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Meeting Abstracts

2012 Annual Meeting

Chicago, IL

Meeting Begins11/16/2012
Meeting Ends11/20/2012

Call for Papers Opens: 2/8/2012
Call for Papers Closes: 3/7/2012

Requirements for Participation

  Meeting Abstracts


Wrapped in Newspaper: Using Current Events in a Biblical Studies Flipped Classroom
Program Unit: Academic Teaching and Biblical Studies
Anthony L. Abell, Clearwater Christian College

This session suggests using current events from the newspaper. The students should come to class with notes from the on-line lecture and be prepared to find, analyze, and present current events found in the day’s news that reflect situations, principles, and theology discussed in the previous lecture. The students are divided into groups to work on the project. The professor works the room to guide the groups in the pursuit. The groups share their results with the class by building a Prezi file that is available to all the students online. The objectives of the exercise is for the student to 1) explain biblical concepts and 2) demonstrate their ability to apply them to everyday life. The assignment can be extended through the use of collaborative tools such as Diigo which allows the entire class to post comments and respond on the online news article.


Twitter Is Our Friend: Using Twitter to Enhance Learning Experiences
Program Unit: Teaching Biblical Studies in an Undergraduate Liberal Arts Context
Anthony L. Abell, Clearwater Christian College

Most professors loathe the use of smart phones, tablets, and computers in the classroom for updating social networks. Instead of banning them, why not use these sources for advancing classroom topics? The social network Twitter can be a great tool for student to student and professor to student communication about classroom discussion topics. Through the use of hashtags (#), the class can create a journal of the learning experiences. Twitter can be used in the classroom for building a knowledge base of information through group projects. It can also be used for backdoor discussions that allow students to help other students with common information that the professor would otherwise have to answer. Outside the classroom Twitter can provide continued forum for discussion of the day’s topic. Pedagogically, Twitter serves to enhance the learning experience in several ways. First it allows students to teach students minor information which allows the class to stay on task. Second it allows instant feed back from students that might not vocally engage in the classroom, Third it allows the conversation to continue beyond the classroom environment.


The Banquet at Zion (Isaiah 25:6–8) and Imperial Rhetoric in Isaiah 1–39
Program Unit: Meals in the HB/OT and Its World
Andrew Abernethy, Ridley Melbourne

From ancient times, one of the most successful yet devastating features of war and imperial policy pertains to food and drink control, destruction, and promises of provision. It is no surprise, then, to find the book of Isaiah wrestling with Israel and Judah’s experience of food and drink deprivation and promises of provision from her enemies. In fact, the book of Isaiah, especially in Isaiah 1-39, reflects upon enemy imperial tactics in the realms of food and drink to theologically highlight God’s sovereign use of them to judge his people. Furthermore, YHWH’s own promises to restore food present him as king in contrast to the kings of other empires who make similar offers. My contention is that this pattern of imperial rhetoric in the realms of food and drink deprivation (judgment) and provision (restoration) within Isaiah 1-39 should be brought to bear on interpreting the banquet at Zion (Isa 25:6-8). While acknowledging that Isaiah 25:6-8 has multiple layers of connotation, this paper argues that a reader of the final form of Isaiah should also interpret the banquet at Zion in association with a network of food and drink passages within Isaiah 1-39. When read in the orbit of these other food and drink passages, especially the frame provided by Isaiah 1 and 36-37, a reader can detect a nuance pertaining to how the banquet at Zion in Isaiah 25:6-8 is a climactic, counter-imperial assertion of YHWH’s rule within the imperial rhetoric of Isaiah 1-39.


The Queen of Sheba, the Hoopoe, and the Ant: A Structural Analysis of the Role of the Solomon Story in Surat al-Naml
Program Unit: Qur'an and Biblical Literature
Dalia Abo-Haggar, University of Pennsylvania

Analysis of the structure of the story of Solomon in Surat al-Naml (27), using Semitic Rhetorical figures, uncovers layers of meaning that are otherwise not evident. This analysis of Solomon's encounters with the ant, the hoopoe, and the Queen of Sheba reveals three types of reactions to various messages. A parallel symmetry is formed by repetition of derivatives of *na?ara* (looking, examining), highlighting the theme of rational response. Solomon "investigates" the veracity of the hoopoe's report on the idolatry of the Queen of Sheba. The Queen's council trust her "to evaluate" the entire situation. And the Queen "looks into" Solomon's truthfulness. A concentric symmetry places the ant at the center, highlighting her willingness to give this Prophet the benefit of the doubt. Framed by a series of stories that depict people's forthright rejection of their messengers, Solomon’s story appears to denote that rationality and spirituality cross gender and species lines.


The Use of the Bible by Isaac of Antioch and His Ascetic Community
Program Unit: Syriac Literature and Interpretations of Sacred Texts
Shafiq Abouzayd, ARAM Society for Syro-Mesopotamian Studies

to be supplied


The Unwritten Text of the Covenant
Program Unit: Deuteronomistic History
Reinhard Achenbach, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster

According to the deuteronomistic frame of Deuteronomy Dtn 5:23-6:3 argues that after the Decalogue the teachings of Deuteronomy were revealed to Moses at mount Horeb as a basic text of the Covenant of Moab. Thus the text offers an alternative narrative to account of Exod 20:18-21 and the revelation of the Covenant Code. Dtn 18:16-22 adds a third version of that story, stating that God promissed to raise up a prophet to pronounce the commandmends in future. It is obvious that there are several links between this text and the Book of Jeremiah (cf. Dtn 18:18/Jer 1:9) and for the formula „to speak in the name of the LORD“ (cf. Dtn 18:19) an equivalent evidence in the Hebrew Bible is found in Jer 26:16 (cf. also Jer 11:21;20:9; (26:9); 44:16)! The formula must be understood in line with the criticism against prophets who prophecy falsely in the name of God (cf. Jer 14:14f; 23:25; 27:15; 29:21 a.o.). Whereas Dtn 17:8-13 relates to the written Torah that stands under the suveillance of levitical priests who „serve in the name of the LORD“ (Dtn 10:8; 18:5), Dtn 18:16-18 thus opens the perspective of an oral Torah under the surveillance of scribes who follow the prophet who „speaks in the name of the LORD“. Thus the non-Mosaic oral Torah of the Prophets becomes „the unwritten Text of the Covenant“. The lecture will investigate the literary-historical consequences of this notion, and it will put the question, if there exist any parallels for this development in the cultural milieu of the Achaemenid period.


A Code in the Head: Semiotics, Relevance Theory, and Recuperating from Biblical Criticism
Program Unit: Semiotics and Exegesis
A. K. M. Adam, University of Glasgow

Proponents of Relevance Theory have identified a problematic theoretical construct which they label the ‘code model’ (what Lakoff and Johnson labelled the ‘conduit metaphor’), a characterisation of interpretive deliberation that fits nicely into a hermeneutical regime overshadowed by the imperative to arrive at a uniquely authoritative correct interpretation. A number of disciplinary circumstances reinforce the prevalence of the code model in biblical studies: the forces of ecclesiastical controversy (and of secular resistance thereunto), the ways biblical languages are usually taught in the modern academy, the often-outrageous literature of outsider biblical interpretation, and the customary combat of academic disciplinary conflict. When these considerations then draw support from such models as Claude Shannon’s information theory and some figurative uses of the term ‘code’ in hermeneutical and semiotic literature, the resulting unholy convergence reinforces and perpetuates a perniciously misleading interpretive paradigm. Relevance Theory does helpful work toward problematising the code model, but too often its proponents bootleg normative force into their professedly descriptive research. A better way forward would entail taking an unfettered semiotic approach to interpretive problems. By identifying weaknesses in an information-theoretical model for interpretation, by taking ‘words’ as an especially interesting (but non-representative) instance of communication, by disinvesting in the libido dominandi as as arbiter of interpretive soundness, practitioners of semiotically-flavoured hermeneutics may help biblical scholarship emerge from its self-imposed tutelage toward a vigorous, interesting, productive, and especially honest critical practice.


Private Enmity as Social Status in Biblical Law
Program Unit: Biblical Law
Klaus-Peter Adam, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago

Private enmity and private friendship seem at first glance to be at best marginal categories in Ancient Israel law. Supposedly inserted into a passage about trial rules, two brief cases refer to the escape of an enemy’s livestock and to an enemy’s donkey’s breakdown (Exod 23:4-5; ‘yb; cf. Deut 22:1-4). In passing, priestly homicide law alludes to enemies (Num 35:23; cf. ‘enmity’ V 21-22) and a broad command not ‘to hate’ a fellow countryman but ‘to love’ the sons of one’s people can be found in the Holiness Code (sn’ Lev 19:16). Notwithstanding this seemingly scattered evidence for enmity in codified law, this paper claims first that long term enmity designates the legally relevant social status between two individuals and, second, that this status of enmity has continuously gained influence in Biblical law. The paper traces back how private enmity between two individuals develops in the literary history of codified law and describes the evolving nature of the social status of enmity. Examples on the basis of which dispute settlement between private enemies can be imagined include injury law (Exod 22:1-2; Deut 19:1-12; Num 35:9-34), depository laws (Exod 21:34-22:14) and procedural law (Exod 23:1-8). Exemplary cases demonstrate the fundamental relevance of private enmity. I hypothesize an enmity ethos in Israelite Law and I extrapolate four basic aspects that characterize enmity as a distinct relationship between two individuals: the overt act requirement between two enemies; the flexibility and variation in the responses between two enemies; the reciprocity and escalation in the responses between two enemies; the transitivity and heritability of enmity. The results for enmity in codified biblical law will be compared with enmity as it is apparent in Greek forensic oratory (Demosthenes, Antiphon, Lysias).


Semiotics of Biblical Inscriptions on Motor Vehicles in Nigeria
Program Unit: Semiotics and Exegesis
David Tuesday Adamo, Kogi State University

Semiotics of Biblical Inscriptions on Motor Vehicles in Nigeria. Strange as it may be in the eyes of the Western people/scholars in Nigeria and perhaps other African countries, owners of motor vehicles including taxi drivers do write biblical inscriptions such as PSALM 91, or PSALM 8, or “THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD, I SHALL NOT WANT,” or “MY REFUGE AND MY FORTRESS,” and others. These inscriptions are symbolic signs with specific meanings. Their semiotic significance will be examined in African context as part of biblical exegesis. We shall visit Motor parks, and travel to various cities to take photograph of those inscriptions for interpretation. Professor David Tuesday Adamo adamodt@yahoo.com


The Task of African Biblical Hermeneutics
Program Unit: African Biblical Hermeneutics
David Tuesday Adamo, Kogi State University

The Task of African Biblical Hermeneutics In the past, attention has been on the definition and the application of African Biblical Hermeneutics to the biblical text, but not much, if any, has been paid to the actual broad and crucial task of African Biblical Hermeneutics. This paper intends to answer the important question of what is the task of African Biblical Hermeneutics. It is an important paper because without a clear discussion of what the tasks are, we may not have a clear road map to move forward and what to achieve. This paper will discuss critically, the task below and other tasks. Some of our tasks as scholars of African Biblical Hermeneutics include not only the understanding of the biblical text and discovering it as the word of God in our own reality, but also to understand God as the liberator of the oppressed and the marginalized. It is not only to put Africa and Africans and their culture at the center of the world of biblical scholarship by asserting African presence in the Bible, but also to interprete the bible existentially to facilitate the life of a community. It is not only to blacken? the Bible but also to challenge and correct the Eurocentric hegemony of making Western methods the only correct interpretation of the Bible. African Biblical Hermeneutics tries to discover our story and use it as a strategy for reading Prof. David Tuesday Adamo Kogi State University, Anyigba, Nigeria. adamodt@yahoo.com


The Contributions of Daughers at the Household Level during the Second Temple Period
Program Unit: Economics in the Biblical World
Samuel L. Adams, Union Presbyterian Seminary

This paper will address the contributions of daughters at the household level, including such factors as ages for various chores, differing responsibilities from any male siblings, and the probable age range for betrothal. The question of seclusion will also receive attention, as sources like Philo and Ben Sira encourage families, especially fathers, to keep their daughters sequestered in order to preserve their chastity for marriage. Despite these warnings, there is substantial evidence to suggest that many daughters played an active and in some cases public role in facilitating the needs of their household. In pursuing this topic, theoretical and cross-cultural analysis will assist us with the question of domestic space and the participation of daughters. This type of inquiry will help us to argue that daughters regularly made significant contributions to the upkeep and economic security of their households, especially in a context where many of their fathers (and mothers) died at a young age.


Luke and Rhetorical Education: The Role of the Progymnasmata and a Response to Recent Proposals
Program Unit: Institute for Biblical Research
Sean Adams, University of Edinburgh

Luke and Rhetorical Education: The Role of the Progymnasmata and a Response to Recent Proposals


Reading Jeremiah with Baruch
Program Unit: Writing/Reading Jeremiah
Sean A. Adams, University of Edinburgh

There has been substantial discussion regarding the dependency of Baruch on Jeremiah (so Tov 1976). As part of the Jeremianic additions, Baruch has been seen merely to appropriate Jeremianic material and not provide a unique reading (so Moore 1977). This paper seeks to re-evaluate Baruch’s use and reading of Jeremiah in order to show the literary creativity of the author(s). Investigating the final form of Baruch, I argue that Baruch provides a distinctive reading of Jeremiah, one based in Second Temple Judaism, and that this reading is shaped by melding passages from Jeremiah with other books of Jewish Scripture. This is particularly seen in Baruch’s introduction and penitential prayer sections. Overall, Baruch offers a unique reading of Jeremiah that both adopts and adapts the Jeremianic text and provides a new avenue of approach for future interpretation.


Some Observations about the Development of the Theory of Local Texts from Eichhorn to Albright and Cross, with Special Regard to the Book of Jeremiah
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible
James Seth Adcock, University of St. Andrews

William F. Albright was not the original proponent of the theory of local texts popularized by Frank Moore Cross. It seems that credit for something akin to an original articulation of Cross’ theory should be given to Johann Gottfried Eichhorn in the late 18th century. The textual divergence in the text forms of Jeremiah inspired Eichhorn’s geographical theory as it continues to inspire current text critical theories of textual plurality. The popularity of Cross’ theory of “Geographical Recension” has apparently had its day. However, future literature must give the honor of originality for Cross’ theory of local texts to Eichhorn and no longer to Albright. Moreover, Eichhorn also created a sharp distinction in the text forms of the Septuagint and Massoretic Texts of Jeremiah that since his time has continued to heavily influence textual criticism of the book. Future text critical theories would benefit from the guidelines outlined by S. R. Driver in 1889, who suggests that a common Urtext of Jeremiah must be assumed for proper textual criticism to be done. It is apparent from the history of research that all text critical theories presuppose aspects of their argument and will usually find what they wish to find in the manuscript evidence. Finally, the text critic must ask himself if what he thinks occurred in the history of the Jeremiah transmission holds true for text traditions of other biblical literature.


Can We Apply the Term ‘Rewritten Bible’ to Midrash? The Case of Elijah Redivivus in Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer
Program Unit: Midrash
Rachel Adelman, Harvard University

Geza Vermes once characterized many of the extra-canonical works of the Second Temple Period, such as Jubilees and Biblical Antiquities, as well as the late midrashic compositions, such as Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer (from hereon PRE), as ‘Rewritten Bible.’ While scholars such as Bernstein, Najman, and Fraade have recently challenged the term as it applies to the para-biblical works, I engage in a genre analysis of the later midrashic compositions. In this paper, I propose to challenge the classification PRE as ‘Rewritten Bible,’ based on Philip Alexander’s list of nine criteria, and suggest that a new term be deployed – ‘Narrative Midrash.’ In this genre, the biblical story is re-told with quotes from the original text interwoven into a new narrative rendition. Rather than a composite of different rabbinic interpretations, as in Genesis Rabbah, the author creates an integrated narrative, blurring the boundary between interpretation and primary source, as in the genre of the so-called ‘Rewritten Bible.’ Yet PRE preserves the exegetical character of midrash in the course of its re-telling. As a test case, I will present the story of Elijah redivivus, identified with Phinehas, the zealous High Priest of the Israelite desert sojourn, and contrast it with the retelling in Biblical Antiquities (L.A.B.). It is clear that the author of PRE drew from the extra-canonical works Pseudepigrapha as I demonstrated in my book, "The Return of the Repressed" (Brill 2009). In this paper, I argue that a close reading of PRE, as an exegetical work, can inform our reading of the earlier apocryphal works. Where are the exegetical workings are made explicit in the later midrash, how are they blurred in L.A.B. and why? In this paper, I compare and contrast the images of Elijah as a zealot in PRE and L.A.B. I suggest that the later midrashic text traces an arc over the biography of the prophet priest addressing Why Elijah is invoked at every Brit Milah, Havadalah ritual, and Passover Seder. In the Hebrew Bible, the prophet plays the paragon zealot, taken up in a chariot of fire to Heaven, yet returns to earth to annul evil decrees, succour the sick and poor, and resolve Talmudic debate in aggadic lore. In this paper, I trace his transformation from religious fanatic to nomadic penitent and the herald of the End of Days.


Was Samuel a Nazirite? Interpreting Defective Translation
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Historical Books
Anneli Aejmelaeus, University of Helsinki

The employment of the Septuagint in textual criticism of the Hebrew text presupposes backtranslation of elements of the Greek text into Hebrew. In many cases, it is easy to perceive a pattern followed by the translator, and this gives the backtranslation a high probability. There are however cases in which the translation shows no such pattern, and the translator may have been in difficulty trying to find a rendering for a certain, rare expression in his Vorlage. At times he has even given false renderings for Hebrew words and expressions unknown to him. How is it possible to deal with such cases? How is it possible to backtranslate a false rendering or reconstruct elements of the Vorlage that were inexplicable to the translator? One of the examples to be considered is 1 Sam 1:11.


Multiple Witnesses, the “Original Text,” and the Historian’s Challenge: How to Make Sense out of “Joseph and Aseneth”
Program Unit: Pseudepigrapha
Patricia Ahearne-Kroll, Ohio Wesleyan University

Most scholars of “Joseph and Aseneth” choose a particular reconstructed text as their object of examination (that of Philonenko, Burchard, or the more recently modified version by Fink) when discussing the possible meanings of this story for either an ancient Jewish or Christian audience. Each reconstructed text, however, masks a larger problem about how to understand the transmission of this story and the possible meanings of this narrative when it was first composed. Standhartinger and Kraemer demonstrate well how certain textual witnesses exhibit scribal redaction, but their reliance upon Philonenko’s and Burchard’s texts does not adequately expose the alterations that were made in the transmission of this story. Even Burchard’s most recent discussion (Joseph und Aseneth [2003]) presumes a neat order of transmission that is not convincing; the transmission of this narrative may have been more fluid than what any reconstructed text allows, including Fink’s most recent text. Likewise, the decision to rely primarily on the earliest witness is equally problematic because there are too many examples in ancient Mediterranean studies where the preservation of a literary piece in later times indicates little (if anything) about when the piece was written. The challenge posed by the evidence of “Joseph and Aseneth,” in particular, is best addressed in the manner by which Christine Thomas approached the “The Acts of Peter” (Oxford, 2003). Applying Russian Formalist and narratological studies, the basic components and organization of the “Joseph and Aseneth” narrative (or “core narrative”) can be distinguished from the particular telling of that narrative in each textual witness. The core narrative can then be used to hypothesize the initial context of “Joseph and Aseneth,” but it also can serve as a helpful framework in determining what historically can and cannot be said about the composition of this story.


The Corinthian Last Supper in Light of the Ritual Dimensions of Memory in Greece
Program Unit: Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti
Stephen P. Ahearne-Kroll, Methodist Theological School in Ohio

This study will explore the role of Memory (Mnemosyne) in Greek rituals as part of the possible cultural matrix of Gentile followers of Jesus in Corinth. Mnemosyne played a key role in the cult of Asklepios (allowing remembrance of supplicants’ dreams and the resulting votives that honor the god for centuries), the oracle of Trophonius (proper preparation for encountering the god and calming ordering of the mind to recall the encounter and inscribe it for temple archives), and Bacchic mystery initiation rituals (allowing the initiates to remember the crucial rituals they experienced throughout the night of initiation). All of these rituals show the importance of Mnemosyne’s presence in extending the ritual effects of contact with the divine world and allowing one to order the chaotic and confusing thoughts resulting from the encounter with the divinity. For Paul, the Lord’s Supper in Corinth is a locus of social chaos and lack of understanding for the Corinthians. Analogous to the three rituals mentioned above, in Paul’s vision of the Lord’s Supper ritual, anamnesis functions to order this chaos, to clarify the proper way to understand the significance of the meal for the Corinthians, and to extend the encounter with Jesus and his death to present and future generations. Rather than arguing for the origins of the Last Supper ritual through the influence of surrounding cultural practices, this study posits the possible cultural knowledge of the Corinthians who participated in the Last Supper ritual, and the discussion of concurrent ritual practices in Greece is strictly for comparative purposes. When the Last Supper ritual is read in light of these other Greek rituals where memory plays a key role, it is clear that memory also resides at the center of the Last Supper as a key to the other aspects of the Corinthian ritual as envisioned by Paul.


Forced Migration/Exile vs. Exile-less Exile: A Principal Judeo-Babylonian and Judean/Judahite Concern that Bridges Them--Intermarriage
Program Unit: Exile (Forced Migrations) in Biblical Literature
John Ahn, Saint Edward's University

Contemporary cutting edge scholarship on the exile or the forced migrations period now requires a working knowledge of issues and concerns of social, economic, and theological constructions of reality on both ends. That is, those displaced and resettled to Babylon, the Judeo-Babylonians and their succeeding generations, over against those that remained in the land after the multiple displacements, i.e., the Judeans or Judahites with their on-going respective generations. Now, what were the central issues and concerns for survival and continuity or discontinuity for both respective communities in Babylon and Judah? Were such issues the same in each generation? Clearly, there are issues of assimilation and acculturation in the context of Babylon as seen in the Book of Daniel and as early as Jer 29. Conversely, what were the central concerns among the remnant Judeans or Judahites? This paper addresses several possible parallel issues and concerns of which, a key component was none other than inter-marriage. And so, when did intermarriage become a realistic possibility among the Judeo-Babylonians inasmuch as the same concern for those that remained in the land? By the time of the return, we see a heterogeneous community in Yehud over against the more ethnically homogeneous but economically diverse Judeo-Babylonians/Persians.


The Body of Jesus outside the Eternal City: Mapping Ritual Space in the Epistle to the Hebrews
Program Unit: Hebrews
Ellen B. Aitken, McGill University

The persuasive strategies of the Epistle to the Hebrews employ metaphors of travel, arrival, and entrance both to describe the work of Jesus in the world (earthly and heavenly) and to encourage its inscribed audience to maintain solidarity with Jesus. The quotation of Ps 40:6-8 on Jesus’ lips in Hebrews 10 announces not only his “arrival” to do God’s will, but also emphasizes the “body prepared” in place of the sacrificial offerings of the Israelite cult. This paper examines the spatial mapping of Hebrews in order to understand the semiotically complex landscape through which Jesus and the audience journey. It attends particularly to the erasure and re-inscribing of meaning within this landscape in relation to patterns of sacrifice, offering, and ritual presence. It argues that the argument of Hebrews places Jesus’ suffering body within this landscape and thus redefines the landscape of meaning through which the audience moves. Building on my earlier work that develops a reading of Hebrews within the cityscape of Flavian Rome, it proposes that Hebrews is thus deploying a conceptual reimagining of the ritual, sacrificial, and monumental space of the city of Rome in order to create a compelling vision of “the city that is to come” (Heb 13.14).


Jewish Education and the Book of Acts
Program Unit: Book of Acts
James Aitken, University of Cambridge

In trying to situate Acts within its wider Jewish context the question of the nature of Jewish education in the diaspora is raised, and accordingly the audience that is being addressed. How far is the style of Acts, combining both literary sophistication and biblical knowledge, different from what Jews would have appreciated at the end of the first century? Neglected evidence will first be considered of the use and interpretation of the Bible in Greek. Then, through careful analysis of the data, we will be able to indicate the education Jews would have had and the level of Greek and the literary techniques that they learnt. Incorporating recent research on classical education, a fuller picture of Jews in the diaspora and of the profile of Acts can be given.


Virginity as Identity in Female Christian Life: Designations in the Papyri
Program Unit: Papyrology and Early Christian Backgrounds
María-Jesús Albarrán, Universidad de Alcalá (Madrid)

Since the beginning of Christianity one of its main doctrinal aspects was virginity or sexual abstinence. The spiritual life involved the purity of the body according to the Sacred Scriptures, a style of life which many Christian people followed. They were differentiated from the rest of the Christians community by their titles or designations. Terminology used in papyri of early Christian times allow the identification of women who had consecrated their lives to the Christian religion. This paper will examine the terms which refer to virginity and virgins, to observe their involvement and development in Christian society.


Receiving the Implanted Word: The “Christianizing” of a Stoic Concept in the Letter of James
Program Unit: Letters of James, Peter, and Jude
Martin C. Albl, Presentation College

Agreeing with scholars such as Matt Jackson-McCabe, I argue that James’ understanding of “word” (logos) and “law” (nomos) has close affinities with Stoic conceptions of those terms, especially as those concepts were mediated through Hellenistic Judaism (as witnessed particularly in Philo). Specifically, I understand the “word of truth” (Jas 1:18) and the “implanted word” (emphytos logos; 1:21) to correspond closely to the Stoic concept of “right reason” (orthos logos) inherent in human nature. For James, then, the implanted word is given to all people at creation (cf. 3:9, the “likeness of God”). James’ thought further corresponds to Stoic ideas in identifying the implanted word with the divine law (1:18-25). For James, the Torah is the written expression of that divine law. In contrast to Jackson-McCabe, however, I argue that James closely associates the innate word and the divine law with the Lord Jesus Christ. As evidenced by his frequent allusions to the Jesus sayings tradition, James understands the “law” as the Torah interpreted by Jesus. But James sees Jesus as far more than a teacher, as he applies the divine name “Lord “ (Kyrios) to him (1:1, 2:1). In line with Philo’s conception of the patriarchs, James implicitly sees Jesus as the empsychos nomos, the living embodiment of the divine law. Jesus is the Lord who will come as the eschatological judge (5:8-9), the lawgiver and judge who is able to save and to destroy (4:12). Baptism in the divine name of the Lord Jesus (cf. 1:18, 2:7) allows those who have faith in the Lord (cf. 2:1) to renew the divine likeness, the logos implanted at creation, and thus to be saved (1:21).


A Coptic Psalms Testimonia Collection and Early Egyptian Monasticism
Program Unit: Christianity in Egypt: Scripture, Tradition, and Reception
Martin C. Albl, Presentation College

This paper examines a fragmentary Coptic Psalms testimonia collection (see C.W. Hedrick, Journal of Coptic Studies 8 [2006]: 1-41) in the context of early Egyptian monasticism. The CPT lists approximately thirty events from Jesus’ life; each event is paired with a Psalms quotation understood as a prophetic witness (testimonium) to that event. Of special interest is the CPT’s quotation of Christian additions to Ps 96:10 (“on the wood”) and Ps 51:7 (“by the blood of the wood”), additions also witnessed in the Coptic Psalter. The collection is creedally structured, focusing on Jesus’ birth, his passion and death, and his resurrection, ascension, and heavenly enthronement. The CPT’s texts and interpretations show close affinities with catechetical works such as Cyril of Jerusalem’s Catechetical Lectures and Rufinus’ Commentary on the Apostolic Creed. This paper locates the CPT’s quotations and interpretations within a wider early Christian interpretive tradition (including Origen, Diodore, and Athanasius) that focused on identifying the speaker in each Psalm. Applying the testimonia literally to events in Christ’s life, the CPT eschews both Origen’s spiritual interpretations and Diodore’s focus on historical context. Given its provenance at Antinoë and its exclusive use of Psalms, this paper suggests that the CPT was composed as a catechetical tool for novices in the monasteries associated with Pachomius or Shenoute. A monastic setting is also suggested by two quotations that conflate passages from different Psalms; these may derive from liturgical hymns (e.g., the hermeniai) composed in the monasteries by blending Psalm excerpts. With its focus on prophecies literally fulfilled in the life of Christ (including his virgin birth, the flight to Egypt, his burial, and his bodily resurrection), the CPT fits well in the historical context of Shenoute’s struggle against the docetic Christologies of Origenist and gnostic interpreters.


Sundays in “East” New York: 1948–1960
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Jared E. Alcántara, Princeton Theological Seminary

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Never before Seen in Israel: A Deuteronomistic Reference in Matthew 9:33
Program Unit: Matthew
Isaac M. Alderman, University of Saint Thomas (Saint Paul, MN)

It is accepted that the author of Matthew utilizes the Mosaic tradition and, in particular, frequently references Deuteronomy. However, Matt 9:33 has never been identified as one of these references. I propose reading the passage, “Never has anything like this been seen in Israel,” as a reference to Deut 34:10, “Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses...”. This assertion is based on how the passage was redacted from Mark, the frequency and manner of Matthew’s use of Deuteronomy, the context in which it is used and other uses of the superlative evaluation. All of this serves to further the Mosaic motif, increase the conflict between Jesus and his pharisaic opponents, and place Jesus among the great figures of Jewish history.


Ritual on the Threshold: Mezuzah and the Crafting of Domestic and Civic Space
Program Unit: Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism
Elizabeth Shanks Alexander, University of Virginia

This talk examines the role that interaction with the mezuzah played in the construction of both civic and domestic spaces in antiquity. The mezuzah is located on the threshold, a transitional space that is neither on one side of the wall or the other, but in-between. Depending on the cultural setting, engagement with the mezuzah could demarcate either public or private spaces. Whereas Philo focuses on the public, civic side of the threshold, the rabbis focus on the private, domestic side. Interestingly, interactions with the mezuzah were central to the construction of social space on both the civic and domestic sides. I begin with the observation that both Philo and the rabbis envision a broad constituency of society ritually interacting with the mezuzah. Philo envisions men, women, adults, children, freemen, slaves, Jews and gentiles engaging the mezuzah in a ritually meaningful manner (Spec. Laws 4.142). In a similar gesture of inclusivity, the rabbis declare women, children and slaves to be obligated in the observance of mezuzah (m. Ber. 3:3). While both Philo and the rabbis view mezuzah as a ritual with broad social relevance, each envisions the ritual constituency of mezuzah in slightly different terms. I argue that Philo and the rabbis assume different constituencies engage the mezuzah ritually because each envisions the mezuzah as a part of a different kind of space. Philo focuses on the threshold as it spills out into public space. This focus leads him to imagine a full range of social classes, including gentiles, interacting meaningfully with the mezuzah. The rabbis, on the other hand, are concerned with how the threshold opens up to and contains the domicile. They require meaningful ritual interaction with the mezuzah from constituencies involved in the social, economic and religious life of the household (women, slaves and minors).


Philo's Rhetorical Strategies in the Allegorical Interpretation of Genesis 2:1–3:19
Program Unit: Philo of Alexandria
Manuel Alexandre Jr., Universidade de Lisboa

To say with Émile Bréhier that the Legum Allegoriae are "the most important for knowing Philo’s ideas” is as true as to say that these treatises are “the most important for knowing the intellectual and religious personality of their author”, as Claude Mondésert quotes and comments in the introduction to his translation in French (Legum Allegoriae I-III, Paris: CERF, 1962, p. 15). And, if that is clear through a philosophical reading of their contents, is it not even clearer through the rhetorical analysis of each unit in their allegorical interpretation of the biblical text? I hope to demonstrate in my paper that Philo’s exegetical exposition of Genesis 2:1-3:19 clearly reflects the influence of ancient rhetorical theory, both in terms of argumentative structures of interpretation, and in terms of strategies of persuasion, in order to implant understanding in those who are without knowledge. And I will do it, analyzing some relevant passages of these three works of Philo, in light of the main patterns of argumentation taught by rhetoricians and sophists in his cultural milieu. It is, in fact, my conviction that Philo makes prolific use of the canons of rhetoric taught in the paideia schools of his time, to disclose and prove the philosophical ideas he saw in the text, putting rhetoric’s patterns of argumentation at the service of his exegetical exposition, mainly in the allegorical interpretation of Scripture.


The Meaning of the Media Tantum
Program Unit: Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics
Rutger Allan, University of Amsterdam

In the 2010 SBL Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics theme session, the presenters reached a consensus that we should discard deponency as a grammatical category and treat all occurrences of the middle voice as true middles. However, this conclusion leaves a lacuna as to how our perception of the verbal system/voice system is effected by the elimination of this category, and as to the semantic contribution of the middle voice. The author has written a monograph on the middle voice in ancient Greek, and will extend the trajectory of his past work to further fill this lacuna.


Discipleship as Accompaniment: A Narrative-Critical Look at the Disjuncture between the Female Support Jesus’ Ministry as Described in Luke 8:1–3 in Light of the Complete Abandonment of the Cross
Program Unit: Biblical Criticism and Literary Criticism
Amy L. Allen, Vanderbilt University

The women in Luke’s gospel account provide a constant, though often silent, backdrop to the story of Jesus’ life, death, and ministry that Luke tells. This paper employs a narrative critical approach to present these women, introduced in Luke 8:1-3, as companions of Jesus according to an accompaniment model. It explores the warrants for and implications of this accompaniment through an examination of the context and placement of Luke 8:1-3 within Luke’s narrative, the grammatical structure of this text as a paratactical sentence, and the function and purpose of the summary genre through which it is conveyed. It then contrasts this strong accompaniment theme with the complete abandonment of Jesus by all of his disciples, including the women, at the cross. The paper pursues this incongruity within the narrative framework in order to understand the complete solitude of Jesus on the cross. This solitude can only be understood in the context of the assumed, multifaceted accompaniment of the women at every other point in Jesus’ ministry. That Jesus was accompanied, instead, at that crucial point only by two criminals who were forced by their own limited circumstances further emphasizes this fissure. However, Luke’s narrative does not end with Jesus on the cross. Rather, this moment of incongruity highlights the role of Luke’s women as companions of Jesus throughout his ministry. In this way, the embodied ministry of presence that is central to both Jesus’ proclamation and to the early church is reclaimed. In light of this, this paper argues that the women in Luke 8:1-3, especially Mary, Joanna, and Susanna, while relatively flat and undeveloped individually in the narrative, are therefore crucial to an understanding of the progression and importance of the narrative as a whole. Through their embodied example, readers are able to experience what it is like to “be with” Jesus and are also encouraged to join in the broadly understood service that this ministry entails.


The Sabbath and the Age to Come in Augustine and the Mishnah
Program Unit: Sabbath in Text and Tradition
Edward Allen, Union College

Both Augustine and the rabbis of the Mishnah and Talmud interpret the Sabbath with reference to the Age to come. Augustine interprets the Sabbath according to the tropological (moral) sense teaching that “the person who really observes the Sabbath is the one who doesn’t sin.” He also interprets the Sabbath according to the anagogical sense (which is oriented to the Christian’s hope and the end) interpreting the Sabbath in terms of the future rest of the blessed in heaven. The immediate roots of Augustine’s anagogical Sabbath are in the strongly anti-Judaic Epistle of Barnabas, but its deepest roots are in the Jewish apocalyptic book of Enoch. For Augustine, the symbolic meaning of the Sabbath negates its literal observance. In contrast, Rabbinic views that connect the Sabbath with the Age to Come are based on the assumption of a literal observance of the day and see it as the future age entering the present age proleptically.


Rearranging the Curses and Gods in Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty
Program Unit: Assyriology and the Bible
Spencer L. Allen, John Brown University

According to D. J. Wiseman, the arrangement of divine names in the curse section of Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty (SAA 2 6:414-465) defied his expectations after the first five names. The sequential arrangement of the remaining divine names can be explained, however, in light of the curses associated with each god and in light of lists of divine names found in other Assyrian documents. Moshe Weinfeld observed that the sequence of the five curses found in SAA 2 6:419-430 resembles that found in Deuteronomy 28:26-33 and proposed that these two texts shared a common Neo-Assyrian curse tradition. Aside from the Deuteronomist’s expected elimination of Mesopotamian divine names from the curses, the most notable difference between these two texts is the placement of the curse against the transgressors’ corpses in their respective arrangements. In Deut 28:26, the corpse curse is the first of five curses, but in SAA 2 6:425-427, it is the third. Jeffrey Tigay surmises that the biblical author rearranged these curses in order to impose a chiastic structure on the curses in vv. 23-42 as he had done previously in vv. 3-13. This paper argues for the opposite of the above scenario: one in which the author of SAA 2 6 modified the traditional arrangement of curses. He did this so that the divine names Sin and Šamaš would precede Ninurta. As a result of this rearrangement, SAA 2 6’s presentation of the curses and their corresponding gods in ll. 419-430 conforms to the expected divine hierarchy attested in other Assyrian documents and elsewhere in SAA 2 6 (i.e., high gods, warrior gods, and goddesses). This suggested rearrangement also provides a key that prevented Wiseman from unlocking the connection between the first five divine names in this curse list with Venus, Jupiter, and the remaining ten divine names.


John and the Transfiguration of Jesus in Mark
Program Unit: John, Jesus, and History
Dale C. Allison, Jr., Pittsburgh Theological Seminary

We have good reason to believe that John's Gospel reflects a knowledge, not only of some form of the saying preserved in Mark 9:1, but also of the event that follows it in Mark: the transfiguration of Jesus (Mark 9:2-8). More than that, it appears that the evangelist was familiar with a source that (like Mark) linked that saying with that event. It remains an open question whether or not all this requires that John knew Mark or one of the Synoptics (although it ups the odds). When, however, one further takes John 21:20-23 into account, the implications for understanding the nature of the Jesus tradition behind John, as well as for what John has to say about the so-called beloved disciple, are considerable.


Formation of Q: Its Impact on the Study of the Historical Jesus
Program Unit: Q
Dale Allison, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary

This paper will review J.S. Kloppenborg's, 'The Formation of Q', with particular reference to how its ideas have been employed in different reconstructions of the historical Jesus.


Tithes for Clergy and Taxes for the King: Separate or Combined Systems of Payments in Nehemiah?
Program Unit: Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah
Peter Altmann, Universität Zürich

The Book of Nehemiah narrates at different points of the middah for the king (5:4) and of the contributions, first fruits, and tithes for the priests and Levites (13:10-13). This paper will consider the historical background and composition-critical nature of each text in order to reflect on the following: Can these two systems to be understood together? How does the Judean system compare to other tax and temple payment systems of the Persian period?


Hadrian’s Adventus to Corinth: The Numismatic Evidence
Program Unit: Polis and Ekklesia: Investigations of Urban Christianity
Michel Amandry, Bibliothèque Nationale de France

In the autumn 124, Hadrian undertook an extensive tour of the Peloponnese which lasted until March 125, when he was back in Athens. His presence at Corinth is tentatively assigned by Birley to early 125, on his way back to Athens. Coins with an imperial galley on the reverse and the legend ADV(entus) AVG (usti) might attest Hadrian’s visit at Corinth. If they are dated to 124/125 AD, then they provide a good clue to the chronological sequence of the coinage. The choice of the galley seems however strange, as Hadrian’s tour was by land, unless he decided, when he was returning to Athens, to sail from Pylos to Corinth (and visit first Olympia, though evidence for a visit there is lacking). From Pausanias (II, 3, 5), we know Hadrian’s benefactions to Corinth: an aqueduct and baths. But, more important, Corinth was granted ateleia, that is freedom of taxation, during his reign. The city was paying the normal taxes, both tributum soli and tributum capitis to the central government when Cn. Cornelius Pulcher obtained ateleia for the colony. It means that the status of Corinth changed as the « ateleia provided the same fiscal privileges as those which resulted from possession to the ius Italicum ». Pulcher was a prominent citizen of Epidauros, patron of Corinth, who was, during the reign of Hadrian, appointed priest of Hadrian Panhellenios and Panhellenic archon. When was the ateleia granted? This grant can be linked with the representation on the coinage of a silenus identified as Marsyas. This figure was a symbol of civic freedom. As this type is linked with portraits which can be dated from the first part of Hadrian’s reign, it is possible that ateleia was granted during Hadrian’s visit in 124/5.


Jewish Funerary Inscriptions as a Source for History
Program Unit: Hellenistic Judaism
Walter Ameling, University of Cologne

Jewish Funerary Inscriptions as a Source for History


The Incidence and Interpretation of Blindness in Ancient Israel
Program Unit: Healthcare and Disability in the Ancient World
Frank Ritchel Ames, Rocky Vista University College of Medicine

The prevalence of disabling visual disorders effected the quality of life and the behavior of individuals and groups in ancient Israel, and the phenomenon of blindness elicited a range of understandings that have been preserved in the Hebrew Bible. This paper applies comparative epidemiology and literary criticism (1) to describe the categories of visual impairment and estimate the incidence and burden of disease in ancient Israel and (2) to enrich the interpretation of relevant texts in the Hebrew Bible.


Confronting Schismata and Agudot: The Politics of Authority in I Corinthians and Rabbinic Literature
Program Unit: Intertextuality in the New Testament
Aaron Amit, Bar-Ilan University

Paul opens his First Epistle to the Corinthians with a call to unity: Me ei en humin schismata, “Let there be no schisms among you” (I Corinthians 1:10). A nearly identical plea is found in Sifre Deuteronomy 96, in which the biblical injunction Lo titgodedu (Deut. 14:1) is interpreted Lo te`asu agudot, “Let there be no groupings among you”. There is no question that the politics of unity and the question of authority were major concerns of apostle and sage alike. In I Corinthians 1:12 Paul describes a division in Corinth into four groups. The standard translation reads: “Now I mean this, that each one of you is saying, ‘I am of Paul,’ and ‘I of Apollos,’ and ‘I of Cephas,’ and ‘I of Christ.’” Paul’s description of the split in the community in Corinth is strikingly similar to two passages in rabbinic literature that discuss the prohibition against creating factions (Yerushalmi Pesahim 4:1, 30d and Bavli Yevamot 13b-14a). In the passage in Yerushalmi Pesahim 4:1 the sages of the amoraic period debate the question of what exactly would constitute creating factions. A number of proposals are raised and rejected – including following the rulings of competing sages, such as the House of Hillel vs. Shammai, the tanna Rabbi Meir vs. the tanna Rabbi Yosi, and the tanna Rabbi Akiva vs. the tanna Rabbi Yohanan ben Nuri. There are some significant differences in the parallel passage in the Bavli, but in general it is similar to the Yerushalmi passage. Based on these sources, the Talmudist Yitzhak Gilat proposed that the prohibition of not forming factions underwent a transformation at the beginning of the third century, at the juncture between the Tannaitic and Amoraic periods. In Gilat’s opinion, the early tannaim understood the prohibition as a moral and ethical demand, aimed against the kind of schism which took place at the end of the Second Temple period. However, the early amoraim, who no longer faced the problem of extreme schism, transferred the concept to the practical legal sphere and attempted to give it a normative legal definition. In this lecture I will examine the rabbinic texts in light of one another and in comparison with Paul’s arguments in I Corinthians, demonstrating the importance of a comparative approach for understanding Paul’s arguments.


The Book of Judges: Date and Meaning
Program Unit: Deuteronomistic History
Yairah Amit, Tel Aviv University

According to my point of view, most of the book of Judges was written and edited on the basis of northern traditions in Judah at the end of the eighth cen. BCE or the beginning of the seventh cen. I have adhered to this view for more than twenty years, from the time I wrote my dissertation that was published as The Book of Judges: the Art of Editing (Leiden: Brill, 1999). This paper draws upon my recent article: "The Book of Judges – Dating and Meaning" in Homeland and Exile: Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Honour of Bustenay Oded (Leiden: Brill, 2009). In my presentation I shall reexamine the evidence for the position that the book of Judges represents the beginning of history writing in Judah, and is the product of intellectuals who reacted to the Assyrian conquests of the eighth cen., and particularly to the fall of the northern kingdom (722 BCE).


A Case of Mimicry? Jewish Polemic against Animal Worship in the Roman Period
Program Unit: Hellenistic Judaism
Sonja Ammann, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

Hebrew Bible texts mainly portray Egypt in a negative light. Remarkably, though, they do not exploit the, presumably, most curious and distinguishing feature of Egyptian customs: the worship of animals. It was not until the Hellenistic and Roman periods that Jewish writers addressed the topic of animal worship in order to denounce Egyptian idolatry (Aristeas, Philo, Wisdom of Solomon etc.). In this paper, I will examine how Jewish polemic against zoolatry emerged in relation to its Hellenistic environment and how it relates to the earlier biblical tradition. I will argue that Jewish interest in Egyptian zoolatry results from contacts with Greek and Roman discourses on Egypt. A comparison of Jewish polemics to their Greek and Roman counterparts will show that the way they present Egyptian animal worship as the most degenerated form of idolatry corresponds in particular to Roman anti-Egyptian discourse. Therefore, I will explore the possible impact of Augustan propaganda in the war against Mark Anthony and Cleopatra, which built on popular anti-Egyptian resentment. When, after the war, Egypt became part of the Roman Empire, Jews residing in Egypt feared being put on the same level as native Egyptians (which implied a lower social status and higher taxation). This might explain the need to mark the difference between Jews and Egyptians, and to co-opt the Roman anti-Egyptian discourse. In conclusion, I will suggest that Jewish polemics against zoolatry are part of a strategy to identify with the dominant elites.


Beyond the Ritual Sphere: The Aaronide Priestly Ascendancy of Eleazar (Num 27:15–23) and Jehoiada (2 Chr 23:1–21)
Program Unit: Cultic Personnel in the Biblical World
Hannah S. An, Princeton Theological Seminary

The account of the commissioning of Joshua in Num 27:12-23 and that of Joash’s ascent to the Judah’s throne in 2 Chr 23:1-21feature the late reformulation of potentially disparate textual traditions. Notably, Eleazar (Num 27:15-23) and Jehoiada (2 Chr 23:1-12) figure prominently in the narratives as the key sacerdotal agents to legitimate the succession of the subsequent leader of the Israelites. The question then arises as to what extent the Priestly characterization of these high priests coincides and what theological emphasis such a textual revision achieves. A careful evaluation of the Priestly interpolations of the both texts (Num 27:12-23 and 2 Chr 23:1-21) indicates that the status of the high priest is consistently upheld over the military/political leader of the Israelites and the Levites. In the succession narrative of Num 27:12-23, the emerging picture is not the diarchic leadership of Joshua and Eleazar modeled after that of Moses and Aaron. In fact, Eleazar assumes the religious capacity of Aaron as the high priest, while remaining superior to Joshua by playing a mediating role between YWHW and Joshua. In this way, the perceived hierarchy of Moses, Aaron, and the Levites is to an extent reversed through the conspicuous claim on the priestly supremacy in the narrative. The Priestly rendition of Jehoiada’s rise in 2 Chr 23:1-21 is instructive in this regard. The analysis reveals that the tradents reworked the deuteronomistic base text in 2 Kgs 11:4-21 to heighten Jehoiada’s priestly status— especially over the military/political leader and the Levites—by means of a number of distinctive literary rearrangements, including the employment of the hithpael conjugation of ??? in connection to Solomon’s reign. These findings enlighten the nature of the embedded rhetoric in the biblical tradition attributed to the Second Temple Period and provide insights into the exegetical and theological heritage of the group that stands behind the text during the Persian period.


Strangely Blessed: Revisiting Blessing and Fulfillment in the Jacob Cycle
Program Unit: Genesis
Bradford A. Anderson, Mater Dei Institute of Education, Dublin City University

The points of contact between Genesis 27 and Genesis 32-33 have inspired much commentary in recent decades, a good deal of which has revolved around the question of whether the latter should be understood as the fulfillment of Isaac’s pronouncements over Jacob and Esau in the former. Although Jacob’s character in these scenes has been investigated from a variety of vantage points, a starting point of this paper is the conviction that paying particular attention to the unchosen sibling Esau may offer fresh perspective for engaging with these texts and themes. Accordingly, this paper will reexamine blessing and fulfillment in the Jacob Cycle in light of the interrelated motifs of election, particularity, and otherness, building on the work of several interdisciplinary voices that have contributed to reflection on these areas. It will be suggested, first of all, that a reading with a more nuanced and indeed positive view of Esau may allow room for the “fulfillment” of Jacob’s blessing in unexpected ways. Thus, although Jacob may be blessed, the realization of this blessing need be neither straightforward nor triumphant; in fact, the very brother who has been passed over can be understood to have an important role in the realization of Jacob’s blessing. Further, it can be argued that Esau is blessed in his own right in spite of his status as the unchosen son and the difficulties caused by the election of Jacob. In this view, election, though complex and problematic, need not necessitate a scarcity of blessing. Taken together, one way of looking at blessing and fulfillment in the Jacob Cycle is to recognize in these stories a picture whereby, in spite of the complexities brought on by the realities of particularity and election, both the chosen and unchosen are blessed, albeit in ways the reader might find surprising and unexpected.


‘What Will Yow Doe Now Yor Bibles Are Burnt’: The Material Bible in the 1641 Depositions in Ireland
Program Unit: Use, Influence, and Impact of the Bible
Bradford A. Anderson, Mater Dei Institute, Dublin City University

This paper will explore the use of the Bible in seventeenth century Ireland, specifically as depicted in the 1641 Depositions. This collection, containing roughly 19,000 pages of testimony from English and Scottish settlers at the time of the 1641 rising by Irish Catholics, recounts a formative and contested time in Ireland. One theme that recurs within these depositions has to do with the Bible. Interestingly, the Bible is rarely, if ever, quoted in these depositions. Rather, there are numerous reports relating to the material Bible, whether it is used in the swearing of oaths (usually by Protestants), or in relation to its desecration by burning, defacement, and destruction (always reported to have taken place at the hands of Catholics as part of broader hostilities toward Protestants). Bearing in mind serious historiographical and ideological questions concerning these documents, these testimonies nonetheless highlight important issues regarding the perception and use of the Bible beyond that of a semantic and performative text in the seventeenth century. Indeed, the references to the Bible in this collection point to another dimension of sacred texts: that of their materiality and related iconic status. As such, the notion that sacred texts have an iconic dimension will be used heuristically as a way to explore the material Bible in the 1641 Depositions, the differing conceptions of the Bible displayed by Catholics and Protestants, and in turn how this might shape our understanding of the ways in which scriptures function in both historical and contemporary contexts.


Prepared to Listen: An Inclusive Hermeneutic
Program Unit: Homiletics and Biblical Studies
Larry D. Anderson, Central Christian College of Kansas

In an attempt to make the sermon event more transformative a model for sermon preparation that is roughly the equivalent to progressive revelation is being offered. This model is an inclusive hermeneutic that gives the listener of sermons the opportunity to do their own preparation a week in advance of the sermon event. This is done in hopes of raising the expectation of the listener through their thoughtful consideration of the pericope and surrounding texts and information moving them from passive to active listeners.


The Legacy of the Chicago Lectionary Project: CSPMT and New Discoveries Regarding Greek Lectionary Manuscripts
Program Unit: New Testament Textual Criticism
Paul D. Anderson, Center for Study and Preservation of the Majority Text

The Chicago Lectionary Project directed by E. C. Colwell in the 1930’s was the first concerted effort by Western biblical scholars at understanding the textual characteristics of Greek lectionary manuscripts. Though groundbreaking in its vision and purpose, the results of the Project proved mainly inadequate to its original goals. This paper will first review the Chicago Lectionary Project and its significance for Greek lectionary studies today. The Projects’ findings subsequently laid the foundation for the recent discoveries made by the Center for Study and Preservation of the Majority Text (CSPMT). This research involved in-depth examination of lectionary manuscripts, their textual profiles, and relationship to particular Byzantine continuous text manuscripts. The two primary Greek lectionary manuscript groupings will be briefly discussed as well as their relationship to the modern Greek lectionary and the official (Antoniades) Greek New Testament of the Greek Orthodox Church. Finally, an overview will be given on their use in the forthcoming Byzantine Greek New Testament (BGNT) edition.


The Greek Orthodox New Testament and Lectionary: Their History, Texts, and Traditions Examined
Program Unit: Bible in Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Traditions
Paul D. Anderson, Center for Study and Preservation of the Majority Text

The newly founded non-profit organization the Center for Study & Preservation of the Majority Text (CSPMT) based in Washington, D.C. is establishing itself as a leading textual research center including the study of Greek New Testament manuscripts, editions and related litugical books. In this paper, Paul Anderson President of CSPMT will examine the (Antoniades) Greek Orthodox New Testament and lectionary texts comparing their history, textual characteristics and traditions within the Greek Orthodox Church. Since 1904, the Antoniades Greek New Testament has been the official New Testament text of the Greek Orthodox Church. Also, the liturgical books known as lectionaries form an important part in the liturgy and worship within the Church. The Antoniades New Testament and the Euaggelion-Apostolos lectionaries history and textual charecteristics have remained largely untapped and without scholarly examination for nearly a century. This paper will examine the two textual traditions attempting to fill this void of in the study of the Bible's role within the Greek Orthodox Church.


When Eucharists Attack: Policing the Body of Christ in Third Century Carthage
Program Unit: Religious World of Late Antiquity
Sonja Anderson, Yale University

Sometime in the spring of 251, Cyprian of Carthage announced that several eucharistic disasters had taken place in his town. Some lapsed Christians, he claimed, had attempted to receive the eucharist but found their efforts frustrated when the consecrated food instead choked them, induced vomiting, set itself on fire, or dissolved into ash. After 1 Cor 11:29-30, these are the earliest references to the eucharist physically harming its recipients. This paper explores how Cyprian used the discourse of a self-policing, sacrificial eucharist to control the boundaries of his congregation in the aftermath of the Decian persecution. Specifically, it focuses on three aspects of his treatise “On the Lapsed.” First, unlike Christian writers before him, Cyprian does not hesitate to say that Christians sacrifice, and in a context of forced imperial sacrifice, this is striking. Second, Cyprian presents a eucharist that is active, violent, and self-policing. It is its own guard dog, sniffing out and attacking intruders. Third, the eucharist, the lapsed, confessors, martyrs, and their interactions are overwhelmingly described in terms of bodily integrity and dismemberment. Both the eucharist and the Christian assembly are called the “body of Christ” by Cyprian, and thus the regulation of either can be portrayed as the defense of a body from assault. I argue that these three aspects of Cyprian’s discourse attacked from different angles the problems he faced in controlling the Carthaginian Christian community during the so-called controversy over the lapsed. The familiar ritual act of consuming the body and blood of Christ provided him with a concrete discursive space in which he could assert his authority unimpeded. In short, by setting up a situation of competing sacrifices in which the only real actors were Christ and the lapsed, Cyprian avoided challenging his rivals (the martyrs) directly, attempted to elevate himself to the status of a martyr, and exerted a panoptic pressure on his congregation, effectively creating the category of the lapsed and ensuring its maintenance.


Left behind Bars: Reading and Writing with Revelation in Prison
Program Unit: Contextual Biblical Interpretation
William Andrews, Jr., Chicago Theological Seminary

In prisons where I have volunteered, there is a curious fascination with apocalyptic literature and dispensationalist interpretations of these texts. With that phenomenon in mind, this paper highlights common features in the biblical interpretive activity of men incarcerated in US prisons and the reworking of biblical texts that occurs in the book of Revelation. First, I briefly sketch a “prison hermeneutics” using the “prison poetics” proposed by Doran Larson as well as the work of Michel Foucault and Michel de Certeau. Secondly, I turn to the writings of prisoners—-essays, devotions, personal letters, and other autobiographical reflections—-in order to demonstrate how the context of incarceration informs and guides their biblical interpretation. Finally, I identify similar dynamics that arise from the context of Roman domination in Revelation.


A Paradigmatic Approach to the Qumran Book of Giants
Program Unit: Qumran
Joseph L. Angel, Yeshiva University

This paper explores the purpose of the Qumran Book of Giants (BG). After an introductory discussion of the composition’s provenance (endorsing a date in the early to mid 2nd century BCE, perhaps in Palestine), the study considers unique aspects of the work vis-à-vis the larger corpus of early Enochic lore in an attempt to determine the underlying purpose of its composition. The interpretive cue is taken from two central and peculiar aspects of BG: First, BG is the only known Enochic work written from the perspective of the giants. Second, there is a pronounced emphasis on the destructive crimes of the giants and particularly on how their impending judgment is revealed directly to them through dream-visions. Previous research has accounted for these details within the framework of an etiological approach to the myth of the giants. For example, one prominent interpretation views the emphasis on the irreversible judgment against all of the giants as a polemical response to certain Hellenistic-Jewish traditions of the mid 2nd century BCE according to which some giants survived the flood and mediated culture to humanity. The insistence of BG that the giants were informed of their own doom is taken as espousing a conception of the post-flood giants (the disembodied spirits inhabiting the world of the audience) as defeated powers who had already suffered a decisive setback in the Urzeit and who were fully cognizant of their vast inferiority to the power of God. Given the multivalent character of the apocalyptic symbolism of BG, this study argues that the above interpretation is to be supplemented by a paradigmatic approach to the myth. According to this option, the myth projects a perceived historical crisis to the mythological plane as a paradigm for the judgment of real historical oppressors and the vindication of the oppressed audience. Given the likely provenance of BG in the 2nd century, the violence of the giants would represent that of the Seleucids. (The attribution of the Babylonian names Gilgamesh and Hobabish to the giants is consistent with an attitude of hostility toward Mesopotamian-Hellenistic figures of power.) The revelation of doom-judgment to the giants would reflect the belief that the Seleucid oppressors would be humbled by their awareness of their ultimate fate. The paper suggests that this is to be related to the motif of the humbling of arrogant oppressors through the revelation of their inferiority to God, which is well-attested in Second Temple literature (e.g., Daniel 2, 4, 5), and which appears explicitly in connection with Antiochus IV in 1 and 2 Maccabees. The paradigmatic approach thus suggests that a major motivation of the author of BG in his reworking of earlier Enochic traditions (especially BW) lies in his desire to respond to Seleucid oppression. This invites further comparison of BG with the Daniel material, with which the paper concludes.


A Unified Approach to Weqatal in Biblical Hebrew: A Cosubordination Analysis
Program Unit: Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew
Matthew Anstey, St Barnabas College, Charles Sturt University

This paper argues that the Biblical Hebrew weqatal Verb grammaticalises cosubordination, that is, that a weqatal clause is syntactically independent of but semantically dependent on the illocutionary and semantic features of its Donor Clause. The Donor Clause which can be any main or non-main Tiberian Hebrew Clause type. Such a cosubordination analysis is shown to have greater explanatory power and fewer (and less) problematic exceptions to the traditional account of weqatal. There are three traditional approaches to the problem of weqatal, and particularly its relation to the qatal. The first and oldest solution is that the apparent tense-/aspect-switching effect is due to the waw, claiming that a so-called Conversive waw in weqatal is a different morpheme from the regular Coordinator waw (e.g. Sasson 1997, 2001). This solution is often bolstered by the fallacious argument of the supposed prosodic difference between qatal and weqatal, whereby weqatal undergoes an accent shift is restricted environments (Revell 1984, 1985), but Garr (1998) dismantles such an argument thoroughly. The second, widely held solution is that weqatal grammaticalises Nonpast/Nonperfective, having gained this value from qatal’s common use in the apodoses of Conditional Clauses [(waw-)X + qatal]. The third and rarely held view is that weqatal and qatal are more similar than not, both encoding Perfectivity (Berry 1903; Cook 2002; cf. Baayen 1997). The Nonperfective analysis is most common, but it has two major weaknesses. Firstly, although in most cases it correctly predicts that weqatal expresses Nonperfectivity, it fails to predict that weqatal would inherit the interpersonal (e.g. illocutionary force) and other semantic values (e.g. frequentative, negation) of the DC. That is, if weqatal is a regular Finite Nonperfective Verb, we would expect in the majority of cases for it to introduce its own illocution, but it does not. Secondly, there are over one hundred systematic cases of weqatal following wayyiqtol or qatal, in which weqatal is past. Hence this paper offers a fourth solution, namely, that weqatal is distinct from qatal, but not in grammaticalising a tense/aspect distinction, but cosubordination (Van Valin & LaPolla 1997). In cosubordination, the Cosubordinate Clause inherits semantics (and other) features from its DC even though the DC and the Cosubordinate Clause are syntactically independent. I call this the Cosubordination Analysis. The proposed Cosubordination Analysis, in contrast, predicts both the inheritance of interpersonal/semantic values from the DC, and the inheritance specifically of past tense after past tense DCs. The exceptions to the Cosubordination Analysis are fewer and more amenable to explanation than other analyses.


After the Ascension: Preaching and the Body of Christ
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Benjamin J. Anthony, Vanderbilt University

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The Body Matters: Rights and Rites of African Sexualities and the Body in the Context of 1 Cor 6
Program Unit: African Biblical Hermeneutics
Eric Nii Bortey Anum, University of Cape Coast

In this paper rights and rites related to sexualities of Africans with respect to their bodily affectionality is looked at. The paper explores ways by which sexual affections and relations are understood and are expressed in African societies. The relationship between the Rights and Rites of sexuality and the body in I Cor.6 is also examined. A collaboration between the discourses on the Rights and Rites of Sexualities in the African Context and the body and that of 1 Cor.6 with reference to the body in both contexts is done..Socio-scientific analysis is employed in doing this. The anticipated outcome of the interaction through the collaborative study of concepts in these two contexts is the contribution to the current discussions on Sexuality Rights and Rites in Africa.


Reclaiming the Commons: Food Production and Sustainability in Ahab and Jezebel’s Israel
Program Unit: Ecological Hermeneutics
Deborah Appler, Moravian College & Theological Seminary

The rise of the Occupy Wall Street movement has unleashed a challenge to wealthy multi-national corporations and individuals. In particular it has highlighted a dangerous consolidation of food sources and, in response, a call for an “occupation” of the food supply by reclaiming the “commons” (natural resources that should belong to everyone). A similar movement is needed in 9th century BCE Israel as described in 1Kgs 17- 2 Kgs 9. When Ahab marries the Phoenician Jezebel, trade between these two nations and access to each other’s wealth and cultural values open even wider. In addition, the monarchy consolidates power by controlling the nation’s food supplies. By law Israel’s land and resources are gifts to the people from God, or “the commons.” However, Ahab and Jezebel’s hunger for agricultural land and international power lead to a system of unequal food distribution that becomes exacerbated by the famine and droughts (1 Kgs 18:1-2). During these crises, Jezebel feeds 850 prophets of Baal and Asherah (1 Kgs 18:19) presumably at the expense of her people. Meanwhile, Ahab strives to keep his horses fed and watered (1 Kgs 18:5) perhaps because of the power these horses give him in matters of state, but also because horse dung appears to play a role in food production as fertilizer and fuel for much needed food to maintain his elite lifestyle. Water is diverted away from thirsty people to supply the irrigation system needed to grow the, perhaps, egotistical and impractical garden Ahab plants at the confiscated site of Naboth’s vineyard (1 Kgs 21). Vineyards grow much more successfully in parched ground than vegetables. This paper will examine how Ahab and Jezebel’s monopoly of ecological resources threatens the welfare of their people and the sustainability of Israel’s resources that parallels today’s environmental threats.


Digging Below the Surface. Uncovering Microaggressions as an Act of Atonement
Program Unit: Bible and Practical Theology
Deborah Appler, Moravian College & Theological Seminary

We (Sharon Brown, Director of Institutional Diversity and Deborah Appler, Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible) co-teach “Creating Cultural Competency through the Lens of the Hebrew Bible”—a course that addresses social justice and diversity concerns related to marginalized groups and their intersection with the Hebrew Bible and Pastoral Counseling. This course arose out of our commitment to social justice and recognition that the biblical narratives are sacred for many in our communities and have been employed by some to oppress but also used to create liberated and healthy individuals and communities. Our students are often justice minded. Still, deep-seated in our society are inequities that are almost invisible but are made manifest in often unintentional words or actions labeled microaggressions and defined by Psychologist Derald Wing Sue as those acts that convey hostile, damaging slights and insults that further marginalize historically oppressed groups. Microaggressions have a greater impact on the wellbeing of the marginalized than overt attacks because they are vague. For example, did the white man surrender his seat to a white woman rather than the Latina who entered the subway first based on racial bias or because of some entirely different reason? Either way, the Latina woman may experience his action as a slight. Sue warns that a failure to recognize the legitimacy of these cumulative assaults and their impacts on a client/parishioner’s physical and mental health jeopardizes pastoral and therapeutic relationships, especially between those from different social locations. The guilt offering in Leviticus 5:14-6:7 offers a lens to explore microaggressions. This ritual addresses the seriousness of both unintentional (5:14-19) and intentional sins (6:1-7) that threaten the wholeness of the community as they transgress God’s commandments (5:17). Leviticus’ call for wholeness (5:16) and atonement (6:2) implies naming these inadvertent sins and making them visible to prevent repetition. The principles of this Levitical ritual that can be used as a framework to identify the sinfulness of microaggressions and the need for atonement are the focus of this paper. Through this process, individual and community healing can take place and our students can be more culturally competent counselors.


Deities, Diets, and Dietary Laws: The Archaeological and the Contextual Perspective
Program Unit: Ritual in the Biblical World
Rami Arav, University of Nebraska at Omaha

The biblical dietary laws on prohibition of consumption of pork as stated in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 are very well known and serve as a hallmark of biblical and rabbinical Judaism. However, the reasons and motivations for these laws are still elusive and conjectural. Many attempts to explain these laws were made during the past centuries, but none with a compelling theory. This presentation is different from the conventional attempts since it is not based only on texts or sociological models, but it uses archaeological and contextual approaches. The excavations at Bethsaida and other sites may serve as a clue to understand this prohibition. These excavations revealed sacrificial high places in which only “kosher” animals were sacrificed while the populations of these places were not Israelites and consumed pork. Bethsaida, for example, a none- Israelite city, did not have to comply with Leviticus and Deuteronomy and indeed, research shows that pork made about 8% of the meat consumption. Yet, the sacrificial high place at Bethsaida yielded only “kosher” animals. The contextual approach suggests viewing the larger picture of deities in the ancient world. Ancient gods and goddesses were divided into two main groups. The upper gods who reside on the surface of the earth and up to the farthermost extend of heaven and the lower, chthonic gods who dwell under the surface of the earth. Each group of deities had different role, different diet and different sacrifice. While upper gods were the creator gods and were responsible for the weather, sun, and justice; the domain of the chthonic gods included death and rebirth, revival, and fertility. Their diet or sacrificial animals was accordingly different, while upper gods enjoyed sheep, cattle and deer, chthonic gods prefer pigs and rabbits. In the process of immitatio dei worshippers in the polytheistic religions sacrifice and consume the food of the deities for whom they sacrificed. In the monotheistic religions when the one and only god is an upper god, the diet of the worshipper in this process is naturally limited to “kosher” animals only.


Herod the Great and the Roman Imperial Cult in Sebaste/ Samaria
Program Unit: Greco-Roman Religions
Dr. Rami Arav, University of Nebraska at Omaha

In 40 BCE Mark Antony proposed Herod as the king of the Jews, soon after Herod left Rome to claim his kingdom. In 37 BCE he captured Jerusalem and in the subsequent years annihilated his opponents and rivals. However, after the battle of Actium in 31 BCE, Herod feared that he will face a destiny similar to the enemies of Octavian, and hurried to meet Octavian on the island of Rhodes. Josephus relates that “when he had sailed to that city, he took off his diadem”, but Octavian “restored him his diadem again; and encouraged him to exhibit himself as great a friend to himself as he had been to Antony”. This restoration was ratified by the senate. Herod gave Octavian 800 talents of silver and hosted him in Judea. In 27 BCE, the Roman Senate proclaimed Octavian Imperator Caesar Augusuts. Soon thereafter Herod founded Sebaste (Greek for Augustus), built a large temple, game facilities for the cult of the emperor, and constructed his palace near the temple, to imitate the palace Octavian/Augustus had built near the temple of Apollo, his ancestral god. Sebaste was the first Roman Imperial cult city. A century later there would be more Roman Imperial cult temples built in the Roman Empire than temples of all the other gods combined. The second coronation of Herod in Rhodes was overlooked by scholars when dealing with the coins issued by Herod. Of all his coins only one issue bears a date - year 3. Most scholars date it to 37 BCE. However, accepting this date creates more problems than it solves. This issue of four different denominations bears images described by many as “pagan” and some debated whether they could be Jewish. However, this series of coins make much more sense in the context of the Roman Imperial cult in Sebaste. This presentation proposes, that these series date from 27 BCE the third year of his second coronation. The presentation will deal with symbols on the coins and their association to the Roman Imperial cult in Sebaste.


Assessing 'The Formation of Q'
Program Unit: Q
Bill Arnal, University of Regina

A critical review of J.S. Kloppenborg's 'The Formation of Q'.


Teaching with Meta-Questions
Program Unit: Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion
Russell Arnold, DePauw University

Students most often take introductory courses in Religion, not to learn how to think critically, but to make personal meaning. As each successive generation enters college, they bring with them new questions about who they are and what their place in the world might be. This roundtable will discuss how to organize a course around a central question that can be invoked frequently in class sessions and on exams to encourage students to consider how the various parts of the course contribute to one particular theme. Such “meta-questions” can both satisfy the academic rigor of the college classroom to lay a foundation for further studies and create the space for students to make personal meaning, satisfying the needs of both instructor and student.


Perfect Tenses and the Synoptic Problem
Program Unit: Markan Literary Sources
Richard L. Arthur, Unification Theological Seminary

Many years ago , H. J Cadbury (The Style and Literary Method of Luke, 1920), noted that with regard to editorial changes made by Luke, “in some cases . . . the change is quite contrary to the apparent preferences of Luke” (p. 188). Cadbury noted five instances of Lucan aorist tenses in parallel with perfect tenses in Mark (p. 163), although he could have added three more to his list (Cf. Lk. 8.39, 8.47, and 9.7 and the parallels with Mark). These eight examples illustrate an important point, because Luke almost never gives an aorist reading compared with Matthew (the one exception is Matt. 26.75). Luke commonly gives perfect tenses for Matthean aorists. Apparently, it never occurred to Prof. Cadbury that the Markan editor could have been practicing the same changes on Luke that Luke employed on Matthew (or Q). To address this matter of the spread of perfect tenses in the synoptic gospels, I enlisted the help of Bible Works 8, and with comparative ease compiled all occurrences of perfect tenses in the synoptics, and constructed some conclusions of my own. The data shows that Mark never employs an aorist tense (with same verb) if either or both Matthew and Luke employ a perfect tense. Mark never employs a perfect tense in common with Matthew and against Luke. With the pertinent date drawn from Bible Works 8, a strong case can be made for the Griesbach hypothesis, i.e., both Luke and Mark edited Matthew, and Mark edited both Matthew (or Q) and Luke.


Cosmic Order and the Angels of the Nations: Moving beyond the Stoicism/Apocalypticism Divide in Paul and Second Temple Judaism
Program Unit: Wisdom and Apocalypticism
R. G. Artinian, King's College London

Though for whatever reason the fact remains widely unrecognized, there is in the Second Temple literature (esp. OTP and Apocrypha) an abundance of evidence attesting the conceptual connection of (a) the cosmic order or even a “universal law” (e.g., Sir 17:7-17; 1 En. 80:1-8; 2 En. 19:1-4; 4 Ezra 7:21-24, 70-74; T.Naph. 3:1-5; Philo, Ios. 29-31) and (b) the tutelary “angels of the nations” (LXX Dan 7:27; 10:13, 20-21; Sir 17:17; Jub. 15:31-32; Sib. Or. 2.214-19; Apoc. Ab. 14:5-6; 20:5; 22:6). The purpose of this paper is to lay bare the extent of this evidence in detail, noting the key passages for each idea and focusing particularly on those in which the two conceptions coalesce into a single tradition. In my view, this evidence has been profoundly underappreciated (not least since the two concepts are united in both “apocalyptic” and “Hellenistic” writings); thus its implications for the interpretation of Second Temple Judaism and Paul remain unrealized also. Insofar as this evidence illustrates the organic connection of a (Stoicized) universal law and the national angels concept in Second Temple thought, it thus exposes the fallacy of a presumptive Stoicism/Apocalypticism antinomy in the study of early Judaism and Paul (cf., e.g., Engberg-Pedersen/Martyn 2002). Moreover, its presence in these diverse texts also suggests the role which “universal law” may have played in Hellenistic Jewish paideia—for which Paul provides additional evidence. I conclude that, for Second Temple Jewish thinkers widely and for Paul particularly, Stoic conceptions (e.g., cosmic order; universal law) and apocalyptic theology were not seen as fundamentally antithetical, but (however odd it may seem to us) held to be of a piece—united in a common core of Hellenistic Jewish intellection.


"With Regard to These Things, There Is No Law": Is Paul Positive about the Torah in Gal. 5–6?
Program Unit: Pauline Epistles
Atsuhiro Asano, Kwansei Gakuin University

It is known that Paul’s polemic against the Torah is strong and clear in the series of his arguments in Gal. 3-4. But when it comes to the ethical section in Gal. 5-6, many understand that he tones down his polemic against the Torah. For example, one finds such expressions (in NASB) as, ‘the whole law is summed up (peplêrôtai) in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself”’ (5.14), or ‘There is no law against such things (kata tôn toioutôn)’ (5.23). The positive reading of such expressions on the Torah have led some interpreters to suppose that the whole ethical section as a later interpolation. While such a suggestion found only a few supporters, recent commentators regard the expressions by Paul as a ‘shock’ or an ‘extreme paradox.’ However, it seems that not enough attempts have been made to re-evaluate the possible nüances that Paul might have sought to communicate with these expressions, especially in light of the larger context of the epistle. This general tendency has its implications. One of which is that the rather positive reading of the Torah statements in Gal. 5-6 among the western academic communities directly and immediately affect the way the chapters are translated into the language of the presenter so much so that the epistle as translated in the language sounds as if it is quite contradicting itself. In the presentation, therefore, the presenter will take a close look at such expressions as ‘peplêrôtai’ and ‘kata tôn toioutôn’, in order to seek to bring out nüances different from the ordinary understanding of the verses. As the result, it will be suggested that Paul is NOT positive about the Torah in the ethical section, and that he is quite consistent in the entire epistle in his polemic against the Torah.


An Introduction to the Session: Associations and Christian Origins—Status Quaestionis
Program Unit: Meals in the Greco-Roman World
Richard Ascough, Queens University

This presentation will orient the session towards using associations “to think with” with a synopsis of past research trends and current interests, ending up with a summary of how people have used association meals to understand early Jesus groups.


Ethnogenesis and the Gentiles in Ephesians
Program Unit: Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti
Jeffrey Asher, Georgetown College

By drawing on recent research and a careful assessment of ancient textual and archaeological evidence, this paper will focus on the ways in which the letter of Ephesians constructs the so-called “identity” of non-Jewish peoples. Frequently, theology and theologically motivated constructions of history (supersessionism) have colored many attempts to understand the letter. This paper will argue that the author of Ephesians does not construct an elaborate scenario of an ethnic transformation involving Jews and gentiles. The letter has little to say about the Jews and virtually nothing about how they are reconstructed. Rather, through an elaborate ethnogenetic argument it constructs the status of a sub-set of gentiles who constitute the “faithful in Christ Jesus” by establishing kinship bonds, articulating their status with respect to their new deity, relating a foundation myth, and implementing guidelines of normative behavior.


The Sahidic Apocalypse Tradition in Islamic Egypt
Program Unit: Christianity in Egypt: Scripture, Tradition, and Reception
Christian Askeland, Kirchliche Hochschule Wuppertal/Bethel

While the larger Eastern church largely ignored the biblical text of the Apocalypse, the Coptic church employed the Apocalypse in liturgical and literary texts, offering an unbroken tradition of its use from the earliest period. This paper will explore the nature of the Sahidic Apocalypse as scripture, with special attention to results gleaned from the forthcoming Editio Critica Maior underway at the Kirchliche Hochschule Wuppertal/Bethel.


Being in Exile in your own Homeland
Program Unit: Exile (Forced Migrations) in Biblical Literature
Elie Assis, Bar-Ilan University

The term glh refers to the expulsion or migration of people from their land. The land of refuge is called galut. The use of this term reflects the people’s perception that they are removed from their homeland. Though these are simple observations they do not reveal a full theological outlook that can be found in various biblical texts. I propose to demonstrate the idea that even people who remained in the Land still felt in exile. The concept of exile in many biblical passages refers to a situation of a break in the covenantal relationship between God and the people. The exile of the people was a result of this unstable relationship. Thus people who remained in the Land, felt in exile as well, because they believed that God rejected them. The question of exile, depends less on the place of residence than their perception of the covenantal relationship with God. This idea will be explored within texts that were written in the exilic period by or for the Judean community that continued to reside in Judaea.


The Composition of the Book of Obadiah and Its Role in the Book of Twelve
Program Unit: Book of the Twelve Prophets
Elie Assis, Bar-Ilan University

There is no agreement among scholars regarding the composition of the small book of Obadiah. Some view the Book as a collection of different fragments whereas others however, are of the opinion that the Book is of one unit. While the unifying elements are apparent, various points in the book reflect different political and historical backgrounds. These features will be discussed. I will attempt to show that the author prophesied about Edom at three different stages of the rapid changing situation of the 6th century BCE, and the book was updated in accordance with these situations. The first prophetic piece reflects a pre-exilic period, an update following the events of 586 BCE was added, and a third section that deflects a later period, probably a post-exilic date, in which the Edomite penetration to Judea became prominent. Thus the Book reflects three positions towards Edom that originated in three continues but diverse situations. I will demonstrate how the first layer is parallel to the pre-exilic period, the second to the exilic period, and the third to the post exilic period. While the first layer has obvious connections with Jeremiah, the second layer shares some common features with Joel, and the third can be seen in light of the work of Malachi. In line of these findings the role of Obadiah in the book of Twelve will be determined.


"Because of Your Unbelief, I Will Speak Again": The Reception of the Post-resurrection Doubts of the Apostles at Nag Hammadi
Program Unit: Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism
J. D. Atkins, Marquette University

In the canonical gospels the apostles appear to be afflicted with persistent doubts, even after the resurrection. Though they do so in diverse ways, Matthew, Luke, and John all point out the presence of doubt or unbelief in response to the resurrection of Jesus. This paper will explore the reception or reuse of these post-resurrection doubt traditions in the Nag Hammadi corpus and other "gnostic" writings. Two trends will be examined: 1) a tendency to use the doubt to criticize the apostles as representatives of a competing (proto-orthodox) tradition, and 2) a pattern of exploiting the doubt as an opportunity to expound and promote gnostic doctrine—including, among other things, a docetic understanding of the resurrection. Counter trends that defend or downplay the doubts of the apostles in anti-gnostic and anti-docetic writers will also be considered. The presentation will conclude with some implications for historical-critical interpretation of the canonical resurrection narratives.


Ptolemy Physcon and His Unhappy Wives (Cleopatra II and III): The Mysterious “King from the Sun” of the Third Sibylline Oracle Identified
Program Unit: Pseudepigrapha
Kenneth Atkinson, University of Northern Iowa

The Third Sibylline Oracle is a composite work, whose nucleus is generally dated to the mid-second century B.CE. (vss. 97-294; 545-808). Likely written by an Egyptian Jew, its author uses Isaiah 11:1-12 to describe a mysterious “seventh king” (vs. 652-56) who will bring about the universal peace necessary for the messianic age. Hailed as the “king from the sun” (vss. 652-56), under his guidance civil strife in Egypt will cease and men will cast away their idols. Drawing on Pharaonic ideology, the writer opposes subversive anti-Ptolemiac sentiments, as expressed in the Potter’s Oracle, to highlight this Egyptian king’s divine role. Based on the oracle’s historical allusions, there are three possible identifications for this "seventh king": Ptolemy VI Philometor, Ptolemy VII Neos Philopator, and Ptolemy VIII Physcon. This paper suggests that that scholars have failed to recognize that this oracle attributes the imminent arrival of the messianic age to the contributions of Physcon’s wives, and that it bears witness to a unique period of history when pagan women helped shaped Hellenistic Judaism. The first section of this presentation examines how Sibylline Oracle 3 combines Biblical messianic prophecy with Egyptian nationalism to encourage Jews to support the Ptolemaic kings. The second section explores the current numbering of the Egyptian moanrchs to show that Ptolemy VIII Physcon must be identified as the “seventh king” since there is no evidence that Ptolemy VII Neos Philopator existed. The third portion will show that the reconciliation between Physcon and his pro-Jewish wives (Cleopatra II and Cleopatra III) brought about favorable changes for Egypt’s Jewish community that led to his identification as a the harbinger of the messianic age. In light of its historical background, the Third Sibylline Oracle emerges as a completely unique text that describes Jewish messianic aspirations that emerged from the pro-Jewish activities of Cleopatra II and Cleopatra III.


The Use of the Term "Magic" as a Religio-Cultic Category in the Greco-Roman World and Early Christianity
Program Unit: Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti
David Aune, University of Notre Dame

This paper will examine the complex problems involved in using the term "magic" as a heuristic term for analyzing certain aspects of religious phenomena in the ancient world. The author will focus on a critique of one of the more comprehensive recent discussions of the phenomenon of "magic" in antiquity: Marco Frenschkowski, "Magie," Reallexikon fuer Antike und Christentum, Band XXIII (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 2010), cols. 857-957.


LXX-Isa’s Thorny Renderings of shamir vashayit
Program Unit: International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies
Benjamin M. Austin, Universiteit Leiden

How metaphors are rendered is an aspect of translation technique that has yet to be thoroughly investigated in Septuagint research. Some initial work has been done for Septuagint-Isaiah by H.M. Orlinsky, who studied anthropomorphisms; Joseph Ziegler, who made a brief survey of metaphors and comparisons; and Arie van der Kooij, who showed similarities between the Septuagint and the Targum’s method of interpreting metaphors. The variety of ways a recurring metaphor is rendered can shed light on LXX-Isa’s translation technique. The word pair shamir vashayit is used in several metaphors in Isaiah: Isa 5:6; 7:23,24,25; 9:17; 10:17; and 27:4. The Septuagint appears to translate these words in a variety of ways. But when careful attention is paid to the context in which these metaphors occur, it becomes clear that the translator has very carefully rendered each metaphor to clarify the point of comparison being made by the metaphor. So, when the metaphor expresses a deserted place we find imagery of thorns growing in a fallow field in the Greek. When the metaphor expresses flammability we find imagery of dry grass in the Greek. In comparison, the Targum’s technique for dealing with these metaphors is either to render the metaphor literally (preserving the vehicle of the metaphor) or to offer an interpretation of the metaphor (by stating the perceived tenor of the metaphor).


No Need to Worry, or Is There? A Camba Reading of Luke 12:22–34
Program Unit: Contextual Biblical Interpretation
Esa Autero, University of Helsinki

In media and popular imagination Bolivia is often synonymous with snow-capped Andes mountain ranges, coca leaf, and indigenous politics. Nevertheless, nearly two-thirds of Bolivia consists of hot and steamy low lands. Eastern Bolivia or El Oriente, as it is locally known, has its distinct culture(s) and customs that are considerably different from the Andes mountain range and the central valleys. Easter Bolivians generally use the word Camba as a self-designation despite the highly ambiguous character of the term (Waldman 2008). Cambas characterize themselves as care-free, hospitable, and happy people in contrast to their rigid and hard-working compatriots. Nevertheless, despite the fact that the city of Santa Cruz in the east has become the number one economic center of the country, numerous people in Oriente live in abject poverty. In addition to this, government corruption and the lack of basic services make life difficult for many even within cities. Despite these difficulties, many people in the local Christian communities try to maintain the care-free and happy Camba outlook on life. This presentation will attempt to give a Camba reading on the classic gospel text “Do not Worry” in this highly ambivalent context. The method employed in the reading is empirical hermeneutics. The researcher spent nine months listening to the readings and interpretations of the poor and marginalized Camba Pentecostals and Evangelicals both in the slums of the city of Santa Cruz and in a small village which lacks basic water supply. The readings were recorded and supplemented by interviews and participant observations.


Does It Matter Where We Read? Exploring Biblical Poverty Texts Empirically
Program Unit: Poverty in the Biblical World
Esa Autero, University of Helsinki

Scholars have written extensively on the themes of poverty and riches in Luke’s gospel over the past 40 years. Methodologically these studies have employed a variety of approaches from historical-critical, sociological and anthropological methods to literary and feminist analysis. The focus has largely been on the biblical texts and references to the present-day context of global (and local) poverty have been scarce. An alternative to these traditional approaches is to explore the biblical poverty texts with those who presently live in the midst of poverty and marginalization. This kind of ‘dialogical reading’ has been conducted in South Africa since 1990s (e.g. West 2007) though it originated in the Latin American basic ecclesiastic communities (Autero 2011). In recent years a small group of scholars have started to develop a method called empirical hermeneutics, which combines biblical studies with empirical field research (de Wit 2010; de Wit et. al. 2004; Mlingo 2011; Village 2007; Conradie and Jonker 2001). These studies focus heavily on the ordinary readers’ interpretative practices and how they appropriate the biblical texts in their respective contexts. Nevertheless, they have paid less attention to how the experiences and interpretations of the ordinary readers could potentially highlight the (socio-) historical aspects of the biblical texts. This presentation will give a brief overview of empirical hermeneutics and then gives highlights of an empirical research project where poverty texts from Luke’s gospel were read with the poor and marginalized Christian communities in Bolivia. Finally, an initial exploration on how an intercontextual analysis, which takes into account the experiences of the poor and marginalized, may shed light both on the present-day appropriation of biblical texts and potentially to the socio-historical readings of the Luke’s poverty texts.


Socio-rhetorical Criticism and Slavery in the Pauline Epistles
Program Unit: Rhetoric and Early Christianity
Hector Avalos, Iowa State University

Socio-rhetorical criticism has been used to argue that the Pauline epistles exhibit more anti-slavery sentiments than what may be apparent. In particular, Ben Witherington, in a number of works (e.g., The Letters to Philemon, the Colossians, and Ephesians: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on the Captivity Epistles [2007]; The Indelible Image: The Theological and Ethical Thought World of the New Testament [2010]), argues that Colossians, Ephesians and Philemon must be read in the context of three orders of moral discourse in which familiarity between the author and the audience helps determine the level of frankness used in criticism of slave holding. In addition, Witherington (The Letters to Philemon…, p. 63) argues that Philemon uses the technique known as insinuatio by which author begins any criticism or plea “indirectly so as not to offend or anger the audience and then in the peroratio to pull all the emotional stops and make one’s appeal boldly and directly.” This paper will critique the methodology and conclusions of such socio-rhetorical analysis of the Pauline epistles. In particular, it will demonstrate that Witherington’s a socio-rhetorical analysis: 1) Misreads, in some crucial cases, the classical rhetoricians cited for support; 2) Depends on a flawed homogenization of the directives found in disparate classical sources; 3) Minimizes the flexibility of rules exhibited in the actual letters written by classical theorists of rhetoric, and especially Cicero; and 4) Does not fully cohere with how Paul’s rhetorical techniques are characterized in the Pauline epistles (e.g., 1 Cor. 2:1-4; 2 Cor. 10:9-11). Finally, the paper shows how such a such socio-rhetorical analysis of Pauline epistles functions to mitigate a biblical author’s view of slavery rather than to illuminate how Pauline epistles actually applied any classical rhetorical theories.


The Image of God and the Human Person in Genesis 1
Program Unit: Biblical Lexicography
Richard E. Averbeck, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

The study of the human “person” as presented in the biblical canon naturally begins with creation in Genesis. Genesis 1 highlights the overwhelming importance and dignity of human beings, male and female together, as the crown of God’s creative work. Lexical analysis of the terminology for “image” and “likeness” emphasizes the basic physical and functional dimensions of the human person. As his image and likeness (i.e., his representative statue, so to speak) God designed us for functional dominion and commissioned us to manage creation according to his good will and character. ANE background evidence supports this analysis, and the context in Genesis 1 and 2 adds the importance of our relational nature as human persons in carrying out God’s original design. Specific biblical inter-texts carry these concepts through the canon and underline the importance of this complex of terms and ideas.


The Palestinoi in Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews
Program Unit: Josephus
Michael Avioz, Bar-Ilan University

One of the bitterest enemies of the Israelites that challenged them from the conquest of Canaan till the early monarchy period were the Philistines. They are mentioned mainly in the so-called "Deuteronomitic History" and some references are scattered throughout the Pentateuch, the Latter Prophets, and the Book of Chronicles. Some of the texts depict the Philistines with fear and hate. Josephus mentions the Philistines when he retells the biblical narratives from Joshua to Kings in his Antiquities of the Jews. He does not follow the biblical occurrences strictly, and he omits or gives an abridged version of some narratives in which the Philistines appear. My aim in this paper is to explore the ways in which Josephus constructs the Philistines' ethnic identity as "the others" in relation to his people. Exum (1993) views the Philistines in the Book of Judges as "permanently identified with otherness." This otherness is portrayed by means of binary opposition, "in which one side of the opposition is always privileged." As Faust and Lev-Tov (2011) show in their recent artlice, "ethnicity is too complex to be merely identified with a material or an archaeological culture." Thus, I shall show how Josephus' defines the Philistines through their titles (Palestinoi; Allophuloi, polemioi), their military behavior; their unique practices; and the overall relationship between them and the Israelites. In fact, these descriptions are needed for the self-definition of both Josephus and the people to which he belongs, the Ioudaioi. Circumcision may be deemed a differentiating factor, assuming that the Philistines did not use to circumcise themselves at least until the Iron Age II. If that is the case, how can we explain Josephus' avoidance of the term "the uncircumcised" when describing the Philistines? I shall also examine the question whether Josephus is projecting his Greco-Roman present into his retelling of the Philistines' past. Finally, I will compare Josephus's description of the Philistines to the way in which Greek and Roman authors viewed the Ioudaioi.


Closed Eye, Clogged Ear, Shut Hand, Cringed Nose: Can Sensory Metaphors for Rejection be Explained as Examples of Disgust?
Program Unit: Senses, Cultures, and Biblical Worlds
Yael Avrahami, Oranim: Academic College of Education and The University of Haifa

The acts of opening and closing sensory organs is a sign for acceptance and Rejection in the Hebrew Bible: The open and closed eye, ear, hand, mouth, and nose all represent a functioning or dysfunctioning sensory organ, whether the idiom is based on physical or imagined ability to close and open that organ. While unexpected and unintentional closing of sensory organs represents inability, deliberate closing of sensory organs represents the avoidance of sight, hearing, touch/support, speech, and smell and rejection of their content. It therefore implies withdrawing from negative stimulus modalities, and attribution of negative values to their origin. However, does the biblical evidence suggest an interpretation of such avoidance as disgust, ie as a feeling of revulsion, and as an attribution of uncleanness and infectious qualities to the rejected matter?


“Baal Son of Dagan”' and Its Transmission
Program Unit: Ugaritic Studies and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy
Noga Ayali-Darshan, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The Ugaritic expression “Baal son of Dagan” has been the subject of several studies which attempt to resolve the contradiction between the depiction of Baal as El’s son on the one hand and the expression “Baal son of Dagan” on the other. Despite the paucity of literary evidence, the majority of scholars have either identified Dagan with El or Baal, consequently attributing a single “real” father to Baal. In this paper I would like to suggest a new solution in light of the literary traditions preserved in the Hurro-Hittite texts – contemporary with Ugarit – and the development of these traditions in the writings of Philo of Byblos (1st–2nd centuries C.E.). Both these texts describe the storm-god as having two fathers: the grain-god (Kumarbi / Dagon) and the veteran god of the pantheon, the god of Heaven (Anu / Ouranus). Given the close relationship between Ugarit, the Hurrians, and the Phoenicians, it is difficult to regard this parallelism as coincidental.


The Jews of the Fourth Gospel according to Cyril of Alexandria
Program Unit: Bible in Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Traditions
Michael Azar, Fordham University

Prior to the christological disputes that arose over a decade into his episcopacy, Cyril had authored a slew of exegetical works, for which he likely would have been remembered, had it not been for the later, more infamous controversies. Among the last and greatest of such works is his magisterial Commentary on John (425-8 CE). Unlike the majority of related studies, this paper does not focus on the ways in which Cyril’s exegesis factored into his overall, theological vision. Rather, setting Cyril’s commentary against the backdrop of an entirely different, but equally contentious, controversy—his relationship with the Jews of Alexandria—this paper analyzes Cyril’s reading of the Johannine Jews. In the history of Jewish-Christian relations, Cyril often is remembered most for his expulsion of Jews from Alexandria. The persistence of Judaism (and its revitalization in Alexandria in particular) presented a key theological problem for Cyril, to which he devoted much of his attention as bishop. His earliest works, On Adoration in Spirit and Truth and Glaphyra, assert that the Law of Moses has continuing relevancy not in letter, but in spirit. Its true intention is to be found in its christological meaning, as one exchanges mere type for truth and reality. Despite the easy fodder that the Fourth Gospel would appear to provide for Cyril’s opposition to Judaism, he employs the tension between Jesus and the Jews toward a different end. While his commentary bears many of the opposing sentiments expressed in his earlier works, Cyril here refashions the identity of the Jews—namely, their grievances against and opposition to Christ—in terms of the fourth- and early fifth-century theological controversies. Accordingly, the image of the Johannine Christ that Cyril presents is one in which the former appears to be a reflection of the latter; Christ becomes, in other words, an orthodox theologian whose central, pedagogical intention is to provide for the Jews a “more doctrinal” understanding of himself. As such, Cyril paints within John an imitative image of the fifth century, in which the disputes between Jesus and the Jews come to reflect, in their “deeper meaning,” the theological debates between an orthodox theologian and his heterodox interlocutors. Cyril thus employs John not primarily as grounds for anti-Judaic sentiment, but rather as a scriptural resource for the delineation of his orthodox Christian community.


Sacred Time in West Semitic Festival Calendars and the Dating of Leviticus 23
Program Unit: Institute for Biblical Research
Bryan Babcock, Hartwick College

Sacred Time in West Semitic Festival Calendars and the Dating of Leviticus 23


Versions of a Power Play: The Court Setting and Its Relevance for Dating the Ancient Esther Texts
Program Unit: Transmission of Traditions in the Second Temple Period
Veronika Bachmann, University of Zurich

As with other court tales, the Esther story can be read as a literary piece displaying and critically reviewing power claims and power constellations among the different characters. A closer look at the ancient versions of Esther shows that while sharing the same story, they differ in the manner that they exploit the potential of the courtly power play. This paper explores these differences and considers to what extent they indicate absolute or relative datings of the texts.


Hearing the Word or Listening toward Liberation? Feminist Biblical Hermeneutics as the Praxis of "Hearing Women into Speech"
Program Unit: Feminist Hermeneutics of the Bible
Hannah Bacon, University of Chester

It was Nelle Morton who back in 1985 introduced the concept of ‘hearing one another into speech’. Although now an often cited, almost iconic metaphor within feminist theology, this provides an important challenge to feminist biblical hermeneutics within a global setting. The ‘good news’ of the Bible has often masked the bad news of western hegemony, heteropatriarchy, colonialism and white supremacy and there is considerable work still to do in order to unearth the voices of women and men buried beneath such dominant theological discourse. In response to this, this paper suggests that feminist biblical hermeneutics at the turn of the 21st century must principally be a matter of ‘hearing one another into speech’ so that women previously excluded from biblical interpretation are empowered to ‘name in their own way, their own oppression and suffering’ (Morton, 1985: 128). This though involves a radical and political act of listening across contexts so as to allow space for other voices to be heard ‘before speaking’ (1985: 205, emphasis mine). It means being prepared to accompany one another (from a myriad of global settings) towards liberation and to sit in ‘powerful silence’ (ibid), in full anticipation of being changed by the process. Although feminist theology has increasingly come to embrace a diversity of contextual approaches to reading the Bible, the art of ‘hearing each other into speech’ demands an especially radical commitment to listening in ways which evoke new speech and transform inherited traditions. It calls for a global dialogue in which previously marginalized readings of the Bible are not only valued but also engaged with one another so that the critical work of feminist liberation theology (c.f. Fiorenza, 1996) can be continued. As a genuine intercultural project, the task of ‘hearing one another into speech’ thus becomes an important device for working toward a critical feminist hermeneutics of liberation. It not only recognises that different women hear the ‘word’ of God in different ways (an increasingly common observation within feminist scholarship) – that, as Schroer argues, ‘every “context” involves a different “history with the Bible” that has shaped this context and that influences and will continue to influence the treatment of biblical texts’ (2003: 3), but that different contextual readings must speak to, critique and inform others in the pursuit of justice and liberation for all. This more greatly facilitates the exposure of the racist and colonial implications of Western-European hegemonic readings. Such intercultural learning, rather than relativizing interpretations of biblical texts so they are confined to particular socio-historic-political locations, insists that women from across contexts ‘listen to and obey each other’ (Ibid, 4).


Fear, Trust, and Test: Genesis 22 in Its Original Context
Program Unit: Pentateuch
Joel Baden, Yale University

This paper will begin by identifying the relationship of Genesis 22 to other biblical texts while delineating the various strata of the chapter. It will then situate Genesis 22 in its original context, as one of a sequence of closely interconnected passages that make up a discrete textual group within the Pentateuch, a group that includes, most importantly for this paper, Genesis 15 and Exodus 32. Finally, it will show that reading Genesis 22 in its original context leads to important exegetical insights regarding the purpose of the chapter and its place in the overarching narrative. About neither child sacrifice nor Heilsgeschichte, Genesis 22 stands as one of the central texts for establishing the notion of Abraham’s (and thus Israel’s) behavioral responsibilities toward God, a notion that is rehearsed and developed elsewhere in the pentateuchal narrative.


In a Different Voice: Feminist Hermeneutics and Creating First Person Narratives
Program Unit: Feminist Hermeneutics of the Bible
Jo-Ann Badley, The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology

Kathryn Blanchard and Jane Webster recently invited me to contribute to a forthcoming collection of biblical women's monologues prompted by Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues. I accepted the invitation to give voice to Mary Magdalene’s story. This paper reflects on three aspects of that writing process: the implications of writing a first person account rather than third person description which is more typical of historical discourse; the challenges of using historical sources to narrate women’s embodied religious experience; and the narrative quality of a monologue that must both satisfy historical lacunae and represent various historical sources in a single plot-line.


Loving Self, Other, and God: A Reading of Matthew 15:21–28 through the Lens of Psychoanalytic Theory
Program Unit: Psychology and Biblical Studies
Melanie Baffes, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary

This paper presents an alternative reading of the story of the Canaanite woman in Matthew 15:21-28 from a psychological perspective. The obvious ideologies of domination in this text—male over female, Jew over Gentile, Israelite over Canaanite, native over alien, pure over impure, and non-possessed over demon-possessed—have been analyzed by countless biblical scholars; this paper explores the ideology that privileges Jesus over the woman and favors his role as savior over her role as the one saved. Using the lens of psychoanalytic theory—specifically D.W. Winnicott’s notion of True Self vs. False Self and Robert D. Stolorow and George E. Atwood’s model of intersubjectivity—this paper argues that both the Canaanite woman and Jesus move from False Self to True Self in the exchange, exemplifying, enacting, and teaching a new way of being fully human. This full humanity not only involves both parties becoming their True Selves, but also it entails both of them showing receptivity, openness, and mutuality in their relations with one another. Jesus and the woman engage in a reciprocal exchange—demonstrating that divine power involves God and humans working together to bring about whole-making and healing for the creation of a transformed world. This reading leads to new understandings of: 1) loving self—seeing ourselves as empowered, refusing compliance as a response to oppression, and rejecting the “rules” of patriarchy/kyriarchy; 2) loving other—overturning the self/other paradigm to see all individuals in terms of their humanity, calling for oppressed and marginalized individuals to work together to bring about a transformed society; and 3) loving God—learning to be in mutual and authentic relationship with God.


Paradigms of Sacrifice and Atonement: Did the New Testament Authors “Read” Jacob Milgrom and Harmut Gese?
Program Unit: Sacrifice, Cult, and Atonement
Daniel P. Bailey, University of Illinois at Chicago

A persistent but often unaddressed question in the study of biblical atonement concerns what use the scholar of the NT and early Judaism should make of his or her readings of the works of modern Hebrew Bible scholars who strive to recapture the original sense and logic of cultic atonement. This paper argues that beyond a greater appreciation of OT texts in their own right, such reading can sharpen historically oriented observation about the NT and early Jewish texts. The principle is illustrated with reference to Jacob Milgrom and Hartmut Gese. First, knowing Milgrom’s theology helps one to appreciate how little it is reflected in early Jewish sources. No known ancient Jewish or early Christian text unambiguously reflects on the significance that the application of sin-offering (hatta’t) blood to holy objects in the sanctuary has for the forgiveness (Leviticus 4) or cleansing (Leviticus 16) of Israelite worshipers. The Temple Scroll says that in the ideal temple the high priest will use the blood of the people’s sin offering on the Day of Atonement to “atone for all the people of the assembly” (11Q19 26:7, 9), but the text does not mention atonement for the sanctuary or the altar (cf. Lev 16:16, 18, 20, 33). The author of Hebrews comes closer to having “read” Milgrom in that he mentions blood on holy objects and forgiveness of persons in close proximity, but the connections are tenuous and must be supplied by the modern reader: “Indeed, under the law almost all things are purified (katharizetai) with blood [including the worship vessels just mentioned in v. 21?], and without the shedding of blood [for sprinkling on these things?] there is no forgiveness of sins [for people]” (Heb. 9:22). The differences between Milgrom and Gese might be summarized by the significance they give to the blood of the hatta’t: blood as “purging” the sanctuary (Milgrom) versus blood as providing symbolic “access” to the sanctuary for the Israelite people as represented by their high priest through his hand-leaning on the animal victim (Gese). Gese-like ideas are found in both Ephesians and Hebrews. Gentile believers are “brought near by the blood of Christ” (Eph. 2:13) and thus enjoy an “access” (prosagôgê, 2:18; 3:12) previously accorded only to members of the “commonwealth of Israel” (2:12). This echoes Paul’s idea of Jesus as the new “mercy seat (hilastêron) though faith” (Rom 3:25) with its implication of “access by faith into grace” (Rom 5:2). Similar images of cultically mediated access in Hebrews include “a hope that enters the inner shrine behind the curtain,” where Jesus made his journey for others (Heb. 6:19-20; cf. 9:24); “the entrance (eisodos) into the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus that he opened for us, as a new and living way (hodos) through the curtain” (10:19-20); and an invitation to “approach the throne of grace with confidence” (4:16, possibly alluding to the mercy seat of 9:5). Ultimately the cultic motifs emphasized by Gese are more constitutive for Hebrews than those of Milgrom.


Converting to Jews: Theology as Sociology and Other Category Confusions
Program Unit: Religious World of Late Antiquity
Cynthia Baker, Bates College

Among scholars of Jewish and Christian antiquity, it has become common to distinguish between a primordial collective entity referred to as “Judaeans” and a subsequent communal entity identified as “Jews.” The historical development underlying the shift from one to the other, according to Shaye Cohen (among others), was a “progression from ethnicity to religion [that] had advanced to the point where individual gentiles who came to believe in the God of the Jews were accepted as Jews themselves.” Conversion, then, becomes the defining feature of “religion” in such enlightened progress narratives that at the same time configure “ethnicity” as a more native and parochial form of human community. In this paper, I critically assess this understanding of conversion and its significance for explaining cultural dynamics in antiquity. I suggest that the sociological/anthropological dualism ethnicity versus religion that often passes as reasonably descriptive when invoked in academic discussions and social scientific analyses is - like the category “conversion” upon which it so depends - as deeply rooted in an antique Christian worldview as are the more theologically explicit dualisms to which it so closely conforms. Indeed, the patterns of correspondence ethnicity = flesh/particular and religion = spirit/universal are as consistent and striking in recent academic studies of Jewish and Christian antiquity as are historicized narratives of cultural-transformation-through-conversion that uncritically replicate supersessionist theological paradigms.


Teaching Hebrew through Video Clips
Program Unit: National Association of Professors of Hebrew
David W Baker, Ashland Theological Seminary

Hebrew classrooms invariably contain students with facility in language learning sitting beside those who struggle to grasp even basic concepts. The teacher is challenged to meet the needs of this spectrum of ability without either discouraging or boring class members and within the parameters of a regular class session. Salman Khan developed a method of making short presentations on discrete aspects of mathematics in video clips of no longer than ten minutes. Students were able to master each concept by viewing and repeating as needed until they were able to proceed to the next higher concept. In this session we will explore how this method was used to teach an introduction to biblical Hebrew, using both on-line access to the presentations as well as face-to-face tutorial sessions.


“Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign”: The Politics of Tim LaHaye’s End-Times Theologies
Program Unit: John's Apocalypse and Cultural Contexts Ancient and Modern
Kelly J. Baker, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

As the presidential race in 2008 heated up between Barak Obama and John McCain, some Christians pondered whether Obama played a role in the coming end times. Internet speculation painted the future president as the anti-Christ, and CNN ran stories on the unlikely possibility that Obama was actually a diabolic figure, whose election would signal the beginning of the end. As speculation swelled online and various websites marketed coffee mugs and t-shirts of Obama with horns, Tim LaHaye, the co-author of the best-selling Left Behind series, weighed in on the controversy. The octogenarian LaHaye noted that Obama simply could not be the anti-Christ because people imagined that he was. LaHaye assured that the signs of the apocalypse might be adding up, but there can be no anti-Christ until the Rapture, the ascension of the righteous faithful, occurs. Signs are everywhere, but LaHaye insists we, the readers, must learn how to interpret them via his fiction, the Left Behind series or his newer Joshua Jordan series, and his non-fiction prophecy “scholarship,” Are We Living in the End Times? or Revelation Unveiled. For this panel on the place of apocalyptic rhetoric in American political culture, I turn to Tim LaHaye’s prophecy “scholarship” and his new books Edge of the Apocalypse and Thunder of Heaven to discuss how LaHaye encourages readers to track any event as a potential sign of the end and his particular concern with the place of the American political system and nation. The consumption of LaHaye’s apocalyptic thrillers and prophecy “scholarship” signals a wider acceptance of Christian fundamentalist visions of the end and nationhood. The signs abound, and LaHaye imagines the end as a vehicle to repair the current American nation. Obama might not be the anti-Christ, but LaHaye proclaims the end is not here but soon. * Kelly Baker requests that her panels for SBL are scheduled November 18, 19 or 20 since her ASA scheduled panel is on November 15, 16, or 17.


What’s Abrahamic about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam?
Program Unit: Qur'an and Biblical Literature
Carol Bakhos, University of California-Los Angeles

In an attempt to recognize the common scriptural heritage shared by Judaism, Christianity and Islam, as well as historical, cultural and theological linkages that prove fertile for comparative studies, scholars have adopted the term "Abrahamic." While there are advantages to using this shorthand, the term is highly problematic. This paper will explore the extent to which describing these religions as "Abrahamic" is a useful analytical tool for interrogating their complex relationship as a family of religions. In order to frame the discussion, it will consider ways in which scholars describe the relationship between Jewish, and Muslim scriptural and extra-scriptural sources, and will examine portrayals of Abraham’s discovery of God and rejection of idolatry in ancient and early medieval sources.


The Casting of Lots and the Concept of Inheritance in 4QInstruction and 1QS iii-iv
Program Unit: Qumran
Arjen Bakker, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Apart from studies by A. Lange (2000, 2011) and F. Schmidt (2008) the casting of the lot in Qumran texts has received little attention. This is remarkable in view of the unusually high frequency of the word 'goral' in the Scrolls and its striking presence in texts like 1QM and 1QS. The casting of lots is closely related to the concept of inheritance in a number of texts, most notably 4QInstruction and the Two Spirits Treatise. This relationship has not been investigated to any extent. Nevertheless, the concept of inheritance plays a central role in 4QInstruction and TST. A person’s share in the realm of the spirits determines both his moral status and his degree of insight into the roots of good and evil. Moreover, it defines his identity as belonging to either a community of truth or a community of iniquity. This communal aspect of inheritance, often neglected by scholars, is highlighted by the goral-terminology. In both 4QInstruction and TST the casting of lots recalls the allotment of land to the tribes of Israel described in the books of Numbers and Joshua. A unique quotation from Numbers 26 in 4QInstruction and the Treatise underlines this biblical allusion. The two Qumran texts are apparently not interested in the division of land, but rephrase the biblical allotment in a universal and moral sense. It is God himself who casts the lots in order to divide between his chosen ones and those rejected because of their sins. Thus, the notion of fate as determined by the casting of the lots expresses a form of group identity. This group identity is formulated in terms of inheritance, which symbolically connects not only individuals living at a certain time, but also generations of righteous men and women: from the very beginning to the very end.


Back to the Future: The Ritualization of the “Passover of Egypt” in the Mekhilta dRabbi Ishmael
Program Unit: History and Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism
Mira Balberg, Northwestern University

According to Exodus 12, the lamb-sacrifice that the Israelites are required to offer upon their exodus from Egypt is designated to serve as means of protection during the tumult of the plague of the firstborn, and the procedures it entails are distinctly and explicitly apotropaic. However, alongside the instructions for sacrificing the lambs in the specific context of the exodus and of the plague, the priestly author mandates that a commemorative ritual for the events of the exodus night – including the sacrifice – must be performed annually during the same time of the year henceforth. In the rabbinic tradition, the distinction between the sacrificial instructions unique to the night of the exodus and the instructions that apply to the commemorative annual ritual thereafter is known as a distinction between the “Passover of Egypt” and “the Passover of generations” respectively. The latter, as developed in rabbinic legislation, also includes a sacrificial offering of a lamb, but is devoid of all the features that mark this offering as apotropaic. Rather, the sacrifice in the “Passover of generations” is offered at the Temple, and is subject to most of the rules and regulations that pertain to other kinds of offerings. The discrepancy between the “Passover of Egypt” and “the Passover of generations” is a central theme of preoccupation in the tannaitic Midrash on the book of Exodus, the Mekhilta dRabbi Ishmael, as it is in other rabbinic texts. However, the homiletic trajectory that the creators of the Midrash adopt in grappling with this discrepancy is quite surprising. As I will show in this paper, rather than considering the sacrifice in Egypt to be the paradigm and the annual Passover sacrifice to be its modified replication, the homilists attempt to present the ritualized Temple sacrifice as the paradigm, and to project it back unto the “Passover of Egypt.” In other words, rather than the Temple sacrifice being presented as a reenactment of the Egypt sacrifice, the Egypt sacrifice is presented as a pre-enactment of the Temple sacrifice. This homiletic move is made through a systematic ritualization of aspects of the “Passover of Egypt” which were clearly designated for practical and/or apotropaic purposes, ultimately emptying out the “Passover of Egypt” from its one-time unique content. An analysis of this homiletic move can shed light, I suggest, both on rabbinic concepts of time and memory and on the rabbinic approach towards sacrifices and Temple-worship in the post-destruction era.


Gendering the Demonic Taxon
Program Unit: Christianity in Egypt: Scripture, Tradition, and Reception
Tara Baldrick-Morrone, Florida State University

Sayings against the demonic in Evagrius's work titled Talking Back, especially on the thoughts of fornication, take a decidedly negative view of women. Specifically, any time that a woman is mentioned, it is solely as a demonic thought, one that the monk should vanquish by reciting the given biblical verse that accompanies the thought. A demon’s appearance as a woman is mentioned nine times throughout the sixty-five passages that are meant to ward off these demons of fornication. Passage thirty-two exemplifies the use of women as temptations, because it addresses “the demon of fornication that imitates the form of a beautiful naked woman, luxurious in her gait, her entire body obscenely dissipated, [a woman] who seizes the intellect of many persons and makes them forget the better things.” The language of the accompanying verse, Psalm 51:7, is equally as intense: “Therefore, may God destroy you forever; may he pluck you up and remove you from your dwelling and your root from the land of the living”. The gendered language used in writings like Talking Back, according to David Brakke, was done in order to help the monks “visualize demonic conflict.The female body provided a compelling image with which to render visible an unseen drama of temptation, followed by seduction or resistance”. Additionally, I posit that the idea of an evil woman who materializes to tempt the monk to turn away from the contemplative life is also used as a matter of distinction. In this paper, I aim to explore how Evagrius of Pontus, a monastic teacher and writer on early Christian monastic practices, utilizes women in his work on demon combat titled Talking Back. I want to show how his association of demons with women (and therefore the liminal, out-of-place being) is a way for the monk to distinguish himself in his proper place from that which is outside of his realm and thereby on the margins.


"What Are Human Beings That You Make So Much of Them?" Responses and Counter Responses from Job, Psalms, Prometheus, and Frankenstein
Program Unit: Theology of the Hebrew Scriptures
Samuel E. Balentine, Union Presbyterian Seminary

The question as posed comes from inter-textual ruminations in Job 7 and Psalms 8, with echoes of Genesis 1. Hebraic texts and traditions typically address the question by using theology to define and limit anthropological considerations: God is God; human beings are mortal; God’s knowledge and capacity surpass anything humans might question; thus, the proper role of humans is to accept, submit, and conform themselves to forbidden knowledge and limited participation in the affairs of God and the world. This paper puts these and other Hebraic texts in conversation with Hesiod and Aeschylus (on Prometheus), Goethe, Byron, and Shelley, as romantic interpreters who accented the laudable and necessary role of mortals in the cosmic drama of the gods, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which emphasizes the gruesome nature of the “noble savage,” who is impelled by the truest of motives to become an anti-hero in the debate about what it means to be created in the image of the creator. To submit willingly to the decrees of God (or the gods), or to construe defiance, when appropriate, as the “right worship” that defines what it means for humans to be in relationship with the divine? Such are the abiding, multi-faceted questions that press our understanding of how the human being relates to the divine.


Tongue-Tied and Taunted: Renegotiating a Theology of Weakness and Leadership in 2 Corinthians 5:13
Program Unit: Second Corinthians: Pauline Theology in the Making
C. Andrew Ballard, Fordham University

“Paul must be out of his mind!” Upon a cursory reading of 2 Corinthians 5:13, one would get the impression that this was the accusation leveled against Paul by his adversaries. There have, however, been numerous proposals as to what Paul was actually referring when he used the verb exestemen, often translated “we are beside ourselves.” So many proposals, in fact, that the possibilities are staggering. Over the course of this essay we will delineate the three main categories for interpreting 2 Cor 5:13. We will then propose that Paul’s use of exestemen and sofronoumen (“we are in our right minds”) can be best understood in light of ancient rhetoricians such as Isocrates and Dio Chrysostom. Within the writings of these trained rhetors, we will find that the two verbs in 5:13 are often used in a context of describing the character of an effective civic leader. By applying connotations of civic leadership ability to 5:13, we will be able to provide further insights into the accusations leveled at Paul from his opponents in Corinth. We will discover that Paul seizes upon the opportunity to renegotiate the meaning of weakness, transforming it into a theology of true leadership ability.


Intertextuality and the Coherence of Micah 6–7
Program Unit: Israelite Prophetic Literature
Libby Ballard, Baylor University

Micah 6-7 contain an unusual number of intertextual allusions. In this paper I will explore these intertextual allusions and demonstrate that they create a greater degree of unity between Micah 6 and 7 than previous scholarship supposed. The theme of Micah 6-7 moves from judgment to hope for salvation, paralleling that same move in Micah 1-5. Previous scholarship on these chapters has recognized only a tenuous unity formed by the juxtaposition of disparate individual units. However, examination of the intertextual allusions in this text reveals an arc of intertextuality that uses references to the history of Israel to move from past judgment to hope for future salvation. These two chapters contain an unusual number of inner-biblical allusions. These references include both Moses and Abraham who appear as closely together only six other times outside of the Pentateuch (Josh 24:2-4; 1 Chr 15:15; 16:16; 2 Chr 30:6, 16; Neh 9:7, 14; Psalm 105; Isa 63:11-16). Mention of Moses or Abraham is very rare in the prophets—Abraham seven times and Moses five—only appearing together in Isaiah 63 and Micah 6-7. References to other parts of Israel’s story include: Exodus story (6:4; 7:15, 18, 19), to Moses, Aaron, and Miriam (6:4), Balak, Balaam, Shittim, and Gilgal (6:5), Omri and Ahab (6:16), Assyria and Egypt (7:12), Bashan and Gilead (7:14), and finally to Jacob and Abraham (7:20). Mic 6:1-7:7 move the reader through the history of Israel’s failures and judgment from the Exodus to the divided monarchy. Then Mic 7:8-20 reverses the pattern by going backwards from the divided monarchy to the Exodus, and ending with hope for salvation in the oath sworn to Abraham. Many of the references in chapter 6 have parallels with those in chapter 7, enhancing the relationship between the two chapters.


Revising Myth: The Targum of Psalm 74 and the Exodus Tradition
Program Unit: Aramaic Studies
Debra Scoggins Ballentine, Rutgers University

Psalm 74:12-17 is a hymn that interweaves themes of authority, combat, and creation. The deity is described as a divine king who has broken the sea, shattered the heads of sea-dragons, and crushed the heads of Leviathan (Ps 74:13-14). These elements are biblical representatives of the broader ancient West Asian conflict topos, a literary pattern in which a divine warrior defeats the sea or sea-dragon and attains kingship. The Targum of Psalm 74:13-14, however, states that the deity has cut off the waters of the sea, shattered the heads of sea-dragons, drowned the Egyptians at the sea, and crushed the heads of pharaoh’s warriors. We see that the targumic reading adds several details that indicate a layering of exodus tradition. Considering the Targumim as a valuable source of exegesis, this paper explores how the inclusion of narrative details from the exodus story effect the meaning of this psalm as a whole. How does the targumic reading clarify, obscure, and/or comment on the Hebrew original? The final form of Psalm 74 is a hymn of national lament. This was a fitting literary context for targumic transmitters to incorporate the foundational story of Israelite self-identification and the paradigmatic story of the deity intervening in human affairs on behalf of the people. While I focus on the history of interpretation of Psalm 74, I also include similar examples where exodus tradition is introduced into other targumic passages. My analysis contributes to our understanding of Psalm 74 and the Targum of Psalm 74, as well as to discussion of biblical exegesis; the on-going interpretation of stories during the process of transmission; and the dynamics of myth-making in the ancient world.


Jesus’ Identity as Davidic Temple-Builder and Peter’s Priestly Role in Matthew 16:16–19
Program Unit: Matthew
Michael Patrick Barber, John Paul the Great Catholic University

It is widely accepted that Matthew presents Jesus as fulfilling Jewish eschatological expectations, particularly, Davidic hopes. However, although Jesus frequently speaks positively about his disciples’ participation in the cult in Matthew’s narrative (e.g., Matt 5:23-24), little attention has been paid to Matthew’s interest in Christ’s fulfillment of the cultic dimensions of Israel's hopes. In fact, ancient Jewish sources repeatedly express hopes not only for an eschatological temple but also for a reformed and/or new priesthood (e.g., Isa 66:21; Mal 3:3; Ezek 40:45-46; 1Q28b 3:22-23; CD 4:1-6). This paper will look at the way such expectations appear to relate to Matthew 16:16-19. To begin with we shall draw upon the work of scholars who have recognized “temple building” language in Jesus’ promise to “build the church” upon a “rock” (e.g., Zech 4:7-9)(e.g., Wright, Beale, Meyer, Davies and Allison). As others have noted, such imagery fits well with Matthew’s Davidic Christology. However, though the Davidic temple-building imagery is often caught, what is frequently missed is that Jesus’ description of Peter's role also seems to be linked with cultic traditions. As many scholars have noted, Jesus’ words appear to Peter echo the description of Eliakim in Isaiah 22 (e.g., Davies and Allison, Hagner, Willis). What is frequently overlooked is that this passage describes Eliakim as wearing garments usually associated with the high priest (cf. Isa 22:21 with Exod 28:4), an aspect of the passage not lost on Jewish readers (e.g., Tg. on Isaiah; b. Ta’an. 29a). In light of this we shall argue that this passage provides Jesus with the perfect quarry: if the church is a temple, its leadership is naturally described in terms of priestly responsibilities. Furthermore, the terminology of the “keys” may also have a cultic reference; keys were associated with the priests’ responsibilities (cf. 1 Chr 9:27; Josephus, C. Apion 2.108; m. Mid. 1.9; t. Šeqal. 2:25; b. Ta’an. 29a). Moreover, the language of “binding” and “loosing” also seems to cohere well with a priestly reading. Although the terminology may point in different directions, the most common interpretive options involve linking the language to activities most prominently associated with the priesthood (e.g., teaching, judging, mediating forgiveness of sins, etc.). Finally, we shall support our reading by looking at Matthew 19:29, where Jesus’ description of the disciples as those who have renounced kin and “lands” and thus will “inherit” eternal life, is best read against Levitical traditions, i.e., the Levites renounced kin (cf. Exod 32:29; LXX Deut 33:9) and received no land but instead were given a unique inheritance in the Lord (cf. Num 18:20, 23; Deut 10:9; 18:1–2; Neh 13:10). That next verse describes the apostles as the judges of Israel in the eschaton supports this priestly reading since judging Israel in the eschatological age was an activity especially associated with the priests (e.g., Ezek 44:23; 4Q161 VIII–X, 24–25). In sum, this paper will argue that Jesus identifies Peter as a high priestly figure who is given responsibility over the eschatological temple, the Church.


Aristeas the Tourist
Program Unit: Hellenistic Judaism
Daniel Barbu, Université de Genève

“Herodotus the Tourist” was the title given by James Redfield to his inquiry into Herodotus’ ethnological system (Classical Philology, 80.2, 1985: 97-118). Redfield’s insights, together with François Hartog’s monograph The mirror of Herodotus (University of California Press, 1988), definitively modified our interpretation of Herodotus’ Histories. In the present paper, I wish to analyse the so-called Letter of Aristeas from a narratological perspective, suggesting that the anonymous author of the Letter deliberately constructed his main character (“Aristeas”) as a Herodotus-like figure, who visits Judea and Jerusalem as yet another “tourist”. In so-doing, the author's pseudo-ethnographic text produces a specific Jewish self-definition and identity in the Hellenistic period, mirroring both Greek representations of the Jews as a people of philosophers, and a Jewish interpretation of the ideal bios philosophikos, best typified through the Jewish compliance with the Mosaic legislation.


The Style of Early Christian Literature
Program Unit: Papyrology and Early Christian Backgrounds
Don Barker, Macquarie University

Various claims have been made about the production of early Christian literary documents and especially that the New Testament documents have been produced by copyist who are more at home in producing documentary texts. This paper will examine in particular the nature of the New Testament manuscripts from the perspective of the care, training and or ability of the copyist in their production. This exercise will in part involve examining letter formation in a selection of New Testament documents and the conclusions that are able to be drawn from that evidence as to the training and ability of the copyists.


CSI Jerusalem: Did Peter Kill Ananias and Sapphira?
Program Unit: Formation of Luke and Acts
James W. Barker, Luther College

In Acts 5, Ananias and Sapphira sinfully set aside for themselves (nosphizomai) partial proceeds from a sale of property (vv. 1–2). Peter confronts them, and--without specifying cause of death--the narrator says that Ananias and Sapphira fell and expired (vv. 5a, 10a). In the patristic era, Macarius Magnes’s neo-Platonist adversary interpreted that Peter unjustly put the couple to death. By contrast, Christian interpreters have long exonerated Peter of any wrongdoing or physical involvement. This paper investigates the influence of canonical and deuterocanonical Septuagint narratives, which surprisingly support a straightforward and yet nuanced reading whereby Peter directly kills Ananias and Sapphira. The thesis is that the rare word nosphizomai constitutes a characteristic element signaling a three-step motif to informed readers of the Septuagint and Acts: (1) an offender withholds something; (2) an accuser convicts the offender; (3) either the offender or the accuser dies by human hands. In an oft-cited parallel, nosphizomai refers to Achan’s stealing from the herem (Josh 7:1); Joshua convicts Achan (v. 19), and the accuser has the offender executed (v. 25). In a heretofore undeveloped parallel, the only other Septuagintal occurrence of nosphizomai, Menelaus steals temple vessels (2 Macc 4:32); when Onias convicts Menelaus (v. 33), the offender has his accuser murdered (v. 34). According to this motif, Ananias and Sapphira’s theft and Peter’s ensuing conviction set up a “kill or be killed” scenario that heightens readers’ anticipation concerning who of the three would die. After relating the couples’ death, the narrator mentions “signs and wonders...by the apostles’ hands” (Acts 5:12a), which need not entail divine intervention because Acts elsewhere describes Moses’ murder of the Egyptian (Exod 2:11–12) as effecting God’s “salvation...by (Moses’) hand” (Acts 7:24–25). Thus, early readers could understandably interpret, and even accept, that Peter put Ananias and Sapphira to death.


Fun with Funerals: The Power of Parody in Isaiah 14:3–23
Program Unit: Biblical Hebrew Poetry
Joel Barker, Heritage Seminary

This paper examines Isa 14:3–23 as a particularly clever example of parody in the Hebrew Bible. It persuades its audience to trust in YHWH’s authority over that of the mightiest human conquerors. It traces the ways in which the text takes the expected elements of a funeral lament (cf. 2 Sam 1:17–27) and turns it into a lyric celebrating the fall of a Babylonian tyrant. Essentially, this paper demonstrates how Isa 14:3-23 weaves together its rhetorical strategies in order to savagely lampoon the intended target and persuade its audience that YHWH stands above rival authorities. This text begins by looking forward to a day of release from trouble and turmoil and in doing so it calls upon the people of YHWH to adopt the following prophetic poem as their own (Isa 14:3–4a). It describes the agency of YHWH in the destruction of this figure (Isa 14:5–6). It then follows with a description of the gleeful response of nature and the underworld to his fall, which stands in stark contrast to the expected elements of a funeral lament (Isa 14:7–11)). The prophet then recapitulates the lament form and he connects this Babylonian king to a mythical figure (Helel ben Shahar) who trespassed on the realm of the divine and was struck down (Isa 14:12–15). The text makes this hubris explicit speaking as the tyrant himself and unmasking his claim on the divine realm before articulating once again his fall into the underworld. The text then details a mock funeral where attendees mock the tyrant’s corpse, rather than lamenting his passing (Isa 14:16–17). The text then describes the king’s fate in death, where he is treated like the poor and lowly and not given the acclaim normally awarded to the subject of a funeral lament (Isa 14:18–21). Finally, the poem gives the last word to YHWH who again emphasizes that it is through his agency and power that the tyrant becomes the subject of ruthless mockery (Isa 14:22–23). This paper then suggests that through the moves made in this oracle, the text presents a persuasive message concerning the posture that the people of YHWH are to adopt towards their conquerors. This prophetic oracle declares that ultimately YHWH will break them free from their bondage and that the tyrant who seems so powerful is powerless before YHWH.. The repeated references to YHWH as the cause of the tyrant’s fall and the cleverness of the parodied lament form are the key rhetorical strategies through which this prophetic oracle persuades its audience that YHWH’s authority extends over any human power.


Law and Literature: Genesis 38 as a Test Case
Program Unit: Biblical Law
Pamela Barmash, Washington University

Genesis 38 is a case study through which we can explore questions of methodology and how to approach a narrative text that is inscribed with legal matters. Can Genesis 38 be taken as an accurate transcript of actual legal practice? Does the narrative shape legal matters to reflect how law was perceived to operate or was influenced by power relationships and flaws in legal institutions? These considerations raise a number of issues particular to Genesis 38, a few of which are the following: While halitzah does not appear to be a possibility in this narrative, it may be questionable to conclude that this reflects a time was halitzah was unknown: perhaps a skilled writer shaped the narrative to reflect the ease with which a powerful figure could ignore the plight of a widow. Despite Tamar’s lack of social power, she is portrayed as being able to manipulate the system through a legal ploy; nonetheless, it is a maneuver so risky that she puts herself in mortal danger.


The Shema in the Apocrypha
Program Unit: Function of Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
Lori A. Baron, Duke University

Authors of several apocryphal works employ Deut 6:4-5 in their compositions, reinterpreting the message of Deut 6:4-5 within a new historical situation – often the Exile or the destruction of Jerusalem. Some of the authors attribute the nation’s woes to Israel’s failure to keep the commandments. They express the hope that repentance and obedience to the Law will reverse the Deuteronomic curses rightly imposed upon the nation and restore the people’s fortunes. Tobit and Sirach draw upon Deut 6:4-5 more extensively than the other apocryphal writings. While Sirach contains the only references to God’s oneness, both speak of “those who love God,” denoting those who fulfill their covenantal obligations, a phrase that appears in other works as well. Many Jewish writers in the Second Temple period struggle with the problem of theodicy arising from the Exile, and see the nation’s sin as its chief cause. They exhort their readers to repent and return to Torah observance in order to mitigate God’s punishment and restore the nation to the Land. Writers use key features of Deut 6:4-5 – hearing, love for God, the whole heart, soul, and strength – to motivate their fellow Jews to renew their commitment to God and the covenant in whatever land in which they reside. Sirach and Baruch draw upon traditions which associate wisdom with Torah. Fourth Ezra’s apocalyptic visions include a forceful call to the people to hear and obey the commandments. By utilizing Deut 6:4-5 and its connection to the Mosaic covenant, some seek to bring about an end to the Dispersion. In the case of 4 Ezra and Fourth Maccabees, the concern is to make sense of and alleviate the suffering incurred by the Destruction of 70 CE. Deuteronomy 6:4-5 was a text that was used to stimulate the corporate memory of the people, as it encapsulated their past, present, and future. In the past, YHWH had loved and redeemed Israel and required absolute fidelity to his commandments. In the present, the people suffered the consequences of disobedience – Exile and rule by foreign powers. In the future, if Israel heard and obeyed the ancient message and returned to YHWH with all their heart, soul, and strength, there was hope that they would be restored and renewed, that they would receive the promise of life once again. Across genres and generations, Deut 6:4-5 was a text that wielded power over the Jewish religious imagination. It was used in a variety of ways to explain suffering and national disaster, to maintain commitment to ancient teaching and law in foreign lands, and to provide hope that in so doing, the nation would be reunited in the land, ushering in a new era of peace and prosperity.


Occupying Genesis 1–3: Missionally Located Reflections on Biblical Economic Values and Justice
Program Unit: GOCN Forum on Missional Hermeneutics
Michael Barram, Saint Mary's College of California

One of the key facets or ‘streams’ of missional hermeneutics as articulated in presentations and publications linked to the GOCN Forum on Missional Hermeneutics over the last several years is an emphasis on the ‘located’ nature of missional interpretation of the biblical text. A robust missional hermeneutic must be grounded in the reality of the believing community that has been invited into and caught up in the larger purposes of the missio Dei. In 2006, I presented a paper (“‘Located Questions’ for a Missional Hermeneutic”) that attempted to highlight both the interpretive significance of the Christian community’s missional location and the kinds of “located questions” that a responsible missional hermeneutic would probably engender—and, indeed, necessitate. My goal in this paper will be to test further the interpretive value of this missional hermeneutic ‘stream’ and others by exploring some located questions that, although not new, are especially salient in the current socio-cultural and even political milieu in which the North American church finds itself. Specifically, in view of the contemporary faith community’s location in a society (and wider global community) reeling from the recent global economic crisis, this paper seeks imaginatively to tease out some of noteworthy economic implications of the creation and ‘fall’ stories in Genesis 1–3, implications that are not only theologically and missionally evocative but also often at odds with widespread anthropological assumptions, market-centric values, and conceptions of socio-economic justice. In the face of stubbornly chronic economic disparities now painfully evident even in the most ‘developed’ nations (such as the United States)—truly challenging and thorny questions of missional formation arise. From whence will the Christian community’s most core economic convictions be drawn? Whose economic values must the church reflect, and what do those values look like? If faithfulness to the biblical text would require that our economic values (and corresponding behaviors) reflect those of our Creator, then a pressing missional task is to reflect diligently on the nature and missional import of biblical economic values, including the kinds of missional conduct they might potentially engender. Although most work on biblical values and their implications related to economic thought and behavior focuses on legal traditions in the Pentateuch, on the Prophets, and on the Synoptic Gospels, there are important images and themes in Genesis 1–3 that merit sustained reflection in this regard. This paper, then, provides some exegetical and theological reflections on the link between missional hermeneutics and economic justice in Genesis 1–3, arguing, in effect, that economic questions are inherently missional questions (even if they are often overlooked in missional conversations). It does so by highlighting some of the implicit economic values in these texts as crucial component of a missionally located reading process.


The Particularities of Athens: Acts, Ethnicity, and the Areopagus Speech
Program Unit: Book of Acts
Eric D. Barreto, Luther Seminary

Paul’s proclamation in Athens has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention from a guild and a culture that traces its intellectual roots back to the philosophical schools of Athens and Greece. As a symbolic cultural progenitor, Athens is an important site. It is little surprise then that scholars find in Paul’s presentation of the gospel to the Athenians the encounter par excellence of the religious and philosophical traditions most central to the study of the New Testament. Scholars have tended to emphasize the universal dimensions of Paul’s proclamation at Athens, arguing that Luke’s Paul here engages in a philosophical discourse designed to encompass and persuade all peoples. By this, scholars assume that the distinctly Greek setting of Paul’s speech marks it as universal. In contrast, I contend that this scene is far more local than it is universal. While Greek heritage is a cultural touchstone for much of Western culture, Paul’s encounter with Greece does not necessarily mark it as a foundational moment in the narrative of Acts. The events of Acts 17:16-34 are more particular to the Athenian ethos constructed by Luke than it is transcendent of individual cultures and thus applicable to all. My argument is two-fold. First, Luke’s narration of the Areopagus events is yet another instantiation of his careful orchestration of vibrantly local scenes. That is, Luke highlights the unique features of Athens in order to emphasize this particular setting. Paul’s proclamation here is tailored to the peculiar character of Athens not the wider world. Second, Paul’s sermon trades on notions of ethnicity. If there is a broader proclamation present at the Areopagus, it is in the Lukan Paul’s strategic deployment of ethnic discourse. In other words, Paul’s speech deals directly with the proliferation of ethnic difference and how the endurance of ethnic difference is an integral component of God’s working among the nations. Thus, the encounter of Athenian curiosity and Pauline proclamation is yet another instance of Luke’s negotiation of the wide claims of the gospel in the diverse and particular communities of the ancient world. Luke does not posit that a single culture can encompass all the various peoples of the world or that the gospel can transcend the many ethnic and cultural differences that characterized the ancient world. Instead, intensely local instantiations of the gospel are the very means by which the nations hear the good news. At root, the proper vessel of the gospel in Acts is a distinctively ethnic discourse, not a universal word.


Holmer, the Canon, and the Alleged "Yale School"
Program Unit: Søren Kierkegaard Society
Lee Barrett, Lancaster Theological Seminary

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The Grave and Flexible Concept of Idolatry in Jeremiah
Program Unit: Writing/Reading Jeremiah
Rob Barrett, Göttingen University

Idolatry plays a critical conceptual role within the book of Jeremiah, not least because it programmatically justifies YHWH's use of destructive force against Judah (1:16). However, idolatry is no simple, identifiable cultic act. Rather, Jeremiah's idolatry texts both presuppose and carefully manipulate the concept of idolatry. The audience is presumed both to have a conceptual category of 'elohim, to which YHWH and other deities belong, and to admit the possibility of offering cultic service to multiple members of the category. While accepting the formal equivalence of YHWH and other gods, Jeremiah's rhetoric carefully avoids ascribing any active reality to other gods. Furthermore, the rhetoric manipulates the idea of offering service to multiple deities through a wide variety of metaphors that transform such into exchanging YHWH for others, thus abandoning YHWH. This exchange concept is then used to impugn turning to other gods as an irrational exchange of the incomparable, invaluable, and inevitable YHWH for utter worthlessness. Finally, the concept of idolatry is expanded by drawing other activities--both political and moral--into the same conceptual space by also linking them to abandoning YHWH. Seeking political protection from the reigning empires or violating YHWH's moral law are both presented as rejecting YHWH, just like the heinous offense of idolatry. In such ways, these texts "create" the concept of idolatry, develop a logic that justifies its offensiveness, and fashion it into a flexible accusatory concept of the greatest gravity. This study of idolatry in Jeremiah considers texts from the three major genres of the book (poetry, biography, and sermon) and finally reflects on later Jewish and Christian reception of both the gravity and flexibility of idolatry as an offense against God.


Learning Outcomes in the Study of Religions: A Roundtable Conversation about the (In)tangibles
Program Unit: Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion
Molly Bassett, Georgia State University

The hosts of this roundtable invite conversation among scholars of religions about creating and evaluating learning outcomes and the ways in which we facilitate our students’ achievement of course objectives through the assignments we craft. We’ll explore how possible starting points (objectives, a course title, a feature assignment, or a textbook) affect the shape of a class, and we’ll discuss how we align and/or scaffold assignments to reach the outcomes we have established. We’ll also consider how intangibles, like “the big questions” of religions or theologically-oriented department mission statements, impact our teaching and our students’ learning.


Prosopopoiia as Scriptural Excavation Rather Than Rhetorical Persuasion
Program Unit: Intertextuality in the New Testament
Matthew W. Bates, Quincy University

Prosopopoiia, temporarily taking on a different character during a speech in order to persuade the audience, was a well-known rhetorical strategy in the New Testament era. Intriguingly, some of the some of the early fathers of the church, such as Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, employed prosopopoiia not in order to persuade their audiences, but as an exegetical technique—that is, as an excavative reading strategy—an observation which has generally eluded biblical scholarship. In other words, when reading the scriptures, Justin and Irenaeus assumed that a putative speaker such as Isaiah might not be speaking as Isaiah, but might rather be slipping into the guise of a different character, speaking from an alternative prosopon, and they sought to identify the true identity of this alternative speaking character while reading their scriptures. In this paper I will present the basic features of this excavative reading strategy, best termed prosopological exegesis, as described in the ancient sources. Then I will argue, partly on the basis of reception history in the early fathers, that we can better understand puzzling moments in the New Testament, such as Paul’s interpretation of Psalm 115:1 LXX in 2 Cor 4:13, when Paul’s prosopological technique is appreciated.


When Christ Prays the Psalter: Prosopological Exegesis and the Trinity
Program Unit: Theological Interpretation of Scripture
Matthew W. Bates, Quincy University

Paul’s citation of Psalm 68:10 LXX—“The insults of those who insulted you fell upon me”—in Romans 15:3 involves a puzzling christocentric exegesis by Paul. Two basic scholarly models have been proposed to explain such moments when Christ is judged to be praying the Psalter—a sacramental model suggested by A. T. Hanson and a typological model defended by Richard Hays. This paper will argue that neither Hanson nor Hays has correctly identified Paul’s true reading strategy. Rather a third model can best explain Paul’s interpretation—a person-centered reading technique termed “prosopological exegesis” that is evidenced in early fathers such Justin Martyr and Irenaeus. This prosopological reading technique was widely employed in antiquity but has hitherto not been sufficiently noted by biblical scholarship. If the prosopological model is correct, then Paul understands Psalm 68:10 LXX and like-minded texts to be prophetically anticipatory conversations in which the preexistent Christ personally speaks to God the Father. Thus, not only Psalm 68:10 LXX in Romans 15:3, but this reading strategy as a whole, has profound implications for the person-centered nature of Trinitarian theology as we see it emerging in Paul’s letters and the rest of the New Testament.


Revelation and Response: The Role of Revelatory Experience in Matthew's Gospel
Program Unit: Matthew
Mark Batluck, University of Edinburgh

Revelatory experiences were instrumental in “driving and shaping” the veneration of Jesus in early Christianity. Hurtado notes the “demonstrable efficacy of such experiences in generating significant innovations in various religious traditions” (LJC, 65). If such revelatory events—i.e., “divine disclosures by visionary or auditory means” (Bockmuehl, RM, 2)—were indeed influential in early Christian circles, revelatory experience accounts in the Gospels may also have a generative role in early Christian texts. More specifically, if revelatory experiences were significant for christological devotion in the earliest Christian communities, the revelatory accounts in Matthew may have a similar role in developing the christological purposes of the author. This paper will investigate the narratival role of revelatory experience in Matthew’s Gospel, comparing and contrasting the different revelatory accounts in an effort to understand Matthew’s concept of revelation. Matthew uses revelatory experiences to present and validate Jesus throughout his earthly ministry. This paper will examine the way his Gospel shapes its presentations of Jesus via the revelatory experience events. First, the role of religious experience in general will be examined to determine its use and function throughout the narrative. Such religious experiences—i.e., any contact with the divine—are ubiquitous in Matthew and play a sure part in the development of the narrative. After the wider role of religious experience is investigated, select revelatory experience accounts will be analyzed to determine how these scenes function within the Gospel. Because of the scope of the project and the limitations of time, accounts will be grouped together where possible. The goal of this paper is to understand Matthew’s revelatory emphasis and the contribution these accounts make to the wider picture of his Christology. It is argued in this paper that Matthean revelatory experience accounts validate Jesus to the reader and demonstrate the priority of the First Gospel on divine revelation concerning one’s apprehension of Jesus.


James and Greco-Roman Invective against the Rich
Program Unit: Letters of James, Peter, and Jude
Alicia J. Batten, Université de Sudbury - University of Sudbury

It is widely agreed that in addition to drawing from pre-existing biblical and Hellenistic Judean traditions, the author of James incorporates themes, motifs and literary techniques from Greek and Roman writings into his letter. This paper focuses on James’s use of Greco-Roman images and ideas, especially those that emerge in satirical writings, in his description of the rich. Although rich people come under fire early on in the letter (1:11), and are identified as potential sources of partiality within the community (Jas 2:2), it is in Jas 5:1-6 where they face the most severe criticism. The author is likely recalling some prophetic imagery in these verses, such as Jeremiah’s “day of slaughter” (Jer 12:3) as well as themes from the biblical tradition (the Cain and Abel story, for example). However, one can also detect influences of the well-established Greco-Roman tradition of satirizing the rich in James’ exaggerated language and imagery. Greek and Roman writers often characterize the wealthy as flabby, often effeminate, luxury loving hoarders, who overeat and focus on material gain at the expense of others. James depicts the rich as weeping and howling (like women at funerary rites?) as their stored up wealth, including their clothing, rots (5:2), and their gold and silver rust (5:3). Ironically, this rust will “eat” the flesh (excess flesh?) of the rich just as they had previously “fed” themselves when they lived in luxury on slaughtering day (5:5). Moreover, the rich are clearly fraudulent, having kept back the wages of their workers (5:4). James thus depicts the rich in the most uncomplimentary manner possible, comparable to depictions found in the literature of his Greek and Roman contemporaries. Although James may not intend the same type of humor to which Roman satirists aspired, this characterization further assists James as he attempts to exhort his audience to avoid the murderous and vile behaviour of these rich.


Papias and the Gospels
Program Unit: Extent of Theological Diversity in Earliest Christianity
Richard Bauckham, University of St. Andrews

N/A


Intertextual Relationships of Papias's Gospel Traditions
Program Unit: History of Interpretation
Richard Bauckham, University of St. Andrews

Invited


Creation and Kenosis
Program Unit: Adventist Society for Religious Studies
Stephen Bauer, Southern Adventist University

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Q and the Cultural Space of Galilee
Program Unit: Q
Giovanni Bazzana, Harvard University

A number of recent scholarly interventions in the hotly debated conversation around Galilee and the Jesus movement in the first century CE (as, for instance, a significant contribution by Halvor Moxnes in “Biblical Interpretation”) has put under the spotlight the role played by Galilee as a “space” in which contemporary imagination tried to fit its understanding both of Jesus and of the first group of his followers. As far as the Sayings Gospel Q (a text that is usually “placed” by historians in Galilee) is concerned, the discussion around “space” has centered on the relationship between texts and archaeological discoveries, with a significant emphasis posed on the striking “absence” of the two main urban centers of Sepphoris and Tiberias from this quintessentially Galilean document. The present paper proposes to probe the articulation of textual and archaeological data in order to show how the attempts to “put Q in its place” reveal and/or hide the ideological endeavor to map out Galilee as an ideal “space” for religious and socio-political agendas. In the first section of the paper, I will deal with the work of Sean Freyne, whose landmark contributions on the history of Galilee have brought together, at the highest level of sophistication, methodological awareness and a clear consciousness of the role played by one’s own “place” in shaping intellectual interests and historical judgments. In Freyne’s reconstruction, the villagers of Q are portrayed as the heros of a resistance movement fighting against Hellenistic urban colonization. The final part of the paper will be focused on the newer proposals to see the people behind Q as village scribes and on their implications on the conceptualizations of Galilee as a “place”. Here, a great role is played by the innovative way in which a few archaeologists and historians (as Wallace-Hadrill, Mattingly, or Nasrallah) have started to look at the interplay between cultures and archaeological spaces not anymore in terms of oppositions, but of hybridizations or “discrepant identities”. Therefore, Galilee becomes the “place” shaped by the socio-cultural practice of a group of marginal, but nonetheless powerful, intellectuals, who try to negotiate their position amid the turmoil of a rapidly changing political environment.


Early Christian Texts on the Verso of Reemployed Papyri
Program Unit: Papyrology and Early Christian Backgrounds
Giovanni B. Bazzana, Harvard University

The present paper will focus on a peculiar – and rather small – group of early Christian papyri that are characterized by some very specific “formal” features. A number of (not only Christian) Greek literary texts are written on the verso of reemployed sheets of papyrus. This feature is quite frequently accompanied by other characteristic elements, as, among others, a cursive or relatively unskilled handwriting. The first part of the paper will ask what kinds of texts were mostly put into writing in this particular fashion. It will be evident that texts happened to be written on the verso when their use was connected to specific practical purposes, as in the case of the numerous school exercises that can be found on the verso of discarded papers. Following the increasing attention that paleographers (as Guglielmo Cavallo) and papyrologists (as William Johnson in his recent book on reading) are paying to reading (and writing) as a social practice and to the ways in which the latter is reflected in the “formal” features of ancient manuscripts, it is easy to conclude that the appearance of literary texts on the verso of reemployed papyrus hints at some more general inferences concerning the circulation and the social fruition of the texts themselves. The paper will end by bringing these conclusions to bear on the study of early Christian papyri specifically. It is worth inquiring whether those texts that appear more frequently (as it happens for apocalyptic writings, for instance) or exclusively on the verso of reemployed papyrus are identified by specific traits, as being part of the same literary genre or sharing a certain social function.


The Literary Function of Visual Perception in the Characterization of Judah (Genesis 37–50)
Program Unit: Institute for Biblical Research
William K. Bechtold III, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

The Literary Function of Visual Perception in the Characterization of Judah (Genesis 37-50)


Judges 17–21 between Hexateuch and Dtr History
Program Unit: Deuteronomistic History
Uwe Becker, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena

The so-called appendices to the book of Judges in chapters 17-21 consist of two main stories (that of Judg 17-18 and 19-21). They are bound together by the pro-monarchic comments in 17:1; 18:1, 19:1 and 21:25. Both stories seem to presuppose and emphasize the connection between the Hexateuch story and the Deuteronomistic edition of the story of the kings in 1 Samuel to 2 Kings. The pro-monarchic verse does not reflect the expectation of a new (Davidic) king but is a means of structuring the salvation history (Heilsgeschichte) from a late Persian perspective.


The Role of Vassal Treaties in the Maintenance of the Hittite Empire
Program Unit: Assyriology and the Bible
Gary Beckman, University of Michigan

The Hittite Empire of the Late Bronze Age was a complex structure that stretched over much of modern Turkey and northern Syria, encompassing more than a dozen subordinate political units. The Great Kings of Hatti developed a number of techniques for maintaining the cohesion of their realm despite the challenges to the efficient movement of information and military forces posed by the great distances between the extremes of their domain. Prominent among the tools they employed were vassal treaties, whose constituent elements bound subordinate rulers with both material and religious ties to Hatti’s central government.


Becoming Other: On the Very Idea of Conversion in Late Antiquity
Program Unit: Religious World of Late Antiquity
Jason BeDuhn, Northern Arizona University

This paper attempts to survey the development of the necessary conceptual basis for conversion, namely, the idea of a "religion" identity-marker separable from ethnic identity. It was always possible for emigrants to "go native" in exotic lands, as well as for local people to participate, even exclusively, in exotic cults brought by emigre colonists. Paul of Tarsus belongs to a development of the latter phenomenon that involves the reduction of the exotic cult to an essence deliberately conceived for adoption by non-native participants, and in this respect resembles various purveyors of exotic wisdom in Greco-Roman lands. Yet early Christians continued to struggle to distinguish the adopted identity from ethnic categories. The full emergence of a concept of distinct religious communities competing for identity-allegiance in a given population, I propose, may only come clearly into view in the 3rd century in the writings of Mani and the inscriptions of the Zoroastrian leader Kerdir. Before this, the very idea of "conversion" would be problematic. I hope to elicit from the discussion any evidence contrary to this proposal.


Your Daughter Shall Prophesy
Program Unit: Adventist Society for Religious Studies
Bev Beem, Walla Walla University

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Metaphor and Cognitive Poetics
Program Unit: Metaphor Theory and the Hebrew Bible
Hanneke van Loon, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

While recent studies on metaphors in the Hebrew Bible have taken the cognitive linguistic approach to metaphor to heart, they rarely question how this approach takes into account the fact that these metaphors occur in literary contexts. The characteristics of metaphors in literature are currently an important theme within cognitive poetics. Cognitive poetics, a term coined by Tsur in the 1980s, has come to refer to the emerging field in which cognitive linguistic scholars join the efforts of literary scholars who apply insights from cognitive sciences to clarify the stylistic features of literary texts (cf. Stockwell 2002, Semino & Culpeper 2002, Steen & Gavins 2003, Brône & Vandaele 2009). Main topics in metaphor research in cognitive poetics include the continuity and discontinuity between metaphor in and outside literature, the evoked sensuous, emotional, and aesthetic effects, and the function of metaphor on the level of the text. In this paper, I will explain what developments in cognitive poetics contribute to the understanding of metaphor in literature, and I will demonstrate what this involves for the study of metaphor in the Hebrew Bible by considering several metaphors in the book of Job.


Christology, Creed, and the Sitz im Leben of 1 Timothy
Program Unit: Disputed Paulines
Linda L Belleville, Grand Rapids Theological Seminary

It is a common scholarly perception that the Christology of 1 Timothy consists of derivative, free-standing traditional fragments that do not contribute theologically to the fabric or argumentation of the letter but only serve to give apostolic authenticity to third generation issues of church polity and the congregational life. The influence of German scholarship has led commentators to view 1 Timothy as either a bourgeois document, concerned with a middle-class ethic of social respectability1 or an organizational manual to guide post-apostolic church leadership.2 Yet, both construals overlook the soteriological concern of 1 Timothy and Christology’s intimate connection to it. This has especially been the case regarding the title God/Christ our Savior and the creedal formulations of 1 Timothy 1:15, 2:5 and 3:16. In part, past scholarship has focused on matters of source and form and has neglected comparative analysis with imperial epiphany language and Greco-Roman redemptive religious piety. This study will reevaluate the role of Christology in 1 Timothy and the light comparative analysis sheds on the letter’s Sitz im Leben. 1. See Hans Windisch, “Zur Christologie der Pastoralbriefe,” ZNW 34 (1935) 213-214; Martin Dibelius, Die Pastoralbriefe (2nd ed.; Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1931) 8-10. Compare Norbert Brox, Die Pastoralbriefe: 1 Timotheus, 2 Timotheus, Titus. (RNT 7B; Pustet Regensburg 1989; Hans Bürki, Der erste Brief des Paulus an Timotheus (Wuppertaler Studienbibel, Reihe Neues Testament 14. Brockhaus, Wuppertal 1994); Fritz Grünzweig, Erster Timotheus-Brief (Bibel-Kommentare 18; Hänssler Neuhausen-Stuttgart 1990); Jeremias, Timotheus und Titus; Helmut Merkel: Die Pastoralbriefe (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1991); Heinz-Werner Neudorfer, Der erste Brief des Paulus an Timotheus. Historisch-Theologische Auslegung (HTA; Brockhaus 2004); Lorenz Oberlinner: Der Titusbrief (HTKNT 11; Freiburg: Herder, 2002); Jurgen Roloff, Der erste Brief an Timotheus. (EKKNT XV; Benziger, Zürich 1988). 2. See, for example, J. H. Houlden, Pastoral Epistles. I and II Timothy, Titus. TPI New Testament Commentaries. London: SCM, 1989) 64-65; Robert. Karris, The Pastoral Epistles. Wilmington: Glazier, 1979) 64; William Richards, Difference and Distance in Post-Pauline Christianity: An Epistolary Analysis of the Pastorals (Studies in Biblical Literature 44; New York: Peter Lang, 2002; Raymond Collins 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002); Karl Donfried, “Rethinking Scholarly Approaches to 1 Timothy,” in 1 Timothy Reconsidered (ed. K. Donfried; Louvain, Belgium: Peeters, 2008) 153–182; Michale Gourgues, “Étude critique: La recherche sur les pastorales à un tournant?” Science et Esprit 61 (2009) 73–86; Raymond Collins, 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus, 181-186.


Paul's Christological Use of the Wilderness Rock Tradition in 1 Corinthians 10:4
Program Unit: Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity
Linda L Belleville, Grand Rapids Theological Seminary

Paul’s mention in 1 Corinthians 10:4 of the “the rock that followed Israel” during its wilderness wanderings is considered by all to be one of Paul’s more perplexing uses of Scripture. Even more perplexing is understanding how and why Paul proceeds to identify Christ with that wilderness rock. Paul’s interpretive approach has been variously labeled as pesher, typology, allegory, and re-read Bible. Yet, none of the standard exegetical methodologies account for Paul’s bold assertion that that wilderness rock was in fact Christ (v. 4) and his command “not to put Christ1 to the test, as some of them did, and were destroyed by serpents” (v. 9). While, a traveling rock can perhaps be deduced from the exodus-wilderness narrative, Christ as that rock is more problematic. Is this then Paul’s creative genius at work? Or is there a valid Scriptural and exegetical basis for Paul’s rock Christology? This paper will explore the interpretive history of the wilderness rock tradition with a view to shedding light on Paul’s use of Scripture and on his exegetical methodology in 1 Corinthians 10:1-11. 1.See Bruce Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (2nd ed.; New York: United Bible Societies, 1994) 494.


Covenant, History, and the Psalms
Program Unit: Covenant in the Persian Period
W. H. Bellinger, Jr., Baylor University

Several psalms related to the second temple period refer to “covenant.” This paper will explore those references to covenant and their implications for scholarly reconstructions of the social history of the era. Several tasks are involved. First is the question of which psalms to include. The paper will attend to several community laments – Psalms 44, 74, 79, (105)-106, and 137 – and to other related psalms such as Psalm 89. A second task is to identify the covenant traditions to which these texts refer. A third task is to articulate the nexus between covenant and the later eras of the Hebrew Scriptures. The paper will interact with the work of R. Bautch and M. Boda on prayers in the later Old Testament eras. The goal is an articulation of how the liturgical forms and language of these psalms connect with the history of the second temple period.


Scent, Incense, and Liminality
Program Unit: Ritual in the Biblical World
Dan Belnap, Brigham Young University

Though often forgotten, scent played a fundamental role in the ritualized experience of the Israelite cult. This is most readily seen in the use and manipulation of incense both within and without the sanctum. When one examines these usages it appears that the use of incense was associated with an entire ritual process that was meant to facilitate the creation of a temporary time and space whereby the divine world could interact directly with the mortal one. This usage, in turn, may point towards an understanding of the temple/tabernacle precincts as a liminal space, rather than a divine one. In other words, while the sacred space of the temple has been associated in the past with the abode of the deity, the rites of liminality, including prominently the use of incense, suggests that this space is best understood as one that stood between heaven and earth, a temporary place that could be facilitated for the meeting of man and deity. Thus, contrary to the idea that incense worked as a divine shield protecting man from the harmful influence, the incense usage may be understood to facilitate the ability for one to enter into the presence of deity, as long as one performed the ritual correctly.


When and Where I Enter: A Review of the Womanist Rhetoric of Anna J. Cooper and Elaine Flake
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Cynthia Belt, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary

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A Balancing Act: Settling and Unsettling Issues Concerning Past Divine Promises
Program Unit: Deuteronomistic History
Ehud Ben Zvi, University of Alberta

Central to the construction of social memory, at least among the literati of the period, were memories of some core divine promises. Within their social mindscape, many of their core divine promises were understood in terms ‘covenant’ and vice versa. To illustrate, the divine promise to David in 2 Sam 7 was understood in covenantal terms in Jer 33:21; Ps 89; 2 Chr 13:5; 21:7 (cf. 2 Kgs 8:19) and these texts, in turn, shaped and reflected the community’s reading of 2 Sam 7. This paper will focus on how remembering the past evoked by the DHC (deuteronomistic historical collection) raised both 'settling' and very 'unsettling' issues about divine promises for the community. It will then look at the ways in which reading Chronicles partakes in and influences this balancing act. There will be references to promises to David, Aaron and Israel, but also to the ‘broken’ promise to Eli and his line (in Samuel), about the unfulfilled promise of the land, but the fulfilled promise of the catastrophe of 586, and to balancing acts regarding 'conditional and unconditional promises.' Some transcultural considerations about social mindscapes influenced by crushing defeat and 'living among the ruins’ will be advanced.


Language as Media: Language Awareness in Early Jewish Writings in Its Ancient Background
Program Unit: Pseudepigrapha
Jonathan Ben-Dov, University of Haifa

From recent studies in the literature from Qumran it becomes clear that members of the Yahad entertained a special awareness to the notion of Language as medium. They engaged in constant reflection on the essence and characteristics of Language as a medium for the transfer and shaping of information, to a greater extent than other Jewish groups at the time. I have previously pointed out one aspect of this notion with regard to the value of the Hebrew language vis-à-vis Aramaic, and would like presently to shed light on further trajectories. I aim to point out the outlines of this quasi-philosophical theory of language and to draw its possible origins and modes of development. Biblical prophets were already aware of the special power of language as a medium, and labored to distinguish pure language from contaminated language, especially as a means to convey prophecy and divine revelation. This notion is especially present in Isaiah ben Amotz (chapters 8, 28), Zephaiah and Ezekiel (3). Yahad writers adopted this rhetoric as part of the re-conceptualization of prophecy in the Yahad, with special attention given to Isaiah 28. Interestingly, this chapter was also elaborated in the NT, especially in the discourse about Tongues in 1 Kor 14. Both Yahad texts and the MT explicitly posit the abstract term lashon and explore its relation with prophecy as a speech-act. The quote from Zephaniah in 4Q464 and from Isaiah in 1QH IX should be understood accordingly. These notions of language are carried forward in the liturgical writings, where Yahad authors are explicitly reflective on the faculty of human speech in a way which is most uncharacteristic of non-Greek authors. This awareness can be found in Shirot Olat Hashabat, and arrives its peak in 1QH IX-X. Not surprisingly, theories of language crystallized in contemporary Greece and Rome by philosophers, grammarians and rhetoricians. While contemporary Greek theories of language sought the correspondence of signifier and signified in earthly reality, the Yahad contemplators of language sought correspondence with the sublime. Their theory is not in any way related to the Greek theories, but for our purposes it is be illuminating to put the two branches of human interest in language in comparison.


Actualizing the Love Command through Mimesis in the Johannine Literature
Program Unit: Ethics, Love, and the Other in Early Christianity
Cornelis Bennema, South Asia Institute of Advanced Christian Studies

In the problematic realm of Johannine ethics, scholarship has assumed for a long time that Jesus’ love command in 13:34 is pretty much the only (explicit) ethic in the Gospel or even entire Johannine corpus (albeit perhaps as the précis of his commandments). As a result, publications on this subject abound but they all too often merely stress that believers should love one another and rarely address the means by which Jesus’ command can be carried out. The focus of this study, therefore, is on the practice of the love command. Our central question is this: How can believers actualize (i.e. realize in action) Jesus’ ethical imperative ‘to love one another’? In answer to this, I wish to argue that, for John, believers should and are able to love one another through imitation. The mimetic chain looks approximately like this: just as the Father loves Jesus, Jesus loves the disciples (15:9); just as Jesus loves the disciples, they should love one another (13:34; 15:12; 1 Jn 4:11). The concept of mimesis does not merely address why the love command must be carried out but also how it can be achieved or realized. Since mimesis is essentially relational, believers can actualize the love command in and out of their relationship with Jesus. For it is precisely Jesus’ love for the believers (the original or ?p?de??µa) which is the basis that motivates and empowers believers to love one another. I will argue my case by examining four passages (13:34–35; 15:9–17; 1 Jn 3:11–18; 4:7–21) because these virtually contain all the references to the love command and its mimesis.


Divided Anthropology: An Ontological Look at the Vatican’s Rejection of Women’s Ordination
Program Unit: Adventist Society for Religious Studies
Kessia Reyne Bennett, Andrews University

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Where Starts Trito-Isaiah in the Book of Isaiah?
Program Unit: Book of Isaiah
Ulrich Berges, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn

The beginning of Trito-Isaiah is actually not a disputed issue in academic circles. On the contrary, there seems to be no problem at all. Voices that presented different views are overheard or not well received. The majority of scholars seem to be happy to rely on Is 56.1 – for whatever reasons given in the past. But can the formula “Thus says the Lord” really function as an introduction to this last section of the book of Isaiah? Not even Bernhard Duhm seemed to be really convinced by this and lately various scholars have proposed other division lines (i.e. Vermeylen, Watts, Seitz, Rofé). Searching for a new solution one wonders how little attention is given so far to the verse Is 54,17b: “This is the heritage of the Servants of YHWH, and their righteousness is of me, said YHWH“. This is even more astonishing when one notices that the great Isaiah scroll in Qumran uses surprisingly three devices (vacat, paragraphos and spatium) to highlight 54.17b as something very special. The lecture argues to see this colon as the superscript for the last part of the book of Isaiah, i.e. to let “Trito-Isaiah” start with chap. 55! What are the consequences doing so, especially for the interpretation of Isaiah 55 in conjunction with 56?


Joseph Smith’s Recovery of Biblical Angels
Program Unit: Latter-day Saints and the Bible
James F. Berlin, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints---Translation Division

Although John the Revelator speaks of flying angels (Rev. 8:13; 14:6), nowhere in the biblical text are angels described as having wings; yet, notwithstanding the lack of these feathered appendages, extra-biblical literature and artistic renderings have long depicted angels with wings. This may be due in part to the mixing of the attributes of other beings such as seraphim and cherubim. In addition to wings, other characteristics and notions have been associated with angels following the closure of the biblical record, a few of which may have some foundation in the Bible, but others of which seem more to be accretions from various mythologies than relics of biblical tradition. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which all claim belief in at least some portions of the Christian Bible, have held and continue to hold a variety of ideas regarding the nature and existence of angels. Joseph Smith was born into this climate of uncertainty and even doubt regarding the existence of angels, but he soon began to speak very authoritatively about these beings. Richard Bushman, biographer of the Prophet, remarked: “Joseph spoke to the . . . [brethren] about angels with an easy familiarity that must have thrilled his hearers” (Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, 387). While Joseph’s believers might have thrilled at his words, his bold statements about angels, including his claims to having received the ministering of angels, brought ridicule and persecution from many of his neighbors, whether or not they professed a belief in such beings. Ironically, Joseph’s claims and teachings about angels can be shown to be in harmony with the biblical witness of angels as found in both the Old and New Testaments. This paper will examine the Bible’s representation of the nature and ministering of angels, including the etymology of the Hebrew (mal’akh) and Greek (aggelos) words from which the English word is derived, and compare it with Joseph Smith’s teachings about angels and the subsequent growth of this doctrine within the LDS Church. This examination will demonstrate that Joseph’s remarkable recovery of biblical angels in modern times was not just another layer added to the post-biblical confusion regarding angels, but rather a return to the biblical belief in and understanding of these beings.


Theory of Collective Responsibility and the Sin of Achan (Joshua 7)
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible and Political Theory
Joshua Berman, Bar-Ilan University

Conventional understandings of the mechanism of collective responsibility in the account of the sin of Achan (Joshua 7), such as notions of corporate responsibility or the contagion present in devoted goods, have been found to be problematic. Moreover, nowhere in the legal or treaty literature of the ancient Near East is there a precedent for the collective punishment of an entire polity due to the infraction of a lone individual. Diachronic studies of these chapters posit here two accounts –a devoted goods account and an Ha-Ai account. Even if this accepted, we must probe the aims of the redactor who wove the two accounts in this fashion. A synchronic and close reading of Joshua 6-7 reveals that Achan, like the spies who returned from Ha-Ai are seen to reveal a broad spirit within the Israelite camp that downplayed the role of the Lord at Jericho, and credited the forces of Israel with the victory. Through creating an attitudinal climate conducive to the perpetration of Achan's crime, Israel is held accountable. Contemporary moral theorists often balk at the notion of collective responsibility for a crime, because it is impossible to demonstrate the intent of all those incriminated. The theory put forth here, however, resonates strongly with the work of the contemporary philosopher Larry May, who likewise speaks of the guilt incurred when individuals contribute to create a societal climate that leads to crime.


God the Economist and the Occupy Movement
Program Unit: Ethics and Biblical Interpretation
Joshua Berman, Bar-Ilan University

Although the economic laws of the Pentateuch are normally assigned to different documents, taken as a whole, they provide a coherent economic doctrine: to ensure the economic security of the common Israelite, by enacting a series of principles designed to prevent the Israelite’s family from falling into debt and a further series of principles to help it emerge from debt thereafter. A major plank in this economic plan concerns the allocation and regulation of land resources through laws that seek to buttress both economic security as well as to promote social capital. The complexities of modern markets make it impossible to enact these laws in any simple, direct manner. Nonetheless, the laws point to guiding principles that illuminate the root causes of unrest in last year’s Occupy movements, and also suggest why addressing those concerns will prove difficult within the confines of contemporary political discourse .


Occupy Solomon’s Portico: The Re-envisioning of Public Space, Then and Now
Program Unit: Contextual Biblical Interpretation
Jonathan Bernier, McMaster University

The Occupy Movement, which emerged in fall 2011, as well as its immediate predecessor, the Arab Spring, will be remembered as moments of revolutionary fervour, and spoken of in the same breath as the revolutions of 1848, 1871, 1917, 1968, and 1989. Such revolutionary moments provide opportunities to re-envision our world, and re-evaluate its history and our place therein. This paper will focus upon Acts 5:12-13, and argue that, much as the Occupy Movement re-envisioned public space through physical occupation, so too did the early Christian re-envision Solomon’s portico. The paper will further reflect upon how such an understanding of Acts 5:12-13 might help develop a theological understanding of the revolutionary events of 2011.


Can We Really Read the Genesis Apocryphon without the Book of Genesis?
Program Unit: Qumran
Moshe J. Bernstein, Yeshiva University

In several papers delivered over the last few years, I have endeavored to show some of the interpretive advantages that accrue if we treat the Genesis Apocryphon as a literary artifact in its own right, not as “Rewritten Bible” or midrash or targum or commentary on Genesis, since it most probably was not written to be any of those. This approach demonstrates that the Apocryphon possesses literary integrity, even though it seems clear that its “author” constructed or compiled it out of pre-existing sources. In order to make this reading tactic work, we need to “forget” as much as we can the fact that the Apocryphon is based on and framed by an underlying text, the book of Genesis. It is only through such a method that is relatively independent of Genesis that we are able to pay attention to a variety of literary features intrinsic to the Apocryphon that do not derive from its biblical foundation. Among these are employment of first-person narrative, the use of rhetorical and poetic devices, the existence of internal structural parallels, and the presence of themes that are shared across the dividing lines between the hypothetical “sources” of the work. Reading in this manner, we can likewise focus on the ways in which the author of the Apocryphon employs dialogue and depicts the emotions of his characters. By treating that the Apocryphon as an independent composition, we thus free ourselves temporarily from any constraints that reading it in the light of the book of Genesis would place upon us. In response to this approach and some of its implications, the question has been raised whether we really have the right to read the Apocryphon as if the book of Genesis did not underlie it. Even though its readers or listeners did not keep a copy of Genesis in hand when confronting the Apocryphon, they presumably knew at least the outlines of the story, and this knowledge had an impact on the way they heard the narrative. Such an assumption would undermine somewhat our contention that we can treat the Genesis Apocryphon as an independent literary artifact. In this paper I shall try to respond to that issue and reflect on what indeed are the boundaries of our pretended ignorance of the book of Genesis in reading the Apocryphon as a free-standing work. In the course of my response, I shall confront the related issue of what the constraints on the author of a work such as the Apocryphon might have been in terms of his freedom to deal with his biblical source material.


Editing Heresiology: The Epistemological Limits of the Text
Program Unit: Religious World of Late Antiquity
Todd Berzon, Columbia University

While “exact knowledge” as Epiphanius of Salamis observes, “guides man, to protect him from error about either part of the truth,” heresiological literature evidences the inadequacy and tension embedded within expounding how a Christian knows, when he knows, when he knows too much, when he must cease from knowing, and whether he can know at all (Pan. 62.7.7). Theorizing knowledge, both as an end in itself and as an investigative process, heresiology shapes the formation a Christian scholastic and pedagogical tradition in which the barriers to, limits of, and utility for information, genuine and so-called, human and divine, totalizing and parochial, are enumerated, contested, and meticulously reconfigured. This paper analyzes the scholastic claims of heresiological literature—as evidenced in the works of Epiphanius, Philastrius of Brescia, Augustine, and Theodoret of Cyrrhus—to identify the epistemological foundations and quandaries attending the classification and refutation of the heretics. I argue that heresiological texts are not mere performances of orthodox authority, but rather that they are contemplations about the capacity of the heresiologists to (1) conceptualize an epistemological distinction between heresy and orthodoxy, (2) comprehend the expansive contours of the heretical world, and (3) codify that knowledge in texts. Even though the heretics are depicted as knowable due to their human lineages, the heresiologists dispute, by editing and augmenting the genre, the conceptual and practical (im)possibility of drafting heresiological texts. Their extended refutations conceive heretical errata as more than historical or theological phenomena to be refuted in texts; heretics become textual and epistemological dilemmas in themselves. And even in the cases where our orthodox authors include heresies they report to be extinct, they identity by name only, or they bemoaning describing, the contestation over the comprehensiveness of their texts evidences that the heresies are problems of, by, and even beyond texts. Heresiological literature is as much an instantiation of scholastic impossibility as it is a polemical performance of orthodox knowledge.


Jesus (and) the Only Child: Jesus, Children, and the Gospel of Luke
Program Unit: Contextual Biblical Interpretation
Sharon Betsworth, Oklahoma City University

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus heals or brings back to life two if not three children. In 8:40-56, Jesus raises the daughter of Jairus, restoring her to life. In 9:37-43, a father brings his son, who has an unclean spirit, to Jesus for healing. Both of these stories describe the children as an only child (8:42; 9:38; monogenes), a feature missing from the parallel versions of the stories in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew. Moreover, in Luke 7:11-17, the son of the widow of Nain is also described as her only son. That narrative does not specify if the son is an adult or a child, but the use of monogenes suggests that Luke may be connecting this narrative to the other two child healing stories. Thus, Luke seems to have an interest in children who are an only child. Even Jesus is depicted in this fashion in Luke’s Gospel. Although Luke does include a reference to Jesus’ brothers, unlike the stories in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew, these brothers are not named, and Jesus does not otherwise acknowledge biological siblings in Luke’s Gospel. Thus, it is as if Jesus too is an only child. In this paper, I will examine these texts regarding only children and the way in which Jesus is depicted as an only child. The context under consideration is children – in both the 1st century world and the 21st century world. I will read the texts against their historical context of children in the Roman Empire, but also in the present U.S. context of the only child. This reading will also engage a group of children as real readers from my middle-American urban context to discover how children perceive these stories about Jesus and children.


From New Moon to New Moon: Recovering Female Rites of Passage in Ancient Israel
Program Unit: Ritual in the Biblical World
Julye Bidmead, Chapman University

Circumcision serves as the initiation rite of passage for males in the Hebrew Bible. This ritual practice biologically excludes the female population, suggesting that they had no formal means of entry into or fulfillment of the covenant. However, through the process of gender-specific ritualization they created their own rituals to venerate the covenantal promises. Cross-cultural case studies conducted in the modern Middle East indicate that village women form informal social networks to develop alternative and unofficial religious practices, focusing almost exclusively on their immediate domestic concerns. Women’s religious rituals, therefore, are an outgrowth of the household. In ancient Israel the entirety of a woman’s life would be spent in the domestic realm, as she fulfills her primary role of childbearing and maintaining the household. Fear of childbirth and women’s sexuality is apparent throughout the Ancient Near East; pregnancy and labor was physically hazardous while the texts reflect an ideological fear of women’s bodies. It is here, in this dangerous period of liminality, where women created and participated in their own rites of passage. The ritual functioned on two levels --as an apotropaic to ward off perils associated with marriage and childbirth, and as a female initiation into the religion. Hints of women’s rites of passage are meager in the Hebrew Bible (Gen 24:55; Jdg 11:40) but by employing a combined methodology of ideological criticism, cross-cultural ethnography, ritual theory, and a re-examination of domestic archaeological artifacts, this rite of passage can be revealed.


Enemies of Order: Acts and the Monumentalization of Anti-Jewish Propaganda
Program Unit: Book of Acts
Drew Billings, McGill University

This paper will analyze the negative representation of Jews in Acts from an ancient media perspective. During the Flavian dynasty, images circulated throughout the empire to commemorate Roman victory in the Judean wars that propagated anti-Jewish rhetoric. While various forms of media were employed, including the well-known Arch of Titus, Temple of Peace, and JUDAEA CAPTA coin series, they consistently constructed Jews as enemies of Roman imperial order. This paper will analyze how the book of Acts itself extends such efforts as another form of media communication that literarily monumentalizes anti-Jewish rhetoric, serving as a conduit of Roman imperial ideology. Since Acts repeatedly locates Jewish rabble-rousing in the provinces, an image that I argue either anticipates or is contemporary with the Jewish Diaspora revolts of ca. 116, special attention will be given to the development of anti-Jewish propaganda during the reign of Trajan (98-117). In the end, it will be argued that Acts operated in tandem with its ancient media culture in propagating negative attitudes about Jews which could potentially serve as valuable cultural capital for individual and collective identity construction at this stage in the evolution of imperial relations.


Words and Witness in Lyons: Intertextuality in the Letter of the Martyrs
Program Unit: History of Interpretation
D. Jeffrey Bingham, Dallas Theological Seminary

Invited


Paradise Reframed: Caribbean Diaspora as Island Experience
Program Unit: Islands, Islanders, and Scriptures
Fiona Black, Mount Allison University

This paper is concerned with Paradise in two aspects. First, it looks at the biblical version, an imagined, idealized place which might be viewed metaphorically as an island in its isolation and exclusivity, notably pre-expulsion (Genesis) and post-apocalypse (Revelation). Second, it brings these biblical spaces into conversation with actual islands—those of the Caribbean—where the predominant idea of paradise has a deeply ambiguous resonance because of the impact of tourism. Biblical ideas of perfection, exclusivity, segregation, violence and eschatology combine to create a dense framework with which to think through the implications of the idea of paradise for the Caribbean. Now, both biblical spaces involve journeys and exclusions, working around themes of belonging and not-belonging. As a consequence, the paper will ultimately focus the discussion more closely around the borders of Caribbean diasporic experience, to ask how paradise/island—which has been literally left behind—might persist in the imagination as an appropriate, if not conflicted, metaphor for thinking about diaspora and hybrid immigrant identities.


