understanding the gospel message today. In this paper, we would like to suggest that the Filipinos" devotion to the Last Supper can be rooted in the Lukan picture of Jesus who occupies different roles at table so that it can spur them to a more relevant way of being Christians today in the face of the injustice of hunger in their Filipino and Asian contexts.


The Origin and Identity of Early Israel: A Social Identity Approach
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible, History, and Archaeology
Pong Dae Im, Graduate Theological Union

Since the history of early Israel is a subject of much debate, it has become evident that biblical accounts of early Israel donot represent historical fact. While the biblical accounts dominate the tradition of Israelite origins outside of Palestine, recent proposals have emphasized Israelite indigenous origins within Palestine and the expansion of rural villages in the Palestinian highlands during Iron I Age. A majority of scholars now would embrace the theory that the earliest Israelite settlers came from sedentary Canaanite populations of the Late Bronze Age. If they seem formerly to have been indigenous Canaanites, not “foreign invaders,” what is the salience of distinguishing between the highland settlers and lowland Canaanite people? How can we identify Israel and its organization in terms of the settlement of early Israel? If salience fosters social categorization and distinctions among groups, we may ask: What kinds of factors influence level of identification with the group? In terms of these questions, the aim of this paper is to argue that social identity theory is likely to provide additional understanding of the origin and identity of early Israel. While it does not supplant the archeological and anthropological perspectives of early Israel, it adds a social identity perspective, which may help to understand some of the recent issues of early Israel.


Origen's Attitude towards Judaism and Jewish Sources in an Apologetic Context: The Case of the Efficacious Names (Contra Celsum I 24–25; V 45; VIII 37)
Program Unit: Early Jewish Christian Relations
Sabrina Inowlocki, Université Libre de Bruxelles

In his Contra Celsum, Origen deals with the efficaciousness of certain barbarian names. These well-known passages have been discussed in a number of places, either in relation to philosophical debates about the nature of language, or in relation to Platonic theurgy and magic. Yet despite the (often underestimated) importance of Jewish influence on Origen's discussion of efficacious names, few studies have examined these passages in the context of Origen's relation to Judaism. In this paper, I will look at his discussion on names as a lens through which to assess his appropriation of and detachment from Judaism and Jewish sources. Indeed, on the one hand, Origen uses and is influenced by Jewish sources, promoting an interpretation of efficacious names which is akin to Jewish conceptions of the divine name; on the other hand, he attempts to draw a distinction between the Christian use of the name of Jesus and other - including Jewish – uses of divine names. He also clearly breaks up with a Jewish Hellenistic tradition which emphasizes the equivalence between the name of God and that of Zeus. Thus through this particular discussion on names and languages, this paper will seek to provide a nuanced view of Origen"s attitude towards Judaism and Jewish sources in an apologetic context.


Modern Scholarship and Identity Construction in Hellenistic Judaism: The Problematic Case of Artapanos
Program Unit: Hellenistic Judaism
Sabrina Inowlocki, Université Libre de Bruxelles

To date, Artapanos is a bit of a conundrum for the students of Hellenistic Judaism. His fragments, and his description of Moses in particular, have attracted a great deal of attention. This paper will aim to call into question common assumptions regarding Artapanos and his fragments. Through this analysis, this presentation will attempt to shed some light on larger issues related to Hellenistic Judaism and Hellenistic Jewish literature. Indeed, many scholars are baffled by Artapanos" presentation of Moses as instigating zoolatry in Egypt because it does not fit their representation of Judaism. Consequently, these fragments are considered at best as "odd", at worst as being of non-Jewish authorship. In this paper, I wish to use the evidence found in Artapanos in order to question the manner in which scholars envision Hellenistic Judaism. I will show how, on occasion, they mistakenly apply contemporary religious categories to ancient Jewish Hellenistic texts. In addition, I will provide a fresh re-assessment of Artapanus" literary endeavour. Focusing on the specific manner in which he re-deploys the biblical stories of Abraham, Joseph and Moses, I will attempt to shed new light on his construction of Jewish identity. In particular, I will concentrate on the way in which he articulates Jewish, Greek, and Egyptian identities as well as on the role played by apologetics in his fragments.


Teaching the Bible in the Bridal Chamber: A Thematic Analysis of the Nag Hammadi Codex II
Program Unit: Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism
Eduard Iricinschi, Princeton University

This paper attempts to identify the rationale for the composition of the Nag Hammadi Codex II through a thematic analysis across its seven writings. Its main argument holds that the texts of Codex II provided a hypothetical fourth-century Egyptian reader with a series of interpretations to the Book of Genesis through the description of various acts of creation as the loss of unity. Moreover, the paper argues that the texts in Codex II pair the exegeses to Genesis with interpretations of 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, and 1 Thessalonians in order to single out the non-sexual practice of bridal chamber, and present it as the best way to retrieve the unity lost through generations. The pedagogical features of Codex II become apparent in its consistent use of questions and answers through which revelations of secret teachings lead to debates on forms of resurrection. Finally, the paper argues that female characters receive a significant place in Codex II. If they follow the tortuous road to repentance (Sophia) or toward androgyny (the bridal chamber), the women of the Nag Hammadi Codex II become eligible for the ascetic paideia centered on Genesis and Paul's letters.


Whose Synagogue Is This Anyway? Disputing Prophetic Traditions in Matthew's Textual Community
Program Unit: Scripture as Artifact
Eduard Iricinschi, Princeton University

This paper takes a close look at the use of Hebrew Bible quotations in the gospel of Matthew, paying special attention to the expressions that introduce these quotations. Far from being random introductory catchwords spread in Matthew's text, these formulas point to different practices of writing, reading, listening, or prophesying within Matthew's learned community. This position also allows me to understand Matthew"s ekklesia as a synagogue, structured by Hellenistic school settings. I also hold that Matthew criticized the scribes of formative Judaism in 80-90 CE, for failing to include Jesus" messianic role in the larger Hebrew prophetic tradition. The gospel circulated in Matthew"s community not only as a fundamental element for its religious and social identity, but also as a debate manual, for use in confrontations with opponents of Jesus movement. One of its main roles was to claim for Matthew"s ekklesia the right to interpret prophetic texts in the Jesus movement. As such, the students of Matthew school learned how to use snippets of prophecy as arguments to gain territory in the shifting dispute over the leadership of the synagogue.


Annual Greek New Testament Reading Program
Program Unit: Poster Session
Lee Irons, Fuller Theological Seminary

In this poster I describe a program for reading the Greek New Testament on an annual basis using only The UBS Greek New Testament: A Reader's Edition and my Greek Syntax Notes. The program presupposes one year of elementary New Testament Greek as typically taught at a theological seminary or the equivalent. The focus of the program is on deepening one's skill at reading the Greek New Testament by exposure to manageable amounts of continuous text on a daily basis (a maximum of 37 verses per day). My innovative program provides a synthetic and holistic approach to the mastery of New Testament Greek.


Rethinking Mark's Parable of the Wicked Tenants: A Narrative Reading of the Anonymous “Others”
Program Unit: Biblical Criticism and Literary Criticism
Kelly Iverson, University of St. Andrews

The Parable of the Wicked Tenants (Mark 12:1-12) has been regarded as one the most difficult parables in the Synoptic Tradition. Discussion surrounding this enigmatic parable has typically focused on questions of authenticity, the relationship between the versions in the Synoptics and the Gospel of Thomas, and the origin, meaning, and significance of the parable within the context of Jesus" ministry and/or the Sitz em Leben of the early church. Unfortunately, what has often been minimized, if not altogether neglected in such discussions, is the broader narrative context in which the parable is situated. In this paper, I argue that after the tenants are judged for their maltreatment of the owner's servants and son, the unidentified “others” to whom the vineyard is given is a veiled reference to the Gentiles. Though this interpretation has been suggested by others, attempts to link the Gentiles and “others” have often been dismissed—characterized as “unsubstantiated” and “without argument”—because the exegesis has typically been based upon developments within the early church, rather than the text itself. In contrast, I advance a narrative reading of Mark's parable that examines how the Isaianic vineyard (Isa. 5.1-7) has been re-crafted by the evangelist and must be re-interpreted within the context of Mark"s story. Features within the parable, as well as the wider plot structure of the narrative, both indicate that the pericope functions strategically within the development of Mark"s Gentile mission, looking back upon Israel"s obstinance and the inferiority of the Gentiles, while at the same time foreshadowing the climax of the drama and new priority of the Gentiles in the proclamation of the gospel.


A Couple of Collaborators: Rahab and Delilah, Comedy and Feminist Hermeneutics
Program Unit: Feminist Hermeneutics of the Bible
Melissa Jackson, University of Oxford

Quite surprisingly, comedy and feminist interpretive method have several points of contact. The most significant of these points are (1) an acknowledgement of the influence of context and the subjectivity it creates, (2) a keen awareness of a subject/object duality and of "the Other" and (3) a frequently subverting (and thus, potentially, liberating) attitude. Thus scrutinizing biblical texts through the lens of the comic, interestingly, has something to offer feminist hermeneutics. The narratives featuring Rahab (Josh 2) and Delilah (Judg 16.4-22) exhibit many characteristics of comedy, including use of stock characters, wordplay, irony, sexual-ness, trickery, hiddenness, a situational ethic and an inversion of expectation. In both narratives, "the Other" acts as deliverer of her "chosen" people. Yet, while one is a hero, the other is a villain. What then is the difference between these two foreigners? One champions Israel, helping deliver them to victory; the other delivers an Israelite champion, helping bring about his defeat. Making comedy out of men who are fool enough to be bested by women can never be difficulty-free for feminist-critical readers. However, comedy made of women who are savvy enough to best men can offer a model of subversion, survival and liberation that will resonate strongly with many of these same readers. In the Hebrew Bible, the unyielding boundaries of Israel come into contact with the flexible boundaries of comedy. At this meeting place, one frequently encounters a woman. And that is funny.


Surrogacy as a Performance of Violent Love: Reading Luke's Mary alongside Low Caste Surrogate Women in India
Program Unit: Gender, Sexuality, and the Bible
Sharon Jacob, Drew University

It is a truism that the world has become smaller as a result of globalization. Few countries have embraced globalization more enthusiastically than India, and much that was until recently impossible has now become possible. Globalization has, however, come with a price in India, and this price is being paid through the bodies of women. Indian women's bodies have become sites where globalization both oppresses and liberates. The case of surrogacy in India has been gaining a lot of attention recently. Western women with money and means have been finding potential surrogates in rural and low caste Indian women. The bodies of these Indian women have therefore become sites where westernization literally gets reproduced. In this paper, I read the figure of Mary in the Lukan infancy narrative through and alongside the body of the low caste/rural Indian woman caught up in the now globalized surrogacy economy. Just as Mary's body is impregnated with something that transcends the material circumstances of her peasant world, so too is the body of the surrogate Indian woman impregnated with something that transcends the material circumstances of her low caste/rural world. By reading the two bodies side by side, I hope to deconstruct the strict binaries between liberation and oppression and blur them in order to illustrate the performance of violent love that is carried out by and upon Mary and the Indian low caste surrogate woman. My paper argues that reading Mary through the lens of the Indian low caste surrogate allows us to blur the economic and social binaries that enable Mary and the Indian women transcend their boundaries. However, in the end the price of this transcendence is paid through their bodies in ways that both enslave and emancipate them. Therefore, Mary and the Indian low caste/rural surrogate woman participate in and perform a love that is both violent and caring at one and the same time.


Passing: Jesus' Human Charade
Program Unit: Violence and Representations of Violence in Antiquity
Andrew S. Jacobs, University of California, Riverside

K. Coleman's classic study of “Fatal Charades” explores the intersection of empire, power, spectacle, and fantasy in the public condemnation of criminals. Jesus figures briefly in this survey, as one more Roman criminal made to act out the mocking humiliation of his captors, “attired” as “a parody of qe/oj.” This essay reverses Coleman's gaze by asking how imperial power was appropriated and subverted--Christianized--by the charade of qe/oj as human. The subversive and spectacular qualities of Jesus" human charade are especially evident in the ways early Christians imagined Jesus" Jewish humanity. Never quite authentic, Jesus" Jewishness in early Christian eyes was more akin to passing, a performance that perfectly mimics--and therefore both affirms and subverts--essential categories of identity. For Christian authors such as Tertullian, Ambrose, and Jerome, Jesus" Jewish identity is a ruse, a charade, that enacts the contradictions of Christian power. For Hippolytus, Jesus" passing sets the stage for the double pass of the Anti-Christ--passing as Jesus passing as Jewish passing as human. Only Augustine--who famously feared the fantasies of the arena--calls into question Jesus" passing Jewishness, and interrupts the Christian appropriation of Roman spectacular, and specular, desires.


“Both We and Our Ancestors…”: The Heritage of Memory in the Book of Psalms
Program Unit: Biblical Hebrew Poetry
Karl Jacobson, Augsburg College

Who remembers, or perhaps better who is called to remember and instructed in what to remember, in/by the Psalms? My paper will outline the intersection of the various subjects of memory (the “me”s, “we”s and “they”s), specifically in terms of the “remembered past” as it is laid out in the so-called historical Psalms and the Psalms of Asaph. I will explore the function of preserving a collective, national memory both for the people and for the individual as intentionally shaping an understanding of and relationship with the historical/remembered past, which in turn shapes the present and makes possible the future (again both for the people and the individual).


Through the Pistol Smoke Dimly: Psalm 23 in Contemporary Film and Song
Program Unit: Bible and Popular Culture
Karl Jacobson, Augsburg College

Arguably the most familiar of the Biblical psalms, Psalm 23 is to be found in numerous films and popular musical pieces; there it is quoted, misquoted, intentionally altered, argued with, or simply appropriated. Numerous scholars and readers of the psalm have categorized Psalm 23 as a “psalm of trust,” a sub-type of the lament psalm in which the element of complaint is utterly effaced by the expression of trust. My paper will explore the use/scrutiny to which the psalm is put in film and song (specifically in the movie Pale Rider and two hip-hop songs—Gangsta's Paradise by Coolio and Jesus Walks by Kanye West), and the ways in which this psalm of trust is recast (or perhaps better returned) to a place of troubled faith and complaint.


“The Faithfulness of the Lord Endures Forever”: The Central Theological Witness of the Psalter
Program Unit: Book of Psalms
Rolf Jacobson, Luther Seminary

The Reformer Philip Melanchthon famously asserted that “to know Christ means to know his benefits rather than his natures.” Similarly, the psalms repeatedly bear witness that the Lord is a God of fidelity—a God who makes the divine self known through faithfulness to the divine promises, to the chosen people, through creation, and through Torah. This paper argues that the psalms" repeated witness to the Lord's steadfast love and faithfulness is the central theological witness of the Psalter and explores the ramifications of this witness for interpreting the individual texts of the psalm and some of the dominant imagery and forms of the Psalter's poems.


The Experience of Disability and the Theological Witness of the Psalter
Program Unit: Healthcare and Disability in the Ancient World
Rolf Jacobson, Luther Seminary

The Psalter bears witness to the faithfulness of God. The communities that produced and collected the psalms testified through these ancient lyrics that God remains faithful both to creation and to the community gathered in the Lord's name (referred to as "the congregation of the righteous" in Ps 1:5). Even as the Psalter offers this witness, it is aware of the witness of those who have not experienced fidelity in either the creation or the Creator. And yet, nevertheless, the Psalter proclaims God as faithful. This paper will explore the experience the tensions between the core testimony of the Psalter to God's fidelity and the challenge that the experience of disability offers to this testimony.


What Word Exactly Cannot Be Spoken? Isaiah 58:13 and the Sabbath Prohibition on Business-Related Speech in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Jubilees, and Rabbinic Literature
Program Unit: Biblical Law
Alex P. Jassen, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

The Dead Sea Scrolls represent a vast treasure trove for scholars interested in the comparative analysis of early Jewish biblical interpretation and in the history of Jewish law. Scholarship on biblical interpretation, however, has focused almost exclusively on homiletical exegesis. There has been little attempt to integrate the study of Jewish law in the Dead Sea Scrolls with the exegetical basis in Scripture through which it was regularly formed. The present paper seeks to address these issues through comparative analysis of the Sabbath restrictions on discussion of business as articulated in the Qumran legal texts (Damascus Document, 4QHalakha B) and related Second Temple (Jubilees) and rabbinic literature. In examining these texts, my attention will first be directed to unpacking the legal issues at stake in each passage and identifying the nature of the textual and literary relationship between their overlapping legal content. I then turn to their exegetical basis in Scripture. The formulation of each of these passages is exegetically linked to Isaiah 58:13 (Isaiah's condemnation of pursuing one's affairs on the Sabbath). The specific way in which each of these passages formulates its Sabbath business laws is directly linked to legal and exegetical exigencies found in the Isaiah passage. In particular, each text seeks to determine the precise legal application of Isaiah"s condemnation of “speaking a word” on the Sabbath. In each passage, keywords from Isaiah are interwoven into a new more precise and expanded legal formulation, often with the aid of intertextual appeal to related scriptural passages. Comparative analysis of the Sabbath restrictions on discussion of business in the Qumran corpus and related Second Temple and rabbinic literature demonstrates a shared set of legal and exegetical concerns and similarly closely related approaches to resolving these difficulties.


Transformative Hermeneutics and Violence in the Dead Sea Scrolls
Program Unit: Qumran
Alex P. Jassen, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

A central feature of the Qumran community's eschatology is the belief that the end of days would witness the violent destruction of evil people in the world—understood by the community to consist of non-Jews such as the Romans and Jews who did not subscribe to the community's worldview. Discussion of violence in the Dead Sea Scrolls has generally located this eschatological portrait within the framework of the community"s apocalyptic orientation. The division of humanity into good and evil and the expectation that the end of days would bring about the justified destruction of the wicked and exaltation of the righteous are commonplace themes in apocalyptic. While these general themes structured the community"s portrait of the end of days, most of the specific details were drawn from the community"s exegetical engagement with Scripture and the reapplication of ancient prophetic words to expected eschatological circumstances. Like other communities or individuals that use Scripture to defend violence, the sectarians transformed Scripture through exegesis in order to legitimize and craft its violent expectations. This paper examines the exegetical strategies employed by the community in order to construct its portrait of its enemies and vilify them as worthy of destruction in the end of days. What techniques did they employ to interpret non-violent scriptural passages in support of their own violent application of the text? How were violent scriptural narratives and commandments reread in order to apply to the community"s historical circumstances? I draw upon comparative studies of Scripture-based violence in communities of violence ranging from ancient apocalyptics to modern fundamentalist religious groups. I focus on selected passages in sectarian exegetical literature that treat the Romans and other Jews in an attempt to illustrate the community"s transformative hermeneutics of violence and locate this portrait within the larger landscape of Scripture-based violence.


The Rhetoric of Resistance: Opposition to the Irrelevant Imperial Powers in Colossians
Program Unit: Disputed Paulines
Roy R. Jeal, Booth College

Early Christians in Asia Minor lived in a socio-cultural environment where people were constantly aware of the Empire and its political, military, economic and religious power and domination. This dominant culture consciousness brought about social and behavioral requirements and expectations. The emperor was both a fearsome and a beneficent power, though located far away in Rome. The power of the emperor and the empire was represented locally in a variety ways, some of which are implicit in the rhetoric of the Letter to the Colossians. It would be difficult for the believers in Christ Jesus in Colossae to miss the implicit empire/imperial allusions in the letter, however oblique they may be. Colossians presents an evocative rhetoric of resistance to cosmic-spiritual powers, but also to human-political-spiritual powers that press on people to live in and behave in accord with a very restrictive social and religious space. This essay takes up, in particular, Colossians 2:8-15, which aims, among other things, to elicit an ideology among “the saints and faithful brothers and sisters in Colossae” that the imperial presence and power has been made irrelevant and is to be resisted. God has acted apocalyptically in Christ Jesus to bring about a new situation of liberated existence. Believers have been called to live in this liberated space where social concerns for the power and influence of the empire are no longer important. Things are different now; life is intertwined with Christ Jesus in the new space where the constructs of human effort, human achievement and human subservience are irrelevant and pointless. God and Christ Jesus are now the genuine imperial and apocalyptic authorities. No one and nothing else is necessary or helpful in the Colossian believers" lives. The religious burdens imposed by empire should be rejected.


The Priestly Robes of the Incarnation: The Meaning of dia tou katapetasmatos, tout estin tes sarkos autou and the Inauguration of the Eschatological Temple in Hebrews 10:19–20
Program Unit: Hebrews
Mark A. Jennings, Marquette University

This paper focuses on Heb 10:19-22. Contrary to the traditional viewpoint that the Day of Atonement is the primary image behind this fleeting, yet alluring statement, this essay will argue that it is the inauguration of the eschatological Temple that the author has in view. It is within this background that the appositional relationship between Jesus" flesh and the veil should be seen as a reference to his Incarnation, when as the eschatological high priest, he passed through the veil that separated the heavens and the cosmos in order to inaugurate the eschatological Temple. In so doing, he took upon the priestly robes that, like the veil of the Temple, symbolized the material universe. These robes of the material universe are his very flesh. By presenting Christ's flesh as the priestly robes which he wore while ministering on earth, the author of Hebrews stand in the same tradition as Philo's discussion on what occurred when the Logos left heaven in order to serve as the ultimate high priest. According to Philo, as the Logos moved from heaven to earth, he took upon himself the material of the cosmos when he passed through the cosmic veil that separated the two realms. This process is also played out in the garments of the high priests in the Temple economy. Therefore, when the author places Christ"s flesh in apposition to the veil, it is this great moment of the Incarnation that he has in mind, when the great eschatological high priest became flesh in order to open the way for the people of God to enter the eschatological Temple.


Rural Galilee and Rapid Changes
Program Unit: Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy
Morten Hørning Jensen, University of Aarhus

Much research on the socio-economic conditions of Palestine/Galilee in the Herodian period has concluded that this era witnessed a rapid economic deterioration for the rural population. Alleged three-fold taxation, huge building projects, climatic catastrophes and changes in family patterns are all said to have resulted in a deadly spiral of violence culminating in the rebellion of 66 against Rome as well as in the appearance of popular protest movements of which Jesus of Nazareth's became the most renowned. While dominating, this picture is not the only one proposed. Other investigations paint a much more lenient picture of Galilee being under only a moderate development. On way of clarifying this situation further is through focusing on whether or not rapid changes took place in various areas of life important for the socio-economic stability of rural life, such as landownership, climate, taxes, family life and housing etc. This paper wishes to outline the problem at hand, suggest a methodology for further development and apply this on some of the topics mentioned by dealing with new archaeological material emerging from excavations in Galilee and the textual material available.


Missing Joseph: The Father's Place at the Holy Family's Table
Program Unit: Early Christian Families
Robin Jensen, Vanderbilt University

Despite a rich textual tradition of the secret life of Jesus in apocryphal gospels and other literary documents, the beloved pictorial representations of the Holy Family in a domestic setting or resting on the Flight to Egypt are almost unknown in western Christian art prior to the late middle ages or early renaissance. While the themes of early Christian art included scenes of the nativity and the adoration of the magi, they appear to have overlooked (or eliminated) Jesus" adoptive, earthly father. With the development of the Holy Family motif in the middle ages (usually consisting only of the two holy parents with their child Jesus), Joseph reappears as part of the family but usually only in scenes of the nativity or as part of the Marian cycle (e.g., the Virgin's marriage or the Presentation in the Temple). The Holy Family motif took a particularly domestic turn among northern European painters in the first century of the Protestant Reformation, giving Joseph a role in his son's rearing and education. This visually reflected Protestant redefinition of marriage and family values. Meanwhile, the art of the Catholic reformation balanced this triad (father, mother, and child) with Trinitarian motifs (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) to create an earthly and a heavenly Trinity. In the second type, the Virgin appears with God the Father, Christ, and the Holy Spirit both in scenes of the deposition from the cross or in her coronation as Queen of Heaven. Here Joseph has no place. Finally Joseph reclaims a place in the family portrait – through the efforts of seventeenth-century Jesuits to establish his cult, while reaffirming traditional Catholic values of continent (or monastic) domestic models. This paper will offer an overview of the iconography of the Holy Family from the third century to the seventeenth – with special consideration of the missing, appearing, disappearing, and reappearing figure of St. Joseph.


Parables and Rabbinic Authority in Exodus Rabbah 42–44
Program Unit: History of Interpretation
Janet Jerrow, University of Texas

Far from regarding God as a power not to be reckoned with, the ancient rabbis took full advantage of their role as authoritative interpreters of the biblical text for the Jewish community to challenge divine decrees that they considered unjust. One way they did so was to put their arguments against these decrees in the mouths of specific biblical characters. One favorite character was Moses, who argued with God about a range of issues. This paper will focus on the golden calf incident. The midrashic passages found in Exodus Rabbah 42-44 are replete with parables, or meshalim, in which the rabbis liken God's decision to destroy Israel after the worship of the golden calf to an irrational and easily angered Gentile king's decision to punish a son in disproportion to the son"s infraction. In these parables Moses" role as advocate for the people is played by a pedagogue, who comes to the son"s rescue by providing compelling reasons why the king should not punish his son. These parables function as rhetorical narratives which suggest parallels between the fictional narrative and the biblical text, but ultimately leave to the audience the task of making these parallels explicit. This paper will examine the parables" literary structure, stereotypical vocabulary, stock characters, literary motifs, thematic passages, and poetics. The rabbis employed all of these elements to convey their complaint against what they deemed to be God"s excessive anger against the Israelites, with the rabbinic position voiced by the pedagogue, who in turn represents Moses, lawgiver par excellence. This paper will then contend that the rabbis inserted their teachings about divine justice in these parables in such a way as to boost the authority of their interpretations in different communities. That is to say, since the parables have, in effect, the rabbis" arguments trumping God"s decree to destroy Israel, then the rabbis show themselves as possessing the authority to be the rightful interpreters of Scripture. One target was the Jewish community, to whom the sages sought to demonstrate that God"s covenant was still in place despite the nation"s committing of its greatest sin, the worship of the golden calf. Another target may have been the Christian community with its belief that Israel was no longer God"s chosen people. The rabbis" portrayal of an easily angered and dimwitted Gentile ruler would have boosted this effect. This message would have been particularly comforting for a Jewish community that, whether in exile or in the land of Israel, lived under foreign rule.


Paul's Virtue Ethics
Program Unit: Pauline Epistles
L. Ann Jervis, Wycliffe College

Paul's ethics have been approached with various questions: what is the relationship between his theology and his ethics; what is the social context of his ethics; what are relevant ancient parallels to his ethics; what is the structure and content of his ethics; how should we reckon with the distance between Paul's ethics and our contemporary culture. This paper argues and demonstrates that Paul's ethics should be approached as an example of ancient virtue ethics. It asks and answers questions of Paul fitting to this approach: what does Paul think is the function of human beings; what does he think is the 'telos' fitting to that function; what does he think are the means and the obstacles to arriving at that 'telos'.


Oxymoronic Preaching: Execution Sermons in New England
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Joey Jeter, Brite Divinity School

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The Use of the Old Testament in the Syrian Christian Traditions of India
Program Unit: Bible in Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Traditions
R. Boaz Johnson, North Park University Theological Seminary

Biblical interpretation in India, according to students of Indian Christian Theology, has been impacted by three philosophical frameworks. First, there was the colonial framework, espoused by those theologians who were trained in western methodology. Second, there was the Brahamanical framework, which was espoused by a powerful group of theologians who came from the dominant priestly caste of Hindu society. In more recent times Dalit interpretations of the Bible seek to interpret the Bible from a Marxist framework. This paper will seek to examine a neglected field of Indian Christian Theology- Biblical Theology, and specifically Old Testament Theology in the Syrian Christian Traditions of India. The paper will show that Western, Brahamanical and Marxist frameworks do more harm than good to the Bible in the Indian context. A study of the use of the Old Testament in the Syrian Christian traditions of India, on the other hand, provides valuable lessons for the use of the Bible in India, as well as, biblical theology in the context of pluralism in the west today.


God Was in Christ: 2 Corinthians 5:19 and Mythic Language
Program Unit: Bible, Myth, and Myth Theory
Luke Timothy Johnson, Emory University

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Wisdom and Aspects of Creativity Theory in Job 28
Program Unit: Poster Session
Michael Johnson, Buffalo State College

The book of Job attempts to justify the ways of God to Man, and it also considers how humans, made distinctively creative in God's image, are to justify themselves to their Creator. A previous analysis of Job in terms of a contemporary theory of creativity (Creative Problem Solving – CPS) showed the structure of the whole text to be consonant with four distinct facets of the formal study of human creativity. In terms of the “Four P's” of the theory, these aspects investigate what may be the best "Press" (context), the most effective Process, the prerequisite Personal traits, and some useful criteria for appraising the Products of creativity. One by one the succeeding quarters of the book speak to these topics. Detailed analysis of Job 28 shows how these “Four P"s” of creativity theory underlie the famous poem on Wisdom. The poem progresses through a concrete depiction of three of the “P"s,” and then skillfully blends all four at the end. The remote location of precious metals is a challenging Press for the miner; but there is a creative process for finding out and further fashioning the products of the search. Securing Wisdom, however, is a greater challenge still: it is a product not to be had at any price. So how does Man get it, and where does he find it? God, the most creative Person, knew Wisdom in and through the original creative process itself. Wisdom is not just a cosmic principle, but it should inform the whole of human life in all its social, practical, moral, and even aesthetic aspects. Life"s challenges both imperil and validate the exercise of human creativity: Man is always wise at a cost – and a value – beyond that of rubies.


Pilgrimage as Hagiography, Pausanias to Egeria
Program Unit: Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti
Scott Fitzgerald Johnson, Washington and Lee University

In this paper I argue that the evolving genre of the pilgrimage narrative in late antiquity shares a number of characteristics with the late antique saint's Life. In an important article from 1997 (JHS 117, 22–37), Jas Elsner argued that Philostratus" Life of Apollonius of Tyana, a hagiographical text par excellence, should properly be read as a travel or pilgrimage narrative, in line with the works of his near contemporaries Pausanias and Lucian. Due to the work of Elsner and others, the rich second-sophistic tradition of pilgrimage (exemplified also by Aelius Aristides) is now recognized as one of the defining aspects of high imperial literature. What has only recently come into focus, however, through the work of Richard Talbert, Kai Brodersen, and Elsner himself (e.g. JRS 90, 181–195), is that the parallel traditions of the Greek periplous and the Roman itinerarium are also crucial to the development of imperial literature. Both of these realizations — regarding hagiography and “hodological” or cartographical travel narratives — impinge on how we are to read and interpret early Christian “travelers" texts”, from the Acts of the Apostles (and the subsequent apocryphal Acta) to the pioneering pilgrimage narratives of the Bordeaux Pilgrim (AD 333) and Egeria (381–384). In this paper I examine literary assumptions in these latter texts similar to those found in contemporary hagiography (e.g. the Life of Antony). I discuss specific issues such as the fictionality of the pilgrim texts, their imperial resonance, and the relationship between center and periphery. The latter theme will be familiar to many from Peter Brown's work on the holy man but thus far it has not been linked to the evolution of late antique pilgrimage texts. Further, I consider the archival quality of the pilgrimage narratives and compare them to late antique miracle collections, texts which are equally concerned with the gathering of visual and textual “wonders” (thaumata or miracula).


The Bible, Origins, and Colonialism in Olaudah Equiano's "Interesting Narrative"
Program Unit: African Biblical Hermeneutics
Sylvester Johnson, Indiana University at Bloomington

The autobiography of Olaudah Equiano offers an unusual portrait of the dynamic relationship between the Bible and colonialism in the early modern period. Olaudah Equiano (1745–1797), who also went by the name of Gustavus Vassa, was a former slave who lived out his adult life in Britain. He converted to evangelical Christianity (Methodism), traveled throughout the Atlantic and Mediterranean, and rose to great prominence and wealth. In 1789 Equiano related his experience of slavery to support abolitionism in Britain in the form of a best-selling, two-volume autobiography, entitled _The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself_. Equiano's autobiography comprises a striking description of religion and culture among the Igbo of West Africa, the region he identified as his place of birth. According to the author, the Igbo were descended from ancient Jews, and their religion was a modern survival of ancient biblical religion. This claim by Equiano, seemingly casual at first, is actually a complicated maneuver that reveals how deeply he had mined the trove of biblical commentary to shape his interesting narrative for a skeptical readership. In my paper, I first explain the cultural significance of modern biblical commentary within the context of modern publishing. I then demonstrate that Equiano's appeal to biblical commentary about Africa is an inventive ruse that reveals his skill as an artist of self-representation who invents a biblical Africa to overturn Christian colonial ideas that denied Africans a place in the historical world. At the same time, as I will show, Equiano"s appeal to biblical commentators reveals the eviscerating, compromising role of biblical interpretation in colonial conquest over modern African subjects.


Noah's Family in Nineteenth-Century America
Program Unit: Early Christian Families
Sylvester A. Johnson, Indiana University at Bloomington

The arrival of Christian and Jewish scriptures in America meant that temporalities (biblical "history") and genealogies (origins of races) were forged in the encounters and conflicts between the many peoples of the nation. Of all the narrative subsets in the Bible, the Noah legend stands out for its overwhelmingly popular use to make 'sense" of American peoples and modern identities. Slavery, which was arguably the most enduring public moral debate in nineteenth-century America, inspired spirited recourse to the Noah legend (especially Noah's curse) as defenders and opponents of slavery attempted to sway national consciousness about America"s Black slaves. Some Cherokee readers styled themselves as primal descendants of Noah—the Red race—and positioned Whites and Blacks as derivative races. Both during and after slavery, American readers of the Bible continued to advance particular meanings of sex and race by relying on traditions about Noah"s family. Ham, Shem, and Japheth, Noah"s sons, were commonly viewed as racial progenitors of Blacks, Whites, and Indians. Noah"s grandson Nimrod became the object of intricate biblical commentary traditions that rationalized a modern American order of society. As the church historian Phillip Schaff proclaimed on the eve of the Civil War, America was the meeting place of Noah"s sons; although they had gone their separate ways in the ancient world, their paths had conjoined in the American geography of temporality and descent. It is this distinctive history of "Noah"s family" in nineteenth-century America that I examine in my paper. Drawing on biblical commentaries of the era, exegetical sermons, slavery propaganda, and racial "histories" based on the Noah legend, I explain the transmission and reception of major trends in American ideas about Noah"s family that were the vehicle for representing race, religion, and sex in the nineteenth century.


Heavenly Flying, Cloud-Riding, and other Cosmic Journeys: When Early Christians Take the Bird's Eye View
Program Unit: Reading, Theory, and the Bible
Melanie Johnson-DeBaufre, Drew University

This paper explores several places in the Pauline letters and Acts when members of the ekklesia are imagined flying, traversing the heavens, or considering the shape of the whole oikumene. These texts will be examined in terms of the way they spatially orient the members of the ekklesia in particular contexts, in comparison with several Roman period textual and visual mappings of the heavens and those who move in it, and in light of theoretical discussions of critical geographers and postcolonial/feminist interpreters, who discuss the way that a bird's eye view of the globe is imbricated with imperialism and border-crossing.


Unconditional and Conditional Abrahamic Covenant Passages in the Light of the Hybrid/Mixed Form of Ancient Near Eastern “Grant Treaties”
Program Unit: Pentateuch
Gordon Johnston, Dallas Theological Seminary

In the 1970s, Moshe Weinfeld distinguished two types of ANE covenants: suzerainty treaty(obligatory covenant) from royal grant (promissory covenant). Weinfeld suggested Yahweh's covenants with Abraham (Gen 15) and David (2 Sam 7) were modeled on the ANE royal grant, which were typically unconditional. Nevertheless, he acknowledged that subsquent passages articulate explicit stipulations upon which covenant fulfillment/perpetuation was conditioned: Abrahamic (Gen 17:1-2, 9-14; 18:18-19; 22:14-18; 26:5), Davidic (Ps 132:10-11; 1 Kgs 2:1-4; 6:11-13; 8:23-26; 9:1-9; Jer 17:19-27; 22:1-9). Weinfeld suggested this tension could only be explained by the existence of two conflicting traditions—the early Yahwistic tradition which believed the covenants were unconditional and the later Deuteronomistic tradition which concluded from the historical realities (division of the kingdom, Assyrian and Babylonian exiles) that the covenants were conditional. Although Weinfeld's view enjoys widespread acceptance among scholars, several recent studies suggest he oversimplified the issue in not recognizing the existence of a third covenant form in ANE literature—the mixed/mybrid form of the “grant treaty.” In 1981, Dennis McCarthy identified this form in covenant documents from Alalakh. In 1996, Gary Beckman identified several examples of this form in Hittite diplomatic texts. In 1997-98, Gary Knoppers suggested the mixed/hybrid form of “grant treaty” provides a segue to reconcile the seemingly unconditional grant to David and subsequent conditional passages. The purpose of my paper is to develop this approach by extending it to the Abrahamic covenant. According to this model, the original covenant given to Abraham was seemingly unconditional (Gen 15), like the typical royal grant. However, subsequent passage, featuring explicit stipulations upon which covenant fulfillment was conditioned (Gen 17:1-2, 9-14; 18:18-19; 22:14-18; 26:5), made it clear that the original covenant carried implicit obligations. These subsequent conditional passages are consistent with the "grant treaty" form which typically qualified previous royal grants.


The Torch and Brazier in Genesis 15:17 in the Light of Ancient Near Eastern Literature
Program Unit: Hebrew Scriptures and Cognate Literature
Gordon Johnston, Dallas Theological Seminary

Biblical scholars have puzzled over the meaning of Abraham's enigmatic vision of a smoking brazier and flaming torch passing between the disjecta membra in Gen 15:17. Scholars typically assume this vision symbolically conveyed some kind of covenant-making ritual. However, the search for a parallel covenant-making ritual in ancient Near Eastern literature has been in vain. In the light of the scholarly impasse in finding any adequate parallels in covenant-making rituals in ancient Near Eastern literature, this paper seeks to reinvestigate the original meaning/significance the smoking brazier and flaming torch passing between the severed animals in the light of non-covenant making rituals and contexts in ancient Near Eastern literature. This paper will focus on two items: (1) the function of the brazier and torch as divine symbols in ancient Near Eastern literature; and (2) the role of brazier and torch in four non-covenant making ancient Near Eastern rituals: (a) torch and brazier in oath-taking rituals from Alalakh and Ashur; (b) torch and brazier in Mesopotamian purification rituals of Shurpu; (c) torch and brazier in Mesopotamian calamity-reversing rituals of Maqlu; and (d) torch and brazier passing between disjecta membra in the Hittite ritual of Anniwiyanis, designed to secure the birth of a son (not daughter) for a man seeking an heir for his estate. We will suggest the latter ritual has much in common with Gen 15:17 in terms of shared features, form, and function.


Ritual in the Qumran Movement: What Do We Explain?
Program Unit: Religious Experience in Antiquity
Jutta Jokiranta, University of Helsinki

Ritual is not yet a thoroughly studied topic in Qumran studies. In the past, scholars have illuminated the various kinds of prayers and liturgies that the Qumran corpus holds, discussed their sectarian/non-sectarian nature, and investigated their relationship to traditions in the Second Temple period. It has been emphasized that liturgical prayer did not emerge as a replacement for sacrificial system but was rather developed within and alongside the temple institution and adopted and elaborated outside the temple. Furthermore, ritual purity has been the topic number one in understanding the Qumran movement. Meals and other communal practices have been compared to Greco-Roman associations. Yet rituals have hardly been discussed from the point of view of theories of rituals and religious experience. This paper will attempt to pursue on this track and clarify the questions involved in studying rituals in the Qumran movement. Cognitive science of religion offers theoretical perspectives in the study of rituals: their effects on senses and memory, transmission, structure, patterns of ritual systems, stability (e.g., Boyer; Lawson and McCauley; Whitehouse). Instead of analyzing the function of rituals (e.g., cohesion and identity formation; support for belief system), these theories seek to explain large-scale phenomena, with special attention to structures and function of the human mind. In order to evaluate their potential usefulness for studying ritual in the Qumran movement, it is asked what specifically is explained in some of these theories and how they could be applicable to the Qumran evidence.


Ritual in the Qumran Movement: What Do We Explain?
Program Unit: Ritual in the Biblical World
Jutta Jokiranta, University of Helsinki

Ritual is not yet a thoroughly studied topic in Qumran studies. In the past, scholars have illuminated the various kinds of prayers and liturgies that the Qumran corpus holds, discussed their sectarian/non-sectarian nature, and investigated their relationship to traditions in the Second Temple period. It has been emphasized that liturgical prayer did not emerge as a replacement for sacrificial system but was rather developed within and alongside the temple institution and adopted and elaborated outside the temple. Furthermore, ritual purity has been the topic number one in understanding the Qumran movement. Meals and other communal practices have been compared to Greco-Roman associations. Yet rituals have hardly been discussed from the point of view of religion and theories of rituals. This paper will attempt to pursue on this track and clarify the questions involved in studying rituals in the Qumran movement. Cognitive science of religion offers theoretical perspectives in the study of rituals: their effectiveness, transmission, structure, patterns of ritual systems, stability (e.g., Boyer; Lawson and McCauley; Whitehouse). Instead of analyzing the function of rituals (e.g., cohesion and identity formation; support for belief system), these theories seek to explain large-scale phenomena, with special attention to structures and function of the human mind. In order to evaluate their potential usefulness for studying ritual in the Qumran movement, it is asked what specifically is explained in some of these theories and how they could be applicable to the Qumran evidence.


Faith (Pistis) in Hebrews in Light of the Stoic Concept of the Acquisition of Scientific Knowledge (Episteme)
Program Unit: Hebrews
Ira Jolivet Jr., Pepperdine University

The scholarly consensus since the publication of James W. Thompson's seminal dissertation in 1982 seems to be that faith in Hebrews is basically equivalent to knowledge of the unseen realm in Platonic dualism. For example, in his highly influential commentary on Hebrews Attridge attributes the author's conception of faith as perception of "a reality not apparent to the senses" to the influence of Middle Platonism. Ronald Cox has further strengthened this position by arguing effectively in his recently published dissertation that faith in Hebrews, as a way of accessing knowledge of the intelligible realm, involves an "immaterial intermediary figure," the conceptualization of which had been developed by the Middle Platonists. In this paper I propose that faith in Hebrews more nearly equates to the Stoic view that the knowledge, which leads to the acquisition of virtue as the telos for humans as rational creatures, is scientific knowledge (episteme) which is attained, not through memory or intuition as in Platonism, but rather through a teleological process involving sensory perception and a “reciprocity of giving” (Philo) between the object of sense perception and the soul which is its receptor. Analyzing Hebrews in light of insights about this process from Philo and other Stoic sources, sheds light on the general nature of faith in the author's argument and also on difficult exegetical issues such as the interpretation of the participial form of sugkerannumi in Heb 4:2 and of hupostasis in 11:1.


Why the Cities of the Pentapolis Lay North, Not South, of the Dead Sea
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible, History, and Archaeology
Brian C. Jones, Wartburg College

The location of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim and Zoar, the so-called cities of the Pentapolis, has never been determined with certainty, although an orthodox answer has taken hold in scholarship. The present consensus holds that these five cities lay south-east of the Dead Sea (DS), though specific sites for the cities have not been identified. Determining the location of Zoar has proven crucial in the discussion since it alone of the five cities could be seen in the time of the biblical writers. Post-biblical writers are divided on the location of Zoar. Josephus, Eusebius and a few later Roman and Byzantine writers placed it south of the DS, and medieval Arab writers frequently identified Zoar with es-Safi, the site of an old Roman fort lying about 3 miles south of the DS. European travelers who visited Palestine in the 19th century perpetuated this identification, and by the mid-twentieth century, most scholars had accepted it. This paper will show that recent studies in DS hydrology now undercut key arguments for the southern location, that the biblical evidence points to a northern location, and that extra-biblical authorities are in fact divided and attest two distinct traditions, one locating the Pentapolis south of the DS and one locating it to the north; Josephus attests both traditions. Tell es-Sagur located six miles SE of the DS seems the most likely candidate for biblical Zoar. The conclusion of the paper will discuss briefly the implications of placing Zoar north of the DS for the interpretation of Isaiah 15–16 and for the identification of other sites in Moab.


Jewish Christians as Heresiologists
Program Unit: Jewish Christianity / Christian Judaism
F. Stanley Jones, California State University-Long Beach

It has not been appreciated that Jewish Christians were not only objects of heresiological discourse but that they also engaged in it.In particular, examination of the Jewish Christian list of heresies in Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions 1.54 reveals a distinctive profile, including unnoted correspondences with 4QMMT and Hegesippus. The heresiological discourse here stands on the cusp of Jewish, rabbinic, Gentile Christian, and pagan philosophical traditions and feeds into the heresiological perspective of the Pseudo-Clementine Basic Writer. This paper explores these connections and situates the insights into the larger framework of the developing heresiological discourse of the time. Implications for identity-formation are discussed.


Insubordinate Metaphors: Complex Coherence and 1 Peter
Program Unit: Letters of James, Peter, and Jude
Judith Anne Jones, Wartburg College

Exegetes often struggle to account for rapid transitions and mixing of metaphors in biblical texts. For example, within twelve verses in 1 Peter 1—2 the writer describes the readers as born of imperishable seed, emphasizes their grass-like frailty, implores them to long like infants for spiritual milk, invites them to come to the living stone and be built into a spiritual house, and calls them a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, and God's own people. Previous attempts to identify a "master metaphor" under which all of the above images may be subsumed have emphasized some images while neglecting or ignoring others. Lakoff and Johnson's theory of complex coherence provides an alternative model for understanding the webs of relationships among metaphors. My interpretation of 1 Peter 1—2 demonstrates that complex coherence, when used with awareness of the social and cultural background of the passage's apparently contradictory images, discloses the connections among them and allows each metaphor its place in the textual whole. This reading serves as a test case with implications for interpreting not only the many texts that combine seed, stone, and son imagery, but also any text with a sequence of seemingly unrelated metaphors.


Job 28 as Mashal
Program Unit: Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
Scott Jones, Covenant College

Though praised for its poetic brilliance, the genre and function of Job 28 have eluded interpreters. While often dubbed a “hymn” or an “interlude,” there are no formal hymnic features, nor any indication that it should be interpreted independently of its literary context. The first section of this presentation engages Carol Newsom's suggestion that Job 28 is a poetic interlude that participates in the “speculative wisdom poem” genre (with Prov 8; Sir 1, 24; Bar 3:9-4:4; I Enoch 42) and allegorizes the prose tale and wisdom dialogues. While Job 28 resonates with aspects of these works, more attention must be given to how such traditional elements function in the Book of Job. The second section argues that the Book of Job often subverts generic convention and supports this with several examples. Thus while traditional material is prominent in Job 28 (e.g., proverbs), it does not necessarily follow that the poem is theologically conventional or that it reflects the speaker's own world view. The third section interprets ch. 28 as a Joban mashal (see 29:1; 27:1). Mashal is understood functionally (not formally) as an imaginative parable designed to involve the audience. In this vein, Job employs a traditional trope of seeking wisdom as an implicit critique of his friends" claim to have grasped wisdom by searching out (?qr) the tradition (see 5:27; 8:8; 15:17-18; 32:11). They are to imagine themselves as the subjects of this (failed) quest for wisdom (vv. 3-12) which only God perceives (vv. 23-27). Moreoever, in God"s speech to the first human in the poem"s climax (v. 28), the definition of wisdom matches God"s description of Job in the prologue (cf. 1:1, 8; 2:3). By this equation, it is Job who is not only consummately upright, but also consummately wise.


“The Lord Has Given and the Lord Has Taken Away”: The Prosperity Gospel, the Book of Job, and the Latin American Context
Program Unit: Contextual Biblical Interpretation
Alissa Jones Nelson, University of St. Andrews-Scotland

Whatever one's opinion of prosperity theology and its proponents, it cannot be denied that the debate surrounding this particular perspective has gained both national and international attention. As recently as September 2006, Time Magazine's cover posed what has become a crucial question for many: “Does God Want You to Be Rich?” It is often too easy in “academic” circles to simplistically malign or ignore some of the more questionable theological products of the North American mega-church. Contextual engagement, however, requires that one address those issues that participate in the shaping of the wider contexts of which “academic” biblical studies is a p art and with which it interacts. This paper will engage the issues raised by prosperity theology by placing various interpretations of the book of Job from three particular contextual perspectives in dialogue with each other. The methodology employed will be a contrapuntal hermeneutic in which distinct voices, as well as the process(es) of dialogue itself, are taken together as poles around and between which a contrapuntal dialogue moves. The first section of this paper will briefly review the history of prosperity theology in the United States. The second section will examine some of the challenges to prosperity theology raised by Latin American liberation theologians reading the book of Job. The third section will promote a contrapuntal engagement between interpretations of Job from various perspectives of liberation and prosperity theology, highlighting some surprising discoveries of correspondence between these seemingly oppositional perspectives. The fourth section will briefly question the foundation of ethical universalism upon which both perspectives seem to rest. Finally, the paper will close with the author"s own reflections on the interpretation of the book of Job from a political activist"s perspective and will explore the ways in which the contrapuntal perspectives of liberation and prosperity theology can enlighten her own contextual interpretive practice. As a reflection of the nature of this particular context, many of the sources for this paper will be web-based and will reflect the explicitly evangelical Christian context from which they come. This paper intends to critically and seriously engage that context, as well as the contexts of specific Latin American liberation theologies, although the author does not espouse either context as her own.


Job in Conversation with Edward Said: The “Outsider” as Ethical and Pedagogical Dilemma in Biblical Interpretation
Program Unit: Ethics and Biblical Interpretation
Alissa Jones Nelson, University of St. Andrews-Scotland

In the title of this paper we are faced with two characters who inhabit, in different historical, textual, and existential contexts, as well as in different degrees, the space of the outsider. Both characters move repeatedly across the permeable boundary that separates insider from outsider, and both inhabit these seemingly separate spaces simultaneously. What are the implications of placing these two characters in conversation, albeit textually-mediated conversation? What can their dialogue teach us about the intersection of ethics, biblical interpretation, and the “outsider”? This paper will argue that such a conversation has much to contribute to the current debate surrounding this intersection. Furthermore, it will argue that this conversation raises specific pedagogical challenges in the field of biblical interpretation. The first section of the paper will briefly introduce Said's concept of contrapuntal reading and its applicability to the dialogue between ethics and biblical interpretation. The second section will initiate a contrapuntal dialogue between Said and his work on the one hand and the biblical character of Job as presented in the book of Job on the other. Through this dialogue, we will explore the implications of outsider status as it is variously inhabited and experienced by both characters in their separate texts and contexts. The third section will extend the contrapuntal dialogue to include other “outsider” voices on the topic of the interpretation of the book of Job. Finally, the paper will close with an exploration of the pedagogical implications of contrapuntal hermeneutics on the field of biblical interpretation. It will seek to relocate the intersection of ethics and biblical interpretation in the classroom by opening a new contrapuntal space that more fully embraces the voices of “outsiders” without silencing other voices.


From Greek Syntax and Semantics to Social Science
Program Unit: Best Practices in Teaching
Pierre Johan Jordaan, North-West University

Biblical exegesis seem to be in trouble. With the emergence of electronic computer aids a new type of exegesis also emerged. The explanation of words and complicated constructions can now be done by the pressing of a button. Gone are the days of wrestling for long hours with lexicons and Bible dictionaries of the source langauge.This resulted in exegetes knowing more about less. The question is now asked: "What remains to be done by the biblical exegete in this computer environment?" The author argues that certain exciting steps of exegesis should still be done by exegete. This is among others a social scientific investigation and a rhetorical analysis of the Greek text. A simple method, taking into consideration the latest literary developements will be introduced. It will be applied to a text.


Hebrews and Contemporary Roman Religion
Program Unit: Hebrews
Jörg Rüpke, Universität Erfurt

The paper accepts the thesis of a Roman origin of Hebrews at the end of the first century AD. This implies an educated audience raised in late Neronian or Flavian times and informed by Roman culture as expressed in public buildings, images and—even if we think about a Jewish family background—rituals. Without disregarding the intertextual relationship to Scripture, the text is thus analyzed in terms of contemporary Roman religion. Special attention is given to the priestly roles discussed. These are compared to the prominent role of pontifex maximus of the Roman emperors and to the developments of major public priesthoods during the second half of the first century AD. Such a look promises a deepened understanding of the cultural setting of the text and the interaction of its audience with the institutional setting of Rome, of which any audience would be part in institutional and in cultural terms.


“Aseneth Bent Down to the Water in the Basin, and Her Face Was Like the Sun, and Her Eyes Like the Rising Morning Star”
Program Unit: Religious Experience in Antiquity
Ljubica Jovanovic, Vanderbilt University

This presentation will show that a broad variety of Hellenistic texts maintains that, because they deal with revelations through images, Joseph's divinatory practices (Gen 44:5.15) belong to the same category as dream interpretation. Accordingly, A. Leo Oppenheim's influential discrimination between divinely sent 'symbolic" and "message" dreams may need to be rethought. Hellenistic understanding of the human eye as a source, emitter and transmitter of light and the practice of interpreting images suggest that symbolic dreams belong with other revelations that use sight, such as lecanomancy, hydromancy, lychnomancy or catoptromancy. In contrast, "Message dreams," are revealed via hearing mostly in the form of speech, requiring no interpretation. In Mediterranean traditions, light is associated with the highest intellectual and religious expression. This notion is attested, among others, in the Hebrew Bible, Greek contemplative tradition, Egyptian and Mesopotamian cultures, the New Testament, as well as Rabbinic and Gnostic texts. Sight is favored over other senses as the leading portal to the supernatural, esoteric, and universal knowledge. The interpretation of visual images was a recognized and popular profession with a very structured theory and practice, as revealed by this notice in Yashar 53:20: "Benjamin beheld that instrument with the map of the stars of heaven, and he was wise and looked therein to know where his brother was."


Joseph Sounded the Cup with His Fingers and Looked
Program Unit: Pseudepigrapha
Ljubica Jovanovic, Vanderbilt University

Searching for an Ethiopic version of Joseph and Aseneth in the rich medieval library of the Dabra Bizon monastery, Ephraim Isaac discovered a manuscript (EMML 1939) which he translated as The Ethiopic History of Joseph. It consists of two Ethiopic texts about Joseph: The Story of Joseph, followed by a shorter tale, The Death of Joseph. The former, probably a theatre play, preserves the fullest description of Joseph using his cup in divination. This paper argues that the Ethiopic Story of Joseph adopted the popular Hellenistic image of Joseph as a powerful scientist in his divinatory practices and thus shifted the focus from the power of magic (Gen 43-44) to the power of scientific piety. Around the beginning of the common era, the Magical Papyri, Lucian, and Pausanias bore witness to the well-established belief that the gaze of an experienced professional into the reflective surface of springs, wells, or cups yielded esoteric knowledge and uncovered human secrets. The power accorded sight fully corresponds with the predominant theories of antiquity on the divine nature of light, as maintained by Plato, Euclid, and Ptolemy, and supported by Hellenistic optics. Several midrashim such as Genesis Rabbah 91:6:9:6 and Tanhuma-Yelammedenu. 8 seem to share with the Ethiopic Story of Joseph this Hellenistic view of Joseph as a scientist and the belief in sight as a revealer of truth. The 14th-15th century copy of the Story of Joseph probably reflects a trend in Ethiopic Christianity of reviving old Hellenistic stories and investing them with Christian meaning. I note that such a project had also been afoot in contemporary Byzantine literary circles. Thus, like Joseph and Aseneth or Apocalypse of Abraham, this tale should also be counted among the Pseudepigrapha.


Wombs and Tombs: The Reception History of Mark 16:1–20
Program Unit: Use, Influence, and Impact of the Bible
Christine Joynes, University of Oxford

The ending of Mark's Gospel at 16.8 is generally considered to be one of the Gospel's most distinctive features, with the women fleeing from the tomb and saying nothing to anyone because of their fear. The reception history of Mark"s gospel reveals notable ambiguity amongsts commentators concerning the role of the women. And contrary to the modern tendency to ignore Mark 16.9-20, these verses sometimes had a significant impact in discussions about how to interpret Mark"s account of the empty tomb. This paper will provide a sample of the differing interpretations of Mark 16.1-20, including some representations in art, music and literature, with a particular focus on the "afterlives" of the women who are mentioned. After illustrating a range of patristic interpretations – from the positive response of Pseudo-Jerome (the earliest commentator on Mark) to criticism of the women"s lack of faith (Peter Chrysologus) – I will then compare these with some artistic interpretations of the women, thereby raising issues about the role of artists as biblical interpreters. The examples discussed, ranging from baptismal fonts to Bach"s Cantatas, highlight the significant use, influence and impact of Mark 16.1-20 in a wide variety of contexts.


Theological Perceptions of Pontius Pilate in Early Christian and Latter-day Saint Literature
Program Unit: Latter-day Saints and the Bible
Frank F. Judd, Brigham Young University

Ever since his brief meeting with Jesus Pontius Pilate has been the subject of much theological reflection. I will show that early Christian writers held a variety of opinions concerning Pilate. Some heaped blame for his role in the crucifixion of Jesus. Others exculpated, usually at the expense of the Jews. Interestingly, those who wrote negative things about Pilate also wrote positive things. I will conclude that this mixed presentation has to do with the nature of the sources and with the exegetical need and theological perspectives of the writers. First, most references in these sources are incidental, never containing a substantial discussion of Pilate. Further, writers feel free to use Pilate to make whatever theological point suits their purpose. Ante-Nicene Christianity was diverse and did not possess one unified view of Pilate. I will also demonstrate that LDS authors have dealt with the issue of Pilate and his responsibility for the death of Jesus in a similar way. Some have expressed negative views of Pilate, emphasizing his weakness before the Jewish leaders. Others have indicated much more positive views of Pilate, concluding that he did everything that he could to free Jesus. One such LDS writer wrote about Pilate in both a negative and a positive light. I will conclude that LDS references to Pilate are affected by the same factors as early Christian sources. First, these references are usually incidental, without a substantial discussion of Pilate. LDS authors also seem to use Pilate to make whatever theological point suits their purpose at the time. In the end, there are positive and negative features of the Pilate story in the Gospels and one's conclusion concerning Pilate depends upon what one emphasizes and what theological point one is trying to make.


Q 7:1–10 and Matthew's Redaction
Program Unit: Q
Peter J. Judge, Winthrop University

This paper will provide an examination of the text of Q 7:1-10, now reconstructed in The Critical Edition of Q and in the series Documenta Q with a data-base of 200 years of scholarly research. Of particular interest for discussion of the reconstruction is the exchange between the centurion and Jesus that leads to the former's central saying – “Lord, I am not worthy …” – especially Jesus" hesitant question: “Am I, by coming, to heal him?” (Q 7:3; cf. Mt 8:7). A second point has to do with the conclusion (Q 7:10) – whether or not there was one and, if so, what form it might have had. These issues bear on our appreciation of the nature of the pericope and its place in Q. Of importance, of course, is the assessment of the redactional activity of Matthew and Luke respectively. This paper will examine the tradition in Q and what the evangelist Matthew has done with the story as it is presented in Mt 8:5-13. We can conclude with reference to some possible implications for understanding the related story of the Royal Official in Jn 4:46-54.


New Evidence for the Ironical Interpretation of the Parable of the Unjust Steward: The Usage of the Greek Words for the “Tent” and “Permanent”
Program Unit: Synoptic Gospels
Chang-Wook Jung, Chongshin University

The parable of the unjust steward is regarded as the most difficult of the parables in the New Testament or of the passages in the Gospel of Luke. Opinions are first divided concerning the title of the parable, whether it is 'the unjust steward,' 'the prudent steward' or 'the crafty steward'; each title reflects its basic interpretation of the parable. Scholarly views also vary as to where the parable proper ends and the application of the parable begins (7, 8a, 8b, 9). Due to such difficulties, scholars have suggested various interpretations. Some have tried to resolve the problem by investigating social background and Greek expressions of the parable. Others have claimed, ignoring the details of the parable, that the primary thrust is the wise use of the wealth, which may be called as "traditional view." Still others, unsatisfied with the above views, have argued that the parable should be understood as conveying an ironical or sarcastic lesson. All of these considerations illustrate how difficult it is to interpret the parable. While many scholars still stick to the traditional view, some recently are inclined to accept the sarcastic interpretation. In rebuttal of the ironical interpretation, however, scholars like Bock argue that no irony exists in the parable at all. This paper seeks to demonstrate that the parable of the unjust steward involves the ironical force. It will be shown that lexical study on the usage of the noun skhnh, and the adjective aivw,nioj refreshes the ironical interpretation of the parable of the unjust steward in Luke 16. An ironical element emerges with the careful investigation into the usage of the two words in the LXX as well as in the New Testament. A close look at the broader context and the content of the parable also lends support to the sarcastic interpretation of the parable.


More Than Sex: Gender, Ethnicity, and Class in Potiphar's House (Genesis 39)
Program Unit: Feminist Hermeneutics of the Bible
Nyasha Junior, University of Dayton

Feminist biblical interpreters have provided significant challenges to mainstream interpretations of Genesis 39 as a seduction text. Although many feminist interpreters question the traditional negative characterization of Potiphar's Wife, most continue to focus primarily on gender issues within the text. Such a focus on gender causes them to ignore the interaction of gender with other categories of difference. This paper demonstrates the importance of gender, ethnicity, and class within Genesis 39. Drawing on womanist thought, it illustrates the insufficiency of these categories as isolated identity markers and underscores the importance of their interaction. As a result, it shows the multidimensional power dynamics of this text.


Peter's Antiochene Apostasy: Re-Judaizing or Imperial Conformism?
Program Unit: Pauline Epistles
Brigitte Kahl, Union Theological Seminary

This paper focuses on Paul's accusation in Gal 2:14 that Peter has adopted an ethnikos (“goyish”) way of life, a notorious crux interpretationis, as Peter in fact has just (re-)established his Jewish credentials in terms of table community. However, an examination of the intertextual echoes in 2:11-14, ranging from Deuteronomy to Esther and 2 Maccabees, clearly point towards an underlying conflict about what constitutes the essence of Jewishness, as opposed to Gentile idolatry. This is strongly supported by other NT usages of focal terms in 2:11-14. Peter's fear-driven “withdrawal” from the inclusive table then would be an act of intra-Jewish self-policing in light of concerns about public image and potential hostilities or reprisals. Paul, however, denounces it as an act of accommodation to the “idols.” But why would the community of Jews and Gentiles disturb the civic and, by implication, imperial order at Syrian Antioch, and elsewhere in Galatia? This question requires the text to be read within the framework of a broader contextual model that integrates Jewish, Greek and Roman concerns.


“Dying Gauls” and Christ Crucified: Reimagining the Galatian Hermeneutics of Self and Other
Program Unit: Violence and Representations of Violence in Antiquity
Brigitte Kahl, Union Theological Seminary

The blood-dripping sculptures of "Dying Gauls" at Paul's time are among the most pervasive and impressive representations of “salvific” Roman violence in conquering and subduing the barbarian Other. Their life counterparts are at display in the Roman arenas when beast hunts, gladiatorial fights or executions, including crucifixions, are staged .Rarely noticed in New Testament scholarship is the fact that these "Dying Gauls" are the direct ancestors of Paul's Galatians: The image was invented at Pergamon during a time of Pergamene-Galatian clashes in the 3rd/2nd centuries BCE; conceptually it belongs into the overall panorama of a cosmogonic “giant battle” that is the centerpiece of the Great Altar of Pergamon – and at the core of occidental constructs of a lawless/godless enemy Other that justifies and celebrates deadly violence as world-saving act of victorious Self-establishment. This paper re-imagines the image of Christ crucified advocated by Paul in Gal 3:1 before the backdrop of "Dying Gauls/Galatians"; it lays out some of the subversive implications of a resistant semiotics of Otherness that constructs the Self in solidarity and identification with, rather than dissociation from the “pain of the Other.”


The Aqeda in Rabbinic Literature
Program Unit: Midrash
Isaac Kalimi, Albright Institute, Jerusalem

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Murder in the Temple: The Chronicler's Story about the Murder of the Prophet Zechariah and Its Impact in Acts
Program Unit: Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah
Isaac Kalimi, Northwestern University

This paper discusses the short story concerning the murder of the priest-prophet Zechariah in the Jerusalem's Temple courtyard, recounted in 2 Chr 24,20-22. It scrutinizes the literary-history, theological concept and historicity of the Chronicler's story, which has no parallel in Kings or elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible. Detached from the question of the historicity of the story in Chronicles, the murder of the prophet and priest in the House of the Lord has been viewed through generations as a most disgraceful event, and had a strong impact on numerous Jewish and Christian writings. The paper exemplifies a probable reflection of the Chronicler"s story in a similar narrative in the Acts of Apostles, and the consequent message of the latter concerning the greater ethical merit of the “new covenant” (Christianity) versus the incompatible vengeance of the “old covenant” (Judaism).


The Devil Is in the Details: On the Changing Depiction of Satan in Jewish Exegesis of the Book of Job
Program Unit: National Association of Professors of Hebrew
Jason Kalman, Hebrew Union College, Jewish Institute of Religion

Jewish interpreters of the biblical book of Job have used the character of Satan in a variety of ways. By exploring the way these readers have solved the problem of theodicy by recasting the character of Satan, this paper will shed light on how he was transformed from the cellestial being of the book of Job, to the fallen angel of the Second Temple Period, into a metaphor for an individual's ignorance in mediaeval Jewish philosophy and God's counterbalance in Medieval Jewish mysticism.


Whores, Camels, and Mothers: The Monstrous-Feminine in the Book of Jeremiah
Program Unit: Writing/Reading Jeremiah
Amy Kalmanofsky, The Jewish Theological Seminary of America

Throughout his prophecy, Jeremiah conjures images of monstrous women to justify God's condemnation of Israel, to provoke disgust from his audience and to impel them to reform. According to horror theorist Barbara Creed, female monsters horrify differently than male monsters. For Creed, female monstrousness relates primarily to a woman's mothering or reproductive functions. Applying horror theory on the monstrous-feminine to the book of Jeremiah, I will look at Jeremiah"s representation of woman as monster. I begin by defining the monstrous-feminine and locating her in the book of Jeremiah. Through the lens of a close reading of Jer. 13:18-27, I consider the construct, nature and rhetorical impact of Jeremiah"s female monsters. Supporting Creed, I claim that Jeremiah constructs images of monstrous mothers and abject female bodies as well as images that convey a monstrous female sexuality.


The Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount in Present Tense
Program Unit: Matthew
John Kampen, Methodist Theological School in Ohio

Significant connections between 4Q525 (Beatitudes) 2 II - 3 from Qumran and the beatitues of Matthew have been demonstrated by a number of scholars, most notably Émile Puech and George Brooke. There is good reason to accept the English translations of 4Q525 2 II – 3 in which the assumption is made that the use of the imperfect in the Hebrew construction designates continuing activity (waw consecutive). This common grammatical construction is also evident in other macarisms found in biblical and post-biblical Hebrew literature. In contrast to these constructions, the Greek text of Matt 5:3-10 has the verb of the second clause in the future tense. The exception to this rule is found in vv. 3 and 10, the first and the last verses, “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Were we to have found the text of vv. 4-9 in a Hebrew text, we would have interpreted the Hebrew imperfect in a consecutive sense. This paper will propose that in the context of first-century debates between varieties of Jewish sectarianism the Matthean community represented in this text will similarly have understood these macarisms to have present meaning, thereby establishing a different temporal framework for the Sermon on the Mount than that assumed by many commentators.


Social Status, Scribes, and Poverty in Instruction
Program Unit: Qumran
John Kampen, Methodist Theological School in Ohio

The available fragments of Instruction constitute a particular challenge for the study of the social status of scribes in Second Temple Judaism of the third to the first centuries BCE. This composition is clearly reflective of a wisdom tradition shared with works such as Ben Sira and even the Wisdom of Solomon. Research has demonstrated that the scribal circles associated with Daniel and Enoch betray evidence of an elite social status in which those compositions originated. In contrast to both the wisdom compositions and these prominent representatives of Second Temple apocalyptic literature, Instruction is filled with references to the poverty and lack of means available to the mebyn, the addressee of this composition. This paper explores the evidence available within Instruction with regard to social status and scribal roles, comparing it with the material in these other texts. The research will demonstrate that the distinctive nature of the social location assumed in this text made it a valuable resource for sectarians as they developed an identity using some of the same vocabulary, as demonstrated in a sample of the texts which they authored.


The Impact of War on Children and Families: The Psychology of Displacement and Exile
Program Unit: Warfare in Ancient Israel
Hugo Kamya, Simmons College

In many parts of Africa and around the world, children are targets and perpetrators of war. Children experience torture, loss and are often caught fighting on various sides of different conflicts. These children suffer several forms of exploitation. They serve as laborers, sex slaves and often are involved in ritualistic abuse. They often carry out killings at the bequest of adults. All these experiences not only alienate them from others but also internally create isolation from their own psychic integrity and a deep sense of exile. This presentation will discuss the vicissitudes of children caught in armed conflicts and the psychiatric sequelae as well as attempts to address these symptoms in the context of community, regional, national and international arenas. Case studies of displaced children and families will be used to illustrate these issues.


The Song of Songs: From the Bible to the Mishnah
Program Unit: Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity
Jonathan Kaplan, Harvard University

Rabbinic literature from the third century C.E. witnesses to the flowering of so-called allegorical interpretation of the Song of Songs. Evidence for such sustained interpretation of the Song of Songs before this period is, however, scant. Scholars have suggested potential allusions to the Song of Songs in earlier literature such as the Wisdom of Solomon, 4 Ezra, Sirach, and the Apocalypse of John (or Revelation). This paper will explore what these earlier allusions and recent discussion of them can tell us about the interpretation of the Song of Songs between the period of the Song's composition and its more sustained interpretation in Tannaitic literature. Taken as a whole these allusions suggest a budding use of the Song of Songs in pre-Tannaitic Jewish and Christian literature in which the erotic language of the Song is used to express devotion to God.


The Baptismal Dove in Luke as Antithetical Roman Inaugural Symbolism
Program Unit: Jesus Traditions, Gospels, and Negotiating the Roman Imperial World
William Karlson, Baylor University

Scholarship continues to be dissatisfied in the search for the symbolism of a dove at Jesus" baptism. Many scholars have sought for answers from the Jewish milieu with little success. Charles H. Talbert of Baylor University has made noteworthy progress by going against this tide and looking to the Greco-Roman sources. The attempt in this presentation is to build upon Talbert's work and consider how the authorial audience of Luke's Gospel would have understood the flight of the dove at the inauguration of Jesus" ministry. I will demonstrate that Luke"s first audience would have likely connected Jesus" baptismal scene with Roman imperial inauguration, but the dove was the antithesis of the expected Imperial imagery of an eagle, a contrast crucial to Luke"s depiction of Jesus and the nature of the Kingdom of God.


Abrek as Key to the Onto-cosmological Meaning of the Joseph Story
Program Unit: Egyptology and Ancient Israel
Edward Karshner, Robert Morris University

There is general agreement that “Abrek” used in Genesis 41:43 is not a Hebrew word.Because abrek is used by the Egyptians, it would seem reasonable that it is an Egyptian phrase. Yet, abrek is not found in any other Egyptian writing. Egyptologist Bob Brier has speculated that abrek is a Hebrew corruption of the Egyptian expression “Ib ro*k” (Heart to You!). While this interpretation works phonetically, there is little textual support for this reading. This paper begins with John Gould's observation that maxims (gnomes) emerge from and then dissolve back into more complex mythical narratives. Therefore, if abrek is the corruption of an Egyptian maxim, it will, necessarily, make use of a more complex narrative as a subtext. Using Gould's perspective on the relationship between maxim and myth, this paper will propose that abrek as the idiomatic expression “Ib ro ka” (“Heart to Soul”) which, it will be argued, is based on the onto-cosmological narrative “The Memphite Theology.” After investigating how “Ib ro ka” emerges from its Egyptian narrative subtext, this paper will examine how the collective memory of the Hebrews reformulates this gnome into a polemical narrative against Egyptian wisdom. Finally, this progression from narrative to maxim to polemic will be analyzed using Kenneth Burke"s pentad of dramatism to illustrate how a rhetorical analysis of motive can be an invaluable tool in determining the time and place of a text"s construction.


Genesis 34 Used as an Anti-Samaritan Text in Jewish Writings from the Second Century BCE
Program Unit: Hellenistic Judaism
Magnar Kartveit, School of Mission and Theology (Misjonshogskolen i Stavanger)

Genesis 34 echoes in a number of texts from the second century bce, Theodotus, Jubilees, the Aramaic Levi Document, the Testament of Levi, Judith, Joseph and Aseneth. The Tendenz of this reuse of Gen 34 is disputed, but when read together with other texts, like Ben Sira and 4Q371/4Q372 (4QPoetic and Narrative Composition a-c), an anti-Samaritan Tendenz becomes the most likely understanding. The repeated use of Gen 34 and its combination with other HB texts are characteristic of these polemics, which allow a glipmse into the world of ongoing self-definition and definition of otherness.


The Temple on Mount Gerizim according to Josephus
Program Unit: Josephus
Magnar Kartveit, School of Mission and Theology (Misjonshogskolen i Stavanger)

Josephus is a major source for information on the temple on Mount Gerizim,for its construction and destruction. Often this information has been taken as a building block in the reconstruction of the origin and early history of the Samaritans. However, Josephus' general attitude towards the Samaritans has to be taken into account for evaluting this information, before its value as a historical source can be assessed. One is now able to make comparisons with the epigraphical material emerging from the excavations on Mount Gerizim, with sources from Qumran and with 2 Maccabees. On the basis of the available material, a picture of the situation on Mount Gerizim in the last centuries bce can be drawn.


Negotiating Aseneth: Constructing a Proper Wife for Joseph
Program Unit: Gender, Sexuality, and the Bible
Marianne Bjelland Kartzow, University of Oslo

The novel Joseph and Aseneth blends chastity and eroticism, and use sexualized ethnic and racial language to legitimize how the forefather Joseph could marry a non-Jew. Being concerned with a very beautiful couple from the upper strata of society, the heterosexual erotic pattern is combined with the ideal of virginity. Before the conversion, Aseneth is the incarnation of the religious other when it comes to gender, ethnicity and pagan praxis, but it is repeatedly emphasized that her sexuality is not influenced by this paganism. In other ancient texts female idolatry and sexual immorality goes hand in hand. In this novel, however, Aseneth's virginal seclusion serves to prove that there is no such connection in her case. Her female body is not sexually polluted although her mouth praised pagan gods. Apparently, paganism and ethnicity could be left behind when Aseneth became a new creation, while sexual purity was non-negotiable.


Discovering the Canon as a “Hybrid Persona”: Asian-North American Hermeneutical Conversations with Canonicity
Program Unit: Asian and Asian-American Hermeneutics
Julius-Kei Kato, King's University College-Ontario

The University of Chicago theologian David Tracy proposes three steps for hermeneutics: First, interpreters enter the act of interpreting “bearing the history of the effects of the traditions to which they ineluctably belong.” Second, interpreters confront a “classic,” that is, a “text” (in the broad sense) which bears “a certain permanence and excess of meaning that resists a definitive interpretation.” Third, interpreters engage this classic text in a hermeneutical “game of conversation.” This paper will attempt to show that Tracy's steps for hermeneutics are actually an eloquent description of what often happens when Asian-North Americans engage in hermeneutics. In the first place, they enter the interpretive act bearing the qualities that are characteristic of their diasporic and hybrid experience. (Here, I will present some salient characteristics with a bearing on hermeneutics that I culled from the Asian American theologians P. Phan, F. Matsuoka, R. Nakashima-Brock, and J.Y. Lee in my 2006 dissertation.) Next, I will suggest that a “classic” with which Asian-North American interpreters could converse with much profit is “canonicity,” the fact that a group of diverse writings on Jesus proclaimed as the Christ have been collected and fixed in a corpus which is believed to have some coherence and permanence of meaning for any subsequent questions about Christian identity. Why? Because such a conversation will show that the canon exhibits many commonalities with Asian-North American experiences and can itself be considered a “persona” with a hybrid identity. Lastly, I will actually initiate a hermeneutical conversation between an Asian-North American interpreter and canonicity and see what this conversation can suggest regarding issues deemed crucial among Asian-North Americans such as plurality in Christian identity, negotiation between diverse worlds, and the meaning of efforts to domesticate canonical plurality using notions such as authoritative interpretation and a “canon within the canon.”


The Fate of the Elides: 1 Samuel 2:36 according to Cyprian and L
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Historical Books
Tuukka Kauhanen, University of Helsinki

Cyprian is traditionally held to be one of the most significant Proto-Lucianic witnesses. One reason for this is to be found in the striking agreements between L and Cyprian's quotation in 1 Sam 2:36. These witnesses attest the prophecy against the Elides in a wording different from the text of B. Moreover, together with the majority of the LXX MSS, they attest a slightly longer text in accordance with the MT. An analysis of this verse helps to re-evaluate the relationships between L, Cyprian's quotations, and the original text of the LXX of 1 Samuel.


Coding Helps to Date Isaiah Chapters
Program Unit: Book of Isaiah
Preston Kavanagh, United Church of Christ

This presentation will have three parts. The first will define coding, drawing upon my July 2007 article in Biblica (which is online). Part two will describe how coding was applied to Hebrew scripture in general and to the book of Isaiah in particular. As a handout will show, exilic coding in all three sections of the book is high--as a whole it ranks sixth in coding density among Hebrew scripture's thirty-nine books. Two-thirds of chapters 1-39 contain statistically significant coding of Nebuchadnezzar or of a later monarch (including "Cyrus king of Babylon"), which means that most of First Isaiah was written during the Exile. Interestingly, coding shows that Isaiah 53 also was written under Cyrus after 539 BCE, while Isaiah 52 with its introduction to the Suffering Servant chapter has no such designation. This implies that the two might have been written decades apart. The presentation's third part will discuss clues that coding gives about authorship. A handout will show that three different exilic people have significant coding in at least thirty Isaiah chapters. Surprisingly, "Daniel" ranks first with thirty-four. In conclusion, this coding discovery can be of considerable assistance in understanding how the book of Isaiah was formed.


“What Is Truth?” Pilate's Perspective on Jesus in John 18:33–38
Program Unit: John, Jesus, and History
Craig S. Keener, Palmer Theological Seminary of Eastern University

The narrative in John 18:33-38 does not offer eyewitnesses to substantiate its account, but ancient historians and biographers also constructed scenes based on plausible inferences. The inference that Pilate categorized Jesus according to the categories of sage familiar to him is indeed a plausible one, one of the most plausible explanations, in fact, for Pilate's behavior even as it appears in the Synoptics. Even minimal attention to his Roman education would have exposed Pilate to a theme found among most kinds of philosophers, namely, that philosophers had the greatest wisdom for guiding the state. Stoics and Cynics, in particular, spoke of sages reigning as kings; but the heart of their "rule" involved persuading people about "truth." Unlike typical Stoics of this period, Cynics were considered antisocial, yet nevertheless usually escaped punishment because they were normally politically harmless. Although the ideal hearer of this Gospel recognizes that Jesus is no mere philosopher, Pilate within the narrative world would surely hear him in such terms. Pilate's response to Jesus makes sense historically on such terms.


The Beautiful Creatures: Trees in the Biblical Story
Program Unit: Ecological Hermeneutics
Sylvia C. Keesmaat, Institute for Christian Studies

The hermeneutical assumption that human beings are the central character throughout the biblical narrative is questioned in this reading that focuses on the voice of trees as they are found throughout the story. Beginning with Genesis and following the story through to Revelation, the way in which God's actions are perceived in the world is explored from the perspective of the trees. Such a perspective provides unusual insights into how historical happenings are seen by the non-human world. Events that seem successful by human standards are situations of deep suffering for trees. Conversely, historical event that seem tragic from a human point of view provide an opportunity for rejoicing on the part of the trees. In addition, when the biblical story is told from a place of identification with trees, there are some unexpected plot twists in the story that decentre the importance of humanity and retrieve the importance of trees for the redemption of humankind. In spite of being used by humanity as an instrument of death, the trees themselves take the path of imitation of Jesus. They do this by offering healing and forgiveness to those who have distorted their calling and caused them untold suffering. This telling illuminates Paul's assertion that the gospel has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, for the text indicates that trees not only hear such good news, but that they also respond and live out the gospel themselves.


A Gospel for Every Creature under Heaven? Creation in the New Testament
Program Unit: Ethics and Biblical Interpretation
Sylvia C. Keesmaat, Institute for Christian Studies

“With regard to how we should live with our fellow creatures” was never a section in any of the epistles that have been passed on to us, unfortunately. For some, this might mean that it is hard to discern what an environmental ethic based on the New Testament writings might look like. However, there are enough references to the hope of creation, the role of creation in salvation, and creational responsiveness to provide a solid basis for discerning the underlying assumptions that the writers held about creation. Such assumptions, in turn, provide us with a vision not only of what the good news of the gospel might be for creation, but also how we might be the bearers of that good news.


The Challenge of the Ancient Phenomenology of the Verbal Arts
Program Unit: Mapping Memory: Tradition, Texts, and Identity
Werner H. Kelber, Rice University

A discussion of the challenge of the ancient phenomenology of the verbal arts.


Dealing with the Trauma of Defeat: The Rhetoric of the Devastation and Rejuvenation of Nature in Ezekiel
Program Unit: Warfare in Ancient Israel
Brad E. Kelle, Point Loma Nazarene University

Language of the devastation and rejuvenation of nature appears regularly in the Old Testament prophets" proclamations of judgment and restoration. Against this background, scholars have noted that the book of Ezekiel shares the use of this prophetic motif (see, e.g., Ezek 12:20; 20:47; 33:28-29; 34:26-29; 36:4-6, 8-9, 33-36) but does so from the unique perspective of priestly theology. For Ezekiel, the land itself has become defiled, i.e., ritually impure or unclean, and for that reason must suffer the described devastation in order to purify it for future restoration (see Ezek 36:16-19). At the same time, recent Ezekiel scholarship has stressed the “traumatic” effects that the experiences of war, destruction, and deportation had on Ezekiel's exilic audience and, indeed, on the sixth-century prophet himself (e.g., Daniel Smith-Christopher; David G. Garber). Combining these observations, this paper explores the ways in which Ezekiel's priestly use of the devastation and rejuvenation of nature might serve a particular rhetorical function connected to the traumatic events experienced by Ezekiel and his audience, including the long-standing ancient Near Eastern warfare practice of devastating the countryside by cutting down trees, burning crop fields, etc. In keeping with the insights of trauma theory concerning how one deals with such traumatic experiences, this paper proposes that Ezekiel uses the common prophetic language of the destruction and rejuvenation of nature in order to reinterpret these Babylonian actions as outworkings of divine holiness and sovereignty and thus to deal with the trauma experienced by the victims among the people of Judah.


Genocide Studies and New Testament Scholarship: A Preliminary Investigation
Program Unit: Reading, Theory, and the Bible
Shawn Kelley, Daemen College

This paper will argue that New Testament scholarship could benefit from sustained engagement with Holocaust scholarship and with the burgeoning field of Genocide Studies. I will begin by examining critically the nature and scope of the assumptions made by post-Holocaust New Testament scholars about genocide. I will argue that the Holocaust functions, within New Testament scholarship, primarily as an ethical ground for a more serious and less hostile conception of Judaism. While I applaud the ethical seriousness of post-Holocaust New Testament, I also wish to ground this understanding in the sort of issues raised by Holocaust/Genocide scholars. At the same time, it must be acknowledged that such a dialogue is not without its complexity and difficulties. While categories draw from critical theory are often fluid enough to apply to the interpretation of ancient texts, most Holocaust scholarship is historically specific enough to render problematic such direct application of categories. Having identified some of the obstacles that stand in the way of engagement between the two fields, I will conclude by identifying three specific ways that Genocide Studies can help to inform New Testament scholarship. (i) Genocide Studies can help post-Holocaust New Testament scholarship become more reflective in its assumptions about genocide and the Holocaust. (ii) Holocaust Scholarship provides a rich and nuanced theory on the origins of the modern genocides and can introduce to New Testament scholarship a whole new range of ethical issues for examination and consideration. (iii) While Holocaust/genocide scholarship will probably not provide scholars with directly applicable interpretive categories, it is possible that these fields can introduce a theoretical stance towards the problem of systematic violence that can prove helpful to New Testament scholarship.


Between the Scenes: The Anointing and Un-anointing Meals of Saul
Program Unit: Biblical Criticism and Literary Criticism
Grenville Kent, University of Manchester

Pamela Tamarkin Reis has shown a darker undertone to Saul's nocturnal encounter with the "witch" at En-Dor (1 Samuel 28:8-25). Yet this meal scene also has an important literary and ideological function in undoing, point by point, Saul's anointing feast with Samuel. While some commentators have noted a few similarities in passing, this paper will attempt a systematic comparison and contrast, using literary theory and narrative film theory to examine the two scenes at the beginning and end of Saul"s reign.


Divine Philanthropia and Biblical Interpretation in Clement of Alexandria
Program Unit: History of Interpretation
Shawn W. J. Keough, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Clement's approach to scripture is shaped by his prior theological commitment to the identity and character of God, which he expresses especially in a creative tension between a radical apophaticism and a fervent commitment to divine philanthropia. It is, however, the divine philanthropia climactically expressed in the condescension and love of the Son that governs Clement's conception both of the doctrine of God and of the goal of human existence. Divine philanthropia thus not only characterizes the identity and character of God but also orients the revelatory and redemptive economy of the Logos, and in so doing provides the exegete with the most fundamental criterion of biblical exegesis. This specifically biblical doctrine of divine philanthropia not only serves to govern Clement"s description of the divine identity and character, but also the practice of biblical interpretation viewed in relation to the goal of human existence: the true Gnostic is not merely one who has correct knowledge of the divine identity, but rather is above all else an exegete marked and transformed by divine philanthropia. In this regard Clement"s trilogy, especially the Stromateis, has a decidedly exegetical foundation and orientation. Although Clement"s preferred procedure differs markedly from Philo and Origen, he nevertheless exemplifies a similar biblical orientation that orders his thought and gives shape to his most fundamental theological commitments. Thus the revelatory and redemptive economy of the Logos unites for Clement the manner in which exegesis must be worthy of God: just as biblical interpretation must yield descriptions of God that conform to governing convictions related to God"s loving intentions for humanity, so the progressive salvation of humanity results in an ever-increasing capacity to worship God in a manner worthy of God and (especially) to interpret the scriptures in a manner worthy of God.


Synaxis and Sacrifice: Some Observations on the Eucharistic Assembly Motif in Didache 14
Program Unit: Didache in Context
Taras Khomych, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

This presentation seeks to shed some new light on the interpretation of Didache's eucharistic passages, by drawing attention to the overlap between ethical-sapiential and eschatological-apocalyptic motifs in this document. It argues, in particular, that the concept of assembly (synaxis/synago) in eucharistic passages of Did. 9-10 and 16.2 points to a (close) connection between eschatological expectations and ethical teaching in the Didache. It is then demonstrated that chapter 14 likewise emphasises the notion of assembly, although in a somewhat different manner than the other eucharistic passages. Taking into account that the gathering motif was given only marginal attention in the vast majority of interpretations of Did. 14, the present paper attempts to show how the recovery of this notion may influence our understanding of the passage in question, including the much-debated concept of sacrifice (thusia).


The Gathering of the Church (Didache 9.4; 10.5) and the Parting of the Ways with Judaism: The Self-Understanding of the Didachean Community Revisited
Program Unit: Early Jewish Christian Relations
Taras Khomych, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

The Didache has often been the subject of scholarly discussions surrounding the issues of early Jewish-Christian relations insofar as this document clearly points at early forms of Jesus movement that transmitted Jewish traditions both in practice and belief. Affinity with Judaism has been highlighted especially with regard to the liturgical portions of the Didache, which seem to reflect contemporary Jewish institutions. In particular, many scholars tend to see a direct link between the eucharistic prayers of the Didache (9-10) and the Birkat Ha-Mazon, suggesting that the former evolved out of the latter. At the same time, the distinctive features of the Didache prayers are interpreted for the most part as Christian modifications of the Jewish original. This presentation will test this view by focusing on Did. 9.4 and 10.5, which refer to the eschatological gathering of the Church into God's Kingdom. While displaying some similarity with the traditional Jewish motif of the ingathering of the diaspora, these verses do not express the idea of Israel's restoration, which seems to be closely connected with the gathering motif in Jewish literature. In view of this the following questions may be raised: does the lack of any explicit reference to Israel (as well as Jerusalem and/or the Temple) here indicate that the Didache attempts to substitute the Jewish hope for the political reconstitution of Israel as nation by the notion of the eschatological assembly of the Church, stripped of any political connotation? And if so, is the Didache community attempting to define thus its own identity in opposition to Judaism? Answers to these questions will allow us to determine to what extent, if at all, verses 9.4 and 10.5 can be seen as specifically Christian, and whether they imply the parting of the ways with Judaism.


The Jewish Root of Christology in the Apocalypse of John: The Mystical Character of Jesus in Light of the Messianism in Old Greek Daniel
Program Unit: Korean Biblical Colloquium
Daewoong Kim, Rice University

This paper concerns hermeneutically motivational factors of Christology in Revelation, with a special focus on mystical-oriented characterization of Jesus. In Revelation Jesus is presented as the Messiah, whose images and roles are firmly rooted in two theophanic figures in Daniel 7, “Son of Man” and “Ancient of Days.” In mystical visions of the celestial hall of throne in Revelation Jesus, identified both as the Danielic Son of Man and as Ancient of Days, goes through a process of ontological unification with God enthroned. This mode of the mystical depiction of the Christ in the Apocalypse seems indicative of worship of Jesus practiced by the early Christians who juxtaposed Jesus with God in such a way to preserve “an exclusivist monotheistic stance.” Such a ritual-oriented Christology in Revelation is best explained in light of the messianism in the Old Greek Daniel that appears to have been the foundational source of the scriptural interpretation of the apocalyptic group behind the Apocalypse.


Reading Proverbs 26:4–5 from the Hermeneutical Perspective of Proverbs 1–9
Program Unit: Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
Hee Suk Kim, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

Proverbs 26:4-5 is notorious for its exegetical difficulty because the two verses seem contradictory to each other. In recent scholarship, a number of scholars have argued that a key to understanding this passage is “fittingness,” which requires the interpreter's sensitivity toward how to act appropriately in a given situation. This “fittingness” criterion is suggestively said to serve the hermeneutical needs of other individual proverbs, yet has significant limitation: it is read from within Proverbs 26:4-5 and therefore does not have legitimacy for other proverbs. Accordingly, this paper revisits Proverbs 26:4-5 at two levels. First, it attempts to read the passage from within itself. Second, it goes further to interpret it from the hermeneutical perspective of Proverbs 1-9, especially Proverbs 9 where the fear of the Lord is given as a guideline to differentiate between Lady Wisdom and Lady Folly. It is noteworthy that Lady Wisdom and Lady Folly in Proverbs 9 are etymologically related to “be wise” and “fools” in Proverbs 26:4-5 (hkm and ksl). Consequently, this paper argues that Proverbs 26:4-5 should be interpreted not only from within itself, namely, from the viewpoint of fittingness, but also through Proverbs 1-9, precisely, from the perspective of the fear of the Lord. It is hoped that this study would serve as a useful example to support the case that the individual maxims in Proverbs 10 onward are to be interpreted through the hermeneutical lens of Proverbs 1-9.


The Interpretation of “Daughter Zion” (bat siyôn)
Program Unit: Biblical Hebrew Poetry
Hyukki Kim, McMaster Divinity College

This paper will deal with the issue of the interpretation of “daughter Zion” (bat siyôn). “Daughter Zion” (bat siyôn) is an expression related to Zion which plays an important role in the description of the relationship between God and Israel in the Hebrew Bible. During the latter part of the last century, several academic projects concentrated on the origin and the grammar of "daughter Zion" against the backdrop of the ancient Near East. Although these projects found some common elements between "daughter Zion" in the Old Testament and goddesses in other ancient Near Eastern religions, they were not able to reach a definitive conclusion, because of the paucity of evidence. In addition, they did not reveal the metaphorical character of "daughter Zoin," which may contain various nuances depending on the specific context. Thus, while building on the fact that "daughter Zion" is a metaphor which describes Zion as a daughter, this paper will focus on the function of the metaphor “daughter Zion” in the context of the Hebrew Bible regardless its background, because it appears already as an accepted metaphor in the Hebrew Bible. In order to examine the metaphorical character of "daughter Zion," I will employ the cognitive theories of metaphor. Especially, I consider “daughter Zion” as one of female metaphors for Zion, in which Zion is described as a mother, wife, widow, and daughter. Through this approach, I will reveal the various functions and connotations of the metaphor "daughter Zion" in the Hebrew Bible.


Ilu's Epithet Thoru in the Ugaritic Literature
Program Unit: Ugaritic Studies and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy
Stephen Sang-Bae Kim, University of Pennsylvania

Ilu is the highest god of Ugarit. Like other kings of gods, he has many epithets. One of the most frequently used epithets is Thoru (tôru). It seems that there are two well represented competing views about the ancient Near Eastern symbolism of the bull. According to the one, the title tr signifies that Ilu is a fertility god. The other view is that the ancient bull symbolizes the strength and might of Ilu, rather than fertility. This paper begins with the Held's methodological principle zero, “all internal Biblical evidence must first be examined exhaustively before even beginning the philological investigation of the comparative Semitic evidence for the word in question.” According to this principle, this paper examines all internal Ugaritic evidence first before making inferences. The consequence of a thorough scrutiny of the Ugaritic literary data is that Ilu's epithet Thoru indicates that Ilu is a fertility god of Ugarit. Bull symbolizes might or strength in other areas of the ancient Near East and beyond, but when the epithet is used to describe Ilu of Ugarit, it consistently signifies the aspect of fertility of the highest god of the city.


Friendship: The Proverbial Model for Human Relationship
Program Unit: Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
Sung Jin Kim, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

The primary goal of Israelite wisdom literature is pedagogical. It teaches “its” student how to master things of the world in which they live and how to build right relationships with both human beings and God. Of these goals, the book of Proverbs focuses more on their relationships with humans and God. While the theme of “fear of the Lord” is relevant for the relationship with God, the theme of “friendship” represents a right model for human relationship. The purpose of this study is to elucidate the teaching of friendship in the book of Proverbs. The thesis is that the theme of friendship is the model for the human relationship in various contexts. The term “friend” includes the relationship with spouse, business partner, neighbor (spatial dimension), and spiritual friend (emotional dimension). This study will delve into the proverbial teachings on the friendship (especially Prov 27:1-21) within various contexts and its implications.


Reading the Story of David with Asian Americans
Program Unit: Asian and Asian-American Hermeneutics
Uriah Y. Kim, Hartford Seminary

The narrator of the David story, 1 Samuel 16 to 1 Kings 2, is certainly more of an apologist than an historian, spinning stories with superb narrative skills in order to defend David's innocence of bloodguilt during his rise to power (1 Samuel 16 – 2 Samuel 5) and to depict him as a kind and meek father who is taken advantage of by his sons and servants during Absalom's revolt (2 Samuel 13 – 20) and Solomon"s succession (1 Kings 1 – 2). This David invokes awe and adoration on one hand and profound sympathy on the other. He is a hero of faith many of us strive to imitate, and, at the same time, he is all too human to whom we can relate and in whom we see our frailties. This paper does not try to deconstruct this image, tempting as it may be. Instead, this paper strives to present postcolonial features in David that ought to be imagined and practiced by individuals and communities, like Asian Americans, embroiled in the politics of difference in the twenty-first century.


The Suffering Servant at Isenheim
Program Unit: Bible and Visual Art
Jill Kirby, The Catholic University of America

Andrée Hayum's investigation of the hospital context for which Grünewald's Isenheim altarpiece was commissioned concludes that the closed Crucifixion state “allows for the possibility of divine intervention and of identification with the divine.” Although she notes, for example, that the watery background evokes the cure of Naaman in 2 Kings 5, she does not pursue further potential OT allusions. This paper extends Hayum"s insights by considering the possibility that Isenheim"s patients, who suffered from ignis plaga, or St. Anthony"s Fire, would have seen in the ravaged skin and contorted limbs of the crucified Christ a depiction of the Servant (Isa 53:3-4) whose suffering and infirmities bore a certain physical resemblance to their own. Perhaps this allowed them to more fully assimilate the idea that this Christ had indeed “borne [their] infirmities and carried [their] diseases” on his way to becoming the dancing figure who rises in the Resurrection panel.


Early Writings Websites
Program Unit: Computer Assisted Research
Peter Kirby, California State University-Fullerton

Early Christian Writings and its companion site, Early Jewish Writings, have become very popular over the past five years, receiving well over a million visitors in that time and being recognized occasionally in print publications. These sites catalog the writings of Christians and Jews respectively through the first two centuries of the common era, highlighting publicly available introductions and translations. The websites and their functionality will be illustrated and a future course for the sites will be suggested.


Memory, Ancient Media, and the Problem of Order in Matthew's Q Tradition
Program Unit: Q
Alan Kirk, James Madison University

The order of the the double tradition in Matthew remains a crux problem for the Two Document Hypothesis. The multiple scans solution proposed by Vincent Taylor (still the default solution for much 2DH scholarship) is difficult to reconcile with ancient media realities. Synoptic scholarship in general tends to have a deficient understanding of these realities, and especially of memory and orality as crucial factors in ancient source-utilization. Matthew's use of the Q tradition is in fact intelligible as a case of memory-based source competence.


Resurrection Hermeneutics in Romans
Program Unit: Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity
J. R. Daniel Kirk, St. Joseph's University

Resurrection in Paul's letter to Rome provides an extended case study in first century Jewish Christian hermeneutics. The resurrection of Jesus looms large over the entire letter, appearing in at least eleven of the sixteen chapters and also in every major argumentative section. Paul does not provide an extended analysis of resurrection; instead, he uses the resurrection of Jesus as a hermeneutical key by which he reinterprets almost every major moment of Israel's story. These reinterpreted elements include creation, Adam, Abrahamic descent, Torah, Davidic kingship, restoration, new creation, and perhaps even the identity of Israel"s God. The paper will argue for this hermeneutical function of resurrection in the letter, and make some suggestions as to why Paul chooses resurrection as the appropriate interpretive grid for Israel"s scriptures given the content and purposes of Romans.


Making Their Mark: Pagan, Jewish, and Christian Graffiti at Aphrodisias
Program Unit: Archaeology of Religion in the Roman World
Bradford A. Kirkegaard, San Diego State University

Graffiti at Aphrodisias reveal the complexity of individual claims on space within the city's shared late antique religious landscape. Paganism, Christianity and Judaism all coexisted at Aphrodisias from the fourth through the sixth centuries CE. Buildings, sculpture, and formal inscriptions chronicle several of the decisive moments in shifting power between these religious groups from the perspectives of the wealthy; however, poorer people made their own diverse claims in the less articulate, if no less deeply felt, language of graffiti. Expressing their individual perspectives and needs coupled with their religious affiliations, these graffiti show the complex coexistence of these religious traditions upon the city's landscape. The new Cathedral became a locus of intense interest for Christian graffiti with individuals claiming specific places for themselves and giving voice to their hopes and fears in simple prayers. Graffiti from the Sebasteion tell a different story, as the space declined as a site of vital pagan worship and was carved out instead with Jewish markings. Public spaces of the city were particularly active locations for graffiti. Pagans, Christians, and Jews marked spaces in and around the agora in contradistinction with one another in what has been described as a graffiti war. Christian "place inscriptions" within these public spaces reflect growing encroachment and the humbler structures Christians set up for themselves within these monumental pagan spaces. Individuals also employed graffiti at sites of public entertainment. The theater, odeon and stadium are replete with individuals claiming their own spaces and expressing their hopes, triumphs and frustrations in a cacophony of religious language. The aristocratic forms of inscriptions, buildings and sculpture identify the coexistence of religions at Aphrodisias. But it is only by turning to the simpler and highly individualized expressions of graffiti that the long and complex coexistence of these traditions comes into sharp relief.


Constantine's “In Kind” Donations and the Economy of the Early Christian Church
Program Unit: Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy
Bradford A. Kirkegaard, San Diego State University

“In kind” donations by Constantine to the churches in the Liber Pontificalis reveal the specific economic needs of the new churches within their civic context, reflect the complexities and interrelationships of the Roman economy, and underscore the realities of the resources available to Christianity. The Liber Pontificalis (or Book of the Popes) details the specific gifts made to the individual churches at Rome. Foundational among these gifts are the donations of Constantine, made especially after his consolidations of the Western and Eastern halves of the empire. Pietri made the now oft-cited observation that the total of Constantine's donations was about the equivalent of the income of a single senator. The “in kind” donations that form the primary source of funding for churches founded after Constantine's consolidation of the East have been less thoroughly examined or connected to recent theories about the Roman economy, world historical perspectives, or studies of Constantine"s Rome. Constantine"s “in kind” donations correspond closely with the specific economic needs of the individual churches for their liturgical functions and also for meeting the specific social needs of their new communities. These “in kind” donations from newly acquired Eastern holdings also offer insight into the complex flow of goods from the provinces into the center of the empire to support specialized needs. Close inspection of the funding for Constantine"s churches also underscores the limited means of these churches. Christian churches would build upon early Constantinian foundations to establish a vital economy at the heart of the later Roman Empire, but at this time their means remained limited and their economic position vulnerable. Capturing a specific and critical moment in time, Constantine"s “in kind” donations from the Liber Pontificalis reveal the nascent economy of the Christian church set within the complexity of the larger economy of the Roman Empire.


Introducing Whom to What? Teaching Introductory Bible Courses to Non-majors at Christian Colleges
Program Unit: Teaching Biblical Studies in an Undergraduate Liberal Arts Context
Shane Kirkpatrick, Anderson University

This study of teachers of required introductory Bible courses at several CCCU (Council for Christian Colleges and Universities) schools follows a recent nation-wide study by asking about faculty learning goals in comparison with student learning goals. Why require an introductory Bible course, and what role does critical scholarship play in the teaching of such a course? How does institutional identity influence the purposes and practices of teaching introductory Bible courses at these Christian colleges?


The Tree of Life, the Sword, and the Bitter Waters: Jewish and Christian Biblical Interpretation, Symbols, and Theological Patterns
Program Unit: Early Jewish Christian Relations
Menahem Kister, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The lecture will deal with early interpretations of the "flaming turning sword" placed by God "to guard the way of the tree of life," according to Gen 3:24, and some of its interpretations in early Judaism (midrash) and Christianity (Ephrem). I intend also to deal with the interpretation suggested by Origen and by Jewish sources to the bitter waters of Marah and the tree thrown into it (Ex 15:22-26). These case-studies may help us to better understand the complex relationship between the Jewish and the Christian interpretations of the Bible (including borrowings and polemics) and their correspondence to the more basic theological orientations of the two rival religions.


A Christian Nineveh: Narsai's Interpretation of Jonah for the Church of the East
Program Unit: Bible in Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Traditions
Robert A. Kitchen, Knox-Metropolitan United Church

Narsai (399-502) was a bishop of the Church of the East, the principal of the School of Nisibis, and along with Ephrem and Jacob of Serug, one of the great poetic Biblical exegetes in the Syriac Church tradition. Of the three poets/exegetes, Narsai is the least known and least translated, but this situation is gradually changing. The themes of Narsai's lengthy memre/poetic discourses focus frequently upon Old Testament topics and personalities. The 8th memra in Volume 1 (pp. 134-149) of Alphonse Mingana's edition of Narsai"s works is a medium length theological exegesis of the book of Jonah and the repentance of Nineveh. Ephrem (in a number of shorter memre) and Jacob of Serug (in one very long memra) also treat the same subjects in great detail, both bestowing particular attention and imagination on Nineveh"s repentance, which they hold to be a model for contemporary Christian communal repentance. The direction of this paper will be to summarize Narsai"s interpretation of Jonah as a Christian personality and to examine how the assessment of Jonah"s character fares in the light of Nineveh"s transformation. As well, I will begin the comparison between Narsai"s exegesis and interpretation and that of Ephrem and Jacob. How all three utilize this Old Testament story in service of the situation in their own Christian communities will be among the more important trajectories to observe.


Curse Cleansing Rituals: “Leprosy” Rites and nam-erim-bur-ru-das
Program Unit: Israelite Religion in its Ancient Context
Anne Marie Kitz, Kenrick-Glennon Seminary–Kenrick School of Theology

For almost a century, Assyriologists have been aware of a ritual called nam-erim-bur-ru da/mamit pasaru. Both the Sumerian and Akkadian appellations of this rite mean "curse releasing". Textual evidence shows that they are exorcistic and aim to heal diseases and other ailments caused by maledictions. A nam-erim-bur-ru-da found on a tablet in the British Museum (BM 50658) furnishes information on the structure of the rite. The tablet records two elements of the ritual under two headings: an inim-inim-ma/amatu a series of "words" or "an oral formula" and a kid-kid/kikkittû, a list of preparatory acts that indirectly inventories some of the items required for the rite. The ritual described in Lev 14:2-9 likewise cleanses a man suffering from the effects of the curse of "leprosy" and may be considered the biblical equivalent of a nam-erim-bur ru-da/mamit pasaru ritual. This proposes that Lev 14:2-9 functions as the kid-kid/kikkittû "ritual acts" tablet for the "leprosy" rituals. Lev 14:2 specifically identifies the procedure as torah. Unlike BM 50658, Leviticus does not record any oral elements of the rite. The lack of such incantations in biblical "leprosy" rituals may account for Naaman's heated response to Elisha in 2 Kings 5:11 who obviously expected much more from the prophet than instructions to wash in the river. This suggests that some Israelite rites were primarily a series of effective ritual acts that required few if any incantations for them to be productive.


Journeying, Tenting, Home-Coming: Rereading Johannine Characters from Exile
Program Unit: Johannine Literature
Ingrid Rosa Kitzberger, Muenster, Germany

The Word-become-flesh tented among „us“and journeyed on earth as a „non-resident alien“ (L. Guardiola-Sáenz) until his return/home-coming into the Father´s womb. The „journey of the Word“ is not only essential for the plot of John´s Gospel (cf. F. Segovia), it also provides the matrix for other characters and their encounters with Jesus during their own journeys. This paper focusses on characterization from a narrative-critical reader response perspective, combined with an autobiographical biblical critical (ABC) approach by re-reading Johannine characters from my own “non-resident” location of exile and border crossing journeys.


Josephus, the Rabbis, and the Response to Catastrophes Ancient and Modern
Program Unit: History and Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism
Jonathan Klawans, Boston University

In order to explain the impact the destruction of the second temple had on Judaism, a number of scholars maintain that a helpful analogy can be drawn between the catastrophic defeat in 70 CE and calamities that befell the Jewish people in 1933-1945. Following from this, it is suggested that the Jewish responses to these catastrophes can also be helpfully compared. A dispassionate comparison of the two historical events, alongside a careful reconsideration of the responses to 70 CE in Josephus and Rabbinic literature will provide the basis for a critical reexamination of this approach. The scholars who maintain the approach to be analyzed here—B. Bokser, J. Neusner, S. Schwartz, M. Goodman—do not present a monolithic stance on these matters. Nonetheless, these scholars generally maintain that the Jews were at first shocked into silence, and only gradually able to come to terms with catastrophe. Neither aspect of this approach finds adequate support in either the ancient or modern evidence. When looking at the ancient evidence—and this will be the focus of this paper—what is striking is the degree to which Josephus's response in the first decade after the destruction is in many important respects quite similar to the responses of the rabbis centuries later. These similarities include: (1) maintaining a covenantal explanation for the destruction; (2) expressing a concern with transgressions that defiled the temple prior to its destruction; (3) explicitly recognizing that the destruction was not unprecedented; and (4) clearly asserting that the proper response is not to make dramatic changes but to assert continuity. It will be argued, in conclusion, that scholarly understanding of both Josephus and the Rabbis will be advanced if we set aside once and for all the ill-advised comparison between the events of 70 CE and 1945.


Israel in Exile after Thirty Years
Program Unit: Exile (Forced Migrations) in Biblical Literature
Ralph W. Klein, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago

Since the appearance of Israel in Exile in the Overtures to Biblical Theology series, several monographs have raised new dimensions of exile and/or expanded the horizon of what such a title should address. This paper will review these major developments and propose salient prospects for the future.


“Mirrors of the Dance”: Finding the Interplay between the Static and the Dynamic in Biblical Ritual and Ancient Near Eastern Iconography
Program Unit: Ritual in the Biblical World
Gerald A. Klingbeil, Adventist International Institute of Advanced Studies and Martin G. Klingbeil, Helderberg College

Action is an important element in ritual and refers to the interplay of ritual objects/participants in space and time which results in the performance of the ritual itself (cf. Gerald A. Klingbeil, Bridging the Gap: Ritual and Ritual Texts in the Bible [BBRSup 1; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2007], 18). While both biblical ritual texts and ANE iconography depicting religious/ritual activities describe a dynamic, action-oriented reality, both are in fact static snapshots of an ancient reality or concept. Within the thematic framework of this particular session of the Ritual in the Biblical World consultation, this paper tries to look for an interface between ritual and iconographic studies by focusing upon the interaction between the dynamic and the static. The two key questions under discussion are: (1) Can ritual be expressed adequately through iconography; and (2) Can iconography serve as a hermeneutic tool to decipher ritual? The raw data used to interact with these questions is taken from the corpus of the ritual texts of the Hebrew Bible and from ANE iconographic objects where preference is given to the spatial and geographic context in which the Hebrew Bible originated.


The Sabbath in the Decalogue: Creation and Liberation as a Paradigm for Community
Program Unit: Sabbath in Text and Tradition
Gerald A. Klingbeil, Adventist International Institute of Advanced Studies

Sabbath studies are booming and it appears to be a good time to revisit one of the key texts of Sabbath theology of the Hebrew Bible, i.e., the Decalogue (Exod 20:8–11 and Deut 5:12–15). This study seeks to concisely introduce the locus (textual, structural, historical, and theological) of the Sabbath command in the Decalogue, which will be followed by reflections about the differences between the two forms of the Decalogue in Exodus and Deuteronomy. I will argue here that one of the key reasons for the significant differences in the Sabbath commands of the Decalogue in Exodus and Deuteronomy concerns the concept of contextualization. The next section examines in more detail Exodus 20:8–11 and highlights a number of intertextual links to the creation narrative. Furthermore, I also pay attention to the ritual elements and holiness language associated with the biblical Sabbath command. The following section focuses on the additional arguments for Sabbath observance that are presented in Deuteronomy 5:12–15. Finally, I will try to bring together the main elements and arguments for Sabbath observance in the Decalogue, focusing on key theological components such as creation, liberation, community, and holiness.


Mapping the Literary to the Literal Image: A Comparison between Submetaphors of the 'God is a Warrior' Metaphor in the Hebrew Psalter and Attributes of the Warrior-God in ANE Iconography
Program Unit: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Bible
Martin Klingbeil, Helderberg College

In a paper read at the International SBL meetings in Vienna, 2007, I discussed the relationship between the literary and literal image. Taking metaphor as the most prominent trope of biblical imagery, I concentrated on the relationship between metaphors in the Hebrew Bible and iconographic objects in the ANE. My preliminary conclusion was that while both are independent forms of communication which need to be understood in their own right, they nevertheless are linked to each other via the conceptual metaphor and converge in the concept of what constitutes an image. Thus the literary and literal images can rightfully be related to each other as done liberally in iconographic studies that deal with exegetical issues. In the present study I would like to take the analysis of the relationship between the literal and literary image one step further. Metaphors of the divine in the Hebrew Psalter can be categorized in domains of main metaphors and their corresponding sub-metaphors. Deities as depicted in ANE iconography also exhibit certain sets of attributes which in turn classify them as the respective deity. A comparison of the God as a warrior metaphor in the Hebrew Psalter together with its corresponding sub-metaphors, and iconographic objects of warrior-gods from the ANE with their respective sets of attributes will try to answer the question as to how complex the level of interaction between the literary and the literal image can be established.


Johannine Dramatics: A Study of Past Methods and a Proposal for the Future
Program Unit: Johannine Literature
Edward Klink, Talbot School of Theology

For over a century the Gospel of John has been described as “dramatic” or as a “drama.” The uses of the category of drama are hardly monolithic, but they do reveal developing trends in Johannine studies. But what exactly do we mean by the term “drama” as it is applied to the Gospel of John? From “a testimony to the frequently challenged organic unity” of John (Hitchcock, 1907), to the two-level reading that deciphers John “in his own terms” (Martyn, 1968/2003), John has been dramatized. Did John intended to write in the genre of drama (Brant, 2004), or did we append dramatic categories to John for our own ideological purposes (Conway, 2002)? Either way, John has been dramatized; almost every textbook on John will speak with the category of drama, supported by numerous footnotes, as if the entire dramatic enterprise were paradigmatic. But what do we mean when we speak of John as “drama?” Is the category of drama to be used to depict the ancient context of the gospel (Martyn) or merely our own contemporary production(s) of the Gospel (Conway)? After examining a century of Johannine dramatization, this paper will argue that a more robust understanding of the category of drama is needed. After looking at the limitations of the categories of “history” and “narrative” in recent research, this paper will argue that the category of drama might function as a meta-category, a more capable conceptual model within which the categories of history and narrative may function and inter-relate. Rather than being a mere heuristic device, the category of drama will be shown to be a helpful metaphor in trying to understand the interrelation of history and theology and the performative nature of the Gospel of John.


A Dramatic Reading of the Fourth Gospel
Program Unit: Christian Theology and the Bible
Edward Klink, Talbot School of Theology

For over a century the Gospel of John has been described as a drama. Before the Second World War the dramatic nature of the gospel was used to defend the literary unity of the gospel in the midst of growing criticisms. After the war, and in lieu of form- and redaction-critical emphases, the gospel's dramatic features were used to describe its odd historical nature, most visible in the unique mixture of Jesus tradition with the experiences of the Johannine community that created a “two-level drama.” Unfortunately, the notion of “drama” has been used rather simplistically as a buzzword either in place of literary aesthetics or as a descriptor of John's unique historical narrative. But these conceptual categories have had their problems, for both the categories of “narrative” and “history” are impeded by limitations in their very nature. Even more, neither seem to be able to handle the theological dimension of the Fourth Gospel. This paper will try to move beyond the narrative-history impasse by using “drama” as a theological category. This is not an argument regarding the genre of the Gospel of John, nor is it trying to describe theatrical elements in order to highlight theological emphases; rather, it is attempting to use drama as a category, just as one would use the categories of history or narrative. It is an argument that drama is a more capable conceptual model, a meta-category, a preferable frame of reference within which the categories of history and narrative (theology) may function and inter-relate. Using recent research in dramatic theory, especially Hans Urs von Balthasar"s Theo-Drama, this paper will try to move beyond the impasse of history and theology in the Fourth Gospel and provide a reading strategy that allows for the gospel"s performative nature as Christian scripture.


Stoic Psychagogy and the Letter of James
Program Unit: Letters of James, Peter, and Jude
John S. Kloppenborg, University of Toronto

Interpreters have occasionally noted the coincidence between James' vocabulary and technical terms of Stoicism, usually dismissing them as coincidental. This paper argues that in significant ways, James shares with Stoicism notions of care of the soul, control of the epithymiai, and the role of rational persuasion in the guidance of the soul.


Texts That Live and Breathe: The Function and Role of Psalms 96–98 in Isaiah 42–49
Program Unit: Book of Isaiah
Sheri Klouda, Taylor University

The extant text of Isaiah shares literary, verbal, and thematic affinities with many psalms. An examination of some of these similarities reveals that in the compositional process, the Isaianic author draws liberally from a specific group of psalms which, linked together conceptually through terminology and theme, influence and enhance the interpretation of Isaiah's message. This paper analyzes three instances of prophetic appropriation and adaptation of Psalms 96-98 in Isaiah 42-49, in order to discover the role that biblical allusion plays when the writer invokes an anterior text, then reformulates it, reinterprets it, or reacts against it The research demonstrates that through the adaptation of Psalms 96-98, the prophetic writer actively engages the audience in the process of connecting conceptually corresponding texts together into an authoritative theological continuum, illustrating the dynamic vitality and interpretive significance of biblical textual dialogue for the reader.


An Ancient Metallurgy Landscape in Iron Age Edom: New Data from the Wadi al-Jariyeh, Faynan
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible, History, and Archaeology
Kyle Knabb, University of California, San Diego

As a part of the UCSD–Department of Antiquities of Jordan Edom Lowlands Regional Archaeology Project (ELRAP) 2007 field season directed by T.E. Levy and M. Najjar, we conducted an intensive survey of an approximately 4km stretch of Wadi al-Jariyeh. A total of 96 new sites were recorded in Wadi al-Jariyeh and two secondary drainages. The following is a preliminary summary and presentation of the settlement pattern data collected that season. To characterize the nature of occupation in the research area, we set out to recorded sites of all types from all time periods, ranging from prehistoric through modern Bedouin periods. This paper focuses on the nature of Iron Age metal production in the Faynan district using settlement pattern data to understand the organization of metal production that was centered on sites such as Khirbat en-Nahas and Khirbat al-Jariyeh.