Biblical and Systematic Perspectives on Creation: An Interdisciplinary Approach
Program Unit: Institute for Biblical Research
Craig Blaising, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

Biblical and Systematic Perspectives on Creation: An Interdisciplinary Approach


Interpreting Paul’s Collection: From “Capitalist Criticism” to Capitalism’s Troubled Conscience?
Program Unit: Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy
Thomas R. Blanton, IV, Luther College

(Ancient Economy: Second project) In his articles on Paul of Tarsus’ position within the ancient economy, Steven Friesen has identified “powerful discursive patterns” that have effectively precluded the examination of economic systems in Pauline studies, which have instead focused largely on theological issues. This set of discursive patterns Friesen dubs “capitalist criticism”: issues of economic inequality and deprivation, capitalism’s doppelgängers, are implicitly declared off limits to analysis. Friesen argues that Paul’s collection of funds to be transmitted to the Jerusalem church represented an example of “occasional, need-based redistribution, the goal of which was economic equality,” and as such represented an alternative to Roman systems of patronage. But there are problems with Friesen’s analysis. First, he does not distinguish between patronage and more generalized forms of reciprocity practiced in the Greco-Roman world, nor does he adequately account for Paul’s own statement that the collection was offered as a reciprocal gift in return for Jerusalem’s bestowal of “spiritual things” to the non-Jewish churches (Rom 15:27). Second, the idea that the promotion of economic equality constituted Paul’s motive for undertaking the collection is contradicted by 2 Cor 8:1–3, which states that the Macedonian churches of Philippi and Thessalonica—churches that Paul describes as “extremely poor”—had nonetheless contributed to the fund for Jerusalem. If the equal distribution of wealth had been the goal, the Macedonian churches should have been recipients, not donors of a monetary gift. One wonders to what extent Friesen’s treatment of Paul’s collection might not itself be a harbinger of a new phase of “capitalist criticism,” one in which capitalism, having become aware of its own complicity in bringing about economic inequality, seeks to alleviate its troubled conscience by imputing to Paul plans for a redistributive program designed to bring about economic equality, despite the difficulties in reconciling this view with Paul’s own statements.


Significant Nonsense: Denotation and Connotation in the “Great” Tablet from Thurii
Program Unit: Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti
Thomas R. Blanton, IV, Luther College

The Orphic Gold Tablet known as the “Great” Tablet from Thurii, produced during the late fourth or early third century BCE, has been linked plausibly with similar Orphic/Dionysiac tablets which, accompanying the bodies of deceased individuals at burial sites, were designed to guide the entry of the deceased into the underworld and to facilitate access to chthonic deities who could grant a more pleasant afterlife. The tablet consists of ten lines of Greek letters inscribed on gold leaf, in which the names of Greek and Anatolian deities appear alongside mention of various elements (earth, air, fire) and epithets (“hero,” “light to the mind”). Interspersed amongst these words and names are a series of incomprehensible letters, constituting roughly half of the tablet’s content. These letters have been interpreted as a series of mistakes introduced by a semi-literate artisan or incompetent scribe, an accumulation of copyists’ errors, a phylactery containing nonsense magical words, and an ancient “word-search puzzle,” in which meaningful elements were hidden amongst meaningless ones. Most of the explanations that have been proposed assume that, in order for the letters in the text to be deemed significant, they must serve a denotative function; that is, they must transmit semantic information. Greco-Roman religious practice, however, did not share this assumption. Incomprehensible utterances and writings, in some cases attributed to prophetesses and prophets, secret books reserved for initiates into the mysteries of Isis, religious functionaries serving as intermediaries between the earth and the underworld and, of course, magicians, were deemed to convey divine power and to serve as a mediating link between humans and the gods. Verbal utterances and written productions containing incomprehensible sequences of phonemes were judged significant, not because they conveyed denotative semantic information, but because they connoted numinous power and access to the divine. After a brief survey of the connotations associated with incomprehensible utterances in the writings of Aeschylus, Lucian of Samosata, Apuleius of Madauros, Cicero, and the Greek magical papyri, the paper will argue that the “Great” Tablet from Thurii included a number of denotatively meaningless phonemes in order to evoke a sense that the bearer of the tablet enjoyed access to and intimate association with heavenly and chthonic deities. Far from being mistakes, copyists’ errors, or attempts to conceal information, these incomprehensible utterances conveyed meaning by evoking a set of cultural associations connoting access to the divine. Attempts to remove the non-denotative phonemes from the text, along with claims that they are unimportant to the text’s interpretation, overlook the important connotative and evocative significance of the nonsensical utterances: connoting access to the divine, the tablet’s nonsensical phonemes are precisely what render it a fitting text to accompany the deceased who, upon entering the underworld, desired to establish relations with the chthonic deities who held sway there.


“There is Nothing More Bitter than Poverty”: Social and Economic Advice in 4QInstruction and the Aramaic Book of Ahiqar
Program Unit: Qumran
Seth A. Bledsoe, Florida State University

When Proverbs brings up issues of poverty, it generally calls for the ethical treatment of the poor, thus indicating an audience with wealth and status. Likewise, Ben Sira undoubtedly reflects an elite, aristocratic (and likely priestly) perspective. In contrast to the “traditional” wisdom literature of Proverbs and Ben Sira, the social and economic advice found in 4QInstruction is nearly always relevant to one who is poor or, at best, one with a small income. The addressee of 4QInstruction—identified as the mebin—is assumed to have a familiarity with want and distress. Indeed, the mebin is constantly reminded that he is poor. While the apparently meager financial situation of the mebin distinguishes 4QInstruction from Proverbs and Ben Sira, the economic advice found in this Qumran text invites comparison with another ancient wisdom text that is often overlooked: the Aramaic Book of Ahiqar. Although some of the proverbs, as well as the narrative setting, presume a scribal context associated with the royal court, many of the Ahiqar sayings, like those in 4QInstruction, are directed at an audience whose economic situation is less than secure. Both texts offer counsel for taking out and repaying loans, being content with one’s lot, and dealing with hunger and other distressing situations. This paper, therefore, seeks to put 4QInstruction and the Aramaic Book of Ahiqar into conversation with each other. Using the strikingly similar advice on how to handle debt as a point of departure, I will bring to light the sayings of Book of Ahiqar whose social milieu resonate with those from 4QInstruction. The value of this comparison to Ahiqar is that it can provide us with a better sense of how 4QInstruction draws on older wisdom traditions beyond the book of Proverbs.


Judah and Benjamin
Program Unit: Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah
Joseph Blenkinsopp, University of Notre Dame

The paper will examine the significance, scope and origin in Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah of their self-identification with the Israel of the traditions.


Take Your Time: Conversion, Confidence, and Tranquility in Joseph and Aseneth
Program Unit: Ancient Fiction and Early Christian and Jewish Narrative
René Bloch, Universität Bern - Université de Berne

Joseph and Aseneth belongs to the most controversial texts in Jewish-Hellenistic literature. Date, provenance, genre, and intention of the story are all intensely disputed with no consensus in sight. This paper offers a new argument: I would like to propose that by converting from paganism to Judaism, Aseneth does more than cross religious boundaries. Her conversion also stands for a progression from Egyptian restlessness to Jewish quiet and security. While Joseph, from beginning to end, acts with sovereignty, Aseneth, the daughter of the Egyptian priest Pentephres, is presented as restless and insecure. She is constantly on the move: the phrase “and Aseneth hurried (kai espeusen Aseneth)” shows up not less than eight times in the novel. What allows Aseneth to finally relax is her conversion to Judaism and her reunion with Joseph: she now can walk at the same pace as Joseph (JosAs 26.4). I would like to suggest that this self-confident and playful portrait of a secure Judaism in contrast with a restless Egyptian culture fits best into the Ptolemaic period when Jews in Egypt were an integral part of Egyptian society and generally lived in peace and security. This is the period when similarly self-confident Jewish-Hellenistic literature was written in Egypt: The Letter of Aristeas, the work by Artapanus, and especially Ezekiel’s drama Exagoge. Joseph and Aseneth is best understood as a Jewish novel dating from the 2nd or 1st century BCE. If this dating of the novel is correct, Joseph and Aseneth is earlier than all extant pagan novels. In the second part of the paper I will discuss what this might imply for the history of the ancient novel. Taking into consideration the most recent scholarship on the ancient novel (S. Tilg, Chariton of Aphrodisias and the Invention of the Greek Love Novel, 2010 and T. Whitmarsh, Narrative and Identity in the Ancient Greek Novel: Returning Romance, 2011) this paper will suggest that Joseph and Aseneth should indeed be understood as a precedent of the later pagan novel.


Tel Dor, Pots, and People: The Phoenician-Israelite Transition
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
Elizabeth Bloch-Smith, Saint Joseph's University (Philadelphia, PA)

Research on Iron Age levels at Tel Dor, located on Israel's Carmel coast, focused in the last decades mostly on the earliest levels of that period. The research has resulted in a detailed picture of the Sikila ("Sea People") material culture of Dor—which we define as synonymous with Phoenician—that illuminates the Egyptian texts that mention these people at Dor. Excavations have revealed the origin of the Sikila, their extensive commercial activities—which are quite unparalleled in this period—and on-going interaction with communities in Cyprus. Recently it has become very clear that this Sikila/Phoenician sequence comes to an abrupt end during Iron Age II when all structures are abandoned and a new administrative center is literally imposed over these remains. Thus far, this new center consists of public structures and a new fortification, which is quite unique since parts of it are constructed solely of ashlars. In tandem with the new constructions, all commercial activities that typified the earliest Iron Age levels cease, contacts with Cyprus are disrupted, and Dor's material culture becomes practically identical to that of inland Israelite sites. This abrupt transition, no doubt, exemplifies the takeover of the site by the Israelite kingdom, as described in 1 Kings. In the 8th century, this Israelite center at Dor was abandoned (rather than destroyed). The town's demise has usually been attributed to the Assyrians under Tiglath Pileser III, but recently-accumulated evidence indicates that most probably when the Assyrians arrived at this part of Western Asia the site was already deserted and so the town's demise should be attributed to another agent or other factors.


The Sayings of Jesus in Mark: Does Mark Ever Rely on a Pre-Johannine Tradition?
Program Unit: John, Jesus, and History
Craig Blomberg, Denver Seminary

Philipp Bartholomä’s 2010 Ph.D. dissertation in Louvain ably demonstrated the higher degree of similarity between large segments of the Johannine Jesus' teaching and the Synoptic Jesus' teaching than is usually acknowledged. But what happens if the exercise is reversed? Limiting our investigation to Mark's sayings tradition, to what degree do linguistic or conceptual parallels appear in John? Do the parallels ever show signs of greater primitivity? This investigation demonstrates a surprisingly high degree of correlation between the two traditions. It does not suggest that John is normally more primitive than Mark, but does find that this may be the case in an important minority of instances, giving further support for the basic contours of Paul Anderson's bioptic approach to the tradition history of the four Gospels.


Common Exegetical Fallacies in New Testament Scholarship Rectifiable through External Evidence
Program Unit: Evangelical Philosophical Society
Craig Blomberg, Denver Seminary

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Hearing Is Believing: The Use of Audio Feedback for Religion Student Papers
Program Unit: Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion
Joe Blosser, High Point University

How do you offer constructive feedback to a paper in which a student suggests that the work of Ayn Rand convinced her to seek an abortion? What if you have 40 or 50 or 60 such papers to grade? Professors of religion often struggle to present students with both constructive and sensitive feedback on personal topics. This presentation suggests an innovative approach to the problem – the use of audio (.mp3) feedback. Through audio feedback, religion professors can save time grading, offer more substantive critiques that students claim they find more helpful than written comments, and add a level of personal connection to the feedback that assures students our comments are made in good faith. While audio feedback cannot solve the normative and subjective challenges grading such papers pose, it does offer professors a way to continue the moral conversation begun in the classroom. Plus, some students just think it’s cool to have their professor’s comments on their iPhone – and that starts to carry the moral conversation into the world.


Saintly Subversions: The (Mis)appropriation of the Pauline Epistles in the Poetry and Letters of Emily Dickinson
Program Unit: Recovering Female Interpreters of the Bible
Caroline Blyth, University of Auckland

In one of her poems, Emily Dickinson describes the Bible as ‘an antique volume/written by faded men’. According to Alicia Ostriker, this view of scripture allowed Dickinson the freedom, as a woman, ‘to criticize, to mock, to rewrite, and to use for her own purposes’ the sacred texts in both her poetry and her letters. While Dickinson included many allusions to the biblical texts in her writing, I wish to focus on her engagement with one particular ‘faded man’ – the apostle Paul. Dickinson makes a number of direct references to Paul (using such epithets as ‘The Apostle’ and ‘orator of Ephesus’) as well as paraphrasing him on numerous occasions in her letters and poetry, often in ways that thoroughly unbalance his spiritual and heaven-centred gaze, thrusting it earthwards to bring new and unexpected meaning to very earthly elements such as friendship, love, death, suffering, and desire. Through taking a closer look at her writings in which she addresses the apostle, I will consider the tension that exists between, on the one hand, Dickinson’s obvious interest in and desire to engage with Paul’s writings and, on the other hand, her regular rejection of what she considered to be ‘distorting’ elements of Pauline theology in favour of her own ‘radical alteration’ of Christian belief that she felt made more sense within her own specific socio-cultural context. In particular, I will explore the ways in which Dickinson’s Calvinist faith stands at times uneasily alongside Pauline affirmations of a transcendent and resurrected Godhead, in her focus on the utterly down-to-earth suffering of Christ, the dreaded uncertainty of life after death, and the ever-present tribulation of humanity in a world in which both pain and paradise could be encountered.


Grounded in the Body: Reading Lamentations 2 from AnOther Perspective
Program Unit: Ecological Hermeneutics
Elizabeth Boase, Flinders University

The personification of Jerusalem as female in Lamentations is often the entry point for interpretive engagements with the book. Although Daughter Zion metaphorically represents the physical city, the figure is most often interpreted as a poetic means of portraying the suffering and distress of the human inhabitants of the city. Moving from the opening personification, there can be little argument that Lamentations voices the concerns of the people who survived the events of 587 BCE. Descriptions throughout are dominated by images of human suffering and degradation, and the struggle to come to terms with the trauma of military defeat and destruction. The book is, in its essence, anthropocentric. Does this mean, however, that these poems are limited only to an anthropocentric reading? The aim of this paper is to explore the possibility of reading Lamentations 2 from AnOther perspective. Taking its cue from Lamentation’s opening image of the widowed city seated (on the earth?), the discussion will explore the metonymic potential of reading the embodied language of the text as a site of engagement with the other than human world. Drawing on Bakhtinian dialogics alongside Wainwright’s categories of habitat and ecological texture, Lamentations 2 will be read through the lens of the interrelatedness of material bodies with the social, economic, political, historical and environmental parameters of time and space. The analysis will focus on the socio-religious understanding of Zion as sacred site, aiming to explore the inter-relationships encoded in the text with a view to identifying with and retrieving the voice/s of AnOther/s (non-human Other/s) in the text.


Echoes of Salvation: The Role of Zechariah 8:1–13 in the Development of the Haggai-Zechariah 1–8 Corpus
Program Unit: Book of the Twelve Prophets
Mark Boda, McMaster Divinity College/McMaster University

Introductory formulae found in Zech 7:1, 4, 8; 8:18 suggest the work of a redactor (7:1, 8: “the ?word of Yahweh came to Zechariah, saying”) taking up a first person account of the ?prophet (7:4; 8:18; “the word of Yahweh came to me, saying”). The introductory formula ?in 8:1, with its shortened form “the word of Yahweh came” stands apart from these other ?formulae in chs. 7-8 and suggests that the material which follows has arisen from a ?different hand. This material which follows 8:1 falls into two distinct pieces, 8:2-8 and ??8:9-13, which would make 8:14 the continuation of the speech which is broken off in ??7:14. In this paper I will look more carefully at the material found in 8:1-13? ? and ?evidence for its role in the early development of a Haggai-Zechariah 1-8 corpus?. 8:2-8 interacts with the material in Zech 1-6, applying it to the issues raised in Zech 7-8, while 8:9-13 interacts with the material in Haggai, also applying it to the issues raised in Zech 7-8. In this way Haggai and Zechariah are presented as "earlier prophets" whose words have enduring relevance.


Feeding the Lamps: Zechariah 4 as Dynastic Encouragement
Program Unit: Cultic Personnel in the Biblical World
Mark Boda, McMaster Divinity College/McMaster University

There is little question among scholars that the visionary scene and accompanying oracle in Zechariah 4 focuses attention on royal ideology, especially in light of the two oracles which have been placed at its center and provide encouragement to Zerubbabel and warning to those who would oppose his work of temple building (4:6b-10a). What has not been emphasized in past work on this key passage is the absence of emphasis on the priestly tradition in a vision which appears to be focused on a key priestly accoutrement (lampstand). This paper will argue that Zechariah 4 uses the priestly lampstand tradition for royal purposes, bringing it in line with a key royal fertility tradition and in so doing subtly bolstering the Davidic over priestly stream in early Persian period Yehud.


The Double Current and the Tree of Healing in Ezekiel 47:1–12 in Light of Babylonian Iconography and Texts
Program Unit: Prophetic Texts and Their Ancient Contexts
Daniel Bodi, University of Paris 8

This paper deals with the Iconographic and textual evidence dealing with Ezekiel's vision of the double current flowing from the New Temple in New Jerusalem. The the vision found in Ezek. 47:1-12 describes a spectacular renewal of the Dead Sea owing to the torrent that flows into it from the New Temple allowing fish to abound again. The element of the tree of healing which grows along the torrent will also be analyzed in light of Akkadian texts. Both motifs are found in Ancient Near Eastern iconography as decoration of temple façades.


Living a Life of Luxury? Subsistence versus Trade in the Ancient Economy
Program Unit: Ideological Criticism
Roland Boer, University of Newcastle, Australia

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What Exactly Did Credit Mean in the Ancient World?
Program Unit: Poverty in the Biblical World
Roland Boer, University of Newcastle, Australia

This paper explores the vexed issue of credit in the ancient Near East, especially in light of studies that question the extensiveness of credit for interest. How was credit understood (as far as we are able to discern)? Was its function focussed on monetary return, repayment in kind, or labour? Was credit understood as a source of income for the lender or did the lender seek to ensure the productiveness of labour on the land? Further, how was the issue of 'interest' calculated? Was it a customary amount with little direct or detailed calculation in specific cases?


Jesus Christ: The Greatest Pro of Them All! Kierkegaard and Walker Percy
Program Unit: Søren Kierkegaard Society
Chris Boesel, Drew Theological School

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The Discovery of a Late Antique Statuary Collection at Ostia: New Evidence for the Transformation of Sacred Space in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries
Program Unit: Archaeology of Religion in the Roman World
Douglas Boin, Georgetown University

Throughout the Late Antique Mediterranean, the preservation of statues, particularly those depicting traditional sacred subjects or those offered as dedications, has provided a window onto social and religious transformation during a time of ascendant Christianity. The preservation of statuary collections, known from textual and archaeological evidence, is increasingly important in this regard. Archival research has revealed the discovery of a Late Antique statuary collection from Ostia’s Sanctuary of Magna Mater. Excavated by C.L. and P.E. Visconti in 1867–1869, the sanctuary was a treasure trove of marble sculptures, reliefs, and at least one bronze statue, all of which pertain to the cult of Cybele and Attis. All were well preserved; several were found in the open spaces of the sanctuary. These pieces, the last of which dates to the late fourth century C.E., span 500 years of history. Unfortunately, the collection as whole was soon dispersed throughout Rome, and the Late Antique significance of the finds was lost. This paper reassembles that collection and situates it for the first time within the urban and religious landscape of the late fourth- and fifth-century town. In particular, I propose that, even as dedications came to an end, the sanctuary retained its cultural importance as a museum. Thus, even in an increasingly Christian landscape, I suggest that traditional sacred spaces remained active agents in promoting a multilayered approach to history and identity, encouraging residents and viewers to incorporate the past in the creation of contemporary, Christian identities.


Imperial Cult in a Christian Empire: Late Antique Divi and Imperial Priests of the 4th and 5th Century C.E.
Program Unit: Religious World of Late Antiquity
Douglas Boin, Georgetown University

Now that new contributions have been made to the study of imperial cult in the Roman empire (Jeffrey Brodd and Jonathan Reed [eds.], 2011), the time is ripe to continue that dialogue: by drawing attention to imperial cult practices in the late Roman world. Two studies—one focusing on Divus Constantine, the other on the iconography of Christ as heavenly emperor—have now paved the way for consideration of that topic. This paper expands upon that work in new ways. First, it presents a survey of the epigraphic, legal, numismatic, and literary sources for the Late Antique emperors as divi—culminating in divus Anastasius (491-518 CE). Then, it re-examines the social and cultural context of a one inscription from Rome (CIL 6.1783) which has been used to characterize the late fourth and early fifth-century as a period of “Christian triumph” over the “pagan past” (Hedrick 2000). The fact that this inscription names the emperor Theodosius as divus has, unfortunately, received no attention. This paper situates that inscription within the now-larger corpus of Late Antique divi. In so doing, I suggest that the same social and cultural mechanisms by which individuals and communities drew the attention and patronage of the imperial house (as in earlier periods) remained important mechanisms in the Late Antique world, as well. This thesis challenges scholars who see “the imperial cult” as a phenomenon that was inherently in tension with early Christianity, or as one whose outward “pagan” trappings were thrown off with the legalization of Christianity. To provide further support for this approach, I discuss one contemporary inscription from North Africa, attesting to a flamen perpetuus, or priest of the imperial cult. Erected between 402-408 CE, its existence hints at the dynamic social world of the time.


Qohelet and the Covenant: Some Preliminary Observations
Program Unit: Covenant in the Persian Period
Thomas M. Bolin, Saint Norbert College

Renewed emphasis on the scribal milieu of the Tanakh is a good reminder that the Torah, Nevi’im and Kethuivm are products of the same, relatively small, scribal class. Consequently, strong dichotomies between the Wisdom writings and the remainder of the biblical corpus are ill-advised. This paper explores Qohelet’s remarks about human effort and the cult in an attempt to see if they demonstrate knowledge of, and adherence to, an idea of covenant, tempered in the social and political exigencies of the post-exilic era.


Is Ricoeur Still Relevant? Re-considering the Contributions of The Rule of Metaphor to Biblical Studies
Program Unit: Metaphor Theory and the Hebrew Bible
Ryan Bonfiglio, Emory University

Since the publication of Lakoff and Johnson's highly influential Metaphors We Live By in 1980, conceptual metaphor theories, to borrow a phrase from present-day social media, have been "trending" in a variety of academic circles, including biblical studies. While these current theories have considerably advanced our understandings of metaphorical thought and expression, they have not necessarily rendered past approaches obsolete. As an example, this paper will contend that biblical scholars can utilize the metaphor theory on display in Paul Ricoeur's 1977 The Rule of Metaphor alongside conceptual metaphor theories in ways that are mutually enhancing, not mutually exclusive. The aim of this analysis is twofold. First, by re-examining several key aspects of Ricoeur's metaphor theory – namely, his notions about how metaphors reflect a semantic innovation, function to re-describe reality, and maintain a tension between the "is" and "is not" of referential identity and difference – I will evaluate the extent to which The Rule of Metaphor partially anticipates ideas more fully developed in later conceptual metaphor theories. Second, I will suggest how Ricoeur's approach might uniquely contribute to the analysis of biblical metaphors in ways that other theories cannot do on their own. Specifically, while conceptual metaphor theories offer penetrating insights into the conceptual backgrounds and cognitive mechanisms operative in metaphorical thought, Ricoeur's theories can potentially allow for a more robust understanding of the rhetorical effect of an author's selection of particular linguistic instantiations of a root metaphor in a given context. As a generative example, I will demonstrate how insights offered by Ricoeur and conceptual metaphor theory can enhance our understanding of both the conceptual background and rhetorical effect of the underlying "God is blind" metaphor in Isa 58:3-4.


Daniel's Court Tales as Source Code: What Daniel Can Teach Us about Biblical Development
Program Unit: Transmission of Traditions in the Second Temple Period
Francis Borchardt, Lutheran Theological Seminary, Hong Kong

This paper uses the variants of the Daniel tradition, particularly those in chapters 3:31-6:28 as the basis for a broader argument concerning the growth of biblical texts. The central argument is that the divergent trajectories in which the Daniel court tales were composed, grew, and then were used as the basis for an otherwise unrelated set of apocalyptic texts are extraordinarily similar to the way computer programmers in the modern day use open source code to produce software we use everyday. It is hoped that illustrating the way this phenomenon plays out in modern media with reference to ancient works will further our understanding of the environment in which, not only the book of Daniel, but all literature in the ancient Judean milieu may have developed.


Jewish Myths of the Benign Gentile
Program Unit: Hellenistic Judaism
Francis Borchardt, Lutheran Theological Seminary, Hong Kong

The question of identity has attracted great interest for those studying the texts of Hellenistic Judaism for some time. It is little wonder that Jews living in a liminal space would settle into diverse and fascinating strategies of self-identification in order to cope with the new surroundings introduced in the Hellenistic period. The process of tracing these constructed Jewish identities through various texts has been enlightening. Comparatively little attention, however, has been paid to the way Jews constructed gentile identity in this brave new world of free and open contact with a variety of non-Jewish cultures. This paper makes a small step in that direction. It examines the ways Ptolemy II Philadelphus is depicted in two versions of the LXX myth: the Letter of Aristeas and Philo's Life of Moses 2:26-45. This paper will attempt to show the various ways in which these texts make a non-Jew acceptable and even idealized to their mixed audiences using Jewish and Hellenistic ideals. It is hoped that the conclusions reached will be of value for revealing the attitudes of the Letter of Aristeas and Philo in particular, and for Diaspora Jews as a whole.


The Tablets of the House of Urtenu Considered in Relation to the Entire Cuneiform Alphabetic Corpus from Ugarit
Program Unit: Ugaritic Studies and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy
Pierre Bordreuil, CNRS

Around 120 alphabetic tablets from the house of Urtenu, fortuitously unearthed by a bulldozer in 1973, contain a mass of information of highest interest. This incomplete documentation is the most important group of Ugaritic tablets discovered at Ugarit, other than tablet finds from the royal palaces. The house of Urtenu had significant connections with the three other main centers: the library of the High Priest, the palaces of Ugarit, and Ras Ibn Hani. A mythological fragment bearing the colophon of Ilîmilku (RS 92.2016) refers to the literary texts unearthed during the 1930s; lists of personnel and toponyms as well as epistles tally with those from the royal palaces, and the mention of Yabninu recalls the southern palace (RS 94. 2965). A letter from Ras Ibn Hani (RIH 78/12 = CAT 2. 82) expresses concern with the health of Abdimilku, probably wounded during a battle; an homonym, pointing surely to the same person, appears in the testament of Abdimilku (RS 94. 2168), an important document from this «bibliothèque au sud de la ville» stored in the house of Urtenu.


Critical Engagement with the Biblical Text: Classroom and Online
Program Unit: Academic Teaching and Biblical Studies
Paul Borgman, Gordon College

Though what follows can be adapted to differing pedagogical goals, I have in mind the following focus: to help students become more biblically literate. The biblical literature itself receives the focus of attention, with secondary sources such as standard introductory texts, Oxford Study Bible introductions and notes, and, online, professors’ lectures along with other secondary materials. A professor’s published material can also be made available as secondary material. The course, then, proceeds in three fundamental stages that repeat themselves throughout the course: (1) With a specific biblical text in view, though not yet assigned, students are assigned appropriate secondary reading that sufficiently establishes the important cultural and literary contexts (ancient rhetorical practices, primarily, the dominant techniques of repetition). Written questions or insights—two or three—would be required to be posted online, or brought to class in hard copy. (2) An inductive reading of a limited biblical text (eg., poetry; Esther, Jonah, or Ruth the most obvious beginning entry points into the repetitive patterns shaping biblical narrative; a short epistle, like Galatians or 1 Thessalonians). The assignment would involve online posting of the professor’s prompt questions, necessitating student responses either online or handed in at the beginning of class. Class time could break into smaller groups, with designated presenters from each group offering group findings to the larger class Throughout, or toward the end, the professor would interact with the student findings. (3) A reassessment of inductive findings in light of further and specific secondary sources on the particular text or portion of text chosen. Such secondary material could be the professor’s own lectures, posted online, or published essays and/or books (put on library reserve?), or possibly an assigned text addition to the introductory text (depending on how sophisticated this text is regarding the rhetorical shaping of ancient literary texts). Students write short paragraphs summarizing in what way the secondary reading has challenged or broadened or brought questions regarding their initial close readings. Again, the class time could have a breaking into groups, with presenters’ offering major insights and/or questions. The professor then guides a “circle” of critical conversation and engagement. The stages are repeated for the next assigned biblical text, each text representing the major genres—with perhaps narrative getting the lion’s share of attention, since it is the backbone of the biblical canon.


The Limitations of Literacy, or, The Implausibility of an Anti-monarchical Text like Hosea Being Composed during the Monarchic Period
Program Unit: Book of the Twelve Prophets
James M. Bos, University of Mississippi

The book of Hosea contains several passages that are strongly critical of the behavior of the kings of Israel, a couple others that dismiss them (or perhaps any king) as irrelevant, and several others that delimit their royal prerogatives of making war, conducting diplomacy, and carrying out large construction projects. Many scholars have recognized the anti-monarchical sentiment in the book. However, with a couple of exceptions, scholars who have undertaken an analysis of this perspective in the book have attempted to fit this ideology into the context of eighth-century Israel, that is, the prophet (ostensibly responsible for the majority of the book) is viewed as something like a social critic. However, the idea that an Israelite prophet could criticize in writing the king of Israel is problematic in light of the limitation of literacy to just a few social locations in the southern Levant, namely, within the context of a royal administration, within a temple context (closely associated with a royal administration in most instances), and for merchant activity. Israelite men (and women) in other social roles would have had little to no need of literacy. Even if a relatively large number of Israelites were exposed to the basics of literacy (like the alphabet, or reading and writing one’s name), which is debatable, only a handful of persons in Israel at any one time would have had both the intellectual capacity and the access to extensive scribal training (available primarily via the royal administration it seems) to write a sophisticated literary work like the book of Hosea. Furthermore, those who did have the ability to write larger literary works would have been educated and socialized in a pro-monarchic context, one that reinforced the notion of the king’s superiority to other humans and his divine right to rule. These considerations suggest that the book of Hosea (and other books in the Hebrew Bible with a strong anti-monarchical bent) should perhaps be understood as a product of the (Judahite) post-monarchic period.


“I Want You to Be Wise…” Oral Aspects of the Letter to the Romans
Program Unit: Performance Criticism of the Bible and Other Ancient Texts
Pieter Botha, University of South Africa

The Letter to the Romans is considered to be among the most sophisticated and literary among the Pauline Letters. The presence of diatribal rhetoric in it is widely acknowledged, but the function thereof has generated considerable debate. A performative, orally determined context for this letter provides a different perspective on these elements of the text, allowing the interpreter to inquire into the oral style of teaching, and the elucidation of a (projected) audience. In this paper I explore a setting for the “team” consisting of Tertius, Phoebe, Paul and others attempting to persuade some influential persons in the developing Christian communities in the imperial capital to become patrons for gospel teachers


How (Not) to "Live with the Woman": Genesis 18 and 20 in 1 Peter 3:7
Program Unit: Letters of James, Peter, and Jude
Nicholas Bott, Stanford, Palo Alto

Reference to Sarah as a model for believing wives in 3:6 has provided fodder for an evaluation of 1 Peter’s use of Scripture as undisciplined and tangential. And while many studies have looked to the larger Abrahamic narrative to provide warrant that 1 Peter is sensitive to the context of the OT narrative he evokes (Kiley, Grudem, Spencer, van Rensburg), scholarly consensus has invalidated these intertextual proposals on the grounds that “they press the lexical evidence further than it allows” (Green). This paper offers a fresh appraisal of 1 Peter’s use of Sarah in 3:6 in light of his instructions to husbands in 3:7, offering an intertexual reading of 3:7 to explain the peculiar instructions to husbands found there, to demonstrate the contextually appropriate reasons for 1 Peter’s use of Sarah in 3:6, and to validate 1 Peter’s use of previous Scripture as both disciplined and nuanced. This paper is particularly distinctive in that it establishes the literary coherence of the phrases “living with the woman,” “weaker vessel,” and the rationale behind the commands to husbands that ensure their prayers “are not hindered.” These phrases are linked by their sexual and reproductive connotations, and are visible in Genesis 18 and 20, to which they allude. Moreover, 1 Peter’s use of this narrative identifies Abraham negatively, as a husband who refuses to regard Sarah as a “coheir” in light of her reproductive capacity, or lack thereof. 1 Peter’s instructions to husbands contrast Sarah’s submission to the marital relationship, despite Abraham’s age (3:6), with Abraham’s disregard of the marital relationship, because of Sarah’s age (3:7). With this reading, 3:7 no longer remains an afterthought to 1 Peter’s instructions, and his reference to Sarah in 3:6 exhibits remarkable sensitivity to the underlying tensions present in the scriptural narratives to which he alludes.


The Afterlives of Martyred Bodies in Late Antique Judaism
Program Unit: Violence and Representations of Violence in Antiquity
Ra‘anan Boustan, University of California-Los Angeles

This paper reviews the archaeological and textual evidence for the Jewish cult of the “very special dead” in late antiquity, both within and beyond rabbinic literature. One prominent strain within early rabbinic literature sought to prevent the sanctification of holy places outside of Jerusalem and its destroyed Temple; likely as part of that wider project, the rabbis of the second to fourth centuries explicitly set restrictions on pilgrimage to and worship at the graves of the special dead, as potentially dangerous sites of interreligious contact and shared worship. Yet, I argue that rabbinic literature does not reflect the full range of Jewish attitudes toward the corporeal remains of the righteous dead. Jewish sources attest a growing interest in and latitude toward such practices over time. Such changes are especially visible within Jewish martyrological sources from Byzantine Palestine (fifth to seventh centuries). I argue that changes within rabbinic culture, coupled with the process of Christianization, transformed the Jewish cult of the dead in ways that the first generations of rabbis could not have foreseen.


Material Texts and the Study of Ancient Mediterranean Religion: The Case of Judaism
Program Unit:
Ra'anan S. Boustan, University of California-Los Angeles

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Presentation of S.C. Mimouni, Early Judaeo-Christianity: Historical Essays
Program Unit: Construction of Christian Identities
Daniel Boyarin, University of California-Berkeley

Presentation of S.C. Mimouni, Early Judaeo-Christianity. Historical Essays, Leuven, Peeters, 2012 (Interdisciplinary Studies in Ancient Culture and Religion, 13).


A Biblical Conciliation Consideration of the Seventh-day Adventist Ordination Conversation
Program Unit: Adventist Society for Religious Studies
Bruce Boyd, Canadian University College

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Teaching and Preaching the Passion Narratives after the Shoah
Program Unit: Jewish-Christian Dialogue and Sacred Texts
Mary C. Boys, Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York

In the past fifty years, some Christians have taken a long look in the tarnished mirror of our tradition’s history with Jews, and seen the shadow side of Christianity reflected. Christians have reiterated for nearly two millennia that the Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus Christ, thereby unjustly maligning Judaism and inflicting bitter suffering on Jews. In some periods, the violence inherent in the rhetoric of odious contrast was used to justify bloodshed. The accusation that Jews are implicated in the death of Jesus suffuses the New Testament, particularly the passion narratives. Moreover, these texts are proclaimed in Christian worship; as scripture, they are sacred and normative writing that cannot merely be set aside. Further, the fundamental plot line of these texts is widely known, even among those largely unschooled in the Christian tradition. While its underlying argument is the more abstract claim that Jews “rejected” Jesus, this allegation comes alive through a drama of good versus evil, of innocent suffering and ultimate vindication. The characters are memorable, especially the villainous ones (e.g., Judas, Caiaphas, the chief priests and elders of the people, “the Jews”). Scenes from the various passion narratives have dominated Christian art, and been a staple of sacred music. One need never have picked up a New Testament to know the basic contours of the story of the crucifixion of Jesus and the events leading to it. In this presentation I will explore the resources biblical scholarship provides to enable Christians to think about the death of Jesus in new ways, and thereby also to do greater justice to our relationship with Jews.


A Literary Analysis of Selected Secondary Characters in the Book of Judith
Program Unit: International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies
Robin Gallaher Branch, Victory University

Secondary characters in any literary work play supporting roles. In their cameo appearances, they reinforce the importance of the primary characters, the stars. While not given top billing on the marquee, they nonetheless remain crucial to the plot and contribute to its twists and turns. When a secondary character interacts with a primary character, additional traits of the primary one emerge. However in this interaction, often distinct personality traits of the secondary character likewise appear. This paper looks at selected secondary characters in the Book of Judith including--among others--Joakim, the high priest and leader of the council in Jerusalem; Uzziah, the magistrate of Bethulia, the city besieged by Holofernes and the Assyrian army; and Bagoas, Holofernes’ aide de camp. Via a literary methodology which sees the Book of Judith as a fictional short story, this paper examines the contributions of characters who play supporting roles to those taking center stage, Judith the beautiful Bethulian widow, and Holofernes, the Assyrian bully who is conquering the world. Yet borders are crossed as Judith, accompanied by her silent maid, invades the Assyrian camp, dressed for battle in a tiara and anklets. Beguiled by her beauty and wisdom and blindly unaware of the intrusion within the boundaries of his camp, Holofernes succumbs to his lustful fantasies, passes out drunk and dies ignominiously—beheaded by Judith in his own bedroom, unprotected by Bagoas and surrounded by his sloppy, sleeping, undisciplined army. The God of Israel wins over Nebuchadnezzar, the ruler of the Assyrians and their self-declared god. It is a stunning triumph.


Elizabeth and Mary: Teaching Feminist Hermeneutics via Dramas Starring Two Biblical Heroines
Program Unit: Feminist Hermeneutics of the Bible
Robin Gallaher Branch, Victory University

A way successfully to teach the importance of women in the biblical text and to incorporate a lesson on feminist hermeneutics is via drama. Two of my dramas showcase the significance of Elizabeth and Mary in the birth narratives in Luke and Matthew. Both dramas use a literary methodology and are scheduled for publication in 2012 and 2013. This paper provides examples of teaching feminist hermeneutics via giving two outstanding women voice and pausing on the texts surrounding them. My scholarly monologue, “Astonishment and Joy: Luke 1 as Told from the Perspective of Elizabeth,” examines the events in Luke 1 from the viewpoint of Elizabeth, the elderly wife of Zechariah, a priest. Luke 1 frames its central events from a female and indeed a gynocentric perspective. As a named participant, Elizabeth should figure predominantly in scholarly articles and sermons. Surprisingly, she does not. Instead, scholarly, lectionary, seasonal, and congregational attention focuses primarily on Zechariah, Gabriel, and Mary, the chapter’s other speaking characters. Consequently, the monologue seeks to showcase, honor, and analyze Elizabeth, an overlooked yet pivotal eyewitness. The dramatic monologue lets her speak of the astonishing recent events in her life and thereby invites readers and hearers to share her joy, surely a singular theme in Luke’s gospel. My play, “When Mary Tells Joseph: A Play Based on Matthew 1:18-19,” looks at two verses that summarize an important event: when Joseph learns of Mary’s pregnancy, does not believe her story, and chooses to divorce her. The play combines both scholarship and standard drama features—character, conflict, plot, setting, viewpoint, tone, and dialogue. At times it employs humor and thus relieves tension. The Mary play and Elizabeth monologue both encourage and engage the imagination of audience members while shining the spotlight on two extraordinary biblical heroines.


Models of Demonic Rule: The Aramaic Levi Document, the Plea for Deliverance, and Jubilees 1:19–21
Program Unit: Pseudepigrapha
Miryam T. Brand, Brown University

The description of demonic rule that causes sin can be found in several works of Jewish Pseudepigrapha. This paper will focus on the description of this "phenomenon" in three works: Levi’s prayer in the Aramaic Levi Document (ALD), the Plea for Deliverance (column 19 of the Psalms Scroll), and Moses’ prayer in Jubilees 1:19-21. Through comparison of these three works, this paper attempts to draw the contours of demonic "rule" leading to sin as it was perceived in the Second Temple period. The terminological similarity of the Aramaic Levi Document and the Plea for Deliverance and their reliance on Ps 119:133 is well-known. When read together, ALD 3:9, the Plea for Deliverance, and Jub. 1:19-21 demonstrate that the more abstract idea in Ps 119:133b, namely that sin may "rule over" the speaker, was later transformed into a description of the workings of demons who cause sin. These demons, while clearly a force to be reckoned with, are under divine control. Demons may achieve dominion over human beings, thereby causing sin; however, all three texts agree that God has the power to prevent this dominion. These three works reflect a complex view of sin, where internal and external sources of sin combine to cause iniquity. The Plea makes no distinction whatsoever between internal-human and external-demonic sources of sin and pain, while Moses’ prayer in Jubilees and Levi’s prayer in ALD address the human desire to sin separately from the potential influence of Belial (Jub.) or "any satan" (ALD). In addition, in all three texts, the request that the demonic presence not be allowed to "rule" the speaker follows a request that God prevent sin, and in ALD and the Plea, that God endow the speaker with good qualities (ALD 3:6-7) or cleanse him from past sins (11QPsa XIX 13-14). In other words, demonic influence is only one possible source of sin, alongside a person’s own internal qualities. Finally, while evil forces are described as "ruling" the sinner, the sinner is not exclusively under their command, just as Belial is not the exclusive ruler of the Israelites in Jub. 1:19-21. The nature of demonic rule is evident through terminological parallels with legal documents found in the Babatha archive. These documents use terms similar to those found in ALD and the Plea to denote the right over and control of a property or person. Consequently, it is possible to understand that the use of both these terms in reference to demons is an expression, on the one hand, of the control and authority that demons may wield over the human self and, on the other, of the idea that this right must be granted by God (as such a right would be legally granted in the case of property). In the context of the passages examined here, the use of these terms implies that to nullify the demon’s power it is sufficient to ask God not to allow such control.


Polybian Republicanism in the Israelite Covenant
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible and Political Theory
Steele Brand, Baylor University

Philosophers and historians throughout history have analyzed ancient Israel through a republican lens. Stephanus Junius Brutus, John Calvin, Petrus Cunaeus, James Harrington, Baruch Spinoza, John Toland, Thomas Paine, and John Adams, are a few examples. While their examinations may betray a tendency towards anachronism, the Israelite covenant(s) nonetheless offered some novel political theories in its ancient context. One of the more appropriate ways to systematically approach Israel’s so-called republicanism is to explore the writings of the first classical theorists on republicanism. With some discretion, Polybius’ analysis of the Roman Republic can be applied to the political structure indicated in Israelite covenantalism. Polybius followed the political theorizing of Plato, Aristotle, and Xenophon, and his analysis of the Roman constitution provided the first complete articulation of ancient republicanism. Polybius himself was a statesman and general before he became a historian and theorist; thus his work has a penchant for comprehensive, practical applications. Ironically, Polybius has been compared to both Jeremiah and Josephus, and the latter was almost certainly aware of Polybius’ political terminology when he wrote of the Mosaic politeia. According to Polybius and his forebears, ancient republicanism was defined by certain qualities, namely, the consent of the governed, the rule of law, mixed government, civic virtue, and military participation. Israelite literature foreshadowed each of these Polybian traits in its own unique ways, giving rise to the Early Modern theory of an Israelite “republic.” I will demonstrate how Polybius‘ notions of republicanism were prefigured by the Pentateuch and the Deuteronomic history. Polybian and covenantal comparisons are imperfect, but their mere existence demands further exploration. The notion of popular consent, mixed government, and civic virtue prior to the classical models must be examined in a world confronted with democratic attempts outside the traditional Western norms.


What Is a Context, and How Would Someone Put a Biblical Text Into It?
Program Unit: Contextual Biblical Interpretation
Brennan W. Breed, Columbia Theological Seminary

In recent years, biblical scholars have become much more sensitive to the context-dependence of meaning as well as the ongoing recontextualization of biblical texts. For some scholars, the focus on context is a means of delimiting meaning by "putting the text in its ancient context." For other scholars, the emphasis on contextualization represents an effort to push beyond the traditional fields of "lower" and "higher" criticism. Yet strangely, both historical-critical biblical scholars and cultural studies-minded contextual readers generally avoid an analysis of the concept of context itself. What is a context, exactly? Though modern biblical scholarship has advanced our knowledge primarily because of its concern for historical contextualization of texts, “context” often functions as a catch-all term that at times references linguistic synchrony, at other times references literary conventions, and at other times references the world of historical events, including authors and their intentions. The field of contextual hermeneutics, as well, often seems to take for granted the concept of context. Perhaps the concept of “context” has eluded analysis because it is, to the observing scholar, a "horizontal phenomenon," such as peripheral vision, which is defined as that which one does not analyze directly. In this paper, I will develop a concept of context that takes the peripheral notion of context as its central definition. Contexts are particular determinations of underdetermined elements that could always be configured differently. This is not to say that elements and their relations are completely open to any determination imaginable. On the contrary the parts of a context can always play multiple roles– but not just any role– within the context itself. Contexts are not pre-given wholes like a puzzle in which every piece has only one place to fit within the larger picture. Rather, contexts more closely resemble a set of building materials in which the contours of each element allow for certain connections, but not others. These structural contours allow for a multiplicity of constructions that are not identical, but each exhibit a certain stability. Rather than thinking of a context as an already-determined synthesis of parts into a whole, we must think in terms of "disjunctive synthesis." As literary contexts, biblical texts are determinable in the same way, as is their relationship to any particular historical context in which they are read. Biblical examples will come from the books of Psalms, Proverbs, and Amos.


Extensive and Intensive Difference in 2 Kings 6:8–23
Program Unit: Biblical Criticism and Literary Criticism
Brennan W. Breed, Columbia Theological Seminary

As the philosopher Gilles Deleuze explained, there are different kinds of difference. "Extensive difference" denotes the difference between measurable properties, such as mass or location. For example, the distance between Chicago and Atlanta is an extensive difference. But this type of difference presumes the existence and privilege of fixed identities, and conceives of difference in purely negative terms–difference is thus only an empty space, or merely a lack of resemblance. Deleuze argues that another form of difference, namely "intensive difference," provides a powerful and yet often overlooked counterpoint to extensive difference. An example of an intensive difference is the difference in temperature and pressure between two adjacent air masses. This difference is not merely a lack of resemblance, it is on the contrary a productive and potentially hurricane producing event. Intensive differences drive processes; the process of geological formation, for instance, is driven by differences in temperature, pressure and density that produced–and is still subtly changing–the extensive distance between Chicago and Atlanta. Intensive differences thus produce identities and constantly change them. Deleuze's discussion of difference may help us to see several biblical narratives, in particular the prophetic narratives in 1-2 Kings, in a new light. In the story of 2 Kings 6:8-23, the story revolves around a series of extensive differences, such as those between Israel and Aram, sight and blindness, presence and absence, and knowledge and ignorance. Yet the 'ish elohim bodies forth the unsettling but productive power of intensive difference, which in turn transforms both Israelites and Arameans. The difference between these differences produces the narrative and drives its characters.


Lucian, On the Syrian Goddess: A Confusing Polis Religion?
Program Unit: Greco-Roman Religions
Frederick E. Brenk, Pontifical Biblical Institute

In her massive commentary, Lucian: On the Syrian Goddess (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), Jane Lightfoot takes the work very seriously as a description of the Syrian religion, in which the fictional narrator, who presumes to be the author, a Greco-Syrian, asserts his own identity and the superiority of this religious site over any other. Jas Elsner, “Describing Self in the Language of the Other: Pseudo (?) Lucian at the Temple of Hierapolis,” in: Simon Goldhill (ed.), Being Greek under Rome: Cultural Identity, the Second Sophistic and the Development of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 123-153, describes a Syrian Greek, whose “Syrianness” and “Greekness” are always in conflict. The debate centers somewhat on the narrator’s reliability in discussing the “Syrian” religion, and the seriousness of the work. Against both are Marie-Françoise Baslez, John North, and Alain Billault. Most recently, Daniel Richter “More Syrians,” in his Cosmopolis. Imagining Community in Late Classical Athens and the Early Roman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) 235-242, has noted the inconsistencies and confusion, which he sees as intentional, but which also are at the heart of syncretism. In any case as soon as we speak of polis religion here, pan-Syrian religion, a cult, or a Greco-Roman-Syrian hybrid, boundaries seem to break down. Exoticism and syncretism, visual representation and large temples, were part of the day. But for the fictional narrator of the piece, the lines demarcating “Syrian religion,” polis religion, or a cult, were not at all clear. To understand On the Syrian Goddess, one can compare Lucian to voluminous writers like Pausanias and Plutarch. Each had a particular agenda and produced similar but serious works on certain religious sites which were somewhat difficult to define. Elsner has noted many similarities between the work of Pausanias and On the Syrian Goddess, in particularly a sense of religion and pilgrimage. Pausanias’ purpose in a sense is the exaltation of a religion encompassing the whole of Greece. Ultimately, though, Pausanias’ approach is based on Greek polis religion. Susan Alcock, too, has described something similar in “Landscapes of Memory and the Authority of Pausanias,” in: Domenico Musti et al. (eds.), Pausanias historien (Vandoeuvres-Geneva: Fondation Hardt, 1994) 241-267. In the case of places like Corinth or Athens, the lines of polis religion are rather clearly drawn. However, for Delphi or Olympia there is a Pan-Hellenic element which blurs the lines between polis religion, cult, and Pan-Hellenism. Do we have here polis religion, a local cult, or Hellenic religion? In the Imperial period, this situation became much more complicated and particularly so in the case of religions like that of the Syrian Goddess at Hierapolis, where a non-Greek element enters, even if described in Greek terms. The name itself suggests the religion of a polis, but it hardly is a typical Greek polis religion, in spite of all the (pretended) efforts of the narrator.


Philo and Plutarch on the Nature of God
Program Unit: Philo of Alexandria
Frederick E. Brenk, Pontifical Biblical Institute, Rome

In 1969, John Whittaker wrote an illuminating article entitled “Ammonius On the E at Delphi (Classical Quarterly 19, 185-192). On several specific points, he noted strong correspondences with statements in Philo. Among these are: the equation of God with Plato’s Being, rendered through the Greek participle “being” (or as “the really being”) both in the neuter and in the masculine singular ; the unity of God, rendered as “the one” (neuter) or as “one” (masculine); the One as a-polla “not many” (a-privative and polla from “Apollo”); the interpretation of the name Ieios as “the one and only;” and the exaggerated description of the mutability of human beings. Whittaker attributed some of these correspondences to Neopythagorean teaching in Alexandria, and believed that some probably derived from Eudorus of Alexandria, considered the founder of Middle Platonism. The terminology for God has resonances in many philosophers, while that on the mutability of human beings appears in Ovid and Seneca as well as in Plutarch. More recently, Rainer Hirsch-Luipold (who does not cite Whittaker) has concentrated on the notion of the One God (“Der eine Gott bei Philon von Alexandrien und Plutarch,” in R. Hirsch-Luipold, ed., Gott und die Götter bei Plutarch. Götterbilder, Gottesbilder, Weltbilder [Berlin 2005] 141-168). The matter is very important for the discussion of “pagan monotheism,” since opponents of this term refuse to see pagan monotheism as religious. Plutarch’s approach, like Philo’s, however, is distinctively religious. Thus, at least indirectly, Philo may have been an important influence on the religious thought of Graeco-Roman intellectuals. He offered a theological model for those who wanted to worship a monotheistic God whose nature had been elaborated in Middle Platonism.


The Politics of Marriage in Genesis
Program Unit: Pentateuch
Mark G. Brett, Whitley College

From the time of Jubilees onwards, interpreters of Genesis have worked hard to create the impression that the ancestral marriages are valid and proper, but there are many ways in which this common interpretive endeavour departs from the details of the primary texts, especially when they are read through the lens of the Persian period. Sarah Shechtman’s recent question is well formulated: why does the emphasis found in both P and non-P texts on the Aramean lineage of the matriarchs (via Terah or Bethuel) suddenly evaporate with the sons of Jacob? Contra Shectman, however, it is simply not the case that the earlier endogamous marriages conform to common anthropological norms without complication. Secondly, it is unlikely that the cognitive dissonances bequeathed by earlier traditions regarding ancestral marriages might have been addressed by purely literary solutions, without regard for the historical challenges faced by the editors’ audience. In this paper, I will pursue the hypothesis that the editors of Genesis belong to the Holiness School (or are strongly influenced by them) and that they are burdened not simply by the weight and contradictions of tradition, but by the social and economic challenges arising from Nehemiah’s ethnocentric policies.


The "Same" Metaphor in Parallel Texts: Psalm 18 and 2 Samuel 22
Program Unit: Metaphor Theory and the Hebrew Bible
Marc Brettler, Brandeis University

The poems in Psalm 18 and 2 Samuel 22 are well-known parallels, yet they contain significant differences. How might these differences be explored as a way of understanding how the "same" larger metaphor is expressed in parallel poems in slightly different contexts?


The Commanding, Saving, Protecting Power of the Voice of God: The Function of Yahweh’s kôl in the Psalter
Program Unit: Book of Psalms
Ginny Brewer-Boydston, Baylor University

In the Psalter, the mighty voice of the LORD appears fifteen times in eight psalms (Pss 18; 29; 46; 68; 81; 95; 103; 106). Can one, therefore, draw any conclusions about the psalmists’ use of kôl in the Psalter? Does God’s voice act in certain ways in the psalms? Is the use of kôl tied to specific topics or a particular theology? In this paper, I will investigate the literary function of Yahweh’s kôl in the eight psalms listed above in order to answer these questions. Four of the psalms using the term are theophanic in nature (Pss 18; 29; 46; 68) and four are not (Pss 81; 96; 103; 106). The voice functions in two particular ways in the Psalter. In the theophanic psalms, the voice is employed by the psalmist to demonstrate how it saves and protects God’s people, specifically controlling chaos and intervening on behalf other people, and to motivate the people to praise God for its great power. In the non-theophanic psalms, the voice of God serves as a reminder of the people’s past disobedience and as a command for present obedience. Early in Israel’s history, God appeared to the people in theophany as a symbol of God’s presence among them. As the Torah and the Prophets begin to serve as a conduit for God’s presence, it is God’s word through law and prophetic utterance that replace theophany. Both the law and prophecy call for obedience on behalf of the people to God’s word, which can result in blessing and prosperity. These psalms, therefore, reflect a progression of the function of the voice of God in Israel’s history from divine presence among the people early in the history of the nation to God’s word itself among them calling for obedience after the devastation of the Babylonian exile.


Encountering Hellenism: 1 Clement as a Test Case
Program Unit: Inventing Christianity: Apostolic Fathers, Apologists, and Martyrs
Cilliers Breytenbach, Humboldt-University Berlin

The 1st Letter of Clement is one of the most important documents illustrating the encounter between emerging Christianity and Greco-Roman thought, as the seminal works of von Harnack, Jäger and van Unnik have demonstrated. The paper reviews the research on 1st Clement and explores recent development in this field.


Hierarchy, Equality, or Mutuality? Mapping out the Relational Contours of Second Corinthians
Program Unit: Institute for Biblical Research
David Briones, Sterling College

Hierarchy, Equality, or Mutuality?: Mapping out the Relational Contours of Second Corinthians


Medium,Prophetess, Diviner: Women as Cultic Functionaries in Military Context in the Bible and the Apocrypha
Program Unit: Contextual Biblical Interpretation
Ora Brison, Tel Aviv University

The practices of divination and magic are not unique to the ancient biblical world. They are an accompanying cultural aspect throughout human history, in dark as well as in enlightened times. It is no wonder that these practices are to be found in Israeli culture. It is, however, surprising to see to what extent such practices are current daily phenomena in the modern state of Israel. Many people including prominent figures of high political and financial positions are regularly consulting various mediums, astrologists, numerologists and many other varieties of "spiritual gurus" (many of which are women who "have the gift"). Especially widespread is the phenomenon of religious “Yid‘onut" (fortune-telling, including elements of kabala). More and more Israelis are trying to influence their personal destiny by receiving spiritual guidance from certain "Blessed" Rabbis casting spells, curses, blessings and handing out charms. The practice of pilgrimage to "holy graves" is equally prevalent among Israelis hoping for a change of their fortune. I find these practices intriguing and am particularly interested in their ancient origins. In this presentation I attempt to trace biblical origins of similar practices in stories of magic, prophecy and divination. The first is an exceptional story openly portraying a woman practicing magic. This is the story of the medium (’eshet ba‘alat ob) of En-dor, King Saul, and Samuel’s spirit, on the eve of Saul’s final battle with the Philistines and his death (1 Sam. 28:5-25). This biblical text is quite explicit in its depiction of a woman necromancer. This comparative study also refers to the stories of the prophetess Deborah, and the enigmatic encounter between Yael the Kenite and Sisera, the army commander of Yabin king of Hazor, described in Judges 4--5, and the Apocryphal story of the encounter between Judith and Holofernes (Judith 8-16).


Mark’s Links to Acts 1:1–15:35: Indications of a Careful Literary Transformation
Program Unit: Markan Literary Sources
Thomas L. Brodie, Dominican Biblical Institute

Mark and the first half of Acts may seem worlds apart, yet several episodes of Mark have curious similarities to those in Acts, similarities so striking and persistent that they indicate the presence of some form of literary link. For instance, the account of the lowering of the man through an opening in the roof (Mark 2:1-12), an incident that, within Mark’s gospel initiates an emphasis on controversy with Jewish authorities (Mark 2:1-3:6), has curious similarities to Peter’s vision of the lowering of the sheet from heaven (Acts 10:9-16), an event that also led to controversy, though of a more peaceful kind. The paper examines some of the similarities, and asks what is the best explanation of the data. The paper then steps back and reviews some further data: (1) The changing context for discussing composition and possible links between texts: (a) there is increasing awareness that in tracing the composition of biblical prose narrative the role of oral tradition and redaction has been overstated, and that it is necessary to allow for thoroughly literary processes, including both scribal literary traditions whereby a writer build on a line of preceding writers, and also careful complex transformation; (b) there is particular awareness that Mark, far from being “clumsy” or “unliterary”, is a highly literary writing; (c) the recent gradual emergence of criteria for judging literary dependence. (2) The broad context of some existing affinities between the work of Mark and that of Luke: (a) Luke’s gospel uses Mark in a transparent way; (b) initial evidence points to some dependence of both Mark and Luke-Acts on epistles. (3) Raymond E. Brown’s thesis: of all the literary models underlying the gospels the strongest claims are those of the biblical prophetic lives, especially that of Elijah, and particularly Elisha (“Jesus and Elisha”, Perspective, 12: 1971, 86-104). (4) Among the gospels, those that most clearly depend on the Elijah-Elisha narrative are Luke and Mark. (5) Several features in the work Luke-Acts have generated theories about earlier narratives—Proto-Luke, or “Semitic” Luke (which included most of Acts 1-15), or Elijah-Elisha Luke (which included all of Acts 1:1-15:35). The paper then makes a proposal: The Elijah-Elisha narrative did indeed function as an initial model for the gospels, first for Luke in the Elijah/Elisha-shaped narrative that included Acts 1:1-15:35, and then for Mark, who—probably in accord with scribal writing tradition—not only used the Elijah-Elisha narrative but also incorporated Luke’s Elijah/Elisha-based narrative (including Acts 1:1-15:35), transforming its text in accord with his own distinct vision. This is the explanation that most easily accounts for the data, and so best satisfies the requirements of scientific method.


On Editing Works of Classical Rabbinic Literature
Program Unit: Qumran
Robert Brody, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

A number of factors have converged (or conspired) to produce a widespread consensus against "eclectic" editions of classical rabbinic texts and in favor of extremely conservative text editions which valorize a particular manuscript of a given text, whether for quasi-ideological or for supposedly objective academic reasons. "Eclectic" became almost a term of abuse in the wake of several justifiably devastating reviews of editions of the Mechilta and Sifre Deuteronomy published in the 1920's and 1930's, but the excesses or abuses of particular practitioners should not have been allowed to decide fundamental methodological questions. In addition, considerable terminological imprecision has prevailed; the "eclectic" label has been applied much too broadly, while in fact almost all editors have pursued a mixed approach, neither purely eclectic like Malter's edition of BT Ta'anit nor slavishly following a single preferred witness through thick and thin, as in the variorum edition of the Babylonian Talmud which is being published by the Institute for the Complete Israeli Talmud of Jerusalem. Another factor which has contributed to the valorization of particular manuscripts has been the influence of scholars of rabbinic Hebrew and Aramaic, following in the footsteps of the late Yechezkel Kutscher who famously privileged so called "avot tekstim", foremost among them the celebrated MS Kaufmann of the Mishnah. But linguistic and textual purity are not interchangeable, and MS Kaufmann contains a great many obvious errors, not all of which have been repaired by its several correctors. I propose to discuss a number of examples, drawn primarily from my work on the Mishnah and Tosefta of tractate Ketubbot, in order to demonstrate the pitfalls which have resulted from an excessively high valuation of particular manuscripts and manuscript traditions of these two works, and to argue for the advantages of editions based on the principles of stemmatic criticism.


The Eve of Islamic Exegesis: Imagining the First Woman in Formative Tafsir
Program Unit: Qur'an and Biblical Literature
Catherine Bronson, The University of Chicago

The primary focus of my proposed study is the historicization of the formative exegetical discourse on Eve, or Hawwa, among Quran exegetes during the 7th-10th centuries CE. I examine the literary interrelationships between Quranic commentary (tafsir), quasi-historical traditions (akhbar), prophetic hadith and other, late antique literary representations of Eve found in Jewish and Christian literature (parascriptural corpora, midsrashim, sermons, poetry, etc.). Based on my preliminary research, I argue that the earliest Muslim interpretations of and discourse on Eve were conducted outside of a Quranic frame of reference, leaving posterity to deal with the discomfiting disjunction between the scriptural-textual Eve and her exegetical counterpart. Indeed, the Quranic portrayal of Eve as Adam’s helpmate and consort accords little with the seductress of the exegetes. I argue that, by viewing early exegesis on Eve as an accreted body of literature produced within the confluences of late antique syncretism, we can glean insight into the intellectual development of the early Islamic community as conceptions of the first woman evolved from ecumenically-minded, multi-confessional renderings of Eve to the particularistic renderings where self-definition and legitimation took precedence.


Acts and the Discourses of the Scrolls from Qumran
Program Unit: Book of Acts
George Brooke, University of Manchester

This paper will offer an overview of the current discussion of what students of Acts might learn from looking at the Scrolls from Qumran. The paper will have three parts. In the first there will be some brief updating of where the discussion of the last 60 years has reached; that discussion has focused particularly on how the discourse of the sectarian scrolls might illuminate some features of Acts. In the second part attention will be paid to other discourses represented in the Scrolls, especially those that can be broadly labelled as pre-sectarian, discourses that have only become better known since the overall publication of the complete corpus of Scrolls in the last twenty years. In the third part there will be more detailed discussion of how the discourses based on scriptural traditions in both Acts and the Scrolls can be seen both as having distinct dimensions but also as being mutually illuminating.


The Name ‘Erastus’ in Antiquity: A Literary, Papyrical, and Epigraphical Catalog
Program Unit: Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy
Timothy Brookins, Houston Baptist University

Abstract to be considered for the Second Project (First-Century Christianity and Ancient Economy): One of the most critical pieces in the debate about social stratification in the Corinthian church is that of the socio-economic profile of “Erastus,” whom Paul describes in Rom 16:23 as ho oikonomos tes poleos. Hot debate has surrounded this figure ever since the 1929 discovery of an ancient inscription bearing his name. Two portions of a paving slab situated east of the stage building of the Roman theatre together contain the inscription: “Erastus in return for his aedileship laid (the pavement) at his own expense (Erastus pro aedilitate s.p. stravit)” (Corinth VIII 232). Upon its discovery, the inscription immediately roused the interest of biblical scholars. If this was the same man as the Corinthian Christian named by Paul, it would have seismic ramifications for our understanding of the socio-economic composition of the early church, for the aedileship was one of the highest municipal offices in Corinth. Three questions have remained central to the debate: the date of the inscription, the nature of the office of oikonomos, and the frequency of the name “Erastus” in antiquity. Several recent articles have treated questions related to the date of the inscription and the nature of Erastus’ office (Goodrich 2010; Weiss 2010; Friesen 2010; Goodrich 2011). The present paper attempts to make a contribution with regard to the frequency of the name in antiquity. Moving beyond Meggitt’s earlier research (1996; 1999), this paper furnishes a comprehensive catalog of literary, papyrical, and epigraphical occurrences of the name (in Greek and in Latin) in antiquity. The payoff of the catalog is two-fold: (1) it provides, for the first time, comprehensive quantitative proof that the name was in fact rare; and (2) it reveals a chronological, geographical, and institutional distribution for the name which allows for a tantalizing new hypothesis regarding the social station of Paul’s Erastus.


Mapping the Metaphorical World: The Case of Psalm 1
Program Unit: Book of Psalms
Buzz Brookman, North Central University

Many of the psalms do something very sophisticated in the realm of conceptualizing reality. They employ metaphor and simile. While the level of sophistication of such language use in the cognitive-linguistic sense is impressive, it may, at the same time, also be described as child’s play. It is something humans do. Indeed, metaphor has been described as an inventive tool that God has placed in our minds. Regrettably, the exact nuances of some metaphors from antiquity may partially allude us since metaphors have been demonstrated to be matters of thought. Yet, as been has suggested (Van Hecke), interrelated clusters of metaphors may facilitate a clarity of how the ancient psalmists conceptualized reality. Current conceptual metaphor theory recognizes that there are patterns of association established through metaphor. These patterns arise from mapping, a term used to describe the systematic correspondences between related ideas. Psalm 1 seems to establish a link with the entire Psalter through mapping. To be sure, much has been said about the first psalm as an introduction to the entire Psalter, and the argument has been presented that Psalm 1 manifests an “orienting power” largely through the use of “metaphor and image” (Brown). This paper will (a) explore the imagery within Psalm 1 with an eye toward metaphorical construction and function (Lakoff and Johnson), (b) probe the range and influence of the metaphors and similies in Psalm 1, and (c) synthesize the elements of mapping in conceptual domains resident within the Psalter which may be associated with Psalm 1.


Drama and Delivery in Preaching
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Gennifer Brooks, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary

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Sexual Surrogacy Enables Holy Celibacy: Euklia, Iphidama, and Maximilla in the Passion of Andrew
Program Unit: Christian Apocrypha
Bernadette J. Brooten, Brandeis University

Slavery and freedom are both deeply embedded within the Passion of Andrew (part of the Acts of Andrew) and yet curiously invisible—hidden in plan sight. Legal slavery helps the female protagonist, the “blessed” Maximilla, to keep her body pure and holy for Christ and to remain in contact with the apostle Andrew. Maximilla uses her slave-woman Euklia as a sexual surrogate so that she herself can avoid the “disgusting pollution” of sex with her “snake” of a pagan husband. Maximilla needs both her own freedom and Euklia’s enslavement to be pure and holy. Yet, in her faithfulness to Christ and to his apostle Andrew, Maximilla becomes a slave-woman of the Lord. In fact, all of the believers are enslaved to the Lord, for slavery represents the ultimate loyalty and submission. Without full attention to the role of slavery, scholars (e.g., Kate Cooper, Saundra Schwartz) have interpreted the Passion of Andrew as structured around an inverted love triangle: Maximilla at the center fought over by her pagan husband Aigeates and the apostle Andrew. But the surrogacy of slavery modifies the triangular structure. Euklia’s request for her freedom, which epitomizes her carnality, sets in motion a temporary bursting of the triangular structure. By getting out of line, Euklia alters the line. But, because this slave-woman represents the antithesis of the apostolic values of “the better…the good…the just…the merciful,” when Aigeates kills Euklia and her fellow enslaved servants who have spoken ill of their mistress, the wound to the narrative structure heals quickly. Although Maximilla’s disloyal sexual surrogate is dead, Iphidama, as her loyal enslaved surrogate, goes out on dangerous missions for her. Iphidama supports her mistress’s salvation by connecting her to Andrew, who inspires Maximilla and others to rise above the slavish, carnal values epitomized by Euklia to live a celibate life in preparation for the ascent of their souls.


The Multiple Readings of Psalm 60: Through the Lenses of Prophet, Poet, and Exegete
Program Unit: Book of Psalms
Karl F. Brower, Catholic University of America

Psalms 60 is nexus of inner biblical allusions- it reads, is read, is unread, and reread within the Hebrew canon. This paper presents the reading of the tradition by the poet of Psalm 60, the response of Deutero-Isaiah to that reading, the unreading of Psalm 60 by the poet of Psalm 108, and new reading of Psalm 60 by the exegete who affixed its historical superscript. When the poetic unit is isolated, its rhetoric analyzed, and structures understood, it provides a liminal theopoetic expression of a bitter people, who are defeated but expectant. This expression is taken up by the prophet Isaiah and transformed into a confident expression of both the defeat of Israel’s enemies and the restoration of the Divine’s creative manifestations. The structure of Deutero-Isaiah’s allusions to Psalm 60 change questions to answers and the manifestations of God’s judgment against his people to blessings. Having experienced the promise of Deutero-Isaiah, Psalm 60 is unread as an authoritative expression of the cult by Psalm 108. This is accomplished by the reappropriation of material from Psalm 57 and the strengthened links between Psalm 108 and Deutero-Isaiah. Finally, Psalm 60 is given a new reading by the addition of an historical superscript, which provides inner biblical allusions to the Davidic corpus. These inner biblical allusions not only change the meaning of Psalm 60, but the understanding of Davidic intertexts as well. This diachronic analysis of the meaning of Psalm 60 demonstrates how the imagery of poetic material is reutilized to change meaning and how the inner biblical allusions of the historical superscript recontextualizes the poetry to provide both poem and intertext with new meaning.


Paul’s Apocalyptic Vision: Some Theological Implications
Program Unit: Pauline Epistles
Alexandra Brown, Washington and Lee University

It is one of the genuine advances of the last century of Pauline scholarship – an advance due in no small way to the efforts of J. Louis Martyn -- to have shown the centrality and the distinctiveness of apocalyptic language in Paul’s articulation of what constitutes the “good news.” To be sure, the usual connotations of the terms apocalypse/apocalyptic in both popular and scholarly discourse tend, ironically, to veil its meaning in Paul. Many hear in the term only the catastrophic end – a destruction of cosmos coming in the future literally conceived -- and nothing of Paul’s new creation now dawning. Attention to both the ancient context of Paul’s language and to Paul’s unique contributions to contemporary construals of apocalypse language brings to light especially the cosmic frame of Paul’s apocalyptic terms. On this reading, for Paul the real world is manifestly the site of battle; the powers of sin and death (the stoicheia tou kosmou) have been themselves lethally attacked by the Sovereign God who invades their territory (through the Crucifixion and the advent of the Spirit) to free their captives (i.e., the whole creation). Essential features of this reading of Paul’s apocalyptic include its cosmic scope in which nothing less than a new creation is inaugurated in a divine, liberating act, its address to matters of human and divine agency, and its insistence on the final sovereignty of the liberating God. This detail expresses some features of apocalyptic thought shared with other first century figures and some features newly present in Paul’s way of formulating the advent of Christ crucified and its effects. In this paper I will consider what is at stake hermeneutically in the apocalyptic reading of Paul outlined above. In particular, I will address its implications for understanding Paul’s reading of Scripture, his relation to the ancient ethical traditions of Hellenism, and ways in which missing Paul’s apocalyptic nuance may lead to fundamental distortions of his key theological contributions, not least his treatment of God’s “justification of the ungodly.” Prominent alternatives to the apocalyptic reading will be considered.


The Gospel of Thomas, Secrecy, and Negotiating Space in the Roman Empire
Program Unit: Jesus Traditions, Gospels, and Negotiating the Roman Imperial World
Ian Brown, University of Toronto

One of the most distinguishing features of the Gospel of Thomas is Thomas’ claim to secrecy with Thomas’ incipit stating “these are the secret words that Jesus the living one spoke.” In this paper I will argue that Thomas’ rhetoric of secrecy was one of the main techniques employed by the gospel in order to negotiated social and intellectual space and power in a context in which older modes of accesses to space and power had been destroyed or altered significantly by, among other things, Roman imperialism. I argue that Thomas addressed a situation of social and economic deracination by creating a discourse of secrecy and interpretation centred around the text of Thomas. The double claim both to possess a secret and the ability to interpret that secret, I argue, bought a measure of social capital for those readings and interpreting Thomas. To argue this point I will use Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social capital to illustrate how the rhetoric of secrecy in Thomas served to buy back some measure social capital which Thomas’ composers lost (or deemed themselves to have lost) due to, among other things, the social and economic reordering brought about by the Roman Empire. Additionally, the fact that the secret in Thomas must be worked on and correctly interpreted implies that the interpretation of Thomas’ secret was not a solo venture, but instead a guided effort where the privileged insider guided the less privileged insider. In this way the Gospel of Thomas functioned to both form an alternative scholastic community around the secret, and to empower those who claimed to know the interpretation of that secret. Finally, by comparing the secret sayings of Gospel of Thomas to the secret sayings created and used by colonized Gurus in nineteenth century India, I will illustrate concretely the ways in which discourses of secrecy can, and have been utilized as means of negotiating intellectual and social space in the context of empires (in these cases British and Roman).


Thinking with Schools: Evaluating the Schoolishness of 1 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians, and the Gospel of Thomas
Program Unit: North American Association for the Study of Religion
Ian Brown, University of Toronto

Approaching many texts of Christian Origins from the perspective of the study of Hellenistic philosophical schools is not a new idea. Attempts to compare the texts and social formations of early Jesus people and Hellenistic philosophy schools vary drastically in their approaches, sites of comparison, and conclusions. Various pieces of data for Christian Origins have been examined alongside schools, but for my purposes here I will limit myself to 1 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians, and the Gospel of Thomas. Scholars note parallels between Paul’s letters (and sometimes Paul himself) and the Hellenistic philosophical schools. In most cases these parallels are seen in Paul’s general philosophy, mode social formation/organization, language, rhetoric, and practices. After drawing attention to these parallels, in many cases these studies conclude that Paul used the persuasive rhetoric also used by philosophers, or that the Pauline ekklesia were or were not schools. It is the later question that interests me, although my goal is not to argue that the Pauline ekklesia were or were not schools. In this paper I compare 1 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians, and Thomas to the Hellenistic philosophy schools in terms of the ways in which each understood the figure and role of the founder. Hellenistic philosophical schools were established as “cults of the founder” and David Sedley has argued that these schools were less interested in a “common quest for the truth” and more interested in “a virtual religious commitment to the authority of a founding figure.” By examining the role and significance of the founding figure (Jesus) in 1 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians, and Thomas, I argue that thinking-with-schools can indeed help us to interpret early Jesus people.


Coordination of the Logistics, Digital Tools, and Processes of the THEOT Project
Program Unit: Ethiopic Bible and Literature
Jeremy R. Brown, George Fox Evangelical Seminary

The Textual History of the Ethiopic Old Testament Project is aimed at identifying and characterizing the families of manuscripts within the Ethiopic manuscript tradition as well as the relationship of those manuscript families to the Greek, Hebrew, Syriac and Christian Arabic manuscript traditions. It will use the Profile Method to characterize the nature of the text of the 39 books of the Ethiopic Old Testament shared in common with the Hebrew Bible. It is impractical to expect one or two senior scholars to take on the entirety of such a project and complete it in a timely manner. Instead, the THEOT project will employ digital tools and processes to foster and encourage a community of scholars of differing levels of expertise and experience to work each step of the project. In this presentation we will discuss the digital tools that are being utilized in this project. These include the use of relatively unsophisticated tools such as Google documents, Unicode fonts and keyboards, and programs for the comparison of texts. But, it also includes more sophisticated tools such as CollateX for the analysis of familial relationship between manuscripts. We will also discuss the processes of having a community of scholars work on the same project and the logistics of employing the efforts of many scholars and maintaining the highest levels of accuracy and precision. We will also discuss the sociology of scholarship underlying the project design and especially the opportunity it affords for junior scholars to gain experience and to identify areas for further study.


Sunday’s Sermon for Monday’s World: Social Geography and the Tactics of the Weak
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Sally A. Brown, Princeton Theological Seminary

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Catching up on a Conversation: Socio-rhetorical Interpretation and Mediterranean Anthropology Since 1980
Program Unit: Rhetoric of Religious Antiquity
Bart Bruehler, Indiana Wesleyan University

Socio-Rhetorical Interpretation (SRI) was influenced in the early 1980’s by recent insights from Mediterranean anthropology. However during the 80’s and 90’s, Mediterranean anthropology went through a significant period of crisis. It has re-emerged as a disciplinary focus but not without significant changes regarding the homogeneity of the region (e.g. northern vs. southern), the role of complementary opposites (e.g. honor and shame), and primary cultural forces (e.g. kinship or economy). This paper will review the developments in Mediterranean anthropology over the last 30 years and suggest how a renewed conversation can refine the use of social-cultural texture within SRI.


After the Death of the Author/After the Death of God: Reading Jeremiah Theologically in the Wake of the Postmodern Turn
Program Unit: Writing/Reading Jeremiah
Mark Brummitt, Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School

In Roland Barthes’s estimation, the very concept of the author is a theological one that presumes any such figure serves as both creator and sustainer of meaning from the far side of the text. By proclaiming the death of the author, then, Barthes challenges not only ideas about the locus of meaning making, but a certain metaphysics as well. As if to illustrate Barthes’s point, the failure in Jeremiah studies to secure an historical prophet as author and editor of his own text has resulted in the demise of liberal-theological approaches that looked to situate the locus of theological reflection in the experiences of the man. If for Roland Barthes, the death of the author amounts to the birth of the reader, however—a proposition that has invited the no less liberal move of shifting the site of theological meaning on to the reader instead—in Jeremiah studies it has tended to turn scholarly attention towards the polyphonous (and performative) nature of the text. This provides an opportunity to reconsider the theological in dialogue with so-called postmodern, or better, non-foundationalist approaches—those which favor the dialogical, even dramatic, over the more rationalist (modernist) constructions of the deity, say. In short, starting with a critique of Barthes’s decidedly dismissive use of “theological,” this paper will then look at nostalgia and utopianizing; exile and the uncanny; absence and presence; and other such themes that resonate with our theological present. Theological guides will likely include John D. Caputo, Catherine Keller, and Richard Kearney.


Does the NT Contain a Clear Practice of Ordination for Ministry?
Program Unit: Adventist Society for Religious Studies
John Brunt, Azure Hills S.D.A. Church

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Does the NT Contain a Clear Practice of Ordination for Ministry?
Program Unit: Adventist Society for Religious Studies
John Brunt, Azure Hills S.D.A. Church

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The Heavenly Lord over All: A Comparison of Second Temple Jewish Ascents into Heaven and Acts 1:9–14
Program Unit: Book of Acts
David K Bryan, Luther Seminary

While the connection between Second Temple Jewish ascents into heaven and Jesus’ ascent in Acts 1:9-14 has long been recognized, there are few considerations of this material that are not largely form critical in nature. The diversity of ascent-into-heaven accounts in Second Temple Judaism makes it highly unlikely that Luke had one particular “form” by which he framed Jesus’ ascent into heaven. Additionally, form critics have usually only examined select Second Temple Jewish texts, unnecessarily fragmenting this body of literature and impeding an analysis of the common themes and motifs present in most, if not all, of the ascent-to-heaven texts of this period. Failing to address these commonalities with regard to theme or motif has allowed Luke’s potential emphases in Jesus’ ascent into heaven in Acts 1:9-14 to remain obscured. The importance of Second Temple Jewish texts for Jesus’ ascent into heaven lies in their place as a vital web of discourse within which Luke wrote his ascent narrative. Second Temple Jewish ascents into heaven are strongly concerned with God in heaven, describing God as the King and Lord sitting on the throne, reigning and ruling over all creation, being worshipped by angels, and receiving and responding to the prayers of the people. A comparison of these motifs with Acts 1:9-14 reveals very similar emphases in the Lukan account. This paper seeks to demonstrate that Luke’s portrayal of Jesus’ ascent into heaven in Acts 1:9-14 highlights Jesus’ divine identity, an identity revealed by its connection with Second Temple Jewish portrayals of God in heaven. Luke presents Jesus as the heavenly Lord, Ruler, and King over all to whom angels are subject and to whom the people of God pray as the one who sovereignly governs the world. Jesus’ ascent in Acts 1:9-14 redefines Second Temple Jewish notions of God in heaven for his audience and calls them to identify Jesus with the God of Israel as the heavenly Lord over all.


Gentiles and the Abrahamic Lineage: Galatians 3 Reconsidered in Light of Stoic Physics
Program Unit: Pauline Epistles
Gitte Buch-Hansen, Københavns Universitet

Our understanding of Paul’s argument in Galatians depends on our reconstruction of the position of Paul’s opponents, which again depends on our understanding of the gospel that Paul initially proclaimed to the Galatians. The risk of mirror-reading is obvious and leaves the exegetical proof in the pudding. In his recent book 'Cosmology and the Self in the Apostle Paul: the Material Spirit' (2010), Troels Engberg-Pedersen draws attention to the role of 1 Cor 15:45 in Paul’s world-view. Paul’s claim that Christ became “a life-giving spirit” is in no way mysterious; it is, so it is argued, Stoic. How Christ became spirit may be explained by the Stoic idea of anastoicheiôsis (‘dissolution into elements’). How, in turn, this spirit is life-giving may be accounted for by the Stoic idea of krasis (‘blending’) of pneumatic bodies in the human soul. The idiosyncrasy of this explanation is reduced by the fact that Philo also uses these physical phenomena to explain Moses’ deutera genesis (‘second birth’) on Mount Sinai and his mysterious disappearance into heaven. In my paper, I reconsider Paul’s argument in Galatians 3 in light of a Stoically informed reading of 1 Cor 15. When Paul claims that Christ is “Abraham’s semen” (3:16), we should take this statement at face value; the spiritualization of the fleshly, Jewish Jesus, which takes place at the resurrection, also explains how Christ literally became Abraham’s seed. Thus, it seems reasonable to surmise that when Paul first met with the Galatian Gentile – maybe as proselytes in Jewish synagogues – he had explained to them how, through baptism and the reception of Christ’s spirit, their relation to the covenantal ancestor Abraham would be set right. This understanding of Paul’s Gospel indicates the relevance of Pamela Eisenbaum’s discussion of the engraftment of a Gentile branch into Abraham’s pedigree in 'A Remedy for Having Been Born of Woman: Jesus, Gentiles and Genealogy in Romans'(2004). Eisenbaum draws attention to the fact that genealogical legitimacy was not based on physical birth, but depended on the father’s acceptance of the child. Through some ritual – often a sacrifice – the child was cleansed and separated from the mother and adopted into the paternal line of descent. In Eisenbaum’s work, the classical doctrine of Christ’s expiratory sacrifice is reframed by ethnographic studies and reinterpreted as a sacrifice that cleanses the Gentiles of their original sin and incorporates them into Abraham’s family. Caroline Johnson Hodge supplements Eisenbaum’s interpretation. In 'If Sons, then Heirs'(2007), Hodge argues that baptism is also the moment when Gentiles are adopted as God’s children through the reception of Christ’s spirit. In my paper, I supplement and also adjust Eisenbaum’s and Hodge’s readings. First, the idea of anastoicheiôsis bridges their readings, since it explains how Christ became Abraham’s seed. Of course, those who are Jews by birth have no need for this aspect of the spirit’s work. I shall argue, however, that like the Gentiles Jews too are in need of Christ’s life-giving spirit in order to remain just within the covenant (3:21).


Touched by the Words. Corporeality and Liturgical Practices in the Johannine Jesus’ Speeches
Program Unit: Bible and Practical Theology
Gitte Buch-Hansen, Københavns Universitet

The Fourth Gospel constitutes ongoing problems to scholars engaged in homiletics and practical theology. First, Jesus’ long speeches, lacking logical argument and a narrative progression, are notoriously difficult to preach. The speeches spiral poetically around the same subject: Jesus’ presence with his disciples after his death and glorification. As is generally recognized among New Testament scholars, the Johannine Jesus already speaks from this future position. To those who love him and abide in his words, Jesus promises that he will return with the Father and make an abode with them (14:23). But how to take his words? Second, the apparently contradictory fact that the FG has no story of Jesus’ baptism and no account of the last supper, but at the same time excels in imagery of water and bread has divided Johannine scholarship on the status of the sacraments in John’s Gospel. Concurrently, liturgical studies face the challenge of bringing the Eucharistic ordo of the early church into harmony with the NT. After all, the narratives about the last supper seem not to have been used as liturgical prescripts. Instead, the Emmaus narrative appears to be a valid source for our reconstruction of early Eucharistic practices. After an initial reading from the scriptures, the Eucharist prayer and the breaking of the bread would follow, completed by an ordinary meal. The gospels – including John – presuppose such ritualized practice which enriches their literary description of the Eucharist by providing them with new meaning. The Emmaus story may be seen as a paradigmatic example of how textual traditions are revived and charged with experiences of eschatological presence when embedded in a liturgical practice. In order to come to terms with this surplus of experiential meaning evoked through ritualization, we pick up perspectives from linguistic research into the extra-semantic dimensions of oral language. In his article on “Intersubjectivity and Intercorporeality”(2008), Csordas objects to the characterization of this dimension as body language arguing that the designation indicates that the intercorporeal exchange may be reduced to language. He quotes Merleau-Ponty: “Meaning is not on the phrase like the butter on the bread, like a second layer of ‘psychic reality’ spread over the sound, it is the totality of what is said.” Instead of attributing language to the body, we should attribute corporeality to language. Speaking is a kind of “sonorous touching,” a “bodily secretion” or may even be seen as a fertilizing “intercourse” between speaker and listener. Whereas intersubjectivity is mediated through language, the experience of intercorporeality is always immediate. In this way, when performed in a ritual setting, the Johannine Jesus’ speeches may establish his “real presence.” The discourse of the Spirit, which is to replace Jesus’ fleshly presence in the community, may be understood as a meta-discourse on this intercorporeal aspect of language. When seen in this light, Jesus’ speeches appear to be a kind of liturgical language that mediates between preaching and sacrament. This paper is a polyphonic performance for three voices: liturgical studies, homiletics and Johannine exegesis.


The Septuagint's Vocabulary of Impurity
Program Unit: International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies
Dirk Büchner, Trinity Western University

Chapters 13-15 of Leviticus contain the technical terminology of impurity. This paper will present the results of research conducted over the summer on the Septuagint's unique contribution in response to Hebrew words for impurity. Attention will be given to non-translational terminology of impurity, as well as the lexicography of vocabulary found in a translational context.


Clement of Alexandria’s Exegesis of Old Testament Theophanies
Program Unit: Christianity in Egypt: Scripture, Tradition, and Reception
Bogdan G. Bucur, Duquesne University

The interpretation of biblical theophanies is crucial to our understanding of early Christianity’s self-definition in relation to both the sacred history of Israel and the contemporary and competing Rabbinic Judaism. My paper will take Clement of Alexandria as a test-case, inquiring about the degree to which his approach is part of an inherited tradition, with significant precursors in pre-Christian literature, or an exegetical novelty, driven by specific polemical concerns, and involved in a specific type of identity-construction.


The Prologue to the Gospel of John in St. Ephrem the Syrian
Program Unit:
Dmitry Bumazhnov, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

Due to the discovery in 1957 of the major part of the Diatessaron Commentary written by Ephrem the Syrian, we are now in possession of Ephrem`s Syriac lectures on Tatian‘s Gospel harmony edited in the end of 4th century by the pupils of the Syriac poet some twenty years after his death. The comparison of the Commentary with the genuine works by Ephrem shows that the editing process included corrections as well as additions of the new text passages. Using the example of Ephrem‘s explanation of John 1:1-14 I wish to discuss which intentions Ephrem could have had when dealing with incarnation in his lectures and how, some time later, his ideas were transformed by the editor(s) of the Commentary. The paper illustrates how both Ephrem himself and the interpolated Ephrem after the death of the former fulfilled the task of teaching the Christian audience in the multicultural and multireligious context of the late antiquity East Syria.


"And Samson gave a feast there as the custom of young men was" (Judges 14, 10): re-visiting Philistine drinking habits and their origins
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
Shlomo Bunimovitz, Tel Aviv University

The biblical narrative of the Samson cycle emphasizes the wine-guzzling behavior of the Philistines. When Samson set with his Philistine friends, were they having a Greek-style symposium? Philistine material culture excavated in Israel revealed a recurring assemblage of pottery vessels comprising of spouted jug, krater and small bowls, presumably used for drinking alcoholic beverages - most probably wine. The (in)famous Philistine 'beer-jug' (strainer-jug) is another vessel attesting to wine consumption. The origins of the Philistine drinking customs were considered to be rooted in the Aegean world. However, the typical Mycenaean service for drinking wine is different as it comprises deeper, krater and stemmed vessels – kylikes or goblets. While the form and decoration of the Philistine wine-drinking vessels are clearly of Aegean origins, the repertoire is more akin to the Levantine cultural sphere. There, stemless vessels, mainly bowls, were preferred for wine consumption (as exemplified by a 14th century BCE feasting assemblage recently exposed at Tel Beth-Shemesh). Intriguingly, Philistine 'beer-jugs' are missing from the first stage of Philistine pottery and appeared only later, reflecting the practice of wine straining unfamiliar in the Late Bronze Age Aegean. Philistine drinking habits may therefore hint at behavioral patterns rooted in the Orient no less than in the Occident.


How the Bible Went Underground: Art and Spirituality in the Collections of the Art Institute
Program Unit: Bible and Visual Art
Frank Burch Brown, Christian Theological Seminary

This presentation will be made in a lecture room at The Art Institute of Chicago (http://www.artic.edu/aic/), and participants will be given a gallery guide that highlights the works discussed, after which, participants may purchase a ticket to see the collections, either in small groups or singly.


Something about Holmer
Program Unit: Søren Kierkegaard Society
Andrew Burgess, University of New Mexico

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The Childhood of Jesus in the East Syriac Life of Mary
Program Unit: Christian Apocrypha
Tony Burke, York University

The East Syriac Life of Mary, published for the first and only time by E. A. Wallis Budge in 1899, is a combination of a variety of non-canonical texts, including the Protoevangelium of James, the Dormition/Transitus of Mary, sections from the Abgar Legend and the Acts of Pilate, and, in some manuscripts, much of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Also included in the text, but not often discussed, is a series of stories of the holy family during their time in Egypt. The source of these tales is unknown. The same stories occur in the more widely published Arabic Infancy Gospel, long believed to be a translation of the Life of Mary, perhaps from an earlier stage in its development. Scholars interested in the childhood of Jesus and the life of Mary would be better served reading the stories in the Syriac Life of Mary than in its Arabic translation. To that end, this paper provides a new edition and translation of the Egyptian childhood tales based on a pool of over fifteen manuscripts. It represents a considerable advance on Budge’s edition, which employed only two manuscripts, one of which is now lost. The paper includes also a full description of all the manuscripts available today and information on those that have been lost in the turmoil faced in the east over the past century.


YHWH, a Taking or a Giving God?
Program Unit: Unity and Diversity in Early Jewish Monotheisms
Micaël Bürki, Collège de France

The three festival calendars of Exodus 23 and 34, and of Deuteronomy 16 present apparently the same exhortation: “No one may appear before me empty-handed!“ In the book of Deuteronomy, the invitation to bring offerings concludes the calendar and is applied indifferently to the three annual pilgrimages. In both references of Exodus (23.15 and 34.20), the phrase concerns only the feast of Mazzot, the first of the calendar. This limited statement raises an ambiguity since Mazzot has to be celebrated in spring while no harvest has yet started; therefore there is nothing to bring to Yahweh. Exodus 34 links together the offering of the first-born and Mazzot (v.19-20). Because of their primacy, all the first-borns belong automatically to Yahweh. They are unfitting as a thanksgiving offering for their “offering” constitutes a rite of passage. The wording of the offering demand in both Exodus calendars shows syntactical variations inviting to reverse the meaning of the sentence. As the verb appears here in a plural form, the expression “my face” (which is used in the plural form) without the preposition could be understood as subject. The sentence would then have a new meaning, formulating Yahweh’s commitment towards his people in response to Mazzot’s celebration: “my face[s] (YHWH) will not appear empty-handed”, announcing the benediction on the harvest. This inversion of the offerings between Deuteronomy’s calendar and those of Exodus, alludes to two different meaning of the feast of Mazzot in two different socio-historical backgrounds. It expresses also two different concepts of the deity whose generosity spreads anterior and posterior to the cult. The deuteronomistic god provides blessings to his people by means of a “contract” while the priestly god demands a ritual first of his people to which he answers by his proximity and his blessings.


Sethian Crowns, Sethian Martyrs? Jewish Apocalyptic and Christian Martyrology in a Gnostic Literary Tradition
Program Unit: Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism
Dylan M. Burns, Københavns Universitet

One of the most puzzling motifs in Sethian Gnostic apocalypses, recensions of several of which stirred controversy in the school of the Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus in Rome (ca. 263 CE), is that of the crown. These crowns are worn by heavenly beings, and often acquired by the seer during a heavenly journey. Their significance in the texts has received scant scholarly comment and remains mysterious. The present study will thus provide a survey of the available materials and explain the importance of the motif, which is threefold. First of all, like attention to the seer’s disposition, ascent via cloud, auto-angelification, or celestial liturgy, crowns are a distinctive motif of the Sethian texts which is notably absent from contemporary Hellenic philosophical literature but abundant in contemporary Jewish and Christian apocalyptic. Striking is thus its presence in even the “Platonizing” Sethian apocalypses, which are replete with Neoplatonic jargon, and whose background in Judeo-Christian apocalypses has been hitherto minimalized. Second, although the precise function of the crowns cannot be determined, it appears that they indicate a state of glorification and deification that draws from ancient Jewish traditions of recovering the primordial glory of mankind, often compared to becoming an angel. At the same time, like other contemporary Christians, Plotinus’ Gnostics, arguing with him in Rome less than 5 years after the Valerianic persecution, may have re-constellated these Jewish traditions to express the glory of martyrdom. Thus the paper will explore the valence of Sethian crown imagery from the perspective of contemporary Christian martyrological literature. Finally, while Grundmann recognized that crowns were a significant motif in Gnostic and apocalyptic literature, his analysis was too brief, and worth even a cursory update.


The Synagogue of Severus: Spacing Jewish Authority in Imperial Rome
Program Unit: Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism
Joshua Ezra Burns, Marquette University

The proposed paper seeks to analyze the rhetorical dimensions of a Jewish legend involving an ancient institution known as the Synagogue of Severus. First attested in the medieval exegetical treatise Bereshit Rabbati, the legend alludes to an ancient Torah scroll taken from Jerusalem during the first Jewish revolt against Rome and later transferred to the care of said synagogue. There, it was supposedly read by the second-century Palestinian sage Rabbi Meir and noted for its variant (i.e., non-Masoretic) readings of the biblical text. Although often taken at face value, the story of the ancient Torah scroll appears to be a fabrication reflecting the familiarity of the Tiberian Masoretes with classical rabbinic witnesses to ‘vulgar’ Torah scrolls and related ancient witnesses otherwise at odds with the received Hebrew text of the Pentateuch. This observation naturally problematizes the prospect of accounting for the historicity of the Synagogue of Severus itself. If not, however, as a documentary witness to that ancient institution or its scroll, it is my contention, that the Severus legend ought to be read as an authentic recollection of the situation of the local Jewish community in pre-Christian Rome. Analyzing the story in view of its rhetoric vis-à-vis the acquisition of its sacred relic, I aim to demonstrate how the Severus legend serves to legitimize the place of the Jews in imperial Rome for the benefit of a medieval Jewish readership whose own memories of the erstwhile center of Christian political power were colored by subsequent incidents of tension and regret.


Is NT Ethics a Genre Mistake? Including the Other in Methological Reflections Following Gustafson and Hays
Program Unit: Ethics, Love, and the Other in Early Christianity
Richard A. Burridge, King's College London

It is a common view, even more so outside the churches than inside, to view Jesus of Nazareth as a great moral teacher and to treat the New Testament as a book of ethical teaching. Both of these approaches are genre mistakes, since Jesus is more a proclaimer of the in-breaking rule of God, while the New Testament contains many separate books, none of which are composed in any recognizable ethical genre. Careful attention to the genres of ethical material within the New Testament from the work of JM Gustafson (1970) to RB Hays (1996) has isolated various genres such as moral commands, principles, paradigms and world-views. However, an analysis of how these genres of biblical ethical material were used both to justify apartheid in South Africa and to critique it demonstrates that such generic approaches alone will not prevent an absence of Love nor the oppression of the Other. Furthermore, most modern approaches to using the NT in ethics fail to deal appropriately with the twin problems of cultural relativism and the contingency of the different moral issues dealt with in the NT from those facing us today. A refinement of Hays’ fourfold interpretative method (the descriptive, synthetic, hermeneutic and pragmatic tasks) will be proposed, starting with the words and deeds of Jesus, drawing upon Burridge’s book, Imitating Jesus (Eerdmans 2007). Tracing these trajectories through the rest of the NT Canon with regard to the various sub-genres of ethical material can provide ample resource for consideration of today’s moral dilemmas, in the areas of money, sex, power, violence and the value of human life. In doing so, the voice of the Other, those most likely to be affected by any potential decision, must be clearly heard in order to guard against self-serving applications of the biblical text.


The Qur’an as Document: Arabic Texts in Late Antiquity
Program Unit: Religious World of Late Antiquity
Adam C. Bursi, Cornell University

In order to reconstruct the early history of the Qur’an’s written transmission and usage as a physical text, it is necessary to situate that history within the context of the scribal cultures and forms of literacy present in the late ancient Near East. Because the earliest extant Qur’an manuscripts are transcribed in a defective Arabic script that only minimally displays the diacritics necessary for the full decipherment of the Arabic alphabet’s several homographic consonants, the question emerges of who would have been able to access and read these documents. Modern scholars of early Islam have often interpreted these manuscripts’ textual ambiguity as a physical embodiment of the multiple permissible Qur’an recitations circulating in the period of their production, and/or as evidence that such manuscripts were primarily used as aide-mémoires by individuals who already knew the Qur’anic text by heart. Exploring who such learned and literate writers and readers might have been, this paper suggests that the sparse presence of diacritics in the early Qur’an manuscripts reflects their production within the context of seventh- and eighth-century Arabic scribal culture. The similarity in orthographic conventions exhibited also within seventh- and eighth-century Arabic administrative papyri and commemorative inscriptions indicates that the earliest Qur’an manuscripts were likely written – and perhaps used – by the same highly literate scribes who produced and read other Arabic texts in this period. Situating these early Islamic textual artifacts within the social environment of late ancient scribal practices, this paper investigates the role of literacy in the production and usage of the early written Qur’an, and brings this history into conversation with that of other scriptures and texts of the late ancient world.


John’s EBRAISTI, Hebrew or Aramaic? Having Some Fun with Names
Program Unit: Aramaic Studies
Randall Buth, Biblical Language Center, Israel

Ancient Greek authors kept EBRAISTI ‘in Hebrew’ and SYRISTI ‘in Aramaic’ separate. This can be shown to be true for Josephus, LXX, Pseudepigrapha, even Luke. On the other hand NT lexica assure us that EBRAISTI means Jewish Aramaic. The Gospel of John appears to be the one and only author that might fit such a picture: Bethesda/Bethzatha, Gabbatha, Golgotha, and rabbouni have often been cited to prove Aramaic. John does not tell us what the first two names mean. Following on Delitzsch’s suggestion 158 years ago, we now have the Greek loan word STOA ‘portico’ attested as Qumranian Hebrew estan. The ‘house of stoa’ is a fitting name for the pool with five porticoes. That would mean that the etymology of the name is Greek, though apparently adopted into Hebrew. Contrary to previous speculation, Gabbatha was not an Aramaic word meaning ‘raised place.’ Dalman corrected himself to gbxt ‘frontal baldness.’ Following CC Torrey, we have a Latin word gabata ‘plate, dish’ that fits better. The word gabata was chosen by CPA lectionaries for the TRYBLION dish at the Last Supper as well as John’s Gabbatha. The lithostrotos courtyard (‘[mosaic?] stone-paved’) appears to have gotten a local name as a ‘[foreign] dish/container,’ perhaps from a pavement design or from the general shape of the courtyard in Herod’s palace. John considers this foreign word to be the Hebrew name for the Greek Lithostrotos. Fortunately, John tells us what ‘golgotha’ means and we have no trouble connecting it to Hebrew and Aramaic gulgolet. The form with the final alpha fits Aramaic, of course, but that doesn’t rule out the name as a name in Hebrew. As for rabbouni, Kutscher has long ago shown that the form was the western pronunciation of the word in both mishnaic Hebrew and later targumic Aramaic. John appears to treat the three names and one word as Hebrew, regardless of the interesting multilingual etymologies in Greek, Latin, Aramaic, and Hebrew. His Gospel is not a justifiable basis for overturning the rest of the Greek language.


Performance Criticism: Learning from a Presentation of Philippians
Program Unit: Applied Linguistics for Biblical Languages
Randall Buth, Biblical Language Center, Israel

A very brief introduction will be given on Philippians, a letter of encouragement and explanation that thanks the Philippians for their support. The audience will be treated as recipients of the letter. -- The presentation itself will cover 20-22 minutes. Afterwards, a few brief comments will be added in English pointing out some of the structures that derive from presentation and some of what has been learned in preparation. -- Five minutes will be open for questions in this time slot. However, the presentation itself provides a background to the following Panel Discussion where a generous allotment of time is open for questions from the audience and may include reference to the presentation on Philippians within the larger questions of the Panel.


From Manuscripts to Edition: The Case of the Syriac History of St. Cyriacus and his Mother Julitta
Program Unit: Manuscripts from Eastern Christian Traditions
Aaron Michael Butts, Yale University

The methodology of producing text editions of manuscripts in Eastern Christian languages has come into focus in recent years (see, e.g., Bausi 2006; 2008). Among the many challenges in moving from manuscripts to edition is capturing the diversity of the manuscript tradition. This diversity can exist both on the micro-level (variants in wording, punctuation, orthography, diacritic points, etc.) and on a macro-level (various recensions, re-written texts, etc.). In this paper, we reflect on how best to capture the diversity of a manuscript tradition in an edition through a study of the textual tradition of the Syriac History of St. Cyriacus and his Mother Julitta. This text is preserved in three recensions in Syriac. The ‘primary’ recension is attested in two manuscripts: Library of the Royal Asiatic Society (1569 CE) and Sachau 222 (1881 CE; ed. Bedjan 1892: 254-83). Based on shared Leitfehler, it is clear that these two manuscripts stem from the same textual family; minor differences do, however, arise relatively frequently allowing for a look at diversity on the micro-level. The Syriac History of St. Cyriacus and his Mother Julitta also exists in an abridged recension, which is preserved in ms. Yale Syriac 5 (1888 CE), as well as an expanded recension, which is preserved in Vatican 161 (‘pervetustus’ according to the cataloguer; ed. Terpelyuk). This latter recension has been re-written in places to highlight connections between Julitta and other famous female martyrs, such as Thecla the disciple of the Apostle Paul and Sophia the mother of Pistis, Elpis, and Agape. Given its diversity on both the micro-level and the macro-level, the manuscript tradition of the Syriac History of St. Cyriacus and his Mother Julitta provides a good opportunity to explore the challenges of producing an edition of a text in an Eastern Christian language. BIBLIOGRAPHY A. Bausi, “Current Trends in Ethiopian Studies: Philology,” in S. Uhlig et al. (eds.), Proceedings of the XVth International Conference of Ethiopian Studies (Äthiopistische Forschungen 65; Wiesbaden, 2006), 542-551. ______. “‘Philology’ as Textual Criticism. ‘Normalization’ of Ethiopian Studies,” Ethiopian Philology. Bulletin of Philological Society of Ethiopia 1.1 (November 2008), 13-46. P. Bedjan, Acta Martyrum et Sanctorum, vol. 3 (Paris and Leipzig, 1892), 254-83. A. A. Terpelyuk, Martyrdom of Mar Quryaqus and Yolit?i (Cyriacus & Julitta) (Moscow, 2009). [in Russian]


Sin and Death in the World: Who’s to Blame?
Program Unit: Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity
John Byron, Ashland Theological Seminary

In his letter to the Romans Paul considers sin to be a pervasive power in the world which is manifested in its reign through death. With the first sin came death, a penalty that not only affected the first sinner, but all of humanity. As part of his program Paul fingers Adam as the first sinner and therefore the reason that death is in the world (Rom 5:12, 14). But this view of Adam was not as universal as some might suppose. Some interpreters laid the blame not at the feet of Adam but Cain. In some ways Cain fits the category of prototypical sinner better than Adam. These interpreters noticed that the stories of Adam’s disobedience and Cain’s treachery were similar, yet contained significant differences. Adam’s act of disobedience is never described as sin in Genesis nor does he die because of it. It is only in the Genesis 4 story that sin makes its debut and it is through Cain’s murder of Abel that death enters the world. Cain, therefore, has the distinction of being the first human condemned for an act defined as sin and is the first to introduce death into the world. This paper will suggest that what Paul was doing was against the grain of many Jewish and Christian interpretations and, consequently, not everybody would have been convinced by Paul’s argument since it was possible that they subscribed to an alternative interpretation that blamed Cain, not Adam, for the presence of sin and death in the world.


Aspiring to the Homonoia of the Gods: Tracking Religion and Identity in the Coins of Colossae
Program Unit: Archaeology of Religion in the Roman World
Alan Cadwallader, Australian Catholic University

Numismatics has become an increasingly fruitful field for the construction and interpretation of the world within which the fledgling Jesus groups negotiated and regulated their existence, especially when encouraged to interact with other artifactual evidence of the period. Epigraphical, textual and monumental evidence known to be associated with sites has the capacity to overcome some of the inherited difficulties of coin collections, not least being the lack of recorded provenance. The coins of Colossae have yet to receive any substantial analysis, even though a sizeable number are extant, ranging from the second century BCE to the third century CE. Although there is a first century CE lacuna in the collation — a factor that invites some explanation — an examination of the coins of the Hellenistic and Roman imperial periods reveals the patron god of the city and how the religious identity by which the city was portrayed underwent significant changes through the engagement with empire and with neighboring and/or leading Asian cities. The political realities that a minting city faced were of necessity more than local, even when local identity was asserted on (some of) its coins. The Colossian coins reveal one city’s accommodation to imperial and Asian forces and the subtle efforts required to chart a distinctive civic identity in such a complex set of relationships.


Adam's Solitude in Philo
Program Unit: Philo of Alexandria
Francesca Calabi, University of Pavia, Italy

My aim is to analyse Philo's Interpretation of Gen 2,18 in Leg. II. 1-18. I mean to see Adam's solitude as a human condition contrasted with God's being unique and with the situation of mankind after Eve's birth. At the beginning Adam was alone and his status made him similar to God, he was nearer to perfection. How did his duality work before the creation of Eve? And which is the relation between his being alone and God’s status? There is a problematic position in Philo’s praise of Adam’s being alone, which assimilates him to God, makes him superior to the men who will come later and, at the same time, sets him in a state of lack and need. Duality is essential to the man, both when we speak of gegonos anthropos and of peplasmenos one. This aspect can be seen in the necessity of a helper which is more recent than the man. We have here a duality in time which is particularly interesting if we consider that, while speaking of God's solitude, Philo says that in God's eternity there is nobody/nothing else. On the contrary, man cannot be alone and duality and alterity are essential parts of his being, together with his being plunged in temporality and becoming. My aim is to analyse the words expressing solitude, monadic condition, simplicity and to see how their meaning changes when related to God or to the man. The meaning of the term monos must be considered also in relation with monas and with heis: it can mean alone, unique, simple, haplos. I mean also to see how these terms change in connection with eternity and with temporality. The meaning of "helper" should also be studied, in relation both to Eve and to the animals and their receiving a name.


"Reading-Mystery" Revisited
Program Unit: Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti
Robert Matthew Calhoun, Independent Scholar

Richard Reitzenstein coined the term Lese-mysterium, describing texts that achieve initiation like those of the mystery cults, but without any ancillary rituals. Does the idea of the reading-mystery still work, and, if so, what utility does it have in contemporary work on ancient magical literature, the Hermetica, or 'Gnostic' texts?


Gendering the Myths of Exile and the Empty Land
Program Unit: Exile (Forced Migrations) in Biblical Literature
Claudia Camp, Texas Christian University

While the early sixth-century series of Babylonian invasions of Judah, with the ensuing deportations of Judeans from their homeland, were traumatically real, they left surprisingly little overt mark on the Israelite identity story ultimately encoded in the Hebrew canon, with neither of the two major histories giving much if any expression to the human cost of this experience. I argue in this paper that the group who self-identified as the golah had, in effect, to sell “the exile” as a defining feature of “Israelite” identity, that the notion returning to an “empty land” had to be negotiated as part of this process, and that the gender ideology inherent in, and sometime expressed by, both myths was an important aspect of their wider if not complete acceptance.


No Distinction or No Discrimination between Jew and Greek?
Program Unit: Pauline Epistles
William S.Campbell, University of Wales, Trinity Saint David

The term 'diastole' occurs in Rom 3.22, 10.12 and elsewhere in the New Testament only in 1 Cor 14.7. Thus it is difficult to ascertain precisely its connotation especially in Romans. A powerful argument is frequently encountered in which Gal 3.28 in conjunction with Rom 10.12 seems to assert beyond all doubt that Paul taught that since the coming of Christ all ethnic distinctions (amongst others) have been annulled and that to be a Jew or a Greek is no longer significant. Even when Gal 3.28 is read with P46 as stating that all are ‘in Christ Jesus’, rather than ‘one in Christ Jesus’, the weight of the translation of Rom 10.12 ‘there is no distinction’ tends to weaken the P46 reading, and privilege the latter interpretation. What seems to be happening here is that two texts in differing letters addressing specific contexts are read in concert to give a generalised reading of Paul’s theology despite the fact that Paul appears, even in Romans 11, to continue to stress the distinction between Jew and gentile. But if 'diastole'in Rom 10.12, in light of LXX usage, is read as ‘discrimination’ rather than ‘distinction’ a differing reading is clearly viable. Instead of Paul asserting that there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, thereby advancing an ideology of the levelling of diversity and the promotion of sameness, he can now be viewed as stating there is no discrimination between those who call upon God even though they are different. Divine impartiality (cf. Romans 2) does not negate human difference and does not discriminate because of difference. Not only does this reading not deny ongoing distinctions between those who are called but in fact it implies abiding human differences rather than conflating these into the sameness of a supposed ‘third race’. Such a reading offers a more coherent understanding of Paul’s theology of diversity and can be demonstrated to offer no conflict with contemporary interpretations of Rom 3.22.


War-Horses at Jezreel: Jezebel And Jehu
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
Deborah O'Daniel Cantrell, Vanderbilt University

After Jehu raced across the plain driving his chariot like a ‘madman’ to the Jezreel fortress, Queen Mother Jezebel was thrown from the window and trampled to death, according to the Hebrew Bible sources. In fact, death by trampling under the sharp, flint hooves of war horses was feared and dreaded as one of the most violent and disgraceful ways to die in the ancient world. This paper analyses the killing force of the ancient war- horses and how their power was used practically and symbolically for regime change and glorified in political rhetoric by the prophets. In addition, the historical importance of Jezreel as the Omride cavalry headquarters and its function as the mustering depot for the Battle of Qarqar (853 b.c.e.) is explored.


Millenarianism and the Discourse of American Exceptionalism in the 2012 Presidential Election
Program Unit: John's Apocalypse and Cultural Contexts Ancient and Modern
Greg Carey, Lancaster Theological Seminary

American exceptionalism has fueled millenarian discourse since the days of the Puritans. No one today is surprised to find prominent Bible prophecy teachers posturing before the flag or displaying national symbols on book covers and other promotional materials. At the time of this writing, Web presence for John Hagee ministries, announces “God’s Two-Minute Warning for America,” though a description of the event is lacking. This paper examines the combination of exceptionalism and end-time rhetoric during the 2012 presidential campaign. This study requires discrimination between run of the mill crisis rhetoric and direct recourse to apocalyptic topic. We will attend particularly to the differentiation of roles, particularly in the opposition to Barack Obama’s reelection campaign: which speakers explicitly blend exceptionalist and end-time rhetoric, which speakers indirectly appeal to those arguments, which rhetors avoid direct engagement with that discourse, and how this network of roles creates a larger rhetorical system.


Pleasure and Self-Mastery in Allegorical Interpretation II 71–108
Program Unit: Philo of Alexandria
Caroline Carlier, Independent Scholar

In Book II of Allegorical Interpretation, Philo comments on the beginning of Genesis and suggests recognizing in Adam and Eve an allegory of two Greek philosophical concepts: mind and sense-perception. In § 71, he quotes Gen 3:1: “Now the serpent was the most subtle of all the beasts on the earth, which the Lord God had made.” Influenced by Cynic philosophy, he then describes the serpent as pleasure and explains that pleasure is necessary so that mind and sense-perception might be united. Still, like the Cynics, Philo uses the adjective poikilos to describe the serpent; this adjective has different meanings: “variable”, “complex”, “tortuous”, “cunning”. So what is Philo's idea of pleasure — and likewise of virtue, since he uses the same adjective in speaking of self-mastery (§ 79)? Philo opposes to Eve's serpent, which he considers to be useful but which gnaws at the human soul by overstepping its functions, a symbol of salvation: the bronze serpent of Moses (Num 21:8), which represents self-mastery. Between these two serpents, and with the help of other biblical passages with serpents on which Philo comments in our passage § 71-108, is it possible first to discover an Epicurean influence that has perhaps been falsified, knowing that Philo elsewhere defends necessary pleasures over against superfluous pleasures? Secondly, in view of the meaning of poikilos when speaking of self-mastery, must not the various stages of moral progress inspired by Stoicism be linked: those progressing, the ascetics, and the perfect? If for philosophy, wisdom is possible but rarely realizable, for Philo, who is a believing Jew, this wisdom is attained thanks to divine intervention.


Method in Determining the Dependence of Biblical on Non-Biblical Texts
Program Unit: National Association of Professors of Hebrew
David M. Carr, Union Theological Seminary in New York

This paper briefly summarizes some of the major criteria for arguing that a given biblical text is dependent on another biblical text. It then procedes to focus on how these criteria might apply to establishing a biblical allusion to a non-biblical textual tradition and discussion of the particular challenges attending such arguments for extra- biblical allusion. Several cases will be considered, including the proposed dependence of Deuteronomy 13 and 28 on Neo-Assyrian treaty traditions, the case of the Deir Alla Plaster inscriptions, and the proposed dependence of Psalm 72 on Ashurbanipal's Coronation Hymn (SAA III,11).


How the Hebrew Scriptures Came to Be
Program Unit: Westar Institute
David M. Carr, Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York

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Women’s Ordination as a Threat to Church Unity: An Ethical Analysis
Program Unit: Adventist Society for Religious Studies
Mark F. Carr, Loma Linda University

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Diaspora Jews and Torah-Observance—Josephus, Philo, Pseudo-Phocylides, and Paul
Program Unit: Paul within Judaism
George Carras, Washington and Lee University

Definition and meaning of Torah observance among Diaspora Jews remains a topic of keen interest. This paper will consider what is meant by Torah-observance in three bodies of Jewish Diaspora evidence representing Rome and Alexandria. Equally, each literary author is a near contemporary of Paul. We will take “soundings” from this Diaspora evidence in considering Torah observance as a means to help better contextualize Paul as a Torah-observant Diaspora Jew. The evidence to be used for analytical and illustrative purposes is Josephus’ Contra Apionem, Philo’s Hypothetica, and the Pseudo-Phocylides Sentences. We will seek to (i) contextualize the use, range of meaning and definition of Torah observance within these designated literatures (ii) clarify motives behind Torah observance language in the Jewish representatives and samples of literatures (iii) suggest reasons for an inquiry of these select Jewish authors (Josephus, Philo, and Ps. Phoc.) in seeking definitions and sensibilities of Torah observance in the Diaspora world (iv) offer evidence and texts without arguing the case in this paper for ways that may serve as potential windows to understanding Paul as a Torah-observant Jew. To this end, this study may serve as background for future studies on Paul to appreciate (a) the meaning and range of use relating to Torah oriented sensibilities in Paul (b) motives and perspectives of Paul as a Torah-observant Jew (c) locate Paul’s Torah-oriented perspective within Diaspora Hellenistic Judaism.


The Spirit Engages the Spirits: A Comparative Synoptic Analysis
Program Unit: Synoptic Gospels
John T. Carroll, Union Presbyterian Seminary

Part of a larger project on the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, this paper will probe select passages in Matthew, Mark, and Luke in which the Spirit plays a significant role in the plot, especially as agent of divine empowerment and authorization. The contest between Spirit and spirits in the early chapters of each gospel (Mark 1:7-11 and parallels; Mark 1:12-13 and parallels; Luke 4:15-16, 18; Mark 1:23-28 and Lukan parallel; and Mark 3:22-30 and parallels) and the intertextually-voiced prophetic declarations legitimated by the Spirit in Luke 1-2 will claim particular attention. The aim of the comparative analysis is to sketch the distinctive profiles of the Spirit in each synoptic narrative.


Reading John 4 through Diaspora and Differentness
Program Unit: Contextual Biblical Interpretation
Arthur Francis Carter, Vanderbilt University

While diaspora is the primary hermeneutic lens utilised in this analysis, this paper employs the notions of le même and le divers presented in Édouard Glissant’s, le Discours Antillais, as paradigmatic analytics to execute a socio-rhetorical exegesis of the woman of Samaria’s encounter with Jesus at Jacob’s well (Jn 4:1-42). Implementing an experimental hermeneutic and analytic, this paper has four objectives: a) to describe how même [sameness] and divers [differentness] can help explore a text’s discursive character; b) to outline four thematic categories that are useful when considering discourses from, for, or within diaspora; c) to demonstrate the appropriateness of diaspora as a socio-rhetorical hermeneutic, for historico-literary analysis in general, for Biblical studies in particular; d) to contribute to scholarly readings of John 4:1-42 by challenging the interpretive emphasis placed on difference - the woman’s marriages/Jesus’s piety; Jews/Samaritans; These objectives are developed in four parts. The first section outlines this paper’s experimental hermeneutic and analytic. Twofold, it describes même and divers as paradigmatic analytics to critique the syntagmatic presence and signifying value of difference within text, while also introducing the understanding of diaspora employed within these pages. This comparative analysis provides intertextual parallels for conceiving the variant rhetorical and poetic strategies employed in diaspora discourse. After this sampling of diasporic literature ensues a discussion of diaspora and its relationship to the social and cultural texture of the Gospel of John. This paper refrains from an argument that the Gospel of John has a specific diasporic provenance or intended ancient audience. It does, however, argue that when one combines various textual aspects of the Fourth Gospel, knowledge of the socio-cultural and political climate of the early Roman Empire with an assumed presence of diasporic experiences and communities during the late first to early second centuries common era, a diasporic context, whether envisioned or authorially intended or not, is a legitimate and plausible through which an interpreter can conceive John’s ancient social and cultural texture. By identifying diaspora as a significant part of the social and cultural texture, this section initiates discussion of John’s ideological texture. The final section consists of an exegesis of John 4:1-42 that focuses primarily on the pericope’s innertextual and intertextual textures. A brief conclusion summarises the benefits même and divers give this diasporic reading of the woman of Samaria’s encounter with Jesus at Jacob’s well by situating this reading among traditional exegeses of John 4.


Empire AND Synagogue: Bridging a Matthean Divide
Program Unit: Synoptic Gospels
Warren Carter, Brite Divinity School (TCU)

Contemporary scholarly approaches to Matthew’s Gospel predominantly foreground a Jewish context and hostile interaction with a synagogue community, whether as a separation from, or an ongoing dispute with, a synagogue. An alternative approach has foregrounded Matthew as a text negotiating imperial power. The former approaches tend to highlight “religious” matters, the latter tend to highlight “political/societal” matters. Arguing that these options need not be mutually exclusive, this paper proposes a bridge between them in the recognition that Jewish synagogue communities were, post-70, negotiating Roman power freshly asserted in the 66-70 war and fall of Jerusalem. The paper understands the Gospel’s harsh rhetoric toward Jewish leaders and synagogues in terms of the horizontal (verbal) violence that numerous historians and social scientists have observed to occur among groups that encounter vertical pressure from a dominating power. This analysis brings together Jewish and imperial contexts, accounts in a new way for the Matthew-synagogue tensions and animosities, and moves beyond a religious-political divide without diminishing the importance of either category.


Memory Trauma and Identity in Ezra-Nehemiah
Program Unit: Social Sciences and the Interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures
Jeremiah W. Cataldo, Grand Valley State University

The absence of any material fulfillment of the golah community's desired restoration in Yehud produced a perceived "trauma." In turn, this resulted in the usurpation of cultural memory (traditions etc.) and a subsequent construction of an exclusive group identity. Using Ruth Leys' theory on trauma and memory, it can be shown that an initial survivor's guilt led to an autotelic response promoting the idea that the restoration of "Israel" (intentionally defined) was affected by exile (thus, explaining Ezra-Nehemiah's [also Dtr.'s] emphasis on exile as divine punishment). In other words, reading post-exilic texts such as Ezra-Nehemiah with the aid of Leys' model reveals responses to social-psychological concerns conducted by writing (autotelic) texts that argued that restoration was the desired consequence of exile--a strategy that while at first was a survival mechanism was later developed by Ezra-Nehemiah into one supporting the golah community in its contest for social-political authority. This investigation focuses on the development of that strategy within the cultural memory of the Judean exiles as that which can be determined from Ezra-Nehemiah.


The Curious Case of P43: Another New Testament Opisthograph?
Program Unit: Papyrology and Early Christian Backgrounds
Jeff Cate, California Baptist University

P.Sarga 12 (British Library, papyrus 2241) is a tiny scrap from Wadi Sarga in Egypt with barely 100 letters visible on front and back. This fragment, more commonly known as P43, is one of only seven known Greek papyrus manuscripts of the Apocalypse of John and is quite an enigma. The manuscript was discovered nearly a century ago, yet rarely is it mentioned in publications. Oddities abound with the fragment. The text on front and back is not from adjacent passages (Rev 2:12-13 and 15:8-16:2, respectively) as would be expected from a codex. Furthermore, the text on the verso is upside-down compared to the recto and does not appear to be from the same hand. The fragment is generally dated to the seventh century, which is late for NT papyri and long after the establishment of the codex over the scroll as the preferred format for copies of the Christian scriptures. Nevertheless, reconstructing the extant text leads to the reasonable conjecture that P43 is another rare example of a New Testament opisthograph, albeit the only example of which the text on recto and verso is from the same book.


The Acts of John: New Insights into the Source of the Ethiopic Tradition
Program Unit: Ethiopic Bible and Literature
Chess Cavitt, Abilene Christian University

For years scholars have known about the rich diversity in the apocryphal acts of John that exists in the Greek, Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic traditions, but as of yet there has been little effort to fully analyze this vast range of transmission. Therefore, my paper presents the results of not only my analysis of the Ethiopic text of the apocryphal acts of John (particularly the Metastasis), but also a comparison of the Ethiopic to the Greek, the results of which I summarize here. The analysis revealed numerous insights into the assumed textual transmission of the Ethiopic. Using Budge’s printing of two 18th century manuscripts of the Contendings of the Apostles, and what is likely a 15th century manuscript, I was able to find evidence that the Ethiopic tradition, which was previously assumed to descend from the Coptic via Arabic, actually descends from an unknown Greek tradition. Even though the Ethiopic tradition is very similar in content to the Coptic and Arabic, evidence such as the transliteration of Greek place names and syntax suggests that the Ethiopic was dependent upon a Greek tradition that has not survived. As such, it then becomes critical to compare the Ethiopic, and thereby the possible Greek behind it, to the traditional Greek in order to find the points of divergence. My analysis revealed that the Ethiopic is not only significantly longer, but differs from the Greek in the minor details (i.e., names of characters and narrative plot development). However, the Ethiopic preserves the speeches of John closely to the Greek. Therefore, my conclusion is that the Ethiopic likely built upon a very early Greek edition of the apocryphal acts of John, which was primarily sayings of John, and was later amended by the addition of narrative material.


Demythologizing a Glocalized Sectarian Reception of 2012 Apocalypse: Re-reading Revelation 12
Program Unit: Contextual Biblical Interpretation
Lung Pun Common CHAN, Chinese University of Hong Kong

This paper aims at demythologizing Chinese reception of Mayan 2012 apocalypse (namely “December 21, 2012” as Doomsday) in cyberspace. YouTube becomes a hotbed of syncretism between Mayan prophecy of 2012 and Christian Apcoalypse of John. By means of global marketing and glocal production, numerous Chinese Christian sects take advantage of this 2012 phenomenon. In Hong Kong, the “2012”-reception of the Church of Zion, as a case being studied in this paper, is remarkably typical and radical. The sectarian live sermons, short films and personal testimonies are posted, propagandized and proliferated via YouTube as an apocalyptic series of “texts” or hypertexts. Special attention will be paid on a keynote of their mythical reading of the Apcoalypse of John, particularly Rev 12. Their glocalized sectarian hermeneutics could be viewed as a modern gnositicism. Three features are precisely noted: syncretistic, astrological and pseudoscientific. Living in the age of information explosion, Hongkongers are overwhelmed by abundance of data. Religiosity of information age demands spiritual direction. In this manner, Hongkong “Zionists,” who are experiencing a cosmopolitan city, read the Apocalypse of John with their pluralistic and cross-cultural explosure. Like relocating all mosaic stones in the Bible, they employ an eclectic paradigm to reconstruct a biblical timeline for reading the Revelation and syncretize the myth of Mayan “21-12-2012” into it since 2009. In consequence, paradigam of “three-and-a-half” years is presupposed in their gnostic reading. Indeed they summon a “cross-textual” interpretation. In light of Mayan 2012, Revelation 12 (e.g. Rev 12:1) is interpreted with the aid of folk astronomy or astrology, especially Mayan Calendar (cf. Malina 2000). Furthermore, under influence of the marketization of Chinese churches, their pseudoscientific claims or relevance win audience, including professionals. But to certain extent, their contextual biblical interpretation reflects that Hongkongers demand a cross-cultural, cosmological and (anti-)globalist spirituality in an information age.


Hippolytus’ Reception of 2 Maccabees in Danielic Traditions
Program Unit: Function of Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
Lung Pun Common CHAN, Chinese University of Hong Kong

The overarching purpose of the paper is to further investigate how Hippolytus of Rome received Second Maccabees in his Commentary on Daniel (hereafter DC). 2 Macc 7 and 2 Macc 9 are employed in DC 2.14-38 and DC 3 respectively (Schneider 2000). Not until the emergence of Hippolytus’ commentary did Early Christian (including New Testament) writer(s) interpret the Book of Daniel from the martyrological perspective (cf. Koch 2005). However, the persecution context under the reign of Septimius Severus could not sufficiently explain Hippolytus’ reception of martyrological narrative(s) of 2 Maccabees in the Septuagintal Danielic traditions (cf. Shelton 2008). In DC 2.35.1, Hippolytus raised such a question, “And so why did God rescue the martyrs long ago, but now he does not so rescue them?” Through this question, the “Maccabean”martyrs are depicted as counterpart to those Danielic witnesses. Originally, martyrdom did not belong to the Danielic traditions. The first part of the paper illustrates how Hippolytus remedied and supplemented the contextual reading of Daniel intratextually by inputting the “Maccabean” martyrological tradition. In this manner, Hippolytus was most likely the first Christian writer to introduce the martyrological reading of Daniel on one hand (cf. Clem. Strom I 21.123.2; Strom V 14.97.7). On the other hand he canonized the legend behind 2 Maccabees text. On top of the first part, the second part attempts to posit intertexually how Hippolytus’ innovative reception of 2 Maccabees might have been inspired by his contemporary Christian texts, particularly the Martyrdom of Polycarp. This particular text entails Danielic elements, Second-Maccabean-image, martyrdom of Christ and martyrological verbatim. In the last part, the paper highlights that Origen Christianized in his Exhortatio ad Martyrium the Danielic traditions and the Jewish martyrology of 2 and 4 Maccabees by adopting Hippolytus’ reception (Schneider 2000; cf. deSilva 2009; Kellermann 1979; van Henten 1997).


Joseph and Jehoiachin: On the Edge of Exodus
Program Unit: Deuteronomistic History
Michael J. Chan, Emory University

Jehoiachin’s rehabilitation in 2 Kgs 25:27-30 is a bothersome thorn in the side of biblical scholars. Instead of the expected end-of-era speech, readers are left with a brief notice about Jehoiachin’s release from prison and exaltation in the Babylonian court. This “anticlimax” has left scholars clamoring for explanations: Noth thought that these verses were just another indication of Dtr’s “scrupulous respect for historical fact”; for Von Rad they signaled the ongoing relevance of the Davidic covenant; and Cross attributes them to the work of a “less articulate” editor (i.e., Dtr2). But recent scholarship suggests that, at one time, these final verses belonged to an enneatuchal, not an exclusively deuteronomistic, context. Read against this broader horizon, a number of new literary connections emerge that may explain 2 Kings’ anticlimactic conclusion. As Römer suggests, Jehoiachin’s rehabilitation is modeled on the Jewish court tale, which flourished in the Persian period (cf. Daniel 1-6, parts of Genesis 37-50, etc.). The connections between the Jehoiachin and Joseph court tales are notable: Both characters are forced into exile and are imprisoned by a foreign king (Genesis 37, 39; 2 Kgs 24:12, 15). After their released from prison (Gen 40-41; 2 Kgs 25:27-30), each is given new garments (Gen 41:42; 2 Kgs 25:29). And finally, Joseph and Jehoiachin are exalted to high positions in the royal court (Gen 41; 2 Kgs 25:30). These literary resonances suggest that hope does exist at the end of 2 Kings. In Genesis, Joseph’s rise to prestige prepares the way for Israel’s exodus from Egypt. If Joseph’s court tale is read typologically and in the context of the Enneateuch, Jehoiachin’s rehabilitation signals the possibility of a “new exodus”—out of Mesopotamia and into Canaan. Hope, then, may yet exist at the end of 2 Kings, but its grounding is not in the royal Davidic promise (so Von Rad), but rather in the hope of a new escape and beginning for the people of Judah.


Producing Peasant Poverty: Debt Instruments in Amos 2:6b–8, 13–16
Program Unit: Poverty in the Biblical World
Marvin Chaney, San Francisco Theological Seminary

Numerous authors have sketched a historical outline of the political economies of ancient Israel and Judah wherein a first round of surplus extraction via taxation was followed by a second round of surplus extraction accomplished through various debt instruments. This second round of surplus extraction is seen by these authors as particularly severe during periods of agricultural intensification, such as the eighth century B.C.E. Previous studies have explored how specific literary units in the eighth-century prophets reflect and reflect upon these dynamics of debt and their role in the impoverishment of large portions of the peasantry in Israel and Judah. The older portions of the “Israel oracle” in Amos 2:6b-8, 13-16 seem to witness these same dynamics, but the oracle bristles with philological obscurities and uncertainties that have precluded its full contribution to the discussion. Careful attention to the working details of the political economy presumed allows more intrinsic and less contrived “solutions” to many of these philological difficulties. These “solutions,” in turn, help to unify the oracle in content and literary form, as well as contributing incrementally to an understanding of the role of debt in its several iterations to the process of peasant pauperization.


The Rib of Adam: The Maternal Sub-division of the House of the Father
Program Unit: Social Sciences and the Interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures
Cindy Chapman, Oberlin College

The Rib of Adam: The Maternal Sub-Division of the House of the Father Traditionally, scholars have defined the Hebrew kinship designation, “House of the Father” as the “the basic building block of the tribal structure” (Blenkinsopp 1997: 51) or “the basic unit of Israelite society” (King and Stager 2001: 39). Some recent scholars, however, have suggested that the house of the father could be subdivided into meaningful social units headed by married sons (S. Bendor 1996: 123-24) or inheriting sons (F. Greenspahn 1994). In short, there can be multiple “houses” within a “house of the father” (S. Ackerman 2008 : 128). This paper will provide evidence for the biblical subdivision of the “house of the father” into meaningful social units defined by wives of the head of household who have born sons. A man’s house can also be structurally sub-divided into maternally defined entities such as “wombs” and “tents.” Even the primeval male ancestor, the fist man to establish a house through the begetting of sons, accomplished this feat through his wife who is understood to be a sub-section of his very being – his rib. I argue that the subdivision of an extended family house of the father into units defined by the mother is the basis for understanding the Hebrew kinship term “house of the mother” as a sub-unit nested within the house of the father but defined by a mother, her maids, and her biological and adopted children.


The Descensus ad inferos in the Odes of Solomon and Early Christian Texts
Program Unit: Function of Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
James H. Charlesworth, Princeton Theological Seminary

Of the numerous questions to be explored, the most prominent are these: Why did Jesus followers create the concept that Jesus went into Hell? Where do we find these concept? Is this concept found in Early Judaism? Why would Reitzenstein trace the concept not back to Judaism or Christianity but back to Iranian thought? Why would the Odist emphasize this concept? What is the rhetorical function of composing ex ore Christi? When did this event ascribed to Jesus occur, after his crucifixion but before his resurrection or after his resurrection? How far into Sheol did “the Son of God” enter? What image of Sheol is provided by Ode 42? What are the two main theological claims enhanced by the concept of descensus ad inferos?


Praise as Currency in the Divine Realm
Program Unit: Book of Psalms
Davida Charney, University of Texas at Austin

The frequent shifts in mood from despair to praise in the individual laments have long intrigued and even baffled their interpreters. Some scholars have taken the characteristic final shift to praise as a sign of the therapeutic power of articulating a psalm of lament. Even if the prayer is not answered favorably in the immediate future, the speaker recuperates enough to remain faithful. Recognizing that the therapeutic account does little to explain the abruptness of the shifts, Carleen Mandolfo has challenged the assumption that they express a succession of feelings of a single person. Instead she posits a dialogue in the laments between the complainant and a didactic voice of faith that reminds the speaker (and hearers) of normative beliefs and behaviors that justify continued faithfulness. While insightful, Mandolfo continues the traditional focus on the putative effect of praise on the speaker rather than on the hearer whom the speaker addresses directly, namely God. In this talk, I consider a range of contexts in which praise and the promise to praise serve as means of persuasion. In addition to self-expression, the speaker's goal in a lament is to move God to respond, to intervene directly in the crisis. In many laments, the primary appeal is to God's desire for justice or to God's attribute of compassion. But a number of speakers also argue that their deaths would deprive God of praise (e.g., Ps 6:6, Ps 30:10, Ps 88:11-13). The argument that God should intervene for the sake of continued praise receives its fullest elaboration in Ps. 71 in which the speaker attests to his previous role as a model for others to praise God, a function that cannot continue unless God rescues the speaker and renews his strength. A consideration of the rhetoric of praise has broader implications for understanding the primary place of speech acts in the psalms.


A Non-supersessionist Christian Reading of Psalm 22
Program Unit: Theological Interpretation of Scripture
Ellen T. Charry, Princeton Theological Seminary

In the cycles of interpretive sensibility, the Older Testament, traditionally read by Christians as Christian documents, was at least theoretically released from Christian theological constraints by turning to both the original context of the text and the text itself. This potentially undermined Christian readings of the texts along with the supersessionist presuppositions of pre-modern Christian commentaries. Post-Holocaust awareness eventually reversed supersessionist scholarship and eschewed suppersessionism. Some Christian exegetes began to read scriptural texts with anti-supersessionist convictions. Now the pendulum has again swung and the biblical guild is criticized for reading the texts simply as ancient literature thereby robbing them of their spiritual power for worship and devotion. The criticism is giving rise to a small movement promoting the theological interpretation of scripture that distinguishes itself from the earlier biblical theology movement that failed in its quest to discern theological unity in the Christian scriptures. How is theological interpretation of scripture sensitive to both concerns to proceed? That is, how are we to read the Older Testament both respecting the pre-Christian theology of the text while addressing the spiritual and devotional needs of current believers? Psalm 22 is a central text through which to attempt such a mediating undertaking for Christians precisely because it is so central to Christian piety. While many questions arise in this undertaking, perhaps the greatest challenge is to identify theological features of the text that illumine later Christian sensibilities. The reading of Psalm 22 offered here seeks to honor both sensibilities by mining the reception of the text for clues to its nurturing power. The attempt will consider the canonical Gospels’ appropriation of phrases of Psalm 22 and delve further into how the dynamic movement of the psalm illuminates the story of Jesus.


The Economic Aspect of Wisdom in the Book of Proverbs
Program Unit: Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
Samuel Chen, University of Oxford

Rather than simply a collection of moralistic and dogmatic sayings, the Book of Proverbs shows serious engagement with social reality in its sapiential explorations and teachings. Arguably, this engagement can be best seen in the deep concern for the economic life and well-being of individuals throughout all six parts of the Book, most notably in the Proverbs of Solomon (10:1–22:16). Not only were careful observations of economic life offered, serious efforts were also made in guiding individuals to learn and practise the economic rules, moral and ethical principles, and religious sentiments conducive to economic success. In the meantime, different parts of the Book also give warnings of the dire economic consequences of certain behaviours, activities and choices. To a considerable extent, the Book of Proverbs provides urgent advice on how wealth may be properly made, kept, consumed and invested. Furthermore, the wisdom teachings of the Book of Proverbs apply economic calculation in the construction of their value systems in order to critically evaluate and prioritise various things in life. Interestingly, according to these evaluations, material prosperity is not the sole and ultimate measure of success. Nor is poverty always the most undesirable. The present paper will compare different parts of the Book of Proverbs in order to investigate commonality and divergence in their economic observations, teachings and value systems. Attentions will also be given to the economic terms and images used in the Book.


The Georgian Acts at Sinai: Analysis of an Unpublished Manuscript of the Georgian Acts (Sinai georg. NF 9)
Program Unit: Manuscripts from Eastern Christian Traditions
Jeff Childers, Abilene Christian University

On the basis of two Sinai manuscripts, in 1955 Gérard Garitte published an edition of the Old Georgian version of the Acts of the Apostles. He was unaware that Ilia Abuladze had published an edition in Georgia five years earlier, utilizing many more manuscripts--but not the Sinai texts. Garitte's edition has been more widely used by western scholars, and the Sinai form of text has often been upheld as the most primitive extant form. Yet a thorough investigation of Garitte's text and the multiple recensions in Abuladze reveal that the situation is more complex. Nor could either scholar have known that new discoveries at St Catharine's Monastery would once again complicate things further, due to the trove of Georgian treasures amongst the New Finds. These include some badly damaged fragments of a fine Old Georgian copy of Acts, in the primitive asomtavruli script. This paper presents the results of a thorough analysis of the unpublished New Finds fragments. It not only clarifies the manuscript's significance for defining the Sinai text and for understanding the history of the Georgian text tradition, but also examines the role that new manuscript discoveries may play in shedding new light on old problems.


Analytic Comparison and the Challenge of Teaching
Program Unit: Jewish-Christian Dialogue and Sacred Texts
Bruce Chilton, Bard College

Comparing interpretations of the same text across religious traditions involves several levels of analysis. What makes a text "the same"? How are exegetical moves deployed to understand the text? Why does a given system of religion favor characteristic meanings? For example, the Nazirite vow could be understood both practically and metaphorically on the basis of the New Testament, so that ritual practices – including fasting, abstinence, and avoidance of oil and/or bathing – continued to be pursued in Christianity after the destruction of the Temple.


Death in the “Isaiah Apocalypse” (Isaiah 25:8)
Program Unit: Book of Isaiah
Paul K-K Cho, Harvard University

A number of tradition-rich motifs come together in the closely related texts, Isaiah 24:21–23 and 25:6-8: divine kingship, feasting, Zion, and Death. As part of a ongoing project on Isaiah 24:21–23 and 25:6–8, for this presentation, I propose to review primary and secondary literature on Death (???) to argue for a multi-dimensional understanding of Death and his (ironic) relationship to the motif of feasting. Attention will extend to the difference between Death and God’s celestial and earthly enemies (24:21) and to the difference in the mode of their punishment (cf. 24:22 and 25:8). I will suggest that Death is primarily an enemy to God’s royal authority but also affirm his (antagonistic) relationship to creation as an important factor in understanding the apocalyptic feast of judgment and vindication.


Christianity and Local Religion in the Great Oasis
Program Unit: Christianity in Egypt: Scripture, Tradition, and Reception
Malcolm Choat, Macquarie University

So far from the Nile that its inhabitants still talk of ‘going to Egypt’ when they make the trek to the Valley, the Great Oasis of Graeco-Roman period (the modern Dakhleh and Khargeh Oases) was nevertheless home to Christian communities by the end of the third century. This paper will survey the papyrological, archaeological, and literary evidence for the spread of Christianity, and Manichaeism, in the Oasis down to the fifth century against the backdrop of Graeco-Egyptian religious traditions in the area.


New Proposal of pistis Christou: A Contextual Approach to the pistis Christou Construction in Romans and Galatians
Program Unit: Korean Biblical Colloquium
Gab Jong Choi, Baekseok University, Korea

Abstract This article explores the meaning of the Pauline pistis Christou which has caused one of the most perplexing debates in recent NT scholarship. The issue at stake is whether pistis Christou should be interpreted in the objective genitive, i.e., “faith in Christ,” or in the subjective genitive, i.e., “faith(faithfulness) of Christ.” Because the problem cannot be settled by grammar and syntax alone, this paper focuses on the role of pistis within the dika- and the nomos constructions of Romans and Galatians to determine the meaning of pistis Christou. The article gives special attention to whether the pistis Christou construction, when it is employed with the dika- and the nomos terminology, functions as an instrument to attain God’s righteousness or whether it functions to disclose God’s righteousness. Through a contextual and exegetical investigation of Romans 1:16-17, 3:21-31, 4:1-25 and Galatians 2:15-20, 3:1-29 and 5:2-6, the article argues that the phrase pistis Christou functions as the means to attain God’s righteousness, not to disclose it. The flow of Paul’s argument in most of the periscopes of pistis, dika- and nomos construction in Romans and Galatians is on how God’s salvation in Jesus Christ has been given to us without the works of the law (“about soteriology”), rather than what Jesus Christ has done for our salvation (“about Christology”). Although both are indissolubly connected, the major issue in the earliest Christian communities including the Roman church was not of Christology but of soteriology. Christology was the accepted given and common ground for all early Christian churches, while soteriology referring to whether salvation/righteousness was given through “only faith” or “the works of the law” was debated among the churches in Antioch, Jerusalem, Galatia, and Rome. Providing support from both contextual and historical study, the article concludes that the phrase pistis Christou should be taken in the objective genitive referring to “faith in Christ” rather than in the subjective genitive meaning of the “faithfulness of Christ.”


Jesus’ Body as the Disappearance and the Dys-appearance
Program Unit: Gender, Sexuality, and the Bible
Jin Young Choi, Vanderbilt University

In our daily experience, we generally conceive of the body as absent insofar as we unaware of it. In this regard, the body disappears. On the other hand, when the body faces disease, defect, or disorder, this inadmissible consciousness causes the alienation of the body. The body then dys-appears. Indebted to Drew Leder’ ideas of the disappearing and dys-appearing bodies, this paper probes the themes of the body of Jesus as well as the bodies of subject people—the othered body—represented by the Gospel of Mark. The body of Jesus is absent not ontologically in the text but in our unawareness. Then, the crucified body of Jesus is an extreme type of the dys-appearing body. Finally, the body becomes the disappearance when the Gospel ends with the story of the empty tomb. Also, dys-appearing bodies—such as starving, sick, handicapped, bleeding, defiled, possessed, dying, and dead bodies—are present in the text, but many times they are not properly treated as the real body because only the significance of post-healing is highlighted. Here what seems to determine the disappearing and dys-appearing bodies is perception. While this perception is related to the ideological construction of sameness and difference, Mark also uses seemingly epistemological terms such as seeing, hearing, perceiving and understanding. I argue that such perception is germane to embodiment, implying the interaction between the body and the sensual world and further connoting interrelated bodies and intersubjectivity. Through the body of Jesus, the bodies of the dys-appearance and the disappearance are connected and touched by the mystery. The disappearance and dys-appearance of Jesus’ body and of the other(ed) bodies in the Gospel of Mark will illuminate the mystery of the fluidity and interconnectedness of bodies, which cannot be perceived by disembodied reason.


The Divine Unsub: Television Procedurals and Biblical Sexual Violence
Program Unit: Bible and Popular Culture
Dan W. Clanton, Jr., Doane College

One of the most common and popular genres of television programs today is the psychological police procedural. The procedural genre is predicated on predictable repetition, i.e., there is a formula that is routinzed, so that audience expectations operate at a normalized level. Series such as "Criminal Minds" and the venerable "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" embrace this format and seek to explore the psychological motives behind horrific crimes such as serial homicides and violent sexual offenses. In this presentation, I will examine texts that depict divine and divinely sanctioned sexually aggressive behavior by exploring parallels with both the content and form of the modern procedural drama. The importance of such a discussion is twofold: (a) noting the parallels between psychopathic sexual behavior in these series and the behavior of God in texts like Hosea 1-3 and Ezekiel 16 and 23 allows us a greater specificity in exposing the underlying gender expectations and patterns of sexual abuse in these chapters; and (b) exploring the genric qualities of the procedural can help to account for the surprising survival of explicit and abusive images, including the marriage metaphor, in prophetic literature. To be clear, I am not arguing for the direct influence of the Bible on these episodes. Rather, by placing these troubling biblical texts into conversation with (a) these television series; (b) their specific interest in psychosexual abnormalities; and (c) the episodic genre of the procedural, we can bring popular cultural forms and content to bear on the some of the Bible’s most horrific sections in the hope that one day, these cases can be closed.


The Redemption of Felix Bush: "Get Low" as Secularized Prophetic Symbolic Action
Program Unit: Bible and Film
Dan W. Clanton, Jr., Doane College

In the film "Get Low," Robert Duvall plays Felix Bush, a man who has voluntarily isolated himself from his community and others for forty years. As a result, multiple legends and stories have arisen and been passed down about the “Hermit of Caleb County.” As he gets older, though, Bush realizes that his self-seclusion and these stories have only served to hide his real identity, which for Bush is bound up in his own version of a story that happened forty years ago. In order to reveal this story before he dies, he commissions a local funeral home run by Frank Quinn (Bill Murray) to throw him a funeral party, and anyone that has a story to tell about him will be invited. This comedic premise belies the deeper themes of the film, and, I will argue, the real purpose of Bush’s self-imposed segregation. Using the symbolic action reports found in prophetic literature such as Hosea and Ezekiel as a backdrop, I will argue that Bush’s isolation and the legends that have been passed down about him are cancelled and negated in order to reap a particular type of forgiveness from his community. That is, at the end of the film, it becomes clear that Bush’s life has been an extended symbolic action, but one that does not accord with the purpose of the symbolic actions we find in prophetic literature. Therein, these actions are performed in order to affect a change in the vertical relationship between the people and God through odd and sometimes disturbing actions. In "Get Low," Bush’s revelation at his own funeral—what I would argue is the climax of his life—is aimed entirely at restoring himself within the horizontal relationship between all the members of his community. In other words, Bush’s goal is similar to that of other performers of symbolic actions, viz., to affect a change in his audience, but his symbolic action and the intention behind it is entirely devoid of any traditional religious content, as Bush himself makes clear several times during the film. In essence, then, "Get Low" demonstrates a secularization of the prophetic symbolic action, but the substance of the redemption and atonement Bush seeks accords with the functional aspect of those prophetic performances.


Approaching the Modern
Program Unit:
Elizabeth Clark, Duke University

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Engaging Traumatic Stories in the Classroom, Office, and Pastorate
Program Unit: Bible and Practical Theology
Ron Clark, George Fox Evangelical Seminary

In teaching Pastoral Counseling classes one finds many resources that engage the student with the text but few which apply the text to pastoral care. Apocalyptic literature is one form of Biblical genre which students struggle to both understand and apply to their ministries. In the past I have used apocalyptic and prophetic texts along with abuse survivor stories to confront the students with both the injustice of human behaviors as well as the comfort of God. I would like to share my research concerning the effects of both the texts and experiences upon the students and their awareness in how to help others suffering injustice, pain, and a crisis of their faith. I would also like to offer a model for the relationship that can exist between Biblical scholarship and Patoral Theology in both the classroom and pastorate.


Your Warriors Will Become Women: the Feminization of Exiles, Captives, and Survivors in Ancient Jehud
Program Unit: Exile (Forced Migrations) in Biblical Literature
Ron Clark, George Fox Evangelical Seminary

Ancient texts feminize those individuals who are subject to violence in military, sexual assault, and forced migration. Valiant men are described as weak, afraid, confused, or rape victims when defeated by a more powerful nation or god. The Hebrew scriptures also use this description to indicate the defeat of Yahweh’s foes whether in the community of Israel or outside its borders. This form of gendered violence language can be ruthless, cruel, and misogynistic. This violent justice is disturbing to the reader however; Yahweh also follows the violence with compassion, mercy, and love—also feminine language. The texts use language suggesting that Yahweh is unique as one who becomes “feminized” in order to nurture and protect the victim of violence so that shalom will exist and provide both humans and their God a relationship of support and respect.


Scripture Cannot Be Broken: The Social Function of the Use of Scripture in the Fourth Gospel
Program Unit: Johannine Literature
Jaime Clark-Soles, Perkins School of Theology

In one trajectory of Johannine scholarship, the Johannine community has been envisioned as a sectarian group. This paper will primarily attend to an analysis of passages in which scriptural quotations are central in order to discover how they may or may not contribute to the repertory of things that sects need to do in order to establish and sustain themselves. Because there is no direct evidence of how the scriptural echoes functioned for the Johannine community, we will rely on educated imagination, the Johannine epistles, and evidence from Qumran and the Branch Davidians of Waco.


Reopening Acts’ Open Ending: Applying Bakhtin’s Unfinalizability to Acts 28:16–31
Program Unit: Reading, Theory, and the Bible
Christy Cobb, Drew University

The elusive ending to the Acts of the Apostles baffles many readers. Numerous solutions have been posited, ranging from the possibility that Luke simply came to the end of the scroll and stopped writing, to the suggestion that Luke had a third volume planned that he was never able to complete. Moreover, when considering Paul’s apparent dismissal of the Jews in Acts 28, the problem of reading the ending of Acts intensifies. Does Paul say “farewell to Judaism” by completely writing off the Jews through his recitation of Isaiah’s words? Or does the pantas of 28:30 include the Jews as welcomed into Paul’s residence? Unsatisfied with previous readings of the closing of Acts, increasing numbers of scholars are rereading the ending of Acts as intentionally crafted. Literary criticism is often a recourse for such readings. Richard Pervo’s major Hermeneia commentary on Acts, for example, takes its lead from narrative criticism in order to suggest that the narrative of Acts is finished while the future is left open. In this paper, I will briefly address previous interpretations of Acts 28:16-31 as well as the effect that these interpretations have on understandings of Paul’s interactions with the Jewish community. Then, building on Pervo’s suggestion to read the ending of Acts as “finished” in light of “openness,” I will provide another possible solution to this problem through the literary theory of Michel Bakhtin, in particular his notion of unfinalizability. Unfinalizability is best represented by this often repeated quote from Bakhtin’s Problems of Doesteovsky’s Poetics: “Nothing conclusive has yet taken place in the world, the ultimate word of the world and about the world has not yet been spoken, the world is open and free, everything is still in the future, and will always be in the future.” This concept shaped Bakhtin’s notion of history, in which multiple potentials exist within the present. Read in the light of this theoretical principle, the open ending of Acts is reopened to incorporate the sense of finality present in Acts while simultaneously exploring the unfinality that exists in delicate balance with this finality. Unfinalizability, then, allows me to read Acts 28:16-31 as purposely open and creatively unfinished, and Paul’s residence as a continually reopened space for pantas.


Hebrews 12:18–24: An Example of Apocalyptic Typology or Platonic Dualism?
Program Unit: Hebrews
Gareth Lee Cockerill, Wesley Biblical Seminary

This study begins its analysis of the connection between the “Sinai” of Heb 12:18-21 and the “Zion” of 12:22-24 by surveying the various ways in which interpreters of Hebrews have understood this relationship: as a contrast between the old and new religious orders, between the times before and after Christ, or between Judaism and Christianity; as an ineffective foreshadowing of the effective, or, as is asserted by those who affirm a Platonic background for Hebrews, as an earthly copy of the heavenly reality. This paper contends that this passage is concerned neither with a typological relationship between the old and the new nor with a Platonic relationship between earthly and heavenly, copy and reality. The author is not here concerned either with lesser/greater, before/after, type/antitype on the one hand, or with below/above, copy/reality on the other. There is little in this passage that suggests the writer’s primary concern is with an earthly/heavenly distinction and less that would indicate temporal sequence between these two “mountains.” The primary relationship between the two is stark contrast—between exclusion from and access to the presence of God. Other indicators as well, including the rhetorical structure of this “sermon,” suggest that the author presents “Sinai” and “Zion” as two alternatives for the people of God in the present. Through the work of Christ the “Mount” of God’s speaking has become the place of judgment for the apostate (12:18-21) but the “Zion” of fellowship with God for the faithful (12:22-24).


Collecting the Pieces of (and Reconfiguring) the Temple in the Mishnah's Temple Ritual Material
Program Unit: Religious World of Late Antiquity
Naftali Cohn, Concordia University - Université Concordia

It has long been noted that the third-century Mishnah contains extensive details about the performance of ritual in the Jerusalem Temple. Many scholars, particularly before the 1970s, believed that the rabbis preserved traditions from the Temple era about how Temple rituals were in fact performed. Jacob Neusner argued that the rabbis of the Mishnah were “reacting” to the destruction by pretending that “nothing has changed.” Building on my own (forthcoming) work, I argue in this paper that the extensive set of Temple material in the Mishnah was politically useful to the rabbis in their own time and that the rabbis shaped their laws and accounts of Temple ritual in a way that asserted authority for themselves and their traditions. The paper begins by demonstrating that there are two distinct ways in which the Mishnah conveys how Temple ritual is done: one, by describing in theoretical laws how Temple rituals ought to be performed, and two, by purporting to tell, in what I call “Temple ritual narratives,” how Temple rituals used to be performed in the past. Focusing especially on the Passover sacrifice and the first-fruits offering, I continue by showing that the two types of Temple material, in their interplay, validate the rabbinic version of the traditional way of life by reading unique characteristics of the rabbinic legal system into the past. First, both sets of material assert that there were endless varieties of ways in which the ritual could have been performed, depending on contingencies—whether, e.g., the person making the recitation could read Hebrew or whether the pilgrims lived near to or far from the Temple. These are the hallmarks of the Mishnah’s so-called casuistic law, which the Mishnah asserts were part of past observance in the Temple. Second, while the theoretical laws—like most of the Mishnah’s laws—focus almost exclusively on the individual’s or family’s ritual performance usually in the home setting, the Temple ritual narratives link the individual’s participation in the home to the public performance of the ritual by all of Israel in the Temple. In doing so, the Mishnah not only suggests that the rabbis’ own stress on the individual in the home was a component of Temple ritual, but hints that observance of the rabbinic version of traditional practice in post-temple times could, like the Temple rituals of past, serve as well to unify all of Israel.


Women's Adornment and the Rabbinized Body of Israel
Program Unit: History and Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism
Naftali Cohn, Concordia University - Université Concordia

The rabbinic authors of the Mishnah were concerned in a number of instances with the regulated dress and adornment of the female body. In this paper I show that in key passages in Mishnah Shabbat, Mo‘ed Kattan, Ta‘anit, and Sotah, women’s adornment could have more than one valence and could be regulated in more than one way: it could be negative, a means for sexual sin; it could be positive, a means for attracting a mate; or, most often, it could be neutral, simply an aspect of everyday life. So too adornment could be restricted or allowed, denied as a punishment or prescribed as a display of the female body. Regardless of its valence or method of regulation, however, it always served as a site for the assertion of rabbinic authority and the authority of the rabbinic legal system. One way, I suggest, that these passages about women’s adornment assert authority is by presuming that the typical Judaean woman must follow the dictates of the rabbis. Another way is by connecting the adornment of women with the larger body of Israel. In the majority of these instances, the regulation of women’s adornment is tied to the observance and celebration of the Sabbath and festivals—temporal sites of Judaean unity and distinctiveness—over which rabbis explicitly claim authority to determine the practice for all Israel after the destruction. Similarly, in the passage in Ta‘anit there is an explicit link between the display of women’s bodies and the participation of all of Israel in celebration of festivals. Based on these features of the passages and building on the work of Fonrobert, Baker, and Rosen-Zvi (and Mary Douglas), I argue that the rabbinic move to regulate the adornment of women’s bodies makes a larger claim for the authority of rabbis and their legal system over the entire body of Israel.


Calling on the Diaspora: Nativism and Diaspora Identity in the Letter of James
Program Unit: Postcolonial Studies and Biblical Studies
K. Jason Coker, Albertus Magnus College

The recipients of the Letter of James are called “the twelve tribes of the diaspora” (1:1). Understanding the Letter of James as an official “Letter to the Diaspora” from Jerusalem makes the letter ripe for a postcolonial analysis using the burgeoning field of diaspora theory. The center/margins binary created between Jerusalem and diaspora in the opening prescript of James calls on those in the diaspora to come back to the homeland. The homeland is governed by “the perfect law of freedom” (1:25) and “kingdom law” (2:8). By positioning the homeland as a rival kingdom to the “world,” James makes his claim on the diaspora’s primary allegiance. In this call to the diaspora, the recipients are forced to make a choice between the alternative kingdom espoused by James or the kingdom of the world/Roman Empire that James flatly condemns (5:1-6). The rhetoric used throughout the Letter of James is full of imperatives that beckon the diaspora to remain pure and undefiled before God. Using decolonization scholars like Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire as lenses to read the Letter of James, the invectives used to call the diaspora begin to reflect nativist calls to homeland. Reading the Letter of James from this postcolonial perspective changes the scholarly conversations about the Letter of James in relation to historical questions of Sitz im Leben, social setting, authorship and recipients.


‘Prepare War against Her’: The Land as Wounded City in Jer 6:1–8
Program Unit: Ecological Hermeneutics
Emily Colgan, University of Auckland

Land features prominently in the book of Jeremiah, but its presence as a character in the text has not received significant interpretive attention. With an emphasis on the ecological principles of suspicion and retrieval, this paper examines Jer 6:1-8 from the perspective of the Land as city. By paying close attention to the text’s language and imagery, I suggest that underlying this poem is a rhetoric of sexual abuse and that these verses should be read as a description of the Land’s rape. My analysis begins by establishing the subject of the poem as Zion – or Jerusalem – as a Land place, imagined as a woman. A re-reading of v 2 subsequently makes it clear that it is YHWH’s desire to inflict punishment upon this figure. I then bring to light the multiple sexual innuendos used to describe the attack on the Land, including the shepherds who ‘come upon her’ (v 3), the violation of ‘her palaces’ (v 5), and her public ‘stripping’ which is couched in terms of deforestation (v 6). From here I explore the way in which gender operates within these verses to constitute dynamics of power. As a daughter is expected to surrender absolute authority to her male head within a patriarchal household, so the metaphor suggests that the Land is the exclusive property of YHWH. Within this context violence is conceived as an acceptable means to exert control over this possession. By virtue of their affiliation with the divine, human superiority over Land is promoted as a moral right and the principle mode of this relationship is one of combative interaction. Finally, I suggest that the Land’s resistance to such sexual aggression is found in v 4b where the Land joins with the personified woman and the city’s inhabitants to denounce YHWH’s violent punishment. Through this act of dissent Jerusalem becomes a symbol of unified resistance, opposed to abuse and unwilling to be silenced.


The Legacy of Walter Bauer’s "Orthodoxy and Heresy" in the Discipline of New Testament Studies
Program Unit: Inventing Christianity: Apostolic Fathers, Apologists, and Martyrs
Adela Yarbro Collins, Yale University

This paper will examine the reception of Walter Bauer’s book by Rudolf Bultmann and his students, especially Helmut Koester. The focus will be on Koester’s contribution to Bultmann’s Festschrift, Zeit und Geschichte, his article in the third edition of Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart on heretics in early Christianity, and his article “Gnomai Diaphoroi: The Origin and Nature of Diversification in the History of early Christianity,” which appeared first in the Harvard Theological Review in 1965 and was reprinted in Trajectories through Early Christianity in 1971.


Asmodeus and Social Commentary: 17th–19th Century Society through the Eyes of a Biblical Demon
Program Unit: Use, Influence, and Impact of the Bible
Matthew A. Collins, University of Chester

The demon Asmodeus plays a minor (albeit crucial) role in the plot of the apocryphal book of Tobit, where he is said to be responsible for the deaths of Sarah’s seven previous husbands. After Tobias burns the heart and liver of a fish, the demon is repelled and flees to Egypt. Despite these relatively obscure scriptural origins (he has no dialogue and does not really have a physical presence within the narrative), Asmodeus goes on to have a rich and extremely varied reception history, stretching from the rabbinic period through to the present day. One peculiar facet of this biblical afterlife is the frequent employment in the 17th–19th centuries of the character of Asmodeus as a tool for political and social commentary, a phenomenon which this paper will endeavour to shed further light upon.


From Dan Brown to Charlie Brown: The Popularization of the Dead Sea Scrolls
Program Unit: Bible and Popular Culture
Matthew A. Collins, University of Chester

In his The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), Timothy H. Lim begins with the astute observation that “Many people have heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls, but few know what they are” (p. 1). Ever since their discovery some 65 years ago, the scrolls (both the biblical and non-biblical manuscripts) have been a source of fascination, not only for scholars (who see in them a window through to the late Second Temple period and its textual diversity), but for the public alike, for whom “the Dead Sea Scrolls” has become a byword for mystery, conspiracy, and ancient or hidden knowledge. This paper will explore the popularization of the scrolls and attempt to explain how an obscure collection of ancient and heavily fragmented Hebrew and Aramaic manuscripts have come to play such a prominent role in popular culture and the public imagination.


Dreams(’) Matter: Idol-Demons and Early Christian Oneiric Techniques
Program Unit: Religious Competition in Late Antiquity
Jason Robert Combs, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Tertullian complained that the pagan gods are “not confined to the sanctuaries … they penetrate into our houses and impose upon us in our bedrooms just as they do in the temples” (De Anima 46.13). The same pagan gods, whose statues dominated the cityscape, also populated the early Christian dreamscape. Authors from the late-second and early-third centuries – including Tatian, Athenagoras, Tertullian, Cyprian, Origen, and others – all express explicit concern that Christians, like their pagan counterparts, could be deceived by images in dreams. These “gods,” who frequently appeared in the form of their statues, were said to deceive through healings, prognostications or by more malicious means. Christians, of course, were confronted daily by the images of pagan art and lacked a corresponding wealth of their own visual stimuli. Although Robin Lane Fox identifies this problem in his Pagans and Christians, he does not deal with the particular techniques early Christians employed to manage it. Drawing upon recent work in the anthropology of dreams and imagination, particularly in a colonial context (Augé, Chidester, Crapanzano, Mittermaier), this study examines the strategies and techniques of dreaming in a “contact zone.” A comparison of pagan and Christian interaction with oneiric images and their techniques for eliciting or avoiding particular dreams (e.g., Aelius Aristides and Artemidorus) reveals shared trends. Yet, early Christians also developed various unique discursive modes and embodied practices to ensure safe sleep: from the common rhetorical identification of the idols’ images with demons (e.g., Cyprian, Treatise 6.6-7), to the practical application of the sign of the cross over one’s bed before sleep (e.g., Tertullian, De Corona 3).


Negotiating Multiple Modes of Religion and Identity in Roman Corinth
Program Unit: Polis and Ekklesia: Investigations of Urban Christianity
Cavan Concannon, Duke University

This paper explores the dynamic landscape of Roman Corinth, looking for ways to reimagine the Corinthians to whom Paul wrote and with whom he worked, debated, and disagreed. In exploring the literary and material contours of the city, I attempt to invoke a sense of the multiple “ordering principles,” in J.Z. Smith’s words, that were negotiated in the landscape of Corinth. Ideology and civic religion are certainly two kinds of ordering principles, but other alternatives are also important: myth, place, oracles, pilgrimmage and travel, to name but a few. What I hope to convey in my exploration of Corinthian identity is a sense of how the inhabitants of Corinth negotiated between and among these various orders, thereby creating new, pluriform ways of constructing identity and cultic practice. Out of attention to plurality and multiplicity, I discuss how we might hear the voices of Corinthians for whom the cult of Jesus offered new possibilities for negotiating life in and around Corinth.


The Ruin of Revelation: Dionysios of Alexandria’s Efforts to Keep the Apocalypse out of the New Testament Canon
Program Unit: Christianity in Egypt: Scripture, Tradition, and Reception
Eugenia Constantinou, University of San Diego

Revelation was universally accepted within the Church as apostolic from the early second century. But in the mid-third century, soon after the process of canon formation began, Dionysios, bishop of Alexandria, raised doubts about its apostolic authorship. He is the first known person ever to do so. Dionysios was motivated to oppose Revelation because of dissention within the Egyptian Church over the allegorical interpretation of prophecy. An Egyptian bishop, Nepos of Arsinoe, had written Refutation of the Allegorists, a defense of the literal exegesis of the prophetic writings, including, and especially, the Apocalypse. Dionysios debated Nepos during a three day conference held specifically to discuss the matter. Dionysios cautiously but cleverly raised arguments against the Book of Revelation, primarily by attacking its apostolic pedigree in two ways: comparing the Greek of the Apocalypse to the Greek in the Gospel of John and creating a theory that it was composed by some “other John,” a theory which survives even today. Although he denied it, Dionysios did not want Revelation to be considered Scripture, and his efforts were the first serious attempt to keep it out of the New Testament canon. He was remarkably successful. Even though later bishops of Alexandria did not agree with Dionysios, his arguments eventually persuaded nearly the entire Eastern Church when the conference and Dionysios’s arguments against Revelation were taken up later and strongly promoted by Eusebius of Caesarea. Dionysios’s line of reasoning coupled with Eusebius’s wide readership had the desired effect. Slowly, confidence in the apostolicity of Revelation and support for it in the canon eroded. By the end of the fourth century the Apocalypse of John was overwhelmingly rejected in the East, also leading directly to its exclusion from the lectionary. Revelation remained non-canonical for most of the Christian East until the modern era.


Listening to the Patristic Voices: Andrew of Caesarea and the Collection of Greek Apocalypse Interpretation at the End of Late Antiquity
Program Unit: Religious World of Late Antiquity
Eugenia Constantinou, University of San Diego

Although Revelation had enjoyed universal acceptance in the Church from the second century onward, opinion had turned against Revelation in the East by the mid-fourth century and it was mostly rejected from the New Testament canon. But popular interest in the Apocalypse remained, especially as Late Antiquity drew to a close. The first Greek commentary on the Apocalypse appeared at the end of the sixth century, authored by Oikoumenios, a Miaphysite philosopher. As the only Greek commentary on Revelation, Oikoumenios’s work should have found a ready readership. But his commentary was quirky, unorthodox, relied on imagination and frequently expressed surprising conclusions. Shortly thereafter, the Eastern Roman Empire slid into chaos. The early seventh century saw famine, earthquakes, bubonic plague, civil war, and a devastating Persian invasion. In this apocalyptic climate, a well-known and respected exegete, Andrew, Archbishop of Caesarea, Cappadocia, composed a second Greek commentary on Revelation, one which would directly respond to Oikoumenios. Andrew wrote that he would “listen to the patristic voices.” The commentary was remarkably sound, intelligent, orthodox and preserved the entire history of Apocalypse interpretation in the Greek East, including the opinions of Oikoumenios himself, thirteen ancient writers, as well as many previously unknown oral sources and traditions. Far from being a mere “catena,” Andrew applied his own exegetical skill to those passages for which little patristic tradition existed. Andrew’s commentary had a tremendous impact. It quickly eclipsed Oikoumenios’s composition, which today only survives in one complete copy. On the other hand, one third of all Revelation manuscripts contain the Apocalypse commentary of Andrew of Caesarea. The commentary influenced eschatological opinion in the East, preserved early Greek Apocalypse interpretations, and eventually even led to Eastern Christian acceptance of Revelation in the New Testament canon after it had been excluded for over one thousand years.


An Approach to Historical Linguistics through Computer Tools and Computational Linguistics: 1–2 Kings
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Historical Books
Alba Contreras Corrochano, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

Traditionally, Historical Linguistic has been mainly based on the particular cases that we can find in the Masoretic Text. This approach works on a case-by-case basis and depends on the linguistic sensibility of the scholar. I am trying to apply a less individualistic approach by using Computational Linguistics and treating the data from a quantitative point of view. The book of Kings constitutes a perfect field of application for this kind of study since there are several linguistic layers, both diachronically and dialectologically. Therefore, I will introduce some examples and the problems they pose for this way of approaching the textual evidence.


"Into the Hand of a Woman"? Artistic Dealings with the Gender Threat of Jael
Program Unit: Use, Influence, and Impact of the Bible
Colleen Conway, Seton Hall University

The story of Jael has long intrigued scholars, artists and poets alike in its depiction of a non-Israelite woman who gruesomely murders the Canaanite general Sisera. In the context of Judges, Jael is clearly a hero, with a victory hymn declaring her the “most blessed of women.” Nevertheless, with Barak’s masculinity undercut, not to mention Sisera’s, the biblical narrative already signals the gender deviance that would captivate and frighten the imaginations of later artists and storytellers. This paper will examine a range of artistic and literary renderings of Jael, across several different historical periods, attending to the effects of different media in the gendered constructions of Jael. Artists, of course, show the gender identity of Jael, with musculature, clothing, posture, and facial expressions working to convey an understanding of the story in which Jael plays the role of a dominant masculine figure, or conversely a wily female seductress. With literary retellings, gender construction takes place through motives that are attributed to Jael by the authors. Here, too, the retellings lean in different directions, creating more or less masculine depictions of Jael and Sisera. These examples of artistic and literary renderings of Jael illustrate both the gender anxieties and cultural assumptions of the artist/author, but also provide insight into the biblical narrative.


Valency: The Intersection of Syntax and Semantics
Program Unit: International Syriac Language Project
John A. Cook, Asbury Theological Seminary

As the analysis of ancient texts progresses past lexical and morphological levels to syntax, the syntactic structures highlight the inadequacy of earlier lexicographic studies. In particular, the lexical determination of verbal arguments and semantic contrasts associated with variations in verb argument structure have been insufficiently treated by the standard lexica. Valency theory provides a framework for analyzing these variations in a way that advances both syntactic and lexical analysis of these ancient texts. In this paper I present a theory of valency that has been developed out of the Accordance syntax projects and discuss its contribution to our knowledge of BH syntax and lexicography.


Ezekiel’s God Incarnate! The God That the Temple Blueprint Creates
Program Unit: Book of Ezekiel
Stephen L. Cook, Virginia Theological Seminary

The temple vision of Ezekiel (chs. 40-48) presents an understanding of God’s nature and presence that stands out within the Scriptures and even within Ezekiel’s scroll. It maps out a three-dimensional architecture of holiness to house the divine body—a body that physically inhabits the system in 43:1-12, a major point of resolution within Ezekiel’s scroll. Despite the startling theology of divine presence and permanence in the vision, the temple “blueprint” has hardly evolved from nothing. It arises out of a defined stream of tradition. It builds upon established Zadokite assumptions about an actual bodily presence of divine reality on earth. It elaborates its understandings and ideals by mounting daring new interpretations of the Pentateuch’s priestly legal traditions, particularly Zadokite Holiness School traditions. In this paper, I examine how the text of Ezek 40-48 characterizes the deity who bodily indwells the ideal temple complex and I probe the theological roots and sources that inform this characterization.


Creation and Divination in Isaiah 2:1–4
Program Unit: Assyriology and the Bible
Jeffrey Cooley, Boston College

In this paper I examine Isa 2:1-4 in light of mantic traditions of the ancient Near East. Unlike some previous examinations, however, my point of reference will not be primarily innerbiblical, nor will I restrict my comparison solely to what others have labeled the prophetic material from Mesopotamia. Instead, I wish to broaden the backdrop against which we read this passage to include other mantic traditions as well. By mantic traditions, I mean not only texts that are functionally equivalent to the Isaian oracle; rather, my corpus will also include literary texts that consciously ground and reflect on mantic praxis within a cultural framework. In essence, I am suggesting we read this oracle internationally. Isa 2:1-4, I maintain, provides an alternative narrative to Babylonian traditions, which describe the ideal origins of the cosmos, as well as the origins of the city of Babylon and its exclusivist divinatory method, celestial divination. The Mesopotamian powers could claim that this method was not only more ancient, but also sustained their political and military triumphs. The author of Isa 2:1-4 presents his own ideal cosmos in which Jerusalem and the temple of its god, Yahweh, are preeminent. Like the Babylonian story, the prophet’s idealized cosmos includes a system of divination. But that system, unlike its Babylonian counterpart, will not be used to propagate wars of conquest that will result in peace. It will, rather, propagate peace directly without conflict. This is a radical assertion on the part of the prophet, given that the mantic traditions of contemporary Mesopotamia ostensibly aided its monarchs’ conquest of much of south-western Asia. Thus, the oracle is to be understood as reflecting the sort of rhetoric that important postcolonial studies have shown may be found among subjugated groups.


Debt as Weapon: Generating Poverty and Power in Eighth-Century Judah
Program Unit: Poverty in the Biblical World
Matthew J.M. Coomber, Saint Ambrose University

From Bronze-Age Mesopotamia to modern-day Latin America, debt has been used as a weapon to keep individuals and nations in states of poverty and dependence, while concentrating wealth and power among ruling and economic elites. Although illegal foreclosure practices in California and World Bank conditionality loans that generate poverty and dependence in the developing world may belong to a vastly different time than that of the biblical authors, the motivations and consequences of these activities are not far removed from examples of debt exploitation that are found in the Hebrew Bible. Cultural-evolutionary theorists find that a recurring societal pattern develops as subsistence communities enter into trade systems, regardless of culture or time, in which administrators coerce farmers into specialized agriculture and seize land through debt exploitation. Using evidence of these patterns in Judah’s entrance into Assyria’s eighth-century trade nexus, Marvin Chaney and D.N. Premnath have offered valuable new contextual insights into prophetic complaints against landownership abuse that are attributed to this time. My paper uses the effects of these same cultural-evolutionary patterns on such modern developing nations as Tunisia and El Salvador to expand the conversation and gain new insights into how debt exploitation was used to generate a poverty that not only created wealth for Judah’s ruling elites, but also solidified people’s dependence upon an increasingly powerful Judean state.