Proverbs and the Poetics of Making-Transcendent
Program Unit: Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
David Knauert, Duke University

The paradoxical identification between wisdom's essence and its points of failure (as analyzed in the crucial chapter of von Rad's Weisheit in Israel—“Grenzen der Weisheit”) has proven remarkably productive in recent Proverbs scholarship. What was once disregarded as a rigid ideology of retribution is now seen, on the whole, as a pious exploration of the finitude of human knowledge, set in stark contrast to the infinite freedom of Yhwh. On this reading, what limits wisdom (Yhwh's unfettered sovereignty) and what marks wisdom's deepest truth (Yhwh's ordered creativity) are different sides of the same coin. This is to understand both limit and essence as grounded in a transcendent Other, which human wisdom approaches but only asymptotically—the gap marked, of course, by Proverbs high regard for “the-fear of-Yhwh.” Assuming these conclusions are right, we can formalize the situation thus: the Symbolic order of wisdom falls short of its external referent in the Real (i.e. the unattainable kernel of Yhwh's freedom), and this gap is marked by a signifier, “the-fear of-Yhwh.” In other words, it is the transcendent Real that holds ontological priority. The paper at hand is interested in two “clusters” (Scoralick, Heim) of proverbs (Prov 10:22-27; 14:16-27) wherein “the-fear of-Yhwh” is deployed as a solution to the impasses of the Symbolic as such. In these chains of sayings, the “gap” that impedes the sages from attaining Absolute Wisdom inheres immanently to wisdom's symbolic-discursive field. Wisdom's inaccessible Real, to put it more strongly, is nothing but this series of failures to constitute a coherent Symbolic field. The goal of this paper is to renew our perceptive capacities (1) vis-à-vis wisdom's limit-essence as it subsists on the plane of immanence, and (2) to the poetics of making-transcendent that I believe characterizes Proverbs 1-9 as an ideological-literary project.


Covenantal Sabotage
Program Unit: Pentateuch
Robin J. DeWitt Knauth, Lycoming College

A theme of covenantal sabotage found in J's account of the serpent tricking Eve in Genesis 3, plus Delilah tricking Samson in Judges (assigned as J by Friedman), may explain contradictory traditions of Numbers 22-24's basically positive presentation of Balaam as an obedient prophet of YHWH and his condemnation in other texts. Helpful clues are provided by Num 31:15-16"s comments about “Balaam"s advice” to Moabite women, who turned the Israelites away from YHWH so that they suffered a severe plague (recorded in Num 25, but with no mention of Balaam), plus Rev 2:14"s association of Balaam with meat sacrificed to idols and fornication – placing a “stumbling block” before the Israelites. Balaam"s involvement in the Peor incident reveals him clearly as Israel"s enemy. Balaam"s absence from the account is explainable by a strong Priestly agenda, signaled by the obvious pro-Aaron / anti-Moses shift of blame for the plague from Moabites to Midianites, along with affirmation of Phinehas with an exclusive covenant of priesthood for his zeal in the face of Moses" ineffectual apathy. Priestly presentation of Balaam as a prophet of YHWH follows logically from universal popular acknowledgement of Balaam as a famous prophet, combined with a Priestly doctrine of monotheism. Balaam"s prophetic powers could only be from YHWH, who is completely in control. Priestly presentation of Balaam thus carefully stresses the prophet"s lack of power to do anything on his own, but obscures his basic stance of opposition to Israel. His method of manipulation begins in Num 23 with repeated sacrifices designed to manipulate God into going against Israel. When this failed, he advised the Moabites to manipulate Israel into going against God, seducing them to sin with ritual prostitution and meat sacrificed to another god, sabotaging the covenant.


The Holy Spirit in Cyril of Alexandria's Commentary on Isaiah
Program Unit: Bible in Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Traditions
David Kneip, University of Notre Dame

Cyril of Alexandria composed a verse-by-verse commentary on Isaiah early in his pontificate. However, this commentary has received very little scholarly attention, both including and because of a lack of a critical edition and a translation into any modern language. In this paper I examine Cyril's teaching concerning the Holy Spirit as it manifests itself in this commentary. I pursue this goal in several directions, including the role of the Spirit within the Trinity and concerning soteriology, the Spirit's role in the sacraments, and the Spirit"s involvement with the Bible. I hope by this paper to suggest the presence of a wide field for patristic scholarship in the future, namely, the relatively untouched commentary of Cyril of Alexandria on Isaiah, and to give my audience a small taste of Cyril"s work in the commentary by discussing at some length his comments to various Isaianic passages, including two that have been important for later reflection on the Holy Spirit. I intend to argue that for Cyril, at least in this commentary, the Spirit has a significant, indeed indispensable, role in the salvation of humanity, but a role that is never apart from the other two persons of the Trinity. Finally, I attempt to illuminate Cyril"s thought on the Spirit"s role in baptism and concerning the Bible. This last touches the theme of the sessions most closely, and it illustrates well two truths that may seem circular but must be held in tension. For Cyril, definitive doctrine concerning the Holy Spirit derives most prominently from the Bible, but the very Bible that leads to definitive doctrine has primarily been authored through the activity and voice of the Holy Spirit. In other words, for Cyril, the Bible is authoritative concerning the Spirit, and its authority comes from that same Spirit.


Elizabeth Hands and the Rape of Tamar
Program Unit: Recovering Female Interpreters of the Bible
Robert Knetsch, Wycliffe College

Historical evidence does not support the notion that various biblical “texts of terror” were not critiqued prior to the advent of feminist readings of Scripture. This presentation will analyze Elizabeth Hands" re-telling of the death of Amnon and the rape of Tamar in her work The Death of Amnon: A Poem from 1789. This re-interpretation of 2 Samuel 13 in the format of an epic poem exemplifies a proto-feminist reading of the text which takes seriously the horror of the event to elicit sympathy for the victim by the reader. This reading from a female perspective brings into stark light the corruptive forces of lust, greed and patriarchy as well as her theological and social commentary on the role of women in antiquity and Hands' era. Moreover, this presentation will analyze how Hands, a woman about whom we know very little, embraces the epic tradition of others such as William Blake and John Milton to comment socio-sexual politics in light of a biblical text.


The Gabriel Revelation and the Birth of Christianity
Program Unit: Function of Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
Israel Knohl, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The Gabriel Revelation is an apocalyptic text written on stone, which was dated to the end of the first centuary BCE. In my paper, I would like to discuss first the posibile 'sITZ IM LEBEN" and function of this apocalyptic text. The second part of my paper will deal with the possibility that this text had an impact on the birth of Christianity. The main issues related to this discussion in the Gabriel Revelation are the figure of "Ephraim" or the "Messiah son of Joseph" and his 'sign" and the command of the Angel Gabriel "By three days, live".


The Construction of the Judean Diaspora in Ezra-Nehemiah
Program Unit: Literature and History of the Persian Period
Gary Knoppers, Pennsylvania State University

The pattern of successful interventions by members of the Eastern Diaspora (Zerubbabel and Jeshua, Ezra, Nehemiah) in the homeland of Yehud, as depicted in Ezra-Nehemiah, raises some interesting issues about developing notions of Judean ethnicity and community identity in the international context of the Achaemenid empire. One is dealing with multiple and overlapping relationships between Yahwistic groups located in widely different geographic areas. In most cases of interactions between related communities geographically set apart, the community rooted in the ancestral land would represent the established community and the diasporic community would represent a colony or dependent community. But in Ezra-Nehemiah these roles are in many ways reversed. In this paper, I will focus on the eastern Diaspora, specifically the Babylonian community, and its ongoing relations to the community in Yehud. The rescript of Ezra and the mission(s) of Nehemiah, and the vertical alliances they presuppose, will receive special attention.


Aspects of Samaria's Religious Culture during the Late Persian and Early Hellenistic Periods
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
Gary Knoppers, Pennsylvania State University, University Park

To speak in any depth of Samaria's culture and religion during the Persian and early Hellenistic periods just a few decades ago was a daunting task, because detailed material evidence was largely lacking. Happily, recent discoveries have begun to change this picture. The publication of the Samaria papyri and seal impressions, analysis of hundreds of Samarian coins, and partial publication of the Mt. Gerizim excavations have enhanced our knowledge and complicated older reconstructions of the religious history of the region of Samaria. The focus of my paper will be on some aspects of Samaria's religious culture as reflected in the Samarian numismatic finds and the hundreds of short (fragmentary) inscriptions from Mt. Gerizim written in lapidary Aramaic, the so-called Proto-Jewish, and Neo-Hebrew scripts. The Mt. Gerizim inscriptions written in Samaritan script will not be dealt with as these date to the late antique and medieval periods.


Earth Accuses Earth: Tracing Jesus' Writing on the Ground
Program Unit: New Testament Textual Criticism
Jennifer Knust, Boston University

In the mid-tenth century, the Archbishop Egbert of Trier commissioned a beautiful illuminated collection of gospel narratives that includes an illustration of the pericope adulterae, among other stories. Depicted as bending over with the grateful adulteress nearby, Jesus inscribes the words "terra terram accusat" into the ground while the woman's accusers leave the scene. This cryptic “earth accuses earth” supplements the accompanying Vulgate text by alluding to a long stranding tradition connecting writing to God's judgment; it also adds to more than five centuries of speculation about what Jesus wrote. From Ambrose of Milan"s early association of Jeremiah 22:29 with the pericope (“earth, earth, write that these men have been disowned”) to the comment that Jesus “wrote the sins of each of them” found in the Codex U and other Byzantine manuscripts, audiences have wanted to know: What did Jesus write? This paper traces answers to this question supplied by gospel texts, ornamental additions to the text, medieval marginalia and Carolingian book covers, exploring these multiple traditions of engagement in their diverse interpretive and historical frames of reference.


Tracing Eros in the Roman Collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts
Program Unit: Art and Religions of Antiquity
Christine Kondoleon, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

This paper will consider the place of the erotes in late Roman and Early Christian and Jewish art, including funereal art (sarcophagi). Special consideration will be paid to tomb mosaics from Tunisia.


Exodus 32–34 and the Quest for a Post-Priestly Enneateuch
Program Unit: Pentateuch
Michael Konkel, University of Bonn

Current research has put forward a lot of evidence regarding the existence of an Enneateuch (Gen - 2 Kings). Nevertheless in the Sinai-Pericope as the heart of the Pentateuch only few redactional links to the Former Prophets have been discovered yet. The dtr and post-priestly redaction is mostly seen within the framework of a Pentateuch or Hexateuch. The final composition of Ex 32-34, however, is characterized by intertextual references that cover the whole Enneateuch (Gen - 2 Kings). The paper will analyze these references and offer evidence for the existence of a post-priestly redaction in Ex 32–34 that links the Sinai-Pericope to the former prophets. The existence of a specific Pentateuchal redaction in Ex 32-34 that separates the Tora from the Former Prophets is called into question.


The Gleaners and Ruth
Program Unit: Women in the Biblical World
Jennifer L. Koosed, Albright College

I have harvested more than I have gleaned. The season would begin with the distinctive crank of the rusty orange-red tractor, which would shutter and spark into life then slowly clunk out to the back acres where we had the vegetable gardens. I would perch on the wheel rim, riding with my father as he performed his one agricultural task – overturn the soil, plow the fields. Afterwards, he would fade into the background, and my mother and my sister would emerge and we would plant, weed, tend, harvest – another two generations of women in the field. The story of Ruth is beautifully crafted but the narrative is not as simple as first appears. As the book so the woman – Ruth's character is unsettled and unsettling. This paper will explore one aspect of Ruth's character – Ruth as gleaner, the one who follows behind, picking up what others leave. Ruth"s character unfolds through the harvesting and gleaning. Her actions are exaggerated; her speech is misleading; there are gaps between what she says and what she does. She emerges Janus-faced, a trickster in the fields and on the threshing room floor. Since Ruth has continued to live outside of her narrative, my reading of Ruth will also be informed by her after-lives. I will focus on Agnes Varda"s documentary “The Gleaners and I” (2000). Even though she never mentions Ruth, the biblical heroine is a shadow presence, following behind and beside the contemporary gleaners Varda documents, standing over Varda"s shoulder as she turns the camera on herself. Ruth"s entry is through the painting that frames the documentary: Jean-François Millet"s “The Gleaners” – often used to illustrate Ruth"s gleaning of Boaz"s fields. As Ruth shadows Varda, I will follow behind them both, gleaning images and ideas to create my own portrait of Ruth.


Implications for the Study of History
Program Unit: John, Jesus, and History
Andreas J. Kostenberger, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

Corollary to the John, Jesus, and History project several important books have recently contributed to the larger set of inquiries. Three of these will be reviewed by leading scholars from Britain and America, followed by responses from the authors and a general discussion. The books include: The Fourth Gospel and the Quest for Jesus; Modern Foundations Reconsidered, by Paul N. Anderson (T&T Clark 2006); The Testimony of the Beloved Disciple; Narrative, History and Theology in the Gospel of John, by Richard Bauckham (Baker 2007); and The Fourth Gospel in Four Dimensions: Judaism and Jesus, the Gospels and Scripture, by D. Moody Smith (University of South Carolina Press 2008). The reviewers will engage particular aspects of all three books and their implications, as follows: “Implications for the Study of John,” Judith Lieu; “Implications for the Study of Jesus,” Amy-Jill Levine; and “Implications for History,” Andreas J. Köstenberger. Authors will respond to these reviews, and Felix Just, S.J. will moderate the following discussion.


The Blackwell Bible Commentaries
Program Unit: Use, Influence, and Impact of the Bible
Judith Kovacs, University of Virginia

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Philo's Representation of the Therapeutrides, Reconsidered
Program Unit: Philo of Alexandria
Ross S. Kraemer, Brown University

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Connecting the Dots: Early Jewish and Early Christian Greek Evidence in Context
Program Unit: Qumran
Robert A. Kraft, University of Pennsylvania

We now have access to a number of pre-Christian or almost certainly non-Christian examples of Greek fragments of Jewish texts, mostly but not exclusively of works that came to be considered scriptural. It is possible to identify various scribal features in these texts, and to compare those features with the evidence from early Christian texts as well as texts that could be either Jewish or Christian in origin. Comparison with similar features in Greek documentary and "paraliterary" texts in general also sheds light on the possible scribal developments and relationships in that transitional period that saw the rise both of Christianity and of codex technology. It will be suggested that in 'scribal practice" as in numerous other areas, early Christians seem to have been heavily indebted to their Greek Jewish predecessors, within the general context of Greco-Roman developments.


Looking Backward to Move Forward: The New Testament and Myth
Program Unit: Bible, Myth, and Myth Theory
Steven Kraftchick, Emory University

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Virtuous Consumption: The Bible and the Material Chastity Culture
Program Unit: Bible and Popular Culture
Michelle Krejci, University of Sheffield

After decades of falling out of fashion, virginity has recently made its triumphal return as a choice worthy of material demonstration. Those who vow to save themselves until marriage are now making their lifestyle known with promise rings and Wait Wear, quinceaneras and Purity Balls. Whether it is a sign of moral legitimation or a strategic affectation, the Bible has been the central force behind the chastity culture. Such a material primacy has reinforced the cultural consensus that sexuality is a major concern of the Bible. With the Bible gaining political and social weight, this heavy emphasis on sexual purity effects the larger conversation on abstinence education and monopolises the attention of those interested in adhering to the biblical message. This paper will analyze how the material culture of purity shapes the Bible and its implications on social policy.


The 2008 Primaries: Or, How Americans Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bible in Politics
Program Unit: Use, Influence, and Impact of the Bible
Michelle Krejci, University of Sheffield

The 2008 primaries have offered an opportunity to assess the state of play of the Bible in American political discourse. Where has the electoral wrangling left the apocalyptic foreign policy Bible, the liberal Bible and the conservative Bible that have become such dominant features in American politics? When in early in June 2007, Howard Dean, the national chairman of the Democratic Party, told his fellow party members that they should focus on “things that really are in the Bible”—things like poverty, global warming and the bloodshed in Darfur—he captured the interrelationship between Bible, domestic and international politics. In September at the Values Voter Summit, Republican candidates assured voters that they were the most qualified to bring American policies in line with biblical values, values that were tough on abortion, immigration, and gay marriage. Meanwhile candidates from both parties utilised reference to the Bible throughout their campaign prompting some debate monitors to question the candidates" reliance on a literal interpretation of the Bible. This paper will be an analysis of how the Bible was employed during the run-up to the 2008 election—who used it, what parts, and to what audience. It will ask where the biblically saturated polemic of the primaries leaves the interrelationship between Bible, American society and geopolitics.


Translation and Recensions in 4 Kingdoms
Program Unit: International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies
Siegfried Kreuzer, Kirchliche Hochschule Wuppertal

The different forms of the text of the historical books, especially the books 1–4 Kingdoms, represent a rather complex tradition. There were different forms of the Hebrew text, and there was a strong development in the transmission of the Greek text. Besides common aspects, there are several specific traits in each of the books resp. in the different sections of 1 – 4 Kgdms. In 4Kdms (basically equal to the so called gd-section) there are some interesting specifics in the translation and also interesting phenomena in the different revisions. 4Kgdms also has its specific importance because of its place in the history of research: A. Rahlfs based his research on the textual traditions of the books of Kingdoms mainly on 4Kgds. His conclusions had and still have a far reaching influence in Septuagint research, even beyond the historical books. The paper will present (1) observations on interesting phenomena in the original translation (the Old Greek) of 4 Kgdms, and (2) new insights in the history of the revisions and the profile of some manuscripts, and (3) check some of the long standing assumptions about the development of the Hebrew and the Greek text of this book.


A Typology of the Nominal Clause in Biblical Hebrew
Program Unit: Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew
Jutta Krispenz, University of Marburg

The nominal clause in Biblical Hebrew has recently received some attention (e.g.: Michel, Diethelm, Grundlegung einer hebräischen Syntax. Teil 2: Der hebräische Nominalsatz. Hg. Von: Achim Behrens, Johannes F. Diehl, Anja A. Diesel, Reinhard G. Lehmann, Andreas Wagner, Neukirchen – Vluyn 2004; Muraoka, Takamitsu, Reflexions on an Important Study on the Nominal Clause in Biblical Hebrew. In: Bibliotheca Orientalis LXIII, 5-6 (2006), 447-467). Yet, a single basic meaning underlying all nominal clauses hasn"t been given, nor does a systematic description covering the different types of nominal clauses exist. The paper starts by giving a first differentiation of nominal clauses according to the possible types of the predicate. A look at the possible nominal phrases leads to three different types of nominal predicate and thus to a tripartite division of all nominal clauses. It can than be shown, that there exists one basic logical predication for all types of nominal clause. This basic predication is differentiated in a systematic way by the nature of the predicate. Other features often used in this context, like determination or word order, serve for further differentiations. They either only occur in some of the basic types of nominal clause or can be explained by the normal use of the same feature in verbal clauses. The shortpaper is the English version of an article, written in German and accepted for publication in ZAH.


The Role of the Prophet: Intertextual Links between the Book of Jeremiah and the Book of the Twelve Prophets
Program Unit: Book of the Twelve Prophets
Jutta Krispenz, University of Marburg

It is well known that the book of Jeremiah refers in various texts to different texts in the book of the Twelve. The paper concentrates on the distribution of words and phrases connected with the role of the prophet: Words like Nabi or the root nb" as well as phrases and formulas used in prophetic writings to mark the difference between divine word and human word do not appear evenly in the prophetic books. In the Book of the Twelve Amos, Haggai and Zachariah come closest to Jeremiah in using these words and phrases. Obviously, the intertextual links connecting the books of Jeremiah and the Twelve point in both directions: From the Minor Prophets to Jeremiah and vice versa. In the context of communication between God and Israel, though, the role of the prophet is not only depicted in “prophetic” terms, but also contrasted against or compared to other social functions communicating with the divine sphere, as the priest and the wisdom teacher. Again Jeremiah uses also the vocabulary connected with cult and wisdom, but now Hosea, Micah, Haggai and Zachariah look more similar to Jeremiah than other writings in the Twelve. The Twelve display in the early writings a discussion on the role of the prophet, featuring different positions in different writings, while the book of Jeremiah seems to merge these different positions. The writings Haggai – Maleachi on the other hand reflect the complex role of the prophet achieved by Jeremiah in an equally complex terminology for the transmission of the divine word and the divine word itself.


“Ethnic Language” in Luke-Acts and the Construction of a Transethnic Social Identity
Program Unit: Construction of Christian Identities
Aaron Kuecker, Trinity Christian College

This paper will examine Luke's deployment of "ethnic language" in his pursuit of a common superordinate identity that simultaneously affirms yet chastens existing ethnic identities in Luke-Acts. The paper will feature a detailed examination of the use of the key terms Israel, Ioudaios, ethnos, and adelphoi in Josephus, the Synoptic Gospels and in Acts. The contrast in usage between Luke and his rough contemporaries will demonstrate both that Luke is keenly aware of the ethnic freight and the correlate conceptualizations of the social context carried by these terms and also that Luke deploys these terms uniquely and strategically in an effort to shape the identity of the early Jesus-movement. It is Luke's subtle and nuanced use of "ethnic language" that allows him slowly to shift his hearers away from the primacy of ethnicity but still to affirm the value of ethnic identity nested within a superordinate trans-ethnic social identity. The new identity anticipated by Luke"s use of "ethnic language" is the key to intergroup reconciliation in Luke-Acts and is formed by the rhetorical influence of no less a figure than the Holy Spirit. Finally, the paper will contrast Luke"s portrait of the relationship between ethnicity and identity with the common view of the early apologists that characterized Christianity as a "third race" standing alongside "Jews" and "Gentiles". For Luke, the community of Jesus-followers forms not a "third race" akin to other ethnic identities but a new social category that allows existing ethnic identities to remain intact, though at a penultimate level.


Hearing the Story of Moses in Ptolemaic Egypt: Artapanus Accommodates the Tradition, Revisited
Program Unit: Hellenistic Judaism
Robert A. Kugler, Lewis and Clark College

Twenty recently published documentary papyri settle affirmatively the debate whether Jews of Ptolemaic Egypt formed politeumata, autonomous groups of military settlers affiliated through common ethnicity (Cowey and Maresch, eds., Urkunden des Politeuma der Juden von Herakleopolis, 2001). The papyri are citizen petitions to the archons of the politeuma for judgment of civil lawsuits. Analyzed in light of the legal pluralism typical of Hellenistic Egypt and with the assistance of legal theory, the legal reasoning in the papyri suggests that Jews in Ptolemaic Egypt were more deeply rooted in a postcolonial, multicultural context than even the most revisionist approaches have imagined. To support this claim the paper analyzes an appeal to the archons regarding dissolution of an engagement (P.Polit.Jud. 4 [P.Heid. Inv. G 4931, 12 January 134]) and a petition concerning removal of an orphan from her guardian's home (P.Polit.Jud. 7 [P.Köln Inv. 21038, June or July 134]). This revised portrait of the Hellenistic Egyptian context in which Artapanus wrote his account of Moses and in which it was received calls into question the standard explanations of the account's purpose and effect (including my own; see “Hearing the Story of Moses in Ptolemaic Egypt: Artapanus Accommodates the Tradition,” in The Wisdom of Egypt: Jewish, Early Christian, and Gnostic Essays in Honour of Gerard P. Luttikhuizen [AGJU/AJEC; eds. George H. van Kooten & Anthony Hilhorst; Leiden: Brill, 2005] 67-80): in this context it was unlikely to have been an apologetic work meant for non-Jews, or a salve for Jews challenged to acculturate; it was more likely received (if not also intended) as a challenge to acculturated Jews to reclaim their ethnic identity.


The Syntax of Conditionals in Deuteronomy and Translation of wqatal (Consecutive Perfects)
Program Unit: Biblical Law
Raju D. Kunjummen, Michigan Theological Seminary

In the typical case law in Deuteronomy, the protasis is introduced by a ky yqtl clause, the protasis continued by wqtl clauses, the apodosis presented with a yqtl clause, and the rationale that underlies the apodosis, if stated, with a subordinate clause introduced by ky (13:1-3[2-4]; 17:14-15; 19:1-2; 20:1, 19; 21:15-17; 22:6-7). In the less common structure, when a wqtl introduces an apodosis, if there is a series of such clauses, they all belong with the apodosis and do not introduce a new protasis. Even here, usually there is a climactic statement using the yqtl verb (19:11-13, 16-19; 21:1-9, 18-21; 22:22). If a wqtl clause begins the apodosis, if there is a new protasis, it is marked lexically, with a particle like 'im (20:10-13; 21:10-14). In some instances when translations use context-based intuition to render a wqtl clause following a protasis as an apodotic clause, such an interpretation can be seen as not required (13:13-16; 17:2-5). When a wqtl within an extended series of such clauses in a conditional can be understood as an intermediate apodosis, it is prescriptive rather than permissive and procedurally contributes to the determination of the facts of the case (13:13-16; 17:2-5; 22:13-19). The study was undertaken out of interest in the interpretation of Deut 24:1-4, particularly the translation of the last clause of v.1, and the findings are extremely pertinent to that issue.


Spreading the Sweet Scent of the Gospel as the Cult of the Wise: Sapiential Background of Paul's Olfactory Metaphor in 2 Corinthians 2:14–16
Program Unit: Sacrifice, Cult, and Atonement
Dominika A. Kurek-Chomycz, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

In the Pauline letters we come across several metaphors, in which the Apostle characterizes his own apostolic life in unambiguously cultic terms. A similar backdrop has also been suggested for the olfactory metaphor in 2 Cor 2:14-16. Yet in this passage the imagery is more convoluted. Commentators often point to the notion of fragrance as a sign of divine presence and life, widely attested in various ancient religious traditions, as the background against which the metaphor should be interpreted. Sir 24:15 is usually cited as a particular instance of this idea. Even authors who do not reject the possible cultic overtones in 2 Cor 2:14-16, seldom realize that there is no need to pose a disjunction between the notions of Wisdom and sacrifice. This paper argues that one of the reasons why sacrificial understanding of the metaphor has been rejected by many scholars is their notion of sacrifice. Exclusive association of sacrifice with death makes it difficult to account for the life-giving aspect of scent. While the thought of the divine aroma seen in terms of Wisdom is a possible connotation in 2 Cor 2:14-16, I agree with those who emphasize a close relation between Wisdom and cult. Realizing that sacrifice does not necessarily need to imply loss and destruction makes it easier to reconcile the concept of Wisdom and life-giving fragrance with that of sacrifice. It is noteworthy that Paul's view on sacrifice seems to be to a significant extent in line with that attested in Ben Sira. The backdrop against which the metaphor in 2 Cor 2:14-16 is best understood is thus most likely that of the association between Wisdom, scent and sacrifice. While in Sir 24:23 Wisdom is related to the Torah, in Paul's understanding Wisdom"s divine fragrance is manifested in the proclamation of the Good News.


The World in Front of the Text: An Intermediary between Text and Praxis
Program Unit: Homiletics and Biblical Studies
Abraham Kuruvilla, Dallas Theological Seminary

The biblical text is not only a literary object, but also an instrument of divine action that renews the covenantal relationship of God's people with their sovereign. As the object of a creative literary enterprise, the text must be investigated for the world “behind” the text (the real-life rhetorical situations and narrative raw material that gave rise to the text) and the world “of” the text (its linguistic details and literary content). However, interpretation, particularly for deriving sermonic application, should not cease with the elucidation of these essential entities but, considering the text as an instrument of action, must proceed to discern what Ricoeur designated the world “in front of” the text. This paper explores the significance of this concept to homiletics. The biblical canon, in such an understanding, projects a plenary world—a potential mode of existence in which God's priorities are supreme, where his principles operate, and his purposes are enacted, a world that should be and would be, were God"s people to align their lives to it. It is this “eschatological” world in front of the text that guides believers to fresh appropriation of Scripture into their own contexts. Every individual preaching text features a segment of that plenary world and, in each homiletical event, it is this segment of the world in front of that text, specific for that pericope, that individuals are bidden to inhabit. As biblical pericopes are applied in the lives of readers and hearers week by week, their worlds are being remade after the fashion of the world in front of the text: the eschatological world is thereby progressively rendered real. Thus, for the homiletical movement from text to praxis, this notion of the world in front of the text plays a critical intermediary role.


The Book of Revelation and Septuagint: Some Reflections on Selected Texts
Program Unit: John's Apocalypse and Cultural Contexts Ancient and Modern
Michael Labahn, Kirchliche Hochschule Wuppertal

It is generally acknowledged that the author of the book of Revelation used his Bible as a source for his rhetorical strategy and for illustration of his narrative. Despite this consensus, a lot of questions regarding the seer's use of scripture are still under debate. The still open discussion is based in his way of referring to scripture to which the seer mostly alludes in a rather creative manner, from time to time intertwining different pre-texts into one allusion or echo. Mainly the seer's highly creative and selective use of scripture keeps the question open in which form a pre-text is used. An older view referred to a Hebrew text form (e.g. Charles), more recent approaches rather refer to the Septuagint, sometimes questioning any influence from Hebrew. A new German project, sponsored by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and hosted at the Kirchliche Hochschule Wuppertal is aiming at the Old Testament allusions in the book of revelation trying to answer the question of their textual form and the further transmission of allusions in the text history of the manuscripts of Revelation. Does later evidence of manuscripts give further hints to the use of allusions and how do they treat the creative and changing use of allusions? The paper will present evidence from the actual work of the project underscoring the priority of a Septuagint text. However, it would be mistaken to assume an either or of Hebrew and Greek text form. Methodologically, a case by case study has to be used that keeps an eye on the author"s creativity, on his memory and on the development of Greek and Hebrew scripture and tradition and also on the transmission of the manuscripts of the book of Revelation. Therefore, the paper will focus at significant examples to discover a more balanced answer to the question of the influence of the Septuagint on Revelation"s use of scripture.


The Purchase of His Money: Slavery and the Rabbinic Construction of Marriage and Sexuality
Program Unit:
Gail Labovitz, American Jewish University

Rabbinic literature constructs its dominant model of marriage through a metaphor of property and ownership. Thinking of marriage as a purchase and women as ownable allowed rabbis to consider marriage, gender relations, and sexuality in terms of the legalities of property - including those relevant to another commonly known category of owned human beings, slaves. For example, the legal cores of the two transactions--buying a slave and taking a wife--are highly similar, as are the processes of manumitting a slave or divorcing a wife. Of course, "free" wives and slaves were not of the same status at the time when this literature developed, and although slavery and femaleness share similarities as forms of subordination to the male free householder, there are also important differences of power and social standing which differentiate free woman from slaves. Notably, while the male householder's sexual access to his female slave and her concomitant lack of sexual agency is rarely if ever addressed directly in rabbinic literature, the reality of such sexual contact is presumed in several ways. The rabbis assume for legal purposes that a freed female slave is not a virgin. In addition, by ruling that a man has no legal familial relationship to his own child by a slave woman, or to his father's child (his half-sibling) by a slave woman, we see that the rabbis assumed the existence of the sexual relationships that resulted in these children. In contrast, female chastity for free daughters and wives is idealized, expected, and legally enforced (at least theoretically) in the rabbinic system. The nexus between these two realms of rabbinic law has not yet been fully explored in works either on slavery in the rabbinic system, or on rabbinic constructions of (female) sexuality. This paper will thus investigate how these conceptual linkages have served to shape rabbinic ideas about modesty, chastity, female sexual agency, sexual exploitation and violence, and the like.


The Non-eternal Dynastic Promises of Jehu of Israel and Esarhaddon of Assyria
Program Unit: Hebrew Scriptures and Cognate Literature
David T. Lamb, Biblical Theological Seminary

Ancient Near Eastern rulers clearly desired long dynasties. Rulers not only pray for “eternal” dynasties (e.g., David, Solomon, Shalmaneser I and Nebuchadnezzer II), but also use dynastic curses to discourage other rulers from damaging royal inscriptions (e.g., Shalmaneser I, Azatiwada and Yahawmilk). Piously portrayed rulers are rewarded with divine promises of long dynasties. Three Israelite and Judean kings receive promises of a dynasty continuing indefinitely (David, Solomon and Jeroboam I), but Jehu of Israel is the only ruler in the Hebrew Bible with a specific dynastic promise. According to the text, because Jehu cut off the house of Ahab, YHWH granted that four heirs would reign over Israel (2 Ki. 10:30; cf. 15:12). While many Assyrian rulers claim divine election and speak of “eternal” dynasties, the dynastic promise of Esarhaddon is unusual because of its modest nature. Two separate oracles mediated by La-dagil-ili from the Lady of Arbela declare that Esarhaddon's son and grandson will succeed him. Thus, the dynastic promises of Jehu and Esarhaddon are unique within their ANE context because of their lack of hyperbolic language and more limited scope, guaranteeing only two or four generations of continuity. Interestingly, both Jehu and Esarhaddon assume the throne in the midst of a political crisis. Jehu had slaughtered the royal houses of Israel and Judah. Esarhaddon defeated his older brothers in a civil war after they assassinated their father Sennacherib. Thus, their reigns would have been reasonable times for promises legitimizing their dynasties. While the literary contexts are different (for Jehu, a historical narrative and for Esarhaddon, a collection of prophetic oracles), an analysis of these oracles shows the crucial role that non-eternal dynastic promises may play in establishing royal authority during periods of dynastic chaos.


The First Israelite Exile (2 Kings 15:29): Where Were YHWH and His Prophets?
Program Unit: Exile (Forced Migrations) in Biblical Literature
David T. Lamb, Biblical Theological Seminary

The text of 2 Kings 15:29 tersely records that Tiglath-pileser (III) of Assyria captured various northern Israelite cities as well as the regions of Gilead, Galilee and Naphtali. The abbrieviated style of the notice would suggest an event of minor significance. However, this initial Assyrian conquest and the resulting deportation was arguably as important historically and politically as Israelite and Judean exiles by Assyria and Babylon later narrated in detail in 2 Kings 17 and 24-25. Not only was this the first recorded exile of Israelites from their land, but also it involved people from the vast majority of the territory of the northern kingdom. Pekah was deposed and assassinated, with Hoshea set up as an Assyrian puppet to rule only the hill country of Ephraim. A royal inscription of Tiglath-pileser describes this exile as involving Israel as a nation, and not simply a portion of it. While all other descriptions of Israelite and Judean deportations in the Deuteronomistic History include theological explanations for the event, for this first exile the text never mentions YHWH or even one of his prophets. In addition to discussing the uniqueness of this deportation, this paper will examine possible reasons why Dtr would downplay this crucial event in the history of Israel.


What Are We Fighting For? The Function of the Image of the Christian's Armor in Ephesians 6:11–17
Program Unit: Society for Pentecostal Studies
Jeffrey S. Lamp, Oral Roberts University

Within Pentecostal-Charismatic circles, the imagery of the armor of God in Eph 6:11-17 has inspired legion sermons and studies aimed at motivating Christians to enter the battle against Satan. Frequently the label 'spiritual warfare" is employed as a clarion call for believers to enter into the cosmic battle against the devil and his minions. Through the influence of such popular Christian media as the fictional novel This Present Darkness by Frank Peretti, the picture of Christians putting on the armor of God to engage in warfare in the spiritual world against demonic forces has colored the interpretation of this passage and, in the argument of this present paper, has distorted the purpose for which Paul presents the image. This paper will argue that Paul's purpose for introducing this image at the climax of the epistle is to cap his exhortation for the readers to live in holiness. In other words, the point of the image is to underscore the need for sanctification in the lives of believers. Three lines of evidence will be adduced. First, it will examine the constituency of the armor itself, particularly in light of the use of this image in Judaism and in the New Testament, to show that the substance of the image is appropriate for such a concern. Second, it will examine the development of the argument in Ephesians to demonstrate that this is a significant concern of the apostle in the letter. Third, it will examine similarities with the image of believers being clothed with Christ in Colossians, a letter long argued by scholars to be closely related to Ephesians. The paper will not argue that the passage has no place in the practice of spiritual warfare as popularly conceived, but that its primary focus is on holiness.


What's with Cutting Up All Those Animals? Reading the Sacrifice of Christ in Hebrews from the Perspective of the Animals
Program Unit: Ecological Hermeneutics
Jeffrey S. Lamp, Oral Roberts University

This paper will uncover the voice of animal creation in a strand of argumentation throughout Hebrews that articulates the doctrine of the sacrifice of the Son. The letter develops the assertion that a perfect sacrifice was necessary to procure the benefits of the forgiveness of sins for human beings. The rationale for this argument lies in the inadequacy of the sacrificial system of the old covenant. The voice of animal creation will be heard in two ways. First, it will respond to the critique of the inadequacy of the "blood of goats and calves" to secure the very thing that it was ostensibly initiated to accomplish, namely, pardon for sins. The biblical traditions portray a diminishing estimate of animals. They go from the goodness of their initial creation to submission to and exploitation by human beings. They die to cover the nakedness of the first couple, they become a source of food for humans, they die to mark covenant between Yahweh and Abraham, and die in great numbers to procure forgiveness through the Israelite cultus. Yet the writer of Hebrews concludes that their sacrifice was inadequate. The animals" respond in the protest that they are the innocent victims in the human drama of sin and redemption, and to critique them is to diminish them for their role in a system not of their own device. Second, animals affirm that they are also the implicit beneficiaries of the sacrifice of the Son. Though the author of Hebrews has an anthropocentric focus in his discussions, the fact is that animals need no longer be sacrificed for human benefit; they are in effect 'saved" by the Son's sacrifice. This notion is in keeping with the argument of my paper last year in which I argued that creation is the object of God's redemption.


The Christian Production of “Pagan” Pseudepigrapha
Program Unit: Christian Apocrypha
Brent C. Landau, Harvard University

While numerous examples of ancient Christian pseudepigrapha abound, the vast majority of these documents purport to have been written by an individual standing firmly within Jewish or Christian tradition. Much rarer are pseudepigraphical writings claiming a pagan as their author. Some of the most notable examples in this category include the correspondence of Pilate in the Acts of Pilate, the legend of King Abgar of Edessa, the letters between the Apostle Paul and the Stoic philosopher Seneca, and the personal testimony of the biblical Magi as ostensibly provided by the Syriac Revelation of the Magi. Despite the diversity of content and rhetorical situation, all of these texts share a foundational apologetic goal, namely to serve as a powerful vindication of Christian truth claims by a disinterested party. This paper will analyze the apologetic strategies in several examples of “pagan” pseudepigrapha, with specific attention to the Revelation of the Magi, the longest and most complex composition of this kind.


What Does Criticism Do?
Program Unit: Biblical Criticism and Literary Criticism
Francis Landy, University of Alberta

J. Hillis Miller writes about the apotrophaic function of criticism: that it is a way of warding off the Medusa effect of literature. At the same time criticism is a response to the act of reading. One sees, imagines, and feels one way into the text, never quite knowing where one is going, knowing too that every reading is inconclusive. One writes as a form of blindness, feeling one's way fumblingly, just as Derrida wrote compulsively about the death of his friends, both as a way of helping them die, and as a way of resisting their deaths. I want to reflect about writing about prophetic literature, specifically the book of Isaiah, as literature written with and for the dead, and as literature of survival. At stake in any prophetic book is the apocalyptic promise, to uncover that which is hidden, to make present the consummation of the book and world for which it speaks. It must defer this revelation, since it is written in language which is ambiguous, quotidianal, and apophatic. The end would be a vision of the glory of God, as in the prophet's initiatory vision, into which all language is absorbed and of which it speaks. The writing of any prophetic book is then provisional, displacing the vision, just as, in an historical model, prophetic books are processes of accretion, revision and accommodation. Similarly, the criticism of the book (any book) must be open, not just to the historical process of composition, but to the provisionality of the text. This renders it allegorical: a foreshadowing, a speaking otherwise, of that which cannot be spoken. This is evident in the parables that punctuate the book, in which initial clarity is obfuscated, in Isaiah"s initiatory paradox, and the promise to speak in a different language.


YHWH and the Nations: Parallels to Exodus 34:6–7 in the Twelve
Program Unit: Book of the Twelve Prophets
Nathan Lane, Palm Beach Atlantic University

This paper will explore the shape and location of the parallels to the credo of Exod 34:6-7 present in the common LXX ordering of the Twelve (i.e. Micah, Joel, Obadiah, Jonah, Nahum). The paper will argue that the constellation of parallels within the LXX compacts the parallels in a way to highlight YHWH's interaction with the nations by placing the book of Obadiah and his message concerning the fate of nations at the center of the parallels. Micah's concluding hymn based upon the credo is the first synchronic appearance of the credo in the LXX sequence of the Twelve. This parallel is followed by Joel"s use of the credo as an invective to summon YHWH"s mercy. The third appearance of the credo comes in the lament of Jonah because of YHWH"s mercy upon the Ninevites. The final parallel comes in the warning of Nahum to the Ninevites and connects these two prophets of the Twelve most concerned with that city. The ordering of the parallels in the MT evidences a much less organized constellation than the LXX. This change in order may give clues to the theology behind the revised corpus of the LXX. The LXX situates these parallels in a way which highlights lexical and theological diversity as they emphasize YHWH"s interaction with ancient Israel (Micah/Joel), then with the nations (Jonah/Nahum). This constellation of parallels gives some evidence for the intentionality of the order of the LXX and adds to ongoing dialogue regarding the order of the two corpi (especially the contribution of Sweeney).


Luke-Acts, Paul, and a Christian Ars Vivendi
Program Unit: Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti
Manfred Lang, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg

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“I Girded My Loins with a Vision of Righteousness and Wisdom as a Robe” (1QapGen ar VI:4): The Wisdom and Righteousness of Noah in Ezekiel 14:14, 20, and the Book of the Words of Noah
Program Unit: Qumran
Armin Lange, University of Vienna

It has often been asked why Ezek 14:14, 20 lists Noah together with Job and Daniel as a paradigmatic righteous sage. Already Martin Noth (VT 1[1951], 257) suspected that Ezek 14:14, 20 draws on a Noah tradition which was not incorporated into the Pentateuch. Since the complete publication of 1QapGen ar, ancient Jewish paratexts on Noah became available. Although they are later rewritings and interpretations of the Pentateuch's flood story, these paratexts incorporate other narrative traditions as well. I will ask if the deliberations about Noah's wisdom and righteousness in 1QapGen ar VI:1-4 draw on the same Noah traditions as the Book of Ezekiel does.


Half-Way between Genesis and Apocalypse: Using Ezekiel as Message and Proof for New World Converts
Program Unit: Book of Ezekiel
Jaime Lara, Yale Divinity School

I would like to deal with the afterlife or reception of Ezekiel in the early New World, specifically with the use of chapters 40-48 in town planning and in "the architecture of conversion." To the first missionaries, Ezekiel's prophecy seemed like a blueprint for missionary activity in the "Last Days" which dawned with the discovery of the mysterious peoples of the Americas. Moreover, on the eve of the discoveries, Europeans had been experimenting with using Ezekiel's earthly New Jerusalem as a model for utopian society and well-ordered sacred-civic space. Illustrated commentaries on Ezekiel were among the first books to cross the Atlantic Ocean to the New World. His comments on idolatry and on the need for religious reform also seemed a propos.


“Character Bending” in Fan Fiction and New Testament Apocrypha
Program Unit: Christian Apocrypha
Kasper Bro Larsen, University of Aarhus

This presentation applies insights from fan fiction theory to the study of the NT Apocrypha. Fan fiction is literature written by fans of a narrative, be it a novel, a movie, or a television series. The fans, rather than the original creators, elaborate on the original work by, e.g., expanding, reshaping, mending, relocating, or twisting the initial story. In recent years, fan fiction has become increasingly popular in fan milieus or so-called “fandoms” on the internet (see for example the various reworkings of The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter on www.fanfiction.net). As a consequence, the phenomenon is also beginning to attract attention in cultural studies. The paper takes inspiration from these trends in popular culture and scholarship and shows that although fan fiction is often traced back to fan magazines from the 1930s, the NT Apocrypha represent a comparable phenomenon in ancient Christianity. By bending and enlargening the minor characters of the canonical universe, the Apocrypha employ similar techniques for making social and ideological identifications and criticisms.


John 4:4–42 as Recognition Scene: Challenging Current Consensus
Program Unit: Johannine Literature
Kasper Bro Larsen, University of Aarhus

Contemporary research in the Fourth Gospel seems to agree that the meeting between Jesus and the Samaritan Woman is modelled in the likeness of the betrothal or courtship scenes of the Hebrew Bible. The present paper, however, argues that the cognitive game in the text points toward a different underlying literary pattern: the recognition type-scene (anagnorisis). This type-scene was a tremendously popular feature in ancient fiction when motifs of hidden identities, Sein and Schein, deception and discovery played a central role in the plot. For example, it appears frequently in the Hebrew Bible, the Homeric Epics, as well as the Greco-Roman tragedies, comedies, and romances. In the presentation, I shall (1) identify the main conventional features and inherent social ideology of the ancient recognition scene, (2) discuss the outline of John 4:4–42 in relation to this type-scene, and (3) point out how the pericope transforms its genre with certain ideological effects. Through the lenses of the ancient recognition type-scene, the encounter between Jesus and the Samaritans appears as a narrative about identification and mutual recognition, allocation of social space, and exchange of hospitality. These are motifs well known from the recognition type-scene, but here they appear with a distinctly Johannine coloring.


Early Christian Meals and Slavery
Program Unit: Meals in the Greco-Roman World
Lillian I. Larsen, University of Redlands

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Holiness and Healing in the Apophthegmata Patrum
Program Unit: Christianity in Egypt: Scripture, Tradition, and Reception
Lillian I. Larsen, University of Redlands

The various collections of the Apophthegmata Patrum provide a rich locus for exploring questions of healing, and derivatively illness, in late-ancient Egyptian monastic communities. While the apophthegmatic portrayals that comprise these collections are quite varied, the commonalities that do exist must inform any re-imagining of the general contours of health and healing within the communities in which these sayings and stories ostensibly found their form. Nonetheless, considerable caution and sophistication must be used in seeking to reconstruct the life, message, or historical circumstance of these constituencies (Hock and O"Neill 1995; Larsen 2006). In addressing a narrative texture that is clearly informed by patent hagiographical strands, in this paper, I will explore both the distinct and common aspects of monastic perceptions of healing as they are represented in the apophthegmatic texts. Depictions of healing (and illness) included in the Apophthegmata Patrum will be placed in conversation with monastic and non-monastic counterparts. In turn, narrative details common to a range of apophthegmatic depictions will serve as a guide in placing respective literary representations in conversation with one another.


Codifying Memory
Program Unit: Scripture as Artifact
Jason T. Larson, Syracuse University

This paper argues that biblical codices are artifacts of knowledge production and social identity that can be productively compared to Greco-Roman artifacts of the same. Biblical codices and imperial architecture, monuments, and other Roman objets d"art shared functional and symbolic values that established a semantic kinship between Christian books on the one hand and Imperial temples, monuments, and statues on the other. I draw on recent theories of cultural memory and iconic books to argue that early Christian codices were “sites of memory” whose very materiality conveyed authority and identity by connecting Christian communities with a specific remembered past and ideological identity, much as Roman monumental representations of imperial power did. The archival nature of Christian codices gave way to a powerful understanding of “the books” as material artifacts charged with semantic meaning in their own right, which in turn enhanced the symbolic force of the archived text of Christian books even more. In short, the “crossing” of the material and the semantic properties of Christian books can be described and understood in terms of imperial sites of memory in Late Antiquity.


The Gospels as Sites of Memory
Program Unit: Mapping Memory: Tradition, Texts, and Identity
Jason T. Larson, Syracuse University

This paper argues that early Christian gospel books were “sites of memory.” It draws on Pierre Nora's description of sites of memory to argue that Irenaeus" fourfold Gospel met material, symbolic, and functional criteria for sites of memory better than other gospel archives of the second-fourth centuries. Irenaeus" Gospels started out like other gospels and narratives of Jesus; they were archival repositories of the particular stories of Jesus that certain Christian communities felt were important to know, and each one manifested a particular ideology. It was the stories and accounts of Jesus' words, activities, crucifixion, and resurrection that were important. There was no special symbolic investment in the materiality of gospel books during this early stage. By the end of the fourth century, however, Irenaeus" fourfold gospel books were as important for their symbolic materiality as they were for their textual content in ways that other gospels were not. The cumulative effect of the four New Testament Gospels" transition from archives to sites of memory is nothing less than the beginnings of the formation of Christian scripture. The paper briefly discusses the nature of archives as memory aids in the context of late antique book culture and defines “site of memory.” It then turns to specific examples of various gospels and especially to the use that early Christian writers made of gospel archives in the second and third centuries and contrasts that use with how Christian communities exploited the materiality of Gospel books by the end of the fourth century. Finally, the paper argues that the transition from many gospel archives to the dominance of four Gospels as sites of memory is keyed to specific threats to Christian existence and identity from the second century to the end of the fourth century.


Politics of Peace in Ephesians
Program Unit: Disputed Paulines
Te-Li Lau, Emory University

This paper argues that Ephesians can be read politically and that its political materials serve the deliberative function of promoting peace and concord within the ekklesia. I begin my analysis by first defining “the political” as fields of activity in which power is contested and in which issues of identity are addressed. In the ancient Hellenistic and Roman world, “the political” revolves around the three bases of Economics, Ethics, and Politics, covering topics such as moral education, wealth, household management, forms of government, citizenship, war, and peace. I then argue that these topics occur in major sections of Ephesians, supporting my argument by an analysis of the reconciliation of Jews and Gentiles into one new humanity in Eph 2, the call for communal unity in Eph 4:1–16, and the call to warfare in Eph 6:10–20. A comparison of these sections with classical Hellenistic and Roman political thought shows similarities in subject matter, terms, and themes. I further argue that these political materials promote peace within the ekklesia. The reconciliation of Jews and Gentiles in 2:1–22 seeks to dissipate ethnic tension and stereotypification by casting the vision of one new humanity and citizenry that eliminates former ethnic hostilities and rivalries; the exhortation in 4:1–16 urges unity, appealing to “ones” and the body metaphor; and the call to warfare (6:10–20) against a common enemy functions to enhance group identity and unity. I conclude by noting how other portions of the letter can be read within a political frame, and suggest several implications of such a political reading for our overall understanding of Ephesians.


Hosea's View of the Place of Carnal Knowledge in the Divine-Human Relationship in Light of Mesopotamian and Greek Parallels
Program Unit: Israelite Religion in its Ancient Context
Dale F. Launderville, Saint John's University

Hosea upbraids his audience for confusing carnal with spiritual ways of knowing Yhwh (4:6, 14). Yet for a reader of the Book of Hosea in fourth century Yehud, the distinction between carnal and spiritual ways of knowing Yhwh would still be ambiguous even though Yhwh's love as a husband and parent had been concretely instanced in historical events, nature, and personal relationships in the Israelite community since the late eighth century B.C. This paper will examine how the erotic drive for knowledge of persons and things can take on the character of an independent deity. Parallels focused on the Mesopotamian deity Inana/Ishtar from Sumerian myths and the Gilgamesh Epic and on the Greek deities Aphrodite and Eros from Plato's Symposium will provide a wider West Asian context for assessing Hosea"s view of the interplay between love and knowledge.


The Syrohexapla of 3 Kingdoms
Program Unit: International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies
Timothy Michael Law, Oxford University

This study will examine the Syriac translation of the Greek 3 Kingdoms (MT: 1 Kings). The Syrohexapla (Syh) is a translation that was carried out in the 7th century directly from some Greek text(s) with no apparent recourse to the Hebrew. Its inflexible style has been the subject of much discussion, as has its value as a witness to the Hexaplaric recension of the Greek Versions. In this study, we will examine some of the pitfalls in using the Hexaplaric information from Syh in the textual criticism of the Greek Versions, and note the role Syh plays as a witness to the complex textual history of 3 Kingdoms.


What Are Our Students Learning, and How Can We Tell? Everything You Wanted to Know About Assessment and Were Afraid to Ask
Program Unit: Teaching Biblical Studies in an Undergraduate Liberal Arts Context
Jonathan David Lawrence, Canisius College

Faculty at many institutions are being asked to assess student learning for internal and external audiences and this process can create much confusion and consternation. This presentation will attempt to demystify the assessment process, clarify some common misconceptions, discuss issues arising in assessing student learning in Biblical Studies, and suggest some strategies and resources for individuals and departments as they participate in assessment.


Images of Salvation: Early Depictions of Baptism
Program Unit: Ritual in the Biblical World
Jonathan David Lawrence, Canisius College

How did the earliest Christians perform baptism? In many cases it is hard to tell since early Christian texts discuss the significance and theology of baptism but give very little description of the mechanics and of baptism. The Didache describes the forms of water that can be used and other texts describe the liturgies associated with baptism. There are also many baptismal fonts starting with the third-century one at Dura Europas, but little is known about the earliest practices of baptism predating these specially-built structures. Early Christian art may help us fill in some of these gaps, both in terms of the practice and the understanding of baptism. This paper will examine the available textual, ritual, archaeological, and iconographic evidence to try uncover some of these early practices and how they developed from the depictions in the Gospels to the baptistery at Dura Europas to the complexity of the images in a sixth-century font from Kélibia, Tunisia.


Mikhail Bakhtin's Logic of Form and the Logic of the Exodus in the Book of Amos
Program Unit: Bakhtin and the Biblical Imagination
Ela Lazarewicz-Wyrzykowska, University of Manchester

The book of Amos is renowned for its criticism of unjust social practices. What has not been adequately explored by the exegetes is that such criticism and the threats of punishment are pronounced in the context of allusions to the exodus tradition. In this paper, the elements of the exodus tradition alluded to in Amos (election, leaving Egypt, wilderness period, settlement in the Land) are conceptualised in terms of Bakhtin's aesthetic theory, considered against its philosophical background, particularly Georg Simmel's treatment of form. In Bakhtin's terms, in the exodus God creates Israel by endowing it with form. The Law and the Land are conceptualised as two interlocking aspects of such aesthetic form. The Law is perceived as the principle of behaviour modelled on God's merciful act toward the powerless Israel: the powerful members of the community are to protect the powerless ones. The Land was obtained by Israel directly from God, who himself freed his people from the territorial struggle in which their neighbours engaged. Together, the Law and the Land decide about the nation's unique form and establish its identity as the "ethical nation". Such approach allows us to understand the logic of the condemnation of the nation's social practices in this text. Various forms of abuse of the powerless violate the form giving principle of behaviour established by God in the exodus, event lying at the heart of the nation's history. Transgressions of this principle undermine Israel's form and its identity. The nation's territorial ambitions and gains further undermine its identity by putting it among "other nations" engaging in warfare. The exile from the Land and dispersion among the nations can be seen as consummation of the process of deterioration of Israel's form. The paper concludes with an indication of some limitations of such Bakhtinian approach.


Charting Memory Cycles in the Gospels: A Case for Historical Triangulation
Program Unit: Mapping Memory: Tradition, Texts, and Identity
Anthony Le Donne, Durham University

Historical memory is a cyclical process of projection and assimilation. New perceptions are refracted through the lens of previous categories and old categories are forced to evolve to remain intelligible. One of the central tenets of Social Memory theory is that memory (both personal and historical) is a fluid process, able to accommodate new perceptions. The function of memory is to conceptually reinforce and be reinforced by new perceptions for the purpose of creating cognitive continuity and stability. Because of this, many prominent memory theorists such as Michael Schudson and Jan Assmann readily assert that all "memory is distortion" since there is no such thing as an "undistorted memory." This insight helps to dismantle the historical-positive tendency to draw a dichotomy between reliable memory and distorted perception. This paper will adapt previous historiographical discussions of the “hermeneutical circle” by discussing the ebb and tide from novum to pre-conception. I will argue that recent research on memory distortion (what I call mnemonic refraction) sheds new light on the circle model. When applied the Jesus tradition, the historian is able to navigate past the authenticity vs. redaction dichotomy that has bankrupted historical-positivism. I will argue that when redaction tendencies are treated as “mnemonic refraction” certain memory trajectories become evident in the Jesus tradition. Once located, these trajectories can be charted backward to a sphere of historical plausibility. If a single saying or story is refracted along multiple trajectories there is warrant for postulating (i.e. triangulating) what an early and widespread memory of the historical Jesus might have looked like—one that best accounts for the refraction trajectories manifest in the Gospels.


Son of David: Jesus and Solomon Typology
Program Unit: Historical Jesus
Anthony Le Donne, Durham University

There are only a handful of historical claims that are uncontroversial in historical Jesus research. Included in this short list are: (1) Therapy: Jesus was known to be an exorcist/healer. (2) Kingdom: Jesus was known as a kingdom-preacher and was crucified as “the King of the Jews”. (3) Temple: Jesus was remembered to have claimed authority over the temple. (4) Wisdom: Jesus was known as a wisdom teacher and later associated with Wisdom personified. (5) Jesus was called both “Son of God” and “Son of David” in early Christian memory. This paper will argue that each of these strands share a common point of departure: Solomon typology. It has become increasingly popular for commentators to entertain the notion of Solomon typology in conjunction with the title Son of David. Yet most do so only in discussions of exorcism. This paper argues that the archetypal relationship between David and (his most prominent son) Solomon colored early and widespread interpretations of Jesus" ministry, message and temple demonstration. Furthermore, I will suggest that the titles Son of God and Son of David represent divergent reactions to the impact of these early interpretations.


With Homi Bhabha at the Jerusalem City Gate: A Postcolonial Reading of Jesus" Entry (Mark 11:1–11)
Program Unit: Jesus Traditions, Gospels, and Negotiating the Roman Imperial World
Hans Leander, University of Gothenburg

In this paper I discuss how Mark's description of Jesus" entry into Jerusalem (Mk 11:1-11) alludes in form and content to triumphal processions in both Jewish anti-colonial and Greco-Roman colonial discourses. Previous interpretations of these allusions, especially after Brandon's Jesus and the Zealots (1967), have tended to be either pro- or anti-colonial. Making use of Edward Said"s contrapuntal reading, I give two examples of how such interpretations can be understood as part of the interpreter"s colonial or anti-colonial location. In my reading of the text, I focus particularly on the phrase “the Lord needs it” (Mk 11:3) that I argue echoes the colonial praxis of forced labour, known for Mark"s readers/hearers as angareia. In order to interpret this echo and other (anti)colonial allusions, I draw on the heterogeneous field of postcolonial theory, more specifically one of its branches that has been developed by Homi Bhabha. Influenced by Lacanian psychoanalysis, Bhabha has developed some concepts (mimicry, hybridity, ambivalence, third space) that describe the slippery relation between colonizer and colonized. With help of such concepts, I interpret the Markan allusions to (anti)colonial discourses as mimicry that opens up a third space, making possible new positions of identification. Hence, I read the Markan account of Jesus" entry as presenting an ironic and ambivalent hero, and I discuss if this kind of hero constitutes a greater or lesser problem for the Roman hegemony as compared to a more clear-cut anti-colonial hero.


A Comparative Study of Ezekiel's Exagoge 68–89 with Aeschylus's Persae
Program Unit: Hellenistic Judaism
Doo Hee Lee, Graduate Theological Union

While most of the story of Exagoge is based on the Septuagint, Moses" dream scene has no prototype there. This oddity has stimulated scholars" curiosity as to the backdrop of Ezekiel's formulation of Moses" dream scene. Recent studies on the dream scene suggest four options. Holladay argues that Moses in this scene is portrayed as a Hebrew prophet in competition with the Greek mantic god Apollo. His point is that the throne in the dream scene is not the royal throne but the mantic/prophetic throne, which can be compared to Apollo's mantic throne along the Greek mantic tradition. Van der Horst argues that Moses" dream vision is the earliest evidence of merkavah-vision that develops more fully later in the Jewish merkavah-literatures. Jacobson suggests Herodotean impacts on Ezekiel"s composition of Moses" dream scene, based on some common elements of wording and images found in both Herodotus" Histories and Ezekiel"s Exagoge. Unlike previous studies, Gruen does not try to dig out its origin, but rather emphasizes its “novelty” which creates a new image of Moses as a prophet and a king fitting to enhance the confidence and pride of the Hellenistic Jews. It seems to me that Gruen"s explanation is the only one which gives due evaluation for both images (king and prophet) that are evident in Moses" dream scene, whereas other explanations are inclined to highlight one image at the expense of the other. However, I still have some suspicion that there may be a significant particular backdrop against which Ezekiel formulates Moses" image as a prophet and king. I would argue that the ghost of king Darius in Aeschylus" Persae may be a counterpart to Moses in the dream scene of Exagoge.


Divine Absence and the Fourth Gospel
Program Unit: Johannine Literature
Dorothy Ann Lee, Trinity College Theological School

The emphasis of the Fourth Gospel is on the radical presence of divine love, joy, peace and union within the believing community. By contrast, the theme of absence is more usually associated with Mark's Gospel than John's—particularly the cry of dereliction from the cross (Mk 15:33). By contrast, the fourth evangelist seems more concerned to depict plenitude and harmony than desolation and dearth, not only in the crucifixion narrative but elsewhere in the Gospel. Yet there are sufficient indications of an absence theme in the narrative of the Fourth Gospel: Jesus" power in physical absence, for example; his reluctance on occasions to perform miracles; the development of faith beyond his proximity; and, above all, his departure through glorification on the cross, leaving the community to deal with distance, dejection and persecution. Though all manifestations of absence are not identical, the Fourth Gospel nonetheless presents it as part of the unfinality of the world, the puzzling assertion of darkness and death despite the eloquent triumph of the light. The Fourth Gospel attempts to confront the mystery of divine absence within its own framework in order to provide consolation for Johannine disciples. It does so by assigning theological meaning to Jesus" physical absence, a meaning that forges a path and holds out a destination as well as offering unseen companionship. Throughout the narrative, the reader perceives that absence begins to open the way to another and deeper comprehension of propinquity, a propinquity bounded theologically by a more capacious sense of presence. The English Jacobean poet, John Donne (1572-1631), expresses a similar dynamic between absence and presence in the love poem "Valediction Forbidding Mourning", an analysis of which can help to illuminate the Johannine paradoxical dynamic.


Reading the Markan Shema (12:29) in Light of the “Exaltation of the Messiah” (12:36)
Program Unit: Synoptic Gospels
Jang Ryul Lee, University of Edinburgh

In this paper, I will argue that Mark 12.28-34 and 12.35-37 must be read collectively.(1) One may wonder why the case needs to be argued since these two passages are juxtaposed. Juxtaposition does not, however, establish this case because some neighboring passages do not necessarily have any relationship with each other and the degree of their relationship varies considerably in different occasions. For example, the juxtaposition of the Parable of the Mustard Seed (followed by an editorial summary) (Mk 4.30-34) and the story of Jesus" silencing a storm (Mk 4.35-41) does not present any specific relationship between the two. Even if the question about taxes (12.13-17) and the next question about resurrection (12.18-27) are related to each other as parts of the same section, which is a series of questions and answers in the temple (11.27-12.37), understanding one without the other does not seem to be a problem. A collective reading requires a much stronger connection between the two neighboring passages. If one passage happens to be read without the other, an important part of the evangelist's message will be lost. I will argue for the collective reading of Mark 12.28-34 and 12.35-37 based upon (a) the intimate connection between 12.28-34 and 12.35-37 with the notion of “Kingdom,” and (b) a narrative scheme of 11.27-12.37 in which 12.35-37 functions as the climax and 12.28-34 as a preparatory step to that climax. I will then discuss the force of the collective reading. Namely, the monotheistic statement (12.29; cf. v. 32) is to be read in view of the exaltation of the Messiah, Jesus (12.36), and the understanding of the “one-ness of God” is further defined by the presentation of Jesus who “sits at God's right.” (2) (1) I differentiate a case of a “collective” (or “corporate”) reading from a case of juxtaposition. The former refers to the state in which two passages must be read in view of each other; otherwise, a proper understanding of one of the passages, if not both, would be seriously damaged. The latter simply describes the state in which two passages are placed next to each other. (2) I will focus on the Greek text of the second gospel as it stands and how its earliest readers would have understood it. The question of the so-called “Historical Jesus,” and the issues related to traditions/sources as well as their transmission cannot and should not be avoided. They, however, are not something on which I shall concentrate.


Prophetic Bat-'ammî Answers Jeremiah
Program Unit: Women in the Biblical World
Nancy C. Lee, Elmhurst College

The matter of dialogue rendered in the book of Jeremiah's poetry has been recently considered by a number of scholars. In previous writings, I have argued that the poetry of Jeremiah may include more than simply a constructed dramatic dialogue of voices with differing perspectives (some seem to presume all created by one poet or redactor or scribe). One may regard instead the text as including the utterances of different oral poets who were in dialogue, now embedded in the book of Jeremiah. Carrying this argument forward, this paper seeks to illuminate more about a poetic singer that may be in dialogue with the prophet Jeremiah in that book in a few texts. That poetic singer's speech, in close proximity to Jeremiah"s use of his favored term of endearment, Bat-"ammî, suggests that she may be the referent of the term; moreover Bat-"ammî is not simply another construct of the usual persona or personification of Jerusalem (Daughter Zion). By its inclusion of "ammî, the term Bat-"ammî does not follow the standard formula that refers to cities. Instead, by comparison of the prophet Ezekiel"s use of the phrase “daughters of your people” to refer to women prophets, this paper proposes that Jeremiah"s reference to Bat-"ammî is possibly to a woman prophet (with this name, or who attracts his appellative for her by nature of her utterances) and with whom he may have been in dialogue in the context. An equally plausible proposal is that Bat-"ammî refers to a woman lament singer. However, that an individual could be called to be a prophet and who sang the genres of Israel"s culture, such as lament, is evident in the other prophets and Jeremiah himself, or for that matter, the traditions about Miriam.


“Unless You Believe, You Will Not Understand”: A Brief History of Isaiah 7:9
Program Unit: History of Interpretation
Michael C. Legaspi, Creighton University

Few biblical verses have had as illustrious a career in Western intellectual history as Isaiah 7:9, “unless you believe, you will not understand” (Old Latin, Septuagint). Church Fathers such as Jerome and Augustine discerned in this prophetic pronouncement a strategy for navigating between the claims of reason and of faith and, more specifically, for defending the claim that the latter is both indispensable and prior to the former. The verse became the touchstone for influential modes of intellectual inquiry in the Middle Ages, the era in which theology, the acknowledged "queen of the sciences," directed her handmaidens in the discovery of truth. The ethos of this verse found its most famous expression in Anselm's model of "faith seeking understanding." Yet for all of its renown, the actual wording of the verse is a matter of some controversy. The verse reads differently in the Masoretic Text, Vulgate, and Targums than in the bibles of many of the fathers; thus: “unless you believe, you will not endure.” Though evidence from Qumran permits a decisive judgment in favor of the MT reading, patristic interpreters acknowledged the validity, interestingly, of both readings. An examination of the ways in which they coped with variant readings such as one finds in Is 7:9 reveals a great deal about their attitudes toward textual disorder in the Bible. It also sheds light on the role of scripture in shaping the dialectic of faith and reason, even as it exemplifies broader strategies for appropriating the biblical tradition in new philosophical and cultural environments.


The “Distorters of the Resurrection” in Apocryphal Acts and Other Early Christian Texts: The Threat of Deviance
Program Unit: Christian Apocrypha
Outi Lehtipuu, University of Helsinki

What do we know about Hymenaeus and Philetus, Demas and Hermogenes, or Simon and Cleobius? Not much, apart from the fact that their understanding of what “resurrection” means differed from that held by the early Christian authors who mention them. Thus, these people are described as those who “have swerved from the truth” (2. Tim. 2:17), who “pervert the faith of many” (3. Cor 1:2) and who “full of hypocrisy flatter Paul as if they loved him” (Acts Paul 1) since they teach that the resurrection has already taken place. Concentrating on these and other, sometimes anonymous characters in such apocryphal writings as the Acts of Paul and Thecla, Paul's Third Letter to the Corinthians, Epistula Apostolorum, and Didascalia Apostolorum, I discuss the different early Christian views on how resurrection should and should not be understood. Drawing from insights borrowed from social scientific studies on deviance and marginalization, I address the question why the “right” understanding of resurrection was so important for different early Christian groups. I suggest that the polemic against those who hold a different view is hostile since they form deviant subgroups who threaten the integrity and distinctiveness of others in the ingroup. On the other hand, deviants serve an important strategic function by helping to bolster a distinctive social identity. After all, it is impossible to know whether Hymenaeus and Philetus, Demas and Hermogenes, Simon and Cleobius were real people, known to the implied readers, or whether they were literary characters who served a rhetorical function. Be that as it may, they represented the “other” over against whom “us”, the true followers of Christ were defined.


A Newly Discovered Mosaic from the Synagogue of Wadi Hamam, Lower Galilee
Program Unit: Bible and Visual Art
Uzi Leibner, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Remains of an ancient synagogue from the Roman-Byzantine era have been revealed in excavations carried out in the Eastern Lower Galilee by the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The main goal of the project is to try and shed new light on the highly debated issue of the dating of the "Galilean Synagogues". These monumental structures were generally thought to have been built under Roman rule (second-fourth centuries CE). This period was seen as a renaissance in Jewish culture under the late Roman Empire which came to an end with the rise of Byzantium. Recent finds have caused some scholars to revise this picture, arguing that the synagogues were in fact built centuries later, under Christian Byzantine rule. This question has significant implications for our understanding of the conditions of the Jews of the Land of Israel during the late Roman/Byzantine periods, Christian–Jewish relations, etc. Besides rich architectural elements, a unique feature uncovered in the first season of excavations was a mosaic floor which to date has no parallels -- not in other synagogues, nor in art in Israel in general from the Roman-Byzantine period. The mosaic is made of tiny stones in a variety of colors. The scene depicted is that of a series of craftsmen who are holding various tools of their trade. Near these workers is seen a monumental structure which they are apparently building. Since Biblical scenes are found in synagogue art, it is reasonable that what we see in this case is the construction of an important Biblical structure. The lecture will present the mosaic and discuss possible interpretations in light of hermeneutical themes and historical events, relevant to the contemporaneous Galilean setting.


Re-viewing the Levite's Concubine
Program Unit: Bible and Visual Art
Mary Joan Winn Leith, Stonehill College

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston owns one painting by the seventeenth–century Dutch painter, Daniel Jansz Thievaert (before 1613-before 1658). A student of Rembrandt, Thievaert specialized in biblical scenes of a moralizing nature, including the MFA's “The Laborer of Gibea Offering Hospitality to the Levite and His Wife.” The grisly account of the Levite's Concubine (Judges 19:1-30) has in recent decades acquired dubious status as the most troubling of the Bible"s “Texts of Terror,” Phyllis Trible"s expression for biblical stories of violence directed at women. On the one hand, Thievaert"s treatment of this subject represents a distinctive stage in the intersection of biblical interpretation and social discourse about gender; at the same time, however, his painting can provoke the viewer to reconsider not only the intent of the biblical narrator, but also the dynamics of viewer-response on the part of today"s museumgoer.


“Prophesy! Who Struck You?” (Mark 14:65): The Messiah Who Smells
Program Unit: African Biblical Hermeneutics
Grant LeMarquand, Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry

In Mark 14:65 Jesus is blindfolded and struck as part of his interrogation by the Sanhedrin prior to his execution. The reason for this form of 'game' or 'trial' is not stated in the text, but a clue may be found in Isaiah 11:3 in which the Messiah is said to judge not by his eyes or his ears but by his sense of smell. This paper will suggest that the cruel blindfold game is a test of Jesus' messiahship and African traditions of judging by sniffing will be used to help to illustrate this possible understanding of the text.


What Are Iconographic Approaches?
Program Unit: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Bible
Joel M. LeMon, Emory University

As a relatively new venture within biblical and ancient Near Eastern studies, a number of scholars have liberally applied the rubric “iconographic study” to a variety of pursuits. This paper categorizes these studies, and, in doing so, determines what constitutes an iconographic approach. Over the past 30 years, iconographic approaches have identified and attempted to address three related questions. First, how does one discern the meaning/significance of an ancient Near Eastern image? Second, how does one reconstruct ancient Near Eastern history (and religion) with the help of these images? Third, how can the images inform readings of particular biblical texts? Each of these questions requires practitioners to employ a unique iconographic method. Clearly outlining these methods will allow iconographic approaches to have an even greater impact on the field of biblical studies.


Where There Is Dirt, Is There System? Revisiting Biblical Purity Constructions
Program Unit: Biblical Law
T. M. Lemos, Yale University

This paper will address two interrelated topics concerning biblical and Israelite purity constructions. 1. It will critique the tendency exhibited by virtually all of those who have written on these concepts to systematize, synchronize, and homogenize biblical purity constructions, rather than recognizing the multiplicity of ideas that one finds in different biblical texts. 2. It will suggest that the overall concept of impurity, not only in ancient Israel but elsewhere, is closer to ideas of hygiene than many anthropologists and many biblical scholars have posited. Mary Douglas famously wrote: “Where there is dirt, there is system.” Her attempt to uncover the system of thought behind Israelite dietary laws, and behind purity ideas the word over, has of course been incredibly influential. I will argue that virtually all biblical scholars who have written on Israelite purity ideas since the publication of Purity and Danger have followed Douglas's lead in attempting to find the system behind Israel's purity laws. This is the case even in recent works by Jonathan Klawans and Christine Hayes, both of whom, despite their delineation of two or more categories of impurity, have glossed over the differences between biblical texts in order neatly to frame the categories they posit. Klawans, for instance, brackets the dietary laws out of his discussion because of his inability to fit them into either of his categories of ritual or moral impurity. Both he and Christine Hayes ignore or explain away the impurity language in Nehemiah 13 because it, too, does not easily fit into the categories they have put forth. My paper will argue that these tendencies towards systematization are misguided and lead us away from rather than towards a fuller understanding of what different Israelites in different times and places agreed upon regarding defilement. Furthermore, the paper will question whether or not anthropologists and others have let go too easily of the idea of a materialist basis for impurity concepts. While there is no question that the earlier proposals for a materialist basis were often extremely simplistic and displayed a Eurocentric bias, there is reason to believe that materialist (i.e., hygiene-based) and non-materialist concerns are interwoven in the purity ideas of not only the ancient Israelites, but many groups throughout the world.


The Songs of Deborah … Jael … and Sisera's Mother: Musical Settings of Judges 4–5
Program Unit: Women in the Biblical World
Helen Leneman, University of Amsterdam

Music based on texts about biblical women brings these women's stories to life with a fresh immediacy. Composers who chose to set biblical stories were inspired by the story and characters; their music adds new dimensions to both. This paper will explore how librettos and music can influence our perception of women in a biblical narrative. Musical excerpts will be played to illustrate music's power to challenge—and even alter-- the listener's preconceptions about the narrative and its characters. Jael, who killed an enemy of Israel to save the Israelites in a historically precarious moment, has inspired both artists and composers through the ages. Musical settings of her story shed new and different light on her character. Jael is given a voice in the 1936 cantata Deborah and Barak by British composer Cecil Armstrong Gibbs (1889-1960). The libretto is based on the Judges text, but with notable changes in the speakers. Maurice Greene (1696-1755), a rival of Handel, wrote his Song of Deborah and Barak some 200 years earlier, in 1732. A significant feature of this work is the composer"s sympathetic treatment of Sisera"s mother. Georg Fredric Handel (1685-1759) wrote his oratorio Deborah in 1733. In the libretto, Deborah meets both Jael and Sisera. These three works all highlight God"s and Barak"s roles in the Israelite victory, and Deborah"s role is minimized relative to Barak"s. Yet Jael and Sisera"s mother are given their own, strong voice in two of the works. Musical excerpts to be played will draw particular attention to the musical treatment of the women at the fringe—one in the tent, the other at the window, both waiting for the same man.


Saul's Tragedy Retold through Drama and Music
Program Unit: Use, Influence, and Impact of the Bible
Helen Leneman, University of Amsterdam

A new opera based on Andre Gide's play Saül by Italian composer Flavio Testi premiered at the Macerata Festival in 2007. This paper will discuss the libretto and music, including analysis of a live performance in Rome in 2008. Musical excerpts and Powerpoint slides of the production will be included. Gide's Saül was written in 1898, but premiered as a play only in 1922. It confronts the issue of homosexuality which some commentators consider subliminal in the David narratives, by suggesting Saul"s attraction to David along with a very suggestive relation between David and Jonathan. Saul"s "demons" in the biblical narrative are never explained, and Gide fills the gap by depicting Saul as an older man tormented by his attraction to a much younger one. The production stresses this timeless element of the story, making it relevant for any era. Gide has been accused of perverting the biblical narrative. In her provocative book Perverse Midrash, Katherine Downey proposes that Gide was actually revealing “perversity in the text itself.” Gide"s play is seldom performed and little known. The fate of the opera remains to be seen. Stylistically the music recalls early 20th-century composers such as Stravinsky and Bartok, as well as Debussy and Ravel. Testi omitted violins from his score, considering them too lyrical and sentimental for his conception. The most unusual instruments included are xylophone and vibraphone, lending a very specific timbre or tone. But Testi"s musical idiom is completely personal and original. The production of this opera left no doubt in the audience"s mind of both Saul"s and Jonathan"s strong sexual attraction to David. Whether this is a perversion or merely an act of gap-filling, it is provocative and will surely cause the audience to read the original story through a different lens.


Gad Sarfatti and the Study of Hebrew Script in Christian Art
Program Unit: National Association of Professors of Hebrew
Harris Lenowitz, University of Utah

The polymath, Gad Ben-Ami Sarfatti, along with his scholarly work as a Hebraist and as a historian of mathematics, published fifteen essays on appearances of "Hebrew" script in non-Jewish works of art.(Some five are collected in kilshon 'ami (Academy of the Hebrew Language, 1997) In what seems to have been his last essay on the topic, "Un'iscrizione ebraica in un quadro di Jean Lemaire" (Hebraica Hereditas, 2005)he outlined a typology of 5 sorts of "Hebrew script" and 3 motives for their deployment. This presentation will put to the question both his typology and his motives and the history of their development in his work as they relate to this field of study, one in which he was a pathbreaking aficionado.


Invoking the God: Comparing Laments in Mesopotamia and the Hebrew Psalter
Program Unit: Hebrew Scriptures and Cognate Literature
Alan Lenzi, University of the Pacific

Since the earliest comparative analyses scholars have noted a striking difference between the Psalter's "laments of the individual" and the Akkadian Shuila-prayers. The latter begin with an invocation and hymnic prologue; the former have only a very brief invocation, often consisting of a word or two. A canvassing of the secondary literature demonstrates that several interpreters have attached great significance to this difference, making comparative and even theological generalizations that inevitably exalt Israel over its imperial neighbor in Mesopotamia. Although the difference between the Hebrew and Akkadian prayers is unmistakable, the comparison, as important and illuminating as it is, may not be entirely appropriate with regard to how these prayers begin. Based on Greenberg's social model of prayer and the idea that the level of formality in ritual is often directly related to the social distance or proximity between the parties involved (Bell and Douglas), I submit that a better comparison for understanding the brief invocation in the Hebrew "laments of the individual" lies in the dingir.sha.dib.ba-prayers, supplications for the abatement of a personal god's wrath. I argue that the brief invocations in both the Hebrew "laments of the individual" and the Akkadian dingir.sha.dib.ba's reflect the close connection between the supplicant and the deity entreated. Besides countering improper comparative generalizations, this paper will provide further support for seeing a personal aspect to the god presented in the Psalter's "laments of the individual."


“He Led His People Out with Gladness”: Psalm 105 and the Return from Exile
Program Unit: Book of Psalms
Jeffery M. Leonard, Samford University

The beautiful historical psalm, Psalm 105, invites the reader to “remember the wonders” YHWH has done. In recalling these wonders, however, the psalm does far more than idly reflect upon traditions from Israel's past. In this paper, I argue that the psalm marshals Israel's historical traditions for a specific purpose, namely to call the newly freed exiles that form the psalm"s audience to brave the return journey to their homeland. In this regard, Psalm 105 is to be closely allied, both in timing and intent, with 2 Isaiah. Extending the work of scholars such as Svend Holm-Nielsen and Adele Berlin, I analyze Psalm 105 primarily through the lens of inner-biblical allusion. Through an identification of the unique constellation of traditions used in the psalm and the sometimes subtle, sometimes overt changes made in the recitation of these traditions, I argue it is possible to bring into sharp focus the nature and occasion of the psalmist"s call to the people. Just as importantly, I maintain the Psalm"s heavy reliance on inner-biblical allusion offers an invaluable window onto the development of Israel"s historical traditions, and particularly the Pentateuchal traditions, at the time of the end of the exile.


“She Spoke in the Language of the Cherubim”: Women and Revelatory Experience
Program Unit: Pseudepigrapha
Rebecca Lesses, Ithaca College

Several Jewish works of the Second Temple period present female figures from the Bible as recipients of divine or angelic revelation. In each case, the role of the biblical woman is expanded in the retelling and the aspect of revelation is added to her experience. The spirit of God comes upon Miriam, in Pseudo-Philo 9:10, and she is informed in a dream by a man in a linen garment that her parents would have a child who would save the Israelites from their Egyptian oppressors. In the Testament of Job, the daughters of Job receive powerful cords from their father, which give them the ability to speak angelic languages and see the chariot that comes to take Job's soul. Asenath, in Joseph and Asenath, receives the chief of the angels after a long time spent fasting and in repentance. In Jubilees, the “spirit of truth” (25:14) descends upon Rebecca and she blesses her son Jacob; she also learns of Esau's plan to kill his brother through a dream (27:1). The paper will discuss 1) the purpose of the revelatory experience in the literary context of the retold story (is it, for example, simply a continuation of the biblical literary type of the annunciation of the birth of a child); 2) the social context of revelation for each woman (in most cases, familial); 3) whether the woman receives revelation as part of fulfilling an expected social role (for example, as a mother); 4) and how, in each story, the woman is enabled to receive revelation – whether it comes spontaneously or after the performance of certain actions. These results lead to two further questions: can any of the experiences of revelation be considered “mystical”? Do any of these accounts provide evidence for women"s ability to engage in mystical contemplation?


The Occasions of Redaction in Deuteronomy
Program Unit: Pentateuch
Mark Leuchter, Temple University

In his recent work Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible, Karel van der Toorn established important criteria for understanding the process of redaction, preservation and transmission of Biblical texts in antiquity. Though his general approach remains compelling, the present paper wishes to draw attention to features within the book of Deuteronomy that suggest a different redactional paradigm. Whereas other texts were long preserved in a closed circle of literate elites, Deuteronomy presents itself as readily accessible to the common Israelite, and qualifies traditional elite social castes under a common pseudo-democratic rubric. Deuteronomy also contains passages that suggests a regular cycle of redactional updating bound to its legislation regarding the expansion of the extant written law (Deut 17:8-13) and the ritual public reading of the master copy at the central sanctuary (Deut 31:9-12). The process of redaction itself takes on a hermeneutical and even ritual significance in Deuteronomic discourse, carrying implications for diversity in Israel's scribal culture when compared with the development of most other texts as proposed by van der Toorn. This becomes especially significant in the period of the exile, when Deuteronomy became redactionally associated with the Former prophets (Josh-Kings) and the Persian Period, when it becomes an organic part of the larger Pentateuch, indicating the book's importance to the respective social/intellectual circles responsible for these works.


The Nehemiah Memoir and the Redaction of Leviticus
Program Unit: Literature and History of the Persian Period
Mark Leuchter, Temple University

Recent rhetorical studies of Leviticus reveal carefully constructed strategies aimed at consolidating Zadokite priestly power over against competing groups in the Second Temple period. Who were these competing groups, and how did their influence lead to the redaction of Leviticus into its current form? The present study suggests that it was Nehemiah and his Levite supporters who constituted the most significant threat to Zadokite socio-political hegemony in Yehud, and the construction of the Nehemiah Memoir in an early form catalyzed the redaction of Leviticus. The subsequent development of the Ezra-Nehemiah corpus constitutes a literary counter-argument, claiming the responsibility of teaching the Torah for the Levites (see especially Neh 8). This has significant implications for the historical context surrounding the final redaction of the Pentateuch, which eclipsed these alternate literary works, forged (or, perhaps, forced) alliances between the groups behind them, and points to a major development in both Priestly social authority and scribal methods and hermeneutics.


On Redactional Coherence and Book Division within the Enneateuch
Program Unit: Pentateuch
Christoph Levin, University of Munich

Ever since, the coherence of the narrative of the Enneateuch forms a strong problem for redactional criticism. On the one hand the coherence cannot have been the starting point of the literary development of this huge amount of written records. On the other hand nearly every division into today's single books cuts off an obvious literary and/or narrative threat. The paper shall again focus on the book division as the most crucial passages. It's not intended to solve the problem, but to move it to more precise terms.


Implications for the Study of Jesus
Program Unit: John, Jesus, and History
Amy-Jill Levine, Vanderbilt University

Corollary to the John, Jesus, and History project several important books have recently contributed to the larger set of inquiries. Three of these will be reviewed by leading scholars from Britain and America, followed by responses from the authors and a general discussion. The books include: The Fourth Gospel and the Quest for Jesus; Modern Foundations Reconsidered, by Paul N. Anderson (T&T Clark 2006); The Testimony of the Beloved Disciple; Narrative, History and Theology in the Gospel of John, by Richard Bauckham (Baker 2007); and The Fourth Gospel in Four Dimensions: Judaism and Jesus, the Gospels and Scripture, by D. Moody Smith (University of South Carolina Press 2008). The reviewers will engage particular aspects of all three books and their implications, as follows: “Implications for the Study of John,” Judith Lieu; “Implications for the Study of Jesus,” Amy-Jill Levine; and “Implications for History,” Andreas J. Köstenberger. Authors will respond to these reviews, and Felix Just, S.J. will moderate the following discussion.


The Relevance or Irrelevance of Rabbinic Literature for the Study of Jewish Art in Late Antiquity
Program Unit: History and Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism
Lee Levine, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Scholars studying Jewish art of Late Antiquity have regularly invoked rabbinic sources to support their interpretations of artistic remains. Such recourse was considered most natural, both because many of these sources were edited at roughly the same time that most of the art was produced and owing to the assumption that virtually nothing significant happened in Jewish life at the time without rabbinic involvement or approval. Such premises, however, have been seriously called into question. On one level, using rabbinic sources to explain archaeological finds has often been done without regard to (1) the comparable chronologies of text and art; and (2) the fact that sources do not always say what scholars attribute to them. On another level, there are very few, if any, references in these sources to an actual rabbinic role in the synagogue, and virtually nothing regarding the art used therein. Moreover, rabbis frequented very few of the sites, either in Palestine or the Diaspora, where artistic remains have been discovered and, in fact, we know absolutely noting about rabbis and rabbinic communal activity in Byzantium from the fifth through seventh centuries CE. In short, explaining Jewish art on the basis of rabbinic sources implies rabbinic influence on, if not control of, synagogues and cemeteries, and is therefore a most problematic assumption. Finally, the multifaceted nature and expression of Jewish art were assimilated and applied by various communities in diverse ways. The ultimate arbiter of what art was to be included in a synagogue and how it was to be presented was the local community, and not the rabbinic elite.


Did Jewish Art Emerge in a Late Roman or Byzantine-Christian Context?
Program Unit: Art and Religions of Antiquity
Lee Levine, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

It has been generally assumed that the emergence of a dramatically new Jewish art in Palestine and the Diaspora of Late Antiquity was inextricably intertwined with Christian art following the triumph of Christianity in the fourth century CE. The challenges and threats presented by the new Verus Israel presumably stimulated Jewish artistic creativity, leading to an unprecedented explosion in the repertoire of motifs that found expression in synagogues, cemeteries, and private homes (e.g., Jewish symbols, biblical scenes and figures). Without minimizing the importance of Christianity in spurring Jewish artistic creativity in the fourth through seventh centuries, it should be noted that some important expressions of Jewish art existed before the rise of Christianity, such those in the Dura Europos synagogue and the cemeteries of Bet She"arim and Rome, all dating to the third century CE. The question naturally follows: What in the second and third centuries might have contributed to this emerging Jewish artistic proclivity, which for centuries before had focused almost exclusively on floral and geometrical designs? The answer, it is suggested, lies in the dramatically new religious and cultural currents percolating in the East and spreading westward, especially in the second and third centuries. This phenomenon includes the rich assortment of pagan cults, the phenomenon commonly referred to as the Second Sophistic, and, of course, the expansion of Christianity. Each of these developments played a major role in stimulating various Jewish communities and circles to create new and diverse avenues of visual expression.


Ecstasy and Restraint in the Book of Acts
Program Unit: Pseudepigrapha
John R. Levison, Seattle Pacific University

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Modeling Iron Age Social Organization in the Faynan Region, Jordan: New Insights from Archaeology, Radiocarbon Dating, and Biblical Texts
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible, History, and Archaeology
Thomas Levy, University of California - San Diego

Recent excavations at the Iron Age metal production center of Khirbat en-Nahas were aimed at sampling a wide range of architectural units including the fortress and monumental buildings. A suite of new radiocarbon determinations from these excavations, coupled with analyses of ceramics and other data, demonstrate the chronological depth in Iron Age Edom and firmly establish the framework for a new, much longer, chronology for this part of Transjordan. These data have important implications for understanding the processes that led to the rise of complex polities during the late 2nd and early 1st millennia BCE. This paper examines the new data and its relationship to Biblical texts related to ancient Edom.


Wilhelm Vischer, Job, and the So-Called Judenfrage
Program Unit: History of Interpretation
Andrew Lewis, University of St. Andrews-Scotland

This paper will look at Wilhelm Vischer's interpretation of Job during the rise of Anti-Semitism in 1930s Germany. Despite its publication 11 times in three languages over the course of 50 years, “Hiob, ein Zeuge Jesu Christi” has been largely ignored by scholarship with only a few exceptions. Karl Barth credits the article with renewing his own interpretation in Church Dogmatics and Dietrich Bonhoeffer republished the mini-commentary in his Bekennende Kirche three times. My thesis is that Vischer's “Hiob”, though flawed, has not met with the credit it deserves because of its off-putting and obscuring title. The article itself mentions Jesus and the New Testament very sparingly, focussing almost entirely on a quasi-final-form interpretation on the book of Job. Despite its obscuring nature, the title of the article remains an important element historically since it was Vischer"s contention that the Hebrew Bible is a necessary component to Christian theology, a position that had been challenged in central Europe for several decades. Vischer"s insistence along with his various speeches and articles questioning the nature of the Judenfrage led to his eventual ousting from German academia and his re-emigration to Switzerland shortly before the start of World War II. The proposed essay will examine Vischer"s position regarding the Hebrew Bible in general and his interpretation of the book of Job in particular, with special attention paid to his context during the rise of the Third Reich. I will conclude by arguing that his typological reading is partly due to his historical context and obscures his importance as biblical interpreter. His interpretation of the silence of God in Job is an important but overlooked reading of a difficult biblical book, even after, perhaps especially after, the Holocaust.


Refuse, Filth, and Excrement in the Homilies of John Chrysostom
Program Unit: Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism
Blake Leyerle, University of Notre Dame

This paper intends to sift through the large heap of John Chrysostom's homilies for real dirt: for his comments on filth, excrement, and other kinds of refuse. I am interested in discovering information about 1. ancient sanitation (what his comments reveal about urban waste and water management), 2. practices of ritual purity (how Chrysostom and his congregation understood the charged categories of dirty and clean), and 3. aversive rhetoric (how Chrysostom used the language of filth to advance his own, largely ethical, agenda).


Demonstrating an Advanced Computational Linguistics Software Tool Applied to the Text of the Greek New Testament
Program Unit: Computer Assisted Research
James Libby, McMaster Divinity College

Both Old and New Testament Studies have a long history of appropriating new methods to more deeply understand the setting and origin of the texts of the Bible. Over the last 200 years, for instance, first historical and then traditio-critical studies sought to reconstruct the original setting of the texts. Methods such as form and redaction criticism are cases in point, they are diachronic in nature and deal with units of tradition individually, rather than as a whole. In the last fifty years, however, synchronic disciplines have been developed. Synchronic textual researchers propose that a careful study of the differences in the structure of language at a given point in time will itself reveal insights into occasion, dating, genre and authorship; precisely those issues that have previously been the sole purview of diachronic studies. In this session we will demonstrate a software tool developed by the mathematical modeling firm, Decision Support Sciences. This software tool, PositionSolve™, is being employed at McMaster Divinity college to explore the texts synchronically and in aggregate rather than diachronically and individually. PositionSolve™ uses methods drawn from multiple synchronic disciplines including systemic functional linguistics, corpus linguistics, computational linguistics, multivariate data reduction, and univariate and multivariate statistical inference. In this session we will demonstrate PositionSolve™ in real-time by constructing a landscape map of the morphological relationships between the books of the Greek New Testament, and then analyze those results statistically. In addition, we will perform the same demonstration using a syntactically tagged database derived from OpenText. Hence, these worked examples will demonstrate the utility of synchronic analysis at two levels of linguistic rank; morphology and syntax. We will close the session by discussing the future of these kinds of synchronic studies in contributing to long-standing issues of introduction and occasion within Biblical Studies.


Comparing the Position and Clustering of the Texts of the Greek New Testament Using Differing Layers or Ranks of Linguistic Structure
Program Unit: Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics
James Libby, McMaster Divinity College

Almost since it became recognized as a distinct corpus, the New Testament has been the focus of grammatical, lexical, and syntactical study. With the rise of modern linguistics, however, no longer is the New Testament scholar limited to understanding the text only through the lenses of traditional grammar, lexis and syntax. New layers of linguistic structure now exist which include simple and extended syntactical relations encoded at the clause and word group levels. Moreover, new fields of study such as corpus and computational linguistics have emerged which can operate upon this richer set of linguistic data. In this study we explore intertextual variation between the texts of the Greek New Testament as visualized using a data reduction tool commonly used in computational linguistics. Specifically, we will compare and contrast the position and clustering of the New Testament texts when the intertextual variation between the texts is predicated upon morphology alone, when it is predicated upon clause and word group syntactical relations alone, and when it is predicated upon morphology combined with clause and word group syntactical relations. Second, we will use inferential methods from univariate and multivariate statistics to determine which texts ot text groupings are significantly different from one another. Last, we will discuss how research of this type can make important contributions toward the goal of developing a formal data-driven definition of genre and authorship in the Greek New Testament.


In Search of the Quest for the Real Discovery of Noah's Ark: Archaeology and the Television Religious Documentary Genre
Program Unit: Archaeological Excavations and Discoveries: Illuminating the Biblical World
Lynn LiDonnici, Vassar College

What do Noah's Ark, Bigfoot, black holes, the Shroud of Turin, alien abduction, the Dead Sea Scrolls, ESP, spontaneous human combustion, the Bible Code, and guardian angels have in common? Scientists and theologians who are involved with one or more of these things would strenuously object to being categorized with the others, but any one of them might turn up at any time in a one hour documentary exploration on the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, the National Geographic Channel, the Learning Channel, or A&E. The bulimic appetite of cable channels such as these has created a long stream of production of specials and series, through which aspects of the Christian religion and of the modern scientific method are commodified and packaged for the fast-food palate. This has had unexpected and perplexing consequences for scholars, scientists and theologians as they struggle to present increasingly complicated ideas to a population whose expectation is for increasing convenience, user-friendliness and fun. In this paper, I focus on documentaries dealing with Noah's Ark, using them as a microcosmic window into the larger phenomenon. Noah"s Ark makes a perfect subject: biblical, both familiar and mysterious, and full of descriptions of objects, dimensions and specific locations that people have speculated about for centuries. Noah documentaries cover the full spectrum of the genre: from the theological perspectives of creation science, to the "archaeo-porn" family of ark hunters and their objects and anchors, to the perspective of modern geology and oceanography, to one example that pursues a line fairly close to modern historical-critical biblical scholarship. The phenomenon of the Ark has also broken out of the documentary form, and competing groups propose at least three different locations for the Actual Ark, groups that vehemently oppose each other and that have a great deal at stake: the fate of Christian souls in one case, but extremely lucrative video production companies, tour packages, visitor centers and luxury cruises for two others, one of which also involves the interests of the Turkish government. The overall Ark phenomenon both trades upon and encourages a particular way of consuming religion today, which has consequences for scholarship and law.


In Sacrifice and Slander: Ambiguous Blood in Greco-Egyptian Magical Formularies
Program Unit: Religious World of Late Antiquity
Lynn LiDonnici, Vassar College

In the ritual world of the Greco-Egyptian magical formularies, there are many kinds of blood, and blood has many roles. The blood of both sacrificial and wild animals is used, as well as other substances that for different reasons are called "blood." All of these may be used in libation, sacrifice, and amulets, though the most frequent use for them is in the creation and use of inks for ritually active writing. These inks may be visually red, but even if they are not, through reading the recipe or creating the ink the practitioner remains aware of the redness, whether actually or symbolically blood, that courses through the pen into the text. The symbolism of blood is also powerful, as practitioners may ritually transform an ingredient into the blood of a god or goddess for the space of ritual. At the same time, though clearly using both actual blood, its namesakes and symbols, these texts sometimes express an ambivalence to it. The suggestion that a potential victim pollutes Selene's altars with "blood and abomination" and claims that Selene drinks human blood and that a baboon was born out of her menstrual flow is used to enrage the goddess and spur her into action against the potential victim - slanders on two levels that are used in a ritual that does not itself use blood, though it does use red liquids for ink. In this paper, I will survey the physical and symbolic uses of blood in the formularies, using ritual texts from sanctuaries, medical writing, amulet forms, amulet texts and artistic representations to contextualize the meanings of the use of blood, whether actual, rhetorical or imaginal.


Messianic Woes in 1 Peter? Whoa!
Program Unit: Letters of James, Peter, and Jude
Kelly Liebengood, University of St. Andrews-Scotland

What is the basis for 1 Peter's theology regarding Christian suffering? More specifically, why is 'suffering as a Christian" to be expected (4.12-19), even necessary (1.6)? Identifying the source behind the metal and fiery trials imagery in 1 Peter 1.6-7 and 4.12 is a significant step on the way to ascertaining a solution to these important questions, for it is in these two passages where 1 Peter seeks to explain how its readers should interpret their precarious predicament. While there have been various proposals for the source behind this imagery, to date a significant number of Primopetrine scholars have suggested that it is the concept of messianic woes which informs these passages and 1 Peter"s overall theology of suffering. No one has more fully developed this hypothesis than Mark Dubis in his 2002 published doctoral dissertation "Messianic Woes in 1 Peter." In this paper, I will indicate several critical flaws in the messianic woes proposal, and then argue that Zechariah 13.7-9 (and its wider text plot) is the source behind the metal and fiery trial imagery of 1 Peter 1.6 and 4.12. Additionally, I will demonstrate how Zechariah 9-14 brings coherence to seemingly unrelated features of 1 Peter, such as the stone imagery (1 Pet 2.4-10), the shepherd imagery (1 Pet 2.25; 5.2-4), and the restoration-from-exile motif, which may suggest that Zechariah 9-14 functions as the narrative sub-structure of 1 Peter.


1 Peter's Fiery Trials and Zechariah 9–14's Pierced Shepherd-King
Program Unit: Greek Bible
Kelly Liebengood, University of St. Andrews-Scotland

Identifying the source behind the metal and fiery trials imagery in 1 Peter 1.6-7 and 4.12 is a significant step on the way to understanding 1 Peter's theology of suffering. More particularly, it will shed light on why suffering as a Christian is to be expected (1 Pet 4.12-19), even necessary (1 Pet 1.6). To date, a variety of sources have been proposed, ranging from Graeco-Roman topoi, Jewish wisdom sayings, Jewish apocalyptic traditions, as well as OT prophetic traditions. In this paper, I will briefly critique these proposals, while also arguing that there are clear indications in 1 Peter that LXX Zechariah 13.7-9 (and its wider text plot) is the source behind the metal and fiery trials imagery of 1 Peter 1.6 and 4.12. Additionally, I will demonstrate that other elements particular to LXX Zechariah 9-14 bring coherence to seemingly unrelated features of 1 Peter, such as the stone imagery (1 Pet 2.4-10), the shepherd imagery (1 Pet 2.25; 5.2-4), and the restoration-from- exile motif, which may suggest that Zechariah 9-14 functions as the narrative sub-structure of 1 Peter.


Masoretic Traditions of Menachem Ben Shelomo's Sekhel Tov
Program Unit: Masoretic Studies
Abraham A. Lieberman, Yeshiva University

It is the intent of this paper to investigate the Masoretic traditions recorded by Rabbi Menachem ben Shelomo in his midrashic work Midrash Sekhel Tov. While the provenance of the author is still debated the fact remains that Italy and Italian are connected to the work itself. The composition of the work based on the comments of the author takes place in the year 1139. Solomon Buber in publishing the work in 1900 already made notice but without any analysis of the fact that the work exhibits some different Masoretic traditions. Some of the material in the Sekhel Tov has its origin in an earlier work, namely Midrash Leqah Tov of Tobiah ben Eliezer (c.1036 - c.1108) of Castoria, Bulgaria, who at times shares the same Masoretical tradition. The paper will focus on collecting, organizing all the Masoretical information and then analyzing it in contrast and comparison to the established Masoretical traditions of both Sefarad and Ashkenaz to see if indeed they, Sekhel Tov and Leqah Tov, have retained a different Masoretical tradition.


The Reception of the Pseudepigrapha in the Syriac Traditions: The Case of 2 Baruch
Program Unit: Function of Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
Liv Ingeborg Lied, University of Bergen

As the title indicates, this paper will discuss the interpretations and functions of the Pseudepigrapha in the Syriac Traditions. Of particular interest is the reception history of the 1st – 2nd century CE Jewish work 2 Baruch in Western Syriac Christianity, with a special regard for the complex relationship 2 Baruch had with Syriac Scripture and liturgical texts. Today, 2 Baruch is extant in its entirety in a 6th- 7th century Syriac Bible manuscript only. In addition, parts of 2 Baruch (44.9-15; 72.1-73.2) are attested in three Syriac lectionary manuscripts. This paper will take the attestation of 2 Baruch in these manuscripts as its point of departure (in accordance with the position of Robert Kraft) and discuss how 2 Baruch may have been understood and used by Syriac speaking Christians. The paper will discuss these issues in light of the concept of Cultural memory and some recent studies of folklore, orality, literacy and canonicity in ancient Christianity and Judaism. Questions being asked are: What are the implications of the fact that 2 Baruch, together with 4 Ezra and Josephus's Jewish War book 6, was part of a Syriac Bible in the 6th-7th century? Can we tell whether 2 Baruch was perceived as a non-scriptural, Jewish work, or as a more or less integrated part of the Christian Old Testament at that time? Was 2 Baruch of interest as a composition (“a work”) in the Syriac speaking realm, or were materials of 2 Baruch of interest due to thematic focus, motifs and metaphors? Moreover, since two sections of 2 Baruch have been found in lectionary manuscripts it is likely that these sections of the work may have been part of the liturgy of the Syriac Church: how does the integration of these sections into liturgy add to and challenge our understanding of the use of 2 Baruch in the Western Syriac tradition?


Melchizedek: An Allegorical Reading in Hebrews 7
Program Unit: Hebrews
Bert Jan Lietaert Peerbolte, Protestant Theological University, The Netherlands

Hebrews' characterisation of Melchizedek is based on an exegetical combination of Gen. 14:18 and Ps. 110:4. These texts speak of the Melchizedek's encounter with Abraham and of his priestly status. The same combination is found in Philo (esp.: Leg.All. 3,79-82). Next to this, Hebrews assumes a heavenly status for Melchisedek, thereby reflecting traditions also found in Dead Sea Scrolls (cf. 11QMelch; 4QAmram; 4Q280) and 2 Enoch 71-72. The reference to Melchizedek in Hebrews 7 is thus part of an exegetical tradition based on the combination of Gen. 14:18 and Ps. 110:4. This paper will explore the way in which the author of Hebrews adapts this tradition to prove his christological point by allegorizing the figure of Melchizedek. It pays special attention to the closeness of Hebrews" discourse on this priestly figure to that of Philo of Alexandria, arguing in favour of an Alexandrian provenance of the Epistle to the Hebrews.


Implications for the Study of John
Program Unit: John, Jesus, and History
Judith M. Lieu, University of Cambridge

Corollary to the John, Jesus, and History project several important books have recently contributed to the larger set of inquiries. Three of these will be reviewed by leading scholars from Britain and America, followed by responses from the authors and a general discussion. The books include: The Fourth Gospel and the Quest for Jesus; Modern Foundations Reconsidered, by Paul N. Anderson (T&T Clark 2006); The Testimony of the Beloved Disciple; Narrative, History and Theology in the Gospel of John, by Richard Bauckham (Baker 2007); and The Fourth Gospel in Four Dimensions: Judaism and Jesus, the Gospels and Scripture, by D. Moody Smith (University of South Carolina Press 2008). The reviewers will engage particular aspects of all three books and their implications, as follows: “Implications for the Study of John,” Judith Lieu; “Implications for the Study of Jesus,” Amy-Jill Levine; and “Implications for History,” Andreas J. Köstenberger. Authors will respond to these reviews, and Felix Just, S.J. will moderate the following discussion.


Marcion and the Jews in Early Christian Thought
Program Unit: Construction of Christian Identities
Judith M. Lieu, University of Cambridge

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The List of the Vessels in 1 Samuel 2:14 and the Case of the Syrohexapla
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Historical Books
Marketta Liljeström, University of Helsinki

1 Sam 2:14 enumerates vessels that were used in preparing the sacrificial offerings but the lists of the versions differ in number, in content, and in order of the items. In the MT the list consists of four vessels, in the Greek manuscripts of three to four vessels in different combinations. Of the Syriac versions the Peshitta and the version of Jacob of Edessa are clear in this matter, but the Syrohexapla is complicated. The lectionary passage of the Syrohexapla does not seem to agree with the quotation by Barhebraeus nor with the Hexaplaric group. What was the wording of the Syrohexapla in the first place? Does it help us to pinpoint the genuine Greek hexaplaric reading? In this paper I will offer a solution to the puzzle.


Liturgical Function of p967: How Codicological Analysis Sheds Light on Textual Issues in Septuagint Ezekiel
Program Unit: Papyrology and Early Christian Backgrounds
Ingrid Lilly, Emory University

In this paper, I consider the role liturgical function played in Ezekiel's text tradition through study of the early 3rd century codex, p967. First, I conduct codicological analysis on p967 Ezekiel, arguing that the book functioned in a Christian liturgical setting. I examine p967's unique paragraphing, extra-textual marks, as well as a small number of Christian theological touches to the body of the text. Characteristics of neighboring Daniel and Esther support the conclusion that the codex was used in Christian liturgy. Second, I interrogate the textual history of p967 for liturgical function, agreeing with Thackeray"s early pronouncement that liturgy motivated late textual editing of the book.


The Book of the Watchers Deployment of Theogony: Hesiod's Gigantomachy, Titanomachy, and Genealogical Principle according to Enoch
Program Unit: Pseudepigrapha
Ingrid Lilly, Emory University

This paper engages the scholarly debate about Hellenistic influence in the Book of the Watchers and argues that the book is thoroughly saturated with Hellenistic political mythos. However, I do not look for the passive term, "influence," but rather read the Book of the Watchers as an act of political deployment. I argue that the Enochic scribe drew heavily on Hesiod's Theogony in writing the Book of the Watchers. I demonstrate precedent for political use of Hesiod with the frieze on the great Altar of Pergamon, commissioned by the Attalids to endorse their imperial grip on the region. Indeed, the Enochic scribe inverts terms in Hesiod's genealogy, and manipulates plots, characterizations, themes, and motifs in the Titanomachy and Gigantomachy. Drawing on theories and comparative cases of colonized artistic representation, I demonstrate that the author of the Book of the Watchers thoroughly re-appropriated the mythos in Hesiod"s Theogony to its own ideological ends.


Speak My Name: Anticolonial Mimicry and the Samaritan Woman in John 4:1–42
Program Unit: Contextual Biblical Interpretation
Sung Uk Lim, Graduate Theological Union

This paper revisits the thorny issue of whether or not the subaltern can speak against colonial authority. This paper argues that in John 4 the nameless Samaritan woman as a subaltern native is a creative agent who undermines the colonial authority of Jesus as a so-called missionary, seen through Homi Bhabha's lens of anti-colonial mimicry. Close reading of John 4:1-42 reveals that the mimicry of the Samaritan woman is anti-colonial in the sense that she, as the colonized, menaces the authority of Jesus as the colonizer by causing ambivalence to him with regard to his ethnic and political identity. As a consequence, mimicry is transformed into the location of resistance against colonialism. After investigating the text in terms of anti-colonial mimicry, this paper shall apply the same scenario to the reader's social context of Korean Christianity in relation to Western missionaries during the period of the Japanese colonization (1910-1945). The power relations between Jesus and the Samaritan woman parallel those between a missionary and native, between the colonizer and colonized. As is typical in the history of Christian missions, indigenous Christians as the colonized are commanded to imitate missionaries as the colonizers. This paper particularly considers the case of my own denomination, Korea Evangelical Holiness Church. Thus, this paper explores the ways in which mimicry subverts colonial rule in both the text and the world.


Making the Body Remember: Violence in First Invective against Julian the Emperor, by Gregory of Nazianzus
Program Unit: Violence and Representations of Violence in Antiquity
Vasiliki M. Limberis, Temple University

The First Invective against Julian the Emperor, written by Gregory of Nazianzus shortly after Julian's death in 363, is an extremely complicated text. Scholars have surmised that he either dared not write such a tract during Julian's lifetime or that he did not have enough courage to do so. Gregory obviously found great release in writing this for his deep seated frustrations and fears that had accumulated during Julian"s short reign. Many of his negative emotions are imbricated in an inordinate amount of violent scenes, quite uncharacteristic for Nazianzen"s literary corpus. This paper uses recent trauma theory that focuses on how the original, severely negative emotions resulting from violence are instantly available to victims nearly forever. This contrasts sharply with the fact that the ravages of physical pain wrought by violence of all sorts are lost forever for human beings. Put simply, unlike the emotional trauma connected with it, physical pain leaves no imprint for human beings to retrace, and it cannot be remembered. Moreover, there is no meaning to violence. Meaning is given to violence when it is contextualized by the victim"s and the perpetrator"s relationship to the surrounding culture and its parameters of power. Using these rubrics to explore Nazianzen"s text, the paper will address how he controls Julian through the memory of the violence he wrought. Next it will show the variety of ways Nazianzen uses violence committed in the name of religion, sometimes intentionally keeping the readers out as voyeurs and other times drawing them in to pathos, even sympathy. Finally, how martyrdom in all its violence becomes contested capital during Julian"s reign, a reward he cruelly denied the Christians as a matter of policy, shows the multivalent quality of violence. The entire tract is meant to jolt Gregory"s readers into his experience of Julian, corporately.


Suffering “Unhallowed Blood” “For the Blood of Christ”: The First Invective against Julian the Emperor, by Gregory of Nazianzus
Program Unit: Religious World of Late Antiquity
Vasiliki M. Limberis, Temple University

The First Invective against Julian the Emperor, written by Gregory of Nazianzus shortly after Julian's death in 363, is a complicated text for many reasons. In writing it Gregory obviously found release for his deep seated frustrations, fears, and resentments that had accumulated during Julian's short reign. Gregory uses nearly every rhetorical means possible to castigate Julian"s life as expressed through religion, resulting in an effective damnatio memoriae for such an enemy of Christianity. A primary reason for the text"s complexity is that Gregory"s views of religion liberally mix description in the forms of recent history, Greek mythology, and Biblical history with rousing parenesis alerting his readers to proper and improper forms of piety. And, put simply, what the reader discovers is that blood for Gregory is the chief signifier of ritual piety in all religions he deals with: Greco-Roman, Biblical, and Christian. Using some of the useful insights of Biale"s new book, this paper will first contextualize the variety of ways Gregory describes non-ritual and ritual blood in the text. They range from the most horrifying descriptions of violent homicide, rape, human evisceration, polluted animal sacrifice, and a defiling blood bath of a taurabolium, to the cleansing sacrifice of Christ -- sometimes with blood and sometimes bloodless, the exemplary blood of the martyrs used to inspire imitation in piety and in life, and finally the miraculous blood of the martyrs which brings cures and wonders. How Gregory manipulates meanings of torture, pollution, piety, holiness, miracles, idolatry and salvation by alternating from the positions of both victim and victor is key for understanding all the meanings of “blood” in the text. Finally the paper will offer some possible reasons why “blood” actually eludes Gregory in his own text, taking on a meaning and valance he could not possibly have foreseen.


Paul and the Temple Scroll: Reflections on Their Shared Engagement with Deuteronomy
Program Unit: Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity
David Lincicum, University of Oxford

If Paul's letters and the Temple Scroll from the Judaean Desert are mentioned together at all, it is usually with reference to a discussion of either crucifixion or divorce and remarriage. This paper, however, undertakes a comparison of their exegetical practice with reference to a key text, Deuteronomy. While in many ways the differences between Paul's letters and the Temple Scroll are more obvious than their similarities, the juxtaposition of the two serves a heuristic purpose for the recognition and identification of similar exegetical strategies and purposes, including the actualizing rewriting of certain passages of Deuteronomy and halakhic reflection on the contemporary relevance of Deuteronomy. Thus, after an initial section situating the paper and a brief introduction to the Temple Scroll, the paper first explores the question of hermeneutical stance toward Deuteronomy, suggesting that both Paul and the Temple Scroll interpret scriptural passages from Deuteronomy in light of other scriptural loci and read Deuteronomy with a certain amount of actualizing interpretation as a word to the present. Second, the Temple Scroll"s well-known stress on halakhah is compared with Paul"s letters, and several key areas of Paul"s ethical engagement with Deuteronomy are shown to be engaged in questions similar to those concerning the Temple Scroll, though not always with the same answers. Finally, a concluding comparison sets forth their similarities and differences as each engages in a very different act of correlation between Deuteronomy and the present.


The Mantic and Mythic Imagination in the Book of the Twelve
Program Unit: Book of the Twelve Prophets
James Linville, University of Lethbridge

According to a number of scholars the scribes who produced the prophetic corpus understood themselves as embarking on a quasi-prophetic or mantic quest for divine knowledge. This paper builds on these insights and combines them with a perception of the prophetic corpus as a part of a larger national mythology granting reason and meaning to the past. Moreover, it views the Twelve as a complex symbolic universe in which the historically contingent is revealed as instantiating eternal and paradigmatic truths. This discovery of the timeless within history is what bridges the gap between the eponymous prophet and the scribe, and makes the prophetic text eternally relevant and revelatory for the initiated interpreter. By looking at Hosea, Zechariah, and Malachi in relative detail, I demonstrate how the Twelve opens and closes on depictions of heavenly and earthly relationship as a relationship between macrocosm and microcosm. This is expressed in the marriage imagery as well as other features. Moreover, the obvious cultic interests of these books suggest a textual, symbolic ritual of transformation and purification embodied in the idea of the “Day of the Lord”, rendering the experience of the writer and even the reader with this symbolic universe not so much as a voyeuristic encounter with the divine, but an active participant in the revelation of it. Viewing the Book of the Twelve in this way provides a plausible scenario for explaining the desire to produce a tightly interrelated anthology of prophetic documents. Moreover, it can impact how scholars view ancient Judaism's return to older mythological themes of cosmology, heavenly rebellion and combat, themes that are expressed in a number of apocalyptic texts of the late second temple period.


Regulations Regarding the Purity of Priests' Wives in Leviticus 21
Program Unit: Women in the Biblical World
Hilary Lipka, University of California, Los Angeles

Leviticus 21, continuing the holiness-centered legislation of the previous chapters, concerns itself in part with maintaining the sanctity of priests, providing strict guidelines for them regarding various aspects of family life. One of the issues addressed in this chapter regards whom a priest may marry. This study will focus on Leviticus 21:7-8 and 13-15, which provide marital restrictions for priests and the high priest, respectively. In the course of this investigation, I will consider the H conceptions of priestly holiness and desecration within the context of marital relations, addressing such issues as why a priest can apparently marry a widow, but not a prostitute or divorcee, why a high priest can only marry a virgin of his own kin, and what the consequences are should a priest marry a forbidden woman.


The Origin of the Volute-Capitals from Judah, Moab, and Ammon
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
Oded Lipschits, Tel Aviv University

The Volute Capitals (also known as "Proto-Aeolic" or "Proto Ionic" capitals) from Samaria, Megiddo, Hazor and Dan comprise a significant and impressive corpus. They date to the 9th century BCE and may be described as one of architectural innovations of the Omrides. These Volute Capitals were probably located in the gates and palace complexes in these cities and were in use until their destruction between 730 and 720 BCE. Ten Volute Capitals were discovered at Ramat Rachel, and, according to new excavations at the site, they date to the end of the 8th or to the beginning of the 7th century BCE. There are noticeable typological differences between the northern types of Volute Capitals and the type discovered at Ramat Rachel. We should hypothesize that some period of time, perhaps one or two decades, separate the northern capitals and those from Ramat Rachel. Kenyon recovered one volute capital at the City of David beneath a stratum which she dated between the 5th and 3rd centuries BCE. Its actual date can be assigned only according typological comparison. Kenyon compared it to the Volute Capitals discovered in the north, prompting her to date it to the time of Solomon, but it is now clear that it closely resembles the Ramat Rachel type, and should be dated to the same period. Five Volute Capitals are known from the area of the outer gate of Khirbat al-Mudaybia in Moab. These capitals are of a unique type, but resemble those discovered in Ramat Rachel and Jerusalem. The date of the Khirbat al-Mudaybia Citadel is not clear. Like Ramat Rachel, however, the plan of the structure, the quality of the building and the appearance of volute capitals are not characteristic of the local architectural tradition. These volute capitals, together with one more that was discovered in a modern wall in Ain Sara, not far from Karak, and two fragments of capitals excavated in the citadel of Amman, are the only other exemplars of volute capitals known to us from the late Iron Age. In this paper, I argue that all the Volute Capitals from Judah, Moab and Ammon are close in their typology and date, and will suggest a historical explanation for their simultaneous appearance.


Mother Knows Best: Maternal Supplication and the Gospel of Matthew
Program Unit: Early Christian Families
Diane Lipsett, Wake Forest University

The Gospel of Matthew tells two enigmatic stories of mothers who act as supplicants on behalf of their children -- the Canaanite woman (15:21-28) and the mother of the sons of Zebedee (20:20-23). Like other texts recounting ancient supplication, Matthew distinguishes key elements: the supplicant's approach, gestures, and request, then the judgment and response of the Gospel's only viable supplicandus, Jesus (see Naiden, Ancient Supplication, 2006). Though the Gospel genre certainly favors supplicants, these two intercessory mothers meet apparent refusals, though one is reversed and the other deferred. Setting these early Christian stories alongside other maternal supplication scenes (for example, from Homer, Josephus, 4 Maccabees, and Plutarch) shows that supplicating mothers can be vivid test cases for how readers construe the ancient maternal role. When is maternal intercession for children"s safety, honor or access to distinction proper, even admirable, and when is it interfering, misguided or disruptive? Tracing connections between women"s supplication and broader conceptions of the ancient family then also underscores how these two Matthean episodes draw from and inflect motifs that pervade the Gospel. Both juxtapose alternate criteria for evaluating and protecting kinship and collective interest. The Canaanite woman"s story and, indeed, the series of references to the family of Zebedee contribute to the ways kinship is variously disrupted, protected, and reconfigured in the Gospel of Matthew.


“And We Were Together” (1 Kings 3:18): Solomon's Window on Two Pentateuchal Worldviews
Program Unit: Pentateuch
Diana Lipton, King's College London

The Pentateuch reflects a world sustained by two underlying systems. One, exemplified by Deuteronomy, is historical (out of Egypt), legal ("constitutional" Sinai), "national" (identity via homeland), conditional (exile), subject to change (intermarriage alters identity), and particularist (home is a vacuum). The second, exemplified by "priestly" literature, is pre-historical (creation), ritual (cultic taxonomists, diet, purity), ethnic (families), permanent (eternal covenant), unchanging (identity from ancestors), and universalist (earth as wheel, Israel as cog). These systems must compete while being compatible; each addresses the needs of an hour, and should not divide those who appeal to them. Were the biblical authors conscious of these systems and did they seek to manage their interaction? I Kings 3 is a model for identifying, differentiating and keeping in play a set of binary opposites that correspond to the components of these systems. 1 Kings 3:1-15 is constructed around pairs of opposites: Solomon/Pharaoh; husband/wife; palace/Temple; "doctrine"/practice; tradition/change; father/son, King/king; good/evil; power/authority; justice/wisdom. 1 Kings 3:16-28 manages the pairs without collapsing or reconciling. Two women are together in one house with one living child. Only one is the mother, but nothing (their own accounts, names, descriptions) distinguishes them. Solomon uses justice and wisdom (v.28) to identify one mother, but ambiguity remains. Was the woman who got the child the "first" (v.17) one or the "other" (v.22). Was the woman who wanted to divide it (v.26) the "first" or the "other"? Did Solomon award the child to the birth mother (ethnic) who nevertheless wanted to give it away (universalist), or to the woman who wanted to divide it (violent nationalist) on condition that she did not (v.27)? Witnesses would have seen and known. "All Israel" who simply "hear" (v.28) must keep both women (systems) in the picture, and can be certain only that the child (people) must remain whole.


“Like Food for the Birds of the Sky”: Staged Death as Prophetic Intercession
Program Unit: Israelite Prophetic Literature
Diana Lipton, King's College London

A subplot of Shakespeare's Cymbeline involves suspected infidelity with narrowly averted tragic consequences. Leonatus and Imogen are cruelly separated. Iachimo claims that Imogen is unfaithful, and brings Leonatus "proof" of her adultery. Inexplicably, Leonatus is convinced, and instructs his servant Pisanio, now serving Imogen, to kill her. Pisanio seems to comply: before long, both Imogen and Leonatus are lying dead. But … their deaths were staged. Imogen had unknowingly taken sleeping potion, and Leonatus was really the (now headless!) evil Cloten, wearing Leonatus's clothes. Leonatus and Imogen are reunited. Yet why did Pisanio not simply intercede for Imogen from the outset? Perhaps because he judged this strategy more effective. Leonatus"s jealousy, though unfounded, had a life of its own, and had to be resolved accordingly. Pisanio brought a virtual problem (suspected infidelity) to a virtual conclusion (fake deaths). Let us apply this model to Jeremiah. God suspects Israel of infidelity. Where Jeremiah should intercede, he exacerbates – exaggerating Israel"s crime and fanning God"s anger. Ultimately, he depicts in graphic detail Israel"s humiliating death (chs 15-16) – without heir or mourner. We read these passages as shocking accounts of what Jeremiah expects or wants to happen, but Cymbeline suggests another interpretation. Jeremiah is creating the textual equivalent of Pisanio"s staged deaths, giving God what God thinks he wants, showing what jealousy (unfounded or otherwise) looks like when allowed to run its course, and paving the way for reconciliation. For Heschel, Jeremiah suffers from a hypertrophe of empathy; his anger outlives its cause. I see Jeremiah"s anger as a crucial tool of his intercession, forcing events to their unfortunate but necessary conclusion, so that real life can resume. Like Pisanio, Jeremiah makes things "virtually" worse so that they can, in reality, be better – a strategy with important therapeutic parallels from sotah to psychoanalysis.


Textile Economy in the Western Roman Empire (First–Third Century)
Program Unit: Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy
Jinyu Liu, DePauw University

In his "Wool and the Textile Industry of Roman Italy: A Working Hypothesis" (in Elio Lo Cascio, ed., Mercati permanenti e mercati periodici nel mondo romano [Bari: Edipuglia, 2000], 187-197), Willem Jongman emphasizes, rightly, the outstanding potential of the textile trade to aid our understanding of the Roman economy. In his view, an important feature of the Roman textile economy may have been the trade of wool, which was typically exported in raw form from the less-densely populated areas in northern and southern Italy to the more populous cities in central Italy for manufacture close to its ultimate consumers. This model, however, can only be partially true, especially since Jongman isolated Italy from the nearby provinces. Based on a study of the epigraphic, papyrological, literary, archaeological and legal sources, I suggest that northern Italy and southern Gaul not only produced wool, but also tended to attract wool from elsewhere, and that these regions may have been the supply centers of non-luxury clothing and textiles for long-distance trade. Among the “pull” factors behind these phenomena, the demand from the city of Rome and the military in the frontier provinces may have both been significant. Central to my analysis is a new reappraisal of the roles of the centonarii in the textile economy.


Male Prostitutes? Identification of the Dogs in Revelation 22:15
Program Unit: John's Apocalypse and Cultural Contexts Ancient and Modern
Rebekah Liu, Andrews University

Generally, scholars regard “the dogs” in Rev 22:15 as Hebraic euphemism for homosexuals. However, based upon my study of the ANE and Greco-Roman canine imagery, and especially my study on the structural and verbal parallels between Rev 22:13-15 and Rev 21:6-8, I would like to propose a Greco-Roman metaphorical reading of the “dogs” in Rev 22:15 instead of the traditional Hebraic reading of euphemism for homosexuals, and also to provide a more likely identity of the “dogs,” as well as reasons of their exclusion from the Holy City. This study is mainly exegetical and will be presented in three stages. There will be a brief survey of canine imagery in the ANE as well as the Greco-Roman world, followed by an exegetical study on Rev 22: 13-15 in relation to Rev 21: 6-8. Finally a conclusion will be drawn based upon previous studies. Significance of the study is twofold: First, it identifies the dogs in Rev 22:15; second, it solves the literary relationship problem between the two vice lists in the book of Revelation.


Does It Make Any Difference for the Reader? A Response to Williamson
Program Unit: Book of Isaiah
Hanne Loland, MF Norwegian School of Theology

“In my opinion, however, there never was a separate book of Deutero-Isaiah.” This thesis is the most challenging claim in H. G. M. Williamson's The Book Called Isaiah: Deutero-Isaiah's Role in Composition and Redaction. That is the point where the redaction-historical approach challenges reader-oriented approaches most sharply. In my own work, I ask how the ancient readers of Isa 40-55 might have read these texts. This question assumes, of course, that at some time there was a more or less self-contained corpus of Isa 40-55 (as argued for by a long line of scholars, both before and after Williamson). This paper aims not to discuss whether Williamson is right or not in his claim but to investigate whether, if he is right, this makes any difference for the readers (both ancient and modern) of these texts? A clarification of the concept of reader(s) is required. Indeed, can we continue to read Isa 40-55 as a more or less self-contained corpus, if it never really existed as such? Certainly we can—(post-)modern readers do decide for themselves how they read and what premises they establish for their readings—but does it make sense? Scholars read Isaiah from different methodological approaches even when they take multiple authorship of the book for granted (and thus start from a historical-critical approach). If Williamson"s conclusions have implications for the broader interpretation of the book called Isaiah, one needs to ask whether they have implications also for interpretations employing other methodologies.


Jewish Burial Practices in Second Temple Period, the Shroud of Turin, and the Media
Program Unit: Archaeological Excavations and Discoveries: Illuminating the Biblical World
Antonio Lombatti, Deputazione di Storia Patria

The Shroud of Turin is probably the brightest example of how the media have misrepresented the archaeological truth of a medieval forgery. Through a quick tour or Internet articles and popular books, the common reader is immediately convinced that the linen is the real burial cloth of Jesus. Unfortunately, professional scholars have rarely tackled this controversy. And this is mainly why journalists have always interviewed authors of pseudoscientific books as if they were leading experts on Jewish burials in the Second Temple period. The Shroud of Turin studies fall into two categories: popular quackery and scholarly esotericism. Absurdly spectacular claims are repeated over and over, while impenetrable academic reports laden with technical vocabulary sit unseen and unread in university libraries. This must be understood as a new challenge to scholars worldwide. The internet is becoming the most powerful tool in every field of research. Academics have to deal with it and to re-think the way it can be used: photos, a plain language and quick reports on main archaeological finds will balance infamous news articles. In the paper, I will focus on four main scientific aspects: Jewish funerary customs in the first century Roman Palestine; presumed use of coin-on-the-eye burial practice; complete survey of Jewish burial cloths (full or fragments) found in Roman Palestine and dating from first century BCE to first c. CE; how the cult of Passion relics developed in early Christianity (from white face clothes to face clothes with blood stains on them, to full shrouds with no image to a relic like the Turin Shroud).


Discerning Empires in Ephesians: Trumping the Powers by the Triumphant One Lord Jesus Messiah
Program Unit: Disputed Paulines
Fredrick J. Long, Asbury Theological Seminary

Ephesians represents a grand political vision of God the Father's benefactorial grace in wisdom to reveal Jesus the self-sacrificing Messiah as the one Lord and Head who secures peace and unifies an otherwise hostile humanity into a body politic. Mediterranean political topoi (Greek, Roman, and Jewish) abound in this open letter to Christians in Asia Minor. Carefully investigating these topoi as pictured and elaborated across Ephesians may allow both for situating the discourse within a concrete setting of Paul's life (his arrest due to specific charges by "the Jews of Asia" at the Jerusalem temple in Acts 21:27-28) and for the discernment of presumably deliberate "trumping" maneuvers against alternative or competing political ideologies in circulation during the middle of the first century. The letter, then, fosters communal solidarity around God the Father and the One triumphant Lord Jesus in the Spirit, by describing the divinely revealed creation of a structured, productive, ethical, worshipful, and wise political body, which is ultimately God's army fighting the true battle on earth against rulers, authorities, world powers, and spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.


Corollaries of Violence: Jesus, Rome, Jews, and Hitler in Rolf Gompertz's Jewish Novel about Jesus
Program Unit: Violence and Representations of Violence in Antiquity
Bruce W. Longenecker, University of St. Andrews-Scotland

Six decades after the Holocaust of the 20th century, Holocaust survivor Rolf Gompertz published his (unimaginatively entitled) novel, A Jewish Novel about Jesus. Like all retellings of Jesus" life, Gompertz's novel attempts to bring the old story alive in ways that are meaningful for later situations – something the author achieves through various character realignments and plot adjustments. Gompertz's interest in the Jesus story is ultimately driven by a concern to set the record straight about violent proclivities within Judaism and Christianity, for the benefit of a post-Holocaust world. This essay examines the Gompertz story of Jesus for what it contributes to contemporary reflection on the relationship of Christians and Jews in a violent and dangerous world where religious and political power frequently intermingle.


“He Will Give His Angels Charge over You”: Narrative Arcs and the Christological Fulfillment of Psalm 91 in Luke's Gospel
Program Unit: Synoptic Gospels
Bruce W. Longenecker, University of St. Andrews-Scotland

Psalm 91 is interpreted christologically in the literature of the early church fathers. It will be argued here that the Lukan Gospel shares a christological interpretation of that Psalm (an interpretation that may also be evident in the Markan and Matthean Gospels). This claim is demonstrable in relation to a subtle narrative arc that has been neglected in Lukan studies. The third temptation of Luke 4 establishes a foothold for a narrative arc that stretches out into the Lukan Gospel. Early interpreters who shared a christological interpretation of Psa 91:11-12 (cited in Luke 4:10-11) differed in their view of where the narrative arc grounds itself past Luke 4. This essay suggests a novel termination point for the narrative arc, with a christological fulfillment of Psa 91:11-12 transpiring within the Lukan narrative in a most peculiar fashion.


A Tract for the “Interpretation” of Hebrew Words in Syriac
Program Unit: Bible in Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Traditions
Jonathan Loopstra, Catholic University of America

A significant number of Syriac grammatical or lexicographical tractates recur in diverse manuscripts. Some of these same tractates can be found in a type of appendix to Syriac pedagogical handbooks dated between the ninth and thirteenth centuries. It is thought that these handbooks were used by the “teachers of reading” in the Syriac-speaking schools as aids to correct reading or biblical interpretation. One such tract is entitled “An Explanation of Hebrew Words.” This tract claims to have been compiled by the famous Syriac polymath Jacob of Edessa, but this attribution is uncertain. The compiler of this tract systematically highlights “Hebrew” words in the Syriac Old Testament, commenting on words of interest. The etymologies or brief theological comments in this tract provide interesting insights into the interpretation of Hebrew and other foreign words in the Miaphysite community. This communication will highlight the various words included in this small tractate, explaining several of the more intriguing points of etymological or exegetical interest. It will be shown how many of these explanations of Hebrew words also occur in Miaphysite biblical interpretation during the period under consideration. The speaker recently completed a comparative edition of this tract based on multiple manuscripts and will discuss the types of manuscripts in which this tract is found.


The Reformation of Levi: Genesis 34 Turned on Its Head
Program Unit: Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity
Kathryn Muller Lopez, Campbell University

Whereas Levi and Simeon are roundly condemned for their actions against the men of Shechem in Genesis 34, later interpretations of this story, such as Jubilees, Aramaic Levi, Judith, Testament of Levi, and Theodotus, turn Levi into the hero of the narrative and for the most part ignore Simeon. These later interpretations are clearly and cleverly grounded in the Genesis story, except they turn it on its head! While these differences have been noted and the differences and similarities between them have been chronicled, a deeper questions remains. How do these later interpretations function to further the agenda of the social groups who produced and/or used them, and how do they operate to convince the reader to a particular social identity/group formation? Why and for what purpose is the extreme violence of this story applauded, and why is this story one of the explanations for the elevation of Levi to the position of divine ordination as priest?


Coins and Conflict: The Imperial Cult, Ignatius of Antioch, and the homonoia Coins of Asia Minor
Program Unit: Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy
John-Paul Lotz, London School of Theology

Negotiating the webs of power during the Flavian to the Hadrianic ages was a constant concern of high placed aristocrats in the Greek East. The Imperial cult allowed for the public displays of devotion and loyalty to Rome whilst also affirming the primacy of cities and civilians in the province of Asia. While the Imperial cult was meant to paint a picture of this loyalty iconographically in the representations and rituals of civic worship, intra-city rivalries often used the annual gatherings at Imperial cult temples to assert their primacy over other cities in the new hierarchies of Roman dominion. In order to avoid these communal exhibitions of discord, cities often negotiated treaties of concord with one another, and minted coins to this effect. These were widely circulated, and proclaimed not only the concord of the two (or three) cities on the reverse, but loyalty to Rome on the obverse. The use of the imagery of these numismatic icons by Christians in the second century indicates a widespread recognition and reification of the propaganda of concord mediated by the distribution of these coins.


Cash and Release: Atonement and Release from Oppression in the Imperial Context of Luke's Gospel
Program Unit: Jesus Traditions, Gospels, and Negotiating the Roman Imperial World
Matthew Forrest Lowe, McMaster Divinity College

Luke's Gospel foregrounds the theme of aphesis, “release,” as Jesus interprets scripture in Luke 4, quoting from Isaiah and setting his own career agenda. Robert Tannehill outlines the significance of release in the sense of deliverance from poverty, healing from disease and demonic possession, and the release (or more conventionally, forgiveness) of sins; in all three of these dimensions, release factors as a rich, central image for Luke's portrayal of Jesus. But this literary theme had a socio-economic context: Luke lived and wrote in a world dominated by empire. Jesus" audience and Luke's readers knew what life was like at the bottom of Rome's society. A promise of release would have captured their attention, as it should capture ours. The gap between rich and poor lies behind this theme; along with related metaphors of deliverance, vindication/victory, and ransom, the same theme echoes Israel's covenant traditions, hints at ways that early Christians told the story of the cross, and helps Luke's readers to negotiate the imperial world around them. I argue that Luke employed Isaiah's allusions to jubilary and sabbatical conditions as a covert metric, summed up in the unitive repetition of the aphesis word-group, to evaluate Roman society's structurally oppressive practices: on multiple levels, God offers “release” and Rome does not. This study responds to emergent issues in NT scholarship at the concrete level of provincial poverty, in formative traditions both covenantal and imperial, and in the evocative metaphors of Christ"s act of atonement. Refining previous interpretations of relevant texts (from Luke 4; 7; 19; etc.) it attempts to meet the challenges posed by the first-century Roman world, a context historically distant yet frighteningly relevant.


Implementing a Hebrew Syntax Database Using the Emdros Query Engine
Program Unit: Computer Assisted Research
Kirk E. Lowery, Westminster Theological Seminary

One of the most basic tasks of a text scholar in this Information Age is to create electronic editions of the ancient texts he or she studies, then annotate that text with linguistic, literary and text critical information and analysis. But what does one do after this data is created? If such a tagged and annotated text is already available in a software package, well and good. But the nature of such packages is that the data is static and not modifiable by the user. And the cutting-edge researcher is going to need the flexibility of radically altering the data when necessary. But the typical researcher in our disciplines does not have the skill necessary to implement a search engine or database application complete with a query language adapted specifically to that researcher's data. Is there a solution to this dilemma? For the past four years the J. Alan Groves Center for Advanced Biblical Research (formerly, the Westminster Hebrew Institute) has been creating a new syntax of the Hebrew Bible based upon modern computational linguistic theory. The data (about 8GB!) is in an XML format. We are in the penultimate stage of data preparation and we badly need to be able to search the database to complete this phase of the task. But no query software exists that is exactly suited to our data and query requirements. Or so we thought. We were wrong. This presentation will outline how we used Emdros (emdros.org), a database engine and query language optimized for text databases with analyzed or annotated text, to create a very large, searchable and full-featured Hebrew syntax database. We will show how Emdros can be adapted to Hebrew syntax data and by extension to any other text data. The power of the accompanying Emdros Query Tool will then be demonstration with real world questions.


The Impact of the “Fatted Duck” on Ezekiel 32:6 and Hebrew Onomastics
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible, History, and Archaeology
Meir Lubetski, City University of New York, Bernard M. Baruch College

Notoriously difficult, the uncommon phrase, erets tsftkh in Ezek 32:6, has proven enigmatic for commentators and translators throughout the centuries. The plethora of translations testifies to the difficulty of the phrase. The LXX views it as Tso'a and therefore emends the Hebrew text to the Greek word for excrement, and translates: "And the land shall be drenched with thy dung." Some modern commentators follow suit while others propose alternate explanations. The diverse opinions and textual emendations indicate that there is no consensus on the translation or interpretation of this verse. Hence, this allows a fresh assessment of the expression. Surprisingly, Egyptian sources have been completely ignored. One would think that exegetes would have considered Egyptian as a philological source particularly in an oracle directed to the Egyptians. Yet, commentators did not seek a solution in that direction and therefore missed finding the precise etymological and morphological cognate of sapateka. We suggest that biblical word is derived from tsf'/tsf*, a root borrowed from late Egyptian and that erets tsftkh is parallel to the Egyptian phrase, "provisions of the Two Lands ,"i.e. Egypt. This approach has an impact on the onomastics of pre-exilic times. Seals and ostraca using spn might be construed differently, perhaps even point to the origin of the owner(s).


Intertextuality and Redaction: 1QS 5.1–20 and Its 4Q Parallels
Program Unit: Qumran
Alec Lucas, Loyola University Chicago

In their DJD volume on the cave 4 S texts, P. Alexander and G. Vermes state that the redactional history of S “is only beginning to be explored.” S. Metso's work is widely regarded as a significant step toward establishing that redaction history. Concerning this history Metso says “There was no ready-made scheme in the minds of redactors which they would have followed when arranging the material and editing the text. A vague association prompted by a key-word was sufficient to provide the impulse for creating a new sentence or including a new passage.” Contrary to Metso's claim, I argue that the scriptural citations present in 1QS 5.1–20a but absent in 4Q256 9.1–13; 4Q258 1.1–11 suggest a different story. Each scriptural citation (Zeph 1:6 in 1QS 5.11; Lev 22:16 in 1QS 5.14–15; Exod 23:7 in 1QS 5.15; Isa 2:22 in 1QS 5.17) is employed with regard for its original context and is anticipated by key vocabulary that is without parallel in 4Q256/4Q258. For example, though the implicit citation of Lev 22:16 (“[lest] he bear the iniquity of guilt”) in 1QS 5.14–15, does not occur in 4Q256/4Q258, one does find the unparalleled phrase “and he shall not eat with him in the community” (9.9; 1.8). As it turns out, this phrase coheres quite well with the function of Lev 22:16 in its original context: it is a warning against failure to make restitution for improper consumption of priestly food offerings (cf. Lev 22:1–16). Moreover, the citation of Lev 22:16 in QS 5.14–15 is anticipated by the key term “guilt” in 1QS 5.12, a term without parallel in 4Q256/4Q258. The consistency of such a redactional pattern, I further argue, provides an internal control for establishing the priority of 4Q256/4Q258 in relation to 1QS 5.1–20a.


A Dirty Little Secret: Sacred Scriptures as Trash
Program Unit: Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism
AnneMarie Luijendijk, Princeton University

It is evident that Christian manuscripts occupied a central place in the life of Christian communities and individuals, both for their content and also as artifacts. Read during religious gatherings and advised for private reading, scriptures were considered guidelines for daily lives, for life and death. Diverse usages of biblical texts—from proof quotations to bibliomancy—and imperial orders to confiscate books during times of persecution attest to the significance of Christian manuscripts as physical objects. Given this important role, it comes as a surprise that papyrologists found numerous fragments of sacred scriptures thrown away at garbage heaps of ancient cities. While perhaps not a secret in the sense that scholars haves known that most of the earliest Christian manuscripts derive from ancient trash, this surprising fact has never received proper scholarly examination. Taking a down and dirty approach to fragments of New Testament and other early Christian writings, my paper offers a beginning at the discussion of the disuse of ancient manuscripts. I explore the implications of this practice posing social-historical questions about the owners and users of these texts and also about issues of sacredness and canonicity. In doing so, this paper nuances our understanding of early Christian usage of scriptural manuscripts.


The First "study Qur'an" and It's Implications for Teaching About Islam
Program Unit:
Joseph Lumbard, Brandeis University

This presentation will describe the collaborative effort, currently in progress, to prepare the first 'study Qur'an", to be published by HarperCollins. The presentation will elucidate some of the unique theological, paleographic, linguistic, and historiographic challenges addressed by the authors and editors of the Study Qur'an.


The Fruit of the Tree of Life: Ritual Interpretation of the Crucifixion in the Gospel of Philip
Program Unit: Cognitive Linguistics in Biblical Interpretation
Hugo Lundhaug, University of Oslo

The Gospel of Philip, preserved in Nag Hammadi Codex II, offers up a multitude of difficulties for its modern interpreters. Its seemingly haphazard structure and the highly allusive nature of its rhetoric have consistently frustrated scholars. This paper uses cognitive linguistics to show how the Gospel of Philip may be read as a coherent composition, analyzing the way in which it interprets the meaning and significance of the crucifixion and the cross in light of canonical scripture on the one hand, and ritual practice on the other. The paper examines how the Gospel of Philip interprets a multitude of Scriptural passages with a view towards a mystagogical interpretation of key Christian rituals and vice versa. The method employed is based primarily on Blending Theory, as developed by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner and their followers, while also taking into account Raymond Gibbs" dynamic view of meaning production, as well as the concept of priming, in order to elucidate the implicit ways in which the text prompts for the construction of elaborate blends in readers" minds. In this regard the paper deals not only with the blending of concepts in the strict sense, but also with the blending of memories of canonical texts, what may be termed intertextual blending. The paper thus aims to demonstrate how Blending Theory can be applied to the analysis of a complex text from antiquity, and help us map out interpretive possibilities that are easily missed using traditional methods of analysis, and to see how the different strands of the Gospel of Philip's rhetoric are woven together.


Ambrosiaster's Quaestio 110 and Early Christian Exegesis of the Cathedra Pestilentiae
Program Unit: History of Interpretation
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe, King's College London

Ambrosiaster's quaestiones encompass a number of very different kinds of text. They include polemics against a range of heretics, attempts to reconcile apparently contradictory scriptural passages, sustained pieces of exegesis, sermons and ethical treatises. In general, it is very hard to discern authorial presence (let alone biographical details) from the texts themselves, and many of them seem utterly detached from any historical context. Ambrosiaster's quaestio 110 is, on the face of it, a straightforward exegesis of psalm 1, proceeding on a verse-by-verse basis and using scripture to interpret scripture. However, in part of this apparently transparent and theologically angled text it is possible to discern a coded but highly pertinent attack on bishops who usurp the Petrine succession. This proposed paper will examine early Christian exegetes" understanding of the cathedra pestilentiae of psalm 1, and their use of this biblical phrase to describe heretical clergy. I will focus particularly on the deployment of this phrase in Optatus of Milevis" Contra Parmenianum, which colours Ambrosiaster"s own reading of it in his quaestio 110. Against this background I will explore Ambrosiaster"s own subtle but pointed brand of exegesis, in which his reading of a phrase from the Psalms through the lens of Optatus appears to present a coded attack on the Donatists" line of false bishops in late-fourth-century Rome.


Q and Other Jewish-Christian Gospels
Program Unit: Q
Petri Luomanen, University of Helsinki

Our knowledge of early Jewish-Christian gospels is based on fragmentary quotations, preserved in the writings of the Church fathers. According to a widely accepted theory there were three of these gospels: The Gospel of the Ebionites (in Greek, harmonizes synoptic gospels, preserved only in Epiphanius" Panarion), The Gospel of the Nazarenes (in Aramaic or Hebrew, resembles Matthew) and the Gospel of the Hebrews (a Greek gospel in Egypt; differs clearly from the synoptic type of gospels). In this paper, I will first show some serious methodological errors in the reconstruction of these three gospels and then argue for an alternative theory of two Jewish-Christian Gospels: The Gospel of the Ebionites and the Gospel of the Hebrews. In contrast to earlier reconstructions (especially in French scholarship) that have also presumed only two Jewish-Christian gospels, this “New Two Gospel Hypothesis” does not presume any connection with the Gospel of the Hebrews and the Nazarene Christians that were known to Jerome. Instead, the Gospel of the Hebrews appears as a post-synoptic harmonizing gospel strongly influenced by Wisdom speculations. As such it coheres nicely with Eusebius discussion of canonical and non-canonical books (Hist. Eccl. 3.25), where the Gospel of the Hebrews in placed in the category of the “disputed” books. Moreover, the Gospel of the Hebrews of the “New Two Gospel Hypothesis” provides a much more natural continuation of Q-Matthew –trajectory than the Gospel of the Nazarenes and the Gospel of the Hebrews of the standard “Three Gospel Hypothesis.” It also shows that Jewish Christians who carried on the Wisdom theology of the Q people stayed much closer to the proto-orthodox Christianity than the Gospel of the Hebrews of the earlier Three Gospel Hypothesis would let us to believe.


Rhetorical Structure Theory and the Study of Biblical Hebrew Discourse Markers
Program Unit: Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew
Alexey Lyavdansky, Russian State University for the Humanities

In the present paper I will investigate the applicability of Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) to the study of Biblical Hebrew discourse markers. The basic notions and tools of this theory will be tested as appropriate for the analysis of inferential and causative markers in Biblical Hebrew. RST was at first formulated in 1988 by W.C.Mann and S.A.Thompson. At the moment RST is one of the dominating and authoritative theories of discourse organization. It has proven to be a useful tool in analyzing discourse structure of the texts in many languages. Fairly recently RST was applied to the study of discourse markers (DM) in general and discourse particles in particular. There are different approaches to discourse markers and different understandings of what they are. I follow the approach to discourse markers represented in the works of L.Schourup and B.Fraser. That type of DM which could be called connective type is especially susceptible to analysis with the methods of RST because RST is focused on text coherence and the discourse relations within utterances. The important caveat: for the time being RST is applicable mostly for the analysis of monologic speech; its usefulness for the analysis of dialoge relations (relations between turns) is not obvious so far. For that reason I restrict the linguistic material only to the DM which mark the relations within turns or utterances, not between them. F.e. the particle "bl , discussed recently as a discourse marker by R.Garr, would not be approptiate here in most of its uses. For the present purposes I have chosen two related functional sets of Biblical Hebrew DM: inferential, or logical, markers (lkn, w"th) and causative markers (ky, y"n). The following relations out of the RST set of relations will be discussed as relevant: enablement, justify, motivation, volitional/non-volitional cause, volitional/non-volitional result.


“Preaching the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37)”: A Study of Shifting Meaning in a (Published) Sermon
Program Unit: Contextual Biblical Interpretation
William John Lyons, University of Bristol

A comparatively little studied phenomenon is the shift in biblical meaning produced when a sermon designed for oral delivery in a Christian communal setting is published in an edited volume designed for a different purpose. The Bible has— hopefully—been successfully inculturated for an audience in a certain time and place, but its subsequent usage, and especially its reproduction in print, potentially shifts that cultural tone into a somewhat different key. The sermon considered here was delivered in Sheffield in 1992 by Professor John Rogerson of Sheffield University. Its text, set by the Anglican lectionary, was the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10.25-37) and its setting was the "First Celebration of Holy Communion" of the newly ordained vicar of the Nine O"clock Service (NOS), Chris Brain. The sermon's discussion of the need for the divine risk-taking as exemplified in the Scriptures to be echoed by human risk-taking in the present was originally heard in the context of a fast approaching move into a long awaited mission-field. It took on a different meaning, however, following the contextual shift brought about by the collapse of NOS in a public sexual scandal in 1995. Although it could have been presented as prescient, the decision to publish the sermon in 2002 did not revolved around an attempt to claim foreknowledge, however. Rather it was the abrupt closure of NOS by local Church authorities that provided a third context—the deafening silence now reigning over its mission-field, the club culture of Sheffield—in which the published sermon could now effectively function as the protest of one still angry individual, a protest aimed at those Church leaders who refused to echo the divine risk-taking so prominent in the sermon and who by their risk-averse behaviour effectively destroyed a Church already badly damaged by internal abuse.


The Apocalypse and Its (Many, Modern) Mediators: John's Revelation, Johnny Cash's The Man Comes Around, Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead, and the Videographers of YouTube
Program Unit: The Bible in Ancient (and Modern) Media
William John Lyons, University of Bristol

Johnny Cash's description of his 2002 song, The Man Comes Around (from his American IV album), as being "based, loosely" on the Apocalypse of John is in fact a considerable understatement. The song quotes verbatim from that and other biblical texts, echoes a number of its most important apocalyptic motifs, and effectively moulds John of Patmos" material into a functional, available, and culturally significant "mini-Apocalypse". The formal relationship between the song and its "parent" texts and Cash's own characterisation of his role in mediating between the two are first briefly examined. The paper then critically analyses the ongoing impact of the book of Revelation – as mediated through the song and its first significant soundtrack outing in Zack Snyder"s zombie film, Dawn of the Dead (2004) – upon a specific media set, the growing number of YouTube videos that are being created to illustrate Cash"s "mini-Apocalypse" (2006-present). Finally, certain aspects of the early impact of John of Patmos" own Apocalypse are re-considered in the light of the assumptions and processes that have been observed within this modern chain of traditions.


Creation and Ethics in 2 Enoch
Program Unit: Mysticism, Esotericism, and Gnosticism in Antiquity
Grant Macaskill, University of St Andrews, Scotland

As Andrei Orlov has rightly observed, 2 Enoch presents the patriarch as both recipient and revealer of the secrets of creation. Where Orlov's work has focused on the connections between this and the roles and titles of Enoch, my own has explored the connections between the creational knowledge attained by Enoch in his heavenly ascent and the ethical instruction found in the second half of the book. This paper will continue to explore these connections, examining particularly the question of how much of content of the creation account—inconsistently represented in the manuscript witnesses—is echoed in the ethical material. This is important to our assessment of the originality of the creation material and may help to establish links with other Jewish and Christian texts.


Mark's Creation of Judas “Into-the-City” and Pseudo-Histories of Pseudo-Judas
Program Unit: Future of the Past: Biblical and Cognate Studies for the Twenty-First Century
Dennis R. MacDonald, Claremont School of Theology

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The Women of Acts in Light of Recent Research on Families
Program Unit: Book of Acts
Margaret Y. MacDonald, St. Francis Xavier University

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Punishment of the Harlot: Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Evidence
Program Unit: Biblical Hebrew Poetry
Heather Macumber, St. Michael's College

It has become common to assume that the punishment of the harlot outlined in Ezekiel 16:35-43 accords with both the biblical evidence and that of surrounding cultures for the crime of adultery. However, the rhetorical purpose of Ezekiel's extended metaphor of the harlot is not to convict the harlot for the crime of adultery but to convict elite male Israelites for the crime of covenant breaking. This paper will critique the traditional biblical and Near Eastern parallels to adultery that are commonly advanced for understanding the punishment given to the harlot in Ezekiel 16. Instead, I will demonstrate the more convincing parallels that are found in the biblical material and the ancient Near Eastern treaties that show important connections between Ezekiel's punishments and the crime of covenant breaking.


Land Tenure in Israel and African Tradition
Program Unit: African Biblical Hermeneutics
Temba Mafico, Interdenominational Theological Center

Psalm 24:1-2 encapsulates the African and Israelite concept of land ownership. The pristine belief to both communities is that God owns the land and appoints sovereigns to allocate it to the citizens (cf. Joshua). The recipient holds the land in perpetuity because it is both heredity and the burial place for the progenitors. Ancestral graveyards were permanent seals for one's right to the particular piece of land. Serious tension between the Africans and the colonialists was triggered by the discordant views on land ownership. The whites bought land and received title deeds; the blacks owned the same land as an inheritance from their ancestors. Biblically, the story of Naboth's vineyard resonates the African stance to land (1 Kings 21:1-4). Naboth had a vineyard in Jezreel beside King Ahab"s palace. Ahab wanted to purchase and develop it into a vegetable garden. Naboth swore by God that he could not give it away because “it is the inheritance of my fathers.” That is the crux of the land dispute in Zimbabwe and South Africa. In Zimbabwe the black Africans" seizure of land from the former colonialists has created economic chaos and ineffable suffering. Regardless of the difficulties, Zimbabweans are rejoicing that they have retaken their land from the white settlers. The sad thing is that the land has been seized and not carefully redistributed according to an economic plan beneficent for the entire country. Apparently the land grabbing has been motivated by land greed and retribution. The government, like Joshua, should have carefully reallocated the land to every tribe regardless of ethnic origin. Until the land is equitably redistributed in post colonial Africa, there can be no real peace in Africa regardless of whether it is the black or white Africans who own the land.


Gender Trouble in Jeremiah 2–3: Can Feminist Readings Solve the Riddle?
Program Unit: Writing/Reading Jeremiah
Christl M. Maier, Philipps Universität-Marburg

Jeremiah 2–3 may cause confusion for modern readers since the prophet's audience is variously addressed as an adulterous wife (2:2, 16–25, 33–37; 3:1–5, 6–13), the first-fruit of the harvest (2:3), a single male (2:14–15, 28; cf. 4:1–2), a group (2:4–13, 26–27, 29–32; 3,12; cf. 4:3–4) or alternatively as a daughter (3:19a) or sons (3:14–20, 21–22). Scholars have offered different explanations for these puzzling gender roles. While traditional redaction-critical interpretations take the gender-bending as a criterion for diachronic differentiation, feminist scholars who favor a literary approach explain the differences synchronically as variant perspectives on the same group. The paper offers a feminist reading that is sensitive to the historical context of the employed metaphors, especially the female personification of the people. It argues that the gender dichotomy is not accidental but an interpretive device that poignantly personifies Israel in relation to its deity. Solving the riddle of Jer 2–3 requires a considerate evaluation of ancient and modern connotations of metaphors, gender roles, and images of the divine.


Roman Imperial Sacrificial Iconography and the Epistle to the Hebrews
Program Unit: Hebrews
Harry O. Maier, Vancouver School of Theology

Drawing from Tonio Hoelscher's theory of Roman imperial iconography as an idealised system of communication, this paper investigates the communication code of imperial imagery of the emperor as faithful priest and officient of right sacrifice as a means toward understanding the imperial location of the Epistle to the Hebrews' representation of Jesus as offering perfect sacrifice. Hebrews' language of sacrifice is at home amidst Flavian political propaganda of a revived Augustan era manifested in iconography of the emperor conducting right sacrifice and promoting and rehabilitating traditional rites. The Epistle's use of imperial language to celebrate Jesus who "appeared" once for all to end sacrifice by the offering of himself (9:26), and to found "the city of the living God" (12:22), "the city that is to come" (13:14) is fully at home in Flavian political iconography and propaganda. Recognition of this invites a reconsideration of Hebrews in its imperial context and recovers a political reading of the text too neglected by more parochial treatments.


Does the Subaltern Demoniac Get to Speak? Dialogue and Mutuality in Mark 5:1–20
Program Unit: Healthcare and Disability in the Ancient World
Simon Mainwaring, University of Birmingham

This paper seeks to answer Spivak's somewhat spectral question for those interested in the question of interlocutors in disability studies: Can the subaltern speak"? The answer offered is a study of the potential of mutuality both as a heuristic for shaping biblical hermeneutics and as a theological lens for informing contextual concerns with mental health. Methodologically, the story of the man among the tombs told in Mark 5:1-20 is read dialogically as an attempt to expand the frame of much present biblical work in disability studies to include the interpretative insights of persons self-identified as suffering poor mental health. Theologically, the products of this reading are placed in relief to insights from postcolonial biblical criticism with regards to the emancipatory potential of dialogue and the re-imagining of this story as a survivor's tale. From this juxtaposition of readings of the text, the mutuality of the encounter with Jesus emerges as a potential form of postcolonial resistive praxis. Given this, suggestions are made as to the utility of mutuality in this text as applied to the lived reality of poor mental health in society today.


Ecumenical Ecclesiology with Reference to Karl Barth
Program Unit: Karl Barth Society of North America
Joseph Mangina, Wycliffe College

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A Review of Approaches to Teaching the World Religions in Public Schools
Program Unit:
Shabbir Mansuri, Institute on Religion and Civic Values

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Foucault at the Foot of Philemon: The Sexual Use of Slaves and Scholarly Evasion
Program Unit: Gender, Sexuality, and the Bible
Joseph A. Marchal, Ball State University

The title of Michel Foucault's second volume of The History of Sexuality—The Use of Pleasure—takes its name from the Greek expression chresis aphrodision. Remarkably, most Pauline scholars studiously avoid acknowledging the potential sexual import of this chresis, or “use,” particularly when it comes to the relationship between slaves and slaveholders in these communities. This is all the more striking given the way Paul reflects upon Onesimus" relative usefulness (achreston or euchreston?) in Phlm 11, provoking a different kind of interpretive ambiguity for scholars to confront. Sheila Briggs" work indicates that this avoidance could be symptomatic of a wider “discourse of evasion” in terms of the coercive nature of slavery in antiquity. This paper will argue that this evasion is doubled by scholars, who avoid not only the sexual coercion enacted on the bodies of slaves but also the insights of various feminist, queer, and postcolonial theorists who might, in the end, help to illuminate unexamined dynamics and develop effective strategies for negotiating traditional perspectives on “Pauline” ethics. Eve Sedgwick's conceptualization of rivalry through erotic triangulation indicates that the relations between Paul, Philemon, Onesimus, and Apphia might test a variety of boundaries in terms of gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and status. Yet, the use to which we might put the letter to Philemon is not limited to the options of acknowledgment or avoidance, as Gayatri Spivak"s strategy of catachresis (or “improper use”) exemplifies. In the end, such strategies should help to queer both the resistance to and the resignification of traditional Pauline values.


Some Additional Aramaic Mnemonics in the Leningrad Codex
Program Unit: Masoretic Studies
David Marcus, Jewish Theological Seminary of America

In some Masorah magna notes in the Leningrad Codex Hebrew simanim (“catchwords”) are replaced or supplemented by Aramaic simanim. What makes these Aramaic simanim so distinctive is that they are not mere translations of the Hebrew simanim into Aramaic, that is, they do not reflect Targumic translations, but when put together are actually mnemonics. The mnemonics mostly consist of amusing and often asyndetical sentences of the type “he was born, he became ill, and he died.” Each Aramaic word that is part of the mnemonic corresponds with a Hebrew word in one of the verses in which the lemma occurs, though the correspondences are not always exact. Since publishing a list of these Aramaic mnemonics almost a decade ago fifteen additional mnemonics have come to light. This paper will discuss how these additional mnemonics were discovered, and will give some examples of the difficulties in identifying Aramaic mnemonics in Masoretic notes.


The Christians and Other Sects in the Eighteen Benedictions
Program Unit: Jewish Christianity / Christian Judaism
Joel Marcus, Duke Divinity School

As shown by texts from the Gospel of John, Justin's Dialogue with Trypho, and the Talmuds, there is some relationship between the Birkat Ha-Minim, the Twelfth Benediction of the Eighteen, and a first-second century Jewish sect, the Jewish Christians. Originally, however, this Benediction was probably directed against the Roman government and reflected the views of another Jewish sect, the “Fourth Philosophy” described by Josephus. At some point in its development it also may have been directed against the Pharisees and/or the Essenes. After the First Revolt, however, it was redirected against the Jewish Christians by the emergent rabbinic party. Nor was this the only Benediction to come out of a background in first-century Jewish sectarianism. The Fourteenth Benediction (“who builds Jerusalem”), for example, was probably directed against the Christians or the Samaritans or both. And the Second Benediction (“who revives the dead”) was almost certainly directed against the Sadducees, and may originally have sprung from Christian circles. The Eighteen Benedictions, therefore, reflect a complex tradition history in which competing Jewish sects were jockeying for power and attempting to define who was and was not a member in good standing of Israel.


Does Bultmann Demythologize or Remythicize?
Program Unit: Bible, Myth, and Myth Theory
William Marderness, University of Pittsburgh at Bradford

Rudolf Bultmann advocates demythologizing the New Testament proclamation. Drawing from the work of Roland Barthes and Jean-Luc Nancy, I argue that Bultmann advocates “remythicizing,” rather than “demythologizing,” New Testament myths. In Mythologies, Roland Barthes says that when a myth functions in a community, the myth is not recognized as myth, but is thought to convey truth. Only when a myth ceases to function as a myth is the myth thought to be a myth. When a myth is remythicized, the myth is interrupted rather than discarded. Myth “is interrupted at that precise and familiar point where we know that it is all a myth,” explains Nancy (Inoperative Community 52). When a myth becomes dysfunctional through the discovery that the myth is a myth (that is, when the myth is deciphered), the myth may be revised such that it again functions as a myth and, accordingly, is not thought to be a myth. In other words, the myth may be remythicized. Myth, then, does not necessarily discontinue when it is deciphered. It may only be interrupted and remythicized. In “New Testament and Mythology,” Bultmann deciphers the myths heaven and hell. In other words, he exposes them as myths; hence, they are not thought to convey truth. By demythologizing heaven and hell, Bultmann actually remythicizes these myths so that they again function within a contemporary world view. The myths are interrupted, but are not discarded. Bultmann makes heaven and hell function as myths for contemporary Christians, so that heaven and hell appear nonmythical and are thought to convey truth.


The Reception of Paul in Acts
Program Unit: Formation of Luke and Acts
Daniel Marguerat, University of Lausanne

What are the sources of Luke in his narrative on Paul's mission ? Does know Luke Pauline letters ? The paper will propose a freh approach on this topic in considering ther mixture of proximity and distance between Pauline literature and the Lukan portrait of Paul. The status of the Torah will serve as an example of this view.


Rabbinic Meal-Time Blessings and Social Formation
Program Unit: Meals in the Greco-Roman World
Susan Marks, New College of Florida

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Double Translations in Symmachus
Program Unit: International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies
Phillip S. Marshall, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Symmachus was one of the three early post-Septuagintal translators/revisors of the Hebrew Bible included in Origen's Hexapla. His translation approach was characterized by an elegant Greek style and faithfulness to the sense of the Hebrew text. As A. Salvesen pointed out in Symmachus in the Pentateuch, Symmachus" revision generally rendered the Hebrew in one-for-one fashion (compared to LXX), but at times he avoided the one-for-one correspondence for stylistic (avoiding Hebraic constructions, avoiding unnecessary repetition, adding explanatory glosses) or exegetical (by addition or omission of key words, contextual renderings, etc.) reasons. Sometimes the fragmentary manuscript evidence for Symmachus preserves what appear to be double renderings of the Hebrew source. This paper investigates several possible double translations in Symmachus (mainly from Ecclesiastes) in order to determine [1] whether such double renderings may legitimately be attributed to Symmachus, and [2] if so, what motived such double renderings.


Moses: More Christian Than Abraham?
Program Unit: Søren Kierkegaard Society
Paul Martens, Baylor University

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Why Is Noah's Wife Condemned in the Qur'an?
Program Unit: Qur'an and Biblical Literature
Erica Martin, Graduate Theological Union

Sura 66, Al-Tahrim, teaches that Noah's wife was an unbeliever, condemned to “enter the fire.” What did she do to deserve such a punishment? In this paper, I examine a range of Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions relating to the moral character of Noah's wife. Descriptions of a life ranging from piety to perversion have coalesced around this unnamed Biblical character – a character that accumulates over 103 names in later literature! In the end, I will propose that the presentation of her fate in the Qur"an and its interpreters may have something to teach us about the biblical text itself.


The Rabbinic Knife: Why and How the Rabbis Castrated Noah
Program Unit: Midrash
Erica Martin, Graduate Theological Union

Over thirty years ago, Baumgarten asserted that a castration tradition cannot lie behind the Biblical verses in Genesis 9:20-29, but must be a creation of the second century exegetes. (“Myth and Midrash: Gen 9:20-29.” In Christianity, Judaism and Other Greco-Roman Cults, ed. Jacob Neusner, 3, 55-71, Leiden: Brill, 1975.) This paper agrees, and attempts to show both the motivation behind this act of exegetical violence and the methods by which it was achieved. Rabbinic literature is especially eager to insure that the character of Noah is not imbued with divine or supernatural qualities. To this end, many rabbis resort to character assassination and outright maiming in order to keep Noah on a horizontal plane. Beginning from the Torah's characterization of Noah as righteous in his generation, many voices recorded in rabbinic literature speculate that Noah was, at most, the best of a bad lot. In a far more libelous vein, certain sections of rabbinic literature seek to disenfranchise Noah as the putative first priest. Noah's disinvestiture is accomplished through creative exegesis of the Vineyard Episode, Genesis 9:20-29, from which Noah emerges a castrate. However, there is evidence that the motif of Noah"s castration was not inherent to the Vineyard Episode but borrowed from exegesis of a separate part of the flood narrative.


A Death in the Family: Paul's Use of Adamic Traditions in Romans 6:1–14
Program Unit: Intertextuality in the New Testament
Sarah Martin, Marquette University

Almost inevitably, the discussion of Romans 6:1-14 revolves around the doctrine of baptism or the moral obligations of believers. The traditional approach to the exegesis of Romans chapter 6 is often to see it as the beginning of a new argument in answer to a possible objection following the preceding section, the Adam/Christ contrast of 5:12-21. The discussion carries on with the doctrine of baptism and the death and resurrection of the believer through Christ. Verses 12-14 are viewed in turn as a digression in the form of a brief moral exhortation. I believe it to be a mistake to draw such a sharp line between the end of chapter 5 and the opening of chapter 6. I propose that Adam is still in Paul's mind as he draws out implications of the explicit Adam/Christ contrast he has drawn in 5:12-21. If the opening of chapter 6 is approached from the perspective of Jewish apocalyptic traditions of the time, the argument falls into place quite nicely. To this end I will briefly present some representative examples of common approaches to chapter 6. Adam material is then surveyed in books such as Jubilees, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, The Apocalypse of Moses and the Dead Sea Scrolls shedding an interesting light on the Adam/Christ connection and Romans 6:1-14. I argue that if Paul's juxtaposition between Adam and Christ is seen from the perspective of the apocalyptic thought of the day, a more coherent picture of Paul"s argument emerges. Humanity is subject to death through Adam. In chapter 6, Paul describes a paradoxical escape from death by means of another death. Through theme and vocabulary, Romans reflects certain Adam traditions current in some Jewish thought of Paul"s day. If Paul"s view of sin and death as “powers” is followed through consistently, this passage becomes about the eschatological turn of the ages.


The City as Salvific Space: The Promise and Peril of John's New Jerusalem for Contemporary Environmental Ethics
Program Unit: Ecological Hermeneutics
Thomas W. Martin, Susquehanna University

This paper uses current theory on the city (e.g., Certeau)and the ideological function of social constructions of modern urban spaces to re-examine how it is that John's historically impactful vision of the New Jerusalem offers both promise and peril for contemporary environmental ethics. Urban centers have often had a problematic relationship with the environment throughout their long history. John reproduces his cultural ideology of space: great cities provide salvation. We reproduce that same ideology in the early 21st century. The paper examines the problematic nature of this ideology for John's vision and for our appropriation of that vision. Then, taking a cue from Duncan Ried, it examines the silences of John's texts about the New Jerusalem to find ways in which the ideology can be made transformative for our social construction of urban spaces, making them salvific for the earth.


Putting Order in the Chaos: The Logic of the Masora
Program Unit: Masoretic Studies
Elvira Martin-Contreras, Instituto de Filologia, Madrid

The Masora was described as a chaotic or difficult field of research and the work of the Masoretes as “madness for scrupulous count of words.” But, is this true? Is there no logic behind it? Is it as difficult and incomprehensible as it seems? This paper aims to show the logic of the Masoretic notes, analyzing difficult examples and translating them to current concepts and logical thinking.


Scribal Practices in the Aramaic Literary Texts from Qumran
Program Unit: Qumran
Florentino García Martínez, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

The Aramaic literary texts form a minority of the whole Qumran collection of manuscripts, but they form a sizable minority of about 120 manuscripts, of which some eighty have preserved enough text, belonging to twenty-nine different compositions, to allow them to be treated in a meaningful way. This group of Aramaic literary texts has recently been considered as forming a coherent whole. But the basic questions about (1) the specificity of these texts within the collection, (2) its possible origin at Qumran, and (3) their function within the collection as a whole, need still to be answered. I intend to look at the scribal practices and approaches as reflected in these literary Aramaic texts as a way to start finding such answers, since in the standard treatment of scribal practices and approaches, where great attention is given to the two basic categories of literary and documentary texts, the differences (if any) between the scribal practices reflected in literary texts written in Hebrew and those written in Aramaic are not specifically dealt with.


Foreign Nations in Ben Sira's “Laus Patrum”
Program Unit: Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
Marko Marttila, University of Helsinki

Ben Sira's attitude towards the gentiles is an old and disputed question in the research. The most extreme scholarly opinions regard Ben Sira either as a vehement anti-Hellenist or as a sympathizer of the Hellenistic culture. In this paper, the largest textual unit in the Wisdom of Ben Sira will be in focus (Sir 44-50). It is my aim to examine how Ben Sira retold and interpreted the past history of his own people in his 'Laus Patrum' and how he understood the role of foreign nations in this survey. It becomes obvious that Ben Sira was not always as harsh towards the foreigners as his source texts. Perhaps Ben Sira's openness is one explanation to the old enigma why he omitted Ezra from his Praise of the Ancestors.


Response
Program Unit: Pauline Epistles
J. Louis Martyn, Union Theological Seminary

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High Priests and Platonists: Allegorizing Blood Sacrifice in the Universal Discourse of Late Antique Daemonologies
Program Unit: Religious World of Late Antiquity
Heidi Marx-Wolf, University of California, Santa Barbara

In his recent book, Blood and Belief: The Circulation of a Symbol between Jews and Christians, David Biale argues that at a certain moment in Israelite history, the control of blood by the temple priests was an index of their power. He writes: “The biblical rules for the proper disposition of animal blood enacted their [the priests"] ritual monopoly.” The priestly discourse about blood was “political rather than theological” because it allowed the priests control over an agrarian society's most valuable resource. Biale notes that both early rabbinic and Patristic fathers “allegorized” the sacrifices and priestly prescriptions regarding blood found in Hebrew scripture. But what he passes over in his discussion of early Christianity and early rabbinic Judaism is another priestly discourse about the control of blood, a discourse that I will argue is equally political. This late antique discourse about blood arises from the dialectical interaction among third century Platonists, both Christian and non-Christian. My paper will argue that both Porphyry and Origen, by associating blood sacrifice with the worship of lesser spirits and even with evil daemons and by allegorizing sacrifices found in their respective holy texts, were founding their own authority as high priests. In other words, like the ancient Hebrew priests, by attempting to control the flow of blood through the creation of discourses about proper ritual and priestly knowledge, philosophers such as Origen and Porphyry were striving to found their own authority as both theological and ritual experts and increase their cultural capital. And like the discourse of the ancient Israelite priests, this one also centered around the flow of blood. Origen's allegorical interpretation in the “Homilies on Leviticus”, when read in conjunction with his other philosophical works reveals his efforts to cast the philosopher as the new high priest of the Church. In Porphyry"s case, scholars puzzle over the fragments from Philosophy from Oracles found in Eusebius" Preparation for the Gospel. In some of these fragments he associates the spilling of blood in temples with the appeasement of evil daemons. In another fragment, Porphyry quotes a lengthy oracle that lists the kinds of animals different gods want. I will argue that, although Eusebius fails to provide us with Porphyry"s commentary on this oracle, it is far more likely that Porphyry was allegorizing this list of sacrifices in a fashion that mirrored Origen"s interpretation of the sacrificial prescriptions in Leviticus than that he was contradicting himself. I will also highlight the way Porphyry constructs the image of the true philosopher as the priest of the highest god. Finally, I will argue these philosophers were making such claims to ritual expertise at the expense of the authority of everyday local priests. As a number of scholars have argued, the authority and influence of local priests was declining and their roles were in flux in certain provinces in the third century. Philosophers such as Origen and Porphyry were trying to compete for the same cultural and social resources by developing new discourses about blood sacrifice and about the realm of spirits. These discourses were ones into which they could emplot themselves as high priests. By exploring this material, I will answer the question why both Christian and non-Christian intellectuals in this period were so uneasy about and often violently opposed to blood sacrifices using evidence that goes beyond their theological and philosophical positions and takes account of political and social factors.


Response to Joan Taylor on De vita contemplativa
Program Unit: Philo of Alexandria
Steve Mason, York University

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The Apostle Paul and the War on Terror
Program Unit: Biblical Criticism and Literary Criticism
R. Barry Matlock, University of Sheffield

What connects Paul with the so-called "war on terror" being waged in our time (other than the fact that the same person, me, might be keenly interested in both)? I don"t have in mind simply readings that attempt to burst imperial American pretensions by depicting Paul as frequently engaged in anti-Roman-imperial polemic—valuable though such readings may be. I will attempt such a contextualization of Paul with the help of the fascinating reading of Romans offered by Jacob Taubes, further developed by Giorgio Agamben. Taubes reads Paul from the point of view of a political philosopher, and familiar Pauline concepts such as "law" are defamiliarized accordingly; and the contemporary theorist against whom Taubes reads Paul is Carl Schmitt, a towering figure in twentieth century German jurisprudence and sometime apologist for fascism. For Schmitt, it is definitive of the 'sovereign" to be the one who is able to declare the 'state of exception" in which the law does not apply; and the struggle between the nation and its enemies, in the context of which such a state of crisis is occasionally declared, is definitive of the sphere of the "political". The connection to the "war on terror" is easy enough: it turns out that President Bush"s legal enablers often seem to be channelling Schmitt. The connection with Paul is made in terms of his declaring the law to be no longer applicable and his ethic/politics of enemy-love. In the context of this intriguing contextualization of Paul"s letter to the Romans, this paper will also discuss the very phenomenon of the turn to Paul on the part of "secular" readers, and the range of responses available to biblical scholars.


Triumph in Colossians 2:15: Christ's Victory and Its Relevance to the Roman Empire
Program Unit: Disputed Paulines
B. J. Matthews, Durham University

Inquiry into the attitude of the Colossian epistle towards the Roman Empire finds a significant occurrence of the term thriambeuo in Col. 2.15. Several scholars have argued that the image behind this verb is that of a triumphal procession through the streets of Rome in celebration of a military victory. Given this, it is possible that the text represents Christ's crucifixion as a victory over the cosmic rulers and authorities far superior to any Roman imperial victory. Yet, the difficulties encountered when interpreting Col. 2.15 require that the exact nature of the "triumph" be assessed in the broader context of 2.8-15 for its cosmological and anthropological implications. Therefore, this paper explores the rhetoric of the passage as a whole in order to determine how Colossians perceives the Roman Empire.


The Speech of Stephen; the Death of James
Program Unit: Rhetoric and Early Christianity
Shelly Matthews, Furman University

This paper will consider the martyrdom of Stephen alongside related traditions concerning the death of James to underscore how both traditions grasp for ways to assert the split of Jesus believers, or Christians, from "The Jews." As part of this analysis, the speech of Stephen will be set alongside the historiographical speech preserved in the Pseudo-Clementine recognitions 1.27-71, so that the relative hostility of each text toward unbelieving Jews might be better assessed.


Jeremiah, Baruch, and Linked Zones of Communication
Program Unit: Space, Place, and Lived Experience in Antiquity
Victor H. Matthews, Missouri State University

Using the narrative in Jeremiah 36 as an exemplar, this paper will examine how Baruch and/or Jeremiah's dictated message travel through a series of spatial domains, some of which may be considered protected or exclusive areas, and the ways in which these domains and their inhabitants are transformed by the serial reading of the text. The strategy to disrupt and confront in this narrative demonstrates how speech and spatial tactics can be combined. Furthermore, the social formations found within each domain will be linked to the analysis of the effectiveness of these tactics.


The Audience as Fellow-Workers in the Rhetoric of Stephen's Speech
Program Unit: Rhetoric and Early Christianity
Kathy Maxwell, South Texas School of Christian Studies

The audience is a vital element for communicating story; in fact, without audience participation, the narrative fails. I have recently examined a striking number of examples of ancient rhetorical theory and practices regarding audience participation. According to ancient rhetoricians, an engaged, participating audience at the very least paid attention and often helped create the story, inclining the audience toward moral formation. Strangely enough, one ancient rhetorical method for encouraging audience participation involved silence. Rhetors left blanks or holes in speeches and stories, relying on the audience to complete their thoughts. Long before modern identification of literary gap theory (i.e., the work of Meir Sternberg and Wolfgang Iser), ancient rhetors crafted gaps in narratives, encouraging audiences to become “fellow-workers” (Mor. 48:14) with the speaker. Identifying ancient roots for such theories helps guard against anachronistic methodological missteps, while simultaneously preventing the same theories from being dismissed out of hand. In Acts 7, Luke creates gaps using tools recommended by ancient rhetoricians. Using the speech of Stephen as a case study, I will explore Luke's practice of creating gaps by using tools recommended by ancient rhetoricians. By inviting the audience to participate in the narrative, Luke increases the probability that the audience will be formed by his story. The recognition of ancient gaps gives modern audience members a glimpse into the experience of the ancient auditors and also informs the way modern readers “hear” the biblical narrative. The responsibility of audience participation did not end with the ancient audience. The modern audience also bears the responsibility of creating the story with the ancient author. In our particular context as the people of God reading the Scriptures, we are more likely to be persuaded by the argument we help complete, astonished by the pictures we help draw, formed by the story we help create.


The Performance of a Lifetime: Audience Participation in the Sermon on the Mount
Program Unit: Performance Criticism of the Bible and Other Ancient Texts
Kathy Maxwell, South Texas School of Christian Studies

This paper explores ancient comments about the audience and its participation in rhetorical performance, evidence that is complemented by studying the ancient stage: audience participation was expected and even vital for a performance's success. Strangely, a prominent tool used to encourage such participation was silence. The striking number of rhetoricians" comments is supported by evidence that a strategy of silence was used in ancient literature. This literature was likely received aurally—the silences, as well as the words, were to be heard. Modern rhetoricians have named this strategy of silence literary gap theory, and modern audiences have the luxury of the printed text. Passages may be compared and dissected, and many gaps can be filled with relative ease. Long before post-Enlightenment storytelling strategies, however, ancient orators left gaps in narratives, encouraging audiences to become “fellow-workers” (Mor. 48:14) with the speaker. Hearing the silences and working to fill them reveals the power of the gospel performance to capture attentive listeners. The passive listener becomes a fellow-worker, one who also acts and finally, in a sense, “lives” the performance of the gospel. Matthew's Sermon on the Mount highlights the evangelist"s concern for engaging the audience. An engaged audience at least paid attention and often even helped create within the silent sections of the story, an act that inclined them toward moral formation. This project impacts not only our view of rhetorical abilities of ancient authors, but also the way in which modern readers “hear” narratives. The responsibility of audience participation did not end with the ancient audience. We also bear the responsibility of hearing between the lines, entering into performance with the ancients. We are all the more likely to be persuaded by the argument we help complete, astonished by the words we help speak, and formed by the story we live.


Self-Manifestation and “Primary Revelation” in the Platonizing Sethian Ascent Treatises and Plotinian Mysticism
Program Unit: Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism
Zeke Mazur, University of Chicago

This paper will explore the interpenetration of Gnosticism and Platonism by examining in detail a particular motif in the Platonizing Sethian ascent treatises, especially Zostrianos (NHC VIII,1) and Allogenes (NHC XI,3), and then briefly comparing this motif to a parallel feature in Plotinus, who was known to have read and critiqued these particular treatises. It is well known that in the Platonizing Sethian treatises, as in Plotinus, the ascent towards the transcendent, hyperontic deity recapitulates the process of ontogenesis in reverse; in the case of Allogenes, for example, it is often noted that one ascends through some version of the derivational scheme of the so-called noetic triad (Being–– Life–– Intellect) that was systematized by later Platonists (indeed this passage, Allog. 59.1-61.22, is curiously reminiscent of Plotinus III.8[30].9). Yet I would like to suggest that there are more specific features of the Sethian ascent passages which suggest a striking parallel between the visionary ascent itself and the first moments of ontogenesis. In both Zostrianos and Allogenes the ascending aspirant must revert or “withdraw” (anachôrein) to his or her self at a crucial stage of ascent towards the supreme principle, while at the penultimate stage of ascent, the aspirant experiences a self-manifestation (or, equivalently, a manifestation of the transcendent principle within the self) that is an immediate prerequisite for a direct experience of the unknowable deity. In Allogenes this is specifically referred to as a “primary revelation” (oymntshorp noyônh ebol). The pattern of self-reversion followed by self-manifestation during the ascent is closely parallel in structure and terminology to the initial moment of ontogenesis, i.e. the moment at which the first, transcendent principle (the Unknowable One / Invisible Spirit) unfolds itself into the second (usually the multipartite Barbelo Aeon) through a similar process of self-manifestation or self-reflection. Indeed this may explain the perplexing term “primary revelation,” often (erroneously, in my opinion) taken to refer to the extended negative-theological discourse revealed by luminaries at Allog. 61.28-67.20. Rather, the “primary revelation” may be a deliberate reminiscence of the initial self-manifestation of the transcendent principle at the first moment of ontogenesis, similarly described as –oyônh ebol, at, for example, Allog. (NHC XI,3) 45.17, Zost. (NHC VIII,1) 3.12, Ap. Jn. (NHC II,4) 4.31, etc. Similarly, in Plotinus, the ascending mystic must recapitulate within his or her self the experience of the transcendent deity; the penultimate stage of the Plotinian ascent, just prior to union with the One, consists of a sudden vision of one's self, described in terms similar if not identical to the first moments of ontogenesis in which the One's eternal efflux reverts to its source and perceives its own (former) self, thereby introducing the first subject-object duality. The similarity of these Sethian texts with Plotinus" mystical passages–– indeed, with that aspect of his thought long considered to be the most intimate and experiential feature of his spiritual life–– is extremely striking, and suggests, if not a simple dependence of Plotinus on the Gnostics, at least a significant dialogue between them.


Setting the Historical Context of Some Aspects of Biblcial Narrative
Program Unit:
Stephanie McAllister, High School History and Social Studies Teacher

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The Legend of Ra and Isis: A Historical Behind 1 Timothy 2:12–14?
Program Unit: Women in the Biblical World
Elizabeth McCabe, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion

This paper will explore the intersection of the biblical text with the Egyptian cult of Isis. To arrive at this juncture, brief discussion will be given to the existence of the Isis cut in Ephesus prior to Christianity and the nature of the false teaching throughout the epistle. Of particular interest are the comparisons and contrasts that can be drawn with the creation account in Genesis, especially the correlations between Eve and Isis.


A Reexamination of Phoebe as Diakonos and Prostatis: Exposing the Inaccuracies of English Translations
Program Unit: Bible Translation
Elizabeth McCabe, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion

The roles of Phoebe as a diakonos and a prostatis in Romans 16.1-2 have often been slighted in English translations, being rendered as 'servant" and "helper" respectively. However, diakonos should be more suitably translated as "minister" or "courier." Literary evidence from Pliny's Epistulae, coupled with epigraphical evidence of women diakonoi will be coupled with a critical examination of 1 Timothy 3.11 to foster a discussion of women diakonoi. The word "helper" for prostatis will prove problematic based on New Testament usage of its cognate verb form (proistemi) and classical usage of prostates and prostatis. Possible origins of the word "helper" in English translations will be also be exposed and analyzed.


Questioning the Unquestioned: Revisiting What We “Know” about Mesopotamian Cosmology
Program Unit: Assyriology and the Bible
Kathleen McCaffrey, University of California, Berkeley

Logical-empiricist tendencies that linger in Assyriology influence us to regard current reconstructions of Mesopotamian cosmological beliefs as a “body of knowledge” rather than a “system of theories” -- that is to say, as facts uncovered by Assyriological investigators rather than hypotheses formulated by specific historical communities. My paper looks at how and when current translations of key Mesopotamian cosmological terms were first formulated, the assumptions of those early scholars, and how their ideas came to be institutionalized. I contend that the cosmological evidence was contradictory, and that the political history of Assyriology, particularly the aftermath of sharp early conflicts with conservative theology, caused certain data to be given weight over other data. Although many cuneiform references were compatible with the cosmological model that eventually came to be preferred early in the twentieth century, they did not point towards it indisputably. A de novo review of the same data using metaphor analysis, taking into consideration the many anomalies that have accumulated over the years, provides grounds for different but no less plausible reconstructions of the Mesopotamian afterlife and underworld.


Temple and Empire: The Court of the Gentiles
Program Unit: Josephus
Byron R. McCane, Wofford College

Scholars have generally tended to view Herod's invention of the “court of the Gentiles” as an expression of his desire to bring the Roman world to Jerusalem. The stoa basileia and the broad expanse of the “court of the Gentiles” would certainly have made a strong impression on any visitor from abroad. However, while it is correct to regard Herod's temple as a kind of tourist attraction, this observation overlooks the fact that the “court of the Gentiles” would have impressed Jews from Palestine too. Herod"s renovated temple thus had a double effect: it changed the way Romans thought about Jews and the way Jews thought about Romans, and it altered Jews" image of the Empire. For in its wide and sunny plaza the Jewish temple was symbolically opened up to the Empire. Whenever a Gentile entered that generous space, and whenever a Jew crossed it on the way to offer sacrifice, Empire and Temple came together. Herod"s “court of the Gentiles” represented harmony and coherence between Empire and Temple, and as such, it was an expression of Herod"s effort, based on his responsibilities as a Roman client, to socialize the Jews of Palestine to the Roman Empire. It linked the Empire with all that Jews had always regarded as best in their history, religion, and culture. Taking a page from Augustus, who reconfigured the Forum Romanum to integrate the Empire with the finest traditions of Rome, Herod reconfigured the temple to integrate the Empire with the finest traditions of Judaism.


The Most Important Text in the Bible and a Theology of the Psalms
Program Unit: Book of Psalms
J. Clinton McCann, Eden Theological Seminary

Taking as its point of departure John Dominic Crossan's claim that Psalm 82 is the most important text in the entire Bible, this presentation will articulate major dimensions of a theology of the Psalms, highlighting God's will for world-encompassing justice, righteousness, and peace. The presenter's approach is largely synchronic, and might be labeled something like a literary-canonical-theological approach.


The Rhetorical Use of Oracles in Plutarch's Lives and Old Testament Scripture in Luke-Acts: An Investigation
Program Unit: Book of Acts
James McConnell, Baylor University

Throughout Plutarch's Lives characters in these narratives are constantly soliciting, receiving, interpreting, and even manipulating oracles from the gods. Oracular speech is by far the most prominent form of communication between the gods and human beings. Likewise, in Luke-Acts, OT scripture is often recalled and recited by both the characters and the narrator. Although God sometimes speaks audibly and directly to human beings, as well as through dreams and visions, in Luke-Acts OT scripture, being attributed to God, is quoted far more often than these other forms of communication. It is the contention of this paper that the giving and receiving of oracles in Plutarch's Lives and the citation of OT scripture in Luke-Acts would have been understood as the use of the topos of divine testimony in these works by their respective audiences. This paper further demonstrates that Plutarch and the author of Luke-Acts apply the topos of divine testimony through utterances in related and similar ways and for similar functions; these functions include demonstration of divine communication, characterization of individuals in the narrative, reinterpretation of the oracle/scripture in light of a new situation, and as warnings. The fulfillment of oracles and scripture as proof of divine legitimation is also a prevalent theme in both works.


Trials of Character and Miracles of Emotion: Deliberative Rhetoric in Matthew 4 and 8
Program Unit: Rhetoric and Early Christianity
Karl McDaniel, McGill University

While honour and shame categories have been applied to the Gospel of Matthew for some time, examination of deliberative rhetorical strategies in the gospel, outside the Sermon on the Mount, has not been widely undertaken. This paper explores the way in which Matthew employs a complete, deliberative strategy to enforce the logic of the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew prefaces the sermon with the temptation narrative functioning as an argument from ethos (character) and concludes it with miracle narratives serving as an argument from pathos (emotion). Via the techniques of Aristotle, Cicero, and the Ad Herrennium, Matthew constructs an argument that convinces the reader to engage the logic of the Sermon on the Mount; the result is a classical outline of ethos, logos, pathos.


Mark's Missing Ending: Clues from the Gospel of John and the Gospel of Peter
Program Unit: Synoptic Gospels
James F. McGrath, Butler University

That the original ending of the Gospel of Mark has been lost is no longer the commonplace in New Testament scholarship that it once was. A strong case can be made for this earlier viewpoint, however, on the basis of both internal and external considerations. Internally, the story anticipates appearances to Jesus" disciples, and yet they never get the message, as far as the earliest manuscripts of Mark are concerned. Externally, at least two different scribes (as well as the authors of Matthew and Luke) felt the need to complete Mark's account. The primary focus of this paper, however, will be not on the evidence that the original ending is missing, but the evidence for what it most likely contained. The tradition of an appearance by the risen Jesus to his disciples fishing on the Sea of Galilee surfaces in the conclusion of the Gospel of John, as well as in the extant fragments of the Gospel of Peter. The former is often regarded as having the appearance of a first encounter by the disciples with the risen Christ, and the latter makes this explicit, following Mark closely up until this point: the women do not deliver the message, the disciples have at any rate returned to Galilee, and Jesus meets them there in spite of the message not having been delivered. The paper will argue that a story along these lines was found in the original ending of Mark's Gospel. Various literary and historical aspects of this hypothesis will also be discussed.


Mandaean Polemic against Jews and Christians as Evidence about the Origins and Setting of Early Mandaism
Program Unit: Jewish Christianity / Christian Judaism
James F. McGrath, Butler University

Jorunn Buckley wrote in a recent study that “The polemical parts of the [Mandaean] literature, as religious-political evidence, are still in need of a thorough scholarly examination” (Great Stem Of Souls, Gorgias Press, 2005, p.311). This paper is part of a larger project that attempts to do just that. Study of the process of self-definition by religious communities often provides us with important evidence about their history, by allowing us to triangulate their historical coordinates, as it were, in relation to interlocutors with whom they are engaged in debate. In many passages in Mandaean literature, one finds polemic against both Jews and Christians, as the Mandaeans sought to define themselves as neither. As in the case of the Gospel of John, there is good reason to think that the anti-Jewish features of some Mandaean literature may ultimately provide evidence of the Jewish origins, or at the very least context, of the community that produced it. In addressing this question, we hope at the same time to be able to learn more about the ways Jews and Christians were defining themselves in the same historical and geographical context.


Imperial Power Structures, the Particular Predicament of Middle Agents, and the Jesus Movement
Program Unit: Jesus Traditions, Gospels, and Negotiating the Roman Imperial World
Rachel McGuire, Institute for Christian Studies

From a Palestinian agrarian perspective, this paper sketches out a first century “anatomy” of Roman regionalized imperial power – its structure and dynamics. The paper pays particular attention to: 1) the social mechanisms by which wealth and power are transferred from the majority agrarian poor to a tiny minority of super-wealthy; 2) the roles of active and passive middle agents who reside between the majority poor and the super-rich, serving as lynchpins in the imperial system; and 3) a study of active and passive middle agents who appear in the gospel texts and how Jesus and the Jesus Movement relate to them. Lastly, the paper draws connections to our modern globalized context and the relevance of the Jesus Movement to modern day middle agents in the North American context.


Samuel, Saul, and David: A “Fox” Oversees the Transfer of Power from One “Lion” to Another
Program Unit: Social Sciences and the Interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures
Heather A. McKay, Edge Hill University

In this paper, I will explore the characters of Samuel, Saul and David using the work of Italian sociologist Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923), hitherto little referred to by biblical scholars. A vital ingredient is his telling identification of two styles of successful leadership: the "fox" and the "lion". Pareto claimed that societies are most stable when there is a combination—or alternation—of both types of leadership in government; if that balance did not arise naturally it would come about by force. He believed also that too much softness in leaders who wished to be loved led to their overthrow by leaders who knew it was safer in the long run to be feared. This basic analysis will be supplemented by use of Pareto's "residues" and "motivations" (key human drives) in explicating the jostlings for power/authority among competing elites within societal groups. In Pareto's view societies respond to change by seeking to restore their equilibrium through a readjustment of many relationships, particularly that between the ruling elite (e.g. monarchy) and the non-ruling elite (e.g. priests or lawmakers). Furthermore, according to Pareto, wise rulers seek to reinvigorate their ranks by allowing the best from the lower strata of society to rise and become fully a part of the ruling class. Samuel"s support of David will be analysed along lines suggested by Pareto"s work.


Putting YHWH in His Place: Bakhtin, the Chronotope, and Spatial Trialectics
Program Unit: Bakhtin and the Biblical Imagination
Cameron S. Mckenzie, Providence College

The question of who is able to stand before YHWH (lipne adonai) has been shown in previous research to exert considerable influence on the meaning of the so-called Ark Narrative in 1 Samuel 4-6 and 2 Samuel 6. Much of the attention in this research has focused on the ark itself and its suitability to the specific narrative poetics of the Former Prophets. Less attention has been given to the question of what is understood by the phrase lipne adonai . More specifically, what does it mean to be 'before' YHWH? This paper will engage in a dialogue between Bakhtin's idea of the chronotope and the critical spatialities of Henri Lefebvre and Edward Soja to suggest that 'lipne adonai' can be helpfully understood as chronotopic 'lived space' or 'third Space'. That is, lipne adonai is a narratologically constructed temporal and spatial index that remains resistant to the ideological limitations of the various character's attempts to gain control of YHWH. This narratological resistance is one of the principle knots, to use Morson and Emerson"s term, of the story of kingship in the book of Samuel.


From the Gothic to the Garden: The Visual Transformation of the Bible in Popular Children's Culture
Program Unit: Bible and Popular Culture
Cameron S. McKenzie, Providence College

This paper will engage in a comparative analysis of Gustave Dore's Bible illustrations (1865-1890) and the art of Phil Vischer's Veggie Tales.As an artist with an established reputation for caricature (Balzac), carnivalesque (Rabelais), and horror (Dante), Dore, through his religious illustrations (Milton and the Bible) offers a particularly good model for exploring the visual representation of the Bible, for general consumption, in the era during which childhood is emerging as a distinct socio-cultural category, but a category that is still largely overwritten with the characteristics of adulthood. Visher's Veggie Tales occupy an equally salutary position in contemporary north American culture, where childhood has been co-opted by the marketing industry. Using Adorno's 'culture industry' model, the paper will trace the visual trajectory of the gradual commodification of the Bible in children's popular culture from a text of gothic proportions to a salad bar teeming with self-referential, 'simpsonesque' humor.


Dating the Death of Jesus: A House Built on Sand
Program Unit: Historical Jesus
James S. McLaren, Australian Catholic University

Numerous arguments have been proposed in an effort to determine exactly when Jesus was executed. In particular, two issues have been dominant: the actual day of the execution, either Nisan 14 or Nisan 15; and, the actual year, with 27, 30 or 33 CE being the preferred options. For both issues, it is assumed that the gospel accounts are historical records of the event, what is disputed is the relative status allocated to the accounts. This paper challenges such a claim. It will examine the basis on which the content of a text is deemed to convey historical data, using three fundamental questions: who wrote the account, when was the account written, and why was the account written. It will be argued that references to timing of Jesus" death in the gospel accounts are part of early polemic against Jewish non-believers and that they do not have credence as records of when Jesus was actually executed. In turn, it will be proposed that any attempt to date the death is dependant on the crucial question, why Pilate ordered the execution of Jesus.


Healing Troubled Souls: The Efforts of Bishop Serapion of Thmuis
Program Unit: Christianity in Egypt: Scripture, Tradition, and Reception
Bernadette McNary-Zak, Rhodes College

This paper explores the development of a theology of healing in the extant works of the fourth century Egyptian bishop, Serapion of Thmuis. Examination of the theme of healing found in these works complements the finds of recent research on the Sacramentary of Serapion and makes it possible to consider how Serapion interpreted his episcopal role as healer in the context of the theological dissension and debate of his day.


Messianic Exegesis in Mark 1:2–3
Program Unit: Gospel of Mark
Jocelyn McWhirter, Albion College

In the last paper I presented to this group, I argued that the citations of Israel's Scripture in Mark's Passion Narrative do not necessarily reflect a “Suffering Servant” or “Righteous Sufferer” christology. Instead they can be seen as the result of messianic exegesis, in which Scriptures reminiscent of Jesus" life and death were interpreted as messianic prophecies on the basis of shared vocabulary with acknowledged messianic texts. I outlined a process that begins with christological interpretation of Pss 22, 69, 110, and 118 in light of Ps 89. In this paper, I contend that the citation of Exod 23:20, Mal 3:1, and Isa 40:3 in Mark 1:2-3 does not necessarily reflect a “New Exodus” theology. This, too, can be seen as the result of messianic exegesis. Once we establish that Ps 118:26 concerns the Messiah, we can read Isa 40:1-11 as a messianic prophecy, since both passages concern a “Lord” who “comes.” Mark has obviously used shared vocabulary such as “send,” “messenger,” “prepare,” and “way” to conflate Exod 23:30 and Mal 3:1 with Isa 40:3. This extends christological interpretation to all three passages. Messianic exegesis can also account for how Mark uses this shared vocabulary to tell the story of Jesus. Significant combinations among the words “Lord,” “send,” “messenger,” “prepare,” and “way” together with the verb “come” appear in Mark 6:6-13; 11:1-10; 13:26-27; and 14:12-17. For Mark, Jesus is the prophesied Messiah who comes to Galilee (1:14) and Jerusalem (11:9; 14:17), sending disciples to prepare the way (6:6-13; 11:1-10; 14:12-17). Even though the way to Jerusalem is the way of suffering and death (8:27-38; 9:30-37; 10:32-52), the suffering ends when the Messiah comes with the clouds, sending out his messengers one last time (13:26-27).


Ritual Seams in the Book of Job: Job's Reaction to Disaster Viewed as a Ritual of Mourning
Program Unit: Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
Richard W. Medina, Columbia Theological Seminary

Scholars have traditionally viewed the prosaic framework (Job 1–2, 42) and the poetic core of the book of Job (Job 3-41) as differing sharply in their depiction of Job. In the prose story, he is a scrupulous observer of the cult and a model of patience; in the poetry section, he is a defiant rebel, who shows no sign of following cultic practices. These apparent inconsistencies can be resolved if Job's reaction to disaster is viewed as a ritual of mourning throughout the entire book. Drawing upon A. van Gennep's classical theory of rites de passage, this study contends that Job"s mourning rites found in the prologue —especially Job 1:20–21— signal a transition from day–to–day life to a liminal state of separation from cult and society in which Job identifies with the dead and disaster. He remains in this threshold phase during the poetry section until the epilogue, when ritual acts and speech of incorporation allow Job to enter into a new condition. After a brief discussion of the ritual treatment of Job in contemporary literature, this paper will study the social function of ritual actions and language —tearing garments, head-shaving, falling to the ground, bowing, praying, eating, blessing— in the context of the ancient Near East and the Old Testament, and will accentuate their importance for our understanding of the relationship between the prosaic frame and poetic dialogue of the book itself.


A God of Justice: Can the Prophetic Books Aid in the Construction of a Disability Liberation Ethic?
Program Unit: Healthcare and Disability in the Ancient World
Sarah J. Melcher, Xavier University

Using the author's previous work on disability in the prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible as a jumping off place, this paper will examine theological themes from the prophetic books that might be used toward the construction of a disability liberation ethic. While focused in the biblical texts themselves, the paper will also incorporate insights from work in disability studies and biblical ethics, especially the work of Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza in Rhetoric and Ethic: The Politics of Biblical Studies, 1999. Since the prophetic corpus is vast, the paper should be seen as a preliminary exploration. The paper will acknowledge and discuss some of the difficulties inherent in the task of constructing a disability liberation ethic from biblical texts. Among the theological themes that will be explored to see if they could aid in the construction of a disability ethic are prophetic perspectives on justice and righteousness; a concern for those who are marginalized or at risk in the community; a divine intention to humble those in power; and the divine as a source of refuge and renewal; etc. Of particular interest is the intersection of themes related to justice and divine identity.


Isaiah 19:1–15: A Reversal of Egyptian Royal Ideology
Program Unit: Egyptology and Ancient Israel
Ash Melika, Bergen College

The intention of this paper is to investigate the Egyptian conceptual and artistic evidence found in the first section (vv. 1-15) of the oracle given by Isaiah in chapter 19. It will become evident after our review of the Egyptian data that the biblical writer had an intricate knowledge of Egyptian kingship ideology. The prophet subtly directed the judgment of Yahweh towards Egypt's central figure—the pharaoh. Isaiah lays out a perfect illustration of his ability to create Egyptian royal ideological images out of words and tailors them to serve his purpose. Namely, the literary technique in this section depicts an exemplary image of Egyptian kingship ideology but in a reversal sense; everything that pharaoh had to accomplish in order to fulfill his responsibility as an Egyptian king failed. Yahweh reverses pharaoh's royal duties by permitting chaos to overcome Egypt"s religious, social, economic, and political realms. The focal point in the use of such reversal of Egyptian royal duties is to emphasize the sovereignty of Yahweh over the fate of pharaoh and by extension, Egypt.


“Like a Stranger in the Land”: Jeremiah's God in Exile
Program Unit: Exile (Forced Migrations) in Biblical Literature
Esther M. Menn, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago

Brief poetic passages in the book of Jeremiah (including Jer. 12:7-10 and 14:8-9) suggest that with the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem God's own self was forcibly displaced from a beloved home. The depiction of God as disoriented refugee complicates the prophetic understanding of divine agency and presence in the upheaval and turmoil of war's aftermath. Not simply the one who 'slings the inhabitants out of the land" (Jer. 10:18), Jeremiah"s God also personally experiences the loss of place, accompanying the people in their tragedy. This paper analyzes Jeremiah's poetic rhetoric portraying God "like a stranger in the land."


Ephraem the Syrian and the Authority of the Old Testament Writings
Program Unit: Bible in Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Traditions
Merja Merras, The University of Joensuu, Finland

Ephraem the Syrian, the famous doctor ecclesiae from the fourth century Syria, was the authoritative Bible interpreter at the exegetical schools, first at Nisibis and then at Edessa. Those schools trained readers and clergy for the church. Besides basic teaching, the schools strived to answer the challenges of their time, which were posed by heretics. The answers were found in the Scripture. In the neighbourhood of these ecclesiastical schools Jews had their own schools of interpretation. Both Christians and Jews used the same methods and oriental approaches, though they ended up with different interpretations, mainly because of the New Testament writings. Thus Hellenistic philosophy and Greek-Christian theology based on it were foreign to Ephraem. In this paper I will present the notion of authority concerning the fourth century Bible interpretation in Syria. The prominent person in this presentation is Ephraem the Syrian. As supporting material I will use contemporary Jewish sources as well as the earliest Christian lectionaries.


Hagar, Ruth, and the Good Neighborhood: Remembrances of the Outsider and the Moral Character of Community
Program Unit: Ethics and Biblical Interpretation
Amy C. Merrill Willis, Gonzaga University

This paper will explore the topic of the outsider by considering the connection between the Sinai covenantal legislation and the narratives involving Hagar (Genesis 16 and 21) and Ruth. Drawing upon P. D. Miller's concept that the Decalogue offers a vision of the good neighborhood, this study will examine the way in which the Hagar and Ruth stories narratively embody the moral vision of this good neighborhood in their treatment of the stranger. These narratives extend the moral vision of community in the Sinai legislation not only by concretizing the good neighborhood, as in the case of Ruth, but also by embodying Israel's own early failure to live in community with the stranger, as in the case of Hagar. Moreover, these narratives also provide the opportunity to reflect on how memory functions as the source and motivation for the good neighborhood. The Hagar story is one that illustrates how not to treat the stranger; it constitutes a negative memory of early Israel"s treatment of the outsider. Yet its literary connections with Exodus and its evocation in the Sinai legislation would identify Hagar with Israel. She is, as one scholar writes, “Israel in utero.” The Exodus and Sinai complex thus provide the mediating point at which this negative memory can be reshaped into the positive concern for the stranger. This study will further explore how the book of Ruth, in its own recollection of the Sinai covenant, creates a seemingly invented memory from a different time in Israel"s gestation. This memory is used to positively motivate the post-exilic community"s vision in response to competing visions that would create the good neighborhood at the expense of the stranger.


The Battle for the Canonical Paul: A Fresh Look at the Role of the Acts of Paul in Early Christianity
Program Unit: Function of Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
Annette Merz, University of Utrecht

This paper will explore the rhetoric of rewriting the history and message of Paul in the apocryphal Acts of Paul and discuss the implications of this enterprise with regard to the battle for the canonical Paul. In 1983 D. R. MacDonald convinced many that the Pastoral Epistles and the Acts of Paul both are witnesses of a “Battle for Paul in Story and Canon”. According to MacDonald the weapons in this battle were oral legends about Paul and Thecla, which were taken up independently by the authors of the Acts of Paul and the Pastoral Epistles. A close investigation of all the intertextual relationships between the extant fragments of the Acts of Paul and Pauline literature reveals, however, that MacDonald's analysis was wrong as far as regards the literary relations between the texts. These clearly point to a deliberate use of and reference to authoritative Pauline material by the author of the Acts of Paul. Pauline texts known to the intended readers of the Acts are constantly referred to, re-interpreted and contextualized in order to shape the portrait of Paul and give an account of his message that not only meets the needs and beliefs of the intended audience. By taking up “loose ends” and filling up “gaps” in the earlier Pauline material the Acts deliberately pursue the goal of providing essential additional knowledge of the life and message of their hero that, if accepted, will also change the perception and interpretation of Pauline utterances already known to the public. The paper will only shortly deal with the Thecla story and the martyrdom of Paul which have gained quite a lot of attention in the past. It mainly focuses on lesser known parts of the Acts such as the overcoming of idols in Sidon (creating a narrative which contextualizes Paul's teaching on the “table of the demons” in 1Cor 10:21), and the fare-well speech and last supper in Corinth which clearly comments on passages of 1/2 Cor and reveals the final harmonious chapter in the relationship between Paul and the Corinthians.


Divine Warrioress Imagery: A Diachronic Survey of Anat and Deborah
Program Unit: Warfare in Ancient Israel
Amy Meverden, Fuller Theological Seminary

The proposed paper considers the diachronic progression of divine warrioress imagery in the Late Bronze Age, Early Iron Age I and Second Temple period, looking specifically at the goddess Anat in Ugaritic myth, and Deborah of Judges 5 in both the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint. This paper identifies the warrior qualities of Anat and Deborah, and draws parallels between myth and socio-political circumstances to explore trends in the depletion of divine warrioress imagery. Divine warrioress imagery pervades ancient Near Eastern cultic texts, providing vast resources from which one may trace the diachronic sequence of such representation. Progression of divine warrioress imagery found in texts from the Late Bronze Age, Early Iron Age I and the Second Temple eras suggests a weakening and eventual decline of female warrior figures, as evidenced by a decrease in the presence and acceptability of female warrior imagery in texts emerging out of later contexts. Anat and Deborah serve as prime examples for comparison as they appear within close textual, cultural and socio-political proximity (Anat in Late Bronze era and Deborah of the MT's Judges 5 in Early Iron Age I). While this paper does not seek to define a strict typology of the ancient Near Eastern divine warrioress, it does intend to identify similar characteristics of female warriors in positions of leadership and attribute these to comparable socio-political factors. Drawing from Susan Ackerman's Warrior, Dancer, Seductress, Queen, which identifies character trends in biblical and other ancient Near Eastern texts, and Neal Walls" extensive look at textual depictions of the divine warrioress, Anat, in the Late Bronze Age texts of Ugarit, this paper follows the diachronic progression of the divine warrioress.


Three Figures of Judas (after Borges)
Program Unit: Future of the Past: Biblical and Cognate Studies for the Twenty-First Century
Marvin Meyer, Chapman University

In this paper I explore, in the spirit of Jorge Luis Borges' "Three Versions of Judas," how the figure of Judas Iscariot may be interpreted, now after the appearance of the Gospel of Judas. I discuss the nuances of more positive and more negative interpretations of Judas, as well as a more thoroughly literary understanding of this figure. With regard to the last issue of Judas as a literary character, I pay particular attention to the presentation of Judah the brother of Joseph in Genesis 37 and subsequent literature.


Contextualizing Rural-Urban Relations in First-Century Galilee
Program Unit: Historical Jesus
Eric Meyers, Duke University

This paper will explore rural-urban relations in first century Galilee as they can be reconstructed from the archaeological evidence in Upper Galilee and Sepphoris. The paper will offer some suggestions about how this evidence relates to historical Jesus research.


Opening Comments on Archaeology and the Media
Program Unit: Archaeological Excavations and Discoveries: Illuminating the Biblical World
Eric M. Meyers, Duke University

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A Washington Bible Class: Gail Hamilton on Biblical Inspiration and Paul's View of Women
Program Unit: Recovering Female Interpreters of the Bible
J. Ramsey Michaels, Missouri State University

Mary Abigail Dodge (1833-1896), also known as Gail Hamilton, taught a Bible class in Washington DC in 1890 for the wives of congressmen, cabinet members, the vice president and the president that became the basis of her short biblical theology, A Washington Bible-Class (New York: Appleton, 1891). In twelve essays she explored a number of issues centering on the relation between the Old Testament law and sacrificial system and the new covenant in Jesus Christ. The paper explores in particular her essay on “Inspiration,” and its conclusions regarding Paul's view of women as expressed in 1 Corinthians 11:3-16, 14:34-35, Ephesians 5:22-24 and 1 Timothy 2:11-13. Like many present-day Christian feminists, Hamilton found herself on the one hand criticizing Paul (or at least comparing him unfavorably with Jesus), and yet on the other interpreting him positively in light of her own theological assumptions.


Teraphim in Biblical Women's Ritual Life
Program Unit: Women in the Biblical World
Sheila Shiki-y-Michaels, New York, NY

The mysterious iconography of Rachel's tent at Jegar-saha-dutha/Galeed in Genesis 31:34, corresponds to the equally mysterious Yom Kippur atonement ritual in the Tabernacle tent, in Leviticus 16:13-15. The scenes are so strikingly similar that we must ask their purpose. In Genesis 31:34 we find Rachel in a darkened tent. Her father, Laban gropes about—presumably on his knees—while she sits upon a palanquin. Teraphim/Elohim are in the palanquin or palanquin basket. Rachel remains seated upon the palanquin and Teraphim, claiming to be menstruating. The iconography of a woman seated upon or between a supernatural figure or figures, a man bent before her, could be that of almost any Middle Eastern deity. In Leviticus 16:13-15 Aaron (and every High Priest after him) enters the tent of the Tabernacle. He makes a cloud of incense to cover the seat of the palanquin, which is the Ark: as if the cloud of God's Presence had settled upon its seat (Ex 25:17-22, Numbers 7:89) between the Cherubim. Aaron sprinkles blood of sacrificial animals upon this holy seat, which would be a desecration in any other circumstance. The two scenes connote abomination & holiness, respectively. Rachel is anathematized for lying and stealing, and is in an unclean state. She is cursed: that results in her death, and her spirit mourns in the heights. Aaron is acting at God"s command. Yet these tableaux are remarkably analogous. Why? It would appear that Rachel"s iconography as Tutelary Mother of both Southern and Northern founding dynasties was appropriated by the official Royal cult at Jerusalem. Teraphim are central to the religion of Biblical Women; Cherubim appear extensively in the Jerusalem Royal Cult. I will examine the power both lent to those who used them ritually.


Augustine's Interpretation of John 1:1–18: A Theology of God's Word
Program Unit: Christian Theology and the Bible
Mike Michielin, Toronto School of Theology

My paper will investigate Augustine's interpretation of John 1:1-18 that seeks to offer insights into how the church today can read the Gospel of John (and the rest of Scripture for that matter), in a theological manner. What informs Augustine's interpretive practices, and thus making it theological in orientation, is the subject matter of John 1:1-18, God"s Word. A theology of God"s Word, as presented by John"s prologue, entails that God can only be known through God"s self in Jesus Christ which makes doctrine, most specifically the doctrines of the Trinity, Incarnation and Salvation, adequate to the task of reading the Bible. Accordingly, the human and historical realities of Scripture for Augustine, and thus how he handles them, are informed by a doctrinally construed reality of God"s present activity. Literary-historical inquiries are permissible and encouraged but only insofar as they serve and are guided by a doctrinal construal of Scripture. Therefore, the interpretative acts of the reader are informed by the same doctrinally oriented understanding of the text. Since doctrine adequately informs the nature of the biblical text and the task of interpreting it, so does it adequately serve to correct and guide the church to live its life in a manner that corresponds to the Gospel reality of which Scripture bears witness.


Zion and Her Fellow Sufferers after the Fall of Jerusalem
Program Unit: Biblical Hebrew Poetry
Jill Middlemas, University of Aarhus

In the period following the destruction of Jerusalem the expression of and relief from suffering played an important role. One significant way the biblical writers encapsulate the nature and experience of suffering is through the portrayal of the human visage. The personified Jerusalem along with fellow sufferers the Servant of Deutero-Isaiah and the Strong Man of Lamentations played important roles in allowing the expression, rejection, understanding, and acceptance of tragedy. This paper assesses these three characters, comparing and contrasting their portrayals, and their outcomes to show how they function to provide meaningful reactions to disaster.


The Future of the Exile
Program Unit: Exile (Forced Migrations) in Biblical Literature
Jill Middlemas, University of Aarhus

This paper takes as its point of departure the way that the exile has been understood as an historical event and how it became a concept in biblical tradition. While taking into consideration research on the exile that conceptualizes the historical period in other frameworks, such as "the Neo-Babylonian period" or "the Templeless Age", it seeks to give equal weight to the way the idea of the exile grows in importance in the biblical tradition as a concept. Understanding the dual nature of the exile provides a means to establish areas for exciting new research on this topic.


Violent Martyrs: On Dispensing with Nonviolent Readings of John's Apocalypse
Program Unit: Violence and Representations of Violence in Antiquity
Paul Middleton, University of Wales

The book of Revelation has been recently dubbed 'a sick text' (Will Self). The violence of the imagery, the grotesquely brutal sexual humiliation of the Whore, combined with orgiastic heavenly glorification of such vengeance has rendered the Apocalypse if not a sick text, a problematic one. This paper will argue that many recent attempts to read John as offering a model of non-violent resistance through the act of martyrdom are unconvincing. This is because for John, martyrdom is not passive, but active violence; martyrs are soldiers in a cosmic holy war. The violent cosmological drama of the Apocalypse actually hinges on the martyrs' deaths; Divine violence in Revelation depends on the martyrs' contribution, and so the Apocalypse calls its readers to actively participate in (and collude with) both human and divine violence. Without this violence, the drama of the Apocalypse just does not work.


Whence the Unique Features of Ezekiel's Sanctuary?
Program Unit: Book of Ezekiel
Jacob Milgrom, University of California, Berkeley

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Character Formation and Community Ethics in Mesopotamian Wisdom Literature
Program Unit: Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
Alan R. Millard, University of Liverpool

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The Aramaeans, Assyria, and Israel
Program Unit: Assyriology and the Bible
Alan Millard, University of Liverpool

Aramaean history is more extensively known from her enemies' records than from her own. Those records show how relationships between the Aramaeans and their neighbors varied from fierce hostility and scorn to amity. Issues of security, domination, loyalty and rebellion were expressed in various ways, reflecting changing circumstances. Aramaic royal inscriptions contribute their native viewpoint. By comparing the situations and attitudes revealed, this paper wil explore the historical realities behind the reports.


First Dates in the Last Days? A Dialogue on 1 Corinthians 7 in Gendered Perspectives
Program Unit: Contextual Biblical Interpretation
Amanda C. Miller, Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education

As a feminist who reads the text specifically as a woman, this paper has grown out of my desire to engage in conversation with men reading the text specifically as men. Although the vast majority of biblical interpretation over the centuries has been done by men, it has been done not by men claiming their own gender and then reading from that perspective, but by men trying to maintain an impossible state of “objectivity.” This is a critical difference. In settings where women have gained relative equality with their male colleagues, the time is ripe for a move toward gender hermeneutics. My male colleague in this project, Alec Miller, is a seminary-trained ordained minister working as a chaplain for at-risk youth (and also my husband). It is my hope that he will be able to present with me, but as he is not an SBL member, I have submitted the paper under my name only at this time. Thus this paper brings several dichotomies into conversation with one another: female and male, scholar and minister, academy and residential chaplaincy. In this study, I first offer an introduction on the reasoning and methodology behind this approach of reading the text from gendered perspectives both male and female. The main body of the paper is in two sections, reading as a woman and reading as a man. Mr. Miller and I each elaborate separately on our own gendered understanding of Paul's treatment of marriage in 1 Corinthians 7. We then close the paper with a dialogue about how the act of listening to each other's perspectives has changed and encirched our own understanding of the text.


A Different Kind of Victory: 4Q427 7 and the Magnificat as Later Developments of the Hebrew Victory Song
Program Unit: Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity
Amanda C. Miller, Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education

Victory songs are a generally acknowledged, if hard to define, category of Hebrew poetry. In the purest form, they are directly connected to a battle scene (i.e. Moses" and Miraim's songs, Deborah's song) where God has brought about a miraculous triumph for the Hebrews and a violent defeat for their enemies. But the tradition also eventually encompassed other areas of life; Hannah"s song, replete with military imagery and rejoicing over the downfall of her enemies, is sung not on a battlefield, but at the dedication of a small boy to the service of Yahweh. Mary"s song in Luke 1, the Magnificat, is often identified as having strong identifications with the victory songs of the Hebrew Bible, especially Hannah"s song. Another parallel for the Magnificat is presented here: the so-called “self-glorification” hymn from the Qumran hodayot, found in its most complete form in 4Q427 fragment 7. This paper argues that these two songs were both originally independent from their current settings and represent a later development in the victory hymn tradition, when victory had to be defined more eschatologically. The two hymns are evaluated in comparison to each another and to four Hebrew-style victory hymns: Judges 5, 1 Samuel 2, Judith 16, and 1QM col. XIV. Four specific areas are explored: the image and role of God, the image and role of humanity, reversal themes, and eschatology. The most significant areas of change are found in the final two areas. Reversal themes, for example, are common in victory hymns, but generally for the purposes of war. In these later interpretations of the tradition, though, reversals have a more universal nuance. The author concludes that over the centuries, the Hebrew victory hymn appears to have undergone a gradual change from pure war imagery to a more social and eschatological orientation.


Pneuma and Hellenistic Anthropology in Romans 8:1–17
Program Unit: Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti
Colin Miller, Duke University

This paper treats the Apostle Paul's argument in Romans 8.1-17 in light of contemporary Hellenistic anthropologies. In this passage Paul makes it clear that the spirit is connected with ethical behavior. The question that is rarely treated is why there could be such a connection. What logical connection is there between the spirit and behavior, such that Paul can say that “if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you shall live” (Rom 8.13)? Why should it be that the spirit produces good behavior? My thesis is that the ethical character imparted by the pneuma is best explained by reference to the way that the Roman believers would have understood the word pneuma. Drawing on Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, Diogenes Laertius and others, I will show that, because of the marked influence of Stoicism and other closely related Hellenistic philosophies in Rome, Paul's anthropological terms in Romans 8.1-17 cannot but have been heard as part of this philosophical discourse. I will argue that for the widespread anthropology which their philosophy both created and gave expression to, the sort of pneuma one possessed determined what sort of qualities, including moral qualities, one possessed. It defined one"s behavior. Thus I suggest that in Rom 8.1-17 Paul uses this behavior-defining nature of the pneuma to exhort the Christians in Rome to behavior consonant with Christ"s spirit, which they have. And because Christ suffered and died before he was raised, it follows that those who have his spirit will do the same.


Is There Anything New under the (Mediterranean) Sun? Expressions of Near Eastern Deities in the Graeco-Roman World
Program Unit: Greco-Roman Religions
Daniel Miller, Bishop's University

As is well known, it was Greek practice to identify the deities of their pantheon with those of the pantheons of other peoples. The chief power on Mount Olympos was known to the Greeks as Zeus, but he was identified with weather gods of Syria-Palestine, notably the Israelite/Jewish deity Yahweh and the pan-West Semitic deity known as Baal-shamem (“Lord of the Heavens”). Such associations passed equally from east to west. Sometime in the middle of the first millennium BCE, the Tyrian Phoenicians began to identify their chief deity Melqart with the Greek demigod Heracles, leading even to a Hellenization of the former's originally Semitic depiction. Such divine cross-cultural identifications could be cross-epochal as well; the Graeco-Roman goddess Aphrodite is thought to have her origins in the Mesopotamian Inanna-Ishtar. Taking Zeus and Baal-shamem as an example, then, we find that they were/are both different and the same. Once one compares and contrasts them, the discrepancies derived are essentially but two: the particular people who worshiped them (Greeks vs. Semites) and the two designations they were given (“Zeus” vs. “Baal-shamem”). If these ostensibly “different” deities were consciously equated, however, then in reality all we are left with is two different names for the same construct—one signified with two signifiers. Furthermore, the signified is not a “real” entity that one could speak of as having a Platonic form, but rather a mental construct, rendering the signifiers to which it corresponds empty of any inherent meaning. Ultimately, the reality of cross-cultural and cross-epochal divine identifications leads to the inescapable conclusion that it would be more accurate to approach deities as subjective constructs “made” by humans rather than objective in any sense.


Ethnic Identity “in Christ” according to Paul
Program Unit: Construction of Christian Identities
James C. Miller, Asbury Theological Seminary

Examinations of ethnicity in the New Testament often focus on Paul's letters, and for good reason. After all, it is Paul who claims “For there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer male or female, there is no longer slave and free…” (Gal. 3:28), a statement usually taken as a blanket devaluation of various forms of identity, ethnic identity included. Furthermore, it is Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, who appears responsible more than any other for carrying the gospel across ethnic boundaries to the nations. This paper consists of three parts. The first offers a brief overview of the recent study of ethnicity. In light of issues raised by this survey, the paper examines the role of ethnicity in Paul's self-understanding and in what he advocates for the early Christian communities to whom he writes. In particular, the essay examines the relevance for ethnicity of Paul"s understanding of the Lordship of Jesus Christ, Paul"s devaluation of his own ethnicity in Philippians 3, and Paul"s seeming flexibility with his ethnic identity in 1 Corinthians. The paper concludes that ethnic identity, like all collective identities, has been transcended by the cosmic Lordship of Jesus Christ. Yet, ethnic identities remain, even if devalued. As such they may become tools for the gospel, as Paul"s own utilitarian use of his own ethnicity shows.


Spaces of Desire? Images That Do Things in Late Ancient Art
Program Unit: Art and Religions of Antiquity
Patricia Cox Miller, Syracuse University

The phrase “images that do things” comes from Maurizio Bettini's The Portrait of the Lover, a study of the triangulation of lover, beloved, and the beloved's portrait in the literature of the early Roman empire. Arguing that the portrait of the lover is a “sign stained by reality” (38), Bettini explores the phenomenon of the perfomativity of the image as a sign so contaminated with its referent that it can replace him (or her). The story that presides over Bettini"s study comes from Ovid: in it, a young woman, in grief over the imminent departure of her beloved, traces the outline of the sleeping youth"s shadow on a wall; when her father sees this design, he makes a model of it in clay. As Bettini remarks, “the original portrait of the lover was produced by a shadow” (8)—hence the art of creating images is founded in desiderium, an ardent desire for the presence of one who is absent. It is the shadow that authorizes the image and establishes contact and affinity between the object of art and its referent (43). Can this argument concerning the reciprocity between image and referent, embedded in the desiring gaze of the viewer, be applied to art objects as well as to literary images of art? The wager of this paper is that it can. I propose to compare and contrast organic, three-dimensional art (for example, Dionysus sarcophagi) with two-dimensional art (for example, apse mosaics of saints), asking how both might be considered to be memory spaces of desire. With its play of contour and shadow, how does three-dimensional art compare with the flat but often glittery space of two-dimensional art? In what sense can such art objects be said to return the gaze of the viewer insofar as they inflect the sense of sight with (differing) qualities of touch? In the main, I am interested in exploring how the organization or manipulation of space shapes the desire of the viewer.


Mark's Empty Tomb and the Myth of the “Missing Body” in Greco-Roman Literature
Program Unit: Bible, Myth, and Myth Theory
Richard C. Miller, Claremont Graduate University

The presentation explores the topic underpinnings for Mark's enigmatic ending, the "empty tomb" narrative in Mark 16. Once locating the vignette within this heroic topos, the study explores the subtext of these generic signals and what possible interpretation this places upon the preceding narrative. Instead of proposed as the moment sui generis in human history, the narrative places the protagonist within a standing, mythic tradition aimed at punctuating the heroic/divine stature of the man. Hence, the essay notes the inceptive disposition of the text vis-à-vis Early Christian "resurrection" mythography.


Julius Proculus and the Politics of Paul's Resurrection Myth in 1 Corinthians 15
Program Unit: Ancient Fiction and Early Christian and Jewish Narrative
Richard C. Miller, Claremont Graduate University

This presentation proposes an altogether different implied register for Paul's advancement of “eyewitnesses” to Jesus postmortem appearances in 1 Corinthians 15:1-6. Instead of proffered as proof of an historical event, Paul endeavors to add Jesus to the short list of royal figures having achieved apotheosis as especially conventional in Caesarian propaganda. Being the earliest known literary mention of Jesus" alleged resurrection, Paul's treatment provides an incisive window into the Early Christian performance of “resurrection” kerugma as prior and developing toward the later Gospel narratives. Ultimately, the essay argues that Paul et al have sought to bedeck the founder of their movement as a competing king (rex regum), the emblem and vehicle of Early Christian political subversion, thus applying a potent mimetic strategy vis-à-vis the emerging imperial, Romulan tradition of exaltatio.


Markan Parables of Harvest: An Ecological Reading of Mark's Gospel
Program Unit: Ecological Hermeneutics
Susan Miller, University of Aberdeen

Mark includes parables depicting the sowing of crops and abundant harvests (4:1-20; 26-29; 30-32). These parables emphasise the interconnectedness of Earth and humanity. Human beings depend on the produce of Earth to sustain life. When we approach Mark from a hermeneutics of suspicion, identification, and retrieval, however, we discover that the produce of Earth becomes a source of contention among human beings. Jesus is criticised for his meals with tax collectors and sinners (2:15-17). His disciples are condemned because they eat bread with unclean hands (7:5). Jesus, moreover, is initially reluctant to share the "children's bread" with a gentile girl (7:24-30). Earth is subject to human demands, and used to eatablish boundaries between human beings. These passages raise current ecological questions about the cultivation of crops and the sharing of food. In other texts, however, Earth receives respect as a source of abundant food for humanity. In the feedings of the five thousand and of the four thousand bread is broken and shared so that everyone eats and is fully satisfied (6:42; 8:8). These accounts act as a challenge to the earlier conflicts over bread. The sacrificial nature of Earth is illustrated in the descriptions of the broken bread which become abundant food for the hungry crowds in desert places. A hermeneutics of identification and retrieval may be seen in the narrative of the Last Supper in which bread is identified with the body of Jesus, and wine with his blood poured out for many (14:22-24). Earth and Jesus are identified in their wilingness to give up life for others. Jesus prophesies that he will not drink the fruit of the vine until he drinks it new in the Kingdom of God (14:25). From the perspective of Earth the vision of the Kingdom is expressed by the material realm in abundant harvests and food shared by all.


“They Shall Look on Him Whom They Pierced” (John 19:37): Visuality in the Fourth Gospel
Program Unit: Johannine Literature
Susan Miller, University of Aberdeen

This paper explores the significance of visuality in an analysis of the relationship between sight and the sacred in the Fourth Gospel. The Prologue gives an account of the word made flesh, and the testimony of the Johannine community "we have seen his glory" (1:14). Two modes of seeing, however, are associated with the presentation of Jesus' signs. For those who see with faith, the signs reveal the glory of Jesus (2:11) but others view the signs and see only the material world (2:23-25). Scholars including Jas Elsner examine visuality in the Graeco-Roman world, and note that an individual's mode of seeing may lead to union with the sacred, and transformation into the image he or she observes. A person's mode of seeing may also focus on the material, and he or she may fail to perceive the transcendent. These features of visuality are evident in the account of the crucifixion of Jesus. One of the soldiers pierces Jesus' side with a spear, and blood and water come out (19:34). The citation of Zech 12:10 "They shall look on him whom they pierced" emphasises the associations of sight with judgment and salvation. Those who look on are judged by what they see, and they see themselves observed by the one they see. Paradoxically, the crucifixion also brings salvation. In 12:32 Jesus teaches "After I am lifted up from the earth I shall draw everyone to myself." The sight of the crucified Christ becomes central to the believers' mode of viewing the world. This mode of seeing forms the basis of the testimony of the Beloved Disciple "He who saw it has borne witness" (19:35).


Quoting, Misquoting, or Paraphrasing Jesus? Latter-day Saints' Perspectives on Biblical Inerrancy and Infallibility
Program Unit: Latter-day Saints and the Bible
Robert L. Millet, Brigham Young University

The “Battle for the Bible” has been underway for a long time. Both ends of a theological spectrum have spoken out, quarreled, and marshaled their research to substantiate their respective points of view on how to perceive and present the Bible: Is it a valuable and precious, albeit human, literary collection worthy of serious study? Or is it the final, complete, error-free word and mind of Deity? This firestorm has raged, in particular, from the early part of the twentieth century as individual scholars as well as religious institutions (schools and seminaries) have taken sides on the issue. With the recent renewal of interest in such apocryphal works as the Gospel of Thomas and the resurgence of such biblical personalities as Mary Magdalene in the popular media, it is inevitable that works such as Bart Ehrman's The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture (Oxford, 1993), Lost Christianities (Oxford, 2003), and the more popular Misquoting Jesus (HarperSan Francisco, 2005) should send shockwaves throughout the universe of biblical studies, especially among Evangelical scholars, resulting in such Christological counterpunches such as Timothy Paul Jones's Misquoting Truth (IVP Books, 2007). In the midst of this war of words about matters of eternal consequence, what if anything has gone on within the world of Mormonism? How does The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a restorationist movement with a solidly Christian profession, address itself to the historical veracity, inerrancy, or infallibility of the Bible? The Mormons are certainly Bible believers, but they also accept additional books of holy scripture. How does their expanded canon affect their perspective on the Bible? Must one hold to the tenet of inerrancy in order to prevent the scriptural slide into secularity? Must one subscribe to an inerrant text in order to generate sufficient reverence and respect for the Bible? To what extent do Latter-day Saints believe the hand of God has been over the preservation of the Bible? These and other questions are among the matters to be addressed briefly in this paper.


The Population of Early Roman Corinth as Seen through the Graffiti
Program Unit: Archaeology of Religion in the Roman World
B. W. Millis, American School of Classical Studies at Athens

Knowledge of the population of Early Roman Corinth, as far as it is currently known from Corinth itself, has been formed almost entirely from public inscriptions; this class of evidence by its nature privileges the higher echelons of society and so presents a one-sided view of Corinthian society. There does exist, however, a small but significant corpus of graffiti, primarily ownership marks and the like on pottery, dating to the first century and a half of the colony's existence. This material has never been properly studied and remains unpublished; as a result, this evidence and its importance are not widely known. The graffiti has had, therefore, little impact on most discussions of Corinth's population despite offering a valuable corrective to the picture of society given by the public inscriptions. In an attempt to redress this state of affairs, this paper provides an overview of the graffiti and explores its implications both for recognizing an otherwise largely invisible segment of Corinth"s population and for shaping our understanding of the population of Early Roman Corinth as a whole.


Hyper-Reality in the City/Temple Imagery of Zechariah 1–8
Program Unit: Space, Place, and Lived Experience in Antiquity
Mary Mills, Liverpool Hope University

The aim of this paper is to explore biblical text via the tools of cultural geography, in this case the work of E. Soja and his modelling of urban spaces in Postmetropolis. In this study the focus will be the use of his model of Sim-city and the links between his thought and that of magical realism to explore space and place images within the sacred universe narrated in the prophetic text. This particular case study is set within the frame of contemporary concerns with spatiality as source of cultural meaning.


Son of a Prostitute and Daughter of a Warrior: What Do You Think the Story in Judges 11 Means?
Program Unit: Feminist Hermeneutics of the Bible
Pamela J. Milne, University of Windsor

This paper presents some of the data gathered in a feminist qualitative research project examining how ordinary readers construct meaning from the story in Judges 11. The project arose from an interest in exploring whether, and to what extent, feminism and the work of feminist biblical scholars might be having an impact on ordinary, non-academic readers of the bible. Would the attention given by feminists to violence against women in society influence contemporary readers" views of a biblical story involving the violence of war and domestic violence against a female character? Would such readers have encountered and adopted any of the interpretive strategies used by feminist biblical scholars for analyzing such “texts of terror”? Would they be resisting readers? Would they be supportive or critical of Jephthah's vow and his daughter's reaction to it? How would they understand and react to the outcome of the story for the daughter? Using Stuart Charmé"s qualitative study of children"s interpretation of the Genesis 2-3 story as a model, this study interviewed an equal number of female and male subjects, half with a strong religious background and half with little or no religious background. Subjects were asked to read the story and to respond several questions about characters, actions and the meaning of the story. Qualitative research, a favoured method of feminist scholars in many fields, is not widely used in biblical studies. The method itself is not feminist but qualitative research informed by feminist methodology has the potential to provide rich data to feminist biblical scholars about such things as the impact of gender, social location and other factors on how readers understand biblical texts in today"s world. Such data is important to feminists whose goal is to bring about positive change for women.


Expanding Ancient Narratives: The Phenomenon of Revised Introductions in Biblical and Mesopotamian Texts
Program Unit: Hebrew Scriptures and Cognate Literature
Sara J. Milstein, New York University

In the ongoing discussion of the Bible's formation, it is possible to neglect the demonstration of specific techniques for the revision of literature. One prominent technique that has not received attention is expansion through introduction. In order to define techniques for revision in the Bible, it is essential to examine them in the company of independent sources with diachronic evidence. For this, Mesopotamian literary traditions exhibit clear techniques of revision. Expansion through introduction is widely applied in both literary corpora. In the Bible, the book of Judges stands as a particularly potent repository of texts that demonstrates the diverse applications of this technique: Judges 2:11-19 represents the new Deuteronomistic prologue for the collection; the Gideon cycle has been recast as an introduction to Judges 9; and the concubine tale is created with the specific aim of revamping the Benjaminite war narrative. The use of revised introductions to expand and transform received texts is also demonstrable in the separate recensions of Adapa and the Gilgamesh Epic. The method of revision through introduction stands out as both fruitful and elusive, for the fronting of received material with a new text transforms the details of the older work completely. Because revised introductions alter one's reading of the following text, they easily foster misinterpretations of the original narratives and the processes by which they evolved. By tracking the use of revised introductions in biblical and Mesopotamian narratives, I shall demonstrate that the recognition and analysis of this phenomenon is essential for tracking the process by which certain texts have evolved and for disentangling later readings from the intentions of the original author. Rather than prioritize the Mesopotamian evidence, I allow findings both from the Bible and from Mesopotamia to contribute toward the development of a model for the expansion of ancient literature through introduction.