The Reuse of Royal Funerary Objects and the Power of Ritual Transformation
Program Unit: Ritual in the Biblical World
Kathlyn (Kara) Cooney, University of California-Los Angeles

When Merneptah and Ramses II built their Funerary Temples (Temples of Millions of Years), they used blocks and statuary from the temple of Amenhotep III, essentially using the 18th dynasty site as a quarry for stone. King Psusennes I of Dynasty 21 was found in his Tanis tomb in a reused sarcophagus of the 19th Dynasty king Merneptah. The High Priests of Amen systematically looted the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings, and they had themselves buried in the company of the ancestor kings of the New Kingdom. Indeed, “king” and High Priest of Amen Pinedjem I was himself buried in two coffins that once belonged to king Thutmose I. As the Bronze Age closed, royal funerary arts were reused by other kings, who took burial containers that had once held the bodies of New Kingdom monarchs. How are we to conceptualize the ancient Egyptian reuse of funerary arts, particularly of royal burial goods? The practical and economic motivations are obvious, but how did the Egyptians negotiate the reuse of such ritually charged materiality and why? Was this reuse of royal funerary arts driven by a desire to connect with great ancestor kings? Or is the explanation based on the functionality of the objects themselves? Temples, coffins, and sarcophagi are the embodiments of ritual action, concretized in three-dimensional, decorated form. The value of funerary arts was established through ritual action perceived as necessary for the effective transformation of the dead in elite and royal circles. Thus, during a time of scarcity and crisis, Egyptian kings and rulers prioritized short-term ritual transformation over long-term material ownership. It is easy to assume that funerary arts reuse was considered an immoral action that happened rarely, but my research suggests that the ancient Egyptians considered the non-performance of ritual transformation in appropriate funerary materiality for kings who had just died to be to be an egregious cultural and social failure. Funerary arts reuse was a creative negotiation of the economic-social-religious crisis at the end of the New Kingdom.


Greek Musical Documents at Oxyrhynchus and an Ancient Christian Hymn with Musical Notation (POxy 1786)
Program Unit: Papyrology and Early Christian Backgrounds
Charles H. Cosgrove, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary

Among the diverse papyri from Oxyrhynchus are musical documents, all of them stemming from the Roman era—second century to the end of the third/early fourth centuries. Some of these materials are fragmentary musical scores. The scores of songs, which contain both lyrics and musical notation, include a Christian hymn from the later third century. This paper describes the musical documents of Oxyrhynchus, including their place in ancient Greek music and life, and gives special attention to the ancient Christian hymn.


Embodiment, Violence, and Sensation: A Reading of Ehud and Jael through the Lens of Affect Theory
Program Unit: Reading, Theory, and the Bible
Amy C. Cottrill, Birmingham-Southern College

This paper uses affect theory as a tool to interpret the violent images of two stories in Judges, those of Ehud and Jael. Affect theory affords biblical exegetes a means to examine the role of the reader’s embodiment as a tool for textual interpretation. In particular, I use the work of two affect theorists. Marco Abel (Violent Affect: Literature, Cinema, and Critique After Representation) discusses the way violent images work on readers and create the emotional, physical, and sensory context in which later violent images will be received and interpreted. According to Abel, the affect of violent images is embodied in witnesses before the witnesses judge the images according to their moral, ideological, and ethical value. In fact, the embodied affect of exposure to violence is the context in which that judgment occurs. Sara Ahmed (The Cultural Politics of Emotion) examines the creation of fear through the experience of intense affect. In Judges, the violated body anchors the experience of vulnerability and fear in the reader. The visceral affect of anxiety and the intensity of bodily violence position the reader to feel the need for security and relief in the figure of the king. One of the central arguments of the book of Judges is the urgent need for a king; the fear and anxiety created by the images of the violated body provide the emotion that allows the reader to accept that thesis. This paper focuses on Ehud and Jael as two of the significant early exposures to the violated body in the book of Judges and explores their different contributions to the theme of physical violence. In addition to offering a textual interpretation informed by affect theory, the paper will include comments about the potential of this new approach for Biblical Studies and what Biblical Studies might offer in return to the development of affect theory.


Poison Ivy: The Dionysiac Brand in 3 Maccabees
Program Unit: Hellenistic Judaism
J.R.C. Cousland, University of British Columbia

In 3 Maccabees the interaction between the Jewish Diaspora in Alexandria and their Hellenistic overlords is, quite literally, an issue of burning significance. 3 Maccabees 2:29 records King Ptolemy IV Philopator’s decree that the Jews of Alexandria are to be branded with “the ivy-leaf symbol of Dionysus.” Quite what this action signifies has been the subject of ongoing dispute. Since the ivy leaf is one of the most characteristic symbols of Dionysus, does branding the Jews with his symbol make them (willing or unwilling) affiliates of his cult? At the same time, however, branding was sometimes used in Egypt as a means of identifying slaves. Would this indicate that Ptolemy’s action was intended to emphasize the Jews’ servile status? While the latter seems the likelier option, it is nevertheless highly suggestive that the Etymologicum Magnum (s.v. Gallos) relates that Ptolemy IV was himself branded with ivy leaves. Philo of Alexandria (De spec. leg. 1.58) also furnishes a discussion of the practice of religious branding by “idolators.” This paper will consider the various options presented by the evidence, and argue that a detailed examination of the rituals associated with the Dionysiac mysteries as practiced throughout the Mediterranean provides the best evidence for assessing Philopator’s attempt to brand the Jewish people.


Homiletic Exegesis in Acts 2 and Hebrews 3–4
Program Unit: Book of Acts
Michael B. Cover, University of Notre Dame

Both the Epistle to the Hebrews (Heb 13:22) and Paul’s speech in the synagogue at Pisidian Antioch (Acts 13:15) are dubbed logos (tes) parakleseos (“word of exhortation). This titular identification suggests that a comparison of Hebrews and the speeches in Acts might yield important information about the form and content of early Christian homilies. Lawrence Wills has in fact used Paul’s first missionary homily, given on the Sabbath in the synagogue of Pisidian Antioch (Acts 13:16–41), to create a generic typology for the homiletic genre, which he finds in various Christian and Jewish sources spanning the first and second centuries. The scope of this paper is much more modest. Rather than aiming at such a typology, I will investigate what a comparison of Hebrews and Acts might yield in terms of defining a common pattern of homiletic exegesis. By a pattern of exegesis, I mean especially the way in which an OT pericope guides and structures an interpreter’s exegetical argument. In this paper, I will claim that the homiletic exegesis of LXX Ps 94:7d–11 in Heb 3:7–4:10 sheds considerable light on the form and pattern of Luke’s exegesis of LXX Ps 15:8–11b in Acts 2:25–36. In particular, I argue that LXX Ps 15:11c should be understood as part of the pericope upon which Peter comments, as this best explains the singular dexia in Acts 2:33 (cf. LXX Ps 15:11c). Once this restoration is made, a common pattern of commenting on both the first word and the final verse of a Psalm pericope (as well as sequentially on medial themes) emerges in the both Acts and Hebrews. Luke has followed the pattern of Psalmic interpretation exemplified by Hebrews, even as he has curtailed and stereotyped it according to the conventions of Greco-Roman historiography. The contribution of this study is twofold. On the one hand, it clarifies the exegetical method used in Peter’s speech and reopens old questions about Luke’s use of sources in Acts. On the other hand, it contributes to the ongoing study of early Christian homilies, distinguishing a sequential pattern of exegesis shared by these two texts.


“No One Actually Did Fly until Technology Made It Possible”: Experiences of Soul Journeys as Neurocultural States of Consciousness
Program Unit: Religious Experience in Antiquity
Pieter F Craffert, University of South Africa

The ethnographic literature is replete with spirit journey experiences, religious traditions are packed with stories about soul or sky travels and the scientific library is full of stories and studies about out-of-body, near-death and autoscopic experiences. Scholarly interpretations vary between easy identification of these phenomena because of the researcher’s diagnostic tool and total separation because of the experients unique claims. The neurocultural model suggests that each of the phenomena or experiences can be seen as a state of consciousness that is constituted as a configuration of neurobiological, psycho-cognitive, social and cultural elements; in short, as neurocultural phenomena. Three implications for the understanding of soul journeys follow from this. Firstly, by means of this analytical model a soul journey can be analysed as a composite neurocultural experience. Secondly, because it is seen in terms of the constituting elements, soul journeys can be compared to parallel experiences by means of any or all of the constituting elements. The suggestion of this paper is that soul journeys activate similar neuro- and cognitive mechanisms and structures as the parallel experiences but despite these shared features they are uniquely stamped as cultural realities because of their social functions and cultural ecology. Thirdly, advances in cognitive and neuroscientific research infuse this analytical model. One of the features of experients’ concepts is that single elements from the experience or phenomena are highlighted without attention to the other constituting aspects. From the perspective of this model a soul journey is always a composite neurocultural phenomenon and the fact that experients/analysts either do not know or do not recognise it does not change that fact. Local descriptions are part of the data to be analysed and not the facts to be affirmed. Analytical and not local models about soul journeys advance the scientific understanding of complex human phenomena and much is known about the neural mechanisms of out-of-body experiences. While feelings of flying may constitute the conscious state of a soul journey it does not mean anybody or anything has done the travelling.


What Are Apocalyptic Gospel Texts Evidence For?
Program Unit: Historical Jesus
Pieter Craffert, University of South Africa

The debate in historical Jesus research regarding the apocalyptic/non-apocalyptic (or eschatological/non-eschatological) Jesus is characterised, like most other aspects of historical Jesus research, by two features. The one is whether such sayings are authentic; that is, whether the historical Jesus in fact made certain claims about the kingdom of God, the end of the world, God’s reign and the like. The other is to provide as clear a summary as possible of the authentic sayings; that is to say, to provide a description of the content of what is taken as authentic. In short, the authentic testimonies of the sources (after duly cleansed from unauthentic parts) serve the historian’s purpose of finding out what Jesus actually said about apocalyptic topics. An alternative way of doing historiography and asking historical questions are to analyse what the data about the rule of God, the son of man and the end of the world sayings are evidence for. In other words, in order to move beyond the apocalyptic/non-apocalyptic divide the first step would be to find meaningful categories in order to deal with the apocalyptic data in the Gospels. Is it possible to derive information about apocalyptic sayings from comparative material and to determine why such language was used? That would include questions such as: Who spoke about the rule of God and the son of man and towards which ends? What kind of people generated such terms and why were they used in Jesus' world? And, Under which conditions were apocalyptic language generated? That is to invoke in the historical quest interpretive categories that are not derived from the informants (the content of their testimonies) themselves but to use their testimonies in order to establish what they are evidence for.


Priests, Pollution, and the Demonic: Evaluating Impurity in the Hebrew Bible in Light of Assyro-Babylonian Texts
Program Unit: Israelite Religion in its Ancient Context
Isabel Cranz, Johns Hopkins University

When it comes to the evaluation of impurity in the Hebrew Bible, one frequently encounters the opinion that impurity in the Priestly Source is 'non-demonic' and as such set apart from its non-biblical counterparts. Nonetheless, some scholars still detect a weakened 'demonic' element in the Priestly conceptions of impurity which can be traced back to Israel's polytheistic past. Thus, the debate focuses not only on the nature of impurity, but also on the place of polytheism in the evolution of the Israelite religion and biblical monotheism. In order to clarify the relationship between non-biblical religion, pollution and the demonic, it is necessary to outline the manner in which the concepts of demonic pollution has been developed and employed in the field of biblical studies. The subsequent reevaluation of cuneiform sources will lead us to question whether terms like 'demonic' or 'non-demonic' can be used to describe either non-biblical or Priestly pollution.


Family Systems 1000 BC: A Natural Systems Reading of the Davidic Narratives
Program Unit: Psychology and Biblical Studies
R. Robert Creech, George W. Truett Theological Seminary

As the work of psychological biblical criticism has unfolded over two decades, the potential contribution of the natural systems theory developed by psychiatrist Murray Bowen has remained a largely untapped hermeneutical source. Kamilia Blessing’s creative work on the Prodigal Son, Galatians 1 and 2, and her 2010 volume on biblical families represents the only scholarly attempt to apply Bowen Family Systems Theory to biblical materials. In addition, Blessing’s effort to supply a considered hermeneutic of family systems theory stands alone. This paper offers a critique of Blessing’s application of the theory and expands on her thinking regarding hermeneutical principles. Although she pioneered ground-breaking work in her use of Bowen Theory as an interpretive tool, in some instances her approach extends beyond or departs from Bowen’s thinking to the point where it is difficult to recognize Bowen’s ideas in the process. This paper argues for a hermeneutic that respects both the biblical text and the psychological theory when bringing the two into conversation. This focused hermeneutical perspective is then applied to the Davidic narratives in 1 Samuel 16-1 Kings 3 and 1 Chronicles, demonstrating ways in which the perspective of natural systems theory provides unique insight into the biblical accounts. Other than the Abrahamic narratives in Genesis 11-50, nothing in the biblical corpus compares to the amount of family information provided about David. Within David’s family the emotional processes Bowen observed and described repeatedly occur. David’s story offers examples of the togetherness force operating during times of increased personal and societal anxiety. Emotional triangles abound. The emotional processes of conflict, distance, over- and under-functioning, and projection are evident throughout. In addition, the family projection process is at work, particularly in David’s relationship with Absalom. Emotional cutoff shows up in key relationships. The Davidic narratives are a rich source of family emotional material and Bowen’s perspective provides insight into their workings.


The Motif of the Five Trees in the “Gospel of Thomas” and in Ancient Literature
Program Unit: Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism
Eric Crégheur, Université Laval

This paper will investigate and try to uncover what can be known of the five trees of Paradise, a motif famous for being found in the Coptic “Gospel of Thomas” (log. 19): “For there are five trees for you in Paradise which remain undisturbed summer and winter and whose leaves do not fall. Whoever becomes acquainted with them will not experience death” (transl. T. O. Lambdin: 1989). Although present in texts known before the discovery of the “Gospel of Thomas”, this motif has intrigued scholars for more sixty years. This paper will start by looking closely at the characteristics of these five trees, as they are found in the “Gospel of Thomas”. Keeping these characteristics in mind, we will then shift our attention on the other texts where the motif is attested, and thus see where and how they are similar or different. Coming from various sources, the Bible, the Jewish tradition, the intertestamental literature, the gnostic literature, and Manichaeism, these other attestations of the motif of the five trees will help us to get a larger perspective of its expression in the “Gospel of Thomas”, and contribute to a better understanding of the motif in general. With the help of all the evidence that we will have gathered, we will finally see if it is possible to speculate on the origin and development of the motif of the five trees of Paradise in Antiquity.


Nida and Editions of the Bible Text: Past and Future
Program Unit: Bible Translation
Simon Crisp, United Bible Societies

This paper will give a summary of Eugene Nida's involvement in the whole process of establishing critical editions of the Greek New Testament and the Hebrew text whithin the framework of the Bible Translation field.


Faerie Stories: The Renewed Genre Making Necessary a Biblical Education for Understanding Our Contemporary World
Program Unit: Teaching Biblical Studies in an Undergraduate Liberal Arts Context
Sonya Cronin, Florida State University

In the past twenty years the genre of the Faerie Story, more commonly known as “fantasy,” has exploded into popularity both in the area of film and literature. J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings has sold 150 million copies since its 1950s release, and has had a resurgence since the books were adapted to film by Peter Jackson, selling approximately 50 million copies since the film releases. Similarly, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Series has sold over 450 million copies and has been translated into 67 languages. The films have been equally successful. This genre has dominated the cultural consciousness of the world, moving from the fringes into the mainstream. This is important for those who teach in the field of Biblical Studies because both the Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter series are wrought with biblical motifs. Both series have allusions to “the fall” in Genesis 3; and both contain messianic imagery, characters who play the role of “cross bearers,” and Christ figures that die and resurrect both for the purpose of sacrifice and to attain overall victory in the battle against evil. Without a firm biblical education, the future generations of college graduates will not be able to understand the theological underpinnings that root much of the popular culture that they regularly ingest, a culture that is literally altering how many view the world, and imbedding biblical concepts into common tongue via references to fantasy stories. This is especially important as biblical education seems to be on the decline in the home. Using the two fantasy works, Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, this paper will make a case for the necessity of biblical courses in the undergraduate liberal arts education.


Manufacturing Memory: Redaction Criticism in Light of Collective Memory Theory
Program Unit: Social Scientific Criticism of the New Testament
Zeba Crook, Carleton University

The introduction of Halbwachs's collective memory theory into the study of Jesus and the Gospels is sometimes heralded as the death of redaction criticism: narrative inconsistencies result not from literary redaction but from competing memories, all of which derive from collective memories concerning Jesus. There is no doubt that memory theory contributes to our study of the transmission of Jesus material, but it is too often used uncritically to buttress the general reliability of the Gospels. Such an approach ignores an important facet of memory theory, namely memory distortion. This paper investigates the relationship between redactional activity and memory distortion.


Jesus the Bum in an Age of Neoliberalism
Program Unit: Reading, Theory, and the Bible
James Crossley, University of Sheffield

Using theorists and thinkers such as Slavoj Žižek, Fredric Jameson, David Harvey, and Wendy Brown, this paper will show how the interconnected contemporary concerns of cultural indeterminacy, individualism, free market and deregulation, a multicultural (limited) tolerance of the Other, and liberal masking of the structures of power – collectively brought under the label of “neoliberalism” – are as deeply rooted in contemporary Gospel and historical Jesus scholarship as they are in virtually all areas of “Western” culture. After outlining these ideological trends affecting scholarship over the past 40 years, our attention will turn to examine some of the ways in which Jesus’ portrayal as the “homeless one” within liberal scholarship often unknowingly reinscribes these ideas and themes. This is typically done through a massive emphasis on individual agency, a downplaying of structural causation, and an emphasis on Jesus’ Jewish Otherness whilst simultaneously making him unique and different from (scholarly constructions of) Judaism.


Jesus and the World Turned Upside Down…and Back Again
Program Unit: Historical Jesus
James Crossley, University of Sheffield

This paper will seek to locate those Jesus traditions which point to forthcoming social change within the broader contexts of histories of agrarian social upheaval. Perhaps fittingly on the fortieth anniversary of Christopher Hill’s The World Turned Upside Down, particular attention will be paid to the millenarian, utopian, quasi-egalitarian, and reversal ideals which have reflected and helped generate social and historical change, as well as (seemingly paradoxically) providing the potential for a reaffirmation of the traditional power structures. It will be seen that the historical Jesus in many ways fits into this pattern, assisted by his message of both liberation and dominance present throughout his teaching and in their reinterpretations. Arguments concerning historical authenticity and inauthenticity of the Jesus traditions will be addressed, but it should become clear that the arguments presented here work on a general level in that traditions about social upheaval and change are present in the earliest tradition whilst not requiring the necessary plausibility of any of the major positions in the old disputes about Jesus as apocalyptic or eschatological prophet, irrespective of their seemingly obvious relevancy. Instead of endless attempts at finding our favourite Jesus and how important Jesus-the-individual was, this approach will hopefully point to ways in which social historical explanations of the Jesus movement and Christian origins can be pursued without the relentless reliance on the nineteenth century Great Man view of history so embedded in historical Jesus scholarship.


Deuteronomy and the Succession Treaty of Esarhaddon: A Reappraisal
Program Unit: Assyriology and the Bible
C.L. Crouch, University of Nottingham

It is a scholarly commonplace to assert that the book of Deuteronomy constitutes a subversive rewriting of Neo-Assyrian imperial ideology. The prevalence of this assertion is attributable to the widespread recognition of similarities between elements of Deuteronomy, especially chapters 13 and 28, and ancient Near Eastern treaties and oaths and, in particular, the Succession Treaty of Esarhaddon (VTE). The object of this paper is to dispute this widely-held understanding of the relationship between Deuteronomy and Mesopotamian imperial power. The relationship between VTE and Deuteronomy is neither exclusive nor robust enough to support assertions of Deuteronomy’s subversive intent, nor is such an intent consistent with Deuteronomy’s overall interests. The paper will examine the specific arguments regarding the nature and extent of Deuteronomy’s relationship to VTE, addressing issues surrounding bilingualism and literacy as well as the nature of subversive texts. The paper concludes that Deuteronomy cannot be using Assyria’s legal and literary traditions to subvert Assyrian imperial power.


What to Do on the Sabbath
Program Unit: Bible and Practical Theology
Stephanie Crowder, Belmont University

This paper will examine the political setting that is foundation for the manner in which the Gospel of Mark's recontextualizes the Sabbath. The Gospel writer reconfigures ideas of the Sabbath and demonstrates that its purpose is to provide healing from cultural, spiritual, economic and physical dis-ease. The essay examines dynamics of power and identity that also inform how Mark uses traditional ideology and practices surrounding the Sabbath to give this observance new meaning in the first century. After expounding on the social location of Mark’s community, this essay will provide a cursory overview of pre-Markan ideas on the Sabbath and then highlight various texts from the Gospel that mirror its reconfiguring of this sacred practice. The paper will conclude with how such renewed interpretations are relevant today as faith leaders seek to offer a wholistic approach to personal well-being.


Jesus as the Father? Tracing the Trinitarian Trajectories in 2 Clement
Program Unit: Development of Early Christian Theology
Brandon D. Crowe, Westminster Theological Seminary

As part of the inquiry into how second century texts led to later Trinitarian formulations, this paper will consider the close relationship between Jesus and God the Father articulated in the early Christian homily known as 2 Clement. Indeed, one of the remarkable features of this homily is the way in which the author reformulates statements that refer to God the Father from what has come to be known as the New Testament and applies these to Jesus. In a significant comment at the beginning of the homily, the author states that we should think of Jesus Christ as we do of God. It appears that this association is a driving influence behind the interpretive moves the author makes, and this paper seeks to trace some of implications of this approach. This can be seen, for example, in the statement that Jesus is as a father (1.4), and in the author’s view of the divine will. Although the scriptural precedent in almost every case is to speak of the will of God or will of the Father, in a fascinating move the author of 2 Clement speaks of both the will of the Father and the will of the Son. These are two examples of a broader phenomenon of an overlapping associative relationship throughout 2 Clement. Thus, this paper will consider the various ways in which Jesus is related to God in 2 Clement, and the underlying logic of the author’s sometimes distinctive exegesis of texts and traditions. It will be argued that the author’s hermeneutic reflects his christology and allows him freely to transpose statements referring in scriptural traditions to God and apply them to Jesus—even where he may not have explicit precedent. Additionally, this paper will consider the several suggestive references to the (Holy) Spirit in 2 Clement, especially in light of the Spirit’s close relationship to the Son. It will be concluded that, though some ambiguities are to be found in Pseudo-Clement’s theological reflections, we can also identify clear distinctions between the Father and the Son and (possibly) the Spirit in 2 Clement. Finally, the significance of the interpretive approach modeled in 2 Clement will be considered in relationship to the emerging Trinitarian shape of early Christian thought.


Illustrations of Kierkegaard: Updike's Maples Stories
Program Unit: Søren Kierkegaard Society
David Crowe, Augustana College

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The "Witch" of Endor and Postcolonial Magic Theory
Program Unit: Social Sciences and the Interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures
Brad Crowell, Drake University

The woman from Endor in 1 Samuel 28:3-25 appears as an evaluative tool used by the Deuteronomist to condemn Saul as a king who has deviated from the Deuteronomistic code. This woman, while portrayed as having a profound connection with the spiritual world, is condemned by the authors and later commentators as a "witch." Current discussion concerning this passage involves the efficacy of her necromantic ritual or what it reveals about the ancient Israelite view of the afterlife. This presentation will investigate how contemporary theory of how magic functions in colonial and postcolonial contexts can inform interpretations of this passage to suggest that the calling up of the spirit of Samuel was an act of resistance against the "colonizing" actions of King Saul.


Translating for Jesus: Philip and Andrew in John 12:20–22
Program Unit: John, Jesus, and History
N. Clayton Croy, Trinity Lutheran Seminary

In John 12:20-22 Greeks at the Passover festival request an audience with Jesus, a request made indirectly through Philip and, secondarily, Andrew. Some scholars have wondered whether these two disciples may have served not only as the brokers of this meeting, but also as its translators. The debate over the languages of first century Palestine and of Jesus himself forms the backdrop of this question. Multilingualism in first century Palestine is a given, but a particular individual’s bilingual facility (e.g., Greek and Aramaic) varied widely depending on the chronological period, locality, urban vs. rural settings, educational level, commerce, cultural influences, and individual aptitude and need. Although our information about these factors vis-à-vis Jesus and his disciples is modest, there is enough evidence reasonably to conjecture that Philip and Andrew would have had a greater bilingual facility than Jesus. Their names, their hometowns, and their professions are suggestive of this difference. Philip and Andrew are the only two disciples of the twelve with purely Greek names. The town of Bethsaida, twice mentioned as Philip’s hometown (1:44; 12:21), was likely more Hellenized than other towns in Galilee such as Nazareth. Even the professions of builder/carpenter vs. fisherman may imply differences in linguistic ability. In addition, recent research in bilingualism, the role of translators in antiquity, and the archaeology of Galilee has increased our understanding of first century language barriers and the ways that they were overcome. (It has been shown, for example, that when the skill of translators was required, their presence was often invisible.) All this suggests that Philip and Andrew may very well have translated for Jesus at the Passover festival


Cognitive Science of Religion and Socio-rhetorical Interpretation
Program Unit: Cognitive Linguistics in Biblical Interpretation
Istvan Czachesz, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg

Cognitive Science of Religion and Socio-Rhetorical Interpretation


Linked: A System-Theoretical Approach to Biblical Religions
Program Unit: Cognitive Science Approaches to the Biblical World
Istvan Czachesz, University of Heidelberg

Networks are mathematical objects that can be used to organize and interpret data. In social sciences, the analysis of social networks is a time-honored method, which influenced thinking about networks in other fields, as well. Since the late 1990s, a wealth of new information about networks in domains such as physics, information technology, biology, ecology, and brain science resulted in the crystallization of new theories about how different features of networks describe and predict the behavior of complex systems. This paper draws on recent developments in network theory in an attempt to give a systemic account of biblical religions. In particular, it addresses the nature of networks in the social, cognitive, and textual dimensions of early Christianity and suggests connections and interactions among them. Various characteristics of these networks predict how easily they change and how resistant they are to stress, providing insights about the historical evolution of Christianity. Although the lack of data does not allow us to reconstruct networks in early Christian religion to full extent, we can build idealized models that reflect their main characteristics. In this sense, network theory can be used as a heuristic tool, inspiring new interpretations of the historical evidence.


Rethinking the Interpretative Agenda for African Biblical Hermeneutics
Program Unit: African Biblical Hermeneutics
Dada Adekunle Oyinloye, University of Ibadan

The Bible occupies a unique place in some African Christians’ socio-religious space. This is because it has become a frame of reference for these Christians in issues bordering on their lives and faith. It is because of this unique role of the Bible that African biblical scholars have devised different interpretative grids to make the message of the Bible meaningful and properly internalized so as to engender social transformation in the Africa. The different African social, cultural and political situations find relevance in the interpretative process, hence the reference to this mode of interpretation as African biblical hermeneutics. However, because African biblical hermeneutics emerged from the colonial contexts made it reactionary in character. Therefore, the basic interest in African biblical hermeneutics is engaging the colonial structure and its residue in the postcolonial situations. This paper however, will explore the possibility of rethinking the interests of African biblical hermeneutics in the light of the postcolonial and global challenges. Today in most independent Africa, hunger, disease, poverty, war and other debilitating social conditions are prevalent. The cause of these calamities has been linked to the colonial era. However, it is a fact that the problems facing most African countries today are self-inflicted. In view of this, how can African biblical hermeneutics address these present realities, without necessarily seeing them mainly as consequences of colonialism? How can biblical hermeneutics in Africa be engaged to engender individual and social transformation and holistic development? How can African biblical hermeneutics be globally relevant? Proffering answers to these questions is the focus of this paper.


Immigrant Readings of Daniel 1: Intercultural and Diasporic
Program Unit: Contextual Biblical Interpretation
Kelly D. Dagley, Fuller Theological Seminary and Hope International University

Biblical interpretation in our contemporary world is no longer as simple as discovering the single ‘true’ meaning of a text. Who is doing the interpretation, where they are from, and where they currently stand are a few factors which should be taken into consideration. There is much to be learned by using an intercultural hermeneutic and reading with others who stand in a context different than one’s own. Particularly fruitful can be the practice of reading exilic literature with those experiencing a type of exile or those who naturally have a diasporic hermeneutic. The content of this paper is the fruit of such an experiment done by the author, a white, middle-class American woman. In reading Daniel 1 with Hispanic legal and illegal immigrants and children of immigrants living in Southern California, one hears the issues of exile reflected in their comments and observations. “The royal rations of food and wine” and “the language and literature of the Chaldeans” call to mind experiences of Happy Meals and “English only” education. Exploring the themes of resistant remembrance, food as identity, “no papers” diaspora and the observations of the text and memories of the readers help to give the author and those hearing this paper a more nuanced understanding of the text of Daniel 1 and of the experiences of these exiled readers.


A Tunic Fit for Carthage: Tertullian and the Making of Christian Men
Program Unit: Religious Competition in Late Antiquity
Carly Daniel-Hughes, Concordia University - Université Concordia

This paper will examine Tertullian of Carthage’s pithy oration, On the Pallium, as evidence of how clothing could be scripted in the production and performance of Christian, masculine identity. His project, it suggests, is carried out in a spirit of competitiveness, which finds him proclaiming all assertions of masculinity failed and dubious. Such heated claims have, however, lead some scholars to read On the Pallium as evidence of his supposed animosity toward the Roman world. In fact, this speech witnesses a more complex and dynamic engagement with the cultural discourses of the Roman Empire, notably ethics and moral subject formation. Rather than shun this normative discourse and its logic, Tertullian’s mines it in order to constitute a winning Christian masculinity—through dress—that is fitted to his colonial context. This paper will show that to do so Tertullian symbolically appropriates the squared-off tunic, the pallium. But this move does not simply repeat a neat dichotomy of Christian and non-Christian, or Roman and non-Roman; instead it reveals the very malleability of such ascriptions in the Roman Empire. Tertullian’s rhetorical machinations depend on his ability to highlight the multivalent ethnic heritage of this garment—Punic, African, Greek, and Roman—only finally to displace these ascriptions with the moniker Christian. My examination of this speech will indicate that Tertullian picks up on tropes drawn directly from Roman oratory in order to fashion a kind of Christian masculinity, in ethnic terms, that retains the positively coded Roman virtues: courage, discernment, self-control, and avoidance of luxury. His rhetoric is marked, then, by what Denise Buell has called “ethnic reasoning.” Tertullian’s speech re-signifies these virtues as ethnically Christian, and distinctively, non-Roman, or more precisely anti-imperial. Ultimately, I will suggest that this speech indicates how early Christians could utilize dress to shape their self-representation in the agonistic environment of the Roman provinces.


The Uses of Typology
Program Unit: Ugaritic Studies and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy
Peter T. Daniels, Grammatim

The abjad/alphabet/abugida typology (aaa) was devised in response to I. J. Gelb's counterintuitive approach to the evolution of writing systems, which has been distorted in popular treatments of writing. Recently, aaa in turn is being distorted by scholars who have not understood its origin, or its content, or its purpose. This talk will address some of those misunderstandings and explore how aaa can be used to illuminate both historical and contemporary questions -- questions of the diffusion of scripts through the ancient world, and questions of literacy acquisition in the modern world: how relevant to learning to read Arabic or Hebrew or Hindi are models based on the study of English reading?


Idol Economy: International Trade and Idol Prohibitions in the Ancient Near East
Program Unit: Israelite Religion in its Ancient Context
Erin Darby, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Although idol prohibitions are widely discussed in both scholarly and popular settings, the biblical terminology is often misunderstood as referring to any type of image. In contrast, close examination of the relevant vocabulary suggests that the prohibitions are most concerned with the materials from which idols were made rather than their iconographic content. When these materials are placed in the ancient Near Eastern context of international trade in elite goods, it becomes evident that prohibitions were not targeting a “popular cult” but the national religion. As such, the prohibitions may have been less concerned with the latent danger of images in general than with the socio-economic implications that accompanied the cult of elite images at the state level. Furthermore, if metal, wood, and stone images were problematic due to the particular economic system that enabled their existence, prohibitions may have grown out of the same ethical objections voiced in the Hebrew Bible’s egalitarian and agrarian ideals. In order to demonstrate the relationship between ancient Near Eastern trade and biblical idol prohibitions, this paper first briefly summarizes biblical passages that emphasize the materials from which idols were made. It then discusses the textual and archaeological data that shed light on the international trade of metal, wood, and stone, as well as the uses to which these items were put. Finally, the paper poses various motivations behind idol prohibitions, comparing these texts to biblical critiques of ancient Near Eastern imperial economic systems and their social repercussions.


An African American Scripturalization of Revelation Signified through the Postcolonial Middle Passage
Program Unit: Contextual Biblical Interpretation
Lynne S. Darden, Rutgers University

This paper unveils the contradictions embedded in John the Seer’s rhetorical strategy in the Book of Revelation, particularly in the throne room scenes, through the lens of an African American scripturalization that is framed by the concepts of signifyin(g), cultural memory and postcolonial theory. The purpose of this scripturalization is to unveil the complex cultural negotiations involved in the construction of Christian identity in the ancient and contemporary contexts. The scripting will propose that John's signifyin(g) on Empire demonstrated that he was well aware of the oppressive nature of Roman imperialism on the lives of provincial Asia Christians. This is made evident by his fierce, non-accommodating stance towards participation in the imperial cult. Yet, ironically, his rhetoric mimics imperial imagery and practices, Thus, no matter how determined he was in his persuasion to disconnect the Christian communities from the religio-political manipulations of Empire, his hybrid identity construct contradicted his motives. John's colonized construction resulted in the production of a resistance strategy that was a “blurred copy” of the hegemonic tactics of the Roman Empire that entailed violent disruption and displacement. It is by way of an analysis of elements in the throne room scenes—such as the throne room itself, the twenty-four elders, the ritual act of proskynesis, the lamb/lion imagery and the hymns of praise— that this paper illustrates that John’s signifyin(g) that actually mimics imperial ideology was, in large part, due to his being a member of a society whose had a long historical experience of identity construction via civic ritual/ceremonial performances that imposed a cosmological order that mystified political domination and shaped cultural dispositions. This scripturalization of Revelation is directed to the African American community as a cautionary warning of the subtle dangers of reinscription.


African American Scripturalization: The Supplementation of Postcolonial Theory to African American Biblical Hermeneutics
Program Unit: Postcolonial Studies and Biblical Studies
Lynne S. Darden, Rutgers University

This paper posits that the supplementation of postcolonial theory to the conceptual framework of African American biblical hermeneutics is effective in ironing out the knotty dimensions of a hermeneutical tradition that is based on a homogeneous identity construct because it allows for the articulation of the complexity of identity construction and cultural negotiation within a post-slavery, post-internally-colonized community. Postcolonial theory and African American biblical hermeneutics are compatible discourses because they share common goals such as: 1) exploring issues of re-presentation, essentialism and nationalism, 2) revealing the devastating aspects of neocolonialism and the lingering forms of discrimination, inequality, and racism that the system perpetuates, 3) providing alternative enunciations of the myth of origin, 4) critiquing how the West uses the concept of the Other and vice versa in the construction of identity; 5) focusing on a subversive revision of the dominant version of history by giving voice to a text muted by dominant historical referents and 6), with reference to womanists and postcolonial feminists, critiquing patriarchy as it aligns with the imperial agenda, including white feminist ideology. Yet, the application of postcolonial theory tends to collapse into a universalism and does not satisfactorily demonstrate the particular negotiation strategies of a particular community. African American biblical hermeneutics, however, with its focus on specificity, disables the postcolonial tendency to collapse specific cultural negotiations into a discourse that is so theoretically general that it disallows cultural uniqueness and difference. Thus, both disciplines enhance one another. Whereas, postcolonial theory contributes to African American biblical hermeneutics by resituating it out of its local cultural context and placing it into a broader global conversation, African American biblical hermeneutics is ideally situated to address racial issues in relation to the (neo)imperial practices of the United States. By re-conceptualizing African American biblical hermeneutics through the lens of hybridity, mimicry and ambivalence, a re-envisioning of the discipline is made possible that better addresses the broader dimensions of cultural identity without forsaking key issues and concerns of African American biblical scholars on race and gender.


The Framework of the Yahwistic Flood Story and Early Greek Genealogical Compositions
Program Unit: Hebrew Scriptures and Cognate Literature
Guy Darshan, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Despite the unique parallels in both form and content between the biblical antediluvian and post-diluvian traditions and some of the Greek genealogical compositions of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.E. – for example, in regard to the description of the diluvian hero as the ancestor of the principal line of lineage – biblical scholarship has not paid sufficient attention to these genealogical compositions. This paper discusses the seam between the Yahwistic flood account and its framing stories – i.e., the accounts of the sons of God commingling with the daughters of men (Gen 6:1–4) and the planting of the first vineyard in history by the protagonist of the flood (Gen 9:20–27) – in light of the similar literary phenomena found in Greek genealogists such as Hecataeus of Miletus and Pseudo-Hesiod. The analysis reveals that while that the biblical narrative constitutes a unique version, this was not sui generis in the ancient eastern Mediterranean.


Epiphanius of Salamis and the Rhetoric of Intellect
Program Unit: Religious World of Late Antiquity
Elizabeth Davidson, Yale University

Epiphanius of Salamis, whose Panarion describes and categorizes eighty different types of heresy, has a bad reputation among scholars as a man with a one-track mind and a vicious anti-intellectual streak. While it is true that Epiphanius is no Homeric scholar, and also that he criticizes opponents like Origen for their Greek education, too much focus on these facets of his rhetoric is a distraction from Epiphanius’s overall program. This paper will argue that, in addition to his heresiological project of identifying and categorizing various heretical schools, Epiphanius also sought the authority to define what it meant to be knowledgeable. Far from despising scholarship, Epiphanius consistently uses language related to intelligence, scholarliness, and ignorance in the Panarion to present himself as an ideal scholar, a man writing to readers who also love study. When possible, he readily takes advantage of Greek education by displaying what knowledge he has, heavily praising ideological allies whose intellectual accomplishments can benefit his cause, and even playing up the roles of ideological opponents who happen to offer support for particular points. In other words, Epiphanius realizes that Greek education confers authority, and he does not shy away from borrowing some of that authority for himself even as he denies it to others. Epiphanius’s aggressive comments about Greek education should not simply be interpreted as a testament to Epiphanius’s own ignorance and anti-intellectualism. Instead, they should be understood within a rhetorical framework in which he adjusts his attitude towards educational status on a case-by-case basis in hopes of gaining an authoritative advantage.


Game of Thrones: YHWH, Judah, and the Nations and the Theology of Power in the Book of Jeremiah
Program Unit: Writing/Reading Jeremiah
Steed Davidson, Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary

The generally accepted view that the book of Jeremiah offers a theodicy that explains the destruction of Jerusalem and the deportation of inhabitants as divine punishment positions imperial power as the instrument of divine power. This construct offers a rational response to YHWH as a source of destructive power. This theological thread unravels though when it comes to divine power directed against the nations listed in the oracles against the nations (chs. 46-52) and against Egypt in several parts of the book. In these instances YHWH becomes the divine warrior waging war on the nations, and with few exceptions without stated justifications for the attack on these nations. This unbridled use of divine power appears to lack the same level of theological justification offered for the use of divine power in the punishment of Judah and Jerusalem. This paper explores the theology inherent in the oracles against the nation and the negative views of Egypt as a step to providing a theological rationale for this use of divine power. By proposing that the shape of Jeremiah MT reflects a diasporic orientation, the paper advances the idea that the oracles against the nations represent divine pacification of the nations of the world as a mechanism for safety and security in diaspora. Appending the end of the DtrH as the end of the book of Jeremiah in ch. 52 with its striking absence of theological reflection, the collapse of vital institutions, the fate of the king, and the searing observation of Judah in exile (52:27) suggests a future that requires a theology of exile that includes the theology of a powerful, punishing, and militant god. The paper articulates a theology of power that effectively positions YHWH within the geopolitical power.


Judah, Tamar, and the Law of Levirate Marriage
Program Unit: Biblical Law
Eryl W Davies, Bangor University

Scholarly discussions of the legal background of the narrative concerning Judah and Tamar as recorded in Gen. 38 have generally focussed on the legislation concerning levirate marriage in Deut. 25:5-10. Both the law and the narrative imply that the primary aim of the institution was to provide a son for the childless widow, but the points of similarity and difference between the two texts require further explication. The aim of this short paper is to seek to answer three basic questions. Did the levirate custom contemplate marriage between the brother-in-law and the widow? Was the levirate duty optional or obligatory? Did the levirate obligation at one time extend to the widow’s father-in-law? A comparison of the law and the narrative suggests that the first question may be answered in the affirmative. In answer to the second question it is argued that the levirate duty, in its earliest phase, was obligatory but that the later Deuteronomic provision made it optional. With regard to the third question, it is argued that ancient Near Eastern laws relating to levirate marriage suggest that the obligation devolved upon the father as well as the brothers of the deceased. Viewed in this light, the liaison between Judah and Tamar was not one of incest (as is commonly supposed) but of a resourceful widow who seeks to ensure – albeit surreptitiously – that her father-in-law fulfils his legal obligation.


The Ninety-Four Books of Ezra and the Angelic Revelations of John Dee
Program Unit: Mysticism, Esotericism, and Gnosticism in Antiquity
Jim Davila, University of St. Andrews

The story narrated in 4 Ezra 14:19-48 reports that Ezra, at God's command, assembled five scribes and then, having imbibed a fiery spiritual drink, dictated a series of revelations over a period of forty days. The scribes wrote in characters they themselves did not know and at the end of this period had produced ninety-four lost books. Various ancient parallels to this story have been adduced in the commentaries. In this paper I analyze a remarkable phenomenological parallel from the sixteenth century in the detailed records of the angelic séances held by the English Renaissance polymath and magus John Dee. In the 1680s Dee worked with a "scryer," named Edward Kelley who purported to receive revelations from angels while gazing into a crystal. In a three-month period between April and July 1684 a complex system of ceremonial magic was revealed to Kelley in the form of a table of letters (the so-called Great Table) containing two sets of angelic names, one superimposed on the other, and nineteen "Calls" or "Keys"—incantations to be used to invoke these angels. The Calls were dictated by Kelley, sometimes letter-by-letter, in an otherwise unknown (but linguistically coherent) "angelic" language, for which a special script was also revealed. Dee wrote out the dictated tables and incantations. English translations were also later produced, showing the calls to be interesting compositions of some literary merit. Although the story in 4 Ezra is clearly fictional, central elements of it that appear highly implausible are paralleled in the well-documented reception of the Great Table and Calls by Dee and Kelley, supporting the possibility, intimated by scholars such as Michael Stone, that the Ezra narrative may describe actual revelatory praxis in ancient Judaism.


Ahaz’s New Altar and the Politics of Sacred Space
Program Unit: Space, Place, and Lived Experience in Antiquity
Andrew R. Davis, Seattle University

According to 2 Kings 16:10-18, King Ahaz was on a diplomatic trip to Damascus when he saw an altar that he ordered to be replicated for the Temple in Jerusalem. Scholarly opinion on this altar remains mixed: some commentators see its construction as nothing short of apostasy (cf. 2 Chr 28:22-23), while others see it as a practical and necessary renovation. The political implications of the altar’s construction are often treated secondarily and are usually viewed in terms of Judah’s vassalage to Assyria. Little attention devoted to the effect of the new altar on the political landscape of Jerusalem. However, a closer look at the passage from the perspective of Henri Lefebvre’s spatial theory reveals the complex local politics that underlie the construction and inauguration of the new altar. In terms of what Lefebvre calls “spatial practice,” we note how little attention is given to the materials and methods of construction; the detailed instructions sent by Ahaz are not at all specified. Instead the report focuses on the exclusive roles of Ahaz and Uriah the priest within the sacred precinct. Moreover, the relocation of the old altar, its exclusive use by Ahaz, the prescribed use of the new altar for the offerings of the ‘am ha’are?, and the removal of the lavers, bronze oxen and “sabbath covering” may all be considered examples of Lefebvre’s “representations of space” insofar as they reflect a political and social hierarchy that Ahaz sought to inculcate. Without discounting the religious significance of the passage or its implications for international relations, this paper will examine how Ahaz’s reorganization of sacred space represents his attempt to reorder three of Judah’s most powerful institutions: the palace, the priesthood and the ‘am ha’are?.


Wrestling Jacob in African American Religious and Literary Tradition
Program Unit: Use, Influence, and Impact of the Bible
Andrew R. Davis, Seattle University

This paper will examine how the story of Jacob’s wrestling match against a supernatural opponent was creatively adapted (and readapted) in African American religion and literature. Insofar as the wrestling match epitomizes the dislocation and familial estrangement that Jacob endured during his exile from Canaan, it resonated with African Americans’ experiences of displacement. The first adaption can be seen in the slave spiritual “Wrestlin’ Jacob,” in which Jacob’s refusal to let go of his opponent becomes an inspiration for the singers to hold tight the trembling hand of their brother and sister. The spiritual’s depiction of familial bonds under threat and of Jacob’s resilience despite his wounded limb makes the song a powerful example of how the Bible gave voice to slaves’ struggles. A second adaption can be seen in August Wilson’s play Fences, whose main character Troy Maxson claims to have wrestled with Death personified. The historical setting of this play is the Great Migration of the twentieth century during which the descendants of African slaves left the American South by the millions. As in the slave spiritual, the wrestling match in Fences embodies the adversity and alienation that these African Americans endured on their journey and afterward. However, whereas in the slave spiritual the wrestling match yields solidarity, in Fences Troy’s wrestling with Death leads to more strain in his already damaged familial relationships, further estranging and isolating him. The spiritual “Wrestlin’ Jacob” and the play Fences both show the profound influence of the story of Jacob’s wrestling in African American tradition. As a model of dislocation and hardship, the story gave voice to similar experiences among African slaves and their descendants.


The Poor and Vulnerable: Prophetic Perspectives on Human and Nonhuman Creatures
Program Unit: Ecological Hermeneutics
Ellen Davis, Duke University

Spheres of experience and value that moderns normally think of as distinct and perhaps in acute tension – economics, ecology, spirituality – are for many biblical writers inseparable. Drawing from Amos and Jeremiah, this paper will explore the complex modes of interaction and causality between human and non-human creatures that are foundational to prophetic understandings of reality.


The Form and Development of the Interrogative hê in Tiberian Hebrew
Program Unit: Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew
Ryan Conrad Davis, University of Texas at Austin

This paper will seek to explain the occasional presence of a dagesh in a consonant following the interrogative hê in Tiberian Hebrew. Although this issue has been noted by others, few have attempted to explain this form of the interrogative and how it relates to its other allomorphs within Tiberian Hebrew. David Yellin (1933) argued that the interrogative hê in Hebrew should be reconstructed from two originally distinct forms that later fell together: some forms came from an original *ha-, and others from an original *han that later fell together with hen. David Testen (1998) has more recently argued for two originally distinct particles as well, but reconstructs an original *ha- along with a remnant of an asseverative/jussive *l-. Both of Yellin’s and Testen’s arguments rely on casting doubt on the traditional boundaries of what constitutes the interrogative hê by arguing that vocalizations that have been traditionally understood as scribal errors are legitimate and that certain instances of the definite article are actually examples of the interrogative hê. These arguments remain unconvincing when one takes their cases verse by verse, and their reconstructions still produce bi-forms from the same reconstructed particle. After analyzing past treatments, I will argue that the allomorphs of the interrogative hê are in complementary distribution according to their phonetic environment and that this provides strong evidence for their single origin. Then I will propose a reconstruction from the internal evidence of attested Hebrew dialects, and from comparative data in other Semitic languages.


Teaching as Ritual: Feminist Hermeneutics in an Unstable Environment
Program Unit: Feminist Hermeneutics of the Bible
Stacy Davis, Saint Mary's College (Notre Dame)

I have taught Reading and Interpreting Hebrew Bible Prophets at Saint Mary's College four times since 2005. Saint Mary's is a Roman Catholic, all-women's college; my course, which counts for elective credit in the Religious Studies department and feminist theory credit in the Women's Studies minor, examines the prophets using the tools of feminist biblical criticism. Most of my students are Roman Catholic with little experience either with biblical studies or feminist hermeneutics. Therefore, their encounter with the marriage metaphor, in which God as "husband" abuses and/or sanctions the abuse of "his wife Israel" can be a traumatic experience. It can be a challenge to teach those texts in ways that are faithful to the words on the page, hermeneutically rigorous, and also sensitive to the context of my students. In this paper, I will discuss how I teach the marriage metaphor in ways that may trouble students' previous understandings of gender and theology. In the process, however, my goal is to empower and not paralyze my students, and I will talk about how that too can be done.


The Almighty Dollar: Malachi and Tithing Talk in African American Churches
Program Unit: African-American Biblical Hermeneutics
Stacy Davis, Saint Mary's College (Notre Dame)

Malachi 3.8-12 is regularly used in African American churches as a justification for tithing. It has also become a foundational text for proponents of the "prosperity gospel," the belief that there is a direct correspondence between tithing and wealth. The book of Malachi as a whole, however, suggests that arguments for financial faithfulness or any kind of faithfulness are unpersuasive to the audience. The prophet's call for financial obedience in Malachi 3 is a call to reinforce the priestly prerogative to collect the tithe, but the call apparently is being ignored. I will examine both the rhetorical context of the book and its contemporary use in African American churches from a womanist perspective, seeking answers to the following questions: how does money and talk about money function as a tool of liberation / oppression in the church? Is such talk gendered – are women pastors or leaders speaking about tithing in the same way as men? And how does a womanist interpretation of Malachi challenge prosperity readings of the biblical text?


Swiss Jesus: Art, Landscape, Ritual, and the Localization of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in a Medieval Alpine Church
Program Unit: Christian Apocrypha
Stephen J. Davis, Yale University

On the painted panel ceiling of the medieval Church of St. Martin at Zillis, Switzerland, within a larger narrative sequence of biblical and hagiographical scenes presented in the form of a mappa mundi, there is a conspicuous apocryphal scene—a panel showing a young Jesus bringing clay birds to life. This story, drawn from the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, came to be popularized in the Latin West as part of the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. In this paper, I attempt to reconstruct medieval perceptions of this image found in St. Martin’s. To this end, I argue that worshipers and visitors would have been prompted to view the Christ child’s miracle in localized terms—specifically, in relation to both the Alpine topography encountered outside the church and the ritual practice of baptism performed within its walls.


The Incestuous Man of 1 Corinthians 5, Banishment Texts in the LXX, and Eating with Sinners
Program Unit: Scripture and Paul
Kathy Barrett Dawson, Duke University

While it is obvious that Deut 27:20 and Lev 18:8 prohibit the incestuous relationship that existed within the Corinthian community and that Paul’s imperative to “expel the evil one from among yourselves” (1 Cor 5:13) is a citation of the similar phrase in LXX Deut 17:7; 21:21; and 22:21, I will argue that Paul’s description of the Corinthians as “arrogant,” rather than grieving over the sins of another (5:2), is an allusion to other banishment texts in the LXX, especially those that deal with an intentional and unrepentant sinner who exhibits arrogance when disciplined by those in positions of authority. I will also propose that reading 1 Cor 5:1-13 in light of these banishment texts not only explains Paul’s reference to “being absent in the body and present in the spirit” (v. 3), but also it clarifies the relationship of v.4a to v.3. Additionally, I will argue that Paul’s reference to the Corinthians’ “boasting” (5:6) and his concern for the purity of the corporate body of the churches, especially his insistence that the Corinthians should live in the unleavened state of “purity of motive and truth” (5:8), may indicate, in agreement with Conzelmann and Wolff, that Paul’s employs the aorist “I wrote” (5:11) to clarify the specific meaning of the general instructions in his previous letter, which the Corinthians have ignored in continuing their fellowship with the incestuous man. Therefore, when Paul lists the various immoral characteristics that disqualify a so-called “brother” from table fellowship with the faithful members of the community, the implication is that the excluded parties are unrepentant sinners who have not responded to previous instruction.


Is Paul Reshaping the Martyrological Tradition of 2 Maccabees in Gal 1:13–2:21 in Order to Present a New Paradigm of a Faithful Follower of God?
Program Unit: Function of Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
Kathy Barrett Dawson, Duke University

Contemporary scholars accept Gaventa’s proposal that Paul presents himself as an example in the autobiographical section of Galatians and describes his own experiences to demonstrate the gospel’s insistence on the “reversal of prior value-systems.” Additionally, most commentators note that Gal 1:13-2:21 includes several Pauline hapax legomena, some of which occur in 2 Maccabees, especially the martyrdom narratives that praise those who strictly adhere to the Mosaic law. I will argue that Paul draws his atypical vocabulary from the martyrdom narratives in order to reinterpret the Maccabean understanding that a faithful follower of God is one who has zeal for the law and refuses to commit apostasy in the face of persecution. While the Maccabean narratives present those who chose to die for the Mosaic law as honored models to be emulated, Paul employs rhetorical parody in order to present himself as the new paradigm of faithfulness in that he died to the law in order to live for God (Gal 2:19). According to Quintilian, Hermogenes, and Ps.-Demetrius, rhetorical parody added forcefulness to an argument by quoting a written phrase in a witty manner in order to reinterpret the meaning of the words as presented in the hypotext. Therefore, it is my contention that Paul employs rhetorical parody in order to present an argument of dissociation in which he sought to convince the Galatians that Torah observance was, in Perelman’s terminology, only an “appearance” of faithfulness. As an “appearance,” Torah observance was previously accepted and valued as reality; however, Paul argues that the “appearance,” the Maccabean paradigm of faithfulness, has been replaced by a new “reality,” a reality brought about by God’s revelation of Jesus Christ (1:12).


Lost in Translation: The Absence of the "Folk" in Sanscritized Biblical Texts
Program Unit: Asian and Asian-American Hermeneutics
Joseph Prabhakar Dayam, United Theological College (Bangalore)

Bible translation in India, undertaken by the foreign missionaries was an enterprise of the Brahminic elite. Brahmin Pundits were hired and commissioned to translate the Bible. Consequently the concern that had driven the translators was a literary concern but not a faith concern. Such a literary concern that rendered the "folk" absent, resulted in theology that was apolitical and a Christology that constructed a dominant image of Jesus as the gentle Jesus meek and mild. This paper will examine select Biblical texts of Telugu translation to substantiate above thesis.


The Significance of the Old Testament as Scripture and as History in Galatians
Program Unit: Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity
Martinus C. de Boer, Vrije Universiteit

The paper will explore two aspects of Paul's use of the Old Testament in Galatians: (1) the status of "the scripture" (3:8; 3:22; 4:30)as text and (2) the value, or authority, of OT (salvation) history. What is the status of the scripture for Paul post Christum? Does he attribute value or authority to (some parts of) the "history" contained in the text? What is the relation between the two aspect?


Dynamic Equivalence and "Intelligible" Translation of Hebrew Bible Poetry
Program Unit: Bible Translation
Izaak J. de Hulster, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

Hebrew poems, especially in the Song of Songs, are studied often only for their aesthetic literary features. The Song of Songs indeed communicates artfully through its poetic devices, but as a love poem it also conveys aesthetic and emotional meaning. Even though commentaries pay attention to meaning, translations—even those employing dynamic equivalence or other theories based on its legacy—often fail to reflect the poems’ messages intelligibly. This failure results in alienating translations that do not bridge the cultural distance between the ancient Israelite text and the present day reader. To appreciate Hebrew (love) poetry, and its metaphors in particular, it is important therefore to find ways to express aesthetic and emotional through a culturally sensitive translation style. ‘Pleonastic’ trans¬lation provides an ‘in-text’ solution to translate ancient metaphors in a way that conveys their primary contemporaneous associations. Although the use of pleonasms spoils the original brevity of the Hebrew poetry, one can compensate for this by other poetic devices (e.g., alliteration) in the translation. The pleonastic approach to translation of Hebrew Bible love poetry is exemplified with a translation of some of the body-description verses from the Song of Songs. Rooted in translation theory and metaphor theory, this paper reflects on dynamic equivalence, draws attention to the various aspects of Hebrew (love) poetry, and proposes a ‘dynamic equivalent’ way to provide present day readers with a comprehensible translation of ancient metaphors.


Cannot My Taste Discern Calamity? A Taste of Evil in the Book of Job
Program Unit: Senses, Cultures, and Biblical Worlds
Johan de Joode, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Ever since Darwin’s ‘The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals,’ a causal connection is frequently postulated between tasting food and disgust. In this contribution, I study the role of the gustatory in the Book of Job in two subsidiary parts. Firstly, within the gustatory frame, ingestion serves as a source domain for discernment. Job uses the metaphor ‘discernment is taste’ to challenge his comforters: is his faculty to judge good from evil still accurate (6:30; 12:11; 34:3; 12:20; 6:6-7)? The potential failure to recognize evil when ‘tasting it’ makes food one of the loci of morality in the metaphorical conceptualizations of the Book of Job (15:16). Secondly, the poet introduces defective digestion. In Job 20, the wicked eat greedily, yet they are never satisfied. They consider evil to be sweet and take it in only then to discover it is poisonous. Interestingly, God interrupts the digestive process actively: a) he has the wicked vomit their evil out (20:15) and b) he meets their insatiable hunger feeding them his anger to subsequently pierce their innards (20:23-25; also 16:13). The failure of taste thus leads to the divinely orchestrated prevention of digestion and the creation of disgust in story and reader. For Zophar evil cannot be digested. Ironically, the poet completes his contemplation by arguing that the wicked themselves will be consumed (20:26). The possible lack of aversive stimuli in the face of evil are therefore followed by the abrupt interruption of the digestive process. The poet’s focus on the malfunction of both taste and digestion associates taste to morality and digestion to delayed retribution.


Transforming Theology in Ordinary Examples: Initial Results of a Research Project in Preaching in the Protestant Church in the Netherlands
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Huibertus de Leede, Protestant Theological University

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Language, Ideology, and Cognition: A Critical Discourse Approach to the Concept of Divine Warfare in Josh 10–11
Program Unit: Joshua-Judges
Jannica de Prenter, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Current research on Israelite historiography focuses on the ideological bias of biblical texts, understanding biblical history writing as the discursive interpretation of history, influenced by belief systems, world views and ethic values. Applied to the book of Joshua, this entails that scholars began to examine the rhetorical, literary and ideological function of the conquest account (Kang 1989; Younger 1990; Rowlett 1996; van Bekkum 2010). A serious flaw in these studies is the absence of a reflection on how ideology operates in language. To fill this lacuna, my study aims at unraveling the relationship between language, ideology and cognition in biblical texts, in the following three steps. First of all, a clear definition of ideology will be provided, as the term has become extremely fuzzy in biblical scholarship, often blurring the distinction between ideology and theology. Secondly, I will develop a new methodology to analyze ideological patterns in biblical texts, by adopting Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), a multidisciplinary discourse approach incorporating both Hallidaean systemic-linguistics, cognitive-linguistic approaches to metaphor and social theories (in particular Foucault’s understanding of “orders of discourse”, Gramsci’s notion of “hegemony” and Althusser’s use of “ideological state apparatuses”). Finally, I will illustrate my methodology with the concept of divine warfare in Josh 10-11, and demonstrate how social problems and power struggles are manifested in the text. A meticulous discourse analysis of both the micro- and macro-level of the text, shows that the image of warfare in Josh 10-11 with its emphasis on total destruction (cherem) and complete obedience towards YHWH’s command, together with the conceptualization of YHWH as divine warrior, functions as an exemplaric case in persuading the early post-exilic community to obey YHWH’s laws and abstain from all non-Yahwistic religious customs. This study contributes to the development of critical language awareness, and provides research tools to recognize ideological rhetoric in biblical texts.


The Economic and Ideological Background of Biblical Interpretation in Antiquity: A Comparison between 1 Peter and the Qumran pesharim
Program Unit: Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy
Rodrigo F. de Sousa, Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the question of early Christianity and the ancient economy via the investigation of the relationship between biblical interpretation in antiquity and the economic and ideological forces that shape it, with a focus on 1 Peter and the Qumran pesharim. It has been suggested that 1 Peter can be seen as espousing interpretive techniques which are akin to those of the Qumran pehsarim. Yet, though these two sets of texts truly seem similar on the surface, my contention is that a comparison can only be made once some factors are taken into account, among which we emphasize their different social, economic and ideological contexts. On the basis of attempts at reconstructing the economic background of 1 Peter, such as that of Van Rensburg (2011) and theories which connect economic context and hermeneutical activity, such as those of Voloshinov (1973) and Auroux (2008) we offer preliminary methodological guidelines for further exploration of the economic and ideological forces that shaped the circles behind 1 Peter and the pesharim and how these in turn affected differently the interpretation of the biblical texts by these communities. By demonstrating how the economic basis of the different groups shaped their biblical interpretation we expect to offer an original contribution to the investigation of the different dimensions of the relationship between early Christianity and the ancient economy.


The Textual History of the Book of Esther within the Larger Context of Rewritten Scripture
Program Unit: Transmission of Traditions in the Second Temple Period
Kristin De Troyer, University of St. Andrews

In this paper, I would like to first reiterate my position on the growth of the Book of Esther from Hebrew text to Old Greek translation and then to revised second Greek text. I will then put the literary development of the Book of Esther within the larger context of rewritten Scripture as attested in the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint and among the Dead Sea Scrolls and point to the importance of multiple textforms as well as the interpretative traditions at work in rewritten Scripture.


The Textual History of the Scriptural Quotations in the New Testament: An Examination of P46
Program Unit: New Testament Textual Criticism
Johannes de Vries, Kirchliche Hochschule Wuppertal/Bethel

In several instances a Septuagint influence on the transmission of the New Testament text is likely or has at least been suggested; however, the extent of the mutual influence between the two traditions is still up for debate. This paper focuses on the earliest textual history of the scriptural quotations in the New Testament which is preserved in the oldest New Testament papyri. Due both to its antiquity (c. 200 CE) and extent of preservation, Papyrus 46 (P46) is an excellent example and worthy of a comparative analysis. /// The analysis of several selected scriptural quotations in P46 shows on the one hand a broad variety of variants of all kinds – many of which are unparalleled by any Septuagint reading; on the other hand, a few occasional harmonizations with the Septuagint can be detected. More precisely, only in two instances, a Septuagint influence on the text of P46 is the most probable explanations for variant readings. Thus, the influence of the Septuagint is just one (and rather minor) factor among many other more dominant factors contributing to the emergence of variants. It seems to be limited to clearly recognizable quotations and is supported by an explicit reference to the quoted text and its prominence. /// These findings on the earliest textual tradition complement the results of the Wuppertal research project on the textual history of the New Testament quotations. Thus, even though further examinations are required to generalize these particular conclusions regarding P46, one can venture a thesis: The transmission of Septuagint and New Testament took place independently during (at least) the first five centuries. Singular exceptions are likely, but remained limited to particular passages or particular strands of the textual tradition. This, in turn, means that these exceptions can easily be identified when contrasted with the overall textual tradition.


A Triangulation of Traditions: Reading the New Testament from Western and African Perspectives
Program Unit: Contextual Biblical Interpretation
Peter de Vries, Old Union Presbyterian Church

Hermeneutics is often described metaphorically as bridging the gap between the horizons of the reader and of the text. This paper offers the metaphor of a triangulation between three perspectives: western, African, and New Testament. It reports the results of a study of New Testament texts conducted by a US instructor and Ghanaian pastoral students. A comparison of five phenomenological aspects of human existence (personhood, community, the world, time, and the spiritual) between the western and African world-view informed study’s participants in their shared examination of New Testament texts that reflect the world-view of their authors about these elements of human experience. This triangulation between three world-views permits mutual understanding: the West and Africa for each other through the medium of the Bible as a shared text, and of Bible for the West and for Africa as informed by the perspective of the other reader world. The dialectical reading of the Bible from the Western and from the African traditions opens both traditions to the synthesis of a new awareness of the message of the Bible for both. That is, the paired theses of understanding of a text from the Western and African perspectives makes possible the creation of a new understanding. As a result, the reading posture of each participant is reshaped, allowing one to interpret in new ways not only the text, but also one’s own experience, as well as sensibilities for a different contemporary culture. The texts under consideration by this study are: (1) Personhood: Romans 7:14-25, Galatians 5:16-26; (2) Community: Luke 10:25-37, 1 Corinthians 12:12-31; (3) The World: John 15:18-25, Romans 8:18-25; (4) Time: 1 Corinthians 10:1-13, 2 Peter 3:1-13; and (5) The Spiritual: Mark 1:21-28, Ephesians 6:10-18. The instructor, who represents the western perspective, prepared for the study not only from his own upbringing and training in western thought, but also by preaching on each of these ten passages in a predominately working-class, predominately white, predominately socially conservative Presbyterian congregation in the US, which elicited feedback from the members. Additionally, he received input from other westerners through social media. The students, representing the African perspective, prepared through personal reflection on the passages under consideration, interviews with members of their churches, families, and communities, and through a series of reflective activities for the five phenomenological elements. For each of the five meetings of the study, the instructor facilitated a process for the students to articulate Ghanaian perspectives on an aspect of the human experience, explained the US perspectives on that aspect, and led an investigation of the perspective of the texts related to this aspect. The study was conducted in April 2012, and this paper will present its results.


A Walk through the City with John Chrysostom
Program Unit: Greco-Roman Religions
Chris L. de Wet, University of South Africa

In The Practice of Everyday Life (1984, 93-110), Michel De Certeau approaches the concept of ‘city’ from the perspective of urban practices. In essence, the city speaks itself through such urban spatial practices. But the voyeurs and walkers in the city also renarrate these urban spatial stories within their own socio-cultural and religious discourses. This paper aims to apply De Certeau’s urban spatial theory to how John Chrysostom paints the picture of the polis in his homilies. It will be demonstrated that, in service of a rigorous yet popularistic programme of ascetic Christian reform, Chrysostom strategically manipulates the spatial stories of the polis. Specifically, the paper will display Chrysostom’s depictions of the rich and poor districts and people of the city, the marketplace, the theatre as well as Christian churches and shrines, which are often located outside of the city. It will investigate how the late ancient bishop as a type of interpretive panopticon refashions urban spaces and practices for very specific religious, political and social purposes.


The Somatography of Ancient Slavery: Reflections on the Heteronomy, Carcerality, and Domesticity of the Slave-Body
Program Unit: Slavery, Resistance, and Freedom
Chris L. de Wet, University of South Africa

This paper approaches ancient slavery as a discursive formation; that is, a nexus of several ancient discourses which are inherently somatic. The study investigates the slave-body then from three, interrelated dimensions: firstly, the slave-body as a heteronomous body (i.e. a body subject to domination and rule); a carceral body (i.e. a body in a state of physical and symbolic incarceration or carceral spatiality); and, finally, a domestic body (i.e. a body that mostly functions in the oikos/domus and hence subject to various oeconomical dynamics and strategies). It will conclude with a synthesis as well as a discussion of the possibilities of this tripartite somatography for a new understanding of ancient slavery.


The “Gospel” and the Emperor Cult: From Bultmann to Crossan
Program Unit: Westar Institute
Jon F. Dechow, Portola Valley, CA

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Crafting Gnosis: Gnostic Spirituality in the Ancient New Age
Program Unit: Mysticism, Esotericism, and Gnosticism in Antiquity
April D. DeConick, Rice University

DeConick crafts a contemporary understanding of Gnostics in antiquity by studying how ancient religious people crafted their own identity as seekers or possessors of Gnosis. Past scholarship has been focused on understanding the ways in which historical forces are at play in the emergence of Gnostic communities and identities, although it has cast a spell of pure origins of Christianity that has been difficult to break. This spell has bound the Gnostic to a later secondary era when the pure Christian religion was threatened with Gnostic erosion and degenerations, but was saved by the heroes of the catholic Church. The other story that has been told most recently has unintentionally resulted in the complete marginalization of the Gnostic, so that the Gnostic is no longer part of history, and only the Christian remains. DeConick's own construction of the Gnostic asks us to consider the role of cognition in the formation of new identities. She suggests that Gnostic spirituality is a complex cognitive network, an emergent structure, that forms in the first century as an impulse within early Judaism and Christianity. It is a new way people begin to think about and discuss metaphysics and engage perennial conversations, many of which have existential dimensions. Once this new type of spirituality is formed in the West, it becomes dispersed into the wider cultural web of knowledge, entrenched in long-term and social memory and distributed within artefacts that were built to prompt these specific constructions of meaning. This framework continues to be operational today, as the scaffold for the spirituality of the New Age and therapeutic movements.


The Ethiopian Psalters in the Andre Tweed Collection of Howard University School of Divinity
Program Unit: Ethiopic Bible and Literature
Steve Delamarter, George Fox University

Earlier this year, a project funded by a collaboration grant from the Association of Theological Schools digitized the 155 codices and 73 magic scrolls in the Andre Tweed Collection. Among the manuscripts are 38 Ethiopian Psalters. The Psalter is the quintessential book of Ethiopian Christianity and can justly claim to represent its book culture. Each of the Psalters is an artifact from its own particular time and place. If we know how to read them, they have stories to tell us about the communities that produced them. These are stories of craftsmen, scribes, artists, and readers; of economics, art, religion, and sociology. If this is true of one book, then the stories of many books, can be woven together to tell a grand story—a saga really—about a book culture across time. In this presentation, Delamarter and Williams will give an overview of several aspects of Ethiopian Christian book culture as represented in the Tweed Psalters. These include: the handling of line length, the marking of the midpoint of the Psalms, the rubrication of the words for God and Mary, and the spiritual meanings of the Hebrew letters in Psalm 118.


“What Are You Seeking?” Pedagogical Implications from the Appropriation of the Philosophical Call Story in the Gospels
Program Unit: Institute for Biblical Research
John DelHousaye, Phoenix Seminary

“What are you seeking?”: Pedagogical Implications from the Appropriation of the Philosophical Call Story in the Gospels


Opening an “Act” of the Preacher: Beginning a Discussion on Implementing the Stanislavski’s System in Homiletics
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Vadim Dementyev, Fuller Theological Seminary

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The First Arslan Tash Incantation: New Evidence for Its Authenticity
Program Unit: Ugaritic Studies and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy
Aaron Demsky, Bar-Ilan University

The Assyrian conquest of the ANE forcibly brought together different peoples to create the first great syncretistic world culture. Illuminating this syncretism is the first incantation tablet from Arslan Tash, published in the 1930's. It was found in a site identified as ?addattu, i.e., “New Town", established by Tiglath Pileser III. The text is written in an Aramaic script, paleographically dated to the mid-seventh century BCE, while the words are in a Tyrian dialect of Phoenician, with some Aramaisms, The text is a remnant of Phoenician literature and gives voice to the otherwise silent exiles caught up in the social and religious upheaval of the time. For some scholars this fascinating document has been judged a scholarly forgery, for others its unique features evidence authenticity. A case in point is the meaning of the word ?NQT which has yet to be properly explained. In this paper I argue for the authenticity of the incantation by noting that this Phoenician term is the cognate and perhaps the source of the Greek “sphinx”, from the root meaning “to strangle”. Iconographic support for this observation is the sphinx like demon depicted on the reverse side of the tablet.


Appropriation of 2 and 4 Maccabees in Post-Nicene Christianity: The Sermons of John Chrysostom, Gregory Nazianzus, and Augustine
Program Unit: Function of Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
David A. deSilva, Ashland Theological Seminary

2 and 4 Maccabees were important resources for the Ante-Nicene church as it faced persecution for its confession and counter-cultural practices. The martyrs of the Maccabean period became exemplars of the person of faith remaining steadfast in his or her commitment to God in the face of legal proceedings involving torture and leading to execution, as seen, for example, in the extensive use of these texts by Origen and Cyprian in their Exhortations to Martyrdom. The martyr narratives, however, continued to be read, used, and proclaimed long after the official edicts of toleration and the institutionalizing of the Church with the Roman Empire in the post-Nicene period. This paper explores the ongoing function and appropriation of 2 and 4 Maccabees in the sermons of John Chrysostom, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Augustine in conjunction with the Christian veneration of the Maccabean martyrs and the ethical reinterpretation of their contest.


Reading Revelation in Sri Lanka
Program Unit: John's Apocalypse and Cultural Contexts Ancient and Modern
David A. deSilva, Ashland Theological Seminary

Revelation is not a text that so much asks to be interpreted as seeks to interpret the circumstances in which the congregation that reads or hears it finds itself. Because of the particular challenges within their social location and recent history, Christians in Sri Lanka find Revelation to be more immediately relevant as "interpretation" of their situation and less remote (hence, needing such imaginative interpretation as we have seen among prophecy experts in the Western world for some centuries). This paper reports on conversations held with Sri Lankan Christians in the context of a seminary course and in less formal contexts of conversations in churches and homes about what Revelation "means" within, and how Revelation positions Sri Lankan Christians to respond to, the challenges of their social location. The more prominent focal points in this conversation include: the role of iconic religion in Sri Lankan majority and dominant culture, the incentives to participate, and the social consequences of non-participation; the tension between the identification of the kingdom of God as a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual entity, the ethnic violence between Sinhalese and Tamil from 1977 to 2009, and ongoing marginalization of the Tamil minority; Sri Lanka at the crossroads between several economic empires, varying perceptions of "Babylonish" intrusions and pollution, and the challenges of "coming out"; and the costliness of witness in a political order that observes no distinction between (Buddhist) Temple and State.


"New Perspective on Paul" and the Greek-Orthodox Interpretation of Paul
Program Unit: Bible in Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Traditions
Athanasios Despotis, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn

In this paper I am seeking to present the main aspects of a large project which I have been working on since 2009. This project compares the way in which Paul’s theology of justification by faith is interpreted by the most important representatives of the New Perspective (namely, E.P. Sanders; J. Dunn; N.T. Wright) as well as the Greek Church Fathers and modern Greek Orthodox scholars. In this paper I summarize the latest and most important results of my comparison and I will focus on the following points: -The way in which both approaches question the Pauline texts; -The new interpretive insights that can be won through this comparison; -The similarities and differences between the different interpretations of the main terms in the semantic field of justification by faith in Paul’s thought: d??a???s?a?; p?st?? ???st??; ???a ??µ??; ??µ??; ?µa?t?a; ?????s??; Lastly, the question of how this comparison can be useful for the ecumenical dialogue between Christian Denominations.


"Autexousion": A Freedom of Decision in Both the Theology of the New Testament and the Early Patristic Interpretation of the New Testament
Program Unit: Development of Early Christian Theology
Athanasios Despotis, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn

"Autexousion" is a technical term that is very often used in early Patristic interpretation of Scripture to refer to the human capacity for free choice. The Greek term "Autexousion" appears neither in the Septuagint nor in the New Testament. In this paper I will present the way in which this term was adapted and functioned in the very early stages of Christian theology. This term is since Justin Martyr one of the most fundamental theological and hermeneutical principles for the Greek-patristic interpretation of the New Testament. I will first describe the non-biblical background of this term and especially its mean-ing in Stoic and Peripatetic philosophy (Chrysipp, Epictet and Alexander from Aphrodisias). I will then focus on crucial New Testament texts concerning the divine and human will (e.g. Mk 14:36) and compare them with the Stoic and Peripatetic theories of free will. After this I will inquire into the reason why Justin Martyr adapts the term "Autexousion" in the second Century and why it became so popular by the next century among the most important interpreters of the Scripture in Alexandria (Clemens, Origen and Cyrill of Alexandria) and Antioch (Tatian, Diodor, John Chrysostom and Theodor of Mopsuestia). I will conclude by showing how "Autexousion" was used in the Greek-patristic interpretation of the most relevant New Testament texts concerning divine agency and human will: Rom 7:15-20; 9:22-24; Jo 6:44-45; Mt 13:11-12. I make a short exegetical excursus on these texts and pre-sent the Patristic application of "Autexousion" in their interpretation. This project makes it evident that despite the fact that the New Testament does not have any theory of human will, one can ascertain that in several New Testament texts a relative human freedom of decision is presupposed. For this reason, "Autexousion" can be accepted as a theological and hermeneutical principle because it is based on solid exegetical ground by the Greek Fathers and reflects their very good knowledge of the Greek language and Hellenistic philosophy and rhetoric. In addition to this, "Autexousion" was also theo-logically necessary in the early Christian Church as a criticism of both pagan fate-theory and astrology as well as Gnostic determinism and dualism. Finally, "Autexousion" served a practical need in early Christian theology: The application of "Autexousion" in the Patristic readings of the New Testament emphasized the responsibility of the Christian believers for living in a consistently Christian manner.


The Upturned Gaze?: Competitive Imagery in Constantinian Numismatics
Program Unit: Religious Competition in Late Antiquity
Nate DesRosiers, Stonehill College

The use of images on the coinage of the Emperor Constantine has created significant debate among scholars. Although Constantine is often described as a “Christian Emperor” non-Christian iconography continued to appear on imperial coin types until well after the emperor’s apparent conversion. Specifically images of divinities such as Helios, Mars, and Zeus, as well as temples and altars frequently appeared on coins until at least the year 320 CE. Likewise overtly “Christian” iconography such as the cross and the chi-rho are rare on the coins from any period in Constantine’s reign. In fact, most Constantinian types featured motifs that were devotionally inert and much less explicit in religious content. This paper will examine these themes in Constantinian numismatics and demonstrate how the use or avoidance of certain images illustrates religious competition in action. In particular I will argue that these more “inert” images were selected as a way of promoting stability among competing religious groups even as the emperor’s own religious views remained fluid. My goal is not to claim Constantine for one religious tradition or another, but to show how the careful control and appropriation of images functioned to consolidate Constantine’s imperial power.


Jesus Remembered in the Johannine and Markan Passion Narratives—Questions about a Sociology-of-Memory Analysis
Program Unit: John, Jesus, and History
Adriana Destro, Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna

In the investigation of Jesus remembered in Johannine and Mark perspective, the following issues merit consideration: 1) Mark and John make use of materials coming from different groups of Jesus followers located in different parts of the land of Israel. 2) The groups that transmitted the different materials on which the two gospels are partially based were probably not in reciprocal communication for decades. 3) It is important to ask about the consequences of the fact that only at a certain point the traditions—that we now find in Mark—came to the knowledge of the Johannine prophetic school that was writing the fourth Gospel. 4) For these reasons, a sociology-of-memory analysis—applied to two case-studies in the passion narrative—takes into account different mechanisms of constructions of memory: distance and discontinuity, localizations of the transmitted materials, uses of written texts, and polemics between lines of transmission.


Reflections on Rudolf Bultmann: A Biography by Konrad Hammann (Polebridge Press, 2012)
Program Unit: Westar Institute
Philip E. Devenish, Hancock, ME

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You Shall Not Boil a Kid in Its Mother’s Milk: The Dietary Law That Wasn’t
Program Unit: Biblical Law
Heath Dewrell, The Johns Hopkins University

The brief command, “You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk,” appears three times in the Torah. While its meaning seems plain enough, the rationale behind the law has been a puzzle with no shortage of proposed solutions, none of which has managed to attract a consensus. Some point to modern Arab cuisine; some to Ugaritic parallels; some argue that humanitarian concerns are at stake; some suspect that avoiding a “pagan” Canaanite practice is the issue; still others note structuralist taboos about mixing life with death. The only common ground among various interpreters appears to be the assumption that it was in fact a dietary prohibition. This paper will question that assumption and argue that, although the command eventually became a dietary law, it originally served another function entirely. Looking at the context in which the prohibition in its various forms appears and comparing it to biblical and extrabiblical Near Eastern aphorisms, this study will argue that the “law” was originally a metaphorical restatement of another law that had nothing at all to do with dietary restrictions. Finally, it will suggest the mechanism by which it came to be a law in its own right, as it has been understood ever since.


Using the Classical Theorists to Analyze Ehud’s Judgeship: Reading Judges 3:12–30 with Marx and Engels, Durkheim, and Weber
Program Unit: Social Sciences and the Interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures
Linda A. Dietch, Drew University

Ehud’s judgeship presents a comic and crude tale of an unlikely assassin who frees the children of Israel from the domination of a Moabite king fattened by eighteen years’ worth of Israelite tribute. Israel’s deity plays a critical role by initiating political and economic oppression in response to Israel’s bad behavior and later by raising up a deliverer in response to Israel’s outcry. Within a monolatrous or monotheistic framework, the story focuses on Israel’s political relationship with a near neighbor, a people who lay just south and east of the territory of Benjamin. In order to explore the role, interests, and purpose of this short and entertaining narrative, this paper turns to the work of four classical theorists of social scientific inquiry. A methodological triptych, the paper moves through three concise applications of concepts drawn from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Émile Durkheim, and Max Weber in order to demonstrate what each contributes to our understanding of the pericope and the social world that produced it. Beginning with Marx and Engels, the study considers how the story, as an element within the ancient society’s superstructure, relates to a material base. How does the story of Ehud’s judgeship depict the religio-political landscape and what values or ideologies come across as most significant? Whose interests might these reflect and, consequently, what purpose(s) might the story serve? Next, anchored by Durkheim’s definition of religion, the paper evaluates the story via reference to his categories of sacred and profane and his conception of the role of religion and religious rites in creating communal cohesion. Finally, the study turns to Weber’s ideal types of legitimate authority in order to assess the bases of authority of the story’s main characters. The study concludes by cursorily engaging the topic of how the selection of a methodology impacts the outcome, as this choice drives what questions are asked and determines, to a considerable extent, the type of results that are obtained. This paper openly grants but leaves aside concerns regarding any limitations or internal inconsistencies inherent within each of the selected approaches in favor of briefly reflecting upon issues of compatibility between these different approaches.


Biblia en Lenguaje Mas Justo: An Objective Critique to Promote a Dream Project
Program Unit: Ideology, Culture, and Translation
Sabine Dievenkorn, Comunidad Teologica Evangelica de Chile

“Then God created Adam, human beings, in the image of God they were created, male and female He created them, She created them, God created them.” This sounds new, strange for most, heretical for others, liberating for many and, above all, courageous: it includes them. A bible translation attempting to be just, e.g. inclusive in this sense makes evident that which was not visible prior, elucidates that which could not be seen or someone did not want to be seen. The scholarly theological and multiculturally interdisciplinary translation work in the Latin American context has started. This work is dependent, aside from contextual connections, on this particular new discourse. A group of female theologians from Chile, a missionized country that has lost its own religions with the mission, is attempting to offer a separate translation relevant to present times. The starting point of this project is thus initially the particular context-steeped theology that often only exists as oral tradition and everyday practice and as such initially appears to be outside the academic context. If every religion we have today is a collection of testimonies of faith that we encounter in the form of different cultural testimonies, then that opens new spaces and rights; spaces and rights of reception as well. If the ecclesiastical year and its Easter cycle stop using northern astronomical constellations as a guide, then Good Friday and Easter Sunday could be a celebration of the rising sun in the southern hemisphere too. If Christmas would cease to be a historical birthday, then Jesus as Christ could also appear as the light in the darkness in the southern hemisphere – in June. How much are we allowed to scratch off the classic image of Jesus with the justified argument that it has been assigned and laid down as a cultural possession? He may be black, but could He also be gay? This question abruptly points out limits, especially those based solely on resentments – even if they masquerade as theological arguments. Is it irrelevant whether the New Testament’s stories take place at the Sea of Galilee or at Lake Titicaca? What are the consequences if their geography, history, culture is moved to a new location? What so-called "Proprium" remains essentially Christian and why? What are the consequences of the insight that the archaic "subduing" of Gen 1:28 means "protecting" in today’s language? Questions such as these provoke dialogue; not only theological-ecumenical or interreligious dialogue, but multicultural and interdisciplinary dialogue as well. It is more than the simple issue of correct translation whether the gospel calls us to build a path for God or make His marks visible. The scientific theological and multicultural interdisciplinary work in the Latin American context has begun in Chile and depends on that discussion along with context references. The new project is an initiative of women doing theological work. It is not commissioned by the church. That is the basis for its liberating aspect and its cultural theological potential in a structural as well as symbolic manner.


Reign Dance: The Metaphoric Nature of the Propagandistic Event in 2 Samuel 6
Program Unit: Semiotics and Exegesis
K. Parker Diggory, Emory University

The paper applies a Lotmonian understanding of “event” and certain understandings of metaphor to elucidate the semantic shift that powers the propaganda of 2 Samuel 6. Though a transgression of semantic boundaries made relevant by the norms of expected behavior, David’s dance in the ark procession both participates in events (boundary crossings) of its own and acts as an indexical sign to the larger boundary crossing event of political transformation. I argue further that there is a way of distinguishing between a simple event and a propagandistic event and that this distinction can be understood with the analogy of metaphors. Meaning making is made via the transgressing of a border, but the hero-agent in the narrative, and by the claim of equivalence in a metaphor. Propagandistic events are more metaphorical in their function than non-propagandistic events. Metaphors make a claim of equivalence that is not made in Lotman’s initial theory of event and plot. The boundary crossed in the simple event remains intact in his examples and the stories do not have as their goal the erasure of their semantic field boundaries. The event behind 2 Samuel 6, on the other hand, is a shift for which the story’s shapers are arguing. They acknowledge the crossing of the boundary but they ultimately want that crossing to be accepted. Such is the case with making a (live) metaphor. I claim that my lover is a rose not because I believe her to be a plant but because I believe that there is something to be gained by pondering that equation. One significant difference with propagandistic events is that the event goes one step further. After a metaphor is made and the border is crossed between “lover” and “rose” with a claim of equivalency, the border is crossed back again. Neither entity represented by the terms of the metaphor is ontologically changed. In the propagandistic event, the storytellers are arguing against that reversal. They want the border to be crossed again, never to be crossed back again – or perhaps for the border to be erased all together. In the case of 2 Samuel 6 and similar narratives, moreover, the storytellers want the border to be crossed by more than only the hero-agent. We are to cross the border to; the text is seeking theological/political buy-in. It is helpful to point out how the shifts of semantic fields in this kind of narrative convey meaning in much the same way metaphor does. This realization is helpful because it challenges us to understand the full extent and impact of the propaganda and prevents us from missing the level of communication carried by the text that communicates with semantic and positional similarity (a la Jakobson). In concluding, the paper proposes that a better understanding of this aspect of meaning-making in propagandistic events is crucial to better understand how narrative propaganda in the Bible accomplishes its persuasive goals.


Moses Not Homer: The Theologia Tripertita in against Apion 2.240–256
Program Unit: Hellenistic Judaism
T.W. Dilbeck, Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion

According to several ancient witnesses, Roman theology could be divided into three categories: the mythical, the physical, and the civil (the theologia tripertita). Poets like Homer and Hesiod were associated with the mythical theology and some ancient writers (most notably Plato) thought that the Homeric presentation of the gods was inadequate for the establishment of laws for the people. The Jewish historian Josephus, in Against Apion 2.240–256 enters the debate and exploits the immoral depictions of the gods in Homer for his own gain. In contrast to their unseemly behavior, he makes the point that the Jewish law was given by Moses with the concept of piety (e?s?ße?a) being the center of it all. In this respect then, Moses was far superior to the Greek law-givers because they allowed themselves to be influenced by Homer. In this paper, I will argue that Josephus actually uses the problems inherent in the theologia tripertita as a major point in the overall argumentation of the work.


The Making of Erasmus’s New Testament
Program Unit:
Ulrich Dill, University of Basel Library

In my presentation, I will investigate the genesis of the epoch-making edition of the New Testament by Erasmus of Rotterdam, illustrating his method of working by means of papers kept in the University Library of Basel. Erasmus’s famous Novum Instrumentum, first published in 1516, comprises the first printed edition of the Greek text as well as a version of the text of the Vulgate revised by Erasmus, and also his comprehensive annotations on the New Testament. The Greek text, being the first version available in print, was to influence the transmission of the New Testament for centuries, and was used by Luther as the original for his German translation. As for the constitution of the text, working conditions were excellent in Basel for Erasmus: Since the days of the Council of Basel (1431–1449), the local Preachers' Monastery was in possession of a considerable collection of Greek manuscripts bequeathed to it by an eminent participant of the Council, Cardinal John of Ragusa. In those days, such a collection was a rare thing north of the Alps, and it may well have influenced Erasmus's decision, taken after his arrival in Basel in 1514, to publish his future major works in collaboration with Johannes Froben. At any rate, we can see that he used the Greek codices of the New Testament available to him there for constituting the text of his editio princeps as well as for revising the Vulgate. In the Annotationes elucidating both the Greek and Latin versions, Erasmus continually refers to the Basel manuscripts. The edition proved a great success and was reprinted several times, undergoing repeated revision by Erasmus. Among the Erasmiana in the collected papers of the Amerbach family is a fragment in his hand of the printer's copy of the second edition of 1519. It serves well to exemplify how Erasmus kept amending his commentary for subsequent editions.


What Kinds of 'Matter' Matter? Deification among Neoplatonic Theurgists and Christians of Late Antiquity
Program Unit: Religious Competition in Late Antiquity
Laura Dingeldein, Brown University

Beginning in the third and fourth centuries CE, a reconsideration of the relationship between the material and the divine was underway within Mediterranean culture; matter was becoming a crucial and positive element in religiously-oriented practices such as pilgrimage, theurgy, the veneration of relics, and the liturgical use of ekphrasis. During this “material turn,” both religious specialists and philosophers began to construe matter as a valuable instrument in the deification of humans. Amongst those glorifying the material realm and incorporating the use of matter into rituals of divine participation and assimilation were the Neoplatonic theurgists and their (proto-) Orthodox Christian contemporaries. Though both Neoplatonic theurgists and late antique Christians increasingly considered matter a necessary tool in rituals of divine participation and assimilation, these groups had competing views regarding the specific type of matter to be used in sanctification. Christians found divine power in human flesh, but decried animal sacrifice and denied their God a habitable statue. Neoplatonic theurgists practiced sacrifice, statue animation, prophecy, and ecstasy to connect with the gods, but they viewed human flesh – particularly corpses – as inimical to the divine. In my paper I will demonstrate that these competing views regarding the types of matter used in rituals of deification and sanctification are directly informed by these groups’ disagreements over the nature of the divine. Late antique Christians, because of Christ’s incarnation, consider the human body to be the most sacred kind of matter, while Neoplatonic theurgists, who seek assimilation to the ineffable and immaterial One, value materials untarnished by perishable human flesh. In proving this point I will rely upon the works of Iamblichus, Proclus, the Cappadocian Gregories, and John Chrysostom.


Silence as Rhetorical Strategy in the Gospel of Luke
Program Unit: Speech and Talk in the Ancient Mediterranean World
Michal Beth Dinkler, Harvard University

Even a brief comparison with its canonical counterparts demonstrates that the Gospel of Luke is preoccupied with the power of spoken words. Words, Luke tells us, can entrap us (20.26) or save us (12.11-12). Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks (6.45); speech can also deceive and mislead (21.8). Despite this emphasis, words alone do not a language make. Just as music without silence collapses into cacophony, so words without silence become meaningless mumbling, signifying nothing: silences are the invisible, inaudible cement that hold the entire edifice together. Though scholars across diverse disciplines have analyzed silence in terms of its contexts, sources, and functions, these insights have barely begun to make inroads in biblical studies. In this paper, I first demonstrate how even in ancient contexts, silence often was employed as an effective rhetorical strategy. I then consider the religious leaders’ inability to respond to Jesus in Luke 14.1-6 as an entry point for discussing how Lukan words and silences function together rhetorically. Does the authorities’ silence represent reluctant acquiescence, as silence often did in ancient legal settings? Is it fear, as silence could also imply? Or does it signal hard-hearted refusal to concede Jesus’ point? I argue that, in contrast to the silences miraculously imposed on Zechariah and the demons elsewhere in Luke, the authorities’ silence in 14.1-6 is a voluntary rhetorical technique, a refusal to participate with Jesus in open dialogue. Their silence is their response, and as such, it is powerfully loaded. This silence, in turn, points toward a realignment of the religious leaders’ identity: they begin as strong opponents, verbally sparring with Jesus, but in the end, they must surrender to Jesus the territory of linguistic debate. They are not merely silent; they are reduced to silence. Ultimately, they forego verbal aggression in favor of physical violence, but this very move paradoxically marks their impotence before Jesus, the verbal victor. Focusing on Luke’s silences in passages like Luke 14 can enrich and deepen our experience of the Gospel as a whole.


Monoon or Monon? Reading 1 John 2:2 from the Editio Critica Maior
Program Unit: New Testament Textual Criticism
Toan Do, Sacred Heart School of Theology

Background: For 1 John 2:2, the eighth-revised edition of Nestle-Aland27 (1994) lists three variants for monoon (henceforth oo for Omega) in place of monon (from the majority of witnesses). Since then more manuscripts have been added to the list. The 2003 Novum Testamentum Graecum Editio Critica Maior provides nineteen variants, plus lacunae, for monoon. Moreover, the presence of de and kai occurs in some MSS but not in others. Questions are raised regarding the syntax and/or grammar of ou peri toon hemeteroon de monon alla kai peri holou tou kosmou. Accordingly, different readings are possible: (a) monon with de-kai; (b) monon without de-kai; (c) monoon with de-kai; and (d) monoon without de-kai. The variants suggest a plurality of grammatical and theological interpretations of the entire text (2:1-2). Methods: Applying the criteria in the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM) in the Editio Critica Maior, this paper evaluates the different readings of 1 John 2:2 in the textual tradition to see whether monon or monoon (with or without de-kai) is likely to be the initial text. The use of monon or monoon stems from the three-ending adjective monos,-e,-on, with its usual meaning “alone” or “only”. The absence or presence of de and/or kai also affects the readings of the text. Two findings will be exemplified. First, the variant monon cannot be taken as an adjective since it does not modify toon hemeteroon, but functions as an adverb in ou peri ton hemeteroon de monon alla kai peri holou tou kosmou. Second, the variant monoon must be taken as an adjective since it agrees in case, number, and gender with ton hemeteroon. Conclusions: A text-critical analysis, backed by the CBGM, indicates that de monon alla kai is the better reading in accordance with the textual tradition for 1 John 2:2. Thus, the variant monoon (in B 1 rell) is mostly likely born out of scribal preference.


Concerning the Sin(s) or the Salvation of the Whole World? A Context-Critical Reading of 1 John 2:2
Program Unit: Johannine Literature
Toan Do, Sacred Heart School of Theology

Background: In 1 John 2:2, the phrases (a) peri ton hamartion hemon, (b) peri ton hemeteron, and (c) peri holou tou kosmou obscure interpretations. Alfred Plummer (1886) observes: “The supposed ellipse [i.e., tes hamartias or ton hamartion in 2:2c] is neither necessary nor very probable.” Raymond E. Brown (1982) notes: “If there is a grammatical irregularity in these two peri phrases of 2:2[bc], it is that the object of the first is ‘our sins’, while the object of the second is ‘the whole world’ – a seeming mixture of things and people.” Objectives: The construction ou monon . . . alla kai explains the sequence of 2:2b and 2:2c, following the peri-clause in 2:2a. However, this does not explain what peri holou tou kosmou in 2:2c refers to. Utilizing the interpretative issues raised by Plummer and Brown, this paper evaluates the grammar and syntax of these prepositional phrases. Several questions will be raised and examined respectively. First, the ellipse (tes hamartias or ton hamartion) in 2:2bc questions its theological implications. Second, does peri holou tou kosmou imply the “sinfulness” or “sins” of the world, as ton hamartion in 2:2a means? Third, what purpose does peri holou tou kosmou (literally – concerning the whole world) have in the midst of the author’s discussion about sin in the Johannine community (cf. 1:5-10; 2:1-2, 3-6)? Finally, there is a problem with modern translations, in which the words “the sins” are often inserted into the text (cf. NIV-1984; NAS-1977; EIN-1980; LUO-1912; and LUT-1984). Conclusions: A context-critical analysis, supported by the grammar and syntax of 1 John 2:2, suggests that peri holou tou kosmou does not mean the “sin(s)” of the world per se. Rather the phrase must be interpreted against the use of the hilasmos-concept in the contexts of 1 John 2:1-2; 4:10.


Re-visiting the Joban ‘Natural Theology’ Drama and the Evolution of Israelite Anthropology
Program Unit: Theology of the Hebrew Scriptures
Brian R. Doak, George Fox University

In this paper, I explore the intersection between the frequently debated category of “natural theology” and the moral rhetoric in the Book of Job. Drawing on the challenges set forth by Carol Newsom in her 2011 SBL presidential address (as well as Newsom’s recent work in The Book of Job: A Contest of Moral Imaginations [2003]), I explore theological anthropology and ecology as it is related to the development of the human “self” as an entity in radical continuity or discontinuity with other animals—and with the cosmic theater as a whole. Indeed, the debate between the Friends and Job directly addresses the question of self-agency vis-à-vis a deterministic natural order; within the core of the Joban dialogues (chs. 3–31), numerous appeals are made to models of creation, animal life, and plant growth as analogies for human order and suffering. For example, the Eliphaz speech in Job 4 (especially vv. 8–16, 23–27) makes shrewd references to “natural” cycles of precipitation by way of anchoring a conventional appeal to divine justice, and further appeal to covenants with the animal kingdom and the prospect of flourishing grass suggests that the trials of the suffering self can be straightforwardly tested against floral and faunal responses. In 8:11–12, Bildad evokes seemingly common-sense agricultural norms as an analogy for human faith. As a counter-model to these attempts at a seamless eco-anthropology, Job offers a shocking rejoinder in Job 12 (vv. 7–8; 22), in which animal and cosmological imagery serve as evidence for a world that can only be an inverted parody of the Friends’ concept of natural theology (i.e., the notion that God’s activity can be accurately perceived through a “rational,” conventionally-conceived image of the physical order). Moreover, the ominous references to Leviathan (Job 3:8; 41:1) and other mythological creatures (7:12; 26:12–13) heighten the philosophical problem inherent in the natural drama from Job’s (and God’s) perspective, since they introduce further distance between humans and the rest of the created order, and thus insert confusion into the anthropology of suffering as it is related to the state of non-human life forms. Thus, I argue, the Book of Job offers a supremely meaningful (and still under-explored) window into the question of whether and how the Hebrew Bible engages with the problem of “natural theology,” and this engagement contributes data to our study of the evolution of Israelite psychological formation in antiquity.


The Art of Poetry in Jer 17:5–8
Program Unit: Writing/Reading Jeremiah
F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, Princeton Theological Seminary

A close reading of the oracle, with special attention to the fact of its underlying poetic medium and the difference this makes.


Incarnation as Pedagogy in Bernard of Clairvaux
Program Unit:
Marvin Döbler, Universität Bremen

In his Sermones super cantica, the Cistercian abbot Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) develops an epistemological model which centers around Christ incarnate. Christ is the Word (according to St. John), and so for Bernard – who draws upon the patristic tradition – the word of scripture and Jesus Christ the man are two faces of the same coin. The Sermons on the Canticle were written mostly for monastic readers and serve Bernard as medium for religious education, formation of monks in this case. For a historian of religion, Bernard’s exegesis is in many ways of interest: he presents an allegorical exegesis of the Canticle, connects his findings with his exegesis of other Biblical passages but also draws upon scripture as present in the acustic environment of the monastery – the liturgy – thus employing an aesthetic pedagogical strategy.


What Do We Value? ASOR's Quest to Develop a Comprehensive Ethics Policy
Program Unit: Archaeology of Religion in the Roman World
Lynn Swartz Dodd, University of Southern California

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The Metaphor of the Cross in Paul’s Letter to the Galatians and Seneca’s De Vita Beata
Program Unit: Intertextuality in the New Testament
Joseph Dodson, Ouachita Baptist University

Despite the widespread practice of crucifixion in the Greco-Roman world, most first-century authors were reluctant to mention the cross—see Martin Hengel (1977) and Sean A. Adams (2008). Cicero even forbade Roman citizens to utter the shameful word crux. Nevertheless, two Roman citizens—Paul, the Christian apostle and Seneca, the Stoic senator—not only mention the cross: they astoundingly depict themselves as having been crucified. Furthermore, both employ this metaphor of the cross in a defense against respective opponents and refer to crucifixion in relation to sinful passions. While scholars have often found great value in comparing Pauline concepts with Stoicism in general and the thoughts of Seneca in particular, they have tended to neglect this striking similarity. This paper, then, seeks to continue the comparison by heuristically examining Paul’s use of the cross in Galatians and Seneca’s use of it in De Vita Beata. Will any resemblances found reveal their differences more clearly so that one can better understand Paul and Galatians as well as Seneca and De Vita Beata? If so, then how so? In the pursuit to answer these questions, I will first explore the accusations Seneca faced and how the Stoic takes up the cross to silence his foes. Next, I will discuss the likely charges made against Paul by his opponents in Galatia and how the apostle wields the cross in defense of his apostleship. In the final section, I will compare the similarities and differences between their employments of the cross metaphor in order to provide a fresh reading of both Galatians and De Vita Beata.


Adversus Iudaeos / Pro-Gentibus: The Place of the Gentiles in Early Christian Anti-Judaic Exegesis
Program Unit: Early Jewish Christian Relations
Terence L. Donaldson, Wycliffe College

Scholars are well aware of the adversus Iudaeos tradition of the early Christian movement—the exegetical program whereby all of the positive aspects of the “Old Testament” were claimed for the church and the negative aspects that remained were used to denounce the Jews. Also recognized is the way in which this exegetical tradition served both to reinforce Christian identity and to address uncomfortable questions about the church’s claim to represent the fulfillment of Israel’s scriptures. What has not received sufficient attention is the place of “the Gentiles” in this exegetical program and the extent to which Christian apologists used scriptural references to ta ethne to pursue the twin goals of identity formation and apologetic rebuttal. Apologists such as Justin Martyr were prepared to see almost any scriptural statement about ta ethne as a reference to the church and thus as justification for Christian appropriation of Israel’s tradition. This enabled Christian apologists both to present themselves to the Greco-Roman world as an ancient ethnos and to position themselves with respect to analogous Greco-Roman projects aimed at uniting panta ta ethne within a single oikoumene. Drawing on material from Justin Martyr and others, this paper will look at the pro gentibus side of the adversus Iudaeos tradition.


Recent Developments in Sub Loco Research: Findings from the Former Prophets
Program Unit: Masoretic Studies
Christopher W. Dost, Jewish Theological Seminary of America

In preparing the Masorah of Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia’s (BHS) Masorah, Gérard E. Weil did not diplomatically present the Masorah of the Leningrad Codex (ML) as the editors of BHS did with ML’s text; rather, he opted to “complete,” “revise,” and “integrate” (BHS, xv) the text and Masorah of ML. Weil marked certain Mp notes “sub loco” in the Masoretic apparatus of BHS in order to indicate that the note required discussion, which was to be found in the commentary of Massorah Gedolah, vol. 3. Due to Weil’s passing, however, this commentary was never realized. A published analysis of BHS’s sub loco notes had to wait until Daniel S. Mynatt’s groundbreaking 1994 monograph, The Sub Loco Notes in the Torah of Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, wherein he lists, analyzes, and classifies the Pentateuch’s 297 sub loco notes with a view to determining how and why BHS’s Mp differs from that of ML. Since that time, no analysis of the sub loco notes of the Prophets or the Writings has been published. Thus, continuation of Mynatt’s research into the next section of the Hebrew Bible, the Former Prophets, is the next step in both completing and analyzing the unfinished work of Weil. In this paper I shall discuss how my Ph.D. dissertation on the sub loco notes of the Former Prophets builds upon and develop Mynatt’s treatment of Weil’s sub loco notes and how my research will serve as a value to supplement the Masoretic commentary of Biblia Hebraica Quinta.


From Subordination of the Woman to Salvation by the Woman: An Exegesis of Genesis 3:16 in the Light of Genesis 4:7 and Genesis 3:15
Program Unit: Adventist Society for Religious Studies
Jacques Doukhan, Andrews University

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The Prophetic Critique of Sacrifice and the Emergence of Redemptive Almsgiving
Program Unit: Sacrifice, Cult, and Atonement
David J. Downs, Fuller Theological Seminary

Redemptive almsgiving — that is, the notion that providing material assistance to the needy redeems (or cancels, or cleanses) human sin— is an important concept in many Second Temple Jewish texts (e.g., LXX Dan 4:27; LXX Prov 15:27; Tobit 12:8-9; Sir 3:30) and in early Christian literature (2 Clem. 16.1-4; Didache 4.5-8; Herm. Sim. 2.5-6; Clement of Alexandria, Quis div. 31-32; Cyprian, Eleem.) It has been suggested that prophetic critiques of ritual sacrifice, which are frequently coupled with calls for the demonstration of justice for the poor, paved the way for the emergence of this doctrine in Judaism and Christianity. Thus, Roman Garrison suggests, “The Prophets lay much of the theological groundwork for the doctrine of redemptive almsgiving” (Redemptive Almsgiving, 48). This paper will explore connections between the prophetic critique of sacrifice and the emergence of redemptive almsgiving in Jewish literature of the Second Temple Period and in select early Christian texts. Given that many Jewish and Christian proponents of redemptive almsgiving do not appeal to the prophetic writings in their advocacy of the practice, combined with the fact that the motif of justice for the poor is often minimized or absent in this particular soteriological model, criticism of the sacrificial cult among Israel’s prophets and the prophetic emphasis on justice do not appear to have been major factors in the emergence of redemptive almsgiving in Second Temple Jewish and early Christian literature. Moreover, as Jonathan Klawans has shown for the prophetic literature in the Hebrew Bible itself, Second Temple Jewish texts that emphasize the redemptive value of alms are quite compatible with the continuing legitimacy of the Jerusalem temple cultus and do not categorically reject sacrifice. Similarly, early Christian texts do not reflect the view that the promotion of redemptive almsgiving and the importance of sacrifice are mutually exclusive, even as Christian literature tends to reinterpret the concept of sacrifice in light of Jesus’ death.


Against the Stream: The Swiss Theologian Karl Barth
Program Unit:
Hans-Anton Drewes, Karl Barth-Archive Basel

If one looks at the international bibliography the peculiar interest of U.S. scholars in the life and work of the Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968) is obvious. Yet in a small exhibit and a short presentation, how can one capture a life of such far-reaching impact, both in positive connection and in critical objection, and a work of such uncommon compass, moreover in such highly varied methodical and rhetorical types? From the hundred thousand documents preserved in the Karl Barth Archives in Basel, what should one display in order to give a relevant impression of Karl Barth? A remark by Karl Barth himself in his preface to Church Dogmatics IV/4 published in 1967 seems to offer a common denominator for his whole life and work: "I anticipate that with this book...I will stand again in a certain theological and ecclesial solitude that I entered nearly fifty years ago." In any case, Karl Barth’s life‘s work was at the beginning, and was, only too clearly still at the end of his life, a work critically inquisitive of what passes for self-evident—to that extent the work of a loner, a "sparrow alone upon the house top" (Ps. 102:7). Appropriately, the English translation of the most important correspondence of Barth’s early years bore the title "Revolutionary Theology in the making," and it is beyond question that Barth’s major opus, the Church Dogmatics, is in its form and in its content a non-conformist work (as astonishing as this characteristic in a “Dogmatics” may seem to some). Ventured with the “Letter to the Romans” (1919 and 1922), the attempt at a new hermeneutics went at first against the theological and philosophical stream. That hermeneutics comprehends the Word as address and claim, which can only really be understood in response and decision. Ultimately the declaration on Baptism in Church Dogmatics IV/4 went against the ecclesial-societal stream—conceiving Baptism not as a means of grace, but as a first step in the decision, and the response to the salvation accomplished and given in Jesus Christ. Somewhere in the middle of the path determined by these two points lie the arguments of the German church struggle, in which Barth assumed a leading position with the Barmen Theological Declaration in May of 1934, a document essentially authored by him, which for many inside and outside of the church became a reference point in the decision and the struggle against National Socialism. Illustrating this timeline, the exhibit documents and presentation will: - illustrate the work on Letter to the Romans, - reveal the creative process of the Barmen Theological Declaration – especially regarding the fifth theses on the task of the state in the “world not yet redeemed,” - show the formulation of the doctrine of Baptism in the framework of the "ethics of the doctrine of reconciliation“ in its various stages. Supplemented with photographs, and depending on the technical possibilities, also by audio and video recordings, the documents will, in three points which represent the whole, articulate the manner in which the Swiss theologian Karl Barth has gained such significance for Christianity of all confessions.


Assyrians under Jerusalem Walls: A New Piece of Evidence Drawn from the Neo-Assyrian Letters
Program Unit: Assyriology and the Bible
Peter Dubovsky, Pontifical Biblical Institute

Famous Rab-shaqeh’s speech addressed to the Jerusalemites on the city walls has been the object of numerous scholarly studies. In this paper I will investigate some Neo-Assyrian letters and inscriptions. First, I will analyze in detail the digital photograph of tablet 81-2-4,96 (ABL 685; SAA XV 136), and then I will offer some comments on Sennacherib’s inscriptions. Based on this study I will conclude that an Assyrian diplomatic mission, which took place under the walls of Jerusalem, can be connected with the episode of Sennacherib’s annals describing how Assyrian officials forced Hezekiah to bring Padi, the king of Ekron, out of Jerusalem.


Israel in Revelation: Ambiguity and Reality
Program Unit: John's Apocalypse and Cultural Contexts Ancient and Modern
Paul Duff, George Washington University

Numerous ambiguities surround the author’s mention of people and places associated with Israel and Judaism in the Book of Revelation. Perhaps the most famous example of such ambiguity is John’s labeling of people who “say they are Jews but are not,” but rather a “synagogue of Satan” in chapters 2 and 3. Likewise, John’s description of spaces tied to Judaism also contains curious ambiguities. For instance, in the visionary interlude of chapter 11, the “great city . . . where . . . their Lord was crucified” is called by the author not “Jerusalem” but rather “Sodom” and “Egypt.” In this paper, I will explore some of these ambiguities found throughout the apocalypse in order to draw some conclusions about John’s relationship with Judaism.


Ancient Amulets and the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-8): A comparative study
Program Unit: Use, Influence, and Impact of the Bible
Robert Duke, Azusa Pacific University

This paper will present for the first time in a scholarly venue an unpublished Aramaic-Hebrew bilingual amulet which is part of the Green Collection of texts. The goal of the Green Scholars Initiative (http://www.greenscholarsinitiative.org/) is to bring faculty and students together to research the items in the Green Collection. Thus, this paper is a co-presentation of professor (Robert Duke) and two students (Lance Baker and Andrew Wall). This paper will have two foci: 1) an overview of the content and possible date of composition of an unpublished silver amulet which quotes the Shema and 2) a discussion of the use of the Shema in the known amulet corpora. The goal is to show how the Shema was used in the popular religious activity of using amulets to ward off illness and other “demonic” activities. The first part of the paper will provide a transcription, translation, and discussion of the material on this amulet. This amulet contains seven lines with an incantation that uses Scripture to ward off the “demon of afflictions”. This part of the paper will conclude with a suggested date of composition. The second part of the presentation will survey all the known amulets from the Near East which quote the Shema to ward off illness and disease. The use of this text in this context gives insights into the popular use of this central daily Jewish prayer. The use of amulets in folk medicine is well-known throughout the world, and this paper will give special insights into how the Shema was used in this enterprise.


Paul’s "Aegean" Social Network: Social Positions, Social Roles, and Social Actors
Program Unit: Cognitive Science Approaches to the Biblical World
Dennis C. Duling, Canisius College (Emeritus)

Paul’s “Aegean” Social Network: Social Positions, Social Roles, and Social Actors (abstract to be added)


Blaming Adam and Not Eve: Changing Perspectives on Genesis 3 in Avot de-Rabbi Nathan A
Program Unit: Midrash
Ryan Dulkin, Jewish Theological Seminary of America

The problem of Adam’s silence during the dialogue between the serpent and Eve is a well-known crux in Genesis 3. While classic rabbinic midrashic sources are not entirely consistent on this question, they generally consider Adam’s absence from the conversation as evidence that Eve is primarily to blame for heeding the serpent’s speech. However, the eighth - ninth century CE redacted collection Avot de-Rabbi Nathan Version A (ARNA) shifts the blame from Eve to Adam, assigning near exclusive culpability to the latter. This study examines the shift in ARNA, proposing that the work’s Islamic cultural milieu, particularly the Qur’anic account of the ‘Fall of Adam and his wife,’ may account for ARNA’s divergent perspective: the elevation of Adam’s status to khalifa and prophet on the one hand and Eve’s diminished role as unnamed spouse on the other may be at work here. This study argues that the shift of focus is thus not an ‘exoneration’ of Eve in ARNA but evidence of her ‘occlusion’ in this early medieval retelling.


Archaeology, Theory, Text: Excavating the Monastery of Abba Seridos
Program Unit: Space, Place, and Lived Experience in Antiquity
Carrie Duncan, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

This paper explores the space, place, and lived experience of Palestinian Christian monks in Late Antiquity. Through a combination of material culture and text, the physical layout of the monastery and its influence on the spiritual lives of monks is revealed. At the same time, however, political and theoretical considerations complicate and challenge these sources of knowledge, and instigate a broader methodological discussion on the project of constructing history. The sixth century monastery of Abba Seridos was a hotbed of heresy and sectarianism during the Christological controversies resulting from the decisions of the Council of Chalcedon. The monastery has been identified with architectural remains at the site of Deir e-Nuserat. Preliminary excavation has revealed a walled enclosure with numerous rooms, which surround a central courtyard containing a church featuring a mosaic floor and a crypt. The site appears to offer a fascinating example of a place in which subversive anti-Chalcedonian perspectives were shaped, lived, and experienced. There is a major impediment, however, to exploring the monastery’s physical remains. Deir e-Nuserat is located 11 kilometers southwest of Gaza. The site’s location in the Gaza Strip makes full scale excavation problematic, to say the least. What material had been excavated prior to the Second Intifada has not been formally published and is known only anecdotally. Although the monastery is known to exist, its place and space are unavailable for exploration. Or so it may seem. In addition to its inaccessible material remains, the lived experience of Seridos’ monastery survives in a corpus of 800 letters written by monks to two venerable elders living in isolation in surrounding caves. Known as the Correspondence of Barsanuphius and John, these letters cover topics ranging from Origenism to monastic involvement in politics, and often include details of daily life and personal relations within the monastic community. Letters which touch on such details offer an alternative way in which to explore the space, place, and lived experience of Seridos’ monks. At the same time that the letters’ contents seem to offer a way into monastic space, their utility is brought into question by the critique of Roland Barthes. In his essay The Reality Effect, Barthes describes the function of seemingly extraneous details mentioned by in passing by authors in the course of their story. Although such details appear to be legitimate potential kernels of historical fact, by virtue of their seeming irrelevance to the topic at hand, Barthes argues that their placement is a deliberate authorial technique to signify an authentically “real” setting for a fictitious story. Might the letters of the Correspondence be subject to a similar critique? Barthes’ comments inspire conversations about the nature of archaeological and literary evidence, about ancient letters as literary sources, and about the influence of literary criticism on historical projects. The monastery of Abba Seridos offers an interesting focal point for engaging theory, text, and material remains in the service of exploring the space, place, and lived experience of monks in sixth century Gaza.


Beyond Grades: Teaching and Assessing Biblical Studies in an Ability-Based Curriculum
Program Unit: Teaching Biblical Studies in an Undergraduate Liberal Arts Context
Steven Dunn, Alverno College

Alverno College uses eight Abilities which students demonstrate at various levels as the core of its teaching and assessment. Teaching an upper-level undergraduate course on "The Biblical Worldview" provides the medium through which the Bible is used for students to demonstrate analysis, developing a global perspective, valuing, aesthetic appreciation and effective communication. Students learn to appreciate, understand,and apply the Bible using tools of modern scholarship. Using an ability-based approach centers classroom learning on student activities and makes the process more relevant and effective than lecture and grade-based methods.


Gender and Animality in John Chrysostom’s Genesis Homilies
Program Unit: Gender, Sexuality, and the Bible
Ben Dunning, Fordham University

In conversation with Jacques Derrida’s exploration of the disavowal of the animal’s gaze in western thought—a disavowal that “institutes what is proper to man, the relation to itself of a humanity that is above all anxious about, and jealous of, what is proper to it”—this paper considers an early Christian attempt to delimit what is proper to the human vis-à-vis the animal: John Chrysostom’s exegesis of Genesis 1-3. Like so many thinkers in antiquity, for Chrysostom the basic distinction between human and animal hinges on the issue of rationality. The capacity for reason bifurcates the order of creatures so as to elevate humanity and consign “the brute beasts” to a sphere of irrationality, bodily limitation, and sexual reproduction. As a result, dominion and authority characterize the human, whereas subjection is the original mark of animality. Feminist philosopher Kelly Oliver has argued that animal difference and sexual difference are “intimately associated” in Jewish and Christian myth—and furthermore (in a gloss on Derrida) that “[Adam’s] right to name [Eve] is evidence of his dominion over her, akin to his dominion over animals.” Yet in Chrysostom’s retelling, while the two modes of difference are no less intimately related, the matter proves rather more complicated. On the one hand, he unequivocally places Eve qua woman alongside Adam in a position of dominion prior to the fall. On the other hand, his lapsarian narrative links gendered imagery with positions of dominion and subjection, revolving around the shifting and ambivalent figure of the serpent. At once clearly an animal and yet lurking ambiguously at the boundary that defines the animal, the serpent also oscillates between gendered registers—sometimes masculinized and other times feminized at different points in the story. As such, the serpent serves as the site for Chrysostom’s alignment of subjection and animality with femininity—and also the transfer point whereby this alignment is used to refigure Eve’s own position after the fall.


Video Presentation
Program Unit: Adventist Society for Religious Studies
Bonnie Dwyer, Spectrum Magazine Ordained Women Pastors in China

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How Do Hebrew Verbs Differ? A Flow Chart of the Differences
Program Unit: International Syriac Language Project
Janet Dyk, Vrije Universiteit

A strict distinction between semantics and syntax is difficult to maintain since the significance of a sentence is contained in and expressed by the elements occurring in it. In the majority of languages a verb is necessary as the core of the most frequent type of sentence structure. The chosen verb determines the basic structure of the sentence involved, in many languages not so much in the order of elements as in the number and nature of the elements occurring in that sentence. The core lexical meaning of a verb is made visible in the elements with which it occurs; specific satellites modify the significance by reducing or expanding the valence or by adding other types of information. An attempt is made to bring together the differences between verbs as projected onto syntax into a flow chart. The presence or absence of specific sentence constituents in any given instance is charted through a single set of choices. In this way differences between verbs are traceable and comparable one to another. The sentence constituents contributing to what we call, for example, a transitive verb, an intransitive verb, or a verb of movement, are made visible.


Internal Strife and the Deaths of Peter and Paul
Program Unit: Inventing Christianity: Apostolic Fathers, Apologists, and Martyrs
David L. Eastman, Ohio Wesleyan University

The traditions locating the martyrdoms of Peter and Paul in Rome represent foundational narratives for the formation of Christian identity, particularly Roman Christian identity. While there is great variety within the different accounts of the circumstances and precise causes of these deaths, the sources nevertheless tell the story of a united apostolic mission, the “concordia apostolorum.” Walter Bauer’s emphasis on the variety within early Christianity, however, compels us to read the evidence of primitive Christianity with fresh eyes. Such close reading reveals a possible alternative explanation for the apostolic deaths in a rather unexpected place, 1 Clement. Here we find the suggestion that Peter and Paul died as a result not of external persecution, but of discord within the incipient Christian community.


The True Israel and Its Counterparts in Deut 7
Program Unit: Literature and History of the Persian Period
Ruth Ebach, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster

The construction of collective identities is supported by the demarcation of opponents. Especially in Deuteronomy, Israel is idealized as “contrast-society” to various counterparts. In Persian times in particular, these tendencies of separation became obvious. My paper highlights the different topoi of separation in Deut 7. These include implicit mechanisms (election, holiness, blessing) as well as explicit ones like the appeal to erase the Canaanites. A redactional critical investigation shows that already the oldest layer dates in Persian times. Thus the paper argues that the Canaanite tribes mentioned in Deut 7 are a cipher for those, who stayed in the land during exile. They are now in opposite to the returnees, who regard themselves as the true Israel; a conflict, which has already been investigated on the basis of other OT-texts (Ezek 33, Ezra/Neh a.o.). My paper elaborates, that Deut 7 as multi-level discursive text tries to ensure and maintain the returnees’ identity. The oldest layer (Deut 7:1f., 6, 17–24*) emphasizes the conquest of the land and the extinction of the “Canaanites”. The next layer’s view on the success of conquest is more realistic: The others cannot be annihilated and the protection of identity becomes crucial. A too close involvement would let disappear the characteristics of the returnees so that cultic and social separation deemed necessary (Deut 7:3–5, 16*, 25f.). Therefore, prohibition of mixed marriages should not be understood as radicalization, but as a way to handle the separation peacefully and to live side by side with each other. In later Persian times, the problem of apostasy turns into an inner-Israelite or inner-religious phenomenon (Deut 7:7–11). In illustrating these developments with a progressive interpretation of Deut 7, my paper helps to understand the conflicts of these two Israelite groups during the Persian Period more accurate.


Patterning the Past
Program Unit: Historiography and the Hebrew Bible
Diana Edelman, University of Sheffield

Psychologists and cognitive scientists have postulated that humans tend to be lazy in their thinking and revert to a limited number of socially reinforced default mental categories and patterns in our thinking. Biblical scholarship can offer corroborative evidence of this tendency in the literature in the Hebrew Bible, which mirrors practices in the larger ancient Near East. Scribes seem to have employed a limited range of patterns that they likely memorized during their formal training and used them as a “vocabulary” in a number of different combinations to generate their compositions, similar to the elements that have been identified to be the building blocks of folktales. One of these specific patterns will be examined: the kinghip pattern, which is best known in mythic forms in the Ba’al cycle from Ugarit and the Enuma Elish. It is used in various biblical texts to remember and reinforce divine and human royal ideology: psalms, the book of Exodus, 1 Samuel, and prophetic texts. Such practices of representing the past in familiar patterns, where details that do not conform readily to established patterns are omitted initially if not over time while others can be added on the basis of the pattern, makes the evaluation of potential evidence by a contemporary historian who is interested in recreating history on the level of event much more complicated.


From Covenant to Connubium
Program Unit: Covenant in the Persian Period
Cynthia Edenburg, Open University of Israel

Martin Noth's observation of the narrative unity running from Deuteronomy to Kings paved the way for recognizing the central role covenant ideology plays throughout the DtrH. The treaty framework for the Deuteronomic laws provided the Dtr with the means for developing the unifying theme of the DtrH, according to which the history of Israel and Judah is the history of the contractual relationship between the national god and his people. Within the terms of the treaty, YHWH's people swore an oath binding all generations to serve YHWH exclusively and to forsake all competing obligations. Accordingly, this ideology also provides the background for the Dtr's negative attitude towards treaties with foreign powers. Within the milieu of the Babylonian period, the treaty or contractual framework provided the basis for understanding the destruction of the temple and the loss of political autonomy. With the transition to the Persian period, the changed circumstances in both the international sphere and within Yehud called for reinterpreting the covenant idea so that the DtrH would remain relevant to a contemporary audience. This paper will explore how the idea of connubium came to the fore in this reinterpretation, both with regard to the relations with YHWH as well as with the "people of the land".


Basil of Ancyra and Aetius of Amida: Food, Semen, and Sexual Desire in Women according to Galenic Dietary Theory
Program Unit: Healthcare and Disability in the Ancient World
Ashley Nicole Edewaard, University of Notre Dame

The purpose of this proposed essay is to examine the dietary recommendations given to women by Basil of Ancyra and Aetius of Amida in De Vera Virginitatis Integritate and The Tetrabiblion, respectively. I will argue that both writers, though writing for different purposes and to different female audiences, both ascribe to Galenic theories of the effect of certain foods on the fertility, sexual desire, and the production of semen in women. Aetius of Amida, a court physician to Justinian in the sixth century C.E., writes in The Tetrabiblion for the woman who desires to maintain sexual desire and fertility through increased production of semen and regular menstrual flow. These effects can be achieved, he argues, through a diet of moist, heating foods. In contrast, Basil of Ancyra, bishop of Ancyra in Galatia in the mid-fourth century C.E., writes in De Vera Virginitatis Integritate for the virgin who desires to maintain sexual chastity. She can achieve this goal in part by reducing her sexual desires and production of semen through an abstemious diet of cooling, drying foods. Galen of Pergamon, physician/philosopher writing in the fourth century C.E., articulates the theory that the production of semen is directly linked to dietary regimens, with heating, moist foods stimulating the production of semen, but with cold, drying foods depressing the production of semen. I will maintain that both Aetius and Basil, either directly or indirectly aware of these theories, apply them to their respective female audiences according to their rhetorical strategies.


Initial Findings on a Newly Discovered Early Fragment of Romans
Program Unit: Papyrology and Early Christian Backgrounds
Grant Edwards, Baylor University

This presentation will discuss the initial results for a newly discovered papyrus fragment of Paul's epistle to the Romans. After noting the papyrus's physical characteristics, we will address the features and significance of its text which contains a nomen sacrum and may support a previously known textual variant. Additionally, since this papyrus may be one of the earliest witnesses to the Pauline corpus, attention will also be given to a likely date range and potential comparanda.


Jesus Is My Homeboy: Christ-Imagery and Racialized Masculinities in Contemporary Popular Culture
Program Unit: Bible and Popular Culture
Katie Edwards, University of Sheffield

Since Benetton courted controversy in 1991 by linking the death of AIDS activist David Kirby with the crucifixion of Jesus in their multi-award winning advertising campaign ‘Pieta’, Christ-imagery has become ubiquitous in contemporary advertising. This paper investigates the trend that has seen Christ become the poster boy for companies looking for a way to offer their brand an edgy, irreverently cool reputation among their target markets. Advertisements employing Christ-imagery, however, are usually irreverent only to the traditional Western construct of Jesus as a blonde, white man whose ‘masculinity’ is often downplayed. Such images rarely make any attempt to parody or lampoon the Christian faith. In fact, where male celebrities are represented as Christ-like it signifies enormous respect for the artist as a suffering servant of their art and the images tend to be released simultaneously with press interviews about the artist’s deeply-held Christian beliefs and love or admiration for Jesus. In advertising campaigns then, Christ-imagery is used as a vehicle through which marketers can communicate messages about the brand they are promoting, whether that be a hip hop star or a clothing store, through constructions of race, sexuality and masculinity. This paper will look at examples from promotional campaigns for hip hop artists Kanye West, Tupac and Sean Combs, alongside fashion and sports-clothing advertising to show how Christ-imagery functions as a tool for the negotiation of traditional ideas of racialised masculinities.


Athenagoras and His Contexts
Program Unit: History of Interpretation
Mark Edwards, University of Oxford

Invited


The Psychological Effects of Selected Texts from Ruth on a Group of Male and Female (South) African University Students/Staff
Program Unit: Psychology and Biblical Studies
Helen Efthimiadis-Keith, University of KwaZulu-Natal

This study sets out to examine the subjective psychological effect of reflecting upon and praying through texts taken from the Book of Ruth (Ruth). A group of men and a group of women from a (South) African university were presented with selected texts from Ruth, and invited to reflect upon /pray through using Ignatian meditation. Following this exercise, participants were invited to participate in a focus group in which they shared the impact of this exercise on their subjective sense of self and (gendered) identity. The focus group material was subjected to a critical thematic analysis, in order to identify what aspects of the exercise were most responsible for reported subjective changes. In this paper, which reports the results of this analysis, particular attention is given to the comparative effect on men and women participating in this exercise, and the differential effect of various aspects of the exercise on men and women.


“Therefore It Says”: Reading the Psalter with Ephesians as Compared to Colossians
Program Unit: Disputed Paulines
Seth M. Ehorn, University of Edinburgh

Scholars have long observed the literary relationship between Colossians and Ephesians, noting that the latter is, in several instances, dependent upon the former. In light of this proposed literary relationship, a comparison of the parallel sections of both letters shows that Ephesians develops and expands the argument(s) of Colossians by evoking Israel’s scriptures. Building from this observation, I argue that Ephesians introduces scriptural readings—by way of both allusion and citation—from the Psalter (e.g., Ps 8.6 and 109.1 in Eph 1.20–22; Ps 67.19 in Eph 4.8; Ps 4.5 in Eph 4.26) into its argument and that studying these insertions ‘synoptically’ can shed interpretive light on the author’s hermeneutical approach to Israel’s scriptures. To anticipate the results, the author of Ephesians reads the Psalter christologically in service of his ecclesiological agenda.


Negotiating Polis and Ekklesia: Challenge and Reassurance in 1 Cor 12:1–11
Program Unit: Polis and Ekklesia: Investigations of Urban Christianity
Kathy Ehrensperger, University of Wales, Trinity Saint David

Most members of the Corinthian ‘ekklesia’ were used to a context in which numerous deities were seen as responsible for diverse aspects of life. Entrenched in their ‘habitus’ was the perception that each aspect of life required the appropriate relationship to a specific deity. Adherence to the respective cultic practices was vital for the well-being not only of the individual but also for the well-being of the polis as favourable returns were only guaranteed by proper cultic practices. To attribute responsibility for all aspects of life to just one single deity would have been most strange when perceived from such a perception and practice and could have been seen as risky, dangerous or even malicious. The Jewish refusal to pay ‘proper’ respect to the deities invoked, under certain circumstances, an image of them as being ‘asebeios’ or even haters of humankind which could be seen as a threat to the well-being of the polis. I will argue in this paper that such perceptions together with potential fears they could have invoked among Greek and Roman neighbours in Roman Corinth might have been the reason for Paul having to deal at such length with the issue of the oneness of God and the Spirit in 12. 1-11. Having argued clearly and beyond doubt in chapters 8-10 that anything which could be seen as involvement with an ‘idol’ or ‘demon’ was out of the question for a member of the ‘ekklesia’ it might have been necessary for Paul to reassure the Corinthians that all of their spiritual gifts were actually rooted in the one God, rather than with other beings, and that none of these had got lost or were omitted because they had ‘turned away from idols’. By providing assurance that all of these gifts are actually provided by the one God, the well-being and building up of the ‘ekklesia’, rather than being neglected, remains at the centre of concern. Paul is thus seen here as negotiating ‘cultural translation’ between different ‘symbolic universes’ (Jewish and Graeco-Roman) in that he tries to explain how with the ‘turning-away-from-idols’ aspects of life, with which the Corinthians were familiar and which had relevance for their life in Christ should be understood and practised by members of the ‘ekklesia’. By providing internal assurance to the members of the ekklesia, Paul, whether consciously or inadvertently, also challenged loyalty claims if not to the polis then certainly to the empire, because the receiving of decisive gifts was not attributed to a polis or empire deity but to the one God.


Book Presentation: The Text of the New Testament
Program Unit: New Testament Textual Criticism
Bart Ehrman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

A presentation of the new, expanded edition of The Text of the New Testament


Prophetic Cult-Criticism in Support of Sacrificial Worship? The Case of Jeremiah
Program Unit: Sacrifice, Cult, and Atonement
Göran Eidevall, Uppsala Universitet

Within the prophetic literature in the Hebrew Bible, the reader comes across oracles announcing radical rejection of sacrificial cult, as well as prophecies that presuppose or even actively promote sacrificial worship of YHWH. Sometimes such apparently contradictory utterances stand side by side in the same book. Jeremiah is a case in point. Since the book of Jeremiah displays a rather high degree of ideological coherence (despite its complex process of coming into being), it is unlikely that this perplexing juxtaposition of cult-critical and cult-positive texts is due to editorial oversight. In this paper, an alternative solution is presented. On the basis of an analysis which combines rhetorical analysis and redaction criticism, it is argued that the cult-critical and the cult-supporting prophecies in the book of Jeremiah are perfectly compatible, from an editorial point of view. More precisely, they are compatible with a positive stance toward sacrificial cult in the Second Temple (as opposed to the cult in the First Temple, at least during its last decades). However, this does not mean that the textual material is free from tensions. While some passages, adopting a Jerusalem-centered perspective, include sacrifices as an integral part of their vision of ideal worship, other passages, accommodating the message to the reality of Diaspora communities, tend to relativize the role of sacrifices.


Jesus and the “Egyptian Prophet”
Program Unit: John, Jesus, and History
Lena Einhorn, none

Unlike the Synoptic Gospels, John 18:3 and 18:12 state that Jesus on the Mount of Olives was confronted by a speira – a Roman cohort of 500 to 1000 soldiers. This suggestion of a battle preceding Jesus’ arrest is reminiscent of an event described by Josephus in the 50s (A.J. 20.169-172; B.J. 2.261-263), involving the so called “Egyptian Prophet”. This messianic leader – who had previously spent time “in the wilderness” – has “advised the multitude… to go along with him to the Mount of Olives”, where he “would show them from hence how, at his command, the walls of Jerusalem would fall down”. Procurator Felix, however, sent a cohort of soldiers to the Mount of Olives, where they defeated the “Egyptian Prophet”. Although the twenty-year time difference would seem to make all comparisons futile, there are other coinciding aspects: The preceding messianic leader named by Josephus, Theudas (A.J. 20.97-99), shares distinct characteristics with John the Baptist: Like John, Theudas gathered his followers by the river Jordan, and, like John, he was arrested by the authorities, and they “cut off his head, and carried it to Jerusalem”. Curiously, although the names of dignitaries may differ, comparing the New Testament accounts with Josephus’ accounts of the mid-40s to early 50s in several respects appears to be more productive than a comparison with his accounts of the 30s: It is in this later period, not the 30s, that Josephus describes the activity and crucifixion of robbers (absent between 6 and 44 C.E.), a conflict between Samaritans and Jews, two co-reigning high priests, a procurator killing Galileans, an attack on someone named Stephen outside Jerusalem, and at least ten more seemingly parallel events. Importantly, these are parallels that, judging by Josephus, appear to be absent in the 30s. The significance of this will be discussed.


Metalepsis in Luke-Acts—Its Literary Character and Rhetorical Function
Program Unit: Formation of Luke and Acts
Ute E. Eisen, Justus Liebig-Universität Gießen

The Gospel of Luke and that of John are the two canonical gospels with a first-person narrator (Luke 1:1-4; John 1:14, 16; 21:24-25). The presence of these narrators gave rise to a number of different hypotheses. My thesis is that the narration of Luke-Acts can most adequately be analyzed using narratological tools. In a second step, those observations may be contextualized within the literature and history of early Christianity. First I will single out the narrative metalepsis in the Luke-Acts. Gérard Genette defines metalepsis, a term from ancient rhetoric, as “any intrusion by the extradiegetic narrator or narratee into the diegetic universe (or by diegetic characters into a metadiegetic universe, etc.), or the inverse” and “taking hold of (telling) by changing level” (Genette, Narrative Discourse [Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980], 234–35). For Luke-Acts, Anja Cornils has analyzed a metalepsis in her essay, “La métalepse narrative dans les Actes des Apôtres: un signe de narration fictionnelle?” in J. Pier / J.-M. Schaeffer, eds., Métalepses (Paris: Éditions de l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 2005). I want to offer proof for and expand Cornils’s arguments, correlating them with a proposed metalepsis in the Gospel of John. Luke’s gospel opens with a prologue by an extradiegetical narrator (Luke 1:1-4), who in the second book surprisingly becomes a character in the story, a companion of Paul in the so-called “we” passages. In the Gospel of John the reader encounters a “we” narrator (John 1:16, 18; 21:24). Confusingly enough, this first-person-plural narrator becomes a first-person-singular narrator in the very last verse of the gospel, saying that the true narrator of the gospel is the “beloved disciple”. How is it that one narrative level has intruded on the other? What effects does this produce? My inquiry will further seek the functions of this narrative strategy. My supposition is that in early Christian literature it serves as a claim to authority. It may not be accidental that we find the narrative phenomenon of metalepsis solely in the two later gospels. The first-person narrators explicitly demonstrate that they have to compete with other narratives of Jesus Christ (Luke 1:1-4; John 21:25). In light of that competition it makes sense to lay special emphasis on the authority and truthfulness of one’s own narrative.


Metalepsis in Early Christian Literature
Program Unit: Ancient Fiction and Early Christian and Jewish Narrative
Ute E. Eisen, Justus Liebig-Universität Gießen

Narrative metalepsis is one of the most fascinating phenomena in narrative literature. It was first described in detail by Gérard Genette in 1972, as a transgression of narrative levels that are in fact impassable: when figures in a narrated world curse their narrator or seek to murder him or her, then in a sense a “sacred boundary between two worlds,” in Genette’s formulation, has been crossed (Genette, Narrative Discourse [Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972]). Such phenomena, which disrupt ordinary expectations and perceptions of narrative texts, may be observed in a number of forms especially in modern fictional literature. But do we find anything comparable in early Christian literature? I propose to develop the thesis that both the Lukan double work and the Gospel of John, each in its own way, reveals such transgressions. Both narratives are in the first person, but the narrators remain extradiegetical (Luke 1:1-4; John 1:14, 16; 21:23-24). It is more surprising when the narrator of Luke-Acts appears suddenly as a character in the story. In the Gospel of John the reader encounters a “we” narrator at the beginning and end of the narrative (John 1:16, 18; 21:24). Confusingly enough, this first-person-plural narrator becomes a first-person-singular narrator in the very last verse of the gospel, saying that the true narrator of the gospel was the “beloved disciple” (John 21:24). How has one narrative level intruded on the other in each of these gospels? What do the metalepses in the two narratives have in common, and how are they different? What is their effect on the audience? In closing, I will inquire about the cultural function of this narrative strategy in early Christianity.


The Letter and the Spirit: Comparing the Material Forms of Early Jewish and Christian Scripture
Program Unit: Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism
Pamela Eisenbaum, Iliff School of Theology

I believe my proposal speaks to the first theme mentioned in the CFP: During the first four centuries of the common era, Judaism and Christianity developed distinct hermeneutics of scripture that are mirror images of one another. Judaism came to obsess about the graphic form of the written text to an extreme degree—one could even say the graphic presentation of the Torah was fetishized--while simultaneously cultivating a rather free-form culture of scriptural interpretation, as manifest in rabbinic literature. Christianity, by contrast, did not overly concern itself with the graphic or material form of scripture, but with stabilizing the meaning of the Bible, with Christian authorities ultimately working to fix a singular interpretation as orthodox, not open to challenge without the risk of being labeled heterodox. I realize this is a big claim, and one which uses traditional categories like “Judaism” and “Christianity” that may easily be problematized. But I intend these categories largely as starting points on which to map the data through a process of comparison and contrast (ultimately I intend including the scriptures of other ancient traditions, as, for example, Manicheanism, but in the interest of time, I will most likely not include that material in this presentation). The data are essentially of two types: manuscripts of scriptural writings and comments about the graphic production of scripture found in rabbinic literature and patristic authors. Although time is limited, I hope to present enough of a range of material to illustrate these contrasting attitudes toward scripture-as-writing in Jewish and Christian communities. I will conclude with some reflections about the way these different treatments of material scripture correspond to and facilitate different models of textual power and religious authority.


The Significance of Jesus’ Identity for Lament
Program Unit: Institute for Biblical Research
Rebekah Ann Eklund, Duke University

The Significance of Jesus’ Identity for Lament


The Qur’anic Perspective on the Early Church: A Dialogue with the Syriac Acts of the Apostles
Program Unit: Qur'an and Biblical Literature
Emran El-Badawi, University of Houston

In this paper, I will demonstrate that Q 57 should be read alongside Acts 13 and 21. More specifically, I will argue that the Arabic text of Q 57:26-27 is best understood in dialogue with the Syriac text of Acts 13:1 and 20:28. On the intertextual level I will illustrate four things. First, I will show how the “prophecy and teachings” (al-nubuwwah wa al-kitab) bestowed upon the offspring of Noah and Abraham (Q 57:26) make reference to the “prophets and teachers” (nabiye w-malpane) sent to the church at Antioch—including Paul (Acts 13:1). Second, I will show that the verb qaffa (Q 57:27) should be understood as “to match,” and implies the existence of two different churches (probably at Antioch and Jerusalem). Third, I will show that rahbaniyyah (Q 57:27) refers to the “clergy, overseers” (episqupe) mentioned by Paul in Acts 20:28, and that it was a gift from God until Paul and his followers “perverted it” (ibtada‘uha). Fourth, I will show that the phrase “they did not care for it as it should have been cared for (fama ra‘awha ?aqq ri‘ayatiha)” in Q 57:27 is a polemical response to and a play on the words of Paul in Acts 20:28, namely “to care for the church of God (d-ter‘un l-‘idta d-alaha).” On the contextual level I will argue that the Qur’an takes sides in the Early Church controversies in the wake of the Council of Jerusalem (ca. 50 CE). In the case of the dialogue between Q 57:26-27 and Acts 13:1 and 20:28, the Qur’an considers Paul’s abolition of circumcision for Gentile converts a corruption of clerical authority and in direct violation of Jewish Law. Instead, the Jewish-Christian sensibilities of the Qur’an (and perhaps Muhammad) cast a more positive light on the early Church in Jerusalem established upon the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels and leadership of the apostle Peter.


Job the Affected
Program Unit: The Bible in Ancient (and Modern) Media
Hasan El-Shamy, Indiana University (Bloomington)

Ayyûb (Job) is the name of one of God's prophets cited in the Koran. His name and experiences constitute a recurrently cited proverbial utterance in the daily lives of peoples of the Arab and Moslem worlds (Tale-type: 750J'; Motif: W26.1', "Job's patience"). A seasonal folk ritual performed at the beginning of Spring, mimics certain aspects of the Job belief-cycle and reinforces its foundations: men, usually of the lower classes, immerse themselves in rivers and rub their bodies with fleabane plants (Ra)ra) 'Ayyûb/Job's tears). This ritual is presumed to restore health and prevent skin maladies as it did for Job. Besides the sacred Koranic texts, the Job account is found on other cultural and social levels. These include parareligious stories given in older literary works narrating vitae of prophets, and also on oral traditional folk levels. In that latter context, a ballad ("a folksong that tells a story") of unknown origins, kept in the national memory, speaks of the trials and tribulations that Job and Rahmah/Ruth, his dedicated paternal-cousin wife, underwent. The ballad also circulates in print in the form of a pamphlet ("sixteen-pager" that parallels the European "broadside" sold on street corners), as well as a song or hymn performed by itinerant maddâhîn (who praise God and sacred men, and are typically perceived as beggars). They travel on foot in the countryside chanting and soliciting donations from listeners. Dating back to ancient Egypt, the wandering "praiser" and his/her art have had profound impact on the national psyche. In the early 1950s, one of the folk variants of the ballad of Job was re-presented on national Egyptian radio as a radio drama. The main singer was an authentic folk female-praiser. However, the plot, the dialogue given in vernacular Egyptian Arabic, and the accompanying melodies were reproductions based on those of the oral folk renditions. The new song, heretofore unfamiliar to members of the expanding middle class in Egypt's urban center, had a bewitching effect on the entire population and generated deep empathetic feelings. Its folk melodies brought tears to the eyes of innumerable listeners. The present paper will explore some of the textual and affective components of that text.


Progymnasmatic Examples in Luke-Acts of Salvation and Spirit-Reception: Necessary Narrative Persuasion and Pauline Clarification
Program Unit: Formation of Luke and Acts
Paul Elbert, Pentecostal Theological Seminary

Examples and Precedents were thought to be a necessary ingredient in order to persuade and to clarify within Progymnasmatic teaching on narrative composition. In Luke's special material in the Third Gospel we find distinctive examples of important Christian experience not just because Luke has sought these out randomly from Jesus tradition, but because of progymnasmatic influence. A similar performance is found in the Book of Acts. Specific and descriptive examples of salvation and of Spirit-reception are included in both documents to provide rhetorical precision with regard to important Christian experience. These narrative examples also employ Pauline language and thereby greatly clarify Paul’s letters so as to stimulate fresh re-readings of them.


The Unruly Son and the Delinquent Daughter: Juvenile Capital Offenses in Deuteronomy
Program Unit: Children in the Biblical World
Nick Elder, Iliff School of Theology

Two accounts in the law book (chapters 12-26) of Deuteronomy call explicitly for capital punishment of children-21.18-21, which is the case of an unruly son, and 22.13-21, which is the case of the delinquent daughter. In this paper I will demonstrate that these laws provide a window into the value system of the Deuteronomic community, especially in regards to the ways that children are expected to think and act in their familial relationships. The case of the unruly son demonstrates two societal values that Deuteronomy aims to protect. The first is that patriarchal and familial honor are highly valued. In a modern context it would be absurd to even physically punish a child for stubborn and disobedient behavior, let alone stone them. Even in other ANE contexts the threat of death would likely seem outrageous for these kinds of behaviors. This indicates “filial insubordination is a grave offense because respect and obedience towards parents is regarded as the cornerstone of all order and authority.” (Tigay, 196) The case of the delinquent daughter functions in a similar way. Recently there has been debate concerning who the daughter offended in this text. Interpreters tend to lean to the conclusion that the daughter has offended her future husband by “playing the harlot in her father’s house.” There is probably truth to this interpretation, however, it is important to also recognize the daughter has deeply offended her father’s honor. In knowingly deceiving her father the daughter has directly affronted his patriarchal honor and “damage[d] seriously the community within which [she] lives.” (Fleishman, 198) In being found to have had sexual relations before her marriage, and even her betrothal, the girl has brought shame upon her father who was ignorant of her infidelity. In exploring these two accounts I will argue the overarching thesis that the most heinous crime a juvenile delinquent can commit in Deuteronomy is against the honor of his or her parents. This is ultimately a reflection of the societal value of the both patriarchal and familial honor.


A Variant Literary Edition of 2 Samuel from Qumran
Program Unit: Transmission of Traditions in the Second Temple Period
Torleif Elgvin, Evangelical Lutheran University College

1QSamuel, found in Cave 1 by de Vaux in 1949, was published in DJD 1 (1955). Barthelemy noted that this scroll did not contain 2 Sam 24, and suggested that the scribe could have attached this chapter to a scroll of Kings. A hitherto unknown fragment of 1QSamuel has surfaced in The Schøyen Collection (2 Sam 20:22-24). The presence of this fragment enables a new physical reconstruction of the end of this Samuel scroll, which preserved remnants of chs. 20, 21, and 23. This scroll, copied in the early Herodian period, neither contained the psalm of ch. 22 (=Ps 18) nor the story of the census in ch. 24. Only five of the eight appendices to 2 Samuel in chs. 21–24 were present in this early recension, and the sequence of the appendices is different from the later canonical order. 1QSamuel shows a stage in the literary growth of Samuel before the book had reached its final form. The recension of 1QSamuel represents a documentary confirmation and refinement of Karl Budde’s outlining of the editorial process behind 2 Samuel (1903). It shows light on the development of the varied textual tradition of the books of Samuel in Hebrew and Greek. A tentative outline of the main editorial processes behind 1–Samuel will be suggested.


Heaven and Earth Will Obey His Messiah: 4Q521 as Interpretation of Daniel 7
Program Unit: Qumran
Torleif Elgvin, Evangelical Lutheran University College, Oslo

The Son of Man of Dan 7:9-14 may be interpreted as a messianic figure with heavenly features, to whom is given an eternal kingdom and authority over all nations. In the following interpretation of the vision (7:15-27) the kingdom is given to the ’messianic’ people. 4Q521 2 ii 1-2 proclaim ”]heaven and earth will obey his messiah, [and all w]hich is in them will not turn away from the commandments of the holy ones.” I will argue that the author of this text reads Dan 7:13-14 as a heavenly inauguration of Israel’s davidic messiah. The following lines of 4Q521 describe an eschatological renewal of Israel with Ps 146 as a central text of reference. These lines may be read as an interpretation of Dan 7:15-27, focusing on the people of the messiah: The inauguration of a heavenly messiah will lead to a renewal of God’s people on earth. This understanding of 4Q521 may explain the enigmatic words ”He will honor the pious on an eternal royal throne,” as Daniel 7:15-27 has awarded the messianic people with kingdom and reign. The ’holy ones’ of line 2 may be read in dialogue with the angels of Dan 7:10 who are witnesses to the end-time judgement, where humans are judged according to commandments given from heaven. 4Q521 is an extra-sectarian text, so a messianic image different from those prevalent in the Yahad is conceivable. Support to this understanding of 4Q521 can be found in the Self-Glorification Hymn, which shares the idea of a human figure enthroned in heaven. 4Q521 and 4Q491c represent stages in the tradition history from Daniel 7 to the image of the heavenly Son of Man in the Similitudes of Enoch (chs. 45–46, 48–53, 61–63, 69, 70–71). Further, a messianic reading of Dan 7:9-14 may throw light on the unparalleled use of elohim ’heavenly being’ for the Davidic king or messiah in Ps 45:7.


Joseph Smith, Folk Magic, and The Bible
Program Unit: Latter-day Saints and the Bible
Eric A. Eliason, Brigham Young University

Joseph Smith’s use of seer stones, divining rods, and other practices known to America’s frontier folk magic tradition, is common knowledge among historians. Evangelical critics of Mormonism also know this and present it as counter-evidence of his prophetic claims. Mormon apologists sometimes implicitly accept their critics’ premise and seek to minimize Joseph Smith’s seemingly superstitious activities. Missing from these discussions have been folklorists and Bible scholars—the two academic types perhaps best suited to interpret such practices for moderns. Folklorists understand “magical” traditions in comparative perspective, and Bible scholars understand how prophetic roles were understood in the ancient religion Joseph Smith claimed to restore. The author of this paper teaches folklore and the Bible as literature and brings these disciplines to bear on a subject so far mostly handled by historians of American religious history, Mormon critics, and apologists. In so doing, the author suggests that, properly understood, Joseph Smith’s involvement in folk magic is not necessarily as alien to either Biblical religion or the modern world as many have presumed.


Enoch’s Cosmic Tours and the History of Resurrection: A Reading of Two Visions from the Book of Watchers (1 En. 22:1–14; 24:2–7)
Program Unit: Function of Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
C.D. Elledge, Gustavus Adolphus College

Commentators have occasionally identified the Book of Watchers (1 En. 1-36) as among the earliest Jewish writings that exhibit the hope of an actual resurrection from the dead; yet the complex redaction of Watchers and the interpretive problems of its visionary episodes have made it difficult to confirm whether this writing actually does attest resurrection – and if so, what kind. This paper provides a reading of Enoch’s visions in 1 Enoch 20-36, arguing that the authors of this portion of Watchers did, in fact, anticipate a resurrection of the righteous, one that was somehow bodily and even envisioned the restoration of the righteous to the city of Jerusalem. This reading rests upon the assumption that the visions of 22.1-14 and 24.2-7 were not isolated episodes, but rather constituted a gradually unfolding and sequential treatment of the fates of the dead that emerged through Enoch’s visits to various cosmic locations. When juxtaposed, the two visions present a kind of intermediate state for “the spirits of the righteous” dead “until the judgment” (22.3, 9), when the fragrances from the edenic tree of life would literally penetrate “their bones” and restore them to “a life like your fathers lived” on earth and apparently in Jerusalem (23.3-6). This promise is explicitly denied the wicked, “who will not be raised from there” (22.13). Moreover, the two visions are also shaped by their reliance on the earlier strata of Watchers, as they incorporate language from the mythological narratives of 1 En. 6-11 into their portrait of the resurrection life. Read in this way, the two complementary visions allow a number of crucial insights into the history and development of the resurrection hope in early Judaism, including its pre-Maccabean date, as well as the early date for a physical-bodily conception of resurrection and an intermediate state for the dead.


Message and Example: Paul’s Perspective on Preaching in Word and Deed in 1 Corinthians
Program Unit: Homiletics and Biblical Studies
Dustin W. Ellington, Justo Mwale Theological University College

While imprisoned during the final year of his life, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote: “[The church] must not under-estimate the importance of human example . . . ; it is not abstract argument, but example, that gives its word emphasis and power” (Letters and Papers from Prison). This paper will explore the relationship between preaching with words and preaching with deeds in 1 Corinthians. The presentation will ask: What can be learned from 1 Corinthians about how the gospel works its way from the preacher to the congregation, so that the message of the gospel becomes embodied through the life of a congregation? The paper will offer three brief exegetical sketches as it argues that the apostle Paul considers participation in Christ and in the gospel to be foundational for integrating word and deed. Two of the sketches will deal with Paul’s commands to imitate him in sections of the letter that portray his participatory union with the gospel – 1 Cor 4:16 in the context of chapters 1-4, and 11:1 in the context of 8:1-11:1. The other will examine the relationship between preacher, gospel, and congregation in 1 Corinthians 15. The exegesis will establish that, to win the Corinthians to a gospel which must be embodied, the apostle himself not only preaches the gospel but embodies it in his life and self-portrayal. Paul’s pastoral work in writing 1 Corinthians involves continuous depiction of the integration between gospel and life. He continually exemplifies for the Corinthians what it looks like to be rightly related to the message of the gospel. Moreover, the paper argues that the constant aim of Paul’s message and example is to invite the congregation to share in his participatory relationship with the gospel, so that the pattern of the gospel becomes their own manner of life, and so that their deeds work in partnership with the gospel’s power. Paul’s steady supply of images that connect the gospel with his way of life invites the Corinthians to take Paul’s vocation of embodying the gospel and embrace it as their own vocation.


From Leviticus 1–7 to a Christian Theology of Sacrifice (and back Again)
Program Unit: Christian Theology and the Bible
Mark W. Elliott, University of St. Andrews

This paper will attempt, first of all, to provide a synthetic account of modern treatments of sacrifice. It will draw on Outram and Spencer’s ‘Enlightenment’ studies of the religion of sacrifice, consider Waterland’s theology of sacrifice, consider whether there is a serious Protestant biblical theology of sacrifice, then address recent theologies of sacrifice by looking at the first 7 chapters of four recent commentaries on Leviticus (those by (Milgrom, Gerstenberger, Rendtorff, Kiuchi) around the theme of 'Means of approach to the Holy'. I shall also include in this discussion Didier Luciani’s Le Lévitique : Ethique & Esthétique and the Papal encyclical Ecclesia de eucharistia (2003), as well as recent catholic liturgical theological works, and the theological hermeneutic of ‘negative theologies’, including those of R. Girard and I. Dalferth. The further aim of the paper is to plot a contemporary Christian theology of sacrifice informed by trajectories that spring from Leviticus


God's Memory: Five Prophetic Conceptions of the Nature and Consequences of Divine Memory
Program Unit: Israelite Prophetic Literature
Barat Ellman, Jewish Theological Seminary

God’s memory in prophetic literature is both infallible and comprehensive. The implications of such memory, however, carries different significance in the theologies of First Isaiah, of Hosea and Jeremiah, and in those of Ezekiel and Second Isaiah. This paper offers an analysis and comparison of God’s memory in this corpus based on close analysis of memory terminology and its deployment in each. It demonstrates that First Isaiah conceives of God’s memory as perfect and absolutely free and imagines its use principally to execute just punishment on the wicked. For Hosea and Jeremiah, however, memory constrains God even as it feeds his anger at Israel’s wayward behavior. God is bound by a fond nostalgia for Israel which prevents him from abandoning wholly his people. Finally, Ezekiel and Second Isaiah impart to God the freedom to remember and forget at will. Out of the language study, this paper maps the character of God’s memory for each prophet and considers it in terms of historical circumstances in which each worked.


The "zikkaron" in P and H: The Transformation of a Priestly Concept for a Lay Community
Program Unit: Cultic Personnel in the Biblical World
Barat Ellman, Jewish Theological Seminary

The last decade has witnessed a flood of scholarship on the relationship of Holiness material to other pentateuchal sources, in particular, the Covenant Code, Deuteronomy and P. This paper seeks to contribute to that discussion through the demonstration of H’s reconceptualization of the priestly term, “reminder” (zikkaron). In the earliest expressions of priestly religion, God’s immanence was conceived of in almost literal terms, and one of the cult’s functions was to secure God’s continued presence in the Tabernacle/Temple. In this context, zikkaron denotes a concrete mnemonic for God that is sensually apprehended (in all one instance by visual means). The Holiness tradition reinterprets the zikkaron in terms more appropriate to its exilic context. In H, the function of a zikkaron is to stimulate recall of a more ancient practice that is reconceptualized in a metaphoric manner. Furthermore, in H the zikkaron is aimed at Israel’s memory rather than the deity’s. The paper begins with an analysis of the 11 occurrences of zikkaron in P to establish the early priestly understanding of the term zikkaron as well as its theological implications. It then turns to the two occurrences of the word in Holiness passages to demonstrate how its meaning has changed. Finally, H’s reinterpretation of zikkaron is contextualized through a brief consideration of H’s analogous reconceptualization of P’s zikkaron and its transformation of the High Priest’s vestments (Exod 28) into the mnemonic fringes worn by Israel (Num 15:37-41). Together these three transformations demonstrate how the Holiness authors retained elements of first temple priestly religion by adapting it to circumstances where there was neither temple nor working priests.


Did Lemuel's Mother Know Ruth? Subtle Allusions between Ruth and Proverbs 31:10–31
Program Unit: Biblical Hebrew Poetry
David Emanuel, Nyack College

The Book of Ruth presents the reader with a tale of one woman’s extraordinary faithfulness to her mother-in-law, which ultimately leads to her participation in King David’s ancestral line. Juxtaposing this tale, in certain manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, is the final chapter of Proverbs, more specifically Prov 31:10-31, which describes a woman of noble character. The present study investigates various subtle, and yet tangible, intertextual associations between the aforementioned texts. Though the intertextual associations between these two works are not immediately apparent, a closer examination reveals various lexical and thematic links between them. As a diachronic analysis, the study first determines the relative dates of the two compositions. To achieve this, it depends primarily upon the foundation of contemporary scholarship. After this it discusses each of the proposed connections between the two works. Taking the results of the dating and analysis of intertextual associations, the paper concludes that the connection between the two texts may not be coincidental, but one author has apparently influenced the other’s composition.


Calvin and the Correction of the Bible in Geneva (1535–1560)
Program Unit:
Max Engammare, Librairie Droz and University of Geneva

Using the French translation of the Bible of Pierre Robert Olivetan (1535) as his basis, Calvin emended and then revised the text, especially the New Testament (1543–1546, after a preliminary foray in 1538). In the 1550s, he also critiqued the biblical prolegomena which certain publishers had added to French translations of the Bible, while revising the Latin edition of the Old Testament made by Robert Estienne (Biblia hebraica, 1557). I shall establish the methods Calvin used in editing and revising the Bible over a quarter of a century.


Pistis and Pneuma: The Role of Spirit in Johannine Epistemology of Faith (John 7–8)
Program Unit: Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti
Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Københavns Universitet

Why do some people in the Fourth Gospel come to faith in Jesus? And why do others not? The paper attempts to answer these two questions by arguing that in John 7-8, the author develops through narrative means a fairly full theory, or even epistemology, of faith that explains the differences in people’s reactions to Jesus. Central concepts in this theory are the notions of ‘wanting to do God’s will', ‘hearing’, ‘having the spirit’ and, conversely, being possessed by demons, including the father of them all, Satan. In articulating the inner logic between these concepts, the paper draws on certain specific ideas in Greco-Roman philosophy contemporary with John (not least the Stoic notion of pneuma). Thus the paper is an exercise in so-called ‘philosophical exegesis’ of John. However, it is a key claim that the philosophical core of the theory ascribed to John can only be recovered through a narrative analysis of the development of John’s story in the two chapters that brings out how one and the same theme is gradually given an ever sharper profile throughout these chapters. Thus ‘philosophical exegesis’ in John requires attending to the ‘cumulative force’ of his narrative argument.


She Shall Remain in the Blood of Purification (Lev 12:4)
Program Unit: Sacrifice, Cult, and Atonement
Dorothea Erbele Kuester, Protestantse Theologische Universiteit

According to Lev 12 the seven-day period of impurity of the woman in the case of the delivering of a male child is followed by a second, unrelated period of 33 days (v4a) or, in the case of a female, 66 days (v5b), in which the woman is supposed to remain in the blood of purification or purity. The translation depends on whether the Hebrew word tohar is understood as a process or a state. In what sense does the woman “remain in” the blood of purification? Is the postpartum blood loss purifying? Most strikingly, in contrast to the MT, the LXX speaks in verses 4 and 5 of the woman’s remaining in “her impure blood”.


Notes on the Ethiopian Old Testament Manuscripts from the Monastery of Gunda Gunde
Program Unit: Manuscripts from Eastern Christian Traditions
Ted Erho, University of Durham

In a joint 2006 venture headed by Prof. Michael Gervers and sponsored by the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library, the contents of the library of Gunda Gunde were digitized. As this has long been recognized as one of the most important sites in Ethiopian monasticism, this project fulfilled a longstanding scholarly desideratum. Significantly, this monastic library includes thirty-two manuscripts containing one or more books of the Ethiopian Old Testament, all but one of which can be dated between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, thereby rendering these copies among the oldest known exemplars of these texts. Although multiple copies of many OT books are attested, peculiar and increasingly corrupt textual strains are endemic, necessitating caution in the utilization of these manuscripts in text-critical work. Particularly noteworthy examples include the appendage of the Life of Ezekiel onto the end of the canonical book and the unique version of Jubilees in the many exemplars from this location, each of which respectively aids in establishing the provenance of Gunda Gunde manuscripts now in other collections.


Jonah and Scribal Habitus
Program Unit: Social Sciences and the Interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures
Amy Erickson, Iliff School of Theology

Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological theories enable biblical interpreters to think through the production of biblical texts in highly nuanced ways. In particular Bourdieu’s work on the concept of field is useful in that it asks the interpreter to analyze the ways a literary producer positions himself in a field of play. For example, he sees writers as taking positions on a field of play, positions evident in a literary producer’s choice of genre, poetic technique, use of allusion, narrative style, and aesthetic. Informing the producers’ choices, however, is also Bourdieu’s notion of habitus, a system of structured, structuring (unconscious) dispositions, constituted in practice and based on and in past experience. My paper posits that the producers of the book of Jonah were scribal agents who adapted their habitus to a heterodox position in the field of post-exilic literary production. On such a post-exilic field of play, the perceived locus of revelation was shifting from prophecy as a phenomenon to prophecy as written genre. I will argue that at this site of struggle and in contrast to texts like Ezekiel and Ezra/Nehemiah, the nature of the book of Jonah suggests that the fixing of the text in written form should not result in a fixing of meaning. Indeed, Jonah’s depictions of the main protagonists (YHWH and Jonah), as well as the ambiguity of the book’s language and allusions, serve to expose the illusion of the written word’s stability. Further, the scribes who produced Jonah (unintentionally) created a text that circumscribes the need for their own skills and services, in particular, a class of people able to help Israel navigate the gaps between its new political place in the world, its emerging understanding of revelation, and its history, memory, and textual archive.


Soldiers of Yahweh: The Literary Presentation of Priests and Levites in Numbers 3–4
Program Unit: Pentateuch
Angela Roskop Erisman, Xavier University

In The Wilderness Itineraries: Genre, Geography, and the Growth of Torah, I argued that the priestly wilderness narrative is a vision for return to the land and restoration of cult, calendar, and social structure after exile, similar in goal to the vision presented in Ezekiel 44-46. In this paper, I will more fully explore how the priests and levites were characterized in Numbers 3-4 so they fit into this annalistic mode of emplotment. I will also explore how the priestly social structure in Numbers 3-4 compares to that in Ezekiel 44 and to a limited extent 1 Chronicles 1-9 in an effort to better understand the social and historical context in which this priestly emplotment of the wilderness narrative was made.


Organizing Centers (Jer 15)
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible
Johanna Erzberger, Philosophisch Theologische Hochschule Münster

The versions of Jer 15:10-14 (and its parallel in Jer 17:1-4, a MT plus) differ to a considerably high degree. At the same time the passage is characterized by its difficult textual form both in the LXX and in the MT. By evaluating every difference individually (and using the versions as kind of a quarry) textual criticism has often newly created a pre-text not testified by any textual witness. In contrast to this a considerable part of the variants of the versions of the MT and the LXX can be shown to be interdependent and work together to create a coherent text. The organizing center of both versions is the (diverse) narrator’s identity in Jer 15:11 (the prophet according to the LXX or God according to MT), which a majority of variants seem to be connected with. The obviousness of the organizing center is accompanied by a certain amount of imprecision, especially at those points where the textual witnesses of each version vary to a high degree. For both reasons Jer 15:10-14 (with Jer 17:1-4 for review) stand as an example not only for the complex correlation of the versions but also for a certain point in the history of the transmission of a biblical text, that at that point still flows. The versions’ variants which are organized by the narrator’s identity at one point result in some significant differences concerning the prophet’s role.


Prophetic Sign Acts and Performances in Modern Art
Program Unit: Writing/Reading Jeremiah
Johanna Erzberger, Philosophisch-Theologische Hochschule Münster

The presentation of prophetic sign acts in the book of Jeremiah transmit a certain kind of a communicative act, no matter if with a historical background or imagined, and transmit it to a different kind of medium, a narrative text. Considering a number of aspects the structure of prophetic sign acts corresponds to the structure of performances of artists as Valie Export in the 1970th or more recently Marina Abramovic in modern art. The prophet and the artist are the main characters of their own performance. Their performances point to a reality behind their acts. The prophet as well as the artist confronts the audience. Their performances might be done at some location where the audience cannot avoid the confrontation (public space). The artist and the prophet claim that their act is relevant for their audience. The artist’s as well as the prophet’s performances work if and only if the audience identifies themselves with the performer. While the prophetic sign act has been transmitted to another medium (the narrative) which values and interprets the prophet’s performance, the understanding of the communication pattern of performances in modern art can be used to understand and evaluate the communicative act assumed by and highlight the way in which it is used by the book of Jeremiah.


Gender Reconfiguration in Early Post-exilic Literature
Program Unit: Exile (Forced Migrations) in Biblical Literature
Tamara Cohn Eskenazi, Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion (California Branch)

This paper examines and reconfigures the role of gender in early post-exilic literature.


Judean Ethnic Identity and the Meaning of Matthew
Program Unit: Social Scientific Criticism of the New Testament
Philip Esler, Saint Mary's University College (Twickenham)

A continuing focus of Matthean scholarship is where the First Gospel is situated with respect to groups usually designated as “Jews” on the one hand and “Gentiles” on the other. The prevailing model is one of two religions, “Judaism” and “Christianity,” whose adherents are “Jews” and “Christians.” Debate rages, for example, as to whether Matthew’s original audience were intra muros, still within “Judaism,” or extra muros, meaning some split had occurred with the local “Jewish” synagogue. There is a wealth of data in the text that appears to respond to such questions and to provide supporters of such positions with evidence for their arguments. This paper proposes a new way of interpreting this data within the larger context of the Gospel that takes as its starting point a recognition that the Ioudaioi and the sons of Israel referred to in Matthew’s Gospel are people with an ethnic identity, “Judeans” not “Jews,” while the members of the Matthean audience were characterized by an entirely different, non-ethnic identity. Evidence for the nature of Judean ethnic identity in the first century CE will be adduced from a number of sources, but especially the Contra Apionem of Josephus. A wide range of textual data in Matthew responding to this approach will be analyzed, including the genealogy, negative statements concerning ethnikoi, the limitation of the Jesus’ ministry to “the lost sheep of the House of Israel,” certain parables and other material, and the concluding instruction to make disciples of all peoples. Important to the argument will be an explanation of the explicit limitation of the earthly ministry of Jesus to Judeans coupled with the recognition (including by Jesus) that non-Judeans would be incorporated after his death and resurrection. The result will be a more satisfactory interpretation of such data in the text than those being proposed in current scholarship.


The Transformation of Ethnic Space in Apocalyptic Literature
Program Unit: Wisdom and Apocalypticism
Philip Esler, Saint Mary's University College (Twickenham)

The thesis of this paper is that representations of space in apocalyptic literature connect to the transformation of ethnic to imagined space in the interests of maintaining individual and group identities in times of intergroup conflict and political change. Within Fredrik Barth’s approach to ethnicity there is ample room for the role of a homeland as a (diagnostic not determinative) indicator of ethnic identity. For Israelites/Judeans in the period when apocalyptic literature flourished, from the late third century BCE to the late first century CE, Judea functioned in this way for Judeans living there or in diaspora communities. It was a central part of the social identity they derived from belonging to this ethnic group. As early as 1 Enoch 76-77, on the other hand, “geographic” material enters apocalyptic literature and flourishes thereafter in its imagined ultimate futures. This paper will explore why this is the case. It will be argued that the transformation from actual ethnic space to imagined apocalyptic space is caught up in a transformation of group and individual identities driven by the necessities of inter-group conflict and oppression. This approach will be pursued in relation to a variety of apocalyptic texts considered in roughly chronological order. Such imagined future space will be shown to be related to the experience of individuals and groups through the generation and maintenance of social identities with particular cognitive, emotional and evaluative dimensions in changing political contexts.


The Folly of the Cross? Erasmus and Calvin on Philippians 2
Program Unit: History of Interpretation
Kirk A. Essary, Florida State University

This paper proposes to investigate some of the epistemological considerations of the theologies of the cross of Erasmus and John Calvin, as they arise out of the interpretation and use of Philippians 2. M. A. Screech, in his monograph Ecstasy and the Praise of Folly, has argued at length that the epistemological foundations of Erasmus’ philosophia Christi lie in the Pauline notion of the foolishness of the cross as found primarily in the early chapters of 1 Corinthians, but also in the ‘kenotic’ humiliation of Phil. 2. Furthermore, he has demonstrated that Erasmus was, to a large extent, indebted to Origen of Alexandria, not only for his anthropology, but also for his understanding of the foolishness of divine wisdom. In Erasmus’ hands, the philosophically intractable nature of the Incarnation is employed against scholastic dialectical theology, and simplicity is posited as a theological virtue. John Calvin, likewise an advocate for theological simplicity, but certainly no Origenist, seems to focus more on the exaltation theme of Philippians 2 than that of the stumbling block of the suffering God, both in his commentaries and in the Institutes. Incidentally, he also explicitly rejects Erasmus’ interpretation at least twice in his commentary on this section of Philippians. An examination of Calvin’s Christology and his theological epistemology can both illuminate, and be illuminated by, a close look at his understanding of this passage. His strong preference for Augustine and Erasmus’ for Origen makes comparison all the more intriguing, as does each thinker’s shared humanistic training and disdain for scholasticism. Thus, the paper will have something to say about not only the history of interpretation of Paul, but also about theological epistemologies in the 16th century (especially regarding the folly of the cross), and about the reception of two exegetical and theological giants, Origen and Augustine, in the anti-scholastic milieu of the early Reformation.


Changing Forms: On the Variation of Transformation in the Ancient World
Program Unit: Scripture and Paul
Douglas Estes, Dominican Biblical Institute

In his Metamorphoses, Ovid opens with words which speak to the transformations he is about to undertake: “My spirit impels me to speak of bodies changed into new forms” [trans: A. Feldherr]. We recognize these transformations are both literal (Ovid’s narrative strategy) and representative (Ovid’s narratives). Likewise, recent trends in biblical interpretation have brought a contemporary focus on what is broadly termed “intertextuality,” wherein biblical scholars seek to understand the literal and representative relationships between ancient texts (such as parts of the Pentateuch) with later, ancient texts (such as 1 Corinthians). One early problem, as noted by Donald Polaski, is a lack of clarity in terminology; some, like Richard Hays, prefer a little ambiguity while others, like Erik Waaler, prefer a more exact taxonomy. The common ground in this discussion is usually the ‘what’—the changed forms. In this paper, and in contrast to much current discussion, I propose to explore the first half of Ovid’s claim: “My spirit impels me.” Rather than examining the changed forms—the ‘what’—I develop a theory of the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ of transformation in the ancient world. As recent evidence reveals, Paul was neither mechanical nor helpless in his adaption of Scripture in writing 1 Corinthians; more than blandly ‘intertextual,’ his was a purposeful and meaningful transformation of Scripture. I show via examples from the ancient world how purpose and meaning play a part in this transformation process. One aspect I delve into is the ‘rhetorical how,’ meaning the intersection of learned persuasive technique and the motivation for transformation. To summarize, this paper will accomplish four goals: 1) provide a very brief introduction to definitional issues in the study of intertextuality 2) develop a brief definition of the transformative (‘how’ and ‘why’) aspect of intertextuality 3) deliver key examples from the ancient world giving insight into the transformative process and 4) apply these types of transformations against test cases in 1 Corinthians.


The New Testament Manuscripts: Old and Reliable
Program Unit: Evangelical Philosophical Society
Craig Evans, Acadia Divinity College

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Teaching the Bible through an Ecological Lens
Program Unit: Teaching Biblical Studies in an Undergraduate Liberal Arts Context
Janet S. Everhart, Simpson College

This paper will explore strategies for integrating ecological concerns into the undergraduate biblical studies classroom, with attention to how learning outcomes might link to the essential outcomes recommended by AAU&P. Resources will include a sample syllabus for a first year interdisciplinary seminar (Earth Matters: The Bible and Ecology) and an annotated bibliography surveying literature from diverse perspectives related to biblical ecological hermeneutics.


Ecce Mulier: The Levite’s Wife, the Mother of Jesus, and the Sacrificial Female Body
Program Unit: Bible and Visual Art
J. Cheryl Exum, University of Sheffield

The paper deals with two unrelated nineteenth-century paintings, Jean-Jacques Henner’s The Levite of Ephraim and His Dead Wife and Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Ecce Ancilla Domini. In the texts upon which these paintings are based, the women’s bodies are not theirs to control and women are the victims of (a)sexual violation. One event is typically viewed negatively, arousing repulsion and reproach, while the other holds an important positive status in Christian tradition. The paper will examine how the texts use both women to promote androcentric ideologies, and consider how the paintings both challenge the biblical versions and reveal the scandal of the ideologies that lie behind them. In staging a dialogue between the text and the canvas, I am arguing not only for the importance of art in the reception history of the Bible but for bringing art into mainstream biblical interpretation—for adding visual criticism to other criticisms (historical, literary, form, rhetorical, ideological, etc.) in the exegete’s toolbox.


Why We Still Need Feminist Criticism
Program Unit: Feminist Hermeneutics of the Bible
J. Cheryl Exum, University of Sheffield

Feminism as a political project is dead or at least moribund, and many of the gains of second-wave feminism are being lost. In an ‘I’m not a feminist but...’ generation, students may well respond to feminist critical approaches with apathy or even open hostility. The postfeminist popular cultural trend has read the last rites for the feminist movement, declaring it simultaneously a failure and therefore defunct or entirely successful in its aims and therefore irrelevant and unnecessary for contemporary women. In academia feminist biblical criticism has been subsumed into gender studies, postcolonial criticism, queer criticism, cultural studies, and even reception criticism. This paper will examine aspects of feminism’s ‘demise’ and look at the popular cultural reception of female biblical figures as one example of the way in which the treatment of gender and the portrayal of women have become limited to representations of young, white, heterosexual, able-bodied, hyper-sexual females. Eve and Mary Magdalene become poster-girls for postfeminist sexual and consumer power—following prescribed ideals of femininity to gain power in gender relations and providing role models who prefer individual consumer empowerment over collective political action. Feminist criticism’s job is not yet done, we argue, and, despite fragmentation and ‘rebranding’, feminist criticism remains as timely and crucial as ever.