“Allusions” of Grandeur: Revisiting the Link between Exodus 32 and 1 Kings 12
Program Unit: Pentateuch
Sara J. Milstein, New York University

The evident relationship between Exod 32:1-6 and 1 Kgs 12:25-33 has not been sufficiently explicated. In each text, the declaration “Here are your gods, O Israel, who brought you out of Egypt” is uttered before calf images, a parallel that requires an explanation. Scholars generally explain this likeness in one of two ways. The majority view it within the greater context of literary dependence: 1 Kings 12 spawned Exodus 32 as a polemic against Jeroboam. Others identify the pair of statements as remnants of a common cultic formula at Bethel. Yet both of these proposals fail to account for the fact that in narrative terms, the declaration is only at home in the context of Exodus 32. I aim to offer a fresh reading of the relationship between the two texts, one that pinpoints 1 Kgs 12:28b as a secondary allusion to Exodus 32. I propose that 1 Kings 12 and Exodus 32 originated as independent narratives, both of which involved the erection of calf images. In the version preceding 1 Kings 12, Jeroboam's calves were criticized not because they were “gods,” but rather because they detracted from Jerusalem-based worship. In the Deuteronomistic editor's milieu, however, such a threat to Jerusalem would no longer be relevant, and thus he reinterpreted Jeroboam"s offense through the lens of Exodus 32, inserting the Israelites" words into Jeroboam"s mouth. This interpolation triggered two major shifts in interpretation: first, by alluding to the events of Exodus 32, it repackaged Jeroboam"s calves as illegitimate, and second, it had the boomerang effect of causing Exodus 32 to look like a polemic against the Israelite king. In turn, the shared presence of the declaration in 1 Kgs 12:28b and Exod 32:4, evidently the only valid connection between the two texts, grants the illusion of a closer literary relationship.


What Is a “Christian” in First and Second Century: The Case of Antioch
Program Unit: Construction of Christian Identities
Simon Mimouni, École Pratique des Hautes Études

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Attachment to the Body in the Greek Testament of Abraham
Program Unit: Pseudepigrapha
Francoise Mirguet, Arizona State University

While most studies present Abraham's general attitude in the Greek Testament of Abraham as a refusal to die, this paper will instead read the character's resistance as a reluctance to abandon his physical body. It will argue that the Testament pertains rather to the relationship to the body than to a more abstract conception of human finitude. Based on a comparative study of the short and long recensions as established by Francis Schmidt (1986), the paper will first examine the metaphors for death, both in the narrative itself and in God"s, Michael"s, and Abraham"s talks, to show their reference to the body. It will then turn to Michael"s mediation, Abraham"s visit to Heaven, and Death"s appearance, all divine strategies aimed at helping Abraham face the impending end of his physical existence. Finally, on the basis of the numerous references to the body, the paper will suggest to read the Testament, especially in the shorter recension, as the story of a transformative experience, by which Abraham is invited to change the way he relates to his own body.


The New World Order: Reading and Enacting Earth in Zechariah 14 and Persian Imperial Inscriptions
Program Unit: Ecological Hermeneutics
Christine Mitchell, St. Andrew's College, Saskatoon

In the Bisitun inscription, Darius the King depicts himself as master of a human empire. The Earth only figures in his narrative as a space in which the Lie may flourish; Darius eliminates the Lie by the grace of Ahura Mazda. However, the absence of the Earth in the inscription is balanced by the carving of the inscription and its associated relief on a rock outcropping. In Zechariah 14, the Earth is very much a part of the cosmic drama enacted by Yhwh on the Day of Yhwh. There are two significant ways that the Earth participates. In the first, the Earth's actions signal or are in sympathy with Yhwh's actions on that day. In the second, Yhwh acts upon the Earth; the Earth is a object of Yhwh"s power, signaled upon by his actions. Two types of mastery of the Earth are thereby enacted: the Imperial Persian, in which the Earth is mastered by its entire irrelevance to Darius"s domination (yet reappears as the physical setting for the inscription), and the Judahite, in which the Earth is mastered as part of Yhwh"s dominion of the cosmos.


Review of Martin Meiser, Galater (NTP)
Program Unit: Use, Influence, and Impact of the Bible
Margaret M. Mitchell, University of Chicago

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The Number of David's Psalms: A New Proposal
Program Unit: Qumran
Noam Mizrahi, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The famous list of David's Compositions in 11QPsa 27:2-11 ascribes to David numerous poetic and liturgical works. The numbers assigned to the various genres clearly reflect a calendrical background, linked to the so-called solar calendar (364 daily songs, 52 songs for the Sabbaths etc). The only obscure datum is the 3,600 psalms, and all the calendrical interpretations proposed so far are unconvincing. This paper will offer a new proposal, based upon the integration of both literary analysis and linguistic considerations. An analysis of the structure, themes and motifs of the passage suggests that the author was relying on two biblical inter-texts: the praise of Solomon's wisdom (1 Kgs 5:9-14) and its functional equivalent describing Solomon"s preparations for the construction of the Temple (2 Chr 1:18–2:1). The number 3,600 can thus be derived from 2 Chr 2:1 (cf. v. 17). However, in Chronicles rhis number refers to Solomon"s construction supervisors (termed as menas?s?h?îm), while in David"s Compositions it is the number of David"s psalms. This surprising transformation is elucidated by a linguistic inquiry into the semantic development of the root n-s?-h? in Hebrew, which suggests that the biblical term menas?s?h?îm was interpreted anachronistically in the light of the musical term menas?s?eah? (very common in superscriptions of biblical psalms). Such a development is paralleled by similar usage in late strata of Rabbinic Hebrew and in Piyyut literature. The conclusion is that the mysterious datum in David"s Compositions has no calendrical implications; rather, it is an indication of the literary dependence of the passage upon its biblical models. It also serves to illustrate an important feature of the Hebrew language employed in the Qumran scrolls: its scholastic relation to biblical language, which is articulated in “pseudo-classicisms.”


What Is Theological Interpretation of Scripture?
Program Unit: Theological Interpretation of Scripture
R. W. L. Moberly, Durham University

In this paper Moberly seeks to do three things. First, he considers something of the history of recent renewed approaches to theological interpretation among Protestants and Roman Catholics, and the nature of the influences upon them, not least the work of Barth. Secondly, he analyzes certain strengths and weaknesses in selected practitioners, with special attention to a) rhetoric, b) the relationship between theory and practice. Thirdly, he offers some proposals for possible ways ahead.


“Abraham Saw My Day!” Making Sense of John 8:48–59 from the Septuagint Genesis 22
Program Unit: Greek Bible
David P. Moessner, University of Dubuque

****In John 8:56 Jesus tells “the Jews” that “Abraham your father rejoiced that he would see my day and he saw it and rejoiced.” Yet the MT divulges only that Abraham perceived that God “would see to” (Qal imperf., ? ? ?) the provision of a sheep, and Abraham then names the place of the sacrifice “the Lord/Yahweh will see to it/provide” (Qal imperf., Gen. 22:14a). The narrator adds that, “it is said to this day, "on the Mount of the Lord, it will be provided/seen/he will be seen"” (Niphal 3rd person, imperf., Gen. 22:14b). At most, this mysterious 3rd person niphal could subtly suggest that “the Lord/Yahweh” will be seen at some future point on the mountain. The immediate context, however, argues for the straightforward reference to the sheep/ram that in fact “was provided” (Gen. 22:13). --In a very different manner, the LXX invites Jesus" assertion that “Abraham had already seen” him (eiden [aorist], John 8:56) and thus makes much better sense of Jesus" fantastic claim and the resulting volatile reaction of the Jews in picking up stones to kill him: 1) Instead of “the Lord will provide/see to it,” LXX Gen. 22:14 declares that Abraham named the place of sacrifice, “"The Lord saw" (eiden), in order that they might say today, "On the mountain, the Lord was seen/appeared"” (Kyrios ophthe). Clearly Abraham is the unspoken “seer” of the Lord; 2) Thus the LXX brandishes the parallel phrases “Abraham saw” (eiden, 22:13) “the Lord saw” (eiden, 22:14); 3) Because in Gen. 22:13 Abraham “sees/perceives” and replaces Isaac with the ram (krios), the suggestion is not far that Abraham sees the day that the christos (alliteration and assonance with krios) will take the place of his son Isaac, since, after all, he has “already seen the Lord” (22:14b).


But We See … Jesus?: Hebrews 2:9 in Light of Jewish Traditions about the Ascension of Moses
Program Unit: Hebrews
David M. Moffitt, Duke University

B. Shabbat 88b–89a contains R. Joshua b. Levi's account of Moses" ascension into heaven. In this story Moses is confronted by the ministering angels who challenge his presence in their realm. When God defends Moses, the angels reply with the words of Ps 8:5. Eventually they relent and begin to tell Moses their secrets. Of particular note, the angel of death tells Moses his secret, thereby giving Moses power over death. The collocation here of “ministering” angels, an ascent into heaven, a citation of Ps 8:5 and the power of the angel of death being surrendered is remarkable when compared with the similar combination of these same elements in Heb 1–2. Moreover, after discussing Ps 8:5–6 and Jesus" victory over the one who holds the power of death, the author of Hebrews immediately proceeds to draw an intriguing contrast between Jesus and Moses (Heb 3:1–6). In this paper I will argue that these and other factors suggest the possibility that both Hebrews and b. Shabbat attest an older tradition about Moses" ascension into heaven. This hypothesis sheds fresh light on two important issues. First, the influence of such a tradition provides new insight into the long debated question regarding the author's concern in Heb 1 to address the relationship between the Son and the angels. Second, this hypothesis offers an explanation for the puzzling way in which Jesus is finally identified with the Son in Heb 2:9. The rhetorical panache of 2:9"s statement “but the one who was for a little while made lower than the angels we see—Jesus” has long been recognized. The force and presence of this stylized flourish, however, may be more clearly understood if the audience could justifiably have expected to hear another name—Moses.


“And They Behaved Even Worse Than Their Fathers”: Reconsidering the Deuteronomistic Origin of Judges 2:11–19
Program Unit: Hebrew Scriptures and Cognate Literature
Lauren A. S. Monroe, Cornell University

****Biblical scholars use the book of Judges to understand both Israel's emergence in Canaan, and the motives of late biblical authors who preserved and recast Israel's origin traditions in light of contemporary trends. In its final form, Judges 2:11-19, identified by Richter as the Deuteronomistic schema, clearly reflects these late developments. In the text we have received, terms such as ????? ????, ???? ??? and ??????? ??? ?????? express a theological interest in Yahweh, who punishes his people for breach of covenant by giving them into the hands of their enemies. However, when we consider the verbs in these phrases on their own terms, they portray territorial rivalries and fears of circumscription by raiding enemies that points to an early tribal socio-political context, entirely fitting for the period in which the book of Judges is set. Internal biblical evidence brings the tribal aspect into clearer relief, and extra-biblical evidence casts additional light. A comparison of this text with Amarna letters from the Aziru and Labayu correspondence, where the verb šahatu signifies fear of losing land to one"s enemies, is particularly illuminating and suggests that we reconsider the meaning of the verb ??????? in Judges 2:19. The Egyptian loan-word ????? and the verb ????? in Judges 2:14, often translated with the generic meaning “to plunder,” may deliberately call to mind the Š3sw raiders, well attested in Egyptian texts from the 18th Dynasty through the Third Intermediate Period. When taken together, this evidence suggests the possibility that embedded in Judges 2:11-19 is an older text that described this period in Israel"s past in explicitly political terms; or, at the very least, that the late historian responsible for the book of Judges in its final form, deliberately appropriated a tribal political language that was quite ancient within a West-Semitic cultural milieu.


Eden, Earth, and Eschatology in 4 Ezra
Program Unit: Ecological Hermeneutics
Jonathan Moo, University of Cambridge

Fourth Ezra is usually considered to represent an extreme case, even among the apocalypses, of eschatological dualism and world-denying pessimism. There is every reason to suspect that for this text Earth is of no intrinsic value, lacks any voice of its own and—in light of the profound corruption assigned to the present saeculum—has little hope of being included in the glorious future envisioned for Ezra and the righteous. But it is possible that previous readings have too quickly passed over the more positive elements in 4 Ezra's portrayal of Earth. In particular, the potential for the non-human created order to stand over and against sinful human beings and to testify to the "ways of the Most High" has often been missed or considered to be finally rejected by the implied author. This paper retrieves the importance of such elements for understanding the outlook of 4 Ezra, focusing ultimately on the central event described in the book of Ezra's "conversion". Although this episode has been the subject of much attention—not least for its comparison of Zion and Earth as grieving mothers—the significance of Ezra"s location in a field apart from humankind and his odd diet of flowers has not been adequately explained nor related cogently to the rest of the narrative. I suggest that part of the explanation lies in an implicit link made between Eden, Earth, the ways of God, and the new creation. Ezra"s "conversion" reveals the potential of those parts of Earth that are unsullied by humankind to witness to God"s sovereignty, love and justice and to serve as material pointers to the new creation. The results of this study may call into question the assumption that the apocalypses—and 4 Ezra in particular—have nothing positive to contribute to an ecological ethos.


Integrating Religion into Teacher Certification and Training: Past Experiences and Future Vision
Program Unit:
Diane Moore, Program in Religion and Secondary Education, Harvard Divinity School

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The Struggle between Mount Gerizim and Mount Moriah in the Writings of Josephus
Program Unit: Josephus
Menahem Mor, University of Haifa

The lecture focuses on three major events related to Josephus' description of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim, which was established as a rival to the Temple of Jerusalem. 1. JA.XI, 306-312; 321-325; 346: The detailed account of the background of the building of the Samaritan Temple during the later part of the Persian rule in Eretz Israel. 2. JA. XII 258-261; 262-264: The correspondence between the Samaritans and the Seleucid King, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, during the religious persecutions. 3.JA. XIII, 256= War, I, 62-63: The destruction of the Samaritan Temple by John Hyrcanus in 111 BCE. These three accounts by Josephus deal with pivotal events in the history of the relations between the Jews and Samaritans. However, can we trust Josephus on this issue? Is Josephus, who lived in the first century CE, and was biased, against the Samaritans, a reliable source? The lecture will discuss the questions: can we reconstruct from the above writings the history of the Samaritans, the relations between the two temples and the relations between the Samaritans and the Jewish people.


The Date of the Building of the Samaritan Temple—Again?
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
Menahem Mor, University of Haifa

The lecture will focus on questions of the background and date of the erection of the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim. Since, Josephus description is the sole evidence for the building of the Samaritan Temple (Jewish Antiquities. XI, 306-312; 321-325; 346), modern scholarship discusses this topic at length, and its conclusions ranged from rejection of this evidence to various attempts based on archaeological material to solve the chronological dilemmas related to the building of the temple. In a series of articles in Hebrew and English I argued that the question of dating the building of the Samaritan Temple is a 'solved riddle", and I dated it to 333/2, during the vacuum between the collapse of the Persian kingdom and the eve of the conquest of Eretz Israel by Alexander the Great. Recently Dr. Yitzhak Magen, the archaeologist who dug for the last 20 years at Mount Gerizim and its vicinity, based on findings from Gerizim, rejected Josephus' account and its dating of the building the Samaritan Temple. He argues for an earlier dating. According to him, the temple was built in the middle of the 4th Century BCE, during the days of Nehemiah's rule in Yahud. The lecture will examine Magen's main arguments, and will survey the archeological findings which he used for the early dating. These arguments will be rejected by using evidence from the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah, which will allow us to continue to argue for a later date, the fourth century, for the erection of the Samaritan Temple.


Roman Jerusalem as a Setting of Earliest Christianity: Archaeology, Literary Invention, and Modern Fascination
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
Milton Moreland, Rhodes College

The recent debates about inscribed names on a few Early Roman period ossuaries have drawn new attention to the composition of a group of early Christians in pre-70 CE Jerusalem. Many recent ideas about the setting of first century Jerusalem are overly reliant on the uncritical use of literary texts. For example, several scholars have attempted to explain the presence of Jesus" family and other “Christians” in Jerusalem by appealing primarily to the canonical Acts of the Apostles. The story in Acts is hard to compete with, but as scholars we do ourselves a great disservice if we simply allow “Luke's” narrative to establish the questions and parameters of our research. A careful combination of texts and artifacts, with additional research into ancient group formation, will lead to new and better constructions of the past that free us from our complete dependence on the ancient stories. Archaeology can help us replace the picture of pre-70 Jerusalem that we find in early Christian literature with more plausible reconstructions of life in this ancient Roman environment. When we think about Early Roman Jerusalem as a setting of earliest “Christianity,” what appears clear is that any group in this city would have faced very similar pressures to those that were encountered by typical associations in most other Roman urban settings. Members of this “Christian” group were living in a city where the political, military, and religious authorities had traditionally shown very little leniency on critics of the temple institution and its related economic and commercial functions. In this paper, I examine the archaeological material that helps us better understand daily life in first century CE Jerusalem, with a focus on how we can more responsibly reconstruct the early “Christian” group that lived in the city.


Ezekiel and the Twelve: Similar Concerns as an Indication of a Shared Tradition?
Program Unit: Book of the Twelve Prophets
David Morgan, University of Aberdeen

It is commonplace in the Hebrew Bible for themes such as "land," "nations,' and "temple" to be given emphasis and theological import. In Ezekiel and the Twelve, the concepts of land, ruler, and nations serve as theological and literary structuring devices in order to prepare for temple building. These concepts serve as literary controls for not only how the texts should be read but also how the conditions for a new temple should appear. Thus they function as markers of coherency and unity for their respective books. Although both prophetic works share these same notions as a prelude for what a new temple should like and how it should function, the individual ideas are conceived in a manner particular to each prophetic tradition and its tradents. The parallel use of these ideas in Ezekiel and the Twelve may suggest common concerns and traditions behind the reception, arrangement, and transmission of the texts.


Text, Nation-Making, and Violence: Rousseau's Lévite d'Ephraïm
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible and Political Theory
Mira Morgenstern, City College New York

This paper analyzes the enterprise of reading the Bible in modern times, through an 18th-century interpretation of a relatively unexplored Biblical text by one modern political theorist who is conventionally associated with the values of freedom and revolution. In reexamining Rousseau's reading of the Biblical Concubine at Gibeah episode, the contemporary reader is struck by many seeming anomalies. Why would a theorist of change choose to read an Old Testament text? How might an ancient narrative contribute to the articulation of a political theory that sought to overturn social and political institutions that were considered out of step with the modern perceptions of justice and reason? And why does Rousseau, an advocate of sensibility and love, choose to write a prose-poem about a text that is steeped in violence? This paper explores Rousseau's use of violence in constructing a sense of national identity, particularly as he depicts this in his elucidation of an Old Testament Biblical text in his prose poem, "The Levite of Ephraim." Rousseau raises pressing questions in the context of the 18th-century (projected) establishment of new polities: to what extent is violence and the polity inextricably linked? To what extent is the violence inherent in the erasure of the Other mandated and thus justified by the establishment of community? Finally, how does Rousseau's refraction of the Biblical text open up new understandings of the theoretical enterprise (Bentham"s “truth” vis-à-vis Coleridge"s “meaning”) of reading the Bible in the contemporary world?


Manuscript Groupings in the Gospel of John
Program Unit: Novum Testamentum Graecum: Editio Critica Maior
Bruce M. Morrill, ITSEE, University of Birmingham

The Text und Texwert analysis of John 1-10 goes a long way to providing the evidence for selecting MSS to be included in the editio maior Iohannes. The matching analysis of all available MSS in Jn 18 brings the whole series to a conclusion. The results are outlined for the first time.


Spinoza's Historical Biblical Criticism in Context: The Seventeenth Century Socio-political Background to the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus
Program Unit: History of Interpretation
Jeffrey L. Morrow, University of Dayton

The early modern political philosopher Benedict Spinoza is often viewed as the father of the historical critical method for studying the Bible. Building upon the work of contemporaries, Spinoza constructed the methodological foundation upon which later historical criticism would build. This paper examines the political background of Spinoza's biblical criticism, thereby placing Spinoza's work in its socio-historical context. Spinoza"s politics had a direct affect upon his biblical criticism, and the socio-historical context in which he lived gave rise to his political theory. The Thirty Years" War and the political turmoil in the Dutch Republic provide the proximate backdrop for Spinoza"s political theory, and upon his biblical criticism. Spinoza extended the insights of his contemporaries, including Thomas Hobbes, in directions that would allow the historical critical project to thrive into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This paper examines Spinoza"s biblical criticism in his political/theological work, Tractatus theologico-politicus, against the socio-historical context within which he wrote it. Contemporary Bible scholars have by and large neglected to examine this connection between the advent of early modern politics and the origin of the historical critical method, even though more recently Spinoza"s role in the history of modern biblical interpretation has become increasingly recognized. This paper seeks to contribute to contemporary discussions of biblical interpretation by examining the history of historical critical interpretation in its formative socio-historical context.


“For God and the King”: A Neo-Assyrian Formula in the Bible and at Ekron?
Program Unit: Assyriology and the Bible
William S. Morrow, Queen's Theological College

In 1999, S. Gitin and M. Cogan published a dedicatory inscription from 7th century BCE Ekron that reads lb"l wlpdy, “for Baal and for Padi” (IEJ 49 [1999]: 193-202). They noted that this was the first “West-Semitic inscription in which a god and a king are joined in a single dedication” and posited influence from Neo-Assyrian models. Connections were suggested with the Neo-Assyrian loyalty oath (cf. pala? ili ú šarri, “fear of god and the king,” in an inscription of Sargon II). Additional support for their association occurs in the phrase ina ma?ar DINGER u LUGAL, which is attested in Neo-Assyrian loyalty oaths (SAA 2, 4r: 17 and 6: 604, plural in 6: 420). Knowledge of Neo-Assyrian loyalty oaths in West-Semitic cultures is also indicated by parallels between Deuteronomy 13 and 28 and the Vassal Treaties of Esarhaddon. But Gitin and Cogan overlook the possibility of a connection between their inscription and Akkadian dedicatory inscriptions which devote objects to a god and for the life of the donor. This combination occurs, e,g., in a private Neo-Assyrian building inscription (KAH 2 138) dedicated to Girra by Sebetti-remanni. Nevertheless, any model of Neo-Assyrian influence has to deal with the fact that the formula “god and the king” is attested or implied in a number of biblical passages, including Exod 22:27; 2 Sam 15:21; 1 Kgs 21:13; 2 Kgs 11:17; Isa 8:21; and Prov. 24:21. Do these passages overturn the thesis of Neo-Assyrian provenance? The paper will identify the most likely inspiration for this inscription by a study of these biblical texts and with references to the influence of Neo-Assyrian culture and ideology on Judah and Philistia during the 7th century BCE.


Place, Role, and Purpose of the Sabbath in the First Genesis Creation Account (Genesis 1:1–2:4a)
Program Unit: Sabbath in Text and Tradition
Jiri Moskala, Andrews University

Even though humans are the "crown" of the First Biblical Creation Account, from the literary structural analysis it is evident that the Sabbath is its culmination point. This observation is crucial for arguing for the theocentric perspective of this account. The purpose of the Creation story lies in stressing humanity's dependency on God. Humans are not angels, nor animals, nor small gods, but without relationship with God they are only on the level of animals (both created on the sixth day). When humans deny their dependency on God and try to be "God," they behave like beasts. Also the holiness of the Sabbath will be discussed from the viewpoint of the Presence of God.


The Man with the Flow of Power: Sickly Bodies in Mark 5:24–36
Program Unit: Healthcare and Disability in the Ancient World
Candida R. Moss, University of Notre Dame

This paper is an ideological critical reading of the story of the woman with the flow of blood in Mark 5: 24-36. It examines the construction of the bodies of both Jesus and the woman in light of ancient theories of disease that were concerned with the balance, boundedness and porosity of the body. It argues that, when considered in this context, the body of Jesus is itself a kind of uncontrolled porous body and therefore a sick and effeminate body. Thus, while the overarching meta-narrative of Mark supports an idea of the faithful as healthy impervious bodies, the protagonist remains throughout the narrative porous and sickly.


Persecution and Social Prejudice in Early Christianity: Constructing Paul as a Christian in the Acts of the Apostles
Program Unit: Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti
Christopher Mount, DePaul University

Early in the second century, Christianity began to merit notice in the writings of elite Romans. The accusations of Pliny, Tacitus, and Suetonius against Christians establish the political context for a remarkable claim of the Paul of the Acts of the Apostles: “I am standing before the emperor's tribunal, where I should be judged” (Acts 25:10). The Paul of Acts acknowledges the legitimacy and competency of the emperor to pass judgment on Christians, Christians whose only fault is to be the object of mob violence and corrupt officials. The construction of Paul as a Christian in Acts represents a precise attempt to create a positive social identity for Christians in response to the social prejudice reflected in the accusations of the sort leveled against Christians by Romans at the beginning of the second century.


“I Know a Person in Christ Who Fourteen Years Ago Was Caught up to the Third Heaven”: Myth and Religious Experience in the Religion of Paul
Program Unit: Bible, Myth, and Myth Theory
Christopher Mount, DePaul University

In his letters Paul creates a discourse about experiences "in Christ": spirit possession manifested in out-of-body journeys, visions, spiritual gifts such as speaking in tongues and the working of signs and wonders. Paul's discourse connects the myth of the resurrected Christ to particular performances within the community. What in contemporary discourse about religion would be labeled religious experience becomes a way for Paul of enacting the myth of the resurrected Christ. However, in contemporary scholarly discourse about Paul and religious experience, religious experience has become a category separate from and prior to the myth of the resurrected Christ. In this scholarly discourse about Paul's religion, religious experience becomes an enactment of a modern mythology of religion and serves an apologetic purpose to connect material and transcendent explanations of religion in general and Paul's religion in particular.


Does Paul Respect the Context of His Scriptural Quotations, and Does It Matter?
Program Unit: Paul and Scripture
Stephen Moyise, University of Chichester

For some scholars, the fact that Paul can quote a text like Isa 52:5 in Rom 2:24 and Isa 52:7 in Rom 10:15 is clear evidence that Paul respects the context of his quotations. For other scholars, the Sarah and Hagar allegory of Galatians 4 and the "muzzle the ox" quotations in 1 Cor 9:9 is clear evidence that he did not. There are also a number of mediating positions such as (1) Paul shows awareness of the context but is not bound by it (2) Paul does not respect the context from a modern historical-critical perspective but does from a first-century perspective (3) Paul modifies the meaning of individual verses but respects their context from a larger canonical or salvation-history perspective. It is also clear that this is not simply an academic question but carries moral implications for Paul's integrity and perhaps even for the faith or non-faith of the individual scholar. In this paper, I will explore whether agreement in the meaning of key words such as "respect" and "context" could lead to some sort of consensus or whether these scholarly differences are the result of different presuppositions.


Deuteronomy: Deuteronomy and the Quran: Exploring the Nuances
Program Unit: Qur'an and Biblical Literature
Omer M. Mozaffar, University of Chicago

Of all the books of the Pentateuch, perhaps none has as much similarity with the Quran in overall content as does Deuteronomy. The Quran narrates more passages about Moses than any other figure, including Muhammad, Abraham, Jesus and Mary. The Quran provides narratives on the story of the Children of Israel. Likewise, the Deuteronomy Shema finds parallels in the Muslim Shahada. The goal of this paper is to provide an analysis of the parallels, differences, and possible evolutions between the two texts. The focus will be placed on the story of Moses, the Children of Israel, and the development of the Law. We will also focus on the depictions of YHWH and Allah in general and in relation to the Children of Israel in particular. In addition, we will approach the genre in Islamic scholarship known as isra"iliyyat, scholarship derived from Jewish and Christian sources, in commentary on the above narratives, as well as commentary on the Law.


The Parable of the Good Samaritan: Challenging Relationships and Redefining Goodness
Program Unit: Psychology and Biblical Studies
Vincent Mudd, John Carroll University

This article juxtaposes the usage of the Good Samaritan pericope by Jesus and Luke, exploring the ethical and relational aspects of Jesus' original intention and the later Lukan interpretation for the developing church. By highlighting the dominance Luke's application of the parable has had in religious and social institutions throughout history, the paper then proposes a re-discovery of Jesus' intention for the parable and how it can radically impact us today in ways Luke's understanding can not. A modern psychological understanding of the parable is critiqued and then an alternate understanding presented in conclusion.


The Influence of Numenius: The “Self-Originate” in Sethian Literature and the Gospel of Judas
Program Unit: Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism
Ellen Muehlberger, DePauw University

****There is a peculiar epithet, the “self-originate” (autogenes), which appears in seven works of Sethian literature: the Apocryphon of John, the Gospel of the Egyptians, Zostrianos, the Three Steles of Seth, Marsanes, Allogenes, the Thought of Norea, and the untitled treatise in the Bruce Codex. (It also appears in the potentially Sethian Eugnostos and the text which encorporates parts of Eugnostos, Sophia of Jesus Christ.) In these works, the epithet describes several different actors: at times, “self-originate” refers to the parent (ApJohn, GosEgypt); it is the child of the holy spirit and the Barbelo (ApJohn II); it can be an entity distinct from the parent (Zos, untitled treatise); alternately, it can be a space of rest (Norea). My presentation will use this epithet as an index by which to investigate the relationship between Sethian literature and middle Platonic philosophers. Specifically, I contextualize the use of “self-” as a prefix by considering the way this same prefix is used by Numenius of Apamea. Numenius distinguishes between the One God and the Demiurge by noting that the One God is “good unto itself” (autoagathon; frag. 16), whereas the Demiurge is simply “good.” I argue that Numenius's division inspires the Sethian use of “self-originate” to speak, in multiple ways, of several divine actors. Interestingly enough, the Gospel of Judas identifies one of its divine actors as “the angelic self-originate” (47; see also 48, 50). My presentation will conclude with remarks relating the appearance of “self-originate” in Judas to these two contexts: Sethian literature and the thought of Numenius.


Royal Women Public and Private: A Spatial Analysis
Program Unit: Space, Place, and Lived Experience in Antiquity
Monika Cornelia Mueller, Kirchliche Hochschule Bethel

In my paper I trace the movements of royal women in Hebrew Bible narratives as compared to some textual and archaeological evidence from the ancient Near East. I raise the question what defines a place as “private” or “public”, and whether this distinction has some implications for the way royal women are seen and judged in the Hebrew Bible. I argue that the “public”-“private”-dichotomy – though much-criticized – may be a helpful tool for the spatial analysis of biblical texts as long as some limitations of the concept are kept in mind. It is e.g. partly mirrored in the concept of babanu vs. bitanu in Assyrian palaces. As part of a ritual or ceremony, women's movements are always part of the public sphere, strictly regulated, and highly symbolic. But this applies to men as well. In describing other situations, place, time, and actors or agents are equally important factors. My thesis is, though, that for the biblical judgement of women's roles as adaequate or inadaequate the spatial component has larger implications: while for many actions the moral standards applied are the same as for men, the border between visibility and invisibility determines decent versus indecent female behaviour. This is largely influenced by the social organization of “public” versus “private” space. Hence apart from general ethical values or a possible ritual setting “space” becomes a basic category in the judgement of female action as (il)legitimate, (in)appropriate, or questionable. On a second level I will argue that an exact tracing of where royal women act can help us assess the author"s notions about palatial organization. Thus these narratives may even reveal some hints about the time and social circles of their origin.


Kinneret: A Nonbiblical City in the Land of the Bible
Program Unit: Archaeological Excavations and Discoveries: Illuminating the Biblical World
Stefan Münger, University of Bern

The paper synthesizes the results of excavations at Tel Kinrot/Tell el-"Oreme undertaken by the European Kinneret Regional Project under the auspices of the Universities of Bern, Helsinki, Leiden and Mainz during the years 2003 to 2008. Tel Kinrot, located on the northwestern shores of the Sea of Galilee (Israel), has a long settlement history ranging from the Chalcolithic to the Ottoman period. The site is identified with the ancient town of Kinneret mentioned in Egyptian documents dating to the 18th dynasty and in the Hebrew Bible (Josh 19:35). According to present knowledge, Kinneret had its heyday during Iron Age IB (ca. 1050-950 BCE) when it became one of the most important cities in Northern Palestine. In contrast to other settlements at that time, Kinneret was a heavily fortified, centrally planned and well-organized town. The numerous imported goods from different regions of the Levant and beyond can easily be explained on the background of the city's strategically and economically favorable position on a small pass along the via maris. However, certain other features – such as burial patterns, ceramic traditions or iconographic peculiarities are foreign to the contemporary material culture of Palestine and call for a discussion of the ancient settlers" origins. Furthermore, aspects of daily life in a vivid and multilayered urban center at the dawn of the first millennium BCE will be addressed.


Photius: A Reevaluation of the Johannine Evidence
Program Unit: Novum Testamentum Graecum: Editio Critica Maior
Roderic L. Mullen, ITSEE, University of Birmingham

Archbishop Photius of Constantinople (ca. 820-893) has often been regarded as a key witness to the middle Byzantine text of the New Testament. This paper seeks to reevaluate the evidence and to clarify Photius's position in the history of the textual tradition.


Foods and Forts: Zooarchaeology Perspectives from the Edom Lowland in Southern Jordan
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible, History, and Archaeology
Adolfo Muniz, University of California, San Diego

Recent archaeological research in the Faynan region of southern Jordan is beginning to provide evidence of the role of metal production and its effects on the evolution of complexity in this region. This paper relies on zooarchaeological data to model the subsistence interaction sphere of the Edom Lowlands during the Iron Age. Preliminary data from Khirbat en-Nahas indicates that the influences of the inhabitants of this important Edomite region extended far beyond local and regional boundaries to the coastal areas of the Red and Mediterranean Sea.


“I Am the Least in My Family”: The Function of Discourse in Judges 6–8
Program Unit: Social Sciences and the Interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures
Kelly Murphy, Emory University

Gideon is one of the most complex heroes of the book of Judges. The cycle of stories which surround him, found in Judges 6-8, are, as is typical of biblical narrative, sparse and lacking in detail. Yet throughout these chapters direct discourse – in other words, speech – plays a large part in shaping the movement of the narrative. Key discourses include that of the prophet sent by Yahweh, the dialogue between the angel of the Lord/the Lord and Gideon, the conversation between the townspeople and Joash, the double-testing of God by Gideon, the Lord's commands to Gideon regarding the fight against the Midianites, Gideon's overhearing the revelation of a dream and its interpretation, and the bitter exchange in the aftermath of the battle between Gideon and the Ephraimites, as well as Gideon"s rejection of kingship. This paper will appraise the space discourse takes up within the Gideon Cycle, along with its cast of characters, and will examine what occupies much of the discourse found therein (history, half-truths, negotiation, inner-Israelite threat, commandment, double-speech, etc.). Through the lens of discourse analysis, the ways in which language is employed to construct a "symbolic world" through text and speech in the Gideon Cycle will be closely examined, and the manner in which discourse analysis attempts to explain how language functions to sustain social activities and identities, and is used to protect human relationships within cultures, social groups, and institutions, will be scrutinized. The paper will argue that these discourses and exchanges serve an important role in the overall story of Gideon – they function to depict a society that is growing increasingly distant from its deity and in which people have difficulty properly communicating with one another as well as with God, thus paralleling the steady decline of ancient Israelite society as depicted in the book of Judges.


A Sheep in Wolf's Clothing? The Critique of Montanism as a Proto-Orthodox Rhetorical Device
Program Unit: Greco-Roman Religions
Michele Murray, Bishop's University

In the middle of the second century CE, a prophetic renewal movement called Montanism is said to have emerged in Phrygia, and became, by all accounts, popular in the provinces of Asia Minor and Galatia. The New Prophecy, as the group ostensibly called itself, is purported to have arisen as a reaction to the increasingly hierarchical nature of the developing “proto-Orthodox” Christian Church. Matters of debate between this putative renewal movement and the Church revolved around several issues, including the power of bishops, the position of prophecy, the attitude towards Roman imperial order, and the role of women. Significantly, the chief sources concerning the movement are found among its later detractors, including Eusebius of Caesarea and Epiphanius. Applying the theoretical ideas of Richard Horsley, Bruce Lincoln, and Tim Murphy, this paper considers how the proto-Orthodox critiques of Montanism may have functioned primarily as a rhetorical means of establishing proto-Orthodox authority and institutional hierarchization rather than serving as an accurate depiction of the Montanist movement.


The One of Whom Moses Wrote: The Characterization of Jesus through Old Testament Moses Traditions in the Gospel of John
Program Unit: Rhetoric and Early Christianity
Alicia Myers, Baylor University

This paper addresses the John's use of OT Moses traditions in his characterization of Jesus. Instead of agreeing with the majority of Johannine scholars who understand John's use of Moses traditions to portray Jesus just as the Prophet-like-Moses from Deut 18:15-19, this paper concludes that John uses these traditions to characterize Jesus with the more encompassing title as “the one of whom Moses wrote” (John 1:45). Consulting the Progymnasmata, John"s rhetorical technique is compared to syncrisis and syncritic language through which ancient authors characterized the main figures of their writings. John"s characterization of Jesus through OT Moses traditions resembles the works of other ancient authors who also use intertextual references in their syncrises and syncritic language. Although examples of this rhetorical strategy are found in all genres, this paper selects only two: (1) from Chariton"s novel Chaereas and Callirhoe and (2) a biographical account from Plutarch"s Lives. From this point the paper turns to focus on the Gospel of John to analyze three particular passages often used to support John"s characterization of Jesus as the Prophet-like-Moses: (1) John 3:13-15; (2) 6:1-59; and (3) 1:45; 5:39-47. Through the analysis of these passages this paper argues that Jesus is presented not as a second Moses figure and fulfillment of Deut 18:15-19 alone, but as the realization of all the writings traditionally ascribed to Moses from Genesis through Deuteronomy.


Jesus as Ideal King: Isaiah 42 and the Characterization of Jesus in Matthew 12:17–21
Program Unit: Matthew
Alicia Myers, Baylor University

This paper focuses on how Matthew's appeal to Isa 42:1-4 in Matt 12:17-21 affects the characterization of Jesus in his Gospel. Although scholars have generally abandoned the thesis that this OT quotation presents Jesus as the “Suffering Servant,” many scholars still consider this passage to emphasize Jesus" submissiveness as God's “servant.” However, this paper will challenge this traditional interpretation with a new analysis of Matt 12 in its literary and socio-cultural context. The paper begins with an argument that Matt 12:17-21 appears in the midst of an inclusio surrounded by 11:2-24 and 14:1-12, both of which recount different aspects John the Baptist"s conflict with Herod Antipas. Next, the paper will show how awareness of this larger context reveals the crucial connection of "reed" (11:7-8; 12:20) and kingship in Matthew"s Gospel. This connection is particularly significant since it raises the possibility that the “bruised reed” and “smoldering wick” are none other than impotent kings, like Herod Antipas, whom Jesus will replace with the establishment of God"s justice. This new reading takes seriously the temporal conjunction "until" in 12:20 as indicative of the time when Jesus will destroy these unjust rulers: namely, when he brings forth justice to victory. Finally, the paper will demonstrate how Matthew"s appeal to Isaiah 42 resonates with the concept of “ideal kingship” in Mediterranean antiquity, which emphasizes the intimate relationship between king and deity, the need for a king to be both a servant of the deity and one"s people, and the role of a king as the one who both establishes and embodies justice. From this analysis, we will see that rather than portraying Jesus as a non-confrontational servant, Matthew"s use of Isaiah 42 contributes to his consistent presentation of Jesus as God"s divinely appointed king.


The Two Fragments of POxy 2949 as Scribal Notes on Gospel of Peter 3–5
Program Unit: Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism
Matti Myllykoski, University of Helsinki

In an earlier study, I have presented a reconstruction POxy 2949 fr. 1 without inclusion of fr. 2, which scholars like Treat, Lührmann have tried to see as an integral part of the same papyrus sheet as fr. 1. In spite of letters that indicate such a connection, it has not been possible to demonstrate that these two pieces originally belonged to the same sheet. I think that these good scholarly efforts have failed because these two fragments originate in two different note sheets written down by the same scribe. These notes include two different versions of the same passage GPet 3–5. I will provide a reconstruction of both fragments and show how they differ in detail. This theory further explains why neither one of the fragments has no text on the verso. Moreover, it will throw some new light on early Christian scribal practices which have remained mostly unknown.


Nehemiah's Wall in the Archaeological Research: An Outlook from the Amarna Letters
Program Unit: Literature and History of the Persian Period
Nadav Na'aman, Tel Aviv University

Comparison of the results of the archaeological excavations and surveys and that of the written texts is always complicated due to the many differences between the two disciplines. This is particularly true of the periods of decline in the scope of settlement and the strength of the urban and material culture, such as the Amarna (14th century) and the early Persian (5th century) periods. There are no primary written sources for the early Persian period, and the single written text available for comparison with the results of the archaeological research (namely, the Bible) suffers from well-known limitations. The situation is different in the Amarna period where we have both the testimony of the archaeological excavations and surveys and that of the primary written texts (namely, the Amarna letters). Hence the discrepancy between the text and archaeology can be put to the documentary test. The lecture will examine the evidence of the Amarna letters sent from some important Canaanite cities vis à vis the results of archaeological excavations conducted in these sites. It is suggested that the conclusions drawn from the comparison are also applicable to the problems involved with the search of Nehemiah's wall, which - like the Amarna highlands cities - was built in a time of utter decline in the history of the city.


(Un)likely Bedfellows: A Hybrid Reading of the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man
Program Unit: Bakhtin and the Biblical Imagination
Raj Nadella, Adrian College

Aspects of the Bakhtinian concept of carnival—pairing of contrasts, lavish feasts and the motif of reversal—characterize the parable of Lazarus and the Richman in Luke 16. The motif of reversal that features prominently in this pericope seemingly signifies Luke's polemic against wealth, as several interpreters have suggested, but the narrative context of the parable attenuates such a notion. The parable does contain both a polemic against a rich man and a reversal that benefits a poor man but, within the larger narrative setting, it makes room for positive portrayal of wealth. Combining the Bakhtinian concept of carnivalization of literature and the postcolonial leitmotiv of Hybridity this paper explicates Luke's juxtaposition of contrasting perspectives and argues that the parable offers a fragmentary and centrifugal, rather than a unitary and centripetal, portrayal of wealth in a manner that resists ideological hegemony. The paper also highlights the areas in which the two aforementioned concepts intersect—their emphasis on counter-narratives that disrupt the narratives of power and dominance and their celebration of oppositional voices, for instance—and suggests ways in which the two can be hybridized to shed new light on Gospel texts.


Postcolonialism, Colonial Mimicry, and Translation
Program Unit: Ideology, Culture, and Translation
Raj Nadella, Adrian College

Translation studies have traditionally been characterized by a preoccupation with the (perceived) dichotomy between "literal" and "dynamic" equivalencies but they have not sufficiently examined aspects of colonial mimicry. Arguing that there is a symbiotic relationship between postcolonial theory and translation studies, especially in the context of biblical studies, this essay demonstrates how insights from the former can be helpful in foregrounding layers of colonial mimicry in translation enterprise. It explicates issues of power and culture pertaining to the translation of biblical texts from English into Telugu (a South Indian language) in the early twentieth century. The essay calls attention to specific examples of imperialistic translations to show how some texts, written in the context of and in opposition to colonialism, were used to justify the colonial presence and/or to make the colonial culture look superior to the native culture/s.


A New Version of the BiBIL Database
Program Unit: Computer Assisted Research
Thomas Naef, University of Lausanne

The last migration of the Biblical Bibliography of Lausanne (BiBIL, www.bibil.net) took place in 2003. From a technological perspective, it is time for an update. During spring and summer 2008, the team is working on this major task. As the database was standardized (Unicode, SQL standard) in 2003, this actual migration is focused on the integration into the University's OpenAccess Server, a more user friendly navigation, server side technology, and other - technological and functional - improvements. The paper gives an overview of the (new) functionalities of the database as well as of the technological work during the migration, and sketches new features for the future.


“Living in the Soul Alone”: Philo of Alexandria on Soul Formation
Program Unit: Letters of James, Peter, and Jude
Hindy Najman, University of Toronto

This paper is interested in the way Philo depicts the natural course of the life of the sage as he eventually becomes soul or mind alone. Additionally, the paper considers how natural law and mosaic can serve to guide the soul on its journey to its telos.


“Go Sell the Oil and Pay the Debt!” Do 1 and 2 Kings Assume a Market Economy for Ancient Israel?
Program Unit: Social Sciences and the Interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures
Roger S. Nam, University of California, Los Angeles

This paper surveys the textual witnesses to 1 and 2 Kings through the lens of economic anthropology. Specifically, the study examines the economic presuppositions within narrative accounts in order to postulate on the existence of true market exchange in ancient Israel. Most of the descriptions of alleged market trade actually align more closely with reciprocity, administered exchange or atypical economic behavior under extreme social circumstances (1 Kgs 5; 9:26-28; 10:11-22, 26-29; 22:49; 2 Kgs 6:25, 28-29; 7:1; 16). But two particular passages appear to support the presence of supply and demand, at least for the northern kingdom: the widow's sale of oil and the promise to set up markets for Ahab in Damascus (1 Kgs 20:34; 2 Kgs 4:1-7). This overview will help to sharpen understanding of the Israelite social structure, and give unique narrative perspective to ongoing substantivist / formalist discussions on the ancient world.


Paul's Reversal of Jews Calling Gentiles “Dogs” (Philippians 3:2): 1,600 Years of an Ideological Tale Wagging an Exegetical Dog?
Program Unit: Early Jewish Christian Relations
Mark D. Nanos, Rockhurst University/University of Kansas

The commentary tradition on Philippians 3:2 (and on Matt. 15 and Mark 7 too) has been claiming at least since Chrysostom that Jews commonly called Gentiles dogs, thereby legitimating a pattern of calling Jews dogs. Contemporary commentaries indicate no awareness of the harmful legacy or the continued implications of the polemic to which it contributes when perpetuating this invective. Moreover, evidence of this supposed common prejudice is often not provided, and when it is, usually consists of sayings attributed to Jesus and the Syro-Phoenician or Canaanite woman—thus available to us only in documents that post-date Paul, representing early "Christian" polemic. In addition to being anachronistic and not likely known to Paul's audience in Philippi, upon examination, it is also not clear that these Gospel sayings provide the proof supposed. Sometimes appeal is made to Psalm 22 and other Jewish texts, but under examination, none of these substantiate the claim. Likewise, the many supposed cases in rabbinic literature—which could only provide anachronistic evidence at best—do not in fact substantiate that Jews ever called Gentiles dogs, much less that Jews commonly did so, even long after Christians habitually called Jews dogs. This essay examines the texts and challenges the interpretive tradition's claims, as well as its failure to exhibit hermeneutical distance when repeating this supposed invective against Jews and Judaism. Having exposed this ideological tale, several exegetical options worth exploring are noted.


The Aphrodite of Knidos: Early Christians and Others on Images and Desire
Program Unit: Art and Religions of Antiquity
Laura S. Nasrallah, Harvard University

In the second-century CE, Roman emulations of Praxiteles" Aphrodite of Knidos abounded in many forms, from miniatures to over-life sized grave monuments. This paper investigates contemporaneous responses to this proliferation of images, focusing especially on early Christian responses to Aphrodite. The paper also treats speculations about the physics or mechanics of vision, as well as the bodily and philosophical effects of viewing and its hazard: desire.


AVP (Alternatives to Violence Project), NT (New Testament), and Me: Prison Violence-Reduction Workshops in Biblical Perspective
Program Unit: Bible and Cultural Studies
Michael Willett Newheart, Howard University

In my Introduction to New Testament classes, I encourage students to select as one of their required projects participation in an Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) Workshop in one of the state prisons in Jessup, MD (between Baltimore and Washington). AVP workshops are offered in prisons all over the country. I myself have participated in these workshops and have been certified as a facilitator. Although AVP does not use religious language, I have found the workshops to be an excellent example of people on the margins of society working to live out Jesus' non-violent ethic as articulated in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7). This paper will describe AVP and discuss the correspondences I see between AVP and the Sermon, with particular attention to Matthew 5:38-41 (“Turn the other cheek”).


Gone Fishin' (It's More Than Just a Wishin' ): Luke's Miraculous Catch in Political (and Playful) Perspective
Program Unit: Jesus Traditions, Gospels, and Negotiating the Roman Imperial World
Michael Willett Newheart, Howard University

In his 2007 book God and Empire John Dominic Crossan suggests that Jesus spent so much time by the sea of Galilee because he was confronting Herod Antipas' Romanization in which the tetrarch had founded the city Tiberius to commercialize the lake and tax the peasant-fishers, so as to impress Rome so that he could made king of the Jews like his father Herod the Great. This paper explores the significance of this suggestion for an understanding of Luke's version of the miraculous catch of fish (5:1-11). I will argue that here Luke claims the sea and thus the world for the Jewish God over against the Roman emperor and their minions such as Herod. I will first discuss my overall perspective, which I am pursuing in a book tentatively entitled, Playing with Miracle: A Poetic, Political, and Playful Perspective on the Powerful Deeds of Jesus. I treat the miracle stories as a "poetic of resistance," in which evangelists locate true power not in Roman oppression but in the community of Jesus-believers. I will then offer my translation of Luke 5:1-11, followed by a playful and political reading of it. A conclusion will discuss the meaning of the passage for Luke's community and for the North American Christian community today.


Shaping Experience in Worship and Prayer Texts at Qumran
Program Unit: Religious Experience in Antiquity
Carol Newsom, Emory University

Attempting to study religious experience in an ancient community is fraught with uncertainties. Nevertheless, certain texts contain indications about the ways in which particular religious practices were designed to foster certain types of experience. This paper examines the rhetorics of two Qumran texts, the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice and the Hodayot in an attempt to identify some of the ways in which both formal and content features of langauge were used to generate certain experiences for individuals and for the worshiping community in this ancient Jewish society.


Mission Not Impossible: Justifying Zion's Destruction and Exonerating the Surviving Remnant
Program Unit: Biblical Hebrew Poetry
Kim Lan Nguyen, University of Wisconsin-Madison

One of the enigmas of Lamentations is the vague nature of Zion's identity and sin. First, Lamentations never defines who Zion is in concrete terms, and second, although the charge of her guilt is repeated several times, not much explanation of it is given. Scholarly opinion seems to be divided between two positions: 1) The vague nature of Zion's sin indicates the author's attempt to express that Zion's punishment is more than she deserves; 2) The vagueness of Zion's confession signals that her sin is more serious and deep rooted than the combination of specific acts of sin, and through Zion's confession the surviving remnant acknowledges that they suffer for their own sins. This paper proposes that both of those positions misread the meaning of the ambivalence in Zion's identity and sin and seeks to establish that this ambivalence is the author's strategy to suggest a new theological paradigm which justifies the city's destruction and exonerates the surviving remnant at the same time. The following points are addressed: 1) The vague nature of Zion's sin is not an indication of the author's protest. 2) Zion is not the equivalent of the surviving remnant. 3) The historical reality of the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BCE demands a modification of the Deuteronomic paradigm, which must recognize justice in the city's destruction and the presence of innocent suffering at the same time. The paper concludes that the ambivalent nature of Zion's identity and sin allows the author to achieve that theological modification. While the destruction of the city is inevitable and fully justified due to its accumulated sin, placing all the measures of punishment on the innocent citizens cannot be justified and must be acknowledged.


Paul's Theology of the Heart in 2 Corinthians
Program Unit: Second Corinthians: Pauline Theology in the Making
V. Henry T. Nguyen, Loyola Marymount University

The term kardia (“heart”) occurs eleven times in 2 Corinthians, nine of which are in the extended literary unit of 2 Cor 1–7. This paper proposes to explore Paul's heart language as an important theological motif in 2 Cor 1–7, a motif which has often been neglected by interpreters. Paul's “theology of the heart” can be traced in three senses. First, several instances of heart in 2 Corinthians (e.g. 3.3) are allusions to OT passages concerning the promises of God"s new covenant that will take place in his people"s heart (e.g. Jer 38.3; Ezek 11.19; 36.26–7 [LXX]). Secondly, the term can be grasped in an anthropological sense as the center of a human being. Thirdly, interpreters have generally overlooked how Paul"s socio-historical situation motivated and shaped his use of heart as a theological motif in 2 Cor 1–7. While recognizing 2 Corinthians as an apologia of his apostolic ministry, it is significant that in 5.12 Paul describes his opponents as boasting in “outward appearance” (prosopon) and not in the “heart” (kardia). Besides possibly being another OT allusion (1 Sam 16.7), this prosopon–kardia (exteriority–interiority) antithesis is significant for his concrete social circumstances: in particular, his critique of his opponents" preoccupation with superficial, material accreditation (cf. 10.10). This weighty external–internal interplay can be observed in the various language used throughout 2 Cor 1–7 to denounce the values of superficial features and to emphasize, instead, the inner person (cf. 4.18; 5.7). Paul, moreover, presents significant theological statements about the Spirit"s transformative work in the believer"s heart (cf. 3.3; 4.6), which accentuates his reaction against the Corinthians" social values and behavior. Furthermore, some brief comparison with Paul"s other letters will show some similarities and differences that will illuminate his theology of the heart in 2 Corinthians.


Review of John Riches, Galatians (BBC)
Program Unit: Use, Influence, and Impact of the Bible
Tobias Nicklas, Universitat Regensburg

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The Notion of Power in Romans and Michel Foucault: A Conversation
Program Unit: Semiotics and Exegesis
Valérie Nicolet Anderson, Emory University

Using passages from Romans (6:6-23; 12:1-2; 14:7-8; 15:1-7), I show the role of power as Paul attempts to influence and construct the identity of his addressees. Using the metaphor of slavery in chapter six, Paul indicates that one's identity changes with the change of one's master. The metaphor is somewhat inadequate when used to describe the relationship that Christ"s believers can have with God because it presupposes that power rests entirely with God. The last chapters of Romans show that belonging to God creates new possibilities for the Roman community. Power is no longer understood in a unilateral manner. The community has the ability to decipher the will of God (Rom 12:2). However, the freedom of Christ"s believers is not unlimited. Because of Christ"s example and of the good of the community the strong need to defer to the weak (14:7-8 and 15:1-7). I then engage Foucault"s understanding of power, arguing that he ends up giving more importance to technologies of the self, as means to carve spaces of freedom inside relations of power, rather than emphasizing relations of force as determining the identity of the subject. Finally, I propose a conversation between Paul and Foucault, which highlights how both see the role of power in creating an identity for the subject. They differ in defining what enables strategies of resistance to power. For Paul, free choices and decisions happen only once individuals have become slaves to God. For Foucault, relations of power need to be called into question every day by individuals who are trying to create themselves as works of art. What is remarkable is that both are similar in their implementation of resistance to power: human beings have to invent a new form of life, aimed at creating a harmonious community, and expressed in practical ways.


The Question of Developing Canonicity: The Shepherd of Hermas as a Preliminary Case Study
Program Unit: Papyrology and Early Christian Backgrounds
Dave Nielsen, Brigham Young University

The Shepherd of Hermas was the most popular noncanonical work in the first centuries of the Christian era. Indeed, only the Psalms and the Gospels of Matthew and John have more surviving manuscripts. It was widely quoted and accepted as scripture from Gaul to Egypt by Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and others. Recent studies such as Hurtado's “Earliest Christian Artifacts” have shown that there is a demonstrable difference between Christian and non-Christian texts. The purpose of this paper is to test the possibility of taking his paradigm one step further. In certain instances, we know what the Church thought of a text based on how they used and commented on it. The question is whether or not we can distinguish between canonical and apocryphal in the eyes of the first Christians based on the manuscripts themselves. Using the Shepherd of Hermas as a preliminary case study, I propose that we indeed can, based on analysis of the historical, codicological, and paleographical data of the Greek papyri from the first five centuries.


The Historical and Theological Reasons behind Hermas' Acceptance as Scripture in the Early Church
Program Unit: Function of Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
Dave Nielsen, Brigham Young University

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The Cognitive Structures of the Concept of Atonement
Program Unit: Cognitive Linguistics in Biblical Interpretation
Jesper Tang Nielsen, Copenhagen University

On the surface Gal 1:4 does not seem to evoke many problems. It presents Jesus' voluntary death as an atoning sacrifice that liberates us from this evil aeon. This not only lays the ground for the argumentation in Galatians, it also constitutes a fundamental concept in theological thinking about the death of Jesus. But, as a matter of fact, the immediate familiarity of the probably pre-Pauline expression stems from its influence on Christian theology. In its original context it may have seemed curious, insofar as it apparently does not refer to an ordinary sacrificial idea. Nowhere in Hellenistic Judaism do we find a sacrifice that provokes a shift of aeons. The insertion of an atoning sacrifice into an apocalyptic worldview is part of early Christian mythmaking. In order to describe how this creative interpretation of Ancient Jewish traditions took form, cognitive theories of meaning construction prove to be valuable. The cognitive idea of blending is able to model the meaning constituting process that may be behind the innovative understanding of the death of Jesus. In this way it is possible to present the traditions the pre-Pauline incorporated and explain how it resulted in the emergence of a theology of atonement. Against the background of this analysis general conclusions about the cognitive basis of the New Testament concept of atonement may be drawn. It will be argued that the creative combination of Old Testament sacrificial vocabulary and apocalyptic dualism creates the common Christian understanding of the death of Jesus as an atoning sacrifice.


Winning a Battle Already Won: The Military Depiction of David as an Invulnerable Warrior
Program Unit: Warfare in Ancient Israel
Paul Nikkel, University of Sheffield

The battle of David and Goliath is often interpreted as the battle of the small David against the mighty incumbent. However, the military role of David as an armour-bearer within Ancient Near Eastern literature indicates one who dispatches an enemy already mortally wounded, the historical Greek literature evidences a tradition of sling-bearing triumphant protagonists, and the lexical body relates to the other murdering tricksters, Ehud and Joab, and divine powers. Through an examination of the historical, literary and lexical background of David's military depiction this paper argues that the 1 Samuel 17 narrative is actually one where David is the invulnerable warrior and Goliath the doomed victim.


Sound Judgement: Examining Patterns and Trends in the Song of Deborah's Military Vocabulary
Program Unit: Biblical Lexicography
Paul Nikkel, University of Sheffield

The Song of Deborah in Judges 5 exhibits a discrete body of military vocabulary which is not found elsewhere within Judges. Further, this lexical body is not normative within the Pentateuch nor Joshua, yet it displays many similarities with texts such as Chronicles and Nehemiah. This paper examines the military vocabulary for patterns of distribution and usage as well as semantic shift and lexical replacement. Using this information, the chronological and historical background of the Song of Deborah is questioned as well the traditional diachronic division of Biblical Hebrew.


Josephus on John the Baptist: A Christian Interpolation?
Program Unit: Josephus
Rivka Nir, Open University of Israel

The consensus among scholars today is that the passage in Josephus about John the Baptist, AJ 18.116-119, is authentic. In this paper I challenge this consensus, and argue that the passage is a Christian interpolation reflecting an internal Christian dispute concerning the questions—1) Is remission of sins the result of immersion in water or is it achieved by spiritual purification prior to immersion? 2) What is the role of bodily purity in Christian baptism? Judaeo-Christian movements, to which I maintain the author of the passage belonged, retained the Jewish principle of immersion for bodily purity, but with it emphasized penitence, the Christian requirement for remission of sin. Details of the passage also indicate Christian interpolation. 1. The epithet assigned to John, "the Baptist," and the terms the author uses for immersion (baptismos, baptisis) are taken from the Christian theological vocabulary. 2. The call to "join in baptism" suggests a mass collective immersion, an initiation into a new community, like Christian baptism, and, as in the case of Christian baptism, there is preaching and exhortation for it. 3. The expresssion "acceptable to God" associates immersion with the sacrificial rite in the Temple, which, like Christian baptism, it replaces. 4. John's baptism cannot be the Jewish Pharisaic immersion, the Essene immersion, or that of Bannus, for though in all of these the immersion is for purification of the body, none of these immersions has anything to do with repentance and spiritual purity, nor do they atone for sin. Finally, I argue that Origen did not have the Josephus passage as we have it. The first reference to it is in Eusebius, and the interpolation must have been made at about or shortly before his time.


Wisdom as Mediatrix in Sirach 24: Ben Sira, Love Lyrics, and Prophecy
Program Unit: Hebrew Scriptures and Cognate Literature
Martti Nissinen, University of Helsinki

Sirach 24 can be read as a compendium of Ben Sira's ideology of Wisdom,bringing together the essential concepts of the book: Wisdom, Law, prophecy,and temple worship. The scholars have long ago recognized the dense network of intertextual links between this chapter and other biblical texts, as well as the background of Ben Sira's image of Lady Wisdom in Hellenistic texts. One obvious biblical precedent of Sirach 24 has gone virtually unnoticed so far: the Song of Songs. This essay attempts (1) at demonstrating the close affinity of Sirach 24 with the Song of Songs; (2) at disclosing the underlying ideology of the goddess as mediatrix of divine knowledge, prominent not only in the ancient Near Eastern love lyrics, but also in prophecy; and (3) at showing that the book of Ben Sira, being a product of the Hellenistic-Jewish culture, at the same time forms a part of the ancient Near Eastern heritage of early Judaism.


Impurity and Sanctity in Josephus and in Rabbinic Halakhah: The Exclusion of Impure Persons from Holy Precincts
Program Unit: History and Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism
Vered Noam, Tel Aviv University

The paper reviews the laws of exclusion of impure persons, especially those defiled by corpse-impurity, from the holy precincts. It compares Josephus to rabbinic and Qumranic law and attempts to discern shared elements as well as the different development of religious law in each corpus.


Qumran and the Rabbis: Reconstruction of a Common Exegesis
Program Unit: Qumran
Vered Noam, Tel Aviv University

The paper will uncover an ancient, common exegetical tradition found in both Qumranic and rabbinic literature, which severed a biblical directive from its context and provided an interpretation contrary to its plain meaning. In later Qumranic and rabbinic strata this shared early midrash was construed differently, creating disparate types of halakhah.


Why Does the New Testament Exist?
Program Unit: Ideological Criticism
K. L. Noll, Brandon University

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An Altar at the Border: Joshua 22 and the Pentateuch
Program Unit: Pentateuch
Ed Noort, University of Groningen

The enigmatic story of Joshua 22 about an altar at the river Jordan belongs to the late-priestly tradition with the main character Phinehas connected with the deuteronomistic role of the Transjordan tribes (22:1-8) and the main character of Joshua. The point of departure is Joshua 18, with the Tent of Meeting set up at Shilo. This altar, which is not allowed to be an altar of sacrifice, is a casus belli for the Westjordan tribes. The central question of the narrative is the cultic purity of Transjordan and the problem whether Transjordan belongs to the land of YHWH. Special is the role of the altar itself, where a stone-monument would have been sufficient. The fact that the narrative focuses on an altar has much to do with the role altars play in the patriarchal stories, where not so much the sacrificial function but much more the calling on YHWH's name and thereby the claiming of the land for YHWH is addressed. The altar at the river Jordan and the near civil war stand in the tradition of the re-use of the altars as described in Deut 27 and Joshua 8:30-35. Here, the Torah surpasses the traditional cultic function of the altar. This paper studies the role and function of special altars in the relation between Pentateuch and Deuteronomistic history.


An Altar at the Border: Joshua 22 and the Pentateuch
Program Unit: Deuteronomistic History
Ed Noort, University of Groningen

The enigmatic story of Joshua 22 about an altar at the river Jordan belongs to the late-priestly tradition with the main character Phinehas connected with the deuteronomistic role of the Transjordan tribes (22:1-8) and the main character of Joshua. The point of departure is Joshua 18, with the Tent of Meeting set up at Shilo. This altar, which is not allowed to be an altar of sacrifice, is a casus belli for the Westjordan tribes. The central question of the narrative is the cultic purity of Transjordan and the problem whether Transjordan belongs to the land of YHWH. Special is the role of the altar itself, where a stone-monument would have been sufficient. The fact that the narrative focuses on an altar has much to do with the role altars play in the patriarchal stories, where not so much the sacrificial function but much more the calling on YHWH's name and thereby the claiming of the land for YHWH is addressed. The altar at the river Jordan and the near civil war stand in the tradition of the re-use of the altars as described in Deut 27 and Joshua 8:30-35. Here, the Torah surpasses the traditional cultic function of the altar. This paper studies the role and function of special altars in the relation between Pentateuch and Deuteronomistic history.


The Imaginative Effects of Ezekiel's Merkavah Vision: A Day in the Life of Hashmal
Program Unit: Book of Ezekiel
Sally Norris, University of Oxford

The text of Ezekiel abounds with unusual syntactic, lexical, and narrative features. Prominently placed within the inaugural merkavah vision is one such linguistic anomaly: hashmal, a hapax legomenon which presents a formidable challenge to the interpreter. What, or who, is hashmal? The answer is not readily apparent. There are no extant instances of hashmal, in a text independent of the merkavah tradition, to assist with this query. Further, while many regard LXX as a reliable translation (hence, hashmal as electron), other ancient translations, such as the Syriac, suggest a radically different solution. Where, then, may we find clues to the meaning of the enigmatic hashmal? This paper will accompany hashmal as it navigates a path through Jewish and Christian tradition, uncovering an array of readings ranging from the mundane, to the metaphorical, to the anthropomorphic. In so doing, hashmal will become its own narrative, illustrating in a particularly compelling manner the fascinating Wirkungsgeschichte of Ezekiel's merkavah vision.


Points and Stars: John and the Synoptics
Program Unit: John, Jesus, and History
Wendy E. S. North, Durham University

This paper proposes that observing how the Fourth Evangelist composed his narrative provides a useful entry-point into the issue of whether his work was directly dependent on Synoptic material. Certain references in the Gospel strongly suggest that John is re-telling a story that was already known to his readership. Since we do not know whether that bank of knowledge included the Synoptics, I propose to tackle the issue by examining how John composes on the basis of material known to his audience that we can identify: (A) within the gospel (1) references to earlier characters and events, and (2) material composed out of earlier gospel statements; (B) outside the gospel (3) explicit quotation from scripture. From the evidence of how he handles this material, I will attempt to construct an argument that John could have composed in direct dependence on Synoptic material in the following test-cases: (a) Jn 20:3-10; and (b) Jn 12:1-8. If this argument is plausible, then it raises the general issue that John's narrative was not based on independent information about the historical Jesus at those points where his gospel coincides with the Synoptic witness.


Preaching Nonviolence in a Violent Time: The Community of Hope
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Kay Lynn Northcutt, Phillips Theological Seminary

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How He Teaches a Specific Biblical Text in a Public High School Classroom
Program Unit:
Jim Norton, Public School Language Arts Teacher

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Non-Septuagintal Hebraisms in the Third Gospel and the Development of the Synoptic Tradition
Program Unit: Synoptic Gospels
R. Steven Notley, Nyack College

New Testament scholarship in the previous century largely ignored the philological consequences of the Dead Sea Scrolls and other epigraphical discoveries, which inform our understanding of the linguistic environment of first-century Judea. This more complex, multilingual picture should have long-since laid to rest the mistaken notion first suggested by Avraham Geiger (1845) and embraced by subsequent scholars that in Roman Judea, “save for small pockets…Palestinian Jews used Aramaic as the common Semitic language and did not readily comprehend Hebrew” (Fitzmyer). Positing an Aramaic [or Greek] only model, unquestioned Hebraisms in the Greek of Luke's Gospel have been assumed by scholarship to be the product of the Evangelist's intentional biblicizing style. Yet, the archaeological data indicate a trilingual (Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek) setting, which makes such remedies unnecessary. Further, this fresh understanding assists us to unravel what remains a conundrum for those who presume a Lukan Septuagintalizing style; namely, the presence of non-Septuaginal Hebraisms in the Third Gospel. These are not limited to Q, nor derived from Mark. Neither can they be explained as the Evangelist"s attempt to imitate the Septuagint, since they are not found in the Septuagint. The linguistic features only exist in Hebrew examples read in the Dead Sea Scrolls and other Hebrew writings from late antiquity. Assuming a trilingual environment in first-century Judea, we will reexamine syntactical and idiomatic Hebraisms in the Third Gospel that are non-Septuagintal and explore their implications for source criticism in the Synoptic Tradition.


“Yet Even the Dogs Eat the Crumbs That Fall from Their Masters' Table”: Matthew's Gospel and Economic Globalization
Program Unit: Matthew
Lidija Novakovic, Baylor University

One of the most frequently voiced criticisms against economic globalization is that it increases the gap between the rich and the poor by strengthening the superiority of the developed and intensifying the dependency of the undeveloped nations. It this way, globalization not only promotes but also reinforces the already existing inequalities between different groups and cultures. Christian ethicists typically address this problem by emphasizing the need for social justice and the ethics of love expressed through sharing and generosity. Biblical resources for this message are certainly abundant. In this paper, I wish to explore another venue that can contribute to this discussion — a subversive understanding of power and identity that underlines the story of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew. I will address this question by analyzing three layers of Matthew's narrative. First, I will examine the question of religious superiority and inferiority that surfaces in the passages dealing with Jewish/Gentile relationship. Although Matthew entertains the idea of Jewish superiority vs. Gentile inferiority, he subverts this notion as the narrative progresses. Next, I will examine the relationship of Jesus who is able to help and the needy that seek help and argue that this notion is subverted in the description of the judgment of the nations. Finally, I will examine the question of inclusion and exclusion and Matthew's subversive understanding of the in-group based on the reconstitution of identity. I will conclude by addressing the implications of this study for the church's role in the discussions of the negative aspects of economic globalization.


Allegory and God: A Study in Philonic Exegesis
Program Unit: Philo of Alexandria
Tzvi Novick, University of Notre Dame

It is well known that Philo establishes systematic correspondences (to which he does not always adhere) between biblical characters and ethical types. In Philo's exegetical treatises, the biblical characters (e.g., Jacob) populate the literal exposition, while their ethical correlates (the trainer) structure the allegorical. But little attention has been paid to the fact that one significant biblical character has no allegorical correlate, at least as such: God. While allegorization of the gods was the stock-in-trade of Alexandrian exegetes, allegorization of God was not, in any straightforward sense, an option for Philo. My talk investigates what Philo “does” with God, i.e., how he treats the biblical character, God, in his allegorical readings. I attend in particular to the implications of God's unique status for the relationship between the literal and allegorical levels of Philo"s exegesis. I combine a broad survey of the problem with close consideration of representative examples.


Judges 11:20 and the Semantics of Assent
Program Unit: Biblical Lexicography
Tzvi Novick, University of Notre Dame

My paper examines the usage of the word he'emîn in Judges 11:20. The consensus among commentators is that the Masoretic text is to be emended, though it is clearly confirmed by the B text of LXX Judges. I survey the semantics of assent in Biblical Hebrew, and the syntactic phenomenon that the verse instantiates, to argue against emendation. The semantic and syntactic analyses elucidate the meaning of a number of other biblical verses.


Exodus 30: An Island of “Misfit” Tabernacle Legislation? The Case of the “Misplaced” Incense Altar Revisited
Program Unit: Pentateuch
Mark A. Nussberger, Harvard University

Exodus 30 has long been a crux interpretum for readers of the Priestly Tabernacle texts, from Antiquity to the present day. And it has proven problematic in more than one respect: its placement within chapters 25–31 of the Tabernacle account, as well as its own literary shape and organizing principle(s). Following what seems to be a solemn conclusion to the preceding series of commands (Exod 29:43–46), 30:1 abruptly resumes instructions, most strikingly for (at least) one item whose specifications seem especially out of place: the golden incense altar (vv. 1–10). Attempts to understand the chapter in terms of source criticism (e.g., the literary strata of P) and/or the history of Israelite religion, though significant, have had limited explanatory power. Building upon the important work of Jacob Milgrom (among others), this paper will seek to understand the placement and design (or associative logic) of Exodus 30 synchronically. There are verbal and ritual parallels between 29:38–42 (the tamid offerings at the bronze altar) and 30:6–10 (the offering of incense at the golden altar) which create a literary whole—with the promise of divine indwelling (29:43–46) at its center—prescribing one enduring liturgical phenomenon. The actual building instructions for the incense altar (30:1–6) are included in order to distinguish it explicitly from its bronze counterpart and preclude the possibility of any confusion. Likewise, the other items listed in Exodus 30 (the census tax, bronze laver, anointing oil, and sacred incense) are associated with opportunities for error or danger. The drawing near of the presence/kabod of the God of Israel, which the construction of the Tabernacle is intended to effect, is not without its attendant risks, and thus requires special care and attention on the part of that deity's worshipers.


Caught between the Lines with Salome
Program Unit: Semiotics and Exegesis
Ela Nutu, University of Sheffield

Most audiences in twentyfirst-century Europe will have inherited the concept of Salome as the young woman whose "dance of many veils" leads to one man's infatuation and another man's decapitation. This has less to do with the brief note on the dance that one finds in the Bible and more to do with the Salome"s artistic afterlives, especially those emerging from fin-de-siècle European traditions. One finds that interpretations of Salome during this period are full of colour, movement, music, scent. Full of heat. Often the heat of the Orient. This paper explore the role of the senses in such artistic readings of the biblical text.


Lovis Corinth's Salomé, at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts
Program Unit: Bible and Visual Art
Ela Nutu, University of Sheffield

If for masters like Caravaggio, the guilt of Herodias's young daughter may be debatable, by the end of the 19th century the emerging Salomé is very different. In Lovis Corinth's interpretation, Salomé inspects the lifeless head of John the Baptist shamelessly. Her interest is personal, her gesture defying. She is brutal and unfeeling. Salomé here not only takes possession of John"s severed head, but she also subjugates him by forcing open his dead eyes. In Oscar Wilde"s play, which may have reverberated in Corinth"s imagination, Salomé addresses the head, "Why did you not look at me? If you had looked at me … I know you would have loved me, and the mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death". Corinth"s Salomé makes sure John"s dead eyes look upon her. She offers him not her own eyes, which seem to wonder off past the charger, but rather her breasts; her sexuality. Salome defies as she defiles him. Her red mouth alludes perhaps to the post-decapitation kiss that constitutes the most shocking element in Wilde"s play and its bitter, bloody aftertaste. Perhaps, like Richard Strauss, responsible for the infamous "dance of the seven veils", and whose Salome opera used Wilde"s play as libretto, Corinth too thinks that "it"s the shudder that counts". Corinth even places himself in the painting as the executioner. In his right hand the sword which took John"s life is still wet with his blood. This paper examines Corinth"s representation of the biblical character seen by many as responsible for the death of John the Baptist in light of the cultural context of the artist.


Review of Anatomies of Narrative Criticism
Program Unit: Johannine Literature
Gail R. O'Day, Emory University

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Innovation and Translation: Hellenistic Architecture and the Temple in Septuagint Ezekiel 40–48
Program Unit: International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies
Daniel O'Hare, University of Notre Dame

Despite the difficulty of his source text, the translator of LXX Ezekiel 40-48 desired to impart a coherent account to his readers. One method by which the translator made sense of his source text is by the purposeful incorporation of terms drawn from Hellenistic architecture into Ezekiel's vision. That this incorporation is purposeful is demonstrated through the translator's employment of the techniques of semantic differentiation and semantic leveling. Motivations adduced for the inclusion of Hellenistic architectural terminology include the influence of the Second Temple or texts describing it, contextual considerations, and especially the desire to update the aesthetic appeal of Ezekiel"s restoration in order to underline the urgency of accepting Ezekiel"s cultic and ethical reforms.


“And the Sea Will Be No More”: Evil, Exodus, and New Creation in Revelation 21:1c
Program Unit: John's Apocalypse and Cultural Contexts Ancient and Modern
Matthew P. O'Reilly, Asbury Theological Seminary

John's vision of new creation in Revelation 21-22 includes the often overlooked detail that, “the sea will be no longer” (21:1c). This odd detail invites the attentive reader to consider the nature of the sea's eschatological elimination. Why does the sea, originally a part of God"s good creation, have no place in God"s work of ultimate new creation? This paper examines the Jewish symbolic background of sea imagery in the Old Testament and intertestamental literature showing that the sea often connoted antagonism towards God and his people, was home to the great sea monster, was seen as the source of foreign oppression over the people of God, and was associated with the exodus as well as the hope for a new and final exodus event. Through a close reading of the sea language in Revelation, it will be demonstrated that John was informed by and embraced the scope of Jewish sea imagey and that the elimination of the sea indicates a removal from creation of all forces antagonistic to the people of God and the creation as a whole in a final act of new creation.


Patronage, Urban Structure, and the Corinthian Followers of Christ
Program Unit: Social Scientific Criticism of the New Testament
Peter Oakes, University of Manchester

This paper explores a range of features of first-century urban layout that relate to patronage. Using a number of examples, the paper presents a patronage model of the layout of first-century towns (including cities). At level one, the model views the town as consisting of a central area for elite display of benefaction and honour (patron), surrounded by the rest of the town that, in a general sense, receives the benefactions and gives the honour (client). At level two, the model views the rest of the town as an agglomeration of local patronage networks. The model is also applied to explanation of features of the layout of some variant types of town: the palace city (the ruler is the patron); the classical Greek city (level 1 – we have no patron; level 2 – there are no patrons here); the Roman colony and its imitators (Rome is our patron); the temple city (the deity is our patron; we are the deity's brokers). The paper then considers some aspects of behaviour of early followers of Christ at Corinth in relation to urban layout, and draws conclusions about the patronage implications and Paul's responses in 1 Corinthians.


Early Libyan Christianity
Program Unit:
Thomas C. Oden, Drew University

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Early Judaism and Modern Culture
Program Unit: Function of Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
Gerbern S. Oegema, McGill University

This paper presents the main thesis developed in my forthcoming book titled “Early Judaism and Modern Culture: Essays on Early Jewish Literature and Theology” (Eerdmans 2008). In it I explore the literature and theology of Early Judaism (300 BCE – 200 CE) from a hermeneutical point of view in order to identify its importance for today. First, I look at what scholars have said about the relevance of the Apocrypha, the Pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea Scrolls and Philo and Josephus. Here one can differentiate four phases of reflection on the non-canonical writings: the Early Church, the Reformation, the nineteenth and twentieth century and recent scholarship. Furthermore, I look at what theologically can be said about the contents of these writings. How do the ancient authors treat topics such as the authority of the Bible, the importance of philosophy, the quest for religious identity, the relevance of the literary world, gender, ethics, the inter-religious dialogue and politics? Second, with this book and paper I hope to start a discussion about the importance of the early Jewish literature for today. Many people nowadays consider these books to be important and fascinating, but few scholars have seriously raised the question of their relevance for the church, the synagogue, or society as a whole. Can these writings still play a role in modern-day reflections on culture and Biblical theology? And how do they relate to the authority of the canonical Bible?


“To Them I Will Give in My House and within My Walls a Memorial and a Name” (Isaiah 56:5): Theological Ideas Surrounding Nehemiah's Wall
Program Unit: Literature and History of the Persian Period
Manfred Oeming, University of Heidelberg

In this paper I analyze a variety of religious ideas connected to the destruction and reconstruction of walls in the Ancient Near East in general, in the Biblical literature from the Persian period, and especially in the Book of Nehemiah. This wider frame of reference contributes to a fuller historical picture of Nehemiah's (and the Chronicler's) ideology connected to the restoration activities in Jerusalem.


Oral Performance before a Split Audience: Letter Reading in Rome, Galatia, and Corinth
Program Unit: Performance Criticism of the Bible and Other Ancient Texts
Bernhard Oestreich, Theologische Hochschule Friedensau

Letters of early Christianity were designed to be orally performed before the assembly of the church. Not only the text, but also temporal and spatial circumstances, socio-historical factors, the performer who “embodies” the text with tone, face expression, gesture and movement, and–-of course–-the audience with its expectations and reactions, all are crucial for the event. This paper deals especially with the situation of an audience that is divided into factions. It is assumed that the author of the letter anticipated the performance situation and the dynamics that would develop between the various groups in the church. What kind of reaction does the author provoke by his manner of addressing the different groups? Passages of Paul's letters to the Romans and to the Galatians and of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians are investigated. In Romans 14-15, the apostle addresses the “strong” and the “weak” in the congregation in turn using an almost balanced parallelism. The letter of Clement normally speaks to the ordinary members of the Corinthian church, but at certain points of the performance a small group of troublemakers is addressed explicitly. In his letter to the Galatians, Paul never addresses his opponents although it is certain that the church was divided (Gal 5:15) and some of the members had taken side with the promoters of circumcision. The paper argues that the manner of addressing the members of the audience in these letters is deliberately chosen in order to achieve a certain effect: reuniting the church, winning back some of the opponents, or getting rid of them.


“Would It Be the Same if I Saw You in Heaven?”: Technologies of Space Travel in 2 Corinthians 12
Program Unit: Reading, Theory, and the Bible
Jorunn Økland, University of Oslo

In antiquity heaven was a place rather than an abstract "dimension" or existence reserved for future enjoyment. The paper will explore Paul's heavenly travel in 2 Corinthians 12, especially how modern notions of heaven as time rather than place have affected scholarly readings, and how Paul imagines that personal continuity can exist across spaces. Or is the problem rather that he cannot imagine such a continuity? The 'earthling'-human (Adam) exists on and off the earth. A bodiless earthling flying across the heavens is impossible. Paul therefore runs into problems when describing his heavenly travel, he is incoherent and lost for words. The paper will suggest that perhaps Rosi Braidotti's concepts of nomadic and cyborg/viral identities might have helped Paul with the conceptual vocabulary he was clearly missing.


The Structure and Content of Stephen's Speech in the Light of Old Testament Credos
Program Unit: Rhetoric and Early Christianity
Thomas H. Olbricht, Pepperdine University

Todd Penner has written an impressive book in which he provides an excellent rhetorical analysis of Stephen's speech in Acts 7. (Todd Penner, In Praise of Christian Origins: Stephen and the Hellentists in Lukan Apologetic Historiography (New York: T&T Clark, International, 2004). He has perused the speech from many perspectives. He has not, however, considered the structure of the speech from the standpoint of Old Testament credos that are similarly organized. Such credos may be found in Deut 6:20-25; 26:5-9; Josh 24:2-13, 1 Sam. 12:6-15, Neh. 9, Pss. 78, 105, 106, 135 and 136, Jer. 32:16-25, Ezek. 20:5-26, and in the New Testament Acts 7, Acts 13:16-41. These provide something of a template for recounting the mighty acts of God. But it is a flexible template because the items vary from credo to credo, and the purposes for reciting them differ from praising God to condemning his people for failure to react when God has acted. I have given detailed attention to especially the structure and content of Psalms 105, 106 but also compared the rhetorical approach in them to that of several of the other credos (Thomas H. Olbricht, “The Rhetoric of Two Narrative Psalms 105, 106,” My Words Are Lovely: Studies in the Rhetoric of the Psalms, eds., Robert Foster and David M. Howard, Jr., (Leiden: Brill Publishing, 2008). In this paper I wish to extend this analysis to Stephen's speech to see in what manner this Old Testament “rhetorical template” may shed light on the rhetorical approach in Acts 7. My initial assumption is that the speech draws creatively upon this background reflecting the tradition to some degree, yet is not bound by it. It will be important to note both similarities and differences.


From Horeb to Nebo: Moses, Exile, and the Promise of Home in Exodus 2:1–3:6 and Deuteronomy 34
Program Unit: Exile (Forced Migrations) in Biblical Literature
Dennis T. Olson, Princeton Theological Seminary

The pentateuchal traditions about Moses begin and end with Moses forced against his will into the status of alien and sojourner. Exodus 2:1–3:6 sets up three interconnected and brief narratives that lead to Moses" self-identification as “an alien (ger) in a foreign land” (Exod 2:22) followed by the burning bush episode at Mount Horeb. Deuteronomy 34 concludes the present Pentateuch with the narrative of Moses" death and burial outside the promised homeland of Canaan on Mount Nebo. The character of Moses as exile operates at multiple levels in these key texts with destabilizing but fruitful polarities that address key challenges of the sixth century exilic communities: the interplay between divine and human, leader and community, Israel and the nations, and wilderness and home.


Mistranslated Aramaic or Septuagintal Greek? A Source-Critical Examination of Luke 11:41, 48
Program Unit: Q
Ken Olson, Duke University

The theory that some of the parallels in the double tradition shared by the Gospels of Matthew and Luke may go back to an Aramaic source has a long pedigree. Julius Wellhausen suggested that the purification in Mt. 23.26 and the alms-giving in Lk. 11.41 may go back to a single word in a common Aramaic source that one of the evangelists misread. Matthew Black accepted Wellhausen's theory and added the suggestion that the sons in Mt. 23.31 and the building in Lk. 11.48 also derive from a single word in the Aramaic source. Previous criticisms of this hypothesis have concentrated primarily on the difficulties in establishing the Aramaic of the supposed source. This paper argues that the differences between Matthew and Luke in these cases may be attributed more plausibly to Luke's own redactional interests and his use of the LXX. The association of purification with almsgiving is known from both Sirach and Tobit, parallels noted by Ambrose of Milan in his commentary on Luke. Further, in Luke"s use of Ps. 118.22 in Lk. 20.17 and Acts 4.11, as well as in Stephen"s speech in Acts 7, one can see that building in Luke-Acts often has a negative connotation. In these cases, as in the construction of the tombs by the “lawyers” in Lk. 11.48, building refers to a human enterprise of the leaders of Israel, undertaken apart from God. Therefore, Luke 11.41 and 11.48 may be explained more readily on the basis of the author"s redactional interests and his knowledge of the LXX or other Jewish tradition in Greek rather than his use of an Aramaic source


Biblical Religion and Public Life in Africa
Program Unit: African Association for the Study of Religions
Jacob K. Olupona, Harvard Divinity School

Since the beginning of the 20th century, Biblical Religion, otherwise known as Christianity, has not only spread in spasmodic manner in Africa, it has also produced diversities of experiences, expressions and practices that have significant implications for faith and practice, identity politics and public life on the continent. Christianity in contemporary time continues to shape the face of the continent locally and globally and most importantly provides an expanded space for intersection between the private religious life and public domain. I will be concerned with the varieties of experiences and expressions of Biblical Religion on the African continent, from three important interrelated dimensions. (1) How biblical religion as lived tradition has been shaping and continues to shape the different local faith communities of Africa; (2) How the production of new phase/brands of Christianities that emerged in/from Africa is affecting new expressions of global Christianity as it is currently being experienced in Europe, America and other parts of the world. In addition, (3) How modern African Christianities as agents of change are engaged in critical intervention in Africa's public sphere such as education, health, social welfare and politics. The lecture will also probe into the historical overview of Christianity on the continent vis-à-vis mission, Indigenous African Christianity, Pentecostal-Charismatic and Evangelical brands, with a view to providing the trajectory of the growth of Christianity, but also show the complex ways in which these various forms of Christian traditions have responded to issues of public concerns in selective African communities. How, for example, has Christianity responded to issues of economic crisis and poverty, health-related issues such as HIV/AIDS; the role of civil society, with specific focus on democratic governance and citizenship, human rights and gender and sexuality?


“How Could We Consider Him to Be God…?” (Origen, Contra Celsum 2.9): Challenging Belief in the Divinity of Jesus as Window on to the Making of a God
Program Unit: Greco-Roman Religions
Heike Omerzu, Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz

Of all the gospels" narrations, Celsus most severely critizes the implausibilities of the passion of Jesus. Put into the words of a Jew, the opponent of Christianity attacks – amongst others –Jesus" behaviour in Gethsemane because he regards his imploring and wailing as being unworthy of a God. If Jesus were a God, he would not experience any pain and consequently need not pray to escape death (cf. Origen, Contra Celsum 2,23f). Besides playing the affliction down, Origen holds against Celsus that Jesus" mourning reveals his real human nature while his divine nature fully agrees with his father's will. In this paper the patrological controversy is taken as starting point to demonstrate that the question raised by Celsus at the end of the second century had already before caused problems to the early Christians themselves – and actually does so until today. While the belief in Christ's incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection as being an essential part of God"s salvation plan can be accounted for as a “constitutive differentiation” (Tim Murphy) for the formation and maintenance of Christian identity, this is not true for the interpretation of the way Jesus encountered his death. Here, Jonathan Z. Smith"s idea of the interdependent relationship between canon and exegesis (cf. Smith, “The process of arbitrary limitation and of overcoming limitation through ingenuity recurs”) is seminal when applied to an even more limited set of “religious axioms” as represented, for instance, by the memory of Jesus" passion. Each of the 27 canonical first century Christian writings bears witness of this event but all make different sense of it depending on the particular discursive contexts they belong to. Concerning the Gethsemane tradition, the prior discourses to which John and Hebrews refer in order to negotiate Jesus" suffering are quite evident (though not suggesting a monocausal explanation). While Hebrews interprets the passion by permuting Jewish traditions, John rather ties it up with the Graeco-Roman concept of noble death. However, both depict Jesus as superior to every ordinary human being, even when facing death, whereas Mark seems to diverge from this concept of divinity. Yet, I will maintain that Mark in his Gethsemane narrative does not just stress Jesus" human nature but that he rather wants to establish a counterpoint to the idea of noble death highly esteemed by the Jewish as well as the Graeco-Roman tradition (which is ideally reflected in the criticism by the “Jewish” voice of Celsus). Mark"s attempt to “produce an authoritative account of authority” (Lincoln) by means of a “corrosive discourse” as reflected e.g. in the Gethsemane tradition was, however, not as successful to become, e.g., part of the “constitutive differentiation”. Already the alleviating readings of the other synoptic gospels, but especially the alternative drafts of the tradition in John and Hebrews reveal that the question how the suffering of Jesus can be related to his alleged divine status remained a controversial subject not only for pagan critics as Celsus but also for Christians – then and now.


Monotheism and Mutiny: Holy War in Ancient Judaism
Program Unit: History and Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism
Aharon Oppenheimer, Tel Aviv University

One of the most important images of God in the Bible is his image as a warrior god, a hero, who precedes his people and aids them in their wars. This concept is unique in that the wars of the God of Israel do not take place in the mythological arena, and are not perceived as wars of one god with another. The wars of Israel are fixed in the arena of history, where God is seen as going out to battle to help Israel against its enemies. In the Hellenistic and Roman periods, the Jews of Palestine revolted a number of times against foreign rulers. These wars were different from the wars of other peoples or the Greeks and Romans themselves, for the polytheistic nature of these latter meant that their wars were not wars of religion. In contrast, the revolts of the Jews were holy wars, for their leading cause was religious. Monotheism developed two novelties in the history of war: 1) Religion as a prime motive for war, as distinguished from a secondary motive, a further basis or excuse. Monotheism turned religion into the central cause of the conflict. This is true not only for Judaism and later for Islam, but Christianity also took up the idea of holy war with enthusiasm. 2) Extremism as expressed in martyrdom, the 'sanctification of the Name of God," as an end in itself, or as part of a holy war, is not a necessary complement of such a war: it is possible to have a holy war without martyrdom. But the Hasmonean revolt, the First Jewish War against the Romans and the Bar Kokhba revolt were all wars which included the phenomenon of martyrdom. It would appear then, that the Jews of antiquity invented both the holy war and martyrdom, as well as the possibility of combining the two.


The Renewed Excavations of Tel Gezer, 2006–2008
Program Unit: Archaeological Excavations and Discoveries: Illuminating the Biblical World
Steven M. Ortiz, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

This paper reports on the results of recent archaeological investigations at Tel Gezer undertaken by the Tel Gezer consortium project under the auspices of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and the Israel Antiquities Authority. Tel Gezer has a long history of archaeological investigations from Macalister during 1902-1909 up to the Hebrew-Union excavations in the 1960s and 1970s. Archaeological inquiry in the region has expanded during the past 25 years and several new projects in the Judean Hills and the Philistine coast are focusing on interregional dynamics, facilitating new inquiries into the role of Tel Gezer during the Iron Age. The renewed excavations have concentrated on the Iron Age stratigraphy in the south-central part of the 33 acre tell, between Fields III (the Iron Age gate) and VII of the Hebrew Union excavations; that is, the casemate wall system and the remains to the north, including Dever's Palaces 8000 and 10000. This paper is co-authored by Samuel R. Wolff.


Slavery and Household Meals
Program Unit: Meals in the Greco-Roman World
Carolyn Osiek, Brite Divinity School

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Acts and Families: The Blanks We Can't Fill In
Program Unit: Book of Acts
Carolyn Osiek, Brite Divinity School

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Conclusions and Implications
Program Unit: National Association of Professors of Hebrew
Paul Overland, Ashland Theological Sem

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A Starting Point for Communicative Biblical Hebrew
Program Unit: National Association of Professors of Hebrew
Paul Overland, Ashland Theological Seminary

During the past three years a team of Hebrew teachers led by consultants in Second Language Acquisition and Computer Assisted Language Learning have explored Communicative Language Learning for Biblical Hebrew. Several of their discoveries and challenges will be presented, illustrated, and critiqued.


“Manufacturing Religion”: The Case of Demetra Karpophoros in Ephesos
Program Unit: Greco-Roman Religions
Panayotis Pachis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

Roman history has traditionally been Romanocentric, focusing on the political affairs of the capital and, consequently, much work on the imperial cult deals with the characters and policies of the emperors along with the writings of members of the Roman elite. An association of Demeter worshippers (Demetriasts) in Asia Minor and especially in Ephesus during the Imperial Ages will serve as a foray into the issue of imperial cults. An inscription from the time of Domitian (c. 88-89 C.E.), that is, a letter the Demetriasts had written to the governor of Roman Asia, serves as evidence for the tactics of this group. The inscription contains a decree concerning honors for particular benefactors who were priests and priestesses. More importantly, the members of this group connect their own patron deity with a member of the imperial family. This could be considered as a propaganda tactic and could be included in the framework of a “visual language” and “visual imagery” that contributes to the interpretation of the individual monuments. “Visual imagery” reflects a society's inner life and depicts people's values and imagination that often cannot be apprehended in literary sources. This evaluation of the imperial rituals within associations, as those of Demetriasts in Ephesus, should be understood within the context of a common paradigm of imperial cults generally. The emperors were “added to the old gods, not as successors or replacement, but as a new branch of the Olympian pantheon”. According to the above inscription, mysteries, and especially those of Demeter were organized, in honor of the imperial gods. Furthermore, the integration of imperial cults within civic life in this region should be examined taking into consideration their political, social, and religious significance for various social strata of the population. The above tactic is reinforced if we take into consideration that the Greek culture of this time was largely backward looking; it consciously derived its standards and models from the Greek way of thoughts during the fifth and fourth century B.C.E. According to those, Demeter appears to give cereals to people as a present, as well as to teach them the methods of the cultivation, thus creating the suitable presuppositions for the birth of civilization. The Goddess Demeter assigns to her favorite mythical hero Triptolemus the dissemination of agriculture and methods of cultivating land to the whole humanity. This way the initially local nature of her worshipping expanded, gaining a general acceptance in various areas around the Mediterranean. The emperor best personifies, according to the “spirit of the ages", the above-mentioned perceptions of Deemter and her mythical hero. In this way, he is called “Saviour” (S?t??) and “Benefactor” (??e???t??) of the oecumene. The above attitude reveals the loyalty of the subjects towards the emperor and can be considered as a form of state propaganda. The emperors are not initially interested in the establishment of their worship; this is an initiative of the local rulers as a sign of absolute submission. Their worship is connected with the wider political-economic and religious system of the era, which legalized the imperial “sacred power”.


Anat's Palatial Battle: A Reconsideration of CAT 1.3.ii.17–41 in Light of Research on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Program Unit: Ugaritic Studies and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy
Hugh Rowland Page Jr., University of Notre Dame

The enigmatic confrontation within the goddess Anat's palace (CAT 1.3.ii.17 – 41) has long perplexed readers of the Baal Cycle. Opinions vary as to its meaning and significance in the myth. A range of possible interpretations has been proffered by scholars to this point, including those that view it as: (1) a description of the cannibalistic consumption of those combatants surviving the conflagration described in 1.3.ii.3-16; (2) the tale of a feast that devolves into a bloody maelstrom; (3) an episode describing a mock battle or imaginary confrontation in which Anat's furniture takes the place of actual soldiers; (4) the libretto for a fertility liturgy; or (5) a narrative reflecting the ritualized slaughter of enemy captives. This paper will read the passage through an ethno-medical lens, with attention being focused on how war affects direct and/or collateral participants. Particular emphasis will be placed on how the text might productively be read as a therapeutic narrative offering a course of action for healing the trauma of conflict that involves: re-enactment; purgation; restoration; refreshment; and pursuit of the transcendent. Contemporary research on the diagnosis and treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) will be used as a starting point for re-examining this crucial text.


Violence for God's Sake? Puritan Imagery of Destruction, Hell, and Other Forms of Violence
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Kathering Paisley, Vanderbilt University

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1 Esdras and the MT/2 Esdras Compared: How the Editors behind 1 Esdras Changed the Older Text
Program Unit: Transmission of Traditions in the Second Temple Period
Juha Pakkala, University of Helsinki

The books of Ezra and Nehemiah are witnessed by three main textual sources: 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras and the Masoretic text. These three sources reveal the development of the text in a period when it was not yet regarded as unchangeable. Especially informative is 1 Esdras, which differs considerably from the other two witnesses. When we compare the three sources, it becomes evident that the older text was expanded and rearranged. Many of the changes are small, but there are also several occasions where the changes were extensive. Especially interesting are also the omissions, which are usually not assumed to have taken place in the transmission of Biblical texts. 1 Esdras reveals what kinds of changes were made to the books of the Hebrew Bible. It is also an indication that changes, additions, omissions and rearrangements were possible in a relatively late stage of the text's transmission. It is probable that similar editorial processes were in effect during the preceding centuries as well. For example, one has to be open to the possibility that editors added entire scenes, comparable to 1 Esdras 3:1-5:6. In other words, 1 Esdras is an important witness when scholars try to understand, how editors and copyists changed older texts, especially in the textual transmission of Ezra and Nehemiah.


Jeroboam without Bulls
Program Unit: Deuteronomistic History
Juha Pakkala, University of Helsinki

According to the Book of Kings, Israel's gravest transgression was Jeroboam's sin. It is commonly assumed that the sin refers to the golden bulls that Jeroboam constructed in Bethel and Dan. Contrary to the consensus in scholarship, it is probable that the bulls are a late addition to 1 Kgs 12:26-33. Inconsistencies and contradiction in the passage as well as considerations from other texts in 1-2 Kings suggest that Jeroboam was connected with the bulls only in a very late stage in the development of 1-2 Kings. The idea of making bulls was probably taken from Exod 32, also a late text. The oldest text of 1 Kgs 12:26-33 seems to have been unaware of Dan and Bethel as well. Prior to the addition of the bulls, Jeroboam"s sin only referred to the construction of the temples on the high places, which is well in line with what is known of the history writer"s texts in other passages. The conclusion that the bulls have been added has considerable influence on the way the history writer"s view on Israel"s past history is interpreted. It gives more information on which part of the judgment formulae of individual kings are original and which parts were added later. That the bulls are not original in 1 Kgs 12 also makes futile the search for their original meaning in a monarchic context. It is more probable that their original context is in the post 587 BCE idol criticism.


Can Morton Smith's Archival Writings and Correspondence Shine Any Light on the Authenticity of Secret Mark?
Program Unit: Synoptic Gospels
Allan J. Pantuck, University of California - Los Angeles

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A New Alphabetic Inscription from Zincirli
Program Unit: Paleographical Studies in the Ancient Near East
Dennis Pardee, University of Chicago

On July 21, 2008, the Neubauer Expedition to Zincirli, directed by Prof. David Schloen of the University of Chicago and by associate director Amir Fink, found an inscribed basalt stele at the site of Zincirli in Gaziantep province in southeastern Turkey. The remarkably well-preserved stele, 70 centimeters wide and 95 centimeters tall, was found intact in its original location. It was set into a stone wall with its protruding tenon still inserted into the stone-paved floor. The alphabetic inscription on the stele is written in Sam"alian, the language spoken in the region of Zincirli (ancient Sam"al) during the Iron Age. It commemorates the life of “Kattammuwa servant of Panamuwa,” probably a high official of King Panamuwa, who reigned during the eighth century B.C. A bearded figure is depicted on the stele, seated in a chair in front of a table laden with food. Beside him is a thirteen-line inscription, elegantly carved in raised relief and preserved in almost pristine condition nearly three millennia after it was inscribed. It describes the establishment of the memorial stele and associated mortuary rites. This stele is unique in its combination of pictorial and textual features and thus is an important addition to our knowledge of ancient language and culture. An analysis and translation of the inscription will be presented by Prof. Dennis Pardee of the University of Chicago, and Prof. David Schloen will discuss the archaeological context.


Household Management and the Divine Oikonomia in Clement of Alexandria
Program Unit: Hellenistic Moral Philosophy and Early Christianity
Kamala Parel-Nuttall, St. Mary's University College

This paper will explore the way in which Clement of Alexandria uses household management as a metaphor for understanding both the divine arrangement management of the universe for human benefit (oikonomia) and human participation in God's plan. For Clement, the divine oikonomia is the expression of God's will for human salvation, manifested in every aspect of created reality. The universe is like a household (oikos) governed by the divine Logos whose care extends to every detail of His hierarchical arrangement. Human beings are called to participate in God's plan: to discern it through faith and rational inquiry, and to choose to act in obedience to God's commandments in the 'whole' of life. The householder who attends to the responsibilities of life while remaining focused on the love of God is therefore a fitting, though faint, reflection of divine Providence (Strom 7.70.9).


Polarity and the Role of the Particle 'im in Forming Rhetorical Questions
Program Unit: Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew
Grace Jeongyeon Park, University of California, Los Angeles

Rhetorical questions (hereafter RQs) can be described as a speech act that has the form of a question, but functions as an emphatic assertion. The most important characteristic of RQs that do not include a wh-phrase is the role of polarity in their interpretation: a negative rhetorical question such as “Don"t babies cry?” implies a positive answer such as “Certainly they do!” In biblical Hebrew, both ha and "im can be used to form polar RQs. One peculiarity of the particle ha, however, is that it can also form RQs that do not involve polarity such as in 2 Kgs 6:32: Do you see…? [Certainly you do!]. Taking the alternation between polar and non-polar RQs formed with ha as a model, previous studies of certain passages in which "im occurs in an RQ have also been interpreted as non-polar (for example, Jer 31:20 and Job 6:13). My investigation of RQs in the Hebrew Bible shows, however, that the particles ha and "im differ precisely as to whether or not they allow non-polar RQs: whereas ha is capable of forming both polar and non-polar RQs, RQs formed with "im always involve polarity.


Who Touched Me? Reading Two Women's Stories in Mark 5:21–42 from a Korean Woman's Perspective
Program Unit: Contextual Biblical Interpretation
Ji-Eun Park, Vanderbilt University

The narratives of the hemorrhaging woman (5:24-34) and the Jairus's daughter (5:21-23, 35-42) embedded in the Markan text might shed a valuable light on the issue of differences, which inevitably divides us into multiple poles within our society or within the contemporary world. Biblical scholars have traditionally viewed these two connected narratives from the issues of faith, miracle, and the purity code associated with Jesus as the boundary breaker. The common features of these two stories centering on severely ill female characters and their recovery from the illness have also been interpreted in conjunction with sexually abused contemporary female victims, specifically in relation to the hemorrhaging woman. In this presentation, I will read these two female stories from the perspective of an ordinary Korean female Christian reader. And I would like to propose that they might provide us the possibilities of overcoming our differences and reconciling with one another by connecting two different female characters as the main force of change. My interest in the issue of differences has been initiated by my own social situation, two divided nations and the experience of the colonization and neo-colonization. Yet recent surge of ethnically, economically, culturally, and religiously different people from other Asian countries and the issue of their human rights have caused me to reconsider the issues of diversity. Therefore, as a reader living in Korea, a country with a legacy of colonial oppression, but presently also engaging in oppression of those from other Asian countries, I will seek to find common grounds for reconciling our differences by examining these two female characters, who have different features; Jairus's daughter seems to represent the privileged, while the hemorrhaging woman represents the underprivileged. Specifically beginning by focusing on their femaleness, I will present them as models to embrace differences.


Bible, Minjung, and Identities: An Intercontextual Reading of Christian Identities in Light of the Gospel of Luke
Program Unit: Contextual Biblical Interpretation
Rohun Park, Vanderbilt University

The construction of identities may be most poignant today because of globalization—a process that reaches across diverse cultural, ethnic, and racial identities, while also creating "inside"/"outside" boundaries within which our identities are contested, challenged, and often jeopardized at each turn by strife and scarcity. This particular process has also diversified Korean Minjung by their good or bad "luck," which is institutionalized rather than up to their agential choices. With regard to a multilayered nature of identities, Early Christianity unfolded its moral awareness under the empire. In particular, the Gospel of Luke unveils identities based on loyalty rather than on entitlements, on interested/"ideological" relations rather than on mutual/"heteronomous" unity—such as "hugging" and "kissing" with the "prodigal" (15:20). In itself, the mode of "relationality" condones silence or engenders mimicry, which makes it very difficult for colonial and postcolonial subjects to ensure their full humanity. This essay examines a multifaceted conceptualization of “Minjung” in the face of a constant barrage from society of “otherness.” For an East Asian global reader, recourse to the Minjung serves not only as a "point of contact," but also as a resource for trans-historical and cross-cultural reflection on both Christian and ethnic identities.


Sickness of King and Country: Theological Implications of Hezekiah's Illness
Program Unit: Healthcare and Disability in the Ancient World
Song-Mi Suzie Park, Harvard University

2 Kgs 20:1-11, the story about the sickness and recovery of King Hezekiah, has usually been explained in connection with the preceding tale of Sennacherib's attack. Scholars have posited that this tale, by intentionally establishing a correspondence between king and nation, served to downplay the idealistic hope that followed Zion's miraculous survival in 701. I will argue, however, that this tale concerns something more complicated than a mere curtailing of overzealous hope; this story narratologically reflects theological wrestlings about the nature of Israel's sin, the truthfulness of Deuteronomistic tenets, and the fairness of God. The story functions as vehicle for these debates and, by thus doing, in the end, serves to reaffirm the hope implicit in Israelite theology.


Kids from Kings: Looking at Medieval Bibles and Learning about Jewish Childhood
Program Unit: Bible and Visual Art
Julie Faith Parker, Yale University

Sometimes the most honest insights stem from the least scrutinized places. This paper and presentation look at medieval representations of child characters from the book of Kings to increase our knowledge about Jewish childhood in the Middle Ages. More specifically, we will go back to the late twelfth century and depictions of children from the Pamplona Bibles, the Bibla pauperum, and the Bible moralisée. The narratives from Kings can be easily conveyed through pictures with dramatic effect, making these stories popular choices for illustration in these visual Bibles. We will notice that children were viewed differently from adults in the medieval period, contra the oft-touted theory of the French demographer, Philippe Ariès. Moreover, we will see some ways that Christians interpreted these Bible stories, reflecting changing attitudes toward Jews and children. The discoveries put forth in this paper reveal both comforting and chilling realities that faced Jewish children in the Middle Ages.


Burials and Book-Burnings: Contemporary Concerns for Bible Disposal
Program Unit: Scripture as Artifact
Dorina Miller Parmenter, Syracuse University

This paper investigates contemporary attitudes and practices in various Christian communities involving the disposal of old and/or unwanted Bibles. While most Christians would agree that the importance of the Bible lies in its textual meaning and not its physical form, many are not comfortable with throwing away or shredding the Word of God. The result is recent developments in Christian liturgies to create rituals for Bible disposal. These attitudes and practices will be examined in light of a history of other symbolic acts surrounding Bibles, books, and sacramental objects, and in comparison to the treatment of scripture in other Western religions.


Cognitive Theory, Parables, and Luke 4:23
Program Unit: Cognitive Linguistics in Biblical Interpretation
David Parris, Fuller Theological Seminary

This paper will concentrate on Jesus" metaphorical blend in Luke 4:23, “Physician, heal thyself.” This parable was selected for several reasons. First, because this is perhaps the shortest of the parables its content is easier to handle in a short paper. Second, the theory behind metaphorical blending is rather complex the limited scope of this passage allows for more exploration of the various aspects of metaphorical blending. In particular how the different mental spaces are constructed, blended, and the performative aspect of the parable. Third, this parable takes the form of a conventional proverbial statement and, as such, it is perhaps one of the least creative of Jesus" parables. At the same time, the conventional nature of the parable opens the door for further hermeneutical inquiry. How did other speakers employ metaphorical blends similar to that recorded in Luke and how were they received by their audiences? In particular, proverbial statements in Homer, Aeschylus, Cicero, Ovid, Plutarch, and Job will be examined. It is hoped that by gaining a better understanding of how these particular metaphorical blends were constructed and operated we can arrive at a clearer understanding of how this parable is functioning rhetorically in Luke's gospel.


Overcoming the Great Divide: Thomas Aquinas and the Nonviolent Trinity
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Michael Pasquarello, Asbury Theological Seminary

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Can Every Tree Be Known by Its Fruit? Rabbinic and Patristic Readings of Ezekiel 28:11–19
Program Unit: History of Interpretation
Hector Patmore,  De Protestantse Theologische Universiteit, The Nederlands

The Oracle against the King of Tyre in Ezekiel 28:11-19 is a complex text that has posed significant difficulties for translators and interpreters both ancient and modern. This paper examines the contrasting interpretations of the passage in rabbinic and patristic sources. We find in the rabbinic literature two principal threads of interpretation: one that identifies the central figure of the lament with Adam, another which identifies him with Hiram. Among the traditions (mostly attributed to Palestinian authorities) concerning Adam that draw on Ezekiel 28 to develop and illuminate their aggadah, we hear of Adam's superabundant wisdom, the radiance of the round of his heel, and we learn of the numerous canopies that mark Adam as being among the righteous and provide a glorious setting for his wedding. Among those traditions concerning Hiram—the figure from Kings-Chronicles who assists Solomon in the building of the Temple—the focus is exclusively on the figure's false claims of divinity. In contrast to these Jewish sources the Church Fathers offer a relatively consistent reading of the text. Tertullian, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Augustine all understand the text to be speaking of the fall of Satan. Similarly, Hippolytus employs the text as part of his much larger project, which aims to predict details concerning the coming Antichrist. Origen and Jerome offer a looser connection to hostile powers and demonic forces. In bringing these two major strands together for comparison I will address the following questions: What are the thematic similarities in both traditions? What are the similarities and differences in their interpretative strategies? To what extent are the Church Father (particularly Origen and Jerome) indebted to the rabbis? And, What understanding of "Scripture" is presupposed in their readings?


Adam or Satan? The Identity of the King of Tyre in Late Antiquity
Program Unit: Book of Ezekiel
Hector Patmore,  De Protestantse Theologische Universiteit, The Nederlands

The lament over the King of Tyre in Ezekiel 28:11-19 has presented scholars with a great many challenges. It is a problematic text, with a complex transmission history, that has posed significant difficulties for translators and interpreters both ancient and modern. This paper will explore the ways in which this text and its interpretation have changed over a period of just over one thousand years: from the time the text was written, probably around the 6th Century BCE, up until the closure of the Babylonian Talmud in the 7th Century CE. In roughly chronological order, the paper examines: the Hebrew text, the Greek versions, the Targum, classical rabbinic material, and the Church Fathers. In these different sources the central figure of the lament is variously understood to be a "god" (consonantal Hebrew), the Israelite High Priest (Greek versions), a political exemplar (Targum), a mythical cherub (pointed Masoretic Hebrew), Adam or Hiram (Rabbis), and Satan (Church Fathers). Throughout I ask not only how each community understood the text, but also why they understood it in that particular way. I seek to bring to light the methods of reading used, the results these produced, and the motivations underlying both of these. I conclude by making some preliminary suggestions as to how the historical study of reception history might inform contemporary discussions of hermeneutics. I would particularly welcome contributions from those participating in the Program Unit on this broader question.


The Gospel of Thomas: Negotiating Rome?
Program Unit: Jesus Traditions, Gospels, and Negotiating the Roman Imperial World
Stephen J. Patterson, Eden Theological Seminary

This paper explores possible interactions between the Gospel of Thomas and the Roman empire.


Engaging Theological Andragogy Using Classroom Drama
Program Unit: Best Practices in Teaching
Pandora L. Patton, University of the Nations, Jerusalem

The author and more than fifty of her students entertained themselves with a mock "Jeopardy" game during a classroom segment. Each topic became a 'square" to be matched with its appropriate sub-topics. This initiative was generated and led by students, combined by the Professor in teams. The students cheered and threw candy at the ones with the "correct answers" as the teams competed for points. She likens this andragogy (education of adults) to the midrashic process in the yeshivot, which is the direct progeny of the question and answer process Jesus used and was current during the Second Temple Period. Rabbis of his day used what we call 'socratic dialog," in today's vernacular. However as Jesus took his talmidim (Students and disciples) on a journey through the geography of the Holy Land, He expected more than one of the Eight Multiple Intelligences (Gardiner, 2000 ) to be utilized. Since the word for learning, l-m-d and the word to teach, come from the same l-m-d Hebrew shoresh or root, the concept of “teaching” involves creating an environment for learning. (Wilkinson, 2005) The author has heard many professors (she is the daughter and granddaughter of educators) moan about students not wanting to learn. She promotes that in the right environment and with the right andragogy, it is impossible not to learn. As students utilize musical, kinesthetic, mnemonic, and other forms of learning than logical spatial, along with traditional lectures, reading and writing research papers, the learning is burned deeper into their synapses and beings. The author proposes to utilize a Power Point template and demonstrate the methods to the Consultation.


“Umlauts” Matching the Original Ink of Codex Vaticanus: Do They Mark the Location of Textual Variants?
Program Unit: New Testament Textual Criticism
Philip B. Payne, Fuller Theological Seminary

Examination by Paul Canart at the Vatican identified 51 Umlauts in the margins of Codex Vaticanus that match its original apricot-colored ink. A chi-square probability test comparing the frequency of NA variants in these lines to 540 random lines indicates that the odds are less than one in 10,000 that the occurrences of original ink umlauts are independent of textual variants. The chi-square value for the 27 umlauts adjacent to bars also gives extraordinarily high confirmation that there is a co-occurring relationship between umlauts and textual variants. Numerous cases of mirror-image umlauts exactly opposite each other on facing pages, both matching the original ink of Vaticanus, followed on the same page by umlauts that did not leave a mirror impression shows that the umlauts were not all penned in sequence. This and the variety of textual variants that coincide with the location of umlauts indicate that a scribe successively compared Codex Vaticanus to multiple manuscripts and put umlauts in B's margin to mark the locations of variants readings. The presence of one mirror-impression umlaut at the interface between two quires indicates that the umlauts were added after the binding of its quires together. Various factors support the likelihood that dark chocolate brown color umlauts were overtraced in the Middle Ages, just like most of the text of Vaticanus was, in that same color ink. The umlaut at the end of John 7:52, presuming it was traced over an original one, provides the earliest evidence for the presence of this account here in the text of John. The umlaut at end of 1 Cor 14:33 probably indicates awareness of the textual problem regarding verses 34-35 ("Let women keep silent in the churches..."). If the umlaut had represented the Western reading that puts 14:34-35 after v. 40, there should also have been an umlaut after v. 40. Since there is no umlaut after v. 40, the umlaut at the end of v. 33 is less likely to represent the Western text than a text that omitted 1 Cor 14:34-35. The 51 umlauts that match the original ink of Codex Vaticanus provide compelling statistical evidence that the scribe who wrote them was aware of textual variants and believed them to be sufficiently important to note in this codex. This supports the view that the scribe desired to preserve the most original form of the text possible. These umlauts provide windows into the history of the text before Vaticanus. Twenty of the 51 original ink umlauts are in passages that occur in no early papyri. The high proportion of known textual variants in lines with umlauts compared to lines without umlauts provides a statistical basis for concluding that the majority of the variants that were available to the scribe of Vaticanus have survived in extant manuscripts. The significant of this discovery is enhanced by the diversity of textual traditions represented in the surviving variants where original-ink umlauts occur and also by the demonstrable antiquity of the text(s) on which Vaticanus is based. This discovery provides a new basis for confidence that the NT text has been reliably preserved from the ancient manuscripts available to the scribe of Vaticanus until today.


The Secret Gospel of Mark: A Twentieth-Century Fake
Program Unit: Synoptic Gospels
Birger A. Pearson, University of California, Santa Barbara

That the letter of Clement to Theodore, containing "quotations" from the Secret Gospel of Mark, is a forgery was proposed already in 1975. Per Beskow argued the same thing in a book published in Swedish. When an English version appeared in 1983 (Strange Tales About Jesus) Morton Smith sued the publisher (Fortress Press), and the book was withdrawn from circulation. Now Stephen Carlson and Peter Jeffery have shown conclusively that the letter is a product of the mid-fifties of the twentieth century. Neither Carlson nor Jeffery are professional New Testament scholars, but they have provided New Testament scholars a new possibility for determining what the two fragments of the Secret Gospel of Mark really say.


Some Examples of Gnostic Spirituality
Program Unit: Pseudepigrapha
Birger A. Pearson, University of California, Santa Barbara

It is obviously difficult to speak of the religious experiences of people who lived two millennia ago. All one has to go on is the ancient literature that such people left behind. In this paper an attempt will be made to extrapolate from a small selection of Gnostic texts some examples of what might be called Gnostic spirituality, consisting of a variety of religious experiences seen to be reflected in the texts. Two Sethian texts are utilized: Zostrianos (NHC VIII,1) and the Gospel of Judas (CTchakos, 3); one Valentinian, the Gospel of Truth (NHC I,3; XII,2); and one encratite, the Testimony of Truth (NHC IX,3). Some conclusions will then be drawn from the evidence used.


Purple Prose? The Blood of the Martyrs in Textual Transmission
Program Unit: Religious World of Late Antiquity
Elizabeth Penland, Yale University

In his work On Illustrious Men, Jerome mentions his personal collection of texts by Origen. He describes his joy at owning volumes copied by the martyr Pamphilus himself. To Jerome, these texts are more precious than a single letter from the martyr, as they represent thousands of lines written in the martyr's blood. In the later stirrings of the controversy over Origen's works, Jerome will emphasize Pamphilus"s status as a copyist and a martyr clear of doctrinal suspicion and accuse Rufinus of using the imprint of the martyr to transmit the work of a heretic, Eusebius. Although Jerome's stance on Origen is shifting, the question of who has control over the transmission of a martyr"s corpus—body and work—persists. In situating the texts written in the martyr"s blood, this paper will sketch a trajectory of writing, blood and textual strategies from Cyprian through Eusebius to Jerome. It will follow shifting uses of martyrs in local and translocal controversies and the apparently literal ability of texts to embody their bodies and blood.


Textual Sources behind John's Apocalypse: Going Beyond Canonical Intertexuality to Contemporary Jewish and Christian Conversations about the Hebrew Scriptures
Program Unit: Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity
Paul Penley, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

Gregory Beale, Steve Moyise, David Mathewson, and Jon Paulien are carrying on the conversation about John's OT allusions in the Apocalypse employing such tools as intertextuality to expound the full meaning of John's new work. However, the research tends to operate from a textual paradigm that imagines John composing his text with a set of unrolled scrolls sitting on his writing desk to copy that closely resemble the MT and/or LXX. This paradigm of complex textual copying and fresh interpretation originating with John fails to comprehensively make sense of the data produced from comparative linguistic analysis with the literature of early Judaism. Substantial and unique connections to extant Targumim, Midrashim, and Qumran texts call for a revision in the paradigm. For example, Rev 1:4 reflects the language found in the Palestinian Targum on Deut 32:39 more than the MT or LXX versions. The combination of “the lion of the tribe of Judah” and “the root (or shoot) of David” in Rev 5:5 does not appear in the Hebrew Scriptures but is uniquely located in the Qumran commentary on Gen 49:10 in the 4QPatriarchal Blessings. L. Paul Trudinger has found the same phenomenon related to specific passages in Revelation and extant Midrashim. John is not freshly interpreting the Hebrew Scriptures in a vacuum. He is part of ongoing Jewish conversations directed by such Jewish exegetical techniques as “gezera shawa” and by his community"s Christian interpretations. He is enmeshed in these interpretive traditions and working from memory in his allusive composition of the Apocalypse. Without an awareness of these dynamics, questions of textual sources behind John"s allusions and complex theories of John"s handling of those sources will wander aimlessly in a misconstrued context for John"s composition and important interpretive insights from Targumim, Midrashim, Qumran, and New Testament traditions may be overlooked.


Redescribing Early Christian Redescription: Methods, Taxonomies, and Modernity
Program Unit: Redescribing Christian Origins
Todd C. Penner, Austin College

In his seminal study of the modern ideological character of early Christian historical inquiry (Drudgery Divine), Jonathan Z. Smith notes how “comparison provides the means by which we "re-vision" phenomena as our data in order to solve our theoretical problems” (52). Herein the observer performs a critical role in drawing out similarities and highlighting differences, which are inherent to the classification system used by modern scholarship rather than representing something intrinsic to the historical data itself. In this paper, picking up on Smith's lead, I query the manner in which “redescription” (now focused in the second century) redresses older ideologies in newer guise. I focus particularly on the categories for classification that are used for thinking about, conceptualizing, and redescribing early Christian narrative and identity, and the reproduction therein of modern taxonomic constructions. Especially important for this analysis will be the exploration of the very meaning of “Christian” in a second-century context, analyzing both what is included in that designation and, of necessity, what is excluded. In line with this approach, the boundary of the excluded becomes critical for delineating more fully the abject other that (still) haunts modern landscapes of conceptuality and that is redeployed ontologically in our historical projects of redescription and redefinition.


The Anaginoskomena: “Custom,” “Practice,” or “Conciliar Statements”?
Program Unit: Bible in Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Traditions
Eugen J. Pentiuc, Hellenic College-Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology

The paper discusses the status of the anaginoskomena (deuterocanonical) in the Eastern Orthodoxy. Main proof-texts (Council of Laodicea [360], Athanasius" Festal Letter no. 39 [367]) and key-terms (e.g., Athanasius" anaginoskomena) are discussed in light of later developments in the West (Luther's German Bible [1534]: the seven Septuangint's additions called “Apocrypha” were held as “not equal to the Sacred Scriptures and yet useful and good for reading”; the Roman Catholic response to Luther"s decision: the conciliar statements of Council of Trent in 1546 for inclusion of the seven books in the Old Testament Canon). The Greek Church has not always accepted the Apocrypha, nor is its present position unequivocal. Not until the synods of Constantinople (1638; quite close to Protestant view on "canon"), Iassi (1642), and Jerusalem (1672; similar to Roman Catholic attitude on "canon") were these books declared canonical. However, because the Jerusalem Council was a "Regional Council" and neither Ecumenical nor pan-Orthodox, its decrees were not obligatory unless accepted by all Orthodox Churches. They therefore cannot claim to be binding solutions of the problem for the entire Orthodox Church. Although there has been no official acceptance of the canon outlined at Jerusalem, all editions of the Bible published by the Greek Orthodox Church include the books selected in 1672. The paper concludes with some general remarks pertaining to the current status of the anaginoskomena in the ethnic branches of the Eastern Orthodoxy (Russia, Greece, Romania, Serbia, etc.).


The Metaphor of Adoption in Early Christianity
Program Unit: Early Christian Families
Michael Peppard, Yale University

This paper explores how the practice of adoption, common in the Roman families of antiquity and late antiquity, was adapted as a metaphor in selected early Christian writings of the same time period. I argue that adoption has been largely misunderstood as a metaphor in Christianity because of misconceptions about the Roman practice on which the metaphor was based. The crucial (but usually unstated) modern assumption is that adopted sons carried a lower status than biological sons in the Roman conception of the family. But as scholars of the Roman family dispute and bring nuance to that modern assumption, our understanding of the Christian metaphor should be concomitantly altered. This paper will briefly survey the two most prominent points of debate regarding the adoption metaphor: so-called "adoptionist" Christology and "adoption" as an image of Pauline anthropology. But the bulk of the paper will examine some unheralded employments of the adoption metaphor in other early Christian writings. Clement of Alexandria and John Chrysostom will offer representative samples of this metaphor's diverse functions in Christian rhetoric.


The Spectacle of “Bare Life”
Program Unit: Violence and Representations of Violence in Antiquity
Judith B. Perkins, Saint Joseph College

In her grounding-breaking articles, "Fatal Charades” JRS (1990) and “Launching into History” JRS (1993), and recent book, Martial: Liber Spectaculorum: Text, Translation and Commentary (2006), Kathleen Coleman delineates the Roman practice of executing persons as they were forced to play parts in mythological or historical enactments. These executions staged in public auditoria and financed by authorities (magistrates or emperors) for the entertainment of audiences, as Coleman notes, presuppose “ a category of persons whom society regards as dispensable,” as “ no account” (1990:54), “ superfluous” persons (1990: 72). This paper argues that these “no account” persons exemplify the sort of “ bare life” Giorgio Agamben features in his Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (1998). Agamben holds that “the original political relation is the ban,” the exclusion of some human life from the political community and that the “sovereign” is the one who has power to set these limits, the power to define certain human life as “ bare life,” life devoid of political or religious value. Martial's poems provide contemporary testimony for the interpretation of the fatal charades as a spectacle of sovereignty. Christian martyr texts, however, contest this interpretation. That these Christian texts survive and that Christianity emerged as a political entity indicate the changing dynamics of sovereignty in the imperial period. Factors noted by Coleman—a refigured judicial system with harsher penalties and wider liability— likely contributed to this changing dynamic.


Translator Influencing Translator: Did the Greek Exodus Translator's Emphasis on Yahweh's Glory Influence the Greek Isaiah's Use of This Motif?
Program Unit: Greek Bible
Larry Perkins, Northwest Baptist Seminary

Substantial evidence indicates that the Greek Exodus translator emphasized Yahweh's glory by his intentional use of "glory" terminology in his translation. This evidence will be reviewed. Scholars who have worked with the Greek Isaiah text similarly have observed an emphasis on the concept of glory. Selected evidence will be reviewed. Scholars have long expressed the view that the Isaiah translator used Greek Exodus as a guide in rendering specific Hebrew terms. However, this presumed dependence has not been evaluated in terms of the concept of glory. The methodology used to demonstrate dependence by the Isaiah translator on Greek Exodus with respect to other concepts will be evaluated. This paper will then consider evidence that would demonstrate whether Greek Isaiah's use of "glory" language has been influenced by Greek Exodus.


Covenantal Consciousness in Jesus' Last Week and the Fall of Empire
Program Unit: Jesus Traditions, Gospels, and Negotiating the Roman Imperial World
Nicholas Perrin, Wheaton College

Whereas many of Jesus" actions (recorded in the gospels) have been called into question as historical realities, there is presently a broad willingness to admit the authenticity of the events ascribed to Jesus in his last week. With particular attention to these events, especially the "cup saying" at the Last Supper, this paper will argue that the historical Jesus not only anticipated his death but also interpreted it in covenantal terms. Part and parcel of these "covenantal terms", it will further be argued, was the overthrow of illegitimate empires, including the Roman-sponsored empire of the day.


“The Things Having Lives”: Ecology, Allusion, and Performance in Revelation 8:9
Program Unit: Ecological Hermeneutics
Peter Perry, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago

ta echonta psychas ("the things having lives") in Rev 8:9 has long been identified as a solecism reflecting Semitic influence and as an allusion to fish dying in the Nile as the result of an Exodus plague. Building on Ford, Paulien and Beale's suggestion that it is also an allusion to Gen 1:20-21, I use Performance Criticism to examine its impact. In performance, the abrupt structure and unusual syntax of the sentence expresses the Seer's sadness over the death of God's creatures and contrasts their lives with merchant ships that exploit God's creation for Babylon. The phrase evokes the whole creation account and appropriate relationships between God and psychai, both creatures and human beings. At odds with God, Babylon's psyche consumes both human and creaturely psychai to excess, claiming to be sovereign (Rev 18:7, 13-14). John begins this contrast between creation and commerce in Rev 8:9, valuing creatures in the sea, mourning their death like the martyrs (6:9, 12:1, 20:4), and reorienting hearers to consider all creatures as fellow psychai in service of God who wait for renewal. Contrary to first appearances, the book of Revelation does offer a resource for valuing and protecting marine life among all of God's creatures.


The Deuteronomic History and the Book of Chronicles: Scribal Works in an Oral Culture
Program Unit: Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah
Raymond F. Person Jr., Ohio Northern University

In an earlier work I argued that the Deuteronomic History and the Books of Chronicles were contemporary competing historiographies. Both descended from a common source that was produced by the Deuteronomic School in the Babylonian exile. Their differences can be accounted for by a split in this scribal guild into two groups that continued their work on this common source—that is, those scribes who returned to Yehud under Zerubbabel (the Deuteronomic School) and those that remained in Babylon (the school that produced Chronicles). These two scribal groups continued to revise the common source leading to these two different competing contemporary historigraphies that once again came into contact with each other when Ezra returned to Jerusalem with his group of scribes. In this essay I will explore how the existence of these two competing contemporary historiographies helps us understand more about the primary oral culture in which they were produced and preserved, addressing questions such as: “What process may have influenced the rise of these two different historiographies, both descending from a common source?” “How different might these contemporary historiographies have been understood?” and “Why did the tradition preserve both historiographies?”


The Romance of Paul and Seneca
Program Unit: Ancient Fiction and Early Christian and Jewish Narrative
Richard I. Pervo, Saint Paul, MN

Although few dispute the fictional nature of the correspondence between Seneca and Paul, examination of its fictional character has been minimal. This paper addresses the importance of epistolary cliche in the collection and pursues the lines of a plot, establishing links to the ancient epistolary novel.


“Once Again You Shall See the Difference between the Righteous and the Wicked”: A Proposed Reunification of 4QCommentary on Malachi and 4QCommentary on Genesis B
Program Unit: Qumran
Dorothy M. Peters, Trinity Western University

Four fragments possessing similar physical attributes and paleography were originally assigned to 4QCommentary on Genesisb (4Q253). One fragment attests Noah and the ark, another employs sacrificial terms, a third mentions “the sea” and a fourth contains, among other scattered words, the phrase "between the righteous and the wicked". Identified as a quotation and interpretation of Malachi 3:16-18, this latter fragment was distinguished from the others in the official edition and given its own name, 4QCommentary on Malachi (4Q253a). While the fragment clearly quotes Malachi, its language also evokes the Genesis flood narrative in which God, for the first time, effectively distinguishes the righteous (Noah) from the wicked in the primordial judgment. "Between the righteous and the wicked" surfaces in Damascus Document, the Hodayot and within a set of Day of Atonement prayers (4QFestival Prayersb). Within these prayers, the phrase is employed alongside the hoped-for destruction of the oppressors and the covenant with Noah. Therefore, the appearance of Noah together with a possible quotation of Malachi is not unknown in the Dead Sea Scrolls. In this paper, I propose a reordering of the fragments and a reunification of 4Q253 and 4Q253a. Viewed together, their fragments become an intriguing case study of a particular Second Temple hermeneutical strategy. These exegetes of antiquity appear to have viewed the Noah narrative in Genesis through the contemporizing prophetic lens of Malachi, thus linking the two and using this textual conflation as a basis for making prophetic statements concerning their own present and future. "Once again", they hoped, as he had in the days of Noah and, as Malachi had foretold, God would make distinctions between the righteous and the wicked.


The Imperishable Crown: Pauline Athletic Metaphors and Head-Coverings as Egalitarian Program
Program Unit: Pauline Epistles
Janelle Peters, Emory University

****This analysis of 1 Corinthians 9 and 11 will demonstrate that athletic metaphors and female head-coverings cohere with Paul's egalitarian program. Addressing a community obsessed with status conferred by the ritual of baptism, Paul introduces status inversive practices which contribute to the continuing formation of the individual and unify the community in a radical position of social justice. First, I will show that the footracing to which Paul exhorts the community had egalitarian associations. The Heraia, a female footrace held at Olympia also on the Peloponnese, awarded winners crowns and prizes. It was also an event in which the young girls were racing toward the status of the married women who were the judges. Violent sports, on the other hand, were associated with the Roman lares and imperialism. By reserving masculine boxing for himself and the “super apostles,” Paul validates his calling as an apostle and implies the failure of the “super apostles.” Next, I will expand upon Troels Engberg-Pedersen's identification of Corinthian men as desirous of head-coverings. Interpretative patterns in Philo and 4QInstruction prove “because of the angels” need not be taken as referring to fallen Watchers but to the divine cohortative in Gen 1:26. A similar use of kephale as “ruler” occurs in the LXX in Deut 28:44 with egalitarian gendered pairs. Therefore, the Corinthian community probably would not have correlated medical texts on hair (from which contemporary philosophers like Epictetus differed) with Jewish angelology. Rather, the Corinthians would have noticed that Paul's “natural” argument contradicted the prominent representations of the emperor capite velato as pontifex maximus in Corinth. Without explicit anti-imperialism, Paul takes the authority of the Strong and gives it to the Weak, introducing a program by which the Corinthians could still interact with the Roman colony but progress toward the egalitarian heavenly politeuma.


Advancing the Doctrine of the Greek Article
Program Unit: Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics
Ronald Dean Peters, Great Lakes Christian College

This paper is an attempt to redefine the grammar of the Greek article. This is accomplished by means of classifying the Greek article with the relative pronoun and employing Hallidayan categories of TH- items and WH- items. The paper also argues that attempts to define the Greek article based on analogy with the English definite article produce misleading results regarding its funciton. Whereas the English definite article falls under the category TH- item, the Greek article falls under the category WH- item. The function of the Greek article is then explained based on this categorization.


The Nature of “P” in the Primeval History
Program Unit: Pentateuch
David L. Petersen, Emory University

The biblical primeval history has often been assessed primarily from the perspective of the non-priestly material. However, since the priestly literature in Gen 1-11 makes up almost fifty percent of the priestly literature in Genesis and since the bulk of the basic priestly narrative occurs in Genesis, one must focus on those eleven chapters to discern the basic features of the priestly program. In the primeval history, “P” is responding to earlier Israelite traditions, “re-presenting” ancient Near Eastern traditions, and advocating forms of religious practice appropriate to Yahwistic communities in the Persian period.


Q 1:31 and 22:64: Jesus' Birth and Passion in the Synoptic Sayings Source
Program Unit: Q
Jeffrey Peterson, Austin Graduate School of Theology

Q is increasingly treated as belonging to the genre of the Sayings Gospel, consisting principally of sayings and lacking a substantial narrative framework, like the Gospel according to Thomas. This trend in research fails to account for all of the non-Marcan matter shared by Matthew and Luke, in particular that found in the birth and passion narratives, some of which satisfies the criteria conventionally employed in the reconstruction of Q. An especially strong case based on verbatim agreement can be made for including Q 1:31 and 22:64 in the reconstruction of the Synoptic Sayings Source. Such evidence for a biographical framework in Q requires a reassessment of its designation as a Sayings Gospel, and indeed a reconsideration of the grounds on which the existence of Q is posited.


Haggadic Concord and Halakhic Conflict in the First Christian Generation
Program Unit: Extent of Theological Diversity in Earliest Christianity
Jeffrey Peterson, Austin Graduate School Of Theology

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The Usefulness of the Sexual Organs in Pseudo-Justin Martyr's On the Resurrection
Program Unit: Gender, Sexuality, and the Bible
Taylor Petrey, Harvard Divinity School

Ps. Justin Martyr's late-second-century text, "On the Resurrection," defends the resurrection of the flesh against alternative Christian views of the 'spiritual" resurrection. This opposing view holds that the flesh will not be resurrected because it would necessitate the resurrection of the sexual organs, and consequently, sexual desires and relations would be possible in the resurrection. The opponents quote the synoptic saying of Jesus that "in the resurrection they shall be as angels in heaven" in order to argue against the notion of any fleshly resurrection. Ps. Justin insists, however, that the body needs to be resurrected as a fleshly "whole," including sexual organs. He explains that these bodies will not desire sexually, nor will the sexual organs function for sexual purposes. Both views present the resurrected body as free from any kind of sexuality, yet they do so in different ways and for different reasons. What is at stake in the debate about the presence of sexual organs in the resurrection? The dispute over the sexual organs necessarily invokes questions of maleness and femaleness, masculinity and femininity, in resurrected bodies. Simplistically it seems that the opponents value androgyny while Ps. Justin values sexual difference, but there is much more at stake. This paper demonstrates how this approach overlooks why Ps. Justin invested so much intellectual energy into the defense of the resurrection of the "whole" flesh. Ps. Justin's primary concern is that the resurrected body serves as a model for the behavior of the mortal body. Specifically, the mastery of the sexual organs in the resurrected body demonstrates the possibility of their mastery in this life. The reason that the resurrected body must be sexually differentiated and include sexual organs is because it models how virginity should be practiced in mortality.


Marketing a Bible Translation in a Secular Society: Reflections on the New Danish Bible
Program Unit: Ideology, Culture, and Translation
Christina Petterson, Macquarie University-Sydney

In December 2007 a long process of translating the New Testament into contemporary Danish was completed. Already the publishers are looking at a third print run of "The New Accord". The marketing of the translation consciously distanced it from the difficult "church-cliquish" language of the 1992 authorised translation and explicitly targeted the general population. This re-christianisation of the general population takes place within a highly charged political and religious climate, where especially the relationship to the Danish Muslim population is particularly volatile. This paper will look at some of the political and nationalist struggles and motives behind the scenes of the latest translation.


Bakhtin Reads the Song of Songs
Program Unit: Bakhtin and the Biblical Imagination
Jennifer Pfenniger, University of Toronto

To what degree could Bakhtin's profound comprehension of Dostoevky's polyphonic poetics be applied to Hebrew Scripture"s Song of Songs? Indeed, Bakhtin"s provocative resistance to objectifying character consciousness and incisive insistence upon dialogical rather than monological development of plot, has much to offer an interactive and utterance based piece such as the Song. In return, the irreducibly complex, multi-voiced, and potentially plot-defying persona of this most sublime of Works ensures a worthy partner for the integrity and sophistication of Bakhtinian reflection. This paper, then, seeks to engage Bakhtin"s linguistic method with a lexically based approach to the Song"s Hebrew Text, in order to elucidate character, discourse, consistency of plot, and extended "speech communion" with other Scriptural Testimonies. One can expect a most fecund of encounters: where structural illumination of apparently disparate materials is matched only by the genius of dialogical literary understanding.


Numbers: The Reflections of Episodes from Numbers in Selected Islamic Literature and Its Jewish and Syriac Cognates
Program Unit: Qur'an and Biblical Literature
Robert R. Phenix Jr., Saint Louis University

This paper examines the topos of the death of the prophet Harun (Aaron) as recounted in the Islamic hadith, tafsir, and the collections known as the Lives of the Prophets. Connections with the theological and ideological development of Islam are proposed and the matter of the story of Aaron's death as revised to reflect the traditions about the death of Muhammad is investigated. This understanding of the prophets as reflecting traditions about Muhammad is considered from the perspective of Jewish and Christian appropriations of Aaron for their respective identities. From a source-critical approach, this paper identifies the key elements from Jewish literature beginning with Qumran but focusing on stories in the midrash examines the contribution of Syriac hymnography and exegesis. It then offers a sketch of the hermeneutical features of the different traditions, with a clear focus on the differences between the biblical account and the Islamic tradition.


Holiness and Rites of Passage of Child Saints in Ethiopic Hagiography
Program Unit: Early Christian Families
Robert R. Phenix Jr., Saint Louis University

Since the pioneering article of Steven Kaplan (1997), there has been no work conducted in the area of the study of Children in Ethiopic hagiography. The present article picks up on topics that Kaplan evaluated in reconstructing the social aspects of infertility, pregnancy, rites of baptism and naming, and the practice of oblation, or dedicating a child to monastic life as an infant. The present study expands Kaplan's research to evaluate the extent to which the important elements of the saint's early life in holiness correspond to rites of passage for children outside the monastery. A preliminary assessment of the data suggests that at least one of the degrees of holiness that a prodigious holy child presents corresponds with a formal transition to adult status. The conferral of the covenant of the saint, that is, the solemn promise that whoever honors the saint at his or her tomb, or on the day of his or her memorial, will receive remission of sins and blessing from God, corresponds to the rites of passage from childhood to adulthood. Closely connected with this transition to adulthood is the concept of holiness, particularly sexual purity. In the Ethiopic material investigated here, the transition is from a pure state of childhood into a “mature” sainthood, rather than the transition into (licit) sexual activity and family life. This paper will discuss the concepts of holiness and children found in these saints" lives, and place them in dialogue with Christianity and culture in Late Antiquity.


Arresting Children: Biblical Allusion, Modern Iconography, and the Witness of Samuel Bak
Program Unit: Bible and Visual Art
Gary A. Phillips, Wabash College

In a new series of four dozen paintings on exhibition from October 18 to November 18, 2008 at the Pucker Gallery (171 Newbury Street, Boston), post-Shoah artist Samuel Bak has returned to Warsaw and to his past to remember the boy photographed at Nazi gunpoint during the cleansing of the Warsaw ghetto. Combining biblical images, settings, and iconography from both testaments, Bak takes the boy on a poignant and personal journey through a natural world that no longer adheres to a created order and through a history that no longer works on the principle of promise and fulfillment. We join Bak on this expedition to explore how this child and all the lost children he signifies question and reconfigure our understandings of divine promise and presence, suffering and redemption, memory and imagination. Bernard Pucker has agreed to open his gallery to Society members to arrange for special access to the Bak exhibition and to conversation with Sam Bak as well.


Memory in Exile: The Function and Meaning of Memory in Ezekiel 8–11
Program Unit: Exile (Forced Migrations) in Biblical Literature
D. Nathan Phinney, Malone College

James Olney, in his work on Augustine and Rousseau has demonstrated that writers of first person narrative rely on memory to produce their work and often leave behind in their texts clues to their understanding of memory's purpose and function. This paper, by reading closely portions of Ezekiel's "travel narrative" (8:1-11:24) and by considering explicit references to memory in the book, offers suggestions as to how memory may have been understood and employed by the exilic author.


Reexamining Christ's Proclamation to 1 Peter's Imprisoned Spirits
Program Unit: Letters of James, Peter, and Jude
Chad T. Pierce, Calvin College

1 Peter 3:18-22 records Christ's proclamation to “the spirits in prison who sinned in the days of Noah.” Interpreting this passage has challenged even the most competent exegetes. Earliest interpretations understood these imprisoned spirits as the souls of humans to whom Christ preached during his “harrowing of Hades” between his death and resurrection. Augustine identified them as the humans living prior to the flood who were heralded to by the pre-existent Christ through the person of Noah. Scholars from the beginning of the twentieth century through the present have read these verses through the lens of the fall of the watchers tradition first recorded in the Book of Watchers, thus reckoning these spirits as imprisoned angels. Yet contemporary scholarship has failed to acknowledge the development, conflation, and even multiplicity of the fallen angel sin and punishment myths that are found throughout much of early Jewish and Christian literature. This paper traces the major developments of the fallen angel, giant, and human punishment traditions throughout 1 Enoch, Jubilees, Dead Sea Scroll material, and other relevant works that may have played a role in the formative history of 1 Peter 3:18-22. This paper also attempts, based upon the conflation of previous traditions, to ascertain the identity of these imprisoned spirits, what Jesus" message to them would have entailed, and finally the relevance of these questions to the original readers.


Beyond Literalism: Interlinearity Revisited
Program Unit: International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies
Albert Pietersma, University of Toronto

November 2007 saw the publication of A New English Translation of the Septuagint (Oxford University Press). As is well known, at least among Septuagintalists, NETS is informed by the so-called interlinear paradigm. In its rather brief reception history, and contrary to intent, the interlinear paradigm has morphed into a theory of Septuagint origins. As it is axiomatic in the discipline to distinguish between the Septuagint as produced, i.e., the text at its point of inception, on the one hand, and the Septuagint as received, i.e., the text as read at any given point in its history of interpretation, on the other, so it should be deemed axiomatic to distinguish between the interlinear paradigm as produced, i.e., the paradigm as introduced into Septuagint Studies by its proponents and the paradigm as received, i.e., the paradigm as commonly interpreted by Septuagint practitioners. While a text as received, in form or semantics, is not necessarily different from the text as produced, by the same token the two cannot be assumed to be the same. In similar manner, the interlinear paradigm as received cannot be assumed to be identical to the paradigm as produced. This paper intends to discuss the differences between these two uses of the paradigm and to explore whether both interpretations could possibly have validity.


Figurative Preexistence? The Case of Jeremiah 1:5
Program Unit: Israelite Prophetic Literature
Dana M. Pike, Brigham Young University

Jeremiah's vocation report (or call narrative; Jer 1) contains the most obvious example of individual divine election preserved in the Hebrew Bible (Jer 1:4-5). While this report shares certain features with other biblical passages emphasizing pre-birth election (e. g., Judg 16:17; Isa 44:2; 49:1-5), the claim in Jeremiah 1:4-5 is unique in the Hebrew Bible. It does not claim that Jeremiah was originally chosen in his youth or even in the womb, as is often the case in ancient Near Eastern claims of election. Based on the first phrase of verse 5, YHWH chose, or at least “knew” Jeremiah before conception: “before I formed you in the womb I knew you” (NRSV). Modern commentators typically describe this claim (if they discuss it at all) as employing figurative or metaphoric language to legitimate the prophetic message of the book of Jeremiah. My purpose is to explore, as far as possible, whether or not ancient Israelites would have “read” the language of Jeremiah's pre-conception election similarly. In order to pursue this I first review the text tradition of Jeremiah 1:4-5, analyze the relationship between the phrases in this passage, and briefly overview the history of its interpretation. The bulk of my study focuses on an analysis of the four main verbs employed in verse 5 (YHWH is always the subject). Curiously, when these verbs occur elsewhere in the Masoretic Text with deity as the subject the objects of the verbs are consistently existing people or items. This raises the question of the ancient understanding of Jeremiah 1:5 in relation to other biblical passages employing figurative and metaphoric language. My conclusion explores the implications of these data and examines possible alternative ways in which this text may have been understood at the time of its composition and in ensuing centuries.


What Makes a Method of Interpretation Feminist?
Program Unit: Feminist Hermeneutics of the Bible
Ahida E. Pilarski, Saint Anselm College

A few years ago, when asked a question, very similar to the question asked here, what makes a feminist reading feminist, Phyllis Bird began by clarifying some conceptual elements that are constitutive to the question. First, she offered a definition for the term "feminist," and second, for the term "reading." In her definitions I find two preliminary remarks that partially become my starting point to answer the question, what makes a method of interpretation feminist. First is that feminism is a stance; and second, a feminist reading is considered in the context of biblical interpretation. After I briefly explain these two points, I will address the question under discussion here which is about interpretation.


Music in Slavonic Enoch
Program Unit: Social Scientific Criticism of the New Testament
John J. Pilch, Georgetown University

In Slavonic Enoch (2 Enoch) the sky-traveler traverses the traditional seven heavens and hears music (mainly singing) on his journey. My topic concerns "musical hallucinations" (as they are called in the literature. The author of Enoch clearly says he is dreaming. Modern neuroscience has documented the fact that human beings are capable of hearing and composing music especially in the hypnogogic and hypnopompic stages of sleep. So my hypothesis is that the author of Enoch did hear (perhaps compose) music in his visionary dreams. A second part of the research will analyze the reports of what he heard (mostly singing in unison). This will be a further extension of my paper in Salamanca (also published in BTB) where I attempted to present the sounds of the ancient flute. Of course, I won't find ancient recordings of the human voice, but I think I can extrapolate from sung melodies in that culture continent at the present and hypothesize what the ancient music might have sounded like.


“I Have Heard of Your Renown”: Memory and Reminiscence in Habakkuk 3
Program Unit: Israelite Prophetic Literature
Daniel Pioske, Princeton Theological Seminary

My paper will explore the ancient hymn to the divine warrior that concludes the final chapter of Habakkuk. Rather than applying the standard historical methodological tools to this text, however, I will shift my focus slightly and examine instead the relationship between memory and the preservation of the past, particularly that process of remembering paramount to the image of the divine warrior in Habakkuk 3. My contention throughout my paper is that Habakkuk 3 is intricately tied to memory in a threefold progression from: 1.) ancient Canaanite hymn to 2.) prophetic vision to 3.)a liturgical psalm for the post-exilic community. In each setting, the memory of the divine warrior is re-collected and re-membered for the community in which it is recited. Having discussed the threefold mnemonic movement of Habakkuk 3, the second section of my paper will turn from the "what" to the "why"—why is that the Canaanite hymn of the divine warrior is preserved and recast within the context of prophetic vision and communal psalm? In order to answer this question I will turn to Carol Newsom's elegant description of the "historical résumé" within ancient Israelite thought, arguing that the ancient hymn to the divine warrior resides within this rubric. I will then conclude my paper by turning to Paul Ricoeur's recent "Memory, History, Forgetting" in an effort to reflect on the significance of memory for the ancient Israelite relationship to its past—and for the contemporary reader"s connection to this past as well.


The Use of Secondary Versions for the Critical Edition of 3–4 Regnorum: The Georgian Evidence
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Historical Books
Andres Piquer-Otero, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

In this paper, I will present some practical issues on the usage of secondary version evidence from a non-Greek source for the development of the critical text and apparatus of LXX 3-4 Regnorum. Taking 3 Regnorum 1-3 as testing grounds, the evidence from Georgian manuscripts will be examined in order to present a series of relevant remarks for textual criticism of the Greek text. This will include both general observations (translation technique, relationship with different Greek text types, connections with the Armenian) which must be taken into account and discussion of a selection of concrete variants of interest for the critical text of the Septuagint.


Jesus and the Messianic Priesthood
Program Unit: Historical Jesus
Brant Pitre, Our Lady of Holy Cross College, New Orleans

In this paper, I will challenge the widespread scholarly assertion that Jesus did not see himself as a priestly Messiah (e.g., James Dunn, Jürgen Becker, Geza Vermes). In order to show this, I will build on the recent work of Crispin Fletcher-Louis (JSHJ), but attempt to take his work further on several points. First, I will suggest that when the Old Testament distinction between the Levitical and Melchizedekian priesthoods is properly taken into account (cf. Exodus 32; Gen 14:18; Psa 110:4), there is solid evidence that Jesus not only saw himself as an eschatological priestly Messiah, but that he also deliberately organized various circles of his disciples—Peter, the 3, the 12, and the 70—to parallel the pre-Levitical priesthood of Mount Sinai (cf. Exod 24:1-11). Second, I will argue that Jesus did not expect just any kind of Messiah, but a Melchizedekian priest (Mark 12:35-37 et parr.; Psalm 110:1-4; 11QMelchizedek 2). Third and finally, I will conclude by suggesting that Jesus" prophetic signs in the Temple “Cleansing” and at the Last Supper suggest that he, like other Jews, not only envisioned an eschatological Temple but an eschatological priesthood (cf. Mark 11:15-17; Isa 56:1-8; T. Lev. 17-18). In this vein, he deliberately played the part of the priestly Messiah at the Last Supper by acting as chief host at the Messianic Banquet of bread and wine he celebrated with his disciples (cf. Mark 14:17-25 et parr.; 1QRule of the Congregation 2:17-22). The priestly dimensions of this action are especially clear if recent suggestions that Jesus sought to replace the Jerusalem Temple cult at the Last Supper are correct (e.g., Gerd Theissen; Jacob Neusner; Bruce Chilton). When this and other data is taken into account, it seems that the categorical rejection of priestly messianism on the part of Jesus represents a failure to firmly situate his mission and message in the context of late Second Temple Judaism.


Word Order and Clause Structure in the Language of the New Testament
Program Unit: Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics
Andrew W. Pitts, McMaster Divinity College

In 1993 Porter wrote an article suggesting that New Testament Greek word order was an unexplored area of Greek linguistics and sought to make some initiatory suggestions, using Philippians as a case study. Unfortunately, not much progress has been made since then, largely due to the inability to search for syntactic patterns in large portions of the New Testament. The studies that have been produced have been limited to particular books or passages (e.g. Porter's study of Philippians; Martín-Asensio's study of Acts 27; Maloney"s study of Mark, Davidson"s Romans, Luke and Epictetus; Kwong"s study of Luke-Acts and Spencer"s study of three Pauline passages) most of which—at least in terms of syntactic analysis—have been investigated by hand, without the use of annotated corpora, not least because syntactically annotated corpora have not been available until recently. There has been no sustained treatment of word order throughout the entire New Testament. Further complicating the situation is the fact that the studies that have been undertaken all approach the issue from differing methodological standpoints. The unfortunate result has been that much disagreement reigns in grammatical discussion over issues of word order and until now, with the recent release of the OpenText.org database and related search tools, there has been no way of testing various theories across the entire New Testament. In light these new and promising possibilities, this paper attempts to provide an analysis of word order and clause structure across the New Testament under a single united methodological framework. I conclude by plotting out some implications of the results for Greek grammar and syntax, discourse analysis and the exegesis of individual passages, pursuing the final application by comparing my results with a number of exegetical decisions made in the standard commentaries based upon unsubstantiated assumptions about the nature of Greek word order.


Beholding the Teachings of Wisdom: Allegorical Scriptural Interpretation as Religious Experience in Philo's De vita contemplativa
Program Unit: Religious Experience in Antiquity
Catherine Playoust, Jesuit Theological College, Melbourne

In De vita contemplativa, Philo tells of a community of Jewish men and women who pursue wisdom through the study of the Scriptures. The religious experience they seek is philosophical in character, modeled on Platonic contemplation and based on allegorical interpretation. Their practices are both individual and communal: they spend most days alone with the Scriptures, but gather to hear allegorical homilies too, while their collective bodily discipline unifies them and predisposes them to receive the words into their souls. The hymns they sing while together have been composed during their time alone, and the divine ecstasy they experience in chorus prepares them for the solitary days ahead. While Philo's account of the Therapeutae has often been called idealistic, and thus historically questionable, his other works show his extensive personal acquaintance with allegorical scriptural interpretation. Hence at least this dimension of their lifestyle should be considered, with due care, as evidence for ancient religious-philosophical experience.


The Synoptic Problem and the Field of New Testament Introduction
Program Unit: Synoptic Gospels
John C. Poirier, Franklin, OH

Introductions to a field should relate their subject with clarity, honesty, and a firm grasp of the relevant subfields. Unfortunately, when it comes to discussing the synoptic problem, many introductions to the New Testament fall short. Two problems in particular seem to recur: (1) NT introductions often promote a given solution on the basis of faulty and out-of-date arguments, and (2) they often misrepresent the current state of the synoptic problem. When it comes to technical aspects of the Bible, most seminary-trained clerics presumably repeat what they had heard in the classroom (or read in a textbook) during their schooling. The fact is that the majority of NT scholars never look more deeply into the synoptic problem than when they were introduced to it. Yet a number of these scholars eventually write NT introductions of their own, presenting the synoptic problem in a way that scarcely moves beyond what they had once read in an introduction. The result is a crisis in the currency and reliability of basic information, with numerous recent NT introductions published in recent years present arguments disproved more than fifty years ago.


Is Cultic Sacrifice an Efficacious Means of Divine Mercy in the Prophetic Literature?
Program Unit: Israelite Prophetic Literature
H. Junia Pokrifka, Azusa Pacific University

In the prophetic literature, there is an apparent contradiction between denunciation and affirmation of cultic sacrifice. Israelite sacrifices and assemblies are portrayed as worthless and detestable before God and requiring judgment (e.g., Isa 1:13-14,24;65:3,6-7). Yet, following the total destruction of the old temple and sacrificial system, the cultic sacrifices once again become a divinely required, acceptable means of atonement for Israel (e.g., Ezek 20:40;43:20,27;45:15-18,21,27). To what extent do the prophets recognize sacrifice as a God-given means of atonement in Israel? A narrative-historical pattern that marks many prophetic books sheds light on this question. (1) God originally provided the cult as a gracious means of dealing with sin and preserving the covenant. In that situation, the cultic sacrifices have a real but limited power and value to administer forgiveness under the condition of national and individual holiness. (2) When Israel turns to idolatry and injustice, its sacrifices become instances of sinful presumption upon divine mercy. Defiled worshippers defile the places and means of worship, compounding sin upon sin. (3) God must then destroy the places, things, and people corrupted by sin. This calls for the exile, the end of the cultic system and the nation. (4) God graciously preserves or restores a pure remnant because the total annihilation of Israel through strict retributive justice would conflict with God's mercy and covenant commitment. (5) God restores the cult among the righteous, who have been purified through judgment. Within a new temple and cultic system, sacrifices are again pleasing to God and efficacious in removing sin. In conclusion, the prophetic denunciation of the misuse of sacrifices does not contradict their legitimacy under the right conditions. When offered by holy people in a holy temple, the cult has limited power to administer divine forgiveness and tangibly express God's merciful, just, and forbearing nature.


The Glory of God, Moses, and Jesus Christ: An Intertextual and Theological Study of the Allusions to Exodus 33–34 in 2 Corinthians 3:7–18 and in John 1:14–18
Program Unit: Intertextuality in the New Testament
Todd Pokrifka, Azusa Pacific University

Paul (2 Corinthians 3) and John (John 1) both allude to the theme/concept of glory in Exodus 33-34 in ways that are both different and alike: Paul contrasts between the derivative “glory” that Moses reflects with a shining face and the glory of Christ, which believers also reflect. John emphasizes the connection between the glory of divine self-revelation in Exodus and the glory of Jesus Christ. Yet both Paul and John understand the Jesus Christ as a superior fulfillment of the glory that was revealed to or through Moses in Exodus 33-34. The allusions to Exodus in 2 Corinthians 3 and John 1 help us to understand the meaning of glory in these passages as connected to the revelation of divine character and human reception and reflection of it.


Hebrew Hayah: Etymology, Bleaching, and Meaning Potential
Program Unit: Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew
Frank H. Polak, Tel Aviv University

Biblical use of the verb hayah differs in many respects from our "to be," "to happen," "to become," or Greek eimí, gígnomai. Study of its use demands an integration of cognitive semantics, discourse analysis and literary scrutiny. The meaning "to fall" (Arabic hawa), preserved in Job 37:6 (cf. Eccl 11:3), forms the backdrop for the noun howah ("calamity;" Isa 47:11; Ezek 7:26; cf. Pro 19:13; Job 6:2; 30:10; cf. some uses of Akkadian ewûm). The use of hayah in the meaning "to be," "to happen" results from semantic bleaching, much like the use of Arabic waqa?a "to fall" in the meaning "to happen," and of verbs indicating stability (kun, kana) in Phoenician and Arabic, to indicate existence or subject-predicate relation. The thesis of the present paper is that in Biblical Hebrew bleaching has resulted in a wide meaning potential (cf. Latin incido), in which, e.g., dynamics, salience and sometimes even activity, play an important role. In Exodus 19:16 wyhy ... bhywt ... wyhy implies much more than "happening" / "occurrence" (cf. v. 19; Gen 1:8). In Gen 29:17 a hayah clause follows a verbless clause and thus does not serve as time indication nor as a mere copula. wyhy forms are often used to draw the attention, like 1 Sam 1:2 (Joosten 1997:78). In some of these cases hayah could mark highlighting ("higher salience"), but in other cases (Exod 3:14; 1 Sam 1:18; Gen 4:8) the semantic nuance still is far stronger.


Syntactic-Stylistic Differentiation in the Historical Books and the Deuteronomistic School
Program Unit: Deuteronomistic History
Frank H. Polak, Tel Aviv University

Syntactic-stylistic analysis indicates a fundamental disctinction between the style of the narratives in Judges 3-18; 1-2 Samuel (including 1 Kings 1:1-2:46) and those in Deuteronomy, Joshua, Kings, and the Jeremiah Vita (Corpus B). Corpus B is characterized by (a) preference for elaborate sentence structure, (b) long noun groups, and (c) hypotaxis, (d) which often is highly complex (elaborate style; Polak 1998, 2003, 2006). From a cross-cultural, typological point of view (Chafe&Danielewicz 1987, Halliday 1989, Miller&Weinert 1998) this style is characteristic of written language (the prominence of writing in this corpus). In the book of Samuel the elaborate style is rare (1 Sam 7; 2 Sam 6-7). Most passages are characterized by a disinclination to long noun groups, elaborate syntax and hypotaxis, and a clear preference for (a) short clauses (b) in parataxis, (c) limited use of short noun groups (brisk, lean style). Typologically close to spontaneous spoken language this style represents a substratum of oral narrative (scarce references to writing in this corpus). This characterization is confirmed by syntactic-stylistic analysis of a series of passages concerning: public festivities/festive meals; anointment; battles; prophetic speech and religious discourse. In spite of the variety in topic, rhetorical structure and expressivity the style of all passages in Judges-Samuel is largely characterized by the same features (Polak 2006). Similar confirmation was obtained for Corpus B. But within the thematic classes a significant distinction exists between the elaborate and the brisk, lean style, in spite of thematic similarity. The Books of Judges-Samuel, though transmitted in writing, represent the world of oral narrative, whereas Corpus B is at home in the 7th century scribal chancery.


Circumcision, Feminism, and Paul's View of the Law
Program Unit: Biblical Criticism and Literary Criticism
Sandra Hack Polaski, Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond

When Paul summarizes the Law, he often does so with the trope of circumcision--an act performed exclusively (in Paul's context) on male bodies. Circumcision establishes male Jewish identity once for all and remains a private reminder to a man of his Jewish identity. Using feminist critical approaches, this paper will investigate how Paul's discourse about the Law is shaped by his use of the trope of circumcision, and consider how different ways of summarizing the meaning of the Law might lead to different emphases in Paul's understanding.


“Four Entered Paradise” in Light of 1 Enoch 6–8
Program Unit: Function of Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
Nehemia Polen, Hebrew College

Tosefta Hagigah 2:3-4, the "Four Entered Paradise" episode, is one of the most famous passages in Rabbinic literature. A key element of this narrative concerns the sage Elisha [ben Abuyah]. We are told that "Elisha hetzitz ve-kitzetz bi-netiy'ot," translated "Elisha gazed and cut down sprouts" (Neusner), or "Elisha gazed and cut the shoots" (Goshen Gottstein). From talmudic times until today, attempts have been made to explain this enigmatic expression. Contemporary scholars have shown how the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds developed and elaborated the image of Elisha as a 'sinful sage." But what did "kitzetz bi-netiy'ot" mean in its original toseftan context? I Enoch 7:1 tells how the Watchers began to teach the women 'sorcery and charms, and to reveal to them the cutting of roots and plants," generally understood to refer to the preparation of magical potions. Similarly, in 8:3, the leading angel Shemihazah teaches "spells and the cutting of roots." The resemblance to our Tosefta passage is not merely terminological but conceptual. If Aher/Elisha has not destroyed the plants but has taken cuttings--to be slipped out of the Garden and replanted at home, presumably for their powers--then his sin of misappropriation and intended misuse corresponds precisely to the sin of the Watchers in Enoch. It is not necessary to assume that Tosefta has the text of I Enoch, merely that versions of this story continued to circulate among Jews, including Rabbinic sages. An activity labeled "plant-cutting" would have been understood not as an act of malicious destruction but as a purposive project to gather and use the herbs collected. If the intention was then to remove them from God's garden, the sin would have grave indeed, and compounded: violation of trust, theft, sacrilege. The phrase kitzetz bi- netiy'ot--a nearly exact equivalent of "plant-cutting"--should be seen in this context.


Kierkegaard and the Tax Collector
Program Unit: Søren Kierkegaard Society
Timothy Polk, Hamline University

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Indian Spices and Early Christianity: Economic Realities and Constructed Meanings
Program Unit: Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy
Elizabeth Ann Pollard, San Diego State University

World systems models for the relationship between prestige goods networks and information networks offer a hermeneutic for drawing a clear distinction between economic realities and constructed meanings of spices in canonical and non-canonical Christian texts. The dissonance between overlapping information and prestige goods networks explains how exoticized ideas about these remote regions and their savory flavors and aromatic scents abounded, even while real trade connections between Rome and the Indian Ocean thrived. Spices that entered the Roman world by means of Indian Ocean trade --- nard, cassia/cinnamon, and amomum, to name a few --- are at the crux of several highly charged images in Christian text: nard poured on Jesus' head (Mark 14:3); spices used in burying Jesus' body (Luke 23:56 and John 19:39-40); cargo, including cinnamon, amomum, and myrrh, over which merchants weep at the fall of Babylon and the angel who scolds these merchants for being deceived by Babylon's sorcery (pharmakeia) (Revelation 18). During Thecla's near-martyrdom, female spectators intervene on her behalf, throwing nard, amomum, and cassia to subdue the attacking animals. Thomas travels to spice-rich India to spread the Gospel. First-century and later Roman sources for Indomediterranean trade suggest the realities of the trading connections that brought these spices into the Roman economy: Pliny's Natural History and his claims about Roman trade deficit with India, the Periplus Maris Erythraei's guidance to first-century Indian Ocean merchants, and the Peutinger Table mapping a templum Augusti in southern India; simple recipes in Apicius' de re Coquinaria and complex ritual processes of the PGM; and documents ranging from Indian Ocean shipping contracts to the Liber Pontificalis. This paper reads these two bodies of material together, with world systems theory, in order to get a clearer sense of the realities and constructions of Indian spice trade in early Christianity.


Greco-Roman Magical Gumbo: Mixing Spices, Rituals, and Gods
Program Unit: Greco-Roman Religions
Elizabeth Ann Pollard, San Diego State University

Constructions of Greco-Roman “magic”—with their creolizing of disparate ritual procedures, divine powers, and even spices—are clearly a site for complex negotiations of place and identity in the first through the fourth centuries CE. This paper explores how models for hybridization and creolization help to explain the language and ingredients of many ritual procedures in the Greek magical papyri and other magical spells from the wider Greco-Roman world. Scholars in a colonialist mind-set have long noted the Persian and Egyptian influences on Greco-Roman magic; but relatively little has been done to think of these influences in terms of a nuanced, reciprocal, negotiated relationship or to examine the complex intermixture of British, Germanic, and even Indian language and ingredients of magical spells. In the north and west of the Roman world, syncretism does not fully explain the power of Dea Sulis on the theft tablets at Bath, England or of the local Nodens, whom Silvianus of modern Gloucestershire besought for help in finding a lost ring; similarly, the Austrian Secundina's pleas to Mercurius and Moltinus for retribution. Much farther to the East, ever expanding trade connections reaching to India and beyond rendered Egypt, Persia, and the Black Sea region (all traditional hotbeds of “magic”) into transit territory through which goods from even more exotic areas passed. Many of these goods—e.g., Indian spices such as cassia, amomum, pepper, and malabathron—found their way into the ritual procedures of the PGM. The social mobility and encounters facilitated by expanding Roman trade connections and the hybridization those connections introduced into Roman “magic” are best explained by creolization, rather than the usual syncretism models.


Complex Role-Playing Games as Pedagogy: The Josiah Game
Program Unit: Academic Teaching and Biblical Studies
Adam Porter, Illinois College, and David Tabb Stewart, California State University, Long Beach

The "Reacting to the Past" series of complex role-playing games provides a model for this workshop. The games place students in strong adult roles where they embody characters from a particularly pregnant historical moment. This approach is organic--students deploy multiple skills to achieve game goals; and active--they must devour and digest primary texts in order to persuade others to their side. The Josiah Game, set just before Josiah might decide to reform Judahite religion, is pregnant moment when much is at stake. The De Wette hypothesis concerning the discovery of Deuteronomy provides a pretext for debate, as does the disintegrating Assyrian Empire open a context to imagine recovering the lost territory of Israel. You are Huldah: How would you defend your vetting the scroll? You are of the royal house: How might you argue for allying with Egypt? Source Criricism becomes compelling and urgent: Why is the found-scroll different in tone and ideas from the Priestly Tradition? Game players use biblical and ancient Near Eastern texts, material culture, and iconography to develop their positions. The workshop will present pedagogical rationale, methodology, strengths and weaknesses based on our classroom experience, and play a mini-version of the game.


Greek Word Order: Is It Still an Unexplored Area?
Program Unit: Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics
Stanley E. Porter, McMaster Divinity College

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Exodus: “Turn in Repentance to Your Creator, Then Slay Yourselves”: The Levitical Election, Atonement, and Secession in Early and Classical Islamic Exegesis
Program Unit: Qur'an and Biblical Literature
Michael Pregill, Elon University

The narrative of the Golden Calf appears in three different suras of the Quran, but the version found in Surat al-Baqara (Q.2:51-54) contains a unique allusion to what is arguably one of the most important aspects of the version of the narrative in the Hebrew Bible: the election of the Levites (cf. Ex.32:25-29). This paper will explore the changing understanding of Moses" puzzling command to the offending Israelite idolaters to “slay yourselves” in the early and classical Islamic commentary tradition (tafsir). I will argue that careful analysis of the subtle changes in the way Muslim exegetes made sense of this aspect of the episode reflects important developments in early Islamic society, in particular the emergence of the accommodationist political ideology that would become one of the defining features of classical Sunnism.


On Making a Prophet: The Case of Elijah the Tishbite
Program Unit: Prophetic Texts and Their Ancient Contexts
Dagmar Pruin, Humboldt University

Elijah the Tishbite is portrayed in the Book of Kings as an outstanding prophet whose name says it all, "my God is YHWH". He fights against Baal in the name of YHWH (1 Kgs 17-18; 2 Kgs 1) and announces revenge upon King Ahab and his dynasty for the crime committed against Naboth, the Jezreelite (1 Kgs 21). A redaction-critical approach to the texts reveals how the prophetic figure of Elijah is constructed over the centuries. The prophetic characters gains solid contours through the addition of traits that were absent in earlier passages. In the end, Elijah influences the reader's perception of prophets in general since he is the ultimate servant of YHWH who exhorts and guides the people of Israel.


The State the Art: Principles of Second Language Acquisition and Communicative Language Learning for Modern Languages
Program Unit: National Association of Professors of Hebrew
Diana Pulido, Michigan State University

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Who Are the Samaritans?
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
Reinhard Pummer, University of Ottawa

Origin – eighth, fifth, or second century B.C.E. – and identity – independent form of Yahwism or sect/branch of Judaism – of the Samaritans are still the subject of disputes, several hundred years after the rediscovery of the Samaritans by the Europeans. In addition, there is the question “What's in a name?” – when do we speak of Samarians and when of Samaritans? Recent archaeological finds and new perspectives in biblical studies are helping us to locate the Samaritans with greater precision in the orbit of Yahwism and Judaism. The presentation will discuss these new findings.


Pauline Bodies and South African Bodies: Body, Power, and Biblical Hermeneutics
Program Unit: African Biblical Hermeneutics
Jeremy Punt, University of Stellenbosch

In the materiality of postcolonial African contexts, with its increasing antipathy for especially the spiritualist perspective often found in broader social and particularly religious discourse, contesting positions regarding the body abound. On the one hand, material corporeality is increasingly privileged in South Africa amidst prevailing challenges to human existence and dignity such as poverty, homelessness, violence, and disease, but a renewed focus on the body also increasingly foregrounds its interplay with power. On the other hand stands the relative unconcern with the body in the contemporary Christian tradition in stark contrast to the focus on the body and bodiliness in the biblical, and in particular the Pauline, documents. Not only did the apostle frequently refer body, and even addressed the recipients of his letters as bodies, but he also attended to matters intimately concerned with bodily existence. Moreover, Paul's leading metaphor for the communities he engaged with was in fact that of the body, but his theological approach and perception were also informed by his consistent engagement with bodiliness. The Pauline discourse on the body was therefore wide-ranging but also imbued with power concerns, so that the link between body and power is always present in his letters, although in different configurations of various kinds. In this contribution aspects of the Pauline body discourse, and his body theology, is discussed against the background of and with reference to the contemporary South African context.


Patterned Language
Program Unit: Biblical Hebrew Poetry
Frederic Clarke Putnam, Philadelphia Biblical University

Biblical poems are written on multiple interlocking levels, e.g., predicate morphology (binyan/stem, conjugation), lexical choice, syntax, lineation (line length), even metaphor; these are interdependent, and their prominence and function varies from one poem to another. It is thus necessary to examine each parameter for every poem, since prominence cannot be predicted. This paper presents a method of analyzing a biblical poem (i.e., not merely one or two lines) as an instance of verbal art by abstracting information on each of these levels, showing their interdependence, and demonstrating the contribution of their mutual interplay to the meaning or message of the poem as a whole.


BIblical Nonsense
Program Unit: Biblical Criticism and Literary Criticism
Hugh S. Pyper, University of Sheffield

In Isa 28:10 and 13 we find biblical text that is nonsense and, it can be argued, is intended to be so. It mimics the incomprehensibility of ecstatic utterance and of foreign speech at the same time. This paper examines other examples of biblical nonsense and the possible communicative function in incomprehensible language and its contribution to the paradox of unreadable scripture which pervades the biblical tradition. In particular, insights from the work of Rosario Munson on the representation of foreign speech in Herodotus will be drawn upon to examine how unintelligible language can be used to shape the self-understanding of communities of readers and their attitude to the authority of the text.


Beyond Outrage: World Wrestling Entertainment, the Bible, and the Benoit Murders
Program Unit: Bible and Popular Culture
Hugh S. Pyper, University of Sheffield

in July 2007, one of the World Wrestling Entertainments superstars, Chris Benoit, murdered his wife and child and then committed suicide. A key point in the reporting of the incident and the way it was handled by the WWE management was that Benoit had placed a Bible by each of his victims. This case opens up the ambivalence of the relation between the Bible, violence and morality in the culture of the WWE and its audience, leading to wider reflections on this relationship in American popular culture which will be explored in this paper.


Outfitting Biblical Hebrew for Communicative Language Learning
Program Unit: National Association of Professors of Hebrew
Jennifer Quast, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion

When adapted to Biblical Hebrew, principles of communicative language learning call for a shift of pedagogy. This presentation will outline primary innovations with which the team experimented.


Raising Up the Booth of David: The Conclusion of the Book of Amos in Light of the Book of the Twelve
Program Unit: Book of the Twelve Prophets
Jason Radine, Moravian College

The relationship between the positive, hopeful conclusion of the book of Amos (Amos 9:11-15) and the much more negative and pessimistic preceding portions of the book have long been debated. This paper examines the literary and theological connections between Amos 9:11-15 and the concluding chapters of the books of Zechariah and Joel, with a particular focus on the enigmatic "booth of David" (Amos 9:11). This “booth of David” should not be seen as a reconstituted Davidic Empire, but instead as a symbol of eschatological hope for a future ideal temple in Second Temple Jewish thought. This fits with a running theme in the latter chapters of all three books, suggesting that the conclusions of the books of Amos and Zechariah, as well as the entirety of Joel, were all products of a common Second Temple literary stratum as part of the production of the Book of the Twelve. By adding a conclusion to the book of Amos in line with the books of Joel and Zechariah, the older book of Amos could be integrated into a whole Book of the Twelve that framed all of Israelite history as pointing toward an eschatological "booth of David" that will be restored "on that day."


Enabled by Grace: A Theological Account of Human Agency
Program Unit: Pauline Theology
Murray Rae, University of Otago

Invited paper.


Sarah Saw a Hunter: The Venatic Motif in Genesis Rabbah 53:11
Program Unit: Midrash
Jesse Rainbow, Harvard University

****Based on the “playing” (????) of Ishmael (Gen 21:9), Gen. Rab. 53:11 attempts to justify Sarah's expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael on the grounds that Sarah saw Ishmael engaging in one of several sins. Based on other biblical occurrences of the root ???, various sages suggest that Ishmael engaged in sexual immorality (see Gen 39:17), idolatry (Exod 32:6), or the shedding of blood (2 Sam 2:14 and Prov 26:18-19). This paper argues that these options, while seemingly representing distinct lexicographical arguments, are united by a common underlying concept: like Esau, Ishmael was a hunter. I use several illustrations from art history to corroborate the claims of my paper regarding the importance of hunting for the ancient and medieval exegesis of the relevant stories in Genesis. This idea is manifested in Gen. Rab. 53:11 both in the selection of biblical quotations (many of which concern hunting or archery, literally or metaphorically) and in the explanations of what Sarah saw Ishmael doing (“hunting” women, hunting locusts to sacrifice, or shooting arrows at Isaac in a field). In some cases, the motif is expressed indirectly, as in the quotation of Potiphar's wife (Gen 39:17)—while not identified as a hunter in Genesis, she is identified in Gen. Rab. 87:1 with the strange woman of Prov 7:16-23, who does metaphorically “hunt” men. Similarly, the notion that Ishmael took Isaac into a field to slay him with arrows is evocative of the story of Cain, whose descendant Lamech is portrayed as a hunter in haggadic tradition. My paper draws on the recent work of C. Bakhos (on Ishmael in rabbinic tradition), R. Syrén (on the biblical firstborns), and G. Mobely (on the Bible's “liminal” heroes), among others. The paper is relevant to several issues: (1) the emergence of Ishmael as a representative of the Jewish “other,” (2) hunting and rabbinic Judaism, (3) the biblical-theological motif in Genesis of forsaken first-born sons, and (4) ancient exegesis of the participle ???? in Gen 21:9.


The Levantine Literary Reservoir in Judean Poetic Writing
Program Unit: Ugaritic Studies and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy
Anson F. Rainey, Tel Aviv University

Various parallels between passages in the ancient Hebrew Bible and Levantine Literwture, especially Ugaritic, have long been known. The question arises, when and how did these expressions and pericopes reach the literate members of Judean society? This paper suggests tentatively that the principle time was during the late eighth century BCE.


Slavery as a Necessary Evil or as an Evil That Must Be Abolished?
Program Unit: Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy
Ilaria Ramelli, Catholic University of Milan

The whole of the ancient economy was based on slavery. But in Christ, as it is stated in Gal 3:28, there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither man nor woman. Yet it is well known that social and gender differences, in particular, were far from being abolished in historical Christianity. Paul himself does not seem to have fought for the elimination of slavery from the economy. What, then, can we say about Fathers' attitude toward slavery? And to which Biblical texts did they appeal to support their views? I shall endeavor to investigate the treatment of this issue in the first four or five centuries. I shall show that Gregory of Nyssa's view is very different from that of several other Patristic writers: to the best of my knowledge, Gregory is the only Father who truly condemned slavery and declared that it should have been abolished altogether,rather than excusing it as a consequence of the Fall and thus accepting it as a necessary evil. Although some scholars have tried to dismiss his declarations as merely rhetorical, I shall argue against this interpretation and shall demonstrate that, as opposed to other Christian authors, whose opinions on slavery and the reasons for maintaining it as a socio-economical institution I shall discuss as well, Gregory believed that slavery is a positive offense to God and to humankind, and that it ought to be radically eliminated from society and the economy.


A Testament That Supplants Testimony: The Use and Subversion of the Gospels in Modern Jesus Novels
Program Unit: Use, Influence, and Impact of the Bible
Margaret E. Ramey, University of St. Andrews-Scotland

Irenaeus likened the Gnostic use of Scripture to a beautiful jewel-encrusted mosaic whose gems had been taken out and so rearranged that they resembled a dog rather than the original image of a king. For centuries, artists and scholars alike in their various media have extracted and reassembled bits and pieces from the canonical gospels to produce varied portraits of Jesus, but perhaps there is no gallery that offers a greater selection of these rearranged images than the genre of modern Jesus novels. In this paper, I will use Nino Ricci's Testament as a case study of the way in which some of these novelists use the canonical gospels as source material for their own tales, which in turn attempt to supplant the original gospel narratives. Through this novel, I will examine the power of stories for subverting other stories and worldviews and will explore the manner in which the fictional medium is intentionally used by some authors in an attempt to expose the perceived fictionality of the gospels themselves. Because the novel's structure mimics the four testaments themselves by providing four alternate witnesses, Ricci's Testament is an excellent example of the way in which novels can parody the gospels. By narrating the same events in vastly different manners, the novel implicitly calls into question the reliability of testimony as well as that of the New Testament itself. An analysis of Testament reveals not only the use that is being made of the Bible in one branch of contemporary literature but also the impact that some of these modern novels may have on interpretations of the Bible itself.


The Wilderness in the Cross: Intratextual Allusions to Matthew 4:1–11 within Matthew 27:33–44
Program Unit: Matthew
Margaret E. Ramey, University of St. Andrews-Scotland

Scholars often have noted the connection between Jesus" wilderness testing in Matt 4:1-11 and his crucifixion in Matt 27:33-44 suggested by the phrase “ei huios ei tou theou" but have done little to investigate the connection. In this paper, I will argue that this phrase is the tip of an intratextual iceberg that functions as a signpost alerting the careful reader to the fact that there is much more underneath the surface of these paired stories within Matthew's narrative. There are several significant ways that Matthew links Jesus" tests in the wilderness with a new series of tests experienced on the cross. First, the rejection of bread (4:1-4) is mirrored in the rejection of the wine (27:33-34). Second, the testing of Jesus' sonship is seen not only in the challenge to cast himself down from the temple (4:5-7) but also in the challenge for him to come down from the cross (27:39-40). In both instances, the typical Matthean demand for a sign as a prerequisite for belief appears. Also, Jesus' affiliation with God is directly challenged and asked to be proven by divine intervention and rescue, either by angels (4:6) or by God himself (27:43). Finally, the issue of Jesus' kingship is raised both in the wilderness (4:8-10) and again at the crucifixion (27:37, 42-43). After exploring these parallels, I will conclude by suggesting some ways in which these intratextual allusions give us direction for interpreting both of these narratives and their meanings within Matthew's theology.


Dissembling Weakness: Biblical Languages of Embodiment in the John Donne's Lyrics
Program Unit: Use, Influence, and Impact of the Bible
Rebecca Raphael, Texas State University-San Marcos

The Psalms greatly influenced English poetry, and the influence was perhaps greatest during the Renaissance. This paper examines a specific locus of this influence: how John Donne appropriates the Psalms" language of embodiment. Donne draws heavily on the Bible for his language of embodiment, both in his love lyrics and in his religious work. Donne's love lyrics employ metaphors of disabled bodies in their initial address, and then proceed to a re-embodiment as the lovers come together. In effect, disability signifies the state of the person before love, i.e. the state of lack from which one asks for love. As a rhetorical move, this structure sets aside a seduction based on attractiveness and power, and instead begs the beloved by putting the speaker's worst foot (so to speak) forward. It also enables the later depiction of love as the soul"s manifestation in, and partial cure of, the lovers" bodies. Donne"s religious poems follow a parallel structure: they depict the human soul as a disabled body. For Donne, these images reflect the soul"s true state, whereas Christ"s weak body misrepresents his true power. Finally, if the soul accepts divine love, the dissembled weakness of Christ re-creates the soul and its body in a new, incorruptible form. In both cases, dialog and love provide the fulcrum on which a disabled body/soul can be remade. The method draws on philology to explore the representation of the body in early modern translations of the Psalms, and also on contemporary literary critics of disability studies (L. Davis, D. Mitchell, S. Snyder, R. Garland-Thomson, et al.) With this combination, one can analyze how Donne takes up the Psalms" language of embodiment, and what his poetry reveals about the influences and tensions between the biblical texts and the appropriating moment.


The Body as the Site of Mythopoiesis in Daniel 7–12
Program Unit: Bible, Myth, and Myth Theory
Rebecca Raphael, Texas State University-San Marcos

With its extended historical references and prolific monster imagery, the apocalyptic section of Daniel (7-12) is a work of mythopoiesis. I argue that the text moves through several steps to create its myth of apocalyptic futurity. First, historical enemies are represented as mythical monsters (Dan 7-8). These monsters then face their mythical opponents, the deity and his angels; their bodies are represented as beautiful, luminescent forms. That is, the combat motif recedes in favor of a clash of images – images that represent “right” and “wrong” bodies. Unlike the monsters, the angelic figures do not correlate with historical personages. Rather, their imminent action generates a myth of futurity (Dan 11-12). (In contrast to the visions, the exegetical passages (e.g. 9, 11) are narrative in form and represent the past.) Thus, the spatial category of the body provides the key transposition from history to myth, in which form apocalyptic futurity can then be represented. The temporal mythopoiesis is highly integrated with, perhaps even dependent on, the move to spatial (bodily) representation. Since theories of myth tend to emphasize the narrative – and with it, the temporal – component of myth, Daniel 7-12 provides an interesting case study of mythopoiesis in which the spatial mythic imago provides the spring-board for the temporal dimension.


Adam and the Modern Self: Paul Gauguin's Portrait and the Story of the Fall
Program Unit: Bible and Visual Art
Eva Maria Raepple, College of DuPage

Gauguin's self-portrait, painted in 1889, defies easy interpretation as it invites the memory of the biblical story of the Fall in Genesis 3. This paper argues that Gauguin's work provides interesting insights regarding a fundamental change in the configuration of the Western episteme, which is partially responsible for a transformation in the reception of the traditional normative status of the biblical narrative. As Michel Foucault convincingly argues, beginning with the seventeenth century “the uniform layer, in which the seen and the read, the visible and expressible, were endlessly interwoven, vanished” (43). Painting, not exempt from the epistemic shift, becomes a play of visibility and absence requesting the search for meaning in accordance with knowledge of what is probable (Shapiro, 270-74). As an example of this fundamental change, Gauguin's self-portrait renders visible the fissure between different orders, the sacred Word and visuality. In this fissure, the gaze directed at Gauguin"s portrait provokes the question of the identity of the modern/postmodern self.


The Allegory of Exclusion: The Shadow of Hagar on Paul's Universal Message
Program Unit: Feminist Hermeneutics of the Bible
Abigail April Redman, Vanderbilt University

Paul's allegory of Hagar and Sarah in Galatians 4.21-31 is troubling in its exploitation of slavery, inequity, and intolerance in the construction of ecclesial policy. Representative of Paul's opponents, Hagar relives her harsh treatment at the hands of Sarah and Abraham as she is rejected by and expelled from the Church. Yet this reification of Hagar"s role is perplexing when read through the lens of Galatians 3.28: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." Although Paul here claims erasure of ethnic, social, and gender distinctions, the allegory necessarily reintroduces them. Hagar is marked not only as the slave, but also as Gentile (through Egypt and Mt. Sinai) and female (through gendered markers of biological parturition, flesh, and earth); in turn, Sarah represents not only the free, but also the Jew and the male. Indeed, Galatians 4:1-20, placed between the formula for unity and the allegory, prepares readers for this reintroduction. These verses accentuate the denigration of slavery, highlight the negative depiction of Gentiles, and co-opt female imagery. By imposing Hagar"s identity markers on his opponents, Paul erases the unity he has established and establishes the hierarchy he has erased: slaves, women, and Gentiles remain symbols of those who have no place in the Church. The relationship between Gal 3.28 and the allegory of Sarah and Hagar thus problematizes several interpretative traditions. The denigration of Hagar compromises 3.28 as a liberationist manifesto; the division of Hagar and Sarah undermines ecclesial unity; Paul"s deletion of Hagar from salvation history countermands inclusivist soteriology; that Paul demonstrates greater exclusivism than other early Jewish interpretations of the Hagar narrative, including those of Philo and Genesis Rabbah, finally calls into question the common apologetic of “Christian” universalism vs. Jewish particularism.


The Modern Invention of “Old Testament Pseudepigrapha”
Program Unit: Pseudepigrapha
Annette Yoshiko Reed, University of Pennsylvania

This paper will approach the question of the profits and pitfalls of the term "pseudepigrapha" from the perspective of its evolving modern usage. Of primary concern will be the process by which "OT Pseudepigrapha" came to connote a corpus. On the one hand, I will explore how the modern practice of collecting so-called “pseudepigrapha” relates to the medieval transmission-histories of these same writings. On the other hand, I will ask how it compares with similar modern anthological activities – such as the collection of diverse aggadic midrashim under the rubric of "Midrash Rabbah/Rabbot" (e.g., Constantinople 1512; Venice 1545; Freedman and Simon 1939) and the compilation of diverse Christian acts, gospels, etc., under the rubric of "NT apocrypha" (e.g., Nausea 1531; Neander 1564; Fabricius 1703; Thilo 1832; Tischendorf 1851-66; Hennecke 1904). To investigate the historical and cultural contexts for the construction and naturalization of the category of “OT pseudepigrapha,” I will focus on two key moments: [1] their initial collection and publication (esp. Fabricius 1722-23), arguably as part of a broader anthological impulse in the wake of the invention of the Western printing-press, and [2] the translation of such collections into modern European languages (e.g., Kautzsch 1900; Charles 1913), ostensibly as a means of recovering the Jewish background of Jesus and the NT literature. A consideration of the evolving meanings of the term “pseudepigrapha” in modern times will thus serve as a focus for reflecting on the question of its continued heurism. To what degree is our current notion of “OT Pseudepigrapha” predicted on distinctively post-Reformation understandings of “the Bible” and “OT Apocrypha” and/or on distinctively modern Western understandings of authorship and forgery? To what degree has the circulation of these writings as a corpus shaped scholarly views about them?


Morbidity and Mortality as a Socio-economic Factor in Galilee
Program Unit: Historical Jesus
Jonathan L. Reed, University of La Verne

This paper will explore selected aspects of the demographics in first century Galilee. In particular, it will explore how mortality rates effected rural-urban relations.


Limited: The Challenge of Ideology in the Biblical Ideological Criticism Movement
Program Unit: Ideological Criticism
Randall Reed, Appalachian State University

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Scribal Exercises in the Dead Sea Scrolls
Program Unit: Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism
Stephen Reed, Jamestown College

Some inscribed materials written on papyrus, parchment and potsherds from Qumran, Masada and Murabba'at seem clearly to be scribal exercises. Identifiable groups of such texts include abecedaries, lists of names in alphabetic order, and fragments with letters written in scattered ways upon them with no apparent meaning. Scholars have also suggested that other groups of texts like lists of items and certain poorly written texts might also have been produced by students learning to write. While these texts have been published and editors of these texts have made comparisons to other similar texts, a survey of these texts noting their physical features would be useful. Such a survey might help us come up with better criteria that could be used to identify such texts. Furthermore, more attention needs to be given to determining the function and usage of these texts and the kinds of skills which were being developed by student learners when they produced these texts. Comparison needs to be made to other collections of written material in the ancient world which have been identified as scribal exercises.


To Stone or Not to Stone: Reading and Rewriting the Legislation of Family Discipline in Deuteronomy 21:18–21 and 22:20–21
Program Unit: Children in the Biblical World
Caryn A. Reeder, Westmont College

According to Deut 21.18-21 and 22.20-21, disobedient children sometimes “deserve” capital punishment. In commenting on Deut 21.18-21, Philo, Josephus, and early rabbinic texts attempt to restrict the institution of this law. While Philo also limits Deut 22.20-21, however, in rabbinic interpretation the law against the foolish daughter is even more rigorous. This paper argues that the extreme measures of discipline legislated in Deuteronomy are ironically demanded by the privileged place of children in Deuteronomy's ideal society. Sons retain a central position in later theology and society. That commentators nonetheless restrict the applicability of Deut 21.18-21 suggests the development of an ethical critique of the violence demanded by the law of the rebellious son. The contrasting commentaries on Deut 22.20-21 correspondingly indicate the shifting place of daughters in theology, society, and ethics. In light of the softening of Deut 21.18-21, the harsh condemnation of foolish daughters in rabbinic interpretation of Deut 22.20-21 raises key questions about the fundamental importance and value of daughters in Jewish family life.


Figuring Jesus: The Characterization of Jesus through Rhetorical Figures of Speech
Program Unit: Rhetoric and Early Christianity
Keith A. Reich, Baylor University

In this paper I investigate the effects of rhetorical figures of speech and thought as set forth by the handbooks of Quintilian and Ps-Cicero (Rhetorica ad Herennium) on the characterization of Jesus in the Sermon on the plain. I have found that the speech of Jesus has been almost completely ignored in works that deal with the characterization of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. Speech was a major category for determining character in the ancient world. I argue that through the investigation of rhetorical figures of speech one can gain insight on how Luke portrayed the character of Jesus. I use the Sermon on the plain as a test case for this hypothesis. The paper sets side by side Luke's Sermon on the plain with Matthew's Sermon on the Mount and examines the rhetorical differences. Then I draw conclusions about Jesus" character based on his use of rhetorical figures of speech.


Archaeological Remains in Jerusalem of the Persian and Early Hellenistic Periods: A Short Inventory and Subsequent Conclusions
Program Unit: Literature and History of the Persian Period
Ronny Reich, University of Haifa

The Persian and Early Hellenistic periods (the 6th-2nd centuries BCE), are amongst the less known periods in the history of Jerusalem. The picture is even somewhat distorted as the known archaeological remains are scant, and are far less available than the historical record. Against the wealth of the archaeological remains which are available for the previous period (Iron Age II) and the following period (Hasmonean, and particularly Herodian periods), this archaeological scarcity is even more underlined. The lecture will briefly bring the archaeological inventory pertaining these periods, and draw a few conclusions out of it.


The Road Taken: From the Pool of Siloam to the Temple Mount in the Second Temple Period
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
Ronny Reich, University of Haifa

Herodian Jerusalem (of the 1st century BCE and the 1st century CE) was a big city. It was the Temple City, which attracted Jewish pilgrims throughout the year, and particularly during the three main Jewish festivals. During these days of peak activity several ten thousands of persons gathered in the city, in addition to its local population which was of the same size. In the recent years our excavations have revealed two of the main monuments of Herodian Jerusalem: The Pool of Siloam and a wide paved esplanade to the north of it, and two long segments of the stone paved and stepped road which led from the pool towards the Temple Mount, which was situated, half a mile to the north of it. The road had a twofold use. It led the people who gathered around the pool, and who might have purified themselves in it, to the Temple Mount. At the same time, the main drainage system (cloaca maxima) which was constructed under it (of which a long and impressive segment was revealed recently) drained the city from the winter rains. Archaeological indications were found also that this was one of the subterranean hideaways used by the inhabitants to flee from the city when besieged by the Romans in 70 CE, as described by Flavius Josephus (War VI 370, 401, 429).


Imagine if We Preached Jesus: Suggestions for Preaching a Gospel Rather Than a Biographical Jesus
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Robert Stephen Reid, University of Dubuque

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Remember David: Psalm 132 and the Memory of Political and Religious Institutions
Program Unit: Book of Psalms
Stephen Breck Reid, Bethany Theological Seminary

Psalm 132 provides a distinctive voice in the Psalms of Ascent. Remembering David invited the ancient hearer to an historicist reimagination of both the political and religious institutions. How does a twenty-first century rereading of this poetry provide a new horizon for issues of polity and religious affiliation today? This paper will bring to bear the insights of the new historicism.


Israelian Hebrew, Inscriptions from the North of Israel, and Samaritan Hebrew: A Complex of Northern Dialects
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
Gary A. Rendsburg, Rutgers University

This talk will present basic descriptions of the grammar and lexicon of Israelian Hebrew, northern Israelite inscriptions, and Samaritan Hebrew – with an eye to determining the common features of this complex of northern Hebrew dialects from the biblical period. The working hypothesis is that while all of ancient Israel was linguistically cantonized, there was a clear distinction between the various sub-dialects comprising northern Hebrew, on the one hand, and standard Jerusalemite-Judahite Hebrew, on the other.


Reading Bible for Preaching the Gospel
Program Unit: Homiletics and Biblical Studies
André Resner Jr., Hood Theological Seminary

My paper works off Edward Farley's challenging, yet incomplete, differentiation between, as the title to his article put it, "preaching the Bible and preaching the gospel." I am proposing a constructive hermeneutic for reading the Bible with a view to preaching the gospel. My proposed approach attempts to maintain the integrity of both entities—Bible and gospel—by clarifying the agendas of each realm and the ways those agendas sometimes sync with each other and sometimes conflict.


On Why Persuasion May (Not) Be a Dirty Word: The Discipline of Homiletics
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
André Resner Jr., Hood Theological Seminary

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Reading the Bible for Preaching the Gospel
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Andre Resner Jr., Hood Theological Seminary

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Philo of Alexandria on the Contemplative and the Active Lives
Program Unit: Letters of James, Peter, and Jude
Gretchen Reydams-Schils, University of Notre Dame

Philo uses the phrase "unsociable community" to criticize misguided forms of sociability. In the Roman era and so-called Middle-Platonism, under the influence of Stoicism, the boundary between the theoretical and the practical life becomes blurred (even more so than in the Stoicism of the Hellenistic era). This paper will examine the relationship between these two types of life in Philo's work, taking also into account the relation between an individual and community, and the differences among different kind of communities.


Lost in Assyria: Geographical Transmogrifications of Aššur in the Hebrew of the Hellenistic Period
Program Unit: Biblical Lexicography
Bennie H. Reynolds III, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The word Aššur is used 138 times in the Hebrew Bible with minimal variation in orthography or meaning. In all but perhaps two cases, it designates the Neo-Assyrian Empire. This consistency of meaning falls apart in the Hellenistic period when the word develops a considerably larger semantic range. It is striking that the word almost never designates the Neo-Assyrian Empire. It is primarily used in three other ways: 1) a general description for all of Mesopotamia, 2) a specific description for Syro-Palestine, and 3) a cipher for Seleucid kings. These meanings are almost entirely absent from even the most recent Hebrew dictionaries and lexicons. This paper draws heavily on texts from the Qumran library in order to map Aššur in the Hebrew of the Hellenistic period. Cognate developments in Aramaic and Greek are placed alongside the Hebrew evidence.


Unique Uses of Traditional Religious Language in Psalm 119
Program Unit: Book of Psalms
Kent Aaron Reynolds, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Psalm 119 uses traditional religious language in unique formulations. Previous studies of Psalm 119 have discussed this feature of the psalm but have failed to provide a cohesive explanation of it. Some have noted the use of lament language and categorized Psalm 119 as a lament psalm; others have noted the use of wisdom locutions and categorized it as a wisdom psalm. These explanations are unduly influenced by form-critical methodology. This paper provides an explanation that accounts for the disparate motifs in Psalm 119 and discusses how the use of religious language contributes to the message of the psalm. Psalm 119 teaches that the righteous should internalize Torah to the point that it is character-forming. Instead of admonishing the reader to study and obey Torah, the author portrays someone who does so. By means of the portrayal the author creates – in the persona of the speaker – a model for the reader to follow. The speaker loves Torah, clings to it, and yearns to understand it. He rejoices and delights in obedience. The author formulates the words of the speaker using traditional religious language. The author uses this religious language to characterize the speaker as someone who has internalized Torah so completely that it shapes his speech. Because the words are traditional, they resonate with the beliefs of the pious, and this resonance increases the rhetorical effectiveness of the psalm.


Text and Material Culture: Constructing and Understanding Wealth and Poverty in the Second and Third-Century Christianity
Program Unit: Archaeology of Religion in the Roman World
Helen Rhee, Westmont College

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“The Road Not Taken”: An Inquiry into the Significance of the Two Ways Tradition in the Epistle of Barnabas and Its Relevance to the Didache
Program Unit: Didache in Context
James N. Rhodes, Saint Michael's College

With few exceptions, scholars have treated the Two Ways material in Barnabas 18-20 (21) as an appendix whose relation to the foregoing chapters was unclear, despite general agreement that they are not a late addition to the text. This paper argues that the extent to which Barnabas" thinking is shaped in fundamental ways by the Two Ways tradition has yet to be fully appreciated. While Barnabas" rejection of Jewish cultic observances is unambiguous, he does not dispute the validity of the Law so much as its meaning. The author's fondness for the metaphor of “the way” is part of a larger interpretive pattern that sees the Law as positive, but finds its meaning in exclusively ethical terms. Especially revealing in this regard is Barnabas" use of Psalm One, which is used simultaneously to praise the Law itself and to spiritualize the meaning of specific requirements (10:10-11). The subsequent invocation of Psalm One in a baptismal context (11:6-7) may suggest that the Two Ways material in Barnabas 18-20 was familiar to the author as a sort of pre-baptismal teaching which, while overlooking cultic matters, took seriously the obligation of ethical separation in view of the coming day of judgment. Such a possibility poses an intriguing contrast to the Didache, which retained similar material within a more overtly Jewish framework. Although the Two-Ways tradition does not lead inevitably to the kind of ethical reductionism one finds in Barnabas" treatment of the Jewish Law, it is nonetheless compatible with it, and therefore helps to explain the peculiarly Barnabean theological trajectory.


Jews and/or “Judaizers” in the Epistle of Barnabas: Internal Threat, External Rival, or Ideological Construct?
Program Unit: Jewish Christianity / Christian Judaism
James N. Rhodes, Saint Michael's College

Interpreters of the Epistle of Barnabas have long disagreed over the significance of the author's anti-Jewish rhetoric. Some, such as L. W. Barnard, have seen the writing as a response to a judaizing crisis, called forth by an aggressive effort to promote adherence to Jewish ritual practices. Others, such as R. Hvalvik, have spoken in more general terms of “missionary competition” between Jews and Christians as a broader cultural phenomenon most likely to be responsible for the Epistle's composition. Still others, mostly German scholars of a previous generation (K. Wengst, H. Windisch) have seen the author"s broadsides as artificial or academic in nature, intended not to stem the tide of Christian “judaizing” so much as to engage intra-Christian conflicts over the interpretation of the Jewish Scriptures. This paper argues that the most promising solution to this puzzle sees the Epistle of Barnabas as an example of a “Christianized Deuteronomism” in which “those people” play a role analogous both to the failed wilderness generation (hence, the golden-calf incident) and, mutatis mutandis, subsequent generations experiencing the loss of the Jewish temple. In the wake of the failed Bar Kochba revolt, the author believes that prior disagreements over the meaning of Israel"s cult (especially temple sacrifice and circumcision) and covenant have been definitively settled by recent events. The failings and misfortunes of “those people” serve as an important foil in the shaping of Gentile Christian identity, accounting for an uneven tone in the epistle that can be variously perceived as condescending, triumphalistic, and / or tragic. Yet the polemical elements themselves are mostly well-worn traditions that do not require an internal crisis over religious praxis.


Self-Mastery, Apatheia, Metriopatheia, and Moral Theory in the Epistle of James
Program Unit: Letters of James, Peter, and Jude
Luiz Felipe Ribeiro, University of Toronto

The reading of the Stoics" influence on James received little support and only very recently got a comprehensive treatment in Matt A. Jackson-McCabe's “Logos and Law in the Letter of James: the Law of Nature, the Law of Moses and the Law of Freedom. Before Logos and Law in the Letter of James, Jackson-McCabe contends, two lonely treatments of the Epistle allowed for a straight connection between James and Stoic Philosophy. Arnold Meyer in 1930, and M.-E. Boismard in 1957, independently argued that implanted logon (Jas 1,21) and the Perfect Law of Freedom (Jas 1,25) were drawn by the author of the Epistle from a Greek environment, particularly from Stoicism. According to Jackson-McCabe, James" use of Implanted Logos derived from the early Stoa understanding of Émphutoi Prolepseis (Implanted Preconceptions). This paper proposes to add to Jackson-McCabe's thesis of Stoic influences in James" psychology and moral theory. It argues that the pseudonym Yakob might be read in light of the Jewish Hellenistic reception of Stoicism of the idea of the Stoic sage who achieves apatheia, or of the sage who is striving to control his passions through moderation (metriopatheia). This conflation of the Jewish Patriarch and Stoic sage can be seen in the figure of Joseph in the Testaments of the XII Patriarchs and in Abraham, Isaac and Yakob in Philo of Alexandria. The Epistle of James is seen deriving its own ideas about the sage from the Jewish Hellenistic reception of Stoicism and the tradition of the haploûs sophos, the single-minded sage, the man who is the embodiment of simplicity, showing no sign of duplicity, listening and practicing the Logos (Jas 1, 33-35).


Four Things to Consider Before Teaching Scriptures to High School Students
Program Unit:
Kent Harold Richards, Society of Biblical Literature

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Fooling around with Luke 12:20: Why the Rich Man Is (and Is Not) Called a Fool
Program Unit: Synoptic Gospels
Matthew S. Rindge, Gonzaga University

Readers of Luke's parable of the "Rich Fool" (Luke 12:16-20) generally agree that the description of the man as a “fool” is the parable's crux interpretum. Most interpreters read the epithet “fool” in light of Ps 14:1a (“A fool says in his heart, "There is no God"”), understanding the man"s fault in (primarily) theological terms. The rich man (so it is argued) is either an atheist, has forgotten God, or has no relationship with God. This definition of “fool” is unsatisfying, however, because it fails to consider the numerous Second Temple Jewish and Greco-Roman texts in which the term “fool” is explicitly linked to the (mis)use of possessions, a motif germane to Luke"s parable. More helpful explanations for what constitutes the man"s folly are found when the parable is read in concert with wisdom texts whose focus is the juxtaposition of death and possessions. For these texts offer specific proposals regarding how to use possessions given one"s inevitable demise. (These sapiential recommendations include enjoyment, generosity, giving to God, alms, hospitality, and preparing a will or testament.) For his failure to enact any of these sapiential recommendations regarding the use of possessions in the light of death, the rich man earned the epithet “fool.”


Double-Voiced Discourse, Hidden Polemic, and the Johannine Community
Program Unit: Bakhtin and the Biblical Imagination
Jason J. Ripley, Saint Olaf College

This Bakhtinian reading of the Gospel of John analyzes its narrative content as an arena of ideological conflict. Focusing primarily on the conflicted Jewish context of John, I apply Bakhtin's notions of double-voiced discourse and hidden polemic to language and themes specific to the Fourth Gospel. Building off of the claims of martyrdom at the hands of those who think themselves to be offering faithful service to God (John 16:2), I produce evidence that suggests the Johannine community's adversaries are zealous heirs of Maccabean rhetoric and praxis. Subsequent analysis of the narrative reveals double-voiced discourse and hidden polemic directed against Maccabean ideology, as the Evangelist engages key dimensions of Jewish piety claimed by opposing groups in the struggle to define “true” Jewish faithfulness in the face of Roman imperialism. The Gospel of John"s depiction of Jesus" self-consuming zeal for the Temple and declaration that Jesus" cruciform faithfulness is the glory and freedom-granting victory of God subvert the violent configurations of piety set forth in the same terms by the Johannine community"s antagonists. The sociological dimension highlighted by this Bakhtinian analysis of John in its historical context discloses the sharp political and social thrust of this “spiritual” Gospel.


Inclusion and Exclusion in the Reconstruction of Jerusalem
Program Unit: Book of Isaiah
Ken Ristau, Pennsylvania State University

The theme of the reconstruction of Jerusalem in biblical texts has both political and socio-economic dimensions. While the political dimensions and the Achaemenid imperial context have been well studied in recent years, the socio-economic dimensions of reconstruction, especially as presented in Isaiah 40–66, have been captive to studies of the historical development of Israelite religion, particularly the development of apocalyptic literature and the rise of sectarianism. Nevertheless, socio-economic themes, such as inclusion and exclusion, universalism and particularism, and prosetylization, in Deutero and Trito-Isaiah provide new perspectives from which to understand the physical and demographic reconstruction of Jerusalem. My presentation will examine these issues and this relationship in the Near Eastern and Mediterranean context.


The Hexapla Project Online: Why Bother with the Web?
Program Unit: International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies
Elizabeth Robar, Southern Seminary

When the Hexapla Institute was founded in 2001, the goal of an online, fully searchable edition of the Hexapla was beset with technological and logistic challenges. The passage of time resolved many of these, with web browser and Unicode advancements, but the cost of building a web application of sufficient complexity was still forbidding. The decision was made to first build an online interface through which all contributors would enter their data into one centralized repository. The burden of building the apparatus was then offloaded from the contributor to the computer, such that when the contributor entered both data and his text-critical judgments, the apparatus was instantly generated and served both as verification of complete and correct data entry, and preview of the final apparatus as it would appear in the print edition. Additional benefits include search and analysis capabilities, both on a contributor's own data and on all other contributors" data. Already, and as a preview of benefits to all students and scholars when the Project is completed, the web version of the Hexapla has been well worth the effort.


Jesus at the Boundaries of Forgiveness: Reading Luke 23:34a as a Palliative for Victims of Violence
Program Unit: Synoptic Gospels
Maria Mayo Robbins, Vanderbilt University

This paper uses Jesus' acts of forgiveness in the Gospel of Luke to argue that his statement on the cross, “Father forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” (23.34), serves not as the epitome of grace in the face of adversity, but reflects his inability to forgive his attackers. Luke presents Jesus as the agent of forgiveness in previous situations such as the healing of the paralytic (5.20) and the forgiveness of the sinful woman (7.48), and in 5.24 Jesus claims, “The Son of Man has the authority on earth to forgive sins.” Thus, his cry signals an internal struggle, an inability to forgive. Reading Jesus as a human being who wrestles with forgiveness in the face of violence can relieve women from the imperative to forgive – Luke 23.34 is typically cited as a mandate for abused women to forgive their abusers – and allow them to struggle in their experience as Jesus also struggled, while not precluding theological involvement.


Prophecy and the Word of Knowledge in 1 Corinthians
Program Unit: Society for Pentecostal Studies
Steve Robbins, Vineyard Leadership Institute

Drawing on Intertestamental and contemporary literature, as well as New Testament exegesis, an accurate definition and description of the "Word of Knowledge" is proposed. In addition, it is compared and contrasted with the gift of prophecy in 1 Corinthians. I will suggest that the historical Pentecostal and Charismatic definition of the word of knowledge is inaccurate. Spirit-inspired insight into a person's physical condition or existential situation is a sub-type of prophecy ("prophetic insight," as in 1 Cor 14:24-25); and the word of knowledge is Spirit-inspired insight into Scripture or a previously given revelation. Prophecy brings immediacy to God's communication with believers providing insight into biblical truth--illuminating its relevance for a specific time, place, or situtation. As a result, prophecy corroborates and intensifies the witness of Scripture. The word of knowledge is a more mediated form of revelation than prophecy. It deals with particular insights into the commands, comforts, promises, and warnings of Scripture. Therefore, knowledge instructs God's people, giving them a foundation for obedient action. The function of the word of knowledge is to enable believers to recognize, acknowledge, and obey the voice of God though the scriptural media. My point is that people recognize and respond to God's voice in Scripture through these gifts. This thesis can be looked at as an extension of Reformed theology's theme of the subjective aspect of revelation. Both Luther and Calvin spoke of the need for Scripture's message to take effect in the individual's heart as a work of the Holy Spirit. I submit that through these charismata the work of the Spriit is individuated, making the words of Scripture subjectively effective. Furthermore, these gifts show us how the canon of Scripture was created, recognized, and performs as an instrument of God's authority.


Sociorhetorical Spaces, Situations, Discourses, and Belief Systems
Program Unit: Rhetoric of Religious Antiquity
Vernon K. Robbins, Emory University

Sociorhetorical interpretation reconfigures the approach to social spaces and situations in Greco-Roman rhetoric, form criticism, and Lloyd Bitzer's “situation” rhetoric. It reconfigures those approaches with insights both from critical spatiality theory and from conceptual metaphor theory, which emphasizes that thinking and reasoning occur in the body in its locations in the world. At present, this reconceptualization is especially focused on the rhetoric of texts in Mediterranean antiquity during the Hellenistic-Roman period. The purpose is to find a way to analyze and interpret the rhetoric of Hellenistic, Roman, Christian, and Jewish texts that emerged out of multiple locations of life in the Mediterranean world between the time of the demise of the Greek city states and the adoption of Christianity as the religion of the Roman Empire. Current work has identified, in particular, spaces and situations in the body itself, in family households, in temples, in kingdoms, in imperial throne-courts with military outreach, and in imperial households that focus on a special son of the emperor. In first century Christianity, these spaces create the contexts of life for miraculous healing discourse, wisdom discourse, priestly discourse, prophetic discourse, apocalyptic discourse, and precreation discourse. These discourses are localizations of broader Mediterranean philosophical, mantic, and ritual discourses. While this approach can be expanded to analyze and interpret wide varieties of literature in Late Mediterranean Antiquity and in other cultures as well, the focus of this presentation will be on the application of this approach to first century Christian literature.


Anger in the Gospel of Matthew
Program Unit: Hellenistic Moral Philosophy and Early Christianity
Erin Roberts, Brown University

This paper focuses on the relationship between human interiority and morality in the Gospel of Matthew, paying specific attention to teachings about anger (orge). Through a close comparison with different philosophical views of anger as found, for example, in the writings of Seneca and Philodemus, the paper argues that the Gospel of Matthew shows awareness of the ancient topos of anger as desire for revenge. Attention will be paid to the gospel writer's use of this topos both for rhetorical effect (Matthew 18.21-35, 22.1-14) and for moral instruction (Matthew 5.21-26). One important implication of this argument is that it opens the possibility for a new understanding of the unity of Matthew 5.21-48.


Reconsidering the Value of Hope
Program Unit: Philo of Alexandria
Erin Roberts, Brown University

This paper examines the view of hope (elpis) offered by Philo of Alexandria and shows that his discussions of hope are unique in two ways. First, they do not neatly fit the traditionally “theological” or “religious” portrayal of hope as a human yearning—based primarily upon blind faith—for eternal or heavenly bliss. Second, they offer a viable philosophical alternative to the Stoic claim that hope brings fear. The paper argues that Philo has a nuanced account of hope that takes careful consideration of both the agents and the objects of hope, and that he views good hope as rational optimism concerning the possibility of a good life. He bases this optimism on observation and experience related to God's and nature's constant provision of the necessities not only for life, but also for a happy one, and it is in this way that hope can serve as an antidote to fear. Neither of these two reasons—belief in the provision for life by God and by nature—are incompatible with Stoic thought, which is commonly understood to counsel against hope on the grounds that hope only leads to fear. In addition to offering an analysis of hope in Philonic thought, then, this paper also considers the possibility for a new understanding of the value of hope in Stoic ethics.


Critical Reflections on the Book Called Isaiah with Particular Attention to the Second Exodus Theme (Isaiah 11:11–16)
Program Unit: Book of Isaiah
J. J. M. Roberts, Princeton Theological Seminary

This paper will present a broad critical appreciation of the main thesis in Williamson's book, but then will focus in on a more detailed critical evaluation of his treatment of Isa 11:11-16.


Kierkegaard and Peter
Program Unit: Søren Kierkegaard Society
Kyle Roberts, Bethel Seminary (St. Paul)

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Looking beyond the Tree in Jeremiah 17:5–8: A Combined Cognitive Linguistic and Rhetorical Critical
Program Unit: Cognitive Linguistics in Biblical Interpretation
S. J. Robinette, Graduate Theological Union

Bible scholars disagree regarding the function and meaning of the two-part poetic passage in Jeremiah 17:5-8. This study examines this text using Rhetorical Critical methodology in conjunction with concepts and practices developed in recent decades in the field of Cognitive Linguistics, including the practice of regarding metaphors as invitations to reason about one thing in terms of another rather than primarily as rhetorical ornamentation. This study demonstrates how the literary features in Jeremiah 17:5-8, including the reasoning structures suggested by its various metaphors for trust, are useful in interpreting the passage as a whole and for suggesting its intended effect and intended audience. While its conclusions shed light on the issues of meaning, function, and probable audience, they also support continued incorporation of Cognitive Linguistic methodologies in the study of biblical texts.


Reading Genesis 1 as Poetry
Program Unit: Biblical Criticism and Literary Criticism
Robert B. Robinson, Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia

Traditionally the opening verses of Genesis 1 have been read following general conventions for reading prose. Those conventions take no account of certain obvious features of the text, repeated instances of alliteration, assonance, consonance, unusual syntactic formations, and highly evocative imagistic language which are characteristic of the palette of Hebrew poetry. I propose to offer a reading of these verses following poetic conventions. For instance, in the second verse I focus on the juxtaposition of the self-involving but alienating images of the tohu vabohu, darkness, and deep, all evoking anxiety or fear from a human perspective, with the placid image of God hovering above the inchoate waters (supported by a little remarked consonance between ruach and merachephet). The reading acknowledges our terror at the unformed world without transforming that world into a forced opposed to God or beyond God's control or comfort. A certain duality in the world is both evoked and denied, a complex mimesis for which poetry is peculiarly suited. Although the focus of the presentation is exegetical, it will also touch on the role of reading conventions in interpretation, the fluid character of the 'system' of Hebrew poetry, and the effect on reading of a passage that is neither decisively poetry nor prose.


Does the Orthodox Lectionary Subvert the Gospel? The Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen in the Orthodox Liturgical Cycle
Program Unit: Bible in Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Traditions
Nicolae Roddy, Creighton University

The earliest stages of the Orthodox lectionary are obscured by history; subsequent developments resulted in diversity across ecclesiastical jurisdictions, especially between Greek and Slavic traditions. As a human construct it seems appropriate to question certain instances where a particular lectionary reading might actually be counterproductive to the life of the Spirit the Orthodox Church seeks to preserve. The present paper examines the Matthean Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen as prescribed in the lectionary for the 13th Sunday after Pentecost and elsewhere during the liturgical year. It notes that the parable is abruptly truncated at v.43, resulting in the omission of information key to understanding the role of Jesus Christ in the parable, in the gospel overall, and most importantly in the hearing of Orthodox laity throughout the centuries. The paper examines both the theological and social implications of this truncated reading and pleads for the restoration of these key verses (44-46) for the spiritual health of the Church through greater authenticity to her own Scriptures.


The Covenant in the Book of Job
Program Unit: Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
Max Rogland, Erskine Theological Seminary

The relationship between the concept of the covenant and the wisdom literature of the Bible remains unclear in many respects. This paper focuses specifically on the Book of Job and presents a case that the covenant is both present in and significant for the book’s message. The paper proceeds as follows: First, it draws attention to some important indications in the text of a covenantal relationship between Job and the Lord. Second, it examines the nature of the covenant relationship in the OT and ancient Near East, noting the important link between covenant and kinship relations. Third, it argues that the pathos of Job’s speeches is fundamentally due to the fact that he perceives that God has broken covenant with him, since this represents not merely a failure to meet the legal obligations of the covenant but more especially a personal betrayal of kinship loyalty bonds.


The Reisner Samaria Ostraca and the Joint Expedition Inscriptions
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
Christopher A. Rollston, Emmanuel School of Religion

The Reisner Samaria Ostraca can be dated with substantial certitude to the early 8th century BCE. The Joint Expedition Inscriptions can be dated to the late(r) 8th century BCE. This presentation will compare and contrast various aspects of these two important Northern corpora of Old Hebrew inscriptions. Some of the conclusions are based on recent microscopic collations conducted during 2008.


Horvat Uza Epigraphs: New Collations of the Entire Corpus
Program Unit: Paleographical Studies in the Ancient Near East
Christopher A. Rollston, Emmanuel School of Religion

The entire corpus of Iron II inscriptions from Horvat Uza has now been published. Rollston recently re-collated this corpus and this presentation will summarize some of the data generated during the recollation.


Response to Friendly Critics
Program Unit: Christian Theological Research Fellowship
Philip Rolnick, University of Saint Thomas

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Exclusivity, Or Else? Shifts of Group Identities within Exilic Ideology
Program Unit: Literature and History of the Persian Period
Dalit Rom-Shiloni, Tel Aviv University

Within the Babylonian exilic community, exclusivity was a major issue negotiated in occasional re-identifications of group-identities throughout the sixth and fifth centuries BCE. This presentation discusses exclusivity in three major periods from last to first: the early Persian period, which calls for comparison of Ezra-Nehemiah to Haggai and Zechariah; the Exilic-Diasporic era, with Deutero-Isaiah as major voice; and Ezekiel as the representative of the Jehoiachin Exiles prior to the Destruction of Jerusalem and shortly thereafter. Exclusivity contains self- and counter- intertwined procedures demonstrated in social designations, in the exclusive arguments, and in the strategies which are employed to construct the group identity. Studying these procedures of exclusivity, I argue that Babylonian exilic ideology has gone through several ideological shifts during this transitory period from the Neo-Babylonian regime to the Persian Empire. Yet the latter shifts may be fully understood only on the background of the early years of exile, on the ideological foundations set by Ezekiel, in which exclusivity was already built on continuity, entirety, and "annexation" of religious conceptions and national traditions.


My evolution in teaching the bible in high school: from canon to cultural studies
Program Unit:
Tom Rooney, High School English Teacher

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What Does “Proto-Rabbinic” Mean? Rethinking Yetzer in Qumran
Program Unit: Qumran
Ishay Rosen-Zvi, Tel Aviv University

Ever since the publication of the Thanksgiving Scroll scholars have debated on the meaning of the term yetzer in Qumran? How reified is this yetzer? Is it an inward or outward force? Should it be considered a part of Qumranic anthropology of demonology? Many of the studies on the issue dealt also with the similarities and differences between the yetzer appearing at Qumran and the developed concept found in rabbinic literature. This tendency has even intensified when new from Caves 4 and 11 revealed new appearances of the term “yetzer ra” in the scrolls. The similar terminology has motivated some scholars to identify in Qumran parallel themes to those found in the later, rabbinic appearances of the yetzer, such as two yetzarim (esp. in 1QS 4:23) and sexual connotations (e.g. the juxtaposition of yetzer and eini znut in CD 2:16). In a previous study I have questioned the common conceptualization of the rabbinic yetzer. The yetzer appear in only one school of early rabbinic literature, that of Rabbi Ishmael, where it has no special sexual context. Far from being a blind appetite, the yetzer signifies an antinomian entity residing in one's heart, and responsible for one's attraction to sin. These findings lead me, in the present paper, to rethink the relationship of the early rabbinic concept with that of Qumran. After analyzing all the appearances of the term “yetzer ra” in Qumran (4Q417 1 II 12; 4Q422 I 12; 4Q370 1ine 3 [uncertain]; 4Q436 1 I 10; 11QPsa Plea XIX 15-16) I would offer a new account for the relationship between Qumranic and rabbinic yetzer. In both cases the yetzer functions as an explanation to human sinfulness, an alternative (in the rabbinic case) or a solution to a flaw in the grand cosmological structures (which has difficulties to account for the source of sinfulness of the sons of light themselves). Furthermore, The identification of early rabbinic yetzer specifically with the scholl of Rabbi Ishmael may allow us to move beyond phenomenological similarities to speculate about historical ties between the Qumranic yetzer and that of Rabbi Ishmael, a connection that already noticed in other contexts.


Hyper-Sexualization of Reality in the Bavli
Program Unit: Midrash
Ishay Rosen-Zvi, Tel Aviv University

Scholars have long noticed the existence of differences between the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmud regarding Body and Sexuality. The differences however where characterized as those of approach and attitude, claiming a more complex (Boyarin, Carnal Israel, 142) of positive (Satlow, Tasting the Dish, 319) attitude toward sexuality in the Bavli. In this paper I wish to radicalize, and recontextualize, those claims, arguing that the Babylonian sources not only show a different attitude toward sexuality, but multiply and increase sexuality itself. Peering at the world through sexual lenses, the Bavli see sex all around. Numerous statements, homilies, and narratives, all over the Bavli, tend to present their protagonists, biblical heroes as well as rabbinic sages, in a stark sexual manner, unparalleled in Palestinian literature. Biblical events are loaded with sexual content in the Bavli, even when there is scarce basis for that in the Bible itself. Some specific topics, such as sages going to prostitutes or measures of penises, are almost exclusively Babylonian. The conceptualization of marriage as intended, first and foremost, to protect men from their uncontrollable sexual passions is also Babylonian in nature. This hyper-sexualization influences also the legal discourse in the Bavli, as in the case of the laws against forbidden seclusion (b. Kid 81b) or the desirable age of marriage (b. Kid 29b), both unparalleled in the Palestinian sources. After mapping this phenomenon, examining its scope and consistency, I wish to offer a historical contextualization to it, by comparing it to parallel phenomena in eastern Christianity. Naomi Kolton Fromm and Shlomo Naeh has pointed to similarities in the discourse on holiness and sexuality in Babylonian and syrian literatures. Moreover, eastern monastic literature seems to offer the closest parallel to the Bavli's anecdotal narratives about sages resisting sexual temptations (successfully or not). After discussing some of these historical parallels, I would attempt to locate them in the context of the larger discourse on sexuality in late antiquity, after (and following) Foucault.


Kosher Olive Oil in Antiquity Reconsidered
Program Unit: History and Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism
Jordan Rosenblum, University of Wisconsin - Madison

Josephus attests several times to a Jewish aversion to the use of Gentile olive oil (e.g., Life 74; Jewish War 2:591; Jewish Antiquities 12:120). In m. Avodah Zarah 2:6, this practice is first advocated and then immediately reversed by Rabbi and his court. What is the rationale for this sudden leniency with regard to Gentile olive oil? In a famous article entitled “Kosher Olive Oil in Antiquity,” Martin Goodman argues that Rabbi's statement is the result of his inability to find a legal basis for the prohibition of Gentile olive oil. Goodman, however, accounts neither for the unique economic and dietary factors associated with olive oil (i.e., it is a dietary staple, relatively expensive to produce, for which the Roman government sometimes issued monopolies), nor tannaitic legislation regarding other foodstuffs that may shed light on this case (e.g., cheese). In this paper, I reconsider Jewish stances towards Gentile olive oil in antiquity from the time of Josephus to the Tannaitic period.


The Ideological Beyond: Experiences of Death Equivalents in Biblical Scripture
Program Unit: Ideological Criticism
Janet L. R. Ross, McMaster University

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Apocalyptic Discourses, Global Warming, and Empire: Is This the End of the World?
Program Unit: John's Apocalypse and Cultural Contexts Ancient and Modern
Barbara Rossing, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago

Four 2007 scientific reports from the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change read more like Revelation's plague sequences than typical scientific reports, with their warnings of catastrophic floods, severe draughts, increasing infectious diseases, more frequent forest fires, ocean acidification, and ecosystem collapse. Some environmental critics dismiss the book of Revelation and other biblical apocalyptic discourses as escapist and anti-earth. But with the exception of 2 Peter 3, the “end” that biblical apocalyptic texts envision is primarily not the destruction of the earth or the created world. Rather, Revelation and other texts envision an end to the Roman imperial world of injustice and idolatry—an end to the oikoumene. Typical English Bible translations of oikoumene as “world” mask the aggressively imperial dimension this term had taken on by the first century CE. We should translate oikoumene as “empire,” in which case a text such as Rev 3:10 (the “hour of trial that is coming upon the oikoumene”) speaks not primarily about general end-times tribulation or escape, but rather about the end of empire. Today, this distinction between end of the earth and end of empire can be crucial for affirming a future for the planet beyond empire. Revelation's vision of the millennium (Revelation 20)—described by Steve Friesen as “vindication time”—also gives concrete hope for life beyond empire. Is there still time to avert dangerous climate change? Scientists tell us that we have only ten years or less to act. Revelation"s sense of delay-- what Harry Meier calls its “abiding sense of the imminent”—can be a resource to help to underscore the urgency of the present moment, while also allowing time to come out of empire before it is too late.


Hastening the Day When the Earth Will Burn: Global Warming, 2 Peter, and the Book of Revelation
Program Unit:
Barbara Rossing, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago

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The Muratorian Fraud
Program Unit: Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti
Clare K. Rothschild, Lewis University

The dating and provenance of the Muratorian Canon is a well-rehearsed problem of NT scholarship. Many scholars accept a late second/early third century Roman provenance. Others follow A. C. Sundberg Jr. (1968) who famously argued that the Muratorian fragment represents a late fourth century Eastern viewpoint. Sundberg's key defense was that if the Muratorian Fragment dates to the late second/early third century in the West, it is the only example of its kind from this time and place (sui generis). E. Ferguson wrote a brief rebuttal article to Sundberg (1982) that appears frequently in literature on the debate. Although Joseph Verheyden (2003) recently stated that: “the few scholars who have argued for a later date have long been silenced," it is, in fact, more accurate to say that today scholarship has reached an impasse. This paper adopts a conciliating position—based on new readings of familiar evidence informed by background on the Fragment's discoverer, priest, Ludovico Antonio Muratori (1672–1750)—that the Muratorian Fragment is a late third or early fourth century forgery attempting to pass itself off as a Latin translation of a second century Greek list. The aim of the forgery was to provide a venerable second-century precedent for a fourth-century position on canon.


Myth in Early Christian Historiography
Program Unit: Bible, Myth, and Myth Theory
Clare K. Rothschild, Lewis University

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The Enochic Library of the Author of the Epistle of Barnabas
Program Unit: Function of Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
Eric Christopher Rowe, University of Notre Dame

The Epistle of Barnabas contains more scriptural quotations than any other book of either the Apostolic Fathers or the New Testament. The corpus of Jewish literature from which these quotations are drawn includes a number of books that lie outside of what is now considered the Hebrew Bible. This paper surveys these quotations and reveals that the author of the Epistle of Barnabas utilized a corpus similar to what would have been used within the Enochic and/or Essene branch of Judaism, and not unlike that which is evidenced in the Dead Sea Scrolls.


The Rhetoric of Difference and the Appeal to Empire in the Disputed Pauline Epistles
Program Unit: Disputed Paulines
Robert M. Royalty Jr., Wabash College

Scholars of the New Testament and Early Christianity have turned increasingly in the past decade to the interpretive lens of Christianity and empire. In post-colonial readings, resistance and subversion are key themes, from the revolutionary Jesus, to the subversive Paul, to anti-imperialist rhetoric in later Christian writings. But how could an association of Christians that valorized martyrs and martyrdom at the hands of the Roman authorities transform into the official imperial religion of Rome? Orthodox Christian writers wanted to present their community as an ancient, non-transgressive social formation within the context of traditional, hegemonic Greco-Roman religion. While the rhetoric of empire had this apologetic function, it was part of the rhetoric of difference within Christian communities as well. Positioning early orthodox Christianity *with* Rome was also part of positioning themselves *against* other Christians. Imperial ideology becomes central to the rhetoric of orthodox heresiology, which I mark as formed by the rhetoric of difference in early Christian texts, whether or not the word “heresy” is used. A critical moment in this discursive move in the formation of early Christian heresiology is in the later Pauline literature. The disputed Pauline epistles (primarily in this paper 1 Timothy) include the appeal to Empire as part of the discursive negotiation with internal ideological differences to identify “truth” and “error.” In this paper, I analyze the ways in which imperial ideologies have been inscribed in the later Pauline epistles as part of the rhetoric of difference against unnamed Christian opponents, marked as so-called “heretics” in these letters. I argue that, in the development of an early Christian discourse of difference, the notion of “heresy” had political functions. I read the rhetoric of difference in the later Pauline texts politically in terms of its appeal to empire and as a product of empire.


“Your Throne Shall Be Established Forever”: Notes on 2 Samuel 7:1–17
Program Unit: Deuteronomistic History
Jan Rückl, University of Lausanne

The paper is an outline of my analysis of 2 Sam 7, showing that the chapter is a complete deuteronomistic reinterpretation of judean royal ideology for the needs of exilic situation. A more ancient form of the ideology is attested in Ps 132 (even if the psalm itself, at least in its present form with the conditioning of the dynastic promise, can hardly be preexilic). Similarly to several other texts from the ancient Near East, Ps 132 exhibits a close relationship between the temple and the kingship: David receives the dynastic promise as a reward for its care of YHWH's sanctuary (vv. 1-5), and the eternity of the dynasty is guaranteed by YHWH's eternal presence on Zion (vv. 12-14). Contrary to that, 2 Sam 7 rejects both the concept of the gift of the dynasty in reward of the merits for the sanctuary, and the idea of the temple as God"s dwelling place and guarantee of the dynasty. The purpose of the linking of the dynastic promise to the polemic against the traditional significance of the temple in royal ideology is to preserve the validity of the promise after the fall of the temple. The dtr author of 2 Sam 7 struggles hard to deny the traditional connection between the temple and the dynasty so as to make possible the hope that the dynasty will not share the fate of the temple.


A Paragon of Discrimination: The Ethiopian Eunuch in Modern GLBTQ Biblical Interpretation
Program Unit: LGBTI/Queer Hermeneutics
John G. Rumple, University of Edinburgh

This paper offers both a survey and critique of the use of Acts 8:26–40 in modern LGBTQ publications, with a view to explicating the reasons why the figure of the Ethiopian eunuch resonates with a spectrum of sexual and ethnic minority groups. Special attention is given to why the combined realities of ethnicity and sexuality, as noted in the Acts 8 narrative, become and must remain visible during the task of biblical interpretation. Additionally, the investigation notes how those authors who are not part of ethnic minorities have, in general, ignored the racial aspects of this figure when promoting their views of why the story of the Ethiopian eunuch is meaningful for modern LGBTQ people.


The Discourse Function of Pendens Constructions and Their Contribution to Information Structure
Program Unit: Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics
Steven E. Runge, Logos Bible Software

The use of 'casus pendens' constructions, also known in linguistics as left dislocations, is observed in every book of the Greek New Testament, with the exception of Titus. Conventional descriptions of this device provide little explanation of why this construction is used, typically attributing it to Semitic influence. And while the pronominal element reiterating the dislocated concept is usually understood to occur in its canonical position in the main clause, the majority of NT occurrences disprove this claim. This paper provides a description of the linguistic and rhetorical functions accomplished by left dislocations in the New Testament. Of particular significance is their use by writers to accomplish the information-structuring tasks such as creating points of departure or placing a concept in marked focus. This description is illustrated with representative examples taken from a variety of writers and genres to illustrate the common function that left dislocations accomplish.


Fostering an Ideology of Subservience: The Ironic Social Function of 1 Samuel 16–2 Samuel 5
Program Unit: Social Sciences and the Interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures
Patrick J. Russell, Sacred Heart School of Theology

Literary- and historical-critical studies typically interpret the story of David's rise to power (1 Samuel 16 – 2 Samuel 5) as an apologia which validates the legitimacy and authority of the Davidic monarchy. The obvious ambiguity about the institution of kingship found in the Samuel-Saul cycles has, though, led to rather unsatisfying theories about how this pro-monarchical viewpoint fits into the larger project of 1-2 Samuel and the Deuteronomistic Historian. This problem is inadequately resolved by interpreting 1-2 Samuel as having a theological purpose: to sustain the hope of the exiles by defining the exile as a justifiable punishment for the nation's sins which requires repentance so that God will restore the Davidic covenant with the chosen people (for variations on this theme, see Noth [1943], Von Rad [1962]), Wolff [1982], etc.). A more productive reading of the “David"s Rise to Power” is offered by analyzing its social purpose through the use of Social Dominance Theory, a school of thought within social psychology. Specifically, 1 Samuel 16 – 2 Samuel 5 will be examined through the lens of this theory"s Asymmetry Hypothesis, which holds that endorsement of hierarchy-enhancing ideologies will increase ingroup favoritism among dominant groups, while subordinate groups will not only fail to exhibit ingroup favoritism, but will actually show outgroup favoritism. Various “baffling” elements within 1 Samuel 16 – 2 Samuel 5 (e.g., David"s Philistine alliance, the extortion of Nabal, Michal"s condemnation of David"s dancing) function – regardless of whether one postulates an exilic or post-exilic context – to mitigate an ideology supportive of hierarchy in order to maintain ingroup favoritism. Ironically, this diminishment of the Judahite monarchy also functions to legitimate the oppressor"s propaganda of empire superiority, which is consistent with Social Dominance Theory"s claim that oppressed groups participate in their own subjugation by creating ideological frameworks that complement and cooperate with the dominant group"s ideology.