Paul as a Divinatory Expert
Program Unit: Society for Ancient Mediterranean Religions
Jennifer Eyl, Barnard College

This paper argues that the most neglected aspect of the career of the apostle Paul is his divinatory expertise. Scholars have not hesitated to understand him as an exegete of the Septuagint, a teacher of ethics, and proselytizer regarding the significance of Christ for gentiles; yet his self-professed expertise in a range of divinatory practices has been ignored or refuted for reasons which may often be attributed to modern theological interests. In this paper, I consider the range of Paul’s divinatory practices, and offer a useful taxonomy of such practices (channeling divine forms of speech, interpreting divine signs, demonstrating divine power, divining through the use of sacred texts, et al). I argue that his practices have often been “categorized” uniquely vis-à-vis other comparable ancient practices, preserving the notion that Paul is himself unique. Indeed, Paul may be responsible for the presumed uniqueness, as he invents a new taxonomy for his divinatory skill set: pneumatic charismata. My paper concludes by considering the significance of Paul’s innovative terminology, as he repackages widely recognized practices so as to make them appear distinct from the divinatory practices of his competitors, both within the Jesus movement and without.


Paul and Ethnicity-Based Divinatory Expertise
Program Unit: North American Association for the Study of Religion
Jennifer Eyl, Barnard College

This paper explores Paul's attempt to capitalize on the language of ethnicity to promote his claims to divinatory expertise and ancient knowledge. Just as Pauline Ripat recently pointed out that, “claiming to hail from the land that birthed astrology had value for astrologers,” Paul’s unquestionable lineage validates him as a legitimate spokesperson and expert on matters pertaining to Judean texts, practices, and myths. While his extant letters do not tell his readers where he’s from, he does make his qualifications clear when he describes himself as “circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law a Pharisee..” (Philippians 3.5). He reasserts these credentials in Romans: “I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin” (Rom.11.1). With such a pedigree, Paul establishes himself as one qualified to relay any messages he may have regarding the Judean deity, even if he does not claim outright to be from Judea. His credentials come to the fore in 2 Corinthians, when he must contrast himself with his immediate competitors, the “false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ” (2 Cor 11.13). He writes, “Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I. Are they ministers of Christ? I am talking like a madman—I am a better one” (2 Cor. 11.22-23). When Paul defends his divinatory expertise and possession of special knowledge, he does not refer to himself as Ioudaios, which is a curiosity given that this is the Greek word everyone else would (and did) use to denote Paul’s ethnic group. I suggest that Paul's claims to be an Israelite (as well as his avoidance of self-presentation as a Ioudaois) are strategic. Not only is he competing against these “super apostles,” but he is also competing in a wider world of Egyptians, Chaldeans, Etruscans – all of whom also boast ancient knowledge and technical expertise in one method of divination or another (or even “magic”). I suggest that Paul tends to bypass Ioudaios to link himself back to an ancient time (Israelites, of course, no longer exist in the 1st century). By doing so, he can capitalize on stereotypes of Moses as a magician and Israelites as being the ancient people of an exotic deity. Understanding Paul's self-presentation as an Israelite in the context of the varied “ethnicity-based” divinatory experts of the early Empire, I argue, is very fruitful; scholarship on ancient Christianity has often been locked in debate over how “Jewish” or “Hellenized” Paul was. This paper cuts across these interests by looking not at how Jewish Paul was, but at the “work” that Jewishness does in his accrual of symbolic capital among a field of ethnically diverse, traveling divinatory specialists.


Reading the Biblical and Qumran Calendars from a Pacific Island Perspective
Program Unit: Islands, Islanders, and Scriptures
Ikani Fakasiieiki, Graduate Theological Union

In this presentation, I will offer an intertextual reading of selected texts from the biblical, the Qumran, and Mahina Fakatonga (Tongan) calendars. Coming from a Pacific Island perspective, this reading will show how the experiences and way of life of local people provided the foundations for Biblical calendars. The Priestly and other calendars then built upon that foundation. Reading the Biblical and Qumran calendars from an island perspective will highlight the knowledge of local people. Scholars who study calendars overlook and ignore the experiences of local, grassroot peoples who understood the changing times and the seasons. I will thus show how the biblical calendar arose from the daily experiences of local people rather than from the priestly temple. Reading with Mahina Fakatonga and the experiences of local islanders will help one understand the importance of this knowledge for understanding the biblical and the Qumran calendars.


God Damn You, We Damn You: Ritual Cursing and Community Boundaries in the Dead Sea Scrolls
Program Unit: Ritual in the Biblical World
Daniel K. Falk, University of Oregon

Ritual cursing played a prominent role in the sectarian movement of the Dead Sea Scrolls, judging from the large number of texts that contain cursing rituals or references to them. In a few cases, there is some indication of a ritual setting: as part of the covenant ceremony (1QS 2:4-9); an expulsion ritual (4QDa 11; 4QDd 16; 4QDe 7); and in the eschatological ritual of the War Scroll (1QM 13:1-6). The setting of other ritual curses, however, is unclear, for example 4QBerakhot and 4Q280 Curses. Although it has been proposed that the expulsion ritual of the Damascus Document and the blessings and curses of 4QBerakhot all are related to the covenant ceremony, this is far from certain. The texts show complicated patterns of similarities and dissimilarities, but most telling in terms of evaluating the rituals are differences with regard to the actor (a special functionary, a representative group, or the whole congregation) and the object (Belial or Melchizedek, evil spirits, humans of Belial’s lot, apostates). It is likely that there were multiple different ritual occasions in which curses functioned in varying ways, with reuse of some formulas. The present paper will seek to further clarify the functions of ritual cursing in the Dead Sea Scrolls by drawing on perspectives from ritual studies, especially that rituals mean more than their words, that ritual elements are often reused in different settings with different meaning, and that rituals represent choices of behavior in the field of possible human activity. It must be acknowledged that a great deal of what would belong to these rituals of cursing is lost to us. In order to sharpen the analytical sensitivity with regard to the broader possible ritual contexts of these texts, I will draw brief comparative analogies from known cursing practices in the Ancient Near East and the Greco-Roman world, and from modern anthropological treatments of cursing based on ethnographic reports. On the basis of these analytical perspectives and close reading of key texts, the paper will describe what can be concluded about the divergent ways in which ritual cursing was used in the movement to protect boundaries of the community against threats from supernatural evil, outside contamination, and internal defection.


From Oral Performance to Inscribed Texts: Some Parallels in the Evolution of Ancient Jewish and Greek Amulets
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible, History, and Archaeology
Christopher A. Faraone, University of Chicago

In the Roman Imperial Period the numbers of amulets inscribed with Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic texts increases dramatically and some have suggested far reaching social change in the Mediterranean, a turn to superstition and magic. Such argument, however, ignores evidence in both Greek and Jewish culture for some tentative earlier attempts at inscription – for example the silver amulets from Ketef Hinnom (inscribed in the 6th century BCE in Hebrew) and the recently published lead amulets from Selinous (inscribed in a Greek alphabet of fifth-century BCE date) – as well as literary evidence about Orpheus, Empedocles and David that reveals how Greeks and Jews for centuries used oral prayers, blessings and incantations to protect and heal themselves and that the main innovation of the Roman period was the inscription of these traditional oral speech acts, not any increased beliefs in magic or superstition.


Joshua and Saul
Program Unit: Joshua-Judges
Zev Farber, Emory University

This paper proposes that part of the biblical narrative about Joshua reappropriates accomplishments attributed to Saul and assigns them an “earlier” leader from the tribe of Ephraim. As Israelite memnohistory coalesced, the heroes and cultural icons of the various cultural polities needed to find their place in the Israelite narrative – a natural part of the development of Israelite cultural memory. Many scholars have acknowledged the “competition” between the claims of Saul and David for first king of Israel reflected in the book of Samuel as an example of this type of cultural memory compromise. Although the competing memnohistorical claims of Saul and David reflect a north versus south dichotomy in the final form of Samuel (as well as in Chronicles), this paper will argue that earlier layers of the Saul saga and the Saul-David competition reflect a Judah vs. Benjamin dichotomy. Furthermore, the palpable nature of this competition has masked a third contender for this position, Joshua son of Nun, the northern or Ephramite alternative to Saul. Although an Ephramite, much of Joshua’s military activity takes place in the areas of Benjamin and Judah, Saul’s natural territory (as well as David’s). Saul battled the Amalekites, but Joshua was the first to do so; Saul broke faith with the Gibeonites, but Joshua kept his faith with them. Even the quote from the Book of Yashar (according to the MT) may have originally been about Saul; the only other quote from this work is about Saul and Jonathon. Finally, this paper will highlight two important phenomena in the development of Israelite cultural identity. First, Benjamin and the Northern Kingdom were originally two distinct entities, each with its own heroes and cultural memory. Second, biblical Joshua is best understood as a complex and overdetermined character, whose story absorbs or mimics other Israelite hero stories – Saul being just one example.


Virginity Testing in Democratic South Africa: Human Rights and Biblical Implications of This Sexuality Rite
Program Unit: African Biblical Hermeneutics
Dorothy M Farisani, University of South Africa

South Africa has been a democratic country for almost twenty years now and its Constitution has been hailed as one of the best in the world. Case law has made it clear that the Constitutional court regards human rights as essential, specifically the right to dignity as found in section 10 of the Constitution. At the same time, the South African people have many traditions and customary practices, some of which, may appear to be in conflict with human rights. One of these customary practices is virginity testing, an ancient sexuality rite that is prevalent among the Zulu people. Virginity testing is aimed at ensuring that maidens remain chaste until they are married. Advocates of virginity testing claim that the Biblical text of Exodus 20:14 supports their cause. Although virginity testing is not specifically aimed at ensuring that the maidens conform to the commandment in Exodus 20, those Christians who follow this practice claim that they are simultaneously following this commandment. The commandment may even be used to justify the practice. On the other hand, the law sees the practice as an infringement of human rights, particularly the girl child’s right to privacy and her right to dignity. Clearly, the rights to dignity and privacy are on a collision course with this traditional way of virginity. The question is, what role can African Biblical interpretation and the promotion of human rights play in figuring out whether there is still a need for the sexuality rite of virginity testing to be practiced in South Africa. In this paper, the concept of virginity testing will be examined, analysed and problematised. The focus will be on the reasons advanced for the revival of the practice and its effectiveness. This will be followed by a discussion of its relevance in a democratic country as well as the human rights implications of this sexuality rite, driven by “the need to make sure that indigenous customs…do not contravene the Constitution as well as basic universal human rights”. And finally, the role of African Biblical hermeneutics in addressing this issue will be spelt out.


Masculinity and Femininity in Ezekiel 23
Program Unit: African Biblical Hermeneutics
Elelwani B Farisani, University of South Africa

This paper discusses issues of sexuality, masculinity and femininity in Ezekiel 23. The paper argues that Ezekiel presents us with a masculine view of conqueror/conquered in which the Israelites, through their feminization, are no more men. The paper starts off by examining notions of sexuality, masculinity and femininity in Ezekiel, also highlighting some changing constructions of manhood in Ezekiel 23. The paper then spells out the significance of Ezekiel 23 on issues of sexuality, masculinity and femininity for African Biblical scholarship.


Framing the Qur'an: A Literary Analysis of Surat al-Fatiha and Surat al-Nas
Program Unit: Qur'an and Biblical Literature
Raymond K. Farrin, American University of Kuwait

Taking a literary approach to the Qur'an, I analyze in this paper Surat al-Fatiha and Surat al-Nas in terms of structure and theme. I show that the Qur'an’s first sura has a ring pattern featuring a statement of monotheism and a supplication to God in the center. Moreover, I show that this sura is firmly linked with al-Nas, the last sura of the Qur'an. This paper thus highlights ring structure in the first and last suras and underscores the link between the Qur'an’s beginning and end. It suggests finally that the pattern of concentric symmetry may well obtain for the Qur'an as a whole.


Households in Iron II Israel – Between Rich and Poor, Urban and Rural, and Israelites and non-Israelites
Program Unit: Economics in the Biblical World
Avraham Faust, Bar-Ilan University

This paper will review the evidence from Iron Age II Israel architectural landscape in order to identify patterns, concerning plan, size, quality and inner division of structures. On the basis of the identified patterns, the paper will examine the various types of households that existed in Israel and Judah and will address the differences between rich and poor families, between urban and rural households, between large and small kinship groups, and between Israelites and non-Israelites, as well as the possible overlap between the above groupings.


The Wilderness Camp Paradigm in the Holiness Source and the Temple Scroll: Centralized Cult and Purity Legislation in Changing Socio-historical Contexts
Program Unit: Biblical Law
Yitzhaq Feder, University of Haifa

This paper explores the socio-historical implications of the levitical purity laws as they are understood in the Holiness Source (H) and the Temple Scroll (TS). At first glance, these sources show a close similarity in rhetoric, but closer examination reveals fundamental differences between them. In particular, I focus on the manner in which these sources construe the application of the wilderness camp model to Israelite society after the settlement in the Land of Israel, since this paradigm serves as the primary framework for the practical realization of the biblical purity laws. In H, we find a repeated emphasis on the danger of polluting the Tabernacle (e.g. Lev 15:31; Num 5:4). From a strict philological analysis of these sources, it becomes clear that these statements focus on the purity of the centralized sanctuary, a view which is consistent with Lev 17. Interestingly, this attitude is finds echoes in the rabbinic view which restricted the application of the purity laws almost exclusively to Jerusalem (e.g. m. Kelim, ch. 1). In comparison, the interpretation of these verses in TS construes them as requiring purity in other cities throughout the land (48:14–17). These ostensibly exegetical differences seem to thinly conceal a political dimension, rooted in divergent attitudes regarding the legitimacy of the Jerusalem temple. Nevertheless, the decentralized notion of purity in TS does find a real basis in H, which emphasizes the holiness of the Israelite people (e.g. Lev 11:34) and the Land of Israel (Num 35:34). However, it will be argued, these similar views are the result of diametrically-opposed cultic agendas, a recognition which demands a more nuanced understanding of the notion of purity in H.


Between Contagion and Cognition: The Israelite Concept of Pollution (?um’ah) in Light of West Asian and Ethnographic Evidence
Program Unit:
Yitzhaq Feder, University of Haifa

This paper presents the results of my post-doctoral research at the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research. In this study, I apply embodiment theory as a framework for reconstructing the origins of the Israelite notion of pollution (?um’ah). Despite the fact that the Hebrew Bible describes a diverse array of sources of pollution – including bodily conditions, moral offenses and foreign cult practices, most modern studies attempt to find a single organizing principle which is ‘symbolized’ by the notion of pollution, whether it may be death, disorder, or some other abstract referent. In contrast with these attempts to explain away the heterogeneity of the biblical sources of pollution, the present study argues that the category of pollution is based on several distinct schemas that are modeled after bodily experience, including uncleanness and infection. These distinct models can be differentiated by the means of transmission and processes of purification associated with them. This approach is tested through comparison with ancient West Asian (Mari, Babylon) and ethnographic evidence as well as through modern psychological research into notions of contagion. This comparative examination provides a basis for a more accurate appraisal of the historical context of ancient Israelite notions of pollution. This inquiry also clarifies the relationship between “ritual purity” and hygiene. Despite the obvious similarity between these two types of behavioral motivation, the understanding of the relationship between them is frequently obscured by anachronistic and simplistic assumptions which ignore the less differentiated perception of contagion that existed in the pre-modern world.


The Battle of First Armageddon and the Song of Deborah
Program Unit: Joshua-Judges
Peter Feinman, Institute of History, Archaeology, and Education

Thutmose III's triumph at Megiddo transformed Egyptian imperialism as it became the standard by which future warrior Pharaohs would be judged. Typically Egyptologists analyze the art and inscriptions relating to the battle within the Egyptian cultural construct with Megiddo serving as an exemplar of the Königsnovelle tradition. Biblical scholars tend to ignore it since, after all, Israel didn't even exist yet and there is no mention of any patriarch at the battle. Although biblical scholarship frequently refers to the Israelites as Canaanites, the emphasis has tended to be either on how the Ugaritic texts shed light on the language and religion of Israel or how did the people live in this environmental context. The history of the region tends to be ignored. In a recent article, Nadav Na'aman wrote: "...Egypt ruled Canaan uninterruptedly for about 350 years [c. 1500-1150 BCE]... How can we explain the black hole that was opened wide in the biblical memory...?" This paper takes the position that the battle of Second Armageddon was part of the Canaanite memory of the beginning of Egyptian imperialism in the land of Canaan and that the Song of Deborah was part of the celebration of its termination.


Human Sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible: Form and Meaning
Program Unit: Ritual in the Biblical World
Eve Levavi Feinstein, Harvard University

A number of passages in the Hebrew Bible employ the language of sacrifice to describe the offering of humans to YHWH or another deity. Each of these texts draws on certain conceptions of sacrifice – as gift, exchange, expiation, food, and/or a means of maintaining the cosmic order – while neglecting or minimizing others. These different manifestations of sacrificial imagery attest to the complexity and multivalence of Israelite sacrifice and undermine the view that sacrifice and other rituals encode stable, uniform meanings. This paper argues that it is primarily the formal aspects of sacrificial ritual that remain the most stable, and that these formal features establish parameters for the variety of meanings found in biblical texts on human sacrifice.


Sanctuary Service as Sacrificial Offering: A Reading of Exodus 22:28–29 and Numbers 3:5–13
Program Unit: Cultic Personnel in the Biblical World
Eve Levavi-Feinstein, Harvard University

This paper takes the position that the law in Exodus 22:29 mandating that firstborn sons be given over to YHWH should be understood as a requirement to dedicate firstborn sons to sanctuary service. This law is of a piece with texts such as Numbers 3:12-13, according to which firstborn sons preceded the Levites in the role of cultic personnel. I argue that this reading does not undermine the view that Exodus 22:29 mandates the sacrifice of firstborn sons. Exodus 22:29 is, rather, one of several biblical passages that describe dedication to sanctuary service in sacrificial terms. Such texts envision cultic service as a sacred donation or offering in which people were brought to a sacred place and transferred to YHWH’s possession, often through the medium of higher-ranking priests. The benefit that higher-ranking priests accrued from this service was viewed as analogous to the benefits that they accrued from comestible offerings.


E. A. Nida's Relationship to N. Chomsky's Transformational Grammar
Program Unit: Bible Translation
Stefan Felber, Theologisches Seminar St. Chrischona, Basel

Some scholars hold that Nida's theory of dynamic equivalence in translating is heavily dependent on N. Chomsky's transformational grammar, others don't pay attention to the question at all. This paper will follow Nida's works chronologically and assess the issue. The significance of the relationship will be summarized.


Reading Joshua-Judges in 4Q522 (4QProphecy of Joshua): The Geography
Program Unit: Joshua-Judges
Ariel Feldman, Brite Divinity School (TCU)

Classified with the Second Temple literature rewriting the Hebrew Bible, the scroll 4Q522 (4QProphecy of Joshua[4QApocryphon of Joshuac ?]) drew some scholarly attention, as it contains a prophetic speech by Joshua son of Nun. Yet, this scroll also preserves several fragments providing various geographical data related to the Israelites’ conquests in the Promised Land. Until now no attempt has been made to analyze the lists of toponyms found in 4Q522. The present paper fills this gap by explorings the ways in which the author of this scroll interpreted the geographical data found in the Books of Joshua and Judges.


The Wilderness in Deuteronomy: Spatiality, Memory, Religion
Program Unit: Space, Place, and Lived Experience in Antiquity
Laura Feldt, University of Copenhagen

Drawing on perspectives from critical spatiality theory and theories of cultural memory, this paper investigates the construction-production of the desert wilderness as a ‘natural’, social and memorial space in the book of Deuteronomy and discusses its religious function. While Assmann’s important investigation of religion and memory in Deuteronomy is inspirational, it does not incorporate spatiality theory or analyse the wilderness, or the relation wilderness-land, specifically. This paper will analyse the nexus of ‘natural’-material spatiality, religion, and memory and mnemonic practices, with special attention to the narrative and oratory material in Dt 1-11 and argue that the wilderness functions as a crucial space for reflection on, negotiation of, and formation of “Israelite” identity. The wilderness is presented as irreducibly ambiguous - combining negative and positive qualities, elements of a realistic presentation with fantastic-marvellous elements, signifying intimacy between deity and people as well as rejection, danger, and apostasy. The paper will attempt to show that the ambiguous wilderness presentation assists in the formulation of an ethos of religious identity transformation that deterritorializes Israel’s relation to the land while this religion is still anchored squarely in agriculture: the desired fertility of the agricultural land stems from Yahweh and access to it is contingent on religious transformation. The basic motivation for this paper comes from recent developments in the field of religion and nature which guide the interest of this paper in religion and modes of interaction with the nonhuman world, and its interest lies in discussing the nexus of spatiality, memory, and religion. It is part of a larger project about religion and wilderness conceptions in ancient religions.


The Influence of Enochic (and Related) Judaisms on Gnosticism
Program Unit: Function of Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
Stewart Felker, University of Memphis

Not since James VanderKam's brief treatment more than fifteen years ago (in Vanderkam and Adler 1996) has there been a study devoted foremost to the influence of the Enochic literature and cognate traditions in various strands of Gnosticism. This is despite that, among other traditions fully developed in the Enochic pseudepigrapha, the 'fall of the angels' theme “played a major function in the development of Gnostic mythology”—or is even “at the very core of the mythological expression of Gnostic consciousness” (Stroumsa 1984: 32). This paper seeks to give an up-to-date evaluation of this neglected area of study, and explores several new directions in the extent to which Gnostic literature and thought might indebted to “Enochic” Judaism(s). Specific issues addressed include the relationship between the etiology of evil spirits attested in Enochic literature and its influence on Gnostic demonology and psychology—especially the general presence of “error” in the world, and its relation to 1 Enoch and themes from Second Temple apocrypha; the possible relation of some themes of “proto”-Gnosticism (or “para”-Gnosticism) in the New Testament and the early church authors to Enochic Judaism (including reconfiguration of Enochic themes in thought attested to in Athenagoras and Tatian, as recently taken up in a studies by Giulea [2007, 2010]); and finally, special attention is paid to the neglected presence of Enochic themes in works such as the Book of Thomas, The Hypostasis of the Archons, and texts which show an interest in “astrology,” including the comparatively recently published Gospel of Judas. In light of this latter observation, much discussion on this will be framed in the context of the general interplay between Hellenistic astronomy/astrology, Enochic Judaism, and Gnostic literature—and its enduring legacy into late antiquity.


“What Is There Between Us?” Two Ammonite Traditions in Mark 5
Program Unit: Synoptic Gospels
Stewart Felker, University of Memphis

The bulk of research done on Mark 5 has focused on attempting to discern Roman militaristic allusions; yet much less attention has been paid to the early Jewish background and possible antecedents of some of the elements of this pericope. In this paper, I argue that another key to understanding Mark 5 is that Gerasa is the territory of the Ammonites—an area still designated as such by (near) contemporaries as Josephus and others. This is significant in two different ways. First, in Hebrew Bible tradition, Ammon was identified as the land of the Rephaim, who are giants and, on parallel with the Anakim, descendants of the Nephilim (Num. 13.33). In later Second Temple apocryphal literature—first appearing in the early Enochic literature—it is these gigantic descendants of the Nephilim (=“watchers” in 1 Enoch) who, after death, become evil spirits who torment humanity and incite them to violence (1 En. 15.8-11). I will explore this as a plausible background for specific motifs and behavior of the demoniac in Mk. 5. Second, I will argue that the author of the Markan pericope was inspired by the account, in Judges 11, of Jephthah's intrusion into Ammonite territory. This is suggested by several motifs, including the initial proclamation of the demoniac at Jesus's appearance, ti emoi kai soi—the same as the LXX of the Ammonite king's response to Jephthah's intrusion. Lending further plausibility to the author's use of Judges, Mary Anne Beavis (in CBQ 2010) has argued for the reliance of the very next pericope in Mark on the story of Jephthah's daughter in Judg 11.34-40. If both of these suggested backgrounds for Mark 5 were indeed in the mind of the author(s) during its composition, this might give us significant insight into Mark's theology, both in its demonology, and in regard to Jewish-Gentile relations.


Facing the End of History: Communal Anxiety and the Akedah
Program Unit: Genesis
Danna Fewell, Drew University

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The Ones Returning: Ruth, Naomi, and Social Negotiation in the Post-exilic Period
Program Unit: Exile (Forced Migrations) in Biblical Literature
Danna Nolan Fewell, Drew University

The book of Ruth constructs its female characters as women returning to a homeland. Ruth, a foreigner, “returns” to a place she has never been before. Naomi returns “empty,” with no resources to work the landholdings of her deceased husband. Both foreignness and survival drive the plot, placing the women at the mercy of an economic, and somewhat deified, “redeemer.” Moreover, the relationship between the two women is an ambivalent one, in which the body of one is used in various ways to sustain the wellbeing of the other. Following the lead of many scholars who date the story’s production in the post-exilic period, this reading explores the possibility that the story tropes communal anxieties regarding “ones returning” who bring foreign family members into the community’s midst and make claims on its resources. Often seen as a polemic directed against the xenophobic reforms and legalistic tendencies of Ezra-Nehemiah, the story may instead embody a more finely nuanced social negotiation concerning membership in a community living in the shadow of the Persian Empire.


Domestic Space and Standard of Living: Does the Size of a House Indicate the Wealth of the Family?
Program Unit: Economics in the Biblical World
David A. Fiensy, Kentucky Christian University

Since the days of Moses Finley, it has been a given in many academic circles that the ancient economy was essentially stagnant. The overall level neither improved, nor, for that matter, deteriorated throughout antiquity. But of late that doctrine is being challenged. Ian Morris has presented study of housing to make his case that the standard of living increased in Greece from the 8th to the 3rd centuries BCE . His study of 300 houses indicates, remarkably, that house sizes increased five or six fold in that span and he concludes that there must have been “a dramatic improvement in the standard of living . . . .” Therefore, Morris rejects Moses Finley’s ancient economy model in which there was “essentially static economic performance” . There are still questions I have about primarily using housing as the measure for standard of living: Have poorly constructed houses left any traces? Were not most houses do-it-yourself constructions like the log cabins of the American frontier? To what extent do house sizes reflect cultural as opposed to economic factors? Keeping these caveats in mind, I propose to compare housing sizes between four late 2nd Temple villages (Gamla, Yodefat, Khirbet Qana, and Capernaum) and Mishnaic era houses in three villages (Meiron, Katzrin, and Chorazin) to see if the size (square meters) of the domestic space increased. Next, I hope to examine any connections between house sizes and village economy. Is there evidence that those villages with larger houses had a better economy with, e.g. more industry?


The Village of Shikhin/Asochis in Text and Archaeology
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
David A. Fiensy, Kentucky Christian University

The village known as Shikhin in the rabbinic literature was celebrated for its fine pottery. It was said to have been owned entirely by one wealthy rabbi and to have been destroyed in one of the wars. Most historians identify this village with the one called Asochis in Josephus, a village which served as a bivouac for his troops. Based on a chemical analysis of potsherds, a 1988 survey identified a ruin just northwest of Sepphoris as the ancient village. Thanks to a further survey in 2011 and excavations planned for 2012, we can now begin to compare the material remains with the textual evidence. This paper will highlight points of congruence and conflict between text and remains with respect to village industry, agriculture, socio-economic hierarchy, architecture, Hellenization, and with respect to the history of occupation/destruction of the village. Such a comparison will, it is hoped, make a contribution toward further understanding Lower Galilee in the late Second Temple and early Mishnaic periods.


Exhibiting Jewish-Christian Relations: Recent Museum Exhibitions and the Contemporary Presentation of Christian-Jewish Relations in Late Antiquity
Program Unit: National Association of Professors of Hebrew
Steven Fine, Yeshiva University

Museum exhibitions are important-- yet generally overlooked-- venues for the public display of Jewish-Christian relations. Here the values academic/museum communities interface with the interests of donors and real artifacts. Exhibitions are deeply constructed-- yet temporary--environments, set within culture institutions that that contemporary society often imbues with authority--if not sanctity. Recent museum exhibitions that focus upon late antiquity have presented Christianity and Judaism in ways that are distinctive to the organizing venues and the communities they serve. This lecture will explore ways that Christian-Jewish relations are presented in a series of 2011-12 exhibitions at Boston College, the NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, the Onassis Cultural Center and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We will discuss the ways that this relationship is expressed within these very different, though often overlapping venues, and what these exhibitions as a group tell us about the public presentation of Jewish-Christian relations. It will focus upon object selection and exhibition, as well as label copy, ephemera and catalogs as primary sources for this investigation.


Occupy Corinth! Role-Playing a Socially Divided House Church Hearing Paul’s Letter
Program Unit: Academic Teaching and Biblical Studies
Reta Halteman Finger, Messiah College

Educational research shows that teaching through constructive controversy is more effective than either lecture or group discussion. A colleague and I have written a curriculum for role-playing a house church in Corinth that engages all four of the factions Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 1:10-12. Using an “empire-critical” approach and a wealth of historical and sociological background on Corinth and the Roman Empire, we make educated guesses about the nature of each faction—of Paul, Apollos, Cephas, and Christ alone. From clues in 1 Corinthians, we see the major tensions in these house churches as between the wealthier, more educated patrons, and their clients, manual laborers and slaves—the “1%” versus the “99%.” Roman hierarchical values clash with Paul’s egalitarian vision on topics of social status, sexual behavior, lawsuits, gender relations, meals, worship styles, and more. We created characters for 18 members of Chloe’s house church (1 Cor 1:11) and divided them among the factions. (Additional characters can be created.) Students read the background material online (or in a printed copy), so that class time can be used for (1) review and prep for simulation of debate around each section of Paul’s letter, (2) the role-play itself, encouraging vigorous (Mediterranean-style!) argument and debate about what he said, and (3) debriefing and noting contemporary parallels. Since this was not scripture when Paul wrote it, characters can challenge or disagree with Paul. Many find it easier to do so when playing a role. After each class, a journal is required from each “character,” along with reflections from the student her/himself. The material can be adjusted for any number of class sessions. For any age from upper-level high school on, the simulation is fun and full of insights into a human Paul and his very human church. Parallels between Roman Empire and “American Empire” were never so obvious!


The Challenge of "The Jewish Jesus" for the Christian Sabbatarian (7th Day)
Program Unit: National Association of Professors of Hebrew
Timothy D. Finlay, Azusa Pacific University

Those Christians who keep a 7th day sabbath maintain not only that Jesus faithfully observed the sabbath but that he instructed his followers to do so as well. Recent emphasis by certain Jewish scholars studying the New Testament on Jesus as Torah-observant and Torah-affirming would seem to back up this perspective. This paper will discuss the extent to which "The Jewish Jesus" is in fact compatible with a Christian sabbatarian view and to what extent it poses a challenge.


The Rhetoric of Warfare in Jeremiah 4–6 and 8–10
Program Unit: Israelite Prophetic Literature
Karin Finsterbusch, Universität Koblenz - Landau

Within Jer 4-6 and 8-10, some units contain especially destructive images about warfare and the militant conquest of Judah and Jerusalem. Among others this has been recently emphasized by J. Y. Jindo. In particular, the interchange of different narrative voices (YHWH, warriors, prophet, narrator) create a vivid impression of devastation with the readers of these passages. Examples include quotations of the warriors and people of Jerusalem in Jer 6:4—5 within the speech of God in Jer 5:30—6:8. This presentation will show that the function of the destructive imagery in Jer 4-6 and 8-10 differs with regard to the implicit addresses inside the Jeremianic narrative and with regard to a Persian time reader of this narrative after the neo-Babylonian conquest and the Babylonian exile. Inside the Jeremianic narrative, the destructive imagery admonishes the implicit addresses to refrain from their sinful past. In the context of Persian time Yehud, the same imagery directs the attention of the post-exilic reader towards the question of Jewish identity.


Pro and Contra Zion? A Comparison of the Temple’s Role in the Books of Ezekiel and Jeremiah
Program Unit: Book of Ezekiel
Georg Fischer SJ, Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck

M. Konkel (Architektonik des Heiligen, 2001) has shown the fundamental importance of the new temple concept in Ezek 40-48 for the book of Ezekiel. Motifs like Yhwh’s glory and other elements in earlier parts of the book underline the central role of the sanctuary in Jerusalem in Ezek. This is very different from Jer, which, in its final chapter 52, brings at length the destruction and emptying of the temple. Indeed, even before this, a process of relativization of the sanctuary and its components has begun (e.g., in Jer 3:16-17 and 7:4, 12-14). The divergent attitudes towards the temple in Jerusalem in the books of Ezek and Jer require discussion and explanation.


The Theological Achievement of the Author of Q
Program Unit: Q
Harry Fleddermann, Alverno College

The author of Q responded to the problem caused by the delay of the parousia by inventing the gospel genre which narrativizes the early Christian kerygma of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Creating the gospel genre involved among other things shifting Christian thinking away from an exclusive focus on the end time to a new focus on the present which includes a new vision of a universal community formed by the universal mission of gentile Christianity. In this way the author eliminated many of the excesses of apocalypticism while retaining its positive elements. In Q the reader encounters the first flowering of gentile Christian theology in the Subapostolic Period. The canonical gospels and all later Christian theology unfold the author of Q's vision further.


Listening to all the Voices: Reading Revelation as Combination Pastiche
Program Unit: John's Apocalypse and Cultural Contexts Ancient and Modern
Michelle Fletcher, King's College - London

How exactly do we approach the polyvalent text of Revelation which is both disparate and yet united and which constantly defies categorisation? This paper proposes the answer potentially lies in reading Revelation as a Combination Pastiche. A Combination Pastiche is a specific textual form in which different, often disparate source texts are taken from their original contexts, transformed and combined together to create something new and unique. It favours no one source and largely defies categorisation. Rather it requires the audience to recognise its many voices and to ask how they dialogue with each other and are changed by these dialogues. This paper argues for the merit of reading Revelation this way, and begins by explaining how combination pastiche is understood today in Cultural, Literary and Film studies. Through using texts such as Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose it demonstrates the ‘disparate yet united’ nature through modern examples. It then examines other studies on pastiche in Biblical texts. It finishes with a test case of the ‘inaugural vision’ of Revelation 1 to allow us to approach the text from this fresh perspective and highlight some of the more marginalised voices. In doing so it offers a framework for approaching Revelation which allows the reader to listen to the tensions and the harmonies, the ‘major’ allusions and the ‘minor’ ones and that ultimately affirms the fact that the text defies all boundaries, whilst preventing it from collapsing in upon itself through deconstruction.


Interpreting the Psalms at Qumran: The Use of Psalms Passages in the Sectarian Scrolls
Program Unit: Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity
Peter W. Flint, Trinity Western University

This paper begins by identifying citations of, and allusions to, passages from the Book of Psalms among the sectarian scrolls found at Qumran, in three groups: use with citation formulae, clear quotations, and clear allusions. I then consider whether these citations or allusions concentrate on any sections of the Psalter, and whether they predominate in specific periods of the history of the Yahad movement (the Qumranite group). The final section identifies sectarian themes in the use of Psalms by the sectarian scrolls, such as the Psalms Pesharim, the Commmunity Rule, and the Hodayot. Themes that emerge include group identity formation, liturgical modeling, and eschatological emphases.


Eugene Nida and the Chinese Bible: Four-Character Set Phrase as an Ideal Candidate for Implementing the Theory of Functional Equivalence in Biblical Translation in Chinese
Program Unit: Bible Translation
Toshikazu S. Foley, Holy Light Theological Seminary

This paper provides a critical assessment of Eugene Nida’s influences and his continuing legacies upon the practice of biblical translation in Chinese, and argues for the use of four-character set phrases as an ideal candidate for implementing the theory of functional equivalence. Built upon the author’s previous comprehensive survey of the use of four-character set phrases (primarily those stereotyped phrases known as chéngyu) in more than two dozens of New Testament versions in Chinese, this paper primarily deals with the linguistic aspect of set phrases in the light of Nida’s translation theory. In addition to common four-character set phrases typically derived from classical Chinese literature, this study also investigates the intriguing “Christian four-character set phrases” such as yi-yan-huán-yan, yi-yá-huán-yá (“eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth,” Matt 5:38), which are in fact derived from the Chinese Bible. Such Christian four-character set phrases provide convincing evidence of the general reader’s acceptance to idiomatic translation of biblical concept, and thus justify the use of four-character set phrases in the Chinese Bible as an effective way to implement Nida’s theory.


My Four Cubits of Sabbath Movement in the World: A Rabbinic Theology of Place
Program Unit: Sabbath in Text and Tradition
Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert, Stanford University

In his popular treatise The Sabbath - A Palace in Time, A.J. Heschel famously claimed that Judaism is concerned more with the holiness of time, indeed that it is a religion of time, rather than of space. His argument in part hinges on the choice of the biblical editors to open the Torah with Genesis 1 and its emphasis on the temporal dimension of creation. Rabbinic Judaism, however, very much was interested in enhancing the spatiality of the Sabbath observance, as well as the theological underpinnings of that. In this paper, I analyze the rabbinic insistence – contrary to Heschel’s overemphasis on the dimension of time in Jewish religiosity – on considering the emplacement of Sabbath observance. I argue that the rabbinic cultivation of a consciousness of place, a focus on being “here,” in “this place,” precisely in the context of discussing sacred time – the laws of the Sabbath - can be read as a form of cultivating one’s relationship to one’s immediate surroundings and hence one’s place in the created world. This in turn has profound implications for what could be thought of as a rabbinic theology of place. The textual material I am drawing from is the development of the Sabbath law in the Mishnah, in conjunction with its talmudic interpretation, specifically the sister tractates Shabbat and Eruvin. Much of the mishnaic tractate detailing the Sabbath prohibition of labor (Tractate Shabbat) focuses of the seemingly marginal prohibition of carrying, of moving things from one kind of space into another, from private into public, or from private into another private realm. At the same time, the Mishnah includes in its corpus another tractate developing a complicated system of ritual acts allowing Jews to circumvent precisely this prohibition, referred to (in shorthand) as the Eruv. Briefly, this system of ritual acts is designed to unify the residential community to such a degree that it allows Jews to dissolve boundaries between spaces and to carry from one realm into another. At the same time, this context of rabbinic-biblical law making also considers the issue of distances one is allowed to travel on the Sabbath, including a restriction of four cubits of moving oneself lest one has made ritual preparations to extend that limited space. My reading of this set of laws is based on my sense that much more is at stake for the rabbis than mere law making, or legal interpretation, especially since the symbolism of the ritual acts prescribed here much exceeds their legal function.


The Proper Role of Valency in Biblical Studies
Program Unit: International Syriac Language Project
A. Dean Forbes, University of the Free State

The usefulness of valency concepts in linguistic description and theoretical inquiry is well established, especially in dependency grammars. In non-dependency grammars, alternate formalisms are adopted (government, subcategorization, complementation), but both the resulting lexical-unit characterizations and theoretical insights are similar. In carrying out valency studies, analysts rely on: (1) intuition-based well-formed-ness assessments and/or (2) attestations in verb corpora. In Biblical Hebrew studies, the intuition-based approach may yield unreliable inferences due to its intrinsic vagueness or due to quite appropriate non-native-speaker uncertainty. The corpus-based approach risks faulty inferences when it: (1) fails to take confounding variables into account, (2) ignores the damaging effects of noise, or (3) is oblivious to the generalization-deflating effects of small sample sizes. This paper catalogues the operative debilitating phenomena and suggests how best to minimize their effects.


The Discourse Analysis of Dialogue
Program Unit: Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew
A. Dean Forbes, University of the Free State

The Andersen-Forbes grammar of phrases and clauses is a constituency grammar. Since we seek a unified representation as we move from phrase to clause to discourse, we express our discourse grammar as a constituency grammar. Rather than describing aspects of discourse in terms of levels—with their implied hierarchy—we work with four dimensions of discourse. We handle dialog by specifying an exchange dimension rather than by positing adjacency pairs. In this paper, we explain these ideas. We also apply them to the book of Ruth to determine whether the mechanisms of discontinuity and/or multidominance are required for the representation of dialog.


Gattung and Sitz im Leben: Methodological Vagueness in Defining "Wisdom Psalms"
Program Unit: Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
Tova Forti, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

The original setting of many psalms can be easily identified through hints to their cultic ritual or festival background. However the identification of the daily-life setting of the Wisdom psalm is much more complicated. Indicative features pointing to temple rituals or royal court ceremonies are not evident; nor are there any references to historical background or ideological traditions that might facilitate the identification of the cultural setting of Wisdom psalms. Moreover, the lack of consensus among scholars in defining criteria for identifying the Wisdom Psalm has evoked a methodological problem in regard to its origin and message. This paper will reevaluate the problem of how methodological imprecision with regard to the wisdom genre per se has affected negatively on the study of Psalms. Notwithstanding the insufficient accepted criteria for establishing the literary genre of Wisdom psalms, this paper will suggest four aspects in determining their link to the creative workshop of the circles of the wise men: a. Thematic and ideational features; b. Linguistic and stylistic aspects; c. Accumulation of wisdom vocabulary, and d. Figurative features.


Assessing 'The Formation of Q'
Program Unit: Q
Paul Foster, University of Edinburgh

A critical assessment of J.S. Kloppenborg's 'The Formation of Q'


Thomas Aquinas and the Multifaceted Literal Sense of Scripture
Program Unit: Christian Theology and the Bible
Stephen Fowl, Loyola University Maryland

Many modern Catholic biblical scholars find in Thomas Aquinas’ notion of the “literal sense” of Scripture a foundation for their own contemporary historical critical practice. Indeed, the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s document Interpretation of the Bible in the Church treats Thomas in just this way. This paper will argue that such a reading of Thomas misunderstands his notion of the literal sense of Scripture. Moreover, Thomas’ notion of the literal sense might be able to incorporate certain historical critical interpretations, but it requires interpreters to go well beyond the bounds of historical critical readings and seeks to regulate interpretation with a set of considerations that are largely ruled out of bounds by historical critics.


Teaching in a Roman Catholic University
Program Unit: Anglican Association of Biblical Scholars
Stephen Fowl, Loyola University Maryland

This paper will address particular issues and experiences teacing as an Anglican in a Roman Catholic context.


Effective-History and the Cultivation of Wise Interpreters
Program Unit: Theological Interpretation of Scripture
Stephen Fowl, Loyola University Maryland

There are a number of reasons biblical interpreters might have for attending to a biblical text's effective history. Such attention is not always directed to the same end. Moreover, scholars use terms such as Wirkungsgeschichte, effective-history and reception history in diverse ways. This paper will try to shift focus away from effective-history as one more interpretive method and toward the important role that effective history plays in cultivating wisdom among interpreters.


Gender, Status, and Intersubjectivity in 2 Corinthians 10–13
Program Unit: Paul and Politics
Arminta Fox, Drew University

In 2 Corinthians 10-13, Paul presents himself as both a Roman paterfamilias and a slave. This tension challenges scholarship that privileges an isolated feature of Paul to defend him as a hero of social transformation or declaim him as an imperial collaborator or misogynist. This paper explores how Paul's gendered self-presentation is malleable and complexly constructed in relation to his gendered presentations of the superapostles and the Corinthian community. Several scholars have begun to consider Paul's self-construction as a feminized or slave figure (J. Glancy, J.A. Harrill, D. Lopez). Others have considered the image of him as hyper masculine and as paterfamilias (D. Clines, C. Conway, J. Marchal, J. Larson). This scholarship tends to focus on Paul's complex identity alone, often ignoring the companion construction of his community of interpreters and interlocutors. Adopting a gender-critical feminist-rhetorical decolonizing method, this paper places the construction of gendered subjects in the letters within a context of debate (M. Johnson-DeBaufre and L. Nasrallah). I explore how the constructions of Paul as Roman general and paterfamilias, and of the Corinthians as conquered female daughter/slave function within Paul's negotiation of power. Then, I show how these constructions are complicated when Paul adopts a slave topos to serve his argument in relation to his competitor apostles and Corinthian interlocutors. Finally, I consider how these various constructions of Paul and his interlocutors function within communities of interpreters, and reflect on the implications of using this method to consider other Pauline letters.


Gauging Egyptian Influences on Biblical Literature
Program Unit: National Association of Professors of Hebrew
Michael V. Fox, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Gauging Egyptian Influences on Biblical Literature How do we know a foreign influence when we see one? And why should we bother? This paper asks about identifying Egyptian influences on Israelite literature and the value of applying the identifications to the study of the Bible. The paper will look at examples and try to situate them on two scales: one an epistemological scale ranging from certain to conjectural; the other an aesthetic scale ranging from sharp to pallid. The examples will be taken from wisdom literature, psalmody, and love songs.


Editorial Growth in the Book of Esther
Program Unit: Transmission of Traditions in the Second Temple Period
Michael V. Fox, University of Wisconsin-Madison

When we view the Masoretic book of Esther together with its translations, we find that some versions are distinct enough to be called “books” of Esther. The three under consideration here are the Alpha Text (AT), the Masoretic Text, and the Septuagint. Examination of these books in parallel allows us to see the editors at work. I will concentrate on at two phases of editing in which we can track the editors’ activity in some detail: (1) A Hebrew redactor (“RMT”, working with a Hebrew text close to the proto-AT (i.e., the AT prior to the Septuagintal additions and some attendant changes), developed a new version that became the MT-Esther. Aligning the proto-AT with the MT reveals some of the editorial intervention that produced the latter. (2) A later redactor (“RAT”) working in Greek without reference to the MT, transferred the LXX additions to the appropriate places in the proto-AT, thereby creating the AT as we know it. But he did not simply copy them. He reworded and reshaped them in subtle ways, in accordance with his own ideology. Aligning the AT Additions with their LXX parallels allows us to discern with some precision RAT’s techniques. The activity of these two editors will be examined in reverse order, because we must “undo” the second editor’s work to get closer to the text that the author of the MT author worked with. In both cases, my interest is in the kinds of systematic changes, both fine-grained and large-scale, that redactors introduced in the shaping of their new books. This paper is based on my 1989 publication, The Redaction of the Books of Esther (SBL Monograph Series). It goes beyond it in the attempt to consider how the editorial activity described fits into the broader picture of biblical editorial work.


Diverse Conceptions of Monotheism in the Priestly Corpus of the Pentateuch
Program Unit: Unity and Diversity in Early Jewish Monotheisms
David Frankel, Schechter Institue of Jewish Studies

The thesis of this paper is that the priestly corpus in the Pentateuch exhibits divergent tendencies with regard to the monotheistic conception. The divergence can be highlighted through the analysis of several priestly passages. On the one hand, the priestly patriarchal tradition displays a clear concern to remove the participation of angels, so predominant in the non-priestly traditions, from its narrative. Similarly, God is usualy depicted as much more transcendent thatn he is in the non-priestly parallels.A comparision of the priestly and non-priestly texts concerning the plauge of blood in Exodus 7 also shows an attempt by P to remove mythological conceptions of divine combat from its narration. On the other hand, the priestly account of creation depicts God surrounded by the divine council, the cherubim are set up as icons on top of the ark in Exodus, and Azazel seems to be a deity parallel to YHWH in Leviticus 16. It may also be argued from the formulation of Genesis 1:27 that mankind was created in the image of the gods, and these are thought of as both male and female. The motif of theomachy is clearly refered to in the reference to God's punishment of the gods of Egypt, and the gods of Canaan are apparantly refered to in the priestly passage of Numbers 14:9. Finally, nowhere do we find an explicit priestly denial of the reality of other gods the way we find in D material. Some of the apparently conflicting evidence may be harmonized, but the thesis of this paper is that several important conceptual distinctions lie behind the diverse material subsumed under the title P.


Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch as Torah
Program Unit: Homiletics and Biblical Studies
David Frankel, Schechter Institue of Jewish Studies

Are Homiletics and Higher Criticism of the Bible mutually exclusive? Do they belong to seperate spheres of discourse that do not intersect? Or might Higher Criticism of the Bible offer a positive contribution to homiletics. From a Jewish perspective, this question is most acute when dealing with the most sacred of texts, the Pentateuch. In this paper I propose to show from a Jewish perspective how higher criticism of the Pentateuch may indeed serve as the basis for a homiletical exposition of the text as Torah, i.e, religious and moral instruction. Several salient examples will be brought as a demonstration of the method employed.


Remarks on the Study of Ancient Magic
Program Unit: Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti
David Frankfurter, Boston University

This paper will review some of the principal issues surrounding the definition, description, and ongoing discussion of ancient magic, with particular attention to the agents of ritual expertise.


Female Terracotta Figurines from Late Antique Egypt as Evidence of Local Religion
Program Unit: Christianity in Egypt: Scripture, Tradition, and Reception
David Frankfurter, Boston University

Local religion involves a synthesis of great tradition and little tradition in the negotiation of landscape, social roles, spatial boundaries, and ritual practices, sometimes to the degree that the great tradition is no longer recognizable to an outsider. In this case, a great diversity of female figurines produced in coroplath workshops from Aswan to Karanis to the Abu Mina pilgrim city points to local religious practices performed under the aegis of Christianity (e.g., at saints' shrines) but without evident connection to Christian liturgy or mythology (i.e., they do not seem to represent Mary or Thekla). Their usage seems to have been predominantly votive, signifying a desired procreative body to deposit in hope, while the great diversity of these clay figurines points to an authochthonous, rather than imported or imposed, ritual tradition. This paper stems from a larger project on the local sites of Christianization.


A Longue Durée View and Jezreel in the 9th c BCE
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
Norma Franklin, University of Haifa

The important role of Jezreel in the history of the northern Kingdom of Israel will be revealed using the longue durée approach to examine Jezreel’s strategic location; a key factor that assured Jezreel’s continual occupation. This paper also presents a new 3-D model of the site of Jezreel-?????? recently produced using airborne laser (LiDAR) technology. The resultant model when georeferenced with aerial photographs, maps and past excavation results helps elucidate not only Biblical Jezreel but also Jezreel-Stradela of the Roman/Byzantine period, Jezreel-Le Petit Gérin of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, and Jezreel-Zerin the Ottoman village.


Kenosis and Longing in Philippians 2:7
Program Unit: Bible and Emotion
David E. Fredrickson, Luther Seminary

This paper challenges the widely held understanding of kenosis in Philippians 2:7 as an act of voluntary self-limitation in submission to a divine will. Emptying, it is argued, was rather the result of pothos (longing), an emotion conceptualized as eros mixed with grief over the absence of the beloved. This conceptualization of kenosis in ancient philology, poetry, and medicine makes it plausible that Phil 2:7 speaks of love-sickness, not humility. The fifth century C. E. lexicographer Hesychius equated erasai ("to pour forth," "to vomit," but also "to love") with kenosai. The linguistic curiosity that one and the same verb designates both loving and the pouring forth of liquid dovetails with erotic poetry’s portrayal of falling in love as the liquefaction and draining away of the lover's organs. Beginning with Sappho and continuing through Paulus Silentiarius, poetic texts offer many examples of longing’s melting effect on the innards of frustrated, separated, and grieving lovers. Similarly, ancient medical writers and some philosophers (Plato, for example) relied on melting and emptying to explain the origin of pain. The paper concludes with a brief account of Christian writers of the first fourteen centuries who read “he emptied himself” in Phil 2:7 as a description of Christ’s longing for communion.


“As Thy Grace Knoweth How”: Requests for Death and Divine Comeuppance in the Lives of the Eastern Saints by John of Ephesus
Program Unit: Syriac Literature and Interpretations of Sacred Texts
Todd French, Columbia University

When hagiography rose to prominence in the late antique world, John of Ephesus recorded the lives of numerous saintly figures. His thoughtful introduction to the Lives of the Eastern Saints indicates uneasiness with relating the marvelous deeds that these holy persons of God were able to accomplish. One can pinpoint this struggle in the first vignette of his compilation when the stories of the famous holy man, Habib, are recounted. Habib is accused by a wealthy landowner of coming out of his monastery to wander about and eat and drink. Deeply offended, Habib prays that God would do as his “grace knoweth how.” Immediately, his opponent is smitten with a withered body and later succumbs to death even though he begs for the holy man’s forgiveness. Habib declares that God’s judgment has already gone forth and cannot be recalled. This fascinating example of divine comeuppance serves as a typical trope within hagiographical narrative from the eastern side of the empire. Questions emerge as to why this framework for justice is continually reinforced in this period of Christian development. What does it say about the communities who propagate and honor these stories filled with divine comeuppance? Are these merely didactically oriented folk tales, intent on building faith in the unbeliever? This paper will argue that the inclination towards these themes and their subsequent rise in usage was far more nuanced and interesting. Although these themes draw on prior narratives like Elisha and the bears in 2 Kings 2 and Ananias and Saphira in Acts 5, something very different is happening in the Christian imagination during Late Antiquity. This paper will examine the underlying motivations for the rise in usage of God’s immediate comeuppance in relief to the background of Greco-Roman concepts of fated victory and divine favor. While arguing that divine comeuppance is a significant theme in Byzantine hagiographical texts, this paper will examine the reception and transmission of these literary tropes that directly engage questions of providence confronting early Christian communities. Focusing on these remarkable examples of holy requests for death, the paper also will ask how divine comeuppance was conceived and translated from scripture into a source of faith in early Byzantine narratives. Drawing on the numerous examples found in John’s Lives, the paper will show that these instances of comeuppance are not simply the pitiful attempts of a “popular” religion to promote their brand of belief. Rather, in keeping with Peter Brown and his critique of this supposed two tiered system, I will show that these narratives are the translation of the intricate, and often private, ascetic practice into a broader economy of holiness that was meant to explain Christianity’s prominence and promote its standing as the religion of the Empire.


A Historian's Take
Program Unit: Historiography and the Hebrew Bible
Anthony J. Frendo, University of Malta

This paper will respond to the papers in this session, discussing how their observations about village life and economies in greater Palestine in the Iron Age can be used in writing histories of ancient Israel.


The Discourse Function of DE in the Septuagint Minor Prophets
Program Unit: International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies
Christopher Fresch, University of Cambridge

Scholars have traditionally examined the Septuagint translators as working in very small units at a time. This position could be challenged by greater attention to larger discourse units and, in particular, to discourse markers. I contend that the particle de is one such marker and is used to constrain the reader to understand what follows the particle to be a new development in the discourse. The particle de has traditionally been described by grammars and lexicons as primarily an adversative particle. Although de is found in contrastive contexts, one can find many occurrences of it that clearly do not express contrast and seem to be functioning in various different ways. To account for this, de has often been assigned a plethora of semantic functions. This resulting multiplicity of functions of de might be better explained as deriving from the context in which the particle appears, rather than from de itself. Owing to work in discourse analysis by scholars such as Stephen Levinsohn and Steven Runge, a different approach to de has been offered. Levinsohn and Runge understand the particle to have a discourse function: marking development. This description of de has advantages over the more traditional explanations, in that this single constraint can more consistently explain many more instances of the particle. In the Septuagint Minor Prophets, de frequently appears in contexts in which there is observable development in the discourse. In many of these instances, an adversative function cannot be assigned to de due to the semantic constraints of its context. A correct understanding of the function of de could offer insights to discussions regarding the Septuagint translators and translation technique, in that, the use of the particle implies both a concern for the wider context and deliberation regarding what constitutes a development, on the part of the translator.


The Form and Function of the Ark Cherubim
Program Unit: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Bible
Daniel A. Frese, Franklin & Marshall College

This paper will discuss the form and function of the cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant as described in the Hebrew Bible, and thus the function of the Ark itself (viz., as throne, footstool, or other). The most common position is that these creatures are related to the cherubim-flanked thrones known from ANE iconography, and thus have something to do with Yahweh’s enthronement in the Holy of Holies of the tabernacle/temple – even if we are unsure of the exact configuration of the cherubim on the Ark. The evidence for this position will be reviewed, which includes the correlation of cherubim with thrones/chariots in the ANE, various depictions of Yahweh riding or being enthroned on cherubim, the temple being Yahweh's house and his residing there in some sense, the ark being called his footstool, etc. A recent and novel proposal about the form and function of these cherubim by R. Eichler will also be addressed, and his arguments against the consensus position and for his own view will be appraised. Finally, a slightly-modified consensus view will be presented wherein the form of the cherubim will be elucidated based on parallels in ANE iconography. This proposal both clarifies the consensus view and solves some of the difficulties mentioned by Eichler.


Text and Artifact: The Emergence of the Menorah as the Symbol of Ancient Judaism in Coins, Mosaics, Murals, Glass, and Pottery
Program Unit: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Bible
Richard Freund, University of Hartford

The menorah, the (seven-branched) candelabrum mentioned in the book of Exodus and throughout the Hebrew Bible became one of the few iconic renderings found (in different manifestations) on a variety of artifacts from the Iron Age through the Byzantine period in both the Diaspora and the Land of Israel. The meaning of the menorah in antiquity seems to have undergone a series of incarnations but by the Byzantine period it emerges as the unique symbol for Judaism, replacing the pentagram and hexagram as well as the Torah Shrine, Tabernacle/Temple artifacts and the image of the Temple as the unique symbol of Judaism. This paper will begin with the earliest renderings of a precursor to the menorah, the so-called “sacred tree,” image that does appear on seals and seal amulets in the Iron Age but is not a unique symbol of the Israelites or the Judeans. The majority of symbols of the early Iron Age Judean and Israelite seals, are animals, (both real and mythological), agricultural products, as well as human figures and they were replaced with some aniconic images by the end of the Iron Age. The menorah can be seen as an aniconic image and it may be that this characteristic may have contributed to its preservation into the Persian and Greco-Roman periods. Images of the artifacts of the Jews changed from the Iron Age to the Persian period but the transition to the Greek period and the appearance of coinage iconography provides a good opportunity for an image make-over and consolidation for Jewish iconography. From the first century BCE through the Byzantine period, both in the Diaspora and in Israel, the menorah emerges as the predominant symbol for Judaism. It appears that the menorah was the symbol of choice of the rabbinic movement (both in the Diaspora and Israel) in opposition to images that became associated with the early Christians. In this paper in addition to coin evidence I will examine evidence from oil lamps, mosaics, murals, glass, and metals in order to determine why the menorah became so prominent by the end of the Byzantine period.


The Star of Redemption: How the Star Became the Aniconic Symbol of Ancient Judaism
Program Unit: Art and Religions of Antiquity
Richard Freund, University of Hartford

The rosette and the more stylized pentagram and hexagram (star) began as important symbols of the Israelites and Judeans but continued to be used as a symbol of the Jews in the Greco-Roman period and beyond. My thesis is that the symbol of the star (in both the hexagram and pentagram forms) continued to be an important symbol because of its aniconic nature. Geometric symbols were originally popular among artisans because of the ease of their production but also because they seem to have preserved a distinctive meaning among other ancient near eastern populations. It is clear that the similarly styled petalled rosette, for example, which had been a symbol of the sun in the ancient near east in one form, and the whirling wheel (multi-branched, wavy lined), and the symbol of the moon in another form (among the Mesopotamians) survived in use by the Jews into the Roman period both because it was meaningful and easily reproduced. During the Iron Age, forms of rosettes and stars are found on Judean and Israelite seals, but by the 3rd century BCE, the star may have been re-introduced in Judea with new and unexpected political and religious meanings. A collection of stamped jar handles found just outside of Jerusalem with the pentagram prominently displayed and the name of Jerusalem spelled out in paleo-Hebrew between the star’s points is just one example of how it had become accepted by Jews in a very early period. In this same period, the text of the Testament of Solomon shows that the star was a symbol of Divine power: “[The Lord gave the] archangel Michael a ring which had a seal engraved with a five pointed star . . .”


Ending with the High Priest: The Hierarchy of Priests in the Book of Numbers
Program Unit: Pentateuch
Christian Frevel, Ruhr-Universität Bochum

Looking at the priests in the book of Numbers, it is striking that there seems to be a consistent schema throughout: There are no levitical priests, as in Deuteronomy, but rather Aaronides only are priests. Interestingly, the title high priest (???? ?????) is introduced twice at the end of the book. Thus the hierarchy of the priestly organization seems to be quite clear: The Levites are subordinated to the Aaronides explicitly (Num 3:6; 18:2). This is underlined by the story of Korach, Datan, and Abiram (e.g. Num 16:10). It is further remarkable that there are only two instances of kohanîm in Numbers: In the genealogy in Num 3:3, where Aaron and his four sons are mentioned, and in Num 10:8, where the sons of Aaron shall blow the signal to set off with the two trumpets. Thus in the narrative, Eleazar and Itamar blow the trumpet. All other instances in which the title kohen is used refer to a single specific priest, namely, Aaron, Eleazar, or Itamar. Thus on the narrative level the priestly circle seems limited to a small family tradition. The perspective is broken up in Num 18:1, where the social unit of the father's house is addressed.


The Presentation of the Jewish Christian Gospel Fragments in the New Hennecke: Major Decisions, Continuity, and Changes
Program Unit: Christian Apocrypha
Joerg Frey, Universität Zürich

The presentation of the Jewish Gospel fragments in the Hennecke handbook has been largely unchanged since the third edition. Now, in the new seventh edition, there is a completely new presentation which continues some of the lines of the earlier articles by Vielhauer and Strecker, but makes some important changes. This paper will give a brief introduction to the new presentation and the major decisions made for this new edition of the classical handbook.


Sabbath in Egypt? An Examination of Exodus 5
Program Unit: Sabbath in Text and Tradition
Mathilde Frey, Adventist International Institute of Advanced Studies

This study will present several indicators from the narrative of Exod 5, which in their entirety may suggest the practice of Sabbath keeping among the Israelite slaves in Egypt. One such indicator is the verb shabat, “cease,” a verb that marks the seventh day of the creation week with the quality of divine Sabbath rest. Its particular form and use in v. 5 entails various semantic notions, such as the idea that the Israelites ceased from their slave labors regularly. In addition, contextual, structural, and discourse elements allow for a reading that is indeed telling with regard to the Israelites’ social status and the impact of a possible Sabbath cessation. Finally, certain verbal expressions link with Exod 23:12, a Sabbath text that is embedded in the exodus narratives of slavery and freedom. All these indicators when taken together allow for a Sabbath motivated reading of Exod 5. The implications of such a reading tell of a world that longs for restored identities and renewed relationships.


Madness or Moderation? Inspired Speech in Euripides’ Bacchae and Acts 26
Program Unit: Formation of Luke and Acts
Courtney J. P. Friesen, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

This paper argues that when Acts 26, in particular its treatment of mania and sophrosyne, is read in conversation with Euripides’ Bacchae, new insights into Luke’s larger religious and literary project emerge. Both Acts and the Bacchae narrate resistance to “new” divinities and, given the widespread popularity of this tragedy in antiquity, similarities between the two would have held particular resonance for Luke and his readers. Although some scholars have found extensive parallels between two narratives—not least that both Dionysus and Jesus speak the proverb, “to kick against the goads” (Acts 26:14; Bacch. 794-95)—and others have analyzed the philosophical context for Luke’s treatment of the moral virtue of sophrosyne and its opposition with mania, there has been little attention to how these two avenues of research may be brought together. I suggest that Luke’s emphasis on Paul’s repudiation of madness (ou mainomai) and on the nature of Paul’s speech as aletheias kai sophrosynes rhemata (26:25) should be understood in contrast to traditional Greek associations of inspired speech with madness. The Bacchae is unique among Euripidean tragedy in that it problematizes a traditional dichotomy between sophrosyne and mania by positing a sophrosyne that can and must embrace mania. Pentheus’ attempt to champion sophrosyne to the exclusion of Dionysiac cult is shown in the end paradoxically to be a fatal mania. Among the benefits of embracing Dionysiac madness suggested in the Bacchae is oracular inspiration (298-301), a claim that later readers of the play interpret as drunkenness. In contrast to the Bacchae, Luke presents Paul’s conversion as a repudiation of mania and its replacement with sophrosyne. Paul’s insistence in 26:25 that he speaks words of sophrosyne resonates with Luke’s concern in Acts 2 to demonstrate that the apostles’ glossolalia was both intelligible and not the result of drunkenness as their critics supposed. In Acts 26, Luke disrupts the expectations of the educated Greek reader first with Paul’s assertion that Jesus spoke a familiar Greek proverb in Hebrew dialect then by the claim that inspired speech derives from sophrosyne not mania.


Inconspicuous Consumption: Reconstructing Average Diets in the Ancient Mediterranean World Using Stable Isotope Analysis
Program Unit: Meals in the Greco-Roman World
Steven Friesen, University of Texas at Austin

Many research projects have used stable isotope analysis of skeletal material to determine average diets for inhabitants in the easternMediterranean region. Some of these projects have also attempted to correlate diet to factors such as gender, age, economic status, and local resources. This paper surveys results from those projects, discussing problems with the materials and possible implications for the study of ancient religious phenomena.


Revelation and 4 Ezra: Plotting Two Jewish Apocalypses
Program Unit: John's Apocalypse and Cultural Contexts Ancient and Modern
Steven J. Friesen, University of Texas at Austin

This paper compares Revelation and 4 Ezra using a narratological approach in order to examine the ways in which both of them deploy the traditions of Israel. Four features of the text provide focal points for analysis: the characterization of the narrator, the depiction of messiah and opponents, and the role of Jerusalem. The result is a clearer literary description of two Jewish apocalypses. Fourth Ezra draws on Israel's heritage of wisdom, visionary, and legal materials to develop a plot about keeping Torah—a range of practices that distinguished Israel from other nations. Revelation, on the other hand, fails to articulate a clear unified plot. Instead of a plot, Revelation employs a range of plot patterns from Israel's prophetic and visionary heritage, giving special prominence to divine warrior and sacrifice imagery, thereby invoking two plot patterns that Israel shared with other nations.


Translations, Adaptations, and Transformations of Scripture in Flavius Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews
Program Unit: Ideology, Culture, and Translation
Martin Friis, Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen

According to the proem to his work Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus aims to present a depiction of the Jewish people's past and the political constitution “translated from the Hebrew scriptures” (Ant 1,5). However taken at face value this so-called “translation” can hardly be characterized as verbatim – just as Josephus’ literary treatment of the Scriptures should certainly not be seen as an attempt on his part to reproduce any kind of formal equivalence between his work and the Vorlage. As it will be demonstrated in this paper Josephus’ approach to the Scriptures can best be described as highly creative. This creative nature of his particular use of the Scriptures can among other things be seen in the minute care that he pays to the depiction of the Biblical characters – in the sense that he subjects them to a rigorous and highly meticulous literary rewriting process, where he eliminates certain character traits, while other traits are being embellished or transformed. All of this in an attempt to provide his readers with an easily intelligible narrative, which Louis Feldman (et al.) so often has pointed out. The aim of this paper is to examine Josephus' highly creative literary use of the Scriptures taking the various ways in which he “translates”, adapts and transforms the story of King David, Bathsheba, Uriah and the subsequent encounter with Nathan the Prophet (2 Sam 11,1-12,25 in Ant 7,130-158) as the point of departure. Special emphasis will be laid on Josephus’ depiction of the characters, his treatment of the theological ramifications of the story with regards to the notion of divine punishment and the role of the prophet in this particular narrative (as well as elsewhere in the Antiquities).


Tobit as an Authoritative Book in Qumran
Program Unit: Function of Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
Ida Fröhlich, Pázmány Péter Katolikus Egyetem

The book of Tobit was found in Qumran in fragments of several Aramaic and Hebrew copies. Tobit is generally characterized as a ’Diasporanovelle’, a book offering guideline and authoritative illustration for behaviour for those living in the diaspora. However, usual diaspora motifs of the story like the demand of the keeping of the Law (illustrated by Tobit’s practice of giving alms, keeping the Sabbath and the feasts etc.), and that of the practice of endogamy are added by special ideals like the demand of the proper burial of the dead. Ideas and motifs like prayers ascending to heaven, an angelic service before God’s throne, the angelic help and guidance for the pious called forth by their prayers, the exorcistic practice performed with angelic help, and the angelic teachings given to a pious group – all these serve as models and examples for the life of a special group. Qumran belief in angels and demons is mentioned in Josephus and is well documented in Qumran texts; Qumran writings include also apotropaic texts. The idea of the angelic service in the heavenly sanctuary is documented in Qumran works like the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice. Regarding the number of the copies found in Qumran and the fact of the presence of a Hebrew text of Tobit beside the copies in Aramaic it can be supposed that Tobit was an authoritative book in the community; a book that aimed at giving guideline and authoritative illustration for behaviour for a special group, the Essene branch living in families.


Tetrateuch, Hexateuch, or Enneateuch? The Literary Status of the Deuteronomistic History
Program Unit: Deuteronomistic History
Serge Frolov, Southern Methodist University

Martin Noth’s concept of Deuteronomistic History has been increasingly challenged in recent years, with a steadily growing number of scholars asking whether Deuteronomy-Kings or Joshua-Kings indeed qualifies as history and whether the latter can be properly termed Deuteronomistic. Few, if any, questions have been raised, however, about the most basic, if largely unspoken, premise of Noth’s Deuteronomistic hypothesis – that Deuteronomy-Kings is a self-contained literary composition. The purpose of the present paper is to fill the gap by analyzing the literary structure of the biblical text, both within what Noth saw as the Deuteronomistic corpus and beyond it, as indicated by explicit structural signals and such implicit means as syntactic layout, pattern of generic variations, and continuity of content. Based on this analysis, the paper concludes that Deuteronomy-Kings is indeed a literary unit. In that sense, Noth’s idea of drawing a major boundary between it and the Tetrateuch (Genesis-Numbers) is preferable to alternative models, such as the concept of the Hexateuch (Genesis-Joshua) supplemented by Judges-Kings that dominated biblical scholarship before Noth and the traditional configuration of the biblical corpora (the Torah plus the Former Prophets). At the same time, the putative Deuteronomistic History is not a composition in its own right that emerged and circulated independently, as Noth seems to have believed, but rather an integral part of a larger whole – Genesis-Kings, or the Enneateuch that presents itself as a product of scribal activity in Babylonian exile.


“You Should Certainly Set a King over Yourself”: Judges 9 as a Deuteronomistic Text
Program Unit: Joshua-Judges
Serge Frolov, Southern Methodist University

The story of Abimelech in Judges 9 has usually been interpreted as a broadside against kingship. To cite just two examples, Martin Buber characterized the “trees choose a king” fable in vv. 8-15 as “the strongest anti-monarchical poem of world literature,” and Frank Crüsemann included the chapter among the few biblical texts that unambiguously reject the monarchy. Construed in this way, Judges 9 clashes with the balance of the book that seems to build towards the switch to kingship by tracing progressive deterioration of the institute of judgeship and Israel’s plummeting fortunes under it and, in the last five chapters, explicitly and repeatedly pointing towards the absence of a monarch as the cause of the people’s misfortunes. The alleged political stance of the chapter also poorly fits in with the cautious but generally positive attitude towards kingship in Deut 17:14-20 and such Deuteronomistic pieces as 2 Samuel 7. Examining the literary layout and rhetoric of Judges 9, with a special reference to Jotham’s discourse in vv. 7-20, the paper argues that the outlook implicitly operative in both is in fact pro-monarchic. The narrator not only implies that under different circumstances Abimelech’s monarchy would have succeeded, but also caricatures his opponents and, most importantly, traces the entire fracas back to Gideon’s refusal to accept the crown (Judg 8:23) – in perfect agreement with the Deuteronomic prescription (17:14-15) that kingship should be installed as soon as the people feel like it. Abimelech’s story consequently presents itself as an integral element of Judges and the Deuteronomistic composition.


Poetics and Method: Varieties of Literary Style and "Argument" in Kierkegaard's Writings
Program Unit: Søren Kierkegaard Society
Rick Furtak, Colorado College

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The Sage and His "Other": Is "He" Merely a Literary or Also a Social Construct?
Program Unit: Midrash
Eszter K. Fuzessy, Universität Wien

In rabbinic texts that portray a dialogue between Sages and “Outsiders to the tradition” – such as a min, a goy, m/Matrona, just to name a few – the “Outsiders” are clearly literary constructs in the discourse of rabbinic literature. The raison d’être of their appearance opposite the Sages in these texts is the necessity to have a counterpart to the “rabbinic” Sage whom these texts are trying to propagate – and who was, in the period in which these texts originate, no less a literary construct that the “Outsiders” themselves. In my paper I would like to analyze the dialogues and other rabbinic texts in which “Outsiders to the tradition” play a major role from a different angle. My main goal this time is to decide whether behind the literary figures we can actually detect a social construct in rabbinic texts themselves, i.e., whether we can actually describe in any meaningful way the “Outsiders” other than being the counterpart of the rabbinic Sages. Only in this way can we, in my opinion, even begin thinking about the question whether such dialogues in rabbinic literature as well as other texts that portray interaction or conflict between rabbinic Sages and their “Others” can be used for the historical reconstruction of the interaction of different groups – within or without Judaism – in the rabbinic period.


Biblical Atrocities as a Transposable Program across Time: 1 Maccabees and Nuremberg
Program Unit: Violence and Representations of Violence in Antiquity
Kathy L. Gaca, Vanderbilt University

Since September 11th and prior, the OT rationales for collective violence by the Lord’s Israelite adherents against religiously alien peoples in the promised land have come under scholarly critique. This attention has made biblical studies an important player in exploring how and why organized social violence against targeted peoples can gain a cachet of legitimacy and righteousness. One research area has explored transposable biblical intolerance and atrocities, in which the social identities corresponding to the Lord’s Israelites and the religiously alien peoples under attack go through revisionism across time to provide new pretexts of biblical justification for a wide range of biblically motivated social violence (Gaca HTR 1999, Collins, JBL 2003). My paper extends this research on updating biblical atrocities in two ways, both of which concern populace-ravaging warfare. The first pertains to 1 Maccabees (160s BCE), which represents a Hellenistic Jewish martial adaptation of problematic early Israelite principles of warfare in Numbers and Deuteronomy. Mattathias, from a priestly Jerusalem family (2:1-4), is Phineas, here slaughtering a Jewish worshipper at the pagan altar of Modin (2:23-26). Similarly, when Judas Maccabaeus and his forces create their Jewish people’s army, they do so by following the Lord’s ninth-century BCE directive in Deuteronomy 20:14 for ancient Israelite forces: Judas and his forces kill all the males, young and old, in Bozrah, Alema, and Ephron (1 Macc 5:28, 35, 51), while subjugating and coopting alive the women and girl inhabitants. Second are Nazi comments from the Nuremberg Trials that pertain to the total extermination policy of biblical herem. In Joshua, the Lord God’s martial terror cuts a narrative swath of total extermination in the lands claimed as Israelite. With the Lord giving the directive, Israelite forces are said to have killed off everyone living in Jericho, Ai, Makkedah, Libnah, Lachish, Hebron, Eglon, and throughout the whole region, regardless of the attacked people’s sex or age or social status—male and female; elders, adults, children, and infants; kingly and commoner alike (6:21, 8:25-27, 10:28-39, 10:40, 11:16). This miracle-induced violence resists an easy historicizing and has led to a conflicting stalemate in reputable scholarly efforts to understand its import. By one interpretation, these goings-on in Joshua are a fearsome braggadocio with little or no grip on social reality, one ultra-terrifying war story about the Lord as Terminator. A conflicting scholarly interpretation acknowledges that some of this martial violence must have been real, insofar as herem practices are also attested in the Moabite Mesha inscription and in the Assyrian annals (Kern, Ancient Siege Warfare 1999: 63-64). By a disreputable yet grimly influential Nazi Christian understanding, however, this biblical ideology of total extermination was used as a justification by Streicher, among others, for making a pre-emptive strike on European Jews before they could bring the frightful likes of Joshua to the doorsteps of European Christendom (IMT 12: 974; NMT 9: 1184).


Exploring the Rural Hinterland of First and Second Temple Jerusalem: The Archaeology of the Repha'im Valley
Program Unit: Historiography and the Hebrew Bible
Yuval Gadot, Tel Aviv University

Scholars have generally emphasized the close ties between the city of Jerusalem and its rural hinterland. While always important, these ties are of special importance during the late Iron Age II period (8th-7th centuries BCE), when Jerusalem’s urban growth was at its peak and the Kingdom of Judah came under Imperial domination. How did Jerusalem sustain itself as an urban environment as it mushroomed into a city covering over 50 hectares? Did the demands of the imperial yoke cause exploitation of the countryside? Was there a sophisticated administrative system that promised that rural agricultural production and crop collection would satisfy both local and global demands? Thus far, these and other related questions have been addressed by a view from the center—primarily by excavations conducted in Jerusalem; surprisingly little is known about the nature of the rural landscape. The purpose of the presentation will be to address these issues by viewing them not from the center out, but from the hinterland in—from the vantage point of Jerusalem’s economic cradle. New data from Nahal Repha'im in general and the excavations at Kh. er-Ras, one of the best preserved rural Iron Age settlements in the Jerusalem hinterlands, in particular, will be presented and evaluated in order to gain better understanding of the Jerusalem's political, social and economical history.


From Slavery to Slavery: No Exodus for Trafficked Women in Israel
Program Unit: Slavery, Resistance, and Freedom
Wil Gafney, Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia

There are two iconic expressions that capture the liberation of the Exodus: shalach et ‘ami – “Let my people go” and “The Holy One brought us out of Egypt out of the house of slavery.” The verb in the second expression y-tz-’, is the primary verb of the Exodus. Yet Ex 21:7, proclaims, lo tetze’, “she shall not go out.” Under what circumstances could a woman’s liberation be abrogated, her Exodus annulled and she returned to bondage? If her father decides to sell her into slavery, which is thinly disguised sex-slavery, the liberating acts of God, Miryam and Moshe are of no avail to her. This paper will explore sexual/reproductive slavery in the Hebrew Bible signified by the terms amah and shiphchah. The terms are used together and so interchangeably that it is no longer possible to distinguish between them. Both seem to refer primarily to foreign women; Lev 25:44 stipulates that they should be bought from foreigners. However, a survey of the relevant passages does not indicate that these women are entirely or preferentially non-Israelite. Exodus 21:17 allows for an Israelite man to sell his daughter as an amah-slave for sexual use and places no limitations on him as it pertains to selling his daughter into sexual subjugation, he can do so for any or no reason. I translate amah and/or shiphchah as “womb-slave.” In these cases the girls are given by other women to men for sex for the express purpose of impregnating them. This is forcible surrogacy. The term “sex-slave” may conjure up abducted girls imprisoned in dungeons whose stories litter contemporary news-reports. In modernity, sex-slaves are kidnapped and trafficked women and girls (and sometimes boys) forced to have sex with one or more men for the duration of their captivity, and are sometimes forced to bear their captor’s children. If their captors force them to perform other services – dealing drugs, soliciting other victims, domestic chores, etc. – that does not mitigate against their sexual enslavement. I am calling these women in the bible sex-slaves to make their sexual servitude visible and to center it for the religious reader/hearer of these texts, not to suggest that they do not perform any other duties. I conclude with some reflections on the sexual abuse of enslaved African women in the Americas and Caribbean. The pervasiveness of Israelite sexual servitude of women from their own people in addition to other peoples stands in sharp contrast to the sexual subjugation of African and Native women by European colonizers. There seems to be no biblical, Israelite equivalent of the construct of white ladihood, particularly that reified and constructed in the American South. This also means that there is no exact biblical corollary to the wholesale depiction of black and brown women’s bodies as publicly sexually available, promiscuous and uniquely suited for sexual depravity that undergirds and frames American history and contemporary culture.


Re-learning the ABC's: Archaeology, Bible, and Culture Converge: Exploring Galilee as a Possible Setting for Matthew's Gospel Community
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
Aaron M. Gale, West Virginia University

In this paper I will argue that recent archaeological discoveries in Galilee can shed much light on the nature of early Jewish Christianity, specifically as it relates to Matthew’s Gospel. In fact, archaeology is often under-utilized and in some cases ignored as a valid tool alongside scholars’ textual analyses of the Gospels, particularly as it relates to historical and socio-economic reconstructions of the various communities associated with these biblical texts. Using Matthew’s Gospel as a test case (and presuming that the text was written from Galilee), I will fuse textual and historical methods with relevant archaeological evidence in order to try and produce a clearer picture of this Gospel community. I will focus on two aspects of Matthean studies: the community’s economic status and religious inclination. First, I will sketch the economic and religious environments present in ancient Galilee through a brief survey of recent findings from Sepphoris and Bethsaida (where I have dug for several years). Second, I will examine any associated prevailing tendencies apparent in Matthew's Gospel through a textual analysis of passages related to wealth and religious inclinations (i.e. 5.3, 17-19; 6.19-21; 10.5-6; 15.24; 19.16-22, etc.). In the course of this textual examination, I will also utilize other relevant contemporary texts, including the works of Josephus and the rabbis. I contend that the archaeological evidence, when coupled with a thorough textual examination, will prove that the Matthean community was wealthy and remained a conservative Jewish Christian group that still adhered to the Torah laws. Hence, this study will show that archaeology remains a vital partner in the relationship between scholar and text.


Writings Labelled “Apocrypha" in Latin Sources of the Fourth and Fifth Centuries
Program Unit: Function of Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
Edmon L. Gallagher, Heritage Christian University

Modern scholars speak regularly of the canonical books and the apocrypha, and sometimes trace the modern (Catholic and Protestant) distinctions between these classifications to the fourth century. This paper will examine the use of the term apocrypha in the crucial fourth century among Latin writers, also carrying the investigation into the early-fifth century. Our first finding will be that few Latin writers of this period use the term apocrypha very frequently. It appears rarely or never in the works of Hilary of Poitiers, Ambrose of Milan, Ambrosiaster, Rufinus of Aquileia, Priscillian, and Pelagius. On the other hand, Jerome (39x) and Augustine (21x) use the word much more often. We will investigate the reception of the works labelled apocrypha by all of these Latin writers. Which works receive this designation? Does this term carry positive or negative connotations for each Latin author? Even when an author uses the term pejoratively, does he still allow for some useful material in the work so labelled? Do these Latin authors agree with each other concerning which works should be considered apocrypha, and do they agree with their Greek and Latin predecessors in this judgment? Our examination will reveal a variety of possible nuances in the word and a variety of works branded by the designation. We will especially seek to clarify why some authors choose the term apocrypha to categorize certain works that would not be classified in the same way by other authors.


The Patristic Reception of Zechariah ben Jehoiada
Program Unit: Greek Bible
Edmon L. Gallagher, Heritage Christian University

The Old Greek of 2 Chronicles 24:20 speaks of a character named Azariah son of Jodae, whereas the Masoretic Text calls this person Zechariah son of Jehoiada. This alteration of names had a significant impact on the patristic interpretation of Matt. 23:35 // Lk. 11:51, a dominical statement referencing the blood of Abel and Zechariah. While most modern scholars locate Jesus’ Zechariah in 2 Chron. 24:20, this interpretation was not obvious to the Fathers who did not find the name Zechariah in this passage, bur rather Azariah. For instance, Origen knows the character of 2 Chron. 24:20 by his traditional LXX name (Azariah), so that this passage from Chronicles never appears in Origen’s multiple discussions of Matt. 23:35. Instead, Origen relates this Zechariah to the canonical prophet, or alternatively to the father of John the Baptist. However, Josephus does attest the name Zechariah in his retelling of 2 Chron. 24 (A.J. 9.168–71), and this may have been the source for a confused statement by John Chrysostom regarding the Zechariah mentioned by Jesus. Nevertheless, it does not seem that the Fathers were able to confidently link the Zechariah of Matt. 23:35 to the character in 2 Chron. 24, in the manner of modern scholars, until Jerome argued forcefully for this identification, partly at least, it seems, so that it would allow him to display his knowledge of Hebrew, demonstrate its great usefulness for biblical exegesis, and highlight the insufficiency of relying on a Greek translation of scripture.


Understanding Joseph as a Forced Migrant
Program Unit: Exile (Forced Migrations) in Biblical Literature
Garrett Galvin, Franciscan School of Theology

The purpose of this paper is to examine the portrayal of Joseph as a forced migrant. Much debate surrounds the function of Joseph within the novella at the end of the Book of Genesis. I propose to understand this novella as a piece of wisdom literature directed to Jews in the diaspora. The Joseph Story may reflect the concerns of many Jews after the Babylonian Exile who were living in the diaspora. Joseph has commonly been viewed as a story reflecting the time of its setting in the Late Bronze Age. I would like to investigate the Egyptian setting of this story in order to argue for a new understanding of the story. I will start from the notion that Egypt can serve as a place of refuge as easily as a house of bondage. Many refugees fled to Egypt during the conquest of Jerusalem at the beginning of the Sixth Century BCE. The Joseph Story can be read as directions for their survival and adaptation into Egypt and other foreign countries. Although Joseph is set in the distant past, the many Aramaisms and thematic similarities with Daniel suggest a different social setting than the apparent setting. When Joseph is understood in a later setting, the audience of the story will also be perceived differently. The plight of a man sold into slavery is disturbing, but probably a distant concern for many ancient readers. When the reader focuses on Jospeh’s challenges as a forced migrant, Joseph’s story becomes more pertinent to the everyday lives of many more readers. Special attention will be paid to Joseph’s interaction with women in Egypt where we can see parallels with the two women of Proverbs 9 in the lives of Potiphar’s wife and Asenath.


The Distinctive Features of Ezekiel's God in Light of Pentateuchal Traditions
Program Unit: Book of Ezekiel
Tova Ganzel, Bar-Ilan University

An examination of all the places in Ezekiel in which God speaks in the first person shows the presence of many repeated phrases that are specific to Ezekiel and do not appear in this form in either the Priestly literature or Deuteronomy. Among others, these expressions include: (??) ???? ???? (5:11; 7:4, 9; 8:18; 9:10; 20:17; 24:14—paired with ?? ????? in some instances); ????? ???? (7:8 [9:8]; 14:19; 20:8, 13, 21; 22:22; 36:18—and ??? ??? [22:31]); ??? ????? (5:10, 15; 11:9; 14:21); and ?? ????? (22:21, 31; 38:19). Alongside these expressions we find some singular ones, including ???????? ??? ??? (7:22), ????? ???? (20:26), ????? ????? (20:33). This lecture considers these phrases, which are unique to Ezekiel's oracles, their immediate context and distribution in the book. Found mainly in chapters 1-24, the oracles of judgment against Jerusalem and Israel, these phrases are integral to Ezekiel's prophetic message and serve to emphasize divine anger at the Jerusalemites and Israelites. Their use reflects Ezekiel's view of the divine perception of the people's deeds, which brought the destruction of the Temple. The frequent use of these phrases conveys Ezekiel's harsh message regarding the impending destruction of the Temple and the exile of the Jerusalemites, seen by the people as unthinkable. Ultimately, this consideration of how these first-person divine utterances function in Ezekiel also raises the question of their origins and their divergence from what are considered to be Ezekiel's pentateuchal sources.


Three Faces of Jesus
Program Unit: National Association of Professors of Hebrew
Zev Garber, Los Angeles Valley College

Recent quests for the historical Jesus by Jews and in Christian-Jewish dialogue are eroding the teaching of contempt from the Cross at Calvary. But how much of this “Good News” has compromised the Christian belief that Jesus is the “King of the Jews” and inspired the Jewish observant to study without bias Christian scriptures? How graceful is the Jewish Jesus and how lawful is the Christ of faith? What scholars pontificate obfuscate people in the pew. How and why will be discussed in this historio-religio- socio presentation. .


Let Them Eat Fish: Food for the Poor in Early Rabbinic Judaism
Program Unit: Meals in the Greco-Roman World
Gregg E. Gardner, University of British Columbia

What foods and foodways do early rabbinic texts prescribe for the poor? Answering this question will help us understand the role of food in the formative era of Judaism and Christianity as well as the early rabbinic movement’s conceptualization of charity (tsedaqah), which remains a central focus of Judaism to this day. In this paper, I examine the earliest rabbinic discussions of charity (Tosefta Peah; 2nd–3rd century), which I read in light of their literary and historical contexts. I find that the rabbis envision a two-tiered system of almsgiving. The poor should be given bread, olive oil, and legumes on weekdays – foods that fill one’s belly but also carry negative semiotic values and reinforce the stigma of poverty. For the Sabbath, the poor receive three meals, which include fish and a vegetable, to ensure that they observe the Sabbath in a way that is idiosyncratically rabbinic. Food, therefore, serves as a means to control the poor’s religious observance, contributing to our understanding of how charity was used to assert religious authority in late antiquity.


Three Shrines from Khirbet Qeiyafa: Judean Cult at the Time of King David
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
Yosef Garfinkel, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

During six excavation seasons at Khirbet Qeiyafa (2007-2012) three cultic rooms were unearthed, with various installations and cultic objects. The cultic paraphernalia includs standing stones, libation vessels, basalt alters and "shrine models". These finds are the earliest known evidences for cult in Judah at the time of King David. Various aspects relating to these fascinating discoveries will be discussed, including their implications for the Biblical description of Solomon palace.


Grain, Wine, and Oil: The Literary Artistry and Redactional Role of Joel 1:8–13
Program Unit: Book of the Twelve Prophets
R. E. Garton, Baylor University

Hosea 2:10-11, 24; Joel 1:10; 2:19; and Hag 1:11 have something in common: nowhere else in the Book of the Twelve does one find a constellation of the lexemes dagan (“grain”), tîrôš (“new wine”), and yi?har (“fresh oil”). While the Fertility of the Land as a theme in the Twelve is nothing new, the role Joel plays in transforming this theme into a metanarrative spanning this corpus has gone relatively unnoticed, though some (e.g., Nogalski, Schart, Braaten, Wöhrle) have noted pieces of this thread. In Hosea 2, YHWH reclaims the dower of his fertilty from Israel, his wife (?išâ), on account of her cultic infidelity. In Haggai, however, Judah’s infertility stems from a failure to rebuild the temple, the first step toward the people presenting acceptable offerings. These two rationales for the land’s infertility would stand disjointed were it not for Joel 1–2. Indeed, it is only in Joel 1:8-13 that one finds the merger of these two inceptions of infertility: Judah is to wail like the virgin (kibtûlâ) girded in sackcloth for the husband of her youth (1:8; cf. Hos 2:17) and her priests are to gird themselves and mourn for the house of YHWH and the loss of its offerings of grain and libation (1:9, 13). Joel 2 then heightens this crisis, showing the land’s infertility to be but a precursor to the destruction of Zion and by implication the temple. Finally, Joel 2:18-19 serves as a concluding frame, whereby YHWH in his zeal promises a reversal of the fortunes of Zion and the land – a restoration initiated in Hag 1:11 and carried forward into Zechariah 1–8. Together with its literary artistry, Joel 1:8-13’s creation of this metanarrative holds broad implications for its redactional role in the Twelve and the editorial methods employed by its author.


Engaging Tyrannical Texts
Program Unit: Ethics and Biblical Interpretation
Frances Taylor Gench, Union Presbyterian Seminary

The Bible is full of embarrassing, offensive, problematic texts that present serious interpretive challenges for contemporary Christian faith and practice. The presentation will consider interpretive strategies for engaging them with integrity.


Were the Aristarchian Signs in the Fifth Column of Origen’s Hexapla?
Program Unit: International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies
Peter J. Gentry, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Recent works on Origen have reaffirmed the theory that the Aristarchian signs were not part of Origen’s Hexapla, but are derived from a recension of the Fifth Column. The evidence will be reexamined.


Hellenizing Holiness: Jews Dying like Greeks in front of Romans in 4 Maccabees
Program Unit: Hellenistic Judaism
Allan Georgia, Fordham University

This paper will engage 4 Maccabees as a participant in the Greek literary project under the Roman empire, and therefore a participant in the cultural and political engagement with Rome during the literary renaissance of the 1st and 2nd centuries CE in the Greek-speaking East. Drawing on the work of Mary Rose D’Angelo and Timothy Whitmarsh, this reading will attempt to understand the cultural location of this text that so remarkably employs Greek rhetorical and moral modes of expression while affirming the role of “pious reason” in the successfully died deaths of the Maccabean martyrs. Through an excursus on Eleazar’s interchange with Antiochus in chapters 5-7, the success of the argument of 4 Maccabees will be shown to rely on Hellenistic rhetorical modes and moral categories established in the so-called Second Sophistic. This participation in the cultural project that embodied “Greekness” in view of an appreciative Roman cultural audience will be shown to be integral to the argument of 4 Maccabees. The resulting reading will find the text to be culturally ambiguous, having subordinated itself to Greek cultural modes of expression in order to co-opt the political legitimacy and cultural capital that this literature had achieved under Roman rule. “Greekness” as it is successfully imported to the person of Eleazar is translated in 4 Maccabees into faithfulness to the Jewish law and God. However, this discursive interchange will be shown to break in both cultural directions, certainly aiding in the cultural purchase of the text, but also requiring a certain consent to the establishment of Greek and Roman social power. This cultural legitimacy is purchased through the portrayal of Eleazar through the author’s own rhetorical mode, but also in the character of Eleazar himself who demonstrates (apodeiknumi) Greek cultural values through his agonistic endurance and athletic success. The resulting reading intends to unseat some of the “problems” that have been posed for this text by arguing for an explicitly ambiguous cultural location for it. Moving past the binaries that have approached 4 Maccabees in terms of comparative “Graeco-Romanness” and “Jewishness,” this reading will drawn on Daniel Boyarin’s concept of border-crossings to locate this text as precisely such a crossing, but additionally as a strategic cultural negotiation that adopts an embodied “Greekness” for its hero in view of what Greek expression had achieved for non-Roman authors in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE.


Framing the Issue: Questions of Law and Terminology Drawn from the Publication Policy of the Archaeological Institute of America
Program Unit: Archaeology of Religion in the Roman World
Patty Gerstenblith, DePaul College of Law

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Valentinus' Moral Psychology
Program Unit: Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism
Kathleen Gibbons, University of Toronto

Contemporary scholarship, in its efforts to come to a better appreciation of gnosticizing Christianity, have devoted a considerable degree of attention to questions involving moral psychology, and in particular to claims of made by heresiologists that this particular version of Christianity ascribed to some form of ethical determinism. Yet those studies which seek to remove the obscuring lens of the apostolic tradition have sometimes confused two different philosophical positions, fatalism and compatibilism. Fatalism is the view, a version of which is ascribed to Valentinus by Irenaeus, that whatever human beings do, a certain outcome will result. We find this in Irenaeus’s claim that Valentinus and his followers engaged in licentious behavior because they believed that they would return to the pleroma regardless of their actions; this view is widely believed to be a polemical smear. Yet another, more plausible theory of moral psychology is nevertheless open to Valentinus, that called compatibilism. According to this theory, human beings need not have the freedom to act against their character in order to be held morally responsible for their actions. In contemporary philosophy, this remains a viable philosophical position, and indeed it was one during antiquity as well. If we take Valentinus and those who followed him as compatibilists who understood human action as a consequence of a moral nature which could not be altered, we can make sense of why other Christians like Irenaeus, Clement, and Origen thought that the ability of human beings to act against their characters distinguished them from their gnosticizing opponents without taking the outlandish claims made by Irenaeus and others at face value. This paper will examine in particular the Tripartite Tractate and Origen’s Commentary on John, and other texts.


First-Century Priestly Houses in the Upper City of Jerusalem: Results of the Mount Zion Excavations
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
Shimon Gibson, University of the Holy Land

Jerusalem’s Upper City in the first-century CE was dominated by the immense compound of the palace of Herod the Great, which was used as the praetorium of the Roman governors. Josephus Flavius is our main source of information for the history of the Upper City which also comprised city archives, a market place, and a theatre. It has generally been accepted that there was a high concentration of priestly families living in the area of the Upper City, amongst them the House of the High Priest Caiaphas. This lecture will offer new archaeological evidence pertaining to the priestly presence in the Upper City in the light of recent excavations on Mount Zion. It will also deal with the discovery of a unique inscribed stone cup that originated in one of these priestly establishments.


Double Causality and the Double Literal Sense in Exegetical Works of Alexander of Hales
Program Unit: Christian Theology and the Bible
Aaron Gies, Catholic University of America

In the early decades of the thirteenth century innovations in the Faculty of Arts were again in the process of percolating upward into the Faculty of Theology at Paris. Just as the School of Laon, a hundred years earlier, had introduced into their glossed books of Scripture the way of introducing texts by their intentio, materia, and modus tractandi popular in introduction to poets, so that scheme was itself being replaced in the postills of the 1230s by one based on the four Aristotelian causes: material, final, formal and efficient. One advantage of this division was that distinguishing a temporal cause for a given effect (the efficient), gave commentators a chance to consider the nature of agency on the part of the human authors of Scripture. This in turn led to an expansion of what meanings were to be considered under the blanket term “literal sense.” Alexander of Hales (c.1186-1245) used a combination of the old and new introductory methods in his unedited Postilla in Iohannis Evangelium (ca.1230s). There he exhibits attentiveness to a twofold efficient causality in the Gospel: the Holy Spirit and John, his minister. He also expands the contents of the literal sense to include the “enigmatic, the metaphorical, the paradigmatic and the parabolic,” as well as the historical in his newly-edited treatise de Significationibus et expositione sacrarum scripturarum (also ca. 1230s). This progressive stance and its outworking in Alexander’s exegesis of John may surprise those who have read Beryl Smalley’s comment that Alexander’s merit as theologian comes at the cost to his readers of his “depreciation of the literal or ‘carnal’ sense…in favor of the spiritual sense.” Although Alexander remains a theologian commenting on the “theological Gospel,” his new distinctions of agency and authorship make his exegetical insights worthy of the publication and study they have been denied.


The Divine Name in the Gospel of John: A Link to the Historical Jesus?
Program Unit: John, Jesus, and History
Charles Gieschen, Concordia Theological Seminary - Fort Wayne

An intriguing historical link between the Jesus traditions in the Synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of John is the use of “I am” (ego eimi) in an absolute construction as a self-disclosure formula (Matt 14:27; 28:20; Mark 6:50; 13:6; 14:62; Luke 21:8; 22:70; 24:39; John 4:26, 6:20; 8:24, 28, 53; 13:19; 18:5, 6, 8). Helpful research has been done in locating the background for the use of this formula in YHWH’s self disclosure formulae as found at the conclusion of Deuteronomy (32:39) and in the latter third of Isaiah (41:4; 43:10, 13, 25; 46:4; 48:12; 51:12; 52:6). Less research has been done on the relationship between the use of this formula in John and Jesus’ self-understanding in this Gospel as the Son who shares the divine name of the Father (i.e., the Tetragrammaton). This paper will demonstrate that the Gospel of John provides evidence for a much broader use of this formula by the historical Jesus and that this usage is closely related to the testimony that Jesus shares the divine name, a tradition which may also be very early and have its origin in Jesus.


Ezekiel’s “Deuteronomic” Theology of Exile
Program Unit: Exile (Forced Migrations) in Biblical Literature
Jason Gile, Wheaton College

This paper offers a literary and intertextual study of exile in the book of Ezekiel. It is well known that the Holiness Code functioned as the programmatic influence for Ezekiel’s interpretation of the theological crisis surrounding the events of 587 B.C.E., inasmuch as the prophet indicted Israel for failure to keep its statutes and pronounced judgments according to its curses (see Michael A. Lyons, From Law to Prophecy: Ezekiel’s Use of the Holiness Code [T&T Clark, 2009]). However, this paper argues that Ezekiel draws primarily from the exile passages in Deuteronomy for his conception of the exile itself. As many scholars have noted, Deuteronomy’s threats of exile need not derive from the period after 587 B.C.E., given the reality of deportation as a tool of the Assyrian empire (itself at work in Israel in 722 B.C.E.) and the frequency of threats of exile in the ancient Near Eastern curse tradition, and therefore reasonably were available to the prophet. Based on the prophet’s known techniques of literary borrowing (see Lyons), I argue that Ezekiel’s common formula for describing the exile, “to scatter (hephitz) among the nations and disperse (zrh) among the lands,” is best explained as a combination and conflation of the deuteronomic and priestly terms for scattering. Indeed, one finds evidence that Ezekiel in fact knows a pentateuchal tradition about exile. In 20:23 he alludes to a tradition that in the wilderness Yahweh swore to scatter Israel among the nations. The plot structure and narrative flow Ezekiel’s account of Israel’s history in chapter 20 indicate a setting for this oath during the second wilderness generation, which naturally points to Deuteronomy. One particular text in Deuteronomy appears to be the basis for the allusion. By alluding to Deuteronomy’s threat of exile and emphasizing Israel’s religious failures from its earliest days (ch. 20), Ezekiel reveals his agreement not simply with Deuteronomy’s view of Israel’s religious aptitude, but also the distinctive view that the seeds of Israel’s loss of the land were present from the very beginning of its history.


Iconism and Aniconism in the Period of the Monarchy: Was There an Image of the Deity in the Jerusalem Temple?
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible, History, and Archaeology
Garth Gilmour, University of Oxford, University of Stellenbosch

The recent publication of an 8th century sherd from Jerusalem incised with two deity figures is a significant addition to the corpus of images and texts of male and female deities identified with Yahweh and Asherah. The many references in the Hebrew Bible to the unwelcome presence of Asherah and the archaeological evidence for the pairing of Asherah with Yahweh are indicative of the extent of the pairing of these deities in Israel and Judah in the period of the monarchy. In view of such biblical passages as the reference in 2 Kings 23:6 to the removal of the Asherah image from the Temple, it is legitimate to speculate on whether there was an image of Yahweh in the Temple as well, and if so, what form it may have taken. This in turn raises questions of the nature of orthodoxy in the Temple cult, and challenges current views of the artificial division between “official” religion and “folk” religion.


William Bartram’s Travels through a North American Garden of Eden
Program Unit: Use, Influence, and Impact of the Bible
Michael Gilmour, Providence University College (Manitoba, Canada)

The American naturalist William Bartram published an account of his travels in south eastern North America in 1791. Though this work is ostensibly a scientific research project, he introduces biblical material to his study of the flora and fauna of the region for diverse purposes. First, he likens his journey through these pristine lands to “the first appearance of the earth to man at the creation,” thus assuming an Adam-like role, naming what he observes in the natural world and asserting white, European dominion over non-white, non-European civilizations living there (cf. Gen 2:20; 1:28). In addition to the colonial assumptions implied by this posturing, Bartram’s presence in this new-world Eden also alludes to the positive images of tending God’s garden (cf. Gen 2:15), evident in Bartram’s deep respect for sentient beasts that are also works of “the great Author” and “manifest the divine and inimitable workmanship.” Second, Bartram’s biblically literate, Quaker influenced, and surprisingly poetic Linnaean writing does include a political dimension. He is oddly silent about the momentous events of the American Revolution (1775-1783) that overlapped his travels (1773-1778) and subsequent years of writing. He even appears to shape his narrative in such a way that certain experiences depicted coincide with key moments in the Revolution. This silence and the manipulation of his travelogue is conspicuous, suggesting his Eden is a deliberately constructed counterpart to political events unfolding further north. Bartram’s Travels influenced subsequent writers (e.g., Samuel Taylor Coleridge), anticipated and inspired animal rights movements in the nineteenth century and, if recent publications are any indication, continues to have an audience among modern readers. This paper examines Bartram’s uses of the Bible with particular attention to his politics and views on human responsibilities in the “glorious apartment of the boundless palace of the sovereign Creator.”


Redescribing the Prophetic Critique of Sacrifice
Program Unit: Sacrifice, Cult, and Atonement
Aaron Glaim, Brown University

This paper offers a novel explanation of the so-called ‘prophetic critique of sacrifice’ in the Hebrew Bible (e.g., Amos 5:21, Isaiah 1:11), supported by two observations about biblical depictions of sacrifice. First, sacrificial terminology has significant overlap with gift-giving terminology. Many terms used to refer to sacrificial offerings in the most generic and categorical manner are linguistically related to or identical with terms meaning ‘gift’ (e.g., minhah, qorban, isseh), many verbs used to describe the action of sacrificing are also used to describe gift-giving in non-cultic contexts (e.g., hiqrib, higgish, he'elah), and several terms for specific types of sacrificial offerings are explicitly reciprocal or presuppose reciprocal exchange (e.g., todah ‘thanks,’ neder ‘vow,’ asam ‘reparation’). The second observation is that a common logic undergirds gift exchange and sacrificial practices: both are depicted as having the capability to placate or appease the receiving party. Moreover, the acceptance of gifts or sacrifices by a previously aggrieved or potentially hostile party signals a lack of hostile intent towards the giver (gifts: Gen 32:4-33:16; sacrifices: Judges 13:23). Whereas recent treatments of ‘the prophetic critique of sacrifice’ presume that the texts in question challenge the institution of sacrificial cult, I argue that they actually reiterate its reciprocal logic by indicating Yahweh’s refusal to entertain reciprocal relations with Israel and Judah on account of purported religious or ethical violations. As their authors are already privy to historical contingencies wherein Yahweh exhibited hostile intentions toward Israel, his rejection of Israelite sacrifices/gifts is a matter of course, stemming from specific grievances. In other words, texts that portray Yahweh engaging in negative reciprocity with Israel (punishing) could not also depict him participating in positive reciprocity (accepting presents); rather, he continues to reject sacrifices until the period of punishment has been completed and relations have normalized (e.g., Ezek 20:40).


A Slave’s Ear: Between Violence and Representation
Program Unit: Violence and Representations of Violence in Antiquity
Jennifer A. Glancy, Le Moyne College

The site of violence is the ear of a slave. Apparently walking around Jerusalem armed with a sword, a close follower of Jesus is the agent of violence. Under Roman law, the insult and damage are against the owner of the slave—the high priest—rather than the man whose head bleeds. Jesus may touch the slave’s ear and heal him (Luke 22:51), but the story itself remains an open wound, not easily incorporated into somatic narratives that privilege marks of violence perpetrated against Jesus and his followers. Unlike the talismanic ulcers of the resurrected Christ or the storytelling scars of Paul, the slave’s ear—whether hemorrhaging, healed, or cicatrized—is theologically meaningless. I plan to offer close readings of the canonical rehearsals of the incident of the slave’s ear (Mark 14:47; Matthew 26:51-54; Luke 22:50-51; John 18:10-11) in order to highlight desire—ancient and modern—for meaningful bodies, and the ethical and narrative limits of that desire. For those of us who write about ancient bodies, getting beyond notions of representation and inscription is a task at once urgent and impossible. How do we get to the cost of wounded bodies?


Investigating the Source-Critical Value of Participant Reference Shifts in the Book of Jeremiah
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible
Oliver Glanz, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

In the last one and a half centuries the reception of the book Jeremiah has faced many difficulties. The different ways of reconstructing the origins of this book and speculations about Jeremiah as historical figure often created the impression that most of the material is to be read as a collection of diverse and often not directly related pieces of oral and written material. This impression finds great support by the fact that the references to textual participants within the BHS version of Jeremiah are often unstable with regard to their gender, number and person characteristics. While, for example, within the speech of YHWH in Jer 50:26-40 Babel is referred to in 3sgF (v26-30) the speech proceeds with addressing Babel in 2sgM (v31) before it switches into 3sgM forms (v32) and then continuing with 3plM references (v33). Within the reading process the reader is constantly asking questions like “Who is speaking?” and “Who is addressed?”. The phenomenon of participant reference shifts is encountered almost 600 times in Jeremiah (in BHS). Duhm and others have used these shifts as criteria for source-critical analysis. In my paper I try to answer whether a source-critical treatment of these shifts is justified on the basis of a text-comparative analysis. Do the results of a text-critical comparison between the BHS text, Septuagint and Qumran texts of Jeremiah indicate, that participant reference shifts were regarded as problematic during the text-transmission process? Can we find textual material that attempts to overcome problematic participant reference shifts? In how far do the occurrences of these shifts deviate between the different text-traditions? The paper will not attempt to focus on possible text-syntactical and/or rhetorical functions of these shifts but will restrict itself to investigating the possible source-critical value of participant reference shifts in the book of Jeremiah.


Are the Deuteronomists Consistent? Insights from the Jehu Dynasty Pericopes
Program Unit: Deuteronomistic History
David Glatt-Gilad, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

The multi-faceted presentation of Jehu and his dynastic successors in the Book of Kings provides an excellent opportunity to examine the Deuteronomists’ historiographic agenda and their use of sources. This is particularly so inasmuch as the most blatant examples of contrastive evaluations of the Jehuite kings are concentrated in passages that might be taken to represent seam points between various source materials (thus 2 Kgs 10:30–36; 13:1–9). The evident correlation between a passage like 2 Kgs 13:3-5 and the programmatic verses in the Book of Judges only complicates matters, since scholars are divided on the question of the origins of the Judges material. My examination will lend further support to the notion that the Deuteronomistic presentation of history is integrally tied to a prophetic perspective, within which the power of God’s word to be fulfilled is paramount.


Textured Discipline: The Sense of Touch in the Book of Proverbs
Program Unit: Religious Experience in Antiquity
Greg Goering, University of Virginia

Whereas the West has generally considered touch to be an inferior mode of perception, the sages of Proverbs understood this "most primitive" sense to be an effective means to inculcate discipline. Whether in the form of a physical flogging or, analogously, a metaphorical beating with words of rebuke, tactile discipline was recommended by the sages for the deep and lasting impression it could make on the recipient. Having much more than a superficial impact, striking a person's back with a rod was thought to affect a person's interior (leb, nephesh, beten). The sages understood verbal rebukes similarly in tactile terms (Prov 17.10; 19.25; 29.15). Based on the conceptual metaphor WORDS ARE TACTILE OBJECTS, a rebuke--like the disciplining rod--was imagined to impact a person's interior, driving out folly and making room for wisdom. This promotion of tactile discipline provides important cultural insights into the role of touch in Israel's wisdom tradition. The sages imagined themselves to be engaged in a conflict among competing tactile regimes. Both the rebuking touch of father and mother and the straightforward words of Woman Wisdom were seen to be at odds with the smooth but deceptive tongue and sensuous touches of the strange woman. Since the sense of touch lies on the boundary between self and other--and serves as a portal between a person's interior and exterior--the sages considered touch to be a significant and contested site for the formation of the self. The sages' use of tactile discipline also points to their concept of the embodied nature of wisdom. A wisdom that is cultivated through the affective, bodily sensation of touch constitutes a visceral, embodied way of knowing. Such a tangible wisdom is not merely cognitive and therefore discerned with a disembodied mind; it must be impressed upon one's unified mind/body, literally and figuratively.


Mysteries, Flesh, and Spirit—the Apostle Paul and Its Early Jewish Heritage
Program Unit: Pauline Epistles
Matthew Goff, Florida State University

This paper assesses two ways that the writings of Paul can be re-assessed in light of the full publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a process that has only been completed in the last few years. The first topic regards supernatural revelation. Raymond Brown argued in 1968 that Paul’s use of the term “mystery” (mysterion) (e.g., 1 Cor 2:7; 15:51) draws on older Jewish traditions, as suggested by the employment of the word raz (“mystery”) in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The publication of 4QInstruction in 1999 confirms Brown’s observations. In this text the word raz, as part of the raz nihyeh (the mystery that is to be), denotes revealed knowledge that a teacher transmits to his students, who are encouraged to ponder and study them. This is similar to how Paul uses the term “mystery.” The second topic relates to Paul’s famous flesh-spirit dichotomy. 4QInstruction contains one of the earliest examples of flesh-spirit dualism in Judaism. The text utilizes Genesis 1-3 to describe two different types of humankind, one called fleshly, the other spiritual. I will argue that Paul’s flesh-spirit dichotomy, and his use of Genesis 1-3 to explain the nature of humankind, appropriates Palestinian sapiential and exegetical traditions preserved in 4QInstruction.


A Christ-Event Orientation of Belonging: A Semiotic Interpretation of 1 Corinthians 1–4
Program Unit: Semiotics and Exegesis
Menghun Goh, Vanderbilt University

This paper seeks to demonstrate how Paul’s conviction actually undergirds his notion of a Christ-oriented community in Roman Corinth. While Western scholars have attributed the cause of conflicts to different opposing theological parties (cf., F. C. Baur) or personalities clash (cf., Andrew Clarke) – e.g., preference for leadership and rhetorical competence and styles in Second Sophistic Movement (cf., Bruce Winter) or Hellenistic Jewish wisdom tradition (cf. Richard Horsley) or Greco-Roman philosophy (cf., W. Deming) or rhetoric (cf., Margaret Mitchell) or social status (cf., Dale Martin) – this paper aims to do two things. First, to flesh out the theme that underlies the conceptualization or construction of community, as represented in 1 Corinthians 1-4. Secondly, to trace how such theme is manifested in Paul’s dealing with the conflicts in the ekklesia. Using A. J. Greimas’s semiotic square and Daniel Patte’s structural exegesis that tease out Paul’s conveying of his conviction to the Corinthian believers, this paper argues that Paul’s notion of community hinges upon his understanding of both his and Corinthians’ Christ-event, which Paul finds shocking when they, who have received everything from God (4:7) and whose witness God and Christ have confirmed (a Greco-Roman legal binding term!) (1:6), have abandoned it. Instead of reliving the Christ-event experience of being called and sanctified by God (1:2, 9) and building upon the foundation of Christ (3:10), the Corinthian believers judged and made groups for themselves (1:12). Instead of giving thanks for the acts of God through the power of the cross, they relied on the wisdom of the cosmos. Such turning away not only makes God unfaithful (1:8-9), it also invalidates the work of God in Paul’s religious experience (4:9-13). In Paul’s exhortation to Corinthian believers, he thus seeks to remind them of their past Christ-oriented religious experience so that they may realize that their current actions are at odd with their conviction and that there is no future for them without such continuation of religious experiences in the present.


Performing the Book of Proverbs in Egypt: Primer in Scriptural Interpretation, Initiation into Christic Virtue, and Spiritual Combat
Program Unit: Christianity in Egypt: Scripture, Tradition, and Reception
Justin Gohl, Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia

Though often neglected and/or marginalized in modern biblical and theological studies, the Book of Proverbs was held in high regard by the early church, especially by those who were influenced by Origen’s reading strategy for Scripture and the Solomonic trilogy (e.g., Evagrius Ponticus; Didymus the Blind; the Cappadocians; Theodoret of Cyrrhus; Procopius of Gaza). This paper will first briefly explore the reading strategy (“theory”) of Origen for Proverbs (as articulated in his prologue to Commentary on Song of Songs and other comments preserved in the catenae). We will then seek to illustrate this reading strategy at work (“practice”) in Evagrius Ponticus’s Scholia on Proverbs. For the Greek Fathers, because of the genre of “proverb” and the multileveled discourse signaled in the various terms of Prov 1.6, the Book of Proverbs became the paradigm for understanding and engaging all of Scripture, which in turn was to begin to penetrate the very logoi of creation and the mysteries of the Logos’s incarnation and proverbial discourse (Jn 16.25)—all of which was intended to draw souls upwards to the eternal, intelligible realm and to pure communion with God. This “ascent” was predicated upon first cultivating virtue, which purified the “eye” of the mind to perceive the sacramental function of creation, Scripture, and the incarnation. In Evagrius’s reading, we will see these themes at work, however with an added attention to “spiritual combat” owing to his more formally ascetic/monastic context. The effect of this approach (à la both Origen and Evagrius) to the Book of Proverbs is a fundamentally narrative and performative type of interpretation, in which individual sayings, vignettes, and indeed the whole book become paradigms for and a means of the soul’s progress in virtue, spiritual contemplation, and ultimately deification.


Hierarchical Lists of Officials: A Comparative Look at 1 Kgs 4, 1 Chr 27, and Nebuchadnezzar’s Hofkalendar
Program Unit: Assyriology and the Bible
Shira J. Golani, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Lists depicting court officials and other personnel are well known from a variety of ancient Near Eastern societies. These lists are an invaluable source in reconstructing the royal administration, or at least its perception, in ancient Israel and in other ancient Near Eastern cultures alike. This paper will focus on a small, distinctive group of hierarchical officials’ lists. These are complex lists that include several groups of officials with an internal hierarchy between them. The paper will focus on three examples: the lists of Solomon’s officials in 1 Kgs 4, those of the civil officials of David in 1 Chr 27, and the listing of Nebuchadnezzar’s officials in his so-called Hofkalendar (VAT 7834). These three texts, which are unique in that they incorporate hierarchical lists of officials within a larger narrative context, will be presented individually and then compared to one another as to the technical ways in which they are constructed. By comparing the two biblical texts to their first millennium BCE Babylonian counterpart, which also combines hierarchical lists within a narrative, this paper will draw conclusions about the contribution of these lists to our knowledge of the way in which royal courts were described in ancient Israel.


Egyptological Perspectives on Alphabetic Origins
Program Unit: Ugaritic Studies and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy
Orly Goldwasser, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The pictorial models for the new Canaanite letters were taken from Egyptian hieroglyphs in Sinai. All prototypes for the new letters were available as hieroglyphs from the Middle Kingdom inscriptions in Sinai. I believe that the inventors were illiterate. The hypothesis of hieratic models for the Sinai letters is unnecessary, and complicates the discussion and has a much weaker explanatory power. The invention of the alphabet, one of the greatest media revolutions in history, was not born in any cultural center and was not adopted by any center-repertoire.


“As Long as the Heir Is a Child”: The Rhetoric of Inheritance in Galatians 4:1–2 and P.Ryl. 2.153
Program Unit: Papyrology and Early Christian Backgrounds
John Goodrich, Moody Bible Institute

Although Galatians 4.1-2 has historically been interpreted as an analogy taken from Greco-Roman practices of inheritance and guardianship, an increasing number of scholars, following the initial proposal of James M. Scott, have interpreted the passage as an allusion to the exodus (e.g., Sylvia Keesmaat, N.T. Wright, John Byron, Justin Hardin, Mark Harmon, Rodrigo Morales). Proponents of the exodus reading often claim that the conventional guardianship view is untenable due to the passage’s lack of allusions to a distinctly Greco-Roman source domain. Seeking to defend the conventional guardianship interpretation, this study will identify a number of significant verbal and conceptual parallels between Galatians 4.1-2 and P.Ryl. 2.153, the mid-second-century CE will of a Hermopolite gentleman. By offering a close reading of an important yet neglected parallel text, this paper will show that Paul’s rhetoric inheritance in Galatians 4, even if owing its substructure to a New/Second Exodus framework, most closely resonates with contemporary practices of Greco-Roman succession.


The Psalms of Solomon as Solomonic Discourse
Program Unit: Pseudepigrapha
Matthew E. Gordley, Regent University School of Divinity

Recent work on the dynamics of pseudonymous attribution in the Jewish literature of the Second Temple period has drawn out both the variety and complexity inherent in the ways that pseudonymous attribution functions for ancient texts, their authors, and the communities that preserved them. A number of texts in the so-called pseudepigrapha have been the focus of careful study in terms of how the attribution of authorship to a revered ancient personage enables an author and community to find a place in a living and developing tradition in the midst of changing circumstances. Along these lines scholars have examined 4 Ezra, 1 Enoch, and Wisdom of Solomon, among others. In many cases scholars have found significant connections between the instruction and perspective of a particular pseudepigraphon and the developing tradition of discourse surrounding a particular ancient figure. To date, however, no single article, chapter, or monograph has fully explored the dynamics of pseudonymous attribution as it is encountered in the Psalms of Solomon. This lacuna is perhaps not surprising given the ways scholars have disassociated the Solomonic attribution from the original Hebrew text of Psalms of Solomon, suggesting it occurred only later and on the basis of the weakest of connections (if any) with Solomon and the tradition of literature which bears his name. However, the increasing awareness within the scholarly community of the subtle but significant dynamics of pseudonymous attribution in other ancient Jewish texts suggests that it is now time to reexamine Psalms of Solomon. This essay thus explores the questions of the significance of an author or later editor’s choice to ascribe this collection of psalms to Solomon, as well as the functions of such a literary move. By drawing on the work of Hindy Najman relating to pseudonymous attribution and the practice of authorial effacement, this analysis will support the view that associations with Solomon are central to the discourse of Psalms of Solomon and critical to promoting the teaching of this collection as a whole. If they were added later, the psalm titles and ascriptions to Solomon may have been added to bring out this dimension of these psalms even more clearly. Regardless, the developing tradition of Solomonic discourse offered Solomon as the ideal figure for the Psalms of Solomon for many reasons, not the least of which is that his life exemplifies the particular message the Psalms of Solomon promote.


From the Mountain to the Plain: Ancient Rhetoric as a Tool for Source Criticism
Program Unit: Synoptic Gospels
Heather Gorman, Baylor University

The Farrer Hypothesis, which posits that Luke used both Mark and Matthew as sources for his gospel, is often criticized for its inability to explain why Luke would “demolish” Matthew’s beautifully constructed Sermon on the Mount to produce his “artistically inferior” Sermon on the Plain (Stanton 1999; Stein 1987). Farrer Hypothesis proponents Mark Goodacre (2002), Jeffrey Peterson (2004), and Mark Matson (2004) have offered potential explanations as to why Luke would make the moves that he did if he were using Matthew, but many remain unconvinced by their efforts. Here I tap into the well of the ancient rhetorical tradition—a well heretofore underutilized by source critics—as a means of testing the validity of the Farrer Hypothesis. I pose the following question: “If Luke did use Matthew as a source, would his redaction of Matthew make sense on rhetorical grounds?” To answer this question, I use the Sermon on the Plain and the Sermon on the Mount as a test case. I analyze portions of Luke that relate to Matthew’s Sermon assuming that Luke used Matthew as one of his sources. Building on the foundation of Goodacre, Peterson, and Matson, I consult the ancient rhetorical tradition—the progymnasmata and the rhetorical handbooks—for potential explanations of why Luke would have made the changes that he did to Matthew’s account. I have chosen these texts because they tend to be a thorn in the flesh of Farrer Hypothesis proponents. My analysis shows that if Luke did indeed use Matthew as a source for his Sermon on the Plain, then his redaction would make sense on ancient rhetorical grounds. His rearrangements and omissions of Matthean material support his larger rhetorical concerns for clarity, brevity, and plausibility. While this study, of course, does not prove that Luke used Matthew, it does make the Farrer Hypothesis more probable by demonstrating that Luke’s potential redaction of Matthew is explicable on rhetorical grounds. Such a demonstration diminishes the need to invoke a hypothetical pre-existing source to account for Luke’s sequence. While problems remain regarding the sources of the Synoptics and their relationship to one another, this study accomplishes at least two things: (1) it removes a significant obstacle for proponents of the Farrer Hypothesis by showing that the shape of Luke’s Sermon on the Plain can be justified without the existence of Q, and (2) it suggests that rhetorical analysis may be a profitable way forward in source-critical studies of the gospels.


Banqueting and Disability in the Ancient World: Reconsidering the Parable of the Banquet (Luke 14:15–24)
Program Unit: Healthcare and Disability in the Ancient World
Louise Gosbell, Macquarie University

The words of the banquet host in Luke 14:21 direct his servant to ‘Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.’ Traditionally, the reference to the poor and those with physical disability listed in the Parable of the Banquet, have been interpreted allegorically as the marginalized members of the Jewish community as well as those completely outside of covenant relationship with God, the Gentiles. The parable therefore simply emphasizes God’s universal invitation of salvation to both Jews and Gentiles. While such an interpretation is valid, this paper argues that a historical investigation of the relationship between those with physical disability and banquets in the ancient world will lead to a reassessment of the way in which the invitees are described in Luke 14. The literature and artwork of the Greco-Roman world make reference to those with physical disability as being the akletoi in reference to the banquet, the uninvited members of the banquet. This paper argues that the imagery used in Luke 14 recalls this literary history in its use of the phrase “the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.” It is hoped that such a historical investigation may cause us to assess anew the radical nature of the words of the banquet host in relationship to those with physical disability, as those not merely present as akletoi, but rather as fully-fledged invitees experiencing all that the banquet has to offer.


New Evidence for the Dating of Targum Chronicles
Program Unit: Aramaic Studies
Leeor Gottlieb, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The date of composition of Targum Chronicles (hence TC) has generally been estimated by scholars according to the following two main considerations: 1) TC exhibits knowledge of the Babylonian Talmud, and consequently must be later than the sixth century; 2) The language of TC does not contain Arabisms, and therefore it likely predates the period of Arabic influence upon Jewish literature. On these grounds, it has been widely accepted since the nineteenth century that the date of TC’s redaction is circa the seventh-eighth centuries. In this paper, I will present heretofore unnoticed evidence in TC for a date of composition several centuries later than has been generally assumed. The indications of a relatively late date are found in the language of TC, its literary dependence on other Jewish works and the historical context of certain terms found in the Targum. The convergence of these different factors pointing to a date as late as the beginning of the second millenium calls for a re-assessment of other Targumim, and opens the way for new consideration of the role of Targum literature in Jewish tradition.


Kierkegaard, Holmer, and Theology
Program Unit: Søren Kierkegaard Society
David Gouwens, Brite Divinity School (TCU)

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Nevala: The "Outrage" of Women Treated as Meat
Program Unit: Women in the Biblical World
Naomi Graetz, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Women are often thought of as either food, or in relationship to food. A well-known example of this is the Talmudic tale about the unhappy wife who is compared to a piece of meat or fish; to something which can be kneaded, shaped, and knocked around at will by her husband (B. Nedarim 20a-b). Carol J. Adams writes in her classic book, The Sexual Politics of Meat, about how women, are "objectified... prepared, reshaped, and acculturated to be made consumable in a patriarchal world". Biblical women are agents of food preparation (Sarah, Rebecca, Abigail etc.) but are also objectified into food. Tamar in II Sam 13 is both agent and victim for she is invited to make medicinal food (biryah) for her brother, who rapes her, throws her out while she cries out about the outrage being done. The unnamed concubine-wife [pilegesh] of Judges 19 shows agency when she leaves her Levite master-husband and returns to her father's home, yet to the background of men eating and drinking merrily, she is given up to the townsmen, raped and left like a carcass for dead. Her husband sacrifices her body, using a ma-achelet, (which reminds us of the akedah story) cuts her up into 12 animal-like parts, to be distributed as a message to the tribes. Both stories illustrate the concept of women as food and sacrifice. The word, nevala, used to describe what happens in both cases, (and which harkens back to Genesis 34) has both the meaning of carcass and outrage. This paper will examine both biblical and rabbinic literature which treats women as meat, focusing mostly on the two outrages which have cosmic consequences.


Framing Books and Reading: An Exploration of Sixteenth Century Title Borders
Program Unit: Bible and Visual Art
M. Patrick Graham, Emory University

Making use of sixteenth-century, title-page borders, this study seeks to understand how they functioned to introduce their respective books. Each woodcut makes use of symbols for the four Gospels and then adds illustrations of Peter, Paul, the doctors of the Western Church, biblical stories, or other religious scenes. The borders typically show concern for issues of authority, exhibit a certain rhetoric of design, sometimes suggest a hermeneutic for the church’s reading of Scripture, and cite sacred texts to guide interpretation of a title-page illustration or the text of the book that follows.


"When the Friendship of God Was upon My Tent": Covenant as Essential Background to Lament, with Special Reference to the Book of Job
Program Unit: Covenant in the Persian Period
Jamie Grant, Highland Theological College

It is often mooted that the concept of covenant (along with many of the other central themes of the HB/OT) is absent from the Wisdom Literature [WL]. It is the contention of this paper that covenant is implicitly present in the WL, even where it is not seen explicitly, and that this is especially true of its lament literature. While covenant terminology may be largely absent from the WL, its semantic significance is key to any proper understanding of the function of lament within Wisdom. This is, arguably, most clearly seen in the book of Job, where covenant expectation is essential for the book’s rhetoric to make sense. Despite its apparently ‘non-Israelite’ setting, Job’s lament makes little or no sense apart from the covenantal theology typical of the Hebrew worldview. Clearly, this type of complaint poetry must be read in the context of the people’s covenant expectations of God and this remains true even in the post-exilic (Persian) period in which Job reaches its final form. While laments change somewhat in the post-exilic period, especially with regard to the tone and content of their self-presentation, awareness of this covenantal subtext is still essential if the dynamic of lament is to be properly understood. This paper will argue that covenant is an integral part of the mind-set of the sages and that we cannot engage properly with their literature unless we have a healthy awareness of this latent theme.


I Love You, O YHWH, My Strength: The Theme of Strength as Metaphorical Glue in Psalm 18
Program Unit: Metaphor Theory and the Hebrew Bible
Alison Gray, University of Cambridge

Psalm 18, an anomaly in terms of its form and genre, has provoked unresolved disputes over its unity, dating and authorship. However, despite the apparently disparate nature of some of its strophes in terms of form, style, and content, there is a remarkable unity to the psalm. A closer look at some of its key metaphors will reveal that this can be largely attributed to the interplay between particular words and images used in the psalm’s metaphors. This paper aims to demonstrate that the theme of strength can be seen both explicitly and implicitly in a variety of metaphors throughout the psalm, and that it weaves together several distinctive strands of imagery and theological rhetoric into a cohesive literary whole. The approach to exegesis in this paper assumes the view that metaphors are a flexible and integral part of the whole text, and draws together insights from lexical semantics, pragmatics and cognitive linguistics, embracing a complementary approach to the use of metaphor theories in biblical interpretation. The psalm’s overture, 'I love you, O YHWH, my strength!' gives the psalm an intimate frame, addressing YHWH personally with a declaration of love and an appellation of YHWH as his strength. The process of interpreting this opening metaphor will involve an exploration into how particular words and images interact within a literary unit. While the introductory metaphor provides an interpretative frame which sheds a particular light on the understanding of subsequent metaphors in the psalm, its full meaning and impact can only be ‘filled in’, and therefore understood by, these same metaphors. This paper will explore a select number of metaphors that focus on the king’s relationship to YHWH. Together these will enrich our understanding of YHWH as a source of strength in the opening metaphor, and will give insight into how this theme of strength establishes connections between the king’s deliverance in the first half of the psalm, his gift of power and victory in the second half, and the meditation on justice and righteousness that stands in the centre.


Divine Resolve: What and How God Decides (Jeremiah 17 and 18)
Program Unit: Biblical Hebrew Poetry
Barbara Green, Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology at the Graduate Theological Union

Amid all the divine language of anger, accusation, blame and threat, God also speaks another salvific possibility. Assuming that the main engine of the Book of Jeremiah, its driving force, is to promote the counter-intuitive option that the survival of God’s “Judah project” is possible only if some people quasi-voluntarily re-locate to Babylon before the Babylonians are victorious, how can God seem/be shown to consider, desire and promote such an unimaginable thing? It is shown difficult for God as well as for prophet and those few people who take it up, and for some intended audiences, of course. In chs. 11-20, God has eight moments of the genre I have called divine soliloquy, not dissimilar from Jeremiah’s laments, where God’s rumination and resolution can be glimpsed. We will look at the seventh of these passages (17:1-13) to see how God comes to a decision, and then in the eighth of them (18:13-17), we will note how imagery reinforces that central insight.


The Digital Nestle-Aland
Program Unit:
Zeth Green, University of Birmingham

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Technical Developments: the Workspace for Collaborative Editing and the NT.VMR
Program Unit: Novum Testamentum Graecum: Editio Critica Maior
Zeth Green, University of Birmingham

The New Testament Virtual Manuscript Room (NT.VMR), hosted by the INTF in Münster, has become established as the first port of call online for all working on the text of the Greek New Testament. Among the resources made freely available by the initial release of the site are the Gregory-Aland Kurzgefasste Liste of Greek New Testament manuscripts (searchable and regularly updated), digitised images and electronic transcriptions of key witnesses. The second release in March 2012 (VMR 2.0; http://ntvmr.uni-muenster.de/) comprises complete sets of images for over 560 manuscripts, refined search facilities and community collaboration tools for indexing, transcribing and discussing features of New Testament manuscripts. The Workspace for Collaborative Editing is being developed by partners in Birmingham, Trier and Münster to enable editors of the Novum Testamentum Graecum Editio Critica Maior to work together. Its goal is to integrate the electronic tools used at each stage of producing the edition, providing an online environment for a seamless workflow of transcribing, collating, analysing, refining and publishing the textual data. Technical development for the two projects is based on an interoperable approach, using OpenSocial containers. This means that each can adopt tools developed by the other (as well as related projects) and draw on the same data in a customisable web-browser interface. The presentation will demonstrate the capabilities of both platforms, describe progress made in the last year and outline plans for future development.


Calvin’s Understanding of the Literal Sense and Its Typological Shaping: The Promises to Abraham
Program Unit: Christian Theology and the Bible
Kathryn Greene-McCreight, St John's Episcopal Church, New Haven, CT 06511

Calvin is one of the foremost Reformation champions of the authority of Scripture read according to its literal sense. But nowhere does he lay out methodologically his understanding of how the literal sense is to be defined, or how it might be sought. The matter becomes especially interesting when Calvin reads those passages in the New Testament in which the Old Testament is interpreted. There, Calvin’s understanding of the literal reading of Scripture bears a family resemblance to what we might otherwise call a typological reading. Focussing our attention on Calvin’s interpretation of New Testament texts which speak of the promises to Abraham, we will ask some key questions. How do the following impinge on his reading of the literal/typological sense: his overall understanding of classic Christian confession (i. e., Nicaea though Chalcedon); the canon of Scripture as a whole; polemic with other interpreters from the history of the tradition behind him; polemic arising from within his own day’s ecclesiastical context; the tasks of Christian formation and proclamation?


Looking for Laws in the Covenant with Abraham
Program Unit: Biblical Law
Samuel Greengus, Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion

Biblical covenants–both secular and divine–have long been compared to ancient Near Eastern political treaties; and the biblical laws to the stipulations found in those treaties. One thus does not expect to find a covenant or treaty without stipulations or obligations. But there is a curious absence of laws in the divine covenant with Abraham depicted in Gen 15; and only one obligation, i.e., the rite of circumcision, is mentioned in the narrative on the covenant in Gen 17. How surprising, therefore, it is to find God saying to Isaac in Gen 26:4–5 “ . . . all the nations of the earth shall gain blessing for themselves through your offspring, because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.” (NRSV) Medieval Jewish exegetes, understandably, wrestled with the “logical” problem of how this assertion could have been made in view of the little we see in Gen 15 and 17! Many modern exegetes explain Gen 25:4–5 as a later addition to the older narratives. This paper will build upon that idea and explore the formulation of this assertion and its heaping up of so many terms together in order to describe the piety of Abraham. This mingling of terms for ritual regulations and civil laws can seen elsewhere in the Bible. Such formulations, which blurred the original distinctiveness of the individual terms, were created in order to encompass and unify the totality of covenant obligations that, at that time, were understood as defining what God demanded from the people of Israel.


Changing the World in Front of the Preacher: Ricouer’s Theory of the Text as a Model for Preaching for Social Change
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
David Greenhaw, Eden Theological Seminary

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Synopsis and Reflections
Program Unit: Jewish-Christian Dialogue and Sacred Texts
Leonard J. Greenspoon, Creighton University

A synopsis, including reflections on the session topic: Jewish-Christian Dialogue and Teaching Biblical Literature.


Where the Jews Are—and Aren't—in Translations of the New Testament
Program Unit: National Association of Professors of Hebrew
Leonard Greenspoon, Creighton University

Almost all Christians read and study the New Testament in translation. And almost all of these translations feature, especially in the Gospel of John, references to “the Jews” as implacable foes of Jesus and thus of the truth. The main characters, as recorded in these same versions, bear distinctively “un-Jewish” names like “Jesus” (instead of “Jeshua”), “Mary”(instead of “Miryam” and “Joseph” (for “Yosef”). Thus it is that Jesus’ many “Jewish” connections are obscured or misrepresented for Christians in their Scripture. Literary scholar Willis Barnstone has mounted the most recent challenge to these practices. But he is far from alone. In this presentation we will re-evaluate the evidence from the perspective of both first century CE Judaism and translation studies. Although, for the most part, Christians are responsible for the nature and direction of translations of the New Testament, this is no longer entirely the case nor should Jewish scholars and scholarship be reluctant to weigh in on issues such as this that have a direct bearing on interfaith and interconfessional relations.


The Book of Job and Mesopotamian Literature: How Many Degrees of Separation?
Program Unit: National Association of Professors of Hebrew
Edward L. Greenstein, Bar-Ilan University

The Book of Job, as is well known, belongs to an ancient Near Eastern literary tradition of texts about pious sufferers. Perhaps the texts closest in content to Job are the two Akkadian texts, “Let Me Praise the Lord of Wisdom” and the so-called Babylonian Theodicy. The former was already known among the Syro-Canaanite scribes of the second millennium BCE. However, in spite of many similarities between these Akkadian texts and Job, one would be hard-pressed to establish a direct dependency. Nevertheless, the poetry of Job can be shown to display a direct acquaintance with some Babylonian literature and language. In this paper a number of examples will be discussed.


Proclaimers Place: Eight Years of Biracial International Ministerial Continuing Education at Oxford
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Joel Gregory, Baylor University

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Archaeology and Christianity in Roman Corinth and Its Hinterland: Opportunities and Limitations
Program Unit: Polis and Ekklesia: Investigations of Urban Christianity
Timothy E. Gregory, Ohio State University

In recent years, New Testament scholars have become especially interested in the social background of the establishment and growth of Christianity in the first half-millennium C.E. Archaeologists have been anxious to collaborate in this undertaking and many publications have appeared as a result of this intersection of interest. This research, however, has not produced fully satisfactory results. The present paper will examine this phenomenon with a focus on the archaeology of Corinth, its neighboring settlements, and the agricultural and suburban hinterland. It will argue that the difficulty in using archaeological data for the history of the Pauline mission and the development of Christianity in Greece partly arises because the archaeologists and New Testament scholars traditionally ask different kinds of questions, but more seriously because the archaeological information itself does not normally provide good answers to these inquiries. After exploring this general phenomenon, the paper will provide a more positive evaluation by investigating ways in which different types of analysis may be able to succeed in illuminating issues of significance for the development of Christianity in this important part of the Mediterranean world. These will involve the evaluation of different kinds of settlements, from the metropolitan city itself to smaller towns and sanctuaries and the suburban and rural landscape in the immediate vicinity.


Isaiah—A Prophet like Moses (Deut 18:15–18): The Significance of Torah (Isa 2:3) in Isaiah’s Vision of Peace (Isa 2:1–5)
Program Unit: Book of Isaiah
Alphonso Groenewald, University of Pretoria

In this paper the vision of peace in Isaiah 2:1-5 will be analyzed focusing on an interpretation of Torah as referring to the Mosaic Law Book. In other words, Torah is understood in the Deuteronomic/post-Deuteronomic sense of a written code of ethical and religious teaching. This interpretation of Torah in Isaiah 2:3 supports an understanding of Isaiah as a prophet like Moses. For the authors of the post-exilic Pentateuch Moses was not only the last prophet of YHWH’s direct revelation, but he was also the first scribe writing down the Torah and the first exegete of the Torah that accompanied the people of Israel on their way into the promised land after Moses’ death. For the priestly authors of the post-exilic Pentateuch Moses’ task as prophet was revived in the written Torah. This theory of prophetic revelation as formulated in Deuteronomy 18:15-18 was accepted by the scribes editing the book containing the oracles of Isaiah. According to the tradents of Isaiah his prophetic revelation was understood as an updating of the Torah itself; that is to say, he is a man actualizing and commenting on the Mosaic Torah. He becomes a successor to Moses, the giver of the law at Sinai and the prophet par excellence (Deut 18:15-18). Similarly to Israel having received God’s instruction at Sinai, the nations will be taught and be instructed at Mount Zion through the book of Isaiah. Torah teaching thus has a universal impact.


Jew, Non-Jew, and the "Other": Proselytes in Josephus
Program Unit: Josephus
Davina Grojnowski, King's College - London

Within his entire literary corpus, Josephus portrays a large variety of different groups of people, Jewish and non-Jewish, and their cross-cultural relationships. One of these “other” groups are proselytes. Josephus mentions several instances of conversion, the closest connection possible between Jews and “others”. Individual conversion narratives in Josephus’s various books have been discussed frequently for their inherent information on circumcision, the conversion process, and indications for an actively missionary Judaism. This paper, however, attempts to examine these conversion narratives both as a whole and in their respective context, focussing on terminology and literary setting. The focus will be on Josephus’s depiction of the group of proselytes, especially such occasions where entire ethnic groups are converted. As conversion to Judaism entailed the rejection of all previous customs, the acceptance of Jewish law and social integration into the Jewish community, this paper will look at how the aspect of religious “otherness” is dealt with in Josephus. The narratives will be analysed with respect to Josephus’s methodology, their literary setting and the characters’ motives for converting (e.g. marriage, force, conviction) as well as long-term consequences of the conversion, followed by a linguistic analysis of Josephus’s terminology. The aim of this paper is to understand Josephus’ attitude towards conversion, the “other” Jews, the converts, and their relationship with the Jewish community.


Analogous Developments in Aramaic Common Law and in the Biblical Law Collections
Program Unit: Biblical Law
Andrew D. Gross, Catholic University of America

Scholars over the last century have devoted a great deal of energy to adducing the parallels between the various law collections from Mesopotamia and the law collections found within the Hebrew Bible. Recent scholarship on biblical law, in particular David Wright’s 2009 book Inventing God’s Law, has raised anew certain questions as to the nature of these parallels. Two specific questions Wright’s study raises are: (1) Do these parallels stem more from common legal traditions—meta-traditions shared throughout the ancient Near East—or do they stem more from direct textual influence? (2) What does the answer to the first question suggest about when and how the biblical law collections were compiled? Did these traditions spread from the Old Babylonian Empire into Bronze Age Syria and eventually make their way into ancient Israel? Or did they reach ancient Israel only with the spread of the Neo-Assyrian Empire across the ancient Near East in the 1st millennium? Precisely the same questions have been raised regarding the streams of traditions reflected in legal documents of practice from the ancient Near East. Clear parallels can be adduced between the legal formularies used in Aramaic deeds of sale and those used in cuneiform ones. If we assume a chain of influence here, does that chain run from 2nd millennium Mesopotamia through Bronze Age Syria and eventually into 1st millennium Aramaic common law? Or did these parallel elements only enter the Aramaic tradition with the rise of the great 1st millennium Mesopotamian empires? In this paper, I will examine some of the parallels found in these documents of practice, assess the various arguments regarding their origins, and consider what implications they have for the transmission of legal traditions in the ancient Near East in general.


Perceptions and Expectations of the Biblical Hebrew Poetic Line: A Cognitive Poetics Approach to Lineation of David’s Lament in 2 Samuel 1:19–27
Program Unit: Biblical Hebrew Poetry
Emmylou J. Grosser, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Lineation in Biblical Hebrew poetry, like rhythm, is a “felt” or perceptual phenomenon—not simply a perceptual phenomenon, but perceptual, nonetheless. The difficulty of studying rhythm and lineation as “felt” phenomena is that the poem must to some degree be treated as an aesthetic experience, not just as an aesthetic object. In an aesthetic experience, the mind is not a passive recipient of data; rather, aesthetic perception is very much an active organization of data. In spite of the complexities of studying perceptual phenomena in modern poems, let alone in ancient ones, this paper proposes that lineation of Biblical Hebrew poetry as a perceptual phenomenon can be studied in principled ways, with the insights of Cognitive Poetics and other interdisciplinary approaches, and moreover, that it should be studied in principled ways—especially since biblical scholars continue to lineate poems based on their perceptions and expectations. Drawing especially from Reuven Tsur’s Cognitive Poetics work in versification, this paper explores the lineation of David’s Lament from a cognitive constraints approach. The two most relevant cognitive constraints are the limitations and capacities of short-term memory and the conditions that maximize the mind’s tendency to perceive a stimulus pattern as an integrated whole. Two of the expectations that biblical scholars typically bring to the lineation of this lament are “parallelism” and “balance.” Scholars tend to arrange the text into groups of bicola or tricola, or work backwards to lineation from macrostructure. In contrast, this paper’s perceptual approach to lineation considers the textual groupings or shapes that potentially emerge, which of them are weak and which are strong, how parts emerge as wholes, and how wholes break into parts—on all levels of language. This perceptual approach to lineation of the lament results in the emergence of a clear and simple chiastic macrostructure.


Contested Spaces and Contested Meanings in the Acts of Thomas
Program Unit: Greco-Roman Religions
William Gruen, Muhlenberg College

The agonistic character of the Apocryphal Acts literature has been well documented. The vast majority of these traditions revolve around the apostolic figure battling both demonic and human adversaries. The Acts of Thomas is no exception, showing the protagonist as Christian hero par-excellence, navigating both cosmological and theological adversaries, always emerging triumphant. Beyond the narration of these competitions themselves, however, the reader also witnesses Thomas navigating different places and spaces in his journeys. The dichotomies of deserted/inhabited, public/private, sacred/profane, domestic/communal are all encountered and their meanings adjudicated through the apostolic competitions. This paper will use spatiality theory to interrogate the use of these narrative topoi. In so doing, the role of space will not only be explored in these imagined places of the Acts of Thomas, but implications for the lived experience of the community will be investigated. How might these stories simultaneously reflect and influence ritual practice and performance by the community? In what ways might the manipulation of space within the narrative map onto power relationships both within the community and in relation to rival communities? By reading the Acts of Thomas through the lens of space and place, this paper will also explore the possibility that these contemporary tools can help reconstruct both the internal social situation of the community of reception of the text as well as its relationship to other power dynamics in this late antique world (i.e., imperial authority, local/regional influence, and emerging episcopal authority).


The Manga Bible: A Clash of Medium and Message?
Program Unit: Ideology, Culture, and Translation
Anne Katrine Gudme, University of Copenhagen

In recent years, several ‘Manga Bibles’, that is the Bible published as a Japanese-style Manga comic book, have entered the Western book market. These publications are chiefly intended to target and capture the interest of an otherwise difficult audience, namely pre-teens and teens. The hope is that some of the immense popularity of the Manga genre among young people will ‘rub off’ onto the Bible and its message. Interestingly, these new Manga Bibles seem to have almost the exact opposite effect. When children and teenagers are introduced to them they tend to find them embarrassing and awkward. In this paper, the Manga Bibles are compared with other and more successful conversions of the Bible to popular media and it is suggested that the Manga Bibles’ failure to capture their intended audience is due to a clash between a very dynamic tradition of graphic storytelling and a very static and passive use of the biblical text. The argument is that a successful translation of the Bible to Manga requires a fusion of the medium and the message and not merely an illustration of the text.


She Had the Courage to Break the Silence: Briet Bjarnhedinsdottir—A Leader of the Suffrage Movement in Iceland
Program Unit: Recovering Female Interpreters of the Bible
Arnfridur Gudmundsdottir, University of Iceland

As a writer, public speaker, and political advocate, Briet Bjarnhedinsdottir (1856–1940) promoted women’s rights and education. In 1885, her article on women’s rights and education won her recognition as the first woman to have an article published in an Icelandic journal. In December 1887, Bjarnhedinsdottir became the first woman to give a public lecture in Reykjavik, Iceland’s capital, speaking to a packed audience on the same subject. Her lecture was published in a monograph only a few months later. Like many other women who fought for women’s rights, Bjarnhedinsdottir recognized that the Bible had played an important role in preventing women from gaining full equality with men. In her public lecture of 1887, Bjarnhedinsdottir called particular attention to the history of the interpretation of the story of woman’s creation in Gen 2, to misogynist Old Testament laws and narratives, and to some of the teachings of the apostle Paul. She suggested that Paul was following the creation story in his instructions to women to be submissive, forbearing, and obedient to their husbands. She highlighted as problematic Paul’s instructions to women to cover their heads in church and public gatherings, and to remain silent in meetings. While Bjarnhedinsdottir certainly found Paul’s message problematic, she held his interpreters to be even more culpable. Her approach was similar to that found in the Woman’s Bible, which was first published seven years after she delivered her lecture on women’s freedom and education in 1887. Hence, Mrs. Bjarnhedinsdottir rightfully belongs to pioneers among women who contributed to a critical interpretation of biblical writings world-wide.


Job and the "Mystic's Solution" to Theodicy: Paideia and Internalized Apocalypticism in the Testament of Job
Program Unit: Wisdom and Apocalypticism
Andrew R. Guffey, University of Virginia

Problems of theodicy mark both the book of Job and the Testament of Job (T. Job). While Job has traditionally been hailed as “Job the patient,” biblical scholars have often found reason to doubt the validity of the epithet with respect to the book of Job. Whereas in the book of Job the exemplary character of Job’s response to his suffering is ambiguous, T. Job does portray Job as a moral exemplar to be imitated. This paper argues that T. Job describes a path of paideia as Job learns patience and dispassion through his suffering. Drawing on themes current in Hellenistic popular philosophy—particularly the theme of renunciation and athletic metaphor—T. Job narrates the process by which Job gradually learns apatheia and loses his attachment to the sources of his suffering. Job’s path has both horizontal and vertical trajectories. Where Hellenistic philosophy is teleologically oriented, Job’s patience is ultimately eschatologically oriented. At the same time, he is given the means of participating in the heavenly or angelic life while on earth, which may mirror philosophical ascent or assimilation to God. Through his philosophical detachment, eschatological hope, and mystical transformation, Job’s paideia through suffering itself functions as a pedagogical model for other righteous sufferers.


A Diatessaronic Pictorial Cycle Preserved within the St. Augustine Gospels
Program Unit: Art and Religions of Antiquity
Zsuzsanna Gulacsi, Northern Arizona University

The earliest known gospel harmony, composed in Syriac probably by the early Christian writer Tatian (ca. 120-180 CE), remained the standard gospel text in the Syriac-speaking part of the Christian world until the late 5th century. It had been long thought that this text must have had an impact on early Christian art. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate from the perspective of biblical studies that a well-known early Christian book painting has a diatessaronic visual narration. In order to prove that a full-page illumination (folio 125 recto) depicting the events of the early Passion in twelve scenes within a 6th-century Latin manuscript known as the St. Augustine Gospels (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge) conforms to Tatian’s prose, my argument is three-fold. First, I demonstrate that the narrative scope of the pictorial cycle is identical to the twelve events discussed in a continuous section in Tatian’s text (37:46-51:18). This newly recognized fact forms the foundation of this project. Second, I show that the combination of a large group of key motifs chosen to be depicted also conforms to the text of the Diatessaron. Thus, the iconography, too, can be identified as diatessaronic. Finally, I apply a codicological method to the study of the St. Augustine Gospels in order to highlight various additional clues retained within in the manuscript as a physical object to suggest that the full-page painting with its twelve scenes could not have originated within the context of this illuminated book. The location with the book and the conscious design of this 12-scene cycle indicate that the painting was copied into this Latin manuscript not as literal illustrations to any of the four gospel texts, but as an appropriate luxurious embellishment to a gospel-book used as an the Episcopal gift. Thus, I argue that this 12-secen diatessaronic cycle must have originated outside the physical context St. Augustine Gospels, as a now-lost pictorial prototype that was closely based on Tatian’s gospel harmony.


Having Your Cake and Eating It Too—Or Not: Paul’s Defense of the Apostles’ Eating Other People’s Food and Not Doing So Himself in 1Corinthians 9
Program Unit: Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy
Judith Gundry, Yale University

For many 1 Corinthians 9 is a defense of Paul’s apostleship (cf. 9:3). But how does such an apologia fit in the immediate context (chapters 8, 10) concerning “knowledge” that idols don’t exist, the corresponding “right” to eat food sacrificed to idols, and Paul’s prohibition of doing so in certain cases? Further, if Paul’s apostleship was challenged because he refused material support, why does he argue so vehemently for the right to such support (9:4-14), before explaining why he refuses it (9:15-27)? In this paper I will argue that Paul’s defense focuses on the apostolic right to support as remuneration for work through food and drink (not support through patronage, fees, or begging; cf. Hock). Apostles have the right “to eat and drink” other people’s food and “lead around a believing sister” (or: her maintenance; Fitzmyer; 9:4-5), and, conversely, “not to work [with one’s own hands]” (9:6) for food and drink. Apostles have these rights because they “work” for a “wage,” they “sow” to “reap”: “You are my ergon in the Lord” (9:1); “If I do this willingly, I have a misthos” (9:17). “If speiromen spiritual things for you, is it too much if therisomen your physical goods?” (9:11). Paul is not simply dispelling the notion that he was no apostle, if he worked manually (4:12) and was celibate (7:8), unlike other apostles. He defines apostolic ministry as “work” deserving of remuneration (food, drink). By implication, early Christian households were to pony up what they owed the hungry and thirsty workers in the gospel, rather than “use up” their worldly goods for themselves (cf. 7:31). Here Paul probably butts heads with Corinthian critics who construed apostles as patrons conferring benefits (cf. 1:12-13; 3:4, 21-22). In 1 Corinthians 9, I suggest, Paul resumes his earlier discussion of apostles as “God’s co-workers” who “work” for reward; they “plant” and “water,” “lay a foundation” or “build” on it (3:6-15). They are mere diakonoi (3:5, 21). On this basis Paul proceeds (9:15-27) to explain why “I have made no use of any of these.” He sacrifices his apostolic misthos and takes on the persona of a slave, not working for wages, but out of “necessity.” He is thus an exemplum of renouncing a valid right to eat and drink for eschatological gain (cf. 1 Cor 8:8, 11, 13). 1 Cor 9:4-14 thus does not sit uncomfortably between an apology for Paul’s apostleship (9:1-3) and a defense of his renunciation of his apostolic rights (9:15-27). This middle section supplies the crucial definition of apostolic ministry as remunerated labor, supported by a rare Pauline citation of Jesus-tradition (9:14) and a series of rhetorical questions offering analogies from the everyday world of work and temple-work for labor remunerated with food and drink (9:7-13). The need for such a well-supported definition of apostolic ministry as work for food/drink is suggested by the viewpoint expressed in 2 Thess 3:6-12, “whoever does not work (manually) should not eat.” Apostles thus have their cake, and eat it too—or not.


"They Are Not Gods!" Jewish Idol Polemic and Greco-Roman Use of Cult Statues
Program Unit: Religious World of Late Antiquity
Nijay K Gupta, Seattle Pacific University

The mockery of idols in the Jewish Scriptures as well as early Jewish literature is distinctive. The Israelites harangued idol worshippers for being deceived by objects that are not alive and cannot offer true divine aid or protection. It is rather common for Biblical scholars to treat the Jewish idol polemic as a caricature insofar as they appear to be convincing “pagans” or fellow Jews to recognize that cult statues were not real gods. Many Biblical scholars presume that “pagans” already knew that their cult statues were not actual gods and, thus, the Jewish rhetoric is inaccurate. This paper will challenge the prevailing assumption that “pagans” did not in fact view their cult statues as real gods. There is much evidence to support the notion that Greco-Romans, in particular, told stories and treated their cult statues in ways that demonstrate that these objects were understood as much more than symbolic statues or even receptacles of numinous power. The theory will be posited that the most likely conceptualization of the ontology of Greco-Roman cult statues involved a threshold existence that managed to bridge the realm of the gods and the world of mortals. Thus, when Jews warned “pagans” and Jews not to worship idols, while certainly the rhetoric was pointed, it was not necessarily irrelevant or inaccurate. [NB: This proposal is meant for the section "Palpable Gods"]


Gloria in Profundis: Comparing Ben Sira and John on the Glory of Moses and Jesus
Program Unit: Johannine Literature
Nijay K Gupta, Seattle Pacific University

The glory of Jesus is a leitmotif of the Fourth Gospel and probably reflects both the shekinah “glory” of Israel’s God revealed in Jesus as well as “fame” or “honor” attributed to Jesus by John. The Jewish wisdom teacher Ben Sira also employed glorification language frequently and carefully in Sirach. Bringing these two texts into conversation illuminates the peculiar and unique ways in which John was portraying the identity of Jesus. In Sirach 45.1-5, in particular, Ben Sira praised the glory of Moses – a man beloved of God, made equal to the angels, great before his enemies, powerful in word, intrepid before kings, sanctified in faithfulness, party to the holy presence of God, and privy to the secret things of God. Given that John also had much interest in Moses comparison and typology, setting these texts side-by-side brings to the forefront the double-nature of the Fourth Gospel’s glory-Christology. On the one hand, the Johannine Jesus offered great demonstrations of power and authoritative teaching. On the other hand, he fared quite the opposite as Ben Sira’s vision of Moses, especially in John’s passion narrative where Jesus appears frail, weak, shamed, and defeated from a human perspective. Comparing the Moses of Sirach to the Jesus of John’s Gospel especially highlights the Evangelist’s paradoxical theology of Gloria in profundis - the humble glory of God demonstrated in Jesus.


Woman Wisdom and Strange Woman in Proverbs and the Discourse of a Loose Woman and a Virtuous Woman in East Asian Confucian Tradition
Program Unit: Asian and Asian-American Hermeneutics
SungAe Ha, Graduate Theological Union

The paper will explore the politics of gender discourse through a reading of Woman Wisdom and Strange Woman in Proverbs in comparison with the discourse of a loose woman (??) and a virtuous woman (??) in East Asian Confucian tradition.


Promised Land or Rightful Property?
Program Unit: Ecological Hermeneutics
Norm Habel, Flinders University

Promised Land texts of the Scriptures provided a vision for the settlements of colonies in the Western world. We now suspect that interpreters from these contexts read key Promised Land texts from an economic rather than an ecological perspective. What might we discern in these texts if we read from the perspective of those who once identified with the land or that of the land itself? Using key texts such as Joshua 1, the paper will take into account the economic dimensions prevailing in the world of the biblical text, the minds of the biblical writers and the traditions of interpreters past and present whose economic orientation/status may have influenced their reading of the text.


Lexicographic Extensions to Some Biblical Roots in the Light of the Amarna Tablets
Program Unit: Biblical Lexicography
Esther Haber, Bar-Ilan University

The Amarna archive reflects a crucial period in the history of the Ancient Near East during the 14th century BC. The letters are the most important source for the study of words in the North Western Semitic dialects in the pre-Israelite period. Along with the Canaanite glosses, they provide firm ground for linguistic studies. This paper aims to present new interpretations of some biblical roots in the light of material from the archive.


Incantation Texts as a Witness to Mandaean Scripture
Program Unit: Aramaic Studies
Charles G. Häberl, Rutgers University

In contrast with the testimony of the Mandaean manuscripts and external witnesses about Mandaeism in antiquity, the archaeological record seems quite sparse. The Mandaeans have not left behind distinctive architectural remains, ceramic assemblages, specie, or any other examples of the plastic arts. The sole archaeological witnesses to the presence of Mandaeans in the region are the incantation texts composed in the Mandaic script and either inscribed upon pottery bowls or incised into sheets of metal. The former date between the fifth and the eighth century CE, and the latter likely belong to a slightly earlier date, between the fourth and the seventh century. The distribution of these text corresponds closely to the evidence provided by the Mandaean literature and the external witnesses during the Sasanian and early Islamic eras. These texts represent the Mandaean contribution to a broader corpus of incantations that transcend confessional boundaries, and appear in different scripts reflecting different religious traditions, imparting much valuable information about the religions of those who composed them. Some of the earliest Mandaic incantations, such as the lead amulet published by Lidzbarski, attest to a developed Mandaean theology. While none of the incantation bowls thus far discovered reproduce any substantial portion of the canonical Mandaean scriptures, they do frequently incorporate individual formulae also found within Mandaean scripture, raising intriguing questions about the relationship of these two corpora that have thus far not been addressed.


The Concept of Exile in the Septuagint
Program Unit: Greek Bible
Noah Hacham, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Galut (Exile) in Biblical theology is simply a punishment. The people no longer live in their homeland since they do not deserve to live there: "For the land shall be forsaken of them… while they atone for their iniquity" (Lev. 27:43). However, most of the Jewish people lived outside the Land of Israel during the Second Temple period. Did they see themselves as being punished? How did they explain the punishment of the "exile"? In my paper I will examine some Jewish-Hellenistic authors' views, but mainly the way the LXX understands the concept of Galut. Based on the words and terms the LXX uses to translate the semantic field of Gola, we will suggest that the punishment is not the sojourn outside the homeland but the circumstances of life in those places. Thus enslavement and captivity are the true negative essence of Gola: a free man anywhere in the world is not in exile at all.


The Queenmakers: Gender Performance in the Prophets
Program Unit: LGBTI/Queer Hermeneutics
Susan E. Haddox, University of Mount Union

The prophetic texts are well known for their use of the marriage metaphor to describe the relationship between YHWH and Israel. While most of the scholarly attention has focused on the portrayal of the woman in this image and the dynamics between the husband and the wife, some studies have looked into the effects of imposing a female identity on the largely male, elite audience. This paper will take these latter studies a step further, examining how the prophets effectively create a drag performance for the reader. Hosea is the most well-known early adopter of the marriage metaphor, drawing on the portrayal of cities as female found throughout the ANE. Several later prophets picked up on this imagery, especially for describing Israel’s sins and punishments. Images of the prophetic audience as women can be found in most of the minor prophets, as well as Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. One characteristic of these portrayals is that clothing, and sometimes jewelry, is usually featured prominently. Clothing is given and taken away; skirts are lifted and nakedness is uncovered; jewelry is bestowed and excoriated. On the other hand, references to clothing are used sparingly for describing men, and those mostly revolve around sackcloth and armor. The emphasis on female clothing for the male audience attempts to elicit a drag performance, which is sometimes supplemented with a description of their singing or walking with mincing steps, with ornaments jingling on their ankles. The male gender is not completely eradicated in these portrayals, however, and the reader gets an occasional glimpse of the gender performer, as well as the performance.


Noah, "the Preacher of (God's) Righteousness": The Argument from Scripture in 2 Pet 2:5, 9
Program Unit: Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity
Scott Hafemann, University of St. Andrews (Scotland)

The typological significance of God's not sparing the sinful angels, the ungodly ancient world, and the notorious cities of Sodom and Gomorrah in the eschatological-ethical argument of 2 Pet 2:4-6 is readily apparent (cf. the gar of 2 Pet 2:4a, introducing the extended conditional argument that runs from vv. 4-10a). And the role of Noah and Lot as their positive counterparts is equally transparent. Within these parallels, however, the force of the positive description of Noah within the argument is not immediately clear. In 2 Pet 2:4-5, those being judged are described as "having sinned" and as "the world of the ungodly," who can then be summarized in 2:9 as the "unrighteous." In contrast, Noah is described not in terms of his actions (which one might anticipate in view of his building of the ark) or as "righteous" himself, but as a "preacher of righteousness" (2:5). This is all the more striking in comparison to Lot, who is both described as "righteous" and illustrated to be so (2 Pet 2:7-8). Moreover, this description of Noah appears to be unmotivated by earlier tradition, since there is no explicit reference in the biblical account or in early, post-biblical literature to Noah actually preaching a message of "righteousness" to his contemporaries. The first references to Noah as a preacher to his pre-flood generation date from ca. AD 100. Nevertheless, the reference in 2:5 to Noah as the "eighth" (cf. 1 Pet 3:20) does recall the biblical narrative, where the datum of the eight members of Noah's family being saved in the ark finds special emphasis through its threefold repetition across the narrative (Gen 6:18; 7:7; 8:18). Following this lead, the rationale for Noah's unique description in 2 Pet 2:5 should therefore be sought in the Scriptural Noah-narrative considered more broadly. Indeed, an analysis of the Noah-narrative in Scripture serves to unpack the key motifs of the apocalyptic, Urzeit-Endzeit argument of 2 Peter: 1) Gen 6:8 and the Noah-focused palistrophic structure of the narrative, with Gen 8:1 as its center, is an interpretive key to 2 Pet 2:5; 2) the relationship between Gen 6:8, 9, and 7:1 may explain why Noah can be said to preach the righteousness he performs (cf. 1QapGen 6:1-6); and 3) Noah's only speech in the biblical narrative, in which he pronounces covenant blessings and curses on his descendants (Gen 9:20-27), informs 2 Pet 2:9-10a (cf. the b-version of T. Benjamin 10:6). The argument from Scripture in 2 Pet 2:5 and 9 thus forms part of the trajectory of the apocalyptically-colored Noah-tradition already reflected within the canon (cf. Isa 54:9; Ezek 14:12-20) and evidenced in Jubilees and 1 Enoch. Scripturally conceived, Noah is not a moral example, but an eschatological model of the remnant saved by God's righteousness, who preaches, in anticipation of the judgment to come, the reality he practiced.


Developing Methods for Biblical Field Research
Program Unit: Poverty in the Biblical World
Sakari Häkkinen, University of Helsinki, Finland

Consider the Bible is read to non-Christians, for example Muslims. This is something I have done in Africa and in the Palestinian territories in the West Bank. I wanted to know how poor people react to the words of Jesus when they hear his sayings and parables for the first time. I conducted a field study among the poor in order to gain new insights into the poverty texts of the Gospels, which were originally delivered in a world where poverty was a reality for almost everyone. For this reason I developed a simple practical method for conducting a biblical field study among poor people, many of them illiterate. The method has four stages: 1) Getting to know the local social history and making the acquaintance of the poor in their own context. 2) Interviewing the village chief or some other local leader regarding the population, the problems faced by the community, etc. 3) Telling a gospel story to them and recording the exchange. 4) Analyzing the material and deriving conclusions. I am presenting this method in order to gain scholarly feedback. I will also explain the difficulties I faced and the disadvantages that I recognized with this method. In particular, I would be interested in hearing comments on the following: 1) How does this practical method of field study fit with hermeneutical models and other, more theoretical, methodological approaches in contextual biblical studies? 2) Are there known comparable methods used to conduct biblical field study?


Activating Passive Competence: Hebrew Children's Literature, Fostering Instructors' Confidence to Use Biblical Hebrew in the Introductory Classroom
Program Unit: Applied Linguistics for Biblical Languages
Rahel Halabe, Vancouver, BC, Canada

Classical languages instructors nowadays, seek new ways drawn from Second Language pedagogy and methodology, and communicative teaching, in particular, in order to enhance their teaching and their students' learning. Such new ways and activities often require 'producing' language (animated reading aloud of texts, leading a simple conversation, acting out a dialogue, playing games) which some instructors, in spite of their deep competence in the vocabulary and grammar of the language they teach, do not feel at ease doing. Proficiency in Modern Conversational Hebrew (which may take time to achieve), can certainly help Biblical Hebrew instructors overcome their hesitance and actively use BH in class. In this suggested shorter way, instructors can greatly improve on their 'production' of BH through Hebrew Story Time workshops. In these sessions they will enjoy listening to an engaging children's story, orally answer guided questions, and attempt to simply discuss interesting subjects stemming from it – all in Hebrew. Much of Hebrew children's literature is written in rich language, not too different from BH, and has good literary qualities. Suitable stories for the suggested workshops are short, have simple plots, and are illustrated. Initially written for children (some by renowned authors), they may still be considered 'ambivalent', understood by adults on different, higher levels, and are intriguing and thought provoking. Adult learners have long benefited from such stories in the Vancouver Mini Ulpanim . Slight modifications to texts (replacing post Biblical elements with Biblical) and adaptation of methodology (drawing from participants 'passive' but substantial familiarity with BH (is needed. Adapted stories will still keep their original style, charm, and effectiveness, will help BH instructors 'activate' their competence, and foster their confidence to vocally use BH in varied new ways in the classroom.


Come on Feel the Noise: The Function of Screams in Mark and Ancient Performance
Program Unit: Performance Criticism of the Bible and Other Ancient Texts
T. Michael W. Halcomb, Asbury Theological Seminary

A topic that continues to scream for scholarly attention from Markan exegetes is none other than the role of screams throughout the narrative. Heeding the call, in this paper I seek to show how screaming, when situated within the context of ancient performance, sheds light on this fascinating feature of Mark's story. In particular, I will focus on screaming from the standpoint of the ancient performer and how it might have caused him or her to be viewed. Additionally, I will address the intended effects of screaming in relation to other aural devices. In the end, the hope is that we will not only hear these nuances of Mark’s story loud and clear but also understand and feel their intended effects.


The Fruit of Lips That Acknowledge His Name: On the Literal Sense of “Sacrifice of Praise” in the Hebrew Bible
Program Unit: Christian Theology and the Bible
Kevin Joseph Haley, University of Notre Dame

Toward the end of the letter to the Hebrews, the author writes, “Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name” (13:15). In the context of this letter, which contains some of the strongest supersessionist language in the New Testament, this may seem to be a facile spiritualization of sacrifice. In fact, the author is drawing on a tradition already present in the Hebrew Bible, especially in the Psalms. While a thanksgiving offering (todah) would originally have included both an animal sacrifice and some manner of publicizing the works of God through praise (cf. Lev. 7; Pss 22; 66; 107:21-22), eventually the vow to praise and its subsequent fulfillment eventually sufficed as a fitting response to God’s deliverance (Ps 40:6-10; 50:8-16; 107:8, 15, 31-32). In his influential article, Ginsberg showed the similarities between biblical psalms of thanksgiving and North Semitic eucharistic epigraphy, specifically the Ben-hadad stele. The actual writing down of a psalm, similar to an inscription on stone, came to be an acceptable form of thanksgiving in response to an act of deliverance. When the Lord extends Hezekiah’s life in Isa 38, his prayer is introduced not with a simple, “He said” or “He prayed” as are other psalms in the midst of narrative but rather with ??????? ????, “an inscription/writing of Hezekiah.” Similarly, when God delivers Tobit, the angel Raphael orders him to “Write down all that has happened to you” (12:20). Since the words of praise in the Psalms are meant to extend not only spatially but temporally (Ps 22:30-32), the means for this, as Brevard Childs notes, can be found in Ps 102:19: “Let this be recorded (????) for a generation to come.” Because of these different voices within the Old Testament itself, we can see that the author of Hebrews is actually being true to the literal sense of a thanksgiving offering and not simply imposing a metaphorical reading onto the texts.


Theorizing Religious Space: An Overview of Theories, Methods, and Challenges
Program Unit: Greco-Roman Religions
Jeanne Halgren Kilde, University of Minnesota

In the mid-1970s, French philosopher and social theorist Henri LeFebrve argued that social relations have a social existence precisely to the extent to which they have a spatial existence. More recently, geographer Edward Soja reiterated the thought, writing, “There is no unspatialized social reality,” and in turn, “There are no aspatial social processes” (Soja, Thirdspace, 46). The extent to which religion is a social process (and since Durkheim the social character of religion is hardly an untheorized concept) it is spatialized. How then does inquiry into spatialization, a category long ignored by scholars of religion, make a difference in how we understand religion? Scholars in a variety of subfield related to the study of religion are asking this question and energetically investigating the spatial character of religion. This paper will survey the work of some of the major contributors to the field that is currently coalescing around the critical study of space and religion. The paper will look briefly at four general types of approaches – 1.) Phenomenological-Hermeneutical, 2.) Socio-historical approaches, 3.) Critical-spatial approaches, and 4.)Thematic approaches – and then focus in on poststructuralism and the third category, critical spatial studies. Among the theorists to be discussed are Lindsay Jones, Jonathan Z. Smith, David Chidester and Edward Linenthal, sociologist Henri LeFebvre, geographers Yi-Fu Tuan and Edward Soja, and socio-cultural theorists Michel Foucault and Homi Bhabha.


Just-in-Time Teaching Tactics
Program Unit: Academic Teaching and Biblical Studies
Taylor Halverson, Brigham Young University

Learner needs are often constrained by the traditional structure of a timed lecture that is sequenced into a rigid term or semester. One way to meet the real learning needs of students is to plan for and create learning opportunities that respond to the immediate needs of learners. Instead of only using class time to deliver content (i.e., lecture), class time can be used to address learners’ needs. This approach has been called Just-in-Time Teaching (JiTT). Essentially, the teacher uses a variety of means to determine in advance of the instructional moment what the learners’ needs are. The instructor then adjusts the activities of the course or lecture time period to meet those specifically determined learning needs. This presentation will enact this very process of Just-in-Time Teaching with conference participants to demonstrate several ways that teachers can be more effective and efficient in their teaching, even in large introductory Biblical studies lecture courses. Essentially, during the course of the presentation, using Just-in-Time tactics, participant learner needs will be determined and learning activities enacted that help to meet those immediate needs.


To Grade or Not to Grade? Assessing Learning in Theology, Religion, or Biblical Studies Courses
Program Unit: Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion
Taylor Halverson, Brigham Young University

Assessing learning is an area of practice that can cause “fear and trembling” among teachers of Theology, Religion, or Biblical Studies. Concerns arise about how to design, administer, and grade assessments that are fair and rigorous, engage students in real learning appropriate to the content matter, and do not pose an undue time burden on teachers for providing necessary feedback to learners on their achievement. Come join our discussion as we address questions like (1) How do we define learning and achievement in our field? (2) What forms of assessment, in addition to exams, quizzes, and papers, are valid and reliable ways to assess student learning and achievement? (3) What are best practices for effectively and efficiently designing, delivering, and grading assessments? (4) What resources are available to support the development and use of learning assessments in our field? Our table discussion will center on these and other related questions.


The Angelology in 4Q529 and Hazon Gabriel and the Identification of a Milieu
Program Unit: Pseudepigrapha
David Hamidovic, Université de Lausanne

A manuscript excavated from Qumran Cave 4, 4Q529, preserves the title of a document or a part of a document: “Words of the book which Michael has said to the angels”. Therefore the document or a part of it may be named: “Book of words of Michael”. The manuscript in Aramaic seems to be copied at the end of the first century BCE. The fragment 1 is the best preserved. Many words and expressions are closed to 1 Enoch and 2 Enoch like “the troops of fire” to designate angels or the vision of several mountains for example, but other words and expressions recall the book of Daniel like the call to the angel Gabriel to explain the vision and the presence of “a man”. The document may attest early the mix of apocalyptical traditions inside Jewish groups. Another document from the Dead Sea shores published in 2007 and named Hazon Gabriel may attest also the mix of Enochite and Danielic traditions but during the first century CE. Many affinities concerning the angelology may be put in evidence from the comparison between 4Q529 and the stele of Hazon Gabriel. It is not possible to postulate a direct link between both documents but they reflect the development of angelology around CE in Judaism. Both documents contribute to show the difficulty to assign a literary tradition to a specific group or milieu. The paper raises question on the usual paradigms in historical sociology to identify and describe a milieu beneath the text.


Re-conceptualizing the Periods of Early Alphabetic Scripts
Program Unit: Ugaritic Studies and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy
Gordon J. Hamilton, Huron University College

The last decade has witnessed a collapse of any consensus about the stages in the first millennium of early alphabetic scripts. Some would see just two periods:from the beginning to ca. 1050 BCE, a first period, variously termed Proto-Sinaitic, Proto- or Old Canaanite, or Early Alphabetic; and a second stage, called Early Linear Phoenician, starting at ca. 1050 BCE.Others would posit three phases:Canaanite scripts of the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, called Early Canaanite; Canaanite scripts of Iron Age I and IIA, termed Late Canaanite; and, starting ca. 1050 BCE, a standardized script called Early Linear Phoenician. This paper will propose that there were three periods to one continuous tradition of alphabetic writing, to be designated with the most neutral identifier available: Early Alphabetic A, ca. 1900-1400 BCE, Early Alphabetic B, ca. 1400-1050 BCE, and Early Alphabetic C, ca. 1050-900 BCE (or to the rise of distinctly national scripts). Early Alphabetic A may be characterized as: a semi-pictographic or semi-cursive script, almost all of whose letter forms can now be traced to either Egyptian hieroglyphic or hieratic progenitors; whose letters could be arranged either as vertical columns or horizontal lines written in either direction (although vertically arranged texts are much more frequently attested); and most of whose extant witnesses were inscribed on stone. Early Alphabetic B shows a transformation into an almost totally linear stage of handwriting; many letter forms come to resemble geometric shapes. Texts arranged as horizontal lines become much more common, as do inscriptions written with paint or ink. Early Alphabetic C witnesses a direct continuation of the earlier forms of the letters, but with less variety, which came to be arranged as horizontal lines written exclusively from right to left (witnessed by several recent discoveries from sites in Palestine).