The Mythological and Military Background of the Verb 'BR in Exodus 15:16
Program Unit: Hebrew Scriptures and Cognate Literature
Stephen C. Russell, New York University

The Song of the Sea describes the “crossing” of Yahweh's people following the defeat of Pharaoh and his army (Exod 15:16). The verb `BR is used and has often been interpreted as an allusion to some event known from the normative biblical portrayal of Israelite history: the Re(e)d Sea crossing, the wilderness wandering, or the Jordan river crossing. These suggestions, however, make little sense in the context Exod 15:14-16, nor do they take seriously the independence of the poem from the later schematic presentation of Israelite history. An examination of the Ugaritic Baal cycle and Enuma elish suggests instead that the verb `BR in Exod 15:16 reflects a standard military progression that was part of the storm god myths. In the Baal cycle, the verb is used to describe Baal's victory tour after his defeat of Yamm and his assumption of kingship. This sequence is in turn rooted in the political realities of empire, as reflected in descriptions of military campaigns by kings. A change of king tempted vassals to rebel, and new kings had to prove themselves at home and abroad. The verb is also used to describe a survey tour conducted by Marduk after his victory over Tiamat. Viewed against this background, Exod 15:16 seems to describe a tour by Yahweh"s people in Judahite territory, one that causes Judah"s surrounding enemies to tremble. This tour follows the defeat of Pharaoh and his army, a defeat apparently suffered in southern Palestine. In so far as the poem may preserve reliable historical memory, then, it may be rooted in a Syro-Palestinian campaign by an Egyptian ruler in which Judah felt that it had been miraculously saved by Yahweh. The best candidate is perhaps the campaign of Shoshenq I in which Jerusalem apparently escaped destruction, though other historical settings are possible.


Imagining Freedom in Babylon: Biblical Interpretation in the Narratives of Enslaved African Americans
Program Unit: African-American Biblical Hermeneutics
Rodney Sadler, Union-PSCE at Charlotte

African American biblical scholarship is not just the product of emerging movement in academic biblical hermeneutics; its origins can actually be located in African American biblical interpretation of the 18-19th centuries. During this period distinctive readings by this disenfranchised social group that are the precursor to the work being done today were emerging in the biographical narratives of emancipated women and men. In order to ground the notion that the current movement is uniquely African American and a product of a particular historical experience, it is requisite to engage in a descriptive analysis of early African American readings of Scripture. As such this paper will reflect on the ways this group has understood Scripture and it will illuminate the ways Scripture functioned as an invaluable resource for the liberation of African Americans. This paper will examine how the commonplace concept of “freedom” derived from Scripture was used in the narratives of formerly enslaved African Americans in liberative and self-affirming ways. Specifically it will consider how Scripture provided content that was necessary both spiritually and politically to facilitate the conceptualization of “freedom” for this group despite the overwhelming obstacles they faced in their reality. It will conclude suggesting that not only was Scripture crucial to their liberative agenda, the interpretive strategies of enslaved Africans continue to impact contemporary African American biblical interpretation.


The Feel of Words, the Taste of Sense: Synaesthesia as Metaphor in Ritual Languages
Program Unit: Society for the Arts in Religious and Theological Studies (SARTS)
Don Saliers, Emory University

This talk explores the crossing-over of the senses in examples of biblical and liturgical texts and their embodiment in ritual actions. To what extent may we think of deepening ritual participation and the deepening of moral/spiritual sensibility as “synaesthetic”? What light would this relationship shed on the poetics of biblical language in ritual contexts? Following the talk, four composers will reflect with Dr. Saliers and the audience on these and related questions.


The Prophet Moses in the Qur'an
Program Unit: Qur'an and Biblical Literature
Jusuf Salih, University of Virginia

Although the Prophet Abraham is considered to be the father of all three Abrahamic Traditions, the Qur"an talks much more about Moses (Musa) than it does about other prophets. Some of the Prophets "Rusul" had Papers 'suhuf" and needed to follow the laws of the previous messengers; some of them had Books "Kitab". Moses was among those who had "Kitab". He brought a Law that needed to be followed by other prophets. This paper will examine the case of the Prophet Moses (Musa) according to the Qur"an and will compare his life journey and his sacred mission with the Prophet Muhammad Muhammad's life and mission.


The Hexaplaric Readings in the Tabernacle Accounts of the Book of Exodus
Program Unit: International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies
Alison Salvesen, University of Oxford

Both Origen and Jerome noted that in the LXX of the Church, the second Tabernacle account varied in length and content to that of the Hebrew text (Exodus 35–40) of their day. Whether the translator of the Old Greek had a Vorlage that was very different from MT has been much debated, and varying conclusions have been drawn. Unaware of such issues, Origen was able to provide for his readers a Greek text that corresponded to the Hebrew. However, it is unclear from which later revision(s) he drew for the asterized portions of his recension of Exodus, and the relationship of the recorded readings of “Three” to this work.


The Use of Biblical Quotations in Magical Texts from the Cairo Genizah
Program Unit: Use, Influence, and Impact of the Bible
Dorothea M. Salzer, Freie Universität Berlin

Allusions to the text of the Hebrew Bible are one of the main features of these texts. Their purpose for the text is twofold: On the one hand a biblical allusion is part of the magical text as such and thus it constitutes – together with other elements of the text – its intra-textual continuum. On the other hand the allusion is part of the biblical text that consists outside and independently from the magical text itself and therefore it establishes an intertextual relation between these two texts. This interconnection leads to a semantic expansion of the alluding magical text. The presented paper will mainly focus on literal quotations from the Hebrew Bible and their task in a special genre of the magical texts from the Cairo Genizah. It will concentrate on those texts which are meant to cause harm to other people. Several aspects will be analyzed, such as the following: Can certain common formal characteristics and features be observed in the use of the citations in the different texts? Are there texts from the Hebrew Bible which are preferred for these purposes? Finally, the paper will provide an answer to the question if and to what extent such extensions are significant for the understanding and the effect of the magical text.


Reading Chariton's Chaereas and Callirhoe as a Postcolonial Novel
Program Unit: Ancient Fiction and Early Christian and Jewish Narrative
Simon Samuel, New Theological College, Dehradun, India

This paper experiments with the possibility of reading Chariton's Chaereas and Callirhoe as a postcolonial fictive writing by using the postcolonial theoretical concepts of mimicry, ambivalence and hybridity. If a postclassical Greek novel that originated in the Roman colonial context can be read as a postcolonial novel, then some of the early Jewish and Christian writings also may be read as postcolonial writings, because of their origin in the Roman colonial east and their social location among the so-called native "others" of the empire. A postcolonial reading of Chaereas and Callirhoe shows that it is a discursive response to Roman colonialism on the one hand and to Greek nativism and collaborationism on the other. As a creative writer living perhaps as the "elite other" in the Roman colonial east, Chariton responds to Rome through his protagonists. His novel gives structure to, as well as is being structured by, the history of the time in the same way most postcolonial fictions of our time. The postcolonial indeterminacy achieved through the postcolonial mimicry, ambivalence and hybridity of Chariton's characters unleashes a mutation in colonial notions of valor. In Chariton, the colonists and their colonial authority are subverted but at the same time the colonized are transformed. The former is subordinated but the latter is not allowed to dominate. Both are never to be the same again as there is an intertwining and overlapping of colonist and colonized spaces and discourses.


Was Paul a Prooftexter? The Case of Galatians 3
Program Unit: Biblical Law
E. P. Sanders, Duke University

Paul, like other expert Jewish exegetes, knew Jewish Scripture in more than one way and could use it in more than one way. Sometimes his arguments are based on a “big picture,” such as narrative sequence. Other arguments, however, are terminological and reveal precise knowledge of where specific words or combinations of words occur. If there is a link between two passages, other words in those passages can combine and thus yield the right conclusion. These terminological arguments are similar to modern “prooftexting.” The paper will include brief discussion of conflated quotations. Memorization is the simplest explanation of both Paul's ability to construct terminological arguments and his frequent use of conflated texts. This leads to a very brief discussion of the role of memory in Jewish and Greco-Roman education and argumentation.


Translating “Thinking” and “Believing” in the Bible: How Cognitive Linguistic Analysis Shows Increasing Subjectivity in Translations
Program Unit: Cognitive Linguistics in Biblical Interpretation
José Sanders, Vrije Universiteit-Amsterdam

The cognitive linguistic analysis of biblical translations offers a clarification of the ways in which language users understand discourse coherence as expressed by the biblical narrator; more specifically, it shows how the use of causal connectives expresses a growing degree of subjectification of the biblical narrator and characters between old and new translations (Sanders, submitted). In this paper, the subjectification of biblical narrator and characters in biblical translations will be studied specifically with respect the semantic prime “think” (Goddard, 2003) and its linguistic relative categories, since they exquisitely express subjective stance. First, a quantitative analysis is conducted on the full biblical corpus with respect to various verbs and expressions of cognition. The corpus analysis compares the Dutch Statenvertaling and English King James version on the one hand with the Dutch Nieuwe Bijbelvertaling and English Contemporary English Version on the other. It appears that the use of expressions of cognitive activity such as “thinking” has greatly increased. Secondly, the Basic Communicative Network of Mental Spaces (Sanders, Sanders & Sweetser, submitted) is used to analyse and compare the degree of subjectification in the representation of cognitive activity in biblical characters. It appears that new translations instruct readers to develop more epistemic spaces as well as more character specific reasoning content in these spaces. This is true not only for human characters, but also for the devine characters, as is discussed in specific fragments figuring Jesus –in the Gospels– and JHWH –in the Hebrew Bible. Thirdly, it is explored how the representation of the cognitive activity “believing” has altered between translations. Interestingly, and in contrast to expressions of thinking, expressions of “believing” appear to have decreased in number, in favour of more subjective states of “faith” and “trust” (in Dutch “vertrouwen”); thus construing epistemic spaces rather than content ones. Several examples are discussed.


Ethics in Interpretation: The Case of Eglon's Murder (Judges 3)
Program Unit: Hebrew Scriptures and Cognate Literature
Jack M. Sasson, Vanderbilt University

Traditionally, Ehud's murder of Eglon in Judg 3 was read as yet another episode in which God sustains Israel by punishing its oppressors. In recent decades, however, interpretations have multiplied wherein the story is treated as satire or farce. I review this range of opinions as well as crucial moments in the narrative to cast doubt on these recent interpretations.


The Birth of Moses and Buddha
Program Unit:
Vanessa Sasson, McGill Universtiy

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Rediscovering the Origin of the Sabbath
Program Unit: Sabbath in Text and Tradition
Nikolaus Satelmajer, Ministry Magazine

By the 16th century, with few exceptions (Jews and isolated Christians or small groups) the biblical Sabbath was replaced by Sunday, or the Lord's Day, as it was usually called. A renewed interest in the study of the Scripture also awakened interest in the Sabbath, though which day it was and its meaning for Christians was hotly debated. In 16th century England, several writers argued that the Sabbath was a biblical institution going back to creation. Two English clerics, Theophilus Brabourne of Norwich and Bishop Francis White of Ely entered into this debate of the origin of the Sabbath. This paper will explore Brabourne's arguments that the Sabbath was given at creation and given to all people, while White argued that the Sabbath was only temporary. Though Brabourne wrote some 8 books on the Sabbath, emphasis will be given to his earliest writings and White"s response of 1631.


The Social in the Spatial: Space Syntax Analysis of Khirbet Qumran
Program Unit: Space, Place, and Lived Experience in Antiquity
Juhana Markus Saukkonen, University College London

Space syntax, both as a theory and methodology, was formulated by Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson within architectural theory in the 1980s. It has been subsequently developed and used not only in architectural planning and research of modern urban spaces, but also as a theoretical framework and practical tool in the study of ancient built environments and their spatial configurations. According to the main tenets of space syntax theory, we can use spatial configuration of a building or settlement to learn about the social organization of its inhabitants. Methodologically, space syntax is highly formalized. Through creation of justified graphs, axial maps, and isovist maps it gives quantifiable measures of accessibility and visibility within a building or settlement. These results can be interpreted to inform us of, e.g., the relative privacy of the spaces within a building and, in turn, the social organization between its inhabitants and the “outsiders” – or between different social groups living within the building. This paper describes the results of space syntax analysis of the Khirbet Qumran building complex. While this analysis was not carried out to prove or disprove the Essene hypothesis or any of the other, competing theories, its results provide new insight on what types of groups most probably lived on the site. Particular attention is paid on how the spatial configuration changed over time and what the implications of this are in terms of social organization.


IOMS, 1972–2008: Progress and Prospects in Masoretic Studies
Program Unit: Masoretic Studies
Harold P. Scanlin, International Organization for Masoretic Studies

In 1971 Harry Orlinsky (SBL President, 1970) met with Aron Dotan to discuss the possibility of forming a society for the purpose of encouraging and promoting Masoretic studies. They both agreed that the time had come to do this. The following year the founding congress of the International Organization for Masoretic Studies met in Los Angeles in September 1972. On the occasion of the convening of the 21st Congress in Boston, 2008, it is good to reflect on progress in Masoretic studies in the past 36 years and prospects for future research to continue the vision of Orlinsky and Dotan. This survey will primarily focus on the following areas: manuscript studies, Masoretic phenomena, Masora in published editions, Tiberian grammar, non-Tiberian systems, and related topics such as turn of the era roots of Masora and periscope studies.


Modal Prefixed Verb Forms in Phoenician: Pragmatic and Syntactic Considerations
Program Unit: Ugaritic Studies and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy
Aaron Schade, Brigham Young University Hawaii Campus

This paper will examine the use of prefixed verb forms in Phoenician in relation to modality. I will compare the use of the jussive with the prefixed verb forms (subjunctives) used in conditional clauses. Salient indicators that help distinguish the use of the jussive and subjunctive, as well as issues surrounding fronting and triggers (including relative and conditional particles) will be discussed in defining the functions of modal prefixed verb forms in Phoenician inscriptions.


Torah and Identity in the Persian Period
Program Unit: Literature and History of the Persian Period
Joachim Schaper, University of Aberdeen

How did the emerging Pentateuch contribute to the formation of a Judahite/Yehudite/Jewish identity in the course of the Achaemenid period? This will be the lead question of the paper. It will explore how the emergence of a new form of political and social community in Yehud under a new form of imperial/colonial government is mirrored in the Pentateuch, and how the Pentateuch, and the earlier literary units out of which it was composed, in turn contributed to the formation of the identity of that community. Special attention will be given to the relation between the individual and the community as envisaged in key texts of the Pentateuch.


Deathly Silence and Big Bang: Observations on the Soundscape of the Book of the Twelve
Program Unit: Book of the Twelve Prophets
Aaron Schart, University of Duisburg

In this paper the Book of the Twelve is read with special emphasis on the sound that is included in the world of the text. Three onomatopoeic devices are singled out. First, the mourning cry HOY is considered, which is used differently in different writings: In Amos (5:18; 6:1), Micah (2:1), and Zephaniah (3:1) the prophet cries out of compassion with the addressees, in contrast to Nah 3:1 and Hab 2:6-19, where HOY is uttered in a mood of mockery. In Zech 2:10, a third variation is discernable in that the word is used in the expression of joy. It appears that the variations cohere nicely with the overall structure of the Book of the Twelve. The pastoral usage of the concept is limited to the pre-exilic prophets' sympathy with the doom of Israel and Judah, while the pejorative alternative characterizes their condemnation of the imperialistic agendas of foreign nations (e.g. Nineveh, Babylon). After the exile Zech 2:10 brings in the tone of a happy return. Second, the interjection HAS likewise exhibits variable pragmatic functions. In Am 6:10 and 8:3 it simulates the last breath of Israelites dying when the land is devastated. In contrast, in Hab 2:20, Zeph 1:7, and Zech 2:17 the addressees are directed to be silent before YHWH. These three instances constitute a frame around the Babylonian exile, which lies between Zeph and Hag/Zech. The third example is the phrase HAMONIM in Joel 4:14. The author employs a double plural on a word that regularly cannot even build a plural form: the plural morpheme is attached and the word then repeated. This marks the text as the loudest spot (the “big bang”) in the soundscape of the Twelve. From this analysis some redaction-historical conclusions may be drawn.


The “Ibbi-Sîn Disaster”
Program Unit: Assyriology and the Bible
Hanspeter Schaudig, University of Heidelberg

This paper deals with the devastation of Sumer and Ur at the end of the Ur-III period, which became the model destruction in Mesopotamian thought. In the aftermath of the catastrophe, and during the period of rebuilding Sumer under the First Dynasty of Isin, the question of why and how disaster could strike with divine consent was tackled only superficially - no doubt, because the ruling dynasty of Isin was deeply involved into the fall of Ur-III. In the course of the second millennium, the destruction became iconized as the "Ibbi-Sîn disaster" (shahluqti Ibbi-Sîn) in the apodoses of Babylonian omens. Interesting enough, the story of the "Ibbi-Sîn disaster" survived into the first millennium, and then was mixed with the various events when the city of Babylon was conquered or devastated, and when Marduk and the Babylonian gods left for Elam (or Hatti and Assyria). At this point at the latest, the story was also provided with a reasoning why the gods left the country to destruction, and would do so again. The philosophy was laid out in collections of "canonical" as well as "non-canonical" omens, and most prominently in a composition known today as the "Esagil- (or Weidner-) Chronicle." Since key features of the story also show up in Biblical literature, they may obviously have been adapted by Jewish deportees during the exile to explain their own catastrophe.


Redeeming the Unredeemable: Fallen Angels and the Nephilim in Popular Culture
Program Unit: Bible and Popular Culture
Linda S. Schearing, Gonzaga University

Bands are named after them, computer games utilize them, writers populate their stories with them them—what is so attractive about the bad “boys” of Genesis 6:1-4 and their offspring? This paper examines the history of interpretation of the nephilim and their fathers in contemporary television and film. Specifically, we will look at “All Souls” (X-Files episode/5th season; 1998), “The Fallen” (ABC Family TV miniseries; 2006), and “Ghost Rider “(movie, 2007). These three examples not only utilize the characters of Genesis 6:1-4 but develop them in ways that are intriguing. Thus, contemporary viewers are left with images of the nephilim that range from the demonic to beings living amongst us with hope of redemption. Such redemption, if it occurs, ultimately results in either the nephilim being liberated from the flesh or the nephilim becoming the source of their angelic fathers' redemption.


Humans as the “Image of God”: Some Exegetical Observations on the Theological Scope of Genesis 1:26–27; 5:1; and 9:6
Program Unit: Theology of the Hebrew Scriptures
Annette Schellenberg, San Francisco Theological Seminary

The Priestly statements about God's creation of humans “in” or better “as his image” belong to the most influential statements of the entire Old Testament. This paper seeks to contribute to the respective discussion on a formal and a material level: (1.) Formally, it proposes to appreciate that it is three different relationships that are concerned by the idea of a privileged position of humans: The relationship between humans and animals, the relationship between humans and God(s), and the relationship among humans. Paying attention to this multitude of relationships concerned by the idea of a privileged position of mankind (a) helps to understand the (seeming) incoherences in the discussion about the Priestly imago-dei-concept, (b) offers a mean to systematically compare it with similar concepts of a privileged position of humans, and (c) to evaluate it on this background. (2) In the larger “material” part of the paper, exegetical observations are presented that shed light on the theological scope of the Priestly idea of humans being the “image of God”. Against the often repeated assessment that the Priestly-imago-dei-statements are purely functional, it will be shown that according to the Priestly text, humans" being the “image of God” is not confined to their dominion over the animals. In addition, the use of the two nouns zäläm and demuth is reconsidered and a new understanding of the mixed use of the two terms offered. Finally exegetical observations will be presented that show that the relationship among humans is consciously in view in the Priestly text. Without answering all questions, these observations related to different aspects of the idea of a privileged position of humans (i.e. the above mentioned different relationships) all point to the same direction: That the theological scope of the Priestly idea of humans being the “image of God” is quite broad – a broadness often ignored in pertinent scholarly discussions.


Can the Bruce/Thrall Interpretation of 2 Corinthians 5:1–10 Account for Romans and Philippians?
Program Unit: Second Corinthians: Pauline Theology in the Making
Kenneth L. Schenck, Indiana Wesleyan University

F. F. Bruce, Margaret Thrall, and others have suggested that Paul's understanding of resurrection might have developed between 1 and 2 Corinthians. In 1 Corinthians, Paul portrays the time between death and resurrection as a sleepy, shadowy existence. By contrast, 2 Corinthians 5:2 pictures a “dwelling from heaven” immediately at death. Similarly, 1 Corinthians 15:51-52 and 1 Thessalonians 4:16 speak of a soma pneumatikon for the dead in Christ at the parousia, while believers receive this “eternal house not made with hands” at death in 2 Corinthians 5:1. Our study begins by reviewing the basic arguments for this interpretation. It finds these readings of 1 and 2 Corinthians quite plausible when they are read in isolation from the rest of the Pauline corpus. The question is whether Paul's later writings will support them. In particular, do the references to resurrection in Romans and Philippians support this developmental hypothesis? If in 2 Corinthians Paul now understands “resurrection” to happen at death, then his references to resurrection in Romans and Philippians presumably would share this same perspective. Accordingly, the rest of the study explores resurrection imagery in Philippians and Romans. Certainly Philippians 1:23 coheres well with the hypothesis. However, this line of interpretation points to a significantly different understanding of Philippians 3:10-11 than usual. The resurrection Paul wants to attain becomes analogous to his desire not to be found naked in 2 Corinthians 5:3—he wants to be resurrected at death. Romans 6:5 and 8:11 similarly would now refer to something that takes place at death rather than the eschaton. However, Paul's increased emphasis on inner transformation by the indwelling Spirit in 2 Corinthians and Romans, an arrabon of what is to come, might support such a view.


Heaven as the True House of God: Intertextual Soundings in Hebrews
Program Unit: Intertextuality in the New Testament
Kenneth L. Schenck, Indiana Wesleyan University

If Hebrews was written in the wake of the cognitive dissonance caused by, not least, the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple, we would expect to hear echoes and allusions of it in this sermon. This paper explores such possibilities, particularly in relation to how the author's use of Scripture might resonate in such a situation. The author's rhetorical strategy is to redefine the true house of God as the heavenly sanctuary and the heavenly Zion, which turn out to be heaven itself.


Exile and Return in the Dead Sea Scrolls
Program Unit: Exile (Forced Migrations) in Biblical Literature
Lawrence Schiffman, New York University

This paper seeks to inquire into the significance of exile and the notion of return in the Dead Sea Scrolls. For the sectarians, exile was a particularly poignant notion in view of their self-imposed separation from the main body of the Jewish community in the land of Israel from the mid-second century on. Despite the existence of a Temple and the various forms of Jewish political life, the sectarians lived in exile, as if the Babylonian exile had not been interrupted. At the same time, the expected return to the purity and perfection of the first Temple period included a reconstituted Jewish people, reorganized monarchy and leadership of various messianic figures. All of these motifs were spelled out against the background of earlier patterns derived from the Hebrew Scriptures. These notions must be studied in the context of a large body of nonsectarian literature preserved at Qumran as well. This paper hopes to set the views of the Qumran sect in the larger context of second Temple literature and history.


“Anyone Whom You Forgive, I Also Forgive” (2 Corinthians 2:10): Interpersonal Forgiveness and Reconciliation in 2 Corinthians 2:5–11
Program Unit: Second Corinthians: Pauline Theology in the Making
Thomas Schmeller, Frankfurt University

In 2 Cor 2:5-11, Paul invites the Corinthians to forgive some anonymous Christian “who has caused pain”. This paper will try to find plausible answers to some of the many questions arising from this text, including the following: 1. Concerning the role of the church: How does the text relate to the other description of the same instance in 7:8-12? Obviously the role of the Corinthian church is not the same in both texts. Is it a majority or is it the whole church which repented as a consequence of the “letter of tears”? And if a majority – how about the minority and their attitude towards the offender and towards Paul? Was the “letter of tears” really a success? 2. Concerning the role of the offender: What can we know about his identity and the exact offense? Not much, since Paul is obviously reluctant to give details. But what is the reason for this reluctance? It is hardly enough to say that the church knew what he was talking about. 3. Concerning the role of Paul: How does he explain his motives for writing the “letter of tears”? How would he like the church to read and understand this letter? How is his forgiveness related to forgiveness by the church? These and other problems have to be addressed in order to see what forgiveness and reconciliation meant in this concrete instance.


The Paradox of Losing and Saving One's Life: Its Significance for the Historical Jesus Debate
Program Unit: Historical Jesus
Ulrich Schmidt, Evangelische Landeskirche Baden

The paradoxical logion on losing and gaining/saving one's life - usually accepted as an original saying of the historical Jesus - is the most attested pronouncement which has been passed on by the Synoptic Tradition. It's strange to say therefore, that this logion is either neglected in many standard works on the historical Jesus or marginalized to two or three short occurences. This definitely is a drawback in the quest for the historical Jesus. Its strong affirmation suggests that this saying offers a major hint to Jesus. A closer look displays that this logion is present in the background of many stories he told and sayings he coined. These words catch his attitude, way of life and message in a nut shell. And put in the context of other material the paradox even resists and overcomes the alternatives of present and future eschatology put up by the scholarly debate. After all, this logion provides us with a coherent pattern underlying the Jesus tradition.


Greater Than Our Father Jacob: The Polemic with Vision-Mysticism as Seen in the Meeting of Jesus and Nathanael (John 1:45–51)
Program Unit: Intertextuality in the New Testament
Nathan Schmiedicke, Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary

Recent interpretations of John 1:45-51 and its allusions to the patriarch Jacob approach the text from one of two angles: 1) the influence of the Old Testament (Koester); and 2) the influence of Jewish mystical writings about Jacob-Israel (Rowland, Fossum). Neither approach, however, completely explains the Jacob-allusions as John actually applies them, namely, to both Nathanael and Jesus. My paper synthesizes the valuable insights of both approaches by contextualizing John 1:45-51 in a polemic between “faith mysticism” and “vision mysticism." John contrasts Jacob's “guile” with Nathanael's faith, but transforms the mystical-visionary aspect of Jacob"s character into a Christology.


Interpreting the “Separate Inscriptions” from Karatepe-Aslantas
Program Unit: Paleographical Studies in the Ancient Near East
Philip C. Schmitz, Eastern Michigan University

Linguists, epigraphists, and ancient historians are familiar with the Hieroglyphic Luwian and parallel Phoenician inscriptions discovered at the ancient site of Karatepe-Aslantas in southeastern Turkey in 1946. Less studied is a group of nine orthostat fragments bearing Phoenician writing found in the vicinity of the South Gate. The more recent discovery of three new pieces enabled W. Röllig to assemble eleven fragments into a single document, with a twelfth probably associated. The joint designation of these fragmentary texts is 'separate Inscriptions" (SI). I will propose a join involving the twelfth fragment that gives a text of five partial lines. I will also suggest interpretations of several unusual words in the text.


The Phoenician Stele from Nora: A New Reading and Translation
Program Unit: Ugaritic Studies and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy
Philip C. Schmitz, Eastern Michigan University

In 1773 H. Hintz recognized a Phoenician stele built into the wall of a vineyard at Capo di Pula on the southern coast of Sardinia, the site of the ancient city of Nora. The next year, Giovanni Bernardo de Rossi published the text of the inscription from an unreliable copy supplied by Hintz. Studies by G. Arri (1834) and W. Gesenius (1837) improved readings of the text and stimulated further research. Succeeding generations have striven to interpret its eight lines and forty-four letters. Even today, however, no published translation or interpretation is recognized as truly convincing. Zuckerman (1991) has demonstrated in detail why a number of earlier interpretations are unacceptable on orthographic and linguistic grounds. In this study I suggest several new divisions of words, adopt older but now neglected readings, and provide a consistent translation and grammatical interpretation of the text. I affirm the paleographic date of the text argued by Cross: about 825 BCE.


“Imperial” Aramaic and Language Ideology
Program Unit: Assyriology and the Bible
William M. Schniedewind, University of California, Los Angeles

The paper explores the choice of Aramaic as the language of empire by the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians with a special attention to the approach of Anthropological Linguistics. What were the ideologies behind the choice of Aramaic as the Imperial language. How did the choice of Aramaic as the language of empire shape the Aramaic language itself? How did the use of Aramaic by these empires shape other languages, particularly Hebrew?


Resurrection or Restoration in Ezekiel 37:1–14? New Insights into Structure, Genesis, and Meaning of a Well-Known Vision
Program Unit: Book of Ezekiel
Johannes Schnocks, University of Bonn

In recent scholarship it is often maintained that Eze 37:1-14 is based on an exilic layer of the text, which deals with the restoration of the people after exile. During the Maccabean wars so-called apocalyptic elements were added, according to this viewpoint, transforming the text into what we could recognize today as a vision of the resurrection of martyrs. The problem with this view is that when read synchronically, Eze 37:1-14 within the canonical book of Ezechiel cannot be understood as a text of resurrection. The question of the genesis of the text has therefore to be asked once again, based on an analysis of the textual structure. I assume that there is an older layer of the text dating from the times shortly after the exile. It deals with the question of Isreal's identity after the exile: how can there be a continuity of God's chosen people after the catastrophe? This textual layer was then revised at the end of the 2nd century B.C. This revision integrates the concepts of Eze 36:24-28, which verses had been composed only at that time, namely that God has to form anew Israel both bodily and spiritually. Only in its reception by 4QpsEz the vision became a text dealing with the resurrection of the dead.


Old Testament Wisdom Literature and the Resurrection of the Dead: The Development of Meaning in Biblical Texts
Program Unit: Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
Johannes Schnocks, University of Bonn

When enquiring into a biblical theology of the belief in resurrection, there is a broad scholarly consensus that the Hebrew Bible knows about this hope only in its youngest texts and cannot therefore contribute very much to such a theology. If one restricts oneself to asking whether a certain text contains without doubt the belief in a resurrection of the dead, this position is certainly justified. To my mind however this way of asking questions seems misguided in view of a biblical theology. In such a context it is equally important to enquire after the possibilities of interpretation and the way a text was actually understood, for example the reception of an Old Testament text in New Testament times. My paper analyses some shorter texts from the Book of Job and the Psalms. It also looks at their reception within the canonical context and the ancient translations. As a result I hope to present some cornerstones of a theology of resurrection taken from texts belonging to the core of the Hebrew Bible.


Excretion and Rabbinic Ethics
Program Unit: Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism
Jonathan Schofer, Harvard University

What is the significance of excretion for rabbinic ethical instruction? Feces have a fascinating place in rabbinic understandings of purity and cleanliness. Not technically impure, often they are still seen as dirty and contrasting with the holy. Excrement was part of rabbis' daily lives, on the ground and in the streets. Excretion was a recurrent action that included going to an appropriate location, experiencing strong sensory stimulation, exposing nakedness, and cleaning oneself. Studying rabbinic discussions of excretion reveals diverse ways that rabbis responded to their own vulnerability and animality. This paper, which examines materials from Derekh Eretz Rabbah (with parallels in other ethical anthologies), the Babylonian Talmud, Leviticus Rabbah and Rabbi Nathan B, has three facets: First, I highlight ways that rabbis symbolically frame excretion and excrement. Excretion can be a synecdoche for human animality writ large and is a sign of non-divinity. Countering this equation, other passages embrace excretion as part of human embodiment in its fullness, as created by God in the divine image. Second, excretion is often clustered with other bodily processes. Food consumption may be the most concrete pairing with excretion, each related to one end of the alimentary canal. Excretion and sexual intercourse are often juxtaposed: both involve the pelvic region, and often the underlying concern appears to be privacy needed for both acts. Excretion can also be associated with death. Third, these ways of framing the body are not only symbolic but rather inform rabbinic instruction. The goals are multiple: to inspire humility, to control the body, to lead the student from transgression, and to inspire care of the self. The paper as a whole challenges monolithic scholarly images regarding rabbinic responses to excrement or the use of these materials to make overarching claims concerning rabbis" positive or negative views of embodiment.


A “Third-Kind” of Feminist Reading: Toward a Sociology of Feminist Biblical Hermeneutics
Program Unit: Feminist Hermeneutics of the Bible
Susanne Scholz, Southern Methodist University

In our allegedly post-feminist and “post-ethnic” era, feminist scholars of the Bible need to research the sociologies of biblical interpretation in order to convince of feminist meanings. It does not suffice anymore to limit feminist readings to the biblical text—regardless of what methodology is used. Instead, feminist readings need to include a sociological analysis of the history of interpretation in which they stand. This “third-kind” of feminist reading merges “code and context” and shows how the interpretative history of the Bible aligns with society's general reactions to feminist work. Currently, the sociological patterns looks like this: After the initial heyday of feminist interpretations, subsequent responses critically evaluated feminist readings; interpreters have also increasingly asserted androcentric standards and meanings; the Christian right has insisted on biblical androcentrism in justifying traditional gender roles; and secular media have trivialized and commodified biblical allusions and disregarded feminist meanings throughout. The paper illustrates these sociological patterns with historio-cultural appropriations of the book of Genesis, especially Gen. 1-3, since the 1970s. Thus only when feminist interpretations include a sociological analysis will feminist biblical readers succeed in communicating the much needed challenges to androcentric culture, society, and religion. Such an approach also ensures that feminist biblical interpretations are viewed as indispensable in a world in which gender hierarchies are usually taken for granted and nowadays sometimes even considered as overcome.


Towards a Critical Edition of the Samaritan Pentateuch: Presentation of the Project
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible
Stefan Schorch, Kirchliche Hochschule Bethel

The paper will present the project of a critical edition of the Samaritan Torah, which is pursued by a team of scholars from Germany and Hungary since 2007. So far, no critical edition of the Samaritan Torah exists, which corresponds to contemporary scientific standards and could therefore provide a sound basis for any further research on the Samaritan text, in spite of the crucial importance of the Samaritan Torah for the study of the Hebrew Bible and the Hebrew language. The new edition will be a diplomatic one, being based on a manuscript from the early 12th century (Cambridge Add. 1846). The critical apparatus will contain variant readings from ca. 150 Samaritan manuscripts, dating from the 9th to the 15th century. Further apparatuses will provide variants indicated by the Samaritan versions (i.e., the Samaritan Targum and the Samaritan-Arabic translation) as well as parallels in the manuscripts from the Judean Desert and from the Septuagint. Additionally, marginal notes will provide information about the vocalization as transmitted in the Samaritan reading of the Torah. A sample of the edition in progress will be presented.


Reading and the Creation of Texts in the Course of the Literary History of the Hebrew Bible
Program Unit: Orality, Textuality, and the Formation of the Hebrew Bible
Stefan Schorch, Kirchliche Hochschule Bethel

Memory based reading was an important and necessary means of transmitting texts in the Ancient Near East in general and in Ancient Israel in particular. While this is an insight which becomes more and more accepted among scholars of the Hebrew Bible, especially after David Carr's recent book "Writing on the tablet of the heart", a factor which is closely intertwined to this phenomenon has attracted much less scholarly attention: Under certain circumstances, memory and reading were not factors which enabled and stabilized the transmission of texts, but they shaped and re-shaped textual traditions. This process even influenced the written tradition of the Hebrew Bible, leading to the creation of new texts. Apart from theoretical reflections, the paper will present and discuss examples from the Hebrew Bible, in which traces of this interplay are discernible and help to understand its dynamics.


Report on the Roman Temple at Omrit
Program Unit: Archaeological Excavations and Discoveries: Illuminating the Biblical World
Daniel Schowalter, Carthage College

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From Triage to Trauma: Stories of Children Healed and Harmed in Monastic Texts
Program Unit: Christianity in Egypt: Scripture, Tradition, and Reception
Caroline T. Schroeder, University of the Pacific

Monastic texts from early Christian Egypt demonstrate a remarkable ambivalence toward children. On the one hand, monks are frequently the miracle workers and holy people to whom the laity bring their children to be healed or exorcised. Children's bodies, in fact, seem especially susceptible to demonic possession. On the other hand, the texts also contain narratives of child sacrifice and violence against children, often modeled after the biblical narrative of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac or Jesus" sacrifice as God"s son. This paper will explore these parallel streams of thought about children in Egyptian asceticism. Children in the Roman world were viewed as containing society"s future potential, symbolic of the family"s and culture"s legacy and inheritance. Accounts of healing of children and violence against children by monks express ambivalence inherent in the very ascetic movement, ambivalence about the ascetics" relationships with and responsibilities to the wider society.


Envying Jephthah's Daughter: Judges 11 in the Thought of Arcangela Tarabotti (1604–1652)
Program Unit: Recovering Female Interpreters of the Bible
Joy A. Schroeder, Trinity Lutheran Seminary and Capital University

In her treatise "Paternal Tyranny," Arcangela Tarabotti, a seventeenth-century Venetian nun, used biblical arguments to protest the involuntary enclosure of women forced into the monastic life. In a setting where numerous “unmarriageable” women were sent to convents for financial reasons, Tarabotti's tragic personal experiences shaped her interpretation of biblical stories about sacrifice. As a nun forced into the cloister by her father, she personally identified with Jephthah's innocent daughter, who was sacrificed as a result of a paternal vow. This paper explores the historical setting and context for Tarabotti"s interpretation of this biblical story. I will contrast Tarabotti"s exegesis of Judges 11 with earlier western Christian interpretations which she inherited. Despite a long (but by no means monolithic) tradition of condemning Jephthah for his “rash vow,” Tarabotti surprisingly chooses to depart from tradition by commending, or at least excusing, Jephthah. She argues that Jephthah"s sacrifice of his daughter was more honorable than the actions of Venetian fathers of her day. Tarabotti imagines Jephthah to have been a more loving father than her own. She claims that Jephthah"s motives (a vow to the Lord and a military victory) were more worthy than the debased ambition of Venetian men driven by financial concerns about dowry and inheritance. Furthermore, Tarabotti argues that, unlike so many nuns in Venice, Jephthah"s daughter consented to her own sacrifice and suffered only briefly at her death. In contrast, Tarabotti and her fellow nuns were doomed to a grim life imprisoned behind convent walls as a perpetual sacrifice.


The Angel Marriages (Genesis 6:1–4) and the Greek Framing of the Primeval History
Program Unit: Pentateuch
Andreas Schuele, Union Seminary Richmond

The pericope of the "Angel marriages" in Genesis 6:1-4 poses particular challenges to the literary and historical analysis of the Primeval History: What is the "point" of this text? How does it relate to the creation narratives that precede it and the flood narrative that follows it? This paper will argue that Genesis 6:1-4 draws on elements of Greek mythology in order to reaccentuate the Primeval History against the backdrop of Greek/Hellenistic culture.


From 'Edah to Yahad to 'Edah
Program Unit: Qumran
Brian Schultz, Fresno Pacific University

In recent years there has been a thorough re-investigation into the use of the sectarians' self-identification title, the Yahad, leading scholars to challenge the view that it referred exclusively to the Qumran residents. Less attention has been paid, however, on another term the sectarians used to refer to themselves, the "Edah. This paper will survey the uses of "Edah in the Qumran sectarians texts and suggest that while the movement did indeed first refer to its adherents as being an "Edah, possibly even “the "Edah”, it apparently abandoned this biblically inspired appellation when it began calling itself the Yahad. Instead, it appears that they reserved "Edah as a terminus technicus for Israel during the messianic age, when all 12 tribes will have been restored from physical and spiritual exile, the realization of which they believed still lay in their future.


In Search of an Intertextualist Called “Deutero-Isaiah”: Hugh Williamson, Verbal Parallels, and Reading the Book of Isaiah
Program Unit: Book of Isaiah
Richard Schultz, Wheaton College

In his 1994 monograph, The Book Called Isaiah, H.G.M. Williamson draws considerable support for his explanation of the composition and redaction of Isaiah 1-55 from his examination of citations and allusions. In discerning "direct dependence" rather than coincidence or common tradition, Williamson utilizes two criteria: how significant but rare a repeated Hebrew word or concept is within the Isaianic tradition (and within the Hebrew Bible) and, conversely, how typical or appropriate it is for either Proto- or Deutero-Isaiah. After briefly summarizing Williamson's approach to and use of such intertextual relationships in this and more recent publications on Isaiah (e.g., “In Search of Pre-exilic Isaiah,” 2004), his exemplary thoroughness and caution will be highlighted. The paper's major focus will be on methodological questions which Williamson"s work raises: 1) Are his criteria for determining the direction of influence adequate and reliable? 2) In evaluating verbal parallels within Isaiah, is it important to distinguish between citation, allusion, increasingly popular "echo," and concept/theme? 3) What can his diachronic analysis of Deutero-Isaiah"s influence by and editorial insertions into Proto-Isaiah contribute to a synchronic reading of the “Book called Isaiah” that now encompasses 66 chapters? These issues will be illustrated by noting Williamson"s treatment of verses from Isaiah 1, 6, 11, and 28.


The Cosmology and Theology of the Biblical Temple in Josephus
Program Unit: Josephus
David Rolph Seely, Brigham Young University

Josephus's account of the temples of the Hebrew Bible: (including the Tabernacle, which Josephus refers to as a 'portable temple,' and Solomon's Temple) often varies from the biblical account—sometimes dramatically and sometimes subtly. Based on these variations this paper will attempt to define significant differences in Josephus"s cosmological and theological understanding of the biblical temple from the views presented in the biblical text itself. In particular, this study will address the questions of whether there is a single temple theology in Josephus, how it changes, how Josephus"s portrayal of the theological significance of the biblical temples differs from that of the biblical text and possible reasons. Significant issues include the temple as a symbol of the presence of God, the earthly and heavenly temples, the temple as cosmos, the temple and the covenant, and the relationship between the history of Israel and the temple.


“Do Not Forsake Me”: Biblical Motifs in Zinneman's High Noon
Program Unit: Bible and Popular Culture
Robert Paul Seesengood, University of North Carolina at Pembroke

While there have been recent explorations of biblical language and motifs in American film, few have addressed the quintessential American film genre, the Western. Westerns have gotten significant attention, however, in other fields of the humanities and in film studies. Westerns construct both American etiological myth and American masculinity. High Noon (1952) depicts Marshal Will Kane (Gary Cooper) who must stand alone against Frank Miller (Ian McDonald) an outlaw arriving on the noon train. Cooper is unable to persuade any other townspeople to stand with him. The pivotal day is also the day of Kane's wedding to Amy Kane (Grace Kelly), a Quaker who flatly tells Marshal Kane that if he stays for the showdown, she will leave him. To complicate matters even further, we have the character of Helen Ramirez (Katy Jurardo), a Mexican woman who is a former lover of both Kane and Miller. Both Frank Zinnemann (director) and Carl Foreman (screenplay) understood their film to be commentary on Cold War politics, particularly to the "Black Lists" of HUAAC. Zinneman also sought to redefine the genre. Many felt the film, the product of an "Austrian Jew," was a confused morass. John Wayne famously dubbed it an "Un-American" portrayal of the Wild West. This paper will examine the film's use of biblical materials (and how these intersect the film's political agenda). In addition to quotation from Micah and an adaptation of Hebrew "day of the Lord" motifs, the tensions posed by the characters Amy Kane and Helen Ramirez exemplify the motif of the "two women" (Lady Wisdom, who is innocent, prudent, and life-giving, and the 'strange woman," who is sexually extravagant and foreign) found in Proverbs. Marshal Kane must choose between these two voices as he struggles with his own sense of integrity.


The Literary Relationship between the Genesis Apocryphon and Jubilees: A Reappraisal of the Evidence
Program Unit: Qumran
Michael Segal, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Numerous scholars have noted the presence of parallels between two of the primary examples of Rewritten Bible from the Second Temple period, the Genesis Apocryphon and Jubilees. This paper will review the parallel passages in order to better understand the direction and process of literary development between the two compositions. The passages will be analyzed in each of their parallel contexts, with a special focus on aspects of biblical exegesis present in each passage, in order to assess which composition reflects a more “original” location for the narrative. Furthermore, any chronological data in the Apocryphon will be compared to the detailed chronological framework of Jubilees, in order to determine if they reflect the same system. Finally, I will attempt to integrate the results of this analysis with the redactional model for Jubilees that I proposed in The Book of Jubilees: Rewritten Bible, Redaction, Ideology and Theology (Brill, 2007), according to which already extant rewritten narratives were incorporated into a new chronological and legal framework.


“It Is Better for You That One Man Should Die Instead of the People!” History and Theology in the Johannine Portrayal of the Passion of Jesus
Program Unit: John, Jesus, and History
Donald Senior, Catholic Theological Union

The Gospel of John offers indicates multiple and multi-layered reasons or causes for the opposition to Jesus and his ultimate arrest and crucifixion and subsumes all of these into the heart of the Fourth Gospel's theological perspective. At the same time, there are intriguing convergence points with probable historical circumstances surrounding the passion of Jesus, as, for example, in the case of John 11:45-57. This study will review John's account of why Jesus came to be crucified and consider the interweaving of theology and history in John"s reflections on the causes and meaning of Jesus" death.


A Is for Abductive: A Critique of Emergent Preaching's Use of Pierce
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Tim Sensing, Abilene Christian University

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The Old Testament/Hebrew Bible and Its Consequences
Program Unit:
C. L. Seow, Princeton Theological Seminary

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The Orthography of Job and Its Poetic Effects
Program Unit: Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
C. L. Seow, Princeton Theological Seminary

The paper will argue that Noel Freedman's 1969 proposal that the orthography of Job is thoroughly conservative is correct. Freedman's analysis is based only on the Leningrad Codex by way of BHS. The evidence is even stronger if one considers 4QPaleoJob, the Aleppo Codex, other Hebrew MSS, and retroversions from the other ancient versions. Contrary to Freedman, however, I do not see the orthography as having chronological significance. Rather, like the foreign-sounding diction of the book, I contend that this conservatism serves a poetic function. The paper will explore a number of examples with the conservative orthography serves the poet"s literary play. For the book of Job, visible elements in wordplays are as important as oral/aural plays.


Poetic Endings in Job
Program Unit: Biblical Hebrew Poetry
C. L. Seow, Princeton Theological Seminary

In her much-admired monograph, Poetic Closure (Chicago, 1968), Barbara Hernnstein Smith undertook to study how poems end. That project does not include Hebrew poetry and no biblical scholar has applied her insights to biblical poetry in an intentional way. This paper seeks to fill that gap by studying how each of the poems in Job 3-14 ends. It will also consider overall effect of the bracketing of these poems by the ending of the first poem, an unsettling poetic coda in 3:24-26 that allows no closure, and the ending of the last poem that dramatically performs the end of hope.


When Did David and Jonathan Make a Covenant?
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Historical Books
Christian Seppänen, University of Helsinki

In the Masoretic Text David and Jonathan seem to make a covenant in both 1 Sam 18:3–4 and 20:16, whereas these verses do not contain any explicit description of covenant making in the Septuagint at all: 1 Sam 18:3–4 is lacking in the Septuagint, and in 20:16 the Septuagint reads differently. However, in 1 Sam 20:8 the Septuagint, too, presupposes a covenant that has been made earlier. How is this to be understood? Is 18:3–4 part of the original story or is the Masoretic plus a later harmonization possibly inspired by Ch. 20?


The Historical Background for the Composition of Nathan's Oracle to David (2 Samuel 7:1–17) and Its Place within the Deuteronomistic History in the Book of Samuel
Program Unit: Deuteronomistic History
Omer Sergi, Tel Aviv University

Nathan's Oracle to David in 2 Sam 7: 1-17 bears special importance for the study of the Deuteronomistic History. Its placement at a pivotal moment in the narrative (the beginning of the Israelite monarchy, after the accession of David) conveys two main ideological principles of the Deuteronomistic school: Jerusalem's temple and the eternal throne promised to the house of David. These principles inform the Deuteronomist's interpretation and presentation of history, serving as main criteria for evaluating the kings of Israel and Judah. In this paper I would like to suggest that the original oracle was a pre-Deuteronomistic text incorporated in the so called "History of David's Rise". It related to the other appearances of Nathan (2 Sam 12, 1 Kgs 1) since all of them deal with the accession of David's heir and thus with the foundation of the house of David. According to this view, the differentiation of two sources within David's story ("History of David"s Rise" and the "Succession Narrative”) should be reconsidered: They were probably of the same origin in a narrative, which one can designate simply "The Early Monarchic History." This narrative is dated to the 9th century BCE since it reflects the succession struggles in Jerusalem at the time of Athalia, Joash and Amaziah. It also reflects the southern Levantine polity in the time of the formation of the Judahite kingdom. The Deuteronomistic redaction of the oracle incorporates it within the frame of the Deuteronomistic ideology, presenting thereby the early monarchy in keeping with the "prophecy fulfillment scheme." Comparison to ANE texts demonstrates that eternal kingship is a distinctive Deuteronomistic idea unparalleled in other ANE royal ideologies. Thus, the Deuteronomistic redaction elevated the oracle from its original context in the history of the early monarchy and recreated it as a foundation text for the Deuteronomistic History as a whole.


Literary Structuring of Meals in the Gospel of Luke
Program Unit: Poster Session
Christine E. Shander, Princeton Theological Seminary

Luke's Gospel account includes more meal stories than any other Gospel, each of which offering an abnormal element to set the audience on edge. From broken rules to outrageous actions, Jesus is portrayed through these eight meals as breaking the mold and teaching about himself and the kingdom (or favorable year) he has come to inaugurate. Within my study, I focus on the eight meals of intimate fellowship Jesus shares within the Lukan account. As I will argue, the meals expand upon Jesus" mission statement (4:18-19) expressing the recipients of the favorable year, while exemplifying the consequential rejection Jesus will meet by other characters. My study evaluates Luke's redactional agenda, noticing the recurring theme of reception (or rejection) within the meals, as well as the larger structure of meals within the book (including a proposed chiasm), to collectively discern how the meals contribute to Luke's definition and delivery of the Gospel.


What Are We Looking for and How Would We Know if We Found It?
Program Unit: Religious Experience in Antiquity
Colleen Shantz, St. Michael's College, Toronto School of Theology

The study of religious experience poses difficulties on several fronts. For some it raises the spectre of its past association with “pure experience” or its connection to perennial philosophy, a concept that has been discredited by the ascendancy of explanations emphasising the role cultural construction in all experience. For others, both the concept of religion and that of experience are so vague as to lack critical value: what could not be identified religious experience? At the same time, the term persists because it names a category that is meaningful to its ancient practitioners and significant within biblical texts and the history of early Judaism and Christianity. The category allows not only interpretative, but also some explanatory value for these religious movements. Against that background, this paper argues for a reasonable definition of “religious experience” that avoids old arguments and has heuristic utility. It further presents the case that experience is an essential part human knowing that can be accessed through disciplines like phenomenology, the cognitive sciences, and even evolutionary biology.


From a Secular Literal Reading to a Secular Homiletic Reading: The Bible in Israeli Culture
Program Unit: Use, Influence, and Impact of the Bible
Yaacov Shavit, Tel Aviv University

The Hebrew Bible became a “cultural Bible” and a “national Bible” in a process that began with the Haskalah movement at the end of the eighteenth century, and reached its peak in the modern Jewish national movement. This process was attended and underpinned by a central principle: a return from the "derash” (homiletic reading) back to the “peshat” (literal reading). In other words, the Bible was read as the sole source (sola scriptura), and not through the traditional interpretation and the Aggadah. In the last generation, a new trend ensued, which became marked in Israeli society: alongside the debate over the Bible as an historical document, there was a return to a reading of the Bible through the mediation of traditional commentary and the midrashic literature. This return in the secular society was given expression in special sections in newspapers, in public sermons, Bible study circles, and in collections of midrashim. This process can ostensibly be described as a return to the traditional reading of the Bible. However, the new midrashic literature does not have a “theological” dimension, and can be defined as “existentialist.” Hence, rather than being a return to tradition, it “secularizes” the Talmud and in doing so creates a link between the “secular” Bible and the literature of the Sages.


Imperial Romances: Vergil, the Canonical Acts, and Their Empires
Program Unit: Ancient Fiction and Early Christian and Jewish Narrative
Christine Shea, Ball State University

Recent discussion, sparked by the work of Tim Whitmarsh, Judith Perkins, Gerhard van den Heever, and others, has focused on the Greek romances and their relationship to the imperial politics of their age. Difficulties with the dating and provenance of most of the romances have made analyses of their political content a bit rocky, at best. The Roman poet Vergil particularly makes use of the tropes and topoi of the romances in his epic of imperial propaganda, the Aeneid. This paper will argue that one way to identify how the romances were read in an imperial age would be to investigate how Vergil transmogrifies the commonplaces of romance to accommodate the power politics of his warlord patron Augustus. This paper will focus on scenes in the Aeneid which show the first encounters of the newly-arrived Trojan Aeneas with the tribes (Greek, Latin, and Etruscan) of Italy. Such scenes, which in the romances illustrate their hybrid character (as Bakhtin would put it), take on a special-- imperial--flavor in the Aeneid. The paper will go on to argue Vergil's reinterpretation has shaped similar scenes in the canonical Acts and that the canonical Acts can likewise be considered an “imperial romance.”


Women in the Priestly Laws: A Reassessment
Program Unit: Biblical Law
Sarah Shectman, San Francisco, California

Mayer Gruber's 1987 article, “Women in the Cult According to the Priestly Code,” is often touted as the authoritative work on women in P's legal material, and in the twenty years since its appearance, no major challenge to his claims has been mounted. Gruber"s argument that P treats women in an even-handed fashion, offering them ample opportunities for cultic participation, is also seen as bolstering Phyllis Trible"s claim that P"s creation account depicts men and women as equals and thus that the Priestly material reflects women"s relatively high social status. Judith Romney Wegner has begun to pick away at this consensus in her article “"Coming Before the Lord": The Exclusion of Women from the Public Domain of the Israelite Priestly Cult,” but more attention needs to be paid to this neglected topic. A detailed look at the Priestly laws shows that Gruber"s overly-optimistic view of P"s attitude toward women is belied by the evidence. While women are equally culpable with men in matters of cultic impurity, P in no way depicts a cult in which women may even begin to approach the level of cultic participation of men. This assessment of P"s limited cultic role for women is bolstered by the narrative material, where women are involved only insofar as they enhance the role of men in the narrative.


Feminist Source Criticism: A New—and Necessary—Methodological Approach
Program Unit: Feminist Hermeneutics of the Bible
Sarah Shectman, San Francisco, California

Feminist study of the Hebrew Bible has, in recent years, tended to move heavily toward synchronic literary interpretation, particularly focused on the final form of the text, largely abandoning diachronic historical-critical methods like source and redaction criticism. This is in part because advocates of feminist study frequently base their work on a rejection not only of traditional conclusions, but also of the methods used to reach those conclusions. It is also a result of larger trends in biblical and textual interpretation, where the idea of readerly access to authorial thought has been rejected by many scholars. Nevertheless, source criticism is still a mainstay of biblical interpretation, particularly of the Pentateuch. The increased incorporation of feminist analysis into the mainstream of biblical scholarship requires that practitioners of these two methods, source criticism and feminism, begin to interact with each other. The inquiry into women's status in biblical Israel should not be separated from the complex issues of the time and place of the composition and redaction of the sources. A few examples from the Pentateuch, including birth and naming traditions, genealogies, laws governing virginity, and cultic obligations, illustrate how attention to the place of women in these texts reveals an important diachronic shift in the authors" larger ideologies.


Simply Orthodox: Exploiting the Urban/Rural Divide in Fourth-Century Antioch
Program Unit: Space, Place, and Lived Experience in Antiquity
Christine Shepardson, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

From constructing new buildings, to describing places controlled by their rivals as morally and physically dangerous, early Christian leaders fundamentally shaped their landscape and thus the events that unfolded within it. Modern geographers such as Lefebvre, Tuan, Valentine, and Anderson demonstrate that the rhetorical and physical manipulation of places deeply affects the events that occur in and around them. Historical narratives that overlook the significance of physical space in late antiquity have obscured some of the powerful forces that shaped the development of early Christianity. This is particularly clear in Antioch during the turmoil of the fourth and fifth centuries C.E. This paper will demonstrate that in the midst of the theological conflicts that had created three competing congregations in Antioch, John Chrysostom (d. 407) exploited the allegedly simple and pure orthodoxy of uneducated Syriac-speaking Christians outside the city to encourage particular behaviors and beliefs among his Greek-speaking city congregants. Inheriting a characterization of cities as more educated/civilized and yet more morally suspect than rural society, Chrysostom highlighted a strong association between physical location and religious orthodoxy, contrasting rural Christians" faith with the corruption and theological conflict within the city. This spatially charged rhetoric becomes particularly visible when the urban/rural boundaries are transgressed, such as for celebrations at martyr shrines, and by the mountain ascetics whose withdrawal granted them an authority that transcended the urban disputes. More than five decades of a tripartite doctrinal and episcopal schism in Antioch ended in 415 C.E., and Chrysostom's community prevailed in part due to their proactive efforts to reshape and control Antioch's physical topography. Far from being an inert backdrop against which events transpired, Antioch"s urban and rural places were ever-shifting sites of, and tools for, the negotiation of power and authority in the development of early Christianity.


Interpreting the Repentance of the Ninevites in Late Antique Mesopotamia
Program Unit: History of Interpretation
Christine Shepardson, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

The story of Jonah and the repentance of the Ninevites has long had a rich history of interpretation in Jewish and Christians communities. In her 2000 book on Jonah, Yvonne Sherwood notes the striking difference in rabbinic interpretations of the story between the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds (106). Sherwood suggests that early Christian interpretations of the Ninevites as a metaphor for Christians shaped the Yerushalmi's emphasis on the short-lived nature of the Ninevites" repentance, while the Bavli's Mesopotamian context allowed its writers to highlight the sincerity of the Ninevites" repentance without as much concern for possible Christian anti-Jewish interpretations (107). The Syriac Christian verse homily on Jonah attributed to the fourth-century deacon Ephrem becomes particularly interesting in light of these observations, as it provides an early Christian interpretation of the story within the Bavli"s Mesopotamian context. Being in Syriac, however, it remains unfamiliar to most scholars. Like the Bavli, this Christian homily describes the Ninevites" sincere repentance; they even follow Jonah home in the hope of seeing the godly city they imagine must be the home of God"s chosen people. When they gaze at Jonah"s city from a hill, though, they are shocked by the overwhelming impurity and godlessness that they see everywhere, and they return to Nineveh praising God and Jonah, but reviling the unrepentantly sinful Hebrew people. High praise for the Ninevites" genuine repentance thus leads directly to vitriolic anti-Jewish contrasts between the praiseworthy Gentile Ninevites (representing Christians in this text"s interpretation) and the sinful Hebrews (representing later Jews). This paper will locate this Syriac homily within the history of interpretation of the Ninevites" story, and will demonstrate the anti-Jewish use to which this Christian author put the typically Mesopotamian interpretation of the Ninevites" sincere repentance.


They Are (Still) Not Gods: The Letter of Jeremiah Read in a Second-Century CE Context
Program Unit: Greek Bible
Beth M. Sheppard, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary

Although Babylonian worship practices likely provided the original inspiration for the vivid description of the idols mentioned in the Letter of Jeremiah, for which no Hebrew manuscripts have survived, readers of the Greek text in the first centuries of the Roman Empire would have been able to draw analogies between the Epistle's description of the impotent gods of the period of the exile and pagan images in their own era. Indeed, the Roman world was a place in which both the worship ceremonies of the imperial cult and the rituals relating to statuettes present in the household “lararia,” which were honored as part of the Roman family's religious observances, were ubiquitous. Undeniably, some aspects these Roman religious customs bear a striking similarity with the earlier pagan practices of the Babylonians as depicted in the verses of the Letter of Jeremiah. After comparing descriptions of idols in first and second century Roman literature with the disparaged gods in the Letter of Jeremiah, attention will turn to the “Apologia” of the Athenian philosopher Aristides. Potential allusions to the Letter of Jeremiah within the “Apologia” will be highlighted. Although Aristides was struggling with paganism in a Greek context and mentioned many members of the Greek pantheon by name in his text, nonetheless his document was likely intended for a Roman audience. Even Eusebius asserts that the “Apologia” was delivered to the Roman Emperor Hadrian. As a consequence, it would have been targeted at Roman worship as well as Greek. Whether actually written for Hadrian as Eusebius asserts or some other leader of the Roman world, the “Apologia” was a vehicle through which the Letter of Jeremiah"s refrain that there is no need to fear idols for they are not truly gods, found new voice in the Roman world.


Impasse or Opportunity or …? Women Reading Jeremiah Reading Women
Program Unit: Writing/Reading Jeremiah
Mary E. Shields, Trinity Lutheran Seminary

Over the past couple decades, much has been written—and debated—about the depiction of women and use of female metaphors in the book of Jeremiah. Most troubling is his use throughout the text of women's bodies to depict the past behavior and upcoming destruction of Israel. There is some debate as to whether there are any redeeming female metaphors in the book whatsoever. This paper will explore female embodiment in Jeremiah, both from the perspectives of those who have written on the gendered language of the book, and in terms of some suggestions for future Jeremiah studies.


Word Order in the Book of Ruth: Three Focus Structures and Discourse Analysis
Program Unit: Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew
Katsuomi Shimasaki, Japan Bible Society

This presentation will revisit the word order of Biblical Hebrew with a trinary model for both verbal and non-verbal clauses that is an application of Lambrecht's three-focus structures. We will go through the book of Ruth paying attention to clauses that have non-predicate elements (arguments) in the clause-initial position in order to see if those clauses have some discourse-level functions.


Other People's Texts in the Memory of Non-Judean Participants in the Cult of Jesus
Program Unit: Mapping Memory: Tradition, Texts, and Identity
Whitney Shiner, George Mason University

Among Judeans of the first century CE the written texts associated with the cult of the Judean national god were part of a larger complex of orally and scribally transmitted cultural memory. For non-Judean participants in the cult of Jesus, however, those texts functioned within an extremely different cultural memory. For the most part, non-Judeans understood the Judean national god to be part of the ancestral traditions of the Judean people, and written traditions did not play an analogous role in the cults of their own ancestral gods. Among non-Judean participants in the Jesus cult, the writings associated with the cult of the Judean national god were understood through the confluence of two streams of memory. One was the memory of founding figures of the cult who had presented those texts as part of their own memories of Jesus. The second were the non-Judean cultural memories that provided a context for the interpretation of sacred texts now freed from the Judean cultural memories which had provided the context for their interpretation for Judeans. For Romans, the Sibylline oracles and other similar oracles which circulated through popular interpreters placed current and future events within the memory of their own national history. Such writings provided the memory context for the appropriation of Judean texts as part of the memory of the cult of Jesus. This confluence of memory streams was the basis for the development of competing memory complexes within the Jesus cult in which Judean cultural memories were more or less important as a context for understanding the Judean texts.


Other People's Texts in the Memory of Non-Judean Participants in the Cult of Jesus
Program Unit: Construction of Christian Identities
Whitney Shiner, George Mason University

Among Judeans of the first century CE the written texts associated with the cult of the Judean national god were part of a larger complex of orally and scribally transmitted cultural memory. For non-Judean participants in the cult of Jesus, however, those texts functioned within an extremely different cultural memory. For the most part, non-Judeans understood the Judean national god to be part of the ancestral traditions of the Judean people, and written traditions did not play an analogous role in the cults of their own ancestral gods. Among non-Judean participants in the Jesus cult, the writings associated with the cult of the Judean national god were understood through the confluence of two streams of memory. One was the memory of founding figures of the cult who had presented those texts as part of their own memories of Jesus. The second were the non-Judean cultural memories that provided a context for the interpretation of sacred texts now freed from the Judean cultural memories which had provided the context for their interpretation for Judeans. For Romans, the Sibylline oracles and other similar oracles which circulated through popular interpreters placed current and future events within the memory of their own national history. Such writings provided the memory context for the appropriation of Judean texts as part of the memory of the cult of Jesus. This confluence of memory streams was the basis for the development of competing memory complexes within the Jesus cult in which Judean cultural memories were more or less important as a context for understanding the Judean texts.


Sibyllines from the East: The Curious Oracles of the Judean National Cult
Program Unit: Rethinking the Concept and Categories of 'Bible' in Antiquity
Whitney Shiner, George Mason University

Within the (broadly defined) Judean community, there was a complex interaction between more or less authoritative written texts and the oral teaching of authoritative figures based on Judean traditions and personal understandings of the proper way to worship the Judean god. For non-Judean participants in the cult of Jesus, the authority of writings associated with the cult of the Judean national god was anything but obvious. Their authority was not based on tradition but on the personal authority of important Judean teachers within the cult of Jesus. Within the first half of the second century CE, we find prominent teachers within the cult of Jesus, such as Justin, Marcion, and the authors of some gnostic texts, who accept the Judean texts as in some way authoritative without adopting the Judean traditions that provided the context for their interpretation within the Judean community. For the most part, written texts did not play a central role in the cults of non-Judean gods. The Sibylline oracles, however, were quite prestigious among Romans, and a number of oracular writings circulated among the people and were consulted for various reasons. These oracular writings were the model through which many non-Judeans accepted and understood the writings associated with the Judean national god.


Using First-Person Narrative to Discover the Role of the Reader
Program Unit: Academic Teaching and Biblical Studies
Elizabeth Shively, Emory University

Most students who enter biblical exegesis courses for the first time do not realize that they carry an implicit reading strategy in the door with them. They enter from a variety of backgrounds that shape the way they read texts. Some of them have studied the Bible for a long time while others have very little knowledge of it. Some are convinced of its contemporary relevance while others are skeptics. All approach the Bible out of presuppositions and interests that affect their understanding, whether they realize it or not. Part of our task as teachers of the Bible is to help students to engage their or her roles as readers of biblical texts. Recent introductions to biblical studies have begun to include sections on the role of the reader in addition to the more traditional historical critical methods, reflecting literary shifts in the field since the 1970's. In order to facilitate learning, we could use one of those volumes as a textbook in combination with lectures and written assignments. I am trying, however, to include space in my pedagogy for some learning to happen through discovery. The aim of this teaching tip is to suggest an exercise that allows students to discover for themselves how biblical texts shape readers and how readers shape or understand biblical texts. Specifically, this teaching tip is about the use of first-person narrative as an oratory exercise to help students discover their roles as readers of biblical texts. The format of my presentation will be primarily descriptive. First, I will explain how I initially used this exercise in a specific course. Second, I will describe two pedagogical benefits of the exercise. Finally, I will describe alternative ways it can be utilized for introductory bible and exegesis courses.


Difficult Readings and Dialogue: Readers between Theology and Theory
Program Unit: Biblical Criticism and Literary Criticism
Minna Shkul, University of Helsinki

This paper examines readings of Pauline and Deutero-Pauline texts which have one thing in common: a reading position comfortable with identifying a Jewish social or ideological failure to explain or validate early Christian texts. This paper uses a social-scientific theoretical framework to provide alternative ways of understanding early Christian texts without subscribing to their embedded theological constraints. It seeks to provide some tools for re-positioning Paul and his readers in a dialogue that facilitates the participation of wider audiences without dismissing the validity of different viewpoints, individuals and communities. I suggest that we should be able to discuss texts and the legacy of Paul and other early Christian writers beyond the theological perspectives; and demonstrate how the social-scientific framework may facilitate discussion of Pauline texts and emerging Christianities in an open and inclusive dialogue.


Mnemonic Socialisation in Ephesians: Tradition, Ideology, and Otherness in the Communal Remembering
Program Unit: Mapping Memory: Tradition, Texts, and Identity
Minna Shkul, University of Helsinki

This paper explores three ways in which Ephesians uses remembering to transform and guide the community of non-Israelite Christ-followers it addresses. The text uses remembering to provide ideological resources and to reinforce social boundaries, selecting and deselecting different mnemonic components, shaping early Christian tradition and identity through the text. Firstly, Christ is remembered in a unique way that sanctions appropriate cultural performances. Secondly, the reputation of Paul is constructed to legitimate the writer's socio-ideological positionings and to delegitimate alternative views. The reputations of both of these contested Israelites are shaped to connect the community with the agents of God who fulfilled his eternal plans and inaugurated a multi-ethnic people of God celebrated in the discourse. Thirdly, Ephesians remembers Israel as the covenant people and other nations as having deficient identity, superimposing a negative view of other ethnicities for the purposes of resocialisation and communal coherence. Ephesians rejects non-Israelite cultural heritage and anchors "the nations" to Israel's God remembering their otherness and inclusive work of Christ. Thus Ephesians invents traditions, transforms reputations and decomposes existing memories to suit the ideology of the group, the writer"s cultural position and the communal goal of self-enhancement. Thus in Ephesians we have a post-apostolic text which demonstrates that the shaping and controlling of remembering is an essential part of the emerging early Christian tradition and social orientation. Furthermore, it highlights the fluid and negotiable connections between social environs and ideology of the mnemonic community, and the way communal influencers may shape both memory and forgetting.


Family Secrets: Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in Early Christian Apocrypha
Program Unit: Early Christian Families
Stephen J. Shoemaker, University of Oregon

Despite their relative absence from the writings of the New Testament canon, the members of Jesus" family often figure prominently in various extra-biblical narratives about the beginnings of Christianity. Although the stories of the Protevangelium of James and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas are quite well known, some of the most intriguing images of the Holy Family's domestic life survive among the Marian apocrypha of early Christianity. If these apocrypha have often been overlooked in the study of Christian origins, their stories nonetheless offer striking evidence of the diversity with which the early Christians remembered Jesus" family life. Surprisingly, one of the most unusual episodes from Jesus" childhood appears in an early Dormition apocryphon, the Obsequies of the Virgin. This narrative presents some outtakes from the Holy Family's journey to Egypt, in which Joseph offers some rather unflattering reflections concerning the parentage of Mary"s son, remarks suggesting that not all traditions of the Holy Family were grounded in an imagination guided by piety. This same text also suggests the existence of a pedagogical relationship between Jesus and his mother, albeit one in which the pais is the instructor, who reveals the secrets of the universe to his mother. The notion that Mary had privileged knowledge of hidden mysteries on the basis of her maternal relationship with Jesus appears in a few other early Christian texts as well. Finally, the earliest Life of the Virgin, a seventh-century text, preserves traditions ascribing an important role to Mary in Jesus" ministry, which appears to be based on their familial ties, and its representation of her role in the crucifixion seems to mark the beginnings of a tradition commemorating this mother"s pain as she suffered with her son as a spectator to his torments.


Positive and Negative Human Types in the Egyptian Wisdom Literature
Program Unit: Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
Nili Shupak, University of Haifa

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Rethinking the Lachish Letters
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible, History, and Archaeology
Avi Shveka, The Hebrew University

Three of the few readable Lachish letters (No. 2, 5, 6) include in their beginning the phrase “my "bdk klb ky…” (“who is your servant, a dog, that…”). This idiom is taken by all scholars to be a “self-abasement formula”, expressing nothing more than the submissiveness and loyalty of the writer to his master Yaush. As this paper shows, this common understanding is fundamentally erroneous. A thorough analysis of all similar expressions in both the Bible and the Amarna Corpus shows that in Hebrew, as well as in Akkadian, this idiom has but one function – a firm rejection of the saying that follow it. This conclusion in itself requires some revision in the interpretation of the discussed letters. Furthermore, this analysis shows that the context of this idiom is always suspicions concerning rebellious intentions against a king. When the rhetoric question refers to the speaker (as is always the case in the Lachish letters) its purpose is to deny such suspicions regarding him. This conclusion forces us to modify our view of the Lachish letters in general. However, though this conclusion may seem quite restrictive in regard of interpreting the letters, it turns out that its acceptance actually facilitates this task. As will be shown, some long standing interpretative problems may be solved in light of the suggested conclusions. A remarkable example is posed by letter 2, whose purpose of writing has been a riddle to many scholars, as besides the (apparently void) blessing and “self-abasement” formulas it seems to say nothing. Our conclusions regarding this idiom enable us, inter alia, to suggest a satisfying explanation to the meaning and purpose of this letter.


Blood and Secrets: 1 Enoch 6–11 as a Retelling of Genesis 3–6 and Its Influence on Susanna and the Gospel of Matthew
Program Unit: Pseudepigrapha
Catherine Sider Hamilton, Wycliffe College, University of Toronto

1 Enoch 6-11 has long been recognized as one of the earliest instances of re-written Bible, an “ancient Biblical expansion” (Dimant) that reads the story of Noah and the flood (Gen. 6-9) through the myth of the Watchers and the women. It is possible, however, that 1 Enoch 6-11 is a more complex piece of biblical interpretation than the standard reading allows. Verbal links, I suggest, connect 1 Enoch 6-11 to two other stories from Genesis: Cain and Abel (as Nickelsburg has noted) and the blood poured out on the ground (Gen 4:10, 1 En 9.1-2 et passim), and (I propose) Eve and the serpent (Gen 3.1-13; 1 En 9.4-6)—woman learning the secret knowledge of the gods. This paper argues, first, that 1 Enoch 6-11 intertwines these two foundational stories from Genesis with the story of Noah and the Flood and the Shemihaza myth to create a new and powerful tale of the problem of evil and its divine resolution, a tale haunted by corrupting powers and innocent blood and the desolation of the land, a tale with cosmic and eschatological import and not, in the end, devoid of hope. Further, I will argue, 1 Enoch's re-reading of Genesis influences two other apparently widely separated texts: Susanna, and the passion narrative of the Gospel of Matthew. Both of these narratives allude to or—in the case of Susanna—quote 1 Enoch 6-11, both revolve around the problem of innocent blood and the fate of the land, both understand the problem as a story of corruption and purgation and creation restored—through the lens, that is, of 1 Enoch's rewritten Genesis.


Creation, Construction, and Deconstruction: Earth in the Books of Chronicles
Program Unit: Ecological Hermeneutics
Armin Siedlecki, Emory University

The books of Chronicles are perhaps the most urban texts in the Hebrew Bible. Earth as an independent entity is subordinate to human interests: Accomplishments in the realm of construction are central to Chronicles, The building of the temple and the maintenance of the sacrificial cult are dominant themes, both of which involve the use and exploitation of natural resources. Thus it is not surprising that creation and nature imagery are virtually absent from Chronicles. In this paper I shall argue that the Chronicler's view of the earth and the earth community are based on a fundamental dichotomy of undeveloped nature vs. constructed culture, in which the latter is affirmed as superior over the former. Within the context of this dichotomy, human construction projects are implicitly analogous to divine creation, and the temple assumes the role of an artificial Eden. The narrative of this human-made paradise is deconstructed by the underlying threat and eventual realization of destruction as the penultimate act of the book, which is tempered, but not eclipsed by the subsequent authorization to rebuild the temple.


Philo and the Therapeutae: A Response to Joan E. Taylor
Program Unit: Philo of Alexandria
Joseph Sievers, Pontifical Biblical Institute

This response to Joan Taylor's commentary on De vita contemplativa will focus on several issues, including questions of gender roles in Philo's world.


Yom Kippuring Passover: Recombinant Sacrifice in Early Christianity
Program Unit: Sacrifice, Cult, and Atonement
Jeffrey S. Siker, Loyola Marymount University

How did the associations of Jesus as paschal lamb, with his death at Passover, take on the explicit overtones of Jesus as a Yom Kippur scapegoat bearing away the sins of the people? This “Yom Kippuring” of Passover can be seen most clearly in the Johannine proclamation of John the Baptist: “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29). We see here a blending of the Lamb of God motif (from Passover) with the meaning of the Yom Kippur ritual (atonement for sins). This blending can also be found in Paul's understanding of Jesus as “our Passover sacrifice” (1 Cor 5:7) with his concurrent presentation of Jesus as the Yom Kippur offering to atone for sins (Rom 3:21-26). In this paper I explore ways in which early Christians sought to make sense of Jesus' death by recombinant readings of the Passover and Yom Kippur rituals, rituals that were not only textual but also lived experiences. Early Christians assigned the meaning and significance of the Yom Kippur ritual (forgiveness of sins) to the ritual associated with the offering of the Passover lamb (freedom from slavery in Egypt, and so created a new rite altogether. Further, by borrowing the cultic ritual language of the unblemished cultic animal sacrifice and applying it to Jesus (e.g., his bones are not broken - John 19:36), this ritual language now took on moral overtones and identified Jesus as "unblemished," which understanding was then retrojected back onto Jesus' ministry, baptism, and origins.


The Myth and the Scandal: A Comparison between the Gospels and Ancient Political Propaganda
Program Unit: Bible, Myth, and Myth Theory
Rodrigo Silva, Centro Universitario Adventista de Sao Paulo

Propaganda is a concerted set of messages aimed at influencing the opinions or behavior of large numbers of people. Instead of impartially providing information, propaganda in its most basic sense presents information in order to influence its audience. The most effective propaganda is often completely truthful, but some propaganda presents facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis, or gives loaded messages in order to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. Propaganda has been a human activity as far back as reliable recorded evidence exists. The Behistun Inscription (c. 515 BC) detailing the rise of Darius I to the Persian throne, the writings of Roman such as Livy (c. 59 BC – 17 AD) can be seen as an early masterpiece examples of propaganda. The Arthashastra written by Chanakya (c. 350 - 283 BC), discusses propaganda in detail, such as how to spread propaganda and how to apply it specially in warfare. This ancient document associated with some examples of ancient propaganda give us an idea of the rules of an effective propaganda in the First Century – Time of the beginning of Christian Movement. The purpose of this paper is to make a literary comparison between this rules and some “scandal” description of the Canonical Gospels to see how much mythological they can or not be. A suggestive study or future discussion is to do the same exercise with the NT Apocryphal literature.


Entextualization and Prophetic Action: Jeremiah 36 as Literary Artifact
Program Unit: Orality, Textuality, and the Formation of the Hebrew Bible
Edward Silver, University of Chicago

This essay employs the concept of “entextualization” as developed by the linguistic anthropologists of the Center for Transcultural Studies to track the movement of oracular discourse in the Jeremiah tradition from oral performance to literary artifact. Entextualization describes the process of removing some discrete element from the continuous stream of life-events and the re-presentation of it in a new context which permits conscious engagement and critical reflection. Here, the recurrent phrase “The word of the Lord came to me/Jeremiah…” is treated as a marker for the recontextualization of a performative sign-act within a specifically literary milieu. The appearance of the phrase in the call narrative of Jer 1 actively displaces traditional understandings of prophecy as visual or aural perception of the divine and advances an idea of intellective engagement with a material object. This re-conception of the nature of prophetic revelation is put to strategic use in Jer 29.30 and 36.27, where the phrase prefaces an act of mantic addition or re-inscription. Taken en masse, the texts which are coordinated by this marker attest to an effort to reconceptualize revelation as intellective rather than experiential. They reflect the efforts of diaspora scribes to rationalize their own creativity in relation to prophecies which preceded the cataclysms of 597 and 586 BCE.


The Bible after Bergman: Methodological Considerations on Exegetical Film Studies
Program Unit: Use, Influence, and Impact of the Bible
Mikael Sjöberg, Church of Sweden, Department of Research and Culture

“Biblical” films are no longer of interest for the religious community only, but in fact part of the global mainstream popular culture. Religion and film has also become an expanding och progressing academic field, within biblical studies as well as in systematic theology. Yet many scholars no longer consider it a satisfactory task to identify allusions to biblical texts, themes or motifs. Among these, Robert Johnston have argued for an abandonment of the still dominant “literary paradigm” in the field, for a sharper focus on e.g. the visual aspects of the medium or on the audience's reception of films. Although the development hardly is linear, the debate raises keen methodological questions for biblical scholars. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the specifically exegetical contribution to the field of Religion and film. This will be done in two ways. First I will attempt to identify the “biblical” quality in the production of two post-Bergman Scandinavian film makers, Lars von Trier (Denmark, “Breaking the Waves” and “Dogville”) and Lukas Modysson (Sweden, “Show me love” and “Lilja-4-ever”). They both deal with the issues of female sexuality and sacrifice, but from different perspectives and with quite unlike consciousness of religious tradition. What elements in these works can be regarded as “biblical” and why? Secondly, I will assess the methodological tendencies in some of the most recent anthologies on the Bible and Film. Is the exegetical contribution becoming more evident as more biblical scholars are entering the field?


The Integrity of the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2–3)
Program Unit: Pentateuch
Jean Louis Ska, Pontifical Biblical Institute

Karl Budde (1883) was the first exegete who decided to allot different portions of the Garden of Eden to different writers and to cut down some of its trees. In the name of biblical ecology, I would like to defend the integrity of the Garden of Eden and, especially, of its forest (cf. T. N. D. Mettinger). For this I will have to solve several problems. (1) Why is it said twice that Yhwh-God placed Adam in the garden (2:8 and 2:15)? (2) Why are there are two trees in the garden, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (2:9; 2:16; 3:3; 3:24)? The tree of life is mentioned only a few times, at the beginning and the end (2:9, then 3:22, 24). In 3:3, however, the tree which stands in the middle of the garden seems to be not the tree of life (cf. 2:9), but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (3) In Gen 3, neither the serpent nor the women are supposed to know Yhwh-God's prohibition to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. How to explain this startling phenomenon? (4) Why did Yhwh-God send the first couple out of the garden twice (3:23, 24)? The tools used to answer these questions will be Hebrew grammar, Hebrew stylistics, and biblical narrative techniques.


Numbers 15:30–31 as Background for Hebrews 10:26
Program Unit: Biblical Law
Jay Sklar, Covenant Theological Seminary

Heb 10:26 states that in some cases there "no longer remains a sacrifice for sins". This paper considers how Num 15:30-31 might relate as background to this verse. The paper will begin with a consideration of Num 15:30-31 in its original context before proceeding to discuss its use in Second Temple Judaism. These observations will then be related to Heb 10:26 itself.


The Dialect of the Aramaic Toldot Yeshu Fragments
Program Unit: Aramaic Studies
Willem Smelik, University College London

The Aramaic fragments of the Toldot Yeshu have long been recognised as the oldest and original version of this narrative tradition, which was subsequently translated into many other languages and developed, a critical examination of which has been provided by William Horbury in his unpublished thesis. Adler, Krauss, Ginzberg, Horbury, Falk and Boyarin published and republished several of these fragments, which exhibit anomalous dialect features, which Ginzberg was the first to analyse. He wrote that "it is impossible to claim that the Aramaic story of Jesus was composed at the time that the Aramaic language was a living language of the Jews. The author of this work imitates the Aramaic language of the Targumim and in particular that of Targum Onqelos". More specifically, the author does not draw from a vernacular, but from literary sources available to him, so that he cannot escape using a mixture of Palestinian and Babylonian Aramaic. Finally, he translated Hebrew expressions into artificial Aramaic. All fragments are written in an artificial Aramaic dialect. Boyarin raised the question, whether the Aramaic of these fragments is artificial, as Ginzberg claimed, or a specimen of a Western text transposed into the dialect of Babylonian Jewry but retaining, occasionally, its original vocabulary and syntax. Boyarin provides some examples, but not many, and does not really answer the question himself. In this paper, I will offer a grammatical analysis of all the Aramaic fragments, individually with a more detailed comparison of the parallel passages. The analysis will take morphology, vocabulary and syntax into account. The analysis is important for our understanding of the provenance and early history of thie narrative itself, but also relevant for our understanding of the development of Late Aramaic dialects, their transmission and the phenomenon of language interference.


“Nobody Tasted Blood in It”: Public Intellectuals Interrogating Myths of Innocence in Biblical Studies
Program Unit:
Abraham Smith, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University

In 1844, Ralph Waldo Emerson proffered a stirring rebuke to his fellow citizens for their complicity with the whole machinery of sugar production—the forcing of enslaved women to construct the cane-holes, the throwing of enslaved men into boiling vats of sugar, and the larger traffic in human cargo that exploited the labor of thousands of enslaved Africans. Demystifying the presumed innocence of U.S. shoppers who purchased sugar far away from the fitful cries of lives wrecked and families ruined to produce the sweet taste of sugar, Emerson inimitably, aptly, and stingingly quipped: “Nobody tasted the blood in it.” In the spirit of Emerson, many public intellectuals in our own day seek to demystify myths of innocence: that is, they seek to interrogate institutions, cultural formations, and cultural productions that appear “innocent" but in fact participate in death-dealing or otherwise in the subjugation of one or more parts of God's creation. How would biblical studies look were it to take up this role? To answer this question, this paper first sketches the contours of a field within biblical studies in which one can now see this interrogationist mode taken up seriously. Then the paper interrogates a myth of innocence about Luke-Acts, a myth that often prevents us from seeing the whole machinery of domination associated with a textual product that is otherwise lauded for its claims of inclusion, a myth that prevents us from tasting the blood in the sugar.


Ephesus (and Other Sites) Up Close and Personal: Why Being There Matters
Program Unit: Archaeology of Religion in the Roman World
Dennis E. Smith, Phillips Theological Seminary

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Babylonian Kudurru and the Granting of Land: Joshua 24 in Light of the Sun God Tablet
Program Unit: Hebrew Scriptures and Cognate Literature
Eric Smith, Nebraska Christian College

This paper seeks to demonstrate the similarities between the book of Joshua, particularly chapter 24, and kudurru, Babylonian boundary stones that commemorate land grant and acquisition. Although commentators have long compared Joshua 24 and ancient Near Eastern treaties, I will show that kudurru in general and the Sun-God Tablet in particular have several distinguishing characteristics that are also present in the book of Joshua: 1) They often refer to objects being erected in the presence of the gods. Joshua 19:51 states that territories were assigned “in the presence of YHWH” at Shiloh, where the tent of meeting was located. In chapter 24, the leaders “presented themselves before God” (v. 1). 2) The original setting for the erection of kudurru was in temples. The granting of the land at Shiloh was connected with the tent of meeting, and in chapter 24 Joshua set up the stone “under the terebinth that was by the sanctuary of YHWH” (v. 26). 3) Every kudurru inscription commemorates the allocation of a source of perpetual income, as is the case for all the land granted in the book of Joshua. 4) The allocation was perpetual through inheritance. This is also the case throughout the Hebrew Bible, as is attested by the kinsman redeemer laws and the importance of male progeny. Although the book of Joshua is not itself a kudurru, it does seem plausible that the author was sensitive to known ancient Near Eastern traditions regarding land acquisition and entitlement.


1 Peter 5:14b in P72: The Relationship between Physical Codex and “Sacred” Text
Program Unit: New Testament Textual Criticism
Geoffrey Smith, Harvard University

This paper offers a reevaluation of the benediction of 1 Peter in P72, the designation given to 1, 2 Peter and Jude in the Bodmer Miscellaneous Codex. I will argue that the short benediction of 1 Peter in P72 is best understood in light of the oft neglected unifying colophon recurring throughout the codex. This new evidence calls into question text critical assessments of the benediction of 1 Peter in P72, sheds light on scribal practices in this early period, and contributes to our understanding of the complicated binding-(pre)history of the Bodmer Miscellaneous Codex. Contemporary “bindings” of the codex—e.g. modern critical editions—and their role in interpretation will also figure into this analysis.


Religion and the Bible
Program Unit:
Jonathan Smith, University of Chicago

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The Construction of Identity in Mark 7:24–30: The Syrophoenician Woman and the Problem of Ethnicity
Program Unit: Construction of Christian Identities
Julien C. H. Smith, Baylor University

This paper explores the relationship between identity and ethnicity in the NT by examining the way in which the interaction between Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman in Mark 7:24-30 defamiliarizes the reader, thereby exposing the reader's deficient norms regarding ethnicity. The pericope's narrative context and setting lead the reader to expect that Jesus will fulfill the Syrophoenician woman"s request and heal her daughter. The implied author"s use of various stylistic and rhetorical elements within the pericope (type-scenes, stock characters, and two-step progressions) subtly suggest that these expectations may be frustrated. When Jesus rebuffs the woman, the reader must reexamine the assumptions that contributed to misplaced expectations. Through this process of defamiliarization, the text exposes two deficient norms potentially held by the reader: the notion that the gospel obliterates ethnicity as a component of social identity, and the competing notion that one"s particular ethnic identity must be rejected in order to respond faithfully to the gospel.


From Blessing to Damnation: Questions and Explorations for Iconography and Texts
Program Unit: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Bible
Mark S. Smith, New York University

This presentation will raise questions about the study of verbal and pictorial representations involving deities as known in Ugaritic and Israelite cultures. Case studies include blessing by a goddess as well as a god and the depiction of a divinity (?) with horns and a tail.


“Not from Humans”: Paul's Politics of Origins and African American Women's Call to Preach
Program Unit: African-American Biblical Hermeneutics
Mitzi J. Smith, Ashland Theological Seminary

I propose to explore nineteenth-century African American women's appropriation of Paul's politics of origins in Galatians 1. In Galatians 1 Paul argues that his apostolic commission and the content of his gospel did not originate from humans. Paul is responding to those who have questioned his apostolic credentials and are “perverting” the gospel he had preached to the Galatians. Similarly, Nineteenth Century African American women, such as Elizabeth, Zilpha Elaw, and Julia Foote, addressed, preemptively and defensively, anticipated challenges and real opposition to their call and/or authority to preach the gospel. These African American women have either evoked the same language or made allusions to Paul"s argument of origins. Like Paul, their commission to preach originates “not from men” but in the context of a divine revelation. For this reason, African American women preached with boldness in spite of verbal and physical opposition.


The “Coming of the Lord” in the Gospel of Matthew and the Didache
Program Unit: Didache in Context
Murray Smith, Macquarie University-Sydney

This paper compares the "coming of the Son of Man" motif in the Gospel of Matthew (Mt 10.23; 16.27; 24.27, 30, 37, 39, 44; cf. 24.42) with the "coming of the Lord" expected by the Didache (Did. 16.1, 7-8). The first part of the paper offers a narrative-critical interpretation of "coming of the Son of Man" logia in Matthew, with specific reference to Mt. 24. It argues that the first Evangelist understood the coming of the Son of Man to be an imminent eschatological reality focussed on the vindication of Jesus and taking concrete form in Jesus" resurrection, exaltation and session in judgment on Jerusalem and the nations. The second part of the paper then addresses the debated question of the dependence of Did. 16 on Mt. 24. Here it is argued that the verbal similarities between Did. 16 and Mt. 24/Mk. 13 suggest that the Didachist had access neither merely to oral traditions similar to Mt. 24, nor simply to the source "M", but to Matthew's Gospel in its final form. On the basis of this dependence, the final part of the paper examines the Didachist's redaction of Matthew, with specific reference to the "coming of the Lord" motif at Did. 16.1, 6-8. It examines particularly the Didache"s interpretation of the Matthean signs tradition (Mt. 24.30; Did. 16.6) and use of the Danielic image of one "coming on the clouds" (Dan. 7.13; Mt. 24.30; Did. 16.8). The paper concludes that the "coming" expected by the Didachist represents a significant development from the Matthean vision of Jesus" vindication, and shows evidence of theological systematization via assimilation to extra-Matthean themes (e.g,. the resurrection of the righteous).


Tribes and Secondary States: Anthropological Perspectives on Southern Levantine Iron Age State Formation
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible, History, and Archaeology
Neil G. Smith, University of California, San Diego

This paper presents new testable anthropologically based models for investigating the particular historical and cultural transformations that generated secondary state formation in the Iron Age southern Levant. It proposes that secondary state formation can occur in many variant ways than traditionally argued by socio-evolutionary researchers. Specifically, this paper suggests that secondary archaic states can emerge from tribally organized societies and generally take on a specific political economy for legitimization that appears more egalitarian and decentralized than traditionally ascribed to state level societies. Ideologies of tribal identity and ethos is maintained and reinforced within a more complex state level system of political organization and economic centralization. This model is tested against historical and archaeological correlates from Iron Age Israel and Edom.


Displaced Texts: Can We Speak of the Socio-psychology of Exile in the Bible?
Program Unit: Warfare in Ancient Israel
Daniel Smith-Christopher, Loyola Marymount University

This paper will survey the problems and the possibilities of reading biblical texts that (arguably) deal with Babylonian exile by working with selected examples from the contemporary literature on socio-psychological work with displaced persons and refugees. “Refugee Studies” is (sadly) a growing field of social and psychological analysis, even including the development of degrees in “Refugee Studies”, and while most of this literature is not concerned with historical perspectives, some of this literature is arguably illuminating and provocative for biblical scholars interested in enriching their approach to the study of biblical texts generated in the context of social crisis and displacement. While inherently speculative, I will attempt to demonstrate the application of some of these themes and ideas to the analysis of specific texts.


Reading Exile: Sociological and Literary Agendas
Program Unit: Exile (Forced Migrations) in Biblical Literature
Daniel Smith-Christopher, Loyola Marymount University

This survey seeks to review some of the varied sociological approaches to reading and understanding the experiences of 6th Cent. BCE Judean History in Biblical literature, especially the responses to the destruction of Jerusalem and Judean settlements in 587 BCE, as well as interpreting the literature dealing with the surviving community of transported prisoners-of-war who were sent to the Babylonian heartland. What are some of the advantages, and dangers, of such sociological analysis, and has this approach proven itself in Biblical scholarship that is focused on these events? What are some of the remaining questions raised by sociologically informed methods of Biblical analysis? In the end, this presentation will argue for the inevitability of sociological analysis if for no other reason than the simple fact that all historiography is socially comparative precisely because it is historical analysis, and at least being clear about borrowing sociological methods of analysis seeks to make these inevitable comparisons explicit and thus open for critical review.


Gendered Implications of Salvation in the Pastoral Epistles
Program Unit: Gender, Sexuality, and the Bible
Anna Rebecca Solevag, University of Oslo

The PE's demands for gender-specific behavior in the ekklesia, following the hierarchical structure of the patriarchal household (oikos), have often been read as missiologically motivated. The statement that woman “will be saved through childbearing” (1 Tim 2:15) is an unsolved problem in this context. This paper offers a fresh reading of 1 Tim 2:9-15. It contends that women's childbearing is understood to have soteriological implications and thus that men and women are saved through different means. The household ideology is in my view not only reflected in the letters missiology and ecclesiology, but also shapes its soteriology. Salvation is a community effort in the PE. That each individual finds her or his place in the hierarchy of both oikos and ekklesia has clear implications for the ability to achieve salvation and preach salvation. The sound teaching is something preserved and handed over through “family lineage”, from Paul, the father of the community, but also from mothers and fathers to the children and slaves in their households. The “proof” of the sound teaching is in the lifestyle – that each lives according to his or her place. In this family setting, the mother"s roles as childbearer and example in good deeds are important. Only if she conforms to the ideals of submission and silence are the possibilities in place for family members reaching salvation. I would thus say that salvation is gender-specific, in that each individual must conform to his/her gender-specific role within the household structure. On the other hand, it can also be argued that the whole community is saved through childbearing. Only when women perform their crucial roles as childbearers and housekeepers will children be raised in the faith and only thus can community life continue.


Breaking Bread with Huwawa: What Gilgamesh Should Have Done
Program Unit: Assyriology and the Bible
Karen Sonik, University of Pennsylvania

The Return of Lugalbanda (RL) and Gilgamesh and Huwawa (GH), both Mesopotamian texts known from the Old Babylonian period, offer two variations on a common theme. Both compositions vividly recount the exploits of a hero in a fabled land far beyond the bounds of civilization and his encounter therein with a guardian of Enlil, a monster of order who protects and rules a peripheral zone on behalf of the gods. In RL, the hero is Lugalbanda, a loyal citizen of Uruk abandoned in the “farthest highlands” when he becomes too ill to accompany his comrades on their military campaign. Intent on rejoining his company, the opening lines of the text see him planning to gain the aid of Anzu, ruler of the highlands, by banqueting with and otherwise honoring the monster. Eschewing personal gain, comfort, or safety, Lugalbanda is rewarded with supernatural speed that returns him to his comrades and ultimately allows him to serve as the savior of his city and its interests. In GH, Gilgamesh is identinfied as the son of Lugalbanda but follows a starkly different heroic model, setting out for the legendary Cedar Forest in the cause of personal fame and glory. Unsurprisingly, his interaction with Huwawa, guardian of the Cedar Forest on the order of Enlil, is of a very different nature from Lugalbanda's with Anzu, being ill-conceived, dishonorable, and brutally violent, and earning Gilgamesh a strong and well-deserved rebuke from Enlil himself. This paper compares the nature of the heroic model offered by each text, suggesting not only that the two compositions form a complementary pair, the former being an exemplary tale and the latter a cautionary one, but also that Enlil's rebuke in GH is meant to deliberately evoke Lugalbanda"s behavior in RL as an example of how Gilgamesh should have behaved.


“Foreign Women” (and Their Strange Gods?): Religious and Ethnic Intermarriage in Ezra 9–10 and Nehemiah 13:23–27 Post Triple Melting-Pot
Program Unit: Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah
Katherine Southwood, University of Oxford

Ethnic intermarriages often cross more than the ethnic boundary and may permeate other frontiers such as class, caste or religion. When Ezra-Nehemiah addresses the question of marriage to "foreign women", the issue is framed within the parameters of religious intermarriage. Does our text presume an intrinsically ethnic sense of religious identity, or, does religious identity inform ethnic self-definition? The paper hopes to better understand the type of intermarriage represented within Ezra-Nehemiah through using the "triple melting-pot" theory's legacy within scholarship. The paper argues that postexilic Yehud was not a "melting pot" for ethnicity and that the intermingling of a conservative, pious and intense religious identity with an equally exclusive, puritanical ethnic identity, reveals an author in whose eyes religious intermarriage is indistinct from ethnic intermarriage. This perspective may not have been shared by mainstream society within Yehud, since what our text understands to be "intermarriage" is occurring.


Thecla Desexualized: The Saint Justina Legend and the Reception of the Christian Apocrypha in Late Antiquity
Program Unit: Function of Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
Brian P. Sowers, University of Cincinnati

The legend surrounding Thecla was immensely popular in the early centuries of the church, and the story had a profound impact on the role of women in early Christian literature. Central to Thecla's influence were her unusual and indeed non-traditional behaviors, such as her use of masculine dress and hairstyle to join Paul's missionary team. Subsequent female protagonists in early Christian literature undergo similar, but oftentimes increasingly bizarre, sexual ambiguities to such an extent that some scholars see in Thecla the beginning of a transvestite motif. Following Stephen Davis, this dissemination of the Thecla persona was a primarily literate one; women read the Acts of Paul and Thecla while on pilgrimage, which had a significant effect on the spread of the Thecla cult to the edges of the Roman empire. This paper explores how the Acts of Paul and Thecla's spread through the late antique empire variously impacted narratives about female saints. Of particular interest is the Thecla legend's influence on the Conversion of Saint Cyprian, a fourth-century Antiochene hagiography about two local saints, Cyprian and Justina. On the one hand, the characterization of Cyprian, a Faustian magician, depends heavily on the Pythagorean wonder-worker, Apollonius of Tyana, whereas Justina's character follows some of Thecla's salient features, in particular Thecla's physical encounter with Alexander. On the other hand, unlike Thecla, Justina remains within the confines of her father's house and avoids the sexual ambiguity that characterize rural ascetics of late antique Christian fictions. As hagiographies increasingly influence the liturgical calendar and find an empire-wide role in martyr cults, the Conversion of Saint Cyprian reveals a local (Antiochene) narrative that manipulates the Thecla legend to maintain the social mores of fourth-century urban Christianity.


Religious Belief, Practice, and Ethnicity at Upper Peirene in Roman Corinth
Program Unit: Greco-Roman Religions
Barbette Stanley Spaeth, College of William and Mary

The spring of Upper Peirene on Acrocorinth in the Roman period has a fascinating set of Greek and Latin inscriptions carved into its walls, probably dated to the second century C.E. These inscriptions are interesting for a number of reasons. First, the site is relatively difficult to access: why did people come here and why did they choose to commemorate their visit? The formulae on these inscriptions are paralleled most closely by inscriptions found on the so-called “Singing Memnon” statue in Egypt. These inscriptions also mention “acts of adoration” conducted by the visitors, indicating that their purpose was religious and suggesting that they were artifacts of pilgrimage. Are we also to understand the inscriptions at Upper Peirene as records of pilgrimage; and if so, to what divinity and for what purpose? They do not explicitly name a divinity, but literary and artistic evidence related to the spring in this period would suggest the nymph Peirene, Pegasus, or Bellerophon. Interestingly, these figures in the Greek period were associated with a spring in the agora of the city below. Why then would their mythic and cultic associations have been transferred to Acrocorinth in the Roman period? Moreover, for what purpose would people have visited the divinity or divinities at this site? Finally, why are the inscriptions in both Greek and Latin? What does the use of both languages tell us about the importance of ethnicity in religious expression at this site? This paper will explore these questions in depth, focusing on issues of religious belief, practice, and ethnicity in Roman Corinth.


The Rhetoric of Fear and Pity in the “Tragedy” of Ananias and Sapphira
Program Unit: Book of Acts
F. Scott Spencer, Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond

In recent years, the study of emotion (passion) as a vital part of human understanding has emerged with new vigor in the fields of classical literature, moral philosophy, cognitive psychology and neurobiology. This paper takes a fresh look at emotion as a potentially fruitful area of NT study, focusing on feelings of “great fear” generated by both text and reader regarding the “tragic” deaths of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:5, 11). Engaging with (among other classical sources) Aristotle's treatment of the central emotional tandem of fear and pity in his Poetics, Rhetoric and ethical treatises, this study seeks to understand: What is the specific object of fear in the Ananias/Sapphira story (sudden death? severe punishment? public exposure? shameful disgrace)? What kinds of readers/auditors are being targeted? Who, in this culture, is especially susceptible to fearful responses, and why? Does the universal (“all”) fear reported in the text apply equally across social, political and religious contexts? Do ancients and moderns feel fear in the same ways for the same reasons? Is there any room for “pitying” (having compassion for) the victims from an ancient moral perspective? How might the experience of “great fear” (phobos megas) following Ananias and Sapphira's deaths relate to “God-fearing” (phobeomai) in the rest of Acts?


Early Christian Magical Amulets
Program Unit: Art and Religions of Antiquity
Jeffrey Spier, University of Arizona

The use of amulets to heal or to ward off evil spirits was pervasive in pagan Greco-Roman society, notably in the second and third centuries, when magical spells were engraved on gem stones and on thin plaques of gold, silver, and bronze (known as lamellae). Despite the condemnation of amulets and the use of magic by the Church Fathers, the pagan traditions were often adapted for use by Christians, and new amulets designed for Christian use were produced, primarily in Syria and Asia Minor. Several such groups of amulets and their origins will be discussed.


Were the Academic Responses to the Lost Tomb of Jesus Effective?
Program Unit: Archaeological Excavations and Discoveries: Illuminating the Biblical World
Chad Spigel, Duke University

On March 4, 2007 The Lost Tomb of Jesus aired on the Discovery Channel, claiming to have archaeological evidence not only for Jesus, but also for his wife and his child. Immediately after the film a panel discussion was hosted by Ted Koppel with the filmmakers, a New Testament scholar, and an archaeologist. Thus began the scholarly response to the sensational historical claims made in the film. The responses proceeded with a serious of short articles picking apart the film's use of evidence to make historical claims, and continued a year later with a symposium in Jerusalem. In this presentation I will discuss the effectiveness of the scholarly responses to the film in three areas. First, I will discuss whether scholars were effective in responding to the historical claims made by the film. From a historian's perspective the short scholarly articles effectively refuted most of the details in the film"s argument, including their use of archaeology, their reading of inscriptions, the statistical analysis, the DNA evidence, etc. Second, I will address whether scholars were effective in getting beyond the details of the film"s argument and to what I think is the root of the conflict: that archaeology can rarely provide absolute historical conclusions. Again, this point was effectively made by a number of scholars in their responses to the film. Third, I will look at whether the academic responses were effectively communicated beyond the scholarly community. It is in this third area that scholars were not nearly as successful. Beginning with the appearance of scholars in the film itself, continuing with Ted Koppel"s panel discussion, and culminating with the Jerusalem symposium and the subsequent press conference, the academic community has not been entirely effective in conveying their message to the general public.


Birds and Sages: Avian Anecdotes in the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, an Ethiopian Tale, and the Acts of John
Program Unit: Ancient Fiction and Early Christian and Jewish Narrative
Janet Elizabeth Spittler, Texas Christian University

Philostratus' Life of Apollonius of Tyana, Heliodorus" Ethiopian Tale and the Acts of John all include episodes in which a wise man reflects on the characteristics of birds. Apollonius of Tyana, who understands the language of birds, notes the communist tendencies of sparrows and admires their care for one another. In Ethiopian Tale, the sage (and foster-father of the heroine) Calasiris comments on the fantastic properties of the gaze of the plover – a bit of zoological trivia that has important implications both for the characters within that particular episode and for the reader in interpreting the novel as a whole. In the Acts of John, the apostle observes the behavior of a partridge, then compares the bird with the soul of a passerby. In each instance, the characteristics of the bird (known also from natural historical texts of the first and second centuries CE) are drawn upon by the character or narrator to underscore key themes in the broader narrative. At the same time, each man's knowledge of the animal kingdom – not just the zoological trivia, but the significance of zoological information for understanding the human condition – underscores his wisdom and insight, providing evidence that he is indeed a sage. I will argue that knowledge of both the natural-historical information (current at the time when these texts were composed) and the various narrative techniques by which ancient authors used such information is necessary for the contemporary reader to fully appreciate these highly entertaining and often very clever episodes.


The Anthropology of the Acts of Thomas
Program Unit: Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti
Janet Elizabeth Spittler, Texas Christian University

In a recent article, L. Roig Lanzillotta persuasively argues that the Acts of Andrew maintains a tripartite anthropology that distinguishes it from the more widespread Platonic thought of the first centuries CE and precludes the possibility of regarding the text, as many have done, to be in any way "proto-orthodox." According to Lanzillotta, the tripartite conception of the human being (particularly with respect to the role of the intellect) along with the bipartite conception of the soul indicate, rather, a close connection with Middle Platonism, specifically a Middle Platonism heavily influenced by Peripatetic anthropology. The Acts of Thomas, I will argue, also maintains a tripartite anthropology. In the case of the Acts of Thomas, there is a close connection to Tatian and the Middle Platonism exemplified by Alcinous. But as is the case with so many issues in early Christian thought, the narrative nature of the Acts of Thomas allows for a more "fleshed-out" exposition of these complex notions than can be found in a philosophical handbook or treatise. I will argue that the author of the Acts of Thomas, using the literary tools at his disposal, turns the devolution of the human being described by Alcinous (in Didaskalikos 12.2) on its head: through the remarkable cast of characters, including women and animals, the Acts of Thomas narrates an unexpected reversal, in which the creatures farthest removed from their proper state, according to Alcinous, are in fact the models to be imitated.


What Didn't Work in the 70s, What Can Work in the 21st Century
Program Unit:
Robert Spivey, Society for Values in Higher Education

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Translation and Understanding: Pitfalls and Achievements in a Translation of Exodus
Program Unit: International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies
Maria Victoria Spottorno, Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales

This paper is related to our project of the Spanish translation of the Septuagint. For this project, translating the books of Exodus and Leviticus has been my task.


Two Stories of Two Storeys
Program Unit: Johannine Literature
Judith Stack-Nelson, Princeton Theological Seminary

Though NT scholars who employ a narrative approach have often noted the use of irony in John's gospel, both Stephen Moore and Jeffery Staley have pointed out that, while certain aspects of the narrative do promote an ironic perspective on the part of the reader, there are other aspects that effectively undermine this ironic stance. In my paper, I examine the relationship of the two-level structure of irony to the oft-noted Johannine dualism, particularly the cosmological (i.e., spatial) dualism of heaven (above) vs. cosmos (below) that pervades the 4G, and was, in fact, a feature of both Jewish cosmology and Greco-Roman philosophical reflection, particularly in Plato and Aristotle. Through an examination of the Prologue, Bread from Heaven Discourse, and the Farewell Discourse, I demonstrate that the text of John successively asserts and undermines or transgresses a dualistic cosmological perspective through the motifs of light and darkness, ascending and descending, and the unity of the Son and the Father. The net effect of this is that the classic distinction between Heaven/above as the realm of all that is eternal and spiritual and the cosmos/below as the realm of the transient and fleshly is, at some points in the text, abolished and at others forcefully re-established in a way that mirrors the alternating building and destroying of the elevated position occupied by the reader in the ironic structure. Finally, Jesus" resurrection serves as a final transgression of this dualism by spiritualizing flesh beyond recognition and permanently enfleshing the eternal.


The Land's Sabbath: Leviticus 25–26
Program Unit: Sabbath in Text and Tradition
Jeffrey Stackert, University of Chicago

Apart from the land's rest in Lev 25-26, sabbath rest is envisioned in the Hebrew Bible primarily as a cessation of human (and, less frequently, animal) activity. Even in P, where the sabbath is explicitly tied to the deity's rest after creating the world (Gen 2:2-3; Exod 31:12-17), there is no indication that God continues to observe sabbath rest. The human-centered nature of sabbath is also underscored in the New Testament: “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath” (Mark 2:24, NRSV). The land"s sabbath in Lev 25-26, then, is particularly noteworthy. In this paper, I will explore land sabbath ideology in H and suggest that the introduction of non-human sabbath derives from H"s attempt to meld perspectives from its Priestly and non-Priestly sources. I will also briefly discuss the influence of H's innovation in the subsequent interpretive tradition.


“Come Over and Help Us”: Toward a Postcolonial Reading of Biblical Imagery in the WHMS Oriental Home National Fundraising Tour, 1908–1909
Program Unit: Asian and Asian-American Hermeneutics
Jeffrey Staley, Seattle University

2008 marks the one hundredth anniversary of a seven month-long fundraising tour taken by a choir of eight Chinese American children from the Woman's Home Missionary Society (Methodist Episcopal Church) Oriental Home in Berkeley, California. The original WHMS Oriental Home in San Francisco had been destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, and in an attempt to raise funds for a new building, Miss Carrie Davis, matron of the Home, took eight children to the annual meeting of the WHMS in Philadelphia. Their first stop on their way to Philadelphia was at First Church (MEC), Salem, OR, on September 24-25. After performing in Philadelphia, the children sang for President Theodore Roosevelt in the White House on November 5, 1908. Their visit made the front page of the New York Times the following day. Using newspaper articles and photographs, color postcards, Methodist magazine articles, and Oriental Home records, this essay develops a postcolonial analysis of the fundraising tour, focusing particularly on the use of Scripture in the children's performances. Here, three of the central issues are: 1) The children"s recitation of Psalm 91 as the matron retold the story of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire; 2) the use of Acts 16:9-10 in song; 3) changes in clothing as evidence of conversion (Mark 5:1-20). The postcolonial critique of embodied, performed Scripture comes into play in a number of ways: 1) in the question of agency and voice (“mimicry” [Homi Bhabha] or “ventriloquism” [Gayatri Spivak]); 2) in the tropes of travel and clothing; and 3) in a feminist critique of the white matron"s voice. A postcolonial critique of the 1908 fundraising tour reveals how Scripture could both empower and disempower marginalized voices on the domestic, “Home Mission” front at a period when the United States was flexing its newly developed imperial muscles. The fundraising tour is an excellent example of turn-of-the-century, lay Asian American Protestant biblical interpretation “at the service of” an immigrant population.


Women's Lament in the New Testament
Program Unit: Lament in Sacred Texts and Cultures
Angela Standhartinger, Philipps Universität-Marburg

As early as 1923/1974 Hedwig Jahnow, Margaret Alexiou and others have shown there is a cross-cultural tradition of ritual women's laments for the dead from antiquity to early modern times. From the times of Homer to modern times in rural Greece and other areas of the world women lament their beloved ones together in antiphonal dirges, witch share common patterns and structures. In ancient and modern forms the laments recall the suffering and death of the lamented as well as it's impact on the living, then invoke their presence and become channels through which the deceased speaks. After their lamentations women share bread and meals at the graveyard or in their home together (sometimes also with the dead). In the mainly male dominated scriptural traditions from antiquity, not many – but some fragmentary - laments of women are preserved. But these are enough to make sure, that there were women"s laments in Jewish and Christian tradition. This raises the question, what happened to the laments for Jesus, which is almost (not absolutely) missing in New Testament Gospel tradition, but is told in the Gospel of Peter. The paper will offer some evidence for discussion in the context of the following hypothesis. Behind the praxis of the Lord"s Supper, the condensed interpretation of which is contained in the words of institution, there stands the Jerusalem women"s lament tradition reshaped by the experience of resurrection.(


The Saturnalia in Greco-Roman Culture
Program Unit: Meals in the Greco-Roman World
Angela Standhartinger, Philipps Universität-Marburg

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“No Longer I”: Rethinking the Pseudonym of the Corpus Dionysiacum
Program Unit: Religious World of Late Antiquity
Charles Stang, Harvard University

In 1895, Hugo Koch and Josef Stiglmayr demonstrated that the Corpus Dionysiacum was not written by the first century disciple of Paul, Dionysius the Areopagite, but by a late fifth or early sixth century pseudepigrapher. Since then, modern scholarship on the CD has tended to neglect the significance of the pseudonym, often dismissing it as a clever ruse on the part of the author to clothe his heterodox collection in an apostolic veneer and so to secure for it a wider readership in an age of anxious orthodoxy. In this paper, I argue that the pseudonym is no mere ruse but is in fact integral to the aims and purposes of the CD. First, I consider a particular theory of pseudonymous writing forwarded by D.S. Russell in The Method & Message of Jewish Apocalyptic to explain Jewish apocalyptic writing. Russell argues that ancient Jewish pseudonymous authors believed that the distance between past and present could be collapsed such that the ancient authorities would come to inhabit them and speak in their stead. I argue that Russell's theory can be fruitfully applied to the CD, that the author of the CD is in fact attempting to collapse historical time, to enjoy a present discipleship to the apostle Paul, and thereby to imitate the apostle and solicit the indwelling of Christ. To strengthen my case, I draw on recent scholarship on the practice of writing in late antiquity (Derek Krueger, Writing and Holiness, 2004), and the way in which two other late antique authors, the anonymous author of the fifth-century Life and Miracles of Saint Thekla and John Chrysostom in his homilies on Paul, quite consciously wrote so as to collapse historical time and meet the saints of the apostolic age, especially Paul (Scott Fitzgerald Johnson, The Life and Miracles of Thekla, 2006; Margaret M. Mitchell, The Heavenly Trumpet, 2000).


Paul the “Jewgreek”?
Program Unit: Construction of Christian Identities
Christopher D. Stanley, St. Bonaventure University

For more than a century, scholars have debated whether the language and ideas of the apostle Paul are best understood against the background of Hellenistic Judaism or the broader Greco-Roman world. At this point there appears to be general agreement that both of these “worlds” must be taken seriously if we are to understand the apostle Paul. In Daniel Boyarin's words, Paul is a “Jewgreek.” One line of evidence that has received insufficient attention in these debates concerns the ethnic self-representation of Paul in his letters. While Paul normally depicts himself as a Ioudaios, there are a number of places in his letters in which he writes as though he were a “Gentile,” a non-Ioudaios. In some passages he uses language about himself that is normally reserved for non-Jews (e.g., Rom 5:6-10, Gal 4:3-5), while in others he speaks about “Ioudaioi” as though they were a group apart from himself (e.g., Rom 2:17-24, 1 Thess 2:14-17). In still other places he writes as though he were no longer a member of either group (e.g., 1 Cor 1:22-24, Phil 3:2-9). How are these texts to be explained? Are they the product of a “hybrid” psyche that allows Paul to identify comfortably with either group? Do they reflect a theological reappraisal of the value of ethnicity as an identity marker? Or are they simply passing moments in a complex rhetorical strategy that shed little light on Paul's own ethnic self-understanding? This paper will examine Paul"s language through the lens of postcolonial theory, ethnic studies, and rhetorical analysis in an effort to determine how best to make sense of this aspect of Paul"s ethnic self-representation. Along the way, questions will be raised about the uncritical manner in which scholars have used Paul"s language as a window onto his self-understanding.


Paul the Gentile?
Program Unit: Pauline Epistles
Christopher D. Stanley, St. Bonaventure University

For more than a century, scholars have debated whether the language and ideas of the apostle Paul are best understood against the background of Hellenistic Judaism or the broader Greco-Roman world. At this point there appears to be general agreement that both of these “worlds” must be taken seriously if we are to understand the apostle Paul. In Daniel Boyarin's words, Paul is a “Jewgreek.” One line of evidence that has received insufficient attention in these debates concerns the ethnic self-representation of Paul in his letters. While Paul normally depicts himself as a Ioudaios, there are a number of places in his letters in which he writes as though he were a “Gentile,” a non-Ioudaios. In some passages he uses language about himself that is normally reserved for non-Ioudaioi (e.g., Rom 5:6-10, Gal 4:3-5), while in others he speaks about “Ioudaioi” as though they were a group apart from himself (e.g., Rom 2:17-24, 1 Thess 2:14-17). In still other places he writes as though he were no longer a member of either group (e.g., 1 Cor 1:22-24, Phil 3:2-9). How are these texts to be explained? Are they the product of a “hybrid” psyche that allows Paul to identify comfortably with either group? Do they reflect a theological reappraisal of the value of ethnicity as an identity marker? Or are they simply passing moments in a complex rhetorical strategy that shed little light on Paul's own ethnic self-understanding? This paper will examine Paul"s language through the lens of postcolonial theory, ethnic studies, and rhetorical analysis in an effort to determine how best to make sense of this aspect of Paul"s ethnic self-representation. Along the way, questions will be raised about the uncritical manner in which many scholars have used Paul"s language as a window onto his self-understanding.


Did David Have Any Friends?
Program Unit: Social Sciences and the Interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures
Gary Stansell, Saint Olaf College

There is virtually no doubt that friendship counts as a “universal” social phenomenon across the many millennia of human culture. And it is equally certain that what constitutes friendship within specific societies and cultures will receive a stamp of particularity in accordance with the ethos and structures within that society. But only within the past thirty years or so have social or cultural anthropologists offered significant studies of friendship in traditional and modern societies. This essay proposes to analyze the “rise of David” in terms of David's circle of friends. On the one hand, David's patron-client relationship to “friends” is suggested by 1 Sam 30:26. On the other, David"s “friendship” with Jonathan is rich with suggestiveness, as any number of scholarly studies have recently suggested (e.g., Y. Peleg, JSOT 30 [2005]: 171-89). In order to avoid the anachronism and ethnocentrism that attends some studies of David and Jonathan, this study employs a cross-cultural model of friendship With the help of Aristotelian approaches (Pitt-Rivers, Eric Wolf, Cohen), social functional perspectives (Eisenstadt), and ritualized friendship in ancient Greece, the essay considers these friends especially in terms of fictive kinship, patron-client relations and social network analysis.


All Israel—What Do the Gentiles Have to Do with It?: A Fresh Look at Romans 11:25–27
Program Unit: Pauline Epistles
Jason A. Staples, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Romans 11 is nearly universally cited as evidence either that Paul expected a future eschatological salvation of the Jews or that he took a two-covenant perspective in which all Jews are saved without regard for their faith (or lack thereof) in Jesus. However, both of these theories seem to be at variance with Romans 9:6, where Paul indicates that Israelite status is not dependent on ethnic status or lineage, and Romans 1–4, where he argues against any salvific partiality towards the Jews over and against the Gentiles. If Paul's conception of the fate of Israel was at all consistent, the traditional readings of Romans 11 must be reexamined. This paper argues that “all Israel” in Romans 11:26, rather than simply meaning “all Jews,” must be understood in the light of Romans 11:25, which echoes Jacob's prophecy (Gen 48:19) that Ephraim"s seed will be “the fullness of the nations” (a hapax phrase in the OT)— that is, Paul sees the Gentiles as somehow connected to the scattered northern tribes. Thus, when Paul says “all Israel will be saved,” he is not referencing a future salvation of “all Jews,” but is instead speaking of both houses of Israel—the believing Jews are “the house of Judah,” while the believing Gentiles are “the house of Israel.” To support his case, Paul turns to Hosea, where the northern tribes (“Ephraim”) are scattered among the nations, making them “not my people” (=Gentiles). Paul radically reinterprets Hosea (cf. Rom 9:24–26), seeing the Gentile mission as fulfilling the restoration of the north and as the eschatological reconstitution of Israel since the incorporated Gentiles are actually “Ephraim.” The “full number of the nations” must therefore be incorporated into the new covenant community of Israel if “all Israel” (north and south) is to be saved.


Is There an Iconographic Pattern of the Aqedat Yizkhaq?
Program Unit: Ritual in the Biblical World
Thomas Staubli, University of Fribourg

The binding of Isaac is one of the biblical narratives with a large iconographic echo in the synagogue as well as in the church. The question is, whether this echo is founded on the high religious significance of the narrative only, as believed heretofore, or is there not rather an iconographic tradition older than the narrative. In favor of the second possibility presentations of rituals of consecration and release of men before Gods are put forward as arguments, showing those elements (iconems) figuring in the narrative.


Images as Sources for the Understanding of Biblical Name Theology
Program Unit: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Bible
Thomas Staubli, University of Fribourg

The formulas of the Deuteronomistic name theology are influenced by Mesopotamian royal inscriptions as Sandra Richter (2002) has shown through strictly idiomatic comparisons between biblical and Mesopotamian documents following Barr's method. But for a full understanding of the meaning of name theology we also have to explain the background within which the formulas were so successful. One level of the background is the histoire événementiel of the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar and the reaction of the patriotic party of the city state. A second level of the background is the histoire conjoncturelle of the Mesopotamian hegemony of that time. The third level of the background, emphasized in this paper, is the histoire de longue durée of the local Levantine adaptation of the originally Egyptian name theology. Important elements of this long-term history, evident from stamp seals of the Southern Levant, are (1) the promulgation of name seals by the Hyksos, (2) the placing of the names on standards (as reflected in the Letters of Abdi-Hepa of Jerusalem) under the rulers of the 18th Dynasty, (3) the veneration of the name by Ramesside officials, (3) the theology of Amun, (4) the return of name theology under Shishak and (5) the propaganda of YHWH by personal names. This deep layering of the name theology tradition later gives rise to the Jewish kiddush haShem theology. The tradition is also adapted in the Christian “Lord's Prayer” and in formulations of the Trinity as well as in the Muslim Bismillah tradition.


Ezekiel's Use and Abuse of Corpses
Program Unit: Book of Ezekiel
Francesca Stavrakopoulou, University of Exeter

This paper examines the motifs of interment, disinterment and corpse abuse in the book of Ezekiel. In particular, the discussion focuses on the description of Gog's grave and the devouring of corpses in 39:11-20. Whilst the underworld associations of these traditions have received some attention, neither the precise function of Gog's grave nor the ideological weight of the devoured corpses has been fully explored. This paper examines 39:11-20 in the light of (i) oracles about interment and disinterment elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible; (ii) socio-anthropological and archaeological material concerning the territorial use of burials and the function of corpse abuse in warfare; (iii) the theological dynamics of return from exile in Ezekiel. Accordingly, it is argued that the portrayal of Gog"s grave and the devouring of corpses is concerned not simply with the ritualized cleansing of the land, but with the claiming and marking of territory, legitimizing the exiles" return.


The (In)adequacy of “Man” as an English Equivalent of the Biblical Hebrew Noun 'ish
Program Unit: Bible Translation
David E. S. Stein, Santa Monica, CA

In this paper, I will call into question Section A.4 of the Colorado Springs Guidelines for Translation of Gender-Related Language in Scripture (1997), which stated that the common noun "ish “should ordinarily be translated "man" and "men."” I will argue on the basis of philology and linguistics rather than gender ideology. As I have recently shown, "ish is primarily a relational word, and—like all biblical Hebrew “male” personal nouns (that is, those that have female counterparts)—its “male” semantic component is grammatically suppressed when the word points to a category rather than to a particular individual. (See “The Noun "ish in Biblical Hebrew: A Term of Affiliation,” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, Vol. 8, Art. 1 [2008]; “The Grammar of Social Gender in Biblical Hebrew,” Hebrew Studies, Vol. XLIX [forthcoming in 2008].) In contrast, “man” has limited abilities to convey relationship on the lexical level. On the contextual level, there is even less overlap between the affiliational sense of the two words. Likewise the constructions that suppress the “male” meaning of the two terms are also quite different. Consequently, using “man” to render "ish will usually distort readers" view of the Hebrew text, either by dropping the affiliational semantic component of "ish, or by overtranslating its “male” semantic component, or both. To illustrate the significance of the problem, I will cite sample instances of "ish in Genesis so as to compare the relative success of various contemporary published renditions in avoiding the translation distortions. I will conclude that no matter how literal or idiomatic the translation philosophy, rendering "ish as “man” or “men” should be treated as the exception rather than the rule.


Three Early Personages Connected with the Leningrad Codex
Program Unit: Masoretic Studies
David E. S. Stein, Santa Monica, CA

In honor of the (approximate) 1000th anniversary of the Leningrad Codex (B19A), I propose to sketch a history of three early medieval personages connected with ownership of that work: two of its first owners, and a witness to its purchase. (The facts to be presented are well known to historians of the classical Geniza period in Old Cairo, yet they are not mentioned in the background materials about the Codex that scholars of the Masora typically consult.) The three personages are: (1) Mevorakh ben Joseph ben Netanel ha-Kohen "Ben (W)azdad," the original owner who commissioned the book, and who worked as a jurisconsult and public servant of high standing, (2) Halfon ben Menashe ha-Levi (Ibn al-Qati'if), a court clerk, assistant judge and synagogue cantor (thrived 1100-1138), who signed as witness to the Codex's purchase in 1135 CE by (3) His Eminence Matsliah ben Solomon ha-Kohen, who at the time was one of the most famous Jews alive, with followers as far away as Spain and India praying daily for his welfare. The historical presentation will be built around a reading, translation and running commentary on selected sections of the Codex's carpet pages, of its colophon, and of a bill of sale written on the same page.


Know—Be—Do: Using the Bible to Teach Ethics to Children
Program Unit: Use, Influence, and Impact of the Bible
Valerie A. Stein, University of Evansville

This paper will explore how the Bible has been used to teach both normative and applied ethics to children. Analysis of children's religious education material from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and its predecessor bodies (dating from the late 1800s to the present) will reveal that biblical stories are used both to establish standards for what is right and wrong as well as to demonstrate how to apply those principles to real-world dilemmas. Furthermore, we will see how biblical stories are molded to teach age-appropriate ethical concepts with respect to the developmental capabilities of children, increasingly moving from concrete to abstract ideas. Examining the role of Miriam, Ruth, and Hannah in religious education materials, we will see that the ethical goals of the curriculum take precedence over the details of the biblical story.


Letters of Kings about Votive Offerings, the God of Israel, and the Aramaic Document in Ezra 4:8–6:18
Program Unit: Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah
Andrew E. Steinmann, Concordia University-Chicago

Building on Bill Arnold's thesis that the presence of Aramaic in Ezra presents a shift in perspective to an external point of view, Joshua Berman has theorized that Ezra 4:8—6:18 presents a narrator who is speaking from a gentile point of view as opposed to a Judean voice for the Hebrew that precedes and follows this Aramaic section. However, Berman's thesis does not account for all of the narration in this Aramaic text. Narrative verses that indicate that the controlling voice for the overall narration is Judean are 4:24; 5:1–2; 6:14, 16-18. These verses employ the Judeo-centric characterization of God as “the God of Israel,” (5:1; 6:14) instead of the gentile “their/your God” (5:5; cf. 7:12, 18, 20, 25, 26) or the phrase used by both Judeans and gentiles, “the God of Heaven” (5:11, 12; 6:8, 9; cf. 7:12, 21, 23). Moreover, these verses demonstrate the narrator"s knowledge of the Judean prophets, their names, patronymics and office as prophets (5:1; 6:14), revealing his Judean perspective. Ultimately, this narrator reveals his identity by placing the command of God in dominance over the decrees of Persian kings (6:14) Thus, I propose a new thesis: that the Aramaic text allows outside voices to be heard but not to dominate the narrative. Instead, the controlling narrator is Judean, which is intended to demonstrate that the Judean perspective is able to speak authoritatively not only in its own Hebrew-language milieu, but also in foreign milieus, and that the God of Israel not only uses willing servants among Israel, but also unwitting servants among gentile kings. The literary device of employing Aramaic thus demonstrates that even under foreign dominance, the Judeans will ultimately prosper because their God controls the events of the narrative and speaks through Judean narrators even in a foreign tongue.


The Superiority of Precritical Exegesis Revisited
Program Unit: Theological Interpretation of Scripture
David Steinmetz, Duke Divinity School

A critical reexamination of the hermeneutical and exegetical issues raised by a controversial and widely cited essay I wrote as a pubic lecture and subsequently published in 1980 in Theology Today. The purpose of such a fresh examination is to determine whether the presuppositions and conclusions of that essay need to be modified, abandoned, or reasserted even more strongly in the light of more recent developments in biblical interpretation.


Hebrew Text as Ancient Version: Rethinking the Status of the Masoretic Text in Biblical Studies
Program Unit: Rethinking the Concept and Categories of 'Bible' in Antiquity
Elsie R. Stern, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College

For more than a century, the Masoretic text has been the central object of inquiry for HB/OT/Tanakh scholars, while ancient non-Hebrew versions have primarily served as data for the history of biblical interpretation. This identification of the MT (or proto-MT) as Bible, and the non-Hebrew texts as “ancient versions” made sense when biblical scholars located the main activity of biblical composition and formation in the pre-exilic, exilic and immediate post-exilic periods, and identified the Judean “returnees” and their descendents as the primary determiners of post-exilic Jewish culture. Now, however, many of us look to the Persian and Hellenistic periods as key eras in the formation of biblical texts, and are beginning to recognize powerful diaspora communities as key players in the construction of Jewish culture in these periods. In this paper, I will use the book of Esther as a case-study to demonstrate how our contemporary understanding of the Jewish landscape of the Persian and Hellenistic periods should lead us to reconsider the privileged status of the MT in studies of “the biblical text.” Our limited information about Jewish linguistic competencies in these periods suggests that most Jews encountered the “biblical” texts in Greek or Aramaic versions, while only a small minority of the Jewish population (some subset of Jews in Judea) would have encountered the texts in Hebrew. Consequently, even though the proto-MT of Esther probably preceded the Greek and Aramaic versions, its audience and influence would have been quite limited. The marked differences between the MT Esther and all the non-Hebrew versions should not be read primarily as evidence for belated and reactive “revisions” of an authoritative Hebrew tradition, but rather as testimony to the marginal status of particularly Judean perspectives that are present only in the “limited-run” Hebrew version but absent from the more widespread and widely authorized Greek and Aramaic versions.


POWs and Slaves in the Roman Economy during the Expansion of the Roman Empire
Program Unit: Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy
Gaius Stern, San Jose State University/San Francisco State University

In War and Imperialism in Republican Rome (1985), William V. Harris rejected the Romans' own claim that their growth as an empire resulted from a series of self-defensive wars, arguing instead that the prospects for glory and economic benefit as well as sheer greed led to the Roman conquest of the Mediterranean. Harris' work correctly recognizes these motives in the cases of many specific individuals, but in advocating a theory so close to the Marxist explanation for the imperialism of the Roman Empire, Harris raises the old question "did the quest for new slaves fuel the expansion of the Roman Empire?" In certain cases the answer seems to be yes, but in other cases the answer is very clearly no. When new lands were conquered, the Romans did not systematically enslave the entire population - as the obvious examples of Gaul and Britain indicate. Generally speaking, the sale of slaves was usually a happy by-product of war, rather than a goal unto itself. Were slave labor the real agenda for the expansion of the Roman Empire, a vicious economic cycle would have begun whereby each conquest would have produced more slaves, forcing the next step to be larger to feed a now greater demand and a now larger empire. The fact that this did not occur in itself refutes the Marxist thesis, but Harris (and most others) failed to explain "why not?" Roman imperialism arose from a unique set of cultural qualities which account for why Rome, rather than Carthage, Greece, or Egypt dominated the Mediterranean. The addition of slave labor into this equation muddies the water, but does not alter the fact that because slave labor was such a ubiquitous presence in ancient societies, Romans did not see the potential explosion of slaves for labor as an opportunity so much as an occasional bonanza in the quest to achieve other goals. Furthermore, the three great slave rebellions of Eunus, Tryphon, and Spartacus may have taught the Romans that there was such a thing as too many slaves.


Levitical Paradigms for Christian Bishops: The Old Testament Influence on Origen of Alexandria
Program Unit: Bible in Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Traditions
Bryan A. Stewart, Valparaiso University

It has long been noted that Origen of Alexandria employs the term hiereus to designate the priesthood of Christ, the church, and the spiritually elite. Fewer scholars, however, have emphasized or even recognized that Origen also uses the term hiereus to designate the Christian bishop. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate not only Origen's consistent appropriation of priestly language for Christian leadership, but also the shaping influence of the Old Testament upon Origen's choice of vocabulary and his understanding of leadership functions. Particularly in his homilies on Leviticus, Numbers and Joshua, Origen repeatedly draws upon the ancient Israelite priesthood as a model or “type” for Christian leadership. A number of explanations may be offer as to why this bishop-priest connection has been downplayed or missed altogether, but for the purposes of this paper, I suggest there has been a fundamental failure to appreciate the immense influence which the biblical narrative of the Old Testament had on both Origen"s ecclesiology and his views of Christian leadership. More precisely, as Origen assumes an ecclesiological continuity between Israel and the Christian community, it drives him to read and appropriate the Old Testament patterns of Israelite leadership (seen especially in the Levitical priesthood), as a working typology for his understanding of Christian leadership. Thus, as much as Origen has been cast as a philosopher in Christian guise, it is his thoroughly biblical grounding in the Old Testament that guides and shapes his thinking about both the Christian community and Christian leadership. As a result, when Origen speaks of the Christian bishop as a hiereus, it is a clear example of just one way in which Origen"s interest in and attention to the Old Testament has shaped his understanding of Christian reality.


Text, Context, and Logical Analysis: A Reexamination of the Use of Psalm 82 in John 10:31–39
Program Unit: Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity
Bryan A. Stewart, Valparaiso University

Understanding the referent and logic of Psalm 82.6 (“I said you are gods”) as used in John 10 remains a difficult and controversial task for Johannine scholars. Some suggest that Jesus' argument is evasive at best, disingenuous and deceptive at worst. Others have attempted to construct elaborate syllogisms to prove (or disprove) the validity of Jesus' logic. The aim of this paper is to provide further reflection on the Johannine use of Psalm 82 by merging a broader contextual examination with an analysis of formal logic. Recognizing the range of interpretive options in understanding the referent in Psalm 82, I argue that the broader and more immediate contextual theme of judgment in the Johannine gospel (recurring twenty-nine times), strongly suggests that the “gods” of Psalm 82.6 are understood as human judges in John 10. In turn, Jesus" appropriation of Psalm 82.6 becomes an intertextual application and condemnation of his opponents as erring judges who stand before the identified “Son of God.” Having understood the implied referent in the psalm, a fuller analysis of Jesus" argument becomes possible, seen as a qal wahomer argument moving from the lesser (human judges as "gods") to the greater (Jesus as the 'son of God"). The key is to avoid misidentifying Jesus" logic as a deductive argument requiring syllogistic proofs. Rather, as an inductive argument, Jesus" logic proceeds along the lines of analogy, and as such, not only avoids the error of logical invalidity, but also reinforces the contextual theme of judgment. By identifying the situation at hand as analogous to that of Psalm 82, and employing a qal wahomer argument, Jesus" opponents are rebuked for failing to judge correctly, while the Johannine theme of Jesus as “Son of God” is reaffirmed.


Ethiopic Manuscripts and Their Study at the Hill Museum and Manuscripts Library
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible
Columba Stewart, Hill Museum and Manuscripts Library

This presentation will be part of a larger session on Ethiopic Manuscripts in North America and their Availability for Research. The Hill Museum and Manuscripts Library holds the largest collections of Ethiopic manuscript images in North America, if not the world. We will discuss the provenance and nature of the collection as well as the status of the cataloguing and digitization, and plans for access to the collection. Finally, we will list the manuscripts of the Ge'ez Bible which we hold.


Regulating the Gentile Other: The “Apostles” Read the Priestly Work
Program Unit: Biblical Law
David Tabb Stewart, California State University, Long Beach

The Apostolic Decree of the putative Jerusalem Council, found at Acts 15:19-21, 29 and 21:25, appears to read two prior Priestly texts. The question resolved—Shall Gentile converts keep Jewish Law?—finds answers through reading Genesis 9 and its Holiness Code commentary in Leviticus 17-18. Pauline commentary in 1 Corinthians 5:1-11:1 enlarges on and adumbrates the several elements of the decree. Collectively, these form a Bakhtinian chain of utterances, or better, a great chain of reading. Genesis 9:1-7 with its blood rules, followed by the Yahwistic story of Ham's incursion on Noah's nakedness, provide fodder for commentary at the beginning of the Holiness Code. Leviticus 17 elaborates the blood rules into five laws; Leviticus 18 picks up the theme of the father"s nakedness. In the Genesis passage laws are given to all humanity, or a curse passes to progeny; in the Holiness Code, laws of blood handling apply to resident aliens as well as citizen Israelites. The text of Acts signals the sources of the decree not only by similarity in topics—eating blood, offering blood sacrifice to idols, and generalized porneia— but also by appropriating a biblical convention for quotation—Seidel"s rule, or the inversion in the phenotext of elements from the genotext.


Say Now “Shibboleth”: Queer Words at Work in Worship
Program Unit: African-American Biblical Hermeneutics
Raedorah C. Stewart, Pasadena, CA

The case and cause that among the faithful called Christians are Queer worshippers has been clearly, albeit not always comfortably, acknowledged. Both adversaries with stalwart defense of an interpretation of scripture which admonishes one to “love the sinner but not the sin” and advocates of a radically inclusive hermeneutic of personhood among the milieu defining a “whosoever” theology have just enough in common – the Bible – to create a dichotomy of words in place of community for worship. Joint ownership of the sacred text (for the intent of this proposal I solely address the Christian Canon) for use in worship and scholastic work is litigated with passion by both factions. Lost in this cauldron of malcontent is the intent and simple use of the Word of God to the end that “through the Word we are put together and shaped up for the tasks God has for us” [2 Timothy 3:17, The Message]. 'say Now, Shibboleth: Queer Words at Work in Worship,” models for and equips queer and hetero-queer worship leaders, liturgists and clergy in hearing, seeing, and using the Word not only as an attempt at using inclusive language, but to also cull distinctively queer language to become a familiar tone in the worship experience. Guided by the Christian liturgical calendar, “Say Now, Shibboleth” would include sermons, meditations, illustrations, liturgies, prayers and songs for each season, including: Advent, Annunciation, Ascension, Assumption, Christmas, Easter, Epiphany, Eucharist, Lent, Holy Week, Pentecost and Ordinary Time. Original and adapted liturgies are especially solicited for queer-unique “high holy days” (i.e., coming out, negotiating staying in, unions/marriage, blending families, same sex parenting, queer"d violence, etc.). On the table, even at this stage of proposing this discussion, is the ethical quandary of some contributors choosing, even needing, to use pseudonyms to delay incidental outing and from coming under fire from their denominations and colleagues who have yet to learn to “say it right.” Acquiring contributors this way will certainly lend to gender, orientation, cultural, denominational and interpretive diversity. “Say Now, Shibboleth: Queer Words at Work in Worship,” would instruct those seeking and show forth that an aspirant lisp does not indicate a spiritual limp. May this book teach more to “say it right.”


Qumran Life Cycle Rituals
Program Unit: Ritual in the Biblical World
Daniel Stoekl Ben Ezra, Centre National de la recherche scientifique

The collection of about 1000 manuscripts from around 300 BC to 70 AD found at Qumran near the Dead Sea includes an abundance of texts linked to rituals. In dialogue with Russell Arnold's recent typology of these rituals, I shall first engage with his basis - Catherine Bell's work - from a methodological standpoint and with Arnold"s application of Bell"s typology. Finally, I shall address the seeming absence or “under representation” of life cycle rituals in Qumran texts.


“Do Not Pray for This People,” “for I Will No Longer Pass Them By”: Intercession in Jeremiah and Amos
Program Unit: Book of the Twelve Prophets
Jonathan Stökl, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University

The books of Amos and Jeremiah are often adduced as evidence for the thesis that part of the office or role of an Israelite prophet was intercession with YHWH on behalf of Israel. This view is persistent and can be found in very recent publications. The basis in the text of this view is not unambiguous. The link to the prophetic tradition is limited on deuteronomistic literature; even Samuel and Moses are not very fervent intercessors. The literary structure of intercession in the book of Jeremiah, is even more ambiguous about the nature of the link of Jeremiah to intercession. Amos" intercession is not unambiguous either: Amos only intercedes within the cycles of visions. Their structure points towards the annunctiation of final destruction from the beginning. This shows a similarity with the structure in Jeremiah, which seems alien to that book. Following these ambiguities and the expectations of almost everybody (YHWH, Israel, the reader – but curiously enough, not Jeremiah himself), I propose that intercession was introduced to Jeremiah as part of a fairly late and overall composition. Indeed Amos intercession, whether deuteronomistic themselves or not, might well have been Urzelle of the tradition of prophetic intercession.


Singing Moses' Song
Program Unit: Performance Criticism of the Bible and Other Ancient Texts
Keith Stone, Harvard University

The Song of Moses (Deut 32:1–43) may have a much earlier origin than the materials that surround it in the later layers of Deuteronomy, and conjectures about the Song's original performance setting cannot be more precise than those made in general for early Hebrew poetry. However, the framing material in Deuteronomy makes certain explicit prescriptions for the Song's performance, very similar to what is prescribed for the Torah itself. Observing that performance implies the enactment of characters appearing within a composition as well as the recollection or re-enactment of the personas of earlier performers—when this takes place within a tradition of performance—this paper will examine the elaborate ways in which performing and performed characters interact in the Song of Moses and will relate this interaction to what may be surmised about the goals of the Deuteronomic writers.


The Dogs of Exodus and the Question of the Animal
Program Unit: Semiotics and Exegesis
Ken Stone, Chicago Theological Seminary

A growing number of philosophers, critical theorists, and literary scholars – but few biblical scholars – have recently turned their attention to “the question of the animal.” This question often concerns the meaning or significance of the various lines that humans draw between themselves and other animals. Such discussions sometimes reference a short piece by Levinas titled “The Name of a Dog, or Natural Rights.” Several commentators note critically that even if this piece gestures toward a more serious role for animals in ethical philosophy, Levinas" overall stance remains firmly centered on the human. Although most of these commentators refer to Bobby, the named dog in Levinas" piece who greets Jewish prisoners in Nazi Germany and affirms their humanity, less attention has been given to the dogs of Exodus 22 and 11 who also appear in Levinas" essay. However, while the dogs of Exodus 11 are associated with Bobby by Levinas because they do not growl at the Israelites, those dogs actually recognize not only Israelite humans but also, explicitly, Israelite animals. Elsewhere in chapter 11, moreover, firstborn Egyptian animals will die alongside firstborn Egyptian humans. Though neither Levinas nor most of his readers comment on this fact, the biblical text thus appears to redraw the relationships among humans and other animals in a complex fashion. Taking its point of departure from the dogs of Exodus, my paper therefore reflects on some of the ways in which biblical interpretation might contribute to, but also be reshaped by, discussions of “the question of the animal.” It asks how the meanings found in biblical texts change when those texts are read in terms of the appearance of animals; and how the attempts by critical theorists to understand animals can be re-read alongside biblical texts.


Eglon's Belly and Ehud's Blade: A Reconsideration
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible, History, and Archaeology
Lawson Stone, Asbury Theological Seminary

Scholars traditionally interpret the story of Ehud's murder of Eglon as a wily assassin using a short, custom-made dagger to murder an obese tyrant with a single deadly thrust that left the blade snagged in the folds of royal blubber. This image, however, cannot withstand close scrutiny of the language of the text, which presents a more difficult picture that can only best be clarified with reference to Iron Age material culture. This paper will employ philological, archaeological, and physiological data to frame a different picture of the story, namely: that (a) Eglon was not a passive, obese victim; (b) Ehud's sword was not a small dagger but a short sword of a design well-known to Mediterranean archaeology, but which was new to the narrator in Judges 3. The circumstantial detail of the narrative reveals the narrator's fascination with certain Iron-Age innovations in warcraft that, by Iron II, would be taken for granted and passed over without notice.


Ruth, Figured in, Figured out, and Reconfigured: The Compilational History of Ruth in the Canon
Program Unit: The Bible in Ancient (and Modern) Media
Timothy Stone, University of St. Andrews-Scotland

Often the order of the books in the OT canon is considered an anachronistic concern, but within the canonical process there appears to be a search to find, fitting contexts within which to figure books into the canon. The book of Ruth is an excellent example of this. It appears to have been outfitted to broker more than one way of being figured into the canon. In the LXX tradition Ruth has been figured into the Deuteronomistic History after Judges and before Samuel. There is evidence for this in the use of catchlines and thematic connections that bind Ruth into the context in the Deuteronomistic History. In this context, many have interpreted the book to be about the upstanding character of Ruth and Boaz when seen against the dark days of the Judges. Or, on the other hand, it defends the linage of David and his monarchy found in Samuel and Kings. Again, in this context the focus is on the exceptional character of Ruth and Boaz, the worthy ancestors of David. In the Masoretic canon Ruth is found in the Writings after Proverbs. Here the book is figured into a wisdom and postexilic context. The close connections to Proverbs 31 provide a different context from the Deuteronomistic History for the character of Ruth, which results in Ruth playing the role of wisdom personified. The other parabolic elements in the book and the postexilic context of the book bring into focus the central role that Naomi plays in the narrative. The exile, return to emptiness, and subsequent renewed life of Naomi make her a type of the nation of Israel. In this light, David's past transcends its historical roots and strongly speaks hope to the exiles that have returned to the land, yet without a Davidic king.


New Community Formation: Samaritans and Lehites
Program Unit: Latter-day Saints and the Bible
Gaye Strathearn, Brigham Young University

Shemaryahu Talmon has argued that "the cataclysmic events of 586 BCE, that is, the destruction of the Temple, the capture of Jerusalem, and the concomitant loss of political sovereignty" led to "two pivotal aspects of the socioreligious transformation" in ancient Israel. These pivotal aspects of transformation included, "(1) changes in the internal structure of Israelite society and in the interaction of the main societal agents of leadership: king, priest, and prophet; and (2) the transformation from the preexilic monocentric nation, defined by the geopolitical borders of the Land of Israel, to the postexilic people characterized by a multicentricity resulting from deportations and voluntary or semivoluntary emigration" (“The Emergence of Jewish Sectarianism in the Early Second Temple Period,” in Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross; ed. Patrick D. Miller, Jr., Paul D. Hanson, S. Dean McBride [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987], 591). For this paper, I will focus on the second of Talmon's points. Prior to the destruction of the temple and the subsequent exile of some of the Judahites, the sense of shared traditions, common ethnicity and historical past enabled both the northern and southern kingdoms of Israel to maintain a certain cohesiveness, despite their political separation. According to Talmon, that separation “was generally considered a temporary breach that would be healed at some future time in history” (p. 592). The exile, however, shattered this shared sense that came from the “geopolitical borders of the Land of Israel.” Communities sprang up in Babylon, Egypt, and in the Americas. Even those who remained in the land of Israel had to find ways to adjust and establish their identity. Although all of these groups continued to share a commitment to Yahweh through an emphasis on temple, scripture, and priesthood, they each developed them in ways that were unique to their individual communities. I will examine each of these areas as they pertain to two groups who emerged from this cataclysmic time. Lehi and his descendants were embroiled in the events leading up to the destruction of the temple while, for the people of Samaria, those events created a rippling effect that would eventually cause the Samaritans to have to deal with similar questions of identity. Neither of these groups technically belongs to the group of Judahites who lived in Jerusalem because they claim their lineage from the northern tribes, particularly Joseph. Nevertheless, it was the events surrounding the destruction of the Jerusalem temple that was the catalyst for the genesis of each of their communities.


The Iconography of Fear: yir'at yhwh in Artistic Perspective
Program Unit: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Bible
Brent A. Strawn, Emory University

This essay begins with a question that often emerges among contemporary readers of the Bible: why is the word used in the Hebrew Bible for obedience to and worship of the Lord “fear”? This problem is not solely one of translation because the same verbal root is used to describe real, visceral fear as well as the “fear of the LORD” (yir'at yhwh). Again, why? What might explain the “dual use” (if it is that) of yr' as a term appropriate for “true” fear as well as for the proper response to (affect state?) and behavior toward (ethical stance?) Yahweh? Prior scholarship has offered a number of answers to these questions. Many of these focus on fine nuances of yir'at yhwh in its literary contexts. Others delineate differences in usage based on diachronic reconstruction of the various strands or traditions that employ the phrase. The present study looks at this question from another angle and by means of a different, under-utilized lens: that of iconography. When one looks at images alongside the texts, the “dual use” of fear and its specific use in the phrase yir'at yhwh becomes both more understandable and more imaginable. The question that is often asked by contemporary readers turns out to not be a problem in the ancient world; the question of the “dual use” of yr' is solved – or at least seen – in the light of iconography.


A Shameful Death: Burying Egypt in Judah's Stead in Ezekiel 32:17–32
Program Unit: Israelite Prophetic Literature
John T. Strong, Missouri State University

In his final oracle against Egypt, the priest/prophet Ezekiel forms a powerful poetic depiction of Egypt being commanded to go down into Sheol and lie down with the dead nation Assyria (32:17–32). This passage was set at the end of a string of oracles against Egypt, which, as will be argued, was written by the prophet as a unified collection of oracles against Judah's ally in its struggles in 587/6. This climactic oracle draws upon funerary rites from the Iron Age along with accompanying beliefs about death reflected in these customs, which, as were utilized by the prophet, depict Egypt's burial as a shameful, ignominious death, only underscored by the contrast to the honorable death of the military heroes (cf. 32:21). Most interesting, Ezekiel"s elaborate depiction of Egypt"s burial stands in further contrast to the complete absence of a burial or even an explicit mention of the death of Judah. In fact, the decomposition and secondary burial of Egypt contained in Ezek 32:17–32 is never carried out for Judah, but in an astonishing turn of events, is actually reversed in the vision of the dry bones, which narrates that once again the nation will take on tendons and flesh (Ezek 37:1–14). Indeed, Ezekiel"s message to his exilic audience ultimately stated that it was Egypt that had died in 587/6, not Judah!


How Remarkable Is Artapanus? Questions of Authorship and Jewish Identity in Artapanus' Work on Moses
Program Unit: Hellenistic Judaism
Christopher Stroup, Yale University

This paper examines how the narrative development of Artapanus" extant work on Moses can be used to shed light on interpretations of the work. Throughout the first half of the work Moses is a quintessential Egyptian hero. He is the founder of cults and temples and loyal to the kingdom even after an assassination attempt. In the second half of the work, Moses is, more or less, similar to the Jewish hero of Exodus who opposes the king with divine power. This paper asks how such disparate views of Moses can be explained and examines some of the underlying questions surrounding the ethnicity of the author. Through an analysis of the text, it is observed that Moses" Jewish identity is absent from much of the first half of the work. As the work progresses, however, Moses" role as an Egyptian hero is deemphasized and his place as a Jewish hero reinforced. This shift culminates in a divine encounter near the middle of the work. After this encounter, Moses, the one who has been described as the founder of much Egyptian culture, is now the liberator of the Jews. I suggest that this narrative development gives insight into the identity of the author of the work. Artapanus" Moses is not a Deuteronomical monotheist, but is an Egyptian Jew who, though reluctant to oppose his country and adoptive family, follows the command of God. On this view, Artapanus supports interests of the country but not at the expense of disobeying a divine command. Because of this he cannot be relegated to the discrete religious categories of “pagan” or “Jewish” as they are typically conceived and should not be judged based on “orthodox” claims formulated in the Common Era, but should be allowed to speak in his own time and place.


Indebted Love: Paul and the Politics of Poverty and Human Flourishing
Program Unit: African-American Biblical Hermeneutics
Monya A. Stubbs, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary

Over the last ten years, Christian conversations on world poverty and human development have largely been undergirded by the biblical concept of Jubilee. Old Testament scholar Gerald West describes the Jubilee as "a legal, structural, mechanism to ensure that there was no systematic relationship between wealth and poverty, between rich and poor.… Jubilee laws provide legal protection for those who have become poor (including land) and in so doing they break the cycle of debt and enslavement; the Jubilee laws prevented the rich from becoming "the oppressor" (and the poor from becoming "oppressed")." Unfortunately, in my opinion, the concept of Jubilee proves ineffective for our contemporary context, because Jubilee does not give us adequate language to access the historical events that often shape situations of economic injustice that arise because of a relational reality of wealth and poverty, rich and poor, oppressed and oppressor. For Christian believers who today struggle with the issues of world poverty and human development, a more timely and challenging language/concept is needed. Through an indebted love to neighbors, as described in the writings of the Apostle Paul, I argue, we in fact live into the nearness of God's salvation power. In this light, perhaps the best way for Christian believers to enter into a discernment process about eliminating systemic world poverty and advancing human flourishing is to understand that we are in fact indebted to those (and that which ) we seek to help. Perhaps we, like Paul, must employ the language most familiar in our normative context, reshape it and use it as an interpretive grid for our only faithful response to systemic world poverty – its elimination.


Enoch as Seer and Sage in the Early Enochic Tradition
Program Unit: Mysticism, Esotericism, and Gnosticism in Antiquity
Loren Stuckenbruck, Durham University

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Are Individual Complaint Psalms Prayers? Prospects and Problems
Program Unit: Lament in Sacred Texts and Cultures
W. Derek Suderman, University of Waterloo

Although many scholars describe prayer as conversation with or direct speech to God the common claim that "individual complaints are prayers" proves untenable in light of this definition. The extent of address to audiences other than the divine within Psalms generally categorized as individual complaints requires that one either modifies this common definition of prayer or revises the category of individual complaints. This paper clarifies the relationship between prayer and individual complaints by outlining several plausible options for resolving this difficulty as well as providing a case study of the confusion that results from mixing such possibilities.


Of Gates in the Ground and Castles in the Air: A Case of Biblical Unreal Estate
Program Unit: Space, Place, and Lived Experience in Antiquity
Carla Sulzbach, McGill University

The latter part of Psalm 24 describes the personified gates of Jerusalem as raising themselves up in order to allow the King of Glory to enter. This, in addition to the rest of the strong mythical overtones of the psalm, creates an image of architecture coming alive to join in the celebratory entry of the divine ruler. There are numerous, but no definitive, suggestions as to the identity of who or what is supposed to be entering the gates and under what circumstances as well as how the raising gates are to be understood. This paper will argue that the psalm only supplies half the data and that it forms the optimistic complementary ending to the anguished cry of despair of Lam. 2:8-9. Applying critical spatial analysis to these two texts in addition to other supporting material will not only show that one is a response to the other, but will also provide a more secure dating for the psalm and its social setting as well as a clearer understanding of the specific metaphor of personified architecture.


The Household Code of Colossians as Hidden Transcript
Program Unit: Disputed Paulines
Jerry L. Sumney, Lexington Theological Seminary

The household codes of the later Pauline letters are often read as retreats from the more egalitarian view found in the authentic letters. This paper will set the Colossian code in its literary and historical context in ways that suggest that we should read it as what James Scott calls a “hidden transcript.” Empire language in the letter, the elements mentioned in its virtue lists, and cues in the Code itself indicate that its demands cannot be read as unqualified commands. Indeed, rather than phrases such as “in the Lord” being mere Christianizing glosses, they are the key to understanding the hidden ethic the Code enjoins. Reading in this way allows us to translate some parts of the Code in more natural ways than what we find in most translations and commentaries.


Paul and Other Christians
Program Unit: Extent of Theological Diversity in Earliest Christianity
Jerry L. Sumney, Lexington Theological Seminary

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Samuel's Institutional Identity in the Deuteronomistic History
Program Unit: Prophetic Texts and Their Ancient Contexts
Marvin A. Sweeney, Claremont School of Theology

Samuel is well-recognized in the Deuteronomistic History (DtrH) as the primary leader of Israel during its transition from the period of the Judges to the period of the early monarchy. Nevertheless, his institutional identity is unclear, insofar as he functions as a visionary prophet, priest, military commander, and judge in the narratives of 1 Samuel. In this respect, he is very much like Moses, who embodies a similar set of roles in Exodus—Numbers and Deuteronomy, and he resembles to a degree Elijah and Elisha, who are identified as prophets and yet carry out priestly functions in the narratives devoted to their activities in 1-2 Kings. Although Chronicles includes Samuel and his father Elkanah in the Levitical genealogies, the narratives in 1 Samuel make it quite clear that Elkanah is an Ephraimite and that Samuel is the first born son to Elkanah's wife Hannah. Insofar as statements by YHWH in Numbers 3 indicate that the first-born sons of Israel originally served as priests before being replaced by the Levites, it would seem that Samuel represents an early example of such a priest, first-born to his mother and deposited in the Shiloh sanctuary to be raised as a priest. This paper examines the question of Samuel's institutional identity in light of these considerations, and argues he represents a model of priest known in northern Israel, but not in southern Judah where the Levitical priesthood was dominant. Insofar as the DtrH is committed both to the notion of a Levitical priesthood as YHWH"s cultic representatives in the Temple, it constructs Samuel as a prophet so that he might function as one of the spokespersons of YHWH that play such key roles throughout its presentation of Israel"s history.


Sociorhetorical Commentary on the Wisdom of Solomon (1:1–11)
Program Unit: Rhetoric of Religious Antiquity
Dennis Sylva, Saint Francis Seminary

This paper is a study of Wis 1:1-11 from the perspectives of the textual, intertextual, social and cultural, and ideological matrices of this passage. The attempt is to engage in the method developed by Vernon Robbins to explore its heuristic strength in commentary writing. Robbins' concern with the visual imagery in a text and with the types of discourse generated by a text will also be woven into this example of sociorhetorical commentary.


The Hittite išhiul- and the Biblical Covenant Rediscussed
Program Unit: Hebrew Scriptures and Cognate Literature
Ada Taggar-Cohen, Doshisha University

The Hittite išhiul- as understood today by Hittitologists is a literary genre within the Hittite legal texts. In 1954 Mendenhall presented Joshua 24 as reflecting in its literary structure a form of the ancient Near Eastern political treaty, mainly comparing it with the Hittite išhiul-texts. The main component of the literary text of Joshua 24, included, according to Mendenhall, the presentation of the monarch, who in this case is replaced by YHWH, imposing a vassal treaty upon the people of Israel. In the last two decades this understanding has been strongly criticized, and only recently N. Weeks tried to re-asses the validity of this comparison, without reaching a decisive conclusion. In recent years Hittitologists have shown new understandings of this literary genre. The Hittite king issued išhiul-texts, which included all the obligations of his subjected people, who are regarded as the king's servants. Those obligations are actually set up in the text as instructions from the king to his subjects. The išhiul -texts are known to have been written, beside for vassal kings as political texts, for the Hittite king's nobles, commanders of the border garrison, the king"s body-guards, the palace servants, the king"s cooks, as well as for the priests, who were regarded as the king"s servants for divine worship. In fact any servant of the king had to be under an išhiul. Within this framework I would like to return to Joshua 24 and discuss its contents in light of the Hittite išhiul-texts.


Editorial Work and the Case of Joshua 24: Joshua 24 and the “Holiness School”
Program Unit: Deuteronomistic History
Ada Taggar-Cohen, Doshisha University

Joshua 24, a chapter usually considered as an independent literary unite appended to the book of Joshua, occupied the interest of biblical scholarship mainly in the context of Old Testament covenant. Several layers of redaction were suggested for the chapter, and two main periods were thus proposed for its composition: either during the eight century BCE (pre-exilic text), or later, during the fifth century. It is clear that the author of Josh. 24 was familiar with the sources of the Pentateuch, but the chapter also uses phrases from the early prophets and some scholars argue for later ones such as Ezekiel and Jeremiah, and perhaps even Nehemiah. As an independent unit, Joshua 24 shows a complex language with characteristics revealing a creative use of vocabulary and style, in an attempt to present a new description of the Israelite history and the introduction of a new covenant between YHWH and his people. In the last decade Israel Knohl have presented an innovative approach to the understanding of the priestly source H (=Holiness), as the product of a school of priests. According to him, this source, which should be regarded as separate from P, offered a new concept for the understanding of Israel's relationship with its God YHWH. Knohl recognized editorial evidence of the “Holiness School” in the Pentateuch, and also in the Book of Joshua. Following his contribution, as well as the important commentaries offered by J. Milgrom on the priestly work, this paper will argue that Joshua 24, a unique chapter with strong roots in the tradition of Ephraim, presents a special concept of the relationship with YHWH, and should be ascribed to the “Holiness School” for reasons of language and content, as well as ideology.


Ethnic Identities of the Indigenous Coinages of Palestine under Achaemenid Rule
Program Unit: Literature and History of the Persian Period
Oren Tal, Tel Aviv University

The coins of Philistia, Samaria, and Judah dated to the fifth and fourth centuries BC, represent the main artistic and in some cases religious material evidence related with certainty to the population of ancient Palestine. “Pictures are a more permanent and immediate form of communication than words, and even than writing, especially where literacy was slight .… What those pictures were, reflects on the society they served” (Boardman 2000). Furthermore, we assume that the motifs chosen for these coins functioned as permanent and immediate forms of communication, especially in an age in which coins were the principal form of “mass media,” and were regarded primarily as statements of municipal, dynastic, or religious power. These images reflect contemporary fashions, foreign influences and a broad local imagery found only on these coins. The iconography of the indigenous coinages of Palestine was influenced by Western (Greek, Eastern Greek and Southern Anatolian), Eastern (Phoenician and Achaemenid in the broad sense of the term), and Egyptian sources. However, the most striking influence on the Philistian coinage is notably Athenian, that on the Samarian coins was remarkably Achaemenid and the influence on the coinage of Judah is principally Athenian and Achaemenid. The people of ancient Palestine adopted and adapted these foreign motifs for local use. Local designs, in many cases, resemble the original foreign motifs. In a period when identity was mostly indigenous, coins formed part of the shared social and cultural resources of a given urban center. Palestinian coins served as a means of political control. They were also a form of communication between the authorities and the inhabitants of their regions of circulation, transmitting information through certain motifs. This paper will examine selected Palestinian coin-motifs in their social contexts and will focus on the image of the Achaemenid Great King on Philistian, Samarian and Judean issues of the Persian period.


Cultic Christology and the Una Sancta: Jesus Christ's Priestly Agency in the Fourth Gospel
Program Unit: Christian Theology and the Bible
Luke Ben Tallon, University of St. Andrews-Scotland

Since at least the time of Cyprian, Jesus" seamless cloak (Jn. 19:23-24) has been understood to represent the una sancta ecclesia. This connection has been made through Josephus's description of the robe of the high priest as being woven of one thread. Further support for linking the unity of the Church and the priestly office of Christ has been found in John 17, a prayer that 1) includes intercession for the unity of the Church and 2) is formally similar to the prayer of the high priest in Leviticus. However, these connections between the priesthood of Jesus Christ and the unity of believers have often been perceived as incidental. This paper will explore the way in which priestly agency is part of the warp and weft of the Gospel of John and how this agency is the sine qua non of the una sancta. In order to do this, I first will develop a paradigm for priestly agency based on Exodus and Leviticus. In constructing this paradigm, I will draw not only on instances of Levitical and Aaronic priesthood, but also consider the priestly agency of Moses. Second, I will use this paradigm to highlight Christ's priestly agency in John"s Gospel and its connection to belief and the unity of believers. The reticence in some quarters of contemporary biblical scholarship to speak of Jesus Christ"s priesthood in John will be briefly addressed in this section. Third and finally, I will note the implications of this understanding of the unity of the Church for contemporary ecclesiology. Throughout, I will rely upon commentators and theologians ancient and contemporary to illumine the exploration.


Multiple Approaches to Corpus Linguistic Study of Greek Word Order
Program Unit: Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics
Randall K. J. Tan, Kentucky Christian University

With the advent of the OpenText.org clause and word group level annotations of the Greek New Testament, comprehensive corpus linguistic study of word order and clause structure in the Greek New Testament has become a possibility. Additional electronically annotated and searchable databases are also underway. Having been intimately involved with the OpenText.org project and now also newly involved in the Greek Treebank project of the Asia Bible Society, this presenter will compare and contrast the data on Greek word order and clause structure yielded by both annotated corpuses as well as explore the theoretical and practical implications.


Wisdom of Solomon in the Old Testament of the Armenian Church
Program Unit: Bible in Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Traditions
Anoushavan Tanielian, Armenian Apostolic Church of America

The Church fathers of the first three centuries of Christianity speak of an apocryphal book known as "The Wisdom of Solomon"-also known as "The Book of the Great Wisdom of Solomon" and "The Divine Wisdom" and "All Virtuous Wisdom"- which they use in their homilies and teachings. This apocryphal document is known in many versions including Syriac, Greek, Latin and Armenian. The paper will explore the Armenian version of this apocryphon. Utilizing medieval Armenian commentaries, including the 12 century commentary by St. Nersess of Lambron (1153-1198), the paper will examine the association of The Wisdom of Solomon with the Old Testament canon, and its use in the Armenian Church.


Theology of Metaphor, Gaps, and Ellipses: The Psalms as the Canvas of Theological Reflection
Program Unit: Book of Psalms
Beth LaNeel Tanner, New Brunswick Theological Seminary

Over the centuries, several proposals have been presented concerning the theology of the psalms. Some deal with describing the movement within the psalms and/ or the psalter itself while others propose a center or overarching theme; still others offer that the center remains in the purpose or use of the psalms. What has not been fully recognized in these discussions is the very fluid and reader-dependent purpose of poetic verse. Could it be that the real theology of the psalms is forged in the soul of the ones who drink in their words and bumps and gaps? Is the theological center the transformation of one to a greater understanding of God and self? If this is indeed the case, then the psalms are freed from arguments about centers and important metaphors. There is no longer talk of what is the theology of the psalms and instead the theologies discerned from the psalms become avenues for hearing new truths. This paper will argue that the theology of the psalms lies in the individual psalms and the psalter itself. The metaphors, gaps, and ellipses of the psalms should be understood more like the paints from which one can create Rembrandt's “Return of the Prodigal Son” and also van Gough's “Good Samaritan.” Both represent a vision of a biblical story, yet do so in very different


The Place of Human Sacrifice in the Israelite Cult
Program Unit: Sacrifice, Cult, and Atonement
Jason Tatlock, Armstrong Atlantic State University

Animal, rather than human, sacrifice is the more widely recognized form of appropriate immolation within Israelite religion. Several biblical texts engender such a perspective by positioning human sacrifice at the fringes of Israelite cultic practice. It is no wonder then that exegetes frequently regard the sacrifice of humans as an extreme practice or an aberrant rite. Yet, scholars do not always pause to consider the purpose of human immolation within the broader sacrificial system. This study seeks to address this omission by comparing animal to human sacrifice in terms of geographical location and functional position. It will take as its point of departure Micah 6, which ponders the necessity of utilizing human and animal victims for propitiatory and expiatory purposes. While the author ultimately elevates justice, loyalty, and humility above immolation, he nonetheless poses the query by referencing a sacrificial system which knows of both human and animal sacrifice. Several additional passages will be examined with the intent of elucidating the various roles played by human sacrifice within the Israelite cult, but the Deuteronomistic corpus (e.g., Judges 11; 1 Samuel 15; 2 Kings 23) will be of utmost importance due to its particular emphasis on human sacrifice in contrast to other biblical traditions.


The Rhetorical Differences between 2 Corinthians 10–13 and 1–9
Program Unit: Second Corinthians: Pauline Theology in the Making
Gregory Tatum, École Biblique

The arguments concerning the central issues of 2 Corinthians (the nature of Paul's ministry, the comparison with opponents, and the defense of weakness/affliction) shift between chapters 10-13 and 1-9. After a novel reconstruction of the interim events, Galatians is interposed between the two letters which make up canonical 2 Corinthians to account for this rhetorical shift.


Philo of Alexandria, On the Contemplative Life: Commentary
Program Unit: Philo of Alexandria
Joan E. Taylor, Waikato University, New Zealand

In this session, the Philo of Alexandria Group invites Joan Taylor to speak about her forthcoming translation and commentary on Philo's De Vita Contemplativa (On the Contemplative Life).


Reading the Story of Jephthah's Daughter with Our Foremothers
Program Unit: Recovering Female Interpreters of the Bible
Marion Taylor, Wycliffe College

Modern feminists are not the only readers to be troubled by the story of Jephthah's daughter in Judges 11. Our forgotten nineteenth-century foremothers also wrestled with the silences and ambiguities in the story and tried to find something redemptive in it. In this paper I will show that the interpretations of three American women, novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe, dramatist Adelia Graves, and poet Caroline Howard Gilman, anticipate many of the concerns of modern feminists such as Phyllis Trible. Through this investigation of their interpretive strategies, our forgotten foremothers help us face the story's interpretive challenges.


The UCLA Collection of Ethiopic Manuscripts
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible
Melaku Terefe, Ethiopian Orthodox Church, Los Angeles

This presentation will be part of a larger session on Ethiopic Manuscripts in North America and their Availability for Research. UCLA holds one of the largest collections of Ethiopic manuscripts in North America. Kesis Melaku Terefe has catalogued the collection. We will discuss the provenance and nature of the collection as well as the status of the cataloguing and digitization, and plans for access to the collection. Finally, we will list the manuscripts of the Ge'ez Bible which we hold.


Miriam as Visionary? The Figure of Miriam in Pseudo-Philo and 4QVisions of Amram
Program Unit: Pseudepigrapha
Hanna Tervanotko, University of Helsinki/University of Vienna

The figure of Miriam is referred to as “prophetesses” in Ex 15:20. As this description of Miriam is exceptional, it asks for explanation. What is the connection of Miriam to prophesy? Early Jewish literature has preserved various passages that link Miriam to visionary acts. 4QVisions of Amram (4Q546, frag 12, 4) mentions a secret (raz) of Miriam. In the Aramaic Jewish literature, the term raz describes visionary access to mysteries. In the Biblical Antiquities (IX, 10) Pseudo-Philo tells us at least one vision of Miriam. In a dream she foresees the birth of Moses and the events connected to it as well as Moses" significance. A connection between the two texts has been suggested (Puech 2001, 365) but not yet studied in detail. So far the texts are assigned to different periods. LAB is dated to the first century BCE while 4QVisions of Amram might have been written hundred years or more before the LAB. The texts seem to represent different genres. LAB re-narrates the Pentateuch whereas 4QVisions of Amram is a testament. Is it nevertheless possible that the visionary rhetoric which 4QVision of Amram uses in connection with Miriam relates to the story about Miriam's dream told in the LAB IX, 10? I will ask in how far 4QVision of Amram and LAB IX, 10 depend in their visionary understanding of Miriam on Ex 15:20. Are they two independent readings of Ex 15:20 or are the 4QVisions of Amram and LAB IX, 10 connected? Do they share a common narrative tradition or did one text influence the other?


Introduction to Anatomies of Narrative Criticism
Program Unit: Johannine Literature
Tom Thatcher, Cincinnati Christian University

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Twenty-Five Years of "The Oral and the Written Gospel": Orality, Literacy, and Beyond
Program Unit: Mapping Memory: Tradition, Texts, and Identity
Tom Thatcher, Cincinnati Christian University

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Innerbiblical Echoes in the Septuagint of Hosea and Amos
Program Unit: Greek Bible
Myrto Theocharous, University of Cambridge

In the absence of a “recognizable semantic path” between the Hebrew text and the Septuagint, two cases are possible: a different Septuagint Vorlage (which is unexaminable) or a Greek composition on the part of the translator (Barr, 1979). This paper is concerned with the second possibility and aims to demonstrate how apparent “misreadings” of the Hebrew text by the Septuagint translator can derive from intertextual influences. While the use of intertextuality has been widely studied in all kinds of literature, it is still fairly unexplored in the field of Septuagint studies and other ancient versions of the Bible. This paper will look at several examples from the Septuagint of Hosea and Amos to show that they can be explained as a reminiscence of other biblical passages on the part of the translator, having been triggered by a range of possible factors such as the immediate context and a difficult or corrupted text. However, these examples cannot help but raise the question of whether the influence is coming from the Hebrew or the Greek levels of the text, since the translator was possibly familiar with both where available. Probable instances of the latter will be noted. One example in this paper will demonstrate the influence of 1st and 2nd Esdras on LXX Amos while others will illustrate the use of narrative accounts from the book of Genesis in LXX Amos and Hosea. These examples will show how the influence of other texts can account for certain Septuagint readings and cause the translator to depart from the overall contextual meaning intended by the MT towards a new one which in turn has influenced, as the paper will show, early Christian Patristic interpretation.


A New Fragment of James from Oxyrhynchus
Program Unit: Papyrology and Early Christian Backgrounds
Michael Theophilos, University of Oxford

It is not insignificant that 42% of published New Testament papyri are from Oxyrhynchus, Egypt. Furthermore, of the fifty-eight NT papyri dated to the first half of the fourth century or earlier, Oxyrhynchus contributes to nearly 60% of the material, i.e. thirty four fragmentary papyri. Given Oxyrhynchus" prominence, prosperity and significant Christian influence this is somewhat understandable, even if it is equally as baffling as to why so much literature, both biblical and otherwise was "thrown out" en masse, only to be found centuries later by two Oxford graduates, B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt of Queen's College. The primary research that will be undertaken in this study concerns an assessment of a previously unknown New Testament papyrus fragment of the epistle of James from Oxyrhynchus (inventory number 51 4B.18/c [1-4]b). The significance of this study is to offer original and focused research into the history of the textual tradition of the New Testament. Discussion of the fragment will be divided into three sections. Firstly, an extended introduction which will note, among other things, the paleographic points of interest - roll/codex, recto/verso, date, lines/width/height of columns, estimated length of roll and significant reading marks (accents, breathings, quantity marks, punctuation). Secondly, an edited Greek text, both diplomatic and transcriptional (with a short description of how multi-spectral imaging aided in this process, and finally, a section devoted to issues which require further treatment, including exegetical comment, notable paleographic details and collation with other extant manuscripts. Images of the papyri will be included in the presentation.


The Urban Context of Pauline Christianity: New Archaeological Work at Ephesos
Program Unit: Archaeology of Religion in the Roman World
Christine M. Thomas, University of California-Santa Barbara

The urban context of Paul and his first converts has been a perpetual object of interest in New Testament study for decades. Often overlooked is the more concrete question of where individuals such as Paul would have spent their days within the urban landscape of specific cities. Archaeological research in Greece and Turkey, as traditionally pursued, has not been particularly apposite, overwhelmingly weighted as it is toward the excavation of large structures in urban centers, locations dominated by the monuments of the wealthy and powerful. One should question the degree to which Paul and his followers are best represented by the phenomenon of monumentalization. Exclusive focus on it intensifies the tendency to elevate the social and economic status of the earliest Christians in an otherwise entirely defensible attempt to connect them with known data from the ancient world. A new project sponsored since 2004 by the Crisler Library in Ephesos has generated promising new evidence for alternate locations of the earliest Christians in Ephesos. Recent geomorphological research has provided the first detailed outline of the ancient coastline during a period of rapid alluvial deposition in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, identifying large expanses of new land near the Ephesian harbor that became available for construction during the late Hellenistic period. Remote sensing (electromagnetic resonance and ground-penetrating radar) and excavations conducted within the framework of this project have indicated plentiful building activity of non-monumental structures in these areas, which may provide a more promising location than the city center for the social classes from which the first Christian converts were drawn.


Montanist Ecstasy: The Passive Body, Agency, and Christian Identity Construction in the Second-Century
Program Unit: Redescribing Christian Origins
Christine M. Thomas, University of California, Santa Barbara

The various Montanist sects, or rather the “New Prophecy,” as they designated themselves, employed a particular representation of first-century Christian origins to legitimate their practices, explicitly citing the gospels and the letters of Paul. Distinctive about them, and broadly criticized by their opponents, was their preference to prophesy in a state of ecstasy. This was anything but an abstruse quibble over method. Valorization of the ecstatic state had serious ramifications for traditional constructions of body, agency, and gender. It posed a serious challenge to rival constructions of Christian identity by their second-century opponents. Montanist texts and scriptural commentaries speak explicitly about entering a passive state of non-agency in which the spirit would come upon them, a sort of waking sleep in which the rational faculty was suppressed. As Montanus said, “man is a lyre,” and God is the plectrum. In this, they considered themselves to be standing in the traditions not only of the Pauline communities, but also of Old Testament prophecy. Their opponents construed this behavior as a dangerous flight from reason, inherently advocating a reversion to the canonical Platonic self, a centered, ideally male, individual actively guided by his rational faculties. For Plato, the individual ruled by reason was a microcosm of the well-ordered state, and the ability to rule oneself guaranteed one's aptitude for ruling the polis. The Montanist preference to abdicate voluntarily their reason to the divine spirit marked a direct challenge to this anthropology: they desired to be ruled only by God. Thus ecstasy not only rendered individuals unable to govern by the standards of Platonic anthropology, it rendered them fundamentally ungovernable by worldly powers, creating a passive body that could not be ruled either by themselves or others, a subject that was incompatible with traditional political life.


Reading Lamentations with Daniel Berrigan, S.J.
Program Unit: Lament in Sacred Texts and Cultures
Heath Thomas, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

Controversial peace activist, poet, and Jesuit priest Daniel Berrigan writes: "In 2001, I turned eighty. That same year, the twin towers fell in Manhattan, and another American saga of revenge opened. The state mobilized mightily, the Church fell in line" (Berrigan, Lamentations, 71). To this vision, Berrigan offers a distinctive counter-vision enabled through the discordant voice of the Book of Lamentations. The present study reads Lamentations with Daniel Berrigan and teases out his interpretation of the ancient book that assesses both ancient Judah's place in God's economy, as well as presents a lamenter's view of modern US foreign policy and war. The present study concludes with a summary of theological distinctives of Lamentations and their impact on modern politics. Moreover, it will be shown that Berrigan's reading of Lamentations offers a fresh, if not contrary, approach to modern analysis of Lamentations.


Vision, Interpretation, Mediation: Textuality and Experience in Qumran Literature
Program Unit: Religious Experience in Antiquity
Samuel Thomas, California Lutheran University

Because of the complex nature of the intersections of textuality, performance, and experience, it is often difficult to distinguish between the exegetical and the experiential in the literature that survives from antiquity. This paper investigates the ways in which several Qumran texts construe the relationship between vision, text, and experience. I argue that "vision" is a prophetic trope whose modality has been textualized at Qumran; the "interpretative-I" of several Qumran texts mediates a certain kind of religious experience, one that may be transferred and therefore can serve as a basis for communal ritual practice and self-identification. The texts examined here include the pesharim to Habakkuk and Psalms, the Hodayot (1QH and 4Q427), Barki Napshi (4Q437), the final column of the Community Rule (1QS 11), and the so-called 'self-Glorification Hymn" (4Q491). The paper also discusses key methodological issues that arise as one attempts to differentiate between textual representations of religious experience and religious experience itself.


Eternal Writing and Immortal Writers: On the Nondeath of the Scribe in Early Judaism
Program Unit: Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism
Samuel Thomas, California Lutheran University

This paper investigates the motif of the non-death of the scribe as it develops in early Jewish texts. The purpose of the paper is to demonstrate that with the increasing 'textualization' of Jewish religious culture during the Second Temple period, the relationship between scribe, text, and sacred teaching begins to be reimagined in some intriguing ways. 'Scribes' like Enoch, Moses, Elijah, Baruch, Ezra and others become, like the texts associated with them, immortalized (and in some cases, such as with Moses and Ezra, they are perhaps 'rescued' from death ex-post-facto). Included in this discussion are texts such as Jubilees, 1 and 2 Enoch, 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch, and selections from the Hebrew Bible, Qumran texts, and early rabbinic literature. While this topic does not deal directly with the material dimensions of scribal practice, it pertains to the social status and self-understanding of scribes and the scribal tradition.


With Homi Bhabha on the Banks of the Jordan: Postcolonial Reflections on Mark's Gospel and the Alexander Romance
Program Unit: Ancient Fiction and Early Christian and Jewish Narrative
Eric Thurman, University of the South

This paper aims to reflect on the ways ancient narratives rhetorically construct collective identity under empire by putting the oft-cited work of Martin Braun on “national hero romances” in conversation with the work of postcolonial theorist Homi Bhabha on narratives and national identity. “Nationhood” has been often considered a distinctly modern political construct, one that is ill-suited to describe the features that characterize collective identity and social formation in the ancient Mediterranean world. Recent work on the connections between ethnic and national identity, however, suggest the concept may yet provide a useful frame for interpreting ancient texts and social orders. Suggesting that Mark's gospel and the Alexander Romance both may be read, in Braun's terms, as “national hero romances,” this paper will shift comparative readings of the two texts beyond a concern with formal literary similarities to explore how the heroes of both texts represent the self-understanding of ancient audiences who, it will also be suggested, are rhetorically constructed as alternative nations. Drawing on Bhabha, who highlights the links between “nationhood” and “manhood” in modern discourses, particular emphasis will be placed on how the Markan Jesus and the fictional Alexander both are represented as (divine) sons pursuing kingdoms and empires on behalf of their nation and in the name of their (divine) fathers.


Isaiah 40–55: A Drama of Judahite Voices
Program Unit: Biblical Hebrew Poetry
Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer, University of Aberdeen

This paper investigates the different voices in Isa 40-55. First, a close reading of Isa 40-55 reveals that the city of Jerusalem is the intended recipient of most of the oracles. This is true not only for those oracles addressing Zion/Jerusalem but also for those addressing Israel/Jacob. Furthermore, the notion of Lady Zion is best understood as referring to the flesh and blood Judahite population of the physical city rather than as a symbol of the exiles" conceptual destination as has often been argued. Secondly, the positive portrayal of Lady Zion, as well as the frequent use of metaphors related to childbirth and motherhood in the divine speech, suggests that a group of both male and female Judahites, standing in the tradition of Isaiah ben Amos, were responsible for the composition of Isa 40-55. This group sought to respond to the grief of the people of Jerusalem, as expressed in the book of Lamentations, with words of comfort.


The Intertextual Israelite Jonah Face à L'empire: The Postcolonial Significance of the Book's Contexts and Purported Neo-Assyrian Context
Program Unit: Israelite Prophetic Literature
Daniel Timmer, FAREL, Faculté de théologie réformée

Jonah's use of various antecedent HB texts and its purported Neo-Assyrian setting are prominent hermeneutical signposts that are integral to the book. Until now, however, the former question has not received sustained attention and the latter has been obscured by disagreement over the book's historical veracity. In an effort to bring into current postcolonialist discussion literature from colonial and anti-colonial entities that are chronologically, geographically, and culturally distant from those considered thus far, this paper considers empire through the Israelite perspective that Jonah affords as well as through the Neo-Assyrian literature dealing with its conquest of nation-states in the opening centuries of the first millennium B.C.E. Special attention is given to how Jonah the prophet and Jonah the book attribute different identities to the different groups that appear in the book. The intertextual connections of Jonah to other parts of the Hebrew Bible and to contemporary Neo-Assyrian texts are also investigated, particularly for their contribution to religious and national identity. The paper closes by reflecting, in dialogue with a hybrid theory of post-colonial identity, on ways that different means of identification entail different responses to power


The Library of Congress Collection of Ethiopic Manuscripts
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible
Fentahun Tiruneh, Library of Congress

This presentation will be part of a larger session on Ethiopic Manuscripts in North America and their Availability for Research. The Library of Congress holds the largest collection of Ethiopic codices in North America. We will discuss the provenance and nature of the collection as well as the status of the cataloguing and digitization, and plans for access to the collection. Finally, we will list the manuscripts of the Ge'ez Bible which we hold.


Sweeping the Threshing Floors: Canaanites, Israelites, and the Hidden Holy Place
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible, History, and Archaeology
Andrew B. Tobolowsky, Trinity College-Dublin

The Semitic word, Goren, translated as “Threshing Floor” in the Hebrew Bible, is also so translated in the Ugaritic texts. There, in three tablets known collectively as the “rephaim” texts, it serves as the locus for what is apparently a “kispum” ritual, which is the ratification of a new king by his divinized ancestors. The very same locale, in the Hebrew Bible, serves in Genesis 50:10 as the site where the mourning for the patriarch Jacob takes place. They are also explicitly warned against, in Hosea 9:1, as a location where a condemned form of worship occurs, and in general, contrary to their apparently simplistic agrarian function, they serve throughout the Bible as the location of signs and portents. These include the delivery of omens to Gideon and the slaying of Uzzah for touching the Ark of the Covenant. Given, especially, the evidence in 1 Samuel 28 for just such a cult of the divinized ancestor as apparently reigned at Ugarit, and the testimony of the Melichizedek episode in Genesis 14: 18-20 concerning the Canaanitic lineage of the altar at Jerusalem, what could this connection mean? What import could it have in terms of helping to establishing the place of pre-Davidic Israelite religion in the Canaanite milieu? And lastly, and especially given Genesis 14, what are the potential implications of the tradition which states that the Temple in Jerusalem was built on what was called the Threshing Floor of Araunah the Jebusite?


Getting “to Know” Biblical Exegesis: The OIDA Method
Program Unit: Best Practices in Teaching
Carl N. Toney, Biola University

Using the Greek acronym OIDA, “to know” (Observation, Interpretation, Dialogue, Application), students are introduced to various methods of biblical interpretation (historical, socio-rhetorical, literary, feminist, etc.) in a practical and sustainable fashion. Students learn to make Observations of the text by asking “What does it say?” They Interpret the text by asking “What does it mean?” They Dialogue with the text by asking “What do you think it says?” This step gathers input from others (commentaries and fellow classmates) which can modify the initial observations and interpretations. Students make Applications of the text by asking “How does this apply to life today?” This paper will discuss various ways the OIDA method has been used in the classroom.


The Role and Voice of the Earth in Revelation
Program Unit: Ecological Hermeneutics
Sigve Tonstad, Loma Linda University

In Revelation, "the earth" (ge) is one of the most frequent words, occurring eighty-three times in all. Most often, "the earth" is the stage for the cosmic drama, putting "the inhabitants of the earth" and not the earth as such in the foreground. However, subtle exceptions to this will be found by the reader who is willing to look for them. When Revelation points to a time “for destroying those who destroy the earth” (11:18), it is clear that the earth itself and not only its inhabitants, has worth, and that, implicitly, it has voice. When John, describing the imperiled state of the believers in Jesus in the cosmic conflict, states that “the earth came to help the woman” (12:16), it indicates that the earth is God's confidante, a partner in redemption, and the context of cosmic conflict means all the more that the earth is engaged in an act of resistance. When, too, John says that he “saw a new heaven and a new earth,” even reporting that “the first heaven and the first earth had passed away” (21:1), the connotation is not that the earth has been discarded and that another earth has taken its place. In the light of Revelation's allusions to the Old Testament (e.g. Isa 65:17), the emphasis is not so much on "new" versus "old" as on "whole" versus "broken." The connotation of healing resounds when God in Revelation declares, “See, I am making all things new” (21:5). Redemption and renewal are entailed in the newness that is envisioned, indicating an enduring purpose for the earth. Unlike redemption as envisioned in Platonic denigrations of the body and the earth, redemption in Revelation is not disembodied existence, and it is not existence removed from the materiality of the earth. Some, perhaps all, of the Ecojustice Principles are thus on display in Revelation. To the extent that this can be substantiated, as outlined above, Revelation invites an ecological hermeneutic as much as any book of the Bible and perhaps more than any other book in the New Testament.


“I Believe Job Was Right-Handed”: Theodicy in Springfield and South Park
Program Unit: SBL Forum
G. Andrew Tooze, Pfeiffer University

Few, if any, biblical scholars would include the Book of Job among the “humorous” sections of the Bible. However, in the “Hurricane Neddy” episode of The Simpsons and the “Cartmanland” episode of South Park the story of Job and the question of the suffering of the righteous are treated as both humorous and profound. This paper will examine the way these two television episodes present the biblical story of Job in order to demonstrate how the biblical material takes on new life as it is incorporated into popular culture. In this examination, special attention will be paid to the question of whether or not these two episodes depict the story of Job as having anything significant to say to a contemporary audience about the question of theodicy.


Textual Crossroads: A Preliminary Critical Edition of 3 Kingdoms 1–3
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Historical Books
Pablo Torijano, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

In this paper I will present an advance of the critical edition of 3 Kingdoms for the Göttingen Septuaginta I am working on. On the basis furnished by the critical apparatus I will discuss the different problems posed by the edition, focusing on concrete examples from these three chapters, which form a very convenient testing ground since they include materials from both kaige and non-kaige sections.


Consistency in the Activity of Scribes, Translators, and Revisers?
Program Unit: Qumran
Emanuel Tov, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

My intuitive working hypothesis is that consistency was not part of the world of ancient scribes, translators, and revisers. In their activities, these persons sometimes employed systems or correction procedures that seemingly involved consistency; however, in actual fact there is virtually no total consistency, and often there is a complete lack thereof. The absence of consistency did not disturb the ancients, since it was an invention of later centuries. Consistency is probably a by-product of schools, universities, and other frameworks, which did not exist in antiquity, and to the extent that such a framework did exist, it was not as stringent as its modern equivalents. In the period before the invention of the printing press and before the age of computers, consistency was actually difficult to achieve. Because of the lack of consistency, it is therefore difficult for us to prove the existence of some tendencies. A distinction should be made between the description of consistency and that of precision. The areas of investigation are: a. Spelling; b. Writing practices; c. Corrective tendencies and the systems used in correcting; d. Translations and revisions (some remarks). The sources are all ancient manuscripts, especially the Judean Desert Scrolls and the medieval Masoretic and Samaritan scrolls. Like the phenomenon described, this paper is neither exhaustive nor consistent.


The Straight Mind in Corinth: Rereading 1 Corinthians 11:2–16
Program Unit: Biblical Criticism and Literary Criticism
Gillian Townsley, University of Otago

The gender theory of French feminist philosopher Monique Wittig asks us to consider how language operates in the domain of ideology. Wittig warns us about the power of language to act upon the social reality, 'stamping it and violently shaping it." In particular, she argues that ideology seeks primarily to reinforce heterosexuality, and does so through a rhetoric which "envelops itself in myths, resorts to enigma, proceeds by accumulating metaphors, and … poeticize[s] the obligatory character of the "you-will-be-straight-or-you-will-not-be."" Such a description could hardly be more apt of the notoriously slippery piece of rhetoric found in 1 Cor 11.2-16. As the author of this text Paul is using rhetoric to effect some change in the Corinthians" behaviour regarding their clothing and/or coiffure during worship. Yet many scholars suggest that an analysis of the tone in this passage reveals that Paul is not altogether certain of his own stance on this issue, is struggling to work out his own theology of gender and is thus "convoluted" and "confused" in his argumentation. However, other scholars suggest that Paul's argument is, by contrast, "clear;" it is rather our misunderstanding of the issues involved that have created a sense of confusion regarding Paul's logic. This paper suggests that in order to make progress on deciphering this text an approach is needed which critically examines the gender issues inherent in the text. By exploring 1 Cor 11.2-16 in light of Wittig's philosophy of gender this paper will hopefully shedding some new light on this troublesome passage of the New Testament.


Learning and Teaching Biblical Hebrew: The Priority of End-Use Goals
Program Unit: National Association of Professors of Hebrew
Karyn L. Traphagen, University of Stellenbosch

This paper articulates a theoretical rationale for more research and discussion in developing Biblical Hebrew curriculum (content) that is based on the end-use of Biblical Hebrew by the learner. When speaking of Biblical Hebrew instruction, both the specific content and the manner of instruction (methodology) are intertwined. However, the content and/or the methodology should not be the starting point. The end-use should determine the goals of instruction. Before we can begin to discuss the benefits and challenges of various pedagogical methods (i.e. communicative approaches, Total Physical Response, computer assisted learning, etc.) we must address the content of the curriculum. In order to decide on the necessary content, we must first look at the end-use of the language by the learner.


The Sire of Sorrow or the Story We Hate to Tell? Popular Media's Response to and Construction of the Job Narrative
Program Unit: The Bible in Ancient (and Modern) Media
Linzie Treadway, Vanderbilt University

The “righteous suffering” of Job is a point of debate not only in modern scholarship, but even within the numerous texts that refer to the figure. Throughout the history of interpretation, Job has often represented the epitome of the unjustly affliction—a pious man who merely finds himself the object of a (somewhat cruel) divine experiment. Others attempt to take the blame out of God's hands by constructing Job as a guilty sufferer, one who is responsible for his own condition. An examination of the Job traditions in the Hebrew Bible, Pseudepigrapha, Qumran, New Testament, and Qur"an reveals a somewhat dubious view of this quintessential sufferer. The presence of Job in modern media falls in line with this divergence, as it also represents a bifurcated understanding of the figure as well as the story. From the music of Joni Mitchell and Bad Religion to the popular tongue-in-cheek comedy of South Park and Family Guy, various popular media retell and reshape the story, each weighing in on the issue of guilt versus theodicy. Given the power modern media has to influence our understanding of religion, what does the presence of Job in modern film, art, music, and literature imply about the figure of Job, the presence of evil, and God's role in theodicy? What texts do these popular media use, and in what ways are they intentionally or inadvertently deviating from the story? Job represents only one of the infinite ways that our media interaction shapes us, and this case study pushes us to ask larger questions: In what ways do the voices of popular culture reflect our own perception of religion and divine order, and in what way is such media determining our ideas for us?


Textual Criticism and Hebrew Syntax (Massoretic Text, Septuagint and Old Latin in 1 Samuel 20:16; 22:8; 1 Kings 8:9)
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Historical Books
Julio Trebolle, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

The Hebrew syntax seems to know cases in which certain verbs may omit their object by brachylogy. This paper discusses the alleged cases of 1 Sam 20:16; 22:8; 1 Kgs 8:9. The verb krt seems to be deprived of the expected object. However, the LXX variants allow to hypothesize that the Hebrew underlying them contained the object of the verb: “cut a covenant” (karat berît). The “untranslatable” or “heillos verderbt” passage of 1 Sam 20:14-16 offers an example for a joint analysis of textual and literary criticism. Among the many variants of the versions, the Old Latin attests the Hebrew yakrit instead of MT wayyikrot, in accordance with the precedent uses of this verb: takrit and hakrit. According to MT, “Jonathan cut a covenant with the house of David.” If the text attested by the pre-Lucianic Greek and the OL is to be followed, Jonathan swears to David that if he breaks his promise of warning David about a possible plot by Saul “(God) cut off Jonathan together with Saul's house”. Thus, the reconstruction of King David's “biography” requires further “excavation” in the archeology of the textual history of Samuel-Kings.


Preaching in an Age of Religious Violence and Spiritual Hunger
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Thomas Troeger, Yale Divinity School

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Kinship-Formation and the Foundation of the Christ-Movement Identity in 1 Corinthians 4:14–21
Program Unit: Social Scientific Criticism of the New Testament
J. Brian Tucker, University of Wales, Lampeter

This paper argues that Paul's strategy in writing 1 Corinthians was to transform Corinthian Greco-Roman identity into a hybrid, nested 'in Christ' identity in which their Greco-Roman identity was not obliterated, but was subservient to the 'in Christ' identity. This paper provides a few brief remarks concerning identity studies and its methodology. It also introduces six vital aspects of social identity that are present in 1 Corinthians: an internalized narrative, a strengthened narrative substructure which is established through evaluation by others, identity is then seen to be multifarious, fluid, performative, and is made salient through discourse. Finally, 1 Cor 4:14-21 is studied and Paul's rhetoric of kinship-formation is evaluated for its effectiveness in laying the foundation for what would become the social identity of the Christ-Movement.


The Meaning of the Mark: New Light on Ezekiel 9 from the History of Interpretation
Program Unit: Book of Ezekiel
Steven Shawn Tuell, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary

From a surface reading of Ezek 9, the mark placed on the foreheads of those who mourn for Jerusalem appears to be a mark of protection: those marked presumably escape the destruction of the city. However, a closer reading shows that no one survives. The devastation strikes everyone, young and old, women and men. Readings of Ezek 9 in Talmud (b. Shabbat 55a) and in Calvin's commentaries alike conclude that the mark does not convey protection. Far from escaping suffering, the people of God are often immersed in suffering. These pre-critical insights suggest new directions for contemporary post-critical interpreters of Ezekiel.


Persistent Vegetative States: People as Plants in Isaiah
Program Unit: Biblical Hebrew Poetry
Patricia K. Tull, Louisville Presbyterian Seminary

This paper explores the metaphor that shows up throughout the book of Isaiah of people as grass, thorns, oaks, grapes, olives, and other kinds of vegetation, almost always in connection with the fragility and brevity of their lives, but sometimes put positively as their flourishing or coming to life again in unlikely circumstances. These metaphors remind contemporary readers of Isaiah of our place in the world: we ourselves, and the nations we build, are still as fragile as the vegetation of the earth, and not always as regenerative.


From Gnostic Myth to Mysticism: The Symbiosis of Antique Philosophy and Religion
Program Unit: Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism
John D. Turner, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Forty years ago Han Drijvers proclaimed: "However strongly Gnosticism may make the impression of being a philosophy, in essence it is not so, but an attempt to render all philosophy superfluous-it is first and foremost a secret revelation." Since then, other scholars have expressed similar sentiments. Why have such eminent scholars so forcefully attempted to dissociate Gnostic thought from what they conceive as genuine Greek, especially Platonic, philosophy? Does it owe to the perceived character of Gnostic sources themselves? Or does this dissociation owe to a certain contemporary understanding of the nature of philosophy, including ancient philosophy, that would sharply distinguish it from the metaphysical speculation and ritual and visionary practices of ancient religion? Yet when we read Gnostic sources, we see contributions from Greek philosophy at their very core. Their portrayal of the origin and deployment of the cosmic realm is unmistakably influenced by their readings of Plato's Timaeus, and their account of the origin and deployment of the ideal realm is noticeably influenced by readings of Plato's Parmenides. In the Sethian Platonizing treatises, saving enlightenment is achieved by means of an interior and self-actuated visionary ascent through a succession of supramundane realms and mental states, during which one becomes assimilated to ever higher levels of being and insight precisely modeled on the ascent to the vision of absolute beauty described by Socrates in Plato's Symposium. I do not agree that Gnosticism can be called 'sub-philosophical" (Dillon), or that Greek philosophy's influence on Gnosticism was "extraneous and, for the most part superficial" (Armstrong). I would rather embrace the view of the late Philip Merlan when he wrote that "Gnosticism is at home on the borderland between philosophy and religion." It seems to me that a number of eminent historians of Greek philosophy have assumed too narrow a delineation not only of Gnosticism and Greek philosophy, but also of the relation between religion and philosophy. I propose to address this issue once again from the point of view of Hans Jonas' work on myth and mysticism as a common ground between philosophy and religion, and Pierre Hadot's work on ancient philosophy as a way of life involving what he calls 'spiritual exercises." In their own ways, both of these thinkers show how theory, myth, and doctrine form the anticipation--not merely the projection or justification--of spiritual experience, and in the process actually make that experience possible.


The Pastor and His Fops: Gender Indistinction in the Pastorals and Their Readers
Program Unit: Reading, Theory, and the Bible
Jay Twomey, University of Cincinnati

In his popular 18th century biblical commentary, The Family Expositor, Philip Doddridge remarks in passing, with regard to 1 Tim 2:9, that “Estius [d. 1613] very justly observes, that this Discourse concludes with yet stronger Force against Foppery in Men.” This is odd when one considers that the passage in question concerns only women's dress and behavior during worship. Clearly, for the Pastor, the gender of religious agency is a problem, and his epistles are meant, in part, to secure masculine authority in a post-Pauline age. But the Pastor has anxieties about Christian masculinity as well. No wonder, then, that for his readers the message can seem so mixed: his women are foppish men; his bishops and his widows are in some qualities indistinguishable; his Timothy, far from being the manly soldier fighting the good fight, is, in Luther's estimation, “a lean miserable person” who has to be forced to take a dram; and his clerics are both sexually active men and (in Augustine, for instance) celibate representatives of the bride(s) of Christ. This paper will examine the Pastorals as a site/source of gender anxiety for the Christian tradition. It will do so by setting contemporary biblical scholarship on gender and sexuality (the work of Jennifer Glancy, for example, and the new Queer Bible Commentary) into conversation with the Pastor and his readers – including especially Gore Vidal, whose novelistic farce, Live From Golgotha, features Paul and Timothy as gay lovers. In the process it will also consider how this discussion might extend the revolutionary/utopian theoretical projects of Badiou and Agamben beyond their readings of the authentic Paul. Can the gender instability in/of the Pastor and his readers be exploited as an "event" or "a zone of indistinction" for progressive (or even just polemically subversive) contemporary ends?


“… But Mine Eye Seeth Thee!” (Job 42:5): The Book of Job and an Aesthetic Theology of the Old Testament
Program Unit: Theology of the Hebrew Scriptures
Helmut Utzschneider, Augustana-Hochschule

The paper is related a to wider project (cf. my recently published book "Gottes Vorstellung, BWANT 175, 2007, 301ff), which aims to conceive a “Theology of the Old Testament resp. the Hebrew Scriptures” on the basis of a literary-aesthetical perspective on the Bible. The book of Job is a significant example of a (syn)aesthetical theology, which leads from the discussion of traditional theological concepts by "hearing and saying" to a seeing of God, by which Jobs obstinancy is justified in the end. The following items will be treated:1. What means aesthetical Theology of the Old Testament, resp. Hebrew scriptures? 2. Observations on the literary performance of the book of Job. 3. God sees the world 4. Job sees God.


Gal 3:28c: The Meaning of ouk eni arsen kai thelu: Some Observations Concerning the Church Fathers Interpretations of Gal 3:28c and their Relation to Modern Exegesis on the Text
Program Unit: Pauline Epistles
Gesila Uzukwu, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

In the debate concerning the meaning of Gal 3:28c, some scholars like Daniel Boyarin, Madeleine Boucher and Ronald Fung have proposed that this text’s emphasis is on the spiritual equality of the believers. Among the reasons for this interpretation is the view that this spiritual emphasis has been recognized as such in early interpretations. There is a positive element in this approach, but what is negative about it is that to date there is no serious publication that attempts to understand how the Church Fathers understood this text and used this text to comment upon specific theological arguments. From a historical and grammatical approach this article attempts to open the discussion and highlight the differences in the allusions to this text by various Patristic writers as they form part of the Christian history and possibly the acclaimed traditional position. Basing ourselves on examples from Clement of Alexandria (ouk arren, ou thelu), Basil of Caesarea (eite arsen eite thelu), Hilary of Poitier (non inest masculus neque femina), Origen (enim neque masculus neque femina) Gregory Nazianzen (hina meketi omen arren kai thelu), and Gregory of Nyssa (oute arsen oute thelu estin) there are three key questions that form the scope of this article: what does the lack of exact grammatical, syntactical and theological correspondence between the Greek text of Gal 3:28c and the Patristic allusions to this text reveal to us about the Patristic understanding of the text? How did the Church Fathers understand Gal 3:28c? What are the contributions of the Church Fathers’ perspective on Gal 3:28c to contemporary debates concerning Gal 3:28c? By means of these questions, our aim is to bring into dialogue the nuances of the Church Fathers’ allusion to Gal 3:28c with contemporary thinking about how Gal 3:28c speaks concerning the spiritual equality of believers in Christ.


Characterization of Women in the Pseudo-Clementine Literature
Program Unit: Jewish Christianity / Christian Judaism
Päivi Vähäkangas, University of Helsinki

Despite the length of the two Pseudo-Clementine novels, there is not much room for women in the storyline. When they do appear, they are mostly depicted as widowed or separated from their husbands, independent yet decent and modest women living in chastity and patience and performing good deeds. Even before becoming Christians they are presented as role models for everyone. Besides the heroic women there is also a female antagonist, the partner of Simon Magus who is a personification of the female counterpart of the highest God. For the author she represents the foolish theology of his adversaries. The way these women are depicted reveals how the authors saw the ideal behaviour of Christian women. Moreover, the differences in the stories of Homilia and Recognitions betray interesting divergences as to the emphasis of both authors. This can be seen for example in the case of Justa, whom Homilia identifies with the Canaanite woman of the Gospels and who had to convert to Judaism so that she could be healed by Jesus.


Daniel and Friends: Willing Collaborators or Wily Conspirators?
Program Unit: Exile (Forced Migrations) in Biblical Literature
David M. Valeta, University of Colorado at Boulder

There are two common themes that run through the interpretive history of many exilic texts. First, since God is in control, there must be a reason and a purpose for such suffering. Second, even in the midst of dire circumstances, God blesses and protects God's people. The predominant interpretive schema of Court Tale Literature emphasizes that such blessings (Success in the Court) are signs that God does not abandon his own, and that in fact there is little or no moral dilemma for those who serve in the Court of the Foreign King. Drawing upon the work of Daniel Christopher-Smith, James Scott, Eric Gruen, Richard Horsley, and Mikhail Bakhtin, among others, this paper suggests that readings that emphasize a convivial relationship between captors and captives misses the true purpose of this literature. I will examine the Daniel stories in particular to illustrate that the purpose of such tales is not primarily to emphasize God's blessings in times of trial but to creatively subvert and poke fun at the ruling earthly powers that claim total sovereignty. Recently, postcolonial readings of exilic texts has recognized the brutal nature of exile, subjugation and forced service of captives in the ruling apparatus of empire. This paper illustrates how traditional interpretations of texts such as Daniel 1-6 have muted the recognition of such basic sociological realities, and explores how this text creatively subverts and satirizes the claimed hegemonic power of their captors. The memory of exile then is not simply one of recognizing God's blessings in difficult times, but a celebration of the creative resistance that is such an important part of the tradition.


“Foxes" Holes and Birds" Nests” (Matthew 8:20) and “Being Struck on the Right Cheek” (Matthew 5:39): A Postcolonial Reading on Violence in South Africa
Program Unit: Matthew
Andries van Aarde, University of Pretoria

South Africa experiences an exceptionally high crime rate. The question is whether the prevalence of violence in South African is the result of neocolonialism or postcolonialism among other complicated sociological factors. This paper gives some thoughts on how postcolonial hermeneutics can provide access to the diverse complexities of the realities in the African context. Postcolonial consciousness means that the experience of the Other will be taken seriously from their own perspective. Postcolonial theory is presented as a tool for biblical interpretation that helps to look for colonial intentions (be political, cultural or economic), which informed and influenced the South African context. Postcolonial theory calls for a constructive reading that enables the reader to see the concerns of justice. The article focuses on Jesus sayings in Matthew, as influenced by Roman imperial policy, about the comparison between the fate of beasts and that of the son of man, who has nowhere to lay his head (Mt 8,20 and the Matthean Jesus" attitude to one “being struck on the right cheek” (Mt 5:39).


Why Are the Minor Prophets Quoted in the Acts of the Apostles?
Program Unit: Formation of Luke and Acts
Huub van de Sandt, Tilburg University

The goal of this paper is to explore how the Minor Prophets contribute to major themes and movements in Acts of the Apostles, specifically Joel 2:28-32 (3:1-5) in Acts 2:17-21; Amos 5:25-27 in Acts 7:42-43; Habakkuk 1:5 in Acts 13:41 and Amos 9:11-12 in Acts 15:16-17. What is the primary hermeneutic function of these quotations? Are they in any way connected with one another? Our investigation links up with current methods in biblical research as far as the author of Acts determines and directs the meaning of references to the Greek translation of the Old Testament (Septuagint / LXX). It differs, however, from most present-day approaches in this field since these quotations are studied not only as they occur in their isolated form in Acts, but also in their original LXX contexts and the way these contexts are reflected in Acts. Explicit reference to the LXX is regarded as representative of a broader context. The meaning attached to this (broader) pre-text by the author of Acts is deduced from how the reference is interwoven with larger literary units in Acts.


Third Johannine Space: Reimagined Sacred Space in/as the Gospel of John
Program Unit: Rhetoric of Religious Antiquity
Gerhard van den Heever, University of South Africa

A unique feature of the rhetoric of the Gospel of John is its imagination of space, both in terms of its narration of spatialised events, as well as its reconceptualisation of itself as a narrativised sacred space. Taking as starting point the conventional view of an Ephesian origins for the (final version of the) narrative, it can be shown how the Gospel of John plots the Ephesian temple-city space onto a Jerusalem/Judaean narrative space, and vice versa. Plotting the representation of Jesus onto such represented and reimagined sacred space, John reconfigures the narrative itself as sacred space. In this, it stands in a line with other similar reimagined conceptualizations of sacred space such as incipient Jewish mysticism – the Testament of Abraham for instance, as well as such representations of sacred space as the synagogue mosaics of Beth Alpha and others. Characteristic of these representations, graphic or narrative, is the imagining of the representation itself becoming the replacement of the represented space. In the case of the Gospel of John the narrative not only places the bulk of its narration in relation to the narrated Temple in Jerusalem, but by portraying Jesus of Nazareth literally as replacement of the Temple, the gospel narrative itself becomes the temple as dwelling-place of the presence of God.


The Never-Ending Invention of Gods: Dual Mythicizations in Antiquity and Contemporary Scholarship
Program Unit: Greco-Roman Religions
Gerhard van den Heever, University of South Africa

That gods are manufactured is an insight of veritable ancestry, already well known from antiquity. That gods and their world are equally a rather modern construct is perhaps less known. The argument in this paper draws attention to the way in which "religion/s" and divinities in the Graeco-Roman world can be said to be "conceptual metaphors" for an array of other, very human, processes, that is, as rhetorical and symbolic interventions, and conceived as such in self-reflexive scholarship. Drawing on a wide range of contemporary theory and historiography this paper gives an indication of how metatheoretical reflection on the construction of the object of study (I refer in particular to the gods of the ancient mysteries) leads to a reconceptualization of ancient "religious" phenomena. In particular, this is borne out by recent religio-historical description of the history of religious history as a particular epochal social discourse, the construction of ancient religion/s as mirrors of contemporary 19th century cultural critique. Adding to this, contemporary historico-comparative studies highlight, for instance, the "making" or invention of Hinduism as a colonial product, and thus provides significant comparative material for a reconceptualization of the making of "religious" traditions in Graeco-Roman antiquity. If religion can be said to be the rhetorical means to hierarchize and establish authority, a window is opened on to symbolic processes of social formation and worldmaking – rather ordinary ways of negotiating being human and constructing society in the Graeco-Roman world. Essentially, the question this paper deals with, is: what happens to ancient religion/s when we cease to treat them as sui generis phenomena, in line with the manner in which "religion" is treated in contemporary theory of religion? And how do we comment on ourselves doing so? In answering these questions this paper embraces cross-cultural and cross-epochal comparisons, as comparative work is an essential facet of redescriptive scholarship.


Divine Twins or Saintly Twins: The Dioscuri in an Early Christian Context
Program Unit: Art and Religions of Antiquity
Annewies van den Hoek, Harvard University

The divine twins Castor and Pollux have had a venerable and persistent cult tradition in the Greek and Roman world. Their images were durable enough to make their way into early Christianity. This paper will discuss the appearance of the Dioscuri on fourth and fifth century ceramic wares from North Africa and the problems connected with the “Christianization” of their imagery.


The Greek Pentateuch and the Septuagint of Isaiah
Program Unit: Greek Bible
Mirjam van der Vorm-Croughs, Leiden University

In the Septuagint of Isaiah many elements can be found which suggest the influence of the Greek Pentateuch. Some passages in the Pentateuch seem to have drawn the special attention of the translator. One of them is Deuteronomy 32, the famous Song of Moses. In their works about the Septuagint of Isaiah J. Ziegler and I. L. Seeligmann have already given some examples of the use of this passage in the translation of Isaiah. In this paper I will expand the evidence by dealing with some more instances where the translator of Isaiah adopted words and phrases from this Song in Greek. In the discussion of these cases, I will also elaborate on the way in which the Pentateuchal elements may have functioned in the translation of Isaiah.


Who Are “We”? On the Shaping of Identity in Isaiah 53
Program Unit: Book of Isaiah
Annemarieke van der Woude, Radboud University Nijmegen

Isaiah 53, generally titled the Fourth Servant Song (Isaiah 52,13-53,12), is one of the more well-known texts from the Hebrew Bible. The portrait of the servant's humiliation and death, as well as his glorification, makes a deep impression, until the present day. Through the centuries, the servant's identity has intrigued readers. New Testament writers, for instance, have related Jesus" life-story to that of the servant. In my paper, I will not focus on the servant as a person, but rather on his literary function. In Isaiah 40-55, the servant acts as the embodiment of the word of the Lord. As a consequence, emphasis shifts to those who are addressed by God"s word. In Isaiah 53, a group speaks as a “we” for the first time (verse 1). Who are they? After Yhwh has come to Zion all by himself (Isaiah 52,7-10), the reader wonders how this group can turn and accompany the Lord on his way (cf. Isaiah 40,10-11). The servant plays a decisive role in this process. When the people witness the servant"s story, they realise that he has suffered for them, vicariously (Isaiah 53,1-6). This shock is the most dramatic moment in Isaiah 40-55. From now on, the people derive their identity from the servant. His obedience to God is their example (Isaiah 55,6-13). In Isaiah 53, I will argue, not the servant is the central figure, but the “we”. In fact, Isaiah 52,13-53,12 is not a Servant Song, but a story of conversion.


A Plain Dutch Bible Version in Progress
Program Unit: Bible Translation
Jacob van Dorp, Netherlands Bible Society, and Matthijs J. De Jong, Netherlands Bible Society

The Netherlands Bible Society prepares a new bible translation for a target audience at a low literacy level. It is estimated, on the basis of international research in literacy (the Int. Adult Literacy Survey conducted for The Netherlands in 1995 and for Flanders in 2000), that more than 35% of the adult population functions at a low level of literary. The various Dutch bible translations available apply a level of language that lies beyond the comprehension of this part of the population. The plain Dutch Bible Version (in preparation) aims to facilitate these readers, who are able to read simple short texts with high frequent word use and short sentences. The goal of the translation project is to produce a faithful, functional-equivalent translation in plain Dutch which can be understood by everyone, including people functioning at relatively low levels of literacy. In this paper the translation project will be introduced. The question will be addressed whether it is possible to achieve a bible translation that fully meets the criteria of plain language. Various illustrative translation problems– taken from the Old and New Testament – will be discussed.


When Patrons Are Not Patrons: A Social-Scientific Reading of the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19–26)
Program Unit: Social Scientific Criticism of the New Testament
Ernest van Eck, University of Pretoria

The parable of the rich man and Lazarus are on of oppositions. There is, however, from a social-scientific point of view (patronage and clientism) at least one similarity in the parable: the rich man and Abraham are patrons, but do not act in a way patrons should. Why did Jesus tell a parable in which Abrahem, a model for patronage, is typified as not being the patran he is suppose to be? Is the answer to this question the possible key to unlock this open ended parable?


Imitation and Itinerancy: Panoptic Power Relations in 1 Corinthians
Program Unit: Bible and Cultural Studies
Katrina Van Heest, Claremont Graduate University

Paul's apostolic itinerancy demanded that he be away from the communities that he organized more often than he was in their midst. Yet he often called these ekklesiai into an imitative relationship with him, as in 1 Cor 4:16: “I appeal to you, then, be imitators of me.” In so doing, Paul asks the Corinthians to conjure up an image of him—to cognitively re-member him—and act as if he were, in fact, present instead of quite remote. This paper builds on Elizabeth Castelli's work on imitation in Paul to argue that Paul"s correspondence engineers visibility and space in order to simultaneously maximize social control and minimize the need for his participatory presence. Following Castelli, this paper uses the work of Michel Foucault to engage Paul, but here I particularly draw on his analysis of the panopticon, a nineteenth-century prison architecture designed for effective policing of inmates, which provides a rich metaphor for the power dynamics Paul rhetorically constructs in 1 Corinthians. The accessibility of a model is crucial for successful imitation, but Paul does not ask the Corinthians to rely only on the memory of him to serve as their example. Rather, he couples the call to imitation with explicit and implied threats of his ability to visit at any time, cautioning them to behave as if he were there to regulate them personally. In this way, Paul rhetorically collapses the geographical distance between him and Corinth, positioning himself as a ubiquitous authority wielding the power of surveillance. Framed by Foucault"s theory of panopticism, Paul"s organizing method reveals itself as the construction of partially autonomous, self-policing cells throughout the Mediterranean world. Evaluating imitation in Paul"s letters requires, then, a willingness to fathom it as necessarily intertwined with surveillance and consequence: as a captivity technology embedded in the text itself.


Image of God, Idols, and the Temple of God: A Contextualization of 2 Corinthians 6:14–7:1 within the Corinthian Correspondence
Program Unit: Second Corinthians: Pauline Theology in the Making
George H. van Kooten, University of Groningen

It has been often noticed that the invective against idolatry in 2 Cor 6.14-7.1 does not fit nicely in the context. In this paper, however, I shall propose that, semantic-linguistically speaking, the criticism of idols is the natural counterpart of the notion of man as the image of God which has been developed throughout 1 and 2 Cor. I shall first deal with the separate passages in 1 Cor 11.7, 15.49 and 2 Cor 3.18-4.4. Special attention shall be devoted to the interaction with the pagan terminology of "bearing the image" in 1 Cor 15.49, and the ramifications of the anthropology of metamorphosis in 2 Cor 3.18 within the wider context of 2 Cor 3-5, in order to demonstrate that the issue of man as God's image is of central importance here. Secondly, I shall suggest that the talk in 1 Cor 3.16-17 and 6.19 of man as the temple, or rather the inmost part of a temple, the shrine, which contains the image of the god, is closely related to the notion of man as God's image. This is supported by parallels on the metaphorical reference to man as the living image of God in Graeco-Roman paganism, and the consequence that this renders man into a temple. Finally, these insights into important notions in 1 and 2 Cor shall be brought to bear upon 2 Cor 6. I shall argue to the invective against the idols, which are contrasted with the true temple of God, can be understood as the logical consequence of what Paul has said before in the Corinthian correspondence about man"s true identity.


Jesus' Coping with Rejection, Loss, and Insecurity as a Religious Person
Program Unit: Psychology and Biblical Studies
Bas van Os, University of Utrecht

Following my previous contributions in the International Meeting on (1)psychobiographical analyses of Jesus and (2) Jesus attachment to his human and divine fathers, I will now turn to (3) the first phase of the development of Jesus' sense of calling. Using Kenneth Pargament's research in the Psychology of Religion and Coping, I will consider the ways in which Jesus attributed significance to the rejection by his family, the loss of his mentor John the Baptist, and the risks that he would suffer a similar fate at the hands of Herod Antipas; especially so in contrast to the enthusiasm of the marginalized, and the healings they experience. I will argue that Jesus' religious understanding of John the Baptist as well as his personal experience of his divine father and his acquantaince with biblical scriptures, interacted with these events to deepen his religious convictions and expectations about his own role.


The Metaphor of Sacrifice in the Gospel of Judas and the Testimony of Truth
Program Unit: Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism
Bas van Os, University of Utrecht

Partly on the basis of the Testimony of Truth, scholars have proposed to interpret the temple sacrifices in the Gospel of Judas as a metaphor for martyrdom. In this paper I will give the arguments for an alternative interpretation: the metaphor of sacrifice may also refer to the baptismal theology of mainstream Christians, as participation in the death of Christ.


Coping on Earth, with an Inheritance Kept in Heaven: Interpreting 1 Peter within the Economic Realities of Its Author and First Readers
Program Unit: Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy
Fika J. van Rensburg, North-West University

This paper contributes towards a delineation of the relationship between early Christianity and the ancient economy by offering an interpretation of 1 Peter within its economic socio-historical context. Focusing on the economic realities of its author and first readers, it considers economic theory in the first century Greco-Roman world and reconstructs the economic problems that the first readers/hearers of 1 Peter had to deal with, how the author of 1 Peter advised them to approach these problems, and how his approaches and solutions compared with those advocated by others. Stated theologically, the paper establishes what the author of 1 Peter understood to be the economic implications of discipleship for the whole of life (personal life, one's household, the household of God, and the entire community), comparing his perspectives with those of others who lived during the first century of the Common Era, and suggesting the economic relevance of 1 Peter for the modern world.


The Duke University Collection of Ethiopic Manuscripts
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible
Lucas Van Rompay, Duke University

The presentation will: (1) sketch the history of the acquisition of the collection; (2) describe the nature of the content of the collection; (3) discuss the plans for access to the collection; and (4) reflect on the significance of the collection by focusing on some biblical manuscripts.


The David Saga and the Creation of Israelite Identity
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible, History, and Archaeology
John Van Seters, University of North Carolina

Over the last two decades it has become increasingly clear through socio-archaeological studies that the origins of the states of Judah and Israel were quite distinct and that the notion of a “sons of Israel” as the combined peoples of both Judah and Israel only arose after the demise of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Important to the process of creating this new identity for “Israel” was the articulation of the myth of a United Monarchy under David as the successor to the Benjaminite King Saul and the succession of Solomon as the builder of a temple in Jerusalem for all Israel before the state was again divided into two entities. This innovation in the understanding of Israelite identity was the work of Dtr, and the paper will attempt to sketch the main outlines of this ideological achievement.


Why the Verb Bara' in Genesis 1 Does Not Mean “to Create”
Program Unit: Pentateuch
Ellen J. van Wolde, Tilburg University

Bible translations, biblical Hebrew dictionaries, Genesis commentaries and detailed studies of Genesis 1 all explain the verb bara to designate "the act of bringing something new into existence" or "making something new which did not exist before". The following seven arguments lead to the hypothesis that this verb does not designate a process of creation, but designates a process of separation or distinction. (1) The making of light is described in two processes of making and separating. (2) The making of heaven is described in two processes of making and separating. (3) The heaven itself and its components are described in their function of separators: the firmament to separate the waters, the light in the firmament to separate between the day and the night, between light and darkness. (4) The making of the earth is described as the result of the sea waters" spatial movement into one place, which entails both separation and a keeping of this separation. (5) The making of the vegetation on earth is described as the result of the earth's forth bringing and its continuation as the result of the seeds" capacity to bring forth; the three times repeated noun m£n stress that this making and continuation happens in distinct species. (6) The command to the sea animals and birds to reproduce and fill either the waters or to fly in great amount over the earth, which keeps them both distinct from each other; thus God secures their distinction. (7) In the making of the human beings the the distinction of male and female human beings takes up an essential place. This hypothesis will be tested in this paper.


Do “Child” in English and Yeled in Biblical Hebrew Express the Same Semantic Content?
Program Unit: Children in the Biblical World
Ellen J. van Wolde, Tilburg University

In English, the term child is used both as an independent noun to designate a person of a young age and as a relational noun in which the inherent relation to a parent is implied but left unprofiled. The question is whether this is true for biblical Hebrew as well. Do the biblical Hebrew words yeled, yaldah, yeladim and yeladot represent the same semantic contents as the English nouns child (male and female) and children (male and female)? In the Hebrew Bible yeled occurs eighty eight times, whereas yaldah, "female child", occurs only three times. Although THAT (I: 545) claims that the male noun yeled contrasts directly to the female noun, from a merely statistic point of view this is not true. As to the meaning of these nouns, the dictionaries offer comparable results: "boy" or "male child" for yeled and "girl" for yaldah. These lexicographical studies presuppose logical oppositions such as /child/ vs /adult/, /boy/ vs /girl/, /young/ vs /old/, /male/ vs /female/. Thus, these studies project a view that is very similar to our present day view on children and the way it is expressed in the English nouns. A study of the biblical occurrences of the biblical Hebrew terms will prove differently. Hebrew culture expresses a different view on children. A reflection of its consequences will be included in this paper.


Salome Goes South
Program Unit: Women in the Biblical World
Caroline Vander Stichele, University of Amsterdam

In this paper I analyse and compare two films from around the beginning of the twenty-first century in which the biblical character of Salome plays a role. The first one is 'Cookie's Fortune' (Robert Altman, USA, 1999) and the second 'Salomé' (Carlos Saura, Spain, 2002). I will show that not withstanding the differences in style and genre as well as cultural context, both films engage the cultural afterlife of this story and recontextualize it in "the South", being the southern town of Holly Springs in 'Cookie's Fortune' and Spain in 'Salomé'.


The “Graffiti Habit” in the Early Roman Empire
Program Unit: Archaeology of Religion in the Roman World
Zsuzsanna Varhelyi, Boston University

This paper takes up the issue of why people in the Roman Empire chose to leave graffiti marks behind. Taking Ramsay MacMullen's notion of an epigraphic habit in the Roman Empire from the first to the third centuries C.E. (MacMullen 1982, 1986), I question what we can know about a parallel "graffiti habit" in terms of its history and unique characteristics. While no single explanation or classificatory category can encompass the sheer variety of themes and visual contexts employed by ancient graffiti writers, I suggest that beyond the difficult question of who wrote the graffiti, investigating parallels with and oppositions to the epigraphy of monumental inscriptions can provide new insights into the rationales for writing graffiti. The Roman epigraphic habit clearly responded to the intensification of imperial propaganda in monumental forms and the development of an audience for such representation; a parallel survey of graffiti from first-century Italy allows us to investigate how the same trends shaped other practitioners and forms of literacy.


Framing Characters: The Reader's Understanding of Assyria in Nahum, Hosea, and Jonah
Program Unit: Book of the Twelve Prophets
T. Delayne Vaughn, Baylor University

While recent research has centered on the cohesion of the Book of the Twelve, relatively little has focused on the way that characters function within this book. In this paper, I begin an examination of the function of Assyria/Nineveh in the Twelve. Using the literary theory of Manfred Jahn and Meir Sternberg, I examine the way in which readers understand characters in the text. The test cases for this project are Nahum, Hosea, and Jonah, and each of these texts reveals a different way in which readers may encounter characters. In Hosea, the reader encounters Assyria/Nineveh as an ambiguous character. From the outset, Hosea's portrayal of the nation is laden with ambivalence. In Hosea 5, Assyria appears as a potential healer of Ephraim and Judah, but this supposed healing is not within Assyria's power. Further, such healing would be acting in opposition to YHWH, who caused Ephraim"s wound in the first place. The initial ambiguity prepares the reader for further ambiguity in Hosea. In Jonah the reader encounters Assyria/Nineveh as an iconoclastic character. In the beginning, the reader hears only of Nineveh"s great size and evil deeds. Given this characterization, the reader expects Nineveh to behave only wickedly. Thus, when Nineveh repents, the reader"s expectations are inverted, and the reader is forced to understand the character in a radically different way. Finally, in Nahum, the reader encounters Assyria/Nineveh as a consistent character; from the outset, Nahum depicts Nineveh as an evil people, and this portrayal develops only along expected lines within the oracle, so that Nahum"s final pronouncement is that none have escaped Nineveh"s cruelty. Having examined Assyria/Nineveh in these three books, I extrapolate these results to discuss the character in the Twelve, viewing Assyria/Nineveh as a complex character that combines aspects of both ambiguous and iconoclastic character types.


Ill-Skilled Postmen and the Addressees of James: The Socio-rhetorical Function of the Prescript of James
Program Unit: Letters of James, Peter, and Jude
Erin Vearncombe, University of Toronto

The prescript of James serves an important socio-rhetorical function which provides the key to understanding the purpose of the paraenetic letter as a whole, establishing a guide for exegesis. James 1:1 is the only epistolary element in the document, yet the identification of the (fictive) sender James and the (fictive) audience of the twelve tribes is essential to the interpretation of the text. The address of James “to the twelve tribes in the Diaspora,” along with the pseudepigraphical identification of the author, functions to signal the rhetorical strategy of the letter, acting as a guide for the interpretation of the social world which is constructed in the document. A discussion of previous approaches to the prescript and epistolary status of James, including the characterization of James as a Judean Diaspora letter, an analysis of the pseudepigraphical character of James and the construction of ethos in the letter and a comparison of the text to other Greco-Roman paraenetic letters in terms of the primary importance of status association and negotiation in paraenesis will help to shed light on this socio-rhetorical functioning of the prescript.


Salvation for Earth? A Body-Critical Analysis of Psalm 74
Program Unit: Ecological Hermeneutics
Philip Venter, Old Testament Society of South Africa

In Psalm 74 the god metaphor is strictly and forcefully male. In Israel the king was a man, and the man was king. So the God of Psalm 74 is king, a man, and thereby the cult is constituted. Nature, Earth and her components, are simply the stage on which the cult is enacted, and does not have intrinsic value. The only worth while relationship is the one between the people and their god. Audible voices belong to either the complaining community or to the barbarians outside the cultic community. The design of the cosmos serves the male god king. Partnership is only possible within the cult. Resistance is not a trait of subject Earth, but of the endangered cultic community. The diversity within the cosmos that appears in verse 15 to 17 serves male domination. The submissiveness, absence and inaction of God, as symbolised by the concealment of his right hand, is the cause of the current crisis in the eyes of the poet. This inactivity can only be rectified by typical male action, with forceful and potentially procreative action, as symbolised by the raised hand (and associated erect penis). From this and associated symbolisations of a god as male in extremity it is clear that in Psalm 74 there can be no signs of eco-justice. The values underpinning the god construct in Psalm 74 are ethnocentric and androcentric. This text should be regarded as a cultural artefact that renders no contribution towards an ideology which regards Earth and her components as intrinsically valuable.


Genealogies of Translation Theory: Jerome
Program Unit: Nida Institute
Lawrence Venuti, Temple University

Although the history of translation theory and practice has been distinguished by a range of concepts and strategies, two approaches have recurred so frequently as to be considered dominant models: one can be called instrumental, treating translation as the reproduction or imitation of an invariant in the foreign text, whether its form or meaning, while the other can be called hermeneutic, treating translation as an interpretation that attempts to fix the form and meaning of the foreign text, although an interpretation that represents one possibility among others. My lecture will examine the origins of these approaches in the work of two major theorists and practitioners who have had a signficant impact on Bible translation: Jerome's "Letter to Pammachius" and Friedrich Schleiermacher's "On the Different Methods of Translating." Attention will be given to the continuing pertinence of the instrumental model in Eugene Nida's notion of "dynamic equivalence," especially in connection with J.B. Phillips's translations of the New Testament during the 1940s and 1950s.


The Novum Testamentum Patristicum
Program Unit: Use, Influence, and Impact of the Bible
Joseph Verheyden, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

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Was the Ban on Greek Wisdom a Babylonian Matter?
Program Unit: History and Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism
Moulie Vidas, Princeton University

This paper argues that the so-called “rabbinic ban on Greek wisdom” ought to be understood in the context of Jewish-Christian relations in late ancient Mesopotamia rather than a Jewish response to the encounter with Hellenistic culture in Palestine. The term “Greek wisdom” makes its entrance to rabbinic literature in the Babylonian Talmud. Earlier rabbinic documents – the Mishnah, the Tosefta and the Yerushalmi – mention only Greek (language) when they discuss the ban; in addition, the Yerushalmi offers an exclusively political interpretation of the ban and reduces its contemporary applicability. The BT baraita in which the ban is mentioned seems to have underwent typical processes of Babylonian literary adaptation. In its discussion of this baraita, the Talmud seems to go in the opposite direction from the Yerushalmi. It does not offer a political explanation but rather implies a cultural one, and it insists on the applicability of the ban. The term "Greek wisdom" appears also in non-Jewish literature; in late ancient Syriac texts its form is very similar to the one it takes in the Talmud. It is suggested, then, to read the Talmud's introduction of the term and its emphasis on and interpretation of the ban as a reaction to the increased importance of Greek learning in the intellectual life of Christians, and perhaps Jews, in sixth-century Mesopotamia.


The Influence of Psychological Type Preferences on Readers Trying to Imagine Themselves in a New Testament Healing Story
Program Unit: Psychology and Biblical Studies
Andrew Village, York St. John University

A sample of 404 Anglicans from a variety of traditions in the Church of England was asked if they could imagine themselves into a healing story from Mark 9:14-29 by identifying with one of the characters in it. Around 65% could do so ("imaginers") and 35% could not. Imaginers, when compared with non-imaginers were more likely to be women than men, more likely to have heard the story before and were generally more biblically conservative and more charismatically active. In terms of psychological type, imaginers were more likely to prefer feeling to thinking in their judging process. Dominant intuitives were more likely to imaginers than were dominant thinkers. Multivariate binary logistical analysis revealed that judging psychological-type preference, sex and charismatic activity were the best independent predictors of being an imaginers. The implications of these results for psychological approaches to biblical interpretation, and for the use of Ignatian-type meditation on the bible are discussed.


Social Memory and the Dead Sea Scrolls
Program Unit: Mapping Memory: Tradition, Texts, and Identity
Thomas Vollmer, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

By withdrawing from society at large, the Dead Sea community offered an alternative view of what constituted the true people of God in the first centuries of the Common Era. This presentation in many ways ran counter to the prevailing notions of the day. The vast literature of the Dead Sea community has been investigated for years, as the texts have been reconstructed by specialists in many fields. Recent inquiries into interpretive models show an intricate community seeking to establish a social group dedicated to God in what was considered pure religion. This paper examines the use of Social Memory Theory in relation to the Dead Sea Scrolls, while focusing upon one particular pericope, 4Q385 2 of the Second Ezekiel material. In this passage, the community adopts a text that reworks the Dry Bones vision of Ezekiel 37 in ways that meet the community's social needs. The paper considers the threefold relation of colonialism, spatial memory and mnemohistory as the grounding basis of the community's claim to pure religion. By reworking past tradition, the community answers the problem of the present and its colonial challenges, creates a sacred space whereby the community itself is considered holy, and recontextualizes the past for communal application. In this way, the community becomes God's resurrected community and stands against what it considered the religious compromise of the day.


Monsters in Drag: Effeminizing Tyranny in Josephus Bellum Judaicum and Greco-Roman Political Invective
Program Unit: Gender, Sexuality, and the Bible
Jason von Ehrenkrook, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

In the prologue to his Bellum Judaicum, Josephus identifies in no uncertain terms the central antagonist in his narrative, tyranny, which unleashes a madness on Galilee and Judea that culminates in the unfortunate destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. But the reader soon realizes that the locus of this tyranny resides not in some foreign despot but within the Ioudaioi, manifesting itself especially in the revolutionary faction led by John of Gischala. Among the litany of damnable vices associated with John and his band of followers in Bellum, Josephus paints a particularly lurid picture of violent debauchery in 4.559-565, recounting a blood-drenched sexual rampage that includes a pointed accusation of cross-dressing and sexual passivity. In this paper I will argue that this portrayal of the Judean rebels as effeminate objects of sexual penetration draws on a widespread tendency in Greco-Roman discourse to link perceived gender anomalies with an excessive and uncontrollable lust for power and to construct an image of “Eros unleashed” as a symbolic framework through which to define and disparage tyrants. Moreover, the image of effeminate and penetrable tyranny in Bellum, although dubious as a source of reliable information for the Gischalan's exploits in Galilee and Judea, taps into a resurgent moralizing impulse in Flavian Rome, offering an important glimpse into Josephus" own attempt to navigate the cultural and political anxieties of the capital city shortly after the tumultuous transition from the Julio-Claudian to Flavian regime.