Riddles and Parables, Traditions, and Texts: Ezekielian Perpectives on Israelite Wisdom
Program Unit: Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
Mark W. Hamilton, Abilene Christian University

Mark Sneed has argued that the biblical texts usually described as Wisdom Texts do not reflect a single, distinct tradition or worldview but rather a series of loosely related genres produced by scribes who were also responsible for other sorts of work. In making this argument, he challenges a century or more of research, pointing to major inconsistencies in logic and evidentiary gaps present in much older scholarship. This paper explores a dimension of genre-creation in ancient Israel, i.e., the transformation of oral (or oral-like) forms into written texts containing their own commentaries. Drawing on ancient Near Eastern commentary parallels, the paper focuses on the book of Ezekiel as it offers meshalim and commentaries on them (especially Ezekiel 17-19). The book exhibits a highly self-reflective awareness of the plasticity of literary genres and their potential for multiple rhetorical uses. This capacity for commentary on texts within an obviously prophetic textual corpus argues for a Sneed's case that "wisdom" was not a self-contained thought world but more a way of writing texts. But it also suggests that scribalism was itself not a purely in-school activity, much less a purely literary one (whatever that would mean), but a set of processes involving interactions with larger currents of life in Israelite culture.


Overcoming the Challenge of Under Prepared Students: Teaching Biblical Studies in a Community College Setting
Program Unit: Academic Teaching and Biblical Studies
Matthew Hamilton, Southwest Virginia Community College

Freshmen and Sophomore college students taking introductory biblical studies courses are usually in the process of adjusting to the rigors of college work, and are therefore unprepared to read, write, or think critically. This problem is particularly prevalent in the community college setting, where religious studies courses usually have no prerequisites. In order to overcome this difficulty, I have modified the Inductive Bible Study methodology, which was published by Dr. David R. Bauer and the late Dr. Robert A. Traina, in an effort to increase the students' ability to read, write, and think critically while also becoming very familiar with the material presented in New Testament and Old Testament Survey courses without being restricted by secondary sources and textbooks.


A Prayer to Sîn and the Psalms
Program Unit: Assyriology and the Bible
Joel Hamme, Fuller Theological Seminary

This paper examines the adaptation of a prayer to Sîn into a variety of ritual contexts, and how it was transformed into a dingir.ša.dib.ba that was included in an assembly of such ritual prayers. The examination indicates that the scribes freely adapted the name of the deity to fit different regional traditions in the five extant versions of the prayer. The scribes that produced the dingir.ša.dib.ba smoothed over a corruption in the transmission of the text, so that the dingir.ša.dib.ba reads “May the earth, which receives it, draw my fear to the Apsu,” rather than the original prayer’s “Let it (the earth) draw my fear as in a ditch to the Apsu.” There are other adaptations in transmission of the prayer to Sîn into a dingir.ša.dib.ba that take their cues from the texts, such as rather than reading lu-ši-ir “so that I may sing,” the text reads lu-še-er “so that I may succeed,” followed by a lengthy motive clause. Beyond regional traditions regarding the epithet for Sîn that inspired the adaptations in the text in the first line, the scribes take their cues from the text, and based on those cues either make sense of a difficult to understand text, or adapt it for a different theological message and purpose. The paper then discusses how the transmission and adaptation of the prayer to Sîn serves as a model for the adaptation of Psalms 14//53 and 40:14-18//70 into their various collections with slightly different theological messages.


The Magic of Methodology and Methodology of “Magic”
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible, History, and Archaeology
Esther Hamori, Union Theological Seminary, Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York

Through most of the history of biblical scholarship, “magic” was understood as the negative counterpart to “religion.” The last several decades have seen a radical shift in this area, and a fair amount of current scholarship dealing broadly with Israelite religion integrates more up-to-date theoretical models. When it comes to somewhat more narrowly defined topics, however, the theoretical framework is too often lacking. This is the case not only in regard to “magic” and “religion,” but other contrived dichotomies as well, such as “official” and “popular” religion; many scholars focusing on Israelite religion have let go of this outdated model, but the underlying assumptions continue to filter through more narrowly defined work, for instance on a particular prophetic book. “Theory” is reserved for those interested in “religious studies,” as if A) absence of conscious theoretical work is neutral, B) there is a natural intrinsic distinction between “religious studies” and the study of religious aspects of the literature of ancient Israel, and thus C) those who choose to engage theoretical models that are widely seen as foundational in departments of Religious Studies must somehow be doing “interdisciplinary” work. This paper will use the study of divination as portrayed in certain biblical texts as an example of how outdated theoretical models continue to shape biblical interpretation, and how integration of current theory in the broader world of the study of religion can pivotally affect our understanding of what we are reading in the Bible.


Lists with Wits in Proverbs
Program Unit: Biblical Hebrew Poetry
Jin H. Han, New York Theological Seminary

List-making has a long history as an exercise of wisdom from antiquity. The book of Proverbs not only comprises lists (e.g., graded numerical sayings in 6:16-19 and 30:15-33) but also utilizes poetic devices to add comic flavor. For example, the depiction of sloth in 6:10 uses assonance (šenôt . . . tenûmôt. . ?ibbûq . . . liškob) and alliteration (me‘at . . . me‘at . . . me‘at . . .), portraying theatrically a person reeling in bed. In another instance, in 23:29, a clever permutation of exclamations ridicules the vice of inebriation by reproducing a slurred speech (“Who has ’ôy? Who has ’abôy?”). Four additional questions follow, featuring judgmental speeches (midyanîm), incessant complaints (sîa?), inexplicable bruises (pe?a‘îm ?innam), and dull eyes (?aklilût ‘ênayim for “a double vision?”). Each question is introduced with lemî (lit. “to whom,” meaning “who has?”), constructing a case of anaphora. The answer to the bacchanalian litany is given in v. 30. They are “those who tarry (me’a?arîm) over wine” (v. 30), who will eventually (’a?arîô in v. 32 that comes from the same root as me’a?arîm—a case of polyptoton) be stung by the poisonous snake, whose hissing is simulated with a series of sibilants (kena?aš yiššak ûke?ip‘onî yapriš, v. 32). The paper investigates the aural effect that generates the humor embedded in some of the proverbs.


The Audience and the Infelicitous Blessing in Gen 27
Program Unit: Performance Criticism of the Bible and Other Ancient Texts
Jin H. Han, New York Theological Seminary

A blessing is a major biblical category of the performatives, which John L. Austin defines as words that do things (in contrast to the constatives that make statements). Isaac’s blessing of Jacob in Gen 27 is narrated as a life-changing event, and every character in the account recognizes its impact. A close examination, however, reveals that it would fail the felicity test that Austin stipulates for performatives. For example, one might wonder whether in this passage Isaac was in a position to give the patriarch’s deathbed blessing, as were Jacob (Gen 48) and Moses (Deut 33), since he did not even die until eight chapters later (cf. Gen 35:38-39). Due to failing eyesight, he could not tell whom he was laying his hands on to bless. Moreover, he was tricked to give everything to a mistaken recipient. Under these circumstances, is Isaac’s blessing of Jacob any more valid than the marriage of a monkey or the baptism of a penguin (Austin’s facetious examples of infelicity)? Elsewhere, Austin argues that a performative “spoken in a soliloquy” is void altogether, intimating that audience plays a critical role in the efficacy of the performative. Within the narrative confines of Gen 27, the mise-en-scène that produces a dark comedy features an audience made up of Rebekah, Jacob, and Esau, who relentlessly shore up the event as an ironclad case of an irrevocable performative. Battle lines are drawn over the role of the audience.


The Feminization of Wisdom
Program Unit: Gender, Sexuality, and the Bible
Davis Hankins, Appalachian State University

This paper brings to the study of ancient Israel’s wisdom tradition certain insights gained in recent feminist works by Joan Copjec, Catherine Malabou, and others, which chart a course between the doxas of constructivist anti-essentialisms, now well established and yet ever under threat in the humanities, as well as evolutionary psychology, a trend toward which many in the humanities have recently turned. This paper opposes both the “biological turn” in the humanities, which has often contributed to a climate of hostility and ignorance regarding feminist approaches to gender, identity, and the body, as well as still-prevalent, albeit now outdated and poorly justified, suspicions of and hostilities to the natural sciences clung to by many thinkers involved with the humanities, Continental philosophy and psychoanalysis in particular. With recent re-conceptions of woman as a resistant essence, a resistance that prevents the impossibility of its own disappearance, this paper rereads the skeptical literature in Israel’s wisdom corpus (Job and Qoheleoth) as a feminization of wisdom. Job and Qoheleth compel us to ask what remains of wisdom after its sacrifice, our understanding of which is informed in crucial ways by how this question has returned in the history of the feminist struggle.


Palimpsest Revealed: The Transmission, Suppression, and Restoration of Jubilees and the Testament of Moses
Program Unit: Pseudepigrapha
Todd R. Hanneken, Saint Mary's University (San Antonio)

This paper reports on the findings of the Jubilees Palimpsest Project, which is using spectral imaging technology to create a digital reconstruction of an erased and rewritten 144-page 5th century manuscript containing the book of Jubilees and the only copy of the Testament (or Assumption) of Moses. In particular, this paper focuses on the story of the manuscript itself. We can only speculate how Jubilees, known from 14 copies among the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Ethiopic Church, made its way from Judea to northern Italy, and from Hebrew to Latin. We know from the manuscript that it became joined to the Testament of Moses, with which it shares significant literary features. It was copied by Arian Christians, who may have had different notions of canon. Jubilees may have fueled pre-creation speculation, or may have resonated with Christians on the margins much as it resonated with Jews on the margins. The Arian Christian scribes joined the Mosaic literature with one of their own writings, a commentary on the Gospel of Luke. This is one of the two oldest Latin commentaries on Luke, the other having been written around the same time and place by Ambrose of Milan. The battle between Ambrose and the Arians for understanding Luke was ultimately settled by their descendants; the manuscript ended up in the Ambrosiana library. Much as the Dead Sea sectarians did not survive to continue copying their literature, the Arian Christians of northern Italy did not survive. While the Dead Sea Scrolls were preserved by arid isolation, the Arian writings were preserved by the high price of leather. Trinitarian Christians at the Bobbio erased the texts copied by Arians and overwrote the manuscript with an anthology of Augustine on the Trinity. However, much of the erased text remains readable, and more with modern technology. The story of this manuscript offers insight and invites analysis of how manuscripts were used and reused. The paper will also report on the progress and potential of the latest advances in imaging technology. The Jubilees Palimpsest is only one example of how the technology will impact the future of manuscript study. In addition to a better view of the texts they contain, enhanced digital copies provide evidence of scribal practice and how the manuscripts were used. While 19th century editors transcribed (often trying to improve) texts, they did not always record non-textual information. The current trend will allow scholars everywhere to inspect digital copies of manuscripts. These digital copies allow scholars to see the texture of the manuscript and non-textual markings, and identify and isolate different materials based on their spectral signature.


"[W]e the Cornyshe Men … Utterly Refuse Thys Newe Englysh": Josiah's Reform, the Western Rebellion, and the Ideology of Uniformity
Program Unit: Ideology, Culture, and Translation
James E. Harding, University of Otago

This paper scrutinizes one moment in the effective history of the biblical accounts of Josiah’s reform (2 Kings 22-23; 2 Chron 34-35), focusing on the ideological implications of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer’s use of this text in 1547, with reference to the English monarchs Henry VIII and Edward VI, as the religion of England was being forcibly shifted from the rich symbolic world of the medieval Church towards a stark Protestantism of the written word (cf. Duffy 1992 and 2005; pace Daniell 2003). When Cranmer dubs Edward a latter day Josiah at his coronation on February 20, 1547 (Ware 1682: 2-9; Cox 1846: 126-127; cf. MacCulloch 1996: 351-409; Simpson 2007: 10-17), there is an obvious allusion to his ancient Judahite predecessor: he is still a child (cf. 2 Kings 21:23-22:1; 2 Chron 33:21-34:1), too young to rule alone, and it is the evangelical Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, who effectively rules as Lord Protector until 1552. But the allusions go deeper. That Cranmer can also refer to the late King Henry VIII as a latter day Josiah, in a sermon of July 31, 1547, points to the role of the two Tudor kings in presiding over the destruction of religious images, just as Josiah had earlier done, such images, moreover, having in each case implied allegiance to a foreign power. Underlying Cranmer’s understanding of the roles of Henry and Edward is the notion that the king has been divinely chosen and is subject to God alone, a view heavily shaped by texts such as Rom 13:1-7, but also by texts from the Old Testament connected with the divine election of the Davidic dynasty. But the key aspect to the effective history of Josiah’s reform during the Edwardian Reformation in England is the ideology of uniformity. Uniformity is conceived in relation to the imposition of authoritative written texts, as opposed to “unwritten verities”: just as Josiah’s reform is represented as inspired by an authoritative written text, the law of Moses, that supposedly forbids unwritten religious symbols, so reform in England under Edward VI is tied to the written authority of the recently translated English Bible. With the Act of Uniformity of 1549, enforcing the use of Cranmer's English Book of Common Prayer, it was also to be tied to a single devotional language, English. This was the spark for rebellion in Cornwall and Devon in 1549, the rebels demanding both the restoration of recently proscribed devotional practices, and a return to Latin as the language of devotion. Partly this was due to the fact that in parts of Cornwall the imposition of a language other than Latin or Cornish was tantamount to the suppression of both religious and linguistic identity in favour of the universal imposition of English. This, while hardly an inevitable consequence of Cranmer’s use of the biblical account of Josiah’s reform, was nevertheless one of its major effects.


Prayers and Phenomenal Journeys
Program Unit: Religious Experience in Antiquity
Angela Kim Harkins, Fairfield University

How is prayer related to religious experience? This paper will consider how Jonah 2:1-10 can be thought to move one to a religious experience by placing him/her in a phenomenal otherworldly space. Bodily sensations of journeying and deliverance can be generated by the prayer's use of rhetorical elements: the first person voice, arousal of emotions, and construction of spatiality. This paper will use a bio-cultural model of religious experience to describe the transformative sensations of the ritual reenactment of this prayer. These elements can be used to generate within the one who prays the subjectivity of he who has experienced deliverance from the belly of the whale himself.


The Garden Space in Odes of Solomon and the Reinvigoration of Memories about Paradise
Program Unit: Syriac Literature and Interpretations of Sacred Texts
Angela Kim Harkins, Fairfield University

Prayers and hymns, often in the first person voice, vividly construct an elaborate religious geography that has a quality of realism to it but is not based on any single empirical place. In this paper, I wish to explore how the affective bodily reenactment of being in Paradise in the Odes of Solomon 11 can be said to result in the further generation of what its environs look like. The text that I wish to examine is Odes of Solomon 11 which differs in the Syriac and Greek versions. The Greek version contains noticeable material that describes Paradise’s landscape in line 16 which is not found in the Syriac text. I wish to propose that the diverging Greek text (Ode 11:16 a, b, c) can be understood as a further vision of Paradise that was had during a religious experience. The spatial details that appear in the Greek version of Ode 11 are elements that were reconstituted spontaneously into the mental template of the garden as a result of memory’s naturally associative process. The Greek and the Syriac versions of Ode 11 are not two divergent translations that stem from a common Urtext, but reflect two distinct experiences of this text that arose during a state of ritual reenactment.


Roman Graffiti and the Evidence for the Depiction of Crucifixion in the Ancient World
Program Unit: Art and Religions of Antiquity
Felicity Harley-McGowan, University of Melbourne

The infamous ‘Alexamenos’ graffito, depicting a young man saluting a donkey-headed figure tied to a cross, is often treated as the earliest representation of a crucified figure in antiquity. Excavated on the Palatine hill in Rome, it is usually dated to the early third century CE. This paper will discuss a second piece of evidence that may pre-date the Palatine image by roughly a century: a graffito excavated in Puteoli, Italy, which depicts a human figure tied to a cross. The style of painting on the wall into which it was scratched, and the content of the Greek and Latin inscriptions with which the graffito appears, mean the image and an accompanying inscription are dated to the beginning of the second century CE. With reference both to contemporary literary descriptions and to later visual evidence for the appearance of a human figure flayed, this paper will argue that the image depicts an eye-witness account of a human victim having been tied to a cross and tortured. As such, it preserves critical evidence both for the practice of crucifixion in the first centuries CE, and for the gradual development of an iconography for the depiction of a crucified victim in Roman and subsequently early Christian art.


Teaching Hebrew Online
Program Unit: National Association of Professors of Hebrew
Joel Harlow, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary

At the invitation of Pam Scalise I am filling out this form to say that I will be participating in the Panel Discussion on teaching Hebrew online. I spent the last 13 years teaching both Greek and Hebrew in the classroom, in hybrid format, and 100% online . I have done everything related to online courses: plan, design, create, teach, evaluate, and even publish an article on it. So I can share about the logistics, the pedagogical and epistemological assumptions, motivational issues, distance education, adult learning, challenges to online teaching, UNICODE fonts, and more. I'll look to Pam and others for direction.


Exploring the Status of Functional Equivalence in Translation: Nida's Legacy in Light of the Cognitive Turn
Program Unit: Bible Translation
Bryan Harmelink, SIL International

An undeniable part of Nida's legacy is the notion of Functional Equivalence in translation. According to Nida and de Waard in From One Language to Another, the change in terminology from "dynamic" equivalence to "functional" equivalence was intended to avoid certain misunderstandings of dynamic equivalence having to do with "special impact and appeal for receptors" (1986: viii). Now, almost thirty years later, what is the status of functional equivalence? The first part of this paper presents a critical analysis of the notion of functional equivalence, its impact on the field of Bible translation, and the critiques of this approach that have come from scholars and practitioners in various disciplines. The second part of the paper describes the "cognitive turn" in Communication theory, Anthropology, and Cognitive Studies and considers the impact of this "turn" on Translation Studies. Would the cognitive turn give rise to a functional-equivalence-like theory of translation? What implications does this cognitive turn have for the status of the very notion of equivalence itself? The final section discusses equivalence in light of various metaphors of translation with the goal of exploring and expanding understandings of the phenomenon of translation.


The Use of Leviticus in Ezra-Nehemiah
Program Unit: Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah
Hannah K Harrington, Patten University

Modern scholars have downplayed the use of Leviticus by the redactor of Ezra-Nehemiah (cf. European Seminar), focusing rather on the extensive use of Deuteronomic traditions in the text (Frevel, 2010). In fact, the generous stance toward the ger in Leviticus has led to the belief that Ezra-Nehemiah is primary and that Leviticus is a reaction to its harsh position toward foreigners (Douglas, 2002). Taking the position that the tolerant attitude toward the ger in Leviticus reflects an earlier time of less crisis vis-à-vis foreigners, I beg for reconsideration of this view of the chronology of these texts. In this paper, I call attention to elements from Leviticus which are present in Ezra-Nehemiah but are not found elsewhere in the Torah and argue for the chronological priority of Leviticus over Ezra-Nehemiah. The following arguments will be raised: 1) the description of Sukkot found in Leviticus 23 can be explained to inform Nehemiah 8; 2) the use of ma’al and asham in Ezra 9-10 can best be explained by levitical traditions embedded in the cult, since the terms are used differently elsewhere in Scripture, as well as usage of other levitical terms: to‘evah, ga’al, and badal ; 3) the presentation of the jubilee and sabbatical years in Leviticus 25 serve as a necessary backdrop to Nehemiah’s insistence on cancelling debt and returning land (Neh 5); and 4) Leviticus is the only book of the Torah to assume an ongoing supply of wood for the perpetual altar fire (Lev 6:12-13; cf. Neh 10:34, “as it is written in the law”), thus forming a basis for Nehemiah’s wood collection decree. Leviticus 24 is also the base text for the Wood Festival in Qumran texts (e.g. 4Q365; cf. Zahn, 2009).


The Dynamics of Ritual Purification in the Dead Sea Scrolls
Program Unit: Sacrifice, Cult, and Atonement
Hannah K Harrington, Patten University

Jacob Milgrom argued that ablutions serve to remove layers of impurity in the priestly traditions of the Torah (1991, 2000). However, the removal of layers of impurity is not the only dynamic of ablutions in Second Temple Judaism. It was also viewed as a mechanism for participation in levels of holiness. This is supported by the fact that ritual purification was often performed in contexts in which the ritual impurities of the Torah were not a factor. The seeds for this notion are evident in Scripture in both priestly and prophetic traditions. As apparent from Qumran liturgies, ritual ablutions were performed as preparatory to atonement and divine forgiveness (4Q512; 4Q414; cf. Gen 35:-1; 2 Kgs 5:14; Jb 1:6). Ritual immersion was apparently required before initiation into the sect (S) and after transgression (D; S). Like the priests who were inaugurated by ritual purification (Lev 8:6, cf. Num 8:8) and expected to eat holy food in purity (Lev 7:20), all Israel is expected to wash before meals even if already ritually pure (4Q514). Following the prophets, purification before divine eschatological action is expected, e.g. holy war alongside the angels (1QM; 1QSa; cf. Ezek 36:25; Zech 13:1) or the reception of divine revelation (11Q19; cf. Wars 2.159; Ex 19:14). New Testament and early rabbinic texts confirm this quest for access to divine blessing via ablutions in Second Temple times. Divine revelation comes during baptism (Jn 1:26-33); immersion provides union with Christ (Ro 6:3-4); multiple ablutions give the high priest access to holier areas on Yom Kippur, (m. Yom 5:5); rabbinic mystics performed multiple ablutions (Hekhalot); Moses’ perpetual purity authorizes him to receive revelation (Sif. Num 102). Finally, archaeological data (e.g. the miqva’ot on the Temple Mount) supports the use of ablutions for access to holiness even if already ritually pure.


Improving the Quality of Our Disagreements: The Potential of ‘Scriptural Reasoning’ for Helping to Repair the World
Program Unit: Jewish-Christian Dialogue and Sacred Texts
Robert A. Harris, Jewish Theological Seminary of America

"Scriptural Reasoning is the communal practice of reading sacred scriptures, in small groups, together. Normally the passages of scripture chosen are Jewish, Christian and Muslim and are linked together by a particular issue, theme, story or image. When read together in this way participants – or “reasoners” - have found that astonishing, powerful and, at times, quite surprising, new conversations and relationships may open up." This statement, found on the web site www.scripturalreasoning.org, reflects an idea whose time has surely come. Religious thinkers of most every tradition find "truth" in sacred texts, and that truth, over the generations, has all too often been considered by adherents of those traditions as exclusive in nature. While Scriptural Reasoning as a process or even a movement does not necessarily counter those types of claims, it does offer the opportunity, for religious communities that might otherwise be in conflict, for learning about the sacred texts of "the other," along with the tradition of interpretation that these scriptures have engendered. The spirit of the undertaking is one of friendship and respect and, it is hoped, of opening up the potential for improving the quality of our disagreements. I will share a few of the anecdotes that recall my first experiences with Scriptural Reasoning, during a recent sabbatical at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.


Paul's 'Indebtedness to the Barbarians in Latin West Perspective
Program Unit: Pauline Epistles
James Harrison, Wesley Institute

When Paul announced his intention to move the geographical focus of his mission from the Greek East (Rom 15:19) to the Latin West (15:23-24, 28; cf. 1:9-10, 13), he reveals to his Roman auditors that his outreach was a divinely imposed obligation (cf. 1 Cor 9:16). As the apostle to the Gentiles (Rom 1:5, 13b), Paul was indebted to ‘Greek and barbarian’ (Rom 1:14). In this little explored verse, Paul’s language of indebtedness not only relativises the ethnic and linguistic divide of antiquity (v. 14 a), but also cultural and educational stereotypes, including the social denigration of barbarians (‘wise and foolish’: v. 14 b). This should give us pause in restricting Paul’s thought here exclusively to the evangelisation of the Latin West and the pastoral care of its churches, even though that is the focus of the pericope (vv. 8b-9a, 11-12a, 13b, 15-17). Paul’s language of ‘indebtedness’ — prominent in Romans (Rom 1:14a; 4:4; 13:8; 15:1, 27) — occurs in a variety of contexts, several of them social. Moreover, the language of ‘indebtedness’ is embedded in the world of Roman political and social parlance, with its interplay of imperial patronage and the reciprocation of favour in the western provinces where barbarian tribes resided. After examining renderings of barbarians in comedy, philosophy, and Augustan triumphal iconography, the paper explores the language of obligation in Spanish and Gallic inscriptions, as well as in Cicero, Ovid and Seneca. The paper argues that in Romans 1:14 Paul articulates what his obligation meant for the believer’s mission to the marginalised people groups outside of the body of Christ. His decision would enable his house-churches not only to embrace the peoples from barbarian tribes with whom the Romans had patronal relations, but also those tribes in the Latin West whom the Romans had punished for their non-compliance.


Recent Discoveries at Tayinat (Ancient Kunulua, Biblical Calno) on the Orontes
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
Timothy P. Harrison, University of Toronto

Concerted archaeological attention has begun to lift the obscuring veil on the formative character of the Early Iron Age (ca. 1200-900 BCE), challenging the conventional view that this era was marked by cultural devolution, ethnic strife and historical disruption. The University of Toronto excavations at Tell Tayinat, on the Plain of Antioch, have begun to uncover the remains of an extensive settlement from this period. The emerging archaeological picture points to the rise of a powerful regional kingdom associated with the ‘Land of Palistin’, comprised of an intriguing amalgam of Aegean, Anatolian (Luwian) and Bronze Age West Syrian cultural traditions. Palistin resurfaces in ninth century Neo-Assyrian sources as the Neo-Hittite Kingdom of Patina/Unqi, though within diminished political borders, with Tayinat (ancient Kunulua, biblical Calno) its royal city. In 738 BCE, Kunulua is destroyed by the Neo-Assyrian empire builder Tiglath-pileser III, who transforms the site’s Neo-Hittite citadel into the seat of an Assyrian provincial governorate. This presentation will review the results of the ongoing Tayinat Archaeological Project investigations, and the historical (and biblical) insights they have provided to date.


Becoming a People of the Book: How Exposure to Islam Hay Have Facilitated the Codification of Mandaean Religious Literature
Program Unit: Religious World of Late Antiquity
Jennifer Hart, Stanford University

This paper is an exploration of the theory that one of the leading factors that brought about a codification of Mandaean religious literature was a Mandaean desire to be able to present their community as a people of the book (ahl al-kitab) and thereby gain protected status (ahl al-dhimmi) within the newly forming Muslim Empire. I present a three part argument for recognizing exposure to Islam and a concern for how Mandaeism would be perceived by Muslims as a motive for the redaction and consolidation of the primary theological texts of the Mandaean corpus. In part one, we consider evidence from the colophons of Mandaeism’s two main books, the Ginza and The Book of John, which demonstrates that although some of the writings that make up these composite texts predate Islam it was during the Islamic period that both the Ginza and The Book of John emerged as fully formulated pieces of religious literature. An analysis of the extensive scribal lists that accompany these books demonstrates that they were first compiled soon after the Muslims began to establish themselves as the new ruling elite in Persian Gulf marshlands that the Mandaeans called home. Moving from the scribal lists to the commentary that the scribes interspersed among their names, the second part of the paper focuses on instances in which the scribes self-consciously attest to their efforts to actively create an authoritative textual tradition for the Mandaeans during the first century of Muslim rule. Of particular interest in these examples is one scribe’s description of his canonizing ambitions that closely parallels early Muslim accounts of the process by which the Qur’an was recorded. In the third part of the paper, we turn our attention to another important Mandaean text, Haran Gawaita, which includes a supposedly historical narrative about how a prominent member of the Mandaean community presented Muhammad with “the Mandaean book” and thereby secured protected status for the Mandaeans. This story, together with the evidence treated in parts one and two of the paper strongly suggest that the Mandaeans were aware of the benefits to be gained by being labeled as people of the book, and as such they underwent a process of codifying their literature so as to claim this title.


The Theology of Jonah in Light of Genesis 1–11
Program Unit: Book of the Twelve Prophets
Friedhelm Hartenstein, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

The title may surprise the informed reader. I was suprised myself when I discovered in Jonah more than accidental terminological links to the first chapters of Genesis. They turned out to be of significant importance for the theology of the book. To be sure, there is not only one theological issue of Jonah but a bundle of them, including a prophet of doom having „too much“ success and, as an overall hermeneutical clue, the open question of the consequences of the concept of YHWH as the creator of the whole earth whose benvolence encompasses all living beings. Research on Jonah often recognized so called „Leerstellen“ (Wolfgang Iser), empty spaces within the narrative, which – in light of a reader response theory – have to be filled in by the reader’s mind. The proposed paper tries to show how these „empty spaces“ in Jonah, with special focus on chapters 3-4, have a positive counterpart in the flood narrative Genesis 6-9 (Jonah 3) and the story of Cain Genesis 4 (Jonah 4).


Sayings of Jesus in the Gospel of Mary
Program Unit: Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism
Judith Hartenstein, Philipps-Universität Marburg

The Gospel of Mary draws on a number of different traditions from various philosophical and religious backgrounds including sayings of Jesus well known in early Christian tradition. Especially at the end of the discourse between Jesus and the group of disciples and at the beginning of his encounter with Mary the words of Jesus have clear parallels in the synoptic gospels and other writings. The paper analyses these sections with a view to possible sources of the sayings, their specific features, and their importance for the theology of the Gospel of Mary. The question of sources has already been widely discussed. In my opinion there is some evidence for dependence on canonical gospels although this may not concern all examples. The possibility that the Gospel of Mary had access to other strands of early tradition should be taken into consideration as well. Most interesting is the way the Gospel of Mary adapts and combines the sayings to fit its theology. In my opinion, it very skilfully digests older tradition thereby expressing innovative ideas. Although the Gospel of Mary provides only short sections linked to Jesus tradition, it might be possible to describe its place in the developement of the sayings tradition. Finally the reason for the use of this tradition will be explored.


Avian Imagery and Divinanimality in the Acts of Xanthippe
Program Unit: Christian Apocrypha
Midori Hartman, Drew University

This paper examines an overarching theme of bird imagery in the Acts of Xanthippe (AX); it takes the position that the narrative's approach to the avian can complicate readings of the animal-human-divine relationship(s) in the text, as well as present new ways of reading how Christian self-identity is conceived of in relation to alterity. In using a deconstructionist approach by means of Derrida's (2003) concept of the divinanimal, I establish that the value of studying a text's interest in the non-human—in critical contrast to its anthropocentricism—is that it can provide one fruitful lens for complicating our readings of apocryphal Christian literature. Three examples of AX characterizations and their avian relationality are examined, namely: (1) the Eagle and the Raven of Probus' vision, which respectively signal the coming of Christ and the Devil's fall; (2) Paul the Nightingale as the intermediary to the divine in his apostleship; and (3) Xanthippe the metaphorical “caged bird” as Christian convert. On the one hand, these characterizations are contextualized by the narrative's overt purpose to validate Christian identity, as well as map the success of this identity upon Roman cultural cues in an imperial context; on the other hand, these same characterizations are given another layer of complexity by studying how the text subtly asserts that the avian is to be emulated in its closer connection with the divine, despite the overt anthropocentricism upon which the story-world primarily functions. This paper is most interested in the discussion of how a character can become more bird-like to become Christian (Xanthippe) or can be more perfectly Christian as a medium for God via the avian (Paul), as well as add to the more established scholarly discussion of Probus' vision, toward which the other two examples gesture.


Citation Formulae in Qumran Commentaries: Evidence from Greek Tradition
Program Unit: Hellenistic Judaism
Pieter B. (Bärry) Hartog, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

In Qumran’s commentaries on Scripture, the formulae ky hu’ ’šr ’mr and w’šr ’mr are well-attested as citation formulae. These formulae have been the subject of several studies dealing with their form and usage; yet, one important aspect of them remains unclear: the grammatical subject of the verb ’mr. Over time, scholars have suggested three possible candidates for the role of ‘speaker’ in these formulae: (1) God; (2) the speaker of the source text; (3) the source text qua text. By comparing these Qumran formulae with citation formulae in Greek commentaries, this paper sheds new light on this issue, as well as on the relationship between Qumran’s and Greek commentary traditions. First, the problem this paper addresses is introduced by offering a concise status quaestionis. Second, evidence from Greek commentaries, e.g. P. Derveni and Anon. Theaet., is provided, fulfilling a two-fold aim. On the one hand, this evidence shows that equivalents to Hebrew ’mr, i.e. lego and femi, are attested widely as citation formulae within the Greek commentary tradition, and fulfill a role remarkably similar to that of Hebrew ’mr-formulae. On the other, it shows that the subject of these Greek formulae, whenever exemplified, is (2) passim. On the basis of the similarity between the Qumran Pesharim and Greek commentaries, it will be argued that the subject of the verb ’mr in the Pesharim’s citation formulae is (2), too. Third, the outcomes of this comparison will be related to recent studies on the (inter)relationship between Qumran’s and Greek commentary traditions, and some suggestions for further research will be outlined. Hence, this paper illumines the grammatical subject of the verb ’mr in citation formulae in the Qumran Pesharim in light of Greek tradition. By doing so, this paper engages in current discussions about the relationship between Qumran’s and Greek literary traditions.


Robe of Glory, Crown of Victory: Rethinking Adam-Christ Parallels in Ephrem’s Hymns on Paradise
Program Unit: Syriac Literature and Interpretations of Sacred Texts
Blake Hartung, Saint Louis University

In Ephrem’s Hymns on Paradise, it is unsurprising that the characters of Adam and Jesus have significant roles to play in his meditations on the human fall from and restoration to paradise. However, some scholars – such as Robert Murray – have noted that the Hymns on Paradise do not explicitly portray Christ as a second head of the human race, or "second Adam." Still, Ephrem’s “symbolic” method of doing theology demands that scholars look at his work beyond face value to try to make sense of the function of the various raze that he employs in his writings. If one reads the Hymns with attention to these raze as interpretive keys, more implicit connections between Adam and Christ – and their respective roles – will become clear. Therefore, this paper will call attention to two major raze in the Hymns on Paradise which implicitly link the corporate personalities of Adam and Christ. Upon close examination, these symbols – the Robe of Glory and the Crown of Victory – prove integral to Ephrem’s entire narrative of creation, fall, and redemption in the Hymns. Through the image of the Robe of Glory, Ephrem depicts the stripped and lost glory in Adam restored by the incarnate Christ through Adam’s very own flesh. By employing the image of the Crown of Victory, Ephrem portrays Adam’s loss at the testing ground of the Tree of Knowledge as a victory to be won by the the victorious Athlete, Jesus. These two raze depict Adam as both an historical forefather and as a corporate personality; in his loss of the robe of glory, all are stripped. In his failure to win the Crown, all lose. Indeed, Christ’s role is thoroughly tied up with Adam’s, for according to Ephrem, Jesus takes on Adam’s robe as his own, and in his victory offers it to Adam – and therefore to humanity – once more. Thus, while Fr. Murray is correct in saying that explicit language referring to Christ as “second Adam” is hardly evident, a closer study of Ephrem’s use of these significant images will demonstrate that in a very real sense, Christ functions as a second Adam in the Hymns on Paradise.


Recent Excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa: A Fortified City from the Time of King David
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
Michael G. Hasel, Southern Adventist University

The early history of Judah and the rise of David and Solomon has been vigorously debated over the past two decades. This paper outlines ten recent contributions to the debate by data uncovered over the last six seasons at Khirbet Qeiyafa, a fortified city from the time of King David. These include issues of survey and settlement patterns, fortifications and social organization, city planning, dating issues and ceramic typology, food preparation and consumption, household archaeology, literacy and writing, cultic activities, and historical geography. These contributions will be summarized in the context of early state formation and rise of Judah in the late eleventh-early tenth century BCE.


The Jealousy of the Gods and the Death of King Herod in Acts 12:20–23: Redacting the Evocation of Herodotus and the Athenian Tragedians in the Jewish Antiquities
Program Unit: Intertextuality in the New Testament
Matthew Hauge, Azusa Pacific University

In Acts 12:20-23, the evangelist narrates the gruesome fate of King Herod, who had begun to violently persecute the church in 12:1. The inhabitants of Tyre and Sidon had come before the king to regain his good will because the region depended upon his kingdom for its food supply. Herod appeared before them to give a public address, dressed in royal garb and seated upon his throne; afterwards the people shouted, “The voice of a God, not of a man!” When Herod did not give the glory to God, a messenger of the Lord struck him down and he was eaten by worms and died. The death of Herod is also narrated by Josephus in the Jewish Antiquities; in both traditions, the deifying cries of the people lavished upon the king are explicitly tied to a tragic end even though he does not solicit them. A possible literary relationship between Josephus and Acts has largely driven the history of research on Acts 12:20-23, and yet a comparison of these two accounts does not adequately explain the Lukan redaction of his source. The theme of the jealousy of the gods is well attested in the works of Herodotus and the Athenian playwrights: great wealth and power inevitably lead to hubris and hubris must be punished. This literary tradition, in which both Josephus and Luke participate, sheds considerable light upon the sudden death of an abusive tyrant who persecutes the church and starves the people.


Nation vs. Region in the Book of Joshua
Program Unit: Joshua-Judges
Rachel Havrelock, University of Illinois at Chicago

The book of Joshua can easily be divided into two parts: the story of the conquest in chapters 1-12 and the regional “maps” featured in chapters 13-24. On the level of plot, the division follows a logical chronology. The land expropriated from the peoples of Canaan is then redistributed among the tribes of Israel. A deeper look at the fabric of the text, however, reveals intersecting tensions evident throughout the Deuteronomistic History. The tension revolves around the competing institutions of monarchical centralization and regionalism. The second half of Joshua and Judges attests to a regional system in which the tribes of Israel maintain local geographic traditions, intermix with the very people they were said to have exterminated, and follow resident heroes into battle. The deuteronomistic editors manage these traditions in terms of an original family structure of twelve sons, while also characterizing tribal affiliation as a devolved state of national fragmentation. The regional-tribal scenario seems to precede and coexist with the push toward national unity. Because the tribes constitute Israel, their traditions must be incorporated in order to enact unity; paradoxically, these local traditions attest to the tenuous state of national cohesion. A context of political fragility motivates the intensity of the national narrative expressed in the first half of Joshua. The myth of conquest functions as the collective memory intended to sustain cohesion. In analyzing the various tensions between the first and second halves of Joshua, the paper speaks to how national and regional political institutions competed in ancient Israel.


The Myth of the Emptied Land: The Notion of Homeland in Joshua and American Mythology
Program Unit: Joshua-Judges
L. Daniel Hawk, Ashland Theological Seminary

Anthony D. Smith has argued that nationalist identities and ideologies are grounded in traditional religious beliefs and practices drawn from one of more ethnic communities over time. Religious commitments provide the “sacred foundations” that have given rise to nationalism as a separate belief-system and explain why nationalist sentiments persist and evoke passion. Prominent among these sacred resources are, 1) a constitutive politic myth that articulates claims to group origins and descent, and 2) an alleged and felt symbiosis between a piece of earth and “its” community. Smith’s focus on the continuity of nationalist myth-symbol complexes with their religious antecedents provides an important avenue for tracing the influence of the book of Joshua on American national mythology – an influence often noted but rarely explored. Both biblical Israel and modern America construct a myth of origins through a narrative of conquest. These narratives are configured, I propose, by a common mythic structure comprising four parts. The Myth begins with the fiction that the indigenous inhabitants of the land have somehow defiled or misused the land, so that both the land and its people are disordered. Second, the invading people enter the land and subjugate the indigenous peoples, thus freeing the land from their disordering influence. Third, the invaders draw boundaries that define the terrain and establish a beneficial order in the land. Finally, the invading people removes all remaining indigenous peoples, facilitating new attachments between the land and the immigrant people. In this way, the Myth resolves a fundamental ambivalence about the invader’s connection to the land; that is, how the land can be understood as the homeland of a nation whose origins lie outside it. The Myth, in short, narrates a transformation in which the land is claimed and remade in the image of its invader.


Joshua as a Judge
Program Unit: Joshua-Judges
Ralph K. Hawkins, Kentucky Christian University

Joshua is often thought of as a ?????? "prophet" in both Jewish and Christian tradition. This stems from the book of Joshua itself, where Joshua pronounces a curse on anyone who rebuilds Jericho (Josh 6:26). The writer of 1-2 Kings interprets Joshua's words as an announcement of "the word of the Lord" (1 Kgs 16:34). In 4Q522, he is said to have prophesied the building of the temple under Solomon. Joshua continued to be recognized as a prophet by the church fathers. Barnabas interprets Joshua's role as one of the twelve men who spied out the land of Canaan as prophetic (Barn. 12:8) and Eusebius identifies Joshua as the prophet between Moses and Samuel (Praep. 9.30.1). However, although Moses is specifically called a prophet in the Hebrew Bible (Deut 34:10), this title is never specifically applied to Joshua, even though he does exhibit some of the characteristics of a prophet. A role that may provide a more fruitful comparison is that of the ?????? "judge." In the book of Judges, the judge exercises authority given to him by Yahweh, which the judge demonstrates by his charismatic endowment with the spirit of God. This paper will compare and contrast Joshua with the judges in order to determine the applicability of the moniker of "judge" to Joshua.


Reading John for Ethics, Christology, and Martyrdom: Scriptural Interpretation in the First Apocalypse of James
Program Unit: Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism
Mikael Haxby, Harvard University

Contemporary readers of the Gospel of John have identified the text’s ethics as a problem. John claims that knowledge of Christ is foundational for ethics, but the Gospel provides few specific ethical teachings. This paper will undertake a reading of the interpretation of John in the First Apocalypse of James, in order to argue that 1ApocJas builds from this gap in the Gospel of John an ethical program of preparation for martyrdom. Literary scholars suggest that the gapped, incomplete character of texts serves as a spur to intertextual work, and this gap in John serves precisely to drive early Christian interpretations. Comparison to Heracleon’s Commentary on John demonstrates that other early Christian readers identified and attempted to solve this problem of ethics and Christology in John. In Heracleon, just as in 1ApocJas, the fundamental ethical question asked of John is not how to judge actions in the world as right or wrong, but how one is to form oneself as an ethical subject. 1ApocJas reads the Christological revelation of John 7-8 for this type of ethical training. What in John were statements by Jesus about his peculiar identity are understood by 1ApocJas as knowledge about the nature of the person. James is exhorted to train himself to inculcate this knowledge in order to train himself for martyrdom. This Christological knowledge becomes in the reading of 1ApocJas knowledge about the nature of the self which provides the justification for enduring torture and execution. 1ApocJas' method of interpretation draws a striking equivalence between Christology and anthropology in order to produce a coherent reading of ethics in John.


The Myth of Perfect Torah Observance
Program Unit: Paul within Judaism
Christine Hayes, Yale University


Sound and Silence: Aural References and the Rhetoric of Judgment and Restoration in Jeremiah
Program Unit: Biblical Hebrew Poetry
Elizabeth Hayes, Fuller Theological Seminary

References to sound and silence play an important role within the overall rhetoric of judgment and restoration in the book of Jeremiah. Many references to sound and silence are found in oracles that may be considered to be persuasive poetry, i.e. sounds are evoked by terms such as lament, wail and mourn in Jeremiah 4.8 and 6.26, while silence is mandated by the phrase '...they shall not lament for him' in Jeremiah 22.18. Consequently, literary form combines with evocative content to press home the message of the text. This paper will examine the way that references to sound and silence are combined with marital imagery and terminology,. This creates a powerful rhetoric that contributes to the overarching message of judgment and restoration in the book of Jeremiah. While the narrator is deeply concerned with the situation in Judah and Jerusalem, his rebuke takes the form of fond remembrance on the one hand (Jeremiah 2.2) and statements of direct intent on the other (Jeremiah 7.34; 16.9; 25.10 and 33.10-11). Additionally, although these passages are scanned as prose in English translations such as the NRSV, the well-coordinated parallelisms exhibited in these texts beg the question of where poetry leaves off and prose begins.


Carthagian Charity: Christian Wealth Ethics in Pre-Constantinian North Africa
Program Unit: Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy
Christopher M. Hays, University of Oxford

In the third century, the Christian communities of North Africa experienced repeated misfortunes and persecutions. As in other regions of the Empire during this period, the North African Church was distinguished by its charitable endeavors, its care for the poor, even amidst hard times. Yet it is also in Carthage that we hear most about the struggles and frustrations of Church leaders as they attempt to provide for the needy in particularly trying circumstances. This essay will introduce the writings of Tertullian, Cyprian, and Commodian in order to describe the shape of Christian wealth ethics in 3rd century North Africa, and to give an account of how Church leaders coped with the social and financial challenges that beset their communities during that era.


“There Is Hope for a Tree”: Job’s Hope for the Afterlife in the Light of Egyptian Tree Imagery
Program Unit: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Bible
Christopher B. Hays, Fuller Theological Seminary

It is widely recognized that Job, in his suffering, entertains the idea that death would be preferable because it might lead to a better afterlife. The Egyptian character of some of the afterlife imagery has been noted, and this article extends that set of associations to include Job’s recurrent imagery of the rebirth of a tree. That tree imagery has deep resonance with the Egyptian motif of the Osiris tree, which symbolized rebirth for the deceased person, who aspired to “become an Osiris.” Furthermore, it is demonstrable that the motif of the Osiris-tree was received in the Levant. The paper concludes with a reflection on relevance of specific tree images within the wide variety of Egyptian tree imagery, by means of Joel LeMon’s model of “congruent imagery.”


Beyond Clement: A Whistle-Stop Tour of Wealth Ethical Teachings in Pre-Constantinian Egypt
Program Unit: Christianity in Egypt: Scripture, Tradition, and Reception
Christopher M. Hays, University of Oxford

As the academy has come to appreciate the heterogeneity of early Christianities, it has become increasingly clear that the diversity of Christian theologies was matched by a variety of Christian ethics. While any number of moral topics warrant (and are receiving) attention, this brief paper will focus on the subject of wealth ethics in pre-Constantian Egypt. This location lends itself to our discussion because the figure most prominent in scholarly assessments of Christian wealth ethics is Clement of Alexandria; Clement’s prominence, however, has obscured a variety of other figures and views. Consequently, this ‘whistle-stop tour’ will focus briefly on a sequence on less-studied figures and texts, beginning with the rather tame teachings in the Epistle of Barnabas, passing through the rigorist Sentences of Sextus and the (allegedly) libertine/communal Carpocratians, before terminating in the ascetic practices of Antony. (Origen will not be examined, since his corpus is too extensive to approach in such a short presentation.) As such, the presentation will illustrate the diversity in Christian practices and help address a serious lacuna in modern research on early Christian ethics.


The Influence of LXX Jeremiah in Luke-Acts
Program Unit: Formation of Luke and Acts
J. Daniel Hays, Ouachita Baptist University

This paper seeks to demonstrate that LXX Jeremiah had a strong influence on the formation of Luke-Acts, particularly in regard to the themes of 1) judgment on Jerusalem and the Temple, 2) persecution of God’s spokepersons, including trials and imprisonments; and 3) Gentile deliverance at the precise time of hostility towards God’s spokespersons and of impending judgment on Jerusalem and her leaders. The first part of this paper will briefly discuss the manner in which Luke-Acts normally connects to the Hebrew Bible (i.e. usually through allusion and not direct citation). Next this paper will note the importance of the “prophets” in Luke-Acts, underscoring especially the differing contexts in which the "prophets” are mentioned. The second part of the paper will identify several unique features in LXX Jeremiah that have special relevance to Luke-Acts. For example, Jeremiah is the one, above all of the other prophets, who most repeatedly and consistently preaches judgment against Jerusalem and the Temple. It is Jeremiah who actually stands in the Temple and delivers scathing messages of judgment. Likewise, it is Jeremiah, more than any other prophet, who faces active hostility from the leaders in Jerusalem, including numerous plots against his life as well as trials and imprisonments. In this sense Jeremiah “personifies” the persecuted prophet. It is also Jeremiah who prophesies the New Covenant and who introduces an Ethiopian Eunuch as the paradigm of Gentile faith and salvation in the midst of Israelite apostasy and the consequential destruction of Jerusalem. Next a brief survey of Jewish literature of the Second Temple period will reveal that in the first century CE, Jeremiah was closely associated with the proclamation of judgment on Jerusalem and the Temple. He was also seen as the premier example of the persecuted prophet. Then the paper will survey those texts in Luke-Acts that contain the theme of judgment on Jerusalem and the Temple, comparing this theme and specific associated Greek terms to the passages conveying this similar theme and using similar terms in LXX Jeremiah. Next the paper will examine the theme and terminology of hostility and persecution against God’s spokesmen (Jesus, Stephen, Peter, Paul) by the leaders of Israel in Luke-Acts, in comparison with this similar theme and terminology in LXX Jeremiah. Likewise, the salvation of the Ethiopian Eunuch (Acts 8), coming at a time when Israel and her leaders reject the message of God’s spokesmen with hostility (i.e. the death of Stephen), will be analyzed to hear an echo of the Ethiopian Eunuch of Jeremiah 38-39, who finds deliverance just as Jerusalem is destroyed and Israel’s hostile and unbelieving leaders are executed.


A Framework for Hebrew Bible Studies in the Secular Liberal Arts Setting
Program Unit: Teaching Biblical Studies in an Undergraduate Liberal Arts Context
Yoram Hazony, The Shalem Center

Two significant obstacles, at least, stand in the way of granting the Bible an important role in the secular liberal arts curriculum: First, many see the Bible as a work of “revelation,” which demands acceptance of its claims on faith. As such, it is said to be incompatible with one of the central purposes of liberal arts education, which is teaching students to exercise independent judgment and to reason for themselves. Second, there remains a significant question as to why students should invest time studying the Bible when many scholars still see it as composed of patchwork texts too fragmented to sustain coherent positions on subjects of enduring significance—whether moral, political, theological, or aesthetic—the way classic works by, say, Plato or Thucydides, do. Justifying the place of the Bible in the liberal arts curriculum may remain difficult or impossible so long as these concerns remain unresolved. In this paper, I suggest a framework for reading the Hebrew Bible in the liberal arts setting that seeks to meet these challenges. I argue that (1) the presence of expressions such as “And the Lord said to Moses” are usefully read as parallel to the divine speech in works by Parmenides or Empedocles. These works are admitted into the liberal arts environment as legitimate philosophy despite their putatively revealed character. I discuss how and why and suggest that a similar approach can work for Hebrew Scripture. (2) In addition, I argue that regardless of what one may believe concerning the compositional pre-history of the biblical narrative, it is possible to recognize at least one extremely important biblical structure, the unified “History of Israel” extending from Genesis to Kings and encompassing the first half of the Hebrew Bible, as a literary masterpiece assembled by a strong final redactor. I suggest that this final redactor (3) was able to impart to this history interesting and internally coherent points of view concerning morals, politics, human nature, and other issues very similar to those that liberal arts instruction tends to engage in other classical texts. If this framework works, it becomes possible to neutralize two important obstacles in the way of integrating Hebrew Bible into the secular college curriculum. The study of Hebrew Scripture is then justified not only by the literary merit and historical significance of the Bible, but also by the provocative way in which the great biblical “History” raises and tries to resolve enduring questions about morals, politics, human nature and more—questions rightly seen as being at the heart of what the liberal arts are all about.


The Role of Tychicus in Col 4:7–9 (With an Old Approach to the Text of 4:8)
Program Unit: Disputed Paulines
Peter M. Head, Tyndale House (Cambridge)

This paper considers the Colossian presentation of the role of Tychicus (Col 4.7-9) within a broader understanding of the role of named letter carriers in epistolary communication in antiquity and early Christianity (including the undisputed Paulines). It is argued that when understood against this background (aided by a reconsideration of the textual evidence for the second clause in 4.8), Tychicus is presented as not only bringing news from Paul but also as both mediating his absent-presence to the recipients and aiding their reception of the letter. Assuming that Colossians was a real letter (whether authentic or otherwise) it is possible to outline some elements of a Tychician interpretation of Colossians.


Phoebe the Letter Carrier and the Delivery and Initial Reception of Romans
Program Unit: Pauline Epistles
Peter M. Head, Tyndale House (Cambridge)

The context for this paper is the prominent role assigned to Phoebe in several recent accounts of the initial reception of Romans (e.g. from different perspectives J.R. Wagner, R. Jewett, and D. Campbell). These discussions partly involve projecting onto the letter carrier a role required by the modern interpreter. Accepting the premise that Phoebe was Paul's designated letter carrier, this paper outlines a method whereby general ancient assumptions about the role of named letter carriers can be discerned from ancient epistolary practice. Application of these general assumptions to Romans must take further account of Paul's use of the terminology of 'recommendation', his description of Phoebe's role, and his placement of the introduction of Phoebe. The paper proposes a new understanding of the anticipated role of Phoebe in the initial reception of Romans.


Eugene Nida: How His Anthropological Insights Became His Most Important Contribution
Program Unit: Bible Translation
Thomas Headland, SIL International

This paper will focus on the legacy of Eugene Nida on Bible translation methodology, and how Nida influenced translators during the second half of the 20th century. The emphasis will be on Nida’s anthropological insights and writings and on the cultural issues that translators faced, often unaware, as they translated the Bible into preliterate languages of minority indigenous peoples. The presentation will focus on Nida’s startling claim in 2002 that “More of the problems [in Bible translation] involve cultural anthropology than they do problems of theology.” A summary of an investigation of Luke 1 in terms of cultural/anthropological issues will be presented, in addition to a review of Nida's influence on the presenter's career in anthropology over a period of 40 years. Case studies of New Testament translation problems into a hunter-gatherer language in the Philippines, which illustrate mistranslations due to a lack of anthropological insight, will be included.


Gone But Not Forgotten: Hagar and Ishmael in Western Creativity
Program Unit: Genesis
Christopher Heard, Pepperdine University

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Searching for Intersections: Oral Tradition and Music in Early Christianity
Program Unit: The Bible in Ancient (and Modern) Media
Holly Hearon, Christian Theological Seminary

In the Second Testament and other early Christian writings we find traces of and references to oral traditions: for example, stories, sayings, legends, and acclamations. There are a number of studies that have given attention both to the identification of oral traditions and to social dimensions of their transmission and transformation through performance. One question as yet unexplored is whether some of these traditions may have been transmitted through music. In the Second Testament and other early Christian writings we find references to musical instruments (trumpets, flutes, stringed instruments) and singing (e.g. hymns of praise, laments). There are also a number of texts in the Second Testament that are thought to be hymns. This prompts questions about the role music may have played in the preservation, transmission, and performance of early Christian traditions, the social settings in which music was employed and who performed this music. In this paper I will present trace evidence of intersections between oral traditions and music in the New Testament and other early Christian writings, giving particular attention to when, where, and how music is employed, as well as the memorial and aesthetic functions it may have served, and propose questions for consideration in future studies of multimedia (or multimodal) articulations of early Christian traditions.


Toward a Description of Ugaritic Lyric Poetics
Program Unit: Ugaritic Studies and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy
Katie M Heffelfinger, Church of Ireland Theological Institute

The study of Ugaritic poetics has primarily based its descriptions of Ugaritic poetic style on observations of that style in the major long narrative poems (Baal, Kirta, and Aqhat). However, poetic theorists recognize an ancient and cross-cultural distinction between narrative and non-narrative poetries, the latter being designated lyric. Where such a distinction exists within a single culture’s extant poetic corpus, it should be taken into account in any description of that culture’s poetics. This paper will briefly examine elements of poetic style from KTU 1.13, 1.101, 1.96, and the lyric frame of 1.24 in conversation with scholarly descriptions of Ugaritic poetics based upon the epics. The goal of such examination is to determine whether a category of lyric poetics may be said to exist within Ugaritic literature and to begin to describe any discernible distinctive traits of Ugaritic non-narrative poetry that distinguish it from the more ubiquitous epic style.


Towards a Critical Edition of the Syriac Version of the Revelation of John
Program Unit: New Testament Textual Criticism
Martin Heide, Philipps-Universität Marburg

The Syriac Bible has long been known to provide a wealth of variants and information for those engaged in New Testament Textual criticism. The Syriac Revelation did not belong to the primitive canon of the Syriac church and was only later translated into Syriac, but not before the 7th century. Up to date there is no critical edition of its text available. This lecture will provide a short textual history of the Syriac Revelation and give some sample readings from its text which promise to be significant for the reconstruction of the Greek text of John's Apocalypse.


The Ethiopic Version of Secundus Taciturnus
Program Unit: Ethiopic Bible and Literature
Martin Heide, Philipps-Universität Marburg

The Story of Secundus Taciturnus or the "silent philosopher" is a fascinating romantic as well as dramatic biography, to which some 50 questions were added. The story was created in Late Antiquity, translated into Syriac and Arabic, and from Arabic into Ethiopic (Ge'ez). There are 10 Arabic and 5 Ethiopic textual witnesses which are currently prepared for a critical edition. The lecture will give an introduction to the content and intention of the story and to its philological connotations.


Enhancing the Value of Class Time via Pre- and Post-class Student Reflection
Program Unit: Academic Teaching and Biblical Studies
George C. Heider, Valparaiso University

Every instructor feels the press of time—even more so, when the course covers the entirety of the Old Testament (or even the Christian Bible). This 15-minute presentation demonstrates several ideas for pre- and post-class exercises that enhance both effectiveness and efficiency within class time by engaging students in thoughtful preparation for and reflection on class sessions. Attendees will be invited to participate in a very short sample class first without these approaches and then with them, so that they may see for themselves in brief order what a difference implementing these ideas can make.


"Cleave" as Clue to Gender Status in Genesis 2—and Ripples Outward from There
Program Unit: Biblical Lexicography
George C. Heider, Valparaiso University

At a special session observing the 400th anniversary of the King James Version during 2010’s SBL annual meeting, Prof. David J. A. Clines observed at one point (in connection with Job 19:20) that in the construction _dabaq be_ the subject of the verb is regularly weaker or lesser than the object of the preposition. During the Q&A that followed, I asked if this might apply to the famous occurrence of the construction in Gen 2:24: “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh” (NRSV). He replied that mine was a provocative suggestion. This exchange led to the development of the present paper, in which I first investigate Prof. Clines’s claim on lexicographical grounds and then bring this hitherto-overlooked textual datum to bear on the oft-mooted issue of gender subordination in the Genesis creation accounts. I then suggest additional implications of my findings for other instances of contested expectations regarding status in the Hebrew Bible text.


Who is Making Dinner at Qumran?
Program Unit: Ritual in the Biblical World
Charlotte Hempel, University of Birmingham

This paper will revisit the evidence of the Community Rule on commensality in the Yahad. Rather than trying to offer a synthesis of various passages, as is customary in many discussions, the approach adopted here stresses significant differences between the description of the common meal in 1QS 6:2c-3, 4b-5 and the place of pure food and drink in the admissions process in 1QS 6:13b-23. The common meal emerges as a rather low key and uncontroversial shared meal of standard Mediterranean staples preceded by a priestly blessing. The admissions process, on the other hand, is considered afresh against the background of halakhic texts such as 4QTohoraha (4Q274) 3and 4QHarvesting (4Q284a). It is argued that sharing the pure food and drink of the community is only the final stage in a more extended and laborious process of food production and preparation envisaged for gradually advancing new members. The discussion will consider to what extent each account can be considered to describe ritual activities.


Yahweh's Prose Messages and Poetic Laments
Program Unit: Writing/Reading Jeremiah
Joe Henderson, Biola University

The historical-critical assumptions and methods that have dominated Jeremiah studies for over a century systematically obscure the book’s presentation of Yahweh. The book develops Yahweh’s character primarily through his first-person speeches. But the standard source-critical and redactional models of the book’s development and form-critical designations of its components provide a system for reassigning Yahweh’s speeches to historically-situated human speakers. Yahweh’s poetic speeches are given the form-critical designation “messenger speech,” and are regularly explained in terms of the biography, psychology, or theology of the “messenger,” the historical prophet Jeremiah. Yahweh’s prose speeches are designated “prose sermons” and are regularly explained in terms of the theological or political agendas of exilic Deuteronomists. (Curiously, whereas the poetic speeches designated authentic “messenger speech” rarely offer any indications that they are messages or even that Jeremiah spoke them, the prose speeches designated inauthentic “sermons” are regularly introduced as messages that Yahweh gave to Jeremiah. The persistence of these designations despite their misrepresentation of the text indicates the strength of the need to historicize Yahweh’s speeches.) A fresh account of Yahweh’s speeches in Jer 11-20 that eschews the dominant historical-critical paradigm clears the way to appreciating the book’s portrayal of Yahweh. Yahweh’s speeches in these chapters can be grouped by their various audiences: messages to the leaders or inhabitants of Judah to be delivered by Jeremiah, personal words to Jeremiah, and words to Yahweh’s “beloved” (including words about his beloved with no clear audience). In most historical-critical interpretations, the differences in form and content between these three groups are considered to be tensions that can only be resolved historically: by considering the first group to be late Deuteronomistic prose sermons, the second to be oracular responses to the laments, and the third to be part of the authentic poetry of the historical prophet. Setting these explanations aside, all three groups can be understood as elements in a complex but coherent characterization of Yahweh. The differences in form and content are due to their various audiences and contexts. In the messages given to Jeremiah for public presentation to the people, Yahweh employs prose, an appropriate form for reminding his rebellious people of the terms of their contract with him and warning them (primarily in impersonal terms) of the consequences of their actions. In Yahweh’s speeches to Jeremiah, he naturally speaks in prose to give Jeremiah instructions or information, but he sometimes gives poetic responses to Jeremiah’s poetic laments. In his words to or about his beloved, where even Jeremiah is not clearly present, Yahweh employs poetic form and vivid imagery to give expression to his grief and anger at being betrayed or having to watch (or take part in) the devastation of his dear people. In the book’s presentation, Yahweh appears like a parent of a rebellious young adult or like a spouse in a marriage that is falling apart: although in public he must confront his child or spouse with stern words about broken agreements and necessary consequences, in private he pours out his personal anguish.


Marketing Biblical Studies for Undergraduates
Program Unit: Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion
Suzanne Watts Henderson, Queens University of Charlotte

While the innate value of courses in biblical studies is evident to faculty, many undergraduates—often motivated by pre-professional track promises of “hireability”—shy away from our classes and thus our majors. This roundtable discussion will explore strategies that convey to our students both the “relevance” and the “payoff” of biblical studies courses. In addition, we will share creative ideas for packaging undergraduate majors as pre-professional through promoting tracks such as “pre-ministry,” “peace and conflict transformation,” etc. Ultimately, to “sell” our courses and majors more effectively will engage more students in the responsible reading of sacred texts that continue to play a significant role in today’s world.


The Utility of Disability in the Acts of Peter
Program Unit: Healthcare and Disability in the Ancient World
Meghan R. Henning, Emory University

In the Acts of Peter disability, and in particular, lameness is depicted as a handy rhetorical device that is used by Peter (and so also the author of the text) to win the allegiance of his audience. Early in the Acts of Peter, Peter “heals” and then “disables” his own daughter as a demonstration of God’s power at work in him. This paper will use two main points of comparison in order to understand Peter’s attitude to his daughter’s paralysis: ancient medicine and ancient rhetoric. First, we will examine the characterization of paralysis in the ancient medical corpus and in the inscriptions associated with healing shrines (namely the Asclepia). Second, this paper will compare Peter’s description of his daughter’s disability to the descriptive techniques described in the Progymnasmata, or rhetorical handbooks. Finally, our investigation will demonstrate that Peter’s speech and behavior in the Acts of Peter exploits common cultural assumptions about lameness or paralysis for specific rhetorical ends.


Silent No More: Agency Theory and Children's Voices in the Ancient Near East
Program Unit: Children in the Biblical World
Kristine Garroway, Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion

This paper explores the lives of children in the ANE in a unique manner, through the use of agency theory. Agency theory recognizes that, as representatives of society, adults present minors in texts and archaeological realia as they perceived them, a depiction that is necessarily one-sided. Addressing questions that lead to both objective and subjective answers, agency theory creates a fuller, richer picture of the lives of children in the ANE. In essence, agency theory writes children back into the historical record by giving them a voice. It does this by using the seemingly unknowable element of emotion to restore the individual to his/her life as it is represented by the textual data and archaeological materials. Six different children will be presented in this paper; they are offered as a sampling of a larger work. This paper will consider children from different social ages (birth to puberty), statuses (free child, adopted child, slave child), cultures (Canaanite and Mesopotamian), and time periods (the Early Bonze Age I ca. 3300-3050 BCE through the Neo-Babylonian Period ca. 556-539 BCE). Such a variety of cases offers a cross-section of what life may have looked like for children in the ANE. Before moving to a discussion of agency theory and its use within textual and archaeological contexts, the paper will engage in a more traditional approach. This first section will give a brief overview and interpretation of the data concerning the six different children to be discussed through the lens of agency theory. After a presentation of the data the paper will then apply agency theory to the archaeological and textual data, a process that recaptures the lives of six real children through narratives about their lives.


Teaching Biblical Hebrew in a One Hundred Percent Online Format
Program Unit: National Association of Professors of Hebrew
Jared A. Henson, University of the Free State - Universiteit van die Vrystaat

I will be part of a panel discussion about teaching Hebrew online, focusing on the medium, delivery and content of eTeacher Group's on-line biblical Hebrew courses as well as the philosophy on which the course is based. I will also discuss personal experience relating to teaching the courses and students' evaluations of learning biblical Hebrew online.


Codex Sinaiticus’s Fourth Century Corrections and the Andreas “Text-Type”
Program Unit: New Testament Textual Criticism
Juan Hernandez Jr., Bethel University (Minnesota)

The corrections of an ancient manuscript offer an unparalleled opportunity to evaluate the judgments of early scribes and the state of their exemplars. Moreover, one can revisit the assessments of textual critics who conscript scribal corrections for the reconstruction of the NT’s transmission history. Codex Sinaiticus’s fourth century corrections offer an opportunity to do both. Over a half-century ago, Josef Schmid claimed that the Apocalypse’s Andreas “text-type” went back to the fourth century on the basis of its relationship to Codex Sinaiticus’s fourth century corrections. This judgment gave Colwell pause, noting that Schmid was relying on an earlier study by Boussett that had not been assessed in light of recent developments regarding the history of “text-types.” While the “text-type” nomenclature continues to be hotly debated today, a fresh assessment of Codex Sinaiticus’s corrections in the Apocalypse may help to clarify the issue. This paper will examine both the fourth and seventh century corrections in Codex Sinaiticus’s text of the Apocalypse with a view to creating a typology of scribal corrections and assess their connections to the putative Andreas “text-type.”


Joshua and Non-Israelite Personal Names
Program Unit: Joshua-Judges
Richard S. Hess, Denver Seminary

An essential element to exegesis is the historical criticism of the text. Redactional theories and other attempts to place the text in its original context raise questions concerning those elements that constituted the original source and those that contributed to further developments. A book such as Joshua may have multiple levels of redaction. The exegesis of any text depends on the identification of the origins that may lie behind those texts. Much study has been undertaken to establish archaeological and geographical connections with the sites mentioned in the book of Joshua. The important results of this analysis have provided much insight but little in the way of definite conclusions for historical criticism. The personal names in Joshua have received less attention. Nevertheless, earlier studies have argued for names unique to specific periods of time, especially the second millennium BCE. These historical connections have been challenged as problematic and speculative. The purpose of this study will be to review these challenges and to consider new evidence that has not been previously addressed. In particular, the northern provenance of several personal names in this biblical book suggest an antiquity to specific elements and provide a starting point for the investigation of the traditions behind the narratives associated with them. The onomastic context within the sphere of Hurrian culture in the second half of the second millennium BCE will be a focus of consideration for this presentation.


The Devil in the Details: Demonic Corporeality in the Greek and Latin Lives of Antony
Program Unit: Christianity in Egypt: Scripture, Tradition, and Reception
Michael Heyes, Rice University

Written by Athanasius of Alexandria in Greek and translated soon thereafter into Latin by Evagrius Ponticus, the Life of St. Antony represents one of the most important texts for understanding monasticism in the Late Antique period. Recent research by authors, such as David Brakke, has highlighted the importance of the demonic in works such as the Life for determining monastic identity: by defining their opposition, the monks define aspects of themselves. Contrary to present research on the Life, I will argue that there are two distinct types of demonic corporeality present in the Greek and Latin Lives. The Greek Life presents demons as beings capable of influencing thoughts, creating illusions, and even causing others to feel psychosomatic pain, but also as entities incapable of affecting and influencing their environment on the same physical level as human beings. Contrary to the Greek Life, the Latin Life offers an entirely different and more frightening portrayal of demons: creatures capable of shattering doors, beating opponents nearly to death, and struggling with monks on the tops of mountains. These differences are important for two reasons. First, the differences between the two texts suggest that the Life of St. Antony embodies not one perspective of demons in Egyptian monasticism but two. Thus, two conflicting views of monastic identity which I will describe. Finally, as suggested by the propagation of the Latin Life over the Greek, it is Evagrius’ conception of the demonic, not Athanasius’, which continues to inform the Latin West through the end of the Middle Ages, and thus to influence not only the identities of Saints and eremites but popular literature and art for several hundred years.


Up, Up, and Away: The Visual Force of Roman Imperial Apotheosis
Program Unit: Art and Religions of Antiquity
George Heyman, St. Bernard's School of Theology and Ministry

The visual depictions associated with the deification of the Roman imperial family are consistent with the blurring of political and religious ideologies in antiquity. Visual representations of power, couched in monumental depiction, symbolized the flow of influence from the ruler to the ruled comparable to the flow of power between heaven and earth. When expressed in art this relationship used visual cues that bridged the semi-permeable boundary between the gods, as figures central to the maintenance of the cosmos, with humanity, as the peripheral recipients of divine benefaction. This paper argues, through detailed analysis, that such a semi-permeable boundary is especially evident on the extant column of Antoninus Pius, erected in 161 C.E. by the co-emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus to honor the deified Antoninus, as well as the description recorded by Cassius Dio of the statues erected to the deified Caesar on the Capitol and in the Temple of Quirinus.


Hosea 2:1 in Paul and Aseneth: On the Significance of Shared Intertexts
Program Unit: Intertextuality in the New Testament
Jill Hicks-Keeton, Duke University

This paper investigates the methodological possibilities and pitfalls involved in the study of intertexts shared by authors whose knowledge of the other is doubtful or problematic. I will focus on one striking anomaly shared by two ancient Jewish authors usually relegated to separate studies because of (artificial) disciplinary divides: Paul’s epistle to the Romans (9:25-26) and Joseph and Aseneth (19:8) are the only instances in extant literature in which Gentiles are called “sons of the living God.” As is well-known, these authors are quoting Hosea 2:1 LXX [1:10 MT], in which the prophet contrasts idolatrous Israelites (“Not My People”) with future eschatological Israelites who repent and are therefore called “Sons of the Living God.” These authors thereby include (some) Gentiles, who were previously not chosen, in the chosen people of God. I hypothesize that while neither of these authors is dependent on the other, Paul and the author of Joseph and Aseneth use this intertext for similar rhetorical purposes: they each deconstruct the traditional usage of the epithet “the living God” in Israel’s scriptures in order to re-imagine the relationship of this God to Gentiles. The paper concludes with reflections on the methodological questions inherent to such a project.


Recensional Activity in Greek IV Maccabees
Program Unit: International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies
Robert Hiebert, Trinity Western University

In the process of establishing the original Greek text of IV Maccabees, I have been able to document evidence for systematic recensional activity. This paper will deal with the kinds of linguistic phenomena that are involved in this aspect of the textual history.


The Covenant in Leviticus 26: A Concept of Admonition and Redemption
Program Unit: Covenant in the Persian Period
Thomas Hieke, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

With the exception of Lev 2:13 and 24:8 the term bryt, “covenant,” occurs in the book of Leviticus only in chapter 26. Here, however, the eight occurrences form a significant concept in three stages that correspond to the three main parts of the chapter. In the part called “blessings” or better “promises” (Lev 26:3-13), God enumerates the blessings and benefits that will be granted to Israel if the people follow God’s laws, keep God’s commandments and observe them. Israel will gain agricultural and military success, and God will uphold his covenant with Israel (26:9). However, if Israel does not obey God and his commandments, thus breaking the covenant (26:15), God has to punish the people severely and a sword will execute vengeance for the covenant (26:25). The (longer) part called “curses” or better “commination” (Lev 26:14-39) lists a wide variety of consequences of Israel’s disloyalty to the covenant and God’s commandments. God will take back all the promises mentioned in the first part – with one exception: the promise to uphold his covenant is not mentioned and therefore not withdrawn in the second part. Israel experienced the evil consequences in destruction and exile in the sixth century B.C.E. But as the people survived the catastrophe, these two parts of admonition need to be supplemented by a third part of redemption (Lev 26:40-45). God grants mercifully a new beginning after the (necessary) punishment. The text uses the metaphor that God “remembered his covenant” – it is the covenant with the Patriarchs (Jacob, Isaac, Abraham – in this sequence in 26:42) and the (same) covenant with the ancients freed from the land of Egypt (26:45). This concept of redemption that results from the experiences of the Exile and the new beginning in the Persian period is integrated into the revelation at Mount Sinai in order to anchor the paradigm of failure, punishment, forgiveness and new beginning at the roots of Israel’s religion. While the concept of admonition by promises and commination is borrowed from the treaties in the Ancient Near Eastern literature, the concept of redemption is unique in Israel’s environment. The text suggests the following theological and anthropological conclusions: The concept of covenant in Leviticus 26 presents God as a reliable covenant partner and as a merciful and forgiving deity. As Israel is freed from the land of Egypt in the sight of all nations (26:45), hence the people stand for an anthropological paradigm: All human beings are summoned to a life according to God’s ethical demands in order to gain a life in prosperity and peace. While human beings experience their failure in following God’s commandments and suffer the severe consequences, God will answer confessing and repentance by granting a new beginning (“remembering the covenant”). Thus God’s mercy does not suspend the ethical responsibility of the human beings; their actions do not become irrelevant. However, punishment will not be God’s last word; it is the covenant that lets God’s love prevail against his vengeance.


Take Me to the River: The Transcendent Function in Genesis 32
Program Unit: Psychology and Biblical Studies
Patrick Higgiston, Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York

The encounter between Jacob and the wrestler in Genesis 32 is an event initiated by God that achieves for Jacob the transcendent function described by Carl Jung. Jacob is presented with an unexpected physical confrontation that symbolizes the psychical confrontation with his own shadow. The struggle he must endure at the hands of the divine wrestler, the symbol of the river as a transitional boundary and a place of baptismal rebirth, the use of darkness that envelops the struggle, the significance of the rising sun, and the emphasis on naming all point to a process in which the conscious ego is confronted with, and successfully integrates, the compelling content of the unconscious. By wresting a blessing from his opponent, Jacob successfully earns his vocation as Israel; by initiating the confrontation, God creates a space that allows Jacob to do so.


Seeing the Johannine Jesus in the Second Century
Program Unit: John, Jesus, and History
Chuck Hill, Reformed Theological Seminary

This paper identifies connections between the Johannine portrait of Jesus and the memory/reception of that portrait in early, non-canonical sources. It asks whether these sources reflect dependence upon the Gospel itself or upon independent, parallel tradition, and how they affect our understanding of the Gospel’s presentation of history and the historical Jesus. While we find that historical issues related to Jesus are generally fused with theological and spiritual ones in this literature, it is also possible to tease out ways in which the historical import of the Johannine Jesus was perceived and appropriated.


Using Learning Preferences as a Shortcut to Improving Lesson Quality
Program Unit: Academic Teaching and Biblical Studies
John Hilton III, Brigham Young University

Educational research has shown that people have different learning preferences. Teachers that tap into these different learning styles can facilitate deeper student learning. However, many teachers have a tendency to focus solely on the way they prefer to learn. The specific technique that I will share is a template that has a list of teaching approaches organized by the learning preference that they support. This template can be used as a shortcut to quickly determine which learning preferences are being consistently neglected in class and how to more easily come up with approaches that could integrate these neglected learning preferences. My purpose in the presentation is not to simple talk about learning preferences, but rather I will actively involve session participants as I model how to teach in three different ways based on three different learning preferences (kinesthetic, aural, social) using Daniel chapter one as a test case. After a three-minute overview at the beginning of the presentation, I will spend the remainder of the time modeling these three approaches of utilizing different learning preferences to help students engage with the text.


How William Blake Saw the Road to Bethlehem
Program Unit: Bible and Visual Art
I. C. Hine, University of Sheffield

Ruth makes three appearances in the work of William Blake (1757-1827), appearing once in his poetry and twice in visual art. This paper is principally concerned with the earliest of these works, a colour print conventionally entitled "Naomi entreating Ruth and Orpah to return to Moab" (Butlin 299). Examining the image in the context of Blake's other biblical works, and as one in a series of twelve large-scale prints, enables consideration of Ruth's place in Blake's broader hermeneutics. Blake is thus shown to be a creative and independent exegete, who interacts with tradition but also demonstrates a sensitivity to the biblical text comparable with more recent literary readings; this has particular implications for his representation of Naomi and Ruth.


Academic Student Engagement
Program Unit: Academic Teaching and Biblical Studies
Adrian Hinkle, Southwestern Christian University

Faculty often discuss the challenge of balancing active learning with the temptation to simply cover all of the material, through lecture, in the given timeframe of a given course. The tension of not knowing whether students adequately prepared for a course by reading and engaging the assignment frustrates the planning process for many Professors. As freshman students continue to enter their college education underprepared in reading for content, they lack the appropriate foundation for success in their biblical studies. This paper will address an assessment strategy that assists in the rapid development of this skill and enables the instructor to attain an engaged classroom and maximize collaborative learning. Furthermore, students quickly learn to take independent responsibility for their reading and the expectations of their instructor so that class time can be spent on application and interaction of the material.


The Gospel of John and Religious Platonism
Program Unit: Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti
Rainer Hirsch-Luipold, Universität Bern - Université de Berne

In this paper I shall first give an outline of what I believe to be one important current of Platonism in Early Imperial times ("religious platonism"), and then interpret the Johannine way of re-telling the story of Jesus against this background. This will shed new light on the question in what way some writings of the New Testament might be regarded, and might have regarded themselves, as philosophical.


The Use of Kî at the Boundary between Quotative Frame and Quotation in Ancient Hebrew
Program Unit: Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew
John Hobbins, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh

The purpose of this paper is to examine all instances of kî at the boundary between frame and quotation in Biblical Hebrew and identify those examples in which kî is best understood to be a complementizer relative to a head clause recoverable from context. The standard grammars and lexica interpret examples of kî at the boundary between quotative frame and quotation as if it were equivalent to dî recitativum in Aramaic or hoti recitativum in Greek whenever that possibility is not precluded by the semantics of the passage in question. But it makes more sense, in line with Cynthia L. Miller, The Representation of Speech in Biblical Hebrew Narrative: A Linguistic Analysis (HSM 55; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996) 103-116, to replace that default interpretation with another, namely, that kî is a clause-initial conjunction which subordinates the clause it heads to a matrix clause in all cases in which a semantically appropriate matrix clause, expressed or unexpressed, is recoverable from the context. For example, the matrix clause to which the kî-introduced clause in Exod 3:12 relates is gapped from the preceding context (3:11): “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should lead the Israelites out of Egypt?” He said, “[You should go to Pharaoh and you should lead the Israelites out of Egypt] because I am with you.” This is an example of a specialized use of a kî-introduced clause in an adjacency pair; that is, a unit of conversation that contains an exchange of one turn each by two speakers (though an adjacency pair may be rounded off by a third element in conversations of unequal power distribution; more than one example of rounding off is attested in Exod 3). In an adjacency pair, the first turn elicits a response of a certain kind in the second turn; both turns have identifiable linguistic profiles. The examples to be discussed include, but are not limited to, Exod 3:11-12; Num 22:28-30; Judg 6:15-16; and Ruth 1:8-10.


The Advantages of Reviewing Books Online and the Need for an Industry Standard
Program Unit: Blogger and Online Publication
John Hobbins, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh

The experience of biblical bloggers and the example of the online Review of Biblical Literature points to the advantages of reviewing books online if one’s target audience is the ever-growing number of people who research a topic via an electronic search engine without wanting to be limited by the confines of ATLA or JSTOR. Online book reviews by bloggers and electronically available book reviews in peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, precisely because they are at everyone’s fingertips with no money down and no logins required, are among the most-read and frequently accessed secondary literature in the field of biblical studies. Moreover, thanks to the fast-and-furious nature of blogging, a number of threads document responses to a book as presented in a book review with unparalleled immediacy. Finally, the elastic nature of the electronic medium has meant that very long book reviews face, technically speaking, no obstacles; at the same time, tweet-length book reviews have become commonplace. Where do we go from here? In the paper, in addition to recounting amazing episodes from the annals of the biblical blogosphere, I argue in favor of an industry standard for electronic book reviews and present a proof of concept in that sense. A proposed standard is important not because it should or will become the norm, but because the existence of a proposed standard will raise the bar on several fronts and encourage the more intrepid to put it in practice and help the field of academic biblical studies realize the full potential of electronic media for research and teaching.


The Philstine and Sea Peoples Invasion of Egypt: Do Texts and Tells Agree?
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
James K. Hoffmeier, Trinity International University

The Philistines are represented as one of the main components of the Sea Peoples coalition who invaded Egypt early in the 12th Century BC during the reign of Ramesses III. Heretofore the celebrated reliefs at the king's funerary temple at Medinet Habu and their accompanying text have provided primary source for our understanding of this attack on Egypt. Now, thanks to new archaeological and geological work in NW Sinai in which the writer participated, a possible scenario for how and where the invasion occurred and was thwarted can be offered.


Behold, the Lord’s Whore? Slavery, Prostitution, and Luke 1:38
Program Unit: Reading, Theory, and the Bible
James N. Hoke, Drew University

“Mary said, ‘Behold, the Lord’s slave. May it be for me according to your word.’” (Luke 1:38) With these words, Luke’s Mary acknowledges the news that Gabriel announced to her in the preceding verses, namely, that she is to bear a son when a holy spirit overcomes her and the power of the most high overshadows her. Traditionally, commentators have portrayed this verse as the moment of Mary’s acceptance; she is “the model believer,” the woman impregnated with God’s son without coitus. However, the ambiguity surrounding the “how” of this conception presents many questions laden with sexual overtones. Specifically (and pushing beyond the questions raised by Jane Schaberg), what might it mean in such a sexualized context, and in the Roman world of the first and second centuries CE, to label oneself a doule, a slave? What might it mean to label oneself the doule kuriou, the Lord’s slave, in particular? Mary’s self-appellation as doule is striking, especially when the conditions of first century Greco-Roman slaves are considered. Though Luke’s Mary submits to God, her master (kurios), some early hearers of Luke’s story surely would have pictured this submission in conformity to the slave conditions with which they were familiar. In this case, Mary’s portrayal as the Lord’s slave means that her master-God has full access and rights over her body. Given the sexual tension pervading this passage, especially surrounding Mary’s virginity and predicted pregnancy, the slippery connections (noted by classical scholars such as Laura McClure, Thomas McGinn, Allison Glazebrook, and Madeleine Henry) between the conditions the doule and the porne (“prostitute”) in the first century C.E. become apparent in this passage. In other words, it is probable that some would have heard Mary’s submission as the doule kuriou as her professing to be the porne kuriou, “the Lord’s whore.” After discussing the probability of this reading and then using feminist and queer theoretical work on sex trafficking and prostitution, this paper will consider the implications of this potentially shocking reading for both the figures of Mary and of her master-God.


Wealth and Political Power in Late Republican Rome
Program Unit: Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy
David Hollander, Iowa State University

The Romans conceived of power as something wielded through a variety of interrelated instruments including money, legal authority, and friendship. In the late Republic, the relationship between these forms of power became increasingly destabilized and those best able to recognize and exploit the changing nature of power came to dominate Roman politics. Julius Caesar provides the clearest illustration of this phenomenon: going heavily into debt in the initial stages of the cursus honorum, he essentially leveraged his political career. As Plutarch puts it, Caesar “was thought to be purchasing a transient and short-lived fame at a great price, though in reality he was buying things of the highest value at a small price” (Caesar 5.8-9). This paper seeks to understand the role of wealth in late Republican politics by examining a few unexpected political successes and failures. The ill-fated career of Gaius Verres provides an excellent example of the failure of ?traditional' forms of power to protect a politician while Sextus Cloelius suggests that one could gain considerable power without great wealth. Best known as the leader of Publius Clodius' gang, Cloelius wrote laws, briefly administered the grain supply (Cicero, Dom. 25-26), and even captured a fugitive Armenian prince (Asconius, Mil. 47.12-26) in addition to demolishing Cicero’s house. His ability to mobilize non-elite Romans (?the mob') stems at least in part from his close relationship with the collegia (Cicero, Pis. 8; Asconius, Pis. 7.16-21). Examples such as these indicate the increasing influence of middle class or business interests in the late Republic and, in the form of gangs, an increased willingness to resort to violence to exert power.


Nanaya and the Arameans
Program Unit: Aramaic Studies
Tawny Holm, Indiana University of Pennsylvania

The Egyptian Papyrus Amherst 63 is a 23-column text in Aramaic but in Demotic script. It contains a wide variety of compositions, many of which prominently feature the Mesopotamian goddess Nanaya. This deity is the female participant in the "sacred marriage" included in column 17, the last cultic composition on the papyrus and the culmination of its liturgic arch. The papyrus most likely reflects the religious, cultural, and literary traditions of several disparate groups of Arameans or Aramaic-speakers from Mesopotamia and Syria-Palestine, who had taken refuge in the same communities in Egypt. In this hybrid and syncretistic milieu, the sacred marriage composition highlighting Nanaya appears as a key element in understanding the purpose of the authors or copyists of the papyrus.


Intertextual Death: Socrates, Jesus, and Polycarp of Smyrna
Program Unit: History of Interpretation
Michael Holmes, Bethel University (Minnesota)

Invited


Presentation of the New Edition of The Text of the New Testament
Program Unit: New Testament Textual Criticism
Michael Holmes, Bethel University (Minnesota)

This session presents and discussion the new and expanded edition of The Text of the New Testament.


Reading through the Noise: KAI 30 with Fresh Eyes (and Better Photos)
Program Unit: Ugaritic Studies and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy
Robert Holmstedt, University of Toronto

The earliest Phoenician text from Cyprus, typically referred to as the Honeyman inscription, is badly damaged and difficult to read. Using high resolution images from the West Semitic Research Project, this paper will present a new reading and interpretation of this challenging text.


“We Have a Little Sister, and She Has No Breasts.” Or: How to Understand Esther 2/Too?
Program Unit: Gender, Sexuality, and the Bible
Else Holt, Aarhus Universitet

Who is Esther? Scholarly and popular literature, Jewish and Christian alike, have painted very different images of the female protagonist of this early antique Jewish novel. The presentation will trace the configuration of the Esther character in the HB, and in the LXX/AT with special emphasis on the so-called beauty-contest in Est 2. These texts have earlier been compared by Kristin De Troyer from a feminist perspective. I want to add the perspective of Est 2 as a sexual fantasy, a piece of erotic or maybe even pornographic literature (cf. Athalya Brenner’s definition of pornography as a representation of a violent sexual fantasy, vs Linda William's statement that one person's pornography is another person's erotica). If we consider the “Oriental Beauty Parlor” (De Troyer) as a (liminal) space for preparing virgins for the royal harem, and the extreme duration of the beauty treatment as a parallel to the training of characters in sadomasochistic novels like “The Story of O” or “9½ Weeks”, yet another aspect can be added to the picture of Esther’s development under the reader’s gaze from an obedient teenager (object)to a mature queen (subject). How does this picture add to the overall understanding of gender in the ancient versions of the Book of Esther?


Taking a (Forensic) Stand
Program Unit: Biblical Law
Shalom E. Holtz, Yeshiva University

Scholarship on the Hebrew Bible has come to recognize the centrality of courtroom language in many aspects of prayer. This link between law and prayer is especially obvious in the various locutions that describe the petitioners' physical positions. Thus, for example, it has been observed that litigants are said to "stand before" ('-m-d lipnê) the judges (e.g. Num 35:12), just as petitioners "stand before" God (e.g., Jer. 15:1). This paper will build on earlier scholarship and consider the specifically forensic valence of this and other locutions containing the verbs for "standing" ('-m-d and y-s?-b/n-s?-b), as well as similar interpretations of verbs for "approaching" (n-g-š and q-r-b), as these terms occur in prayers and descriptions of prayer. It will argue that these descriptions of speakers at prayer are, indeed, part of the broader linguistic network that connects prayers and human courtrooms. To do so, this paper will begin, as others have, by comparing the Hebrew prayer terminology, both in the Bible and in later Hebrew literature, with Hebrew litigation terminology. In addition, it will make a new, extra-biblical argument based on the terminology available from Akkadian lawsuit records.


Investigating God's Forensic Senses
Program Unit: Senses, Cultures, and Biblical Worlds
Shalom E. Holtz, Yeshiva University

In biblical prayers, speakers regularly demand that God "hear their voices" (e.g. Ps. 5:2-3; 27:7) and "see their plight" (e.g. Ps. 9:14; 35:22). These demands correspond directly with descriptions, within prayers themselves, but also in other texts, of God "hearing" prayers (e.g. Ps. 22:6; Deut. 26:2) and "seeing" petitioners' plights (e.g., Ps 31:8; Gen. 31:42). Biblical scholars, working mostly with the Hebrew text on its own, have proposed forensic interpretations of these verbs of sensory perception. Thus, it is suggested that God's hearing and seeing are more than indications of God's awareness of the speakers and their situations. Instead, God's hearing and seeing, as legal actions, contribute to understanding biblical prayer as courtroom speech. This paper will support this understanding by considering the biblical evidence together with the language available from Mesopotamian legal texts, especially trial records.


If Papyri Could Speak: Insights into the World of Early Christianity Gained from Two Unpublished Papyri
Program Unit: Papyrology and Early Christian Backgrounds
Renate V. Hood, University of Mary Hardin-Baylor

This paper will provide new data extracted from translations and reconstructions of two recently acquired, unpublished papyri fragments of Hebrews 9 and 11. A discussion of the condition, physical characteristics, usage, and dates of the papyri (preliminary data suggests that one is from the second century and one from the third century, while awaiting further dating in summer 2012), along with a presentation of scribal features, will provide insight into early (Egyptian) Christian writing practices and religious life. An examination of nomina sacra presented in light of paleographical data will bear significance on the discussion of the origin and function of nomina sacra in early Christianity. Additional observations from a variant in an explicit quotation in Hebrews, while making reference to the assumed LXX Vorlage, and other textual and paleographical data, will likewise illumine the socio-cultural world of the early Jesus followers.


Being in between: Canticles as a “Chimera” between Written and Oral Style of Speech
Program Unit: Performance Criticism of the Bible and Other Ancient Texts
Matthias Hopf, Augustana-Hochschule

Songs are Chimeras – entities in between. They walk the border between the written and the performed, as Giles and Doan have already pointed out (cf. Giles, and Doan 2008, 5.). Still, texts conceptualized specifically as written manuscripts usually differ in style and diction from those principally laid out as texts to be orally performed. Generally, the former are inclined to be more elaborate and complex, while the latter tend to be more colloquial and imprecise in phrasing. Naturally, these variations in style should also crop up – at least to some degree – in biblical songs in their “betwixt nature”. This paper explores the book of Canticles as an example of biblical songs, trying to make plausible that the book is intentionally designed as a “Chimera” between written and oral style of speech. For on the one hand, Canticles is, of course, elaborately designed in structure and phrasing, as has been demonstrated repeatedly. Thus, it obviously shares the characteristics of written speech. But on the other hand, it seems to display various features of oral diction and style, which seemingly contradict the named elaborateness. These characterisics revolve predominantly around the usage of verbs, but other features, e.g. different kinds of sub-standard use of language and the phenomenon of ellipsis, are also taken into account. In this, the book is of special interest regarding this difference between oral and written speech, as this poetic piece of art is almost completely composed in the mode of direct discourse. In its analysis, the paper concentrates on Cant 5:2–6:3 while also referring to some other passages of the book. Furthermore, the author draws from the observations on verbal syntax and orality in Hebrew texts by Erhard Blum, Mark S. Smith and Ian Young among others.


Ritual, Ordinance, and the Law of Moses
Program Unit: Latter-day Saints and the Bible
Shon D. Hopkin, Brigham Young University

Ritual theory has been used to explain religious practices over time and throughout the world. Along with other important viewpoints, the theories of Victor Turner have had a strong impact on how religious ritual has been understood and defined. Turner’s most important insights into ritual behavior explain ritual as a three-part process that consists first in a separation stage in which the participant breaks ties with previous social conventions and relationships; second, a liminal stage in which the participant moves through behaviors of change and re-ordering that reject the values of the old society and begin to create ties with a new order; and finally an aggregation stage in which the participant is brought into a state of communitas with a new, holy society with new attitudes and behaviors . Because of their sacred nature to Latter-day Saints, modern ordinances have not been heavily examined through the lens of ritual theory. However, the Hebrew bible portrays ancient ordinances or rituals of the Law of Moses that can be examined through this lens in order to gain new understandings and perceptions of how God worked with his covenant people anciently in similar patterns as those exhibited by religious communities throughout the world. By employing ritual theory – in particular the theories of Victor Turner -- in an analysis of a number of ordinances of the Law of Moses, this paper will propose that ordinances, both ancient and modern, exhibit the three-fold division described by Turner. Understanding this three-fold division sheds light on some of the purposes, goals, and methods of the ancient ritual behaviors of the Law of Moses, and by extension can help Latter-day Saints better understand some of the purposes, goals, and methods of modern-day ordinances of the restored gospel.


Intertextual Approaches to Qur’an and Bible: Methodological and Practical Perspectives
Program Unit: Qur'an and Biblical Literature
Cornelia Horn, University of Tuebingen, Germany

With some hesitancy, scholars of early Islamic literature have begun to approach the study of the Qur’an from the perspective of intertextuality. This paper reviews some of the major trends of this development, ranging from rejection to adoption to redefinition of this approach for the specific Islamic context (e.g., Dayeh, Ahmed, Sinai, Neuwirth, Reynolds, Reza Adel ). Within biblical scholarship, intertextual approaches have gained a significant foothold and are well represented. In a second step, this paper compares and contrasts the application of the intertextual approach in Qur’anic studies to respective projects in Biblical scholarship. It argues that perceptions of the degree of the sacredness of the text and respect for its integrity continue to determine the extent of scholarly applications of the method to the text. It also argues, that the level of a given scholar’s familiarity and deep knowledge of ancient literature, a residual phobia of “interdisciplinary work,” as well as a willingness to overcome territorial claims to “schools of thought” are and crucial factors that determine any success in applying intertextual approaches to ancient, normative texts


Missionary Strategies: Healing Sick and Disabled Children in Late Antique Mesopotamia
Program Unit: Syriac Literature and Interpretations of Sacred Texts
Cornelia Horn, Eberhard Karls University, Tuebingen, Germany

On the basis of data derived from Syriac apocryphal, hagiographical, and ascetic narratives that feature a range of Christian missionary activities in late antique Mesopotamia, this paper closely investigates one of the strategies Christian authors employed in order to communicate the superiority of Christianity over native religious convictions. Texts like the Acts of Mar Mari and martyrdom accounts of Christian children in Syriac feature remarkable stories of how the Christian missionary focused on healing sick or disabled children, frequently girls, from seemingly incurable conditions. Some parallels to accounts of Jesus healing children in the canonical gospels can be noted. Yet despite these parallels the Syriac texts reveal a clear appropriation of the canonical model to the specific cultural and religious concerns of families living in late antique Mesopotamia. In some stories one also notes that following the healing the child had received, she or he no longer acted as a dependent of the parent but had become enabled to take on responsibility for her or his own actions. In those instances, the healing stories functioned as narratives promoting the “coming of age” of those who converted. Conclusions to be drawn from the study include that the emphasis on child-centered stories of healing responded to the relevance of and threats to family life and child-rearing in Mesopotamian society and its neighbors at the time. Shaping the overall narratives through integrating stories of children’s healing promoted the reception of the texts among a wider audience that may have become more interested in the texts’ Christian message to the extent that they noted that their own concerns about family health and well-being were addressed as well.


People of the Covenant: Refiguring the Divine through Exile
Program Unit: Psychology and Biblical Studies
Tiffany Houck-Loomis, Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York

Throughout the Hebrew Bible we read echoes of Deuteronomistic covenant theology, the promise of land and progeny based on Israel's obedience of the instructions given to Moses. Some argue this language was redacted in earlier portions of the Pentateuch and reshaped to read more rigidly in the historical books and books of the prophets. Looking at the hybrid nature of the covenant, based on its adaptation from Assyrian Vassal Treaty language, I will explore through the lens of early Object Relations theorist, Donald D. Winnicott, the nature of the covenant as a transitional object. Winnicott argues that transitional objects help one make the transition from one’s subjective experience to a more whole relationship with the objective other regarding the other’s subjectivity. I will argue how trauma can affect one's transitional objects and vice versa, and how the shaping of Deuteronomistic covenant language throughout the Hebrew Bible can be read in this light opening up new ways to approach these texts in concert with the varying counter-narratives offered in others such as Job and Jonah.


Casting Out for Outcasts: Reading Mark with Children with Disabilities and Their Caregivers
Program Unit: Gospel of Mark
Melanie Howard, Princeton Theological Seminary

Modern readers have viewed Mark through a variety of social lenses that focus upon individuals who often experience being identified by society as outcasts. Such lenses have included that of the disabled (Holly Joan Toensing, Mary Ann Beavis) and that of children (Judith M. Gundry). However, virtually no attention has been paid to the intersection of these concerns in children who have serious illnesses or disabilities. Nevertheless, in the course of this short gospel, the reader encounters no fewer than three children for whom, prior to a direct or indirect encounter with Jesus, wholeness of health is impossible: Jairus’s daughter (5:21-43), the daughter of the Syrophoenician woman (7:24-30), and the boy who has been mute since childhood (9:14-29). The abundance of such children both within the Gospel and in modern societies suggests that it may provide a fitting lens with which to read Mark. After examining each of these pericopae in its Markan context, this paper proposes to read these accounts through the bifocal lenses of children with disabilities and their parent-advocates. This bifocal reading provides evidence for the paper’s claim that Mark presents the parents of children with disabilities as advocates for their children and as willing to take risks to achieve the best possible outcome for their offspring. Using the blessing of the children in 10:13-16 as a guide, the paper further argues that children with serious illnesses or disabilities serve a vital role in Mark’s gospel by providing miniature theaters in which Jesus’ power is highlighted with regard to his ability to cast things out (??ßa?e??), language which is common to all three pericopae. Thus, children with serious illnesses or disabilities command attention not only when reading Mark with an eye to its theology and anthropology but also when considering a modern setting where such children and their caregivers are too often marginalized by society.


The Personal Nature of Preaching
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
J. Dwayne Howell, Campbellsville University

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Time Frame in the Direct Speech of Kings
Program Unit: Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew
JoAnna Hoyt, Dallas Theological Seminary

This study examines how time frame is constructed within the direct speech of Kings. The viewpoint aspect (complete versus incomplete) and the aktionsart of the non-modal qatal, yiqtol, and wayyiqtol verbs are examined to show how the verbal features and context function together to express time frame. Participles are also examined to show how they are placed within various time frames. An analysis of the verbs in the introductory lines of discourse (which are less affected by surrounding context) show that each form has a default time frame which aids in understanding how the language later developed into a tense based language. This verbal analysis is founded upon John Cook’s aspect prominent verbal theory, which he presents in his dissertation.


The Pneumatology of 2 Corinthians
Program Unit: Second Corinthians: Pauline Theology in the Making
Moyer Hubbard, Talbot School of Theology

This paper will explore the unique contribution that 2 Corinthians makes to Paul’s developing pneumatology. 2 Corinthians is home to some of Paul’s most important pneumatological conceptions, yet it is often overshadowed by the flashier and more controversial pneumatology of 1 Corinthians, or the more practical and ethically oriented pneumatology of Romans. The first part of the paper will (briefly) compare and contrast the pneumatological perspective of 2 Corinthians with other Pauline letters in order to emphasize the distinctive voice of 2 Corinthians on this subject. For example, in Galatians the Spirit is the fulfillment of a promise (Gal. 3:14), while in 2 Corinthians it is the promise of fulfillment (1:21; 5:5); in 1 Corinthians, the Spirit gives gifts, while in 2 Corinthians the Spirit gives life; in Romans, the Spirit affects outward behavior, while in 2 Corinthians the Spirit effects inner renewal, and so on. The next portion of the paper will analyze and organize Paul’s explicit Spirit-statements, emphasizing the importance of understanding the conflict setting of this letter. Paul’s pneumatology in 2 Corinthians is formulated against the backdrop of Jewish-Christian intruders in Corinth, and is articulated, in part, in response to this opposition. Finally, this paper will also highlight certain implicitly pneumatological themes that should be also be considered as part of the pneumatology of this letter. For example, Paul’s “new creation” statement in 2 Cor. 5:17, and the motif of strength in weakness.


Drawing Analogy by Historical Precedence: Making a Case for Contact between the Construct “Hittite” in the Hebrew Bible and Its Syro-Hittite Cultural Context
Program Unit: Institute for Biblical Research
Neal A. Huddleston, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

Drawing Analogy by Historical Precedence: Making a Case for Contact between the Construct “Hittite” in the Hebrew Bible and Its Syro-Hittite Cultural Context


The Mark People: From Textual to External Evidence
Program Unit: Construction of Christian Identities
Sandra Hübenthal, Universität Tübingen

In the elusive quest for the »Markan Community«, many introductions to the New Testament have variously dotted the map of the ancient Mediterranean world between Rome and Syria with little flags, indicating possible places where the »Community of the Second Gospel« – mostly constructed as predominantly gentile – were located. Besides relying on the testimony of the Church Fathers, the main criteria for pinpointing the community’s location have stemmed from the textual evidence, such as the use of certain Latinisms, geographical (mis-)information, and the need to explain Jewish customs. However, it needs to be pointed out that this approach suffers from the hermeneutical problem that textual evidence is interpreted as directly pointing towards external evidence. Yet this ignores the fact that the text actual world (TAW) of the Second Gospel is not merely a replica of the reality behind the text and hence a one-to-one relation cannot be used to reconstruct that world without, at least, some necessary intermediate steps. This paper will undertake these intermediate steps by starting off with a hermeneutical reflection and continue with an exploration of the possible worlds, memory constructs, and social constructs that are to be found in the Gospel of Mark. Evaluating each in turn, the paper will then be able to better reflect upon the question of how the "Mark People" - the group of commemoration behind the Gospel - constructed their identity as a group, what social and religious issues they carried around, and finally, where indeed they might have been located.


“You Will Dip Me in Filth” (Job 9:31): Job’s Subversion of the Priestly Purity System
Program Unit: Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
Barry R. Huff, Principia College

Despite the significant attention paid in Joban scholarship to the author of Job’s wrestling with other traditions in the Hebrew Bible, the book of Job’s nuanced engagement with the priestly source (P) has often been overlooked. During the past two decades, though, Mary Douglas and Israel Knohl drew theological parallels between P and Job, and Samuel E. Balentine, William Scott Green, and Konrad Schmid noted the author of Job’s engagement with and critique of P. Yet, most of these scholars have focused primarily on connections between P and the divine speeches or prose tale of Job and have not grounded these connections in a lexical analysis of priestly terminology in Job. This paper addresses these gaps in scholarship through an exegesis of several texts (e.g., Job 9:30-31 and 14:4) in the first cycle of the dialogue between Job and his friends where the appropriation of priestly terminology subverts the priestly purity system. Verbs used in P to depict ritual purification are uttered by Job to convey the impossibility of that purification (Job 9:30-31). Furthermore, several terms in the semantic field of purity vocabulary that appear in the Hebrew Bible most frequently in priestly texts are appropriated in the speeches of Eliphaz and Job in questions that subtly suggest the inefficacy of priestly rituals to purify (Job 4:17 and 14:4). The uses of these terms in the initial cycle of the dialogue between Job and his friends occasionally resonate with priestly theology. More often, though, while grounded in cultic concepts, they not only differ from their uses in P but also challenge the priestly purity system. Thus, this lexical analysis suggests that the author of Job is indeed wrestling with priestly traditions and innovatively appropriating terms primarily found in P in order to critique and transform priestly theology.


Contrasting Juridical Conceptions in Ancient Near Eastern Treaties and Covenants
Program Unit: Assyriology and the Bible
Herbert B. Huffmon, Drew University

The recent publication of several treaties from Tell Leilan, contemporary with earlier published treaties from Mari, emphasizes again some important regional and ideological differences among the presently available second and first millennium treaties. This paper focuses on the presence or absence of two aspects of the treaties: (1) the presence or absence of the historical prologue, and (2) the presence of both blessings and curses or of curses alone. The historical prologue is a feature of the Anatolian-Syrian tradition, which includes the Israelite covenant tradition, but is not clearly found elsewhere. Again, both blessings and curses occur in the Anatolian-Syrian tradition, whereas the Northern Mesopotamian (Mari, Tell Leilan) tradition and the Neo-Assyrian tradition contain curses but no blessings. The Anatolian-Syrian tradition presents a very different juridical understanding, featuring a suzerain who is a benefactor, such that there are mutual benefits. The other two traditions, especially the better-attested Neo-Assyrian tradition, feature a primary emphasis on the power of the suzerain to impose policies on the (citizens and) vassals, primarily regarded as potentially treacherous. One model emphasizes the benefactions of the overlord which call forth affiliation with the overlord’s protection, and so offers both curses and blessings. The Neo-Assyrian model emphasizes a one-sided power relationship backed up by an impressive array of curses. Indeed, many of these curses have close parallels in the Biblical tradition, but the basic ideological connection of ancient Israel seems to be with the earlier Anatolian-Syrian treaty tradition, presenting a historical prologue and both blessings and curses.


Teaching at an Anglican Seminary Overseas
Program Unit: Anglican Association of Biblical Scholars
Frank W. Hughes, School of Theology, Diocese of Western Louisiana

This paper deals with both the cultural differences between the United States and the English-speaking Caribbean and the transition that the author made between being a part-time researcher on the New Testament to being a full-time teacher of the New Testament. The author taught at Codrington College in Barbados, in affiliation with the University of the West Indies, from 1998 to 2004.


St. Hildegard of Bingen’s Premodern and Postmodern Paul
Program Unit: Recovering Female Interpreters of the Bible
Leroy A. Huizenga, University of Mary

Hildegard of Bingen’s rich and textured works have led many to envision her in their own image. Later medievals saw her as a mystic when viewed through the lens of her disciple Elisabeth of Schönau. Humanists like Jacob Faber Stapulensis saw her as a woman of letters. Reformers like Andreas Osiander found a Protestant, and in the present day filmmaker Margarethe von Trotta sees a proto-feminist. Hildegard was of course also a conservative medieval Catholic, among many other things, a defender of hierarchy in Church and society and an opponent of those regarded as heretics, while her visions were in essence doctrinal expositions of Scripture in accord with the beliefs of the times. When one examines Hildegard’s appropriation of St. Paul in her monumental Scivias, one sees traces of all these versions of Hildegard. Drawing on historical receptions of both Hildegard and Paul, this paper will argue that Hildegard presents an authentic Paul long lost to modernity, a Paul at home both in the premodern world of traditional Catholicism and the postmodern worlds of today.


Reconsidering Redaction Criticism in Light of Narrative Christology and Triadic Semiotics
Program Unit: Semiotics and Exegesis
Leroy A. Huizenga, University of Mary

Redaction critics assert that Gospel interpretation must be disciplined, objective and determinative, that such interpretation necessitates the recovery of authorial intention, and that authorial intention is best recovered by paying attention to perceived changes to prior sources. They thus largely eschew literary approaches to the Gospels, regarding them as undisciplined, subjective and ahistorical. By exploring the narrative structures of the Gospels of Matthew and Mark and engaging in a fresh examination of their respective Christological presentations along narrative lines, this paper will contend that redaction criticism, in neglecting the form of a Gospel in aiming for its purported propositional content, is fundamentally incoherent, and present a critically objective, concretely historical, hermeneutically fruitful, disciplined literary method rooted in the triadic semiotics of C.S. Peirce, which with the concepts of the Representamen, Object, and Interpretant, takes full account of the possibilities afforded by the dynamic interaction of text, contexts, and readers.


Peter as Initiated Interpreter of the Oracles of God: A New Interpretation of 2 Peter 1:16–21
Program Unit: Letters of James, Peter, and Jude
Jeremy F. Hultin, Yale University

In 2 Peter 1:16-21, Peter insists that his proclamation of Christ's "power and coming" was not based on clever myths (1:16). His defense has two parts. First he claims that the apostles were themselves with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration (1:16-18). Second, he states that biblical prophecy is valid or sure, spoken entirely by God (1:19-21). This train of thought is puzzling. Why, to support the reality of Christ's mighty parousia, does the author appeal to the transfiguration (rather than, e.g., the resurrection or ascension)? And how does the inspiration of scriptural prophecy relate to the veracity of Peter's proclamation? Finally, it is unclear how the two parts of the defense relate to each other. Has the experience of the transfiguration made the prophetic word "more certain"? Is prophecy "more certain" than Peter's experience? Peculiarities and obscurities in the Greek of both parts of the argument have also hindered interpretation. For instance, most translations would suggest that Peter claims that the apostles were "eye-witness" of the transfiguration; but in fact they are said to have been "initiates" (epoptae) of Christ's majesty. Indeed, the use of this technical term is but one of the ways the transfiguration is portrayed as a mystery initiation. Likewise, the awkward language of 1:20 has traditionally been rendered as though it were denying that prophecy was a matter of "private interpretation." But the most straightforward rendering of the Greek is "no prophecy of scripture is a matter of its own interpretation." This suggests an altogether different hermeneutical claim, namely, that "scriptural prophecy is not self-explanatory." Stated positively, 2 Peter is claiming that prophetic scripture needs interpretation because it does not interpret itself. (This is precisely the sense of the Old Latin: omnis profetiae scriptura interpretatione indiget.) On such an understanding of 1:20, the subsequent verse, which insists that the prophets spoke entirely from God, can have its full logical force without being tautological. Scriptural prophecy cannot interpret itself because it is from God, and hence is not susceptible to the modes of interpretation that might unravel merely human locutions. Here we see the widespread ancient assumption that divine utterances—most notoriously oracles—were characteristically vague or ambiguous, and stood in special need of interpretation. This understanding of 2 Pet 1:20-21 is consonant with the claim—made often in the second century—that prophecies of Christ's second coming were not easily understood because scripture, as an inspired text, spoke multivalently. Thus by attending to the details of the Greek, the coherence of the entire paragraph emerges: Peter's experience of the transfiguration is presented in the terms of a religious initiation in order to demonstrate Peter's uncommon qualifications, especially his capacity for spiritual perception. This capacity authorizes Peter as an interpreter of the inspired oracles of God, which, when rightly understood, can be seen to predict Christ's second coming.


Judges 17–18, Levitical Aspirations, and Saintly Foundation Stories
Program Unit: Deuteronomistic History
Jeremy M. Hutton, University of Wisconsin-Madison

The antiquity of Judges 17–21 and these chapters’ literary role within the larger scope of the Deuteronomistic History are contested subjects in modern studies. While some American scholars (e.g., Gale Yee, Judges and Method [2nd ed.: 2007], 151, 157) argue for a contextualization of these chapters during the Josianic reform, many European scholars have deemed the passages secondary to the composition of DtrH. This position was voiced in the initial formulation of the DtrH hypothesis by Martin Noth (ÜGS 54 n. 2), and has been sustained more recently by Reinhard G. Kratz (The Composition of the Narrative Books of the Old Testament [ET: 2005], 196) and Thomas C. Römer (The So-Called Deuteronomistic History [2005], 138). This paper investigates the social location and political aspirations of mendicant holy persons as portrayed in Judges 17–18 through comparative ethnographic analysis: the so-called “Levitical” lineages in their southern Levantine milieu may be fruitfully compared and contrasted with the Ahansali “Saints” of the Atlas mountains of Morocco (examined previously by, e.g., Ernest Gellner and David M. Hart). This analysis reveals that the social organization assumed in Judges 17–21 is one characterized by tribal segmentarity, political decentralization, and dependence on local, small-scale, subsistence economies. Moreover, a study of the saintly foundation stories of the Central Atlas holy lineages provides insights into the narrative features of Judges 17–18, including: (a) the Mosaic genealogy attributed to the Levitical protagonist (Judg 18:30); (b) his service to a large segment of the “Israelite” tribe of Dan in preference over a smaller unit (i.e., the single bet ’ab of Micah); and (c) the role of happenstance in the literary emplotment of the saintly lineage’s foundation. This coincidence of narrative elements suggests that, although the absolute date of the composition of Judges 17–18 cannot be determined with any accuracy, the relative date of many of the traditions contained therein antedates the establishment and fixation of an institutionalized state in the southern Levant. In short, although a post-DrtG date for the incorporation of Judges 17–18 is possible, its traditions hark back authentically to an earlier period.


“…. And They Buried Him in His House at Ramah” (1 Sam 25:1): Archaeological and Literary Indications Relating to the Burial in Residential Houses in the Southern Levant
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible, History, and Archaeology
Juerg Hutzli, Université de Lausanne

Subfloor burials in residential houses – a common practice during the Middle and Late Bronze Ages – apparently went out of fashion in the subsequent periods. Nevertheless, there are minute indications in the material culture of the Southern Levant that this custom was still known during the Iron Age I (c. 1130-950 BCE). The paper presents examples from sites in northern Palestine, especially from Tel Kinrot (ancient Kinneret) on the north-western shore of the Sea of Galilee. On the background of contemporary burial practices these findings call for special attention, particularly in light of a few Biblical texts mentioning burials in residential houses during this very period. The passages are all found in the books of Samuel and Kings and explicitly refer to burials of powerful members of Israel’s elite (Samuel, Ahitophel [cf. LXX] and Joab) in domestic contexts. Scholarship, however, has never given attention to these texts as an ensemble. The paper will thus bundle the currently available archaeological and literary data relating to house burials in ancient Israel and beyond and demonstrate the fruitful interaction of two historical disciplines.


Tradition and Redaction in Num 20:1–13
Program Unit: Pentateuch
Juerg Hutzli, Université de Lausanne

The questions of the literary origin and the consistency of the pericope Num 20:1-13 are controversially discussed in scholarship. Despite several doublets and alleged incoherencies, an increasing number of commentators consider the narrative to be a unified text. This paper re-examines the significant issues calling into question the unity of the passage. It offers a new proposal on the compositional development of the story and aims to link both the original and redaction layers to other passages in Numbers 11-21.


The Orthodox Thecla: Characterization of Thecla in the Life and Miracles of Saint Thecla
Program Unit: Christian Apocrypha
Susan E. Hylen, Vanderbilt University

Scholars have often argued that the Acts of Paul and Thecla is a radical ascetic text that contrasts sharply with proto-orthodox Christian views, especially those of the Pastoral Epistles. This contrast between Thecla and more orthodox views is complicated by the later reception of Thecla’s story. Thecla’s popularity in the 4th-5th centuries, even among the fathers of the church, is well established. To explain her prominence, scholars argue that the radical, ascetic version of Thecla was “domesticated” and thus rendered acceptable to the emerging orthodox church. This explanation makes sense, in part, because it fits with the meta-narrative we tell about the early church and women: that the need for institutionalization of church roles led to the exclusion of women from leadership positions. In this paper I explore the 5th c. Life and Miracles of Saint Thecla to counter the prevailing view that the later Thecla is watered down. I argue that Thecla of the Life and Miracles is both orthodox and radical. She retains and expands her charismatic and leadership roles even as she develops a remarkably orthodox theology. This close reading of the Life and Miracles calls into question the theory that Thecla’s leadership roles must be diminished in order for her to be acceptable in the early church. It also may contribute to a reassessment of the scholarly assertion that the Acts of Paul and Thecla differs radically from orthodox views.


The Antioch Incident
Program Unit: Pauline Epistles
Mika Hynninen, Helsingin Yliopisto - Helsingfors Universitet

The importance of the Antioch incident cannot be underestimated. Yet despite the efforts of some of the most eminent scholars of the field, the details of the Antioch incident remain somewhat of a mystery. Why did the agreement reached in Jerusalem fall short soon after the Apostolic council? Was the problem caused by the food on the table or the people around the table? Had Peter given up the observance of the Law or did he observe the dietary laws? Did the men from James require the circumcision of Gentile believers or observance of the food laws? Did Jews accept table fellowship with Gentiles or not? The different answers given to all these questions and the multiple combinations have resulted in the fact that no consensus has been reached. In the present state of scholarship there is still an obvious need for a study addressing these issues. The historical event is examined by making a distinction between the event itself and the rhetorical description of it. These two are approached using historical and rhetorical criticism. However, they are not separate inquiries, but interact in a dialectical relationship with each other. The knowledge of Paul’s argumentative strategy is an important scholarly question in its own right, but it also forms the foundation for the historical study of the Antioch incident. In fact the dependence on Paul’s biased report is the foundation of a historical study. The presumption is that Paul wrote to the best of his ability to promote an understanding of the Antioch incident that was favourable to himself. If some details of Paul’s narrative are not supportive or even work against the rhetorical intent of the author, they are likely to be historically reliable. This approach is used as the key to unlock the mystery of the Antioch incident.


A Postcolonial and Narrative Reading of Mark 12:35–44: Correction of Identity of Jesus Christ vs. Challenge to Power
Program Unit: Korean Biblical Colloquium
Sang Soo Hyun, Southern Methodist University

In Mark 12:35, while teaching in the temple, Jesus asks “how can the scribes say that Christ is the son of David?” Elizabeth Struthers Malbon, when she develops a narrative Christology, argues that what the implied author does with this passage (Mk 12:35-37) is to portray Jesus not as a Davidic king but as a suffering servant. According to her, here Jesus deflects honor and recognition bestowed on him to God. She understands that what is at stake in this passage is the identity of Jesus. However, I will interpret this passage from a postcolonial perspective and argue that the main theme of this passage is not the identity of Jesus but a challenge to power, especially the Jewish elites. Jesus harshly denounces the scribes by challenging their ground of power, namely, their specialty in interpretation of the Scriptures. For example, the story of a poor widow’s mite (Mk 12:41-44) has been long understood as an example of faith. Tolbert understands the poor widow’s offering as doing the will of God. She defines the scribes’ desire for fame, honor, and high repute as self-aggrandizement while defining the poor widow’s offering as sacrificial devotion to God. Similarly, Malbon regards the poor widow’s offering as “the climatic allusion to the cross in the woman’s sacrifice.” Donahue interpret it as an example of the true piety and generosity that exists among God’s people. According to him, the fact that the story of the poor widow is placed between Jesus’ condemnation of the scribes (Mk 12:38-40) and his announcement of the Temple’s destruction (Mk 13:1-2) confirms this view. However, some scholars have interpreted the story as a vivid example of the victimized case. Powery argues that, although this story had been viewed as an example of faithfulness, Jesus does not say so. He concludes that “in light of the context of conflict between Jesus and the temple leaders, this story is more likely a condemnation, rather than a commendation, for the ways the treasury (of those scribes responsible for determining financial requirements) consumes the means of the poor.” Myers says that this episode provides a further illustration of the ills of official devotion. According to him, Jesus here condemns both the value system that motivated her action and the people who conditioned her to do it. Major characters in this pericope are the scribes, crowd, rich people, the poor widow, and the disciples. I will first closely examine how these characters are portrayed in a larger narrative structure, especially paying attention to the social and religious location of the widow and the scribes in a colonized Jewish society. I will then read the passage from the viewpoint of the widow who has been abused and marginalized in society. I will argue from a postcolonial perspective that, in this passage, Jesus laments for the poor widow who was victimized by the temple authorities and challenges the scribes’ honor-seeking attitude at the cost of others’ life that conforms to imperial ideology of power.


Postcolonial Mimicry and the Corinthian Situation
Program Unit: Postcolonial Studies and Biblical Studies
Sang Soo Hyun, Southern Methodist University

In this paper, I will first examine how Homi Bhabha’s theory of mimicry could and should be utilized to explain not only the hybrid identity of the oppressed but also internal unequal power relations among the oppressed, paying special attention to how it historically functioned in the colonized Korean society in early twentieth century under Japanese Imperial power. I will then examine the Corinthian situation from a postcolonial perspective applying the notion of mimicry and will argue that Paul’s rhetoric in 1 Corinthians is aimed for transformation of imperial ideology rather than acknowledgement of diversity or unity in a community. Though Homi Bhabha uses the concept of mimicry to explain ambivalent attitudes of the oppressed towards the Empire, it is necessary to examine the functions of mimicry not only in the external relationship between the colonizer and the colonized but also in the internal relationship among the oppressed. In the former relationship, mimicry explains the double attitudes of the oppressed towards the colonizer, that is, affection and resistance. Thus the identity of the oppressed is very ambiguous and complex. In the latter relationship, mimicry of the haves among the oppressed creates internal conflicts among the oppressed. The have-nots within the oppressed experience doubled oppression, which is from the Empire in one hand, from the haves in another hand. Thus, I think Bhabha’ notion of mimicry must be critically evaluated in order to examine internal conflicts caused by the haves’ mimicry within an oppressed community. In 1 Corinthians, we see how Paul promotes a transformed ideology to the Corinthian believers who have struggled with unequal power relations among them. Schisma is one the prominent issues that Paul addresses in 1 Corinthians. Although some scholars has argued that their faction is due to their theological differences, the main cause is the haves’ mimicry of imperial ideology. Imperial ideology has governed the relations among the believers, thus the have-nots have been suffered and marginalized based on their socioeconomic status, gender, and spiritual gifts. In the pursuit of overcoming colonial powers, scholars have often emphasized acknowledgement of diversity as a solution to resolve the problem. I agree that such an emphasis on diversity is necessary and essential to resist suppressing regime of universalization and categorization. However, diversified but individuated or isolated identity of the oppressed is not capable of changing the day-to-day suffering realities of the oppressed. Moreover, equality is not achieved by simply emphasizing diversity without addressing transformation of imperial ideology. Letty M. Russell notes that “difference itself has become a category of exclusion and domination in our postcolonial world.” She argues that “the essentializing of difference makes it possible to use differences as a structural weapon of oppression.” Paul tries to resolve the problem by suggesting the Corinthians a transformed ideology that does not conforms to imperial ideology of power.


What to Me Is the Multitude of Your Sacrifices? Critique of Sacrificial Cult in the Prophetic Lawsuit Metaphor
Program Unit: Sacrifice, Cult, and Atonement
Maricel Ibita, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

The courtroom drama is one of the metaphors that the prophets used to express problems in YHWH-Israel relations. This metaphor contains charges of covenant violation as evidenced by a rundown of prevailing social injustice, indictment and threats, and critique of worship and sacrificial offerings. The prophetic criticisms against sacrifice in the Temple cult is presented as YHWH’s objection to these practices, the gravity of which is understood more when it is viewed against the backdrop of socio-cultural values perceivable in the texts. This investigation on the prophetic critique of the sacrificial cult in Isa 1,1-20 and Micah 6,1-8 aims to understand what is going on in the apparently negative attitude of YHWH - as expressed by the prophets - towards Israel’s sacrifice in the “prophetic lawsuit” metaphor. The investigation will proceed as follows: (1) it will provide a brief overview of understanding “prophetic lawsuit” as a metaphor from the perspective of conceptual metaphor theory, particularly of “Blending Theory”; (2) it will characterize Israel and YHWH according to the text and their differing understandings of sacrifice; (3) it will discern the socio-cultural values that one can glean from the text; and (4) it will identify the function of the critique on sacrifice in the so-called prophetic lawsuit texts in Isa 1:1-20 and Micah 6:1-8.


Not Without the “Have-Nots”: Overcoming Economic Divisions at the Lord’s Supper
Program Unit: Meals in the Greco-Roman World
Ma. Marilou S. Ibita, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Using a narrative-critical and socio-historical approach, this paper suggests that Paul reiterates that the Corinthian believers need to celebrate the kyriakon deipnon (1 Cor 11:17-34) without neglecting those characterized as hoi me echontes (“have-nots”) among them. First, I will argue that in Corinth, the economic division and its negative effects (vv. 17-22) turned the kyriakon deipnon into an idion deipnon, to the detriment of hoi me echontes. I propose that they are those who are described as hungering at the common meal (both in v. 22 and v. 34a). Moreover, due to the effects of hunger connected with their economic situation, they are also those who are more predisposed to weakness, illness and death (v. 30). Hence, according to this reading, Paul’s attempts to correct the Corinthian situation are intended to restore unity in the community that consequently favors the marginalized “have-nots”. I will argue that this point is evident in the practical changes that Paul calls for concerning the common meal, particularly in the overcoming of the economic divisions at the Lord’s Supper: allelous ekdecheste (v. 33) is especially geared to welcome the hungry adelphoi, oi hoi me echontes, en oiko, i.e., in the house, the ekklesia space, so that the Corinthian gathering to eat together the kyriakon deipnon may not bring them judgment (v. 34).


Why God Can’t Win in a Fight with Dr. Manhattan: The Cold War Theodicy of Watchmen and Its Implications for the Book of Job
Program Unit: Bible and Popular Culture
Kathryn Imray, Murdoch University

In the comic book series Watchmen, one of the characters, Jon Osterman, steps into an ‘Intrinsic Field Subtractor’ and is promptly dematerialised (Watchmen 4). He is not dead, however, and in the tradition of comic books he has become the super ‘hero’, Dr Manhattan. Dr Manhattan is the equivalent of God in the Watchmen universe, which is an alternate 1980s Cold War America. Dr Manhattan experiences all time simultaneously and can manipulate objects at will, making him almost all powerful. When the world is threatened by a nuclear holocaust, it is Dr Manhattan who can diffuse the threat. Appeals to Dr Manhattan to intercede however come up against his inability to appreciate human suffering, as well as his love for chaos, attitudes that are presented as outgrowths of his capacity to experience the universe at an atomic level. Dr Manhattan and the God of the Book of Job are comparable in this way. In Job, not only does God seem unable to appreciate human suffering, God also expresses a love for chaos, and both of these attitudes seem to arise from God’s ‘universal viewpoint’. Given the biblical allusions throughout Watchmen it is possible that the Dr Manhattan character arose in relationship with the ‘God of the Hebrew Bible’ in general, and the God of Job in particular. Further, a case can be made for the Watchmen graphic novel being an interpretation of the Book of Job for Cold War America. This interpretation suggests on the one hand that God’s indifference to human suffering and love for chaos is natural given God’s presumed experience of the world, and on the other hand it condemns this very attitude, presenting the relationship between people and God as itself ‘a peace that is no peace’.


The Difference Rome Makes—Reading Mark in Its Very Particular Historical Context
Program Unit: Gospel of Mark
Brian Incigneri, Victoria, Australia

Provenance matters a great deal when reading Mark’s Gospel because it was crafted to address the dire situation of Christians in a very specific, short-lived, historical moment, and its rhetoric will not be understood unless its context is appreciated. I have previously argued that this Gospel very well matches the situation in Rome in late 71 when Christians faced a new crisis: the return to Rome of Titus, destroyer of the Jerusalem Temple, who was said to be “another Nero.” They had watched the triumph of Vespasian and Titus processing through the city, proclaiming the victory of Jupiter over the God of Israel and displaying the spoils from his Temple. After having suffered terrible losses under Nero, they now feared the prospect of further martyrdoms, so Mark wrote for them a Gospel which is essentially the story of a martyr who leads the way. This was an emotional time: they held painful memories of lost loved ones, friends and leaders, and bitter memories of their betrayal by fellow Christians who had denied Christ under pressure. Matching the mood, Mark wrote an emotional Gospel, which has not been fully recognized. Insufficient attention has been paid to the emotions of the recipients (not just the characters) because that prime tool of ancient rhetoric—the appeals to the emotions—has been almost entirely ignored. Mark, writing according to the expectations of his rhetorical culture, triggered his readers’ memories by allusion to a number of recent events and experiences, expecting to stir their emotions and hoping to thus build a new resolve to trust in God rather than surrender to fear. Therefore, awareness of what the original hearers already knew is critical to interpretation; one example is their keen awareness of Peter’s martyrdom—the key to understanding Mark’s treatment of the disciples. A number of examples will be provided that show how reading Mark in that situation produces a very different understanding of major features of the Gospel. Indeed, appreciating Mark in this way, it will be argued, resolves many long-standing debates about puzzling aspects of his composition.


Appeals to the Emotions in the Gospels—A Neglected Aspect of Rhetoric
Program Unit: Rhetoric and Early Christianity
Brian J. Incigneri, None

Rhetorical criticism has tended to emphasise ethos and logos over pathos in analysing New Testament texts, and studies have largely focused on such things as values and logic. Emotions seem to be too ‘messy’ to deal with. And yet the Roman rhetorician Quintilian taught, at the time the Gospels were being written, that the greatest power in oratory is to be found in appeals to the emotions of the hearer. Indeed, he declared that “power over the emotions is the life and soul of oratory.” If appeals to the emotions were considered the greatest power in oratory in the rhetorical environment of Roman society, we should be looking at the use of this tool in the Gospel narratives. Rhetorical criticism has been very successful in raising awareness of the rhetorical nature of New Testament texts and literary criticism has created a consciousness of the need to attend to the workings of the story, and so we are now in a far better position to understand how the Gospel narratives functioned as rhetoric. However, rhetorical critics have only rarely paid attention to the Gospels, as there has been doubt that this method of criticism could be sustained throughout a whole narrative. The result has been a failure to appreciate narrative as a different genre of rhetoric, one in which that prime tool of rhetoric, the appeals to the emotions, is a key player. Identifying pathetic appeals in the Gospels can be achieved by having regard to the way in which the author has alluded to the experiences and prior knowledge of the intended audience and thus attempted to arouse their emotional sensitivities, using memories and feelings to move them as any orator of the day would have done. Examples of the benefits of this approach will be provided by showing how the author of Mark's Gospel alluded to past and recent events to trigger memories and stir emotions in the fearful Christians of his community. Through allusion, scene-setting and other story-telling techniques, Mark shaped his story to summon memories that would ignite their emotions and, he hoped, strengthen or re-order their stance and stir their resolve. Awareness of this aspect of Gospel rhetoric can help explain puzzling features and language of Mark’s Gospel. It can also be used to better appreciate the rhetoric of other Gospel texts, especially John’s Gospel.


The Kindness of Irony: A Psychological Look at Irony in 2 Samuel 11
Program Unit: Psychology and Biblical Studies
Virginia Ingram, Murdoch University

In the paper Why not say it directly? The social functions of irony, researchers Dews, Kaplan, and Winner determine that the social function of irony is to preserve relationships. To be more precise, experiments they conducted demonstrated that irony softened criticism, showed the ironist to be less angry and more in control of his or her emotions, and caused less damage to relationships than literal criticism. Therefore, it could be said that an ironist is a person of measured emotions who is understanding, seeks to nurture relationships, or in other words - an ironist is somebody who is psycho-spiritually healthy. This differs from the traditional view of the ironist who is exclusive, distant, and keen to humiliate another for the sake of an abstract ideal. In this paper I will examine irony in 2 Samuel 11 from the perspective of the ironist who is psycho-spiritually healthy. In doing so I will posit that the irony, in what is commonly referred to as the ‘David and Bathseba’ story, is used to soften the criticism of David’s failings as a king and to illustrate the positive relationship between David and God. Fundamental to this argument is the premise that the ironist is accepting of the complexities of life and less inclined to raise ‘black or white’ arguments.


Engaging New Institutional Economics in Understanding Ancient Economy: Using the Slavery System in Roman Empire as a Test Case
Program Unit: Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy
Alex Hon Ho Ip, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

This paper seeks to elucidate the possible values and contributions of New Institutional Economics (NIE) in understanding the Ancient Economy. In the paper, I will demonstrate how New Institutional Economics can help us in analyzing the relationship between the formal and informal rules of the Roman society with the contractual arrangement in the economy. Beginning from the early Roman Republic, the development of markets and business in Roman Economy depended heavily on different types of contractual arrangements to facilitate its growth. For example, the Publican Soeities was a typical example for such contractual arrangement in a very large scale. Therefore, the understanding of how different forms of contractual arrangements were facilitated by the Roman law can surely help us to understand the momentum and structure for the growth of the Roman Economy. There are two main focus of this paper. First, it tries to elucidate how the recent research in NIE can help us to better understand the Roman Economy. The methodological issue will be dealt with in the first section. Major concepts and models will be examined with a focus of how they can be applied in analyzing the Roman economy. Second, I will use the slavery system as an example to demonstrate how, in actual practice, the theory can be applied. The slavery system is chosen since although it has been discussed enormously in the history, there are still many dilemmas not being solved. By using the NIE in explaining two main dilemmas in the slavery system, namely peculium and manumission, I hope I can demonstrate the explanatory power of the NIE in Ancient Economy given the limited numerical data available.


The Teaching Hidden in Silence (NHC II 1,4): The Role of Secrets in Interpreting Genesis in Fourth-Century Egypt
Program Unit: Mysticism, Esotericism, and Gnosticism in Antiquity
Eduard Iricinschi, The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute

Secrets play two main roles in the writings of fourth-century Nag Hammadi Codex II: they advance the narrative and promise teachings and revelations. For instance, the Apocryphon of John opens with the promise of the revelation of “hidden things”; the Gospel of Thomas begins with the same declared intention to unveil “secrets”; the Gospel of Philip develops a theory of language in which names have a dual nature, hidden and revealed; the Hypostasis of the Archons and On the Origin of the World advance a secret interpretation of Genesis; and finally, the Book of Thomas the Contender conveys the revelation of the savior to Judas Thomas. For the fourth-century Egyptian reader of Nag Hammadi texts, understanding the role of secrecy in the above mentioned writings required advanced hermeneutic skills applied on texts such as Genesis and Pauline letters. In this paper I argue that the secrets alluded to in Nag Hammadi Codex II constitute interpretive devices that invite the reader to fill in the gaps in the creation account of Genesis 2–3, and solve conflicts in its narrative sequence. In an educational setting, the secrets of NHC II illuminate the conundrums left behind in the biblical narrative for future generations of astute readers. Finally, I suggest that this extensive recirculation of the second-century Platonic exegeses of Genesis in radically different social, literary, and manuscript contexts, such as those of fourth-century Egypt, also brought a hermeneutic mutation of the usage of this text in different practical and ritual contexts.


Jesus in Zimbabwe: Poverty Is not Blessed, but The Poor are to be Congratulated
Program Unit: Poverty in the Biblical World
Glenna S. Jackson, Otterbein University

More than 65,000 people live in the four-square-mile "high-density suburb" of Sakubva in the hills of Mutare, Zimbabwe. On one recent Palm Sunday, the sermon was about Jesus coming across the Eastern Highland Mountains from Mozambique on a donkey, proclaiming economic and political freedom for Zimbabweans (Luke 19:28-40). Shortly thereafter, the pastor preached against Operation Murambatsvina or "Operation get rid of trash" which targeted the urban poor as their homes were razed to the ground by the government. The pastor was arrested. This joint presentation will focus on the power of Jesus' teachings in Zimbabwe. Jesus said that the poor are to be congratulated--not that poverty is blessed. Our research on the violence of poverty is interdisciplinary and includes traditional textual exegesis with ensuing hermeneutical questions of prescriptiveness and descriptiveness. It also delves into the experiential by observing, describing, interpreting, and debating. If one were to look at a picture of villagers in Zimbabwe, for example, what would you observe? How would you interpret what you see? What is the evidence for your interpretation? What additional observation, description, interpretations, and evidence do you need to understand it better--or at all? Could you tell from the picture that many of the people are plagued with and/or dying of schistosomiasis, malaria, and HIV-related illnesses? If you looked at a photo of a teenaged boy under a Baobab tree, would you know that he is dying from untreated seizures or that the tree was his home (literally)? Would you know from a family picture that the woman with a basket on her head, a baby on her back, and a toddler in tow is a widow? The goal of this presentation is to further clarify the role of the poor and the margins in Jesus' teachings and actions and to provide insight into poverty in our own worlds.


Emphytos Logos and the Literary Structure of James
Program Unit: Letters of James, Peter, and Jude
Matt Jackson-McCabe, Cleveland State University

Among the most enduring and contested questions in the interpretation of the Letter of James is that of its literary structure. This paper will show how reading James’s logos in light of Hellenistic philosophical discourse significantly illuminates this long-standing problem. The paper will have two main components. The first part will reply to objections raised against this reading of James’s logos, with special attention to the suggestion that the Epistle of Barnabas (esp. 1:2; 9:9) and/or the “new covenant” idea of Jeremiah 31 provide better comparisons. The second part will show that a Hellenistic philosophical interpretation, besides making the best sense of James’s logos discourse, also clarifies the overall structure of the letter, particularly by shedding new light on the relationship between James 1 and the subsequent sections of the text.


Taking Sides: Narrative Strategy in Presenting Family Conflict in the Abraham Narratives
Program Unit: Genesis
Mignon Jacobs, Fuller Theological Seminary

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Divine Justice: The Formulation of Reflective Talion in Biblical Law
Program Unit: Biblical Law
Sandra Jacobs, King's College - London

In this paper I suggest that the alignment of natural law and divine justice is most evident in the process of “reflective talion” in biblical tradition. Unlike finite, or strict sense, talion, (i.e. only one eye for one eye) reflective talion occurs where the punishment mirrors the crime or negative character trait of the perpetrator, and projects this flaw back onto his or her person. Although such processes are often characterized in Sumerian proverbial wisdom, I will argue that there is a further relationship also between the Middle Assyrian legal terms and Bernard Jackson’s description of the ka’asher formulation of talion, in Wisdom Laws: A Study of the Mishpatim of Exodus 12:1-22:16. Oxford: OUP, 2006, 197-199, which should not be overlooked.


Preaching as the Unfinished Task of Theology: Grief, Trauma, and Early Christian Texts in Homiletical Interpretation
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
David Schnasa Jacobsen, Boston University

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Augustine’s Use of Tyconius’ Book of Rules in On Christian Doctrine: Promise and the Unfinished Task of Homiletical Theology
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
David Schnasa Jacobsen, Boston University

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I Will Open My Mouth in a Parable: The Intersection of “History” and “Metaphor” in the Psalms
Program Unit: Book of Psalms
Karl N. Jacobson, Augsburg College

Not all metaphors are created equal, and not all metaphors are actually metaphorical in the strictest sense of the word as it is commonly understood. Echoing Aristotle, Philip Wheelwright has identified two kinds of semantic movement in metaphor: epiphor and diaphor. Epiphor is the transference of a name to some other object. This is probably the most familiar and certainly the most common usage of metaphor. Psa 18:2 employs a series of theological epiphors in which God is “named” rock, fortress, shield, horn, and stronghold. Diaphor works differently, creating meaning by juxtaposing the particulars of an old experience with new experiences. In Psalm 79 Israel’s history, a select set of the particulars of its collective past experiences, are juxtaposed with its present experiences in order to transform despair to hope, lament to praise, complaint to trust. My paper explores the semantic depth of the two ways in which metaphor functions by exploring several historical references in the psalms with an eye to understanding when history is history, when history is plainly metaphorical, and when history is best understood as diaphor.


The Booth at the End: Biblical Tropes and Lasting Truths
Program Unit: Bible and Popular Culture
Karl N. Jacobson, Augsburg College

“The Booth at the End,” created and written by Christopher Kubasik, is a web television series of five episodes (to date), distributed by Vuguru, and available on Hulu. The tagline of The Booth at the End asks a question, “How far would you go to get what you want?” The entirety of the show is set in a booth in Cadillac Jack’s diner, and all of the action is delivered via dialogue. Eleven different characters enter the diner and approach “The Man” (Xander Berkeley), asking him for something they want – a son to be cured, to be prettier, for money to make parents happy, to hear the voice of God, etc. The Man then offers a task which they must perform in order to get what they want. As the task is being performed, and when it is finished, part of the deal is that they must return to visit The Man in the booth, and give him the details. While the Bible is never quoted explicitly, there are several biblical texts and tropes (e.g. Genesis 22; Gen 50:19-20; the figure of The Satan; miraculous births, etc.) which may be fruitfully explored in interpretive conversation, of both the meaning of the show, and the meaning of the biblical text. My paper explores these possible connections and the interpretive and pedagogical possibilities raised by them.


The Wit and Witness of the Prophet Amos
Program Unit: Biblical Hebrew Poetry
Rolf Jacobson, Luther Seminary

A professorial wit once remarked, “If you like the prophet Amos, you don’t understand him.” The professor’s point, of course, is that those of us who think we like Amos probably miss the fact we, too, are targets of his prophetic condemnations. But what if a reader just starts by liking how Amos says what he says? The prophet employed a wide range of humorous techniques in his prophetic speeches—sarcasm, parody, irony, satire, scorn. As Peter Berger has written, humor when used as Amos uses it sees “through the facades of ideational and social order, and discloses other realities lurking behind the superficial ones.” This paper will explore the comic dimensions of the Amos’ messages as integral (rather than ancillary) to his prophetic witness.


Speaking a Word for Nature: Anthropocentrism in the Song of Songs
Program Unit: Ecological Hermeneutics
Elaine James, Princeton Theological Seminary

This paper will engage the Earth Bible project’s third methodological Ecojustice principle, “The Principle of Voice.” Norman Habel describes it as follows: “Earth is a subject capable of raising its voice in celebration and against injustice.” Implicit in this emphasis on Earth’s subjectivity is a suspicion of the anthropocentrism of the textual tradition. This paper will consider elements of voice in the Song of Songs, especially Song 2:8-17. In this passage, the earth has a voice: the appearance of flowers and ripening figs, and especially the singing (literally “voice,”qôl) of the dove, vv. 12-13. At the same time, this voice is presented through the conscious convention of the lover’s human speech (v. 10). The artifice of the poem thus guides the reader to consider exactly this question of the relationship between human speech and nature. In Henry David Thoreau’s essay “Walking.” He writes, “I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil—to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society.” Thoreau’s statement points up the same question of anthropocentrism, and his answer has at least two important components for my consideration: Humans are “part and parcel of Nature,” and at the same time, humans still must be the earth’s apologists: we “speak a word for nature,” because (it is implied) nature does not speak for itself. In the Song of Songs, this tension between nature as speaking and spoken for points to the ethical potential of a modified anthropocentrism.


A Short History of Ordination
Program Unit: Adventist Society for Religious Studies
Darius Janklewicz, Andrews University

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Philemon Analytical Seminar Using Sociorhetorical Interpretation
Program Unit: Rhetoric of Religious Antiquity
Roy R. Jeal, Booth University College

This Seminar is designed as a demonstration of how Sociorhetorical Interpretation is employed to analyze a New Testament document. Sociorhetorical Interpretation uses a range of analytical lenses to reveal the intermedia of visual, social, spatial, ideological, and discursive features of texts in order to enhance understanding of their rhetorical force and function. It aims to get at what the texts do and how they do it. The Letter to Philemon will be the subject of analysis and discussion.


The Wisdom of Sirach and the Glue of the Matthew-Didache Tradition
Program Unit: History of Interpretation
Clayton N. Jefford, Saint Meinrad School of Theology

Invited


Walter Bauer and the Apostolic Fathers: A Fork in the Road
Program Unit: Inventing Christianity: Apostolic Fathers, Apologists, and Martyrs
Clayton Jefford, Saint Meinrad School of Theology

Though not necessarily the originator of a new way of thinking about early Christianity and its roots, Bauer has easily become a target as the catalyst behind such a movement in the modern era. This paper reviews various ways in which Bauer’s 1934 volume Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum (English = Orthodoxy and Heresy [1971]) permitted subsequent generations of scholars to envision the non-canonical environment of the second century apart from the traditional assumption that Christianity began as a monolithic confession of faith that only subsequently fractured into divergent “heresies” and misinterpretations. The crux of this essay focuses on only a small portion of the non-canonical literature, that is, the role that the so-called apostolic fathers have played for scholarship since Bauer’s work. This is a fertile field of consideration, since issues that surround the founding of Roman Christianity and certain ideals that are associated with the figures of Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp of Smyrna play into the picture. In result, scholars have taken stances on both sides of Bauer’s thesis of original scattered Christianities and thus have shaped and reshaped their views of the second-century church accordingly. There is no lack of hostility in this effort, since the motivating factor behind much of the traditional reading of the apostolic fathers begins with the faith of a confessional perspective. Bauer’s interpretation, on the other hand, begins with divergent evidence from the second century that finds no clear explanation within the framework of the traditional approach. The essay will identify and discuss specific themes and issues that relate to individual works within the corpus of the literature.


Clairvoyance and Conflict: The Political Implications of Pachomius’s Visions
Program Unit: Christianity in Egypt: Scripture, Tradition, and Reception
Lance Jenott, Princeton University

In 345, a year before his death, the great monastic innovator Pachomius was hauled into an ecclesiastical court by local bishops to answer charges of clairvoyance. Since the Greek Life does not clarify the exact nature of the conflict, scholars have suggested that the charge was largely motivated by politics, including disputes between Pachomius and local clergy over the control of parish finances, pastoral care, and Pachomius’s resisting ordination. In this paper, I will suggest that Pachomius’s justification for the expansion of his federation into new territories also prompted the charge of clairvoyance: for according to the Coptic (Bohairic) Life, Pachomius established each new monastery in response to a divine revelation. Local clergy who felt threatened by the presence of a Pachomian monastery in their district could hardly have let such a justification go unchallenged. In addition, I will discuss how the Greek Life, though including the story of the trial, downplays the role such charismatic visions played in the federation’s growth by systematically omitting them from its narrative.


Ascending Bodies: Jesus, Mary, and Mary Magdalene in Christian Art
Program Unit: Art and Religions of Antiquity
Robin M. Jensen, Vanderbilt University

Christian visual art, following variant traditions, portrays three particular instances of rising bodies: Jesus’ at the ascension from the Mount of Olives; the Virgin Mary’s from her tomb into heaven; and Mary Magdalene, being elevated by angels seven times daily. This paper will explore the iconographic presentations of these three ascending bodies in Christian art from the fifth to the thirteenth centuries, focusing on their compositional parallels (or differences), and commenting on their significance for shaping Christian attitudes toward the physical body and its potential for spiritual transformation.


A Linguistic Argument for Resolving a Source/Redaction-Critical Problem in Exod. 3:9
Program Unit: Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew
Jaeyoung Jeon, Tel Aviv University

Arguments concerning newly suggested formation models for the Pentateuch are intense. Nevertheless, source- and redaction-critics do not take full advantage of linguistic considerations that might aid them in their work. This paper aims to demonstrate that a detailed linguistic study of Biblical Hebrew usage can be decisive in resolving a key problem in source/redaction-critical analysis. The test-case will be the used of ???? ??? followed by ???? in Exod. 3:9-10. A different understanding of the usage of the ???? ??? clause has led some scholars to claim a literary unity for Exodus 3 (E. Blum, E. Otto, K. Schmid), while others argue that vv. 9ff. are an independent source (M. Greenberg, P. Weimar, W. H. Schmitt, W. H. C. Propp) or redaction (J. C. Gertz, W. Berner). However, a close analysis of and comparison between ???? ??? (combined with ????) in Exodus 3 and five other instances throughout the Hebrew Bible reveals that these clauses have a very specific rhetorical function, especially in Dtr-colored direct discourse, whereas in Exodus 3 the clauses are awkwardly attached, betraying their normal function. This fact strongly implies the existence of multiple redactional activities around the verses, especially in the linguistic style of Dtr. Since Exodus 3 is one of the pivotal texts for the various theories and models for the formation of the Pentateuch, this paper is meant to remind scholars of both the significance and effectiveness of a linguistic approach for higher-critical analysis.


Leadership in the Villages of the Iron I: An Anthropological and Archaeological Perspective
Program Unit: Historiography and the Hebrew Bible
Jill Katz, Yeshiva University

This presentation explores the relationship between village life and political leadership during the time of the Judges (1200-1000 BCE; known archaeologically as the Iron I). Archaeological evidence will be presented to support the rural, sedentary nature of the Israelite settlements in the central hills of Judah and Samaria. Next, the anthropological literature on village life and leadership will be discussed followed by a quick review of biblical texts relating to leadership during this period. In consideration of all these sources, it will be argued that pre-monarchic, Israelite leadership fits a paradigm identified as “Big Man” leadership and that the application of this archetype has the potential to enliven and enrich our interpretations of this period.


The Fear/Knowledge of God Revisited: An Allusion to a Wisdom Motif in Isaiah 11:1–9?
Program Unit: Biblical Hebrew Poetry
Job Jindo, The Tikvah Center for Law and Jewish Civilization, New York University

The paper examines an allusion to the creation motif in Isaiah 11:1–9 in light of two oft-juxtaposed biblical concepts, “Fear of God” and “Knowledge of God.” Conventionally, these paired terms are regarded as central notions of biblical religion—just as in other religions of the ancient Near East—and the origin of their connection is usually sought either in wisdom tradition or otherwise in a cultic setting. However, based on some recent studies in biblical and Mesopotamian literature, this paper suggests that there is a deep-rooted connection between these paired concepts, which does not require the context of wisdom or worship. The present discussion has a threefold structure. First, it will examine the use and significance of the paired terms within non-wisdom or non-ritual contexts in both biblical and extra-biblical literature; next, it will determine their semantic range in light of that observation; third, it will reconsider their use and significance in Isaiah 11:1–9. It will thereby suggest a hitherto overlooked cosmological significance of the paired terms in biblical religion and literature (esp., Isa 11 and Prov 1).


On Poetry and Prophecy: The Case of Jeremiah
Program Unit: Biblical Hebrew Poetry
Job Jindo, The Tikvah Center for Law and Jewish Civilization, New York University

An inherent tension has long been noted in the biblical phenomenon of poetic ?prophecy—between the prophet’s role as a mouthpiece of God and his function as a ?poet, “a craftsman of words.” Imagery is an effective means of persuasion but ?stands in tension with his prophetic vocation of communicating God’s own words. ?The more metaphors the prophet employs, the further he moves from his ?prophetic calling and becomes an independent poet. His extensive use of metaphor ?thus fundamentally undermines the status of the prophet as a prophet. The ?present paper revisits this problem, using the book of Jeremiah as a test case. ?Applying recent studies in cognitive science, it will explore how we can view the ?use of poetic language as the very essence of biblical prophecy—as an indispensable ?mode to communicate prophetic insight. ?


"Hearing and Seeing": Two Epistemological Trajectories in Mark 4–9
Program Unit: Senses, Cultures, and Biblical Worlds
Dru Johnson, The King's College (NYC)

In Mark's Gospel (4:12), Jesus flatly states that the "secret of the kingdom of God" will be given to his disciples through a conflated citation of Isaiah 6:9-10 (LXX). And, the epistemological trajectory in the ensuing narratives track the disciples' ability to know through the explicitly Deuteronomic phrase: "ears to hear". However, for everyone else, they will be epistemically blinded and deafened, presumably by the teaching and actions of Jesus. Although both eyes and ears are cited by Jesus as integral to their epistemology, Mark 4–9 places priority on "listening" for the disciples, so that they can see, and therefore know. The citation of Isaiah 6:9-10 here confounds the reader in the emerging narrative where the disciples themselves appear to be deaf and blind to Jesus' teaching and actions. The disciples' incomprehensibility is itself incomprehensible. This paper will propose that a partial solution to this crux will be found by exploring the links between not just Isaiah 6 and Mark 4-9, but also Deuteronomy 29. In brief, instead of viewing the characters of the narrative on equal epistemological footing, two distinct epistemological trajectories are being drawn upon through the parallel language and concepts of "hearing" and "seeing", a relationship that is uniquely shared between Deuteronomy 29 and Isaiah 6 in the Tanakh. However, Deuteronomy's particular arrangement of heart, eyes, and ears (the so-called "epistemological organs") is one of hope (4:22); that the things which are currently "hidden" will soon be "revealed"—oppositional terms that are uniquely employed in Deuteronomy 29:28 (LXX). Although this Deuteronomic epistemology has been implied by Joel Marcus, Birger Gerhardsson, Ched Myers, and others, an exploration of Deuteronomy's lexical and conceptual role in a Marcan dual epistemological trajectory has yet to be done. This paper intends to contribute more substance and framing to these prior suggestions.


Narrative Sensitivity and the Use of Verbal Aspect in 1 Reigns 17:34–37
Program Unit: International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies
Ben Johnson, University of Durham

James Barr wrote, "The reader of the LXX gains the impression that, very generally speaking, the matter of verb tense was well handled." In many, if not most cases, the translators did not struggle with what tense to use in translating Hebrew verbs and proceeded along what Barr calls the "normal" patterns. For example, the Hebrew wayyiqtol is normally translated with a Greek aorist indicative. Barr argued that in most cases the translators were dependent upon context to determine tense. This paper discuses the interesting translational phenomenon of the varying use of verbal aspect in 1 Rgns. 17:34-37. In this passage the translator varies between the use of the imperfect and the use of the aorist without any justification from his source text. After an analysis of the possible reasons for this variation it is suggested that the best way to account for this is that translator's own narrative sensitivity led him to employ these verb forms in a manner that is consistent with verbal patterns found in compositional Greek literature, highlighting foregrounded and backgrounded action. The translator has thus faithfully rendered his Vorlage in terms of lexical choice, but in varying the verbal aspects of the action has added a level of narrative dynamism that would be appreciated by a Greek audience.


Manuscripts and Historical Assumptions: The Varied Fabric of Literary Remains among Eastern Christians
Program Unit: Manuscripts from Eastern Christian Traditions
Scott Johnson, Georgetown University

This paper seeks to compare how historians use manuscripts, inscriptions, and papyri from eastern Christian languages, mainly Greek, Aramaic/Syriac, and Coptic. In the context of a workshop on manuscripts it offers an overview of the historian's task of combining these disparate types of evidence in very different linguistic and cultural settings. Each linguistic setting has different survival rates in each category. In practice this means that the writing of eastern Christian history is fraught with varying emphases. In recent years Roman historian Fergus Millar has repeatedly highlighted the use of Greek in formal inscriptions from the region of greater Roman Syria where Aramaic/Syriac was a spoken and literary lingua franca among Christians. By contrast, historians of late Roman Egypt in the same period and later have pointed to the profusion of multilingualism (Greek-Coptic-Syriac-Arabic) as evidenced by the papyri, arguing that a single language did not achieve public dominance but that code switching, ad hoc translation, and literary interference were dominant elements of the everyday life of Christians. This paper will attempt to bridge the gap of these competing interpretations by arguing that continuity between the literary history of Syriac in the 2nd–3rd centuries and the manuscript history of Syriac in the 5th–6th centuries offers an important opportunity to correct the misapprehension of Syriac as less of a public language than Greek in the period, and consequently that Roman Syria was more in line with the multilingual experience of Egyptian Christians. This paper will therefore focus on bilingual manuscript culture and how it fits into the cognitive landscape of other literary material culture. It will attempt to provide a larger context for understanding how a problematic inscription like the Nisibis Greek baptistery (359/60) can be profitably read alongside the early Syriac manuscripts and papyri, both east and west of the Euphrates.


Learning to Preach: Assessing the Pedagogical Value of Contextual and Collaborative Preaching
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Donna Giver Johnston, Vanderbilt University

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Context for a Systematic Approach: The Systematic Modelling of the NT Canon on the Tanak/LXX; and Tradition as Literary Rather than Oral
Program Unit: Scripture and Paul
Everard Johnston, University of the West Indies, Trinidad

In contrast to Metzger who was led to conclude from “the very great variety in order, both of the several parts of the New Testament as well as of books within each part” that “such matters were of no great significance to the ancient...Church” (The Canon of the New Testament, p.300), this paper puts forward the view that there is evidence to suggest the opposite. The quest for a “correct” or “true” ordering of “approved” texts, probably driven, in part at least, by the growing popularity of the codex as opposed to the scroll, can be discerned among Jews as well as among followers of the Jesus Movement in the early centuries of the common era. In both cases there appears to have been a determination not only to to “re-write” the received sacred texts but also and especially to arrange them (i.e. both the received and the “re-written” texts) in a “correct” or (theologically) “proper” order. The paper suggests that, for Jewish groups, the move to “re-write” and especially to (re?)-order the sacred texts would itself have been driven by the crisis in understanding of their identity and divinely appointed destiny occasioned by the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. As for the rival Jesus Movement, the later “Christian” groups, it was crucial that the new Christian texts - i.e. the Jewish sacred texts “re-written” to demonstrate “fulfilment” of those sacred texts in Jesus - be arranged or ordered in such a way as to illustrate “fulfilment” of the divinely appointed destiny of the chosen people. Hence, the very great variety in order of books in ancient manuscripts of what later became the New Testament (Metzger) possibly bears witness to diverse attempts to arrange the Christian texts in a manner that would on the one hand parallel the arrangement of the sacred texts inherited from the Jews, but would also demonstrate what was believed to be “fulfilment” of those sacred texts.


How Early Critics and Objectors Confirm the Truth of the Easter Story
Program Unit: Evangelical Philosophical Society
J. J. Johnston, Acadia Divinity College

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What is the Evidence for Covenant Renewal Ritual in the Qumran Movement?
Program Unit: Qumran
Jutta Jokiranta, Helsingin Yliopisto - Helsingfors Universitet

When the ritual life of the Qumran movement is being discussed, the annual covenant renewal ceremony features in many roles and is seen to have left markers in many textual witnesses. Most prominently, evidence for the basic liturgical structure of the ritual is normally found in the Community Rule (1QS 2–3 or further; 5Q13). Also the Damascus Document has been suggested to function in such a ritual setting. An annual covenant renewal is explicitly ordered and connected to the Shavuot in Jub. 6:17, and this tradition seems to have been followed in the Qumran movement (4Q266 11 17). The Berakhot (4Q286–290) as well as other manuscripts (1QSb; 4Q275; 4Q280; 4Q285; 4Q511; 5Q14; 11Q11) provide evidence for blessings and/or curses. The manuscript 4Q477 is a rebuke and might remind of those refusing to turn to the covenant. Another manuscript 4Q470 has been proposed to refer to an eschatological covenant renewal. This paper discusses some of this evidence with the purpose of mapping the scholarly suggestions on this ritual and seeking for a methodologically sound basis for studying the ritual: seeking to relate the different manuscript evidence with each other and appreciate the particular nature and characteristics of each individual work.


The Polemic between the Precepts of the Law and the Doctrines of Faith in the Deliberative Argument of Hebrews
Program Unit: Rhetoric and Early Christianity
Ira J. Jolivet, Jr., Pepperdine University

While the number of scholars who use rhetorical insights to analyze Hebrews has increased significantly in recent years, their numbers have not generated a corresponding rise in the level of consensus on specifically rhetorical issues such as the identifications of the document’s structural unity or of the precise rhetorical species to which it conforms. Besides not producing agreement on these types of issues, rhetorical critics have also shed little if any helpful light on other traditionally difficult problems, such as the degree to which Hebrews is a polemic against Judaism or the Mosaic Law. A fundamental premise of this paper is that the inability of rhetorical critics to contribute meaningfully to the analysis of Hebrews is due to the critical mistake of focusing primarily on Aristotelian structural aspects of the speech rather than on its more philosophical characteristics. Because in so doing they ignore the shift due to the influence of the Stoics during the Hellenistic Period in the focus of philosophy from metaphysics to emotional therapy and the simultaneous change in rhetoric from a (techne) as Aristotle had defined it to a science (episteme). The most noticeable effects of these changes can be seen in deliberative oratory, the goal of which for both Aristotle and the Stoics was happiness. But whereas Aristotle had equated this goal with the advantageous (to sumphuton) and had claimed that its acquisition required the possession of both the internal and external goods of the virtues of the soul and of the body, the Stoics insisted that virtue is the only truly good thing it alone is entirely sufficient for happiness. They taught, also, that mistaking mere advantages, which are “indifferents,” for that which is truly good gives rise to the passions, the unstable movements of the soul that if left unchecked harden into sin (hamartia). The Stoics’ philosophical departure from Aristotle is seen in their reclassification of the goal of deliberative rhetoric into three categories: honor (virtue as the summum bonum and the greatest necessity), advantage (indifferents), and things that combine qualities of both honor and advantage. I propose that the perceived polemic in Hebrews between the “good things” of faith and the “weak and ineffectual” law with its “regulations for the body” are indications that its author skillfully crafted a deliberative speech as the remedy for the passions of fear (phobos) and distress (lupe) that threatened the souls of the members of his intended audience who had mistaken the merely advantageous indifferents of the law for the truly good and perfectly virtuous will of God. More specifically, this speech involves the contrast between the precepts (paraineseis) of the law that deal with external indifferents and the doctrines (dogmata, theoremata) of faith that Jesus the exemplar of moral perfection internalized. These doctrines consist of his examples of the virtue of courage, the good emotion (eupatheia) of caution (eulabeia), and confidence and hope, two of the good things “that participate in virtue.”


Exodus from What? The Misleading Divine Memory of Exodus 6:1–8
Program Unit: Social Sciences and the Interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures
Amy Beth Jones, Drew University

The interpretation of the exodus as a liberatory narrative should not be taken for granted. Liberation theologians, such as George Pixley, have looked to the exodus as a biblical example of liberation. However, as Jon Levenson argues, for a text constructed by social revolutionaries as concerned about the oppression of the Israelites, it is remarkable that Exodus does not propose an end to the institution of slavery. This paper will reexamine the question of liberation in Exodus through an analysis of the role of divine memory in response to the groans of the people in Ex 6:1-8. In Ex 6:1-8, at the height of the exodus narrative, God hears the groans of the people, recalls the covenant, and promises to bring the people into the land once promised. The divine memory (6:5) functions as a literary mechanism that cleverly avoids the problem of slavery and instead mediates the movement between a fixed place (Egypt) and an imagined place (the promised land of Canaan). In order to understand the cunning role of the divine memory in the text I propose a reading of Ex 6:1-8 through Michel de Certeau’s ideas about the ways stories can function as metis, or literary sleight of hand, and the role of memory therein. I conclude that the strategically placed divine memory of the “promised land” at the most dire moment in the narrative is spatially disruptive and gives power to the few who remember the ancestor stories and the “promised land.” A collective memory is the property of a community, but the memory of Ex 6:1-8 is the property of an elite few, the deity and those close to the deity (Moses). The divine memory is spatially destabilizing and a subtle signal that the power to make the spatial transition from Egypt to “promised land” will reside with an elite few, making “liberation” relative, not experienced equally by all.


Word Order in Daniel 8–12: Differentiation from Imperial Aramaic
Program Unit: Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew
Andrew R. Jones, University of Toronto

The Hebrew of Daniel 8–12 has a particular character that diverges from standard Biblical Hebrew. Most agree that the Hebrew is relatively poor, perhaps originating from a scribe who was more comfortable working in Aramaic. Word order, specifically the order of subject and verb, is a helpful way to quantify this divergence from a syntactic perspective. This study demonstrates that the Hebrew of Daniel 8–12 has three unusual features with regard to the order of subject and verb in main clauses where SV/VS order is not grammatically restricted. First, there is no correlation at all between SV/VS order and information structure, whether it be topicalization, focus-marking, or the marking of rhematic information. Second, SV order is the "default" order in all main clauses, including clauses with negation and clauses where a verbal modifier is clause-initial. Third, the less common use of VS order correlates strongly with the absence of any verbal modifiers in the clause. The paper explores the possibility that these three features result from the work of a scribe who does not have native proficiency in Hebrew and is more comfortable writing in Imperial Aramaic, a verb-final language. First, a lack of proficiency in Hebrew can explain the failure to employ word order appropriately to communicate information structure. Second, the SV order of Imperial Aramaic can explain the author's tendency to compose SV clauses by default, perhaps unconsciously. Third, the correlation of VS order with the absence of verbal modifiers may result from an avoidance of verb-final clauses. It is unclear whether this was intentional or merely reflects the imperfect understanding of a language learner. In either case it would involve an eschewal of a syntactic feature that is an obvious distinctive of Imperial Aramaic vis-à-vis literary Hebrew.


Where on Earth Was the Land of Moab?
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
Brian C. Jones, Wartburg College

The location of Moab, Israel’s neighbor to the east, is less clear than the makers of Bible atlases would lead us to believe. It is unclear whether Moab “proper” lay north or south of the Wadi Mujib (biblical Arnon), or whether the country encompassed both plateaus. The common view is that Moab controlled the area both north and south of the Mujib until sometime after the state of Israel took shape in the tenth century BCE, at which time the center of Moabite power shifted to the southern plateau. This paper will examine the underpinnings of this view and offer an argument for locating the center of Moabite power north of the Mujib, both before and after the formation of Israel. At the outset, the paper will discuss the evidence from Moabite city lists in the Bible and the Mesha Inscription. It will then examine the argument for identifying Kir Hareseth, Mesha’s putative royal city (2 Kings 3), with Kerak, a site lying far south of the Mujib, and give reasons why this identification is mistaken. Third, the paper will argue against locating Luhith and Horonaim, cities mentioned in relation to Moab, south of the Mujib. The primary evidence for locating these cities in the south has been their association with the flight of Moabite refugees toward Zoar, a site usually located south of the Dead Sea. But the preponderance of biblical and extra-biblical evidence favors locating Zoar north of the Dead Sea rather than south, and this effectively moves Luhith and Horonaim to the north as well. The cumulative affect of these three arguments is to question the association of Moab with the plateau south of the Mujib and locate its center of power on the northern plateau. As a result of this conclusion, the implicit claim of the entry narratives that Moab lay south of the Mujib should be viewed as tendentious, a justification from a later time for geopolitical control of the northern plateau.


A New Coptic Fragment of 2 Samuel 10 (McGill MS No Coptic 2)
Program Unit: Papyrology and Early Christian Backgrounds
Brice C. Jones, Concordia University - Université Concordia

This paper is a preliminary report on a previously unpublished Coptic fragment recently discovered in the McGill University Library. This manuscript is one of four (unrelated) Coptic manuscripts in the McGill University Library that originally belonged to Erik von Scherling, a Swedish rare book dealer who, in the first half of the twentieth century, sold various Greek and Coptic papyri and parchments in a private catalogue titled Rotulus. The present location of many of the original contents of von Scherling’s collection is unknown; the McGill collection represents only a few pieces of a very large puzzle that must be put back together. The fragment in question is a parchment palimpsest fragment written in Sahidic, which is part of an already published codex in the Montserrat Abbey (P.Monts. Roca II 4). The over text contains a Coptic magical text, and the first text portions of 2 Samuel 10. The paper aims at introducing the fragment through a discussion of its contents, date, palaeographical features, function, and the remaining open questions. There will also be a discussion about how the fragment will help to correct a few textual reconstructions in the edition of P.Monts. Roca II 4.


Richly Remembered: Jerusalem’s Selectively Porous Boundaries in Ezra 1–6
Program Unit: Space, Place, and Lived Experience in Antiquity
Christopher M. Jones, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Critical attention to spatiality has gained substantial ground in biblical studies in the past decade, particularly through engagement with spatial theorists like David Harvey, Henri Lefebvre, and Edward Soja. Place, however, is often undertheorized, particularly in relation to memory and identity. To rectify this, I turn to the work of British geographer Doreen Massey. Massey understands place not in opposition to space but as a subset of space. Space is constituted by the full network of social relations across a full range of scales, from the local to the global. Various forms of power (political, economic, cultural, human) flow through space by means of these social relations. Place is a particular intersection of such social relations. A place derives its uniqueness not from its location in absolute space or by virtue of its being a stable, bounded space, but rather by the unique confluence of social relations (and their attendant power flows) that it represents. Thus Massey challenges conventional propositions that place is characterized (in opposition to space) by boundedness, stasis, and continuity. Boundedness is not necessary to place, and the geographical bordering and cultural ordering which most places exhibit is neither static nor power-neutral. Rather, the appearance of stasis results from communities attempting to anchor their own identities in place by regulating which social relations are permissible across boundaries and by constructing and nurturing memories that emphasize diachronic continuity within a particular place. In this paper, I apply Massey’s ideas to Ezra 1-6. I examine the ways that the text regulates power flows at the boundaries of Jerusalem, permitting some while proscribing others. I argue that Ezra 1-6 welcomes Persian wealth, Persian political legitimation, and Persian jurisprudence into Jerusalem and its environs, but it rigorously excludes humans who are not genealogically linked to the Golah. Thus Ezra 1-6 constructs a memory of Jerusalem’s restoration in which it is a center of international flows of power, yet remains unambiguously Jewish and Golah-oriented. It attempts to embrace the nascent reality of Jerusalem’s reemergence as an internationally-relevant urban center (in the mid-Hellenistic period) while clinging to its religio-ethnic exclusivity.


Simon (Mimouni) and the Ebionites
Program Unit: Construction of Christian Identities
F. Stanley Jones, California State University-Long Beach

The occasion for this paper is the publication of S. C. Mimouni’s Early Judaeo-Christianity: Historical Essays, a revision and English translation of Mimouni’s 1998 French monograph. Attention is first directed to the most noteworthy contributions in the essays as well as to their reception by subsequent research and the revisions undertaken for the recent translation. Comments situate the book in the history of research into Jewish Christianity and in the academic career of Mimouni, with reference his further and continuing studies. Then, the results of Early Judaeo-Christianity: Historical Essays are evaluated for the variety of groups and identities among Jesus’ followers in the first two centuries. Consideration is given to geographical locations, chronological factors, cultural hybridization and transformations, and archaeological evidence.


Qohelet and the Economy of Time
Program Unit: Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
Scott C. Jones, Covenant College

Economic terminology pervades the Book of Ecclesiastes. This focus has prompted some scholars to reconstruct the mercantile environment out of which this terminology arose and which gave it currency. I argue, however, that the book itself provides a context in which Qohelet’s calculations of value may be understood. In fact, there are two contexts: (1) life under the sun and (2) a time of judgment which seems to lie beyond the sun. Most of Qohelet’s value-terminology has its meaning within the context of time governed by the sun, which he sets up in the initial cosmological poem about the sun’s weariness as time-keeper. This matrix of life-under-the-sun is well developed in the book and is its dominant note. For Qohelet death is the zero-sum toward which every human’s life inexorably moves. In this context, one may speak of debits and credits, but the credits are only relative. For once one’s time is up, one’s credits are zeroed-out. Qohelet’s evaluative word hebel relates to this idea. Though one must translate hebel differently throughout the book, it represents something which happens again and again, but which does not add up to anything which lasts beyond one’s life. As H. L. Ginsberg said, it is “zero.” There is another matrix in the book, however, which is inchoate but nonetheless important. Qohelet seems to be able to imagine a “proof” whose sum is something other than zero. In this context, being a God-fearer pays off, and being wicked is a disadvantage. Qohelet calls this context the “time of judgment” and perhaps also ‘olam. This time beyond life under the sun is the focus of Qohelet’s final cosmological poem. Here Qohelet paints a picture of the onset of “evil days” and a dying world in which the sun no longer shines. Beyond this end, however, may lie an answer which is not zero, but something else.


Manasseh in Paradise, or Not? The Influence of Persian Palace Garden Imagery in LXX 2 Chronicles 33:20
Program Unit: Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah
Louis Jonker, Universiteit van Stellenbosch - University of Stellenbosch

The physical image of the well-watered, fertile palace garden in Achaemenid Persia probably lurks behind the Septuagint’s translation of Hebrew phrases such as “the garden of Eden” and “God’s garden” in Genesis 2–3 and other Hebrew Bible passages with the Greek word paradeisos. This word is also used in LXX 2 Chronicles 33:20 to refer to Manasseh’s burial place “in the paradeisos of his house”, although the Hebrew Vorlage merely mentions “in his house”. This change will be investigated in the paper, and it will be compared to terminology used elsewhere in Chronicles, as well as in Kings. The investigation will aim at formulating a theory about whether the Septuagint’s translation reflects the later development in Jewish tradition which associated paradeisos with eschatological overtones.


The Jeremianic Connection: Chronicles and the Reception of Lamentations as Two Modes of Interacting with the Jeremianic Tradition?
Program Unit: Literature and History of the Persian Period
Louis Jonker, Universiteit van Stellenbosch - University of Stellenbosch

A connection is often made between Lamentations and Chronicles in terms of the ancient Rabbinic tradition of Jeremianic authorship of Lamentations. Second Chronicles 35:25 is normally quoted as the instigation of this tradition, since this verse at the end of the Chronicler’s Josiah account connects Jeremiah to the singing of laments (qînôt). Recent scholarship (e.g. Lee 2000 and 2008, as well as Kalman 2009) does not attempt to settle the authorship issue in Lamentations, but rather shows how the later reception of Lamentations engages the Jeremianic theology in order to explain some difficult passages in this book. My contribution will be a comparative study in which the different modes of interacting with the Jeremianic tradition by Chronicles and the Lamentations reception will be investigated. The presence of Jeremiah as the most prominent of the classical prophets in Chronicles (in 2 Chr. 35 and 36) will be studied in comparison with the more recent theories on the engagement of Jeremianic theology in the reception of Lamentations in Persian and later periods.


‘Off-Centering’ in the Satanic Verses and the Book of Ezekiel
Program Unit: Israelite Prophetic Literature
Samantha Joo, Seoul Women's University

Most, if not all, commentaries and articles about the person of Ezekiel inevitably address the issue of his mental stability. Unlike other prophets in the Hebrew Bible, many of whom perform sign-acts to symbolize the divine message, Ezekiel’s behavior is erratic, verging on the bizarre. He sees fantastic visions, is described to be physically or mystically transported by the spirit, loses speech/movement, and uses extremely violent, sometimes sexually explicit, metaphors in his prophecies. Therefore, commentators have attributed his behavior to psychological illnesses like schizophrenia or disorders resulting from traumatic experiences. In other words, they have treated the references to his bizarre behavior in the book as actual symptoms of a real sickness or trauma. Rather than read his behavior and actions as factual and/or historical, the characterization of Ezekiel may have been more of a literary device to embody the feelings of disjuncture and dislocation arising from the exilic conditions. Like the novel, The Satanic Verses, in which Salman Rushdie fuses elements of fantasy with realism to provide the migrant’s ‘off-centering’ perspective, the depiction of Ezekiel’s schizophrenic-like experiences also reflect the feeling of alienation of the Babylonian exile. It is through the dreams and visions that both authors play out the crisis of a migrant adapting to their new surroundings in imperial land. Just as Rushdie uses Gibreel Farishta’s dream sequences to help his character grapple with his transition from Bombay to London, the author of the book of Ezekiel uses the vision-sequences to convince Ezekiel, and therefore the exilic community, of the presence of the kabod in foreign land. While representing the ‘Others’ perspective,’ both authors attempt to provide an alternative version of history, undercutting the authoritative and predominating explanation of events.