Thinking with Children: Children as Conceptual Characters in Wisdom Traditions
Program Unit: Children in the Biblical World
Robert H. von Thaden Jr., Mercyhurst College

In this socio-rhetorical analysis I use the insights gleaned from Conceptual Integration Theory (a branch of cognitive science) to investigate how multiple biblical and extra-biblical texts “think with children.” My research examines children as conceptual Characters rather than as literary characters. Cognitive scientists Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner argue that “Characters … are basic cognitive cultural instruments” that help recruit extensive background information in order to bring the rhetoric of various texts down to human scale. Biblical wisdom traditions and their descendants employ children as conceptual Characters as a means to wrestle with how one is to lead a productive life of righteousness. In the conceptual worlds created by Proverbs and the Pastorals, for example, children carry a positive connotation. However, Proverbs also contains the seeds of anxiety that will blossom in some Hellenistic-Roman expressions of Judaism and Christianity. In these later texts children are problematic at best and evidence of an unrighteous life at worst. This paper analyzes the cognitive blends created by these diverse uses of children as a way to understand how wisdom traditions produced such a variety of religious systems.


Pauline Rhetorical Invention: Seeing 1 Corinthians 6:12–7:7 through Conceptual Integration Theory
Program Unit: Cognitive Linguistics in Biblical Interpretation
Robert H. von Thaden Jr., Mercyhurst College

In this paper I use the tools of conceptual integration theory (conceptual blending) within a socio-rhetorical framework to argue that 1 Cor 6:12-7:7 is a unified argument of Paul's own making. Widely regarded as one of the more problematic Pauline passages, I argue that conceptual blending provides biblical scholars a way to explicate thorny issues found in this pericope. Viewing the argument through the lens of rhetorical invention I move away from the more typical use of slogan hypotheses and argue, rather, that Paul first shows the Corinthians why it is necessary to avoid porneia and then explains how they can best do this. Examining how Paul compresses the vital relations between the believer and Christ allows, I argue, for a holistic understanding of his argument regarding sexual comportment and the Christian body. Moreover, the principles of selective projection and emergent structure help biblical scholars make sense of the various sexual solutions Paul creates to solve his Corinthian problem.


The Genre of 4QMMT
Program Unit: Pseudepigrapha
Hanne von Weissenberg, University of Helsinki

When first publicly announced, the editors described 4QMMT as a letter by the leader of the Qumran community, possibly even by the Teacher of Righteousness. It is a well known fact, however, that even the editors of 4QMMT were not able to agree on the definition of the genre of this text, and after the publication of the edition, it has become increasingly clear that 4QMMT eludes any clear definition of genre. It may indeed have to be accepted that in the case of 4QMMT, the definition of the genre – as either a real letter, a literary text making use of the formal features of the letter genre, a treatise, or something else – may remain unanswered because of the fragmentary state of both the textual and the historical evidence. Furthermore, it is possible that 4QMMT, or any ancient text for that matter, had several different settings, audiences, and legitimate readings during the history of its transmission. In this presentation parallel ancient texts are compared with 4QMMT. Unfortunately, the most appropriate texts are either written in and/or translated into a language other than Hebrew, or, are of a considerably later date, or also of a debated genre. Furthermore, it is necessary to remember that the fragmentary state of the manuscripts, especially the loss of the opening section of the document, may have deprived us of conclusive evidence. In light of the comparative and form-critical analysis the genre of personal letter for 4QMMT can be rejected. However, it is more difficult to make a positive proposal for alternative genre identification. It is suggested that the document is not a pure representation of any previously known form or genre; rather it is a mixture of some previously known elements of various genres combined with innovative elements suitable for the purposes of its author(s).


Luke's “Imaginative Geography”: Revisiting Edward Said's Orientalism and Its Implications for Luke's Galilee
Program Unit: Reading, Theory, and the Bible
John M. Vonder Bruegge, Northwestern College-Orange City

This year marks the 30th anniversary of Edward Said's groundbreaking Orientalism. Though coming from outside the field, his concept of “imaginative geography” has been embraced enthusiastically by critical geographers for its clear demonstration that any study of a particular region, especially within a context of colonialism, says as much or more about the author of the study than the region itself. The purpose of this paper is to revisit some of the basics of Said's “imaginative geography” and apply them to the geographical agenda within the Gospel of Luke. While most geographical studies of Luke focus on Jerusalem, this paper endeavors instead to draw conclusions about the author"s view of Galilee in light of his own “imaginative geography” of the region. The aim is to analyze the broader traditions that lie behind Lukan geography, both Jewish (“Table of Nations”) and Greco-Roman (itineraries), and how the author of Luke, as an outsider, applies them to the “mapping” of an outlying area. The paper concludes with a brief summary of possible contributions to and suggestions for current Galilee scholarship.


How “Jewish” Is the Protevangelium of James? Mary, the Temple, and Ritual Purity
Program Unit: Jewish Christianity / Christian Judaism
Lily Vuong, McMaster University

Scholars have long debated the Protevangelium of James's relationship with Judaism. The Protevangelium of James is our earliest extensive narrative about Mary, dating from around the second century CE. Some scholars, such as Oscar Cullmann and Michael Mach, have downplayed its connections to Judaism, suggesting that the text lacks basic knowledge about Palestinian geography and Jewish practice. Others, such as H.R. Smid and Tim Horner, have pointed to its parallels with LXX and early Rabbinic traditions to suggest a closer relationship with Judaism. In this paper, I will explore the question of the “Jewishness” of the Protevangelium of James by focusing on the issue of ritual purity. I will suggest that the text exhibits pointed interest in ritual purity, with parallels both in Levitical law and early Rabbinic halakha. The attention to ritual purity is paired with a concern for the Temple and priesthood, which are represented in surprisingly positive terms. As such the Protevangelium of James may provide further evidence of the interactions and exchanges between Jews and Christians during a time when the lines between these identities was arguably still very much blurred.


Purity, Piety, and the Purpose(s) of the Protevangelium of James
Program Unit: Function of Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
Lily Vuong, McMaster University

In modern research, non-canonical gospels, acts, letters, and apocalypses, have been primarily understood in terms of their relationships to the NT writings and treated as secondary in their significance for our understanding of Christian history. Despite surviving in hundreds of manuscripts and numerous languages, Marian apocrypha, such as the Protevangelium of James, have thus suffered scholarly neglect. In recent research, however, scholars such as Stephen Shoemaker have investigated the diversity of Marian apocrypha and their rich and varied usage in medieval Christian communities. In this paper, I will consider the significance of Marian apocrypha within early Christianity with a focus on the Protevangelium of James. Specifically, I will focus on the question of the genre of the Protevangelium of James, on the one hand, and its pointed concern for ritual purity, on the other. I will suggest that its literary similarities to the Greco-Roman genre of the encomium highlight its overarching concern to elevate Mary as an exemplar. At the same time, the text's interest in Mary's purity may hint at a desire make her accessible to other women. When approached from this perspective, the Protevangelium of James provides important evidence for the complex relationships between “canonical” and “non-canonical” Gospel traditions as they relate to early Christian views of gender and piety.


What Impact Does Paul's Reuse of the Shema in 1 Corinthians 8:6 Make on the Identity-Formation among the Corinthian Christians?
Program Unit: Poster Session
Erik Waaler, NLA School of Religion, Pedagogics, and Intercultural Studies

In the quest for consensus, the core values of the group are constantly negotiated. The mixed ethnic identity of the early church was a potential threat to its unity as a group, challenging the leaders to create unifying categories, setting the church-group apart from the outsiders. The division between ingroup and outgroup invites categorization and the invention of group prototypes. In the Christian community in Corinth there seems to have been more than one ethnic group; however, alongside Jews and Greeks we find the church of God (1Cor 10:32). Superordinate groups tend to suppress subgroups, thus we ask: what were the important boundaries that separated the Jews from the gentiles in the period up to the first century? Shema and the First Commandment represent such strong identity markers amongst first century Jews with several implications for boundary maintenance, both positively and negatively. A ban on the reading of the Commandments might have been in place (Ant. 3:89-90, Pr. Ev. 13:12:5, 4Qphylc,d-f). Use of the one God phrase is found in Josephus, Philo and the NT, often in anti idolatry language (Spec. 4:159, cf. Virt 35, Op. 170-171, Mark 12:28-33, etc.) . The question is whether the "no other god than one phrase" (1Cor 8:4) might be associated with the First Commandment and Shema. In the Pauline epistles, reference to God's oneness is frequent, often used as argument for unity and concord in an attempt to renegotiate the boundaries between the church and the community. In 1.Corinthians we sense the question: “How separate must we be and how free are we?” Paul seems to use monotheistic language in the answer to this question: “There are no idols in the world” (v. 4a, cf. Deut 5:8), “there is no God but One” (v. 4b, cf. Deut 5:7) and “yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live” (v. 6a, cf. Deut 6:4). If this is reuse of Deuteronomy, it fits Paul's use of Deuteronomy in this part of the letter. This leads to a discussion of the impact of such reuse of text on identity formation: What does it mean that Paul divides the “no other God than one” to the dual and quite untraditional statement “One God the Father … and one Lord Jesus Christ”?


Which Is More Literal? A Comparative Analysis of the Translation Techniques of 1 Kings 11:43–12:24 and 2 Chronicles 9:31–11:4 in the Old Greek
Program Unit: International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies
Martha Wade, Pioneer Bible Translators

The Old Greek version of 2 Chronicles is generally said to be more literal than the Old Greek version of 1 Kings. A surface level analysis and comparison of 1 Kings 11.43-12.24 and 2 Chronicles 9.31-11.4 would support that conclusion, but a detailed analysis shows that the 2 Chronicles text is generally a more polished text as may be seen in the differences in the lexical equivalents, translation of grammatical features, and various discourse level features. These differences may be partially attributed to a probable difference in the Hebrew Vorlage, but ultimately the differences are probably due to differences in translation technique. The high percentage of identical translation choices would indicate probable dependence on or at least knowledge of one of the texts by the translator of the other text. The more polished nature of the Old Greek of 2 Chronicles 9.31-11.4 would seem to indicate that the translator of this passage had access to a translation of 1 K 11.43-12.24. This paper begins with a comparison of the two accounts in the MT. After these differences are assessed, each text in the OG is evaluated with reference to the MT as to the nature of the pluses, minuses, and changes. Next, the translation equivalents for nouns and verbs are analyzed to show the similarities and differences between the two texts. In addition to translation equivalents, a limited set of grammatical features will be used as a basis for comparing the translation techniques. Finally, several aspects of the discourse structure of each text will be compared and contrasted. These discourse features will then be compared with the discourse features in the parallel portion of the plus in OG 1 Kings 12.24p-z.


"The Land Is Mine": Biblical and Postcolonial Reflections on Land with Particular Reference to the Land Issue in Zimbabwe
Program Unit: African Biblical Hermeneutics
Robert Wafawanaka, Virginia Union University

This paper seeks to explore the concept of land in biblical context and offer a postcolonial perspective of the land issue in Africa with particular reference to the struggle for land in Zimbabwe. The paper explores the irony of the Promised Land of Canaan and how that ideology has impacted the scramble for African lands. The paper also argues that the current struggle for land in Africa in general, and Zimbabwe in particular, must be understood in the context of colonial land acquisition policies. Rather than viewing land restitution as an unjust policy, it is a question of delayed justice in the postcolonial African context.


This Is My Story: Joban Use of Irony to Resist Divine Tyranny
Program Unit: African Biblical Hermeneutics
Robert Wafula, Drew University

The question of unity/disunity of prose and poetic sections of the book of Job continues to be a contested topic among biblical scholars. The three major arguments for those who argue that the prose and the poetry are distinctive sections are listed by Hoffman as: (1) a definite difference between the personality of Job in the prologue and the personality of Job in the poetry (2) God being largely depicted in anthropomorphic terms in the prose and transcended in the poetry (3) the problem at hand in the prologue differing form the subject matter (problem) poetry. My thesis is an entry into this debate with a particular focus on point number one above. The following questions are my guiding posts: What is the nature of Job's response to divine actions in Job 1—2 and 42:1-6? Is Job's character in the prose section consistent with his character in the poetic section? What is the nature of the powers that Job has to confront? And what has this to do with Job"s communicative key to talk back to these powers? In this paper I propose to explore the use of irony in the book of Job with an African post-colonial lense


XBox Apocalypse: Video Games, Interactivity, and Revelatory Literature
Program Unit: SBL Forum
Rachel Wagner, Ithaca College

Violent video games can be aptly viewed as an experiential form of the genre of apocalypse as defined by the SBL “Apocalypse Group” in 1979. Video games, like apocalypses, can be viewed as revelatory literature disclosing an otherworldly realm, evoking visionary hope of eschatological salvation in both a temporal and a spatial sense, often including vivid descriptions of the destruction of “evil” forces by the forces of “good.” However, unlike traditional Jewish and Christian apocalypses, video games are inherently interactive. Video games, especially first-person shooters, place the player directly in a "messianic" role, urging players to see themselves as the primary agent of destruction of “evil” in a re-playable imagined battle against one's enemies. Furthermore, today's violent video games allow players to imagine their enemies in endlessly variable, programmable ways. Through an analysis of select examples of popular video games in comparison with traditional apocalypses, I argue that video games are the most poignant site for contemporary renegotiation of the genre of apocalypse, and I offer some insights on what this might mean for our understanding of “evil” and violence in popular culture today.


Bringing Out the New and the Old: Ongoing Development of a Reading Paradigm
Program Unit: Ecological Hermeneutics
Elaine M. Wainwright, University of Auckland

The Earth Bible Project has provided biblical scholars with a well-developed paradigm for reading biblical texts from an ecological perspective. This paradigm has been tested in the five volumes of the Earth Bible and through the SBL Consultation Ecological Hermeneutics. As a participant in these, I have found the paradigm foundational in opening up a new area of research interest in biblical studies, namely ecological reading. The Matthean image of “bringing out the new and the old” invites us, however, as ecological readers, to be continually nuancing our reading paradigms in the light of new discoveries, new perspectives and new dialogue partners. In this paper, I will begin to explore such nuancing by asking how the 3 elements of a multi-dimensional hermeneutic combining feminist, postcolonial and ecological perspectives, which I have developed elsewhere, might be brought into a more developed critical dialogue to generate some new categories for an ecological reading paradigm. As an initial step, I will read Feminist New Testament Studies: Global and Future Perspectives, edited by Kathleen O'Brien Wicker, Althea Spencer Miller and Musa W. Dube together with Lorraine Code's Ecological Thinking: the Politics of Epistemic Location. As key critical categories are drawn from this conversation, they will be tested briefly in a reading of Matthew 13:53 with its image of new and old and its central Matthean metaphor of the basileia or 'kingdom'. The bringing out of the new and the old in this paper will characterize the development of perhaps two or three new or newly nuanced categories of analysis within a reading paradigm as well as the reading/s of Matt 13:53 which such categories render possible and plausible. The work of this paper belongs within a much larger project of developing a 'new' ecological hermeneutic for reading the Gospel of Matthew ecologically.


Catherine Booth and “Women's Right” to Preach
Program Unit: Recovering Female Interpreters of the Bible
Pamela Walker, Carleton University

Catherine Booth (1829-1890) co-founder of the Salvation Army proclaimed “women's right to preach” in 1859. Her claim rested on her reading of 1 Cor 11:4-5, 1 Cor 14:34-35, and 1 Tim 2:12-13. She insisted these verses did not forbid women's preaching but rather instructed women how they must preach. Her work drew on well-known theologians but also on a British tradition of religious radicalism and women"s rights advocacy particular to the nineteenth century. Her claim made women"s preaching a theological as well as a political problem and laid the foundation for the institutionalization of women's preaching in the Salvation Army.


Eyes in Heaven, Body on Earth: Rethinking the Significance of Paul's Journey to Paradise (2 Corinthians 12:1–10)
Program Unit: Second Corinthians: Pauline Theology in the Making
James Wallace, Emory University

This paper examines 2 Corinthians 12:1-10, in which Paul claims to have ascended into heaven and later to have received the “thorn in the flesh,” through which he learns that “power is perfected in weakness.” Many scholars over the past sixty-five years have interpreted Paul's account of his ascent as an attempt to disparage ecstatic religious experiences. Even those interpreters who affirm the importance of the ascent for Paul personally tend to see it as little more than attempt to trump the claims of rival missionaries. This paper seeks to elucidate the continuity between Paul's visionary experience, suffering, and claims to divine power. The paper begins with a brief examination of other accounts of ascent to heaven in which the ascent enables the heavenly traveler to bear suffering, deprivation, and humiliation. I then turn to 2 Corinthians 10-13 to demonstrate that 2 Corinthians 12:1-10 does not serve merely to trump or mock Paul"s opponents. Rather, these verses are part of a larger argument in which Paul warns the Corinthians of the divine power he bears despite the weak appearance of his body. I then offer an analysis of the focal passage. I demonstrate that the ascent to heaven (verses 1-4) is a necessary presupposition for the subsequent verses, for the ascent to heaven is one significant instance of the grace or power which Paul must refine through suffering. Indeed, Paul does not dismiss or disparage his ascent to heaven; rather, he demonstrates how his weak, suffering body is actually proof of his intimacy with the heavenly life and divine power. Finally, I make some suggestions as to how this interpretation might solve some remaining exegetical quandaries, including Paul"s account of his flight from Damascus (11:32-33).


The Passover Plot: From Mark to Borges
Program Unit: Biblical Criticism and Literary Criticism
Richard G. Walsh, Methodist University

Various modern fictions, building upon the skeptical premises of biblical scholars, have infamously claimed that the gospels covered up the real story about Jesus (e.g., The Passover Plot, The Da Vinci Code). While conspiracies and paranoia are endemic to modern worldviews and stories, the gospels themselves seem no less conspiratorial. For Mark, e.g., Jesus" public crucifixion by the Romans obscures two secret plots, which the gospel reveals: the religious leaders" plan to dispatch Jesus secretly and the divine program to sacrifice Jesus. Mark unveils the second plot by minimizing the passion's material details (the details of suffering would glorify Rome), substituting the Jewish leaders for the Romans as the important human actors, interpreting the whole as predicted by scripture and by Jesus, and bathing the whole in an irony that claims that the true reality is other than it seems. The resulting a-realistic (or fantastic) narrative relates a divine conspiracy that dooms Jesus—and everyone else—before the story effectively begins. None of this would matter if the conspiracy fetish did not continue to make pawns or “phantoms of us all” (Borges). Thus, in Borges" “The Gospel According to Mark,” an illiterate rancher family after hearing the gospel for the first time, read to them by a young medical student, crucifies the young man. Here, too, the infinite script consumes its obsessive believers. Borges differs from Mark, from some scholarship, and from recent popular fiction, in his insistence that such conspiracy tales are humans" own self-destructive fictions and that such tales manufacture a dangerous “providence” out of an enigmatic, chaotic “reality” (cf. Eco's Foucault"s Pendulum). Therein lies a different kind of hope than Mark"s, a very human, if very fragile, hope.


Son of Man, Son of God: Aphrahat's “Biblical” Christology
Program Unit: Bible in Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Traditions
J. Edward Walters, Abilene Christian University

It is clear in Aphrahat's Demonstrations that he intends for the Old Testament to be heard as an authoritative voice in his Church. This presumed authority for the OT is particularly striking in Aphrahat's Christological arguments. In Demonstration 17, ostensibly in response to Jewish criticisms of Christian reverence for Christ, Aphrahat argues for the use of elevated titles for Jesus, based on the fact that the Hebrew Scriptures apply the same terms to humans. In his consideration of this argument, William L. Peterson concludes that Aphrahat holds a subordinationist Christology.Considering Aphrahat"s time period, his lack of Nicene language is indeed striking. However, a reconsideration of the situation and flow of Aphrahat"s argument, respecting his methods of biblical interpretation, indicates that it is unnecessary (and perhaps unfair) to brand his Christology as subordinationist. Aphrahat"s place in the early history of Christian biblical exegesis and theological reflection heightens the importance of attaining a proper understanding of his Christology—particularly in regard to his use of Scripture as an authoritative voice for Christological arguments.


Public and Hidden Scripts in Romans 13:1–7
Program Unit:
Sze-kar Wan, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University

Paul's discussion of civil authorities in Romans 13.1–7 is fraught with problems. The gravest is that he appears to capitulate to earthly powers, which would flatly contradict his apocalyptical thinking elsewhere. A way out of this conundrum is to understand Paul constructing his discourse at two levels, what James C. Scott calls “public script” and “hidden script.” In public, Paul's rhetoric in Romans 13 appears to appease, even support, the authority of the dominant elite. These latter would read Romans 13 as acknowledgment and legitimation of their political and military might. But Paul chooses for his discourse political terms (such as exousia, diakonos) that have been radically redefined by his apocalyptic views and his self-understanding. In so doing, he winkingly acknowledges to his offstage audience that ultimate authority comes only from the God of Abraham, Jacob, and Christ, and that even earthly authorities are in the end answerable to the true Deacon of God.


Metaphor and Rhetoric in 1 Corinthians 3–4
Program Unit: Rhetoric and Early Christianity
Charles A. Wanamaker, University of Cape Town

From the time of Aristotle's Poetics and his later treatise On Rhetoric, metaphors have often been viewed as matters of style or lexis in rhetorical studies. The New Rhetoric by Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca changed this perspective by claiming that metaphors had a crucial role to play in arguments by analogy. Recently our understanding of metaphors has developed in significant ways as a result of the impact of cognitive linguistics and cognitive science since metaphors have been shown to be of fundamental importance in our everyday conceptual thinking. Paul's rhetorical construction in 1 Corinthians 3-4 employs an extensive repertoire of complex metaphors in an attempt to establish, or perhaps more accurately re-establish his authority over the Corinthian Christians. In this paper I will begin with some theoretical observations about metaphors in classical rhetoric, before comparing the understandings of classical rhetoric with contemporary metaphor theory in cognitive linguistics. This will provide a basis for an analysis of Paul's use of metaphors to construct his rhetorical argument in 1 Corinthians 3-4. My paper will show that metaphors were an effective means, if not the only means available, for persuading Paul's audience regarding his claims to authority over the community. I will conclude by suggesting that much more attention needs to be paid to the role of metaphors in the rhetoric of Paul's letters.


Renovating Ancient Households: Evoking Authority and Power in 1 Corinthians 4:13–21
Program Unit: Intertextuality in the New Testament
Charles A. Wanamaker, University of Cape Town

In 1 Corinthians 4:13-21 Paul encodes a number of relationships from ancient households into his discourse in order represent his relationship of authority and power over the Corinthians. This particular instance involves complex metaphors in which the source is a cultural "text" that is targeted towards defining relations within the Christian community.


Reflections on Concepts and Categories
Program Unit: Rethinking the Concept and Categories of 'Bible' in Antiquity
Tammie R. Wanta, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

This paper will explore and reflect upon the categories of "Holy Writ" in Second Temple period.


Who Is Sacrificing? The Reticence in Early Christianity to Spiritualize the Priesthood
Program Unit: Sacrifice, Cult, and Atonement
Tim Wardle, Duke University

This paper seeks to understand the apparent restraint on the part of the early Christians to transfer priestly identity and ideology to their community. Contrary to the “spiritualization” of temple and sacrifices, which appears to have taken root very early in the nascent Christian movement, the transfer of priestly terminology occurred much more slowly, being applied to the whole community only in 1 Peter and Revelation. An investigation into the founding of several alternative temples to that in Jerusalem—namely, the Samaritan temple, the Oniad temple at Leontopolis, and the community-as-temple ideology at Qumran—may shed some light on the early Christian reticence to spiritualize the priesthood. These examples reveal that while alternative temples and sacrifices to that in Jerusalem were constructed in the Second Temple period, alternative priesthoods were not. In each case, Zadokite priests played a significant role in the founding and continuing existence of each alternative sanctuary. This may help explain the reticence of the early Christians to transfer priestly ideology to themselves, for though historical precedent existed for the construction of an alternative temple and sacrifice, no such precedent existed for the creation of an alternative priesthood. The presence of priests with proper pedigree in and around Jerusalem appears to have prevented the spiritualization of the priesthood for the early Christians, and it was only with the passing of time and the movement of the Christian mission away from Jerusalem that the early Christians began to appropriate this priestly identity for their own community.


The Jerusalem Chronicle
Program Unit: Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah
Amber Warhurst, University of St. Andrews-Scotland

The notion that Chronicles is appropriately understood vis-à-vis Samuel-Kings pervades interpretation of the book. From as early as the LXX designation of it as “things left out,” it has been assumed that the chronistic history is concerned with the same subject matter as its deuteronomistic predecessor: the nation of Israel. Such an assumption has generated theories about the Chronicler's “anti-Samaritan” or “pro-Judah” bias and leads to debate about the significance of the Davidic dynasty and the cult in the Chronicler's perspective. It is the endeavour of this paper to show that the Chronicler crafts an entirely different kind of history: one that revolves around the city of Jerusalem rather than the people of Israel. This perspective resolves several of the puzzling features of the composition. The tribal genealogies are arranged geographically with Jerusalem at the core. Suppression of pre-David history, the division of the kingdom, and the exile in Babylon is not at all peculiar if the city, rather than the people, is the locus of interest. Accounts of military skirmishes, building projects, and cultic affairs which are retained relate directly to the prosperity or deterioration of Jerusalem. It is also possible that the interruption of Cyrus" decree in 2 Chron 36 can be explained by a focus on the city, making the charge to “go up” refer specifically to Jerusalem. Not only does this proposal reduce synoptic tensions, but it brings clarity to the Chronicler"s overall purpose in the aftermath of exile. By emphasizing the importance of Jerusalem in Israel"s religious formation, and the resiliency of the city throughout history, the Chronicler reassures the post-exilic community of YHWH"s continuing concern for Zion and the endurance of prophetic traditions attached to the city.


Reading Relegation: Exile and Exegesis in Early Christianity
Program Unit: Exile (Forced Migrations) in Biblical Literature
Daniel Washburn, Franklin and Marshall College

Which biblical episodes qualify as incidents of exile? On the topic of biblical exile, early Christians harbored a set of assumptions which differed, perhaps sharply, with those of a modern reader. Hence, we can digest their thought patterns and exegetical motivations by examining these attempts to construe particular characters and moments as exilic. In this paper, I address evidence from Athanasius, Basil of Caesarea, Eusebius of Vercelli, and John Chrysostom (fourth- and early fifth-century bishops) in order to reveal their efforts to place the mantle of banishment on figures from the Bible. These authors, confronted with fact of exile in their own experiences, turned to scripture as a means to define and explain those events. Their choices are remarkable not just for what they include, but also for what they reject. Their shared presuppositions about the justice of temporal punishment in their present and history of Judaism forced them to ignore the most obvious candidate—the expulsion of ancient Israel and Judah from the land of Palestine. Parallels between that event and their own lives would have carried the unsettling implication that their exile was the appropriate penalty for obstinacy. Instead, they culled the Old and Testaments for individuals to invest with the qualities of exile, individuals whose stories bore exilic-like qualities and whose examples suggested less threatening associations. Unlikely representatives ranging from the Levite's concubine to Jesus were therefore pressed into service as biblical examples of exile. These examples served their authors" need both to sanctify exile by locating it within a sacred past and to provide a guide for that exile's late antique counterpart. Ultimately, studying the exegesis of exile reveals the church fathers" techniques to create a meaningful explanation for their vicissitudes as well as to imbue scripture with an aura of exile.


Construction of Sacred Space in Paul's Writings and the Dead Sea Scrolls
Program Unit: Space, Place, and Lived Experience in Antiquity
Cecilia Wassen, Umeå University

As Jorunn Okland has demonstrated in her study, Women in Their Place: Paul and the Corinthian Discourse of Gender and Sanctuary Space, Paul employs cultic language in conceptualizing ritual space of the ekklesia. Similarly, the Dead Sea Scrolls writers frequently draw on temple imagery in describing the sectarian community and its holy gatherings. In contrast to the Pauline discourse, however, ritual purity is crucial in creating and maintaining sacred space in the Qumran writings. In my presentation I will compare how temple metaphors are used in the constructions of sacred space in Paul's writings and in the Dead Sea Scrolls and explore how they can illuminate each other. I will also address the question as to why ritual purity does not seem to be a concern for Paul, in spite of the importance of temple metaphors in his development of sanctuary space of the ekklesia.


Demons Yes, Powers No: A Historical Critique of the Notion of Sin as a “Power” in Romans
Program Unit: Pauline Epistles
Emma Wasserman, Reed College

This paper argues that views of sin as an apocalyptic or cosmological “power” in Romans 6–8 lack substantial historical merit. Since the influential work of Martin Dibelius and Otto Everling, many scholars have understood Paul's apocalypticism in terms of cosmic or apocalyptic powers the most important of which is Sin. On this theory, Paul understands sin as a material entity or demonic force that has invaded the person from outside their body. Though some scholars have criticized these approaches, the theories have gained wide approval and can be found in most major commentaries and various studies of Paul's thought on sin, the law, and his apocalypticism. This paper considers the historical evidence marshaled for these theories, especially literature regarding non-human entities such as the Watchers, evils angels, and demons. I argue that the bulk of this evidence actually undermines the theories as currently conceived. In my conclusions I suggest that this tradition of scholarship has been premised on a series of unhelpful oppositions such as that between mythologizing and demythologizing approaches, the notion of demonic verses human agency, and elite versus non-elite ideologies.


Beliefs Are Not at All Like Doctrines: The Case of Paul's Apocalyptic Cosmology
Program Unit: Redescribing Christian Origins
Emma Wasserman, Reed College

Does Paul believe in invisible powers like Sin, Law, Death, and Grace? Scholars such as Johann Christian Beker, Hans Dieter Betz, J. Louis Martyn and others, affirm that Paul does hold such beliefs and that they underlay many supposedly apocalyptic aspects of his thought about sin and salvation. Following on the influential work of Martin Dibelius and Otto Everling, these scholars have understood Paul's apocalypticism in terms if cosmic or apocalyptic “powers” the most important of which is sin. On this theory, Paul understands sin as a material entity or demonic force that has invaded the person from outside their body. Even more significantly, such ideas about invisible cosmic powers structure his conception of the cosmos as a whole and so marks out one of the most significant ways that Paul departs from modern western views of time, space, and the universe. Though particular configurations of these views differ widely, this paper addresses the common conceptualization of Paul as inhabiting a universe with evil quasi-intelligent agents threatening at every turn. While accepting the general view that Paul thinks about the cosmos in ways that differs remarkably from certain modern western ideas, this paper addresses the grounds on which scholars have argued for such beliefs, perspectives, or cosmic worldviews. I argue here that two conditions for holding such positions have not so far been met: the development of a critical, reflected concept of belief and the assembly of data plausibly encouraging such beliefs that is clearly defended as evidence for them. I begin by engaging contemporary theorists of religion on belief and then reconsider the notion of Paul's beliefs in invisible quasi-intelligent agents like angels, Satan, and the supposed “power of sin.”


Politics and Polemic: Hidden Strategy in Paul's Rhetoric of Empire
Program Unit: African-American Biblical Hermeneutics
Kenneth L. Waters, Azusa Pacific University

It appears that Paul urges his audience to be subject to the higher authorities in Rom 13:1-7. Previous scholarship has acknowledged the inconsistency between this appeal and the derogation of rulers and authorities elsewhere in Pauline literature. However, little or no attention has been paid to the radical disjuncture between Rom 13:1-7 and what follows in Rom 13:8-14. A new set of observations suggest that Rom 13:1-7 hides a rhetorical strategy that is best illuminated by the discussion of prosopopoeia in the writings of Quintilian and Aelius Theon. Paul's so-called “theology of the state” is actually a popular political argument that Paul rejects. His apocalyptic perspective precludes subjection to the rulers and authorities of this age. The correlation between Paul's attitude to Empire and subversive themes in African American political thought are therefore stronger than previously realized.


Performing the Torah: The Rhetorical Function of the Pentateuch in the Second Temple Period
Program Unit: Performance Criticism of the Bible and Other Ancient Texts
James W. Watts, Syracuse University

The Torah comes equipped with instructions for its own performance: a public reading of the entire scroll before the assembled people of Israel (Deut 31:9-11). The books of Kings and Nehemiah portrays similar ceremonies occurring in 7th and 5th century Jerusalem (2 Kgs 22-23; Neh 8). Yet later liturgical readings have rarely presented the entire Torah scroll at one time. Juxtaposition of biblical depictions of public readings with rhetorical analysis of the Pentateuch's contents as well as evidence for its uses in the Second Temple period provides a test case for evaluating the possibilities and limitations of performance criticism of ancient texts.


Donkey Domain: Zechariah 9:9b and Lexical Semantics
Program Unit: Biblical Lexicography
Kenneth C. Way, Talbot School of Theology (Biola University)

Zechariah 9:9b features a clustering of donkey terms which each have a unique semantic range, but the nuances are often missed or distorted in the English versions. In order to properly understand and translate Zech 9:9b, one must examine the lexical field for donkeys. Biblical Hebrew employs three terms for the domestic donkey/Equus asinus (hamor, "aton and "ayir) and only one term for the hybrid (pered/pirdah). This study clarifies the semantic ranges of these four terms and also compares/contrasts the terms in order to sharpen the semantic distinctions and to appreciate the degree of semantic overlap between them.


Mark without Mark: Problematizing Some Uses of Q as a Primary Source in Studies of Early Christianity
Program Unit: Q
Joseph A. Weaks, Brite Divinity School

As the accepted form of Q's text solidifies and as the use of that reconstructed text of Q as a primary source in studies of early Christianity increases, it becomes increasingly important to assess the reliability of our reconstructed Q text. We typically make use of the text of Q in the same way that we use extant texts--verbal analysis, literary stratification, theological summation, arguments from positive and negative evidence, etc. However, the text of our non-extant Q source is obtained through a process of backward reconstruction, a process distinct from that used to establish texts that have attestation. And as such, are there limitations regarding how such a reconstructed text can be used? How reliable is it as a representation of its original form? This paper addresses this question by presenting a complete reconstruction of Mark as if Q survived, and Mark is the source that remains to be reconstructed. It works through the non-Q triple tradition evidence in Matthew and Luke to get at the best reconstruction of Mark possible. This reconstructed Mark is then compared with canonical Mark in order to show ways in which the reconstruction is a poor representation of canonical Mark. These categories of improper uses of the text provide then a model for highlighting shortcomings in the reconstructed text of Q. The results have implications for how Q is used as a primary text in the study of early Christianity (the theology of early Christian communities, historical Jesus studies, gospel genre studies, etc.). Extrapolating clear ways that a backward reconstructed text is inferior to a critically constructed text, we problematize certain uses of the reconstructed text of Q when used as a primary source in early the study of early Christianity.


“They Did to Him Whatever They Pleased”: The Exercise of Political Power within Matthew's Narrative
Program Unit: Matthew
Dorothy Jean Weaver, Eastern Mennonite Seminary

To read the Gospel of Matthew within the global context is to read Matthew's narrative against the backdrop of the urgent issues and challenges that face the global community as a whole and individual nations each in turn. One such challenge concerns the exercise of political power within the public arena and the honesty and integrity with which such power is exercised. Frequently such honesty and integrity become casualties of political expedience and the overweening drive to gain and retain power at all costs. Stories of corruption, election fraud, assassination of rival politicians, repression of political opponents, and oppression of the powerless fill our television screens and our newspapers with dismal frequency. Such recent geopolitical flash points as Myanmar, Kenya, and Pakistan are merely current illustrations of an ongoing and global reality. The Gospel Writer Matthew lived in a world little different from our own in this regard. In the course of his story about Jesus Matthew also paints a vivid portrait of the political power brokers of Jesus" world and the methods they use to achieve their goals. This study will examine Matthew's portrait of the political leaders, both Roman and Jewish, that exercise power in the public arena of Palestine and the wider Roman Empire. Part one of the paper will examine the Roman and Jewish leaders within Matthew"s narrative and the methods they employ to gain, retain, and exercise their political power. Part two will assess the effectiveness/ineffectiveness of such uses of power, as Matthew portrays this through his narrative rhetoric. Part three will offer brief pointers toward Matthew"s contrasting portrait of leadership patterns as reflected in the ministry of Jesus and his disciples. Part four will assess Matthew"s narrative rhetoric as a tool for fruitful reflection on the use of political power within our own global community.


House Ownership in Ancient Egypt: Evidence of Partial Ownership from the Census Declarations
Program Unit: Papyrology and Early Christian Backgrounds
Joel A. Weaver, Baylor University

I plan to survey all of the census declarations from the documentary papyri in order to determine what percentage of house owners owned only a portion of a house. After ascertaining whether the majority of house owners owned their homes outright or shared ownership with others, I plan to introduce this data into the debate regarding the relative wealth of early Christians and their house churches.


The Preacher and the Sociological Roots of Religious Violence
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Joseph M. Webb, Gardner-Webb University

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Stative Verbs in the Psalter
Program Unit: Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew
Brian L. Webster, Dallas Theological Seminary

The use of prefixed and suffixed verb forms in books three and four of the Psalter are analyzed by classifying the verbs in the Psalter by the system of Van Valin and LaPolla and the clauses by a modification of Heller's discourse categories. Results focus on verbs which are linguistically stative and also agree with studies emphasizing that poetry should be compared to direct discourse more so than narrative.


Trapped in a Forgerer's Rhetoric: 3 Corinthians, Pseudepigraphy, and the Legacy of Ancient Polemics
Program Unit: Function of Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
Caleb Webster, Claremont Graduate University

The author of 3 Corinthians (3 Cor) semi-successfully passed off his work as Pauline. Though not as widely accepted as the Pastorals of the New Testament, 3 Cor did enjoy a long life of canonicity in the East, and some acceptance in the West. Scholars agree that 3 Cor is an incredibly polemical document. It includes a “Corinthian” letter written to “Paul” that alerts him of certain teachings that have been introduced to the community, and “Paul's” rebuttal to these teachings. Modern scholarship on this apocryphal text has focused on identifying the particular "heresy" behind the text. Marcion, Apelles, Simon Magus, Saturnilus and Ophitism have all been proposed as possible targets of 3 Cor's rhetoric. Of course, such conjectures put a lot of faith in the reliability of the account of the pseudepigraphist. By drawing parallels between the author of 3 Cor and the heresiologists of the second century C.E., I argue that the pseudepigraphist tells us much more about his own anxieties than he ever will about the doctrines of another distinct Christian group. Relying upon the paradigm-shifting work of Alain le Boulluec and Karen King, I argue that scholarship on 3 Cor and other pseudepigrapha of the second and third centuries must strive to understand and, therefore, escape the insider/outsider, orthodoxy/heresy polemic of these texts.


Teaching Biblical Literature in the Liberal Arts: Questions Yet to Consider
Program Unit: Teaching Biblical Studies in an Undergraduate Liberal Arts Context
Jane S. Webster, Barton College

This paper will reflect on the discussions evoked by this consultation to date and aim to focus the converstation on next steps. More specifically, it will begin to raise questions about "appropriate" course conent and curriculum, or at least the questions we should ask ourselves when we design our programs.


Exegesis for Beginners
Program Unit: Best Practices in Teaching
Jane S. Webster, Barton College

One of the most difficult challenges of Biblical exegesis is to get started. This presentation will describe a series of effective classroom activities and assignments used in a Liberal Arts College classroom aimed at introducing the fundamentals of exegesis to students who come to the biblical text for the first time. Evidence is gathered from the text, organized using a writing template, and extended and refined using a rubric. The trick is to be very clear about expectations. Classroom materials will be distributed.


Towards a More Radically “Adventist” Adventism
Program Unit: Adventist Society for Religious Studies
John Webster, La Sierra University

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The Gospel of John and the Development of Early Trinitarian Theology
Program Unit: Christian Theology and the Bible
Mark Weedman, Crossroads College

Scholars have long recognized the importance of John's Gospel for the development of Christian Trinitarian theology. Most of these studies have focused on how passages such as John 10.30 or John 5.19 became the important exegetical battlegrounds in the Trinitarian debates. In this paper I want to shift the focus from the role of individual Johannine passages to that of the Gospel as a whole. I will argue that key patristic – era theologians, especially Pro – Nicenes such as Athanasius of Alexandria, took from John a comprehensive theological vision that they used not only to exegete individual Biblical passages but also to establish their basic Trinitarian categories. The centerpiece of my argument will be a reading of Athanasius" Contra Arianos. Athanansius" importance as a witness to the development of Pro – Nicene thought is well established, and I will show that what he drew from the Gospel is the idea that in Jesus humans can now see God. From this basic insight, he builds an entire theological system in which the Incarnation itself begins the process of repairing human corruption. The Word – made – flesh not only creates epistemological conditions for seeing God, but the act of seeing God in the visible Logos is itself ontologically restorative. This has Trinitarian implications, because, according to Athanasius, unless the Logos is both equal to and distinct from the Father, then our seeing would be inadequate to correct this fundamental human problem. Athanasius" “Johannine Perspective” is found in a number of important Pro – Nicene theologies, including that of the Cappadocians and Augustine, and I will conclude by suggesting that his ideas about the epistemological implications of the incarnate Logos have resonance for modern hermeneutical theory.


The Prologue of Ecclesiastes
Program Unit: Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
Stuart Weeks, Durham University

Ecc 1.2-11 is best read not as a series of separate points, or as a mere setting of the stage for what follows, but as an integrated prologue to the book, foreshadowing and summarizing some of its key concerns. The question about human gain in verse 3 qualifies the famous statement about "vanity" in verse 2, but is then itself elucidated in the subsequent verses. Here, the emphasis is not upon the cyclical nature of the world so much as on its constancy, reflected in the never-ending activity of natural phenomena. Humans, in the course of their brief lives, can snatch only a glimpse of the world's nature, and so cannot appreciate the repetitiveness and self-containment which makes each apparent end or consummation in fact a mere stage in an endless process. These characteristics themselves make it difficult for humans to add to the world, or to take anything away from it when they depart, so that there is no lasting gain in whatever they do, and so that all their activity is ultimately fruitless.


“Knowledge and Life”: The Eucharistic Prayers of the Didache and the High-Priestly Prayer of John 17
Program Unit: Didache in Context
Hans-Ulrich Weidemann, University of Tubingen

Little attention has yet been paid to the relations between the Didache and the Johannine Literature, due to the dominant paradigm of research on its complex interrelationship with Matthew. But since the location of the Johannine Literature in Syria gets more plausible, scholars" attention focuses increasingly on this topic. Besides others, the striking parallels between the so called high-priestly prayer in John 17 and the Eucharistic prayers in Did 9f. (for example the connection between knowledge and eternal life, the importance of the divine “name”, of love and completion or the petition for unity etc.) have already been noticed by some scholars, even though the discussion has often been limited to the question, whether John 17 is (or contains) a “eucharistic text” or a “hymn within a liturgical context”. The question, whether John 17 has been influenced by early Christian prayers, has on the other hand often been focussed exclusively on the Our Father, while paying too little attention on the widely accepted interrelations between the Our Father (Did 8) and the Eucharistic prayers (Did 9f.). Perhaps the Our Father has influenced John 17 only indirectly via the Eucharistic prayers? Starting from the lexical parallels between Joh 17 and Did 9f., the paper will discuss some of the suggestions made by Johannine scholars to explain the data (R.E. Brown; U. Wilckens) and then elaborate further on the topic as regards the contents of the two texts.


One Voice or Many? The Identity of the Narrator in the “Book of the Words of Noah”
Program Unit: Qumran
Matthias Weigold, University of Vienna

One of the most puzzling issues in the interpretation of the so-called Genesis Apocryphon (1Q20) arises from the fact that large portions are narrated in the first person singular with Lamech, Noah, and Abram in turn acting as narrator, but all three of these stories also include third person narration. While the heading “Book of the Words of Noah” in 1QapGen ar v 29 provides a clue to the usage of first person narrative, no reasons are apparent for the shift to third person narrative. Focusing on the material related to Noah, I will provide a detailed analysis of the narrative voices. Taking into account the graphical markers in the manuscript (e.g. the vacats in col. v 28, xvi 12-13, and xviii 23-24), I will ask in how far the changing points of view hint to the intended structure and/or possible sources. In view of similar features in ancient Jewish literature like perhaps most prominently in the Book of Deuteronomy, I will argue that the mere shift between first and third person narrative does not allow for far-reaching conclusions about different sources.


The View from the Ground: Description of the Seminar
Program Unit: Archaeology of Religion in the Roman World
Jeffrey A. D. Weima, Calvin Theological Seminary

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Could Masoretic Lists Have Been Compiled by Computer? An Analysis of Okhla ve-Okhla from the Perspective of Text Processing
Program Unit: Masoretic Studies
Bella H. Weinberg, St. John's University

Masoretic lists compiled in the tenth century relate to the phonological, morphological, orthographic, and semantic levels of Hebrew. This paper considers which lists could have been compiled by computer. Clearly, word frequency counts operating on the graphic level of the Biblical text are automatable. Today there is even software that can count Hebrew vowel points. The Masoretes listed words ending in double nun; machine-readable dictionaries can search for word endings. Okhla ve-Okhla includes mini-concordances; contemporary concordances (word indexes) are computer-produced. Okhla ve-Okhla records words alternatively accented millera' and mille'el (ultimate and penultimate stress); lists of phonological variants can be produced by machine if the variants are represented by graphic signs such as cantillation marks. The Bar-Ilan Responsa Project developed software to generate the morphological variants of a Hebrew root; the Masoretes listed morphological variants occurring in the Tanakh. While there have been attempts to have computers deal with meaning, the semantic distinctions made by the Masoretes are not fully automatable. The lecture will be illustrated with excerpts from Masoretic lists and printouts from text processing software.


A “Dinner at the Palace” during Nebuchadnezzar's Reign
Program Unit: Assyriology and the Bible
David B. Weisberg, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion

Last year in this session, we spoke about international relations during the latter part of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II. Continuing now on The Life and Times of Nebuchadnezzar we are shifting the spotlight to material culture and everyday life. To illustrate, we would like to reconstruct a “dinner at the palace” during Nebuchadnezzar's reign, based upon cuneiform evidence. References to “the king's meal” in Neo-Babylonian texts, or “the king"s table”, give information relating to dinner/meals at the palace. Texts from other periods and places, and the material culture of the Neo-Babylonian period, can shed light on food and drink in the palace. While we must consider the question of “palaces” or “royal dwellings” elsewhere in Babylonia, we shall be speaking here of Nebuchadnezzar"s royal residence in Babylon, “a palace, a building to be admired by the people, the center of the land.”


The Masorah of JTS Manuscript 232: Summary of a Dissertation in Progress
Program Unit: Masoretic Studies
Judy Weiss, Jewish Theological Seminary of America

The goal of the dissertation is to publish the Masorah magna and Masorah parva of the manuscript, JTS 232, with translation and commentary. Topics to be covered in this paper will include a physical description of the manuscript and a summary and analysis of the masoretic notes of the manuscript.


Images as Communication: The Dove
Program Unit: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Bible
Annette Weissenrieder, San Francisco Theological Seminary

In the current methodological discussion in archeology – which views iconography as one of its sub-disciplines – the questions raised by semiotics have become the main focus of attention. At the centre of the semiotic theory for the interpretation of images stands the idea that all human beings communicatively acquire reality: cultural and natural signifying processes are the foundation of all communication. Thus, the question we bring to these images is transformed into a semiotic question: one which concentrates on unveiling the deep communicative structures lying beneath the surface structures of images within a given community of communication. The semiotics of Umberto Eco offers here a stable foundation for differentiating the abstract concepts of images, especially his concept of “encyclopedic communication.” So far, interpretations of the dove have been dominated by history of motifs or social scientific approaches which define it e.g. in terms of a message of love. This paper opts for a semiotic approach, focusing on the image of the dove in art as of a formal element: to make communication understandable.


Pictorial Didactics: Mark 4:1–20 against the Background of Ancient Numismatics
Program Unit: Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy
Annette Weissenrieder, San Francisco Theological Seminary

The images presented by the parable of the sower and its interpretation have been the object of a broad exegetical debate. This paper examines the way in which images of sowing and fruitfulness can achieve a plausibility which would prevent the allegorization in Mk 4:13–20 from being understood simply as a coincidental intensification of the text. To date, a great deal of intensity work has been directed toward appreciating the agricultural habits in Palestine as an extra-textual framework for understanding the text. My paper will seek to display the relevance of numismatic material for New Testament exegesis. Coinage from 29–44 C.E. shows that images of sowers and of fruitfulness were well-known in Judaea and Syria. They point to Roman rule and in particular to the propaganda of fruitfulness for the caesar. Thus, the pictorial world of the parable and its interpretation is both political and economic.


Christou einai: An Early Debate over the Meaning of Christian Identity
Program Unit: Second Corinthians: Pauline Theology in the Making
Laurence L. Welborn, Fordham University

What is the meaning of the claim by someone in Corinth to "belong to Christ" (2 Cor. 10:7)? The history of interpretation demonstrates that the meaning of the phrase "Christou einai" is anything but clear. The paper begins by eliminating untenable hypotheses: first, that the claim is associated with the party slogan "ego eimi Christou" in 1 Cor. 1:12; second, that the claim expresses the consciousness of a distinctive spiritual relationship with Christ on the part of a group of Corinthian gnostics; third, that the claim is an assertion of a special relationship to Jesus as the Christ through personal acquaintance with Jesus of Nazareth, or through authorization to ministry by Jesus as an apostle. The meaning of the claim is then sought in Jewish messianic expectation prior to Paul, as illustrated by the Psalms of Solomon, among other texts. The texts examined indicate that the one who claimed to "belong to Christ" would have experienced hope, a sense of entitlement, a feeling of sovereignty, the possession of wisdom and righteousness, happiness. The paper concludes by asking why the Corinthian Christian whose elevated self-consciousness Paul interrogates in 2 Cor. 10:7 should deny to Paul the sense of sovereignty and freedom he had come to possess as a follower of Christ.


Extraction from the Mortal Site: Badiou on the Resurrection in Paul
Program Unit: Pauline Epistles
Laurence L. Welborn, Fordham University

A discussion of death and resurrection in Paul and Alain Badiou


The Legal Character and Purpose of the Book of Acts
Program Unit: Biblical Law
John W. Welch, Brigham Young University

My paper argues that the book of Acts should be understood predominantly as a book about legal affairs. Indeed, the Greek name for the book of Acts is not the Erga (works or deeds) of the Apostles, but the Praxeis of the Apostles, which can be understood as the "Lawsuits" or "Legal Affairs" of the Apostles. Almost every episode in the book is either essential to or is an account of some kind of lawsuit or legal matter. Seeing the dominant legal characteristic of the book of Acts exposes its rhetorical purposes and techniques, for example, in establishing the legal independence of Christianity from Judaism, in charting important legal precedents, and in reassuring early Christians that even though they might be arraigned before various magistrates of the law (either Jewish or Roman) they will be vindicated before men or beatified by God. In addition to discussing legal themes and rhetorical methods of the book of Acts, I will review bibliographically the importance of legal topics throughout the New Testament.


Law, Ethics, Ritual, and Eschatology from the Sermon on the Mount to the Post-temple Didache
Program Unit: Didache in Context
John W. Welch, Brigham Young University

This paper first compares the use and interpretation of provisions from biblical law in the Sermon on the Mount with the application and understanding of biblical law by the Didache. Subjected to scrutiny are not only the overlapping provisions from the law that occur in both of these texts but also examined are the legal materials that are contained in only one of these two texts. The thesis underlying this paper is that the law and the Temple were inextricably connected so long as the temple stood, and the SM assumed a very positive relationship with the Temple; but when the Temple was destroyed, just as Jewish leaders needed to redefine Judaism for application in a temple-less world, Christian apostles needed to do the same for the teachings of Jesus. As a result, the Didache should be understood as a concrete articulation among Christians of a post-temple comprehension of law, ethics and eschatology.


The Vindication of the Divine and Human Agent in Paul's Reading of Deuteronomy 30:1–10
Program Unit: Pauline Epistles
Kyle Wells, Durham University

The topic of divine and human agency has recently gained renewed interest among those investigating Pauline theology and soteriology. Of those studies that place Paul in conversation with his ancient scriptural heritage, there is a strong contention that Deuteronomy 30 was discounted by the Apostle. Francis Watson, for instance, argues that Paul could not have found the solution to Israel's problem along the lines of Deuteronomy 30, since it witnesses to something other than an unconditional divine saving act. Similarly, J. Louis Martyn argues that Paul's apocalyptic conception of human agency is a deliberate critique of the “classic moral drama” which underlies Deuteronomy 30. For both these scholars, Deuteronomy 30 fails to be a source of Paul"s theology in its optimistic evaluation of human nature. In contrast to this claim, this paper argues 1) that the syntax and context of Deuteronomy 30 contain ambiguities which allow it to be read in a way that prioritizes the divine agent; 2) that 4Q504 demonstrates that Deuteronomy 30:1-10 was actually read this way by at least one of Paul"s contemporaries; and 3) that Romans 2:25-29 provides evidence that Paul read Deuteronomy 29-30 in a way that both prioritizes the divine agent and establishes the human agent, therein verifying Deuteronomy 29-30 as a scriptural source for Pauline soteriology.


The Experience of God's Paideia: Disruption and Discipline in the Psalms of Solomon
Program Unit: Pseudepigrapha
Rodney A. Werline, Barton College

The Psalms of Solomon, a collection of psalms written and edited during the period stretching from after Pompey's taking of Jerusalem to the rule of Herod the Great, gives expression to the struggles of a group of unidentifiable scribes who were apparently on the losing end of the Judean political struggles of the middle and late first-century BCE. Jewish leaders who brokered Roman power in Palestine may have confiscated the property of members of this group, the group having already been pushed out of any position of status that they may have previously occupied (Pss. Sol. 4:9–13, 20–22; cf. 5:1–5). Such great social disruption requires an explanation for the members of the group, especially since the group, in line with the long Israelite religious tradition, maintained God's involvement in the life of the people and individuals. Further, members of the group would need guidance for living in uncertain times. Far from understanding God as absent, the authors in these psalms consistently imagine God as a father who disciplines the righteous as a firstborn son (cf., e.g., 13:9). I will approach these issues related to the experience of God in God"s discipline (paideia) through the methodologies of Pierre Bourdieu, especially his concepts of habitus, logic, the body, and practice. The essay will suggest that the righteous in the Psalms of Solomon experience and respond to their situation through their embodied history, which provides a range of possible dispositions and actions as responses to the situation (habitus). Drawing on the idea that the righteous in Israel"s past experienced God in struggles related to discipline, they become tied to that history in their own bodies by their own struggles, and in that way the embodied suffering also becomes the experience of God.


The Evidence at Our Disposal: Toilets, Excrement, and the Dead Sea Scrolls
Program Unit: Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism
Ian Werrett, Saint Martin's University

In order to understand the power that the Dead Sea Scrolls have over the imagination of the general public, one need look no further than the recent spate of articles in the popular press on the so-called Qumran latrines. In the fall of 2006, dozens of humorously titled articles, such as "Biblical Latrine: Ancient Parasites Show That Cleanliness May Have Been Next To Sickliness" and "How Toilet Habits Killed off Dead Sea Scrolls Sect," appeared in The New York Times, The Independent, MSNBC and a variety of other mainstream publications around the world. These non-academic articles detailed the discovery of a purportedly ancient latrine to the northwest of Qumran, which, according to a recent article in Revue de Qumran by Joe Zias, James Tabor, and Stephanie Harter-Lailheugue proves that the individuals who lived at the site of Qumran during the Second Temple period were none other than the Jewish sect known as the Essenes. Based upon certain bioarchaeological evidence from the Qumran plateau, the witness of Josephus, who describes the defecation habits of the Essenes (Bellum 2.147-49), and a passage from the Temple Scroll, which calls for latrines to be built 3,000 cubits to the northwest of the "city of the Temple" (11Q19 46.13-16; cf. Deut 23:12-14), Zias et al claim that the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls understood their community to be a physical replacement for the Temple (cf. 4Q174 1 2 i 6; 1QS 9.4-6) and, as such, they attempted to protect the "city of the Temple" (i.e., Qumran) from the impurity of excrement by building communal latrines to the northwest of their habitation. In contrast to Zias et al's approach, which is founded upon a systematic reading of the Greek and Qumran sources, this paper will attempt to establish the Dead Sea Scroll's position on the subject of excrement by focusing on the archaeological and literary evidence from Qumran (1QM 7.6b-7; 4Q265 6 2; 4Q472a 2-4; and 11Q19 46.13-16). In the end, it will be argued that the evidence at our disposal is inconsistent and that it cannot be used to recreate a cohesive and consistent approach on the subject of defecation.


A Scroll in One Hand and a Hatchet in the Other: Essenes, Latrines, and the Dead Sea Scrolls
Program Unit: Archaeological Excavations and Discoveries: Illuminating the Biblical World
Ian Werrett, Saint Martin's University

In the fall of 2006 dozens of mainstream media outlets began reporting on the discovery of a purportedly ancient latrine to the northwest of Qumran, which, according to a subsequent article in Revue de Qumran by Joe Zias, James Tabor and Stephanie Harter-Lailheugue, proves that the individuals who lived at the site of Qumran during the Second Temple period were none other than the Jewish sect known as the Essenes. Based upon the witness of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the writings of Josephus, and newly acquired parasitological evidence from the Qumran plateau, Zias et al conclude: “This important new evidence bolsters the Essene hypothesis by corroborating the descriptions of this distinctive toilet regimen in both the Scrolls and Josephus.” In the year since the “Essene latrine” made its way into the popular media, Zias et al's theory has taken on the status of historical fact. For example, on January 17, 2008 in an article that appeared on Slate.com entitled “The Weirdo Cult That Saved the Bible” David Plotz states: "They [i.e., the Qumran community] did not relieve themselves on the Sabbath – at all! And they wouldn"t relieve themselves inside the city walls, meaning they schlepped up the hill behind a big pile of rocks to do their business." The problem with this observation, however, is that it is not a historical fact. Rather, it is a theory that is dependent upon a very specific understanding of the relationship between the Dead Sea Scrolls, the writings of Josephus, and the archaeological evidence from Qumran. Not only will this paper challenge the Essene latrine hypothesis forwarded by Zias et al, but it will use the results of this study to highlight some of the positive and negative aspects of archeology's relationship with the media.


Literary and Linguistic Aspects of the Narrative Aramaic Chapters of the Book of Daniel
Program Unit: Aramaic Studies
Jan Wim Wesselius, Protestant Theological University, Kampen

In recent years, scholars have shown that the chapters Daniel 2-6 have a literary form which is characterized by the use of poetry and elevated prose. Relatively little attention has been given to the way in which this influenced the language profile of the Aramaic in which these chapters have been written. In this paper I will show how the desire to make these chapters into a coherent literary unity, which emulates the Aramaic parts of the book of Ezra, has influenced the choice for certain linguistic features, mainly but not exclusively in the field of syntax, to be used instead of others. The results determine our options for writing a proper grammar of the Aramaic of Daniel and for locating it within the dialect structure of earlier Aramaic.


The Newness of the Word: Hermeneutical Implications of the Reinterpretation of Prophetic Words in the Book of Jeremiah
Program Unit: Society for Pentecostal Studies
Wilhelm J. Wessels, University of South Africa

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“Splendid Vices”? The Untransformed Moral Agent in Paul
Program Unit: Pauline Theology
Stephen Westerholm, McMaster University

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Further Light on the Gestural System (Chironomy) behind the “Tiberian” Accents
Program Unit: Masoretic Studies
John Wheeler, King David's Harp

In past papers, I have compared the analyses of the "Tiberian accents" by the Masoretes and grammarians and by the late Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura, and discussed my own analysis of the gestural system (chironomy) behind the written accents. In this paper, I will extend my analysis of the chironomy, referring to the gestures described by the Diqduqei ha-Te`amim and the Horayat `al-Qore (“Manuel du Lecteur”). As noted previously, such an analysis also sheds light on the validity and accuracy of the "tables of accents" derived from the analytical paradigms of the Masoretes and of Haïk-Vantoura.


Esther 4:16: A Window into the Development of Fasting in Jewish Antiquity
Program Unit: International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies
Kelly Whitcomb, Vanderbilt University

This study examines pertinent variants among the Masoretic Text (MT), Septuagint (LXX) and Alpha Text (AT) of Esther 4:16 (AT 5:11). It seeks to reveal that the variants in question reflect different contexts in the Jewish Diaspora, as well as different models for Jewish life in the Diaspora. First it provides a brief summary of the possibilities concerning the textual character and development of the three traditions and the style of translation of LXX and AT. Next, the study continues with an examination of fasting in ancient Judaism and words associated with fasting in Hebrew and Greek. After this, the variants of fasting (µwx/nhsteuw, ajsitew) in MT/LXX 4:16 and assembly (qerapeia) and prayer (dew) in AT 5:11, as well as several exegetical additions in MT/LXX (“all the Jews in Sousa” and “do not eat and do not drink for three days, night and day”) are examined. The conclusion is reached that in general MT/LXX reflect more vivid communal response to disaster because of their numerous images of fasting and communal responses which are lacking in AT. Finally, fasting in the context of a shame-honor society is briefly discussed, as well as the idea that Esther provides a model for Jewish life in the Diaspora. Fasting as a way of abasing oneself and even identifying oneself with death are a physical means of bringing all- men, women, the powerful, the weak, Jews and Gentiles- to the same level of humility. Thus, Esther not only provides models for response to disaster, but it also momentarily overturns the shame-honor system in MT/LXX.


“A Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation”: 4QInstruction and the Trajectory of the Pauline Tradition in Ephesians
Program Unit: Disputed Paulines
Benjamin White, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The study of the various trajectories of “Pauline” literature and influence in the late first- and early second-centuries is a comparatively young field of study and because of its youth has lacked, at times, methodological and historical clarity. This paper is an initial reassessment of one the earliest appropriations of “Pauline” authority (Ephesians) in light of the most recently published wisdom text from Qumran (4QInstruction). Standard explanations of Ephesians as a pseudepigraphical window into the earliest legacy of the Pauline tradition start from its lack of a specific addressee (Eph. 1:1) and move to its summative style (Eph. 2:11-22; 4:1-16). The implied author is a Jewish Christian of the Diaspora (1:12-13), who writes to Gentile Christians (2:11-22). He is comfortable with literary Greek as well as Hellenistic rhetoric and philosophy. Most place the author in Asia Minor and locate him in the “Pauline school,” which was responsible for carrying forward Paul's message into the new social situation of churches throughout the region. Building on previous studies of the similarities between Ephesians and the literature from Qumran, I will argue that 4QInstruction offers the most striking parallels to Ephesians in both theology and paraenesis. The fusion of apocalyptic and wisdom traditions in 4QInstruction offers new ways to understand the overall shape of Ephesians, as well as some of its details. With respect to overall shape, how the theology of chapters 1-3 is related to the paraenesis of chapters 4-6. With respect to detail, how the “mystery” language functions within the letter and how the Haustafel (5:22-6:9) works within the larger world-view of the author. These parallels, along with several others, raise novel questions about the social situation that gave rise to this letter.


Divvying Up the Divine Council: A New Perspective on the Structure of the Divine Council in the Hebrew Bible
Program Unit: Israelite Religion in its Ancient Context
Ellen White, University of St. Michael's College

Over the years several important studies on the structure of the Divine Council have appeared. While using different metaphors to explain the structure, all the major theorists have concluded that there is a four tier system that operates throughout the Ancient Near East. However, these tiers do not correlate with the evidence of divine council texts in the Hebrew Bible. Therefore, this paper presents a new structural understanding of the Divine Council from the text of the Hebrew Bible in order to provide a platform for further comparative studies.


Ordering the Fragments of On Frank Criticism (PHerc 1471): New Insights from Multispectral Imaging
Program Unit: Hellenistic Moral Philosophy and Early Christianity
L. Michael White, University of Texas at Austin

The paper will discuss new insights on the text of Philodemus's On Frank Criticism gained from the technique of multispectral imaging.


The Land and the Book: Biblical Studies and Imaginative Geographies of Palestine
Program Unit: Reading, Theory, and the Bible
Keith W. Whitelam, University of Sheffield

The paper will explore the ways in which the Bible has been used by European travelers and biblical scholars to construct imaginative geographies of Palestine. It is important to understand how these spatial stories work, and their continuing influence, by examining their representations and images of space that have such a profound and continuing hold on popular and scholarly understandings of Palestine. Failure to explore the critical relationship between the Land and the Book (geography and reading) runs the risk that received scholarship becomes an object of veneration or an instrument of oppression.


Complicit: Preaching Violence When You're Involved in It
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Raewynee Whiteley, Swedesboro, NJ

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Taxo and His Seven Sons in the Cave (Assumption of Moses 9–10)
Program Unit: Sacrifice, Cult, and Atonement
Mark F. Whitters, Eastern Michigan University

The ordination of the messenger (nuntius) after Taxo and his seven sons withdraw into a cave to die and the subsequent dawning of the new age in As. Mos. 9-10 play upon the role of priests and Levites in the Pentateuch and in later Jewish writings. The ordination of Aaron and his sons at the wilderness tabernacle and the extraordinary elevation of the Levites in a time of the wilderness apostasy serve as background passages for the milieu of the Assumption of Moses and its agenda for cultic reform. Later Jewish scriptures and the Dead Sea Scroll provide evidence that Taxo served as a Levitical counterpart to Eleazar. The element of voluntary death and a reformed priestly order has implications for Jesus" death, the Letter to the Hebrews" concept of Jesus as an extraordinary priest, and Jewish martyrology.


Tertullian's Widows in the House(hold) of God: A Case Study of Second-Century Christian Theo-economics
Program Unit: Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy
David E. Wilhite, George W. Truett Theological Seminary

I would like explore the connections between widowhood and economics in Tertullian's writings, particularly his Ad uxorem 1 and 2. The methodology will be from cultural anthropology and its accommodation of Weberian theories of class and social stratification as a lens for ethnography. Anthropologists insist that the economic framework cannot be isolated from other so-called societal structures, such as kinship and religion. Tertullian addresses the issue of marriage/widowhood within a motif of the “household of God.” Such a move results in the widows" finances being claimed as Christ's/the church"s “dowry.” Scholars have noted the patronage motif in North African writers such as Tertullian and Cyprian, but they have not always connected the patronus to the pater, and thereby to God; in other words they have not always explicated the relationship between the economic, domestic, and the religious (i.e. the Theo-economic). By understanding Tertullian"s use of patronage to be linked to fatherhood and kinship, the monetary significance of his discussion of wives, sisters, servants, and widows becomes salient in his Theo-economic agenda, such as his insistence that univira applies not only to divorcees but also to widows, thereby simultaneously preventing remarriage and safeguarding the House(hold) of God.


Interpreting the Bible as Bible
Program Unit: Theological Interpretation of Scripture
Robert Wilken, University of Virginia

Whether in its Jewish or Christian form, the Bible was a new kind of book, two books really, the book read in the synagogue and the book read in the church. The unity of these collections does not come from an author, as the Aeneid came from the imagination of the Roman poet Virgil, but from the people who handed on the books and from their belief in the one God. The Bible is not a random collection of books of the ancient near east or of Hellenistic culture; it is a carried book and how it was read and used by Jews and Christians in antiquity and the middle ages is as much part of its interpretation as the historical setting in which the individual books were written. In the interplay of the life of the Jewish and Christian communities and the Scriptures one discovers the Bible that has formed, nurtured, and inspired our civilization. Which is to say that if one wishes to know what is most compelling about the Bible, a strictly historical interpretation can never be satisfactory.


The Markan Resurrection: A Spatial Analysis
Program Unit: Space, Place, and Lived Experience in Antiquity
Guy Williams, Wellington College

The resurrection in Mark's Gospel is usually considered to be a narrative of absence, the key point being that Jesus' body is not to be found in the 'empty tomb'. However, this common attitude may be challenged in light of Mark's construction of locations and the characters he arranges within them. The description of time and space in the last chapter of this Gospel is used to highlight the importance of what occurs on the way to and within the tomb. Rather than being simply an empty hole, the tomb of Jesus is a liminal space between life and death. The interaction between the 'young man' and the women here is thus a key feature of the narrative. The three women are the recipients of a special revelation and prophetic commission, not just witnesses to an empty tomb. Therefore, it seems that a spatial analysis of Mark allows for a reassessment of his priorities at the ending of his Gospel.


What Survives after Fifteen Years? Response and Reflections
Program Unit: Book of Isaiah
H. G. M. Williamson, University of Oxford

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1 Esdras as Rewritten Bible
Program Unit: Transmission of Traditions in the Second Temple Period
H. G. M. Williamson, University of Oxford

On the assumption that 1 Esdras is a composition/compilation in its own right (whether complete or not), the issue of its literary genre remains to be settled. One suggestion which has been advanced in the past is that it is an early form of Rewritten Bible. This paper will outline some of the principal features of Rewritten Bible (with due acknowledgment of the doubts which have been raised about its very existence) and then discuss the extent to which 1 Esdras conforms to them.


Reading Job from the Margins: Dialogical Pedagogy and the Book of Job
Program Unit: Service-Learning and Biblical Studies
Robert Williamson Jr., Hendrix College

A richer interpretation of scripture is possible when the Bible is read in dialogue with those whose life experience, social location, and even physical location are different from our own. This may be particularly true of the book of Job, which is itself a dialogue among divergent voices grappling with righteousness, suffering, and the (in)justice of God. This paper presents the pedagogical method and evaluates the results of a dialogical course on the book of Job recently taught in a seminary context. The course aimed to embody Job's dialogical approach to truth by assigning participants to one of four contextual reading sites--a prison, a homeless shelter, a senior center, and a homeless services organization--where students led 8-week studies on the book of Job, employing Paulo Freire's dialogical, problem-solving approach to education. Particpants then attempted to integrate the perspectives of their contextualized readings with the critical approach to biblical studies, following the models of the socially engaged biblical scholar represented by scholars such as Gerald O. West and Bob Ekblad.


The Friendship of Matthew and Paul: A Response to a Recent Trend in the Interpretation of Early Christianity
Program Unit: Matthew
Joel Willitts, North Park University

Recently it has been argued that Matthew's so-called Great Commission (Matt 28:16-20) represents a direct anti-Pauline polemic. While this thesis may be theoretically possible and perhaps fits within the perspective of an earlier era in New Testament research, namely the Tübingen school, the evidence in both Matthew and the Pauline corpus does not support such at reading of early Christianity. In this paper I will argue that an antithetical relationship between Matthew's Great Commission and Paul"s Gentile mission as reflected in his epistles is only possible (1) on a certain reading of Matthew and (2) on a caricature of Paul. In light of the most recent research in both Matthew"s Great Commission and the historical Paul, these two traditions can be seen as harmonious and not antithetical in spite of the recent arguments to the contrary. This argument will prove a further corrective to the view of early Christianity that posits a deep schism between so-called Jewish Christianity and Paul"s Law-Free mission to the Gentiles.


Wisdom of Solomon at the Crossroads
Program Unit: Wisdom and Apocalypticism
Lawrence M. Wills, Episcopal Divinity School

The Wisdom and Apocalypticism in Early Judaism and Early Christianity Section came into existence to examine the unexamined assumptions that lie behind the naming of “wisdom” and “apocalypticism.” For over a decade this section has gone back to a contextualized investigation of some of the main Jewish and Christian texts of the Greek and Roman periods in order to uncover the social context that gave rise to these texts and the relations among them. This paper stands at the end of this process, and presents an evaluation of some of the approaches and findings of the section, and analyzes Wisdom of Solomon as one of the rich, problem texts. It has long been recognized that Wisdom of Solomon contains both a wisdom component and an eschatological component, and because it seems to stand “between” many other developments of this period—both ideologically and chronologically—it becomes a central test case for mapping issues of “wisdom,” “apocalypticism,” and other developments as well. I will, for instance, address the nature of influences on Wisdom of Solomon and its reception in both an oral and a literary world. I would also like to enrich our discussion of the dual nature of Wisdom of Solomon by stretching the boundaries in other ways as well: Wisdom of Solomon lies at the beginning of an increased emphasis on ascetic practices (e.g., voluntary childlessness), it lies at the beginning of a shift in the figure of wisdom from a female “Savior” to a female “Cosmic Savior,” and the shimmering nature of reality in Wisdom of Solomon has often been noted as a transition to gnostic speculation. But like wisdom and apocalypticism, these are also conflicted boundaries.


Strange Poetry: Considering the Influence of Lady Wisdom within the Philippians Christ-Hymn
Program Unit: Biblical Criticism and Literary Criticism
Andrew P. Wilson, Mount Allison University

The Christ-hymn from Philippians provides a foundational Christological treatise and its significance for the Christian tradition cannot be overestimated. However, despite being the focus of prolific New Testament scholarship, its provenance and array of background influences remain far from clear. The diverse allusions that have been considered lead as far afield as Genesis, Isaiah, Gnostic myths, Hellenistic poetry, and many more besides. And yet, despite having identifying an array of possible background influences, in practice they have not had a great deal of influence on the way this hymn grounds the dominant theological tradition. Conscious of the poetic (and hence subversive) character of this hymnic text, in this paper, I pursue the allusions to a more often neglected intertext: the Hebraic Wisdom tradition. To what extent does the dark and strange Lady Wisdom lurk uninvited in this scene? And, even if she appears as but a shadow or a phantom, why has it been standard practice to politely ignore her awkward presence? Is it because if pursued, her elusive and subversive form (according to recent feminist characterizations) threatens the elaborate theological apparatus so well constructed atop this hymnic foundation? To what extent does the evocative imagery and poetic dimension of the Wisdom tradition influence our reading of the Christ-hymn and how might this poetic marriage continue to shape our understandings of this text as the place where Christology began?


The Demotion of the Levites in P and H
Program Unit: Pentateuch
Kevin A. Wilson, Wartburg College

The relationship between Numbers 16-18 and the "Law of the Temple" in Ezekiel 40-48 has long been recognized. This nature of that relationship, however, is still uncertain. Recent scholarship has seen innerbiblical exegesis at work in the two passages, with some suggesting that Ezekiel views Numbers 16-18 as paradigmatic of the Levites in the late monarchic period. In the wake of the work of Israel Knohl, who divides the Priestly layers into PT and HS, it is necessary to revisit the question. This paper examines the composition and subsequent editing of the story in Numbers 16-18 to determine what would have been available to Ezekiel and what would have been composed subsequent to his work. It concludes that the relationship between Numbers and Ezekiel is not as simple as previously thought and involves three distinct stages of work within the Priestly school, each of which is re-interpreting earlier versions of the story.


Joseph Smith's Pneumatology Compared with the Bible
Program Unit: Latter-day Saints and the Bible
Lynne Hilton Wilson, Marquette University

Many biographers dismiss Joseph Smith (1805-1844) as a product of his environment. Superficially, his thoughts on the Holy Ghost appear to fall within the mainstream of the enthusiastic outbursts of the Second Great Awakening, but a closer look shows that they are an abrupt and radical departure from the pneumatology of his day. His writings on the Holy Spirit clash with those of his contemporaries but harmonize with biblical language. Rather than categorizing him with his colleagues, one best understands Joseph Smith's pneumatology by comparing it with the Bible's. Even though he explored untraditional Christian pneumatology, his vocabulary falls within the terminology of the King James Version. Comparing the references to the Holy Spirit in The Book of Mormon and The Doctrine and Covenants with biblical narratives clearly shows their continuity. This paper will argue that although Joseph Smith"s writings on the Holy Ghost concur with the biblical vocabulary, they demonstrate more breadth and depth than biblical pneumatology. Fascination with the Holy Ghost pervades Joseph Smith"s prophetic career. His “sacred texts” cite 1.67 times more references to the Spirit than the Bible–notwithstanding the nearly double length of the KJV Bible. This greater attention to the Spirit is especially apparent in Joseph"s Doctrine and Covenants where sixty-three percent more words describe the Holy Spirit than in the New Testament. Smith"s breadth includes unique pneumatological phrases which demonstrate his theological thrust (i.e. Spirit of revelation, voice of the Spirit, and baptism by fire). Conversely, examining the familiar biblical idioms (gifts of the Spirit, the gift of the Holy Ghost, the strait gate, born again, and false spirits) demonstrates Joseph"s pneumatological depth. Joseph Smith"s writings and sermons express a great love for the Bible, and everything he teaches on the Spirit parallels biblical vernacular.


The Exile and the Shape of the Prophetic Literature
Program Unit: Exile (Forced Migrations) in Biblical Literature
Robert R. Wilson, Yale University

John Ahn has recently called the attention of the scholarly world to modern studies of migration and suggested that these studies might shed light on the (forced) migration of Israelites from Jerusalem to Babylon between 597 and 586 B.C.E. According to Ahn's research, these modern studies suggest that the first, second, and third generations of migrants have different perceptions of their situations, face different problems, and have different ideas about how they should live their lives. This paper will briefly examine some of this research and then will explore the usefulness of the comparative material by taking another look at the very different interests of the Book of Ezekiel and the Second Isaiah. If these two bodies of prophetic literature do indeed reflect the perspectives of different generations of exiles, then the comparative material will be used to explore the three different types of literature to be found in the Book of Jeremiah.


Marcion's (Re)description of Apostolic Christianity
Program Unit: Redescribing Christian Origins
Stephen G. Wilson, Carleton University

A consideration of Marcion's concept of the origins of Chistianity and the line of "apostolic" authority he claimed for it. The paper will discuss questions such as: the material Marcion had to hand; what may have motivated his distinctive reading of early Christian tradition; and the influence of the two social and intellectual contexts he can confidently be associated with (Anatolia and Rome). A secondary theme will be to review Harnack's extraordinarily important (re)description of Marcion in the context of the intellectual and political currents of the early 20th century and recent revisionist attempts to emerge from under his shadow.


Creation and Tabernacle, Sabbath and Glory
Program Unit: Sabbath in Text and Tradition
Ross E. Winkle, Pacific Union College

In this presentation I will explore the relation between the Sabbath and God's glory in the tabernacle pericope in Exodus 25-40, based on the homology between creation and the tabernacle. The intertextual and thematic relationships between the creation account in Genesis 1:1—2:4 and the tabernacle pericope in Exodus 25-40 have long been recognized, from Josephus (War 3.265) and rabbinic sources (e.g., Midr. Tanh. 11.2-3; Pesiq. Rab Kah. 1.4) to 20th and 21st century scholarship (e.g., Blenkinsopp, Buber, Cassuto, Fishbane, Fletcher-Louis, Fretheim, Janowski, Kearney, Levenson, Propp, and Weinfeld). These associations reflect the ANE conceptual relationship between temple and cosmos. Within the tabernacle pericope, reference to the Sabbath occurs immediately after instructions are given to Moses about constructing the tabernacle (Exod 31:12-17), thus paralleling the reference to the seventh day after the days of creation in Gen 2:2-3. But when Moses finally finishes the work of setting up the tabernacle (Exod 40:33), there is no explicit mention of the Sabbath. The correlating concept, however, is implicit: the act of God's glory filling the tabernacle upon its completion (Exod 40:34). Furthermore, God"s glory entering the tabernacle bookends the account of the construction and erection of the tabernacle on a macro-level scale by mirror parallelism with the account of Moses entering the glory-cloud on Sinai on the seventh day (Exod 24:15-18) in the introduction to the tabernacle pericope. Thus, the Sabbath is not only understood as a day of completion, rest, holiness, and blessing, but also one of divine glory and presence.


Exploring Hebrew Stems by Class
Program Unit: Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew
Nicolai Winther-Nielsen, Copenhagen Lutheran School of Theology

Biblical Hebrew has a morphologically productive stem-formation system as a fundamental component in its verbal system. A number of syntactically oriented studies have tried to unravel the intricacies of this system, but what if we need semantic criteria to unravel this system, and what would such criteria be anyway? This paper will approach this challenge by arguing that we need to establish a semantic basis for verb classification in order to be able to look at the Hebrew stems, or binyanim, in a fresh way. Presently we have rather fine tools for syntactic queries into the stem system by means of sophisticated databases like the Werkgroep Informatica database or the Andersen Forbes Analyzed Text and others. But how would we really assess structural information that we have accesss to, and how do can they help us explain the Hebrew Stems? My own solution is to build a verb classification system based on the lexical aspect tradition from Vendler and exploited by Dowty, Van Valin and many others. I attempt to argue for refined criteria for verb classes and I implement such criteria as they are developed in Role and Reference Grammer, in order to build corpora of verb classes with analyses of the most frequent Hebrew verbs. This is part of my ongoing work on building a Role-Lexical Module for linking Hebrew syntax to semantic representation and already reported in a paper read at SBL 2007. My goal is to continue the seminal work of Creason (1995) and to learn from current accounts on of the state of research in Beth Levin and Malka Rappaport Hovav,Argument Realiziation (2005). The paper will focus on how such research can explain some fundamental features of the Hebrew stems and their use.


The Hour of the Lamb? Christology and Chronology in John 19:14
Program Unit: John, Jesus, and History
Stephan Witetschek, University of Cambridge

The chronological indication in John 19:14 that Jesus was condemned to death "about the sixth hour" is often interpreted as pointing to Jesus as the paschal lamb, since the time of his death sentence coincides with the hour when in the temple the paschal lambs were slaughtered. This paper is an attempt to evaluate the plausibility of the connection between chronology and christology. It is basically about two questions: Where does this scholarly tradition come from, and how plausible is it? How else can this chronological indication be explained, maybe based on historical knowledge?


A Gold Coin for Caesar? A Close Look at Gospel of Thomas 100
Program Unit: Jesus Traditions, Gospels, and Negotiating the Roman Imperial World
Stephan Witetschek, University of Cambridge

Compared to the canonical parallels, GThom 100 seems to be just a strongly abridged version of a more fully developed apophthegm about taxation. The aim of this paper is a close reading of GThom 100 as a text in its own right, which might reveal a slightly different view on taxation and the Roman emperor.


No Turning Back: The Epideictic Rhetoric of Hebrews
Program Unit: Hebrews
Ben Witherington, Asbury Theological Seminary

Though scholars have long recognized that Hebrews was a rhetorically sophisticated document, there has been debate about the species of rhetoric exhibited in this book. In this paper I will be arguing that epideictic rhetoric is found from beginning to end in this document, and this explains numerous of its special and sometimes peculiar features. I will argue that Hebrews is basically a sermon, rather than a letter, indeed no one hearing this document from the outset would have ever thought it was a letter since it has no epistolary features in its first 12 chapters. The rhetorical aim of this discourse is to head off defection of Jewish Christians under pressure in Rome to return to their Jewish roots, abandoning Christ.


The Conflicts between Judah and the Neighboring Countries in the Book of the Twelve: Reflections upon a Redactional Layer of the Early Hellenistic Period
Program Unit: Book of the Twelve Prophets
Jakob Wöhrle, University of Münster

In the recent research on the Book of the Twelve the many catchword-connections between the individual books have often been recognized. Especially, the connections between Joel 4:4-8, Am 1:9-10 and Obad 14-15, where the enslaving of Judaeans by the Phoenicians, the Philistines or the Edomites is accused, between Am 1:11-12; 9:12 and the book of Obadiah, where divine judgement against the Edomites is announced, or between Joel 4:18 and Am 9:13, where a transformation of the nature and new agricultural success is promised, have been detected. However, a way to explain these connections in detail has not been found yet. Particularly, the historical background and the intention of these passages have not been defined satisfyingly. The paper will show that the mentioned passages are part of a more extensive redaction of the Book of the Twelve, which affected the books of Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Deutero-Zechariah and Malachi. This redaction reacts to events, which happened in the early Hellenistic time, namely the assaults of some neighboring countries, who sinned against the Judaeans by besieging and invading Jerusalem, plundering the city and selling a part of the people on the slave market. These events are characterised by this redaction as God's just judgement against his people. But it is also promised that Yhwh will avert the present distress and lead his people to new economic success.


The Meaning of Peres (Daniel 5:25, 28)
Program Unit: Biblical Lexicography
Al Wolters, Redeemer University College

A comparison with cognates in Eblaite, Old Aramaic, Official Aramaic, Phoenician and Mishnaic Hebrew establishes quite securely that this noun in Daniel 5:25, 28 is a unit of weight equivalent to a half-mina (not a half-shekel). This has the further implication that it does not refer to a coin, but to a weight-stone as a standardized weight used on scales. Such weight-stones, inscribed with the weight-designation PRS, are archeologically attested. Accordingly, "peres" in Daniel 5 is used metaphorically to represent, not one of a series of Neobabylonian kings, but the standards of God's justice.


Use of Synonymous and Antithetical Metaphors in Psalms
Program Unit: Biblical Hebrew Poetry
Fook-Kong Wong, Hong Kong Baptist Theological Seminary

Studies of Hebrew poetry have concentrated on studies of their structures, like meters, parallelism, chiasm, and acrostics. Insufficient attention has been given to metaphors, stated plainly or alluded, as poetic devices. This paper will discuss Psalms 42/43 and 91 to show how skillful use of metaphors highlighted the poets" thoughts. Psalm 42/43 is a lamentation in which the psalmist expressed his sorrow of being prevented from worshipping at Jerusalem and his grief of being oppressed by his enemies. He did so by contrasting an idyllic picture of his outer world against his inner turmoil. Psalm 91, on the other hand, uses the metaphor of a besieged city to express the psalmist's confidence in God as his protector. The first example could be considered antithetical metaphors while the second could be considered as synonymous metaphors.


The Role of the Sage: Ben Sira at the Boundary
Program Unit: Wisdom and Apocalypticism
Benjamin G. Wright III, Lehigh University

The Wisdom of Ben Sira has been held up as one of the parade examples of wisdom literature, and over the years that the Wisdom and Apocalypticism Section has been in business, we have set this book against a variety of texts, both those usually designated wisdom, such as 4QInstruction, and those designated apocalyptic, such as 1 Enoch. But a closer look at Ben Sira reveals why the categories of wisdom and apocalyptic are so problematic. In this paper, I want to try to pull together a nexus of issues to illustrate this claim and that connect the three questions we are focusing on this year. Ben Sira's use of sources, the performance modes signaled by the text, and the reception mode along the orality-textuality spectrum are linked together by the way that Ben Sira constructs the place of the sage in his social world and the authority that he claims for his instruction. In short, as Richard Horsley and Pat Tiller have argued, in this period the scribe/sage occupied an important position in the Judean Temple state. As one who prepares young students to assume the role of the scribal retainer in the centers of power, Ben Sira not only teaches them the things they need to know, he must work to construct their identities so that they can play their proper role. In order to accomplish these ends, Ben Sira legitimates the authority of his teaching and his position as a sage through a number of legitimacy conferring strategies. So, for example, he exploits the discourse of parenthood to construct his students as his children. The ways that he uses the first person creates an ideal sage, an exemplar, to whom they can look and with whom he identifies himself. In this light, the fact that Ben Sira does not employ citations of Hebrew scripture in his book, but thoroughly incorporates his sources into his instruction becomes more readily understandable. These issues have been discussed in relative isolation from each other, but in this paper, I want to examine them together in order to see what kind of a picture of the sage that Ben Sira offers us. The mechanisms that he employs to pursue these goals further highlight the conflicted boundaries between wisdom and apocalyptic.


Post-Graduate Theological Education in Africa: Evangelicals Coming of Age
Program Unit:
Christopher J. H. Wright, Langham Partnership International

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“She Shall Not Go Free as Male Slaves Do”: The Female Debt-Slave in the Hebrew Bible
Program Unit:
David Wright, Brandeis University

The Hebrew Bible, as part of ancient Near Eastern literature, considers slavery a valid social and economic institution. Abraham and the other exemplars of piety in Genesis owned slaves. God is even said to have blessed these men by providing them with slaves. How are we, today, to make ethical sense of this positive acceptance of slavery, and of God's apparent role in it? One important step is to recognize the Bible as a human document, based on other human documents. It was created within particular historical circumstances for particular political, ideological, and social purposes, and was rewritten again and again over time. If we could recognize the ways in which the Bible expresses its writers' ideals and the goals--ideals and goals specific to the age the writers lived in and tied to the customs and expectations of their time--then we could realize the impossibility of simply applying biblical laws to our own society, regardless of how they encourage exploitation or limit individual physical, social and sexual freedoms. We could, indeed, adopt the method of the biblical law writers themselves: instead of sticking to the literal dictates of the texts they inherited, these authors questioned them.


The Nehemiah Memoir and the Composition of 1 Esdras
Program Unit: Transmission of Traditions in the Second Temple Period
Jacob L. Wright, Emory University

This paper argues that one need not engage in close text critical comparisons of Ezra-Neh MT, LXX and 1st Esdras in order to recognize that 1st Esdras represents a later composition. The strongest argument is the priority of Nehemiah's Memoir in the composition process of Ezra-Neh. I will take several test-cases and demonstrate the probability that the Ezra material that is common to 1st Esdras responds directly to Nehemiah's Memoir. Insofar as the evidence is probative, it becomes very difficult to maintain that 1st Esdras predates Ezra-Neh.


The Patronage of Philosophical Libraries in the Early Roman Empire: Khirbet Qumran and the Villa of the Papyri
Program Unit: Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism
John W. Wright, Point Loma Nazarene University

Khirbet Qumran does not represent the only site that combines archaeological material remains with extensive literary scrolls from the first century CE. The Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum was buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE within a decade of the Roman destruction of Khirbet Qumran. Piso, the father-in-law of Julius Caesar possibly initially owned the Villa of Papyri and provided an extensive Epicurean library as the patron of the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus. I propose to investigate the relationship between these two sites and libraries within the framework of the patronage of philosophical schools. The Villa of the Papyri may provide a concrete model for understanding Khirbet Qumran as a residence of a patron for a Jewish philosophical school, i.e., the Essenes. As Piso provided a library for the Epicureans through Philodemus, we may possibly understand Khirbet Qumran as a site where a patron provided a Jewish philosophical library for consultation by the leaders of a Jewish philosophical society as well as a place for the gatherings of the group. Such a hypothesis integrates the material remains, the literary archive, and the social history of libraries within the Roman world.


“And the Birthright Was Given to Joseph”: Joseph as the Included/Excluded Bastard Son of Israel
Program Unit: Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah
John W. Wright, Point Loma Nazarene University

Since the publication of H. G. M. Williamson's monograph, Israel in the Book of Chronicles, Chronicles scholarship has emphasized the “inclusivity” of Israel in Chronicles. In contrast, I would like to argue that the genealogy of Reuben in 1 Chron. 5:1-3 narrates the exclusion of Joseph from the legitimate genealogy of Israel as Israel's bastard son. Joseph"s descendents therefore does not receive a land of their own, but dwell amid Manasseh (1 Chron. 7:29). It is possible that a particular interpretation of the Joseph story in Genesis underlies the Chronicler"s interpretation. The Chronicler reads the story of Joseph in Genesis to order to exclude the northern area of Samaria from a claim to the proper heritage of Israel.


The Qur'anic David
Program Unit: Prophetic Texts and Their Ancient Contexts
Peter Wright, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

This paper utilizes recent allusion theory to argue that the Qur'an is best understood as an active participant in the “moral rehabilitation” of the profile of King David from an all-too-human monarch (2 Samuel) to a prophetic figure who was a model of penitence and piety. It traces the trajectory of David's “moral make-over” from 1 Chronicles to Rabbinic tradition to the Qur'an and beyond in Muslim exegetical traditions.


The Alleged Fictionalization of the Plagues and the Exodus in Artapanus
Program Unit: Hellenistic Judaism
Jed Wyrick, California State University, Chico

The rewriting of the Exodus found in Artapanus has often been attributed to his fictionalizing of events, as if he were a Jewish equivalent to Ctesias of Cnidus. In addition, the supposed overlap with Septuagint terminology for the plagues has been considered as proof that Artapanus consulted the LXX (together with the alleged correspondence between Artapanus" names for biblical individuals and those found in the LXX). I will argue that both of these conclusions are mistaken, by exploring the exegetical nature of Artapanus" approach to each of the Exodus episodes. I will also show that he could not have consulted the LXX and instead relied on a Hebrew text (whether this was a text resembling the MT, the Vorlage to the LXX, or some other textual tradition is unknown to me at this point). I maintain that Artapanus" description fills in perceived gaps in the biblical text and points out implied events without bothering to repeat elements that are clearly stated in the original. Counting the traumatic events that precede the exodus as “ten plagues” was not the only way to register them. Exodus 7:3 and 10:2 speaks of “signs and wonders,” and they are similarly described in Psalm 78:43 and Psalm 105:27. Different numbers of plagues obtained in other early interpretations. Artapanus explores events that could be attributed to Moses rather than to Aaron, whose destructive miracles he held to be extensions of the marvels of Moses. He also has specific reasons for the order of the events that he presents, an order that does not ultimately contradict the narrative order of the biblical text. Artapanus describes Moses as creating the yearly Nile flood, apparently in a tendentious or fictionalizing addition to the biblical text. Yet the motif has an exegetical origin, not just an etiological or competitive historiographical premise. Each of the other elements in his text that are missing from the biblical account of the Exodus will be similarly explained in this paper as time allows.


To Become a Sister to Her Husband: Celibacy in the Apocryphal Acts of Apostles
Program Unit: Christian Apocrypha
Mariko Yakiyama, Tokyo Union Theological Seminary

This paper will analyze teachings of celibacy by the "lesser-known disciples" of Jesus in the five earliest apocryphal Acts of the Apostles (Andrew, John, Peter, Paul and Thomas) by comparing family relationships that converts had before and after their conversion. It will show how their understanding of the ideal Christian life was in marked contrast to a society based on the primacy of the traditional family. In fact, in the stories in these Acts, Christian converts destroy their former familial relationships because of their embrace of celibacy as a Christian ideal. For example, Maximilla, the wife of the Roman proconsul in The Acts of Andrew, refuses to have sexual relations with her husband after her conversion, which leads to the end of their marriage. In The Acts of John, Drusiana, another woman convert, ends her marriage in another way. She becomes a “sister” to her husband. At first, Drusiana's husband is outraged, but eventually he converts too. After their conversion they call each other brother and sister, not husband and wife anymore. Therefore, in these Acts, the act of conversion significantly altered human relationships in families. By collecting and analyzing examples of conversion stories in these five Acts and especially by comparing the converts" choices regarding family especially in contrast to their former lives, we can better understand their believes in celibacy. While these elements might be why these texts were not selected as one of the canonical writings, I with to argue that their believes in celibacy were motivated not only by the interest in asceticism but also by the necessity of converts to giving up their family as in the teachings of Jesus.


Influences of Egyptian Marriage Practice on the Apocryphal Acts of Apostles
Program Unit: Early Christian Families
Mariko Yakiyama, Tokyo Union Theological Seminary

This paper will analyze the family dynamics of Christian converts in the two of the five earliest Acts of the Apostles that thought to be written in Alexandria. The paper will show how their understanding of the ideal Christian life was formed under the mixture of influences of Christian teachings and the pagan practice of marrying to one's sister in Egypt. In the stories in these two Acts, Christian converts destroy their former familial relationships because of a Christian ideal of celibacy. For example, Maximilla, the wife of the Roman proconsul in The Acts of Andrew, refuses to have sexual relations with her husband after her conversion, which ends their marriage and leads her husband's death. In The Acts of John, Drusiana, another woman convert, however, maintains celibacy but also her marriage relationships. At first, Drusiana"s husband is outraged by her conversion, but eventually he converts too. After their conversion they call each other brother and sister, not husband and wife anymore. This paper will point out the possible influences of the custom to marry one"s sister in Egypt on the depiction of the couple in The Acts of John. As a result, this paper will conclude that the teaching in celibacy is not only motivated by asceticism.


Jesus as “Teacher-Savior” or “Savior-Teacher”: Reading the Gospel of Matthew in Chinese Contexts
Program Unit: Matthew
John Yieh, Virginia Theological Seminary

Reading the Gospel of Matthew in global contexts with critical hermeneutical reflection may be rewarded with similar benefits that a Wirkungsgeschichtlich approach can garner from examining influential interpretations and their historical effects in the Western traditions, i.e. horizon-broadening and self-correction. When we study the reception history of Matthew synchronically across cultures and diachronically through history, much can be learned about sound exegesis and ethical appropriation of the scripture. Every interpretation is context-specific and culturally-informed. This paper attempts to investigate some “contextual” readings of Matthew by influential scholars and preachers in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Chinese communities in other places. Most of these readings focus on Jesus" role as “Teacher or Savior” and his teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. My first goal is to understand why these two themes (Christology and ethics) are particularly favored, how they are appropriated in the Chinese contexts, and what impact they have exerted. They may open our eyes to see Matthew's Jesus afresh. These readings also provide fascinating examples of “minority hermeneutics” to show how the Christian Bible struggling to get its voice heard in a multi-religious and multi-scriptural society. Finally, they raise interesting questions concerning the truth claim of the Bible in cross-cultural and comparative settings (West vs. East) and in colonial and post-colonial discourses (North vs. South). They may open a window for us to appreciate the cultural mindset and social conditions of the modern Chinese, a huge population in the Global South, and ponder how Matthew may yet speak to them.


Tanakh Epistemology and the Theology of the Hebrew Scriptures
Program Unit: Theology of the Hebrew Scriptures
Douglas Yoder, Los Angeles, California

In a recently completed study entitled "Tanakh Epistemology: A Philosophical Reading of an Ancient Semitic Text," I argue that the hermeneutical methodologies of biblical studies have overlooked the indigenous epistemology of the Tanakh, and that a philosophically conversant articulation of the tacit and explicit epistemic axioms that function across the literature makes possible a more conceptually self-aware approach to its theology. Tanakh epistemology is cohesive, nuanced, far-ranging, and bold. Its deepest conceptual commitments voice noncontradictory positions with respect to skepticism, perception, physical and nonphysical reality, epistemic limits, and the relation of knowledge to power, desire, and life. The western assumption that Greek-derived epistemology is of uniquely transcultural validity and application is therefore poorly grounded. Consequences follow for biblical studies in general, and especially for investigations into the theology of the Hebrew Scriptures that seek to proceed on the noneisegetical grounds of fundamental conceptuality signaled by epistemology itself.


Epistemology of the Bible? Philosophy, Epistemology, and the Tanak
Program Unit: Christian Theological Research Fellowship
Douglas Yoder, Claremont Graduate University

The relationships between Christian theology, philosophy, and the Bible are difficult to sort out, for these domains of discourse are enormous, contested, and interdependent. The writings of many early theologians are already part of the New Testament, and some of these refer specifically to philosophy. The interrelationships of this primary literature and the centuries of philosophically and biblically influenced theological reflection that follow make it challenging to set out even the meanings of “theology,” “philosophy,” and “Bible” in terms that are not vague or circular. This situation can be clarified by examining the function of epistemology in each domain of thought. Especially fruitful is the comparison of philosophical epistemology with the epistemology assumed and articulated by the earliest, non-Hellenic forms of the biblical literature. In Tanakh Epistemology: A Philosophical Reading of an Ancient Semitic Text I argue that epistemology indigenous to the Tanakh is conceptually sophisticated and demonstrates many points of affinity to and contrast with philosophical epistemology. This oldest form of biblical epistemology allows for an epistemic reframing of the New Testament, and for a re-assessment of philosophical epistemology itself. A philosophically conversant elucidation of epistemology in the Tanakh is therefore one way of beginning to elucidate the relation of theological epistemology to biblical epistemology and to philosophical epistemology, that is conceptually consequential for the relation of theology, philosophy, and the Bible.


An Ancient Case of Identity Theft? An Inquiry into the Relationship between Theodotian and the Greek Lamentaions
Program Unit: International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies
Kevin J. Youngblood, Freed-Hardeman University

Regarding the Greek version of Lamentations, Origen commented “The editions of Aquila and Theodotion in Lamentations have not survived, only that of Symmachus and the Seventy.” Origen's statement has led to much speculation regarding the relationship between Theodotion and the Greek version of Lamentations. Dominique Barthélémy hinted at some close relationship between Theodotion and those recensions/translations he identified as the “Kaige Group,” including Lamentations, but he left it to others to define precisely what that relationship is. More recently, Isabelle Assan-Dote has proposed that the Greek version of Lamentations actually is the work of the translator, or school of translators, identified by the name "Theodotion". This paper investigates Assan-Dote's conclusion by carefully comparing the translation techniques of Theodotion and the Greek Lamentations. The results indicate that the relationship between the two is more complex than simple equation.


Some Aspects of Aramean Religion: Acculturation, Influence, Transmission
Program Unit: Assyriology and the Bible
K. Lawson Younger Jr., Trinity International University

Throughout their early history, the Arameans manifest a tremendous proclivity for acculturation. This is particularly clear in the religious domain. This paper will investigate some of the various ways in which Aramean religion acculturated and influenced ancient Near Eastern religion of the Iron I and II periods. It will focus especially on the areas of astral worship, including especially the moon-god, and on funerary customs, as seen particularly in inscribed funerary monuments.


Preaching from the Deutero-Paulines: Handling Scholarly Suspicion and Pastoral Integrity in Concert
Program Unit: Homiletics and Biblical Studies
C. Hans Yuckman, United Presbyterian Church

Homiletics is at a kind of crossroads with biblical scholarship. While it so often benefits from the fruits of good scholarship, homiletics eventually reaches an impasse when it engages historical-critical work. This is especially apparent when dealing with Paul, which is one of the reasons preaching from Paul has grown unpopular. The increased awareness of the authenticity of some letters over and against others has led to the widely accepted categories of "Pauline" and "Deutero-" or "Pseudo-Pauline." While the distinction adheres in academic settings it is essentially unwelcome and unhelpful in an ecclesial context. Using the example of Ephesians, this paper proposes a way of simultaneously maintaining homiletical integrity while holding to the consensus about authorship: by (1) re-interpreting the role of epistolary authorship in homiletical interpretation; by (2) adopting a "hermeneutic of consent" that challenges the prevailing stratification among the epistles; and by (3) broadening the range of usage of the word "Pauline." Finally, this paper attempts to reconcile the broader purposes of homiletics and hermeneutics in such a way that will make both preachers and scholars more at home in one another's discipline.


From the Ground Up: Practicing Ecological Hermeneutics in Sub-Saharan Africa
Program Unit: Ecological Hermeneutics
C. Hans Yuckman, United Presbyterian Church

Often overlooked in Western readings of the Torah, the character of 'adamah' plays a crucial part in the unfolding of biblical narrative and theology. Other than God adamah is the only consistent “character” throughout the early Genesis narratives, giving us clues to its role and significance in the economy of God's dealings with humanity. Sub-Saharan Africans, relatively free from Enlightenment heritage, have read these foundational texts rather differently. More specifically, the largely Christian nation of Malawi, a desperately poor and landlocked country, exhibits unique perspectives and practices with respect to ecological hermeneutics. Based on the input of Malawian church leaders and personal travel accounts, this paper attempts to locate Genesis 1-11 in a Malawian context and, thereby, illuminate texts that have long suffered from a particularly Western and utilitarian bias.


The Son of David in the Psalms of Solomon 17
Program Unit: Function of Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
Danny Zacharias, University of Aberdeen

Psalms of Solomon 17 provides us with an extensive Jewish portrait of messianic expectation and constitutes the earliest example of the title 'son of David" for the coming messiah. Though PssSol 17 is the dominant psalm of the collection, it is often overlooked that the portrait of this anticipated messiah is a culmination of the hopes expressed in the previous psalms. Chapter 17 is a vital text for understanding pre-Christian messianic hopes. This paper will review how the messiah of PssSol 17 is described, drawing attention to the similarities and differences with other messianic texts at the turn of the era. Finally, possible connections with New Testament texts will be explored.


“Smamit and Her Children”: New Technology and the Decipherment of a Late Antique Aramaic Amulet on Silver
Program Unit: National Association of Professors of Hebrew
Ethan Zadoff, Yeshiva University, CUNY Graduate Center

Over the past twenty years technological methods available to study ancient texts have increased dramatically.This paper will apply these methods to the decipherment of a silver amulet 6 by 4 cm in size that was purchased in Syria and was photographed by the West Semitic Research Project. The text of this amulet relates a well known late antique legend concerning childbirth involving a demonic figure known as Smamit. The discovery and decipherment of this amulet provides a rare opportunity to compare the text of a single incantation as it appears in five different late antique sources, two Aramaic amulets and three magic bowls. This paper will concentrate on the similarities and differences of the five texts, attempting to identify points of convergence and mutual influence concerning the various versions as well as to identify the nuanced variations and adaptations that appear between Palestinian and Babylonian versions of the tale.


The Literary Use of Dialect in the Hebrew Bible
Program Unit: National Association of Professors of Hebrew
Naama Zahavi-Ely, College of William and Mary

Careful reading shows some linguistic variants in the Hebrew Bible that may reflect differences in dialects. Some of these, as in the book of Hosea, appear to be straightforward variants that most likely survive as a record of the linguistic/dialectal background of their writers. In other cases, though, we find much more possible dialectal variation in direct speech than in surrounding text. When a possible record of non-standard dialect appears in direct speech, it pays to consider whether it may reflect the portrayal of a character in the text or a nuance in a particular scene – in other words, whether the dialectal form is used as a literary device. I would suggest that such usage is not limited to direct reflection of dialect, but includes also portrayal of hypercorrection, of intentional use of dialect by a character within a story to project a particular image, or of the attitude of a speaker. This paper will examine several such cases (from the books of Samuel, Jonah, and more) and will explore the additional dimension they bring to the episodes in which they appear.


Knowledge of God in the Book of Judges
Program Unit: Theology of the Hebrew Scriptures
Naama Zahavi-Ely, College of William and Mary

The book of Judges depicts a fascinating series of interactions between humans and God. While the individual leaders and conflicts, the basic plots, and probably parts of the actual text may date far back, the selection of stories, their ordering and framing, and quite possibly much of the current text are the work of later authors and redactors. Just as Euripides in 5th-Century Athens could take the story of Agamemnon and Iphigenia, which is referred to in the Iliad hundreds of years earlier, and write a play based on sensibilities of his own time, and just as the authors of Chronicles could take the text of Samuel and make it fit a very different world view, so the authors of the book of Judges could presumably select among figures and stories and write in a manner that spoke to their own concerns. Recent work by Yaira Amit, Susan Niditch and others shows that the effects of selection and ordering of stories in Judges go far beyond the obvious cyclical framework of sin-punishment-cry-salvation-peace. I would like to suggest that one of the important threads that the authors/redactors of Judges weave throughout the book is knowledge of God: How do leaders know the will of God? How can these leaders tell whether a message received, or an impulse felt, is divine in origin? What requests can one legitimately make of God? What, if any, is the role of sacred places, priests, men of God, and other cultic personnel and paraphernalia? This paper will examine the knowledge of God as portrayed in various stories in the book of Judges.


When the New Edition Still Needs Editing: Narrative and Exegetical “Improvements” to Pre-Samaritan Exodus 20:19–22 in 4Q158
Program Unit: Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism
Molly Zahn, University of Notre Dame

For all the recent debate about the suitability of the term “Rewritten Bible” as a description of some early Jewish texts, it is undeniable that scriptural texts were heavily reworked in the Second Temple period, in the context of both new editions of particular scriptural books and new works that draw upon scripture. We are just beginning to appreciate all that these texts, present in abundance in the Qumran corpus, can tell us about the ways scripture was read, interpreted, and edited in antiquity. This paper focuses on a particular example of rewriting that bears upon these issues: Exod 20:19–22 as presented in 4Q158 (4QReworked Pentateuch a). 4Q158 already has a reworked text as its Vorlage: the pre-Samaritan version, in which material from Deut 5:24–31; 18:18–22 is inserted into Exodus 20. However, 4Q158 contains several additional changes that improve upon the narrative coherence of the pre-Samaritan version and address exegetical difficulties raised in that version. Strikingly, its changes reflect the same concern for textual cohesiveness that generally characterizes the pre-Samaritan texts, and the changes are accomplished by means of techniques also found in those texts, such as repetition in a new context of material originally located elsewhere in the Pentateuch. That is, in its revision of the Samaritan version 4Q158 extends processes visible in the Samaritan texts themselves. This example thus illustrates the degree to which textual rewriting was an ongoing phenomenon, with successive generations of editors addressing perceived difficulties that were overlooked or even created by earlier editors. Understanding this phenomenon not only contributes to our knowledge of how scripture was read and reworked in the late Second Temple period, but may also aid in our understanding of earlier stages in the formation of scriptural books.


The Use of the Words Laqakh and Beth in Judges 17–18
Program Unit: Biblical Lexicography
Lara Zee-Hanssen, Radboud University of Nijmegen

The verb "l-q-kh" is a common word in biblical Hebrew. Its primary meaning or translation into English is "to take". In Judges 17-18 this meaning receives an extra dimension. In this story about the shrine of Micah (Jdg 17) and the migration of the Danites (Jdg 18) "l-q-kh" is frequently used when someone "takes" something. In these stories this "taking" actually means 'stealing". We will explore the occurrences of "l-q-kh" in Jdg 17-18, compare the results to the use of this verb in other texts and look at the way the LXX translates this verb. Another lexicographical question in Jdg 17-18 is the use of the expression "Beth Micah". Although "beth" too is a common word in biblical Hebrew, it is not entirely clear in what way it is used in this text. The most simple meaning would be "house of Micah", in the sense that it speaks about the building in which Micah lives. In Jdg 17, however, this house seems to be converted in a sanctuary. Can the word "beth" also refer to this sanctuary? In other places in these chapter the word "beth" seems to have an even broader meaning. It seems not to refer to one building, but rather to the village in which Micah lives. "Beth Micah" then functions as a geographical designation, comparable to place-names as "Beth Shemesh" or "Bethlehem". Typical for this passage of Judges is the association in a place-name of "Beth" and a personal name of one of its inhabitants.


Chaos in the Land of Egypt: Decoding Artapanus' Message
Program Unit: Hellenistic Judaism
Holger Zellentin, Graduate Theological Union

I suggest a revolutionary method for establishing a more secure and detailed contextualization of Artapanus: taking him seriously. For among his firework of creative historiography one can discern precise references to the reign of Ptolemy VIII, the latter's Egyptian Nativism, and his decree of Amnesty in 118 CE.


The Protevangelium of James and the Composition of the Bodmer Miscellaneous Codex: Chronology, Theology, and Liturgy
Program Unit: Function of Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
George Themelis Zervos, University of North Carolina at Wilmington

Current scholarly opinion on the Protevangelium of James can be traced back over the past fifty years to a radical reevaluation of every aspect of this most important early Christian apocryphon, which has effectively diminished its historical and theological significance. This reevaluation was based, in part, upon a pessimistic assessment of the complete, third-century copy of the Protevangelium, Bodmer Papyrus V, and the place of this papyrus book within what has since come to be known as the Bodmer Codex Miscellanea. More recent scholarly debate concerning the composition of the Miscellanea indicates that the basic presuppositions upon which the earlier negative reevaluation was based were fallacious, and suggests instead that the Protevangelium held a position of primacy in the Bodmer Codex. This new research not only enhances the position of the Protevangelium among the early Christian writings, but also illuminates the function of these writings, and of the Miscellanea itself, within the theological and liturgical life of the early Christian Church. This new understanding of Papyrus Bodmer V, and of the Bodmer Codex Miscellanea, provides us with a rare glimpse into the interaction between scripture, canon, theology, and liturgy as they developed in the formative Christian centuries.


The Didache and the Salvation of Non-Jews
Program Unit: Didache in Context
Magnus Zetterholm, Linkoping University

This paper takes its point of departure in Did. 6:2 where the author claims that the “perfection” of the addressees is related to the ability of bearing the “yoke of the Lord”. This phrase is sometimes understood to mean that the author argues that conversion to Judaism is the goal of the process of observing the Torah. Accepting the claim of many scholars that the Didache emerged in Antioch, this paper suggests that the standpoint of the author of the Didache is rather that non-Jews are supposed to remain non-Jews, but as such still expected to observe as much of the Torah as possible. It is, furthermore, suggested that this ideology is one of several responses to the so-called Antioch incident (Gal 2:11–14(21). Paul seems to have argued that non-Jews should remain non-Jews, but should refrain from observing the Torah. Despite this, unrestricted commensality could take place in the community since Paul considered non-Jewish Jesus-believers to be “holy” and “pure.” This view was challenged by “certain people” from James who maintained that unrestricted commensality was only possible if the non-Jewish Jesus-believers became Jews. The suggested interpretation of Did. 6:2 fits into this scenario if it is viewed as the Petrine compromise between the extreme positions of Paul and “certain people” from James. After the incident in Antioch, the community returned to a situation that probably existed before Paul influenced the community with the idea of the law-free gospel for non-Jewish adherents to the movement. Non-Jews were admonished to observe as much as possible of the Torah while preserving their ethnic identity. Thus, within the early Jesus movement several, and sometimes conflicting, ideas on ethics, law and eschatological hope coexisted, suggesting a more complex picture than is usually assumed.


Seeing Gods in All the Right Places
Program Unit: Israelite Religion in its Ancient Context
Ziony Zevit, American Jewish University

This paper illustrates how solving a problem in the phenomenology of Israelite religion as known through the Bible contributes to understanding some cultic artifacts known through excavation. A small number of biblical narratives describe individuals such as Abraham and Moses who uniquely saw — rather than who had a visionary experience of — YHWH, not angels or stand-ins, as a three-dimensional, physical presence. Exod 34:23-24 and Deut 31:11 (after the MT pointing of the verbs is corrected) command that Israelites come to see YHWH. This common 'seeing" however, differed from the sporadic 'seeing" of Abraham and Moses. The question posed by the Exod and Deut passages is the following: What did Israelites who came expect to see and what did they see? In response, this paper will show, using biblical texts from different genres and an insightful anthropological parallel, where YHWH was thought to be and how he was thought to make himself appear. It will then apply this information to clarify at least one of the roles played by standing stones and model shrines, excavated artifacts, at Israelite cult sites as well as at those of some surrounding peoples.


Ancient Graffiti within the Alleged Judean (Tzuba) Cave of John the Baptist: John, or Lazarus, the Crusader Patron Saint of Leprosy?
Program Unit: Paleographical Studies in the Ancient Near East
Joe Zias, Science and Archaeology-Jerusalem

The massive Judean Hills water installation dating from the 8th century BC, recently published as The Cave of John the Baptist (Gibson 2004) has generated wide media attention since its discovery and excavation. Gibson and Tabor's decision to name the site in memory of John the Baptist, as well as linking it perhaps to Jesus himself based mainly upon graffiti crudely inscribed on the cistern walls, is, in my opinion, an incorrect attribution. Gibson argued, primarily upon ceramic evidence, that the cistern had a cultic function during the Roman period. The excavated fill contained over 100,000 ceramic sherds, mainly small juglets, implying that individuals were coming to the site for purposes of healing in which the individual upon completing the healing process, destroyed the vessel for reasons of ritual purity. Interestingly enough, aside from two potsherds, no oil lamps were found among these potsherds, unlike Hammat Gader, which were one of the defining artifacts found in the Roman period pools for the cleansing of the leper. Nor were there any votive objects or other cultural object which could support their theory. Gibson's and Tabors attempt to associate the site with John the Baptist, Jesus and Baptism, the main premises in the book, film and press, are, however in my opinion, totally unconvincing. The graffiti, along with the historical and anthropological evidence clearly and plainly, argue in favor of St. Lazarus, the Patron Saint of Leprosy suffers from the Crusader Period.


They've Given You a Number and Taken Away Your Name": Gnostic Themes in The Prisoner, Television's Ultimate Cult Classic
Program Unit: Bible and Popular Culture
Valarie Ziegler, DePauw University, and Mark Holwager, DePauw University

Recognized as the ultimate cult television show, The Prisoner remains, forty years after its original airing, an exhilarating examination of the human condition as profound and visually stunning as it is surreal. Commentators have long noted that The Prisoner depicts an archetypal hero in thrall to the existential dilemmas of identity, autonomy, agency, and evil. Surprisingly, however, no one has noticed The Prisoner's striking parallels to Gnostic religions. Using “The Hymn of the Pearl” and the Gospels of Thomas and Judas, we will demonstrate how The Prisoner adopts the Gnostic myth of descent and return, depicting a hero who refuses to be fully embodied in the hateful world in which he is imprisoned, who insists (contrary to evidence) that he is from a truer world in a higher realm, and who risks everything to return to that realm and reunite with his genuine self.


Story, Plot, and History in the Johannine Passion Narrative
Program Unit: John, Jesus, and History
Jean Zumstein, University of Zurich

The paper will be related to current discussions in historiography (esp. Paul Ricoeur and Hayden White) and deal with the followings questions. First: How can the Johannine approach to the history of Jesus" death, based on constructions of memory, be differentiated from pure fiction? Second: Which is the relationship between story and history in John 18-19? Third: Within this debate, what is the function of the plot of the Johannine passion narrative?


Jerusalem at the Time of Nehemiah: Considerations about the Size and the Importance of Nehemiah's Wall
Program Unit: Literature and History of the Persian Period
Wolfgang Zwickel, Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz

According to biblical texts and archaeological finds, Jerusalem was a rather small settlement in the 5th century BC. Surprisingly, according to biblical texts, a relatively long city wall was erected under the leadership of Nehemiah. The paper will discuss the importance of Jerusalem in the 5th century against the background of the surrounding area, will reconstruct the number of settlers in Jerusalem, and will show that the wall of Nehemiah was not built in order to protect the town, but to demonstrate the importance of the small settlement in Jerusalem.

 
 


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