Historical Criticism of the Pentateuch and the History of Hebrew in the Biblical Period
Program Unit: Pentateuch
Jan Joosten, University of Strasbourg, France

“Higher criticism” of the Pentateuch and diachronic study of Biblical Hebrew developed in mutual cross-fertilization and went hand in hand for a long time. Over the last thirty years, however, growing specialization has led to estrangement. Both fields have evolved, almost beyond recognition; but there has been little dialogue between them. In this paper, the present state of the historical approach to Biblical Hebrew, and the contribution it can make to historical critical study of the Pentateuch, will be discussed. Historical linguistics can assist in the question of dating when a text is sufficiently long and unified. It can also help identify secondary passages in some instances. And it can be of help in text-critical decisions trying to determine the earlier text form.


Tense, Aspect, Mood, and the Hebrew Verbal System: New Insights
Program Unit: Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew
Jan Joosten, University of Strasbourg, France

Conjugated forms of the Hebrew verb interact in a complex way to express notions of tense, time reference, aspect, and mood. In addition, they participate in expressing pragmatic functions on the level of the text. In the present paper, an attempt will be made at describing the system underlying the “classical prose” of Genesis – 2 Kings. Parts of the system are well understood, but a few areas still need clarification. The paper is based on a new book on the Hebrew verbal system to be published by Simor, Jerusalem, during the summer of 2012 (The Verbal System of Biblical Hebrew. A New Synthesis Elaborated on the Basis of Classical Prose).


We Are the 99: A Paraenetic Interpretation of the Parable of the Lost Sheep in the Gospel of Truth
Program Unit: Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism
David W. Jorgensen, Princeton University

Early Christian exegesis generated a wide spectrum of interpretations of the parable of the lost sheep. This diversity begins with the Matthean and Lucan accounts, in which Jesus uses the parable as a partial answer to two widely different questions. Most early exegesis isolates the parable from these contexts and conflates it with the discourse in John 10 and a host of passages from the Hebrew bible in order to read Jesus into the parable as the good shepherd. Thus divorced from its paraenetic context in Matthew, rarely was the parable used to exhort laypersons to ethical action in the early church. While the purely soteriological interpretation offered by Irenaeus was unusual, when it was combined with a paraenetic interpretation, the result was usually an ethical exhortation to clergy – to identify with the shepherd and thus, in seeking out the lost, imitate Christ. This interpretation is found in Cyprian, Origen, the Didascalia Apostolorum, and Tertullian, who argues both for and against this position in his earlier and later writings, respectively. Rarely, as in Chrysostom, was the layperson encouraged to identify with the shepherd; however, most often, the laity were depicted as the lapsed or lost. The Gospel of Truth, while participating in the widespread exegetical tradition that in some way associates the Son with the shepherd, also encourages the reader to imagine oneself as part of the remaining flock, the 99, which nevertheless must become co-workers with the Son to seek out and restore the lost, without whom they are not complete. This paper builds upon the work of Michel Desjardins and Philip Tite, who show how the Gospel of Truth is concerned with sin and ethics within the Valentinian community inscribed in the text. Gos.Truth has been shown to rely entirely on the Matthean version of the parable, and, like Matthew, Gos.Truth situates the parable within a paraenetic discourse to insiders in a spiritual community, instructing them on ethical behavior towards other, offending insiders. I therefore argue that Gos.Truth represents an exegesis that is, from a historical critical point of view, most faithful to the meaning of the parable in its Matthean context.


Paul's Contextual Use of the Catalogue of Circumstances in 2 Cor 6:4–10
Program Unit: Second Corinthians: Pauline Theology in the Making
Jose Joseph, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Research on the peristaseis catalogues in the Pauline corpus during the last century has identified two widespread scholarly opinions on the provenance of the lists. First of all striking affinities have been pointed out with the Cynic-Stoic diatribe and Greco-Roman literature (Rudolf Bultmann, A. Fridrichsen, Hans Windisch, John T. Fitzgerald, Martin Ebner and Schiefer Ferrari). Secondly, it was Wolfgang Schrage who emphasized the importance of Jewish apocalyptic for the understanding of peristaseis catalogues. This paper examines the catalogue of circumstances in 2 Cor 6:4-10 in its situational context and argues for Paul’s unique style and particular use of a literary convention based on the historical circumstances and within the material in which it occurs. I understand the main theme throughout 2 Corinthians to be the relationship between Corinthians and Paul as their apostle. As Ivar Vegge suggests, “the description of reconciliation in 7:5-16 is idealized and has a hortative objective.” Paul explains his credentials as an ambassador of Christ and the meaning of his suffering as a true apostle. In 2:14-7:4 he exhorts the Corinthians to full reconciliation with him. As Harris J. Murray points out 2 Cor 6:4-10 “serves as a fitting prelude to Paul’s passionate request to the Corinthians for openness and reciprocity of relations” in 6:11-13. Therefore this paper claims that Paul’s list of tribulations must be viewed in terms of this historical situation and in terms of Paul’s own theology, especially his Christology. The paper investigates and evaluates various scholarly positions and concludes with the observation that, although Paul may have blended various elements in his list of hardships, his primary intention is to deal with a historical situation involving the Corinthians and exhorting them to full reconciliation with him.


Semiotics of Joseph of Genesis as Diviner
Program Unit: Semiotics and Exegesis
Ljubica Jovanovic, Vanderbilt University

The representation of the patriarch Joseph as a diviner with his cup (Gen 44: 5, 15) was understood throughout the history of interpretation according to a conventional metaphor for the concept of diviner of a particular time and space. Scholars, religious leaders, and ordinary people, regardless of their cultural context, equally assumed the universality of the accepted meaning of the diviner within their own semiosphere. However, the metaphorical meaning of lecanomancy (cup-divination) and divination is very different in modern academic and confessional contexts from what it was in the time of early Judaism and Christianity. While lecanomancy in the modern world is related to magic, or regarded as unlawful or false religious expression, in Mediterranean antiquity it was a legitimate scientific mode of communication with the divine. This understanding of divination comes from conventional metaphors inherited from the ancient Mediterranean cultures, religions and scholarship. For example, divination was the most testified form of scientific activity in Ancient Near Eastern texts, while Herodotus seems to include lecanomancy among fundamental exercises of a civilized nation (Hist. 4:5). I argue that the failure to identify the difference between the semiotic modeling of the lecanomancer of the ancient and of that of the modern world is the reason why the image of the Joseph of Genesis as a scholar and spiritual expert is ignored by modern biblical scholarship. Yet, Josephus, Philo, Joseph and Aseneth, and many rabbinic midrashim build their representation of Joseph on the popular contemporary assumption that the cup used for divining the unknown has the metaphorical meaning of scientific activity of a respected professional.


A Place for Pushy Mothers? Visualizations of Christ Blessing the Children
Program Unit: Bible and Visual Art
Christine Joynes, University of Oxford

This paper examines the reception history of Christ blessing children (Mark 10.13-16; cf. Matthew 19.13-15; Luke 18.15-17) as it is found in visual art. Whilst the theme appears rarely in early Christian art, it became particularly popular from the sixteenth century onwards. Reasons for the changing fortunes of this image are considered. The second part of the paper juxtaposes starkly different artistic representations of the same biblical text in order to discuss key exegetical issues raised by artists. In particular, a comparison of Lukas Cranach the Elder’s “Christ Blessing the Children” (1538-40) and William Blake’s “Christ Blessing Little Children” (1799) will provide a springboard from which to address issues of audience. It will be argued that the dominant visual presence of women in some paintings offers a significant (but overlooked) exegetical insight. (This section of the paper includes brief discussion of the image after Giovanni Battista Tinti (1558-1604) in the Art Institute of Chicago, though not on display, “Suffer Little Children to Come unto Me”.) Finally, we will explore how artists have interpreted the idea of “receiving the kingdom of God like a child” (Mark 10.15), which has challenged textual commentators through the centuries.


Echoes of Sodom and Gomorrah on the Day of the Lord: Intertextuality and Tradition in 2 Peter 3:7–13
Program Unit: Institute for Biblical Research
Ryan Juza, Asbury Theological Seminary

Echoes of Sodom and Gomorrah on the Day of the Lord: Intertextuality and Tradition in 2 Peter 3:7-13


Flight on the Sabbath and Early Jewish-Christian Relations: Comparing Matthew 24:20 and Josephus, War 4.97–111
Program Unit: Early Jewish Christian Relations
David A. Kaden, University of Toronto

Although Matthew generally follows his Markan source closely in ch. 24, he deviates in 24.20 with respect to Jesus’ exhortation to pray that flight may not be on the Sabbath. Scholars routinely highlight Matthew’s interest in the Torah to explain this curious nuance, namely, that fleeing will involve work and thus a breach of the law: flight could involve journeying beyond the Techum; it could involve carrying things; Sabbath in Jerusalem could mean limited access to supplies for the journey, since shops would be closed and city gates shut; journeying could draw attention to nonobservant members of Matthew’s group. Recent discussions have assumed that Matthew’s audience fears persecution from Jewish groups, and is either more scrupulous about Sabbath observance to avoid persecution, thus ruling out flight, or is nonobservant but wary that fleeing will expose the group to persecution. In either case, it is likely that Matthew’s audience is in close proximity with Torah-observant Jews, and the relationship is tense. This paper surveys views of Matthew and Torah as they relate to this issue of proximate relations, and demonstrates that since opinions about Matthew’s relationship to the Torah are wide-ranging, from full observance to permitting the abrogation of its ceremonial precepts, it is unlikely that a legal discussion will adequately explain the distinct features of “flight” and “Sabbath” in 24.20. Moreover, by holding in tension disparate legal traditions, from Mark’s apparent nullification of kashrut (7.19), on the one hand, to Q’s fidelity to Torah in terms of tithing (11.42c), and the validity of legal details down to the iota and serif (16.17), on the other, Matthew’s specific views of Torah observance may be difficult to recover with certainty. In any case, nothing in the immediate context of ch. 24 necessitates importing legal concepts from elsewhere in the gospel to explain the presence of “Sabbath” in v 20. Furthermore, exigent threats were grounds for modifying Sabbath observance in Jewish history, making it unlikely that the reference to the Sabbath in 24.20 indicates either concerns over breaching the law or concerns that nonobservance will be noticed. A simpler explanation might be that Matthew is reflecting a tradition also found in Josephus (War 4.97-111) that connects themes of flight, Sabbath, and tragedy during a Roman siege; in War 4 the siege is of the Galilean town of Gischala, which resulted in the slaughter of six thousand women and children. Scholars typically cite the War 4 story as a parallel to Matthew 24.20 without elaboration; however, a detailed examination of features of the two accounts indicates significant overlap, including similar contexts and similar warnings about deceptive leaders. While Matthew’s audience probably was Torah observant, the reference to the Sabbath in 24.20 raises other interesting questions about how Matthew may have encountered a Galilean tradition, especially since only Matthew and Josephus share the tradition. Accordingly, Matthew’s group may have been in Galilee in close proximity with Jewish survivors from the war.


Religious Experience and the Gospel of Truth
Program Unit: Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism
Michael Kaler, York University

In this paper, I will continue my discussion of the significance of transcendent religious experience for the Nag Hammadi collection by discussing the role that it plays in the Gospel of Truth.


Bare Naked: A Gender Analysis of the Exposed Body
Program Unit: Writing/Reading Jeremiah
Amy Kalmanofsky, Jewish Theological Seminary of America

The exposed female body is a familiar trope of the prophetic rhetoric, with the power to incite, shock, shame, disgust, arouse or inspire an audience. Viewing a naked body is an interactive experience between the one who sees and the one who is seen, in which gender is a significant factor. How one perceives a naked body varies according to the gender and sexual orientation of the subject as well as the object. This paper offers a gender analysis of the naked body based on Jeremiah 13 in which the male prophet and female Zion are asked to strip. In the first part of Jeremiah 13, God commands Jeremiah to wear, remove and then bury a soiled loincloth. The subject shifts in the second part to address Zion whose body will be exposed. Using the work of Michael Satlow, who asserts that the meaning of the naked body is context-dependent and that female nakedness is understood differently than male nakedness in the ancient world, I suggest that the exposed male body functions differently than the female body in Jeremiah and throughout the Prophets. This difference reflects the role of the prophet as the embodied word of God. Whereas the naked female body functions as a rhetorical device employed by the prophets to shame and incite their audience, the male naked body is a sign from God to be read and interpreted.


Zechariah and the Bubbling Blood: An Ancient Tradition in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Literature
Program Unit: Qur'an and Biblical Literature
Richard Kalmin, Jewish Theological Seminary of America

This study examines Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions about a murder in the Temple of Jerusalem and the fate of the victim’s blood after death. The accounts examined here range chronologically and geographically from the first century CE in Syria until the thirteenth century in what is modern-day Iraq. We will argue that the story’s meaning changed over time, and that the “original” story was a non-rabbinic, in all likelihood Christian Hebrew tale that reflected the view that God had rejected the Israelites and had compassion for a prophet they had murdered, and that the rabbis incorporated this story into their literature, adding an Aramaic phrase that transformed it into a story about God’s enduring compassion for the Israelites and a meditation on the problems involved in the effectuation of that compassion in a world without prophets. In addition, we will attempt to contribute to the ongoing scholarly analysis of the relationship between rabbinic literature on the one hand, and Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic literature on the other. In the process, we will reevaluate the relationship between ancient and early medieval Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. We will find surprising parallels between (1) late antique rabbinic literature, and (2) Ethiopian Christian commentaries on the New Testament, which are evidence of unexpected commonalities between rabbinic literature, particularly the Bavli, and seventh-thirteenth century CE Syriac and Arabic literature composed in Persia, Mesopotamia, and Syria, which served as a crucial link between Ethiopian Christian literature and the literature of the ancient world.


"Manasseh Sawed Isaiah with a Saw of Wood": An Ancient Legend in Jewish and Syriac Christian Sources
Program Unit: Syriac Literature and Interpretations of Sacred Texts
Richard Kalmin, Jewish Theological Seminary of America

This study examines the Babylonian Talmudic story of Manasseh’s execution of Isaiah against the background of Syriac Christian literature of late antiquity. The Bavli’s version of the tradition depicts Moses as superior to the prophet Isaiah in response to other ancient depictions, notably by Christians, of Isaiah as Moses’s superior. In addition, the Bavli’s version of the tradition perhaps uses Isaiah (in Hebrew, Yeshayahu) as a stand-in for Jesus (in Hebrew, Yeshu), depicting Isaiah as executed according to God’s will with the aid of a tree, for the crime of casting aspersions on the Israelite people. In evaluating this hypothesis, it is important to bear in mind that Isaiah’s prophecies were quoted most frequently by ancient Christians attempting to prove Jesus’ messianic status. This study also argues, by focusing in detail on one case, that (1) the mid fourth century began a period of intense eastern provincial Romanization of Jewish Babylonia, and (2) that Babylonia became part of an emerging cultural confluence that was beginning to form in Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, and western Persia, until the Islamic conquests drastically altered the political and cultural landscape. In addition, I argue that Syriac Christian sources attest the same development, in the same part of the world and at approximately the same time, indicating a significant linkage between the Jewish and Christian communities in Mesopotamia in late antiquity. So close is the linkage in this one case that a story told in a Syriac Christian source holds the hermeneutical key to the interpretation of a Babylonian rabbinic story, or vice versa, since the two stories utilize the same constellation of motifs and themes to teach strikingly similar lessons. Analysis of this narrative reveals no indication of polemical interaction between the two communities.


Teaching Problematic Texts in a Rabbinical Seminary
Program Unit: Ethics and Biblical Interpretation
Tamar Kamionkowski, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College

In this paper, I will present two brief examples of the value of the historical-critical approach as a launching pad for ethics discussions. One example will engage a troubling text from the Book of Ezekiel and the other example will explore a seemingly irrelevant or obscure text from the Book of Leviticus. These examples come directly from my classroom teaching rabbinical students.


Prohibition of Solar-Worship in Ezekiel 40–48
Program Unit: Israelite Prophetic Literature
Jina Kang, Fuller Theological Seminary

Intrusion of solar cult within the Jerusalem temple complex is cited as one of the causes of the profanation of the temple that results in the eventual departure of the kebôd YHWH in the book of Ezekiel (Ezek 8:16). The vision of twenty-five men prostrating eastward towards the sun while their backs are turned towards the altar of YHWH incites not only the departure of the divine presence, but also prompts a response to curtail any traces of sun veneration in the restored temple complex in Ezekiel’s program of restoration (Ezek 40-48). The temple structure and legislation for cultic observances intend to restrict solar-worship and prevent worshippers within the temple from replicating the posture of the twenty-five men. Furthermore, the prohibition of solar-worship may have further implications for understanding the theo-political assertions of the permanence and incontestable presence of YHWH in the context of exile.


In Death as in Birth: The Death of Moses, Collective Accountability, and Moses’ Liminal Status as an Israelite
Program Unit: Pentateuch
Hilary C. Kapfer, Harvard University

The death of Moses has inspired many exegetes to propose creative explanations for why a prophet as esteemed as Moses would die outside the Promised Land with the stiff-necked Israelites whom he led. The theological problem stems from the fact that while YHWH is ready to destroy and dispossess all of Israel and to make a great nation of Moses alone in Numbers 14:12, Moses convinces YHWH to relent of his plan, and YHWH then announces that the entire generation, which seems at this point to include Moses despite the earlier promise to make him into a great nation, will die in the wilderness, with the exception of two righteous individuals, Caleb and Joshua. Moses’ death, then, is a theological problem because it coincides with the punishment endured by the community that rebelled against him. Because two righteous individuals are spared punishment and since Moses did not participate in the rebellion, interpreters reason, the great leader must have committed some sin apart from the murmuring episode that resulted in the people’s exclusion from the land. Later biblical episodes (i.e. Numb. 20:10-13; 27:12-14; Deut. 32:48-52), as well as many non-biblical interpretations, take this assumption, namely that the punishment of exclusion from the land is an individual one, as their starting point. However, another strand of biblical interpretation attributes Moses’ death to the people’s wrongdoings (Deut. 1:37-38; 3:23-28, 4:21-22) and thus seems to explain Moses’ punishment as a case of collective, rather than individual, punishment. This paper will focus on the second strand of interpretation in order to argue that Moses’ death outside the land is best explained as an inversion of the prophet’s intercessory threat in Exodus 32:32-34. In Exodus 32:32, Moses demands that YHWH erase all memory of the innocent Moses if YHWH refuses to forgive the Israelites for the Golden Calf incident, but YHWH responds in vv. 33-34 that he will exercise individual punishment. In Numbers 14, YHWH exercises collective punishment; namely, he subjects Moses to the same fate as the stiff-necked people for whom he has just interceded in Numbers 14:14-19, an episode that has numerous parallels with Exodus 32-34. In order to demonstrate this thesis, I will compare the two prophetic intercessions (Exod. 32-34 and Numb. 14) with special attention paid to the notion of peoplehood and Moses’ relationship to the Israelites. This paper will then explore the tension between collective and individual accountability found in Exodus 32-34, Number 14, and the book of Deuteronomy (especially Deut. 1:37-38, 3:23-28, 4:21-22, 5:9-10, 7:9-10, and 24:16).


Recasting “The Four Empires” in Mekilta de-Rabbi Yishmael
Program Unit: History and Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism
Jonathan Kaplan, Yale University

Throughout rabbinic literature, the sages consistently interpret the visions of the statute made of four metals and of the four beasts in the book of Daniel (2:31–45; 7:1–28) as corresponding to four successive empires: Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. Early rabbinic literature de-couples, however, “the four empires” motif from what Rainer Albertz has termed an “apocalyptic theology of resistance,” in which the book of Daniel participates. Despite the absence of apocalypticism and apocalyptic features in the early rabbinic reception of “the four empires” motif, the rabbis utilize the motif in order to contest Roman imperial hegemony and domination and to expose the limits of temporal, imperial power. This paper explores the early rabbinic reception of “the four empires” motif through close reading of several related passages in Mekilta de-Rabbi Yishmael (Beshallach 2, Shirta 6, and Bachodesh 9). I argue that the early rabbinic approach to this motif, as exemplified in these passages, represents two notable innovations from its use in Daniel. First, in contrast to the use of “the four empires” motif in Daniel in order to emphasize the progress of empires, its interpretation in these passages serves a larger program of denuding imperial power by establishing the essential comparability of the various empires. Second, Mekilta employs “the four empires” motif in order to elevate Israel’s sense of status by asserting that the only empires that rule over the whole world dominate Israel. This recasting of “the four empires” motif positions Israel as both accommodating the reality of imperial domination and resisting imperial hegemony through a relativization of imperial claims to power and permanence.


The Holy of Holies or the Holiest? Rabbi Akiva’s Characterization of the Song of Songs in m. Yadayim 3:5 and Its Afterlife
Program Unit: Midrash
Jonathan Kaplan, Yale University

At the conclusion of an extended discussion in m. Yadayim 3:5 about which scriptural texts do and do not “render the hands impure,” a phrase generally understood as a termus technicus for canonical status in the Mishnah, R. Akiva purportedly describes the Song of Songs as qodesh qodashim in contrast to all the other scriptural writings, which are marked as simply qodesh (holy). There is scholarly agreement regarding the hyperbolic character of R. Akiva’s superlative comparison of the Song of Songs (Shir haShirim) with qodesh qodashim. There is, however, a divide about whether or not qodesh qodashim is a simple superlative, “holiest,” or should be understood as a more theologically significant reference to the inner sanctum of the Temple, “the Holy of Holies.” It is my contention that the former reading is preferable, as I will demonstrate, on philological and contextual grounds. While it may be the more preferable interpretation of this mishnah, the juxtaposition of Shir haShirim and qodesh qodashim has an interesting afterlife in the history of interpretation. In the second half of this paper, I explore the ways in which this juxtaposition is understood in pre-modern interpretation. Both Origen and Song of Songs Rabbah (the latter interpreting R. Akiva’s statement) understand the juxtaposition of these two phrases as simply pointing to the superlative character of the Song of Songs. In contrast, Gregory of Nyssa and the Zohar (2:145a–b; also interpreting R. Akiva’s statement) exploit the juxtaposition of Shir haShirim and qodesh qodashim as pointing to the inner sanctum of the Temple. This characterization enables them both to read the Song of Songs as a repository of coded mysteries.


Report on the Apocalypse Project
Program Unit: Novum Testamentum Graecum: Editio Critica Maior
Martin Karrer, Kirchliche Hochschule Wuppertal/Bethel

In October 2011 a project to edit the Greek Apocalypse of John has started at the Kirchliche Hochschule Wuppertal/Bethel, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. In our first phase (three years) we concentrate on profiling every available manuscript at selected passages in order to map the tradition initially. The paper will describe the rationale as well as the set-up of the project and give a demonstration of the tools that we use to gather and process the data.


The Concept of Israel in the Book of Chronicles and the Gerizim Inscriptions
Program Unit: Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah
Magnar Kartveit, School of Mission & Theology (Misjonshogskolen i Stavanger) (Norway)

The inscriptions found on Mount Gerizim during the excavations there throw some light on the religious life on that mountain. They tell us about the deity worshiped, provide names of the worshippers and give insights into the type of worship practised. The Book of Chronicles has been seen as relating to the emerging religious community in the north that later became known as the Samaritans. Both Martin Noth and Hugh Williamson saw such connections, although with differing interpretations of the material. Do the inscriptions found on Mount Gerizim and elsewhere contribute to our understanding of the concept of Israel in the Book of Chronicles?


Christ in the Gospel of John: A Palestinian Reading
Program Unit: Institute for Biblical Research
Yohanna Katanacho, Bethlehem Bible College

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The Fourth Gospel’s Claims of Superiority Seen through Hybrid Eyes
Program Unit: Asian and Asian-American Hermeneutics
Julius-Kei Kato, King's University College at the UWO

In a globalized world, more and more people find that, through a number of circumstances such as immigration, multiracial parentage or upbringing, travel, relationships, or etc., they have come to belong simultaneously to multiple cultural “worlds.” The term “hybrid” broadly understood can thus be applied to them. Hybrids who strive for balance in the midst of the diverse worlds that coexist in themselves—a state the theologian Rita Nakashima Brock has called “interstitial integrity”—have little patience for positions which claim the superiority of a particular world over another because experience and reflection have taught them that a claim of superiority is often merely an expression of imbalanced power relations. The context that will be employed in this study is the hybridity described above. However, hybridity can never remain an abstract notion; it always takes a particular form borne out of a particular mixture. The particular hybrid context to be utilized here is that of an interpreter who has experienced multiple diasporas (from Asia through Europe to North America) and who has acquired a hybrid identity due to presence in multiple worlds, particularly, Asia and North America. The problematik this study will face is the fourth gospel’s unequivocal claims of superiority about Jesus, the Christ, and all those who accept him as the way. Regarding that, one can ask: How could people, who intentionally belong to multiple worlds (hybrid identities) and seek to attain interstitial integrity in that state, make sense of an authoritative text such as the gospel according to John if it clearly has an unambiguous declaration of Jesus being “the Way,” apart from which there is no other way to come to the Father (Jn. 14:6), and that those who honor the Son are the only ones who properly honor the Father who sent him (Jn. 5:23), implying therefore that the Christian faith is superior to all others? John’s exclusive and exclusionary character will be analyzed and critiqued through Asian-North American interpretive lenses, particularly in the following areas: (1) the claim that Christ is the unique and exclusive revelation of God as represented for example in John 14:1-7 among others; (2) the claim of the believing community’s exclusive access to God because of faith in Christ - John’s ecclesiology as represented for example in the sections on belief and unbelief in 5:23 among others; and (3) the claim of the harsh fate awaiting unbelievers (often referred to simply as “the Jews”) because they do not accept the Johannine community’s faith claims (represented for example in passages such as 8:44 or 15:6 among others). This study will look at these issues from the lens of hybridity and ask: Are there values that can be retrieved from John, a text considered authoritative for Christian faith, despite its exclusivist claims of superiority? What elements are beyond retrieving and have to be resisted?


Revelation’s Telos Seen through Diasporic and Hybrid Eyes
Program Unit: Contextual Biblical Interpretation
Julius-Kei Kato, King's University College at the UWO

In a globalized world, more and more people find that, through a number of circumstances such as immigration, multiracial parentage or upbringing, travel, relationships, etc., they have come to belong simultaneously to multiple cultural “worlds.” The term “hybrid” broadly understood can thus be applied to them. Hybrids who strive for balance in the midst of the diverse worlds that coexist in themselves—a state the theologian Rita Nakashima Brock has called “interstitial integrity”—have little patience for positions which claim the superiority of a particular world over another because experience and reflection have taught them that a claim of superiority is often merely an expression of imbalanced power relations. The truth, for them, lies closer to the notion that there is no culture or faith superior to others but that different cultural worlds and faith traditions are just diverse yet equally valid ways of being human and religious. The context that will be employed in this study is the hybridity described above. However, hybridity is never an abstract notion; it always takes a particular form borne out of a particular mixture. The particular hybrid context to be utilized here is that of an interpreter who has experienced multiple “diasporas” (from Asia through Europe/Middle East to North America) and who has acquired a hybrid identity due to a life lived simultaneously in multiple worlds, particularly, Asian-North American. Rooted in that context, this study will look at what the book of Revelation presents as the telos of salvation history: on the one hand, ultimate victory for God and the Lamb and all who follow them, but, on the other hand, damnation and annihilation for those who do not as presented, particularly, in chapters 20-21 of the book. This paper will analyze and reflect upon the following issues regarding Revelation’s telos through diasporic and hybrid eyes: What is the real nature of the traditional monotheistic and Christian notion of an apocalyptic eschaton as evidenced in the book of Revelation? Is it a glorious triumph of God’s (compassionate?) reign or just another form of imperialistic conquest? What are the imperialistic structures latent in such an imagination of the end? Is the positing of a chosen few as worthy of (eternal) life and the relegating of the rest to “the lake of fire” (20:15), basically an exclusive and exclusionary structure, thus, an expression of an imperialistic mentality and imperialistic hubris? Is this imperialistic mentality the root of later Christian intolerance of the Other? In a globalized and hybrid world in which many cultures and faith-traditions strive to co-exist in harmony, how should that plot be deconstructed? Are there any factors that can be retrieved from it? How do people who intentionally belong to multiple worlds (hybrids) and seek to attain interstitial integrity in that state make sense of Revelation’s telos (which implies that the Christian faith is superior to any other)?


Lucifer of Cagliari and Literary Criticism in Kings
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Historical Books
Tuukka Kauhanen, University of Helsinki

Due to his extensive quotations, Lucifer of Cagliari is among the most important Latin witnesses for the early text of the Books of Kings. His importance, however, is not limited to textual criticism but extends to the field of literary criticism as well. In this paper, selected passages in Kings of literary-critical importance are examined in the light of Lucifer’s quotations. Special emphasis is placed on Lucifer’s relationship to the Lucianic text and other Latin witnesses in both the kaige and non-kaige sections.


Apocalypticism as World View and Linguistic Metaphor: Attempting a Cognitive Approach to Jesus’ Utopian Language
Program Unit: Historical Jesus
Thomas Kazen, Stockholm School of Theology

The character of Jesus’ apocalypticism has been analyzed and debated since the birth of modern biblical studies. Dividing lines have been established and the trenches are dug deep. Either Jesus is regarded as an apocalyptic prophet or as a subversive sage. There seems to be no way out of the present stalemate. On the one hand, many kingdom sayings apply to social and economic circumstances in the present; on the other hand, apocalyptic expressions relate, at least on the surface, to cosmic upheavals and a world beyond. Solutions have been sought by declaring one or another strand as authentic. Both wisdom sayings and apocalyptic language are, however, deeply anchored in the early strata of the Jesus tradition. The crucial issue is not whether Jesus was an “apocalyptic prophet”, but what “apocalyptic” means. The distinction between apocalypticism as a literary genre and as an eschatological understanding of history is commonplace, even if not always upheld. Discussions about the metaphorical character of apocalyptic language are in no way new. These distinctions and discussions have nevertheless had surprisingly little influence on debates about the apocalyptic strand in the Jesus tradition. The present paper is an attempt to revisit this field of discussion, by analyzing key passages from the Jesus tradition with newer tools from cognitive metaphor theory and conceptual blending theory, and with a glance at the social role and function of utopias. It will be argued that Jesus’ apocalypticism can be understood as expressing a concrete vision of a reformed society, without necessarily expecting literal cosmic upheavals and the end of the world.


Assessing Luke's Reliability as a Historian in the Book of Acts
Program Unit: Evangelical Philosophical Society
Craig S. Keener, Asbury Theological Seminary

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Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer as a Turning Point in the Development of Rabbinic Midrash
Program Unit: History and Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism
Katharina Keim, University of Manchester

The Pirke deRabbi Eliezer (PRE) is often regarded as a “strange appendix” to classic Rabbinic Midrash. It manifests distinctive features which are at odds with earlier Midrashim; these include possible parallels to second temple period aggadot, the incorporation of “scientific” material to explain the creation of the cosmos, and two vivid narratives in a text otherwise characterised by thematic discourse. PRE thus also differs from classic Midrashim in form: it is not a meta-textual lemmatic commentary, but a text crafted by the interests of an author whose thematic interests work in tandem with exegetical and eisegetical Biblical interpretation in crafting the text. Previous scholarship has approached PRE comparatively with earlier Jewish tradition, examined particular traditions in PRE against other works, or investigated the text with a view to theorising the development of Jewish literature into the medieval period. This paper seeks to reorient scholarly discussion to address PRE in its own right, recognising the text as a new beginning in the history of rabbinic interpretation of the Hebrew Bible within the greater context of the development of Jewish thought. PRE recognises its own innovation, and calls upon the authority of Rabbinic tradition by placing the text into the Rabbinic grand narrative, just as the second temple pseudepigrapha sought the authority of Biblical tradition by embedding their works into the Biblical grand narrative. This paper argues that an analysis of PRE in its historical context of the medieval world suggests that the end of the Talmudic age in 640 CE and the beginning of Islamic conquest of the Middle East defined not only a political horizon in Jewish history, but also a literary horizon in the development of Rabbinic literature and thought.


Post-war Rituals of Return and Reintegration
Program Unit: Warfare in Ancient Israel
Brad E. Kelle, Point Loma Nazarene University

This paper explores rituals related to the return of warriors from battle and their reintegration into society. The paper will attempt a typology of the limited biblical texts that describe such rituals, as well as a comparison with ancient Near Eastern materials and perspectives from contemporary warfare studies and psychology.


Unprovenienced Artifacts and Policy: Views from an Anthropological Archaeologist
Program Unit: Archaeology of Religion in the Roman World
Morag Kersel, DePaul University

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Haggai 2:5a: Origin, Translation, and Significance
Program Unit: Literature and History of the Persian Period
John Kessler, Tyndale University College and Seminary (Toronto)

Haggai 2:5a raises a variety of inter-related issues. Why are these words absent in the LXX? What was their origin? What do they mean? What is their relationship to the words that immediately precede and follow them? What do they reveal about the significance of the Sinai covenant for the community in Yehud? These matters have been of perennial interest to scholars, yet no consensus has emerged. This paper will examine these inter-related questions and present conclusions relating to the origin of the disputed words, their relationship to the redaction of Haggai, and to the ongoing Persian period reflection concerning the Sinai covenant.


Would Amos Have Understood Israel as a ‘Class Society’?
Program Unit: Economics in the Biblical World
Rainer Kessler, Philipps-Universität Marburg

The question, of course, is anachronistic. Amos had no theory whatever of Israelite society. The question is whether the category of ‘class’ is applicable to the picture we can get from the words of Amos. The category implies two main aspects. First, ‘class’ has to do with control over the means of production which is nearly always connected with the question of (private) property. Second, to be able to speak of ‘classes’ there should exist a form of ‘class consciousness’. Neh 5:1-13 is a text that comprises both aspects. The question of disposal of land is the crucial problem and ‘the people’ have a consciousness that they are opposed to ‘the nobles and the officials’. In Amos, three points have to be discussed. (1) Amos uses nouns for the people he sees as victims in Israelite society. He calls them ‘the righteous’, ‘the needy’, ‘the poor’, ‘the afflicted’, ‘the oppressed’ (2:6-7; 3:9; 4:1; 5:11-12; 8:4.6). The plural or collective singular forms demonstrate that for Amos they form a group. The terms he uses, however, do not designate a ‘class’. We can only reconstruct that he speaks of small peasants threatened to loose their property because of debt. (2) For the actors Amos does not use nouns but verbs. These people are characterised by what they are doing. That does not make it sure whether they form what we would call a ‘class’. (3) The interaction between the two groups consists in the deeds which Amos describes and the verbs he uses. They give the idea that he speaks of economic exploitation and social and political oppression. That points in the direction of class relations. The paper will mainly discuss these three topics in detail. The result could be the following. Amos clearly sees that Israelite society is about to break into two parts. He even uses the Hebrew term šæbær (6:6) which literally means the fracture of a limb (Lev 24:20; cp. 21:19). Like Isaiah (3:14) and Jeremiah (5:26-27), he is aware of the fact that there is a transfer of goods from the poor to the rich (Am 2:8) and even a transfer of enslaved persons (2:7; 8:4-6). Unlike Isaiah and Micah, however, he does not touch the question of landed property (Is 5:8; Mic 2:1-2). Criticising in first line the people who are responsible for certain developments, Amos does not show whether these people as well as their victims had a self-consciousness of belonging together as a ‘class’. In the light of later developments as documented in Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah, and later Nehemiah, however, we can recognise that what Amos observes and criticises is the emergence of a ‘class society’.


Tracing Manuscripts: For Searching the History of the Georgian Translation Tradition of the Bible
Program Unit: Manuscripts from Eastern Christian Traditions
Ana Kharanauli, Javakhishvili Tbilisi State Univerity

The aim of the paper is to represent the history of the Georgian translation tradition of the Bible in the framework within which development of the Georgian manuscript culture and activities of Georgian scholars and literary schools will be viewed. I. Oldest translations of the Books of Bible (canonical texts as well as apocrypha) are preserved in the palimpsest manuscripts and belong to the 5th -7th cc. They are written in majuscule script on a treated parchment. II. The 8th- 10th cc. Biblical manuscripts are copied in Tao-Klarjeti (South-West of Georgia), also in Jerusalem and Mt. Sinai. Most of them are richly illuminated luxury copies. III. Creation of the new recensions of the Four-Gospels and Psalms and translation of patristic commentaries on the Biblical books are connected with the names of great Georgian Athonites – Euthymius and George (the 10th-11th cc.). The manuscripts of Mt. Athos including the Biblical commentaries are mostly copied by scholar-scribers; among them the authograph manuscripts of George the Athonite stands out especially. IV. The hellenophile scholar Ephrem Mtsire (the end of the 11th c., Antioch) rendered into Georgian catenae of the Acts and Psalms. The manuscripts including his translations are equipped with vast introductions, postscripts, marginal notes, etc. As he stated in one of his colophons, these manuscripts are composed according to ”Greek rules”. V. A new, so-called hellenophile stage of translating, coping and adjusting the Bible is presented in two manuscripts of the Gelati literary school (the 12th c., West of Georgia). They include the catenae of the Old Testament. One of the manuscripts is copied by scholarly hand, and the other by well-trained calligrapher. VI. Some of the significant Georgian manuscripts of Bible are copied in the monastic centers of Constantinople in the 12th-13th cc. Richly illuminated copies preserved colophons which include valuable materials on the history of these centers, also, on the Georgian diasporas working in the capital.


The Wise Woman of Endor: An African Contextual Reading of 1 Samuel 28
Program Unit: Contextual Biblical Interpretation
J. Kabamba Kiboko, Iliff School of Theology

In this paper, I will read 1 Sam 28: 3-25, the passage involving the woman of Endor and King Saul, using first and foremost an African contextual approach. Secondarily, African post-colonial insights will be brought to bear. I maintain that the divinatory techniques from the Basanga people, who live primarily in the southeastern corner of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), help us to understand better what is occurring in this passage than does the application of the thinking of Deut. 18:10-11 or the traditional Christian lens. The study maintains that the woman of Endor has been defamed by use of the label “witch,” which does not appear in the Hebrew text. Further, such use of the term “witch” is inconsistent with the understanding of witchcraft both today on the African continent and in the ancient Near East generally. Instead of being a witch, the woman of Endor is actually a law-abiding, kind, generous, and extremely wise woman, who assists Saul in facing his demise. I suggest that the origin of this defamation of the woman of Endor rests in early and, especially, medieval Christian ideology. Such a misreading has been perpetrated through missionary colonial and imperialist efforts on the African continent and has contributed to African self-loathing and identification with its colonial perpetrators. I conclude that an African contextual reading, in this case, opens up next avenues for understanding the Hebrew Bible.


“Go and Bring Whatever Poor Person You Might Find. . .”: Meals and Justice as Deuteronomy’s Real Legacy for the Book of Tobit
Program Unit: Meals in the HB/OT and Its World
Micah Kiel, Saint Ambrose University

Most scholars refer to the theology of the Book of Tobit as “Deuteronomistic.” While there are many ways in which such a designation may be questioned, there is on aspect of the theology of Deuteronomy and its legacy that has been largely overlooked in Tobit: the connection between meals, especially those associated with the festival of Weeks. The manuscript traditions of the Book of Tobit reveal shifting degrees of comfort and discomfort with the connection between the meal and justice, to the point that, by the time of the Vulgate, the connection has been scrubbed from Tobit ch. 2 altogether. The earliest manuscripts, however, testify to a close association, based on Deut. 16:9-12, which becomes programmatic for the statements about justice and almsgiving in the testamentary sections later in the story.


Matthew: Kyklos, Phylakterion, Kraspeda
Program Unit: Greek Bible
Mark C. Kiley, Saint John's University

This study inquires into the First Evangelist’s dialogue with a short list of Septuagintal terms. I point out several features of exegesis already in the Matthean commentaries that are further illuminated by the Septuagintal circle, including attention to that in Ps. 31 LXX. I will also suggest that the Evangelist has transformed the Septuagint’s descriptions of phylacteries and tassels in the Gospel’s concluding chapters. This is one installment in a group of Gospel Essays, now being prepared for publication.


Skepticism of Qoheleth and Dong Ju Yun: An Intertextual Study on Intellectuals under Imperial Domination, Their Self-Critique, and Negotiating the Empires
Program Unit: Asian and Asian-American Hermeneutics
Baek Hee Kim, Brite Divinity School (TCU)

Colonial experiences cause various reactions and tendencies among the colonized against the colonizers. One can regard resistance and accommodation as two major reactions of the colonized. Yet, many intellectuals are in-between resistance and accommodation, and their literature implies psychological and interpretive ambiguities. With regard to the colonial ambiguities, this paper aims to understand skepticism in the book of Ecclesiastes and will focus on the realities of intellectuals, who are under colonized situations, negotiating the empires through survival, accommodation, protest, dissent, and imitation. I view Qoheleth as an intellectual under the colonized situation, which is caused by Greek empires and the book of Ecclesiastes as an intra-empire literature by the colonized. I explore, at the same time, poems of Dong Ju Yun, which were written in the period of Japanese colonization of Korea, as a good source for an intertextual study since it illuminates similar characteristics to the book of Ecclesiastes. Under the colonial situations, Qoheleth and Yun did not resist against the empires actively nor accommodate themselves to the colonial environments explicitly. Rather, they show ambivalent states of mind such as agony, shame, and the sense of futility in their literature. I argue that these states of mind produced their skeptical perspective on the unjust and disordered world. Their states of in-between intensify their skeptical discourse. Under the mask of skepticism, they did not totally resist the imperial aspiration nor totally support their own tradition, authenticity, and cultural identity. Skepticism in the book of Ecclesiastes and Yun’s poems implies ambivalent reactions toward the empires. This is communicated through the strategies of intellectuals in the colonized world such as survival, accommodation, protest, dissent, and imitation in negotiating the imperial world.


Skepticism of Qoheleth and Dong Ju Yun: An Intertextual Study on Intellectuals under Imperial Domination, Their Self-Critique, and Negotiating the Empires
Program Unit: Korean Biblical Colloquium
Baek Hee Kim, Brite Divinity School (TCU)

Colonial experiences cause various reactions and tendencies among the colonized against the colonizers. One can regard resistance and accommodation as two major reactions of the colonized. Yet, many intellectuals are in-between resistance and accommodation, and their literature implies psychological and interpretive ambiguities. With regard to the colonial ambiguities, this paper aims to understand skepticism in the book of Ecclesiastes and will focus on the realities of intellectuals, who are under colonized situations, negotiating the empires through survival, accommodation, protest, dissent, and imitation. I view Qoheleth as an intellectual under the colonized situation, which is caused by Greek empires and the book of Ecclesiastes as an intra-empire literature by the colonized. I explore, at the same time, poems of Dong Ju Yun, which were written in the period of Japanese colonization of Korea, as a good source for an intertextual study since it illuminates similar characteristics to the book of Ecclesiastes. Under the colonial situations, Qoheleth and Yun did not resist against the empires actively nor accommodate themselves to the colonial environments explicitly. Rather, they show ambivalent states of mind such as agony, shame, and the sense of futility in their literature. I argue that these states of mind produced their skeptical perspective on the unjust and disordered world. Their states of in-between intensify their skeptical discourse. Under the mask of skepticism, they did not totally resist the imperial aspiration nor totally support their own tradition, authenticity, and cultural identity. Skepticism in the book of Ecclesiastes and Yun’s poems implies ambivalent reactions toward the empires. This is communicated through the strategies of intellectuals in the colonized world such as survival, accommodation, protest, dissent, and imitation in negotiating the imperial world.


Pecola in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye as a Model of One Steadfast in Faith
Program Unit: African-American Biblical Hermeneutics
Heerak Christian Kim, Cambridge University / Asia Evangelical Seminary

Pecola, the protagonist in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, has been seen often as a victim of racial prejudice and self-hatred that characterize those victimized by racial hatred. Thus, Pecola is often seen as a double victim, rejected by the white world and by her own African-American community. Although this is one way to view Pecola, it might be more helpful to view Pecola from an another vantage point. In my paper, I will discuss how Pecola represents a Model of One Steadfast in Faith. Despite the racial hatred and despite the scorn and rejection by members of her own community, who themselves are victims of racial hatred, Pecola is steadfast in her faith in the Bluest Eye. She believes, and it is her faith that sustains her even when she is rejected by her own family and abandoned by her closest friends. In Matthew 10:22, Jesus Christ emphasizes: “And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved.” Jesus Christ even describes the possibility of being hated by parents for one’s faith: “For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law” (Matthew 10:35). Pecola is raped by her father and beaten by her mother when Pecola tells her mom, Pauline, about the rape. Despite the rejection by her parents, Pecola in unwavering her faith in the Bluest Eye. The Bluest Eye, therefore, is a metaphor, or even a symbol for precious salvation. In the context of the novel, this metaphor enjoys the religious dimension. Pecola visits an African-American spiritualist, named Soaphead Church, a religious leader in the community who is seen by some as a sham like Jesus Christ by religious leaders of his day. Obviously, the name Soapead Church is strategic and meaningful; it implies the idea of being washed clean of one’s transgressions. And Pecola, one who is raped and impregnated by her own father and scorned by the world, puts her faith in Soaphead Church, the way that the Canaanite woman, rejected and despised as “dogs”, puts faith in Jesus of Nazareth and receives a miracle (Matthew 15:21-28). In the end, even as her remaining friends, Claudia and Frieda, abandon her, Pecola has faith and believes that she has received the Bluest Eye, a metaphor for redemption. In a sense, therefore, the end of the novel is a triumph for Pecola, who has found what she has been seeking all her life. Thus, Pecola represents an African-American Model of One Steadfast in Faith, despite persecution, tribulation, and rejection in the context of African-American suffering and experience.


Multiple Formational Functions of Isaiah 33–35
Program Unit: Book of Isaiah
Paul Kim, Methodist Theological School in Ohio

This study aims to analyze internal coherence within chs. 33-35 and the pertinent compositional functions these chapters play in their placement within the book of Isaiah as a whole. Building on recent scholarly works on these chapters, I will examine and argue for the following issues. First, there are internally intricate verbal and thematic connections within chs. 33-35 so that these chapters are deliberately correlated, chs. 33 and 35 together bracketing ch. 34. Second, chs. 33-35 also display crucial intertextual connections within the larger textual corpora, such as chs. 13-27 and chs. 28-33. In fact, it can be argued that, with the “ban” (hrm) motif, the oracles against/concerning the nations end in ch. 34 (rather than in ch. 23 or ch. 27). Third, in addition to the pivotal compositional placement of ch. 34 and ch. 35 as a diptych, which intertextually correspond to chs. 1-33 and chs. 40-66 respectively, chs. 33-35 form a bracket together with chs. 40-42, thereby highlighting chs. 36-39 as the essential center of the entire book of Isaiah. These observations point to the multiple formational functions chs. 33-35 play in various literary ways, which demonstrate not only key themes of the book of Isaiah but also key clues as to how to read this lengthy scroll.


YHWH Shammah: The City as Gateway to the Presence of YHWH
Program Unit: Book of Ezekiel
Soo J. Kim, Claremont School of Theology

According to Julie Galambush, unlike the old Jerusalem, which Scripture refers to as a former wife of YHWH, the new City in Ezekiel 40-48 will have no gender. Consequently, the new City in Ezekiel 40-48 cannot commit adultery/idolatry but can retain its holy status. Reading Ezekiel 40-48 as a territorial rhetoric, Kalinda Rose Stevenson also emphasizes the holiness of the City by pointing out its resemblance to the Temple in the shape of a square. Meanwhile, Nancy R. Bowen, in her psycho-analytic commentary, insists on the common or profane function of the City, from its juxtaposed but distinct portions occupied by the priests and the Levites. For these scholars, the City, as well as other spaces, is pre-designated either as holy or as profane. It is hard to deny that the book of Ezekiel has seriously concerned itself with the City’s holiness and its defilement in the past and its possible profanity in the future. Nonetheless, when we attempt to understand the identity and function of the City, we come to realize that the illustration of the City in Ezekiel 40-48 is very much focused on showing its liminal or dual characteristics in relation to its own holy dedicated area (terumah) as well as with other tribal cities. In other words, Ezekiel 40-48 has three distinctive categories in space recognition, not only the two categories of holy and profane. The City fits in this third category as a transitional space and functions even as a gateway to the holy presence of YHWH. Throughout this paper, I will pursue this unique characteristic of the City by examining three significant facets of the City described in Ezekiel 40-48: the identity of the City in terms of its holy dedicated area (terumah), the structure and shape of the City, and the theological meaning of the name of the City.


Abdeka: A Polite First-Person Reference in Biblical Hebrew
Program Unit: Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew
Yoo-ki Kim, Seoul Women's University

Linguistic forms in a conversation often reflect the relationship between the speaker and the addressee. Some languages like Korean and Japanese make use of a variety of means, both grammatical and lexical, to express the relative status of the people involved, such as verbal endings and special nominal forms. Though Biblical Hebrew does not use such different grammatical and lexical means, it still can reveal the relative status of the participants in the conversation. The most conspicuous among these are references to the speaker himself/herself and the addressee. Speakers in a lower status often use a third-person noun phrase to refer to themselves, such as “your servant/maid,” which does not necessarily mean that the speaker belongs to and works for the addressee. Expectedly in these cases, they often refer to the addressee as “my lord.” However, these honorific third-person forms do not occur in every conversation, even where the same participants are involved. Moreover, the frequency with which these forms appear differs from one conversation to another. There are also cases where other third-person noun phrases are used. This paper looks into the cases where the speaker uses a third-person reference to himself/herself and/or to the addressee, concentrating on some revealing instances. In this way it will correlate the presence/absence and the frequency of the third-person expressions with the relative social status of the participants in the conversation. In cases where the same speaker uses different means of reference to the same addressee, we examine the circumstances that may have triggered such modifications. This paper shows that the status of the speaker relative to the addressee is not only explained in the narrative frame but also encoded and revealed in the representation of dialogues.


Martyrdom among the Heretics
Program Unit: Redescribing Christian Origins
Karen King, Harvard University

Significant work has been done recently which reconsiders early Christian martyrdom in such areas as Christianity in the Roman Empire and Christian theology, but the positions of those designated “heretics” have largely been not been considered. This essay will survey select examples from the Coptic literature of Nag Hammadi and the Tchacos Codex to inquire whether and in what ways positions on persecution and martyrdom in these works resemble or diverge from the views, practices, or discourses of other Christians.


Beyond Bultmann: A Brief Update on the Johannine Prologue from Current Work on Select Nag Hammadi Treatises
Program Unit: Westar Institute
Karen L. King, Harvard University

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Three Warriors Bringing David Water from the Well of Bethlehem: The Interpretation of 2 Sam 23:13–17 in Visual Art from Late Middle Age to Early Modern Time
Program Unit: Bible and Visual Art
Sara Kipfer, University of Bern

This paper takes the image of an Antwerp mannerist (1515/20) in the Art Institute of Chicago showing king David receiving the cistern water of Bethlehem as a starting point and compares it with an image of the same topic from Claude Lorraine (1658) in the National Gallery London. It aims to show how the biblical story in 2 Sam 23:13-17 has been represented in visual art at the transition from a typological and allegorical reading of the biblical text to an interpretation focusing on the "sensus literae". Finally the paper endeavours to answer the question about how this hermeneutical shift influenced visual art and vice versa how the new representations of the biblical story in visual art influenced the textual interpretation.


Plutarch as a Teacher for the Johannine School? Traces of Plutarch in the Gospel of John
Program Unit: Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti
Peter G. Kirchschläger, Chur University of Theology

In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God— not only in these first phrases and definitely in its central parts the Gospel of John is interacting obviously with the logos-philosophy which has its origin in Heraclitus. An important representative of the logos-tradition is Plutarch. Besides the significance of the logos in the Gospel of John, there are many more traces of Plutarch in the Gospel of John, e.g. the idea of men being on a way to God, the understanding of aletheia. Based on this observation, the issue is rising from where the Johannine School is helping itself with these concepts and these terminologies. Is it possible to go so far to see in Plutarch a teacher for the Johannine School? To answer this question the traces of Plutarch in the Gospel of John must be identified precisely and possible models of an understanding of the relation and the interaction between the Gospel of John and Plutarch (thematic horizon of the authors, thematic horizon of the addressees, intertextual dependence, reception, modification, differentiation, alienation) must be examined. This exercise is influenced by the hermeneutical reflection on the interplay between the dimension of the text and the dimension of the observer of the text.


The Youngest Son Motif and the Symbolic Uses of Childhood in the Hebrew Bible
Program Unit: Children in the Biblical World
Milena Kirova, University of Sofia, Bulgaria

On the grounds of some narratives from the Deuteronomistic History: Samuel’s choice of Saul, David’s ascension to the throne, Solomon’s position as the tenth son, the paper explores the characteristic features and the symbolic functions of the youngest son figure, pervading the stories about kings and patriarchs in the Hebrew Bible. Two main conceptual and methodological tools are implemented to the research. The first one is Vladimir Propp’s idea about the “repetitiveness of functions” as a standard mechanism of folk tales telling (“Morphology of the Folktale”). The second one is Philippe Aries’ social history of childhood (“Centuries of Childhood”). Aries’ brief notice that ancient art refused to accept “child morphology” is further developed to the idea that Hebrew epic tradition declined realistic representation of childhood in favour of other (symbolic) aims. The paper sets a sequence of tasks and seeks answers to some important questions. First, it searches through “the youngest son” cases in order to detect and define the “repetitive functions” of the motif in all its variations, and regardless of the circumstances in the different stories. Then it answers the question whether there are features in the character of the youngest son that are psychologically, historically and socially realistic. Should we look at all for a realism of modern type? Finally, the paper defines the symbolic functions, which the youngest son figure performs and draws feasible perspectives for a further reading of children and childhood in the epic narratives of the Hebrew Bible


Qumran Texts: Transmission, Transfiguration, Readings, and Religious Ideas
Program Unit: Qumran
Menahem Kister, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The remarkable textual fluidity of ancient rabbinic literature has been noted and studied. This lecture will deal with the fluidity of texts found at Qumran: texts preserved in more than one recension; passages expanded and elaborated within one work or in different works; the transfiguration of passages and formulae in different works, including instances in which the key for the understanding of a passage seems is absent in the extant texts. The relationship between textual problems of readings and wording in texts and the religious ideas expressed in these texts will be illustrated. The achievements and possible pitfalls of the new edition of Qimron will also be evaluated.


An Evagrian Commentary on the Discourses of Philoxenos: Or the Other Way Around
Program Unit: Syriac Literature and Interpretations of Sacred Texts
Robert Kitchen, Knox-Metropolitan United Church

An important aspect of the legacy of Evagrius Ponticus is that many of his writings survive only in Syriac, consequently influencing the thought of several generations of ascetical and mystical Syriac authors. Philoxenos, the anti-Chalcedonian bishop of Mabbug, has been recognized as an early witness to the spiritual theology of Evagrius in his ascetical and controversial texts. Recent scholarship has focused on the particular interpretations and citations of Evagrius in Philoxenos’ Letter to Patricius. The most copied and read work of Philoxenos is his longest, the 13 Discourses on the monastic and ascetical life, addressed primarily to novice monks in the monasteries under his authority. The Discourses have usually been understood to be unfettered by the complexities and vehemence of the Christological controversies in which Philoxenos was quite adept. Recent study has demonstrated that the bishop did not abandon or ignore his familiar doctrinal themes and issues in The Discourses, but did not present them as the primary focus. Evagrius is omnipresent as well, though rarely cited. The intent here is to begin the rereading of Philoxenos’ ascetical homilies as a witness to idiosyncratic reception and interpretation of Evagrius’ ascetical system. This is a large project, but it can be outlined first in the structure of Philoxenos’ Discourses. Unlike the other two major works of early Syriac ascetical and spiritual theology – Aphrahat’s Demonstrations and The Book of Steps – whose literary units are largely occasional and not systematic, Philoxenos works his way through an agenda of monastic spirituality essentially Evagrian in scope and organization. A second instance will be the exegesis of a brief section of one of The Discourses to illustrate how Philoxenos consistently employs his understanding of Evagrius’ concepts.


Spatial Succession: Urban Landscapes and the Intra-Rabbinic Generational Struggle
Program Unit: Religious Competition in Late Antiquity
Gil Klein, Loyola Marymount University

The relationship between the two major Jewish centers in late antique Galilee – Sepphoris and Tiberias – is a recurring trope in rabbinic literature. For the rabbis, these two competing cities formed two ends of a Jewish ‘corridor’ within Roman Palestine. Moreover, the road between them figures in many rabbinic stories as a paradigmatic route of the sages’ travels, where significant encounters take place. This paper examines a series of narratives from the Palestinian Talmud, which are associated with Rabbi Hanina and Rabbi Yohanan. The former, according to the Talmud, was a first generation amora who served in the great Patriarchal academy in Sepphoris and who marked, therefore, the transitional stage between the tannaitic and amoraic rabbis. The latter, was his student in whose influential academy in Tiberias the Palestinian Talmud was compiled in later years. Hanina and Yohanan are described in the literature as bound by mutual respect and admiration, but their interactions seem also to have entailed tension and disagreement. Thus, through the narratives of these sages’ travels between Sepphoris and Tiberias, the Palestinian Talmud appears to explore the complex relationship between two generations, which is also the relationship of competition and succession between two rabbinic centers. In this regard, by examining the “duopolis” of Sepphoris and Tiberias through the generational struggle of Hanina and Yohanan, this paper analyzes the link between urban history and rabbinic historiography. Its integrative review of the literary and spatial dimensions of rabbinic conflict illuminates, furthermore, the ways in which urban architecture and landscape participate in the formation of religious literature and shapes the social consciousness of its authors.


Rabbinic Urbanism: Reorienting the Roman Cityscape
Program Unit: Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism
Gil Klein, Loyola Marymount University

TBA


Ex Anatole Luz(zi): Polemic, Punning, and Prolepsis in the Judges Prologue
Program Unit: Joshua-Judges
Jonathan G. Kline, Harvard University

The central message of the Judges prologue (1:1–2:5) is that the southern tribes basically succeed in settling the land according to the requirements of the Torah, whereas the northern tribes fail to fulfill their covenant duties to Yahweh through their inability to dispossess the land of its inhabitants. Several Leitwörter in the Judges prologue — yašab, yaraš, kena‘ani, and mas — underscore this message. A close reading of the narrative of the northern tribes in Judg 1:22–36, in particular the story that begins this section and describes the actions of the “House of Joseph” at Bethel (vv. 22–26), reveals that the name Luz in v. 26 constitutes a clever bilingual pun on one of the Judges prologue’s key terms, a play on words that ingeniously reinforces the text’s central message. This conclusion is substantiated through an analysis of the role of etiology in Judg 1:22–26 and through a demonstration that this pericope, which states that the northern tribes free a family from one of the towns in their midst, closely reflects in structure and language, and satirically reverses, Deut 20:10–11, which commands that the Israelites submit their enemies who live far away to forced labor. The proposal that an instance of wordplay is present in Judg 1:26 raises the question of how confident one can be that the author(s)/editor(s) of this text actually intended the pun. Although this issue is complex, the strong likelihood of authorial intention in this matter can be demonstrated through a consideration of literary, linguistic, and historical issues. An appreciation of the pun in Judg 1:26 sharpens one’s understanding not only of Judg 1:22–26, but also of the function of this pericope and of the Judges prologue as a whole in the narrative arc of the Deuteronomistic History. Specifically, Judg 1:22–26 is closely linked to two important passages in DtrH: 1 Kgs 12:13–19, the story of Rehoboam’s subjecting the people to forced labor, which immediately results in the end of the united monarchy; and 2 Kings 25, which recounts the capture, maiming, and exiling of Zedekiah, events that mark the end of the kingdom of Judah. Therefore, Judg 1:22–26 plays an important role in DtrH, foreshadowing the disasters that would eventually befall both the northern and southern kingdoms.


Seals and Scarabs from Khirbet Qeiyafa (2010–2011)
Program Unit: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Bible
Martin Klingbeil, Southern Adventist University

The recent excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa have contributed considerably to the debate on the historicity of the ancient kingdom of Judah and its representation in the Old Testament. During the 2010 and 2011 excavation seasons, a group of nine seals, the majority scarabs, were found in Areas B, C and D. This paper discusses the hitherto unpublished artifacts according to their archaeological and object data, focusing largely on their iconographic and pictographic repertoire with the purpose of integrating the various motifs chronologically into the development of iconographic themes throughout the material culture of the ANE. An outlook on the possible relationships of the seals and scarabs with the cultural and religious history of Khirbet Qeiyafa will conclude the paper.


Associations and Their Meals
Program Unit: Meals in the Greco-Roman World
John S. Kloppenborg, University of Toronto

One of the features common to Christ groups and Greco-Roman associations is the practice of common meals. This paper discusses the meals of associations under the headings: (a) participation in meals — who attended? who hosted? and who funded the meal?; (b) how was participation monitored?; (c) the structure of the meal; (d) performative aspects of the meal — what was eaten? where did it occur? who knew?; (e) social and political functions of dining: imitation of the civic meal.


The Use of the Old Testament in the Old Testament
Program Unit: Institute for Biblical Research
Sheri Klouda, Taylor University

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Implications for the New Testament Use of the Old Testament
Program Unit: Institute for Biblical Research
Sheri Klouda, Taylor University

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Apologetic in Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Literature
Program Unit: Hebrew Scriptures and Cognate Literature
Andrew Knapp, The Johns Hopkins University

In the ancient Near East, when a king ascended the throne in an irregular fashion, he often encountered charges of illegitimacy from his opponents. Kings combated such charges by commissioning apologies in which they defended themselves from these charges and upheld their legitimate right to rule. Several such apologies survive from the ancient Near East, and in the latter half of the 20th century scholars began to compare various apologies to examine the ideological underpinnings of each. Early studies tended to focus on the two most famous examples of ancient Near Eastern apologetic, the Hittite autobiography of Hattushili III and the History of David’s Rise from the Hebrew Bible. In recent decades, further studies have emerged, highlighting the apologetic nature of texts discussing the accessions of such rulers as Solomon of Israel, Esarhaddon of Assyria, Nabonidus of Babylon, Darius of Persia, and others. This paper has two primary purposes. The first is to establish a functional definition of apologetic within the field of ancient Near Eastern studies. Despite the burgeoning scholarship on this phenomenon, no theoretical treatment of what exactly constitutes the literary category of apologetic has been put forth. Scholars assume an understood definition of apologetic, but it is clear from the secondary literature that differing conceptions of its nature inform the various discussions. By interacting with rhetorical scholarship I will address this need for common ground. The second purpose is to attempt to correct a prevalent misunderstanding in the field. Apologetic is consistently treated as a literary genre with a particular form. But this assumption is inaccurate. Literary genres are historical categories which can be used inductively to draw conclusions about any example of the genre. Apologetic, on the other hand, is a transhistorical phenomenon. This misconception has led scholars to homogenize the disparate ancient Near Eastern apologies, instead of acknowledging the distinct situations that gave birth to each text.


The Political Demonology of the Ascension of Isaiah: A Reply to Enrico Norelli
Program Unit: Mysticism, Esotericism, and Gnosticism in Antiquity
Jonathan Knight, York Saint John University

This paper dialogues with Enrico Norelli's discussion of my thesis, particularly as regards the political dimension of the Ascension of Isaiah. The crucial feature of the first half of this text is the manner in which a demonic power is associated with a Roman emperor (chapter 4). While I continue to think that my attempt to explain this text with refeerence to the Pliny-Trajan correspondence is plausible, further insights drawn from postcolonial theory help to explode the myth that the authors of this apocalypse were political innocents. Great interest attaches to the portrait of the rebellious angels in the apocalypse, notably the extent to which this helps to construct a theological anthropology which then has a wider place in early Christian theology through comparison with the canonical literature. In making this assertion, I interact with Norelli's theory and propose a new way of going forward in this neglected area.


The Formation of Christian Identity: The Case of the Ascension of Isaiah
Program Unit: Jewish Christianity / Christian Judaism
Jonathan Knight, York Saint John University

Despite the publication of a new edition in 1995, The Ascension of Isaiah remains substantially neglected by researchers. The purpose of this paper is to take up what has been achieved in the field of early Christian identity formation and to consider in that context the evidence of this apocalypse: work that has not been attempted from this perspective before. I shall look at the question of Christian relations with Jews and Romans and at the social function of the different forms of eschatology that are found in the apoocalypse. I shall also offer some remarks from a postcolonial perspective and consider matters of ethnicity and social status inasfasr as the text allows us to comment on such phenomena.


Samarians and the “Peoples of the Land” in Ezra 1–6
Program Unit: Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah
Gary Knoppers, Pennsylvania State University

My study revisits Judean-Samarian relations during decisive moments in rebuilding the Judean community: 1) the first return and settlement under the enigmatic governor Sheshbazzar (Ezra 1:1–11; 5:13–16) during the reign of Cyrus; 2) the second return and rebuilding of the altar under the Judean governor Zerubbabel and the Judean high priest Jeshua (Ezra 2:1–3:13) during the reign of Darius I; 3) the rebuilding of the Jerusalem temple under Zerubbabel and Jeshua (Ezra 4:1–5; 5:1–6:22) during the reign of Darius I; 4) the Judean attempt to rebuild Jerusalem and repair its walls (Ezra 7:7–23) during the reign of Artaxerxes I. Each of these episodes evinces its own particular characteristics and internal dynamics, but the threat posed by outsiders to “the children of the exile” is a common thread found throughout most of these stories. Who comprised these enemies is, however, rarely specified. Are the “people(s) of the land” and the “adversaries of Judah and Benjamin” extraneous to the province of Yehud, comprising Yehud’s local neighbors (the Edomites, Moabites, Ammonites, Ashdodites, Samarians, etc.) and more distant neighbors (within the region of Transeuphratene)? Or do some opponents reside within Yehud itself (e.g., those Judeans who were not displaced by the Babylonian deportations)? Or, again, does the narration presuppose that Judah is at least partially inhabited by foreign settlers, who migrated to or were imported into the land at some point in the past? While the Samarians are included in some of the conglomerates, are they singled out as leading the opposition? If not, this raises questions not only about why Josephus later treatment repeatedly singles out the Samarians as the chief cause of Judah’s travails, but also about the demographic, social, and ethnographic assumptions informing the portrayal of the early Persian period.


A Biblical Sex Scandal? Noah, Ham, and the Curse of Canaan
Program Unit: Reading, Theory, and the Bible
Jennifer Knust, Boston University

The story of Ham’s encounter with Noah’s nakedness, and the curse that followed, offers a particularly notorious example of what today we might call a “sex scandal.” Though the specifics of Ham’s infraction are far from clear, the shame that was then affixed to whomever was designated as one of his descendants is not. Adapting the insights of affect theory and addressing larger biblical notions of sexual morality and kinship, this paper will consider the way that the Canaanites became disgusting objects, and the effect this interpretation has had on interpretations of sex, race, and gender.


Cultural Bi-lingualism as a Lens for Reading Paul
Program Unit: Pauline Epistles
Esther Kobel, Universität Basel

This paper explores the possibility of reading Pauline texts through the lens of bi- or multiculturalism. Wallace-Hadrill convincingly criticizes the concept of “Hellenism” as a “fusion/creolisation” of Greek and oriental cultures and suggests instead a model of bi- or multiculturalism. While it is not known whether “creole” languages were present in the context from which the New Testament texts emerged, abundant evidence of linguistic and cultural bi- or multiculturalism on all social levels can be adduced. The concept of bi- or multiculturalism accounts for the ways in which two and more languages could be used alongside each other. It also permits us to envisage how humans could switch from one cultural setting/encyclopedia to another and act as go-betweens, as intercultural translators. In this paper, I will argue that this is exactly what Paul did when he “translated” concepts that stem from his Jewish world into a pagan world. The translation work culminates in self-transformation: “To the Jews I became as a Jew (…) to those under the law I became as one under the law” (1Cor 9:20-21). The present paper critically explores modern theories of bilingualism/multilingualism and discusses the methodological implications of reading Paul with such a concept.


Bathsheba Reformed
Program Unit: History of Interpretation
Sara M. Koenig, Seattle Pacific University

The Reformation was a heady time for biblical interpretation: the Protestant principle of Sola Scriptura emphasized the authority of the written word, and preaching the word became prominent in the worship and theology of the reformed churches. In his sermons on 2 Samuel, John Calvin described the story of David and Bathsheba as one which should make the hair of the listeners stand straight up on end! In fact, this story—and more specifically, the character of Bathsheba—becomes a helpful lens through which to view general exegetical and hermeneutical trends of the time period. Because Bathsheba is such a minor character, the amount of commentary on her is limited; however, because she plays such a significant role in the life of David, and as an ancestor of Christ, the Reformers use her character to further their homiletical projects. This paper will demonstrate that though the Reformers drew on exegetical traditions from the Patristic and Medieval period, they diminished the practices of allegory and typology in favor of a literal and historical sense of the text. Bathsheba therefore was no longer viewed as a “type” of the church, but as a historical woman. In this light, she was seen largely critically. Luther saw her as a woman of no faith, in contrast to David who had a close relationship with God. Calvin explained that Bathsheba should have exercised discretion when she was bathing, for a chaste and honest woman would not have shown herself in such a way as to allure men. Calvin also explained that later, David exhorted Bathsheba to repent for her sins. Indeed, in these interpretations Bathsheba was a reprobate, a woman who needed to “be reformed.”


Genesis 29–30 and the Fertile Family
Program Unit: Children in the Biblical World
Laurel W. Koepf, Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York

Infertility is a common theme throughout the Hebrew Bible. Many families prominent in biblical narratives struggle with varying degrees of childlessness. This theme is not unique to the Hebrew Bible. Not only is present in the New Testament and across ancient mythologies, but it is also a challenge for many modern families. Because infertility is a familiar subject to the contemporary reader, the potential for anachronistic assumption about biblical infertility is great. An awareness of the economic value of children and their necessity for familial and communal survival in the ancient world lends additional nuance to interpretation of the many biblical passages involving fertility and infertility. This paper explores Genesis 29-30 as a case study in both fertility and infertility. Not only do Leah, Rachel, Zilpah and Bilhah bear children continually throughout 29:31-30:24, but the broader literary context of the pericope includes YHWH’s promise to make Jacob great and the resultant flourishing of both human and agrarian fertility under Jacob’s influence. I argue that the closely clustered fertility themes in this text are best understood in the context of the ancient economic value of children and their labor. Like the fertility of the flocks, human fertility is a form of wealth through which YHWH transmits blessing.


The Impact of Walter Bauer’s "Orthodoxy and Heresy"
Program Unit: Inventing Christianity: Apostolic Fathers, Apologists, and Martyrs
Helmut Koester, Harvard University

Walter Bauer's 'Rechtglaubigkeit und Ketzerei im altesten Christentum,' published in 1934, offered a bold new conception of the development of primitive Christianity. As the inaugural presentation of this new SBL Consultation, this paper will focus on the critical insights in Bauer's book, which forever changed our general conception of Christian origins, as well as our understanding of the emergence and development of Christianity in specific locations.


Carving Myths in Stone: The Sacred Rocks of Jerusalem
Program Unit: Qur'an and Biblical Literature
Naomi Koltun-Fromm, Haverford College

Scholars of early Islamic history and texts suggest that early Muslim interest in Jerusalem, and especially in the Rock/Sakhra, was directly influenced by their understanding of Jerusalem’s religious significance to both Jews and Christians. With the conquest of this city, Jerusalem’s historical and cosmogonic significance became known to them, not just because of its strong Christian character, but through Jewish avenues as well. Yet that which these early Muslim leaders and authors learned remained focused on Jerusalem and its mythic foundation stone’s central role in the creation of the world, and in its anticipated role in this same world’s demise at the apocalypse or Judgment day. If one understands early Islam to be an apocalyptic religion in its own right, the attractiveness of Jerusalem as apocalyptic epicenter becomes apparent. Furthermore, if early Islam presented itself as the ultimate expression of God’s will on earth, incorporating earlier iterations into its hierarchy of authority makes perfect sense. In this paper I will concentrate on those biblical, Jewish, Christian and early Islamic traditions that focus on Jerusalem and especially on the mythic Rock/Foundation Stone as center/omphalos of the world and beginning point of creation that also anticipates the end of that creation as well. I will argue that the mythical rock imagined by the rabbis to mark the spot of an absent temple, which in turn marked the divine axis mundi, is re-imagined and re-ified in two different “real” rocks in Jerusalem (Golgotha and the Sakhra). The cosmogonic structure imbued by the rabbis is central to these rocks’ significance and ideological mythology.


Biblical Languages and Bible Translation Practice
Program Unit: Bible Translation
Anne Garber Kompaore, Commission to Every Nation

Within the last number of years, there have been discussions about the value of teaching Biblical Languages to Bible translators and having them consult the original languages as they translate. Being surprised at the intensity of the debate, I endeavored to explore the historical background of the ideals and actual practice of the use of Biblical languages in Bible translation starting from St. Jerome and continuing on to the principles promoted by Eugene Nida, with a special focus on translation practice in Africa. It is clear that at the outset, the ideal was to translate from the Biblical languages, but at the same time, Nida himself recognized obstacles for reaching such an ideal. He states as early as 1947: “Before undertaking to translate from the original Greek or Hebrew, it is of utmost importance that the translator be qualified for the work. A little learning is sometimes a dangerous thing even in the hands of a translator.” (Bible Translating, New York, ABS, p.51). While Nida and others continued on with the development of resources for those who could consult the Greek and Hebrew in their translation work, at the same time resources were being developed to facilitate translation from an intermediary source language. In more recent years, more and more translators in Africa have been learning the Biblical languages. The challenges and the benefits of such a development will be discussed in this paper. In my concluding thoughts, I encourage reflection on how we can be practical and yet still reach for the ideal, in particular through the development of resources that empower the translators to adequately use the Biblical languages as they translate the Bible into their own languages.


The Death of Nadab Abihu (Lev 10) as a Key Text for Understanding the (Priestly) Concept of Torah
Program Unit: Pentateuch
Michael Konkel, Faculty of Theology Paderborn

The story about the death of Nadab and Abihu is placed directly after the inauguration of the cult (Lev 9). At first sight it functions just as an introduction to the following Torot of Leviticus, but a second look reveals its pivotal role for understanding the priestly legislation of the Pentateuch. The death of the two elder sons of Aaron within the temenos is the cultic disaster par excellence: all priests are defiled, the high priest Aaron included, who is not allowed to defile himself with any kind of corpse. So the entire cultic personal is defiled, but the daily service must be maintained. In this extreme situation the first of the four speeches of YHWH that are adressed directly to Aaron (Lev 10,9f; cf. Num 18) is spoken. It defines something like the essence of the priestly duties (cp. Ezek 44,23). The following shows how Aaron fulfills these duties even by acting against the law (cp. Lev 6,7–11). The specific application of priestly knowledge implies the competence to discern different levels of obligation and to infringe the written rules in an exceptional situation. So Lev 10 is one of the key-texts for understanding not only the priestly legislation of the Pentateuch, but the concept of Tora in general. Moreover, within the composition of the Pentateuch it functions as a necessary counterpart to Ex 32: whereas in the story of the golden calf Aaron completely fails, in Lev 10 he is rehabilitated. So Lev 10 is one of the key-texts for the composition of the Pentateuch as a whole.


Teaching Eros through the Greek Novel
Program Unit: Ancient Fiction and Early Christian and Jewish Narrative
David Konstan, New York University

The Greek novels are exceptional among classical literary genres in representing symmetrical erotic relations, that is, relations in which free citizen youths fall mutually in love and preserve faith with one another despite long separations and severe hardship. But other kinds of relationship are also exhibited, including traditional arranged marriages, pederastic love, and intense friendships. There is considerable argument, moreover, about whether the reciprocal passions between the hero and heroine of the novels is a childish feature, to be converted as they mature into the traditional dimorphic pattern of dominant husband and retiring wife, or a new model of civic marriage; and at the margins, there also seem to exist cross-influences with new Christian ideals of fidelity. Given that the novels are highly readable, they can serve as excellent introductions to the entire issue of ancient Greek erotics.


Between Animality and Divinity: The Horns of Moses
Program Unit: Reading, Theory, and the Bible
Jennifer L. Koosed, Albright College

Moses inhabits the spaces in between. Born a Hebrew slave, he moves through the waters between Hebrew and Egyptian ethnicities, between slave and aristocratic identities. When he returns to Egypt as liberator he stands between God and Pharaoh; when he leaves Egypt liberated he stands between God and the Israelites. In order to obtain the law, Moses travels up and down a mountain, inhabiting the spaces in between humanity and divinity. In fact, Moses is the only prophet in the tradition to see God “face to face” and this intimate contact transforms his very body – when he comes down from the mountain, his face glows and he must veil (Exodus 34:29-35). Both the glowing face and the veiled face have strange interpretive histories. In Greek and Latin, the rays of light streaming from Moses’s face become horns sticking out of his head and thus a history of interpretation begins which first avers the horns as symbols of power and divinity but later shifts to associate the horns with animals and demons. The veil, on the other hand, is rarely depicted in art, perhaps because of the ways in which veiling signals femininity. The reticence to visualize the veil along with the Greek and Latin “mistranslations” of the Hebrew reveal deeper realities and resonances. Moses is something other than, something beyond, the human and its gendered bifurcation. He is at the nexus where the human, the animal, and the divine meet and converge. And between the glowing face/horns and the veil lies fear – it is the fear of the Israelites that Moses attempts to assuage with his covering up. This paper will explore Moses between humanity, animality, and divinity using the concept of “divinanimality” from Jacques Derrida’s The Animal that Therefore I Am (2006) as well as look at the role of fear using Sara Ahmed’s theories of fear, disgust, and shame from The Cultural Politics of Emotion (2004). My paper will also include a presentation of the horned and veiled Moses as depicted in art.


Modes of Religiosity within the Book of Exodus
Program Unit: Israelite Religion in its Ancient Context
Paul Korchin, University of Alaska

Contemporary social scientific studies of religion have been profoundly influenced by the Modes of Religiosity (MoR) model developed by Harvey Whitehouse and colleagues. MoR has become one of the dominant theoretical paradigms driving interdisciplinary research into the origins, dynamics, and transmissions of religious rituals and beliefs. Whitehouse posits two distinct "attractor positions" around which religious behaviors and ideas variously tend to cluster: the imagistic mode and the doctrinal mode. Both modes correlate with respective groupings of sociopolitical features, which MoR contends are derived from cognitive psychological processes that are governed by laws of evolutionary biology. Imagistic religious modalities feature rituals entailing low transmissive frequency and high cognitive arousal, getting seared into episodic memory, from where they spur individually generated notions about their meanings amid small, intensively cohesive, egalitarian groups. Doctrinal religious modalities feature rituals with high transmissive frequency and low cognitive arousal, getting stored in semantic memory, where they are subject to interpretation and management by authority figures on behalf of large, diffuse, hierarchically ordered masses. To date, biblical scholars have devoted scant attention to MoR, whereas MoR's considerations of scriptural media have been perfunctory. My paper addresses these dual oversights by investigating imagistic and doctrinal modes of religiosity within the Hebrew Bible. Using the book of Exodus as a test case, I explore where and how both attractor positions are operative and interactive, within individual episodes as well as across the overarching narrative. I demonstrate that the text's fusing of source materials (variously aligned with imagistic or doctrinal modes) is motivated by MoR's principles of selective advantage for replication. I conclude that the scriptural narrative of Exodus functions as a recursive mechanism of survival for key imagistic and doctrinal components of ancient Israelite (Yahwistic) religion. This scriptural mechanism is mutually reinforcing: on the one hand, the imagistic mode's individually concentrated intensity within episodic memory gets transmitted and preserved via the doctrinal mode's communally diffuse routinization within semantic memory; on the other hand, doctrinal routinization becomes rejuvenated via its linkage to imagistic stimulation.


Suspense and Authority amid Front Dislocation in Biblical Hebrew
Program Unit: Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew
Paul Korchin, University of Alaska

The casus pendens ("hanging case") construction remains a productive topic of inquiry for Biblical Hebrew scholars. The formal parameters of the syntagm are straightforward, conforming with broad cross-linguistic evidence. Left Dislocation (so termed by linguists—but more accurately, Front Dislocation [FD]) consists of an initial substantival phrase that co-refers with a resumptive constituent occurring inside the juxtaposed subsequent clause. Syntactically, the fronted substantival phrase remains unattached to—hence, dislocated from—its adjoining clause. The semantic and pragmatic functions of FD in Biblical Hebrew remain less sharply defined, however. Traditional notions ("prominence," "emphasis," "importance") are largely intuitive, ill-defined, and ad hoc. Even the more linguistically refined concept of "topic promotion" (from Information-Structure Theory) is explanatorily constrained, since it does not proceed much deeper than the surface structures which sculpt the discourse topography. My paper investigates Biblical Hebrew FD using a Cognitive–Rhetorical approach, drawing upon theoretical insights and empirical data from cognitive psychology (chiefly Structure Building Framework) in order to describe and explain how the formal components of FD contribute to its functions. Semiotically, FD is both over-encoded and under-informative, deferring full alignment between the linguistic code and message. This suspension, effected by the language-sender, establishes a tension between the language unit's denotative and connotative meanings, producing within the language-receiver an awareness of uncertainty between what is expressed and what is meant. Rhetorically, this constructed ambiguity provokes suspense for the receiver even as it promotes authority for the sender. By so utilizing an FD construction, the sender deliberately places the receiver into a momentarily extended state of cognitive indeterminacy, thereby exercising enhanced dominance over the communication event. Biblical Hebrew employs this rhetorical trope frequently and to great effect, with the result that FD becomes largely synonymous with authoritative speaking: language that is variously categorical, prescriptive, didactic, declaratory.


Creating the World Out of the Excesses of Pain
Program Unit: Bible and Cultural Studies
Maia Kotrosits, Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York

"The empirical is palliative," Brian Massumi writes at the conclusion of a chapter on "Chaos and the 'Total Field' of Vision" (Parables for the Virtual), which connects pain with the work of perceptual organization and comprehensive, objectifying vision. This paper applies Massumi's work socially to think about a thematic relationship between violence/pain and some creation accounts from the late first century (Revelation, Secret Revelation to John, Hebrews) -- not from an ideological or explanatory angle, but from a phenomenological and experiential one. Pain is, in many ways, a totalizing experience, and as such it casts the whole world in its own color. Perhaps this totalizing element of pain is part of the reason it finds itself engaged, at least in these texts, in the all-encompassing language of cosmic creation. The impossibly panoptic view assumed in creation stories merges all too easily with the sense that when in large-scale or abiding pain, one has seen far too much. At the very least, one seems to be able to say that a certain creativity can attend pain: new forms of expression often crop up around pain’s sharp and darkened vision. Maybe it is not because pain is especially productive, or that pain teaches any particular truths, but because formless void can be quite unbearable. It is for these reasons, among others, that both possibility and danger attend the creative work that arrives out of pain.


Esther in Jerusalem
Program Unit: Transmission of Traditions in the Second Temple Period
Ingo Kottsieper, Göttingen Academy of Scienes / Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster

The Hebrew Book of Esther and its Greek versions together with their additions give witness to manyfold ways in which this book was taken over and had been modified by different Jewish and Christian communities. The paper will focus on the recension which probably was created in Palestine in the 1st century BCE. I shall argue how this version including the Additions A, C, and F 1-10 can be understood as a pro-Hasmonean text which was propagated even across the borders of Palestine (F 11) and used to establish the celebration of Purim also in Israel. In addition, the question will be discussed why, nevertheless, the shorter Hebrew version did become the canonical book throughout the Jewish world in the end.


The Rabbinic Construction of the Sabbath
Program Unit: Sabbath in Text and Tradition
David Kraemer, Jewish Theological Seminary of America

Sabbath prohibitions may be traced, in greater and greater detail, from their biblical origins through Jewish documents of the Greek and Roman ages. But the rabbinic Mishnah systematizes the prohibited labors in a way that is unprecedented, both with respect to some of the labors detailed and, in particular, with respect to the precise formulation of the labors and their relationship. The Mishnah’s system of prohibited labors offers the rabbis’ own unique interpretation of the Sabbath and its meaning, one that will guide the development of the rabbinic Sabbath in following generations. This paper will examine the rabbis’ particular interpretation, showing that the rabbis seek to construct the Sabbath as an occasion when all essential needs are provided, reminiscent of both the Garden of Eden and the post-Exodus sojourn in the desert, and foreshadowing the World to Come.


Formatting the Scripturesque: Replication and Transmission of Special Books in Jewish and Christian Antiquity
Program Unit: Pseudepigrapha
Robert A. Kraft, Emeritus, University of Pennsylvania

Although most extant evidence for the scripturesque literature (commonly now called “canonical” and “pseudepigraphical,” or the like) of ancient Judaism and early Christianity comes from later copies and translations, some early fragments have been preserved, attesting the technological and graphological stages through which the materials passed. Is it possible to determine anything about ancient attitudes to these writings by exploring such features? Are distinctions between what was considered by the producers to be merely "normal" and what may have been categorized as "special" exhibited in these materials? This illustrated presentation will explore the earliest available evidence and attempt to understand its historical settings and development, including: -quality of materials used: writing surface, ink; -textual formats and sizes: scroll, sheet, mini-codex, mega-codex; -reader helps: writing skill and clarity, titles, spacing, rubrication and special terms, indentation and ekthesis; -evidence of usage: corrections, marginalia, wear patterns, replication, juxtaposition with other works.


Language and Background of the Author of 2 Thessalonians
Program Unit: Disputed Paulines
Christina M. Kreinecker, University of Birmingham

All kind of theological and inner-textual arguments have been brought forward to argue pro and contra the authenticity of 2Thess as a letter written by Paul. This paper wants to focus on the question from a different point of view: What kind of information can we deduce about the author by looking at his language, his use and application of words and phrases that we either cannot at all or can almost literally find in the Undisputed Pauline Epistles? An answer to this question will be brought forward by a closer look into the everyday language during the time of the NT as provided by documentary papyri. The papyrological evidence of words like (kat)euthynô (2Thess 3:5), ataktôs/ataktéô (2Thess 3:6.7) or epibaréô (2Thess 3:8), for example, shows that the author of 2Thess claims a slightly higher authority as apostle than can be seen in 1Thess or 1Cor. Next to this, the high amount of words and phrases with a close relation to a juridical and official sphere is most striking. Some of the phrases found exclusively in 2Thess are known only from legal contexts in the daily language of the first centuries CE and are possibly an indication of the author’s background.


Identifying and Evaluating Variants between the Greek and Coptic Biblical Text
Program Unit: New Testament Textual Criticism
Christina M. Kreinecker, University of Birmingham

It is one thing to comment on variants in the transmission of the biblical text in one language tradition, but it is a completely different thing to comment on the variants that arise between different language traditions. Between two familiar languages like the Indo-European Greek and Latin, a comparison seems manageable, but what about a Semito-Hamitic language like Coptic? How can the Greek and Coptic Versions be compared on an equal footing without one of these languages predominating the other? Coptic and Greek have at least one thing in common: they are both centred about a verbal structure, which allows us to describe both languages in the terms of the so-called dependency (or valency) grammar. In this paper I assume that dependency grammar opens the possibility of making Greek and Coptic versions comparable and gives us also a comprehensible method to identify variants. What is more, applying dependency grammar to the Coptic language also allows us to evaluate the identified variants and to comment on their value of variation. While some are “true” variants, possibly giving evidence of a different textual tradition, others are simply the result of necessary changes during the translation process from Greek to Coptic. (The paper will be presented in such a way that a prior knowledge of Coptic is not necessary).


Old Greek, Kaige, and the Trifaria Varietas: A New Perspective on Jerome’s Statement
Program Unit: International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies
Siegfried Kreuzer, Protestant University Wuppertal/Bethel

This paper presents a new perspective on Jerome's statement that will help identify with further precision the Old Greek, kaige, and the trifaria varietas.


Hosea and the Wisdom Tradition
Program Unit: Book of the Twelve Prophets
Jutta Krispenz, Philipps-Universität Marburg

Not that long ago, exegetes thought that the literary history of the Hebrew Bible started with the written sources of the Pentateuch being composed around 1000 BCE. The oral traditions behind the sources of the Pentateuch were considered to be even significantly older than that. Wisdom was conceived as the result of secular reasoning, developed mainly in a courtly surrounding without substantial influences from the religious tradition of ancient Israel. Although the influence wisdom had on prophetic literature was noted quite early (Fichtner, Jesaja unter den Weisen, 1949; H.W. Wolff, Amos geistige Heimat, 1964), the mutual influence of wisdom and prophecy on each other never became a dominant topic in the discussion on both sapiential and prophetic texts. In the meantime, the basic assumption for the discussion has changed dramatically. The history of the literature of the Hebrew Bible has been completely rewritten; the scribal tradition, which has long been seen as the matrix of wisdom thought in Israel, Mesopotamia and Egypt, has become an important part of that history. Based on this background, the relation of wisdom and prophecy as parts of the religious tradition of ancient Israel needs to be reconsidered. The paper will focus on the beginning of the book of the Twelve in order to trace the wisdom tradition. Hosea, the writing that opens the book of the Twelve, will be the main textual source for this paper. The author who added Hos 14:10 at the end of the writing located the prophet in a sapiential milieu. And in the corpus of presumably early texts in Hos 4-11, the term 'knowledge of God' (e.g., Hos 6:6) finds a parallel only in Proverbs (Prov 2:5; 30:3); the opposition of righteous behavior vs. the cult is expressed in Hos 6:6 and in Prov 21:3.


Preaching and Creativity: A Theological Perspective
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Silas R. Krueger, Christ Evangelical Lutheran Seminary

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Invoking the Septuagint to Interpret Ptolemaic Law: Cataloguing More Instances of Ptolemaic Law Interpreted by Its Own Rhetoric
Program Unit: Papyrology and Early Christian Backgrounds
Robert Kugler, Lewis & Clark College

In a study of P.Heid. Inv. G 5100 (=SB 26 16801, “Eingabe an einen Archiphylakiten”) I demonstrate that the Judean petitioner we meet in that text used a juridical norm of the LXX shaped by the vocabulary of Ptolemaic law to interpret that same Ptolemaic legal rhetoric anew (“Uncovering a New Dimension of Early Judean Interpretation of the Greek Torah: Ptolemaic Law Interpreted by its Own Rhetoric,” in XIV Congress of the IOSCS, Helsinki, 2010, forthcoming). This paper will report the results of a survey of the corpus of documentary papyri involving Judeans from ca. 200 BCE to the late Roman period. The survey identifies the further instances of this juridical hermeneutic method. The paper will also summarize several of the additional instances of this phenomenon turned up by the survey. Lastly, the paper will locate this phenomenon in the broader context of legal history and theory to demonstrate its essentially “conventional” nature.


Uncovering Michal (2 Samuel 6:15–23): An African Postcolonial Reading
Program Unit: African Biblical Hermeneutics
Robert W. Kuloba, Uganda Christian University

This paper is a close reading and an examination of 2 Samuel 6:15-23, the biblical text which entails Michal’s rebuke to “unkingly” David over matters of royal protocol, and David’s lengthy response which is defensive of his kingship vis-à-vis the kingship and family of Saul, Michal’s father. The study asks the following questions: What was the force of Michal’s admonition of David? Why does King David respond to Michal in a way that gives so many answers to unasked question(s)? Is Michal of any political significance in the Bible? In which ways should African readers of the Bible read Michal’s case into their own political situations? I have argued that Michal’s admonition was the “Point Of Order” to the “unkingly” David—the “Point of Order” that generated political anxiety and nervousness. Michal traversed the Deuteronomist’s gender boundaries of subjectivity and passivity to a politician. Her knowledge of ancient politics empowered her to tell the King “you are naked!” Michal’s rebuke challenged the credibility of David as King and called for actions that incarcerated her in political quietism and mortality. Michal, daughter of King Saul and David’s wife, (and more so the woman who used her birth right to birth David to freedom from death—1 Samuel 19) is systematically depoliticised and polemicized as the woman who loved David, but whose love could not alienate the King from Yahweh. She is an object of political manipulation in the contest between Saul and David. To Saul, Michal was convenient in his stratagem to eliminate David by the Philistines. To David, becoming the “king’s son in-law” was probably a means to secure his political fortunes. However, the biblical texts are silent about Michal’s own political ambitions and her relationship with the two men. Contextually, the paper relates Michal’s case to the situation of female politicians in Kenya and Uganda, using the case of two female politicians: Philemena Chelangat Mutai (1974-1983 Kenya) and Miria Matembe (1987-2006 Uganda).


Writing through Many Tears: Crying Apostle and the Construction of Christic Masculinity in Second Corinthians
Program Unit: Gender, Sexuality, and the Bible
Dominika Kurek-Chomycz, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

In the existing studies of Paul’s masculinity the manner in which Paul expresses his grief in Second Corinthians, and the reference to his writing to the Corinthian community “through many tears” (dia pollon dakryon) in 2 Cor 2:4 in particular, have been largely neglected. As is often observed in contemporary discussions of ancient masculinities, by the first century self-control became one of the essential keys to ideal masculinity. Yet while the popularized version of the Stoic discourse on self-control may have been particularly influential, the portrayal of male heroes in Greek novels as shedding abundant tears attests to the malleability of the notion of manliness as reflected in, but also shaped by, the literary works of that period. In this paper I first situate Paul’s reference to shedding tears and the motif of grief in 2 Corinthians against the background of the complex relationship between crying and manliness in the Greek and Latin literature of the first two centuries CE. Next I consider Pauline tears and other expressions of grief in the context of the letter, noting especially the connection with gender imagery present in 2 Corinthians and Paul’s tendency to identify himself with the afflicted, yet paradoxically powerful, and in the end victorious, thus manly, Christ. Paul, who portrays himself as the exclusive intermediary between the “pure virgin” (parthenos hagne), that is the Corinthian community, and Christ, the “one man/husband” (heis aner; cf. 2 Cor 11:2-3), depicts his grief-and-tears-causing relationship with the Corinthians in terms parallel to the relationship between his addressees and Christ. The suggestion that the apostolic suffering has the power to bring about consolation and salvation (soteria; cf. 2 Cor 1:6) to the community is modelled on the interpretation of the death of Christ against the traditions of the noble death (the “dying for” formula), which, as opposed to the rhetoric of the crucifixion, rather than challenging the prevalent notions of manliness, tended to affirm it. In this way Paul, while participating in the current masculinity discourse, contributes to the construction of one of the emerging “new masculinities” – that of the ideal male Christian hero, in whose apparent weakness the power of God is revealed.


Follow Your Heart and Do Not Say It Was a Mistake: Allusions to Numbers 15 in Ecclesiastes
Program Unit: Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
Will Kynes, University of Oxford

Commentators commonly acknowledge two likely allusions to Numbers in Ecclesiastes. In the first, Qoheleth commands, “Follow the inclination of your heart and the desire of your eyes” (Eccl 11:9a), reversing the prohibition against doing just that in Num 15:39. In the second, he declares, “Do not let your mouth lead you into sin, and do not say before the messenger that it was a mistake [shegaga]” (Eccl 5:5a), denying the allowance for unintentional sin (shegaga) in Num 15:22–31. That these two passages appear to allude to the same chapter of Numbers stretches the limits of coincidence. Further, Fox (1989) has identified seven passages that clearly affirm retribution in Ecclesiastes: 3:17; 5:5b; 7:17; 8:5–7; 8:11–13; 11:9b; and 12:14. Both passages with likely references to Numbers are followed by statements endorsing retribution included in this list. This paper will investigate how Qoheleth’s interpretive approach to Numbers 15 sheds light on this connection. These intersections of parody and priestly piety, of license and legalism, will offer insight into the nature of Ecclesiastes and its uneasy relationship, not only with the rest of the canon, but with itself. Eccl 11:9, in particular, acts as a microcosm of the tensions facing interpreters in the book as a whole, as the apparent parody of Num 15:39 in the first part of the verse featured in early arguments against the canonicity of Ecclesiastes, and the retributive declaration at the end of the verse has been considered a pious interpolation, thereby paralleling the orthodox epilogue appended in 12:12–14.


Of Dinosaurs and Other Forebears (Creationism or Evolutionism?)
Program Unit: Genesis
Andre LaCocque, Chicago Theological Seminary

The origin of the universe, according to biblical creation narratives, is a dialogical process. It is marked by unpredictability and unfinalizability. By definition a witness-less event, it affects, however, all existents and brings history to display epiphanic manifestations (re-creations). The world is an art-form. Are we allowed then to speak of a "creatio ex nihilo"? Are science and creationism mutually exclusive? The response lies in the divine gift of relationship: it grants to the human animal its authentic humanity. The human being becomes human.


“There Shall Be Blood throughout the Land of Egypt”: The First Plague in Jewish Hellenistic Literature from the Second Temple Period
Program Unit: Hellenistic Judaism
Nathalie LaCoste, University of Toronto

The Exodus narrative has been remembered and retold in Jewish communities since antiquity. The themes of suffering, retribution, and liberation especially resonated while Jews living under foreign domination in the Hellenistic period. During this time, several Jewish interpreters composed their own versions of the narrative, adding embellishments and providing explanations to the more obscure parts of the story. These interpretations not only give insights into the ways Jews understood their past, but also how they lived and interacted with other cultures in their present. In this paper, I will explore the development of one particular part of the story, the first plague, through various interpretations from the Hellenistic period. This pericope begins on the banks of the Nile river, with a meeting between Moses, Aaron, and Pharaoh. After refusing to release the Israelites, Aaron strikes the Nile with Moses’ rod, instantly turning the Nile water into blood. Hellenistic Jewish interpretations of this story focus on three particular elements: (1) the punishment and subsequent death of the Egyptians, (2) the sensory experiences of the Nile (smell, appearance, taste), and (3) the role of Moses. Through a textual analysis of the available sources, I will argue that these Jewish authors were deeply influenced by Egyptian, Greek, and Roman conceptions of the Nile river in their retellings. Theoretical discussions about levels of assimilation (Barclay 1996) and Diasporic identity (Gruen 2002) will be used to make sense of how retellings of history bring together both a Jewish collective identity, but also a recognition and acceptance of Jewish cultural differences. Rather than view the Jews as a distinct group, these interpretations of the first plague demonstrate how the Jews lived in a thoroughly Hellenistic world, whether in Palestine or the Diaspora.


The Caesarean Text of the Gospel of Mark: Lake Revisited
Program Unit: New Testament Textual Criticism
Didier Lafleur, Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes

In the field of history and practice of New Testament textual criticism, two major stages were initiated during the last century by Kirsopp Lake. The first of these was the publication, in 1902, of a survey concerning the "Codex 1 of the Gospels and its Allies" (TS 7:3). The second one was, in 1928, with Robert P. Blake and Silva New, the publication of "The Caesarean Text of the Gospel of Mark" (HTR 21:4). For the first time, the authors emphasized the existence of such text, on the basis of three major evidences: the Greek manuscripts, the patristic witnesses and the oriental versions. Since then, the question of the Caesarean text-type was a very disputed matter and still remains an important textual issue. This paper will mainly focus on the genesis of the Lake’s publication, from Griesbach to von Soden, through Hort, Sanday and others. The survey of this precursory scholarship will help us to better consider, through the first works of Kirsopp Lake, the way he has followed until the "The Caesarean Text of the Gospel of Mark". We will then emphasize the three evidences quoted by the authors, especially the evidence of the Greek manuscripts used, for the Gospel of Mark, in their Tables of variants. We will especially examine their grouping of readings of the so-called Caesarean witnesses in order to assess the value of their approach. In that way, our fresh new collations, for that Gospel, of Thêta 0.38 and the all extant manuscripts of Family 13 will help us to evaluate these peculiar features.


God Spoke Tibetan: Reflections on the Bible in Ladakh
Program Unit: Asian and Asian-American Hermeneutics
Lalruatkima, Claremont Graduate University

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Psalm 2 and the Disinheritance of Earthly Rulers
Program Unit: Book of Psalms
Joseph Lam, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Scholars have long viewed the setting of Psalm 2 in connection with cultic enthronement ceremonies known from elsewhere in the ancient Near East. However, this emphasis, for all of its merits, has had the subtle result of obscuring certain legal motifs in the poem, including that of inheritance rights as a metaphor for YHWH's delegation of earthly authority. This paper offers a fresh reading of the psalm with a view to bringing these legal aspects to the fore. A new impetus for such a reading comes from evidence furnished by the recently published Ugaritic legal text RS 94.2168, which provides the first attestation in Ugaritic of a transitive verb B-H-L denoting the exclusion of a biological heir from the inheritance of his father's estate. In light of this technical usage, it will be proposed that the Piel form /yebahalemô/ in Psa 2:5 is best understood, not merely as an act of terrifying the rulers of the earth, but as YHWH's (metaphorical) disinheritance of them, a declaration that is naturally followed by the designation of his anointed one as the exclusive heir of the nations (2:8). The legal implications of other language in the psalm, including the question of whether Psa 2:7 actually represents an adoption formula, will also be discussed with a view toward providing a coherent interpretation of the poem as a whole.


The Place of Metaphor in the Baal, Aqhat, and Kirta Texts
Program Unit: Ugaritic Studies and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy
Joseph Lam, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

This paper will examine the place of metaphor in the major Ugaritic mythological texts--Baal, Aqhat, and Kirta--in light of theoretical insights drawn from recent studies on metaphor. Particularly important in this regard are the understanding of the "literal" and the "metaphorical" as distinct modes of language construal, as well as the awareness of the different conceptual levels at which metaphor operates. In contrast to the earlier study of Korpel (1990), which focused on metaphorical depictions of the divine, the present paper will look at the place of metaphor more generally as a linguistic and literary phenomenon. So, for instance, while a text like Baal invites an overarching metaphorical construal by virtue of the ostensible symbolic referents of key divine figures in the story (e.g., Yamm as "sea," Mot as "death"), the Kirta text shows a higher concentration of sentence-level metaphors in service of a tale centered around a human king. Such an approach can serve not only to highlight some of the important stylistic differences between the three texts but also to provide a basis for comparison with literary works from elsewhere in the ancient Near East.


“I Will Strike You down and Cut off Your Head” (1 Sam. 17:46): Trash Talking, Derogatory Rhetoric, and Psychological Warfare in Ancient Israel
Program Unit: Warfare in Ancient Israel
David T. Lamb, Biblical Theological Seminary

Trash talking, far from being an innovation of modern athletics, was a staple course in ancient military contexts, the prerequisite hors d’oeuvres, to whet the appetite for battle. Examples of derogatory military rhetoric can be found in Egyptian sources by Thutmose III, Sethos I, and Ramesses II, and in the Hebrew Bible by Ahab, Ben-hadad of Aram, Jehoash of Israel, and the Rabshakeh of Assyria. Trash talking in these contexts was used as a means of psychological warfare to intimidate one’s enemy. Confidence is crucial for an army to achieve victory in battle. If verbal assaults succeed at instilling fear in an opponent and courage in one’s own troops, the battle is half-won before any blood is spilt. However, the most effective way to counter the intimidating effects of derogatory rhetoric is to reciprocate in kind, as is seen in the interaction between Goliath and David and in a series of exchanges involving Elijah, Jezebel and Jehu. David responds to Goliath’s disdain by swearing that he will cut off Goliath’s head. Elijah taunts, and subsequently slaughters, Jezebel’s prophets so she orders a “hit” on the prophet. After initially fleeing, Elijah eventually comes back at her with a divine judgment involving dogs eating her flesh. Jehu then breaks one of the unwritten rules of “smack” and tells Jehoram his mother Jezebel is a whore. Recent sociological studies discuss the rules, patterns, roles and impact of trash talking in contemporary sports. An analysis of this type of psychological warfare in biblical literature will elucidate some of the most colorful dialogue of the Hebrew Bible and provide an interpretive key to understanding the social dynamic behind these texts.


The Genealogy of Repentance
Program Unit: Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism
David Lambert, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

"Repentance", as a term, has been readily employed in the study of religious texts, particularly, but not exclusively, those of Judaism and Christianity. It is taken as axiomatic that the sort of inner transformation it denotes would be considered an unambiguous good, if not a main goal, in any sort of religious practice. Thus, for instance, it is has been applied extensively in the analysis of Hebrew Bible texts, particularly those relating to mourning, petition, and prophecy. That "repentance" would form a major category of analysis for modern scholars is not surprising, for the interiority, autonomy, focus on moral status, and didacticism with which it is bound up seem to accord with modern sensibilities. This paper will consider the origins of "repentance" as a concept. Against, the assumption that repentance is universal or originated in the Hebrew Bible, I would locate the idea as very much a product of formative Christianity and Judaism. Getting its start in Hellenistic schools of philosophy and, therefore, well represented in the works of Philo and Plutarch, it is picked up as a mode of communal control in the context of the emerging establishment of long-term, stable communities among early Christians and rabbinic Jews. Its development can be traced to, specifically, religious groups lacking in apocalyptic expectations and looking for more stable notions of religious transformation. I will explore this theme through examining a wide variety of texts from Philo and Plutarch to Ben Sira, while focusing especially on its developments within the New Testament, the Shepherd of Hermas, and rabbinic literature.


Objectifications of Personhood in Ancient Israel: The Case of “lev”
Program Unit: Biblical Lexicography
David Lambert, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

On a most basic level, the Hebrew term "lev" denotes the organic object, known as “heart.” But it also clearly has broader connotations. Identifying these connotations is pivotal to any attempt to understand ancient Israelite conceptions of the person. In general, scholars imagine that the heart was considered, in ancient Israel, to be the seat of thought, as essentially equivalent to the head in modern parlance. That suggests a view of "lev" as largely in keeping with the modern Western notion of “mind,” in particular, with the view of mind as the epicenter of human activity and concern, as “interior” (as opposed to some “exterior”), and as, to some degree, autonomous. A number of problems with this view present themselves. First of all, we might do well to proceed with a presumed suspicion of any sort of reading that would see real proximity between ancient Israelite constructions of the person and our own. For millennia, the Hebrew Bible has been read in cultural contexts thoroughly embedded with Western notions of the mind and, in particular, a dualism of mind and body that, undoubtedly, have left a deep impression on biblical interpretation. Second of all, once we open ourselves up to the possibility of more radical difference, evidence from the biblical texts readily presents itself. Thus, for instance, we find that the biblical “heart” seems to have the power of speech. “Keep your mouth from being rash, and let not your heart be quick to bring forth speech before God” (Ecc 5:1). “My mouth utters wisdom, the utterance of my heart understanding” (Ps 49:4). Actually, one of the most impressive aspects of the "lev" attestations is their shear variety. Rather than asking in an anachronistic fashion, after the manner of modern scientific inquiry, what ancient Israelites understood “heart” to be and how they understood it to operate, I would like to ask the different question of to what rhetorical effect a notion of “heart” is constructed. (Likewise, we today continue to speak in various forms of discourse of the heart in terms that clearly go against contemporary scientific understanding.) What is bound up in a construction of the person that would objectify it and a wide variety of its experiences in a single component of its body? In many cases, the effect of such a construction would seem to move us in a quite different direction than the modern notion of “mind.” For one thing, it allows for a disassociation or a selective association of personal identity and what we might call “consciousness.” It also seems to entail an embodiment, rather than an interiorization or spiritualization, of thought. Finally, we frequently encounter "lev" as lacking autonomy, as an object subject to control whether external or by the subject him- or herself. This paper will test these various dimensions of "lev" by looking at a wide selection of examples, drawn primarily from within the Hebrew Bible.


Koilia in Philippians 3:19: Not the Bloated Belly but the Womb of Doom
Program Unit: Ritual in the Biblical World
Jason T. Lamoreaux, Brite Divinity School (TCU)

In Philippians 3:18-19, Paul sets up a foil in contrast to those who are good examples for the Philippian community. Paul describes the opponents as heading for destruction, their god as being their koilia, their glory as being aischune, and their minds set on epigeia. While most of these terms make sense in context, koilia has confounded interpreters. Often, translators opt for “belly” as a translation for koilia in this context. Through the lens of ritual studies and the ritual lives of women in Philippi, I will argue that koilia is best translated as “womb” rather than “belly”. Furthermore, I will demonstrate that this translation is not only necessary in light of the presence of women in the early Jesus community in Philippi, but also that it points toward a group of opponents that are putting outside pressure on the community from the perspective of women’s reproductive roles.


Jesus and Jubilee: An Ecological Reading of Luke 4:16–21 through an Environmental Justice Frame
Program Unit: Ecological Hermeneutics
Jeffrey Lamp, Oral Roberts University

At last year's meeting of SBL, I proffered a proposal that the criteria employed in ecological hermeneutics might benefit from a tactical reorientation in their application. The paper suggested that the field of environmental justice might provide a frame through which the criterion of suspicion might profitably be employed as one way to empathize with Earth via empathy with the poor and oppressed in the world, who suffer directly as Earth suffers environmental degradation. So the hermeneutic might capitalize on anthropocentric bias as a starting point for identification with Earth by helping those not so dramatically affected by ecological degradation to identify with those who are, and by extension, with the suffering Earth that is so intimately bound up with the poor and oppressed. This paper will use this premise as a point of departure to argue that the episode of Jesus reading from the scroll of Isaiah in Nazareth in Luke 4:16-21 serves as both an example of and paradigm for how the approach described in last year's paper might inform an ecological reading of the Bible. The paper will argue that Jesus' description of his Spirit-empowered ministry in the world uses this quotation from Isaiah 61:1-2 to draw upon imagery related to the year of Jubilee in a way that links concern for the poor with concern for Earth, or to state it another way, that good news for the poor translates into good news for Earth. The paper will first demonstrate how the environmental justice frame described last year yields a reading that exploits the clear anthropocentric bias of the passage to foster an identification with Earth leading to a retrieval of the voice of Earth in the passage. It will then describe how this particular passage might stand as a paradigmatic passage for this way of reading ecologically through an environmental justice frame.


Induction as Historiograhical Tool: Methodological Reflections on Locally and Regionally Focused Studies
Program Unit: Construction of Christian Identities
Peter Lampe, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg

For lack of sources, early Christian historiography often generalizes on shaky bases. Can an increased focus on regional or local phenomena from which generalized conclusions might be inferred improve this situation? Based on his studies on Rome and on Phrygia, combining archaeological, epigraphic and literary sources, Peter Lampe looks at chances and drawbacks of an inductive approach.


Polymorphy, Metamorphosis, or Something Else? The Plasticity of Christ in the Syriac Revelation of the Magi and the Apocryphal Acts of John
Program Unit: Christian Apocrypha
Brent Landau, University of Oklahoma

The “gospel” section of the Apocryphal Acts of John has long been noted for its depiction of Christ in a multiplicity of forms—sometimes simultaneously, at other times sequentially. Yet scholars have not agreed on how to designate this shape-shifting: polymorphy is the most common descriptor, but some have argued that not all of these incidents constitute polymorphy, strictly speaking. A recently translated text, the Syriac Revelation of the Magi, has complicated this discussion with its own unique portrayal of a shape-shifting Christ. In this text, which presents itself as the personal testimony of the biblical Magi, Christ first appears to the Magi in the form of a star and then transforms into a human being. An analysis and comparison of these two texts not only reveals the limitations of descriptors like “polymorphy” or “metamorphosis,” but also suggests that the typical characterization of such bodily properties as “docetic” neglects some important soteriological functions that these texts associate with the plasticity of Christ’s body.


Helene Cixous and the Oracles against the Nations
Program Unit: Israelite Prophetic Literature
Francis Landy, University of Alberta

Hélène Cixous, in Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing, writes that “dreams teach us.” They teach us, she says, in four lessons, but does not tell us, except indirectly, what they are: they are related to the capacity to enter another world, without transition; to speed; to what she calls “the taste of the secret”; and to fear. The book of Isaiah, like every poetic and prophetic book, may be seen as a dream book, which teaches us of the hopes, fantasies, and the intertwining of life and death in the minds of its authors. In this paper I would like to focus on the oracles against the nations, the preeminent scene of alterity in the Isaianic imagination. The other nations are both mirror images of Israel, condemned in the first twelve chapters, and its antagonists, whose fall presages Israel’s apotheosis, and who will ultimately pay homage to YHWH in Zion (e.g.18.7; 23.15-18). I will be concerned, however, with the prophet’s identification with the nations, his projection of himself into their destinies, and their specific oneiric characters. Egypt, for instance, is a dying fluvial economy; Tyre represents the sterility of the sea; and Babylon is the crumbling idolatrous tower, as in 21.9, and the matrix of imperial self-deification. Through participating in these dreams, ironically, quizzically, and with affection, the prophet presents himself as both the prophet of the nations and their nemesis. As with all poetry, and especially the overtly obfuscatory poetry of Isaiah, the dream presents us with a riddle, which is ultimately that of the transformation of death into life. On the one hand, it is marked by fear, pity, and the omnipresence of death, as in the carnivalesque raucousness of 22.14. On the other hand, it is the possibility of silent listening (18.4, 21.7, 11), to that which is always imminent and unexpected.


Death, Ghosts, Exile, Repetition: Reading for the Uncanny in Lamentations
Program Unit: Reading, Theory, and the Bible
Francis Landy, University of Alberta

In Freud’s essay “The Uncanny,” he sets out to define this enigmatic term. Of course, he fails to come to any single definition, and offers only a series of synonyms: strange, familiar, mysterious, ghostly, canny, etc. Similarly, there is no single state that brings about the uncanny, though it is associated with repetition, solitude, darkness, exile, genitalia, the double, cannibalism, and the eyes. From this description it is easy to see that Lamentations is an uncanny text. It memorializes the death of a city, and yet this city speaks; Zion is a ghost who grieves over herself. It is a book about exile, about the feeling of not having a home, and yet it creates another home through words and poetry. Lamentations, above all, is a book about repetition, as it turns over and over again to the same themes and the same words, but always with a slightly different meaning, or several meanings at once. The repetition, however, is of a fate that has already been predicted, of a divine fantasy that suddenly has become reality. For Freud, the crossing of the boundary between dream and reality, as between death and life, is the most uncanny of all. In the poem, repeated five times, we find the paradox of a God who plotted from the beginning of time to destroy himself, since to destroy the sanctuary is to destroy the matrix of the divine-human language, the traces of God in the world. The language of Lamentations is thus posthumous. Freud distinguishes, in “Mourning and Melancholia”, between a world rendered empty and a self that has become meaningless. In Lamentations, however, the two are interchangeable. The voice switches from mother to child, from poet to an absent comforter, addressing an interlocutor who never responds. Freud sees the repetition compulsion as symptomatic of death drive. Here, however, as in melancholia in general, it is the inability to die that is ever repeated.


Mystery Exegesis and the Meaning of Prophetic Scripture in Justin Martyr
Program Unit: Development of Early Christian Theology
T.J. Lang, Duke University

This paper explores the exegetical machinery which is at work in Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho, first by examining the machine’s lexical parts and then by considering what the entire system means for Justin’s redefinition of biblical prophecy. I begin by taking inventory of the hermeneutical vocabulary used in the Dialogue. I demonstrate that the word µ?st????? is both Justin’s preferred hermeneutical term and also the term that supplies all the general categories in which the other words participate. Most significant, however, is the way in which Justin hermeneutically coordinates the mystery of Christ and the mystery of scripture. It is only those who have been converted by the mystery of Christ who have the hermeneutical competency to discern scripture’s otherwise hidden christological mysteries, types, signs, symbols, and parables. After surveying Justin’s use of µ?st?????, I next briefly consider the other major words that Justin uses to substantiate his claim that Trypho’s scriptures no longer mean what, to Trypho and his fellow Jews, they have always seemed to mean. In the final major section I consider the more general question of what Justin’s distinctly Christian approach to Jewish scripture means for his conception of prophetic foretelling. Stated more specifically, the principal questions are: 1) what does it mean to the definition of prophecy to say that a predictive prophetic utterance now—or after the advent of Christ—newly reveals mysteries that it concealed beforehand? And 2) what are the rhetorical and theological implications in contending that scriptural prophecy has only recently become discernibly prophetic. For a conclusion I offer some brief remarks on how the fundamental structures and principles of Justin’s mystery exegesis are reproduced by later Christian exegetes. I propose that the best description for the interpretive approaches of early theologians such as Melito, Clement, Tertullian, and Origen is, simply titled, mystery exegesis.


The Question of Group Specific Texts in Light of Essene Jeremiah Quotations and Allusions
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible
Armin Lange, Universität Wien

For the late ancient and medieval transmission of the Hebrew Bible the existence of Jewish, Samaritan, and Christian group specific texts is undisputed. But based on the textual character of the quotations of and allusions to Jewish scriptures in pre-Rabbinic Jewish literature it can now also be asked if Jewish groups from the Second Temple period favored one textual version of a given biblical book against its other existing texts. Between 50 and 60 quotations of and allusions to the Book of Jeremiah in the Essene texts from the Qumran library provide an ideal sample case for an investigation of group specific texts in the Second Temple period. This presentation will ask whether the Essenes preferred the proto-Masoretic text of Jeremiah against other Jeremiah texts although the Qumran library contained Jeremiah scrolls attesting to both the consonantal text of MT-Jeremiah (e.g. 4QJer-a) and the Hebrew Vorlage of the Septuagint (e.g. 4QJer-b). The result of my analysis will show if the textual plurality of the Book of Jeremiah in the Second Temple period is group related or not.


Textual Criticism and Textual History: The Case of Joshua 10
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible
Michael Langlois, Université de Strasbourg

This paper addresses the methodological issues of combining textual criticism and textual history, using Joshua 10 as a test case.


New Northwest Semitic Inscriptions
Program Unit: Ugaritic Studies and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy
Michael Langlois, Université de Strasbourg

In this paper, I present unpublished northwest semitic inscriptions related to the Hebrew Bible, with an emphasis on epigraphical, linguistic, historical and religious aspects.


What Profit?: Qohelet and the Gift of Death
Program Unit: Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
Karen Langton, Brite Divinity School (TCU)

Scholars often try to force a literary structure on Qohelet, but its abundance of literary units only leaves disagreement as to form. Qohelet does not fit into the framework of traditional OT wisdom literature or, for that matter, have significant structural parallels to other ancient Near East texts. In fact, Qohelet has more in common with the organic nature of Hellenistic epistemological rhetoric—Qohelet’s affirmation of individual experience, in particular the experience of pleasure, bears a significant similarity to contemporaneous Hellenistic popular philosophy, which emphasized the pursuit of individual happiness by the use of human reason alone. However, if the purpose of Hellenistic philosophical writing was for the author to find happiness through the personal exercise of reason, we find little of that happiness in Qohelet. Rather we find an author who seems to see life as lacking purpose – all (implicitly including the work of Qohelet itself) is vanity (hebel). This inability to locate Qohelet within standard literary taxonomies and the ensuing disagreements among scholars as to the purpose of its multiple literary forms leads many to question whether Qohelet’s literary structure is, in fact, purposeful. The book as a whole seems to lack design and hierarchy of topics. Some view this as a literary/philosophical flaw, others as evidence of the book’s composite authorship, and still others as mere curiosity—this is simply the way Qohelet wrote it. And it is precisely this taxonomical confusion that we will explore in this paper. It is our contention that one manner in which this tension may be resolved is by finding unity in Qohelet’s structural schizophrenia through the lens of Jacques Derrida’s concept of the gift—namely, as one person’s experience of the ultimate gift of death, outside the economic circle of exchange. We argue that Qohelet’s appreciation for the gift of life is based upon and can only be realized through an understanding of the gift of death, which Derrida calls an “awakening to responsibility”: the observation of the irreplaceable singularity of both self and other. The gift of death is thus the encounter of death as that “which nobody else can undergo or confront in my place.” Of the irreplaceability conferred, delivered, or “given,” by death. Ultimately, this gift of death brings coherence to Qohelet as a sacrificial act where, in proclaiming his death with ours, Qohelet gives us equity in death—awakening us to death as a moment in which we are always already responsible for the other. And through this gift of death, through its awareness that everything is hebel, ephemeral, Qohelet becomes an eschatological gift of completed being: our awakening to ipseity and the gift of knowing humanity beyond hierarchy, beyond judgment, and, most importantly, beyond the possibility of profit.


“Foolish” Zeal and the Language of Divine Jealousy in 2 Corinthians 11:1–4
Program Unit: Second Corinthians: Pauline Theology in the Making
Benjamin J. Lappenga, Fuller Theological Seminary

Two perennial questions in the study of the theology of Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians are the extent to which and the manner by which themes developed for concrete rhetorical purposes also pertain to the letter’s wider theological convictions. This paper aims to contribute to this discussion by examining Paul’s language of divine “jealousy” (zelos) in the “bride of Christ” metaphor in 2 Cor 11:1-4. Interpreters such as Annette Merz have explored how the metaphor’s immediate purpose (to encourage fidelity to Paul’s teaching) becomes wholly displaced in texts such as Eph 5:22-33, showing that Paul’s fecund imagery is easily borrowed for discrete ethical/theological purposes. Yet even in its literary context, specific qualities of Paul’s imagery in 11:1-4 suggest that it is appropriate to apply this rhetorical metaphor to Paul’s deeper theological concerns. For example, Beverly Roberts Gaventa insists that the imagery in 11:1-4 contributes to the profound theological connection Paul asserts between himself and the church, and thus has implications that transcend Paul’s immediate rhetorical purposes. Few would contest Gaventa’s claim that Paul’s contingent metaphor informs (or is informed by) an underlying conviction, but it is the contention of this paper that the significance of the language of zelos in this context for illuminating precisely how Paul executes this multivalence has been under-appreciated. The paper demonstrates that the language of zelos cleverly integrates at least three motifs that further both Paul’s polemical strategy and his theological purposes: (1) the Corinthians’ reconciliation with Christ is inextricably linked with Paul not only as a “father” but as a Phinehas-like figure (Num 25:11-13), (2) since Paul’s zeal reciprocates the Corinthians’ paradoxical zeal for him when he was “afflicted” (7:7), Paul’s zeal exemplifies how divine power is revealed in human weakness (a “foolish” zeal; 11:1-2, 30), and (3) such zeal should provoke to them to action as did the Corinthians’ own zealous participation in the collection for the poor (9:2).


"His Hand Shall Establish You": 4QPsx/4QPs89 as Reworked Scripture
Program Unit: Qumran
David J. Larsen, University of St. Andrews

4QPsx/4QPs89 presents us with a version of Psalm 89 that is intriguing both because of its textual variations and also because of its verse order. Although Flint, et al., in DJD XVI, see this text as preserving “one of the sources of Psalms 89” or “possibly a very early form of this Psalm,” I will argue that the text is an example of reworked scripture, an interpretation of the biblical Psalm 89, that has been reordered and reworded to fit the author's eschatological vision. The manner in which this psalm has been reworked in this scroll follows common Qumran exegetical practice and is similar to what has been done elsewhere in the Qumran library with other scriptural passages, including Psalm 18 in 4Q381 and 2 Samuel 7 in 4QFlor -- the biblical passage has been reshaped, with words altered or removed and lines selected and transposed in order to better suit the author's needs. In 4QPs89, the wording and order of verses (when compared to that of the MT and LXX versions) seem to emphasize the Davidic/royal figure, the power that he will have, and his role in establishing the elect people in the End Times.


Johannine Recognition Scenes in the Second Century
Program Unit: John, Jesus, and History
Kasper Bro Larsen, Aarhus University

On the basis of previous studies in Johannine recognition scenes (anagnorisis), this paper presents how second century authors rewrote such type-scenes from the Fourth Gospel for new ideological and theological purposes. Focus will be on the Epistle of the Apostles and the Acts of John.


Roman Spectacle between Topography and Memory: The Pompa Circensis
Program Unit: Art and Religions of Antiquity
Jacob A. Latham, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Winding their way through Rome, processions fashioned an urban image of the city which wove together people and institutions, monuments and spaces—creating a cognitive map, an idealized cityscape that was neither a real social map nor an exact physical plan. That is, ritual shapes space as much as space shapes ritual—any particular triumph, for example, was influenced by a prestigious tradition of triumphs embodied in the triumphal monuments that lay along the itinerary. And so, linked by what one may call collective memory, a history of Rome housed in its rituals, spaces, and monuments, the processional participants and itinerary form a symbolic, ritual topography—or an image of the city in the words of the influential urban theorist Kevin Lynch. Best known from the extended description of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 7.71, itself a seemingly extended quotation of an earlier historian Fabius Pictor, the pompa circensis usually overlooked. Though vast quantities of ink have been spilled on both the triumph (pompa triumphalis) and the public funeral procession (pompa funebris), the circus procession (pompa circensis) languishes in relative scholarly neglect, even though it was the most often repeated and so, arguably, the most important of the three. However, it provides the best opportunity to investigate the relationship between the procession and its environment in term of individual and social memory. On the one hand, if one wants to understand how the ancient Romans drew the contours of their own society, then one need only look to which groups participated in their processions, often considered as a kind of civic cross section. This cross-section embodied a particular conceptualization of Rome that could draw upon collective social memory of the city as a whole. On the other hand, individual participants could forge their own personal linkages, recalling sites of important life cycle rituals or passing by statues of one’s ancestors. At the same time, processions strung together certain buildings, places, and institutions in coherent itineraries. In broad terms, a procession narrates a particular version of civic history by drawing together the strands of collective and individual memory situated in people, places, institutions and even other ritual complexes. Roman processions constructed Roman space by linking monuments and animating memory as they wound their way through the city. Thus, the pompa circensis or circus procession produced an image of the city which mapped both Rome’s social and topographical contours with each new performance. In short, the pompa circensis shaped how the Romans understood themselves, their society, and their city in the imagination and on the ground. For the ancient Roman, processions embodied a version of Roman history, provided a map of Roman-ness.


The Entanglements of (Roman) Texts and (Metroac) Artifacts in the Cult of Magna Mater at Rome and Ostia
Program Unit: Archaeology of Religion in the Roman World
Jacob A. Latham, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

The cult of Magna Mater at Rome and its immediate surroundings presents an ideal case study with which to explore the relationships between (often-hostile literary) texts and artifacts, in this case a small group of Metroac funerary and honorific (self) representations—statues and reliefs erected by and depicting Metroac devotees. Late republican Roman texts expressed a certain curiosity about the cult of the Great Goddess, which hardened into harsh polemic and often-lurid abuse by the early empire. In the second half of the first century CE, Martial, in particular, singled out the galli, eunuch devotees of Magna Mater, as degenerate, castrated deviants, worthy only of the utmost scorn. Indeed, many, if not most, Roman imperial literary depictions were similarly obsessed with Metroac “deviance” from elite masculine Roman norms—especially sexual ones. Of course, one may dismiss these authors and their histrionic images of the galli as mere elite prejudice, as pure rhetorical fancy. Beside their ascribed (and almost certainly imagined) sexuality, many republic-era and some imperia-era texts also took notice of the flamboyant dress and equally wild rituals of the galli. Importantly, these visible aspects of Metroac deportment were echoed by the extant Metroac (self) representations. Starting in the early empire (first century CE), devotees of Magna Mater commemorated themselves in some of the very ways upon which the caught the attention (and eventually the ire) of Roman literary sources, dress and ritual accoutrement in particular. In imagery and inscriptions, members of the Metroac cult seem to have taken ownership of or at least accepted their imagined alterity, explanations for which may proliferate—for example, a source of difference and so power or an act of stereotype appropriation. One relief represents an ostentatiously dressed devotee with long hair, ornate headdress, earrings, and a necklace—all the stereotypical signs of “effeminacy” or Metroac degeneracy proudly displayed. Other depictions have devotees sporting rings on every finger, distinctive religious imagery, in particular icons of Magna Mate or other deities suspended from necklaces, and even the implements of their self-lacerating worship of the Great Mother. While the sexual polemic may be dismissed a mere rhetoric, nonetheless that rhetoric still performed a role in elite constructions of Roman masculinity. Similarly, while the intersections between Roman texts and Metroac artifacts strongly suggest that Metroac devotees may really have dressed that way, Metroac representations were equally strategies of communal and individual self-fashioning. That is, Metroac self-representation and self-fashioning matched elite rhetoric, and its attendant self-fashioning. One should also keep in mind that Magna Mater was officially imported to Rome, housed within the pomerium, and patronized by aristocrats, emperors, and empresses. More than that, Lynn Roller has recently argued that most of the supposedly many of her wildest, foreign, “Phrygian,” traits were actually Roman inventions. The cult of Magna Mater at Rome was purposively manufactured as “other”; an alterity that seemingly offered something to everybody, cultic adherent or otherwise.


The Proclamation of the Restoration and the Rebuilding of the City, Zion/Jerusalem, in the So-Called “Cyrus passages” and Third Isaiah
Program Unit: Book of Isaiah
May May Latt, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago

The term “Zion/Jerusalem” in Isaiah 40–66 has been treated by many scholars in various ways. Some scholars, such as C. Westermann, J. Blenkinsopp, J. Muilenburg, B. Childs and J. L. Koole, have argued that Zion/Jerusalem in the so-called “Cyrus passages” has a double meaning, referring to 1) the people in the Babylonian exile, and 2) the physical city in Judah. According to this view, while the term “Zion/Jerusalem” in Isaiah 41:27 and the term “Jerusalem” in 44:26, 28 refer to a physical city in Judah, the term “Zion” in 46:13 refers to the exiles in Babylonia. Recently, C. Seitz and Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer have argued against the idea that “Zion/Jerusalem” carries such a double meaning in the so-called “Cyrus passages.” This paper utilizes a synchronic rhetorical method that supports and extends the insights of Seitz and Tiemeyer, arguing that these Cyrus passages should be read in the context of the final form of Isaiah 40–66. Utilizing this method, the paper argues that “Zion/Jerusalem” does not have two references; instead, every occurrence of the term in these passages refers to the physical city in Judah. The message in the Cyrus passages focuses on the proclamation of the restoration and rebuilding of the city in Judah by Yahweh’s raising Cyrus, rather than the release of the exiles from Babylonia, as argued by Westermann, Blenkinsopp, Koole, and others. Therefore, the dominant view that Yahweh’s raising of Cyrus is for the purpose of overthrowing Babylon must be rejected. The Cyrus passages in Isaiah do not mention any attack against Babylon; neither do they pay attention to the release of the Babylonian exiles, which is of secondary importance. In Second Isaiah, Yahweh arouses Cyrus explicitly for the purpose of the rebuilding of the city (Isaiah 41:25–29; 44:26, 28; 45:13; 46:8–13). Third Isaiah alludes to these texts, but makes a significant replacement: instead of naming Cyrus as the one who will rebuild the city, Third Isaiah indicates that “foreigners” and “mourners” will fill that role, and develops the image of the city with its rebuilt walls and sanctuary (Isaiah 60:10–14; 61:3–7; 65:17–19). The allusions to and expansion of Second Isaiah’s themes by Third Isaiah create a new synchronic rhetorical unit in which the term “Zion/Jerusalem” consistently refers to the physical city in Judah; the supposed references to the Babylonian exiles imputed to the term “Zion/Jerusalem” by many scholars must be rejected.


The Indebted and the Poor in the Deuteronomistic History
Program Unit: Poverty in the Biblical World
Kari Latvus, University of Helsinki

The indebted and the poor are mentioned in Deuteronomy in some of the key texts such as Deut. 15:1-11, 12-18; 23:19-26; 24:6-22. On the contrary, in the Deuteronomistic History these groups are mentioned only rarely. The most important texts are 1Sam 2:1-10; 22:1-2; 2Sam 12:1-14; 1Kgs 17:1-16 (cf. 1Kgs 21); 2Kgs 24-25. Comparison between these two sets of texts reveals a distinction between Deuteronomy (focus on legal texts and sermons) and the Deuteronomistic History (historical anecdotes and annals): there seems to be considerable tension between the two materials. In the Deuteronomistic History there is no congruent theology by the poor and they are often seen as mere objects. Further, a theology of poverty seems to be missing. In many occasions the poor belong to the margin of the society or are completely ignored. In Deuteronomy, however, the poor and indebted belonged to the central groups and the concern for the poor was essential. How can the ambiguous relation between Deuteronomy and Deuteronomistic history be explained? Finally, the presentation aims to evaluate the Deuteronomistic History using G. Lenski’s social stratification model.


A Drawing Methodology for Biblical, Theological, and Historical Learning
Program Unit: Academic Teaching and Biblical Studies
Gary Lau, New Hope Christian College

This paper will explain an effective teaching practice used in the Old and New Testament Survey classes at New Hope Christian College-Hawaii. This introductory class faces many demographical challenges: students as young as sixteen who have graduated from home school to as old as sixty-six who are returning to school for personal edification; the multi-cultural diversity found within the Pacific Rim: Hawaiian, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Malaysian, Hawaiian, Samoan, as well as Italian, Egyptian, and Caucasian; and English as a secondary language. The class faces an academic challenge: to cover the thirty-nine and twenty-seven books of the Bible over two fourteen-week semesters sufficiently enough so that students are adequately prepared to take other Biblical courses. Finally, the class faces an educational challenge: students who are lacking in reading, writing, and critical-thinking skills. Thus the goal was to find a way to overcome these demographical, academic and educational challenges. Using a drawing methodology that creatively uses shapes, lines, and words, students are able to grasp the big picture of each book of the Bible as well as the big picture of God’s redemptive story. The results are younger and older students, as well as multi-cultural students and educationally challenged students, but more importantly foreign students are able to understand the Bible in a way never thought possible. Students who are parents are teaching their children the Bible. Youth leaders have found a viable vehicle to teaching their youth. Missionaries have taken this method overseas with success. The practice is also applicable to teaching theology and history. This presentation will explain not only the drawing methodology but also explore why it works.


Markan Monsters: Reading Allusion to Daniel 7:13–14 in the Gospel of Mark
Program Unit: Jesus Traditions, Gospels, and Negotiating the Roman Imperial World
Benjamin Laugelli, University of Virginia

In the Gospel of Mark Jesus twice refers to himself as "Son of Man" in the context of allusions to Daniel 7.13-14, where the same term appears (Mark 13.26; 14.62; cf. 8.38). In Daniel 7 the term "Son of Man" differentiates God's heavenly agent, portrayed as a human being, from a series of foreign empires rendered as mythological beast-like monsters. In Daniel's vision the vindication of the Son of Man coincides with the slaying of the fourth beast, a pejorative symbol of the Hellenistic empire founded by Alexander the Great and embodied in its scion, the Selucid monarch Antiochus IV. Mark's allusion to Daniel 7.13-14 in 13.26 and 14.62 identifies Jesus as the "Son of Man" of Daniel's revelatory vision. The allusion facilitates the reader's identification of Jesus' Judean opponents with the fourth predatory monster of Daniel 7. This interpretive move is striking for its irony. The Gospel has not leveraged Daniel 7.13-14 against a contemporary foreign power such as Rome, as might be expected from the imperial referents in Daniel 7. This allows the Gospel to deflect responsibility both for Jesus' death and for the destruction of the temple away from the Romans and onto the Judean hierarchs and their confederates. Methodologically, the paper draws on the work of Ziva Ben-Porat for a model of the poetics of literary allusion. Ben-Porat outlines the process whereby the reader activates latent intertextual patterns between an alluding and an evoked text that elucidate the alluding text as a whole. The paper also engages cultural theories of monstrosity to explain how the Gospel's vilification of the Judean leaders obfuscates Roman agency even as it betrays anxiety over the fate of Jesus, whose crucifixion branded him both a messianic pretender and a monster to the Roman state.


Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty at Tayinat: A Biographical Sketch
Program Unit: Assyriology and the Bible
Jacob Lauinger, The Johns Hopkins University

Prior to 2009, “Easrhaddon’s Succession Treaty” was primarily known from eight tablets found in the 1955 in the Nabu temple at the Assyrian city of Nimrud, ancient Kalhu. These tablets record an oath (adê) taken by eight “Median” vassals of the Assyrian empire in the late spring of 672 BC in which the vassals swore to uphold the succession of the Assyrian king Esarhaddon’s son Ashurbanipal to the throne. In July 2009, archaeologists working at the Neo-Assyrian provincial capital Tell Tayinat, ancient Kunulua (located in Turkey’s Hatay province about 30 km outside of Antakya, ancient Antioch), discovered a cache of cuneiform tablets in a temple, one of which proved to be a new exemplar of this Succession Treaty. In this paper, I reconstruct the original position of the Tayinat tablet in the temple, demonstrating that it was prominently displayed in the temple’s inner sanctum directly across from the altar. I use this reconstruction as a starting point to sketch out the life story of this treaty tablet (tuppi adê): Its birth as one of many siblings; the great migration of its youth; the stately splendor of its mature years; and finally, a fiery death. I conclude by considering the degree to which this narrative can be extended to the Tayinat tablet’s siblings, other uppi adê inscribed with Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty that will likely never be recovered.


Ezekiel’s Role as Sanctifier in Light of Mesopotamian Prophecy and Cult
Program Unit: Prophetic Texts and Their Ancient Contexts
Dale Launderville, Saint John's University

The interplay of the divine and human realms in the revivification of the dry bones in Ezek 37:1-14 harbors an indirect polemic against the Ishtar-cult by claiming that Yhwh is the one who will bring the exiles back to life. In Mesopotamia, Ishtar is revered as a goddess who brings life from death in the Descent of Ishtar and in her role as protector of kings (“Assurbanipal’s War against Teuman, King of Elam,” Prism B, v 29, 49; cf. RIMB.6.32.19). The priest-prophet Ezekiel is not only spirit-possessed as are the prophets of Ishtar (SAA 9.1 to 9.4), but he is also capable of pronouncing divinely-authorized words like the incantation-priests who function in the m|4s p|+ rituals to help bring the cult-statues of the gods to life (STT 200). Ezekiel’s dual prophetic-priestly role is essential to the re-making of the Israelites into symbols of Yhwh that properly reflect his holiness (36:20-27).


Giving of Names and Double Meaning in Legum Allegoriae (II, 14–18)
Program Unit: Philo of Alexandria
Valéry Laurand, Université Michel de Montaigne Bordeaux 3

While commenting on Gen. 2, 19, Philo makes the most of an obscurity of the Greek text to move from the literal meaning to the moral one. According to the first, Adam is « beginning of conversation », because, contrary to what former philosophers have written, language must come from a single man: hence, the same name symbolizes the same thing (Op. 148-149 throws more light on this issue). In order to turn to the second meaning, Philo refers to the « ti » (what) of the Greek text, which he understands as « dia ti » (why): God wants to see not really what name is given to one animal or another, but the frame of mind in which Adam gives a name, calls or greets (Philo plays on the range of meanings of kaleô) the assistants which God has made for him, i.e.: the sensible forms of passions. I wonder if it would be possible to find here a kind of pattern of the allegorical method, since we move from an evident meaning to another one, determined by the object and its use. Passions can be morally wrong, but necessary and useful (for instance, pleasure, which is not a Stoic indifferent). Thus, revising and changing significantly the Stoic distinction between good and indifferents, Philo invents a class of double meaning, where the same word doesn't always mean the same thing but qualifies both the object and the one who uses it. After having determined this pattern, I'll turn to the double meaning of the nakedness and of the snake, with an assumption: that we can draw an underlying theory of the subject from this use of double meaning.


Addressing the Faithful (and the Unfaithful): Dealing with Religious Commitment in the Secular Classroom
Program Unit: Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion
Jonathan D. Lawrence, Canisius College

Students in Religion courses may represent many different religious communities or none. How does an instructor deal with ingrained faith-based beliefs on the one hand and ignorance and/or indifference on the other? Not to mention all of the religious or agnostic positions in-between? This roundtable will consider these questions in the context of different sorts of secular academic institutions, with an eye towards bringing students to a deeper and more sophisticated understanding of religious issues without either leaving them behind in the midst of difficult material or making them feel as if their faith is under attack.


Jesus and the Problem of Epochal Romanticism
Program Unit: Historical Jesus
Anthony Le Donne, University of the Pacific

This essay will situate Wrede, Schweitzer and other early adherents of the “Jesus as Apocalyptic Prophet” thesis within German Romanticism and suggest that this view of history defined much of the vernacular for modern Jesus studies. It will then examine an often overlooked element of the Jesus tradition, what this study will call Jesus’ “greater than” rhetoric. In doing so, the author will (largely) avoid the terms “prophet,” “apocalyptic,” and “eschatological” for heuristic purposes. Thus this essay will explore the possibility of epochal aggrandizement in the Jesus tradition without hinging the notion on the vernacular of Romanticism.


The Criterion of Coherence: Its Development, Inevitability, and Historiographical Limitations
Program Unit: Historical Jesus
Anthony Le Donne, University of the Pacific

This essay traces the development of the Criterion of Coherence from Johannes Weiss’ portrait of Jesus and Paul Schmiedel’s bifurcation of the Gospel tradition. I argue that Coherence was applied in Jesus studies before the prominent years of Form Criticism, but became a sub-criterion of Double Dissimilarity within the programs of Bultmann, Käsemann, and Perrin. I then argue that Perrin’s application of Coherence as a sub-criterion to Dissimilarity is beyond repair and that both criteria should be abandoned. However, I suggest that recent adaptations of Social Memory theory might provide new life for the more general principle of Coherence as employed from Weiss to John P. Meier. The chief problem with its present use is that New Testament studies works from a premise of binary (or ternary) opposites as they conceive of the divide between Jesus’ context and Christianity’s context. As long as Jesus historians think along the lines of binary opposites, the Criterion of Coherence will continue to be misleading. Thus Perrin’s use of the criterion is beyond repair and Meier’s use must be rebuilt from the ground up.


The Gospel’s Medium and Imperial Culture: The Significance of the Codex
Program Unit: Jesus Traditions, Gospels, and Negotiating the Roman Imperial World
Hans Leander, University of Gothenburg

Since Werner Kelber’s work on the oral and the written gospel (originally published 1983), there has been an increasing interest in orality in early Christianity. In this research field, Kelber is often seen as having overstated the significance of the written medium. The oral medium, the argument goes, continued to dominate long after the gospels were beginning to circulate as written texts. Without questioning the dominance of the oral medium, this paper nevertheless argues that the circulation of Mark’s Gospel as a written text was a crucial event that communicated a message of great importance for the self-understanding of the first century Jesus followers. But what did the written medium communicate? Here the issue of what kind of written medium is actualized. The paper explores the suggestion by Graham Stanton that Mark’s Gospel, when it had been written, began to circulate in the form of codices. Considering the dubious status of the codex as a literary medium at this time, it is argued that such a book form went against the grain of first century imperial culture. Since it did not comply with the literary standards, the book medium would have given further weight to the subversive nature of its content.


The Mark of the Messiah: Revelation 19's Inscribed Thigh
Program Unit: Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity
Sheree Lear, University of St. Andrews

The image of the rider on the white horse in Revelation 19:11-16 is composed almost entirely of elements borrowed from disparate texts of the Hebrew Bible. One detail of the rider's description that has not been satisfactorily explained is the origin of the name engraved on his thigh. I will argue that the phrase was borrowed from Genesis 49:8-12, a text which was traditionally messianic by the time of the composition of Revelation. Verse 10b (MT), m?qq mbyn rglw, is often rendered “nor a commander’s staff from between his feet," but I demonstrate that Rev 19:16b's, epi ton merov...gegrammenon, is a legitimate translation of Gen 49.10b. John’s decision to include this detail from Gen 49:10 was not an arbitrary selection, but a calculated literary and theological choice. By alluding to Gen 49:10, John activated and incorporated the message of Gen 49:10 into the reading of Rev 19:11-16. The inscribed thigh of the rider was a visual marker identifying the rider as the messiah, affirming that the hope of Gen 49.8-12 was yet to be fulfilled, and predicting the nations' future subjugation to him.


"..and the lords of the Philistines walked as far as the border of Beth-Shemesh" (1 Samuel 6) - Why?
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
Zvi Lederman, Tel Aviv University

The fascinating biblical story known as the 'Ark narrative' (1 Samuel 5-6) has received much scholarly attention. Opinions about its authenticity cover a wide spectrum of ideas and interpretations. Anyhow, the Ark narrative succeeds in transferring a real sense of a clear, recognized and accepted border: all ranks of Philistine leadership seem to know that the political and cultural boundary between the two ethnical entities passes at the outskirts of the fields of Beth-Shemesh and refrain from crossing it. When was this border created and how? And who were the 'people of Beth-Shemesh' when these crucial events took place? Archaeological excavations at Tel Beth-Shemesh over the past two decades provides intriguing answers for these questions and open the door for innovative interpretation of cultural processes in the Shephelah following the arrival of the Philistines in Iron Age I (12th-11th centuries BCE). The excavations revealed at Beth-Shemesh a remarkable endurance of Canaanite settlement and cultural traditions. Moreover, the inhabitants at the site had strongly denied Philistine identity markers, expressed vividly in certain aspects of material culture and dietary habits. Since this process of resistance seems to have encompassed more sites at the periphery of Philistine territory, a border was born. The creation of this border - the arena for cultural contact and conflict - led further to identity consolidation on both of its sides, and eventually to the formation of the ancient state of Judah.


Signs and Works in Mark and John
Program Unit: John, Jesus, and History
Dorothy Lee, MCD University of Divinity

More than twice as many signs/works occur in Mark as in John. Taken as a whole, they are very different. The miracle stories are shorter in Mark, with emphasis on the exorcisms; in John, they are part of extended narratives, containing no exorcisms. Apart from the feedings, there are no common signs/works. The miracles in Mark demonstrate divine, beneficent sovereignty over human life, physical and spiritual, personal and social. In John, they are symbolic, revealing Jesus' identity. Yet, for all the differences, there are parallels. John and Mark share images of blindness-sight, with metaphorical import. Both narrate healings of the body with spiritual implications. Both point to Jesus' dominion over nature, as well as death and evil. Both depict his emotional reactions to suffering. These similarities, within the patent divergences, are suggestive for understanding the inter-relationship of the Johannine and Synoptic traditions, and the way each sees itself as a trajectory of Jesus' historical ministry.


Teaching the Bible in an Ecumenical Context
Program Unit: Anglican Association of Biblical Scholars
Dorothy Lee, MCD University of Divinity

The context in which Scripture is taught in MCD University of Divinity, Melbourne, Australia, is an overtly ecumenical one. MCD University includes the Anglican Church of Australia, the Roman Catholic Church (Diocesan, Jesuit, and other RC religious orders), the Baptist Church of Australia, the Churches of Christ, and the Uniting Church in Australia (a union of Methodist, Presbyterian, and Congregational). At Trinity College Theological School, we as Anglicans teach our theology units together with the Jesuits and the Uniting Church, from Monday to Thursday inclusive. In other words, Scripture, along with units in systematic theology, church history, philosophy, ethics, and pastoral theology, are all taught ecumenically. On Friday, we come together in our own colleges for more specifically denominational formation, both lay and ordained. This mutual arrangement has a number of strengths and difficulties. The strengths lie in openness to the diversity of other Christian traditions, and the avoidance of a narrowly denominationalist approach. The difficulty rests in the need to ensure that students are formed as Anglicans, even with a broad definition of what that means. A further complicating factor is that we are committed to training students for lay ministry as well as ordination. These days we cannot assume students come to us with any real sense of what it means to be Anglican. Our questions are: how we can be both ecumenical and Anglican at the same time? How can we cater for lay and ordained students, respecting the diversity of ministerial vocation within the Church?


Witness in the Fourth Gospel: John the Baptist and the Beloved Disciple as Counterparts
Program Unit: Johannine Literature
Dorothy Lee, MCD University of Divinity

The theme of witness/testimony has been well-demonstrated as a major motif throughout the narrative of John’s Gospel. What is not so clear, however, is that the witness-theme provides also the literary frame for the Gospel as a whole. This lack of clarity is due, in large part, to scepticism about the place of John 21 within the Fourth Gospel’s narrative and theological structure. John 21 has been largely dismissed as a later addition, or at least postscript, to the Gospel, whether sympathetic or antithetical to its originating message. The possibility of more than edition of the Gospel is not the issue here. Regardless of its pre-history, the Gospel of John in its final form demonstrates a remarkably close parallelism between the role of John the Baptist in the first chapters of the Gospel (John 1-3) and that of the Beloved Disciple in the final chapters (John 13-21). These parallels are conspicuous particularly in the opening and closing sequences (Jn 1:1-34; Jn 21), where the function of both characters is to point to, and reveal, the identity and destiny of Jesus, as presented in the Gospel of John. What this narrative equivalence amounts to is an identification between the two figures, whose testimony encases the Gospel, ensuring its literary endurance beyond their demise. This paper argues that the correspondence between John the Baptist and the Beloved Disciple is an exegetical and hermeneutical tool to ensure the legitimacy and protraction of the fourth evangelist’s witness to the Johannine Jesus beyond the oral antecedents.


Nebuchadnezzar, a Penitent King? A Study of Daniel's Allusion to Chronicles
Program Unit: Book of Daniel
James S. Lee, Union Presbyterian Seminary

The book of Daniel evidences the ambivalent relationship of the Danielic community with Chronicles. The community contests Chronicles’ interpretation of Jeremiah, although not explicitly. The book of Daniel does not mention the edict of Cyrus or the return of exiles. Daniel himself continues to remain in exile even after the rise of Cyrus. This depiction of exile should be understood as the community’s quiet rebuttal or respectful disagreement with parts of its inherited tradition. However, the Danielic community was still drawn to Chronicles for its message of hope and renewal. While Chronicles presents Israel’s exile as the result of her failure to give heed to the prophets’ warning out of stubbornness, it also highlights Israel’s ability to repent from her sin, which results in God’s gracious response of restoring her. The paramount example in this regard is Chronicles’ portrayal of King Manasseh. In this paper, I submit that the Danielic community appropriated the judgment passed on some of the Judean kings from the pre-exilic period for its assessment of gentile rulers of the exilic and post-exilic periods. The community attributed the ongoing dominance of the nations to the fact that even gentile rulers could repent and thus regain the favor of the God of Israel.


The Achaemenid Royal Iconography and the Implementation of Heavenly Order on Earth
Program Unit: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Bible
Kyong-Jin Lee, Fuller Theological Seminary

The Achaemenid period is generally understood to be the politico-historical setting in which the compilation of the Torah took place. In the ancient Near Eastern world, it was typically understood that it was the gods who imparted the law, and it fell upon the king to bring this divine law to the people. Much of the reputation as a great ruler hinged upon the ability to establish order on the earth according to the divine will. Thus Persian kings were traditionally seen as the embodiment of spiritual knowledge and expected to command the affairs of the people accordingly. According to the Avesta—the primary text of Zoroastrianism—Yima was the first Persian king to establish peace and justice in his country by successfully implementing the divine will in his government. This paper looks into the Achaemenid royal relief decorations from Persepolis, Susa, and Pasargadae as well as the royal titulature present in the Cyrus cylinder, Behistun inscription, and other inscriptions from Gandj Nameh, Hamadan, Naqš-i Rustam, and Persepolis. The Achaemenid royal reliefs reveal how the Persian kings utilized the notion of the monarchs’ privileged insight of the divine realm in promoting Pax Persica in the empire. The symbolic designs provide a statement of the vision and mission vested in a king as a divinely sanctioned ruler. Royal concepts deriving from the iconographic motifs as well as texts on these Achaemenid-era artifacts will illumine one’s understanding of the interface between the heavenly and earthly politics.


Nations (goyim) in the Book of Ezekiel: Implications on the Structure of the Book of Ezekiel
Program Unit: Book of Ezekiel
Lydia Lee, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

In this paper I propose one new lens to strengthen the traditional tri-/tetra-partite structure of the book of Ezekiel (i.e. Ezekiel 1-24; 25-32; 33-48). The prevalent scholarship tends to assume a tri-/tetra-partite structure for the book of Ezekiel (e.g. Cooke, Zimmerli, Fuhs, Hals, Allen, Blenkinsopp, etc.) based predominantly on thematic concerns (i.e. driven by an eschatological schema of judgment and restoration). One result of such neat division is that Ezekiel 25-32 (Oracles against Nations/OAN) is placed in a more detached position from the rest of the book of Ezekiel. On the other hand, scholars like Sweeney and Mayfield raise question about the tangibility of themes as sole justification for such division. They push for more concrete literary features such as the chronological formula as primary division markers for the book of Ezekiel. This paper suggests that, by searching another concrete literary feature, the insights from Sweeney and Mayfield can contribute and improve the more traditional and prevalent tri-/tetra- partite structure of the book of Ezekiel based predominantly on thematic compartmentalization. One way to provide such concrete justification is to note the occurrences and usage of the term 'goyim'in the book of Ezekiel. This is to be examined through four categorizations of such occurrences and usage: a. goy/goyim =Israel/Judah b. goyim’s interaction with Israel/Judah c. goyim’s interaction with particular foreign nations d. the absence of goy/goyim in Ezekiel 40-48. Ultimately through a survey of the interactions of goyim with Israel and specific foreign nations respectively, I argue that the OAN and the rest of the book of Ezekiel are two distinct sections yet could be read together as conveying a complementary message central around the unique identity of Israel in relation to Yahweh’s universal sovereignty.


The Woman Prophet in First Isaiah: Oracular Songs through Women's Genres
Program Unit: Book of Isaiah
Nancy Lee, Elmhurst College

Through close attention to traditional translation and re-translation of Hebrew, from the MT and Qumran texts, within the section regarded as First Isaiah, this paper will attend to feminine grammatical forms and references in the text, to rhetorical genres of women’s culture (ie, S. D. Goitein, C. Meyers), and to the general political-historical context, in order to identify five texts in which the voice of the woman prophet in First Isaiah, possibly made oracular contributions embedded in the final form of the text, suggestive of her being in performative dialog with Isaiah. This research aims to complement the work of feminists/womanists of late focused primarily on male biblical prophets’ use of denigrating female metaphors. Yet this paper focuses on women’s contributions as actual unnamed prophetic composers of oracular songs occasionally embedded in the prophetic books by sympathetic scribes. This paper also illuminates how women performing oral poetic leadership roles might have been more greatly recognized in indigenous cultures than by modern western, mostly male, interpreters using primarily historical, literary, and redaction critical approaches.


Textual Variations as Recorded in the Ethiopian Andemta Biblical Commentaries
Program Unit: Ethiopic Bible and Literature
Ralph Lee, Holy Trinity Theological College, Addis Ababa

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Church has a long tradition of biblical scholarship, part of which is embodied in the tradition known as andemta, referring to the Amharic word which was used to introduce ‘and one more’ interpretation of a passage of Scripture. The contemporary printed editions of the andemta, which record the Biblical text in Ge’ez and then give Amharic translations and interpretations, date from the early eighteenth century CE, when the tradition that had developed over many centuries was formally written down, although many of the interpretations must be significantly older than this, as witnessed by the older Ge’ez interpretative tradition. The seminal work of Cowley identified the tradition as primarily ‘Antiochene’, due to the large and surprising contribution made by writers from the Church of the East, most notably the 11th century CE writer Abu‘l-Faraj ‘Abdallah ibn at ayyib al-‘Iraqi, also with significant material attributed to Theodore of Mopsuestia. Whilst the andemta do contain significant ‘Antiochene’ material there is much more besides, for instance the interpretations are punctuated by explanations that could only come from Ethiopian sources, that use rural Ethiopian examples to explain objects or events in the Bible. Another significant area is the discussion of what are termed abenat, or ‘textual variations’. The textual variations are of various kinds, and some of them appear to demonstrate an awareness of the different readings represented by the LXX and the Mesoretic text. The source for these textual variations is not given in the ’andemta, but their presence indicates, among other things, that traditional Ethiopian scholarship was aware of difference between the LXX and Mesoretic text before the eighteenth century CE. This paper presents initial soundings on the ab?nat found in the Octateuch and seeks to categorise the different types of textual variation found.


Starting from the Beginning: Genesis and 1 Corinthians 1–4
Program Unit: Scripture and Paul
Yongbom Lee, Fuller Theological Seminry, Pasadena

Virtually all commentators of 1 Corinthians emphasize its situational ad hoc character. Did Paul write 1 Corinthians simply as various issues in the church came to his mind, playing by ear, so to say? Or, did Paul have a literary model in mind, while addressing specific issues in the Corinthian church? Without negating the obvious ad hoc feature of 1 Corinthians, Tom Brodie interestingly proposes that Paul models its literary structure after that of the Pentateuch. Brodie divides 1 Corinthians into five distinctive parts: Foundation (chapters 1–4), Basic Moral Code (chapters 5–7), Christian Worship (chapters 8–11), Church Order (chapters 12–14), and Vision for the Future (chapters 15–16). In this paper, I will discuss various verbal, thematic, sequential, and structural similarities between Genesis and 1 Cor 1–4. One may argue that, since Paul never quotes verbatim Genesis in 1 Cor 1–4, he could not have had in mind Genesis as his foundational framework. Such a rigid and rash judgment fails to comprehend Paul’s multifaceted and creative use of the Scriptures. Obviously, Paul did not write 1 Cor 1–4 as an exegetical commentary on Genesis. Paul certainly had in mind specific issues in the Corinthian church and wrote 1 Corinthians with ad hoc rhetorical purposes in his pastoral response to the Corinthian church. The verbal, thematic, sequential, and structural similarities between Genesis and 1 Cor 1–4, which I will discuss in this paper, however, suggest that Paul did not write 1 Cor 1–4 nonchalantly as various issues and ideas popped up in his mind but he possibly had Genesis in mind as his foundational framework, letting the Scripture guide his writing step by step.


Gospels and Pansori: Comparative Insights into Performance and Transmission from Korean Folksongs
Program Unit: Performance Criticism of the Bible and Other Ancient Texts
Yongbom Lee, Dominican Biblical Institute, Limerick, Ireland

Werner H. Kelber’s groundbreaking study The Oral and Written Gospel (1983) has provided a new paradigm of thinking about the Jesus tradition with respect to its orality, performance, and social memory, which had not been explored by previous New Testament studies due to their form-critical and text-critical orientation. It is well known that Kelber applies various insights concerning oral media from cognate fields (such as classics, folkloristics, and anthropology) to Gospel studies. In this paper, following Kelber’s steps, I will compare the Jesus tradition behind the Gospels and Korean folksongs called pansori with respect to their performance and oral transmission. Pansori is a genre of Korean folk story, normally performed by a vocalist and a drummer in a combination of songs and narration. The earliest written record of pansori goes back to 1754 but it is generally agreed that it already existed by 1600s in the southern regions of Korean peninsula during the Chosun dynasty (1392–1897). Many scholars consider that pansori was created by chang-u groups (professional entertainers) related to hereditary shamans. Pansori grew from its diffuse sources among commoners in marketplaces to more established forms under the patronage of kings and nobles in the first half of the 19th century. During this golden age, pansori developed into three branches or schools (je) according to their geographical locations and lineage of transmission. The 1st century A.D. Gospels and the 17th century A.D. Korean folksongs obviously are not related to each other historically. Nonetheless, their performance and oral transmission process could have shared some common features with each other. I will focus on the particular role of performer in the oral transmission process of the two traditions: eyewitnesses and the other teachers of the Early Church for the Jesus tradition and the so-called “master-singers” (myoungchang) for pansori.


The Literal Sense according to Historical Criticism
Program Unit: Christian Theology and the Bible
Michael C. Legaspi, Phillips Academy

For a range of figures spanning the period from the high middle ages to the eighteenth century, uncovering the literal sense of the Bible was not only the key to apprehending individual truths conveyed by the Bible. It was also the key to understanding the way in which the Bible authorized the very concept of truth. During the Enlightenment, the meaning of the literal sense underwent significant change. It acquired special importance when academic critics attempted to integrate the Bible into modern culture with the aid of critical tools and the guidance of a new set of social imperatives. In this arrangement, the pursuit of the literal sense was reconceived as an application of method at once highly disciplined and strangely speculative.


Resurrection as Compensation—and More: On the Function of Different Modes of Resurrection
Program Unit: Function of Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
Outi Lehtipuu, University of Helsinki

Early Jewish texts contain a wide variety of ways to depict salvation and resurrection, ranging from expectations of tangible bodily resurrection (e.g., 2 Maccabees) to visions of heavenly bliss (e.g., Epistle of Enoch) and combinations of the two (e.g., 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch). A common characteristic in many of these texts is the conviction that resurrection is needed to compensate the injustice that the righteous had to face prior to their death. Several early Christians shared this conviction. Especially those who understood resurrection as the resurrection of the body (or, more precisely, as the resurrection of the flesh) argued that the same body that was tormented and martyred on the one hand, or wallowed in pleasures on the other hand, must be rewarded or punished. Otherwise, justice would not prevail. However, in other writings, the link between resurrection and compensation disappears - for example, bodily resurrection does not play a prominent role in early Christian martyrologies that frequently depict the reward of the martyr as an immediate ascent to heaven at the moment of the martyr’s death. In the early Christian scene, resurrection becomes to function on a different level: it is used as a boundary marker that separates true Christians from those who only pretend to be. In this paper, I will first discuss the different ways resurrection is understood in some pseudepigraphical texts and how it functions as a recompense for injustice. I will then show how this conviction is both continued and discontinued in early Christianity. Last, I will give examples of how differently formulated beliefs in resurrection are used to set a boundary between insiders and outsiders among the early Christian movement.


The Phantom Menace: Persian-Period Samaria and the Biblical Tradition
Program Unit: Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah
Mary Joan Leith, Stonehill College

For centuries, Ezra-Nehemiah, early Christian tradition and Josephus have set the parameters for examining the history and cultural identity of Persian-period Samaria. By assessing these sources with a hermeneutic of suspicion and bringing to bear the existing archaeological and extra-biblical evidence one may discover that Samaria and the Samarians had more in common with neighboring Judea than has thus far been considered.


The Anger of Yahweh and the Psychology of Israelite Trauma
Program Unit: Theology of the Hebrew Scriptures
T M Lemos, Huron University College

This paper will discuss the connection between the violent realities of ancient Israel and the nature of the god Yahweh. I will argue here that the anger of the god of Israel is a direct result of Israelite experiences of trauma. In many ways, violence was endemic to ancient Israelite society, and so it is unsurprising that Israelite writers projected this violence, and their strategies for coping with it, onto their god. In many different biblical books, we find what I would call “theologies of emotional distance.” In these, violence is presented as a punishment exacted by Yahweh against a wayward and deserving people. Prophetic and other texts do not elicit sympathy; they negate sympathy—and create emotional distance—through their violent imagery and their theologies of “blaming the victim.” One can make the case, however, that the very anger of Yahweh is a coping strategy on the part of biblical authors for dealing with trauma. Anger allows one distance from pain; as many psychological and anthropological studies have shown, rage is a strategy of survival in the face of trauma. The elaborate revenge fantasies of the Hebrew Bible’s eschatological passages sometimes shift the anger from victim to perpetrator. Yet, they, too, create emotional distance from violence through their allegorization of people and events, their extremely dualistic worldview, and their depiction of divine retribution on a cosmic scale. Thus, the anger of Yahweh, in various genres of biblical literature, is the result of Israelite responses to trauma. This paper will contribute to the growing body of scholarship relating research on trauma to biblical texts, while pushing this area of inquiry further by presenting a new understanding of various biblical texts.


Musical Portrayals of Seductive Women
Program Unit: Bible and Popular Culture
Helen Leneman, Universiteit van Amsterdam

The arts have done much to popularize biblical stories, but this popularization has not resolved the ambiguities of the original stories in a favorable way for the female characters. There are many examples—equal parts wonderful and horrible-- of how biblical women have fared in popular musical interpretations. Composers were inspired by the stories of Delilah and Bathsheba in every era. The most famous operatic rendition of the story of Samson and Delilah is by Saint Saens. In this 1877 opera, Delilah is a cold, calculating seductress. This is important because this portrayal has probably molded modern views of Delilah’s character far more than the biblical account did. Such is the power of music to move the listener that even in Delilah’s famous seduction aria, the music is so lush and seductive that the listener simply has to empathize with poor Samson. Who could resist such music? The fact that the biblical Delilah nags and cajoles rather than seducing is immaterial to composers: seduction music is far more appealing than nagging music, so Delilah became imprinted in all opera lovers’ minds as the temptress par excellence. And no amount of scholarship or commentary can undo the power of music. This is even truer in more popular renditions of the Samson story. In all of these, Samson is the poor sap and Delilah the temptress. Two such songs will be sung and discussed. Musically, Bathsheba is also generally depicted as a temptress. Ezra Laderman’s 1971 opera And David Wept was commissioned by CBS television and performed live on that station. In this work, Bathsheba is depicted as a seductress taking the initiative, deliberately trying to entice David. The musical devices create an all-too-convincing portrait of a scheming woman. Popular songs of the 1950s carry on this tradition. Musical examples will be played.


Grief in Music: David’s Dirge
Program Unit: Use, Influence, and Impact of the Bible
Helen Leneman, Universiteit van Amsterdam

David’s dirge over the mighty who have fallen is one of the most well-known poems in the Hebrew Bible. Musical settings enhance this text through various technical devices. Texts about grief and mourning are somehow completed and fulfilled with music. Words can only describe emotion, while music can evoke it. Readers are unlikely to cry reading David’s dirge, but music can certainly elicit tears. Humanizing David has been a goal of artists and composers in every era. In operas and oratorios based on his story, David sings his most emotional music when his heart is broken, such as in this lament. These are also his most emotional outbursts in the biblical narrative, and some of the most famous verses. By making David’s grief palpable and real, the musical settings also make the man David more human. I will discuss musical settings of David’s dirge from three 20th-century works: Arthur Honegger (Le Roi David, oratorio,1921), Darius Milhaud (David, opera, 1954), and Christopher Brown (David: A Cantata (1970). The music strongly suggests deeper feelings than the text alone does. There are standard musical markers of grief, such as descending musical lines and funeral march rhythm. These are found in all three of these otherwise very different works. Such common markers trigger an emotional response in the listener because they are universally associated with death and loss. Musical examples will be offered and explained. Music creates an inner world of the heart and mind. Music depicting grief, the focus here, has the power to pull the listener into an orbit of lament which is more immediately effective than any text alone can be.


Christian Law: The Case of the Apostolic Constitutions
Program Unit: Early Jewish Christian Relations
Marcie Lenk, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

As recent scholarship has shown, the fourth century was a critical period of boundary-building between Jews and Christians. While many issues between Judaism and Christianity seemed to have been settled by the fourth century, the question of Christian obligations regarding laws derived from Scripture remained in play. Thus the issue of the law remained prominent in the Apostolic Constitutions, despite the fact that much of this text consists of a rewritten Didascalia, a text which, in theory anyway, should have settled the question. The third century Didascalia shows a determined rejection of the deuterosis (second law), and the fourth century Apostolic Constitutions confirms the rejection. Nevertheless, the compiler of the Apostolic Constitutions was not a slavish copyist; he allowed himself freedom to adapt his sources, adding or changing the earlier teachings as he felt fit. The language used in the later text betrays a much more nuanced view, using less negative language regarding the rejected laws, and introducing the positive category of natural law for those laws which the compiler of the Apostolic Constitutions believed Christians must continue to follow. The laws promoted by the Apostolic Constitutions are not only those found in the Decalogue, the Didascalia’s strategy, and the compiler promotes a positive observance of Sabbath, ignoring the negative attitude towards the Sabbath found in the Didascalia. This paper will show the connection between the positive expression of law in the Apostolic Constitutions and the adoption of Jewish liturgy in this same text, demonstrating that the question of the proper dividing point between Jewish and Christian practices was still being negotiated, particularly in the province of Syria. The Didascalia, it would seem, had failed.


The House of David in the Fabric of Ancient Near Eastern Society
Program Unit: Historiography and the Hebrew Bible
Mahri Leonard-Fleckman, New York University

The House of David has commonly been considered synonymous with Judah and the Davidic monarchy, both in terms of biblical historiography and in the ninth-century Tel Dan Inscription. Yet the term may originally have identified a small group that followed the leadership of a figure named David, and was only later used synonymously with the royal dynasty and Judah. Evidence outside ancient Israel attests to such a construction, specifically the phrase “House of X” for Iron Age Aramean polities, where X often represents a local ruler or ancestor. The clearest evidence of this is found in the ninth/eighth-century Assyrian annals and in the eighth-century Aramaic Sefire Inscriptions. The goal of this paper is to lay the foundations for understanding the House of David in the ninth and eighth centuries within the broader phenomenon of terminology outside the Bible. The designations of “house” and “X” vary depending on the polity and the context, yet the terminology may be tied up in a political organization that is tribal, though equally expressed in city centers and kingdoms. Any solution will have to take into consideration the integration of tribal structures and city-centered kingdoms in the larger fabric of ancient society. In addition, the terminology does not appear to be distinctly Assyrian, and its application in the Assyrian Inscriptions may depend on the need to create a political characterization of groups that are not fully understood. The Tel Dan Inscription also points to a way of naming “the other”, even while the House of X terminology may be indigenous to Aramean polities. This paper will carefully examine the “House of X” in ancient Near Eastern historiography to show how the primary political identification of the House of David may have been with a population, not a royal family, before its clear identification with Judah.


Translating Instantaneous Perfect Verbs: Translating Isaiah 40–55
Program Unit: Book of Isaiah
Reed Lessing, Concordia Seminary

No other section of the Old Testament has as many problems in the use of verbal tenses as does Isaiah 40–55. Translations contradict each other and commentaries often resort to emendations in order to “correct” the prophet's grammar. This study specifically takes up Deutero-Isaiah's use of perfect verbs. I argue that many perfects in Isaiah 40-55 should be translated as instantaneous perfect verbs. When this happens the interpretive difference makes, as they say, all the difference in the world. The study will define "instantaneous perfect verbs" as well as performative speech utterances. It will then proceed to lay out the literary and historical contours of Isaiah 40-55 that will then lead into the study of specific texts. The prophet's goal is to announce that the LORD's mighty acts are not confined to the past or something that exiles must wait for in the future. The way out of captivity is to join the drama of chapters 40-55, confess sin, and rejoice in the Servant’s sacrifice. All of this, the prophet maintains through his use of instantaneous perfect verbs, is happening now.


Allusion to Isaiah in Daniel 7–12, in Light of 35 Years of Allusion Criticism
Program Unit: Book of Daniel
G. Brooke Lester, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary

The apocalypses of Daniel allude to the book of Isaiah several times, often in related ways. They do not simply refer covertly to or exegete Isaiah, but rather allude to Isaiah after the manner of a figurative trope akin to metaphor. Primarily, the function of this recurring allusive trope is to contribute to Daniel's vivid narrative characterization of "the nations" and the span of their rule over the people Israel. This presentation argues that a theoretically grounded examination of such allusions not only generates insights into the intent of the text, but generates contributions to scholarly discourse on literary allusion, biblical or non-biblical. When biblical studies is at its theoretical best, it not only partakes of its ancillary disciplines—such as archaeology, literary criticism, social and cultural studies, or linguistics—but gives back to them as well, developing and contributing to academic discourse in those ancillary disciplines. Unfortunately, the study of inner-biblical allusion, while sometimes drawing on non-biblical literary criticism of allusion, has struggled even to accomplish mutually intelligibility among its practitioners, still less to develop its own contributions to allusion criticism. The extensive literature on allusion as a figurative trope, and on its relation to different kinds of metaphor or to semioticians' conceptions of signs and signifieds, is reasonably often cited while only rarely engaged in sustained detail. While the many independent assessments of inner-biblical allusion in the scholarship have given rise to generative and insightful readings of allusive texts, the development of inner-biblical allusion as a coherent field of study in relationship with "secular" literary criticism has been slow and fragmentary. Assessing select allusions to Isaiah in apocalytpic Daniel, in rigorous and consistent conversation with non-biblical allusion criticism regarding allusion, metaphor, signification, metalepsis, and the roles of text and reader in the generation of meaning, this presentation demonstrates some of the yet-unrealized possibilities for a theoretically grounded biblical scholarship of literary allusion as a figurative trope.


The Reformation and Bible Printing in Zurich
Program Unit:
Urs B. Leu, Zentralbibliothek Zürich

During the 1530s and 40s, book production in Basel and Zurich increased due to growing demand, due probably to the Reformation, which stimulated lay literacy and emphasized better education. The strengths of Basel’s publishers were editions of the classics, the Church Fathers, the Humanists, various Reformers, and Latin Bibles, as well as medicine, whereas the main focus of Zurich publishers fell on German Bibles and the works of leading figures in the Zurich Reformed Church, especially Heinrich Bullinger. In both cities, many masterpieces of the printing trade were published, including the herbarium of Leonhard Fuchs and Conrad Gessner’s work on zoology. But this Golden Age was already over in Switzerland by 1580. The number of imprints decreased, because the demand for and distribution of books suffered from both the wars of religion and the process of confessionalization. The increasing demand for vernacular books fragmented the market, and several major publishers and entrepreneurs died, including Johannes Oporin in Basel in 1568, Christoph Froschauer in Zurich in 1564, and his nephew in 1582. None the less, the so-called Froschauer Bibles in German from Zurich survived all these economical and political vicissitudes, finding many friends and readers, especially among the Anabaptists (later called the Mennonites and Amish).


The Exodus Narrative and Northern Levitical Protest
Program Unit: Pentateuch
Mark Leuchter, Temple University

Many scholars have viewed the oldest strata of the Exodus narrative as a “charter myth” originating in support of the founding of the northern monarchy in the late 10th century BCE. Consequently, the prominence of the Exodus motif in later traditions associated with Levites has led some to conclude that the Levites were originally an integral part of this process and held official positions in the northern state cult. Evidence preserved in the Pentateuch, however, suggests that the situation was more complex and fractious than this, and that the founding of the northern cult and promulgation of the Exodus narrative as a charter myth occasioned a strong and sustained tradition of protest by many Levites in the north. This paper will suggest that an antecedent, pre-monarchic Exodus tradition firmly rooted in the old mythology of the Divine Warrior was sustained by these Levites and led to the formation of polemical works such as the Golden Calf tale (Exodus 32) and the Song of Moses (Deuteronomy 32). These inter-related works contributed to an effort to portray the northern monarchy itself as an embodiment of the mythic midbar and the locus of YHWH’s cosmic enemies – the very opposite of the Exodus myth espoused by the agents of the northern state.


Ezra's Priesthood in Rabbinic Memory
Program Unit: Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah
Mark Leuchter, Temple University

In the collective rabbinic tradition, Ezra is remembered primarily as a scribe and exegetical antecedent to the Rabbis themselves. A closer look at the rabbinic sources, however, shows that aspects of Ezra's priestly heritage and function have conditioned the manner in which his scribal/exegetical roles are characterized. Simultaneously, the passages in Ezra-Nehemiah emphasizing Ezra's scribal dimension exerted similar force upon rabbinic notices regarding his priesthood. The present study will consider the mnemo-historical implications of these mutually-related perceptions enshrined in the rabbinic texts. It will also examine the possibility that the Rabbis recognized the redactional strata in Ezra-Nehemiah that alternately and respectively presented Ezra in Priestly and Deuteronomistic terms.


Word Becoming Flesh: Toward a Methodology of Contextual Biblical Interpretation
Program Unit: Contextual Biblical Interpretation
Barbara Leung Lai, Tyndale University College & Seminary (Ontario)

(This is a key subject of my sabbatical book project—Word Becoming Flesh: Wisdom and Appropriation). Working inter-disciplinarily through the juxtaposition of three areas of inquiry: a) the interconnectedness of contemporary theories of globalization-contextualization-appropriation of the biblical texts (whether a few “common denominators” can be identified? [E.g. “context selection”]); b) the empirics of reading (i.e. Osborne’s “hermeneutical spiral”; the transitive affect of the text upon readers [Heschel]—further elaborated in Schuyler Brown’s Text and Psyche: Experiencing Scripture today; the dialogical and transformational model of Biblical Interpretation [M. Bakhtin, Daniel Sanchez, J. Vanier & F. Young]); and c) Narratival Interpretive Model (i.e. the interpretive “thrust” that calls for readers’ self-involvement in engaging text, allowing the biblical text to shape our own “life-person [Blumenthal]/life-world [Thiselton]/text-of-life [Leung Lai]”), I seek to hammer out an original version toward a methodology of “Context Biblical Interpretation.” Prominent in this outcome is the idea of “re-living” and “re-expressing” out of one’s gender-culture-context-situatedness. In the past, the “hows” of moving from textual meaning to contextual significance were primarily discussed on the conceptual level. Somehow, we need a methodology to strategically position “contextualization” at the core of the advances in the biblical field—this is my ultimate goal.


From Moses to Josiah: The Covenant between God and People in the Deuteronomistic History
Program Unit: Deuteronomistic History
Christoph Levin, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Within the books of Deuteronomy through Kings there are a number of covenant scenes which are similar to each other and in fact closely interrelated. The paper will show that none of these texts is original to the first edition of the Dtr History. In terms of history they are all fictitious, drawn up with theological intentions. The most important one is Deut 26:16-19, which originally stood at the close of the Deuteronomic code (Deut 12–26). 2 Kgs 23:1-3 proves to be a literary copy of Deut 26, also influenced by 2 Kgs 17:11. Other items of this genre are Josh 24 and 2 Sam 7.


Rab-shakeh's Hebrew Speech: History versus Rhetoric
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible, History, and Archaeology
Yigal Levin, Bar-Ilan University

The attack by Sennacherib king of Assyria on the kingdom of Judah is well-documented in the Bible, in Assyrian sources and in the archaeological record. Generally speaking, the biblical and Assyrian records concur, despite the differences in genre, in purpose and in their intended audience. In any case it is clear that the events of 701 BCE left a deep mark on the historical memory of Judah for generations to come. The biblical version of the events recounts that three senior Assyrian officials made their way to Jerusalem, and that one of them, whose title was “Rab-shakeh”, made a speech in “Judahite”, presumably the local dialect of Hebrew. This speech as recorded in the Bible, while clearly a part of the biblical narrative, is also very much like the type of speeches that Assyrian officials did deliver to the defenders of besieged cities. To at least some scholars, this similarity is proof of the basic historicity of the biblical speech as well, even if it did undergo a certain measure of editing. The fact that the speech was made in Hebrew is part of this historicity, since as a tool of propaganda or of psychological warfare it would naturally be aimed at the defenders and would be in their language. Several decades ago, Hayim Tadmor suggested that this “Rab-shakeh” knew Hebrew, because he was actually an Israelite, exiled from Samaria and meanwhile risen in the ranks of the Assyrian court. While Tadmor’s proposal did gain some support, it was never really discussed seriously by most scholars. This paper examines the Assyrian policies concerning deportation of conquered peoples and the fate of such deportees, Israelites and others, who were inducted into the imperial service. In light of this examination, we consider Tadmor’s proposal to be well-founded. Finally, we analyze Rab-shakeh’s speech as a speech delivered by such an Israelite exile who had become a senior Assyrian official, and who now wished to warn his Judahite brethren of their inevitable fate.


Why Did the Adversaries of Judah and Benjamin Emphasize Their Foreign Origins?
Program Unit: Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah
Yigal Levin, Bar-Ilan University

Upon arriving in Jerusalem some time after 538 BCE, the returnees let by Zerubbabel were approached by a group of people whom Ezra 4:1 refers to as "the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin", who requested, "Let us build with you, for we worship your God as you do, and we have been sacrificing to him ever since the days of King Esarhaddon of Assyria who brought us here." Most commentators identify these "adversaries" as the people later known as the Samaritans, although other proposals do exist. An apparently similar group are mentioned in verse 10 as "the nations whom the great and noble Osnappar deported and settled in the cities of Samaria and in the rest of the province Beyond the River". This paper examines the question of their claim to foreign origin: why would they make this claim, rather than claim to be indigenous, YHWH-worshipping, Israelites? Is this claim simply Judean propaganda? Or would the leaders of the "adversaries" have considered it advantageous to be descended from foreign deportees? This question will be examined in light of Assyrian deportation policies and the archaeological record, and we will propose a solution that might shed light on the "ethnogenesis" of the Samaritans during the Persian Period.


Jewish Art and the Transition from Paganism to Christianity: Rupture, Continuity, and Creativity
Program Unit: Art and Religions of Antiquity
Lee Levine, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Until recently, the post-70 era in Jewish history had been regarded as one of general decline (rabbinic society excepted). Following the crises caused by the three failed revolts of 70, 116, and 132 CE, the triumph of Christianity in the fourth century was assumed to have marked the end of a long era of overall toleration and acceptance under pagan rule. A far more discriminatory ambience, with all its attendant negativity, was now crystallizing and had been regarded as the dawn of the Middle Ages. This perception was founded on three factors: (1) hostile Byzantine imperial legislation; (2) the continuous harangue against Jews and Judaism by church fathers, who regarded both as posing a real danger of corrupting Christians in their beliefs and practices; and (3) the surfacing violence against the Jews that took the form of attacks on Jewish property, the demolition of synagogues and in some cases converting them into churches, and, finally, several attempts at coercive conversion to Christianity. This rather grim picture has been seriously challenged in recent decades. Along with the reevaluation of existing sources, the material found in archaeological excavations and in the Cairo Genizah have suggested a very different picture of Jewish life in Late Antiquity. This is particularly the case with regard to Jewish art in this era, which attests to the flourishing of strikingly creative expressions of new motifs and patterns. These dimensions, as well as their implications and ramifications, will be discussed with regard to Jewish society at this time.


The Significance of Salient Features
Program Unit: Metaphor Theory and the Hebrew Bible
Hanne Loeland Levinson, Det Teologiske Menighetsfakultet

Two questions are of outmost importance for everyone who works with metaphors: How does a metaphor map certain aspects of the source domain onto the target domain while others remain silent, and which aspects from the source are mapped onto the target? Building on the work I have done in my monograph, Silent or Salient Gender? Interpretation of Gendered God-Language, I argue that determining a metaphor’s salient features helps unfold the meaning of a metaphor. I identify the metaphor’s salient features using Robert Fogelin’s criteria presented in Figuratively Speaking, Yale University Press, 1988. According to Fogelin features are distinctive or salient when “they stand out, are prominent or conspicuous” and when they “play a central role in classifying or sorting things out.” Salient features are also context-bound and indicate a direction. The greatest advantage with Fogelin’s theory, compared to the established concepts of “downplaying” and “highlighting” from Lakoff and Johnson, is that it does not demand an overlap of associated commonplaces between the source and target. Neither does it demand an overlap between the entailments of otherwise inconsistent metaphors. An overlap cannot be a requirement for the understanding of a metaphor.


Dichotomies Be Damned: Investigation and Inspiration in the New Testament
Program Unit: Institute for Biblical Research
John Levison, Seattle Pacific University

Dichotomies Be Damned: Investigation and Inspiration in the New Testament


Bathing, Clothing, and the Law of the Cosmos: Adaptations of Greco-Roman Cultural Markers as Keys to the Vocation of the Rabbinic Sage
Program Unit: Hellenistic Judaism
David Levitan, Spertus College

Early rabbinic sages frequented Roman public bath houses and donned the Roman pallium. As religious and social elites, early rabbis grappled with establishing boundaries between their Jewish communities and the “outside” Greco-Roman world. In an effort to regulate and control the behavior of Jews who attended the baths, rabbinic sages made halakhic rulings which accepted this Roman institution as a valid “Jewish” custom. Legal approaches to Jewish attendance at the Roman bath houses, to the sages’ haberdashery, and to social deportment exemplify early rabbinic views concerning the adoption and adaptation of Hellenistic and Roman cultural artifacts such as the baths and the pallium. The author of 2 Maccabees and Josephus, viewed Jewish attendance at amphitheaters, gymnasia, and other non-Jewish institutions as a betrayal of the Jewish way of life (Judaism, ’Ioudaismos). In contrast to their predecessors, early rabbis sought to Judaize Roman cultural institutions by crafting rules governing Jews’ utilization of these facilities. Prominent rabbis such as Gamliel II, Judah haNasi, and Yohanan frequented theses public facilities (dymosion, balaneion). Within this confluence of Jewish, Greco-Roman, natural, and super-natural influences that converged at the bath house, the rabbis grasped a key opportunity to demonstrate to fellow Jews that God chose the rabbinic sages to lead Jewry in the post-destruction era. Adopting and revising modalities and values of Greco-Roman philosopher sages, rabbinic sages offered a vision for the reconstitution of Judaism in the Greco-Roman world. Like Plotinus, who drew on earlier Stoic concepts, the rabbis viewed “the sage” as the standard (Gk.: kanwn) of human conduct. The rabbinic sages possessed the insight to unite the just requirements of earthly law (Torah) as expressed in Tiqqun ha’Olam (repairing the world) with the supernal preexistent law of heaven (Bereshit Rabbah 1.1). As Philo’s nomos empsychos (see Diotogenes 71.18-23), the rabbinic sage embodied the supernal divine law. The sage, or the collegium of the sages, was the living law on earth. Like Philostratus’ Apollonius of Tyana and Lucian’s Cynic sage Pancrates, rabbinic sages became philosophical holy-men and wonder-workers who controlled both the heavenly and earthly realms. In order to advertise their claimed status as leaders of the Jewish world, the rabbinic sages daily wore the Greek philosopher’s pallium (Talit). The pallium was equivalent to the four-cornered, nearly square tetragwna ‘imation or quadrangulus described by Tertullian (De Pallio 1). By dressing so, the rabbis positioned themselves as the Jewish equivalent of the Hellenistic sage in Roman Palestine. By the sage’s learning, apprehension of the physical and spiritual worlds, and special access to the divine realm, rabbis could claim to mediate truth between the Jewish and Greco-Roman worlds which came together at the bath house.


Principles of Ordination in the Early SDA Church, 1844–1900
Program Unit: Adventist Society for Religious Studies
Theodore Levterov, Loma Linda University

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Resetting Our Iconoclastic Clock: The Iconography of Abstract Representations of Divinity
Program Unit: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Bible
Theodore J. Lewis, Johns Hopkins University

Abstract portrayals of divinity are attested throughout the ancient Near East and thus it is not surprising that we find similar representations in the religion of ancient Israel which, despite its particulars, was fully a part of this world. Scholars from Thorkild Jacobsen to Karel van der Toorn to Benjamin Sommer have used the vocabulary of Rudolph Otto to describe how abstract representations were far better suited to convey both the fascinans and tremendum of divinity. This paper addresses what on the surface looks to be a counter-intuitive topic: the iconography of abstract thought. The study of iconography, at least that practiced by historians of ancient Israelite religion, is focused, appropriately so, on material culture. Yet to what degree can iconography be used for aniconic and abstract traditions? To what degree could such abstract images serve as “attention focusing devices” (à al Colin Refrew) that served pragmatically in the Judean worship of Yahweh in the Iron Age? From Sacred Stone to Sacred Emptiness: From the literary portrayal of religion in the Hebrew Bible, we come across a wide ranging use of abstract ideas and symbols to depict the divine: standing stones, divine “radiance” (kabod), divine/ethereal fire, solar imagery, Deuteronomistic (hypostatic) “name” theology, empty space aniconism/invisibility (mixed with Ark theology and large scale Cherubim imagery), and the notion (derived etymologically) that Yahweh constitutes a “god of being” of some sort (either existential, ontological or causal). The paper will explore these concepts and juxtapose them against relevant ancient Near Eastern analogues including: (a) The Iron Age Ayn Dara temple in neighboring Syria where artisans depicted a transcendent, enormous unseen deity who was nonetheless immanent as evidenced by the huge footprints he/she left behind; (b) The huge human-headed winged bulls (aladlammu) prevalent throughout the Neo-Assyrian empire that can be compared with the large scale Cherubim in 1 Kings 6; (c) The Kuttamuwa stele from Zincirli (discovered in 2008) describing how a “soul/essence/spirit/being” (nbš) was envisioned as continuing to dwell in the stele itself (perhaps analogous to divinity inhabiting a massebah); (d) The depiction of the Mesopotamian concept of melammu (a radiant, supernatural force) similar to the biblical kabod; (e) The concept of light to depict divinity in the Egyptian Aten cult; and (f) The practical presence of real fire within sacred space to focus attention on divinity due to its ethereal and numinous qualities.


“Turn Your House into a Church:” Prescribed Domestic Rituals in the Preaching of John Chrysostom
Program Unit: Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism
Blake Leyerle, University of Notre Dame

In the course of his preaching, John Chrysostom repeatedly urges his congregations to make their houses into churches and suggests a variety of concrete practices whereby they can achieve this goal. Some of these practices—such as inscriptions on doors and windows and the careful positioning of ritualized objects—have a pronounced apotropaic aspect and have interesting parallels in the wider literary and archaeological record. Other prescribed activities—such as scriptural readings and prayers—have left no material trace, and we cannot be certain that they were ever practiced. But what we can know is that these recommendations formed a whole in the mind of John Chrysostom. In this paper, I propose to consider all of these practices together for what they can tell us about the household as both a ritualized space, and a conceptual system. This focus on the house as a unified field of devotional activity would thus build on the work already done by Silke Trzcionka, whose generic treatment of magical practices in 4th century Syria precluded any systematic consideration of locales. In addition to shedding interesting light on extra-ecclesial devotions in late antiquity, this paper promises to illuminate John Chrysostom’s understanding of the constituent elements of a church and the role of domestic practices in reinforcing Christian identity.


The Implied Watchmaker: Collecting and Collectors in Greco-Egyptian ‘Magical’ Formularies
Program Unit: Religious World of Late Antiquity
Lynn Lidonnici, Vassar College

The study of so-called ‘magic’ in the ancient Mediterranean world is intertwined with developments in the study of religion overall, as definitions of ‘magic’ and ‘religion’ – or rejections of those definitions – have formed so great a part of the development of the field. Decisions made about these definitions affect the data set a given scholar will choose for investigation or the weight she or he will give to the various elements within that set. In the study of ancient ‘magic,’ for example, one must decide whether to include evidence from magical handbooks, from archeological remains, and from literary representations, and how much weight to give each. One thing upon which nearly every scholar agrees is that in late antiquity itself, there was no specifically named category of practice that conforms very well with concepts of ‘magic’ as developed in the 19th and 20th century. At the same time, we do possess long, composite collections of materials, usually called ‘magical handbooks’ or formularies, from late antique Greek-speaking Egypt. The longer formularies can be regarded as libraries, reflecting (in some cases clearly reflecting) patterns of pre-collection and redaction. Do these collections reflect a kind of random list-making and copying impulse among scribal houses? If so, this could tell us a lot about the access to books or materials of a particular individual or scribe during a particular time. Do the collections reflect a purposeful selection that can function as a map of some kind of category of material that a scribe or his employer understood as belonging together in a single book or scroll, and if so, what can the varied contents tell us about this category?


Media Culture, New Philology, and the Pseudepigrapha: A Note on Method
Program Unit: Pseudepigrapha
Liv Ingeborg Lied, MF Norwegian School of Theology

In recent decades, the methodological perspective of so-called New Philology has been developed in studies of medieval French and Norse literature as an alternative and complementary perspective to other philological approaches. New Philology basically suggests that copies of texts do not produce variants: they are variance. Hence, each copy is regarded a literary product per se. From the perspective of New Philology, literary works do not exist independently of their material embodiment. Rather, the physical form of the text is an integral part of its meaning – also when the text in focus is a copy of an earlier text witness. A main principle of New Philology is that physical objects like manuscripts come into being at particular times and places and for particular purposes, and that we cannot interpret the texts without taking into consideration how these contexts are part of their meaning. Discussions of the historical transmission and various functions of the Pseudepigrapha have been raised by, among others, Marinus de Jonge, Robert A. Kraft and Jim Davila. Kraft has pointed out that most writings categorized as “Pseudepigrapha” do not survive in their “original” versions – the manuscripts that contain them have more often been produced, preserved, used, and transmitted in various forms in medieval or late antique Christian milieus: regardless of their original provenance these texts are in this regard Christian materials and integral to a medieval/late antique Christian media culture. This paper aims to further the insights of Kraft and others by discussing how a new-philological perspective could provide new entry points to the study of pseudepigraphical texts that (a) survive in one or few manuscripts – while the text was probably once living literature (e.g. 2 Baruch), (b) appear in different versions in different cultural contexts – stressing that copies are variance rather than variants of an assumed original text (e.g. Enoch material), (c) are part of a manuscript context – noting that the text in question is one among other texts and part of a physical artefact: a material contexts that in all due probability affected the interpretation of the text (e.g. 4 Ezra) (d) were part of a larger media culture where (ritual) performance, orality-aurality, and memorization played key roles.


The Epistle of Barnabas as Reflecting a Group of Jewish Followers of Jesus
Program Unit: Construction of Christian Identities
Bert Jan Lietaert Peerbolte, VU University Amsterdam

The Epistle of Barnabas was, most likely, written in the first part of the second century CE. Its content betrays its rootedness in Jewish soil, and yet it focuses on Jesus Christ as the central figure in its religious orientation. The group that produced this document should for this reason be characterized as a primarily Jewish group. In various passages, EpBarn interprets sections of the Jewish Bible in an allegorical manner, thereby pointing out their alleged deeper meaning. This paper focuses especially on chapters 10-16, and intends to shed light on the way in which EpBarn deals with passages from the Jewish Scriptures in a way that contributes to the construction of a new, “Christian” narrative. This particular section raises a number of questions about the identity of the group that produced the document: Does this group understand itself as a Jewish group or does it see itself as separated from Judaism? Does the writing reflect pagan followers of Jesus? And: how does EpBarn deal with the writings and history of Israel? In response to the work of Jonathan Z. Smith, who has underlined the variety of early Judaism, it will be argued that the EpBarn should be seen as reflecting the identity and values of a particular Jewish group, that considered itself as standing in full continuity with the legacy and history of Israel. This seems to underline the approach by Daniel Boyarin and others who argue, primarily on the basis of Walter Bauer’s work, that the first centuries of the Common Era were characterized by a variety of Christianities and Judaisms.


New Testament Conjectural Emendation: A (Brief) History
Program Unit: New Testament Textual Criticism
Bert Jan Lietaert Peerbolte, VU University Amsterdam

The importance of the history of conjectural emendation has long been overlooked in New Testament textual criticism. Nevertheless, many conjectures have been proposed over the centuries, and a number of these are still mentioned in the critical apparatus of Nestle-Aland 27. In Amsterdam, an attempt is being made to map the history of New Testament conjectural emendation. This paper will present the research project as a whole. It pictures the importance of studying conjectural emendation by focusing on the “historical turn” in textual criticism. It presents the choices made for the various parts of the project, and gives a number of examples of conjectures that are considered relevant for new editions as well. Furthermore, it will introduce the database of conjectures on the New Testament that is being created in Amsterdam at the moment.


Theory and Method in the Socio-rhetorical Analysis of Earliest Rabbinic Literature
Program Unit: Rhetoric of Religious Antiquity
Jack Lightstone, Brock Universtiy

In Roman antiquity and for scholars of that period, rhetoric refers to formalized arts of argument for specific socio-cultural contexts, such as the law court or the governing council. Contemporary Greco-Roman handbooks of rhetoric attest to the level of formalization. And writings, such as those of Cicero, are viewed as exemplars of such formalized arts. Both the handbooks and the writings of rhetors provide a window into social institutions and cultural norms, precisely because rhetoric implies faithfulness to context-appropriate rules for authoritative speech. And where there are rules, there are social formations that make and legitimate them. As regards the earliest rabbinic magnum opus, the Mishnah—it too evinces faithfulness to normative, highly stylized patterns of expression, although these exhibit little, if any, resemblance to classical forms of Greco-Roman rhetoric. In addition, no handbook of rabbinic rhetoric has ever been produced by the earliest rabbinic movement. This paper proffers both a conceptual-theoretical framework and a methodological approach for undertaking the socio-rhetorical analysis of Mishnah (and of other early rabbinic texts). Moreover, it examines some typical Mishnaic passages as rhetoric, and draws on that basis conclusions about the core expertise that lay at the heart of the social formation of the earliest rabbinic guild and its self-definition.


An Introductory Catalogue of Early Rabbinic Rhetoric, Part II: Halakhic Midrash and Talmud Yerushalmi
Program Unit: Rhetoric and Early Christianity
Jack N. Lightstone, Brock Universtiy

To shed light on the patterns of rhetoric in the New Testament, students of early Christian literature have long looked to normative rhetorical patterns of the Greco-Roman world as a context for, and source of influence on, early Christian authors. However, interest has arisen in looking to Ancient Judaisms and their literature, including that of the early Rabbinic movement, as another, complementary source for understanding the range of formal modes of argumentation in use in the New Testament. This paper follows last year's in continuing to proffer an indicative sampling of the dominant rhetorical patterns in evidence in early rabbinic legal literature from the late 2nd to late 5th centuries CE. Last year, a primer of rhetorical patterns in Mishnah and Tosefta was provided. The current paper continues in the same vein with the presentation of core rhetorical patterns characterizing the Halakhic Midrashim and the Talmud Yerushalmi. While scholars have identified in early Rabbinic texts patterns comparable to the formal canons of Greco-Roman rhetoric, the purpose of this paper is, again, to present early Rabbinic literature’s rhetorical patterns in their own right. While we do not have evidence that would permit us confidently to date the formal literary traits that characterize the earliest document’s of the rabbinic corpus to the period of the New Testament authors, early Rabbinic literature’s dominant rhetorical traits provide another comparator for understanding the rhetorical patterns of the New Testament in context.


Josephus Constructs the Samari(t)ans: A Strategic Construction of Judean/Jewish Identity through the Rhetoric of Inclusion and Exclusion
Program Unit: Josephus
Sung Uk Lim, Vanderbilt University

The thesis is that Josephus performs a dual dynamic discourse of inclusion and exclusion aimed at strategically constructing Judean/Jewish identity in lesser assimilation to and more distinction from the Samarians/Samaritans in terms of ethnicity, geography, politics, religion and culture, in the diasporic context. Josephus does not deploy the rhetoric of inclusion and exclusion in a dichotomous manner, but along a continuum with varying degrees of both sameness and difference. Given that the boundary per se between Judeans/Jews and Samarians/Samaritans is fictive and fluid rather than being real and fixed, Josephus’ attitudes toward the Samarians/Samaritans could be inclusive sometimes and exclusive other times, depending on a specific context. Thus, Josephus makes the most of the Samarians/Samaritans as a foil against which the Judean/Jewish people may establish a strategic construction of their identity. The basic assumption underlying this paper is that identity construction, in general, operates within the dialectical framework between self and other and, by extension, ‘us’ and ‘them.’ Interestingly, identity is predicated on difference which is in a relative state, not in an absolute one. Another assumption is that the construction of the self stands in juxtaposition to the construction of the other. This means that the other is to be invented as counterpart to the self and vice versa. The final assumption is that literary texts themselves perform a facet of identity of the writer with a certain readership in mind. Along the lines of Judith Lieu, I uphold the performative dimension of identity in and through texts. To explore the Judean/Jewish and Samarian/Samaritan rapport in Josephus’ writings, I will also set out to establish an interpretive framework for the historiographical construction of Judean/Jewish identity in the Hellenistic and Roman context by reformulating Shaye Cohen’s analytical categories, ethnic, geographic, political, religious and/or cultural, as malleable and permeable.


Apophatic Visions: Divine Presence in the Mosaics of Moses and the Transfiguration of Christ at St. Katherine’s Monastery through the Cappadocians
Program Unit: Art and Religions of Antiquity
Vasiliki Limberis, Temple University

Most studies of the 6th century mosaics at St. Katherine’s Monastery at Mt. Sinai depicting Moses and the Burning Bush, Moses receiving the Tablets, and the Transfiguration of Jesus Christ focus on how the works of art engender a transformation in the believing viewers, enabling them to “see,” or rather “glimpse,” the divine. The valuable studies of both Elsner and Andreopoulos explore this type of “mystic viewing” of the beholder. In contrast to their vantage point, this paper centers on two aspects of the visual impact of the mosaics, implicit in their composition and arrangement, and facilitated in the commentaries. The first aspect is the exploration of what the believers possibly see of the divine beyond the narrative stories, from evidence in the mosaics, grounded in the Biblical texts, and guided by the several expositions on Moses and the Transfiguration scattered throughout the writings of the Cappadocian Fathers. The second aspect is the investigation of how the divine presence is evoked apophatically in spaces, obstructions, abstractions, pauses, suggestions, and silence. Methodologically the paper first establishes just how much – or how little -- the texts, the commentaries, and the mosaics allow for divine presence and divine absence. Tracing the movement of antitheses in both the mosaics and the texts, the paper explores the literary and visual cues for divine presence and withdrawal. Careful analysis of the motion in the mosaics and the texts exposes the series of contrasts, such as the natural world/eternity, mortal/immortal, blindness/seeing, sleep/waking, thick cloud/divine darkness, all so crucial to evoking, and accessing, the divine presence. As such the contrasts set the stage of the dynamism of divine presence, since it is ever elusive and potentially annihilating to humanity. Next the role of all the senses except taste in the perception of divinity is dealt with. How the senses both invite the divine presence in communication yet are themselves circumscribed by divinity is explored. Finally, within the context of the Transfiguration mosaic and the two depicting Moses, the paper questions the premise that divinity is always visible in the person of Jesus, the incarnate Logos. The vocabulary of the three mosaics and the literary texts is much more ambiguous than the teachings on the two natures of Christ, pronounced at the Council of Chalcedon, would have it. In conclusion the paper sums up the apophatic vision as divine presence or absence, and what this might say about the nature of humanity and divinity.


Dominique Barthélemy's Contribution to the Study of Masoretic Guidelines for the Layout of the "Songs"
Program Unit: Masoretic Studies
Sarah Lind, United Bible Societies

Barthélemy's Critique Textuelle analyzes the arrangements of the Song of the Sea (Exod. 15) and the Song of Moses (Deut. 32) in medieval manuscripts vis a vis the guidelines for those arrangements in the Masseket Sopherim and Maimonides. Besides furthering our understanding of the various realizations of the guidelines, Barthélemy's observations had a direct impact on layout decisions for the Song of Moses in BHQ.


Mad Magazine’s Book of Revelation: The Apocalyptic Art of Basil Wolverton
Program Unit: Bible and Popular Culture
Benjamin Lindquist, Yale University

Basil Wolverton (1909-1978), the influential “Michelangelo of Mad Magazine,” has of late enjoyed a resurgence in popularity. A posthumous retrospective of his work was held during the summer of 2009 at Barbara Gladstone Gallery, one of New York's premier “blue chip” galleries, which represents some of the most established figures in the contemporary art world (e.g., Anish Kapoor, Mathew Barney, etc.). The exhibition at Gladstone led to an article in The New York Times, followed by the publication of a number of books showcasing a hodgepodge of Basil Wolverton’s drawings. However, despite this recent interest, there has been little scholarly investigation into the art and life of Basil Wolverton. While Wolverton is best known for his brilliantly grotesque illustrations that appeared in Mad Magazine, he also devoted a substantial amount of time to creating religious illustrations for Herbert W. Armstrong's idiosyncratic millenarian “Radio Church of God,” headquartered in Pasadena, California. Most prominent among his religious works was a children’s bible written and illustrated by Wolverton, which was first issued in installments in Armstrong’s The Plain Truth magazine. The Bible Story, a liberally adapted version of the Hebrew Bible, was later printed in six parts totaling over 1300 pages. Additionally, Wolverton created a number of drawings illustrating the Book of Revelation, published both in The Plain Truth magazine and in two apocalyptic pamphlets printed in 1956: 1975 in Prophesy and The Book of Revelation Unveiled at Last. Despite the heterodoxy of his teachings, Armstrong’s radio program, “The World Tomorrow,” reached its popular apex in the 1950s with almost five million listeners. It was during this time that Armstrong and Wolverton collaborated on the two aforementioned pamphlets which guaranteed an immanent apocalypse. These pamphlets are thought to contain Wolverton's finest religious work. In this paper, I will focus on Wolverton’s pamphlets in order to re-contextualize his work, which is almost invariably viewed independently of the context for which it was originally created. Unlike typical biblical illustrations of the period, which attempt to emphasize the Bible’s historic venerability, Wolverton’s striking illustrations, I will argue, stress the extreme urgency of the present situation. Through this exploration I hope to elucidate the creative symbiosis of America’s most bizarre radio prophet, Herbert W. Armstrong, and the insurmountably strange art of Basil Wolverton.


The Royal Scam: Josiah, Joseph Smith, and Believing One's Own Pious Fraud
Program Unit: Metacriticism of Biblical Scholarship
Jim Linville, University of Lethbridge

As is well known the history of religions is replete with stories of the discovery of purportedly lost or miraculously appearing books with messages from deities. This includes instances from ancient Egypt and Rome to 19th century America with the claimed discovery and translation of the book of Mormon. Some of these discovery tales have been accorded legitimacy while others have been suppressed or denounced as forgeries. Joseph Smith found an accepting audience but also incurred the accusation of fraud from many others. The historicity of the story of Josiah’s law-book and reform (2 Kings 22-23) occupies a central position in debates about the composition of much of the Hebrew Bible and the work of so-called deuteronomists. In a 2003 paper in Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, that revolves around the story of Josiah, Arthur J. Droge finds it curious that the lexica of Religious Studies tends to exclude the term “fraud” despite it occurring frequently within religious discourse. He writes that a cynic may well regard fraud as the “modus operandi religiousus.” Droge refrains from asserting that fraud should be an analytical category for religious studies, preferring to call attention to the need for critical analysis of how religious communities—and academic disciplines—construct legitimacy and illegitimacy within the socio-political contexts in which their texts are produced. Yet, the question of fraud or forgery is not easily subsumed under this larger project. This paper takes a “cynical” approach to Josiah and Joseph Smith as a thought experiment to tease out some interpretative benefits of asking directly if a given religious text is the result of a deliberate fraud or forgery and relating this to legitimizing strategies that generate religious belief.


On the Fairytales of Bronze Age Goat-Herders: Ancient Israel as the New Atheists' Foil
Program Unit: Metacriticism of Biblical Scholarship
Jim Linville, University of Lethbridge

One common dismissal of the biblical material by those active in the so-called New Atheist Movement is the description of the Old Testament as bronze age goat herders' fairy-tales. With this as a starting point, this paper addresses how the religions of ancient Israel and the biblical texts are often misrepresented in this popular literature and online resources. Of course, such characterizations are academically indefensible but for their proponents they serve to relegate the biblical materials to the past and to highlight that the Bible should be inadmissible in discussions of scientific topics or modern political and ethical questions. Some secular biblical scholars may well share the overall goal of de-privileging the Bible in modern discourse and so the question of the relationship between scholarship and activism with its sometimes less than academic rhetoric becomes an important issue. Without seeking to defend the Bible's relevance to the modern world (while admitting that relevance is a subjective evaluation) this paper argues that secular biblical scholars should be as concerned about these kinds of anti-religious mischaracterizations of ancient Israel and the Bible as they are of the literalist and conservative religious misrepresentations of biblical origins. This is especially the case when mischaracterizations are found in contexts which do influence how people address social issues, such as the works of influential writers such as Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins. Mischaracterization impacts the perception of the worth of the humanities as a broad discipline and can have more serious political implications. This paper, then, seeks to open a dialogue on the social roles and responsibilities of the secular study of ancient Israel and the Bible.


Judah’s Sentence of Tamar in Genesis 38:24: An Example of Ancient Israelite Family Law?
Program Unit: Biblical Law
Hilary Lipka, University of New Mexico

In Gen 38:24, Judah is informed that his daughter-in-law Tamar has engaged in illicit sexual behavior, and is in fact pregnant from her actions. “Bring her out,” responds Judah, “and let her be burned.” Most biblical scholars, when confronted with Judah’s sentence of Tamar in this verse, appear to take it for granted that Judah had the right as paterfamilias to decide Tamar’s fate, that burning was an appropriate, if harsh, punishment, and that Judah’s sentence of Tamar reflected ancient Israelite practice regarding family law. However, is this really the case? Does the evidence from other biblical sources support the conclusion that putting a woman to death by fire was an appropriate punishment in such circumstances and that the paterfamilias would have had the authority to impose such a sentence? Should Judah’s sentence of Tamar be viewed as a typical example of family law as it was practiced in ancient Israel? In order to answer these questions, I will consider (1) the nature of Tamar’s crime, (2) who usually determines the punishment in such cases, (3) the range of punishments usually given for those found guilty of similar forms of illicit sexual behavior, (4) the use of burning as a punishment in biblical texts, and (5) whether Judah’s right to sentence his daughter-in-law to death in such a case likely reflected actual ancient Israelite legal practice.


The Royal Persian Garden and the Answer to the 'Riddle of Ramat Rahel'
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible, History, and Archaeology
Oded Lipschits, Tel Aviv University

Ramat Rahel is the site of the only palace known archaeologically from Judah. It was traditionally dated to the 8th-7th centuries BCE and related to the kings of the kingdom Judah. From the first excavations at the site it was clear that there is a riddle concerning the Persian period: On the one hand, the palatial compound that was excavated at the site was dated to the Iron Age. On the other hand the presence of hundreds of yhwd stamped handles and many other finds from the Persian Period remained with no apparent architectural context accept for some poorly built walls and installations that were attributed by the excavator to both the Persian and late Hellenistic periods (Stratum IVB). The renewed excavations at the site had exposed many fascinating finds that are to be dated to the Persian period. Especially important in the royal garden that was revealed during the new excavations. Standard archaeological procedures could not reveal the garden's flora, as no secure archaeo-botanical remains could be retrieved. A unique method of extracting fossil pollen from ancient plaster enabled us for the first time to reconstruct the exact vegetation components of the royal garden. It became clear that some of the more prominent flora, like the Citron (Citrus medica) and the Persian walnut, is not native to the Judean hills and should be traced to its origins in Persia and even India. These and other revelations concerning the garden shed light on the cultural world of the residence's inhabitants. In this paper we will present for the first time the garden, the architecture and all other associated finds from the Persian period (5th-3th century BCE), as excavated at Ramat Ra?el. Our explorations will demonstrate how Ramat Ra?el reached its zenith during the Persian period, serving as an imperial administrative center. We will also demonstrate that the site declined towards the end of the Persian period only to regain some importance toward the later part of the Hellenistic period.


Azekah in Light of New Surveys and Excavations
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
Oded Lipschits, Tel Aviv University

The valley of Ella is renowned for its fertile soil and strategic location as a thoroughfare connecting between the southern coastal plain to the west and the Judaean hills to the east. Its affluent environment and geopolitical significant are reflected through the biblical traditions placing important political event and military Butterfields within its grounds. Since 2009 the Ellah valley is at the heart of a regional project conducted by the Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University, intended to reveal its settlement history over the ages. The project includes intensive surveys and excavations at two of the key sites: Azekah and Socho. In our lecture we will present the new data collected through the surveys at Azekah, as well as the conclusions from the first season of excavations at the site by the Tel-Aviv and Heidelberg Lautenschläger Azekah Expedition. We will connect the archaeological finds to the historical data on this area, using the long-term settlement pattern revealed in our field work, in order to gain a better understanding of the history of the site and its place in the history of the region.


Signature Pedagogies for Ancient Fiction? Paul and Thecla as Test Case
Program Unit: Ancient Fiction and Early Christian and Jewish Narrative
B. Diane Lipsett, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Lively and varied recent scholarship on the Acts of Paul (and Thecla) suggests certain disciplinary habits of mind in the study of ancient novelistic texts. In the classroom, rather than simply presenting the results of scholarship, one may invite students to participate in at least some of the questions, conflicts, and negotiations that mark research and analysis. Recent work with the Acts of Paul (and Thecla) suggests ways to engage students in learning literary reading practices, contesting views of the canonical Paul, tracing the transmission of ancient texts, and analyzing later reception of the figures of Paul and Thecla.


Desire without Eros in 1 Clement's Rhetoric of Repentance
Program Unit: Inventing Christianity: Apostolic Fathers, Apologists, and Martyrs
B. Diane Lipsett, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Throughout 1 Clement’s deliberative appeals that the church at Corinth abandon faction and schism and return to conditions of concord and peace, the letter manifests a varied rhetoric of repentance. On behalf of the church at Rome, the author issues calls for metanoia, exhortations to paideia, and a range of related images of cleansing, intercession, supplication, and departure. Like other ancient moral exhortations, the letter urges self-control and moderation of desire or passion; enkrateia and sophrosyne are key virtues, particularly as the letter begins and ends. Yet unlike many other moral writings, the desires that are to be restrained are distinctly unerotic and the virtues to be achieved are more static and stratified than passionate. The epistle’s distinctive configurations of desire and virtue shape some of its constituent forms, including vice lists, household codes, exempla, and citation of textual authorities, which, in turn, contribute to the larger rhetorical strategies.


The Semantics of Fire in the Targumim
Program Unit: Aramaic Studies
Andrew Litke, Catholic University of America

The Aramaic language has two words for fire in its lexicon: nur and išša. Utilizing the targumim as a corpus and qualia roles as a means of classification, this paper presents a clearer understanding of the lexical meaning for the two words. In dialects where the words are clearly distinguished, išša is a natural element governed by a sacred agent. Nur, however, is an artifactual element with a profane agent and an explicit purpose. Due to the fact that the two words share the same Constitutive Role (same physical substance), there is a degree of overlap which led at first to their interchangeability and later to the predominance of nur.


Jesus, Hermes, and Dionysus: The Divine Child in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas
Program Unit: Christian Apocrypha
M. David Litwa, University of Virginia

The character of Jesus in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (IGT) is an enigma. Although a sometimes sweet and playful child, he is also a dangerous and seemingly arbitrary killer. It is no surprise, then, that the Jesus of IGT has been accused of being an “enfant terrible who seldom acts in a Christian way!” But if Jesus “seldom acts in a Christian way,” it is difficult to claim that he acts like the (or a) Christian god either. This is even more problematic, since the author of this gospel seems intent on emphasizing Jesus’ divine identity. Using traditions of Greek child gods (Hermes in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, Heracles in Ps.-Apollodorus, and Dionysus in Euripides’ Bacchae), I show how Jesus’ love of honor and jealous wrath accords well with the depiction of deities in Greco-Roman folk theology. I conclude that IGT makes an astute theological statement about the divine identity of Jesus. Jesus is not divine because of his passionless aseity. He is divine because he demands honor and manifests his power like any typical Greco-Roman god. This conclusion has implications for how the common Christian conceived of divinity in the days of Christianity’s own infancy.


Reading Childlessness in Luke-Acts from the Eyes of Chinese
Program Unit: Contextual Biblical Interpretation
Tsui Yuk Louise Liu, Chinese University of Hong Kong

“The impact of childlessness on psychological well being among elderly Chinese is more robust than that found in older Americans” (Kee-Lee CHOU & Iris CHI 2004:457). Indeed, childlessness is a social-psychological issue not just bothering Chinese older adults, but also other age groups. In this paper, childlessness in Luke-Acts, a neglected theme in the Forschungsgeschichte, is rediscovered through Chinese contextual reading. Entry points are two remarkable Lukan dictions, that is, “womb” (koinia) and “barren” (steira), which are clearly connected with the childlessness motif. To be more specific, in Chinese context, childlessness is clustered with other social issues, for instance one-child policy, advanced maternal age, childfree, bias for boys, trafficking of children, surrogacy, national tragedies (e.g. 2008 Sichuan earthquake), and so forth. The discussion is fourfold in this paper. Right at the beginning of Luke, a childless couple is introduced, namely Zacharius and Elizabeth, who are emphasized as having “no child” and “advanced in age” (Luke 1:7). Much more, Elizabeth is highlighted as being “called barren” (Luke 1:36; cf. 1:7). Their righteousness and childlessness recalls us the case of Abraham’s family (Acts 7:5). Another case study is the aged widow prophetess Anna. Although the text does not mention whether she has any child, she is described to live as if childless, for instance, “She never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day” (Luke 2:37). Several one-child families facing childlessness are investigated (Luke 7:1-10, 11-17; 8:40-56; 9:37-43). The most eye-catching case is the resurrection-debate in Luke 20:27-40 (cf. Mark 12:18-27 and Matt 22:23-33). Only in the context of Luke-Acts does the recurring Lukan childlessness motif bring new insights to this synoptic pericope. The pericope, not only laments childlessness of a woman, but redefines her identity and dignity by getting rid of marriage and childbearing.


Holding Out Hope for the Intruders: The Prophetic Background of Jude’s Offer of Mercy
Program Unit: Letters of James, Peter, and Jude
Darian Lockett, Biola University

The traditional understanding of Jude 22-23 is that the author exhorts his audience to extend mercy to members of the community who are wavering in their faith due to the influence of the intruders. This position rests upon two primary assertions: first, that diakrinomenous (v. 22) be translated “doubt” and second, that the three relative pronouns (ou3j) in vv. 22-23 refer to subcategories within Jude’s audience. Both of these assertions have been challenged on grammatical grounds. Building on such evidence, this paper argues that Jude’s “prophetic discourse” follows the traditional model of sure prophetic condemnation with a final offer of hope and mercy. Elements of typical Jewish prophetic literature’s paradigmatic warning, indictment, announcement of judgment, and final extension of mercy surface in Jude. Thus not only grammatically but also in keeping with the Jewish prophetic tradition standing behind his text Jude both announces condemnation and yet holds out hope of mercy for the intruders.


The Return of Paul in Slavoj Žižek’s Philosophical Discourse: A Return of Male-Centered Religion?
Program Unit: Gender, Sexuality, and the Bible
Ole Jakob Løland, Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo

The religious figure Paul the Apostle has returned to continental philosophy as an inspiration for various thinkers. This paper focuses on one of these thinkers, the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek and interprets his turn to Paul as an expression of what has been called ‘the return of religion’. The paper suggests that religion returns in Žižek through an attempt of secularizing Paul and what Zizek calls his “orthodox” Christianity. Does this version of religious orthodoxy lead to an old male-centered religion? Paul has been used to legitimize the subordination throughout the history of Christianity. The article analyzes Žižek’s return to Paul in relation to sexual differences, using Žižek’s reading of Paul’s epistle to the Galatians 3, 28 as a symptom of this. Žižek is not recognizing the struggle for gender equality and sexual rights as a truly universal struggle. The class struggle is the place for the true Universalism in the Pauline sense of the word, according to Žižek.


Jesus the Christ as the "Measure of All Things": Social-cultural Intertexture in Ephesians 4
Program Unit: Rhetoric of Religious Antiquity
Fredrick J. Long, Asbury Theological Seminary

The presentation discusses the distinction between social-cultural historical realia (in terms of SRI's intertexture) and the use of social-cultural models for interpretation in Ephesians 4.


Emphasis and Prominence Markers in Greek: A Proposal and Case Study within 2 Corinthians
Program Unit: Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics
Fredrick J. Long, Asbury Theological Seminary

Steven Runge’s Discourse Grammar of the Greek New Testament (2010) and tagged Lexham Discourse Greek New Testament (2008) or LDGNT represent an ambitious attempt to provide a function based and cross-linguistic approach to discourse that is flexible and “robust enough to handle the mess” of actual language use (p.4). Drawing heavily upon Stephen Levinsohn throughout, Runge emphasizes Levinsohn’s warning against two pitfalls in analyzing texts: neglecting conventional syntactic or semantic explanations for more complex and convoluted text-linguistic ones and not correlating text-linguistic rules to conventional ones. Foundational premises for Runge are that “Choice implies meaning” (§1.1), “Semantic or inherent meaning should be differentiated from pragmatic effect” (§1.2), and “Default patterns of usage should be distinguished from marked ones” (§1.3). Although Runge achieves much with his efforts in these two works, especially by utilizing insights from cognitive science and information structure, hardly any macro discourse features are accounted for, since much of Runge’s attention is given to marked features at the sentence and paragraph levels. Exceptions include his discussion of conjunctions (§2), which is incomplete and treats only a handful of particles; and framing devices, which however often function at these micro levels. Admittedly, one should begin descriptions with the sentence level and build up. However, in this paper I will not try to improve on Runge here to any great degree, but will continue to fill in what remains lacking. For even at the sentence level, much more work needs to be done identifying non-routine or marked features of Greek grammar and syntax that involve choice and thus meaning. For example, forward placed genitives, non-routine verb tenses, periphrastic participles, rhetorical questions expecting yes or no answers, to name a few. Having utilized for nearly twenty years the theory and explanations of discourse theory and semantics from Robert Traina, David Bauer, Robert Longacre, Eugene Nida, Johannes Louw, George Guthrie, Stanley Porter, Runge, and others, I have identified and described more than fourteen places of “emphasis” in discrete constructions denoting prominence discernable at the sentence and discourse levels, which I have called formal, framing, focal, final, intensive, additive, correlative, interrogative, verbal, subjectival, genitival, adjectival, pronominal, and lexical. Although Runge reserves the word “emphasis” only for new, focal information placed forward in P2 position based upon the work of Simon Dik (pp. 191-94, 200, 224, 237; §13), there is great benefit to delineate “emphasis” more broadly. Moreover, one often observes more than one type of emphasis occurring simultaneously, thus creating increased prominence within the discourse. This leads to another difficulty with Runge’s Discourse Grammar at present, and its implementation in the LDGNT—inconsistency of identification of categories and the difficulty of assigning overlapping or concurrent constructions simultaneously to sentence elements. For example, throughout 2 Corinthians, one can find numerous instances of missed identification and in lesser frequency wrong or disputable identification. Thus, this paper will investigate some of these places, while more substantially describing these fourteen types of emphasis to achieve prominence within the discourse.


Images of Domination, Texts of Resistance: Roman Imperial Art, Gospel Literature, and the Limits of Representation
Program Unit: Jesus Traditions, Gospels, and Negotiating the Roman Imperial World
Davina C. Lopez, Eckerd College

Recent scholarship on the Gospels in relation to their socio-historical contexts has encouraged a hermeneutical concern with positioning the Roman empire as the ideological matrix that Jesus traditions can then be configured as negotiating in complex ways. Special interest lies in reconstructing Roman imperial ideology as that which is accommodated, resisted, subverted, and/or mimicked by proto-Christian communities, wherein the political dimensions of such communities might be revealed. In such an interpretational framework, understandings of Roman imperial ideology are deeply enhanced by attention to material culture, where art and archaeological remains are thought to reflect the historical reality of Roman domination—against which resistant Jesus movements are pitted. In other words, images of the Roman empire must signify violence in order for the narratives of the Gospels to signify opposition to violence—which in effect reifies an interdependence of “Caesar”/self and “Jesus”/other in so-called “empire-critical” readings of the New Testament. Using select visual representations of Roman war against national enemies alongside literary depictions of violence and resistance in the Gospels, this paper will explore and appraise several methodological trajectories in empire-critical New Testament studies that rely on elisions between representation and that which is represented, between image and reality.


Josephus' Concept of Priestly Leadership after the Destruction of the Temple
Program Unit: Cultic Personnel in the Biblical World
Claudia Losekam, Ruhr-Universität Bochum

In recent years an increasing interest in the social and historical role of the priests after the destruction of the temple occurred in the field of Early Judaism. One main aspect in research is to trace the historical and social survival of the priests after they lost their main function in the temple. For some scholars the Pentateuchal Targums, especially Targum Pseudo Jonathan, imply distinct priestly interests. A different kind of evidence about the destiny of priests after 70 which has been vividly discussed, are the inscriptions of the names of the twenty four priestly Courses Mishmarot found in synagogues of the 4th and 5th century. Besides the historical attitudes to the question what happened to the priests I am interested in the image of priests and priesthood in Jewish literature after the destruction of the second temple and how this image was shaped. The writings of Josephus belong to the sources from which we know that priests and priesthood are considered as valuable institutions. Reasons why priests and priesthood are treated in a positive way by Josephus range from biographical experiences and views of the priest Josephus, his awareness of the high reputation of priests in the eyes of roman authorities to his personal belief that priests combine in an ideal way important functions of spiritual and political leadership. While these biographical reasons will be considered, I shall, however, place the main focus on the issue how he defines and describes the functions of priests. I will concentrate on his description of the inauguration of Aaron through God via Moses in A 3:188-192 his admiration of John Hyrcan and his thoughts about a so called Jewish Constitution in Contra Apionem (2:185-198). I shall state that Josephus positive image of priests and priesthood does not only represent the memory of an ideal priesthood of the past but also favors priestly leadership after 70 C.E.


Early Christian Visualizations of Job’s Wife as a Modest Wife
Program Unit: Bible and Visual Art
Katherine Low, Mary Baldwin College

On several early Christian sarcophagi, Job’s wife stands before Job covering her mouth and nose with a shrouded hand. One understanding of her pose stems from the literary descriptions in the Testament of Job describing the awful stench emanating from Job’s sores and from the assumption of her need to block his smell. Engaging in a broader cultural analysis, I examine the pose of Job’s wife in relation to the Roman iconographical tradition of “pudicia” and the ideal of modesty it projects for wives. My presentation argues for the existence of an early Christian visual trend that de-emphasizes the verbally rebellious side of Job’s wife in support of an artistic agenda that bases her depictions on a Roman model of respectful servitude. Alongside the visual elements, I also investigate literary sources that present specific concerns to uphold Job’s wife as an example of a faithful wife.


Money Talks: The Intersection of Benefaction and Hesed in Jas 2:18
Program Unit: Letters of James, Peter, and Jude
Bruce Lowe, Reformed Theological Seminary

James 2:18 is "one of the most difficult New Testament passages in general" (Dibelius), because its most straightforward reading has an antagonist laying a strange challenge at James' door: "You have faith and I have works." James is the one affirming the importance of works and accusing others of "mere" faith. Thus the interlocutor's talk seems back-to-front. Many solutions have been proposed to clarify this enigma, but (as yet) none seems to have won the day. In this paper I wish to explore the fresh alternative that the interlocutor is "Money," i.e. someone akin to the fictitious wealthy person of 1:2-4, who claims that it is only right that some (like him/herself) are "workers" (i.e. benefactors), while others (like James and his audience) are "trusters" -having no immediate obligations to provide for the poor. James' denial that his audience can think this way becomes indicative of a larger clash between the Jewish hesed tradition and Greco-Roman ideals of benefaction/patronage -a hostile intersection several authors in recent years have proposed for Mediterranean Judaism (cf. MacGillivray, Schwartz, and Sorek). In line with rhetorical readings of the past, I will suggest that Jas 2 should be seen as a self-contained argument, but that vv. 14-26 should (more specifically) be read as "diatribal" deliberation, following James' deliberative argument of vv. 1-13. Herein v. 14 would start with a pithy and pertinent question ("What then is the advantage?"), whereby some are asking what possible benefit is to be gained from shunning a potential benefactor. Besides tying 1-13 and 14-26 closer together, this rhetorical alternative for vv. 14 f. clarifies how Jas 2:18 could be a three-way discussion between the interlocutor, audience and James. This is question time, wherein James anticipates open and potentially heated debate over an eternally inflammatory subject: money.


Reading along with Those Reconciled: Assessing the Immediate Impact of 2 Cor 5:16–21 on the Interpretation of 6:1–13
Program Unit: Second Corinthians: Pauline Theology in the Making
Matthew Forrest Lowe, McMaster Divinity College

Paul's Corinthian audience has just heard the crux of his appeal as an ambassador: be reconciled to God. Assuming for argument's sake that some -- if "not many," cf. 1 Cor 1:26! -- of his audience were so persuaded, even repentant, how might Paul have expected them to apprehend the next chapter of his message? For those who are now reading as new creations and new ambassadors, he is of course elaborating on what it means to embody such ambassadorial service (2 Cor 6:3-4a), a corporate, foreign ministry of sorts. Yet the images he uses are hardly foreign: having just heard the apostle employ a Greco-Roman image of statesmanship, the Corinthians are likely to hear similar cultural echoes as well as biblical ones when they learn that the hemera soterias has arrived, that they are to be recipients of grace or favor, and how integrally linked is their salvation to Paul's exemplary suffering on their behalf. In order to read the passage under study in concert with Paul and his audience, this proposal applies the author's "gravitational" hermeneutic to illustrate the competition, within the boundaries (6:12b) of Corinthian hearts and minds, between the salvation and grace offered by Roman saviors and those offered by God, in Christ, through Paul. The apostle insists that his affection is unlimited (6:12a), as are his evident afflictions (6:4b-10), which he wants understood as contributing to the Corinthians' salvation -- a salvation he sees as somehow consistent with God's promise to redeem from captivity (Isa 49:8). Thus the proposal shows this passage to be an important stage in Paul's developing concept of salvation, especially with regard to human agency, in keeping with instances such as Phil 2:12, 2 Cor 7:10, and Rom 10:10, 11:14.


'...But Much More Now in My Absence': Paul's Curious Near-Absence from the Biblical Imagery of American Exceptionalism among the Nations
Program Unit: Paul and Politics
Matthew Forrest Lowe, McMaster Divinity College

Most of us are now familiar with the discursive tradition of representing American exceptionalism through the imagery of Scripture -- in the "city on a hill," for instance, or in metaphors of virtuous newness such as the "new world" and "promised land" -- and the way in which this tradition peaked in the language of recent presidential administrations. Somewhat less recognized is the manner in which this imagery characterizes (or leaves strangely uncharacterized) other nations, the very context that defines such nationalistic exceptionalism. Perhaps even more surprising is the near-absence of Pauline images from this discourse: should we not expect the self-described apostle to the ethne to contribute significantly to the dynamics of national and imperial exegesis today? This proposal analyzes portrayals of the nations (and the U.S. vis-a-vis the nations) within this exceptionalist tradition, especially during the George W. Bush administration; the limited role that Paul’s letters play therein; and, no less surprising, their equally limited role in critically responsive interpretations of Scripture. Contributions from biblical studies to this critical side of the discussion, such as the "Paul in Critical Contexts" series and Walsh and Keesmaat's "Colossians Remixed," will be considered, but a premium will also be placed on popular and scholarly theological texts -- whether for, against, or ambivalent about exceptionalism -- that redeploy Pauline images normatively and/or confessionally to the construction of contemporary, meaning-making discourses. These redeployments will then be critically categorized according to respective emphases, such as various personal/spiritual responses to the "War on Terror" and its aftermath; citizenship in the world, its nations, and God's kingdom; and redefinitions of what it means to be human in a post-9/11 and post-Bush (and post-Obama?) age. These categories will inform a concluding series of constructive suggestions for reading Paul in this often factious sociopolitical climate.


Baffling Inscribed Personal Names in Hebrew Onomastics
Program Unit: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Bible
Meir Lubetski, City University of New York

No subject can remain static when new evidence concerning it is emerging. Archaeology is producing so many artifacts and texts that provide new ideas for doubtful interpretations. This paper will attempt to clarify two personal names found on artifacts that could not be explained satisfactorily or at all. The following names will be discussed: Mrb‘l, a name that appears in the Bible, is found on a Samaria #2 trapezoidal ostracon, line 7. Psyd is inscribed on ostracon #52 from the Temple of Arad. Aharoni was able to decipher the inscribed Hebrew letters on the latter, but did not offer a suggestion as to its meaning. Collateral sources from Egyptian funerary cones, literary texts, and an Aramaic iconic seal from the period of the Judean monarchy might provide clues to explaining these enigmatic names.


Devastating the Egyptian Desert: The “Barbarian” Raid of Scetis in Context
Program Unit: Violence and Representations of Violence in Antiquity
Christine Luckritz Marquis, Lehigh University

This paper explores portrayals of the violence of “barbarian” raids on Scetis by Egyptian ascetics and their late ancient contemporaries, considering how sources interpreted this moment as catastrophic for the project of desert asceticism and as a justified divine punishment for ascetics’ failure to maintain their virtuous life in the desert. Both Augustine and Philostorgius describe these besieged ascetics, couching the attack within descriptions of the many calamities ravaging the larger late ancient world (earthquakes, fires, etc.). More specifically, the paper juxtaposes the raid with two contemporary travesties, the sack of Rome and the struggles surrounding the First Origenist Controversy. The sources themselves invite such comparison, for some of them rhetorically construct the Scetian raid in parallel to the sack of Rome, an event that was itself read within a larger narrative of natural and human-induced disasters. In this way, the Scetian attack was viewed as a devastation on par with the penetration of Rome. Similarly, relating the Scetian raid to the violence performed at the neighboring ascetic site of Nitria highlights the varying rhetorical purposes of descriptions of violence against Egyptian ascetics. While the violence at Scetis was perpetrated against all its ascetic inhabitants as divine retribution for misbehavior (misfocus, lack of virtue, the presence of young males), violence at Nitria was enacted by Bishop Theophilus against a portion of ascetics perceived as Origenists, thus producing and delineating “orthodox” and “heterodox” ascetics. All of these negotiated relationships indicate how violence to desert asceticism at Scetis was appropriated and deployed as an important node of broader late ancient self-understanding. The “loss” of Scetis for ascetics through “barbarian” violence sharply marked the end of the “Golden Age” of asceticism, God’s demarcating of ascetic (and more generally late ancient people’s) access to the divine intimacy once offered by life in the desert.


"Not Clearly Free:" Postcolonialism and Perceptions of Galilean Poverty and Identity
Program Unit: Postcolonial Studies and Biblical Studies
Timothy Luckritz Marquis, Moravian Theological Seminary

Discussions within biblical studies concerning poverty struggle to sustain simultaneous attention to material conditions of impoverishment and to perceptions of poverty as they relate to discursive constructions of identity, including ethnicity. Similarly, scholars in the humanities and social sciences have critiqued the disjunction between postcolonial studies and development studies, pushing the former to focus more on issues of class and materiality. This paper uses the generative tension between studies of deprivation and identity to analyze passages in Josephus and the Gospels concerning first-century Galilee, arguing that poor inhabitants of Galilee were often perceived not simply as being of lower status but as being less Jewish or, in some cases, less human. In his account of the founding of Tiberias, Josephus describes the “poor” portion of the “mob” that initially populates the city as being “not clearly free” and as willing to violate Jewish custom by living on the known site of a cemetery. Recent studies of first-century Galilean economics and demography argue that the mobility and instability resulted in such shifting populations. Josephus’s description testifies to how discourses on identity might have engaged with such material realities. Similarly, Gospel depictions of the crowds following Jesus through animal imagery (“lost sheep,” “sheep without a shepherd”) reflect the wider culture’s radical devaluation of the “humanness” of the poor. (The animalistic imagery evokes recent work on “bare life” as a possible bridge between materiality and discourse in describing the nature of the subaltern.) The Gospels also portray resistance to such perceptions as involving the performative transformation of material realities through creative adaptations of impoverished forms of life; so, itinerant discipleship transforms migrations of the poor from village to city. Postcolonial attention to poverty and perception mitigates facile appeals to material conditions of deprivation while factoring them into reconstructions of identity formation.


Kerygma and History in the Thought of Rudolf Bultmann
Program Unit: Westar Institute
Gerd Lüdemann, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany

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Open Networks and Identity Construction as Preconditions for the Rise of Christianity
Program Unit: Cognitive Science Approaches to the Biblical World
Petri Luomanen, Helsingin Yliopisto - Helsingfors Universitet

One of the previously neglected topics that Rodney Stark has brought into focus is the question about the type of networks through which Christianity was able to spread. In Stark’s view, it was essential for Christianity that it remained an open network which was able to reach out to new members and integrate them. However, a movement that spreads through weak links in open networks would soon fall apart unless it is able to form stable, more closely knit local communities that support identity formation. Consequently, W.D. Runciman has emphasized that unconditional altruism needs to be balanced with reciprocity if the movement wishes to avoid becoming exploited by free riders. The present paper develops a model for the analysis of the relative evolutionary success of Mark, Q and Matthew by analyzing openness and reciprocity in three central discourses relevant for survival in cultural evolution: network discourse, identity discourse and ritual discourse. The paper argues that there is a clear correspondence between these socio-cognitive factors that contribute to the survival of documents and the factual distribution of Mark, Matthew and Q during the first centuries CE.


Constructing Early Christian Reality through Speech
Program Unit: Speech and Talk in the Ancient Mediterranean World
Susanne Luther, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

This paper explores the implications of Scott’s theory in Domination and the Arts of Resistance with regard to the use and potential of language as well as to speech-ethical instruction in the Gospel of Matthew. Scott uses the term ‚hidden transcript‘ for the critique of the ruling powers that goes on offstage. In public the oppressed accept their domination, but offstage they create counter-ideologies of implicit resistance. This theory becomes specifically relevant in the communication of NT ethical discourses on the use of language in inter-personal speech with a view to the potential of language in constructing reality. The paper explores to what extent NT language and instructions on the use of language convey the ideologies and worldview of a resistance group.


The Conception of History in John’s Gospel
Program Unit: John, Jesus, and History
Susanne Luther, University of Mainz, Germany

This paper takes up the question of the conception of history in John’s Gospel and proposes that the evangelist presents a text of ‚literary-dramatic‘ historiography. In contrast to the idea of scientific historiography, dramatic historiography does not formulate absolute, but rather discoursive truths and aims to provide a specific, overall interpretation of the historic events and processes rather than a representation of history. This approach is based on the perception of John‘s presentation of history through remembrances, transmitted traditions, and stories. In dramatic-historiographic literature, history is presented parabolically or theologically in order to construct history, that is to interpret elements of historical material and endow them with meaning. Through the selection and emphasis of narrated elements of Jesus memory, their arrangement and combination, as well as the temporal, local, personal, and thematic relations of the selected elements, the notion of history in the Gospel of John can be described as fictionalized history – although John’s specific account of history is also contextualized within ancient history through topographic and chronological specifications, personal names, and other elements of traditional historiography. The literary-dramatic historiography in John’s Gospel operates with semantics of space in combining this-worldly history with the cosmic metahistorical framework. Through ‚semanticizing‘ places, objects, and events John emphasizes the significance of space as a ‚realm of remembrance‘ (Erinnerungsräume) for historical consciousness and cultural memory. Through the ‚semanticizing‘ of time and the sense of time, history is presented as subjective and fragmentary, as a construct of memory. Literary-dramatic and fictionalized historiography serves a productive function for collective and cultural memory, for identity construction, and the generation of conceptions of history for contemporary society. Memories of historical events are not only used to construct and interpret history, but as the emerging historiographical texts are interpreted anew along dramatic lines, the interpretation of history is encouraged and perpetuated in the recipient.


Modes of Monotheizing in the Hebrew Bible
Program Unit: Unity and Diversity in Early Jewish Monotheisms
Matthew J. Lynch, University of Göttingen

Priestly literature gives expression to Yhwh’s sole divinity in ways utterly unlike the “classic” expressions of monotheism in Deuteronomy, Deutero-Isaiah, or Jeremiah. Rather than denying explicitly the existence of other gods, or asserting Yhwh’s sole existence, priestly writers portray a world in which none but Yhwh could exist. While some biblical scholars have recognized this “implicit” mode of monotheizing in priestly literature, the implications of this mode for a broader understanding of biblical monotheism and its history have gone unappreciated. In this paper I seek to situate priestly modes of monotheizing within a broad taxonomy of various “explicit” and “implicit” modes of monotheizing in the Hebrew Bible. I suggest that there is considerable inner-biblical diversity on question of what constitutes a threat to Yhwh’s sole divinity, how writers express Yhwh’s oneness, and of what distinguishes Yhwh categorically. This paper also challenges models of biblical monotheism that eschew such diversity by (1) assuming a stable set of criteria for determining when a text espouses monotheism, and then by (2) applying those criteria to the Hebrew Bible to reconstruct monotheism’s development.


From Golgotha to Glastonbury and Beyond: Translating the Ideology of Jewish Burial Piety into the Ideology of English Imperial Exceptionalism
Program Unit: Ideology, Culture, and Translation
William John Lyons, University of Bristol

At the New Delhi Commonwealth Games in 2010, the English winners of gold medals found themselves standing to hear the ‘English’ national anthem, Jerusalem, as they collected their medals. Although only chosen by a popular vote for that purpose and occasion, Sir Hubert Parry’s musical setting of William Blake’s poetic introduction to his epic poem, Milton, in fact continues to serve as the most powerful piece of sacred music enshrining the concept of England as a chosen nation, as the blessed piece of green turf upon which the young Jesus once walked and upon which the aged Joseph of Arimathea was to later found the oldest church in the West of Europe; it presents ‘Albion’ to its hearers as the one place on earth in which Jerusalem is fittingly to be built anew. Yet, the biblical material behind this tradition was far removed from the British Isles for over a thousand years (with Joseph long being thought in the East to have died in his hometown of Arimathea). It was only through the ideological possibilities wrought by an extended and—significantly at one point—wholly accidental process of expansion, commentary, and (mis-)translation that the undefined pious Jewish councillor who appears momentarily to bury Jesus before disappearing from the Gospel of Mark was transposed into the wealthy tin merchant-cum-decurio soldier/knight-cum-uncle of Jesus who is found within the legends of Glastonbury and Avalon. By such diverse means, Joseph was enabled and empowered both to travel to England after the crucifixion and to found an Arthurian lineage of kings and knights which even today serves to support a notion of a chosen and sacred Englishness which continues to echo throughout the postcolonial spaces of the ‘British Empire’, nee the Commonwealth, most recently during the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton on April 29th 2011, when Jerusalem once again thundered out before the eyes and ears of the world leaders collected in Westminster Abbey and the many millions watching on TVs in ‘foreign lands’ around the world.


From Catastrophe to Carpe Diem—Qohelet’s Eschatology and His Final Poem
Program Unit: Korean Biblical Colloquium
Sun Myung Lyu, Korean Presbyterian Church of Ann Arbor

Despite the difficulty of unpacking all the figures of speech, there can be little doubt that the final poem of Qohelet (12:1-7) depicts aging and death. Whether taken as allegorical, literal, figurative, or some combination thereof, the poem displays an eschatological dimension which is sometimes taken lightly by interpreters as purely rhetorical. This is an unfortunate mischaracterization as, for Qohelet at least, the end of one’s life is indeed the end of the entire world. In this poem the cosmological disaster is stripped of its eschatological significance it has in the prophetic literature and is reapplied to individual death. In a sense, therefore, the cosmic eschatology has been deconstructed and reconstructed into personal eschatology. Moreover, the eschatology found in the text is very theocentric. It is significant that Qohelet turns the reader’s attention to the Creator (v.1) more than to the eschatological realities as such. This Creator is the same God to whom the living soul (life-breath) will return (v.7). After all, God who created the universe can and will, Qohelet briskly reminds his readers, destroy it. The poem is meant to be read as a visualization of what awaits everyone, the young and vivacious included. It is therefore a reminder (thus memento mori) for the value of what life offers to each person. Life, as it turns out, is achingly short and transient (hebel) but nevertheless valuable and precious so as to be embraced and savored (thus carpe diem). In an irony true to its author, it is precisely this sober and intimate poem about the inevitability of death that presents to us the strongest affirmation of life.


Teaching Mimesis as a Criterion for Textual Criticism: The Case of the Gospel of Nicodemus
Program Unit: Ancient Fiction and Early Christian and Jewish Narrative
Dennis R. MacDonald, Claremont School of Theology

Abstract: Many Christian apocryphal narratives survive in radically different recensions--such as the Syriac and Greek versions of the Acts of Thomas, or the many Passiones of Andrew--and because of the relative scarcity of manuscript testimony, textual critics must largely rely on internal criteria for reconstructing an approximation of the earliest version. The paper argues that perhaps the most valuable tool for making judgments for the relative weight of one recension over another is literary imitation, or mimesis. I will illustrate the methodology on the Gospel of Nicodemus, especially the Descensus Christi, that now exists in one Greek and two radically different Latin recensions, one of which displays unmistakable affinities with Plato's Myth of Er. Remi Gounelle has argued that the Descensus originally was written in Latin and later was translated into Greek and incorporated into recension M of the Gospel of Nicodemus, but he seems not to have noticed the affinities with the final book of Plato's Republic. These affinities make it highly likely that the Latin recension better reflects than the surviving Greek text a Greek version that first saw the light of day as an alternative ending to the Gospel of Nicodemus. The same methodology is important for making internal textual judgments in the Acts of Andrew and the Acts of Thomas.


To Refer or Not to Refer: That Is the Question
Program Unit: National Association of Professors of Hebrew
Peter Machinist, Harvard University

It should be no surprise that ancient Near Eastern "literary" texts, or what the late A.L. Oppenheim called texts of the "stream of tradition," exhibit references to one another or to statements or turns of phrase taken from otherwise non-surviving sources, whether written or oral. No surprise, because, on the one hand, many of these texts are what may be called "traditional": texts composed and recomposed sometimes over centuries, thus in a process of continual intra-textual, if not inter-textual reference. And the composer/transmitters, where we can observe them, were largely, if not exclusively, scribal elites, for whom the ability to undertake, indeed, to perform, textual reference was a primary means of manifesting their self-identity and self-esteem. To refer or not to refer, however, remains for the modern interpreter the question here. And it may be divided into three sub-queries. (1) What kinds of references do we meet in these ancient Near Eastern texts? If the assumption is that they are intentional, still is that intention explicitly marked or implicit? Are the references to other texts and sources to be classified as citations, allusions, reformulations, or something else? (2) How can we recognize these references: be sure that they are really references and not just commonplace comments, or accidental, non-intentional echoes of phrases and ideas found elsewhere? (3) Under what circumstances in the texts do such references occur? What purposes do they serve? To answer the above queries systematically and comprehensively is, of course, well beyond the purview of a short paper. Rather, I shall consider them by way of selected examples that are intra-biblical, intra-Mesopotamian, and inter-biblical-Mesopotamian.


Creative Preaching and the Future of the Arab Spring
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Duncan Macpherson, Saint Mary’s University College

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Earthly and Heavenly Garments: Transforming the Visionary in the Ascension of Isaiah
Program Unit: Religious Experience in Antiquity
Heather Macumber, University of St. Michael's College

Journeys to heaven are typically viewed as an out of body experience and yet in some texts, it is the body that becomes the location of religious experience. In the Ascension of Isaiah, numerous references are made to the physical experience of Isaiah’s ascent as he taken up by an angel while speaking with the Holy Spirit. And yet the text is explicit in stating that Isaiah’s mind and not body is taken away since his body remains in the presence of his fellow prophets on earth. Despite this differentiation between mind and body, continued references to the physical nature of his heavenly journey are found throughout the narrative. In particular, a prominent focus is placed on the appearance of the visionary as he ascends from earth to heaven. This transformation culminates in the donning of garments that make Isaiah the equal of the angels. In this paper, I argue that that despite the visionary state of Isaiah’s ascension, the emphasis on the body and its experiences (especially its transformation) continues to inform the way in which such heavenly journeys are described. The use of such embodied language raises the question as to what degree ancient authors felt that heavenly ascents entailed a separation between the mind, soul and body.


The Recessed Openings of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem: Texts and Shrine Model from Khirbet Qeiyafa
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
Madeleine Mumcuoglu, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Recessed openings, door or window frames with indentations built further back than the wall, can be traced as early as the 4th millennium BC in Mesopotamia. Then it appeared on temple entrances and royal palaces throughout the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC. At about 1000 BC this element appeared again on a shrine model from Khirbet Qeiyafa, a fortified city from the time of King David . It is described in the biblical text relating to the temple and palace built by Solomon in Jerusalem. This motif is also present in the Second Temple. The origin and the significance of this motif will be discussed as well as the importance of the Qeiyafa shrine in the understanding of the Biblical text.


The Appearance, Formation, Transformation, and Disappearance of the Philistine Culture: New Data and New Perspectives
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
Aren Maeir, Bar-Ilan University

The Philistine culture has attracted much scholarly attention for more than a century. In the last two decades or so, several alternative interpretations of the appearance, formation, transformation and disappearance of this culture have been suggested (such as acculturation, creolization, hybridity, etc.), and have been intensively discussed. In light of recent finds from both Philistia and beyond, and in light of other perspectives on the character of culture interaction, I believe that a more nuanced and multivalent perspective on the Philistine culture is required. In this lecture I will argue that a "transcultural" and "entanglement" perspective can provide a more robust interpretive framework for explaining and understand the Philistine culture.


A Persian-Period Marriage Contract from the Judean Babylonian Diaspora: A Comparison with Biblical, Extra-Biblical, and Neo-Babylonian Marriage Texts
Program Unit: Literature and History of the Persian Period
F. Rachel Magdalene, Universität Leipzig

The 200+ Judean legal texts from Al-Ya?udu, Bit-Abi-ram, and (Bit)-Našar of rural Babylonia, written in Neo-Babylonian Akkadian and dating from the reigns of Nabuchadnezzar to Xerses, contain numerous contracts, including two copies of a marriage contract from the Persian period. K. Abraham (AfO 51 [2005/2006]: 198–219) has argued that this document represents a Judean marriage tradition that stands apart in some measure from the corpus of Neo-Babylonian marriage documents. In this paper, I wish to test Abraham's assertion by comparing carefully this text with other Neo-Babylonian marriage contracts, the several marriage contract chronicles of the Hebrew Bible, and the extant extra-biblical Judean marriage contracts from the Persian and Hellenistic periods. I conclude that this marriage text fully resembles other Neo-Babylonian marriage contracts of its time and cannot be said on the face of the document to contain a Judean marriage tradition, however one might define such. Some tentative conclusions regarding the position of the Judean exiles in rural Babylonia will be drawn.


Conspicuous Consumption: Dining on Meat in the Ancient World
Program Unit: Meals in the Greco-Roman World
Jodi Magness, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

This paper discusses meat preparation and consumption in the ancient Near East (including Bronze Age and Iron Age Palestine), the pre-classical and classical Aegean, and the early Islamic world by examining ceramic table wares and cooking pots. Rulers and local elites indulged in a variety of meat-based luxury cuisines, which they showcased through display dining. Differentiated cuisines and conspicuous consumption were an expression of social hierarchy and served to reinforce class distinctions. The paper concludes by considering Late Iron Age Judah, where changes in cooking pot types suggest an apparent absence of meat from the local diet. The absence of meat contrasts with evidence from adjacent regions, and may reflect market patterns under Assyrian rule and the observance of a biblical ban on the consumption of non-sacrificial meat.


Jeremiah as YHWH’s Stronghold (Jer 1:18): The Relationship between Jeremiah and Jerusalem in Jer 1–25
Program Unit: Writing/Reading Jeremiah
Christl M. Maier, Philipps-Universität Marburg

Jeremiah has to proclaim that Jerusalem’s end draws near and that the city will be raided by a foreign nation. Yet, in the call narrative of the book, YHWH announces that he will transform the prophet into “a fortified city, an iron pillar, and bronze walls, against the whole land, against the kings of Judah, its princes, its priests, and the people of the land” (1:18). In Jer 15:20-21 Jeremiah is again likened to a bronze wall against his enemies. Some of these architectural motifs have been identified as phrases denoting a deity or the Pharaoh in Egyptian texts of the New Kingdom and the Late Period (S. Herrmann; M.Görg). Yet, these studies did not analyze the intertextual relations of Jer 1:17-19 within the book of Jeremiah. Therefore, this paper explores the meaning and function of the metaphor “Jeremiah is a city or wall” within its current literary context and especially with regard to the personified city of Jerusalem as portrayed in Jer 1-25. Methodologically, the paper employs insights from spatial theory and ideology criticism. The paper’s literary analysis aims at explaining why and how the prophet ends up as a substitute for YHWH’s favorite city.


Teaching in a State University
Program Unit: Anglican Association of Biblical Scholars
Elizabeth Struthers Malbon, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

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Two Noahs for Children
Program Unit: Children in the Biblical World
Robert D. Maldonado, California State University-Fresno

This paper presents the results of a collaboration between myself and an artist, Jacqueline Doumanian, to create a children’s book of the flood story that utilizes both complete strands of the Yahwist and Priestly traditions. While the story itself is deeply problematic as a children’s story (as are most stories from the Bible), it nevertheless is an extremely popular one, with many editions. One element that the existing versions have in common is paraphrasing the text, which obscures the textual dynamics. Also, they rarely show the orgy of violence that is the flood narrative. While we can only imagine what any children who may have had access to this story in the ancient world might have thought about the extravagant slaughter of living things, including children, these post-biblical tellings of the story have continued to lend themselves to an obscuring of these issues. By including the complete text and particularizing images, we present elements of comparison between translation and image, the challenges faced in sustaining image composition across narrative, and we also strive to maintain tension between literary, ethical, and theological issues. Additionally, we believe that in our own time there is a tendency not to credit children with sophisticated intelligence about story. Frankly, this project grew out of my teaching a Literature of the Old Testament. It is rare to have a student who has even heard of the documentary hypothesis, an hypothesis with roots in the 18th century. My students reported reading the Bible with their children after having had class on the documentary hypothesis. Their children, as young as eight, proved observant and skillful readers, noticing features of the text often glossed over. Whether or not the hypothesis will continue to hold strong in the 21st century is an open question to which we have no strong commitment. Separating the sources, however, highlights those features of the text that contemporary monolithic reading strategies level and obscure. We think we owe our children access to those features as well as the ethical issues raised by both the stories and the various reading strategies brought to bear. Thus, the paper presents a combination of image, text, theory, and pedagogy as one potential path for bridging the Bible and Children's Worlds (including Children in the Biblical World) into the 21st century.


What Have Thelma and Louise to Do with Deborah and Ya’el? Feminism, Violence, and the Bible
Program Unit: Feminist Hermeneutics of the Bible
Carleen Mandolfo, Claremont School of Theology

This paper explores the feminist erasure of Ya'el's violence and asks whether this violence might be appreciated as a vehicle of feminist empowerment. I want to argue that we are doing biblical women a disservice by not taking their violence seriously as a signifier of their identity as women. How might violent biblical women model a kind of radical agency that feminists have typically shied away from? Dismissing these female characters as patriarchal patsies robs them of what might be their last recourse to self-expression. Rather than a sign of their victimization, their violence might better be heralded as a fundamental qualifier of their femininity. In short, biblical scholars need to pay more attention to violent women as feminist subjects, and violence as a means of enabling women, rather than the disabling that has occurred through a politically and conceptually strategic commitment to their victimization. As Judith/Jack Halberstam notes, “Films like Thelma and Louise suggest…not that we all pick up guns, but that we allow ourselves to imagine the possibilities of fighting violence with violence.”


One Word, Many Readings: Framing Cain’s Moral Dilemma
Program Unit: Genesis
Douglas Mangum, University of the Free State - Universiteit van die Vrystaat

Semantic ambiguity in Gen 4:7 allows for multiple interpretations of the episode. The texts produced by the translators of various ancient Bible versions reflect their attempts to render the sense of the verse based on their understanding of the episode as a whole. This study will examine the divergent paths followed by each ancient interpreter to illuminate the strategies used to frame the event, resulting in different readings of the same story in LXX, Peshitta, and Targum.


The Exegetical Methods of Epiphanius of Cyprus
Program Unit: Development of Early Christian Theology
Scott Manor, University of Edinburgh

The fourth-century Church Father Epiphanius of Salamis is often disparaged for his lack of philosophical acumen and narrow-minded theological perspective. Although a cursory reading of his works might support such criticisms,Epiphanius also provides thoughtful and distinctive exegesis of Scripture throughout his treatments of false and proper belief. This paper explores two related elements of Epiphanius’ exegetical methodology that are often overlooked, but which reflect his unique geographical position as bishop of Salamis, Cyprus. First, consideration is given to Epiphanius’ exegetical view of heresy. The Panarion is based on his exegesis of Song of Songs 6:8-9, in which he sees the eighty concubines of Solomon as representative of the same number of heresies that follow. Yet, his list of known heresies fell short, so he employed creative exegetical methods to achieve his desired number. For example, his record of ‘pre-Christian heresies’ is categorized into four parts based on the division he finds in Paul’s notice that “…in Christ there is no Barbarian, Scythian, Hellene or Jew” (Col. 3:11). Secondly, in his work On Weights and Measures Epiphanius’ exegesis takes on a stronger numerological focus. For him, “Measures are worthy of spiritual contemplation by those who understand.” Thus, his work provides not only quantitative analysis, but also extracts the various truths that are found in these units of measure, such as the Trinity or Mary’s possession of the Word of God in four Gospels. At points his work is pragmatic and theologically significant; at other points it is simply bizarre. This paper concludes by contextualizing Epiphanius’ exegetical contribution to the history of Christian interpretations in light of the works of his predecessors. Geographically, he was right in between Antioch and Alexandria, but his exegetical models were far from representing the middle ground.


Joanna and Theophilus: A Proposal
Program Unit: Formation of Luke and Acts
Merrilyn Mansfield, University of Sydney

From a first century inscription it can be determined that Theophilus, the Jewish high priest of 37-41 CE, had a son named Yehohanan (John), and a granddaughter named Yehohanah (Joanna). These names also appear in the texts of Luke-Acts. There, Theophilus is the recipient of Luke-Acts (Luke 1:3; Acts 1:1), John is a member of the high priest’s family (Acts 4:6), and Joanna is a disciple of Jesus who departed from the Herodian court to financially support Jesus’ movement. This paper argues that the characters inscribed on the ossuary are the characters mentioned in Luke-Acts. This view is based on evidence from the ossuary of Yehohanah, the Hebrew Scriptures, the New Testament, and the works of Josephus.


Female Masculinity in Corinth? Drag Kings, Laggings, and Imitations
Program Unit: LGBTI/Queer Hermeneutics
Joseph A. Marchal, Ball State University

Is it possible to (re)think masculinity without men? If so, are the drag practices reflected in Paul’s arguments about the women in Corinth a subversive imitation and thus reconfiguration of otherwise hegemonic gender (and sexual) norms (then and/or now)? To answer such questions this paper maintains that we should revisit Judith Butler’s concept of performativity and incorporate (pun intended) Judith (Jack) Halberstam’s work on female masculinity. While drag has often proved to be a favorite illustration in the reception of performativity, the specifically imitative element of Butler’s conceptualization has yet to be adequately appreciated and redeployed, included in biblical studies. (Not so incidentally, but definitely anecdotally, while some queer and feminist biblical scholars seem to be “over” Butler, I question whether we were ever exactly “under” Butler.) In rethinking Paul’s arguments in 1 Corinthians, this is particularly unfortunate, given the letter’s repetition of imitation arguments and its links to his contorted and sometimes (gender) confusing claims about authority, clothing, and nature in 1 Cor 11:1-16. Calls to imitate can always be heeded in unexpected ways, ways that fail to conform to a norm, but still rework the norm. The Corinthian women might be one such example of this, but so might be the butch lesbians, transgender dykes, and drag kings that enliven the pages of Halberstam’s work. These sorts of female masculinity indicate how alternative gender practices can proliferate by using and embodying dominant scripts differently. In such instances, female masculinity operates in ways unlike an ancient androgyny that is already and ultimately still properly “male.” In this light, the Corinthian women aren’t simply repeating the hegemonic imperial masculinity of virtus or andreia either, those qualities that imperial males would still gladly, if but occasionally grant to certain females they extol. This, indeed, is the potential threat of masculine women in the ancient (and contemporary) context(s), exposing as they do the dissonances and (un)natural linkages between genders and embodied practices. Further, once one recognizes that drag as a practice is not about “passing,” but about revealing differences from and dissonances within gender and sexual norms (among others), one can also begin to grapple with the specifically temporal aspects of drag (as queer studies outside of biblical scholarship have done of late). Thus, this paper can answer any protests against the (supposedly) anachronistic juxtaposition of drag king and Corinthian women prophesying by citing how temporal claims themselves rest embedded and embodied within the gendered arguments between Paul and these female masculine Corinthians (see the multiple allusions to the proximate past, primordial creation past(s), and their compatriots’ present, inter alia, in the passage). Through such subversive imitations the parodic performativity of being “in Christ” is worn by these women and, in turn, lags and drags into the (twenty-)first century concepts and practices of the body.


“The Future Is Not a Heavenly Commonwealth": Lessons for Biblical Studies from Postcolonial Past and Present
Program Unit: Postcolonial Studies and Biblical Studies
Joseph A. Marchal, Ball State University

Where are postcolonial kinds of biblical studies going? Or, perhaps, more to the point, where should it (and we) go? One can start to give an answer to such questions, in part, by turning to postcolonial forms of criticism outside of biblical (and even religious) studies. Indeed, given recent work in such venues, now might be an especially opportune moment to assess our current versions of past and potential. Increasingly, scholars working in postcolonial studies outside of biblical studies have been taking stock and assessing both the present neo-imperial context and whether the strategies and tools of previous forms of postcolonial analysis can adequately address and counter the continuing colonial impact of both the past and the present. For instance, scholars like Achille Mbembe, David Scott, and Amit Baishya have suggested that we can recognize three different “problem spaces” or “cardinal moments” in postcolonial criticism. In order to address our present, not-exactly-chronological third “moment” (shaped by recent analyses of biopolitics, sovereignty, bare life, necropolitics, and exceptionalisms, inter alia), critics can and should reflect upon the practices of anti-colonial liberation movements and colonial discourse analysis (two trajectories not entirely relegated to “the past” of postcolonial studies). A scholar working on gospel narratives or Pauline letters might recognize the “first” two “moments” and find some correspondences in postcolonial biblical approaches. Yet, further, in order to open a different angle to address the ongoing significance of biblical argumentation in this current imperial-context context, biblical scholars can adapt some of the more compelling elements of the third problem space “after postcoloniality” (which itself critiques, addresses, and expands the first and second). While this will prove initially generative, and even provocative, one nevertheless cannot adapt these “mappings” uncritically, particularly given some of the continuing gaps and elisions in postcolonial analysis (in and outside of biblical studies). Such gaps and elisions are typified, for all the concern with biopolitics and how the body politic is constituted and countered in some contemporary work, by the failure to fully grasp and grapple (even still) with feminist intersectional analysis or the contributions of feminist work in postcolonial studies. Such reflections offer opportunities to (re)learn lessons of recurring problem spaces and leverage the lags between various postcolonial approaches to confront the politics of life and death, the exceptional and the expendable, along multiple trajectories and axes, gendered, sexual, racial, and colonial. By briefly surveying this scene, conditioned by correspondences and gaps, lulls and missed connections, and then reflecting on recent examples in the analysis of Paul’s letters, this paper can demonstrate the importance of continuing to negotiate the postcolonial past(s) and present(s) for biblical scholars.


Utilizing the Masorah to Elucidate the Story of Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife
Program Unit: Masoretic Studies
David Marcus, Jewish Theological Seminary of America

In the past, there have been many studies on the importance of the Masorah in the area of biblical Hebrew grammar, as well as a few articles showing how the Masorah can be helpful in the interpretation of some biblical passages, but these articles have usually focused on isolated examples. This paper will attempt to show that the Masorah can be used as a supplementary tool for elucidating a unified Hebrew text as in the well-known story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife that occurs in chapter 39 of the Book of Genesis. I will endeavor to show that the Masorah can assist the elucidation of this text by determining its parameters, by paying attention to its accents, by pointing out its connectiveness to other texts, and by implicitly pointing out the literary structure of the text.


Does the Yod of napši in Ps 24:4 Represent a Minuscule Waw?
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible
David Marcus, Jewish Theological Seminary of America

In the Leningrad Codex and BHS, Ps 24:4 has a reading of napši “my soul” in a context that logically demands a reading of napšo “his soul.” In several mss. and in the Rabbinic Bible, there is a qere of napši “my soul” as well as a ketiv of napšo “his soul.” Some prominent neo-Massoretes such as Elijah Levitas and Solomon Norzi have rejected this qere reading by suggesting that the yod of napši is the result of a scribal error, and that it really represents a minuscule waw. This paper will survey the history of this debate, examine the nature of the minuscule letters, and suggest that the minuscule waw might have originated from a misunderstood abbreviation of the Tetragrammaton.


Two New Coptic Fragments of the Apocalypse of Paul (Visio Pauli)?
Program Unit: Christian Apocrypha
Antti Marjanen, University of Helsinki

Two Coptic parchment fragments of a Christian apocryphal text have turned up in a Finnish collection of Coptic manuscripts (Ilves Collection). On the basis of a tentative analysis of the fragments, one can conclude that they seem to have close thematic connections with Paul’s vision of the paradise in the Apocalypse of Paul (or a very similar text). The fragments refer to the encounters of Paul with Lot, Noah, and possibly Hiob. Unlike the majority of the known versions of the Apocalypse of Paul, the Coptic fragments of the Ilves collection do not report the vision of Paul in the first but in the third person. On paleographical grounds, the fragments may be dated to the fifth or sixth century. If the two Coptic fragments can be identified as part of a Coptic version of the Apocalypse of Paul and their dating proves to be right, the two fragments of the Ilves collection may be among the earliest extant manuscripts of the Apocalypse of Paul.


How Medieval Is Our Image of Ancient Judeo-Christian Gospels? With Some Remarks on the New Apocryphal-Gospel-Volume of the "Ancient Christian Apocrypha"
Program Unit: Christian Apocrypha
Christoph Markschies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

The paper will evaluate some of the medieval resources for the first time since many decades from their manuscripts, especially the "Aurora" and the "Historia Passionis Domini" of the Schojen-Collection. It will answer with the help of codicological analyses and philological observations questions concerning the original purpose of these manuscripts and insofar concerning the knowledge of these texts in medieval Christianity. Our picture that these manuscripts are containing "fragments" of Judeo-Christian Gospels is deeply coined by research of the last two centuries. The paper will argue for a more source-oriented approach especially to these medieval manuscripts.


Harnack’s Image of 1 Clement and Contemporary Research
Program Unit: Inventing Christianity: Apostolic Fathers, Apologists, and Martyrs
Christoph Markschies, Humboldt-University Berlin

Surprisingly, Harnack regarded 1 Clement as the most fitting text with which to introduce young students to the study of Ancient Christianity. In 1929, Harnack concluded his seminar on church history with the publication of a little book that may be described as his intellectual testament: "Einführung in die alte Kirchengeschichte. Das Schreiben der römischen Kirche an die korinthische aus der Zeit Domitians (I. Clemensbrief)." This paper will contextualize this textbook within Harnack’s own model of the evolution of Ancient Christianity, and especially of Christian institutions, but also in contemporary research, in order to reconstruct the specific profile of Harnack's approach. In the last part of the paper, we will ask whether some of Harnack's insights and results are still of interest for contemporary research, even if Harnack's own model of church history has lost plausibility in respect to many details, and even in general.


The Challenge of Pauline Metaphor: Metaphor Theory on the Edge of Explanation and Understanding
Program Unit: Metaphor Theory and the Hebrew Bible
Read Marlatte, University of Oxford

The epistles of Paul are full of vivid metaphors drawn from the various cultural domains of the apostle’s world: judicial, agricultural, architectural, cultic, anthropological, familial, etc. Indeed, many important aspects of Pauline theology depend upon the interpretation of such metaphors and thus on understanding one thing in terms of another. However, the metaphorical nature of Paul’s thought and its implications have often been ignored or denied. When theories of metaphor are employed, it is as a tool of exegesis which suggests that by simply historically reconstructing the source domain of a metaphor we can know how it is to be interpreted. In this paper we shall present some of the challenges that contemporary theories of metaphor present to traditional Pauline exegesis by examining the metaphorically potent 1 Corinthians 3.9-17. In particular, we shall examine exegesis itself as an instantiation of Reddy’s conduit metaphor, which implies that the meaning of a text is “led out” or “extracted” from the words that contain it and which, like all conceptual metaphors, unconsciously and automatically frames our reasoning concerning how we approach a text. Against this, we shall bring together Cognitive Linguistic theories of metaphor (Lakoff, Johnson, Turner, Fillmore) with those of the Philosophical Hermeneutics tradition (Gadamer, Ricœur) to examine how the meaning of metaphor does not simply exist on the page but uniquely depends on an interpreter’s hermeneutical act of construal. It is in metaphor, therefore, that the old hermeneutic distinction between Erklärung and Verstehen collapses, as there can be no explanation of metaphor without a hermeneutical engagement that facilitates the metaphorical process and seeks understanding. Furthermore, we shall argue if the meaning of metaphor is partially dependent on the interpreter’s hermeneutical act of construal, then a full historical understanding of a metaphor will take into account how it has been used and understood historically. In that sense, these contemporary theories of metaphor lead us to an analysis of Paul’s metaphors that examines their "effects" upon their interpreters and thus their effective-history.


Defining the Theurgists: Evidence from Iamblichus' De Mysteriis
Program Unit: Mysticism, Esotericism, and Gnosticism in Antiquity
Nicholas Marshall, Aarhus Universitet

This paper argues against a tendency to use theurgy to describe ritual practices outside of the strict bounds of the Neoplatonic schools of Iamblichus and his followers. The argument is presented in three main stages. In the first, the paper briefly reviews the use of theurgy as a general term, especially in the field of Jewish Studies. In the second, I argue from the basis of textual excerpts from Iamblichus's De Mysteriis that clear notions of a group boundary are present, especially insofar as Iamblichus claims his group, the theurgists, possess secret knowledge. In the third and final part, I address a possible counterargument and bolster my claim by arguing that we are in a better position to claim an identity to the theurgists than we are to the Gnostics or Sethians.


The Antiochene Critique of Allegory: Some Puzzles and Solutions
Program Unit: Christian Theology and the Bible
Peter W. Martens, Saint Louis University

Three important “Antiochene” exegetes of the fourth and early fifth centuries, Eustathius, Diodore and Theodore, each launched targeted criticisms against allegorical biblical interpretation (Origen’s in particular). Yet upon close inspection, much of their criticism puzzles: why, for instance, did they accuse Origen of pagan influence, when the same influence is evident in their own literal exegesis?; why did they accuse allegorists of denying historicity, when they too, it appears, were willing to deny it?; or why did they pit their vaunted theoria against allegoria, yet in their surviving writings we detect a reticence to practice theoria? In this paper I will discuss these, as well as a number of other confusions, that confront the student of the Antiochene critique of allegorical interpretation. I will also suggest a few reasons that might account for these difficulties.


Introducing the Cultural New Testament
Program Unit:
Dale Martin, Yale University

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Circuit Training in the Biblical Studies Classroom
Program Unit: Academic Teaching and Biblical Studies
Erica L. Martin, Seattle University

Implementation of blended learning models allows much more class time for hands-on collaborative projects which build upon the information students have processed at home. This presentation will offer easy and effective ways to transform your traditional Biblical Studies classroom into a dynamic and enriching Studio Learning Environment. I will present as examples of classroom “Circuit Training” from my own Introduction to New Testament course. Small groups of students use class time to work collaboratively on different projects, designed by the instructor, most of which are highly visual, tactile, verbal, and offer space for peers to learn from one another. Projects continue over the course of many class sessions culminating in presentations of project outcomes to the class at large. Projects detailed in this presentation include 1. New Testament Era Coin Cleaning and Identification; 2. Adopt-an-Artifact Project; 3. Apocryphal Gospels Project; 4. Building a New Testament Terminology Wiki; and 5. “Fact” or “Crap” Game Knowledge Question Bank Development.


Ezekiel and the “C” Word
Program Unit: Gender, Sexuality, and the Bible
Erica L. Martin, Seattle University

Abstract: Identifying euphemistic – and dysphemistic – allusions to female anatomy in biblical texts both reveals gendered discourses where none were apparent and can overturn conventional interpretations of well-known texts. Euphemisms for the phallus, such as “yad” (arm), “raglaym” (feet) are commonly understood. Many circumlocutions for the vagina remain under-explored, contributing to our misreading of important biblical texts employing sexualized rhetoric. This paper discusses Ezekiel’s use of “ohel” (tent) in the names Oholah and Oholibah as overt vulgarity depicting the cities so named as “cunts” owned by G*d, and explores the semantic range of “ohel” across biblical texts.


Textual Fluidity, Textual Viscosity, and Textual Rigidity
Program Unit: Orality, Textuality, and the Formation of the Hebrew Bible
Gary Martin, University of Washington

In recent times, at both scholarly conventions and in published works, terms such as "fluidity," "pluriformity," and "multivalence" have become household expressions in a wide range of textual traditions, and the Hebrew Bible is no exception. To what extent are the texts of the Hebrew Bible and its versions fluid? How does one make sense of fluid textual traditions? How do we measure and articulate textual fluidity with precision? On the other hand, we might also ask why texts are not more fluid than they are. What phenomena are, and have been, at work that slow or limit the degree to which texts are fluid? And why do some texts seem to resist change altogether? Several methodological approaches attempt to provide answers to such questions; no single approach fully explains the textual realities we face. We find that our approaches themselves are in a state of flux and have become multivalent! As oral tradition, textual criticism, and other methods are engaged in complementary rather than competing fashion, we are better equipped not only to understand, but to appreciate, the developmental processes of textual traditions we value.


Christians as Babies, Soldiers, and Strangers: Metaphorical Reality in 1 Peter
Program Unit: Letters of James, Peter, and Jude
Troy W. Martin, Saint Xavier University

Aristotle provides an explanation for the abundance of metaphors in 1 Peter. He states, “Metaphors must not be far-fetched, but we must give names to things that have none by deriving the metaphor from what is akin and of the same kind, so that as soon as it is uttered, it is clearly seen to be akin” (Rhet. 1405a III 2.12 [Freese, LCL]). First Peter addresses those “who formerly were no people but now are the people of God” (1 Peter 2:10). These recipients are non-Jews who have left their former life and now believe in the Jewish God (2:9). They are neither Greek nor Jew but a new race of humans (?a???? ?????; Diogn. 1). Consistent with Aristotle’s explanation, metaphors are therefore necessary to “give names” to them and to describe their new unique status. Indeed, one metaphor, Christian (4:16), which this text uses perhaps for the first time, will become the common designation not only for these recipients but also for all who belong to this new human race (4:16). Considering the importance of metaphors in 1 Peter, this paper will first survey the diverse definitions of metaphor and describe some of the recent theories about metaphor that interpreters have applied to 1 Peter. It will then discuss the debate about a controlling metaphor in 1 Peter before turning to investigate some specific metaphors such as new-born babies, soldiers, and strangers that illustrate the metaphorical reality of the recipients’ new life in Christ.


A Survey of Masoretic Studies
Program Unit: Masoretic Studies
Elvira Martín-Contreras, Instituto de Lenguas y Culturas del Mediterráneo

This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the foundation of the International Organization of Masoretic Studies (IOMS) by prof. Harry Orlinsky to gather all the modern "Masoretes" and enhance the work in this field. Since then, Masoretic studies have undergone a true renaissance. The publications on Masoretic subjects have proliferated and there are numerous reviews on the importance of the Masora.This brief survey presents the evolution of Masoretic studies, the main research lines and some of the most relevant works for the last forty years.


The Semiotics of the Dismembered Body of the Monster in the ANE Chaoskampf Myths and Ezekiel
Program Unit: Bible, Myth, and Myth Theory
Safwat Marzouk, Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary

Various ancient Near Eastern Chaoskampf myths (e.g., Enuma Elish, the Baal Cycle, Re-Apophis) speak of the concept of chaos as an embodied monster. These literary works use the body of the monster semiotically as a literary device upon which a message is inscribed. The same literary device figures prominently in the prophet Ezekiel’s oracles of judgment against Egypt (Ezek 29, 32). Although the Chaoskampf theme is well known, the precise contours of the semiotics of the dismembered monster have not been adequately mapped in the scholarly literature. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s work in Discipline and Punish, this paper delineates the semiotics of the monster's dismembered body. The tortured and dismembered body signifies three motifs: 1. The Otherness of the outlaw/the monster; 2. The establishment of the authority of the sovereign 3. The restoration of law and order after the repudiation of the threat of the outlaw/the monster.


African (South) African Women’s Encounter with the Book of Ruth: An African Woman’s Reflection
Program Unit: African Biblical Hermeneutics
Madipoane Masenya (ngwan’a Mphahlele), University of South Africa

It is the object of scrutiny, analysis and critique by biblical scholars. They make such an interaction with the Christian Bible (the Bible) mainly persuaded by their desire for knowledge. In contrast, in one of the contexts to be addressed by the present paper, the Bible is accessed, whether in print or in an oral form, not only for knowledge, but also, and mainly as an object used for the nurturing of faith (belief) as well as for life. Does it then occasion any surprise, that in this particular context, some widows still embrace the story of Ruth in the Hebrew Bible as providing a model for them as they navigate through “marriage” without a marital partner in a context that continues to idolize heterosexual unions? Also, the story’s portrayal of some points of resemblance between the cultural milieu of the world of the production of the book of Ruth and many an African context has made it attractive to many peoples of African descent. The paper will thus also benefit by an investigation of the kind of reading which might emerge if the story is read from the perspective of traditional African women. The questions which this paper seek to address are as follows: Are there any prospects for knowledge in particular regarding sexuality, for belief and for life if the book of Ruth is read from the perspective of African women in South Africa, particularly those for whom the Bible remains important for their spiritual nurturing? Which prospects may the story have if read in a traditional African female setting? If there are prospects, are these, really knowledge-worthy, faith-nurturing and life-enhancing?


Rhetoric and Morality: Josephus and Acts in the "Second Sophistic"
Program Unit: Book of Acts
Steve Mason, University of Aberdeen

The late first and early second centuries CE witnessed a new flourishing of display rhetoric and perhaps a new confidence in Greek polis-culture and literature, commonly associated with Philostratus' 'Second Sophistic' and a Greek renaissance. Although these vaguely defined movements can hardly assist us in dating Acts, it is a worthwhile thought experiment to set Acts alongside Josephus' histories and consider the two as quasi-outsider responses (in Greek) to such mainstream-Greek developments. The comparison is prompted by the two authors' common biblical roots and parallel episodes from first-century Judaea, which might already suggest a date for Acts around 100 or later. This paper explores the authors' different approaches to rhetoric against the background of contemporary trends and asks what those differences might suggest about the texts' moral-rhetorical postures in relation to Graeco-Roman culture of the late first or early second centuries.


The Philistines at Ashkelon: Recent Discoveries from the Leon Levy Expedition
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
Daniel M. Master, Wheaton College

Since 1985, the Leon Levy Expedition has searched for the ancient Philistines as part of a long term interdisciplinary excavation in Ashkelon, Israel. This ancient city was one of five political centers of the Philistines but was the only major settlement located directly on the coast. As the seaport of the Philistines, Ashkelon has the potential to reveal the long-term connections between the Philistines and other maritime Mediterranean groups. During the 1986-89 excavation seasons, the first hints of the early Philistines were discovered in a narrow step trench. This small window into the early Iron Age provided a chronological framework for the coming of the Philistines to Canaan, arguing that they arrived sometime in the first half of the twelfth century BCE. Then, in 1998-2004, a much wider exposure clarified our understanding of Philistine architecture and industry. Finally, in 2007-2012, renewed excavations, with the help of advances in microarchaeology pioneered by the Weizmann Institute of Science, revealed surprising aspects of early Philistine religion and household life. Twenty eight years of excavation at Ashkelon have greatly enhanced our understanding of ancient Philistines and their place in the Mediterranean world. This paper will summarize the contributions of the Leon Levy Expedition to the study of the Philistine history, emphasizing new discoveries from the past several seasons of excavation.


Knowledge or Love? John 13:1 Revisited
Program Unit: Ethics, Love, and the Other in Early Christianity
Bincy Mathew, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

John 13:1 is generally recognized as one of the most important verses in the overall structure of the fourth gospel. However, its syntax is very difficult and disputed among interpreters. The complex nature of this verse resulted in different translations of this verse (for instance, RSV and NRSV). The main problem of this verse is which verb is qualified by the prepositional phrase pro de tes heortes tou pascha. While, for instance, Rudolf Bultmann understands the prepositional phrase pro de tes heortes tou pascha to qualify the verb eidos, Willem K. Grossouw is a representative of those who argues that pro de tes heortes tou pascha qualifies egapesen. However, in the exegetical literature there is very little discussion of this syntactic problem and its implications for the meaning of the verse. Therefore, in this paper we will investigate the complex syntax of John 13:1, defending the reading of pro de tes heortes tou pascha as qualifying egapesen and understanding the participial constructions eidos and agapesas as circumstantial participles. In this syntactic interpretation, love is the central focus in 13:1 and the evangelist expresses the circumstances with the participles eidos and agapesas. Moreover, an investigation into the precise temporal reference of pro de tes heortes tou pascha and the temporal or the modal reference of eis telos before the main verb will try to illustrate their function. Besides, we will study, from a narrative point of view, the dramatic suspense created through the explanatory clauses, by the position of the eis telos before the main verb, the temporal indication of the imminence of Passover, and the relation between the Passover and the hour of Jesus (John 11:55, 12:1 and 12:12). We opine that these elements of suspension given in v. 1 inform the reader about a new direction of the story and the extraordinariness of what is going to happen while pointing to the revelation of Jesus’ love towards his own in a concrete manner.


Making Perfect Men: Isaiah 56:3–5 through Torah as an Anti-Queer Text
Program Unit: LGBTI/Queer Hermeneutics
Steffan Mathias, King's College London

The promise to the faithful eunuch of Isaiah 56:3-5 of a ‘a monument and a name, better than sons and daughters… an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off’ is often lauded as a liberating queer text, a hermeneutical lens through which the hetero-normative and cis-gendered legal texts can be resisted. This paper instead views Isa 56:3-5 as fundamentally androcentric. Turning the pitting of law against prophecy on its head, this paper argues when read in parallel with legal texts, Isa 56:3-5 demonstrates and reinforces a tendency to reassert constructed ideas of masculinity, recasting torah-observance rather than penetration/procreation as the central male performance. The text therefore offers redemption for eunuchs, but eunuchs as men, not as queer characters. In offering a phallic yad, which will act in place of progeny, YHWH is offering the eunuch a mechanism through which to fulfill his performative role as male – to create offspring through penetration with which to perpetuate his name. Legal texts such as levirate marriage (Deut 25:5-10) demonstrate social and legal resistance to what some have termed the dreaded death after death - failure to transmit the name of the dead through progeny and thus eradication from the living social community. Isaiah 56 extends from the same symbolic social context as levirate marriage, which seeks particularly and specifically to protect male post-mortem existence. Moreover the focus on torah-observance in this late (trito-Isaiah) text suggests familiarity with the traditionally anti-queer texts of Lev 18:22 and Deut 22:5. Rather than opposing Isa 56:3-5, they offer a symbolic balance, prohibiting and legislating against the transgressing of constructed embodied genders, while Isa 56:3-5, read in the context of levirate marriage, offers an assertion and perfection of masculinity, despite physical barriers to male gender-performance. This paper will therefore pose hermeneutical questions as to what extent, from a liberation-critical perspective, we can read texts as separate from canon as a whole, and the relationship between reading a text as a product of patriarchy and reading a text as a resistance to patriarchy.


A Distant Hebrew Exegesis Course: Envision, Encounter, and Teach Students
Program Unit: National Association of Professors of Hebrew
Michael D. Matlock, Asbury Theological Seminary

The “successes” and “failures” of an entirely online Hebrew exegesis course will be the basis of this presentation. More specifically, the presenter will describe the medium, delivery, and content of a Hebrew exegesis course that he has taught in an online format. He will also share his reflections in regards to the philosophical basis of the course, experiences in teaching this course, as well as student reactions, achievements, and usage in terms of student learning outcomes.


Marcionite Thinking, Divine Judgment, and the Jews in the Book of Acts
Program Unit: Book of Acts
Shelly Matthews, Brite Divinity School (TCU)

John Knox’s mid-20th century thesis that the first two chapters of Luke along with the book of Acts were written in response to Marcion has been revived recently by Joseph Tyson. Though Knox and Tyson focused primarily on Acts’ role in cementing Paul to the Jerusalem Apostles and on highlighting the “Jewishness” of the Followers of the Way, as possible responses to Marcion’s rejection of things Jewish, they have not explored the question of whether Acts’ theology of divine judgment might also be thought of as “anti-marcionite” in tone. Though I prefer to speak of “marcionite thinking” as a loose cluster of ideas that come to be associated eventually with Marcion, rather than as a heretical line of thought that originates with Marcion himself, this paper set out to explore just this question: Does Acts’ ideology of divine judgment support the notion that responding to marcionite thinking is one impetus for the composition of Acts? More generally, it raises the question of whether Acts ideology of judgment provides support for a second century dating of the text.


Teaching Fiction: Teaching Acts
Program Unit: Ancient Fiction and Early Christian and Jewish Narrative
Shelly Matthews, Brite Divinity School (TCU)

This paper will focus on various tropes in ancient fiction that illuminate fictional elements in the Acts of the Apostles, with particular emphasis on the trial scenes.


Where Have All the Levites Gone? The Absence of Levites in the Book of Judges
Program Unit: Cultic Personnel in the Biblical World
Victor Matthews, Missouri State University

The portrayal of the village culture in the Book of Judges contains very little mention of the Levites or of organized cultic procedures being directed by Levites. Instead the Israelites, collectively, and within their small communities and households seem to be fairly self-reliant when it comes to making sacrifices or engaging in other activities that in later periods will be associated with the Levitical priests. In a practical sense, the lack of Levites may simply be part of the overall Deuteronomic picture in Judges in which social chaos, civil war, and violations of traditional practices as well as the covenant are the natural order of things. However, the small number of Levites may also reflect the conditions in a rural culture that neither needs someone dedicated to cultic activity nor can support him and his family. Levites therefore have no legitimate place or role to play in the Judges period. Their occasional appearances, aside from the artificial injection of Phinehas into the civil war narrative, simply reinforce that fact that they do not and cannot perform the tasks traditionally assigned to Levites. Instead, they, like most other characters in Judges, are portrayed as flawed individuals, who have little stake in teaching about or ministering before Yahweh. It is more in character that they are willing to serve idols and to sacrifice others rather than speak the truth. After all, this narrative is intentionally presented as a world-turned-upside-down and it would upset the balance of chaos for Levites to suddenly appear to rectify the situation.


Jesus and the Cultus in 1 Peter: Matters of Purity, Sacrifice, and Blood in 1 Peter 1, Read through the Lens of Select African Sacrifice and Purity Practices
Program Unit: Institute for Biblical Research
Andrew Mbuvi, Shaw University

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Same Sex Marriage in Ancient Mesopotamia (Newt Is Wrong)
Program Unit: LGBTI/Queer Hermeneutics
Kathleen McCaffrey, Independent Scholar

Using queer theory, I argue that the harimtu (and her counterpart, the qadishtu) was not a prostitute or a hierodule or a single woman. The gender terminology of ancient Mesopotamia cannot be rendered into English because it is culturally specific. The harimtu was a legally recognized category, a gender variant identity particular to the culture of the ancient Near East. The ana ittišu compendium of the Old Babylonian period (20th-16th c. B.C.) and Middle Assyrian law codes of the 12th century B.C. are especially informative because they specify rules of deportment that only applied to female gender variants. In particular, I examine what these legal texts indicate about the practice of same-sex marriage in ancient Mesopotamia.


Why Is Xena Naked or Veiled? The Gender Logic of Female Drag in the Ancient Near East
Program Unit: Assyriology and the Bible
Kathleen McCaffrey, Independent Scholar

The modern concept of drag is imbued with connotations that flow from the gender logic of the Western tradition. My paper compares two examples of cross-dressing in the literatures of Mesopotamia and Ugarit. In each, a woman alters her appearance to misrepresent her actual gender identity. These examples of cross-dressing (unaccompanied by actual gender crossing) rest on a gender logic that is foreign to the modern eye. Because cross-dressing in ancient Near Eastern contexts is based on different logical premises, it can manifest in ways that are misleading.


A Syriac-Greek Index to the Syro-Hexapla of Numbers
Program Unit: International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies
Andrew McClurg, Southern Seminary

The Syro-Hexapla remains our only source for many readings of the Three translators (Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion). Today, the main source of retroversions of these readings into Greek remains the outstanding work of Field in his Origenis Hexaplorum. But, as Michael Weitzman pointed out in 1994 in his article “The Reliability of Retroversions of the Three from the Syrohexapla: A Pilot Study in Hosea,” Field often did not explain the process of achieving a retroversion nor did he attach a degree of certainty to it. The task of establishing retroversions with confidence where no Greek text exists is often only possible where a Greek equivalent for the same Syriac word is clear from other passages where both the Greek and its Syriac rendering exist. And the ability to find such equivalents would be greatly enhanced by a Syriac-Greek and Greek-Syriac index of the entire Syro-Hexapla. Unfortunately, however, although such indexes exist for a few biblical books, most of the Syro-Hexapla is not covered. The goal of this essay is twofold. First it will revisit some of Weitzman’s work from Hosea and apply it to the book of Numbers. In particular it will discuss the factors that contribute to establishing a level of confidence and give some examples of relatively certain and less certain retroversions. Second, and more importantly, it will provide a Syriac-Greek index of Numbers. The purpose in pursuing this task is to further the task that Field began and which Weitzman renewed: to establish retroversions of Syriac readings of the Three as far as possible and at the same time to provide rationales and levels of certainty for the retroversions.


Preaching Pregnant: Insights into Embodiment in Preaching
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Amy P. McCullough, Vanderbilt University

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Parousia, Paul, and Rome: Cultural Hybridity and Social Identity Complexity in First Thessalonians
Program Unit: Postcolonial Studies and Biblical Studies
Patrick George McCullough, University of California, Los Angeles

Studies of group identity in First Thessalonians tend to depict Paul (and his co-authors) as either radically anti-imperialistic or culturally accommodating. Representing the former view, Neil Elliott boldly argues that First Thessalonians represents Paul’s “frontal attack on the false peace of the empire” (Liberating Paul, 190). In contrast to this interpretation, Abraham Malherbe describes an acculturated and assimilated Christian community in Thessalonica, encouraged by the letter, with “a positive view of its place in the larger society” (AYB 32b, 56). At the heart of discussions regarding “empire” in the letter rests a few key terms, parousia perhaps most prominent among them. Other examples include the phrase “peace and security” (eirene kai asphaleia) and the nature of the “meeting” (apantesis) with “the Lord” (kurios) in the air. Scholars have used these terms, and their own contextualization of the terms, to argue for their understanding of Paul’s position vis-à-vis the “empire.” Recent developments in social psychology and postcolonial studies offer a nuanced, multivalent framework for discussing group identities in First Thessalonians that most treatments lack. The current paper thus argues not merely for a “middle ground,” but rather a reoriented perspective in which the letter exhibits multiple layers of dynamic identity construction. On the one hand, the letter contains a starkly defined binary between insiders and outsiders, aided particularly with the use of apocalyptic discourse. This boundary, however, belies a more complex and fluid negotiation between the Roman and Christian identities of the author(s) and audience. The foundational point here is that Paul, his co-authors, and their audience are all members of Roman society and thus utilize the cultural symbols of their Roman-ness, an identity as plural and porous as Judean-ness. As Albert Harrill suggests, “matters are much more complex than asking whether Paul was ‘for’ or ‘against’ the Roman Empire, as if that culture were somehow stable and harmonious” (“Paul and Empire,” 292). In First Thessalonians, Paul and his co-authors participated in Roman identification, even as they sought to reify cohesive boundaries around the Christ ekklesia of Thessalonica. We need not deny the political substance of terms mentioned above (parousia, eirene kai asphaleia, apantesis, kurios) as does Malherbe, for example, in his critique of Elliott’s (and others’) anti-imperialistic view. At the same time, the political import of these terms need not constitute a “hidden transcript” as Elliott has suggested elsewhere (e.g., The Arrogance of Nations). Rather, Paul and his co-authors deploy the shared discursive symbolism of their own Roman-ness (parousia, eirene kai asphaleia, apantesis, kurios) to bolster the shared identity of the Thessalonian Christ-community. The letter thus manages multiple collective identities in view of conflict with other local groups—not as a veiled critique of a monolithic entity called “the empire.” I give special attention here to insights gleaned from cultural hybridity (Bhabha) and social identity complexity (Roccas and Brewer). Additionally, these heuristic tools are utilized in view of the complex group identities represented in material culture from the region.


How the New Testament Came to Be
Program Unit: Westar Institute
Lee M. McDonald, Acadia Divinity College

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The Fragility of Diaspora Security in 3 Maccabees
Program Unit: Hellenistic Judaism
Tom McGlothlin, Duke University

Did diaspora Jews in antiquity feel “at home” within foreign cultures, living prosperous and secure lives? Or did they live anxiously, always aware of prejudice against them and the threat of violence against them and their livelihood? To explore these questions, many scholars have turned to literary portrayals of relationships between diaspora Jews and their non-Jewish neighbors in texts like the Letter of Aristeas and 3 Maccabees. The evidence of 3 Maccabees is difficult to decipher, however. Is the opening and closing portrait of concord between the Jews and their Hellenistic rulers supposed to represent the norm (Erich Gruen)? Is the intervening near-genocide more representative of the author’s perspective on relations with non-Jewish neighbors (John Barclay)? Are different portions of the text addressing different audiences (Loveday and Philip Alexander)? Or is the text an incoherent composite of sources with incompatible attitudes toward the king (Victor Tcherikover)? This study argues that, instead of treating the Alexandrian Jews’ non-Jewish neighbors as a homogenous group, 3 Maccabees distinguishes between relationships with the king, with the Greek citizens of Alexandria, and with non-Greek, non-Jewish Alexandrians (probably native Egyptians)—distinctions also reflected in Josephus and Philo. The persecution erupts when the king temporarily adopts an antagonistic stance toward his Jewish subjects, unleashing the native Egyptians’ deep-seated resentment toward the Jews; the Greeks are caught in the middle, sympathizing with the Jews but unable to protect them. The text thereby highlights the fragility of a security dependent on the king’s protection. In turn, this observation helps explain why 3 Maccabees so emphatically rejects two possible responses to the tension that produces this fragility—rebellion (rejection of royal protection) and assimilation through apostasy (capitulation to popular resentment)—while promoting its own, preferred response: unwavering trust in God.


Revisiting the Relationship between the Mandaean Book of John and the New Testament
Program Unit: Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism
James F. McGrath, Butler University

During the first half of the twentieth century, there were circles in which one could practically take for granted that Mandaean sources stemmed from followers of John the Baptist, and thus provided the background for at least some sections of early Christianity (as Rudolf Bultmann famously maintained in relation to the Gospel of John, for instance). The tide turned against this view, and not without reason. But for the most part the specific claims made by critics of that stance did not do justice to the Mandaean sources any more than the scholars whose views they opposed. Since then, additional Mandaean texts have been published, and English translations of works previously unavailable in English are underway. Moreover, since then the Nag Hammadi texts have been published and allow for the question of the relationship between Mandaean and Christian sources, and between Mandaeism and Christianity, to be correlated with other Gnostic sources that were not available in the time of Reitzenstein and Bultmann on the one hand, and their critics such as Dodd on the other. On the one hand, the date of the Mandaean sources makes it inherently more likely that similarities and overlaps with New Testament texts are due to interaction with those texts and with Christianity on the part of the Mandaeans, rather than vice versa. On the other hand, many features of the Mandaean treatment of the figure of John the Baptist, his parents, and his wife and children, are not easily accounted for in these terms. This paper examines whether dependence in one direction or another, mutual dependence on earlier tradition, or some combination of all of these types of interaction best accounts for the similarities and differences between the Mandaean Book of John and the Gospels of Luke and John in the New Testament in particular.


Servants of Christ and Stewards of God’s Mysteries: Permanent Deacons and Formatin for Mystagogical Preaching
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Susan Fleming McGurgan, Mount St. Mary’s Seminary

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Second Isaiah at Qumran: Textual Substitution as a Window into Scribal Intervention
Program Unit: Transmission of Traditions in the Second Temple Period
Matthew J McIntosh, University of Manchester

In this paper we will investigate textual variants included in a particular category of textual variation, textual substitution, for what they reveal concerning scribal activity. The object of our study is chapters 40-55 of Isaiah, an authoritative literary work well testified in the Dead Sea Scrolls. After briefly summarizing the specific kinds and relative frequencies of these variants, particular examples will be further examined in order that we may better understand ways in which scribes nuanced and creatively reworked readings. In the 130 verses included in the study there are 121 occurrences of textual substitution, appearing at a rate of nearly once every verse. For the purpose of our study a textual variant is defined as an intentional textual change, in the present case involving the substitution of words or phrases, particles or suffixes, which are meaningful for revealing scribal activity. The analysis will be limited to those verses for which there are at least three witnesses from Qumran, so that the insights gained may be based upon a number of Isaiah manuscripts from Qumran as opposed to one single witness. The goal will be to better understand ways in which scribes were actively involved in the dynamic process of manuscript (re)production.


Awakening Feminist Consciousness through the Very Different Stories of Dinah and Rizpah
Program Unit: Feminist Hermeneutics of the Bible
Heather McKay, Edge Hill University

Dinah tends to be known to feminist scholars as the archetypal victim of rape. She is silent in her narrative; she makes no claims and expresses no desires. Throughout her story she is ‘used’ as a ‘tool’ by men: foreign notables and her brothers. Rizpah on the other hand, although she also says not a word, manages to move David to honourable actions with respect to the remains of her dead sons and his dead benefactor, Saul, and his dead friend, Jonathan. Rizpah wields unexpected power in her own right. By giving these two women’s stories different answers to the ambiguities therein, different layers of feminist understandings can be accessed, leading to the development of more open and measured reading strategies in beginner feminists.


Putting YHWH in His Place: The Ark as Heteroropia
Program Unit: Reading, Theory, and the Bible
Cameron Mckenzie, Providence College and Theological Seminary (Manitoba)

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 Foucault’s notion of heterotopia to suggest that lipne adonai can be helpfully understood as a species of heterotopia, a mirror that reflects (and distorts) various 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.


Jesus’ Action in the Temple in an Imperial Context
Program Unit: Jesus Traditions, Gospels, and Negotiating the Roman Imperial World
James McLaren, Australian Catholic University

The incident in the Temple provides an excellent case study of how the career of Jesus was negotiated with imperial authorities at the time of the actual event and in the way it was remembered by subsequent generations of his followers. This paper will examine several layers of that negotiation. The first part of the paper will review the perspectives of the gospel writers in order to consider the significance of the fact that the accounts were framed in the context of Flavian commemoration of the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. It will consider what commentary the gospel authors may have being attempting to provide on the contemporary imperial celebrations and its implications for how they chose to remember the incident. The second part of the paper will focus on the setting of the actual incident. It will be argued that it was not solely nor primarily a Jewish affair but one of direct interest and concern for the Roman governor in his role as the Emperor’s representative in the province. As such, the interests of the governor, the Jewish Temple authorities, the Jews that had gathered in Jerusalem for the festival and Jesus were in negotiation regarding the incident and its aftermath. In turn, discussion will ensue regarding the issue of Jesus’ own awareness of the fact that he was coming into direct connection with imperial interests by undertaking the action.


Rhetoric of a Deutoronomic Refrain in 1 Corinthians 5
Program Unit: Scripture and Paul
Derek McNamara, Lubbock Christian University

Paul concludes his discussion of the immoral man in 1 Corinthians 5 with the imperative “purge the evil person from among you.” This same imperative is found numerous times in Deuteronomy. It is found in Deut. 17:7, 12, 19:19, 21:12, 21, 22, 24, and 24:7. In each occurrence the LXX uses an imperative form of ??a???. Paul also uses an imperative form of ??a??? in 5:13. Thus, it would appear that Paul is intentionally citing this deutoronomic refrain in 1 Corinthians 5. Not only does Paul cite a deutoronomic refrain, but he also uses an allusion to the Passover and the practice of removing leaven in 1 Cor 5:6—8 as a motivation for the Corinthians to remove the immoral man. In recent years scholars have examined 1 Corinthians 5 from various approaches. Clarke and Chow using a socio-historical approach have examined this passage in light of the role of powerful patrons within the Corinthian congregation. Rosner, using a literary approach, suggests that Paul’s ethics in this passage is a based on a blend of covenantal/community/holiness motifs that is heavily influenced by the Jewish Scriptures. John Paul Heil has examined the rhetorical-literary role of the deutoronomic refrain in 1 Corinthians 5:13. This paper will combine both a socio-historical and rhetorical approach and demonstrate that Paul was addressing the immoral actions of a powerful patrol who had married his mother in law and that Paul’s rhetoric of purging draws from the Passover preparations and a Deuteronomic refrain.


Cast the Ark upon the Waters: A Missional Reading of the Flood Story
Program Unit: GOCN Forum on Missional Hermeneutics
James K. Mead, Northwestern College - Iowa

The biblical flood account presents the scholarly guild with several challenges, perhaps chief among them being the integration of historical, literary, and theological methods. A missional hermeneutic provides fresh opportunities to engage the biblical text by employing the very best of these major approaches; but it, too, must grapple with the question of how well a global judgment only seven chapters into the Bible jibes with a comprehensive view of the Missio Dei. In this paper I will argue that a missional hermeneutic is best served when it accounts for traditional, higher critical issues, while also moving beyond them toward theological ends. Indeed, a missional interpretation of the flood account may offer the best explanation for a global judgment precisely because it sets the story’s nagging critical questions in the context of a far-reaching, integrative theological framework. Traditional, critical scholarship tended to run aground on the problem of sources and canonical shaping, namely, how to reconcile strands of Yahwist and Priestly accounts as well as how to determine the relationship of the universal story of Gen1-11 with the particular, Israelite story of Gen 12-50. These important matters of source and shaping have traditionally been couched in a way that asks the wrong question. A missional hermeneutic would suggest that the issue is not one of priority –chronologically or logically – but one of mutual contextuality. God’s mission in world places Israel’s story in the context of global dynamics while the global dynamics are fully apprehended only in relation to God’s mission through Israel to the world. Given this set of relationships, the story of global judgment begins to find its rationale within the tensions of the Missio Dei’s universal and particular dimensions. Interpreting the flood as part of a simple, unidirectional narrative lacks the explanatory power of a critically-informed and theologically sensitive, missional hermeneutic.


Visible History or Polemic Language: A Study of the Exodus Typology in Hosea and Amos
Program Unit: Israelite Prophetic Literature
MEI Hualong, Harvard University

The Exodus typology are reinterpreted in Hosea and Amos to fit in the larger theological frame each prophet attempts to construct and illustrate. In Hosea, the Exodus theme is usually presented as a visible point in history, suggestive of all its historical scenes and theological implications. Therefore, the return to this point would mean to the prophet a repetition or revival, to different extents, of all its inherent concrete and metaphorical meanings. Whereas in Amos, though historical relevance is by no means unimportant, the emphasis is placed on the effect in the present, while no indication of the reversal or revival of the Exodus or any of its content, experience or circumstances is articulated. The different concepts of the Exodus may be rooted in the two prophets general views regarding history and their fundamental theological stances, which are in turn reflected and materialized in the references to the Exodus. This theological insights and interpretations of the Exodus may be precursors, though not necessarily origins, of later prophetic understanding of the Second Exodus, salvation and justice as its precondition. This would be a question calling for further discussion.


Angelic Bystanders and a Man Named Gabriel: The Interpreting Angel Motif in Dan 7–8
Program Unit: Book of Daniel
David P. Melvin, Baylor University

This paper examines the motif of angelic interpretation of visions in Dan 7–8 in the context of Diaspora Judaism of the Hellenistic period. Although the interpreting angel motif is one of the most distinctive features of apocalyptic literature, there have been few sustained scholarly treatments of its origins, development, and function. This paper addresses the gap in scholarship by analyzing the form of the motif in Dan 7–8 in comparison with earlier forms and antecedents in Ezek 40–48, Zech 1–6, The Book of Luminaries, and The Book of Watchers. In both Dan 7–8 and the Enochic texts, several new developments appear, such as the identification of the interpreting angel by name (e.g., Uriel, Gabriel), the ever-increasing mythologization of the seer’s visions, and the seer’s complete dependence upon the angel’s interpretation of his visions. When these observations are viewed within the broader literary context of the Book of Daniel, the function of the interpreting angel becomes apparent. In Dan 1–6, Daniel is consistently portrayed as possessing a superior wisdom than that of the Babylonian court diviners, yet Daniel’s wisdom is attributed not to his knowledge of magical arts, but to divine revelation alone (Dan 1:17, 20; 2:27–30; 4:7–9, 18; 5:11–12). Yet in the visions of Dan 7–12, there are repeated indications that Daniel does not understand his visions (Dan 7:15–16; 8:15, 27b; 12:8), and it is necessary for an angel to give him understanding by explaining the meaning of his visions (Dan 7:16; 8:16; 9:22; 10:14). This contrast between the Babylonian court diviners, whose false knowledge stems from their education in the arts of divination, with Daniel’s true wisdom, which comes from God, suggests a polemic against pagan wisdom in the context of the Hellenistic Diaspora. In Dan 7–8, divine revelation is mediated by the interpreting angel, thus emphasizing the heavenly/divine origin of the revelation. Daniel’s role is strictly that of recipient, as he is unable to understand his visions and is completely dependent upon the angel’s interpretation. The paper concludes that in Dan 7–8 the interpreting angel motif reaches its mature form as a Jewish reaction/polemic against forms of divination considered illegitimate by emerging Judaism.


Christian, Feminist, Post-Holocaust Engagement with Scripture
Program Unit: Ethics and Biblical Interpretation
Esther Menn, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago

How should Christians regard Moses, and the rest of the Hebrew scriptures, as a resource and inspiration for ethical living? Our ebullient times challenge Christians to move beyond often unconscious patterns of polemical biblical interpretation to hermeneutics of empathy, ambiguity, and generativity.The book of Esther will be lifted up as a case study in this discussion.


Empowering Resistance while Teaching Gender-Based Violence
Program Unit: Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion
Anna Mercedes, College of St. Benedict

In religion or theology classes including gender-based violence as a topic, efforts to embed examples of resistance consistently throughout the syllabus or unit enable at least three outcomes: a support for survivors in the class, a modeling for students pursuing helping professions, and an empowerment for the class as a whole, in the face of difficult material that is otherwise potentially immobilizing. This pedagogy refuses to re-victimize participants in the course by dwelling only on the pain of victim’s lives. It honors pain as real yet moves *the class* to a mode of survival. As we become more aware of the pains we have suffered and the pains that are inflicted every day around us, we see, through the intentional emphasis of the course, the hope of survival, and the gritty day-to-day ways that survivors press hope forward.


Sectarian Sin and the Emotion of Fear: An Inquiry into the Consciousness of Members of the Yahad
Program Unit: Qumran
Ari Mermelstein, Yeshiva University

The study of emotions in the sectarian texts of the Scrolls has emerged recently as a productive line of inquiry into sectarian identity. Focusing on the emotion of fear, this paper will contribute to this growing area of scholarship by analyzing the mechanisms through which the sect both sublimated and transformed the emotions of its constituents. The sectarian belief in predestination facilitated the creation of a sharp boundary between the sect and non-sectarians. Yet, this boundary was porous; sin was a constant presence in the life of the sect itself. Their covenant ceremony heaped curses on wayward members and their penal code punished the worst offenders with permanent expulsion. The presence of sin among sectarians effaced the differences between them and non-sectarians and called into question the status of the group as the elect. Not surprisingly, sectarian sin was a source of fear, anxiety, and anguish. Some of the most emotionally charged images in Hodayot are used to describe wayward sectarians, those who betrayed the group by defecting to their opponents. The tension in the sectarian psyche is visible in the Treatise on the Two Spirits (TTS), which acknowledges sectarian sin, while at the same time attributing this sin to the actions of the angel of darkness. This paper will focus on two ways that sectarians dealt with the fear of sin. The physiognomic texts 4Q186 and 4Q561 suggest that attention to the sectarian body served as one means for addressing this fear. Sectarian identity was inscribed on their bodies in a way that provided conclusive evidence of their designation, and this portion of the paper will discuss the relationship between emotions, labeled by Michelle Rosaldo as “embodied thoughts,” and the body. The physiognomic texts presuppose the assumption in TTS that individuals are a combination of light and dark, but physical inspection can determine that, sin notwithstanding, an individual has been designated as one of the sons of light. The Songs of the Sage, 4Q510-11, offer another way in which sectarian fear of sin was addressed. As demonstrated by Joseph Angel, the Songs help communicate to sectarian members that, by partaking of the community’s knowledge and praising God as their savior, they possess the capacity to protect themselves from sin and even to inaugurate the ultimate moment of redemption in the present. By banishing the forces of evil, therefore, the Songs resolve the tension between election and sin outlined in detail in TTS, a passage with which the Songs share a network of linguistic contacts. The impact of this recitation is, as the text stresses repeatedly, to frighten the attacking demons, thus projecting the sectarian’s fear of sin onto the very sources of sin and transforming himself from a position of powerlessness into a position of power. The Songs will teach the sectarian a new way of apprehending reality, one in which divinely endowed knowledge is a source of sectarian power, and, as anthropologists have recently argued, changing one’s thought patterns leads to a transformation of one’s emotions.


Not Just “Happy Hands for Jesus”: Service-Learning, Exegesis, and Contextual Hermeneutics
Program Unit: Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion
Amy Merrill Willis, Lynchburg College

Service-Learning pedagogy poses both challenges and opportunities to the teaching of religion and biblical studies. Ironically, while more and more theological institutions and their professors are adopting service-learning models and experiential education, a profound skepticism persists within the academy about the ability of Service-Learning to deliver on the learning side of things. This is especially the case when it comes to learning and doing exegesis. By focusing on specific texts from Exodus, the Book of Ruth, and the Gospel of Matthew, this roundtable will broach the problem of learning in a Bible Service-Learning course by considering the following questions: Can exegesis and service work be integrated without compromising the exegesis? How can they be integrated in a way that enriches and deepens one’s exegesis and still provides meaningful service to the community? What frameworks, principles, and practices support the robust use of service-learning for learning and doing exegesis? At what point does such a class become little more than a feel-good opportunity?


When Old and New Collide: Visual and Textual Exegesis in the Codex Rossanensis
Program Unit: Art and Religions of Antiquity
Clair Mesick, University of Notre Dame

Biblical illustration can serve a very simple function: to provide readers with a visual supplement for the scriptural text, a catalyst for their imaginations and an image for their adoration. Sometimes, however, illustration goes a step further. The images at the beginning of the Codex Rossanensis are one such example; this sequence of miniatures portrays the life of Christ in a way that actively exegetes the text, emphasizing the continuity between past, present, and future church, and between Jesus the man and Christ the divine savior. In doing so, the miniatures set the stage for the gospel accounts that follow -- every word will be read in their light. This paper will focus on the visual and textual exegesis that the Codex Rossanensis employs to establish these connections: between Old and New Testaments, between the first disciples and the later Christian church, between the earthly Jesus and the heavenly Christ. By intertwining verses and characters from the Old Testament and the New, the images harmonize the story of Jesus' life with the prophetic tradition that prefigures and prognosticates him. By grafting ecclesiological practices and ethics into the New Testament scenes, the miniatures create continuity between the lives of Jesus and his disciples and the life of the Church to come. By colliding scenes from Jesus' earthly and eschatological careers, the miniatures meld the heavenly and earthly Jesus. In this miniature sequence, textual and visual exegesis complement and reinforce each other, presenting a vision of the Christian tradition that stretches in unbroken harmony from past to present, heaven to earth.


At the Source of Biblical Texts: The Bodmer Papyri
Program Unit:
Sylviane Messerli, Martin Bodmer Foundation Cologny

The oldest complete copy of the Gospel of John, the oldest surviving examples and the only known papyrus copies of the Epistles of Jude and Peter, the oldest Greek copy of The Nativity of Mary (Protoevangelium of James): these and other source-texts for the piety of the early Christian centuries are found in the “Bodmer Papyri.” Comprising over 1800 pages written in Coptic and Greek, this collection brings together some fifty biblical and apocryphal texts, as well as secular works. The exceptional quality of each part of this find is augmented by the fact that most of them come from the same collection and thus constitute a veritable library, probably assembled in the fifth or sixth century in a non-monastic setting by a newly-converted scholar. After presenting the history of their discovery and reception, we will focus on one artefact in particular: an anthology of nine texts, copied in the third and fourth centuries and collected in the fourth century in a single binding, by a member of the anti-gnostic Christian community in Egypt, whose folios of Psalms 33 and 34 in selected extracts are on exhibit at the University of Chicago Library.


Parallel Editions and Textual Growth of the Community Rule
Program Unit: Transmission of Traditions in the Second Temple Period
Sarianna Metso, University of Toronto

It has become increasingly clear that no detectable difference existed in the way ancient scribes transmitted material that we now perceive as "scriptural" or "biblical" and other ancient Jewish writings. During the Second Temple period, all textual material was malleable -- often to a striking degree, and the existence of multiple versions of any given text was normal rather than exceptional. This paper will focus on the material of the Community Rule from Qumran Caves 1, 4 and 5. Close analysis of the texts reveals the existence of parallel editions, developing editorial stages, and cross-influence between different documents of the Qumran library. It appears that there never existed a single, up-to-date and authoritative version of The Community Rule that would have supplanted all other versions. Thus, the transmission process of community compositions paralleled that of biblical manuscripts, which allowed the coexistence of older textual traditions side by side with newer ones. Awareness of these textual phenomena is essential when attempting to build a bridge between a text and the historical realities lying behind it, and when attempting to understand how a text would have functioned in a community that used it.


The Role of Orality in Community Compositions from Qumran
Program Unit: Orality, Textuality, and the Formation of the Hebrew Bible
Sarianna Metso, University of Toronto

Manuscripts found at Qumran provide a fascinating window into the work of ancient Jewish scribes and the processes underlying the generating, transmission, and reception of traditions. Multiple instances of parallel editions, developing editorial stages, and cross-influence between different documents are evident in the preserved material, and no discernible difference can be detected in the way the scribes handled scriptural traditions on the one hand and community compositions on the other. The manuscripts of the Community Rule found at Qumran are particularly illuminating, for not only do they offer twelve manuscripts for mutual comparison, but they also contain descriptions of communal gatherings where new legal traditions were generated. From the analysis of these passages it becomes clear that the actual authority of decision-making rested not so much on written texts but on the oral authority of priests and community officials. Evidence such as this calls for a re-evaluation of the role of written materials in the communities that generated them. Rather than seeing scribal activity as the sole or dominating mode for generating legal traditions, in actual historical circumstances the written materials may have played a secondary role to oral processes. This, in turn, may partially explain the high level of textual fluidity in the manuscripts.


Programs and Policies: An Overview of the Question of Unprovenienced Artifacts for SBL and Other Organizations
Program Unit: Archaeology of Religion in the Roman World
Eric M. Meyers, Duke University

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The Syriac Reference Portal: Online Tools for the Study of Syriac Literature
Program Unit: Syriac Literature and Interpretations of Sacred Texts
David A. Michelson, University of Alabama

In cooperation with OCLC Research and Beth Mardutho Syriac Institute, the Syriac Reference Portal (www.syriac.ua.edu) project is pleased to announce two new online resources for the Study of Syriac Literature: a multilingual author list (or authority file) and an online encyclopedia. The author list is built in cooperation with OCLC’s Virtual International Authority File (VIAF, www.viaf.org) and is the first standard list of Syriac authors to include variants of author names in Syriac script. This presentation will demonstrate how this authority file could be used in link-data applications online, such as for Syriac manuscript cataloging projects. In addition to the author data, the Syriac Reference Portal also publishes online the second edition of the Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage (GEDSH). Together with Beth Mardutho the Syriac Reference Portal has proposed to undertake future revision and expansion of the encyclopedia from its current list of approximately 600 headwords to a list of over 2000. This presentation will demonstrate current content and solicit contributors for the expansion of the encyclopedia. Finally, this presentation will discuss future development plans of the Syriac Reference Portal, including the on-going development of prosopographic and hagiographic resources. The Syriac Reference Portal has been made possible through funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Balzan Foundation, Princeton University, and the University of Alabama.


The Deceptive Simplicity of Babel: Reading Genesis 11:1–9 in the Context of Mesopotamian Ideology and the Primeval History
Program Unit: Genesis
J. Richard Middleton, Northeastern Seminary at Roberts Wesleyan College

Genesis 11:1-9 is, on the surface, a lapidary narrative, that ought to be simple to interpret. Yet the text is riddled with lacunae and complexity, leading to multiple interpretive possibilities—often dependent on the assumptions of the reader. This paper will begin by contrasting traditional interpretations of the story with selected recent readings, from Bernhard Anderson to Theodore Hiebert, in order to raise the question of what are appropriate assumptions with which to approach this text. The paper will then attempt to read the text in its literary and historical/ideological contexts, to see what meanings might be disclosed. When read in literary context, the Babel story forms the climax of the Primeval History that seems (on the surface) to bring resolution to the account of increasing violence in the tale of human development. Resolution comes through judgment on Babel/Babylon, while—paradoxically—seeming to uphold Mesopotamian ideals for a unified, organized culture speaking one language (attested from extant Akkadian literature). Yet it was the Assyrian/Babylonian ideal of cultural hegemony (backed by military power) that led to the violent Israelite and Judean deportations of the eighth and sixth centuries B.C.E. This paradoxical stance vis-à-vis Mesopotamian ideology suggests the need for the interpreter to dig deeper, to uncover the fundamental religious/interpretive choice facing ancient Israelite readers. But contemporary readers will also need to face their own interpretive choices, which come freighted with similar religious and ethical import. It will be appropriate, therefore, for this paper to conclude with reflections on the presenter’s own assumptions, since there is no neutral interpretation.


Children and Martyrdom in Judaism and Early Christianity
Program Unit: Children in the Biblical World
Paul Middleton, University of Chester

In 2 Maccabees 7, the well known Jewish story of the martyrdom of the seven sons is recounted. Although the age of the martyrs is not explicitly stated, it is likely at least one of them is a child. Despite his youth, the youngest son exemplifies faithfulness to the Law in undergoing martyrdom. Other examples of child martyrs are found in Jewish tradition, both in the aftermath of the Jewish War and later rabbinic martyrology. Children by their innocence exemplify devotion to the Law through their refusal to abandon the marks or rituals of Judaism. While Christian literature also presents stories of child martyrs, the role of children in Christian martyrology is more ambiguous. Children often constitute a danger to faithful Christians; family ties, especially parental relationships, are often portrayed as potential barriers to successful martyrdom. This paper examines the ambiguous place of children in Christian martyrological narrativs, analysing the way in which children are portrayed as both exemplars of and obstacles to the faith. Finally, the paper will explore how this ambiguous presentation might relate to the historical experience of children in second and third century Christian communities.


Sacrifice, Salvation, and Holy War in Maccabean and Early Christian Martyrdom
Program Unit: Function of Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
Paul Middleton, University of Chester

Scholars are divided over the extent to which early Christian martyrology demonstrates dependence on the Maccabean martyr stories in 2 Maccabees. In his classic study on the topic, William Frend describes the Maccabees as the first Christian martyrs, arguing that all Christian reflection on martyrdom is a theological extension of Maccabean thought. Glen Bowersock, by contrast, argues there is little direct influence. This paper will argue that while there are few, if any, direct literary parallels, the martyrologies in 2 Maccabees make three significant theological developments which are crucial for the development of Christian martyrology: the fusing of martyrdom with the concept of Holy War; martyrdom as a cosmologically significant event; and martyrdom as a sacrificial and salvific act. While sacrificial imagery is employed for both Jewish and Christian martyrs, and while both martyrological schemes ascribe a salvific role for the martyrs, the way in which these concepts develop are markedly different; this may account for the current scholarly dispute over the influence of the Maccabees on Christian martyrology. The paper will conclude that while both Maccabean and Early Christian Martyrdom share a common theological framework (sacrifice and salvation within the context of Holy War), differences in the respective functions of martyrdom explains the theological divergence between the two traditions.


A Late Ninth Century Hebrew Bulla from Tel Dothan
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible, History, and Archaeology
Adam E. Miglio, Wheaton College (Illinois)

This paper presents a clay bulla that was discovered at Tel Dothan in 1964. This epigraphic artifact is decorated with ‘pseudo-hieroglyphs’ (i.e. ‘hieroglyphs in Phoenician style’) and contains an impression of a personal name written in Hebrew script that is unknown from the Hebrew Bible or Hebrew stamp seals. The use of ‘pseudo-hieroglyphs’ on anepigraphic stamp seals is already attested in Israel-Palestine during the Iron Age (e.g. see Samaria-Sebaste III: The Objects, esp. plate 15, object 1), yet the best comparanda for the Tel Dothan bulla are two unprovenanced stamp seals (Avigad and Sass, Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Seals, nos. 328 and 377). These two seals share with the Tel Dothan bulla a use of ‘pseudo-hieroglyphs’ alongside a name written in Hebrew script. Moreover, the Tel Dothan bulla is paleographically similar to these two seals and other corpora from the 9th and 8th centuries. Lastly, a late 9th century dating of the Tel Dothan seal impression in not only consistent with a paleographic analysis but is buttressed by C14 dates for the archaeological context of the bulla.


What Progressive Protestants Can Learn from Jewish Engagement with Scripture
Program Unit: Jewish-Christian Dialogue and Sacred Texts
Rachel S. Mikva, Chicago Theological Seminary

Chicago Theological Seminary decided to endow a chair in Jewish Studies as one way of living into its conviction that, in order to be a religious leader or teacher in a multifaith context, you need to know about a religion other than your own. What does it mean, however, to fully integrate a different religious tradition into the curriculum? It is not simply a matter of teaching about Judaism; rather, the engagement of students and faculty with Jewish tradition transforms the way they think about theological education, including study of scripture.


Kierkegaaard and Dante's Inferno
Program Unit: Søren Kierkegaard Society
Thomas Miles, Boston College

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Critical Editing in the Twenty-First Century: Are the Differences Trivial or Essential: Thoughts on (Re)construction, Presentation, and the Notion of the "Original" Text
Program Unit: Qumran
Chaim Milikowsky, Bar Ilan University

Much ado has been made about the impact of new technologies upon the study of the humanities, and it has been claimed that entire fields have undergone, are about to undergo, should undergo paradigm changes. Notions of "text" and "textuality" have been "queried" and "interrogated"; what exactly does the textual scholar do? A minimalist stance is advocated in this paper: as of today differences seem to be gradual, not radical, and changes are in method, not in essence. Various modes of reconstructing and presenting texts will be discussed with special focus upon the consequences of the new technologies.


Cursed Conundrum: Demarcating ‘Magical’ from Non-‘Magical’ Curses in the Hebrew Bible
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible, History, and Archaeology
Daniel Miller, Bishop's University, Bishop's University

In the earlier years of scholarship on magic in the Hebrew Bible, it was the view of some commentators that curses (or their opposite, blessings) uttered by human beings carried an intrinsic effectiveness to bring about the woe (or weal) specified by the speaker. In recent years, however, the pendulum has swung decidedly in the opposite direction, with a number of scholars asserting that it is only through the assent and action of Yahweh that a speaker’s desired outcome can be realized. According to this understanding, mortal curses and blessings in the Hebrew Bible truly amount only to petitions. Phenomenologically, then, human cursing and blessing is removed from the realm of what may arguably be deemed “magic.” In this paper, which will focus particularly on cursing, it will be argued that such a monolithic interpretation is not tenable. While it appears to be justified to understand some human curses in the Hebrew Bible as essentially prayers for harm, the context of others makes it exceedingly difficult to argue for that reading. These latter curses presuppose a phenomenology that differs from that assumed in prayer; they become intelligible only when it is recognized that they are incantatory.


Creative Writing in Biblical Studies: Engaging Students through Biblical Narratives
Program Unit: Teaching Biblical Studies in an Undergraduate Liberal Arts Context
Geoffrey David Miller, Saint Louis University

The research paper has become a staple in biblical studies courses over the past few decades, although its effectiveness in getting students to read texts carefully, as well as sparking enthusiasm for such reading, has produced mixed results. A remedy to this situation is a creative writing assignment that not only forces students to pore over certain biblical passages but also stimulates their creativity by retelling those passages in novel ways. Two types of assignments are outlined here, and both have proven successful among undergraduate students. The first is the rewriting of a biblical narrative from the perspective of a character in the story. Drawing on the work of Robert Alter and Jan Fokkelman, students employ the narratological techniques utilized in most stories (e.g. tempo, economy of detail, characterization) and offer a new perspective on a familiar tale. Examples include the serpent’s version of the Garden of Eden story, God’s version of the Tower of Babel story, and Sarah’s version of the Aqedah. In the second type of paper, students compose a gospel for a particular audience. They must select pericopes from the four canonical gospels and redact them in such a way so as to construct a specific portrait of Jesus for that audience. Examples include a gospel for the Sioux Indian tribe of the 19th century as told by a Christian missionary and a gospel for Americans of the roaring ‘20s as told by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Both types of papers require students to read a text multiple times and become fully acquainted with it. Students also develop an appreciation for the ways in which biblical authors composed their texts as well as an understanding of how stories are tailored for unique audiences. In some cases, their creativity yields new insights that enhance their reading of the stories.


The Contours of Collective Identity in 1 Corinthians
Program Unit: Institute for Biblical Research
James C. Miller, Asbury Theological Seminary

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An Ecological Reading of the Parables of Harvest
Program Unit: Ecological Hermeneutics
Susan Miller, University of Glasgow

Several parables in the gospels feature the sowing of seeds and the gathering of harvests. Jesus tells the parable of the sower, the parable of the wicked tenants, and the parable of the labourers in the vineyard. In these parables Earth has the role of providing crops for human beings, and human beings depend on the produce of Earth for sustenance. A hermeneutic of suspicion, identification, and retrieval highlights the ways in which Earth is a source of economic conflict in several parables. In the parable of the wicked tenants the tenants seek to keep the produce of the vineyard for themselves, and they illtreat the owner’s servants eventually killing his son. In the parable of the labourers in the vineyard some workers resent others who are paid the same amount as themselves even though they have worked for a shorter period of time. In the parable of the rich fool, the man stores his crops for himself but he dies before he may enjoy his wealth. The parables reflect an economic background of poverty and exploitation in which some people are sold into slavery to pay their debts. The parables, however, depict an alternative vision of the relationship between Earth and humanity. The parable of the sower illustrates the fruitfulness of the kingdom of God, and the parable of the mustard indicates the transformation of the small seed into a large shrub which provides shelter for the birds. In the feeding of the five thousand and of the feeding of four thousand bread is shared, and everyone eats and is fully satisfied. The feeding narratives look forward to the eschatological banquet. In these accounts the fruitfulness of Earth is shared among human beings with baskets of leftovers. This vision of abundance acts as a challenge to human greed and oppression. The images of abundant food resonate most strongly with those who live at subsistence level. At the Last Supper Jesus identifies the bread with his body and the vine with his blood of the covenant which is poured out for many. He prophesies that he will not drink wine until he drinks it new in the kingdom of God (Mark 14:22-25). The Messianic Feast comes about through the death and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus’ desire to bring life to others corresponds to the self-giving of Earth, and provides an alternative vision for a new economic order.


"Among You Stands One Whom You Do Not Know" (John 1:26): The Use of the Tradition of the Hidden Messiah in the Fourth Gospel
Program Unit: Johannine Literature
Susan Miller, University of Glasgow

Mark’s Gospel is associated with the theology of the Messianic Secret. Jesus commands the demons, those he has healed, and the disciples to secrecy, and no human being fully understands Jesus until the Roman centurion recognises him as the Son of God at the crucifixion (15:39). In the Fourth Gospel Jesus is recognised by his disciples as the Messiah at the beginning of the gospel (1:41, 49), and he speaks openly about his identity in a series of “I am” sayings (6:35; 8:12; 10:7, 11; 11:25; 14:6; 15:1). Other features of the Fourth Gospel, however, suggest that John also presents Jesus as the hidden Messiah. John the Baptist only recognises Jesus when he sees the Spirit descend upon him (1:33-34). Jesus’ opponents argue that he cannot be the Messiah because they do not expect to know the origins of the Messiah whereas they do know of the origins of Jesus (cf 7:37). These passages allude to the traditions of the hidden Messiah found in writings such as 1 Enoch 48:6; 4 Ezra 7:26-28 and Justin Martyr, Dialogue 8:4; 110:1. In the Fourth Gospel the traditions of the hidden Messiah are related to the paradoxes of the prologue. Jesus is identified as the word present with God before creation comes into being but all human beings do not accept him. John suggests that God has concealed the identity of Jesus from human beings (12:37-40), and at times Jesus also conceals himself from the crowd. After the feeding of the five thousand he withdraws from the crowd who wish to make him their king (6:14-15). Initially, he does not wish to go up to Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles on account of opposition but later he decides to go in secret (7:1-10). Jesus hides from those who set out to stone him (8:59), and he withdraws to Ephraim with his disciples on account of a plot to put him to death (11:54). Jesus avoids confrontation with his opponents until the hour of his Passion, and at his arrest he steps forward to identify himself (18:4-5). The hidden Messiah tradition reflects the apocalyptic influences on the Fourth Gospel in which Jesus’ identity is hidden until the “hour” has come for his glory to be revealed (13:31-32; 17:1-5). John’s portrayal of Jesus as the hidden Messiah also relates to the period after his death and resurrection. In the Farewell Discourse he teaches his disciples that he will leave them but will return within a short period of time. Those who love Jesus and keep his commandments will be brought into union with him through the presence of the Paraclete (14:15-16).


“When There Were No Appendices in the Book of Judges”: A Reexamination of the Transmission History of Judges 19–21
Program Unit: Deuteronomistic History
Sara J. Milstein, University of British Columbia

It is no question that the character of Judges 17-21 is distinct from that of the rest of the Book of Judges. In contrast to Judges 3-16, a set of independent “savior stories” that are linked by a recurring five-part and arguably Deuteronomistic framework, Judges 17-21 stands out as a pair of non-savior texts that are only loosely joined to what precedes it. These narratives are then linked by their own editorial refrain that aims to situate them within the context of a pre-monarchic period, when every person did “what was right in his eyes.” In the context of the Book of Judges, the explicit reference to the monarchy is unusual and requires some sort of explanation. Rather than situate this refrain within some sort of Deuteronomistic schema, I submit that it may instead be rooted in the prior history of Judges 19-21, the gruesome account of the Levite and his concubine and the Israelite-Benjaminite war. While this text is now separate from material in the Book of Samuel, certain details suggest that an earlier version of it once circulated with two Samuel texts: namely, an earlier “Saul” version of the birth narrative in 1 Samuel 1 and some rendition of Saul’s rescue of the Jabesh-Gileadites in 1 Samuel 11. While the block in its current state is overtly anti-Saul, I suggest that at an earlier phase it was in fact perpetuated by pro-Saul Benjaminites. Rather than focus on the latest elements of Judges 19-21, I suggest that there is much to be gained by a careful consideration of its possible transmission history, and that this in turn may provide crucial insight into the enigmatic origins of its refrain.


F. Stanley Jones and the Elchasaites
Program Unit: Construction of Christian Identities
Simon Claude Mimouni, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes

A discussion of , Pseudoclementina Elchasaiticaque inter Judaeochristiana: Collected Studies. Leuven, Peeters, 2012.


Emotions Retold: Emotional Discourse in Judeo-Hellenistic Rewritten Bibles
Program Unit: Ancient Fiction and Early Christian and Jewish Narrative
Francoise Mirguet, Arizona State University

In line with the proposed theme of “Borders, Boundaries, and Crossings,” this paper will explore a particular effect of narratives crossing cultural and linguistic boundaries. It will examine how rewritten biblical stories, from the Hellenistic period, transform or expand character’s emotions. The license with which Hellenistic authors rewrite emotions is noteworthy, and may suggest the construction of a new emotional discourse. I will consider for example Josephus’ retelling of Amnon’s desire for Tamar (Ant. 7:163, based on 2 Sam 13:1-2), Philo’s description of Abraham’s self-mastery when preparing to sacrifice Isaac (Abr. 1:170, based on Gen 22), or the story of David’s thirst in 4 Macc 3:6-18 (based on 2 Sam 23:13-17 and 1 Chr 11:15-19). Combining literary analysis with a study of social constructions and historical context, I will examine the literary expression (vocabulary, figures of speech, etc.), the use of the body, and the kind of emotionality promoted in the rewritten biblical stories—control of the passions appearing as the mainstream ideal. Comparing this emotional discourse with the somewhat later Hellenistic novels, I will suggest that emotions are conceived as a mirror of the self, and the body as a mirror of the emotions. The paper is part of a larger study on emotions in Judeo-Hellenistic literature, and is inscribed within the emerging discipline of emotional history (see Stearns [1994], Reddy [2001], and Rosenwein [2006]).


How Ishmael Became the Sacrifice of Abraham: Ibn Taymiyya’s Influence on Contemporary Quranic Interpretation
Program Unit: Qur'an and Biblical Literature
Younus Mirza, Georgetown University

This paper will build off recent research that demonstrates that Ibn Taymiyya’s Quranic hermeneutic dominates contemporary Muslim understanding of the Quran. As Walid Saleh has shown, Ibn Taymiyya advances a hermeneutic that emphasizes prophetic hadith to the expense of philology. Instead of Arabic language being the primary criterion to uncover the Quran’s meaning, hadith became the tool to contextualize the Quranic revelation. This hadith-based hermeneutic not only sidelines philology but also other forms of religious knowledge, such as Biblical sources. The epistemology of Prophetic hadith defined true religious knowledge as sayings, actions and affirmations of the Prophet Muhammad. A hadith could only be “authentic” if it contained a theologically sound text (matn) and was narrated by a reliable and unbroken chain of transmission (isnad). Thus, other forms of knowledge which did not fit this criterion, such as Biblical material, did not carry epistemological weight. Ibn Kathir built off of Ibn Taymiyya’s Quranic hermeneutic to begin a process in which the Quran was increasingly viewed as independent of previous revelations. Instead of seeing Biblical knowledge as necessary to understand the Quran, interpreting the Quran through itself and Prophetic hadith were deemed sufficient. In particular, Ibn Kathir argues against biblical sources and previous Quranic exegetes to contend that it was Ishmael, not Isaac, whom Abraham attempted to sacrifice. The fact that many modern Muslims believe that Abraham attempted to sacrifice Ishmael instead of Isaac is thus symbolic of the prevalence of Ibn Taymiyya’s Quranic hermeneutic.


Jesus the Hero: The Heroic Portrayal of Jesus in the Epistle to the Hebrews
Program Unit: Bible, Myth, and Myth Theory
Jeremy Miselbrook, Loyola University of Chicago

Scholars have long theorized about the possibility of a Hellenistic-hero background to New Testament Christology. While the Gospel narratives have received the majority of early attention on this subject, Hebrews scholarship has increasingly provided insight into how the author may have utilized heroic language and mythic imagery in the epistle . This paper will show that the author of Hebrews incorporated a portrayal of Jesus as a hero into his Christology. The first part of the paper will review the major steps of scholarship in the study of heroes and Jesus of the New Testament. The second section will offer a summary of the heroic paradigm as derived from classic Hellenistic hero mythology. The final section of the paper will show how the author of Hebrews portrays Christ as a hero in Hebrews 2:5–10.


Levites That Are More Tsedeq Than Tsadoq: Reading 2 Chr 29:34 in a Web of Righteousness
Program Unit: Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah
Christine Mitchell, St. Andrew's College - Saskatoon

It is well-recognized that Chronicles and Ezekiel have opposing views on the suitability of Levites for service in the Jerusalem temple cult. Ezek 44 contains a diatribe against the Levites, while the entire book of Chronicles is an encomium to them. In this paper I focus specifically on 2 Chr 29:34, where the Levites are described as being "more upright of heart than the priests in sanctifying themselves." Connecting "upright of heart" with "righteous" (tsedeq) through Deuteronomy and the Psalms, I read Chronicles as presenting a subtle polemic against the Zadokite priests of Ezekiel.


Bruce Lincoln and/or the Myth of the Benevolent Persians
Program Unit: Ideological Criticism
Christine Mitchell, St. Andrew's College - Saskatoon

Discussions of the Chicago School have tended to deal with the broader issues of definition of religious studies and approaches to "religious" history and texts. In this contribution I analyze a specific phenomenon in a way that combines literary-historical analysis of a particular set of religio-cultural beliefs with analysis of academic mythic discourses. Several pieces of Bruce Lincoln's recent work (notably Religion, Empire and Torture [2007]) have focused on the world view of the Achaemenid Persians. Through careful textual analysis, and building on the work of Amelie Kuhrt and other scholars, he has sought to demonstrate that the Achaemenid Empire was founded on a world view that could contain the paradox of torture within paradise. Opposed to this analysis of Lincoln's is the persistence within biblical studies of the trope of the benevolent, tolerant Persians. Using a Foucauldian approach of reading ruptures in discourse, I analyze this disciplinary discourse: its roots in classical and biblical texts, its expression in modern historical scholarship, its dissemination in biblical studies textbooks, and its persistence in contemporary high-level scholarship. Can Lincoln's work provide an effective counter-argument or counter-myth? Or will his being identified with the Chicago School serve as an excuse for biblical scholars to ignore the counter-argument and continue to maintain the academic myth of the benevolent Persians?


Breaking the Stigmatizing Silence: Reading John 8:1–11 in a Context of HIV/AIDS-Related Stigmatization in Tanzania
Program Unit: African Biblical Hermeneutics
Elia Shabani Mligo, Amani University Project, Njombe Tanzania

Since the social scientist Erving Goffman launched his book Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (1963), the concepts of stigma and stigmatization have been discussed in various dimensions in social sciences. However, such discussions have not been very extensive in biblical studies, especially in the African context. This paper brings forth the discussion of stigma in relation to biblical texts in an African context. It brings forth the reading of a biblical text (from the gospel of John) as done by a group of People Living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) within their experience of stigmatization in Tanzania. It indicates the possibility for the Bible to become a resource for stigmatized people to re-gain integrity and dignity in their own context through identifying with stigmatized characters within the text in the reading process. In this way, their reading does not only challenge the stigmatization among characters in the text they read and the stigmatization within the society they belong, but also the dominant readings of the Bible that mostly favor the stigmatizers.


Protoevangelium Redivivum? Reflections on Recent Interpretations of Gen 3:15
Program Unit: Genesis
Walter Moberly, University of Durham

In recent theological interpretation of the Old Testament, primarily though not exclusively in evangelical circles, there has been a renewed understanding of Genesis 3:15 as a divine promise of salvation. Initially I will seek to understand why this has come about, and how the arguments in support of it relate to classic premodern arguments and to the main alternative construal. Then I will offer an evaluation.


Jews, Christians, and the Social Nature of Biblical Interpretation
Program Unit: Jewish-Christian Dialogue and Sacred Texts
R. W. L. Moberly, University of Durham

This paper will consider the hermeneutical significance of the distinct, yet possibly overlapping, frames of reference for biblical interpretation provided by church, synagogue, and the secular academy. Among other things, attention will be given to some of the ways in which the social nature of knowledge is misunderstood and/or misrepresented by students and scholars alike.


Peer-Reviewed Biblioblogging—Possible and Beneficial Way of Biblioblogging: The Example of codexlovaniensis.blogspot.com
Program Unit: Blogger and Online Publication
Jarek Moeglich, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Biblioblogging is still one of the newest methods of publishing texts in the biblical studies. However, one of the most serious objections addressed to biblioblogged posts is that they lack scientific quality. A remedy for this objection could be peer-review biblioblogging. In this paper I defend the claim that biblioblogging needs peer-review to be scientific and that peer-review gains new opportunities when is applied to biblioblogging. I argue that synergy of the method (peer review) and technology (biblioblogging) can offer entirely new quality to the biblical scholarship. According to McKnight and Price’s survey 94% of asked scholars consider peer-review important in printed journals (McKnight&Price, 1999). However, peer review being of great importance to publication of articles, meets a lot of criticism. The main issue is the effectiveness of peer review (Williamson, 2002), its lack of accountability and possibility of abuse by reviewers (Rowland, 2002). In this paper I address some objections towards ¬peer-review in its traditional form. I shall discuss slowness of the process, suppression of innovative and cutting-edge ideas, small amount of reviewers, lack of feedback between the author and the reviewer. Then, I shall argue that peer-review applied to the biblioblogging is possible and beneficial for both parties. I am convinced, that the idea of open scholarship, especially on-line publishing, resolves many of the abovementioned concerns, for example, on-line publications accelerate the process of publication. Biblioblogging fosters communication between involved parties (system of immediate comments and responses) and solely supports cutting-edge ideas. Finally I shall demonstrate that peer-reviewed biblioblogging already exists and works well. I shall display the example of the biblioblog codexlovaniensis.blogspot.com maintained by the students of the faculty of theology at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium.


Serving in Heaven’s Temple: Sacred Space, Yom Kippur, and Jesus’ Superior Offering in Hebrews
Program Unit: Hebrews
David M. Moffitt, Campbell University Divinity School

Because the Yom Kippur sacrifices included the presentation of blood in the inner sanctum of the Jerusalem temple, movement through space was a constitutive element of the ritual process that effected atonement. The high priest’s physical act of walking into the temple’s first sanctum and passing through the curtain that separated the inner sanctum from the outer one was, therefore, more than a metaphor for drawing near to the presence of God. Rather, in crossing from one sanctum to the other the high priest entered into that sacred earthly space where God’s presence dwelt most fully. Students of the letter to the Hebrews universally recognize the importance of this spatial progression for the epistle’s depiction of Jesus as the heavenly high priest. Few, however, have taken seriously the possibility that Hebrews’ use of this spatial component of Yom Kippur amounts to more than a metaphor for the departure of Jesus’ spirit upon his death from earth into the immaterial presence of God (i.e., heaven). This paper explores just such a possibility. In particular, attention is paid to Jewish and early Christian apocalyptic texts that clearly envision heaven in spatial terms. Texts that imagine a temple in heaven that has its own especially sacred space (as opposed to those that imagine heaven as a temple all of which is equally sacred space) are especially instructive. If such a concept is in play in Hebrews, I argue that three significant implications appear to follow: 1) the epistle cannot be easily interpreted as affirming an essentially Platonic cosmology, 2) the significance of the process of Jewish sacrificial ritual for Hebrews’ understanding of Jesus’ atoning work can be more clearly grasped, and 3) the text does not argue from nor advocate for the assumption that Jesus’ priesthood and sacrifice replace the Levitical priesthood and sacrifices.


“If the Haughty Cease to Exist, the Magian Priests Shall Cease to Exist”: Babylonian Rabbinic Rhetorical Engagement with the Persian Empire
Program Unit: History and Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism
Jason Mokhtarian, Indiana University (Bloomington)

In this paper, I explore the Babylonian rabbis’ rhetorical engagement with the Persian Sasanian empire as demonstrated in several talmudic passages about the Zoroastrian priests (e.g., bShabbat 139a). To what extent does the Sasanian context, as both an imaginary literary interlocutor and real historical force, play in the Babylonian rabbis’ discussions of “Persian imperial others” such as the Sasanian kings and Zoroastrian priests? As Middle Persian literary and material sources attest, the Zoroastrian priests, known as mowbeds or herbeds, performed a wide range of social functions within Sasanian society. For instance, while some priests were scholars and teachers of the Avestan scriptures, others were recognized imperial administrators and judges. In certain ways these functions are both similar and different to the role of the rabbi in Babylonian Jewish society. In light of these similarities and differences, the basic question that this paper addresses is how the Sasanian historical backdrop affects the rabbis’ attitudes towards both Persian society proper, as well as the relationship between their own Jewish society and the Persian empire. With these general questions in mind, this paper examines talmudic texts which depict the Zoroastrian priests as imperial figures with an eye open towards the role of the wider Sasanian context in such discussions. Through a critical analysis of bShabbat 139a and other sugyot, I argue in this paper that the rabbis rhetorically engage the Persian empire in manners that express their awareness of the social competition between themselves and their imperial priestly counterparts.


The Rhetoric of Desire in the Song of Songs
Program Unit: Institute for Biblical Research
Karl Möller, University of Cumbria

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Benjamin in the Borderlands: Between Israel and Judah in the 9th–8th Centuries
Program Unit: Historiography and the Hebrew Bible
Lauren A.S. Monroe, Cornell University

Cuneiform and alphabetic inscriptions demonstrate the existence of two kingdoms in the southern Levantine highlands during the 9th and 8th centuries that correspond to Israel and Judah of the biblical books of Kings. Based on the detailed chronology of the two kingdoms that begins in 1 Kings 14:20, this situation reached back into the late 10th century, and it continued until Israel’s demise in 722/720. Geographical and political details indicate that the Bible incorporates lore from both kingdoms, though Judah is heir to the combined collection. In historical terms, the relationship between Israel and Judah was mediated in significant part by a people who occupied the space between them, namely Benjamin, a territory that could include both Jerusalem and Bethel (Joshua 18:21-28). In key biblical narratives, Benjamin was a people apart: born separately in Genesis 35 and engaged in war with all Israel in Judges 20. Recent debate has focused on whether Benjamin belonged to Israel or Judah during the period of competing kingdoms. We propose that there is as much to gain by recognizing Benjamin’s situation between them during the 9th and 8th centuries, a foundational period for the formation of biblical writing. Theoretical work on “borderlanders,” a category most often applied to the formation of modern nation states, addresses just this geographical aspect. States do not simply impose their boundaries on local society; rather, local society is a motive force in the formation of national identity. This perspective places the borderland at the center of political developments, as opposed to treating borderland populations as peripheral and passive. Benjamin is the one “tribe” in the Bible’s portrait with boundaries that straddle Judah and Israel, and this in-between status is essential to its political identity and impact on the kingdoms to its north and south.


Physical Theology: The Deuteronomic History, the Chronicler, and the Archaeology of Judah's Borders
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
John Monson, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

The Deuteronomic Historian and the Chronicler present two contrasting retrospectives on Judah's history. Yet they both consider Judah's fluctuating fortunes to be a barometer of its spiritual health. Although these histories are theological and literary the events that they describe are set within the geographical and cultural realities of the first millennium B.C.E. It is possible therefore to investigate the degree to which the picture presented by these biblical texts corresponds to the ebb and flow of Judah's borders as seen in the stratigraphy of sites in the Shephelah and Negev. The case will be made that whether or not there is a high degree of correlation between theological text and excavated artifact both of these biblical works (and possibly others as well) are best understood as "Physical Theology." This expression is introduced as a paradigm for integrating text, artifact, and underlying geography. (143 words)


The Redactional History of the Qumran Hodayot
Program Unit: Qumran
Eric R. Montgomery, McMaster University

This paper examines the redactional history of the Qumran Hodayot or Thanksgiving Psalms. I propose that there are four redactional layers within the 1QHa manuscript. These layers are identifiable based on the use of distinctive grammar, terminology, and thematic interests. The primary focus of my paper is to present the distinctive features which characterize the different redactional layers within the Hodayot. The first layer (L1) consists of 1QHa IX 36b to XVII 36, excluding XI 21b–25a; XII 30–XIII 6; XIV 9–22a; XV 29–XVI 4; and XVII 6b–18a, 33–34a. The second layer (L2) is a short Creation Hymn located in 1QHa IX 9–22. Contrary to previously scholars, I argue that the Creation Hymn originally only consisted of the material in lines 9–22; the rest of col. IX 1–36a is later redactional material. Layer three (L3) is found in 1QHa V 15–V 30a; VI 12–33; VII 21–VIII 10 (excluding VII 21b and VII 33b–34); VIII 20b–23, 26–29a; IX 23a; and XVIII 16a+24b–XIX 5. The fourth layers (L4) consists of several complete psalms plus a large number of interpolations: 1QHa IV 13–40; V 12–14; V 30b–41; VI 34–41; VII 12–20, 21b, 33b–34; VIII 11–20a, 24–25, 29b–41; IX 1–8, 23b–36a; XI 21b–25a; XII 30–XIII 6; XIV 9–22a; XV 29–XVI 4; XVII 6b–18a, 33–34a; XVII 38–XVIII 14; XVIII 16b–24a; XIX 6–XXVII 3. In the final section of my paper, I argue that we can reasonably reconstruct the chronological order in which the various layers were composed. To establish this chronology, I examine several cases where one redactional layer has adapted material from another layer. I also account for orthographic differences within 1QHa as well as the Cave 4 Hodayot manuscript evidence.


Of Kings and Mark: A Case of Mimesis in the Second Gospel
Program Unit: Markan Literary Sources
Matthew Montonini, Ashland Theological Seminary

Scholars have long recognized the important role that the Elijah-Elisha cycle (1 Kgs 16:29- 2 Kgs 13:29) plays in reading the Gospel narratives, particularly, Mark’s Gospel. More recently, scholars have recognized the importance of the ancient Greco-Roman practice of literary mimesis/imitatio and its possible impact for interpreting the gospels. This work seeks to build on one such recent contribution, Adam Winn’s, Mark and the Elijah-Elisha Narrative, where he helpfully develops a four-fold criterion for detecting literary mimesis/imitatio. The goal of this study therefore, is to one, interact with the criterion for detecting mimesis developed by Winn, and two, to propose another possible use of mimesis in Mark’s Gospel, namely, Mark 5:21-43 with 2 Kings 4:18-37.


The Waxing of Archaeological Evidence: A Study of Ancient Near Eastern Writing Materials and What They Mean for the Production of Biblical Hebrew Texts
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible, History, and Archaeology
James D. Moore, Brandeis University

Based on the archaeological record and textual evidence, Moore, who is primarily a textual critic, questions the long standing assumption that papyrus was the primary writing medium of ancient Palestine and that, due to papyrus’ tendency to deteriorate, there exists a hole in the textual record. Instead, Moore argues that the archeological record demonstrates that a variety of writing mediums were used in ancient Palestine and that political and practical limitations (especially at Arad and Lachish) caused writers to use a given medium in a given time and place. Drawing heavily on comparative material and textual evidence from the ancient Near East, Moore argues that wax-boards, not papyri, were one of the preferred mediums used by ancient writers in the Levant. Moore then marshals a claim that genre plays a role in the type of writing mediums used. Combining the data, Moore contends that the limitations of ancient writing mediums should influence literary criticism of the Hebrew Bible. Many biblical texts are compilations of smaller independent literary units. The length of these independent units, often times, correspond to the physical dimensions of known wax-boards. This is especially true for the genres of letters, reports, and oracles.


Was Jesus Jewish: The Challenge of Defining Jesus’ Religious Identity?
Program Unit: National Association of Professors of Hebrew
James F. Moore, Valparaiso University

Christian scholars have tried to remedy the centuries of negative Christian teaching about Jews by recovering a Jewish Jesus mainly because Christians have seen Jesus, in the past, as the key dividing point. Above all, the teaching has been that Jews lost their standing before God because they have rejected Jesus. Of course, simply claiming that Jesus was Jewish does not actually resolve this issue of Christian supercessionism. Still, many have thought that this was a beginning for a new sort of relationship between Christians and Jews. Still, many have thought that this was a beginning for a new sort of relationship between Christians and Jews. In the past decades of both scholarship and dialogical engagement with the Jewish elements of the Historical Jesus, there has also been a disturbing increase in Messianic Jews and the manipulative syncretism of Jewish traditions into the evangelical product of the Jewish Jesus. Are these abusive distortions new forms of supercessionism and are there textual correctives that can be used in renewed Jewish-Christian dialogues? It would not be surprising, therefore, if Jews were skeptical, but even more central is the problem of defining just what it would mean to talk about Jesus as Jewish. The historical Jesus presented in the Christian Gospels clearly ;lived at a time prior to even the earliest stages of the development of modern Judaism, and comparisons often tend to connect Jesus with writings that were written much later as part of the Rabbinic literature. In this we part, my colleague and I propose to look at this question challenging whether we can legitimately talk about Jesus as Jewish, what sort of religious identity we might assign to Jesus and what this means for Jewish-Christian dialogue. We propose to do this by looking at specific Christian texts from the Gospels and through a dialogue. The result of this beginning discussion will be, in part, new challenges for what we must do as Christians and Jews in inter-faith dialogue.


The Dog-Woman of Canaan, and Other Animal Tales from the Gospel of Matthew
Program Unit: Women in the Biblical World
Stephen D. Moore, The Theological School, Drew University

Why is the Canaanite woman represented as a dog-woman in Matthew 15:26-27? The dog-woman’s exchange with the self-proclaimed Human One (ho huios tou anthropou) participates in a larger Matthean discourse on human-animal relations. The humanity of the Human One is thrown into question, as will be shown, not least in certain of his own sayings (e.g., 8:20). Nowhere is his animality more evident, however, than in his own interpretations of his death. Through his words over the Passover cup (26:27-28) in particular, the Human One identifies his impending slaughter as that of a sacrificial animal. In a reversal of standard sacrificial sequence, however, he is first eaten and only afterwards killed. This anthropophagic repast is anticipated by the Canaanite woman. Eucharistic undertones may be detected in her riposte to the Human One (15:27), which invites the paraphrase: “…yet even us Gentile dogs are permitted to gorge on the gobbets of flesh that fall from your sacrificial table.” This construal would complete the narrative’s construction of her as uncannily cognizant. The dog-woman’s problem, the Human One would seem to be saying, is that she is not a sheep-woman (“I was sent only to the lost sheep…”—15:24). The more basic problem, she would seem to be replying, is that the sheep he has culled from the larger flock to follow him must soon morph into dogs so as to be able to heed his command that they devour his flesh and drink his blood, while he himself must morph into a sheep in order that this ingestion may occur. The “Last Supper” is thus the primary locus of abomination in Matthew’s narrative, even though the narrator earlier anathemizes the woman by projecting abomination onto her, “abominable” being a virtual synonym for “Canaanite.” This paper will investigate the mutually illuminating relations between these two episodes.


Does the Empire of Heaven Run on Roman Time? Postcoloniality, Queer Temporality, and Matthew’s Canaanite Woman
Program Unit: Postcolonial Studies and Biblical Studies
Stephen D. Moore, The Theological School, Drew University

The Canaanite woman (Matt. 15:21-28) represents an unerased remnant, a polluted people, whose name connotes idolatrous abomination. Yet the episode in which she is enmeshed also symbolically enacts the completion of YHWH’s ancient genocidal commission to annihilate her people. Polytheism self-deconstructs in this scene in the face of a colonizing mission from the future that invades the woman’s present and rewrites the mythic past. Midway through the scene, the polytheistic woman is already on her knees before the numinous figure who is the only sanctioned object of worship in Matthew’s symbolic world, other than Israel’s God. The new Joshua is accomplishing what the old Joshua could not. In consequence, even “Canaanite,” an impersonal name from the distant past, is drained of its primary (polytheistic) connotations as the episode unfolds and the mother of a possessed daughter is herself possessed by a Christology from the future. Recent queer and postcolonial theory contends that (post)colonial arenas are cultural and political pressure cookers that produce fractures and aberrations, temporal as well as geographical. The temporal convolutions of the Canaanite woman episode are such an instance of “queer temporality” engendered by an ethnically and colonially charged space. But the movement inaugurated by the Matthean Jesus produces queer temporality in a different register—a counter-imperial temporality that lies outside the paradigmatic markers of ancient Mediterranean life experience, especially marriage and reproduction. Yet this movement also runs on imperial time to the extent that its eschatological clock measures the hours until the Son of Man will return to establish the Empire of Heaven. These tensions come to especially forceful expression in the Canaanite woman episode, as this paper will argue in detail. Whether or to what extent the Empire of Heaven runs on Roman time is crucial to a postcolonial appraisal of this colonizing, decolonizing gospel.


Lepers and Beast-Worshippers: Did Hellenistic Judeans and Egyptians Really Hate Each Other?
Program Unit: Hellenistic Judaism
Stewart Moore, Yale University

The way scholars have often told the story of Hellenistic Egypt is as follows: the Greeks and the Egyptians maintained an apartheid-like separation, with the Greeks firmly in the upper place. The Judeans, caught between them, struggled to assimilate to Greek culture (without abandoning their Judean identity) so as to avoid being classed with the subaltern Egyptians. The Egyptians, for their part, took umbrage at Judean pretensions to upward mobility, which resulted in a mutual animosity that spanned the centuries. The inevitable consequences of these social tensions were embodied in the Alexandrian riots of 38 CE. The study of ethnicity in the ancient world, a project only now gathering steam, disturbs the pleasant symmetries of this narrative. Goudriaan’s work has shown that no apartheid-style separation existed between Greeks and Egyptians, and bilingual archives have shown significant cultural mixing throughout the Ptolemaic empire. This removes the structural explanation for Judean-Egyptian animus, which now requires new explanations. Further, papyrological evidence, especially that which has been published since the Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum, indicates significant border-crossing between Judeans and Egyptians, including economic relations and possible intermarriages. This paper will re-examine the main evidence for ethnic tensions between Judeans and Egyptians: (1) Manetho’s accounts of the “Exodus,” (2) the motif of Judeans as Typhonians in Greek “anti-Semitic” authors, (3) the comments of the High Priest in the Letter of Aristeas, (4) the famous papyrus CPJ 1.141 (“You know they detest Judeans”), and (5) Philo’s In Flaccum. When read with attention to the modern study of ethnicity by anthropologists and sociologists, two main conclusions are apparent. First, the older elite writings appear to be the work of ethnic “entrepreneurs” whose social power is based on an attempt to create a stable coalition on ethnic lines; however, there is neither evidence of ongoing Egyptian contributions to what quickly became a Greek discourse, nor evidence of any widespread influence that corresponding Judean rhetoric had on the activity of most Judeans. Second, the later writings seem to reflect issues that have more to do with social class than with ethnicity as an ideological matter. The instance of CPJ 1.141 thus seems to have more to do with the incipient tension between local classes, here pastoralists and agriculturalists; and the Alexandrian tragedy was perpetrated, not by “pure” Egyptians animated by centuries of hate, but by Greco-Egyptians who had relatively recently been demoted by the Roman treatment of ethnicities in their empire to an unaccustomed subaltern status. The Judean-Egyptian relationship was a complicated one that changed greatly over time, and was in certain particular circumstances filled with tension and volatility, but there is little enough evidence that either group defined itself in a fundamental, structural way, throughout the long span of the Hellenistic and Roman periods, by means of its animosity toward the other.


From Galilee? On the Provenance of the Q Traditions
Program Unit: Q
Milton Moreland, Rhodes College

When reconstructing the history of earliest Christianity, focusing on specific regional settings provides scholars with our best descriptions of the formation of early Jesus/Christos groups. Although limited by our scarce literary resources, this approach affords us the opportunity to distinguish the varieties of Jesus followers in each setting, as opposed to the facile assumption that Christianity developed along similar lines in all areas of the Mediterranean region. This paper presents a systematic analysis of how we can determine the probability that certain early Christian texts can be connected to specific regions in the Roman world. After describing criteria that can be used to determine the provenance of an anonymous ancient text, I use Galilee and the Q sayings collection as an example of how the criteria can be employed. I focus attention on the recent archaeology of Galilee and southern Syria in order to evaluate the plausibility that the Q sayings were first edited and distributed from that region. My argument throughout the paper is that we must be very judicious with our desire to link ancient texts to specific regions. In so doing, we will develop more plausible historical reconstructions of the incredible variety of early Jesus/Christos groups that formed in the Early Roman Empire.


Jerusalem in Pre-Hadrianic Rome: A Monument of the Imagination
Program Unit: Book of Acts
Milton Moreland, Rhodes College

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Leading through Lament
Program Unit: Bible and Practical Theology
Donn Morgan, Church Divinity School of the Pacific

This paper explores the premise that biblical lament provides an important resource for the pastoral theologian who wishes to address significant issues in the life of a community of faith and the wider public. In doing so, lament can be an all- important process of naming and dealing with the challenges of personal and institutional change, allowing church and society to work together constructively on common economic and social problems often at the heart of political debate. There are two foci for this paper. First, the process of lament and the contexts in which it appropriately occurs will be highlighted. For example, lament as truth-telling, grief, protest, and advocacy are means by which the pastoral theologian can explore the theological dimensions of public and political issues in the context of a worshiping congregation. Critical to such an exploration is the explicit naming of problems (economic instability; loss of power, influence, and status; changing models of leadership; transition; etc.) affecting congregants, church, and contemporary society. Second, the paper will discuss some illustrative ways in which lament may be used by the pastoral theologian and leader to motivate a congregation to address political and public issues. Education, community organizing, public work and service, and a variety of forms of advocacy at local, regional, and national levels are examples of activities informed and shaped through lament by the pastoral theologian. Overall this paper will lift up the context presupposed by lament, namely individuals and institutions confronted by the need for unwelcome change, and the process used to address the problems associated with it as resources for the pastoral theologian. All of this can and should be seen as a part of the larger political and public context in which we live.


Classifying Greek Manuscripts of the Gospel of John on the Basis of Collations at Test Passages and of One Full Chapter
Program Unit: Novum Testamentum Graecum: Editio Critica Maior
Bruce Morrill, University of Birmingham

The Text und Textwert volume utilizing test passages in the first 10 chapters of the Gospel of John is now supplemented by a full collation of chapter 18. Differences between these two types of data will be explored, as well as a comparison of the manuscripts based on both.


Birthing the Family of God: Metaphorical Motherhood in the Gospel of John
Program Unit: Healthcare and Disability in the Ancient World
Michelle Morris, Southern Methodist University

In the course of this presentation, I will lift up an anti-stereotypical aspect of the Gospel of John to explore its representation of gender: the metaphorical use of birth/motherhood. I will argue that the birth images present in the Fourth Gospel are almost exclusively linked with male figures. Such images include the rebirth discussion between Nicodemus and Jesus in John 3, the metaphorical description of discipleship and loss as parallel to the pain a woman experiences in childbirth that Jesus refers to in the farewell discourse, and the events of the crucifixion as described particularly in John. Additionally, with the exception of the mother of Jesus (who may or may not be his biological mother from the perspective presented in John), there is a stark absence of biological mothers in a gospel populated with strong female figures. The absence of biological mothers in a gospel that relies so heavily on birth and motherhood imagery to reflect the experiences of the community needs explanation. I will argue that, as a result of this tension, the Gospel of John has the capacity to free women from the assumptive stereotype that their worth is in their procreative ability. Additionally, describing the act of giving birth as a universal (not simply a female) experience serves to further lift women in status in their community of disciples. Finally, I will charge that these implications challenge the Roman ideal of a fertile empire by freeing (infertile) women from the expectation of childbearing.


Proclaiming the Christ: A Christocentric Response to the Great Omission (Mark 6:45–8:26; Matt 14:22–15:39)
Program Unit: Synoptic Gospels
Daniel I. Morrison, McMaster Divinity College

Studies of the Synoptic Gospels bring with them the issue of the Synoptic Problem. This matter originates from the existence of multiple canonical Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—that present the life and ministry of Jesus in a similar manner, yet exhibit diversity in their expression. This diversity raises questions concerning their order of composition, purpose, and influence on one another. One such issue—the great omission—relates to all three of the aforementioned topics. This subject has received little attention, yet demands a satisfactory response from New Testament scholars. This concept describes a substantial section of Mark’s Gospel (6:45–8:26) that Luke appears to expunge from his account. This elimination of data leads readers to ask why Luke would exclude such a large amount of information. The omission of what amounts to over seventy verses in today’s Bible functions as a noticeable elimination that continues to puzzle those in New Testament studies. Comparison of the Markan and Lukan texts reveals miracle stories function as the only material from this section of Mark that has been excluded from Luke’s Gospel. Acknowledging Luke’s presentation of charismatic activity and his Gospel’s positive presentation of Gentiles, a closer reading of the Lukan text reveals he establishes these aspects of his writing within a Christocentric framework. This work uses a redaction critical approach to demonstrate Luke’s exclusion of the “great omission” pericopae functions as an intentional act, resulting from the theological intent exhibited by his use of miracle stories—informing his readers of Jesus’ identity.


“Establishing One Mouth” as a Signifier of Neo-Assyrian Administrative Policies
Program Unit: Assyriology and the Bible
William Morrow, Queen's School of Religion

“Peoples of the four regions of the world, of foreign tongue and divergent speech…I unified them (lit. “established one mouth:” pâ išten ušaškin) and settled them therein (i.e., Dur-Sharrukin). Assyrians, fully competent to teach them how to fear god and the king, I dispatched to them as scribes and superintendents.” (cf. ARAB 2, §122) This statement by Sargon II has been used to suggest that Assyria had policies of cultural homogenization (e.g., Paul 1969: 73-74; Uehlinger 1990: 509-12; Dalley 1998: 27; Levinson in Day 2004: 295), taxation (e.g., Gitin & Cogan 1999: 198), and/or language standardization (e.g., Schniedewind in Sanders 2006: 138) that extended throughout its empire, influencing aspects of the political and literary culture of late monarchical Judah and its environs. These opinions stand in some tension with studies of administrative practices in the Neo-Assyrian empire, which show that its policies were neither uniform in the West (e.g., Lamprichs 1995: 123-25, 163-64) nor necessarily programmatic in nature (e.g., Bagg 2011: 281-95). This paper will contextualize Sargon’s claim in his building inscriptions with reference to other instances of the phrase pû išten (‘one mouth’) in Akkadian, especially in Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions, and recent studies of Assyrian administrative practices. In that light, proposals from some of the biblical studies mentioned above will be reexamined. The degree and nature of political, economic, and/or cultural harmonization that Assyria imposed on the regions and states subjugated to its rule varied considerably. One implication of this state of affairs for studies of late monarchical Judah is that caution must be used in developing arguments by analogy from data derived from other constituencies in the Neo-Assyrian empire (either provinces or client states).


Navigating the Powers in the African Context
Program Unit: African Biblical Hermeneutics
Robert E. Moses, Duke University

In light of the African cosmology and traditional religious beliefs, which view the universe as enlivened by spirits, the New Testament language of principalities and powers seems to find a natural home in the African context. Charismatic and Pentecostal movements built on overcoming evil spiritual powers have, therefore, been on the rise in Africa. Yet how much of such Christianity is rooted in the New Testament presentation of the powers and how much of this is a mere transference of traditional religious categories to Christianity? We argue that while the New Testament’s pervasive language of the powers may serve as the foundation for the booming charismatic Christianity in Africa, the New Testament’s extensive and varied presentation of the powers also sets precedents for the misapplication or over-extension of the language of the powers. And in a continent marred by violence, such misapplication of the language of the powers can be extremely dangerous.


The Communicative Functions of Variable (“wh”) Questions in Biblical Hebrew Dialogue
Program Unit: Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew
Adina Moshavi, Bar-Ilan University

Questions are a prominent feature of biblical prose dialogue. Although there have been studies examining the use of questions in biblical prose, most of these have been carried out from a literary and/or psychological perspective. This study takes a pragmatic approach, examining the communicative functions of variable (“wh”) questions. The corpus for the study is the dialogue in the standard classical prose corpus, comprising Genesis-2 Kings. Questions have both immediate and higher-level goals. In the prototypical question, the query, the immediate intent of the question is to elicit the answer from the addressee, while the higher-level goal is to learn the answer. The questions in the corpus can be categorized as belonging to seven functional types, each having a different higher-level goal: the query, the examination question, the pre-directive question, the rhetorical question, the guidance-seeking question, the offer and the commitment-seeking question. Some of these types are primarily oriented towards the speaker, intended to affect his knowledge state or decision-making process, while others are oriented toward the addressee and his knowledge state or decision-making process. Each question type is associated with a particular immediate goal (that the addressee supplies, infers or merely considers the answer) and a particular speech act which constitutes an appropriate answer to the question (assertion, directive or commissive). The most common type of question in the corpus, the rhetorical question, is used to indirectly express assertions. Rhetorical questions serve complex higher-level goals, all intended at persuasion. Questions with special pragmatic characteristics include self-addressed questions and those posed by groups rather than individuals.


A Riddle Wrapped in an Enigma: Ignatius, to the Romans, the Antiochean Acts of Ignatius, and the Remaking of Ignatius and Paul
Program Unit: History of Interpretation
Candida Moss, University of Notre Dame

Invited


Going Public: Legends of the Death of Arius
Program Unit: Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism
Ellen Muehlberger, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

Ancient historians often narrated the deaths of their enemies in grisly terms. This lecture examines how Christian historiographers of the fourth and fifth centuries adopted the practice by tracing the development of the legend of Arius of Alexandria’s explosive demise. Once the legend entered Christian historical narrative, the location of Arius’s death was moved to ever more public places, thus writing a history of heresy over the Christian imperial cityscape of Constantinople. I use this case to explore what I call the ingressive memory of place: the rhetorical technique of investing an already established historical and monumental narrative with a novel story.


Paul with a Spray Can and Megaphone: Galatians 3:1 in view of Roman Slogans, Graffiti, and Public Announcers
Program Unit: Pauline Epistles
Steven Muir, Concordia University College of Alberta

In Galatians 3:1, Paul chastises his Galatian audience for their confusion – was not Christ “publically exhibited” (NRSV; Greek proegraphe) before their eyes as crucified? The meaning of Paul’s assertion is debated among scholars, and many venture the rather timid opinion that the Galatians were not actual eyewitnesses to Jesus’ crucifixion; rather Paul is simply speaking emphatically! I suggest that we may learn more by considering the Greco-Roman background of the word prographo (write in favour of…”). This term usually applies to the activity of those who wrote proclamations, political slogans and advertisements on walls. These were often shady characters of low status who worked under cover of darkness, painted bold or naughty messages, and then skulked away; in other words, graffiti artists. If we also consider similar characters, the praecones (public announcers), here we see speakers, auctioneers, town criers and hawkers of sometimes questionable status. One scholar of the Roman period (Rauh 1989) has characterized them as “flamboyant, loud, streetwise and crass, relying on obnoxious voices, crude remarks, and a willingness to say anything to lure in the buying public.” The above is a perspective which adds considerably to our understanding of the background of Paul’s preaching and how Paul understood his role. It builds on Basil Davis’ insightful studies (1999, 2002) and brings in new material. Not only may we probe Galatians 1:3, but also knit together such typical Pauline themes as “Christ proclaimed not in speech but in power” (1 Cor 2:2-4; 4:20; 1 Thess 1:5) and “Paul shares in Christ’s crucifixion” (Gal 2:20, Gal 6:17, Phil 3:10, also Col 1:24). I propose that the Galatian audience were indeed eyewitnesses, of Paul’s intense and fearless presentations.


The Redactional Framework of Judges
Program Unit: Deuteronomistic History
Reinhard Müller, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

This paper gives an outline of how the original redactional framework of the book of Judges is to be reconstructed. It shows that this framework can be described as an artificial chronicle which creates the notion that there was a coherent period of Judges in the early history of Israel. The paper demonstrates that the framework serves as a redactional bridge between the narrative of the conquest, which ends in Josh 11:23b + 24:28 + Judg 2:8-9, and a collection of different stories which culminates in narratives about the origins of the monarchy in Israel (Judg 13-16*; 17-18*; 1Sam 1-2*; 9-11*). Related to the oldest edition of the conquest narrative, this redactional bridge is probably secondary yet represents a relatively early stage within the literary history of the book of Judges.


Before Mary and Jesus There Was Raphael: An Antecedent to the Angelic “Incarnations” of Jewish Christianity and Its Gospels
Program Unit: Jewish Christianity / Christian Judaism
Phillip Muñoa, Hope College

Jewish Christianity, as depicted by several Jewish Christian gospels, bears witness to an interest in angels that have taken on significant human identities. The archangel Michael came into the world as Mary the mother of Jesus according to the Gospel of the Hebrews. The Gospel of the Ebionites tells us that Jesus was “one of the archangels” before he came to proclaim his gospel. Such odd portrayals may seem peculiar, and even theologically eccentric, but what needs to be examined is this insistence that angels have taken on specific human identities, and do so in a fashion that is without precedent in Jewish angelology. What sets off these angelic appearances among humans? These angels on earth possess ethnic identities. That is, they are specific, "named" Israelites, as opposed to simply angels appearing as humans without a more precise identity, as is usually the case in Second Temple texts. And these angels with Israelite identities are even identified with major figures of the Christian tradition. This type of angelic portrayal is without parallel in the literature of the Hebrew Bible. However, this angelic motif began several centuries before the common era with the book of Tobit, and its seemingly incarnate angel, Raphael. Tobit was known to late Second Temple Jews living in Judea and its new way of describing Raphael’s human appearance sheds light not only on the changing notion of angelic condescension among Jews and Jewish Christians, but more importantly, on the Christology of Jewish Christianity.


Human Act and Perfecting Holiness: 2 Corinthians 7:1 in Its Context
Program Unit: Second Corinthians: Pauline Theology in the Making
Cosmin Murariu, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

While recent scholarship acknowledges both the self-cleansing and the process of sanctification in 2 Cor 7:1 as important aspects of the Christian life, the content of sanctification is understood as the Christians’ status of having been “set apart” for the service of God. As a result, “perfecting holiness” (7:1c) is not regarded as progression in moral holiness, but rather as a personal achievement (“self-consecration,” Plummer, Martin), consisting in the Christians’ “acting out their status in-Christ.” In addition, the role of the individual in this process is diminished, with the self-cleansing (7:1b) becoming a simple “figurative purification” (Harris). While the author of the paper is well aware of the issue of the authenticity and integrity of 2 Cor 6:14-7:1, a discussion of this topic is beyond the scope of the present paper. Siding with the scholarship defending the Pauline authenticity of 6:14-7:1, this paper proposes a re-evaluation of the aforementioned notions in 2 Cor 7:1 by analysing the verse in the larger context of 5:11-7:1. The paper works with the hypothesis that the whole of 5:11-7:1 deals with Paul’s efforts to convince the Corinthians to play their part in their relationship with God by co-operating with God (6:1) towards the realisation of their holiness (7:1) or reconciliation with him (5:20), with the latter notions denoting the salvation mentioned in 6:2. The paper propounds that sanctification should be understood as an actual process of transformation, having to do with the fulfilment of the promises in 6:16-18, and argues against the notion of sanctification as “cultic holiness” (Barnett). The paper proposes the progression of holiness in 7:1c as an effect of the process of self-purification in 7:1b, which the Christians are invited to undertake by harmonising their conduct with their new existence in Christ. The paper discusses 2 Cor 7:10 and 12:21 in relation to 7:1b to suggest repentance as an essential part of the content of self-cleansing in 7:1b, pointing out the active human participation in the process of moral holiness (as against holiness as status). The paper examines the relation between 2 Cor 6:16, 2 Cor 1:22 and 1 Cor 3:16 to put forth the idea that it is the presence of God through the Holy Spirit within the Christians, following their self-purification, that operates their ongoing sanctification, transforming them into Christ’s image “from glory to glory” (3:18).


Does the Marcan Jesus Really Love the Little Children? Mark's Flawed Demonstration of Child Inclusivity
Program Unit: Children in the Biblical World
James Murphy, South Dakota State University

It is frequently argued that Jesus showed a unique concern for children in his day, healing them and holding them up as exemplary models of kingdom membership. He blessed them in a scene a few scholars read as a symbolic adoption reminiscent of Jacob’s blessing of Ephraim and Manasseh in Genesis 48. Among the most vulnerable in the social hierarchy of the ancient world, children became one Marcan example of the great reversal of values between the realms of this world and the kingdom of God. This paper argues that despite the lengths to which Mark tries to convince the reader that ‘Jesus loves the little children,’ the gospel also unwittingly betrays its own indifference toward them. Mark’s attempts at child inclusiveness are tempered by images of household disruption and alienation of children as a consequence of Jesus’ eschatological movement. A deconstructive literary approach is applied to passages such as healing narratives involving children and stories such as the ‘Child in the Midst’ (Mark 9:33-37), ‘One of These Little Ones,’ (9:42), and ‘Let the Young Children Come to Me’ (10:13-16). The attempts at child inclusivity in these passages are examined against sayings relativizing family ties, the itinerant lifestyle of the movement, and themes of abandonment in the Jesus’ passion. For interpreters who have suffered abandonment, Mark’s narrative can be a disturbing place where the cost of discipleship dissolves established biological or social households for fictive ones, and although children are blessed or healed, they can also be read as victims of abandonment.


As Is a Man, So Is His Strength: Biblical Masculinities and Modes of Leadership in the Book of Judges
Program Unit: Joshua-Judges
Kelly Murphy, Augustana College

Although female characters feature significantly in the biblical book of Judges and play a crucial role in the unfolding narrative, Judges is still in many ways a “man’s world,” where women are defined by their relational status to male characters, are presented as other and/or outsider, and are frequently the victims of male instigated violence. Yet the world of Judges is also often an upside down world, where things are not quite what they seem. By reading with insights from the social sciences, feminist theory, and masculinity studies, this paper will examine how Judges constructs a certain typical “biblical masculinity” as it explores leadership modes for its premonarchic “heroes,” while also commenting on—both subtly and not so subtly—the viability of these same leadership modes. Particular attention will be paid to the models of leadership presented in the figures of Gideon (Judges 6-8) and Jephthah (Judges 11-12), along with the competing ways in which persuasive speech and violence intersect in these stories.


The Historical Jesus, a Problem in the Caribbean Islands
Program Unit: Islands, Islanders, and Scriptures
Sam Murrell, University of North Carolina at Wilmington

Caribbean scholars of religion are “caught between a rock and a hard place” in their pursuit of serious academic study of Christianity, theology or the scriptures. We hail from a post-colonial Caribbean historical background and Weltanschauung, and we are encouraged to be true to our religious roots, traditions, faith communities, and Caribbean/Caribbean-American cultures that have “brought us this far by faith,” as a song says, “leaning on the Lord.” However, we biblical scholars, in the islands and the diaspora, must conduct research with what African-Americans term double/triple consciousness in a multifaceted, multi-national, commercialized, and “publish-or-perish” liberal academies and settings. A South African scholar describes one of these settings as “a neo-liberal technologized capitalism and the consequent McDonalization of religion” (Botha 2006). Here, scholars attempting to be true to their academic training, pursue historical Jesus research in a Religionsgeschlichschule “trapped in the historiographical framework from which” the modern study of the historical Jesus “emerged more than a hundred and fifty years ago” (Botha 2009). Since 1738, English Deists (e.g., John Locke, Matthew Tindal, and Thomas Chubb), European continental critics (e.g. H.S. Reimarus, D. F. Strauss, M. Kaehler, R. Bultmann), and English/American scholars “not a few” (from T.W. Manson to J.D. Crossan) have given us conflicting Historical Jesuses. It is almost impossible to recommend any of those Jesus of history or Christ of faith to our peoples; who tolerate no separation of Jesus of history from their Christ of faith. From Trinidad and Tobago (in the south) to Jamaica through the Commonwealth of the Bahamas (in the north), islanders continue to encounter Jesus within a colonial and post colonial history of European and American domination, exploitation, and oppression. Even the Haitians, about 90% of whom in 1900 still followed their African ancestral religions, have now, in huge numbers, embrace the Jesus of History and the Christ of faith. Like Cuban and Puerto Rican, they emerged from and inherited the Weltanschuuang that forced us and our forebears to depend on the biblical Jesus who is both the Jesus of Nazareth and the Christ of God. Leaving behind our African Yoruba Orisa, Cuban Santeria Orisha-Santos, and Vodou Lwa, we identify with the humanity and suffering of the Christ of history, whose illegitimate or “immaculate” conception resonate with many of our dysfunctional families and other filial relations ravaged by slavery, colonialism and capitalism. We also depend on the Christ of Faith of Christianity whose miraculous power we need to survive suffering, dehumanization, poverty, under-employment , and oppression in what the Rastafarians have so aptly named the BABYLON culture. So how are we scholars from the islands to be true to our academic and spiritual heritages? Answering this question is the burden of this paper.


A Voice in the Wilderness: The Testimony of John in Rhetorical Perspective
Program Unit: Johannine Literature
Alicia Myers, United Theological Seminary

As with other studies on Scripture in the New Testament, studies on the Gospel of John’s use of Scripture have generally centered on questions concerning the form and transformation of the evangelist’s various scriptural quotations. While such studies have shed a great deal of light on the Fourth Gospel’s employment of Scripture, they have not provided much background on the literary or rhetorical functions of these scriptural uses. This paper lays out a methodology aimed at addressing this gap by incorporating insights from literary-rhetorical criticism. Working with John 1:19-42 as a sample text, this paper will examine the use of Scripture in this passage in light of progymnasmata, rhetorical handbooks, and comparative literature from the Gospel’s milieu in order to determine its impact on Jesus’ characterization. As a recognized source of authority, Scripture works with the evangelist’s rhetoric to persuade his audience concerning his presentation of Jesus (cf. John 20:30-31). In John 1:19-42 in particular, the evangelist places Scripture in the mouth of John thereby bolstering John’s credibility, enhancing the persuasiveness of his testimony by means of a synkristic association with Isaiah, and adding to the credibility of the narrator who has provided a believable introduction for John in the opening chapter of the Gospel. Incorporating Scripture into John’s testimony concerning Jesus, then, the Fourth Gospel employs a variety of rhetorical techniques in order to set the stage for the audience’s acceptance of the Gospel narrative. As such, even before Jesus physically takes the stage in his own biographical narrative, the evangelist has established his character at the core of Israel’s scriptural story.


Isaiah the Tree-Hugger: Prophetic Protests of Deforestation and Visions of Ecological Restoration (Then and Now)
Program Unit: Ecological Hermeneutics
Ched Myers, Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries

“The Cedars know the history of the earth better than history itself” (Alphonse de Lamartine). Human lament over the ecological devastation of deforestation is as old as the Epic of Gilgamesh. The Hebrew prophets too, notably Isaiah, criticized the clear-cutting of the sacred but economically strategic hardwood cedar forests in the highlands of Lebanon, depicting it as an odious expression of imperial hubris. They also seemed to understand that Palestine had been desertified as a result of such exploitation; moreover, their visions of eschatological restoration promised reforestation, made possible by a divine rehydration of these arid landscapes. This paper will explore these prophetic protests and visions against the backdrop of the political economy of wood in Mediterranean antiquity, and look at the implications of this tradition for contemporary eco-theological thought and practice.


Dying to Be Creative: Playing in/with the Homiletical Hiatus
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Jacob D. Myers, Emory University

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Old and New Perspectives on the Curse of the Law (Gal 3:10–14): Luther and Wright in Dialogue
Program Unit: History of Interpretation
Jason A. Myers, Asbury Theological Seminary

This article seeks to analyze the interpretation of Luther in his exegesis of Gal 3:10-14 and to compare that interpretation with a modern commentator, N.T. Wright. The first section of this paper will analyze the interpretation of Martin Luther in his two lectures on Galatians in 1519 and 1535. The second section of the paper will analyze the interpretation of Gal 3:10-14 by N.T. Wright. The third section will propose a mock dialogue between Martin Luther and N.T. Wright offering the opportunity to allow each commentator to interact with one another, to raise points of agreement, as well as points where each would critique one another’s work. This section will also include fresh pathways for new direction in the current debate.


Homelessness, Neoliberalism, and Jesus’ “Decision” to Go Rogue
Program Unit: Ideological Criticism
Robert Myles, University of Auckland

This paper re-reads Matthew 4:12-22 in light of the understated but pervasive impact of neoliberalism on biblical interpretation. Fundamental to our shared ideological climate, neoliberal discourse frames many discussions about agency, economics, and individual morality as they pertain to Jesus, his disciples, and their “decision” to become homeless and/or separated from the household. The beginnings of Jesus’ ministry and his calling of the first disciples to leave their livelihoods are often idealized as paradigmatic scenes. Aside from serving an obvious theological function, such interpretations also buy into the neoliberal discourse of the individual, free-roaming, moral agent, able to make isolated economic choices, while concurrently downplaying the effects that structural and systemic factors external to an individual have in driving particular behaviours, reactions, and outcomes. Mt 4:12-22 contains a number of details that indicate socioeconomic disenfranchisement and forced displacement that are often obscured or maligned by dominant interpretations, in effect, over-emphasizing the agency possessed by Jesus and his disciples and their seemingly arbitrary “decision” to go rogue.


Jesus, the Mosaic Law, and the Beginnings of Liberal Theology
Program Unit: Jewish Christianity / Christian Judaism
Matti Myllykoski, Helsingin Yliopisto - Helsingfors Universitet

In the scandalous works of Hermann Samuel Reimarus and David Friedrich Strauss, the historical figure of Jesus is that of a Jewish prophet who embraced the Mosaic Law and neither preached nor acted against it. However, in the Baurian school, Jesus’ positive attitude towards the Law became a problem. In 1840s, Karl Christian Planck and Albrecht Ritschl, leaning on the traditional priority of the Gospel of Matthew and thus feeling compelled to accept the key passage Matt 5:17-20 as a ipsissima vox Jesu, tried to find a way to argue for a historical Jesus who as a teacher was somehow independent of the Mosaic Law. According to Planck, Jesus introduced a “Christian principle” which was above the Mosaic Law, while Ritschl in the opening chapter “Christus und das mosaische Gesetz” of Die Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche (1850) presented a new image of Jesus who as the Messiah and the founder of an eschatological community opened a new way of salvation without openly rejecting the ritual and particular commandments of the Mosaic Law. This view was strengthened when Ritschl in 1851 changed his mind on the synoptic problem: now he considered the Gospel of Mark with some of its openly critical statements on Jesus’ messianic authority and the Law - Mark 2:28 in particular - as the primary source on the historical Jesus. Thus the second edition of Ritschl’s famous book (1857) provided a good basis for later liberal theologians (Harnack, Bousset, and others) to develop this kind of view and see in Jesus the founder of Christianity who distanced himself from his Jewish identity.


Publishing in Masoretic Studies: Looking into the Crystal Ball
Program Unit: Masoretic Studies
Daniel S. Mynatt, University of Mary Hardin-Baylor

Masoretic Studies has always suffered from a small audience. We have not made a good case for why the larger world of Hebrew Bible Studies should pay more attention to us. Part of the problem is that we have not published in ways that popularize the field. Kelly, Mynatt and Crawford’s The Masorah of the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia will be 15 years old next year, and it now looks quite dated when compared to the books currently promoted by the publishing industry. What the field needs is to “get ahead of the curve” and publish works for students and scholars that will be relevant in the decades ahead. Meyers will address the broad question of recent trends in the publishing industry. Specifically, he will address questions like these: • If The Masorah of the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia was being written 15 years from now, what would it look like? • How long will it be before printed and bound books are the minority in academic publishing? • Will interactive books, like iBook2, become the wave of the future in academic publishing? Mynatt will address the fact that the Masorah of BHS will soon be a thing of the past. The next generation of Masorah scholars needs to teach students how to use The Masorah of BHQ. • How will BHQ impact Masoretic Studies? What will be different? • What needs to appear in Masoretic Studies to ensure its future viability? This proposal will be workshop as much as presentation. Questions from the audience will be entertained throughout the session.


Heavenly Ascent and Liturgy in Epistle to the Hebrews and Early Jewish Interpretation
Program Unit: Hebrews
Hindy Najman, Yale University

This paper will consider various ways in which heavenly ascent and liturgy are employed to construct new narratives of redemption. Attention to the role of authoritative figures and texts will play a central role.


Defining the Problem
Program Unit: Paul within Judaism
Mark D Nanos, Rockhurst University

Defining Paul within Judaism requires defining Paul's relationship to Torah. That requires defining the standards of Torah observance for his contemporaries within the period and especially in Diaspora places wherein Paul established his communities. Then the implications of Paul's behavior and approach as well as his explicit statements to Diaspora communities about Torah, often directed to non-Jews within them, can be compared and evaluated.


What Matters: Material Culture and Commodity in the Study of the Corinthian Correspondence
Program Unit: Polis and Ekklesia: Investigations of Urban Christianity
Laura Nasrallah, Harvard University

This paper takes into account archaeological remains from Roman Corinth and environs to consider the broader question: Why do such remains matter in the study of the Corinthian correspondence? And what views might the Corinthians who received Paul's correspondence have on materiality and commodities? The paper takes up the theme of slavery and manumission, on the one hand ("you were bought with a price"), and reference to the makellon or market, on the other ("eat whatever is sold in the market"), to consider these questions.


Expansive Archaeology and the New Testament
Program Unit:
Laura Nasrallah, Harvard University

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Audience Participation in First-Century Performances
Program Unit: Performance Criticism of the Bible and Other Ancient Texts
Dan Nasselqvist, Lund University

Oral performances of written texts were a common feature in the Greek and Roman world of the first-century CE. Poetry and prose writings were orally delivered by trained lectors in public as well as in private settings. The various performances were affected by commonly held conventions of delivery (as described by e.g. Whitney Shiner, Proclaiming the Gospel, and William David Shiell, Reading Acts). An essential part of these conventions were the active participation of the audience. Most analyses of audience participation in antiquity focus on statements found in the rhetorical treatises (e.g. Kathy Maxwell, Hearing Between the Lines). This paper turns instead to letters and literature of a less theoretical character (e.g. lectures and essays by Plutarch and letters by Pliny the Younger and Cicero). With the help of these accounts it moves beyond the conclusions drawn by Shiner and Shiell and finds evidence and examples of commonly held conventions about audience participation. This paper presents some of the conventions of audience participation found in the first century CE. It shows that these conventions were influenced by public performances of popular lecturers, an increasingly common phenomenon in the first centuries BCE and CE. As a result, audience participation included a lively interaction with the performer that focused on much-favored features of popular performances, such as style, phrasing, and gestures. The final section of the paper examines how these conventions affected oral performances of New Testament writings, especially with regards to sections containing moral teaching.


"Curse" or "Blessing" in Aqhat 1.19.1.36–48?
Program Unit: Ugaritic Studies and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy
Shirly Natan-Yulzary, Levinsky, Beit-Berl and Gordeon Colleges, Israel

Many scholars have argued that in the Ugaritic epic of Aqhat Dana’il curses the clouds—“No dew, no downpour, / No swirling of the deeps, No welcome voice of Baal!”—while others have suggested that he implores the clouds to make rain. A detailed examination of the story that might settle this controversy has not yet been undertaken. In the present paper a number of arguments are presented to support the claim that Dana’il’s words are not a curse, while the opposing view – that it is a curse – rests solely on the interpretation of the verb ys?ly (which in itself can be interpreted in two opposite ways) and on the context of the parallel passage in 2 Sam 1:21. Arguments are adduced from the sequence of narrated events, from attention to the characters’ motivations, and from a comparison of the characters’ characterization in the passage under consideration with their description in the rest of the narrative. In addition this scene can be compared to the vulture scene with respect to its structure and the grammar of the verb forms. It is further shown that the narrator breaks frame and disturbs the story’s time line by means of a proleptic remark. The cumulative evidence resolves the controversy, strongly suggesting that Dana’il is unaware of his son’s death at that point in the story, and that he is acting against the devastating effect of the drought. This means that the traditional image of holding back water from above and below can function differently in different contexts: in the Bible it is a curse, and in Aqhat it is the poet’s description of the drought.


Teaching Biblical Hebrew from the Standpoint of Complexity Theory
Program Unit: Applied Linguistics for Biblical Languages
Jacobus A. Naude, University of the Free State

Complexity theory has recently come to the fore as an important new theory for teaching language (see Long 2011; Larson-Freeman and Cameron 2008; Ellis and Larson-Freeman 2009; Sampson, Gil, and Trudgill 2009). From a complex systems perspective, language develops or emerges in a process of co-adaptation. In the same way, learning a language is seen as language development rather than as acquisition, that is, as a process of dynamic adaptation rather than as something that, once learned, is “possessed” for all time. From a complexity point of view, language can never be in an entirely stable state, so it cannot be “acquired” once and for all. Since humans, as language-using agents, “assemble” language from the resources or potential at their disposal, the expectations that derive from previous experiences of co-creating and aligning oneself with the latent meaning potential of others through discourse constitute an important resource. Furthermore, complexity theory presents a challenge to the widely-held assumption that human languages are both similar and constant in their degree of complexity as well as to one of the central axioms of generative linguistic theory, namely, that the mental architecture of language is fixed and is therefore identical in all languages. As a result, the importance of L1 (first language) in the acquisition of L2 (second language) is emphasised, while at the same time the uniqueness of L2 (second language) is emphasised. This paper presents the basic tenants of complexity theory for the teaching of Biblical Hebrew and discusses how the reading of Biblical Hebrew can form part of a complex systems approach to language teaching and learning.


Q 12:27: Free from Anxiety like Flowers: Its Role and Position in the Q Document
Program Unit: Q
Nelida Naveros Cordova, Loyola University of Chicago

Q 12:27 contains Jesus’ unique wisdom saying in the entire Q Document. This wisdom saying addresses a basic concern in life, clothing. Jesus teaches the disciples not to be anxious about daily needs but to trust their heavenly Father. Jesus tells them to look at the lilies (of the field), that do not toil and they do not spin. As beautiful they are, they do not work to produce their clothes, and “not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed like one of them.” This paper encompasses three stages. Using John S. Kloppenborg’s stratigraphy of Q, in the first stage, the wisdom saying of Q 12:27 is analyzed as a discrete aphorism from its Q position (Q1), that is, other sayings in Jewish and Gentile contexts in the Greco-Roman world. In the second stage, the meaning of Q 12:27 is examined from its position in the Q1 setting where it is embedded (12:2-34). Then, in the third stage, an analysis is presented on the place of Q 12:27 and its service in the main redaction of the document (Q2). Finally, a suggestion is offered of its place in the overall Q Document (Q1, Q2 and Q3).


Mary, Preaching, and the Apocalyptic Womb
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Jerusha Matsen Neal, Princeton Theological Seminary

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Rabbis in Space: The Building of a Post-Temple Temple
Program Unit: Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism
Rachel Neis, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

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Criteria for Judging Literary Dependence and the Gospel of Mark
Program Unit: Markan Literary Sources
Tom Nelligan, Dominican Biblical Institute

This paper proposes to take an in-depth look at the criteria for judging literary dependence of one text upon another. The criteria for judging literary dependence are a somewhat recent development within biblical studies and there is not one fixed set of criteria. The aim of the scholar using the criteria and the subjectivity of any given argument has resulted in many sets of criteria being produced. Thus, they differ from scholar to scholar. No single set of criteria is definitive, nor in common usage. In looking at the various criteria developed by scholars some constants emerge which, it is proposed, should be the basis of any criteria. Some are, however, redundant in certain cases. The criteria proposed by scholars such as Richard B. Hays, Thomas L. Brodie and Dennis R. MacDonald will be explored and analysed and a new set of criteria will be proposed. These criteria will then be applied to Mark. As part of this analysis, examples of possible sources for Mark from the Old and New Testaments and classical literature will be analysed in order to show the practical application of these criteria in identifying written sources. Following this, the effectiveness of the criteria being proposed can be assessed and evaluated in order to determine their benefit in identifying written sources for Mark. Questions regarding the criteria will be asked such as whether or not is possible to develop a universal set of criteria for identifying sources for any text or whether the criteria need to be tailored for the texts being explored.


The Ridiculed Paul Ridiculing: Paul in Corinth
Program Unit: Social Scientific Criticism of the New Testament
Dietmar Neufeld, University of British Columbia

Fear of just censure and the sense of shame it produced kept Roman citizens from doing wrong (Cic. Rep. 5.6). Ancient Mediterranean culture was a culture in which ethos (character) was a key ingredient in the credibility of discourse and in which honour and honour challenges were integral parts of public discourse. Name-calling, labelling, and caricature were key instruments of disapprobation. Becoming a laughing stock before one’s neighbours and literary peers was every author’s greatest fear. Mockery had special bite when it took place in public places because it was linked to the shamefulness that exposure brought with it. Mockery traded in the standard social currency of shame and functioned socially as a strategy of social sanction. Paul is embedded in such a volatile, shared-cultural outlook and is both the victim of mockery and also victimizes his opponents in Corinth with mockery. In 2 Corinthians Paul’s reputation is on the line because the so-called super-apostles have questioned his credentials undermining his status in the Corinthian community (2 Cor. 11:5; 12:11). He in turn censures not only the community but also the super-apostles who were a source of his aggravation and loss of status. This essay will consider the social functions of ridicule/mockery in the Graeco-Roman world as a strategy of social sanction in order to expose a key feature of ancient persuasion/dissuasion. In this sense this study will contribute to a better understanding of Paul and his troubled relationship with the Corinthian community.


The Book of Ezekiel in Its Babylonian Context: A Response
Program Unit: Book of Ezekiel
Madhavi Nevader, University of Oxford

This paper responses to the three papers of the joint session, addressing major points of interest to the current study of the book of Ezekiel.


Finding a Place at the Table: What Does Hebrew Bible Have to Contribute to the Humanities and Public Scholarship?
Program Unit:
Carol Newsom, Emory University

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“Resistance is Futile!” The Ironies of Danielic Resistance to Empire
Program Unit: Book of Daniel
Carol A. Newsom, Emory University

Recent scholarship on Daniel employing post-colonial approaches has emphasized the various ways in which the narrative chapters of Daniel 1-6 employ story-telling, humor, and other imaginative techniques to resist the claims of empire. What too often gets overlooked is the fact that, in the process of developing techniques of resistance to the claims of empire, the strategies employed actually end up providing theological justification for imperial rule, and thus making active resistance more rather than less difficult. While focusing primarily on the materials in the biblical texts themselves, this paper will attempt to use analysis of the ironies of colonial and post-colonial positioning to demonstrate the difficulties of establishing a posture of resistance. Also relevant is attention to the distinction that some have made to resistance within totalitarian regimes between “internal” resistance and “active” resistance.” Turning to the historical context of antiquity, the shared understanding of political legitimation in the ancient Near East provides an inbuilt cognitive advantage for the establishment of imperial authority, even for those who wish to resist it. In light of these factors, the interesting question becomes how the Danielic literature finally breaks from a bias toward a weak from of “internal” resistance, which incorporates within itself a morally compromising justification of imperial rule, and moves toward a more robust form of active resistance. Is the decisive factor simply the brutality of imperial rule? Or are there other symbolic resources that enable this decisive move?


A.C.E. Reading and Writing: Teaching Critical Reasoning for the Last Time
Program Unit: Academic Teaching and Biblical Studies
Richard Newton, Claremont Graduate University

Every year, instructors decry an increasing lack in their students’ critical reasoning. Some veteran educators wax nostalgic about the day when students would arrive ready to test their skills on biblical literature. Now we are faced with the daunting task of not only introducing a wide range of content but also effective reading and writing skills. As a teacher and a university writing center consultant, I have found great success with what I call the A.C.E. model, a chart for reading, composing, and revising written works. The A.C.E. model enables students to render an argument, its logic, and its weaknesses. Students learn to diagram an author’s assertion, the evidence used to support it, and the commentary that connects the two. “Assertion” heads the top of two vertical columns, respectively designated for “Commentary” and “Evidence.” Visualizing an argument makes logical support and fallacies more conspicuous. Faithful employ of the A.C.E. model can bring students’ critical reasoning up to speed for tasks in the biblical studies’ classroom. My short, interactive presentation gives a taste of how the A.C.E. model is but a single matrix for students to both construct and deconstruct an argument. I begin with an introduction of the A.C.E. diagram and its three components. Then the audience will join me in reading an excerpt using the model. Afterwards I show slides of how the diagram has helped to improve students’ writing. I conclude by sharing testimonies from some of my A.C.E. biblical studies readers and writers. Audience members will recognize that the A.C.E. model can enhance the learning process. It helps students become their own best critics and encourages them to apply the same judgment to others’ work. It also gives teachers an efficient way of pointing out areas of improvement— thus affording us more time to spend on content.


Political Transformation and Paradox in the Post/colony: A Reading of Exod. 2:11–15a
Program Unit: African Biblical Hermeneutics
Kenneth Ngwa, Drew Theological School

In his description of the African postcolony, Achille Mbembe argues that postcolonial attitudes towards the colonial enterprise and legacy are best understood not in terms of dualistic attitudes of resistance or collaboration, but in terms of a convivial relationship between colonial and postcolonial subjects. This convivial relation is fraught by the fact that colonialists and their “subjects” share the same living and epistemological space. Mbembe’s theory proves relevant to interpreting Exodus 2:11-15. The story about Moses, a political adoptee of Egypt, embarking on trips to see members of a subgroup described as “his brothers” constitutes an intriguing subplot to the Exodus narrative, developed in the shadow of a nation and told from the underside. The trips place Moses at the center of two distinct but related events, one economic and the other political: burdensome labor and ethnic/political violence. Although the narrative is silent about Moses’ intentions or involvement in alleviating the economic hardship, the narrator pursues the political dimension of the story. Having struck down an Egyptian in defense of a Hebrew during his first trip, Moses is surprised to see Hebrew-on-Hebrew violence on his next visit, and inquires why a Hebrew would attack another. After the Hebrew man challenges Moses’ political and judicial authority, Moses’ life is endangered as Pharaoh (presumably upon learning about the workplace violence) sought to kill Moses. In one brief narrative art of storytelling, the events of the two days are linked, creating an analogy between the circumstantial, senseless, and structural manifestations of violence in the narrative, framed as interethnic, intraethnic, and national. On the one hand, the storyteller shifts the location of deliberations about Hebrew fortunes from the courts of Pharaoh to Hebrew workplaces. On the other hand, it is not just the internal Hebrew debate about administrative and judicial leadership that moves the story forward; rather, it is also the cultural epistemology related to Moses’ violent act against the Egyptian that triggers Pharaoh’s response. The result is a layered, sometimes messy story that uses ethnicity as a socio-political space to examine forms of political and judicial administration that construct ethnic differentiation, that ponder (and even advocate) political separation and, that hold subgroups and nation together. The political subject emerging out of the exodus story and inhabiting the postcolony negotiates their identity and place not only vis-à-vis the nation or empire, but also vis-à-vis other subgroups.


Biblical Citations as Sources for Reconstructing the Earliest Ethiopic Text of the Bible
Program Unit: Ethiopic Bible and Literature
Curt Niccum, Abilene Christian University

Scholars reconstructing the earliest attainable Ge‘ez text of the Bible face a number of difficulties. Two significant problems are the limited number and the late date of “early” Ethiopic manuscripts. Additional resources are needed, and biblical citations in extracanonical literature provide a source of potential value for the task. Employing methodologies adapted from Patristic studies I will evaluate biblical references in the Kebra Nagast, Gabra Hammamat, Gadla Hawaryat, and other works. The evidence will reveal that the biblical quotations frequently adhere to the earliest form of the Ethiopic Bible, even in later works translated from the Arabic. In some cases they evidence a developed exegetical tradition that suggests that the history of transmission in an earlier period remained rather static. This will also serve as an additional proof that those studying the Septuagint and the Greek New Testament need to pay greater attention to the testimony provided by the Ge‘ez version.


Leonard Cohen's Use of the Bible: Hybridity, Spirituality, and Insurgency
Program Unit: Use, Influence, and Impact of the Bible
Valérie Nicolet-Anderson, Uppsala University

In his deep and dark voice, Leonard Cohen tells stories of a broken world, in which perfection is not attainable, nor perhaps desirable, and in which beauty comes through in fragile moments of happiness. Even a cursory look at, or a distracted listen to, his most recent album, Old Ideas, reveals religious and biblical imagery. The second song of the album is actually entitled Amen. The references to biblical themes are both subtle and omnipresent. It is as if they support the entire edifice of Cohen’s music without ever really being named. Cohen’s biography, with his Jewish upbringing and his sojourn in a Buddhist monastery later in his life, seems to confirm this. Spirituality is deeply part of the man’s life, but it will not simply dictate the thoughts and words of the man, and it refuses to be clearly pinned down and categorized. In this paper, I aim to do two things. First, I will explore some of the ways in which Cohen plays with biblical imagery in his lyrics and in his poetry (imagery taken both from the Hebrew Bible and from the New Testament), and how this use of the Bible interacts with the spiritual practices that Cohen developed during his time as a Buddhist monk. Second, I also want to reflect a bit more on the type of understanding of the Bible this use develops. Using Homi Bhabha’s reflections on hybridity, I want to see how Cohen’s use of biblical imagery creates a new understanding of the Bible itself, and of spirituality, as the spirituality of the stranger, whose use of the old creates a potential for insurgency in the present. Bhabha writes, in The Location of Culture: “The borderline work of culture demands an encounter with ‘newness’ that is not part of the continuum of past and present. It creates a sense of the new as an insurgent act of cultural translation. Such art does not merely recall the past as a social cause or aesthetic precedent; it renews the past, refiguring it as a contingent ‘in-between’ space, that innovates and interrupts the performance of the present”. I believe that Cohen’s engagement with the Bible, and our own reception of what Cohen does, precisely allows for a re-reading of familiar texts and a re-interpretation of biblical images that question our own analyses but also nourishes them. In the enmeshing of Jewish, Christian and Buddhist elements, Cohen creates a form of hybridity where the “old” is allowed to emerge as a fertile ground for new, critical thought and perhaps also spirituality.


Ancient Israelite "Religion as Lived"
Program Unit:
Susan Niditch, Amherst College

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Ritual Texts, Ritualizing Strategies, and the Construction of Priestly Authority in the Pentateuch
Program Unit: Pentateuch
Christophe Nihan, Université de Lausanne

A longstanding scholarly consensus associates the writing down of the various ritual texts preserved in the Pentateuch with the Jerusalemite priesthood. Recent finds related to the Persian period sanctuary on Mount Gerizim and the Samaritan Pentateuch suggest, in addition, that the priestly families controlling the Gerizim temple were also involved in the creation—and the transmission—of the Pentateuch’s ritual legislation. But what was the function of these texts? How did they effectively support the position of these priesthoods? And to what extent, if any, do they point to the extension of priestly competencies beyond the sphere of the cult at the time of the creation of the Pentateuch? These questions have recently emerged as a central topic of discussion. Combining insights from ritual studies and theories of power, this paper will focus on three general issues regarding the Pentateuch’s ritual texts and the construction of priestly authority: cultic centralization and ritual legislation in the Persian period; the textualization of rituals and the representation of a ritualized society in the Pentateuch; the relationship between ritual mastery and interpretive authority.


Act of Hearing: Receptionalist Approach to the Performance of the Two Ways in the Didache Community
Program Unit: Performance Criticism of the Bible and Other Ancient Texts
Perttu Nikander, University of Helsinki

It is widely agreed that in the context of the Didache, the Two Ways teaching (Did 1–6) was used as a baptismal catechesis for gentiles who wished to join the early Christian community. Despite of this agreement on Sitz im Leben of this tradition, little scholarly attention has been paid to the actual use of this teaching in this context. The working hypothesis of this study is the idea that the Two Ways teaching was an oral-derived text that was not merely read aloud but rather performed orally in its original early Christian context. Instead of theological analysis of the baptismal catechesis provided by the Two Ways teaching, this paper deals with the role of the audience in the performance events of this tradition. The method applied in this paper is the receptionalist approach. For the basic characterization of the performances of the Two Ways teaching, I will apply insights from John Miles Foley’s theory of performance events of oral-derived texts. This theory contains concepts such as performance arena, register, and traditional referentiality. Foley’s theory is heavily influenced by receptionalist theories posited by a modern literary critic Wolfgang Iser whose key concepts the ‘implied reader’ and the ‘gaps of indeterminacy’ will be used for the further analysis of the role of the audience in the performance event of the Two Ways teaching. From the receptionalist framework, the task of the audience of the oral performance is to co-create the performance event. This has two intertwining aspects. First, the audience works as co-creator of the performance event by entering to the correct performance arena and operating within the same register with the performer. Second, in order to achieve a successful performance event, the audience must perform certain interpretative tasks, especially filling in the ‘gaps of indeterminacy’ that are implicit and encoded meanings in the tradition. For the task of this paper, Iser’s term the ‘implied reader’ will be modified to the ‘implied audience’ in order to make it match with the context of the oral performance. Hence, in this paper, the ‘implied audience’ is used to refer to the specific role that is provided by the oral performance. Further, the ‘implied audience’ is able to fill in the ‘gaps of indeterminacy’ and decode the implicit meanings within the tradition. Furthermore, the analysis of oral-derived text involves the study of signals and gaps within the Two Ways teaching. It must be noted that in this context, these ‘gaps’ are not lack of details in the Two Ways teaching but rather, missing links between explicit and implicit meanings within the tradition. For example, the authority of the Two Ways teaching and the context of interpretation of this teaching are ‘gaps’ that can be decoded by the ‘implied audience’. Through this analysis it is possible to characterize the ‘implied audience’ of the Two Ways teaching and further, to draw tentative social historical conclusions about the real audience of this teaching.


Isaiah’s Covenant of an Everlasting Prophetic Dynasty: Isaiah 59:21 in the Book of Isaiah
Program Unit: Book of Isaiah
Paul Niskanen, University of Saint Thomas (Saint Paul, MN)

Isaiah 59:21 is a brief prose interlude between larger poetical sections of Trito-Isaiah. The meaning of the passage, its relationship to the surrounding poetical sections, and the identity of its addressee have been topics of debate that have not found consensus. In this paper I argue that the verse should be understood first of all in the context of the formation of the Book of Isaiah, most likely as a conclusion of an earlier form of the book. The covenant promising an everlasting “prophetic dynasty” serves to validate the authority of the tradents behind this layer of the Book of Isaiah who see themselves as spiritual children and heirs of this prophetic covenant. It also leaves open the possibility of ongoing redactional activity by this Isaian school. I attempt to situate this passage, then, not only as an epilogue to an early stage of Trito-Isaiah, but also as a link in the continued evolution of the prophetic text. The singular “you” addressed in the passage may then be understood in a distributive sense. It may perhaps refer to the prophetic “servant” of Deutero-Isaiah (as has sometimes been suggested), but its referent need not be limited. It may also indicate the very scribe writing this text on one end of the spectrum, and serve as a rhetorical allusion to Isaiah of Jerusalem on the other. The passing of the prophetic mantle is thus envisioned with a backward glance to the original source behind this prophetic book, as well as with a forward-looking vision to the ongoing authoritative redaction and interpretation of the prophetic text.


The Book of Ezekiel in Its Babylonian Context: Response
Program Unit: Prophetic Texts and Their Ancient Contexts
Martti Nissinen, University of Helsinki

This paper responds to the papers read in the two The Book of Ezekiel in Its Babylonian Context sessions (Theological Perspectives on the Book of Ezekiel Section and Prophetic Texts and Their Ancient Contexts Group).


A Pharisaic Reply to Sectarian Polemic
Program Unit: Qumran
Vered Noam, Tel Aviv University

The paper will examine the sectarian landscape of the Second Temple period as reflected in the story of the rupture between King Jannaeus and the Pharisees recounted in b. Qiddushin 66a. Focusing on its use of biblical allusions and implicit scriptural references, as well as on its distinctive Qumran-like terminology, I wish to introduce a novel suggestion as to this legend's provenance and aim: namely, that it has preserved a rare fragment of a Pharisaic polemical work.


Names of Biblical Women in the Papyri from Egypt to the Time of Constantine
Program Unit: Papyrology and Early Christian Backgrounds
Alanna Nobbs, Macquarie University

Mary in its various forms is by far the most common Biblical name in the Greek papyri from Egypt to the early fourth century, since it can be Roman as the feminine of the family name Marius , and either Jewish or Christian as a BIblical name,.Aside from Mary, we find in the papyrus letters and documents the names of Esther and Susanna together with other Biblical women. This paper will examine usages of these names with a discussion of possible Jewish or Christian provenance. In conclusion it will mention newer Christian women's names arising from the Christianisation of Egypt.


Inventing Yahwism: The Religion of Ancient Israelite Religion
Program Unit: Metacriticism of Biblical Scholarship
K. L. Noll, Brandon University

The data from Iron Age Palestine suggest that a god called Yahweh was one of many Canaanite patron gods. The Tanak can be understood as a haphazard anthology of literary fragments, some of which also derived from Iron Age Palestine, though others were constructed in later times. As such, the Tanak supports a hypothesis that Iron Age Yahweh was a routine example of a patron god who presided over a conventional Canaanite divine council. Rarely, however, has the biblical evidence been used to defend such a thesis. Instead, various hypotheses have suggested that a distinct religion of Yahwism either existed or gradually emerged, and that participants in this religion were able to distinguish, to a lesser or greater degree, a set of boundaries between Yahwism and non-Yahwism. A survey of relevant data and recent theoretical models for the study of religion will conclude that common models for this alleged Iron Age Yahwism are remnants of contemporary theological desire, not ancient evidence.


That Divinely Inspired Text Walks Like a Duck! Theological Exegesis and Biblical Origins
Program Unit: Metacriticism of Biblical Scholarship
K. L. Noll, Brandon University

Few researchers deny that the origin of the literature now contained in Tanak is unknown. A few hints in the content suggest earliest possible dates of composition but do not require a specific latest possible date. Linguistic elements and manuscript variants suggest a long process of unguided evolution for at least some portions of this anthology. The many discontinuities, inconsistencies, and contradictions might suggest that the entire anthology evolved through a haphazard process of supplementation that was unguided by any overarching goal or ideology. And yet, few researchers are content to view the literature as a library or archive of unrelated narratives, poems, and fragments of unknown provenance and date. This paper suggests that conventional hypotheses about the origins and evolution of the Bible have been motivated by theological need and not by the evidence.


Size Matters? Revisiting Some Physical Features of the Bodmer Codices
Program Unit: Papyrology and Early Christian Backgrounds
Brent Nongbri, Macquarie University

This paper will examine physical features of the Greek and Coptic codices among the Bodmer papyri. In addition to addressing questions of dimensions and quire make-up, the paper will also discuss the somewhat neglected area of bookbinding techniques, for which the Bodmer codices provide a surprising amount of evidence.


The Psalms and God's Hesed: Reclaiming Mature Proximity to Presence/Absence in Public Space
Program Unit: Bible and Practical Theology
Yolanda M. Norton, Vanderbilt University

The Psalms are a body of literature that evolved from individual and collective experiences of ancient Israel over several centuries. In the Psalms we, as readers, bear witness to the evolving relationship between God and humanity. As such, this multifarious biblical text gives its audience an intimate understanding of the values, struggles, and praise of the members of this particular community. Similarly, the church has a rich and complicated history with the Psalms. While songs of praise have had, and continue to have, a significant place in Christian worship, the contemporary Western church has not maintained consistent relationship with the Psalms. If Psalms are utilized at all in Christian worship, rarely do these public expressions leave room for biblical lamentation. While Psalms of lament have been censored from the public worship space, the holy act of lamentation has resurfaced and been embraced in spheres of popular culture—such as hip hop, blues, rock and roll, and Emo music. This resurfacing in “secular” culture creates dissonance in the lives of believers. We come together on Sunday, the eighth day of the ordo symbolizing realized eschatology of the Christian Church in relationship with God, to smile before God and one another. However, we leave this isolated moment of high praise and return to the world without the vocabulary to navigate the violence and ambiguity of our everyday lives as people of faith. This inattention to the intricacies of the Psalms leaves the church incapable of handling God when “God is not good to us.” When this wrestling with God does not occur faithfully in the body of believers unwarranted and unexpected suffering is attributed to: 1) “Satan” and other mythological forces of evil and/or 2) the failures and deficiencies of the individual who has brought the pain upon herself. This paper is an interdisciplinary effort exploring the historical expressions of lament within the fields of biblical studies and homiletics and liturgics. As such, we will address and challenge shallow liturgical language, which presupposes human relationship with a God who only can handle our praise rather than our doubts. Furthermore, we will use the lamentation in the Bible as a corrective tool in which praise and lament are integrally woven together, maintaining the integrity of their symbiotic relationship.


Was There a Priestly Presence at Midgal-Gennesar?
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
R. Steven Notley, Nyack College

Recent excavations at Magdala have shed fresh light on Jewish settlement on the plain of Gennesar in the early Roman period. The discoveries also serve as a bridge between the days of the Hasmoneans to Bar Kohba. In a short study before his death, Flusser argued that the etymology of the toponym Gennesar pointed to an early priestly presence in the area, while Avi-Yonah demonstrated that Midgal Nuniya was the site of one of the priestly mishmarot soon after the destruction of the Temple. Our study will focus on the significance of the incised limestone table recently unearthed within a large public structure that archaeologists have identified to be an early Roman period synagogue. Our interest lies in the symbols engraved on the table, particularly the menorah. A survey of menorot from the days of the Second Temple will demonstrate the significance of the table as a witness for the history of Jewish settlement on the northwestern shores of the lake of Gennesar.


Towards a Credible Methodology in African Biblical Hermeneutics
Program Unit: African Biblical Hermeneutics
Benjamin Abotchie Ntreh, University of Cape Coast

For any interpretation in African Biblical Hermeneutics to have credibility, the method one uses must be comprehensive enough to encompass the various facets of the issues that are at stake in pursuing such an enterprise. First, the method must be accommodating enough to address the similarities in the religious norms and values of the African people and second, it must also be flexible to take care of the differences. Since the unit African Biblical Hermeneutics group presupposes that interpretation is pursued with African perspective, the method must allow the African interpreter to come to the biblical text with his or her perspectives. Thus the cultural issues which are revealed in the biblical text are brought into dialogue and interaction with comparable cultural issues in Africa. The methodology under consideration will employ some aspects of reader-response criticism and the African scholar interprets the text as a real reader would do. In this dialogical and comparative component similar issues as well as differences in the Bible and Africa will have to be grappled with. There will have to be the need for compromises, a give-and-take process, one would describe it. It is hoped that African biblical scholars can learn something from the Bible and yet the African biblical interpreter can also make his or her peculiar contributions to the issues under discussion. This methodology must be applicable to the interpretation of both narrative and poetry.


The Emergence of Non-earthly Conceptions of Afterlife in Second Temple Jewish Literature: A Challenge to Third-Second Century BCE Dating
Program Unit: Function of Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
John C. Nugent, Great Lakes Christian College

Prominent scholars of Second Temple literature, such as George Nickelsburg and John Collins have suggested that Jews began articulating non-earthly conceptions of afterlife during the third and second centuries BCE. They back this claim with a string of ambiguous passages from Daniel, the Epistle of Enoch, Jubilees, and the Testament of Moses. Such an early dating has prompted some, though not all, scholars to look toward Persian influence as a leading cause of such notions. This early dating is also why numerous scholars of apocalyptic literature, including Paul Hanson and John Collins, strongly link the eschatology of apocalypses with that of dualist frameworks, which entail humans becoming angels and dwelling in the heavens. Despite claiming eschatological diversity, these scholars often argue as if apocalyptic eschatology is driven exclusively by non-earthly hope. This position is assumed by scholars building upon their work, such as Martha Himmelfarb and Alan F. Segal. Though several scholars have exercised cautious reserve about interpreting the pertinent passages in Daniel 12, the third-second century timeframe remains in place because it is routinely assumed due to otherworldly interpretations of the Epistle of Enoch, Jubilees, and Testament of Moses. Unlikely interpretations of the aforementioned passages is supported by turn of the era or later texts, including Wisdom of Solomon, the Similitudes, Apocalypse of Zephaniah, 2 Enoch, 2 Baruch, and the Vision of Isaiah. The collective force of these texts is impressive since, unlike their third-second century antecedents, they clearly testify to an angelic heavenly destiny for humans. Though I agree with Collins and Nickelsburg that the movement toward such hopes was intricately related to burgeoning Jewish angelology, I argue against their claim that heavenly orientations developed as early as the third century. Through close scrutiny of the relevant third and second century texts, I argue that a distinction must be made between the eschatology of early Jewish apocalypses and that of turn of the century Jewish apocalypses. The former espouse the earthly eschatology common to the Hebrew Bible and the latter are an outgrowth of both Jewish angelology and Platonic Greek philosophy.


The Golden Calf vis-à-vis the Tabernacle in Acts 7
Program Unit: Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity
Mark Nussberger, Independent Scholar

In the final compilation of documentary sources in the Pentateuch, non-Priestly texts dealing in part with Israel’s idolatry at Sinai (Exodus 32–34) are enveloped by Priestly material concerning the Tabernacle (chs. 25–31, 35–40). The combination of calf narrative and Tabernacle texts, each belonging to discrete antecedent sources, creates not only a new text, but also the possibility of new meanings unanticipated by the authors of the original documents. For instance, Israel’s worship of the calf becomes a foil to the Priestly depiction of right worship and divinely prescribed religious artifacts. And the interpretation of those compiled sources by ancient Jews and Christians involves further acts of re-contextualization. One of the earliest extant Christian appropriations of the calf narrative, the speech ascribed to Stephen in Acts 7, offers another antipode to idolatry—adherence to Jesus as the Righteous One and Son of Man, exalted in glory. While developing his christological interpretation of the sin at Sinai, the author of Acts utilizes the canonical juxtaposition of calf and Tabernacle, in part to underscore the rebelliousness of the Israelites in contrast to the obedience of Moses, the prophet (and type of Jesus) whom the people rejected. And the Tabernacle exemplifies God’s faithfulness to his promises to Abraham (Acts 7:6–7) despite the descendants’ infidelity. But the wilderness sanctuary, emblem of Mosaic obedience and divine fidelity, by no means overshadows Israel’s infidelity. A reference to the Deity’s punishment of Israel, including exile “beyond Babylon” (v. 43), protrudes amidst reports of the calf apostasy (vv. 39–41) and construction of the Tabernacle (v. 44), weakening any sense of the Tabernacle as representing the reconciliation of God and Israel—unlike in Pseudo-Philo’s Biblical Antiquities (13:11), the Animal Apocalypse (1 Enoch 89:36), and especially certain midrashim. According to Stephen, Israel’s rebelliousness continues with the rejection of Jesus, a tragic repetition of the Sinai apostasy. His christological inflection of the juxtaposition of calf and Tabernacle becomes especially apparent at the conclusion of the chapter. After his speech, Stephen beholds the “glory of God,” associated with the man-made spaces of Tabernacle (Exod 40:34–35) and Temple (1 Kgs 8:11), high above in the divinely wrought heavens where the Son of Man stands at God’s right hand (Acts 7:55–56; cf. Luke 9:28–36). The apostolic narrative of salvation history further re-contextualizes the Tabernacle and its successors, rendering them merely provisional vis-à-vis the Christ event.


Picasso's Salome at The Art Institute of Chicago
Program Unit: Bible and Visual Art
L. Nutu Hall, University of Sheffield

In 1905 Picasso found inspiration for his work in the world of acrobats, musicians and clowns: circus performers, or saltimbanques. The Art Institute of Chicago holds in its Prints and Drawings collection three etchings from the artist’s Saltimbanque series, which feature Salome, the daughter of Herodias. Two of the etchings are almost identical and depict Salome dancing in front of Herod, her complete nakedness exposed to him, her left leg kicking the air, while behind her the decapitated head of John the Baptist rests in the arms of a seated female servant, on a platter. The third etching, entitled ‘The Barbarous Dance (in front of Salome and Herod)’, focuses on a dance performed by saltimbanques for the entertainment of the ruling family, the performers naked and facing Herod and Salome but also the viewer. This act is a group dance, with three central figures participating, two men either side of a woman, the one of the left running a violin bow over the naked buttocks of a child resting on his shoulder. The gestures of these saltimbanques seem disconnected, their dance far from a collective performance. While Picasso depicts Salome’s body somewhat reverentially (in as much as she is beautiful in a conventional sense), the bodies of the saltimbanques are portrayed as grotesque. They are caricatures, lacking any grace or elegance. Their identity markers are those of excess, and their nudity repels rather than attracts. Picasso’s choice to depict Salome amongst the saltimbanques is an intriguing one. This paper explores some of the influences on the artist and his subject.


Honi Ha-Me'aggel: Rabbi or Demonic Sage?
Program Unit: History and Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism
Aoife O' Farrell, University of British Columbia

What is the function of the hasid in rabbinic literature? This paper seeks to examine the depiction and function of one such figure, Honi Ha-Me'aggel in Y. Ta'anit 66d. This examination begins by analyzing the representation of this figure in this tractate situating it within its literary context and identifying subtle characteristic differences between the rabbi and the hasid. I shall argue that the Jerusalem Talmud presents him as a proto rabbinic figure and seeks to re-imagine this charismatic individual in the context of the rabbinic movement. The account given in this text is rather different to that contained in both M. Ta'anit 3:8 and B. Ta'anit 3:8, both of which portray Honi as a hasid and contain the negative characterizations that accompany a figure of this grouping. Babylonian sources specifically represent the hasid as the sinful sage, a motif common to all Hasidim in this tradition. In examining this phenomenon, two principal sources will be considered: M. Ta’anit 3:8 and Y. Talmud 3:8 to demonstrate the contrast between the two schools of thought.


Name Games and the Structure of Inner-Biblical Allusions in Proverbs 30:1–9
Program Unit: Biblical Hebrew Poetry
Ryan O'Dowd, Cornell University

Scholars have long puzzled over the enigmatic content in Proverbs chapter 30; most of its sayings are unlike anything else in Proverbs. While the introduction seems to indicate a foreign, or non-Israelite origin (spoken by Agur son of Jakeh), the rest of the chapter nevertheless cites or alludes to countless familiar texts in the Pentateuch, writings, prophets and Second Temple literature. To date no single explanation for the origin, structure and content of the chapter has managed to satisfy even a small minority of scholars. This paper argues that a literary “name game” best explains the deeper structure and meaning of the chapter as a whole. The play on names arises in the superscription of verse 1, every word of which has been disputed by various versions or scholarship. Five of these words appear to be unknown foreign names, though many scholars choose to render at least one or more of them as Hebrew transliterations of foreign words. The matter of names and identity arises again with gusto in verse 4, first with four “who”-type questions (4a-d), and, second, in a twofold “what”-question: "What is his name or his son's name if you know?" in 4e. These name games arise yet again in the prayer in verse 9 which alludes to divine names in two related requests. First, the suppliant wants to avoid an attitude of doubt which asks, “Who is the Lord,” and second, he wants to avoid profaning “the name of my God.” By the end of v. 9, not only are there five names in question, but there are also five names or titles that have been given for God. It thus seems likely that a play on names sits beneath the surface of this text and provides the clue to understanding the purpose and use of the other biblical and Second Temple allusions in the chapter.


Slaves as Real Expected Hearers and Why They Matter for Exegesis of Every New Testament Text
Program Unit: Slavery, Resistance, and Freedom
Peter Oakes, University of Manchester

Because slaves are rarely explicitly addressed in NT texts, and because of the social context of most interpreters, first-century slaves have been ignored as persons whose interests are significant for understanding NT texts. Instead, exegesis has tended to focus on the free adult male who is generally seen as the main implied reader of any NT text. In the case of Galatians, for instance, interpreters tend to study the text in relation to initial readers who are considering voluntarily undergoing circumcision. This group consists only of free, adult, gentile males. Any reasonable model of the social make-up of the house churches will see that group as considerably fewer than half the expected hearers of the letter (Oakes, Reading Romans in Pompeii, SPCK/Fortress, 2009, 87). However much Paul might be concerned about the actions of some free adult males, he knows that his letter is mainly being read to other people. Just as in the case of Philemon, the interpreter must take into account the broader group hearing the letter, not just the person or people central to the most prominent issue. Studies of first-century Graeco-Roman society show that slaves and freed slaves constituted a high proportion of the population (for a startling recent analysis see Andrew Wallace-Hadrill’s consideration of the citizen roll of Herculaneum which led him to conclude that, according to the inscriptions as currently understood, ‘only a sixth of the Roman male citizens of Herculaneum could name their freeborn male fathers’, Herculaneum, Francis Lincoln, 2011, 145). There is also NT evidence of slave house church members, not only in texts relating to slavery but in the list of house/apartment churches greeted in Romans 16, where many of names suggest likely slave origins and two house churches sound like households of slaves/freed slaves (of Aristobulus and Narcissus). Although Judaea and Galilee had lower numbers of slaves than elsewhere (although far from none), almost all NT texts, including Gospels, were written for audiences in Graeco-Roman urban contexts. All the writers will have expected significant numbers of slaves among their hearers. The presence of slaves among the expected hearers will have affected what the NT authors wrote. This means that NT interpreters should habitually give consideration to ways in which the texts relate to issues facing first-century slaves as persons. This practice cannot be evaded by arguing that we cannot get into the heads of first-century people who have not written extensive texts (although even the premise of that argument is not true since we now have significant texts by freed slaves, such as the legal dossiers of Ennychus and Petronia Justa at Herculaneum). We have extensive evidence of aspects of the lives of first-century slaves. We can therefore consider how NT texts relate to issues raised by that evidence. This is not a fringe activity of ‘application’ of the text but is significant for understanding how the authors wrote for their expected audiences. The paper argues this case and offers some examples of how this affects exegesis.


Mental Spaces Theory and Hermeneutics
Program Unit: Cognitive Linguistics in Biblical Interpretation
Todd Oakley, Case Western Reserve Univeristy

In this presentation, I will address several questions about mental spaces and blending theory of relevance to hermeneutics, both religious and secular. Such questions include the following: What is a mental space and what is a blended space? How do they arise and what work do they do? What role does context, or discourse grounding, play in setting up, stabilizing, or altering mental spaces? And how are scholars to integrate a theory of mental spaces with a theory of semantic domains? I address each of these questions by way analysis of several religious and secular texts.


The Apocryphal Book 'Judith' in the Renaissance
Program Unit: Feminist Hermeneutics of the Bible
Gerbern S. Oegema, McGill University

This paper will analyze and reflect on the portrayal of one key female figure in the Apocrypha, namely Judith, and how she has been portrayed by some of the most famous renaissance painters, namely, apart from Jan Sanders van Hemessen’s Judith of ca. 1540, which is kept in The Art Institute in Chicago, by Botticelli (The Return of Judith; 1470); Giorgione (Judith; 1504); Caravaggio (Judith Beheading Holofernes; 1598-99); Artemisia Gentileschi (Judith Slaying Holofernes; ca. 1620); Valentin de Boulogne (Judith and Holofernes; ca. 1626), and Johann Liss (Judith and Holofernes; 1628). Judith is an apocryphal story about a religious heroine, which gruesome details have fascinated many later interpreters. Judith is a courageous and beautiful widow, who opposes Jewish fellow men and women for not believing that God will deliver them from their foreign conquerors the Assyrians. The narrative deals with several questions: divine justice, Jewish identity during the Second Temple period, the status of women, as well as deceit and violence in the name of God. Western art since the renaissance has singled out some of the aspects of this rich and at the same time problematic text, especially Judith’s beheading of Holofernes in Judith 13:8, depicting her either as a brutish women too eager to kill (Jan Sanders van Hemessen; Caravaggio; Johann Liss et al.) or as a highly feminized character hesitating to take part in this murder (Botticelli; Giorgione). These two different portrayals of Judith in the renaissance paintings on the one hand interpret two of the central elements of the story, namely the question of Jewish identity and the status of women in society, but on the other hand the portrayals are much more limited and negative than the text itself. In all, the different ways of artistic renderings underline both the possibility of multiple interpretations of Biblical or non-Biblical stories about women, the potentially harmful readings of female characters in general, and the ideologies that lie behind these depictions.


Domestic Religiosity and Polis Cults: Insights from Ephesus
Program Unit: Greco-Roman Religions
Markus Oehler, Universität Wien

To a certain extent, there was continuity between the official cults of a polis and the domestic veneration of the same gods, although it could also be the case that the main gods of a city were not very popular in the households. Nevertheless, tensions between domestic and public religiosity have a long tradition: civic officials sometimes expressed suspicion that domestic cults in households could lead to improper worship (e.g. Plato, Plutarch). Excavations of insulae in Ephesus show that a certain degree of homogeneity with the civic cults was customary, but offer also insights into the world of domestic religiosity with its special cults. Additionally it will be demonstrated that polis cults were much less important for the religiosity of most people than is usually assumed. Domestic religiosity should therefore be treated with much more effort in the history of religions.


"A Day Like No Other" in the Context of Yahweh War: Joshua 10:14 and the Characterization of Joshua
Program Unit: Joshua-Judges
Gordon Oeste, Heritage Seminary

Joshua 10:14 serves as an important element in the portrayal of the character of Joshua within the book of Joshua. The passage indicates that there has not been another day before or since when Yahweh listened to a human. While Joshua 10:14 has commonly been explored in connection with the description of the sun and moon standing still and the hailstorm described in Joshua 10:1-13, its fuller significance may be best understood within the larger context of Yahweh war and the characterization of Joshua. In this context, the uniqueness described in Joshua 10:14 lies in Joshua’s seizure of Yahweh’s prerogative in Yahweh war and its role in bringing Joshua out from under Moses’ shadow in the book’s development of the character of Joshua.


Who Are Paul's Opponents in Galatia? Performance Criticism Shedding Light on the Galatian Crisis
Program Unit: Performance Criticism of the Bible and Other Ancient Texts
Bernhard Oestreich, Friedensau Adventist University

The fact that Paul never addresses his opponents in his letter to the Galatians has mostly been interpreted to indicate that they came from outside the churches in Galatia and represented a Jewish Christian mission that demanded obedience to the Jewish law and claimed to be authorized by James and the Jerusalem church. Paul's indefinite way of speaking about his opponents is often understood as indication that they are not present when the letter to the Galatians is presented and that perhaps Paul did not know exactly who they were. By applying the methodological tools of performance criticism, this paper assesses this traditional view and comes to the conclusion that Paul's opponents are in fact members of the Galatian congregations and that they are present during the reading of the letter. Paul's addressing the Galatians directly and leaving the identity of the opponents vague is – together with other rhetorical means – his way to exert influence on the audience in order to win back as many as possible and to prepare the audience to take actions against the remaining opponents.


The Legacy of Rudolf Bultmann and the Ideal of a Fully Critical Theology
Program Unit: Westar Institute
Schubert M. Ogden, Southern Methodist University

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Epidosis Decree at Troizen (IG IV 757): A Greek Historical Precedent to the Early Church’s Radical Community Sharing?
Program Unit: Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy
Julien Ogereau, Macquarie University

This paper lies at the intersection between the first and second projects of the seminar. It examines one example of a second-century CE epidosis decree (i.e., an appeal for voluntary, financial and/or material contributions for an extra-ordinary project by decree of the demos), which was recovered at Troizen on the eastern tip of the Argolic peninsula (IG IV 757). This inscription consists of a partially fragmented decree (lines 1–10), followed by a long list of private contributors (i.e., family clans, cultic associations, and surrounding hamlets), who made substantial donations of their properties and possessions for the building of an intermediary defence wall around the endangered city. Upon a careful examination of the text, it is noted that several of these groups displayed tremendous generosity as they donated all of their common possessions, ta koineia panta hyparchonta. Comparison is then drawn to the situation of the early church depicted in Acts 2:42–46 and 4:32–35, which, in the history of scholarship, has generally been interpreted with great suspicion. The philological similarities between IG IV 757 and the Acts 2/4 passages, in which the first Christians are reported to have shared all in common (2:44: eichon apanta koina; 4:32: en autois apanta koina), are then explored. Finally, it is concluded that this epidosis decree provides a hitherto neglected, comparative historical precedent, which helps us better understand the nature of the social experiment conducted by the first Christians.


The Long Ending of Mark’s Gospel as an Oral Theological Corrective
Program Unit: Performance Criticism of the Bible and Other Ancient Texts
Kevin A. Ogilvie, Lutheran Theological Seminary, Saskatoon

Abstract: Using insights from orality/literacy theory, the author builds upon the thesis originally proposed by Werner Kelber (The Oral and the Written Gospel, 1983) that Mark’s use of the written medium itself was a theological statement of absence as a counterbalance to the oral medium’s theology of presence. The author proposes that the Long Ending of Mark’s Gospel is an intentional, alternative ending designed to reassert an ‘oral’ theology of presence as the interpretative key to the gospel. The alternative Long Ending allows for an alternative performance of the same text. Both endings are preserved canonically to allow for both theological positions to remain normative.


Land Ownership in the Hebrew Bible in Light of the New Land Laws in Kenya: The Case of Naboth’s Vineyard
Program Unit: Contextual Biblical Interpretation
Gilbert Okuro Ojwang, Oakwood University

There is some congruence between the conceptions of land and its ownership in ancient Israel on the one hand and land ownership in Kenya, on the other. This paper seeks to read the story of Naboth and his vineyard in 1 Kings 21:1-16 against the backdrop of the new land laws in Kenya. Land-related grievances were a major cause of the post-election violence which rocked Kenya following the contested presidential election of 2007/08. Even though Kenya recently enacted laws meant to address land-related historical injustices, Kenyan society is still apprehensive as to whether it will see another round of violence come the next election cycle. The question to be addressed, therefore, is how might a contextual reading of the Naboth story inform public discourse in Kenya and other developing countries on the matter of land ownership.


Reading Jesus’ Healing Miracles (Mark 6:13; 7:31–37, and Mark 8:22–26) in African Context
Program Unit: Gospel of Mark
Olugbenga Samuel Olagunju, Nigerian Baptist Theological Seminary

This paper discusses Jesus’ healing miracles (Mark 6:13; 7:31-37 and 8:22-26) from an African lens and makes it relevant to African Christians. Applying historical-grammatical tools in an intercultural hermeneutics, this study demonstrates that the healing miracles of Jesus in Mark though similar to mystical practices among traditional healers in Africa, the paper questions whether mystical practices as they are being advocated among African Christians today are congruous with Christian faith and practices.


Putting Paul to the Test: Corinthians and Examination Practices in Greco-Roman Associations
Program Unit: North American Association for the Study of Religion
Ryan Olfert, University of Toronto

This paper will contribute to the discussion regarding the relation between Paul and the Corinthians by placing it in the context of other social practices and strategies that can be seen in Greco-Roman associations. Various sociological concepts and tools have been employed by scholars in order to explain the inter workings of social diversity and dynamism in these early Christ groups. Wanye Meeks has offered the model of status inconsistency, taken up by others, as a key to understanding the differences between Paul and the Corinthians. In contrast, I will argue instead that, while agreeing with some of the assumptions underlying status inconsistency, we can focus more appropriately on social practice and formation. In the light of the changes in some membership approval practices in the associations, I will suggest that we can see part of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians as a defensive reaction against some in the group who wish to make him legitimate both his membership in their group as well as his claims to higher status. Moreover, there seems to be some disagreement between Paul and the Corinthians over the appropriate use of examination practices in the group. Thus, some of the disjuncture between Paul and the Corinthians perceived by scholars may have less to do with “theological” arguments or issues over “ethnic” identity than with differences over social practice.


Strange and Wise? Ruth as an Ambivalent Character
Program Unit: Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
Funlola Olojede, Universiteit van Stellenbosch - University of Stellenbosch

The Woman Wisdom figure in Proverbs 1-9 is commonly contrasted with its rival, Dame Folly or the Strange Woman (??? / ????? ????), equally personified as a woman. Similarly, correspondence has been posited between Woman Wisdom of Proverbs 1-9 and the ??? ???? in the alphabetic acrostic poem of 31:10-31. It is assumed that both Woman Wisdom and the ??? ???? coalesce as one figure, that is, based on lexical and semantic parallels in the passages that describe them. Apart from the ??? ???? of Proverbs 31, Ruth is the only other and the only named woman in the Old Testament referred to as the ??? ???? (Ruth 3:11). How is it then that a Moabitess, a ????? or an “outsider”/foreigner in Bethlehem-Judah is the person commended as ??? ???? (Ruth 2:10)? In the person of Ruth, both the ??? ???? and the ??? / ????? ????i seem to find some convergence. Therefore, it would be a reasonable assumption to regard Ruth as an embodiment of both Wisdom and Strangeness in a sense. Besides, the place accorded this ??? ???? in the lineage of Israel’s model king, David, countervails the xenophobic tendencies attested in some Israelite communities especially in the Second Temple era. By upholding Ruth a stranger as a model of virtue, wisdom and courage, the text sends strong signals about the need to affirm the dignity of the human person regardless of gender, place of origin or creed.


Whenever You Stand Praying: Atonement Without Temple and Sacrifice in Mark’s Gospel
Program Unit: Sacrifice, Cult, and Atonement
Ken Olson, Duke University

Since the publication of E. P. Sanders’ Jesus and Judaism in 1985, it has been widely accepted that Jesus was an eschatological prophet and that his action in the temple (Mk. 11.15-19 and parallels) was a prophetic demonstration of its future destruction rather than a “cleansing,” since that term would suggest that the trade in animals for sacrifice was somehow a corruption of proper temple practice. Sanders argued that the historical Jesus, like other first century Jews, did not reject the sacrificial cult and would have understood the necessity of selling animals for the sacrifices commanded by God. Ancient temples, including the temple in Jerusalem, were built specifically as places for sacrifice and sacrifice required the availability of suitable animals. Sanders rejected the saying of Jesus in Mk. 11.17 as a later addition. Taking Sanders’ work as its starting point, this paper will examine Mark’s story of Jesus’ action in the temple in its Markan context. The saying in Mk. 11.17, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers,” suggests that Jesus, the character in Mark’s gospel, was indeed objecting to the trade in animals that made sacrifice possible and considered this use of the temple to be a corruption of its original purpose, which was to be a place of prayer for the nations. Following the temple action, Jesus teaches on faith and prayer, and in Mk. 11.25, says: “Whenever you stand praying, forgive, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.” Jesus addresses the need for forgiveness, and says that it can be accomplished “whenever you stand praying.” There is no need for sacrifice, or for special days, or for a special place. The situation Mark 11 addresses is one in which the sacrificial cult is no longer relevant for Christians and most likely no longer operating.


Why Violate Corpses? Perspectives from Biblical Texts
Program Unit: Violence and Representations of Violence in Antiquity
Saul M. Olyan, Brown University

Though ritual violence against the bodies of living persons, divine and royal images and inscribed stelae have begun to receive quite a bit of attention from scholars of ritual, calculated acts of violence against corpses have attracted less scholarly interest. In this paper, I delineate what I mean by ritual violence, catalogue the range of violent acts experienced by corpses and identify the ritual contexts of these violent acts. In addition, I suggest reasons why corpses might be violated.


The Moral Value of the Literal Sense in Cyril of Alexandria’s Commentary on Amos
Program Unit: Christian Theology and the Bible
Hauna Ondrey, University of St. Andrews

Cyril of Alexandria’s Commentary on Amos challenges prevailing views of his exegetical commitments and offers an example of the use of the literal sense for moral exhortation. Subsequent interpreters of Cyril’s exegesis have largely followed Alexander Kerrigan’s 1952 portrait of Cyril as an in interpreter for whom the spiritual sense is equated with the christological and bears the essential weight of interpretation. De Margerie labels Cyril a “radically Christocentric exegete.” For Wilken Cyril knew “no way to interpret the words of the Bible than through Christ.” Cyril’s Commentary on Amos defies these generalizations. In it he offers a predominantly moral interpretation, in which Christ plays a conspicuously secondary role. Christ appears in Cyril’s commentary not as unified divine hypostasis but as moral teacher, corroborating rather than transforming the moral principles present within the prophetic text. For Cyril the historical meaning of Amos provides reliable moral guidance predicated upon a foundational constancy of both the nature of sin and God’s response to it. In this way Cyril’s Commentary on Amos offers an extended example of Cyril’s programmatic image for the relationship between Law and Gospel, that of shadow to reality. In doing so, however, it underscores the continuity of this relationship and the true, enduring benefit of that shadow.


Eugene Albert Nida and Dynamic/Functional Equivalence Translation Theory
Program Unit: Bible Translation
Hughson Ong, McMaster Divinity College

This paper examines briefly Eugene Albert Nida’s dynamic/functional equivalence theory both in its making and in practice. The focus is on the foundational premises and methodology of Nida’s translation theory, which include his formulation of a communication theory within the source language (intralingual communication), his model of translation theory (interlingual communication) based on the application of this communication theory to problems involved in the translation process, and the actual transference of a message from the source-language to the receptor-language. Specifically, this paper identifies and analyzes the presumed semantic and structural adjustments made in the translation of Eph 1:7 from its “near-kernel statement” (the optimal form for transfer into the receptor-language) in English to the Filipino language. The objective is to demonstrate and highlight the fact that an effective Bible translation theory is one that takes into account the relationship between language and culture, an important component in a translation theory which Nida himself had both embraced and developed.


Preaching as Apocalyptic Interruption
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Deborah Organ, Catholic Association of Teachers of Homiletics

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Monuments and Memory in Rome
Program Unit: Space, Place, and Lived Experience in Antiquity
Eric Orlin, University of Puget Sound

The role of the built environment has been somewhat overlooked in recent work on the construction of memory in ancient Rome. While many scholars have focused on how Augustus “found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble” (Suet. Aug. 28), less attention has been paid to how his building projects reshaped Roman memory. The built environment played an especially important role in the construction of Roman memory for two reasons. First, Roman authors specifically likened the art of memory to a house in which memories might be stored (Cicero, De Or. 2.86; Quint. Inst. 11.2.17), and secondly, temples and other ‘functional’ buildings served as lieux de memoire, where memories of the men and events of the Roman past could be stored (cf. Bergmann 1994; Jaeger 1997; Radley 1990). In particular, Roman temples served not only as sites for religious rituals, but also as historical monuments; the vast majority were founded as a result of a specific historical event and they often bore inscriptions recounting that event. Reconstruction of a temple, often accompanied by necessary alterations in ritual activity, thus offered the possibility of a new set of associations for each temple. My paper proposes to explore how the Augustan reconstruction of Rome created new spaces and thus reshaped both the Roman environment and Roman experience. I propose to use as a case study the area of the Porticus Octaviae, because it provides a particularly good window into this phenomenon. The reconstruction of this portico and the two temples contained within, along with the reconstruction of the nearby temple of Apollo and the construction of the new theater of Marcellus, dramatically reshaped this sector of Rome. For instance, the temple of Apollo utilized a different architectural layout that, in conjunction with the other building projects in the area, likely forced a re-routing of triumphal processions. In addition, the temple contained a sculptural program borrowed in part from Greece and making clear reference to Augustus’ recent victory over Cleopatra. The reconstruction of this area thus not only restructured its appearance and so opened up new possibilities for shaping memories by focusing attention on the emperor’s recent victories, but it also altered the rituals that occurred in that space and so changed the manner in which people experienced those rituals. As a result, the area of the Porticus Octaviae no longer directed attention toward memories of the Republic and the discord it had generated, but toward a new vision of a unified Rome centered around the person and the family of the emperor.


Timing of Events, Purity, and Nudity: Rewriting Creation of Humanity in Jubilees
Program Unit: Transmission of Traditions in the Second Temple Period
Jessi Orpana, Helsingin Yliopisto - Helsingfors Universitet

The Book of Jubilees (Jubilees) is one of the prominent examples of parascriptural literature. The work generally follows the content and order of Genesis and Exodus, although sometimes certain changes in sequence and content have been introduced. The relationship between Jubilees and Genesis has been an interest of many studies, and the first scholars of Jubilees had to face obstacles that have been over come since then. Before late 1970s there was no critical edition of the Ethiopic text of Jubilees, and before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls there was only a little idea of the biblical text used by the author. In this presentation I emphasize three central issues which are stressed in Jubilees by rewriting the Genesis material: dating of the events of the creation of humanity, purity and nudity. First, everything related to the creation and the first man and woman is dated on the sixth day of the first and the second week. Secondly, the author of Jubilees is concerned of purity, which comes evident in the insertion of the levitical laws of purification after childbirth (Lev 12:2-5) into the creation narrative. Thirdly, the author of Jubilees pays attention to the question of nudity. In Genesis, the first encounter of nakedness follows immediately the formation of the woman from Adam’s rib. “And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed” (Gen 2:25). In Jubilees, on the other hand, nakedness is mentioned only when they are both described to cover themselves separately immediately following the eating of the fruit and gaining the awareness of being naked (Jub 3:21-22). I will first read the Ethiopic text of Jubilees in detail, and then compare it with the Hebrew fragments found at Qumran and the account of Genesis. After the analysis I will draw some conclusions regarding how the tradition of creation of the first man and woman was dealt with through scribal activity.


The "Afterlife" of the Tree Metaphor in Ezekiel 17:22–24
Program Unit: Book of Ezekiel
William R. Osborne, College of the Ozarks

The present study examines the “afterlife,” or early reception history, of Ezekiel 17:22-24 in order to better understand early interpretations of this vague reference to Israel’s restoration. This is done by examining the significance of tree symbolism in the ancient Near East, the text in the Masoretic tradition, and allusions and translations found in 4QPesuedo-Ezekiela (4Q385 fac. 2), the Septuagint (LXX), and the Targum of Ezekiel. It is concluded that these early interpretations of the Ezekiel 17:22-24 reveal that this metaphorical text was understood as a politically charged symbol of Davidic kingship associated with both natural and national restoration.


The Constitutional Debates in Herodotus and in 1 Samuel 8 Compared
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible and Political Theory
Wolfgang Oswald, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen

One of the famoust parts of Herodotus’ Histories is the so-called Constitutional Debate (Hdt. III, 80–84), a fictitious discussion of three Persians over the best form of government. Otanes advocates democracy, Megabyzos aristocracy, and Dareios promotes monarchy. Although the arguments for democracy are the most convincing ones, finally Dareios prevails and gains kingship. In the Hebrew Bible there is another example of a Constitutional Debate, the discussion between Samuel and the elders of Israel in 1Sam 8 over the institution of the monarchy. Like in Herodotus, the arguments for monarchy are weak, but cannot prevent its installation. The opposite standpoint in 1Sam 8 is the kingship of God, which in its deuteronomistic conceptualization is an early form of democracy. Thus, the constellation of the debate and its outcome are roughly the same in both, Herodotus and 1Samuel. A comparison in terms of political theory reveals that both constitutional debates share a common intellectual climate, that is early Mediterranean political thought.


Correlating the Covenants in Exodus 24 and Exodus 34
Program Unit: Covenant in the Persian Period
Wolfgang Oswald, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen

In Exod. 24, for the first time in the Pentateuch, there is a covenant in connection with legislation, and the same connection is again to be found in Exod. 34. Earlier critics assumed two sources, each containing one covenant. This paper proposes that both of these covenants are deuteronomistic and were coordinately composed. The two covenants have the function to correlate the two law codes with which they are associated. In the context of legislation the notion of a covenant between God and the people is an instrument of constitutional law. Its function is to make legislation more binding and at the same time more flexible. The first of these law codes, the so-called Covenant Code (Exod. 20:24–23:19), is a pre-deuteronomistic code and by itself does not contain the notion of covenant. The second law code, the so-called Covenant Words (Exod. 34:11–26), is deuteronomistic, more precisely, a summary of the stipulations of the book of Deuteronomy. By reinterpreting the first legislation in Exod. 24 as covenant making, the deuteronomistic authors redefine the law code as stipulations of a covenant. The cult of the Golden Calf offends against the prohibition of cult images which opens the Covenant Code in its deuteronomistic shape (Exod. 20:22–23) and thus nullifies the covenant of Ex 24 and likewise its associated laws (the Covenant Code). Subsequently, the new covenant of Exod. 34 inaugurates new laws, which anticipate the deuteronomistic law code. As a result, the law code whose covenant was breached, is superseded by the law code whose covenant was not. Historically speaking, the law of Babylonian period Judah, the Covenant Code, is abolished, the law of early Persian period Judah, Deuteronomy, comes into effect.


Philo, Judaeus? A Re-evaluation of Why Clement Calls Philo “the Pythagorean”
Program Unit: Philo of Alexandria
Jennifer Otto, McGill University

The first Christian to cite Philo explicitly, Clement of Alexandria, twice calls him “the Pythagorean.” I contend that both the explicit use of this epithet and implicit evidence in the Stromateis suggest that Clement reads Philo’s writings as belonging to a philosophical tradition that associated Philo with Pythagorean esotericism and exegesis rather than as representative of a specifically Judaeo-Christian exegetical tradition. My investigation proceeds along three lines. First, I explore Clement’s conception of the “Pythagorean” through an analysis of the eighty-one explicit descriptions of Pythagoras and Pythagoreans in the Stromateis. I then compare my results with Clement’s Philonic borrowings, mapping the overlap between Philonic material and Pythagorean references and demonstrating the continuity between Clement’s depiction of Philo as a Pythagorean and as an interpreter of the Pentateuch’s esoteric philosophy. I then provide an overview of his usage of the terms “Jew”, “Hebrew”, “Israel”, and their cognates, and argue that Clement primarily associates contemporary Judaism with incorrect Biblical exegesis. Finally, I investigate the social and intellectual contexts in which Clement reads Philo’s treatises. Taking into account the internal evidence of the Stromateis, I submit a reconstruction of the chain of transmission between Philo and Clement challenging the prevailing theory that Clement located Philo’s works in a specifically Judaeo-Christian tradition and that Clement’s Philonic borrowings constitute evidence for the social and/or institutional continuity between the Jewish Synagogue and the church in Alexandria.


Christian Polemics in Edessa: The Doctrine of Addai against the Manicheans
Program Unit: Syriac Literature and Interpretations of Sacred Texts
Aaron Overby, Saint Louis University

The Doctrine of Addai has raised the imaginations—and suspicions—of many as the legendary account of the foundation of the Christian church in Edessa. Among several theories of its origin and purpose which dominate the scholarship is the proposal that it originated as an anti-Manichean polemic, taking some of the details that were known about Mani and his disciple Addai and crafting them into a competing account of Edessa’s first Christians. This explanation has been accepted by many notable scholars and adopted into their own discussion of the text, while others have found it to be at least an intriguing possibility. This paper will review the discussion offered in the scholarship on this text and look at the strengths and weaknesses of the evidence that has been presented. It will argue that the theory of the DocAdd being anti-Manichean polemic is too limited an explanation. While it offers a suggestive interpretation of the early narrative elements of the text—from which almost all the pieces of evidence for the theory are taken —it remains unconvincing as a portrayal of the text as a whole. It does not reflect the theological message contained in the extensive addresses of Addai, nor the definition given in the text to the scriptural canon. By way of conclusion, it will be shown that the latter question of canon offers an even stronger argument in the text against Manichaeism, but only as one of several religious groups that were rejected as heretical by the community of the DocAdd.


Revisiting Paleographic Dating of the Earliest Amenemope Fragment
Program Unit: Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
Paul Overland, Ashland Theological Sem

This paper will explore Cairo Ostracon 1840-4, a rarely-studied piece of pottery whose inscription is reputed to be the earliest extant fragment of the Wisdom of Amenemope. We will seek through paleography to determine whether this inscription discovered by Howard Carter in the Valley of the Kings should be dated to the late 21st or 22nd Dynasty (as suggested by Jaroslav Cerný), or whether closer examination may recommend a different date. This exploration will be based on first-hand examination and color photos, in contrast to earlier transcription-based studies (e.g., B. Peterson, “A Note of the Wisdom of Amenemope 3.9-4.10,” Studia Aegyptiaca 1, 1974, pp. 323-27).


A Bone to Pick: The Significance of the Body and All Its Parts in Ancient Israelite Religion
Program Unit: Israelite Religion in its Ancient Context
Carl Pace, Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion

Many scholars in the history of biblical interpretation have endeavored to explain the nature of the Israelite idea of the soul, from the earliest interpreters to now. One of the implicit problems is the failure of the most common models and vocabulary (spirit, soul, ghost) to explain the particular idea of the personal essence in Israel and the Near East in general. This paper will explore several instances of the treatment of bodies in the books of Samuel with the aim of clarifying the problem. In particular the stories of the bodies of the Saulide line (1 Samuel 31-2 Samuel 21) will be examined against the background of ancient near eastern culture and modern anthropological investigation into structures of mortuary practice. This study will attempt to illuminate the ancient Israelite notion of the "soul" in light of the great attention paid to the physical remains of the dead.


Who Belongs to “Satan’s Synagogue”? The “Ecclesiae”? “God’s People”?
Program Unit: John's Apocalypse and Cultural Contexts Ancient and Modern
Elaine Pagels, Princeton University

This paper considers the interpretive questions raised by such terms, as well as John’s characterization of “Jezebel” and “Balaam,” to reflect on how scholars have variously characterized his Revelation in relation to Jewish and Christian traditions. Besides considering the assumptions contemporary scholars bring to the text, this paper investigates historical context, comparing John‘s terminology and perspective with that of his near contemporary, Ignatius of Antioch.


"You Will Sacrifice the Man Who Bears Me" (Gos. Jud. 56.19–20)
Program Unit: Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism
Louis Painchaud, Université Laval

Some authors have taken this sentence to be a request addressed by the spiritual Jesus to Judas, giving instructions for Jesus’ liberation from his fleshly body (Kasser, Meyer, Wurst 2006, 2007, 2008; Meyer 2006 [2008]); others have read it as no more than a prediction of Judas’ "betrayal" of Jesus, without any soteriological value (Painchaud 2006 [2008]; DeConick 2006 [2008] 2007; Thomassen 2006 [2008]; Brankaer and Bethge 2007; Bermejo Rubio 2008 [2009]; Pearson 2008 [2009]; Schenke Robinson 2008 [2009]). Drawing on evidence derived from close comparisons of this formula both with the passion and crucifixion narratives in Christian ‘gnostic’ texts and with polemical religious texts of late Antiquity that use the accusation of human sacrifice as a means of vilifying their authors’ opponents, I will argue that the Gospel of Judas is on the one hand quite far away from the usual gnostic discourse about the crucifixion, while on the other hand its discussion is very close to the polemical use of human sacrifice in religious literature of late Antiquity. Under this light, I will also argue and that it is most unlikely that the Gospel of Judas would understand Jesus’ sacrifice as liberating humanity (Jenott 2011).


Omissions in the Textual Transmission of the Hebrew Bible
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible
Juha Pakkala, University of Helsinki

Biblical Studies have traditionally rejected the possibility of omissions in the textual transmission of the Hebrew Scriptures. Changes would have been only expansions and rearrangements of the older text, but nothing would have been taken out. Omissions have been most categorically rejected in literary criticism (Literarkritik), where the methodology is largely based on such an axiom. Although expansions are certainly more common than omissions, recent scholarship in textual criticism has provided increasing evidence to assume that intentional omissions of the older text took place. In this paper I will present text-critical examples of unequivocal intentional omissions from different parts of the Hebrew Bible. Particular focus will be on theological omissions where theologically offensive sections were left out in the textual transmission. I will also discuss the nature of the phenomenon and its methodological implications for the wider study of the Hebrew Bible.


Lexis, Aspect, and Aktionsart: An Empirical Approach Using a Representative Corpus Sample
Program Unit: Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics
Francis G.H. Pang, McMaster Divinity College

In the discussion of the relationship between aspect and Aktionsart, it is generally agreed that aspect is a feature of the tense-form and Aktionsart depends on tense-form together with other clausal and contextual features such as lexical meaning and adjuncts used with the verb. Recent works have tried to find predictable patterns of meaning that emerge when a certain set of clausal factors and lexical features combine with one of the aspects. Most of these works are theoretical in nature and confined to the Greek of the New Testament, and often produce different and even incompatible results. The present study is an attempt to verify these results by way of a statistical approach. Following previous works on corpus linguistics to analyze Hellenistic Greek, this study attempts to look for empirical evidence regarding what role lexical semantics and other contextual factors contribute to the choice of aspect. Using a body of text that forms a representative sample of Hellenistic text, the goal is to investigate distribution of tense-forms and lexis in the literature. Lexis will be tested in groups according to Vendler’s classes and also individually, and other contextual factors will also be considered in this study.


Q 14:26–27: The Cost of Discipleship, from Wisdom Warning to Apologetic
Program Unit: Q
Cambry Pardee, Loyola University Chicago

Q 14:26 and 27 preserve two of Jesus’ most dramatic statements concerning the requirements and cost of discipleship: disciples must hate their own family and bear their own cross. With the aid of John S. Kloppenborg’s established stratigraphy of Q we are able to trace the remarkable journey of these difficult sayings through successive stages of development: from independent aphorisms to wisdom sayings in the formative layer of Q (Q1), thence to their transformation into an apology for the cross of Jesus at the time of the main redaction (Q2), and finally the entire Q document. This paper examines these sayings and their transformations with special attention to their contextualization in each stratum. As two discrete aphorisms, the teachings of Q 14:26 and 27 serve as warnings to the would-be disciple, a meaning consonant with both Jewish tradition and Greco-Roman philosophies. These two sayings were linked together early on and other sayings were soon attached to them for their explanative power. Q 14:26 and 27 were placed in a cluster introduced by Q 13:24 in order to explain how the door to the Kingdom is narrow and why few enter it. Q 17:33 was placed intentionally after Q 14:27 in order to explain the reference to the cross in light of Jesus’ own cross. Q 14:26-27 is seen to be an integral part of the Q1 teaching on the cost of discipleship. At the level of Q2, these sayings are transformed into an apologetic for the Q1 message of discipleship and are buttressed by material castigating “this generation” who has rejected the Q1 message and followers. The command to hate family is now seen in the context of social rejection as in Q 12:51-53, which describes familial turmoil as not only the result of Jesus’ teaching but also his intent. The message of the cross and the theme of suffering are emphasized in apologetic passages about the deaths of the prophets, among whom Jesus is now counted, and the persecutions wrought by “this generation.” Finally, at the level of Q3 the disciple’s master is described for the first time in an extended narrative—the Q people do not follow a mere sage; their master is the very Son of God.


Sensory Appeal in the Wisdom Literature: A Performative Reading of Proverbs 7
Program Unit: Senses, Cultures, and Biblical Worlds
Gideon W. Park, Vanderbilt University

A mashal is a rhetorically persuasive saying rendered in poetic form that draws upon the hearer’s sensory faculties. Proverbs 7 is a rich example of sensory appeal enhancing moral instruction in the Wisdom Literature. My aim in this paper, then, is to underscore the performative style of communication in Proverbs 7. I begin with a brief word on methodology, locating my approach within performance criticism. Then I demonstrate my performative reading by paying attention to three aspects of the text: (1) altered mode of communication; (2) aesthetic description; (3) spatial movement. First, the text exhibits a shift in its mode of communication from deductive (vv. 1-5) to inductive instruction (vv. 6-27) for dramatic effect. Second, the inductive instruction is filled with rich descriptions of the woman to appeal to the senses: the reader sees her dress (v. 10); feels her lips (v. 13); hears her footsteps (vv. 11-12); etc. Third, throughout chapter 7 there is movement in terms of place and perspective: from the father to the woman, from the height of a lattice window to the depths of Sheol. Finally, I conclude with reflections on the advantages of applying performance criticism to biblical texts.


Theological Aesthetics: Preacher Informed by Beauty
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Kwan Park, Fuller Theological Seminary

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Twins in Israel’s Founding Myth
Program Unit: Bible, Myth, and Myth Theory
Song-Mi Suzie Park, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary

Looking at studies on twins as well as twin myths in other cultures, I will examine the presentation of Esau and Jacob, the eponymous patriarchs of Edom and Israel, as twins in the Hebrew Bible. While twin myths, especially stories about twins who become foundational cultural figures are found throughout the world, the biblical portrayal of Esau and Jacob as twins has been generally overlooked. By looking at the different symbolic and psychological meanings connected with twins in various myths and stories, as well as theories concerning mimesis and alterity, this paper will show that the depiction of Esau and Jacob as twins in the Bible conveys important concerns and questions of the Israelite author involving election and Israelite identity. Finally, this paper will show that this question about the nature of Israelite identity is twinned—or doubly reflected—in the portrayal of Leah and Rachel, the sister-wives of Jacob, who are also depicted as twin figures.


Translation Matters: A "Womanist-Postcolonial" Reading of John 4:29–42
Program Unit: African-American Biblical Hermeneutics
Angela N. Parker, Chicago Theological Seminary

The purpose of this paper is to analyze translations of John 4:29-42 in order to provide a justice-oriented “Womanist-Postcolonial” translation. Broadly speaking the justice-oriented Womanist-Postcolonial translation will promote a reading in which the Samaritan woman speaks back to Jesus, the disciples and her community instead of being silenced. I will arrive at this translation in the following manner. First, I will discuss various theories of translation (e.g. feminist, postcolonial, African American and Womanist) in order to identify their similar characteristics. Thereafter, I will briefly analyze two translations of John 4:29-42. These analyses (combined with African American poetry) will lead to a Womanist-Postcolonial translation that seeks to provide liberation to men and women in the context of present African American society.


The Levant Comes of Age: Collating the Ninth Century B.C.E. Inscriptions
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible, History, and Archaeology
Heather Dana Davis Parker, Johns Hopkins University

This paper focuses on Northwest Semitic inscriptions from the ninth-early eighth centuries B.C.E. – the period in which the independent Aramaic and Hebrew scripts are first discerned in the epigraphic corpus. It provides an updated discussion of these scripts based on new collations and photographs made in the summer of 2011. It is important to draw attention to this corpus in light of recent debates surrounding the history of the Levant and the rise of nation-states in the tenth-ninth centuries and to showcase epigraphy’s contribution to the discussion. Particular attention will be paid to the development of the Aramaic script, and the implications of this development for the history of Aram in this period, especially vis-à-vis the encroaching Assyrian empire.


"A Good Meal Gone Bad": Numbers 11 as Meat-Meal Theophany
Program Unit: Meals in the HB/OT and Its World
Jonathan Parker, University of Durham

The quail episode of Numbers 11 is often interpreted as a judgment from YHWH on the people’s ingratitude to the provision of manna, which they express by their craving for meat. In response to their complaint, YHWH sends quail literally ad nauseum (v. 20). For most interpreters, this episode is fairly straightforward: YHWH tells Moses what his judgment will be and then YHWH executes that self-same judgment (vv. 18-20, 31-34). Likewise for these interpreters, the prompt for the story is the question of ‘food’, its potential lack in quality (i.e. diversity) and perhaps quantity (vv. 5-6). This interpretation runs into problems in the text (i.e. why there is a separate plague which follows the giving of the quail and why the plague is said to come before the meat between their teeth was ‘yet cut’, v. 33?), but these concerns are typically circumvented in favor of a dual-phase plot (one for the people and one for Moses). This paper proposes two questions: (1) What if the passage is more concerned with ‘meal’ than ‘food’; that is, what if with whom they eat is as much a concern as how much? (2) What if the concern for the type of food is less about diversity of options as the particular category of ‘meat’? This paper will re-read the Numbers 11 story with these two questions in mind, and the exegetical advantages to reading the story as a ‘meal with YHWH’ (a kind of theophany) and particularly a ‘meal of meat with YHWH’ will be detailed.


Where Have All the Girls Gone? Hermeneutical Strategies for Finding the Bible’s Girls Applied to Exodus 2
Program Unit: Feminist Hermeneutics of the Bible
Julie Faith Parker, Fordham University

This paper invites and challenges feminist scholars to include the Bible’s girls in their hermeneutical approaches. After decades of practice, feminist scholarship is now well-skilled in recognizing, analyzing, and appreciating the Bible’s women. Yet even among feminist scholars, discussion of the Bible’s girls is rare. This paper offers literary and linguistic strategies for noticing young characters, then applies these methodologies to Exodus 2. Further incorporating historical and anthropological insights, I will demonstrate that this chapter is rife with girls. I will argue that understanding the youth of these characters enhances the courage, determination, and defiance that the girls demonstrate in this pivotal narrative of the Exodus saga. Ultimately, this paper promotes the inclusion of girls in feminist hermeneutics as a vehicle for expanding and enriching our reading of the biblical text.


When Cognitive Processes Fail Us: The Case of the Boy Seized by a Demon or Struck by the Moon: Matthew 17, Mark 9, and Luke 9
Program Unit: Cognitive Linguistics in Biblical Interpretation
David Parris, Fuller Theological Seminary - Colorado

When Jesus descended for the Mount of Transfiguration a young boy’s father implored Jesus to help him because his son suffered from what appears to be some form of seizure disorder from our perspective. Most modern commentators consider this some form of epilepsy. However, Mark and Luke attribute the cause of the boy’s ailment to a demon that seizes him. By contrast Matthew tells us that the boy was ‘struck by the moon.' In all three accounts, the authors used language that attributed the cause of the boy’s seizures to a second agent, not a biological problem in the child’s neurological systems. The frames behind the views expressed in the synoptic gospel accounts (and also a third view based on the Hippocratic tradition) would have evoked very different understandings of what the child was suffering from for both the witnesses on the Galilean countryside and also the early readers of these stories. This paper will hopefully demonstrate how cognitive linguistics (in particular frame semantics and force dynamics) allow us to perceive the differences between the synoptic accounts of this healing story and also to understand how different their view of this child’s condition was from how we view similar conditions today.


The Linguistic Framework of Two Parallel Texts: MT Isaiah versus 1QIsa-a
Program Unit: Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew
Donald Parry, Brigham Young University

The two chief goals of corpus linguistics, according to Douglas Biber et al., are to describe “some group of texts” and to describe “a linguistic structure and its variants” (Corpus Linguistics: Investigating Language Structure and Use, 269). The objective of this paper is to provide a corpus-based description of MT Isaiah and 1QIsa-a by presenting a few of their linguistic structures and variants, thus enabling researchers to more fully appreciate these diachronically diverse texts. The paper profiles several corresponding linguistic structures, including: definite article, waw conjunction, directional-he, infinitive absolute, direct object marker (“sign of the accusative”), paragogic-nun, and the verbs Niphal, Pual, and Hophal. The paper does not examine all linguistic forms, nor does it exhaust an examination of any particular structure. The multifeature/multidimensional approach is “particularly well-suited to the development of a typology of text types. This approach uses standardized computer-based text corpora and automatic identification techniques to compute the frequencies of salient and syntactic features. The distributions of these features are analyzed through multivariate statistical techniques to identify the functional ‘dimensions’ of linguistic variation among texts and to provide an overall description of relations among text types with respect to these dimensions.” (Biber and Finegan, Corpus Linguistics II: New Studies in the Analysis and Exploration of Computer Corpora, 20). The multidimensional approach: a) requires a corpus of texts that occur naturally; b) requires computerized, linguistically-tagged texts that permit researchers to search a number of linguistic features in a variety of texts; c) allows researchers to analyze linguistic features of the texts (i.e., MT Isaiah and 1QIsa-a); d) assumes that there are linguistic variations between the two texts; e) is multidimensional, meaning that multiple aspects of the subject matter are examined and displayed; f) is quantitative; g) is qualitative; and h) the approach allows for both macro- and microscopic examinations of the texts and registers.


Demythologizing Jesus: Adjustments to Bultmann
Program Unit: Westar Institute
Stephen J. Patterson, Willamette University

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Dionysius bar Salibi on Matthew 2 as Translation and Interpretation of the Old Testament
Program Unit: Syriac Literature and Interpretations of Sacred Texts
Paul Feghali, Professor, Libanon

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The Case for Mark's Conflation of Matthew and Luke in Mark 3:20–6:6a
Program Unit: Markan Literary Sources
David B. Peabody, Nebraska Wesleyan University

On the Two Gospel Hypothesis, as the accompanying macro-structural synoptic chart illustrates, within the section, Mark 3:20-6:6a, Mark has basically made alternating use of Matthew (Mk 3:20-4:34//Mt 12:22-13:35), Luke (Mk 4:35-5:43//Lk 8:22-56), and Matthew (Mk 6:1-6:6a//Mt 13:54-58), with only a brief Markan turn to the language of Lk 8:16-18 at Mk 4:21-24a intruding into this larger and more general Markan "sandwich" or "intercalated" structure (Mt-Lk-Mt). Furthermore, as is usual for Mark on the Two Gospel Hypothesis, wherever Mark is following the pericope order of Matthew, Mark's language is also more in agreement with that of Matthew and, whenever Mark turns to the pericope order of Luke, Mark's language is also more in agreement with that of Luke as well. And wherever Mark has something distinctive and/or supplementary to the language of both Matthew and Luke, those elements of Mark's text typically reflect Markan style, i. e., a unique, distinctive and unified layer of canonical Mark which the Two Gospel Hypothesis team has labeled the "Markan Overlay" on Mt and Lk. All three of these categories of evidence (alternating shared pericope order, complementary alternating shared language between and among the synoptics, and the distinctively Markan changes or supplements to the parallel texts of Matthew and Luke) are much more plausible on the basis Mark is conflating the texts of Matthew and Luke (Two Gospel Hypothesis) than they are on the basis of Matthew and Luke making independent use of the Gospel of Mark [and the Sayings Gospel, Q] (Two Document Hypothesis). This paper will discuss this evidence in detail.


“My Son, You Are Priest”: The Filial Context of the Cultic Motif in Hebrews
Program Unit: Hebrews
Amy Peeler, Wheaton College

Interpreters of Hebrews agree that the author constructs the Christology of the letter around two foci: Son and Priest. The relationship between those two foci, however, has elicited a wealth of disagreement. Are these identities separate or integrally related? Does one take precedence over the other? After providing a brief summary of the history of interpretation of these questions, this paper, in conversation with Hebrews’ most recent interpreters, argues both for the close relationship between the two titles and also for the priority of Jesus’ sonship. Although the author’s explication of Jesus’ priesthood, introduced at 2:17, becomes a dominant issue in the central section of the letter (4:14–10:25) and references to aspects associated with it continue until the closing section (12:2, 24; 13:12), the author frequently integrates Jesus’ priesthood with assertions of Jesus’ sonship. The consistent linkage between the familial and the cultic motifs suggests that the familial dynamic between God and Jesus is integral to his status as God’s final High Priest. Moreover, I argue that the author of Hebrews grounds Jesus’ vocation as priest in his filial relationship with God, and he does so in two ways. First, Jesus’ sonship is granted priority because it is the suffering that Jesus experiences as the Son of God, through the will of his Father, that qualifies him for his role as High Priest. Second, the author of Hebrews integrally relates these two roles because Jesus’ priestly offering and his priestly intercession are the means by which Jesus secures the human portion of his own inheritance. The author of Hebrews continues to construct his theological and Christological vision through the familial relationship between God and Jesus, even as he turns to the topic of Christ’s priesthood. God the Father appoints his Son as High Priest by means of suffering so that the Son can provide the inheritance to God’s many sons and daughters. In so doing, the Son attains his inheritance—including the audience of Hebrews themselves—through his priestly service.


Becoming Human: God and the Non-animal Animal in Genesis 2–4
Program Unit: Biblical Criticism and Literary Criticism
Abigail Pelham, Independent Researcher

In Genesis 1 the distinction between humans and animals is clear from the outset, with humans alone described as made “in the image of God.” In Genesis 2-4, by contrast, the distinction is far more muddled, and, as the story progresses, God and humans take alternate steps to effect the animal/human differentiation. This paper charts these steps, noting how difference is both proclaimed and then collapsed, making “the human” an unstable category, and discussing this in conversation with Derrida’s The Animal That Therefore I Am and Agamben’s The Open. In Genesis 2, the animals are originally created as potential partners for the man, and it is not God who notes the difference between them, but Adam who fails to recognize himself in the animals, accepting as a mate only a creature made from his own body, indicating his sense of himself as sui generis. Yet, introducing the serpent, the narrator describes it with a similar adjective to that he has just used to describe the humans. Although traditionally interpreted as indicating their opposition, the similar sound also seems to draw our attention to their similitude, clouding the clear distinction Adam has just drawn. When God curses the serpent, he proclaims enmity between the serpent and the woman’s offspring, clearly differentiating one from the other, as if such separation might not otherwise naturally occur, despite Adam’s claim of uniqueness, and as if, moreover, although God did not originally view it as necessary, it ought to occur. God seems to make this separation more concrete by fashioning garments for the humans from the skins of animals, which he has presumably killed, thus setting them off from humans as being both “unclothed” and “killable.” When Abel sacrifices animals in chapter 4, he acts on God’s designation of animals as “killable,” but when Cain subsequently kills Abel, it becomes clear that humans, too, are “killable,” and an essential difference is again collapsed.


God’s Speech and God’s Silence: Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life and the Book of Job
Program Unit: Bible and Film
Abigail Pelham, Independent Researcher

Although its title is taken from Genesis 2 and its main characters seem based on the primordial family of Genesis 2-4, Terrence Malick’s 2011 film The Tree of Life begins with an epigraph from God’s speeches at the end of the Book of Job, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” (Job 38:4), which serves to entangle the two stories. In the film, God’s answer to Job is recast as God’s answer to Eve after the death of her son. What Malick’s “Eve” demands is not a reversal of the circumstances that have caused her to suffer, as Job does, but an explanation from God as to why her son has died. Malick’s version of God’s response to the suffering questioner takes the form of an extended montage of scenes depicting the origins of the universe and the formation of the non-human natural world. This paper reads God’s speeches of Job 38-41 through the lens of Malick’s montage, noticing that the force of the images he presents does much to strengthen the power of God’s words in the Book of Job. For example, Malick’s portrayal of erupting volcanoes and primeval oceans, instead of the “calving deer” and “wild asses” described by God, can help reawaken contemporary readers’ sense of the vast otherness of the world God presents. At the same time, however, it is unclear whether Malick’s montage is intended to serve as an actual divine answer to “Eve,” or whether it is simply a pictorial depiction of the way the world is. Does God speak, or is God silent? In the Book of Job, the narrator indicates that God does speak in answer to Job, but the question of silence raised by Malick’s depiction raises questions about the nature and adequacy of God’s response to Job, as well.


When God is the Problem: Reconciliation in Psalms of Lament
Program Unit: Book of Psalms
Glenn Pemberton, Abilene Christian University

Despite their complaints, psalms of lament typically conclude with words of confidence or praise. Interpreters have variously explain how these psalms reach such a resolution: 1) the praise is a later addition to the lament, 2) the confidence is due to an unrecorded oracle of salvation, or 3) the confidence or praise is the result of the faith of the psalmist who believes that the Lord will respond, regardless of the lack of any change in the present circumstances. In any event, despite God’s mysterious delays and inaction, these poets find reconciliation with the God to whom they pray. For other psalmists, however, such reconciliation does not come so easily. In these prayers the primary problem is not the enemy or one’s own failures but God. This paper will examine seven psalms that explicitly and emphatically charge God with gross neglect or wrongdoing (Pss 44, 60, 80, 88, 89, 90, 120). Without flinching these poets indict God for inexcusable anger (60:1, 80:4, 88:7, 88:16-17, 89:38,46, 90:7,9,11), rejecting God’s own people (44:9,24, 60:1,10, 88:14, 89:38,46, 90:11, 108:11), failing to go out with their armies (44:9, 60:1,10, 89:40,43, 108:11), empowering their enemies to victory (44:10, 89:42, cf. 80:12-13), and so making God’s people the scorn and laughing stock of their neighbors (44:13-14, 80:6, 89:41). Because of God, God’s people are regarded as sheep for the slaughter and killed all day long (44:11,22). And while the psalmists assert covenant fidelity (44:17-18, cf. 89:9,13), they implicitly and explicitly charge God with breaking covenant (89:39,49). This paper examines how these psalms find and lead readers toward reconciliation with a God who is in violation of covenant. What do these poets assert must happen if there is to be reconciliation? What do they imagine, hope, or demand of God – of themselves? How might the contexts in which these psalms occur within the Book of Psalms contribute to a solution? To what degree is the way forward a matter of forgiveness, not God’s forgiveness but forgiveness of God’s failures?


Jinn and Bene Elohim: Surat al-Jinn and Genesis 6
Program Unit: Qur'an and Biblical Literature
David Penchansky, University of Saint Thomas (Saint Paul, MN)

The Jinn are part of ancient Arabic folk mythology, and they also appear in the Qur’an. Satan is identified as Jinn, and the whisperer elsewhere in the Qur’an seems to victimize Jinn as well as humans. An entire Sura named “the Jinn” has these elusive creatures as its subject. In it some Jinn convert and become Muslims. Who are the Jinn? Do they have any similarities with the mythological creatures of the Bible and other ancient Near Eastern religions? The Jinn, I suspect are gods and goddesses of pre-Islamic religion, reduced to subservience. This makes them similar to the biblical Elohim, although the Elohim suffered a different fate. An examination of the Jinn provides a good example of how a new religious notion both displaces and assimilates previous religious ideas.


Sounds of Silence: Absence of Covenant in Hebrew Wisdom
Program Unit: Covenant in the Persian Period
David Penchansky, University of Saint Thomas (Saint Paul, MN)

Many have noted the surprising absence of covenant references in the books of Job, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. If covenant is the heart of the biblical literature, this absence is difficult to explain. Some have deprecated Hebrew wisdom as a lesser form of spiritual discourse. Some see it as evidence of a “secular” sensibility in these works. Others deny altogether that covenant is absent, pointing to some suggestions and hints in the wording. I consider four different theories to account for this deafening silence, and what each might suggest regarding the relationship of the sages to the other religious leaders in Persian Yehud.


Sinaiticus Corrector cb2 as a Witness to the Alexandrian Text of Isaiah
Program Unit: International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies
Ken M. Penner, Saint Francis Xavier University

This paper explores the possibility that corrector cb2 of the codex Sinaiticus may be another early witness to the Alexandrian text of Isaiah. The Alexandrian text is the oldest text-type, but it is represented in only a few early witnesses. According to Ziegler, in Isaiah the earliest manuscripts that provide the Alexandrian text are the (very fragmentary) papyrus 965 from the 3rd century, the uncials A and Q, from the 5th and 6th centuries, and partially S, from the 5th century. After these, it is not until the miniscules from the 9th century onward that the Alexandrian text is attested. However, it is now possible to isolate another possibly independent witness to the Alexandrian text. The Codex Sinaiticus Project (codexsinaiticus.com) now provides a complete data set of the manuscript corrections, from which the correctors' exemplars may be reconstructed. My examination of the textual variants in the book of Isaiah, has shown that the corrections made by scribe cb2 often agree with Ziegler's critical edition. Because corrector cb2 has been dated from the 5th to 7th century, this tendency provides a new, possibly independent witness to a Greek text of Isaiah that is relatively free from recensional changes.


Potent (Eucharistic) Potables: Pharmacology and Ancient Memory Reconsolidation in Cyprian of Carthage
Program Unit: Religious Experience in Antiquity
John David Penniman, Fordham University

In book 4 of Homer’s Odyssey, a dinner party hosted by Menelaus devolves into uncontrollable grief when those present recall the loss of their beloved friend Odysseus. In an attempt to cure the pain of memory, Helen slips into the wine bowl a drug (pharmakon) called “nepenthe” which banishes the cares and, through this forgetting, returns pleasure to the party goers. The experimental disposition toward memory (and toward its manipulation by psychotropic drinks) evoked here has recently been explored by neuroscientists seeking technologies of “memory reconsolidation.” Having isolated the neural proteins in which individual memories crystallize, modern scientists may not be far from producing a drug which can target specific memories and, ultimately, revise or erase them. Since memories form a constitutive part of who we are (both individually and collectively), the attempt to edit and consolidate them into a more coherent narrative via pharmaceuticals offers an opportune site for examining the mutually (de)constructive relationship between memory and identity. This paper proposes that, in early Christian ritual practice, just such a site existed during the experience of drinking the Eucharistic cup – a memorial enactment instigated by the admixture of elements that shaped individual and corporate identity. It will offer a reading of Christian Eucharistic drinking in general - and Cyprian of Carthage’s theology of the sacramental wine specifically – as a parallel to ancient as well as modern discussions of drug-induced memory reconsolidation. First, ancient techniques of memory-alteration will be analyzed in conversation with Derrida’s interpretation of the pharmakon in Plato’s Phaedrus. The pharmakon, says Derrida, is the site where “opposites are opposed.” It is the toxic remedy, the cure that kills. It is a drug by which the preservation of memory occurs, paradoxically, alongside its constitutive loss. Drawing upon Derrida’s insights, the main body of the paper will then demonstrate the ways in which the anamnetic effect of Eucharistic drinking was imagined in similar terms by early Christian authors. After framing passages such as Johannine sacramental imagery (i.e. “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you”) in the context of ancient pharmacology, I will offer a close-reading of Cyprian of Carthage’s “Letter on the Sacrament of the Cup” as amplifying this discursive tradition surrounding anamnesis and Eucharist. Cyprian employs language regarding the Eucharistic wine that is resonant with ancient depictions of drink-induced identity formation that results in the revision or removal of personal memories. For Cyprian, it is not that drinking the cup of Christ provides an occasion to remember Christ. Rather, he asserts that the very properties of the wine are crucial because they alone result in the forgetting of previous sins and thus open a psychic space for the experience of new memories. Put simply, this paper contends that strands of early Eucharistic theology employed ancient pharmacology as an elaboration and amplification of the process of memory reconsolidation within Christian ritual experience.


After Deponency: Connecting the Middle Voice to Other Elements of Greek Grammar and Teaching It to Students
Program Unit: Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics
Jonathan T. Pennington, Southern Seminary

Building on the assumption that we are now in a position to appreciate the Greek Middle Voice on its own terms rather than using the imported category of deponency, this paper will explore the implications in the areas of our grammars, lexicons, and the exegesis of specific texts.


Maldonatus on Matthew: Learning from a Counter-Reformation Commentary Writer
Program Unit: History of Interpretation
Jonathan T. Pennington, Southern Seminary

It is all too easy to make assumptions about the methods and approaches of pre-modern interpreters. But often when pre-modern commentators are actually studied they do not fit into our pre-conceived molds. This is certainly true of the great Counter-Reformation Jesuit scholar Maldonatus (ca. 1534-1584). This paper uses Maldonatus’ lengthy commentary on Matthew to examine his hermeneutical approach, especially as it compares and contrasts with his Reformed contemporaries.


Roman Controversiae about Inheritance Disputes and 1 Corinthians 6
Program Unit: Polis and Ekklesia: Investigations of Urban Christianity
Michael Peppard, Fordham University

The metaphor of inheritance is relatively rare in Paul's epistles, but its appearances during crucial arguments in Galatians and Romans have garnered well-deserved scholarly attention. Paul's expositions of who may rightfully claim the inheritance of the Abrahamic promise are among his most important contributions to nascent Christianity. By contrast, the inheritance metaphor in 1 Cor 6:9 has not been the subject of much interest, despite the intense focus of scholarship on that verse. Scholars have been more interested--and justifiably so--in the subsequent "vice list" and its implications for contemporary views on human sexuality. And yet, the opening question of that verse, "Don't you know that wrongdoers will not inherit God's kingdom?" is worth close consideration for two reasons: first, because of the relative rarity of "inheritance" and "kingdom of God" metaphors in the Pauline corpus; second, because the connection between this verse and the preceding section (6:1-8) has not been sufficiently explained. This paper offers an analysis of inheritance disputes in Roman society--based primarily on the corpus of extant controversiae ("legal case-studies")--as a way of explaining Paul's rhetorical move from vv. 1-8 to vv. 9-11. The ubiquity of actual fraternal lawsuits in Roman society offered Paul an opportunity to adapt his favorite ecclesial metaphor--the ekklesia as a new family under God--to the social reality in Corinth. That is to say, the crucial unstated premise that connects vv. 1-8 with vv. 9-11 is the fact that fraternal lawsuits were usually inheritance disputes. This understanding of what normally happened when a "brother went to court against a brother" (6:6) thus allows Paul to pivot the discussion from legally defined families to the topic he wants to emphasize: the new family "in the Spirit" (6:11). In the end, the paper also explores how this "family inheritance dispute" interpretation might shed light on the sexual morality dispute of the previous chapter.


The Order of Pronominal Clitics in Greek Exodus: An Indicator of the Translator’s Intentionality
Program Unit: International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies
Larry Perkins, Trinity Western University

With some degree of frequency the translator of Greek Exodus breaks his general practice of isomorphism in the placement of personal pronouns. As I noted in the introduction to Exodus in A New English Translation of the Septuagint (44), “about 30 (out of approximately 350) cases are pre-posed, a proportion that is unusually high among the various Septuagint translators.” Regularly, for example, the translator renders ??????? (and related forms) as ??a µ?? ?at?e?s?s?? (cf. 9:1), rather than the expected ??a ?at?e?s?s?? µ??, a Verb – Pronominal Object word order which occurs commonly and conforms to Hebrew word order. A.Wistrand, “Die Stellung der enklitischen Personalpronomina bei den Septuaginta” (1949-50) noted this, but apart from commenting that these exceptions follow normal placement in Attic Greek, did not offer further explanation for this phenomenon. This paper discusses this phenomenon (and one or two related word order issues) in Greek Exodus and seeks to understand such divergences with reference to recent theory that seeks to explain the placement of clitics and constituent order within Koine Greek. The hypothesis is that the use of such word order within Greek Exodus is an indicator of the translator’s desire to provide subtle nuances of focus within the narrative. Selected passages will be used to illustrate and demonstrate this hypothesis.


The Evolution of the Apocalypse: Dream-Visions and the Inception of Apocalyptic from Zechariah 1–6 to 4QVisions of Amram
Program Unit: Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity
Andrew B. Perrin, McMaster University

In a short essay written in 1983 Jean Carmignac proposed that the roots of apocalyptic symbolism derive from analogous depictions in ancient dream literature (‘Description du phénomène de l’Apocalyptique dans l’Ancient Testament,’ in ‘Apocalypticism in the Mediterranean World and the Near East’). Carmignac’s hypothesis, while compelling, received little scholarly attention in the years that followed. Recently, however, the linkage between dream-vision literature and the emergence of the apocalypse has been reconsidered and argued anew by Frances Flannery-Dailey in ‘Dreamers, Scribes, and Priests: Jewish Dreams in the Hellenistic and Roman Eras’ (Brill, 2004) and Bennie H. Reynolds in ‘Between Symbolism and Realism: The Use of Symbolic and Non-Symbolic Language in Ancient Jewish Apocalypses 333-63 B.C.E.’ (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011). The present paper contributes to this line of inquiry by elucidating the ways in which the author of 4QVisions of Amram (4Q543-548) adopted and adapted traditional literary and linguistic material from the Zechariah visionary cycle when penning a new dream-vision pseudepigraphically attributed to the patriarch Amram. While 4QVisions of Amram in its entirety does not fit the mold of an apocalypse as per the classic Semeia 14 definition, the dream-vision episode contained therein hews closely to many of its key components, suggesting that 4QVisions of Amram is indeed an important piece of evidence for tracing the evolution of the apocalypse. Amram’s dream-vision may then be viewed as an important link in the chain from dream-vision to apocalyptic and exemplifies how the tradents of this nascent genre and outlook drew upon the images and idioms of scripture’s seers.


Vertical, Lateral, and Peshat Metaphors in Qohelet: A Levinassian Analysis
Program Unit: Metaphor Theory and the Hebrew Bible
T. A. Perry, Boston College

Emmanuel Levinas’ recently published Notebooks (Carnets de Captivité, 2009, 2011), document a deep interest in literature and in metaphor in particular. It is the relevance of his theories of metaphor to biblical exegesis that I wish to pursue here, with concrete application to wisdom texts such as Qohelet. My focus will deal with three related questions. First of all, if metaphors are conceptualized primarily as figures of transcendence, what bearing does this theory have on both theology and exegesis? Would they then qualify, in Levinas’ phrase, as a “miraculous surplus”? What would be the meaning of his definition of God as the “metaphor of metaphors”? Or if, instead of ascendance, metaphors “relate different levels of being,” then the focus seems to be lateral, perhaps a reworking of the ancient macrocosm / microcosm analogy. Finally, if metaphor is often viewed in opposition to peshat or simple literal meaning, how can we make use of the concept of a peshat-metaphor? For example, what would be the peshat-metaphor for hebel, “vanity”?


2 Samuel 23:1–7 as Read during the Time of Zerubbabel
Program Unit: Covenant in the Persian Period
Raymond Person, Ohio Northern University

In this paper I revisit my earlier interpretation of 2 Sam 23:1-7 during the time of Zerubbabel in light of arguments I made in The Deuteronomic History and the Book of Chronicles: Scribal Works in an Oral World (SBL 2010). I will discuss (1) what we can know about the source and redaction of 2 Sam 23:1-7, (2) what the “everlasting covenant” (2 Sam 23:5) would have meant in the context of Zerubbabel as governor of Yehud, and (3) how this interpretation fits well within the broader narrative theologies of Samuel-Kings // Chronicles.


Wherever and Back on Two Tracks: Xanthippe
Program Unit: Ancient Fiction and Early Christian and Jewish Narrative
Richard I. Pervo, St. Paul, MN

The Acts of Xanthippe and Polyxena is most often examined as an example of the reception of romantic novels and Apocryphal Acts. This paper will focus upon Xan as a work of literature. It is remarked that, although the Greek romantic novels prefer the classic and satisfying folkloristic “there and back” structure, Christian narratives do not. (In fact, The Ethiopian Story and Daphnis and Chloe do not quite fit this model.) Xan is a “there and back” story. Other interesting features are a two-part structure: chaps. 1-21 focus upon domestic adventures. 22-42 move into the wider Mediterranean world. The first half has a single chief character: the matron Xanthippe. Her sister, Polyxena, with Rebecca and others, dominate the second half. Polyxena represents the typically embattled virgin. One apostle, Paul dominates part 1 and frames the work. Philip and Andrew play vital roles in the second part. By offering adventures at home, like Longus, as well as adventures on the road (and ocean), matron and virgin, solitary heroine and young woman helped by friends, the author could be said to present an early Christian variety show, with something for everyone. This paper will argue, however, that more than variety is in view. There are more than a few ways for a woman to be Christian. This compressed little novel makes a pluralistic, as it were, case. No single apostle should predominate nor any one life style. Stay at home moms, as it were, and girls on the go all qualify. Friends are important. Defective as it is in size, Xan is more than a pastiche of plundered scenes from ApocActs. Through its structure and other literary means it presents suggestions about Christian identity and vocation.


Thecla Wove This Web Or Some Things I Learned from Attempting to Write a Commentary on the Acts of Paul
Program Unit: Christian Apocrypha
Richard I. Pervo, St. Paul, MN

[On 2 February 2012 I submitted to Yale the ms. of a commentary on APl for the Anchor Series. Other than the standard experiences of enhanced humility and heightened respect for the forebears, two outstanding learnings were:] 1. Structure. Chapter 4 (Antioch) is the structural key to the extant work. The author took up this story about Thecla, probably in written form, and composed chap. 3 (Iconium) to fashion her into a disciple of Paul (Jensen, Esch-Wermeling). Chapter 3 imitates 4 in structure. A leading feature of the APl is the parallels between (3-)4 and 9 (Ephesus). Even the dullest of readers will note that both Paul and Thecla encounter a lion in the arena. Chap. 14 (Rome) runs parallel to chap. 3. In short, utilization of Thecla’s adventures inspired some of the book’s most notable literary features. One must also ask why the author took up the Thecla story. It is more likely that this benefitted Paul than Thecla. (The theses of Bovon and Brock on APl as a “gospel” are confirmed and developed.) 2. Editing. 3 Corinthians is a later addition not from the author. In addition to the editing of chap. 4, extensive interpolation is probable in chaps. 9 and 13. The versions offer typical examples of expansion, but at points it is at least arguable that the Greek text behind the Syriac (and its derivative Armenian) is earlier and longer, i.e., that the known Greek text contains abbreviations. The paper will offer detailed examples of 2 and flesh out the arguments of 1.


Reconstructing the History of Jesus-Groups During the First Two Centuries: Reflections and Hypotheses
Program Unit: Construction of Christian Identities
Mauro Pesce, Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna

In the last decades a series of factors has introduced a certain transformation in the historical reconstruction of the groups of Jesus followers in the first two centuries. a. The study of early Christian literature has more and more avoided the anachronistic distinctions between canonical and non-canonical writings and between orthodox and heterodox groups; b. increasing attention has been dedicated to “apocryphal” and fragmentary texts and to archeological evidence; c. the fact that the separation of Jesus followers from Jews took place gradually (and in different times and places) has been taken into account; d. social history, history of groups and their religious practices has become a major topic of history of early Christianity; e. the cohabitation of different religious groups within towns has become a central concern. Today the focus of the historian must therefore concentrate on: 1. the plurality of early Christian groups in the first two centuries; 2. the formation not only of the so-called Great Church, but also of all Christian groups; 3. the fact that groups have not only a birth, but also an evolution and a death; 4. the long cohabitation of Jesus followers with Jews and other religious groups within the towns; 5. the attribution of each early Christian writing to a particular group of Jesus followers; 6. new conceptual categories and methodological perspectives. 7. the production of a historical map of groups of Jesus followers in the first two centuries The paper will give attention to some recent historical reconstructions and to the future perspectives of the SBL unit on “The Construction of Christian Identities”.


Syriac Developments of the Fourth Maccabees Materials (Sixth Maccabees)
Program Unit: Function of Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
Sigrid Peterson, University of Pennsylvania

Sixth Maccabees is a poetic Syriac retelling of an old Jewish tale about the Maccabean Martyrdoms, known in the Greek of 2 Macc 6 -7, and in the Greek retelling found in Fourth Maccabees. Sections of Sixth Maccabees follow Fourth Maccabees closely. By closely, I mean that the tortures of the seven sons occur in identical form and order, in Syriac Sixth Maccabees and in Greek Fourth Maccabees. In the sections of Sixth Maccabees dealing with the ordeal of the seven martyrs and their mother the similarities to Fourth Maccabees are striking. A chart of verse and section correspondences between Sixth and Fourth Maccabees, and the italicized English correspondences in my English translation, correspond so closely that I hypothesize an origin in a Greek or Aramaic speaking Jewish community. Much of the rest of Sixth Maccabees is of later origin, reflecting interests and interpretations of the Syriac-speaking Christian communities, who still revere the mother of the Maccabees as Mort(y) Shmuni. The central narrative is not changed from the sequence in Fourth Maccabees. Sections in both Fourth Maccabees and Sixth Maccabees, however, expand their respective books, and lack the close correspondence noted above. The historical introductions do not very often run parallel, compared to the parallelism of the martyrdoms in both books. The mother, in Fourth Maccabees, is given a third of the torture narratives, at the end. The mother, in Sixth Maccabees, speaks to each of her sons in turn. it must be noted that Fourth Maccabees describes the scene in terms of the mother speaking to each son -- but she then disappears until the last third of Fourth Maccabees. Her words, in Sixth Maccabees, are far simpler than the rhetoric provided of Fourth Maccabees. These are features of a much less elaborate text than Fourth Maccabees.


A Tale of Two Moseses: Philo’s De Vita Mosis and Josephus’ Ant. 2–4 in Light of the Roman Discourse of Exemplarity
Program Unit: Ancient Fiction and Early Christian and Jewish Narrative
James Petitfils, University of California-Los Angeles

The preferred moral curriculum of a Roman education largely consisted of exemplary narratives of Rome’s native heroes. Elite and non-elite Romans would regularly encounter these carefully-emplotted heroes both audibly, in frequently repeated—and specifically crafted—ancestral anecdotes and visually, whether by means of prominently displayed ancestral masks (imagines), conspicuously storied statuary, or a host of easily narrativized monuments ornamenting the urban landscape. In short, when Roman writers, orators, or parents wished to articulate or inculcate their conceptions of virtuous “Roman” leadership, they consistently deployed exempla as rhetorical vehicles of the mos maiorum. In dialogue with recent scholarship in the field of Classics (especially the work of Matthew Roller and Karl-Joachim Hölkeskamp), the proposed paper will examine the way in which Philo of Alexandria (De Vita Mosis 1-2) and Flavius Josephus (Antiquities 2-4) appropriate and redeploy the narrative features characterizing this “Roman Discourse of Exemplarity” as they showcase their paradigmatic “Jewish” leader, Moses. I will explore the way in which these authors, in their efforts to establish clear cultural boundaries and prescribe distinctively “Jewish” leadership ideals ironically employ characteristically “Roman” narrative strategies and affirm a number of traditionally “Roman” leadership preferences. This study will also examine the virtues of ideal “Jewish” leadership shared by the respective Moseses as well as those more uniquely Philonic or Josephan priorities. In the end, this presentation will highlight both the permeability of ancient cultural boundaries, as well as the ironic utility of Hellenistic and Roman discursive practices and approaches to narrative for the construction of Jewish identity/ies.


Seen but Not Heard: The Silent Child and the Discourse of Proverbs
Program Unit: Children in the Biblical World
Catherine Petrany, Fordham University

Proverbial instruction often explicitly addresses itself to a youthful figure, the child or “son” (Prov 1:10, 2:1; 3:1; 4:1 etc.) who is exhorted to think and act in particular ways. However, the intellectual and behavioral involvement of the child remains completely veiled in silence. In his book Education in Ancient Israel, James L. Crenshaw characterizes this silence as the “missing voice,” the young son or daughter who receives instruction but gives no verbal evidence of how such instruction is appropriated. How does the presence of this elusive child figure shape the nature of proverbial discourse? Scholars have dealt at length with the historical verities of wisdom schools and the identity of the student of sapiential instruction in ancient Israel. In contrast, this study operates from a rhetorical perspective, and takes the familial and youthful characteristics of the child-student as the basic literary foundation for understanding the content of wisdom instruction which utilizes this type of address in the book of Proverbs. This paper contends that the speaker’s address to the child or “son” introduces a principle of uncertainty into the rhetoric of proverbial pedagogy. That is, the address itself, the initiation of an inter-human discourse, allows for the possibility that the worldview of the parent figure may not be accepted by the child. Thus, the monologic overtones of this kind of didactic discourse are undercut by the explicit presence of a child who may or may not take up the speaker’s epistemological and moral exhortations. In this way, the “silent child” is not merely a passive figure or literary trope in the book of Proverbs. Rather, the figure of the child, as addressed by the parent/teacher, fundamentally shapes the way in which the subsequent pedagogical discourse operates.


Inclusivity Meets Exclusivity: Monotheism in the Book of Ezekiel
Program Unit: Unity and Diversity in Early Jewish Monotheisms
Sven Petry, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

In the debate on biblical monotheism the theological concepts of both Deutero-Isaiah and Deuteronomy have been characterized as exclusive conceptions in contrast to an inclusive conception developed in the Priestly Code. The Book of Ezekiel combines features of all three of them: Ezekiel an Deutero-Isaiah share various topics, the proclamation of a new Exodus, the return of Yhwh or the (final) salvation of the unrighteous people to name just a few. Named after a prophet who is also introduced as a priest, we find a prophetic book with clear affinities to the Priestly Code in general and the Holiness Code in particular. And finally Ezekiel shows clear reference to expressions, traditions and motifs known from Deuteronomy (especially in Ezek 6; 8; 11 and 20). This paper considers how the Ezekiel deals with both exclusive and inclusive conceptions in order to shape its particular form of monotheism.


The Isthmus and the Consequences of Geography: New Directions in the Study of Commercial Corinth
Program Unit: Polis and Ekklesia: Investigations of Urban Christianity
David K. Pettegrew, Messiah College

Geography has frequently captivated interpretations of early Christian Corinth. In its location at a crossroads of land and sea, scholars have held that the commercial structures of the Isthmus made the city exceptional in its maritime orientation. The twin harbors of Lechaion and Kenchreai, in particular, allegedly attracted commerce and generated wealth, while the “diolkos” portage road made Corinth the control point in a major trans-shipment business. For many scholars, transience and wealth form the backdrop to the problems evident in Paul’s Christian community around the mid-1st century CE. In this paper, I discuss scholarship that has complicated this picture through new constructions of the development of Corinth’s commercial landscape. In the first part, I summarize three recent independent studies on the diolkos—my own work, along with studies by Greek and German researchers—that have challenged the traditional interpretation of the Isthmus as a commercial thoroughfare. Through reanalysis of ancient literature, logistics of portaging, archaeology of the road, and regional commerce, these studies have argued that the diolkos road did not function to transship commercial vessels. My own study has further concluded that the road played only a limited role in cargo transshipment and the city’s economic development. In the second part, I turn to evidence for the development of commerce in the two harbors, Kenchreai and Lechaion, and across the broader Isthmus. While the harbors in the Roman era clearly contributed to the region’s resources from the colony’s refoundation, commerce developed and strengthened over the course of the first century following investments in the landscape. This paper highlights the risks of synchronous views of the consequences of geography pieced together from scattered Greek and Roman texts and archaeological sources, and recommends more nuanced attention to the diachronic development of the region’s commercial structures in the first two centuries CE.


Johannine Christianity and the Collapse of Class
Program Unit: Economics in the Biblical World
Christina Petterson, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

This paper examines the narrative of John’s gospel in relation to the conditions of production in antiquity as outlined by classicist G.E.M. Ste. Croix in terms of chora and polis. As is well known, John does not use the same rural imagery as the synoptic gospels. The question is what this means for understanding class and production in John. Is there a distinction between chora and polis in John, and to what extent does this undergird the narrative? If not, are there other class markers within the text and its production?


Drug of the Widow: Isis and the Angels at Hermopolis
Program Unit: Mysticism, Esotericism, and Gnosticism in Antiquity
Jeff Pettis, New Brunswick Seminary

In the 1st century CE alchemical text "Isis to Horus" the goddess Isis offers instruction to her son Horus for what she calls the “drug of the widow” (pharmmikou tes xeras). This is the “great secret” which Isis has procured from Amnael, one of two angels who sexually attack Isis at Hermopolis, Egypt, an ancient religious center mythologically connected with the deity Hermes. According to the mystery revealed by Amnael, nature has the inborn power to regenerate itself. Substance begets substance—a concept elsewhere in the tract translated as “the impregnation of nature by nature.” The notion of kataskeuen, “preparation,” occurs as a central theme in the Isis text as the means for accessing the divine mystery. It relates specific acts by which the suppliant Isis anticipates face-to-face encounter with divine revelation. The progressive nature of events—successive battles with two angels, repetitions of oaths and warnings, declarations (incantations?) of alchemical formulae—tell of what appear to be rituals taking one further into the mystery core. Through the process there occurs a gradual shift toward becoming more open to divine encounter. This openness occurs on two levels. On the one hand, Isis’ state of reception deepens the more she resists the demand for/of lust. She does not “turn” herself to the desire of the first and second angels and their advances toward her. (The text does not state whether she eventually does yield to the Amnael's advances after securing the mystery.) On the other hand, the openness of both of the angels to sharing the divine power (dunameos theias) grows as the struggle and narrative progresses. The ritual progressions occur “in accordance with the seasons (ton kairon) and the necessary movement of the heavenly sphere.” The account relates subsequently a yielding of Isis to the fate of the cosmos by which the angels attack, the struggles issue, and the mystery is won.


Where the God Sleeps: Asclepius Dream Rooms
Program Unit: Art and Religions of Antiquity
Jeff Pettis, New Brunswick Seminary

The central location within Asclepius temples for the purpose of dream encounter is the abaton. As space which facilitates personal, individual interaction between human and deity, the abaton holds special religious significance. It functions as the essential facility within the temple complex—the “inmost sanctuary.” According to one Greek epigram, the deity himself slept in the abaton. The 4th c. BCE abaton at Epidauros serves as an example of size and design. It measured 70 m. x 9.5 m. A row of columns divided the interior area lengthwise. Patrons slept in one of the divided areas, and also on a lower floor area of the west section of the facility. An older abaton, dating to the 6th c. BCE, measured 24.30 m. x 20.70 m. One Epidauros inscription relates the absence of a roof. Pausanias tells of there being an image of Asclepius proximate to the abaton at the Epidauros Asclepius temple. He says that the image is half the size of the image of Olympian Zeus at Athens, made of ivory and gold. The god Asclepius is seated on a throne, grasping a staff while holding the other hand over the head of the serpent and a dog lying by his side. According to Strabo, the Epidaurus temple was “full of the sick.” Aristophanes notes the many "sick with every form of ailment” in the abaton at Athens. The abaton held for Asclepius patrons a notion of the mystery of the unknown. The nature and specific outcome of the incubation dreaming experience within remained unpredictable. References of encounters occur especially in Greek inscriptions of the Epidaurus Asclepius temple. A certain Cleo “came as a suppliant to the god [Asclepius] and slept in the abaton.” Pandarus, a Thessalian, “saw a vision as he slept,” and as he left the abaton he made an offering to the temple. Aristocritus, the father of a lost son, slept in the abaton and saw a dream revealing the location of the boy.


Ezra and the Mediators of the Torah
Program Unit: Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah
Roberto Piani, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen - PBI Rome

How did post-biblical traditions developed the Ezra figure? Among others accents, Ezra has often been put on the same level of Moses. How comes that he has been compared to the founder of Israelite religion? First, I will treat directly the issue of a parallel between Moses and Ezra in Ezra-Nehemiah. Verified the almost total absence of connection between those main characters, in a second step I will verify whether in Ezra-Nehemiah there are further elements that could provide the basis of later developments. In doing that, I will enter in dialogue with scho¬lars that investigated a more general issue, that is the possible connection of Ezra-Nehemiah with the exodus narratives. Verified that there are allusions also to other biblical texts beyond the complex Exodus-Leviticus-Numbers, I will extend the study of the intertextual connections to other textual traditions that seem involved by the narrative of Ezra-Nehemiah, with a focus on Neh 8. “From Moses to Moses there was none like Moses.” The words taken from the epitaph on Moses Maimonides’ grave could well summarize the result of this research: Ezra is not presented as a second Moses in the biblical texts that regard him, particularly in Neh 8. Thanks to connections to other biblical passges, the image of Ezra came out as another leader charged with the task to read the Torah of Moses to the people. He is set in a theoretical succession of mediators of the Torah to Israel.


Fair as the Moon and Clear as the Sun: The Song of Songs in the Latter-day Saint Religious Tradition
Program Unit: Latter-day Saints and the Bible
Dana M Pike, Brigham Young University

In harmony with the major academic position on the Song of Songs, Latter-day Saints do not accept the origins of this biblical book as religiously motivated or inspired. And unlike many traditional Jews and Christians, mainstream Latter-day Saints have not taken an allegorical approach to interpreting the Song of Songs, but rather have generally marginalized the book and its use. After reviewing current scholarship on the Song of Songs, the primary reason for the Latter-day Saint approach to it, and the broader use of passages from the Song of Songs by influential Latter-day Saint leaders, I analyze the vocabulary and imagery of Song 6:10 in its own context (Song 6:4-10) and its use in three passages of the Doctrine and Covenants (additional Latter-day Saint scripture). As part of this analysis, I (1) specifically evaluate the meaning of the last phrase in Song 6:10, traditionally translated “terrible as an army with banners,” but now rendered in other ways, (2) evaluate the intended symbolism of this phrase in Song 6 and the nature of the newer translations regarding their faithfulness to the text and its inherent imagery, and (3) evaluate the function of Song 6:10 and the uses of its imagery in the Doctrine and Covenants. A major purpose of this paper is to explore and explain why early Latter-day Saint leaders, who are assumed to have had a negative view of the Song of Songs, consciously included figurative language from Song 6:10 in texts that became part of the broader Latter-day Saint canon.


Re-reading Luke 10:25–37: A Resource for Healing in an AIDS Era?
Program Unit: African Biblical Hermeneutics
Miranda N Pillay, University of the Western Cape

While juxtaposing the AIDS pandemic with sickness in the New Testament is neither a simplistic nor an obvious link, the fact is that some churches today are offering healing to HIV-positive individuals who then confess to the body of believers that, through their faith in Jesus, they have been cured. It is also true that sero-positive individuals who believe that “God has taken away the AIDS” discontinue their anti-retroviral therapy. This act echoes their pastors’ rhetoric, “We are not the healer. God is the healer. Never a sickness God cannot heal. Never a disease God cannot cure”. This claim to faith healing was made by a pastor of the Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN) after three women died because they had stopped taking their antiretroviral drugs, according to a BBC report on 18 October 2011. The fact that sero-positive individuals who discontinue their antiretroviral therapy risk their own health and lives is of great concern. But of equal concern is the fact that these individuals who believe that “God has taken away the AIDS” may be infecting their sexual partners and spreading the disease. This paper explores how stigmatization of the diseased body (individual and social body), is sustained by purity codes of ‘holiness’ which in turn sanctifies ‘holy hierarchies’ that uphold discrimination and subjugation. In the light of stigmatization of the diseased body this paper further explores how a re-reading of Luke 10:25-37 could provide an alternative view of the dis-eased body in the context of HIV/AIDS in Africa. Informed by a feminist biblical hermeneutic Luke 10:25-37 is read from a socio-cultural-ideological-perspective.


Negotiating the Past in the Past: The Portrayal of Early Tenth Century BCE Jerusalem in Samuel-Kings
Program Unit: Historiography and the Hebrew Bible
Daniel Pioske, Union Theological Seminary - New York

Archaeological excavations in and around Jerusalem continue to open up new vistas into the history of the location during the site’s early 10th century BCE existence. With the material remains of this late Iron I/IIA Jerusalem anchoring my discussion, my paper will the turn in a comparative vein to that Jerusalem depicted in 2 Sam 5 – 1 Kings 2. Fascinating about references to David’s Jerusalem within this account are the moments of semblance and incongruity between its vision of Jerusalem’s past and the archaeological evidence recovered from the early 10th century settlement. In certain instances David’s Jerusalem is portrayed in a manner commensurable with the known archaeological record, with Jerusalem described as a modest stronghold site (2 Sam 5:6-9) struggling to promote and maintain its legitimacy as a ruling center over an unruly tribal society (2 Sam 6:5-19; 15:7-18; 20:1-3). Yet in other narrative scenes Jerusalem takes on a more impressive character, with the city marked by economic and social stratification (2 Sam 6:20; 11:13), pronounced literacy among its elites (2 Sam 11:14-15), and the curious presence of a palace-temple complex (2 Sam 12:20) that are all much more in keeping with the archaeological and epigraphic evidence of Late Iron Age Jerusalem than with the Jerusalem of David’s era. My paper will conclude by suggesting that one reason for this uneven portrayal was the place of Jerusalem itself. With Davidic traditions being reframed by a literary culture abiding within a much larger and wealthier Jerusalem under Assyrian hegemony, my contention will be that literary references to early 10th century BCE Jerusalem in 2 Sam 5 – 1 Kings 2 came to be influenced by the physical appearance and social milieu of that Late Iron Age city within which these stories were first recast into an overarching narrative of Israel and Judah’s past.


The Visions of Baruch and Gorgorios: Two "Moral" Apocalypses in Late Antique Ethiopia
Program Unit: Ethiopic Bible and Literature
Pierluigi Piovanelli, University of Ottawa

The primary function of the Ethiopic apocalyptic texts ascribed to Baruch and Gorgorios (i.e., Gregory) is to provide detailed descriptions of the judgment of the souls of the dead and reports of tours of paradise and hell. These late antique rewritings of other illustrious "moral" apocalypses (notably, the Apocalypse of Paul and the Apocalypse of the Virgin) contain some historical allusions to the extremely long and painful war between Byzantium and Persia, in 609-630. The echoes of that highly traumatic events (the Persian conquest of Jerusalem, the abduction of the holy relics, the atrocities committed against the civil population) still resonate in these texts. In my paper, I will try to recontextualize both apocalypses in the late antique Egyptian and Aksumite setting that produced them.


2Kgs 7:17-8:6: Plurality Considerations for an Edition of the Hebrew Text
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Historical Books
Andres Piquer Otero, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

This paper treats the text of 2Kgs 7:17-8:6 as a sample to consider and discuss the problems and challenges of an eclectic edition of the Hebrew text (as in the Oxford Hebrew Bible Project), taking into consideration that the section is one of the few parts of Kings where, together with the rich Septuagint tradition, Dead Sea Scrolls sources (6Q4) may be compared to the Masoretic Text.


Linguistic Markedness and the Use of Scripture in Gospel Narratives
Program Unit: Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics
Andrew Pitts, McMaster Divinity College

Linguists dealing with the Greek of the New Testament have given an increasing amount of attention to the issue of markedness in assessing linguistic choices in recent years. This analysis has ranged from semantic considerations (e.g. Porter in1989; Porter and Pitts in 2008) to more discourse based concerns revolving around notions like prominence (e.g. Reed in 1997 and Westfall in 2005). This paper seeks to advance the discussion by freshly applying markedness theory to the use of the Old Testament in Gospel narratives. Semantic markedness (markedness on a scale of more or less semantically determinate) is the most fundamental criterion since semantically marked items usually end up more formally complex and less frequent precisely because they are more semantically marked, and vice versa. Applied to intertextuality, this would mean that less specified, more frequent uses of intertexts are less marked whereas more specified, less frequent usages count as more marked. Material not cited directly, such as allusions or echoes or traditional material, are more frequent than direct citation while not being marked by specificity through the use of a citation formula. These function on the “background” of the discourse. Since direct citation employs more semantic specificity through the use of a formula, the author in these passages intends to draw attention in some way to the information communicated by these sources. Further specificity within the formula itself will tend toward higher levels of markedness, moving information from the foreground to the frontground. “Scripture says,” for example, would clearly be foreground material whereas employing the specific name of the source (e.g. Moses) would be frontground material. With this theoretical framework of background, foreground and frontground in place, the interpreter is able to glean insights into the source framework, narrative structure and literary strategies of Gospel writers in their use of Scripture.


Back to the Future: The Priestly Concept of History—Under Special Consideration of Num 7
Program Unit: Cultic Personnel in the Biblical World
Thomas Pola, Dortmund University of Technology

Provided that the Priestly Code (P) was a source (and not a layer) it must be asked: What is the difference between this source and the pre-P-texts? E.g., P shows a new anthropology, another covenant theology, and a new understanding of the cult. This lecture will concentrate on the decisive difference, the priestly understanding of history. It might be summarized by the movie title “back to the future”. Like the Hebrew word qaedaem (front, east, aforetime, future) the past “reported” by P is supposed to be the eschatological future. E.g., it is already known that Gen 6:9 12 (P) quotes Am 8:2 and Ez 7:2,6 because the P-version of the flood aims at the final global judgment announced by the pre-exilic and early exilic prophets. This lecture will concentrate on the example of the consecration of the tabernacle in Ex 40, Lev 8 9, and especially in Num 7. On the one hand the consecration of the Second Temple in 515 B.C. was connected with eschatological expectations (according to Ez 43, Hag 2, and Zech 1 6). On the other hand these expectations were not fulfilled according to the consecration report in Ezr 6:14 22. P reverses the eschatological expectations of Ezekiel, his school, Haggai, and Zechariah (and even sociological developments of the priesthood from the fifth century B.C.) into the past. Consequently the eschatological expectations expressed by Ezekiel, Haggai, and Zechariah were still valid by reversing them into the past and the problem of the lacking fulfilment of these expectations in the present time was minimized. This special Priestly understanding of history will be demonstrated by an analysis of Num 7.


“To All Peoples, Nations, and Languages”: Daniel, Bilingualism, and the Scribal Subject
Program Unit: Book of Daniel
Donald Polaski, College of William and Mary

The Book of Daniel is a polyglot work, a mixture of Hebrew, Aramaic (and Greek if one is inclined to include the so-called Additions). Most scholars have addressed this issue by an appeal to the redactional history of the work. And it is undoubtedly the case that one can write a history of the text that explains the shift from Hebrew to Aramaic and back again. This paper takes a different approach to the issue by raising the question of what it means to *read* such a polyglot text. In particular, I focus on how the scribal reading of this text fits within the ambivalent social stance that Jewish scribes would have had regarding imperial power. In the imperial claim to control language and in the scribal interaction with that claim, we can see tokens of scribal negotiation of their position in Seleucid and Jewish contexts.


The Spirit among the Sages: Illuminated Exegesis, the Putative End of Prophecy, and Tannaitic Midrash
Program Unit: Midrash
Nehemia Polen, Hebrew College

The Rabbinic sages are typically assumed to have used rational principles of exegesis to interpret scripture and to have eschewed illuminated interpretation as found in Qumran. This presentation will show that in the early Rabbinic period, the greatest sages were indeed understood to be endowed with spirit akin to prophecy that guided them in interpreting scripture and determining halakhah. Our analysis will focus on tosefta Yadayim 2:16, which quotes Ps. 25:14 and Amos 3:7, as well as Seder Olam Rabbah ch. 30, quoting Prov. 22:17-21. We shall engage previous work on the putative “end of prophecy” including that of F. E. Greenspahn, Chaim Milikowsky, and John R. Levison, advancing it with careful attentiveness to the biblical verses cited in their full context. Finally, we shall demonstrate how the early sages’ belief in the ongoing, vital presence of the spirit in their midst changes our understanding of tannaitic midrash and early rabbinic claims to authority.


"I Thought I Could Endure Him, but I Cannot": The Gender of Disgust in the Rabbinic Imagination
Program Unit: Senses, Cultures, and Biblical Worlds
Natalie C. Polzer, University of Louisville

"A king built a large palace and decorated it, but a tannery pipe led through it and emptied at its doorway.... So too is man...with a repulsive stream issuing from his bowels, he exalts himself over other creatures." (Avot de Rabbi Natan A.19) This is but one of many rabbinic statements articulating disgust over the existential condition of human embodiment, requiring the body to produce or to inevitably come into contact with substances evoking disgust. This paper explores aggadic and halakhic evidence of the rabbinic view of the gender of disgust, using primarily mishnaic and talmudic sources. Men and women are distinguished, not only by how their distinctive bodily substances and body parts fall along the "disgust register," but by the degree of disgust that they are perceived as being able to tolerate. Not unsurprisingly, women and men are imagined to respond to objects of disgust stereotypically. Men and the male body not only have greater potential to be disgusting, but have a higher threshold for tolerance of disgusting stimuli. Indeed, their ability to tolerate them can be considered a sort of "ritual of pain" in the Durkheimian sense, that is a trial, which results in spiritual strengthening. (Emile Durkheim, Elementary Forms of Religious Life (New York: Free Press, 1995) 320-321. Women have a lower threshold for the toleration of disgust, intrinsically connected with their role in sexual relations and biological reproduction. Experiencing disgust does not appear to be spiritually enobling for women. Halalhic sources examined will include those stipulating appropriate gendered reasons for divorce (for example: BGittin 90a-b; MKetuvot 7:10; BKetuvot 77a). Aggadic materials will be chosen illustrating situations in which men and women are portrayed as registering different responses to disgusting stimuli (for example: MAvot 4:5; BBaba Metzia 83b-85a). The theoretical frame assumed is that disgust is a secondary avoidance mechanism, weaker than taboo. Unlike taboo, which stipulates absolute categories of avoidance and which is triggered cognitively, disgust is a relative category of avoidance triggered by emotional response. The relatively little power menstural blood has to disgust (as opposed to "to defile") in rabbinic halakhah is due to its status as absolute taboo.


Indestructible Life: The Priesthood of Christ in the Epistle to the Hebrews
Program Unit: Christian Theology and the Bible
R. Trent Pomplun, Loyola University Maryland

The last fifty years has seen an explosion of subtle exegetical treatments of Jesus Christ as a priest of the ‘order of Melchizedek’ in the Epistle to the Hebrews. This explosion is largely due to the importance of Melchizedek in Second Temple Judaism as witnessed by the mysterious priest’s presence in various fragments from Qumran, especially 11QMelch. The following paper will synthesize recent research on these Melchizedek traditions with recent works on the eschatology of the Epistle to the Hebrews to offer an exegesis of the ‘single sacrifice for sins’ that Christ offers to perfect the sanctified ‘for all time’ or ‘once and for all.’ The literal sense of Hebrews 10:12-14, however, is among the most elusive of exegetical fauna, for it requires one to explain both the meaning of sacrifice and the ontological conditions that must obtain for a temporal act to be decisive in manner that the author of Hebrews claims. After a brief attempt to do so, this paper will offer a few constructive suggestions for why this literal exegesis is important for theological debates about the sacrifice of the Mass.


Tracing the Origin of the Idumean Ostraca
Program Unit: Aramaic Studies
Bezalel Porten, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Many Idumean ostraca mention Makkedah (mnqdh), a site identified in 1980 by David Dorsey with el-Kom, believed to be the provenance of the ostraca. A recent publication, however, points us to an entirely different, though not surprising, location. Correctly understanding the new information, we draw on epigraphy, philology, and typology. Adroit classification is key to successful interpretation. As often, however, new discoveries only pose further questions.


The Reception History of Bardaisan’s Book of the Laws of the Countries in Syriac and Greek Christianity
Program Unit: Syriac Literature and Interpretations of Sacred Texts
Ute Possekel, Gordon College

Bardaisan composed numerous works on a wide array of theological and philosophical topics, ranging from cosmology to eschatology, from ethnographic studies to astronomy. Yet of his large literary output nothing has been preserved in its entirety, save the Syriac dialogue known as the Book of the Laws of the Countries, written down by Bardaisan’s disciple Philip, in which Bardaisan is the main interlocutor. The fact that only this treatise has been considered worthy of preservation by later generations of Christians is already indicative of its impact upon the late antique church. This paper will trace the reception history of this important dialogue in both Greek and Syriac Christianity and show how Bardaisan’s ideas both shaped and challenged subsequent Christian discourse on the subject.


Preaching, Dance, and the Performance of Discipleship
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Jeannine Potter, Valerie Alpert Dance Company, Chicago

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Uses and Limitations of the 'Criterion of Crucifiability'
Program Unit: Historical Jesus
Brian Pounds, University of Cambridge

The 'criterion of crucifiability' has been used as a means of dismissing or validating entire reconstructions of Jesus and to argue for or against the historicity of given stories in the gospels. In the present paper, I examine the usefulness and limitations of the criterion by applying it to two reconstructions and two episodes. (1) A reconstruction commonly ruled out by the criterion of crucifiability is Géza Vermès' portrait of Jesus as a charismatic ?asid. What is lacking in Vermès' reconstruction is any conflict, political friction, or messianic acclamation to explain Jesus' demise on a cross. However, Jesus' role as a miracle worker does have value in possibly offering a secondary reason for Jesus' execution- his attracting of popular attention to himself. (2) Richard Horsley, has suggested that his anti-imperial Jesus, as opposed to others, is a crucifiable Jesus. However, when evaluated concretely, few of the proposed anti-imperial aspects of Jesus' mission would have been discernible as such or even known by authorities. Thus, the criterion of crucifiability usually offers little in the way of demonstrating that certain gospel episodes should be interpreted in an anti-imperial manner. (3) The action most commonly understood as the immediate catalyst for Jesus' arrest and execution is his action in the Temple during Passover week. The action may aid in explaining why Jesus was executed, but it is less useful in explaining why, in particular, he was crucified as 'King of the Jews'. (4) The historicity of Jesus' royal entry into Jerusalem is evenly debated. The fit between Jesus' entry and his crucifixion moderately raises the probability of the former's historicity. However, the lack of an explicit acclamation of Jesus as “king” in the earliest source and the delay in Jesus' arrest present difficulties to connecting his entry to his crucifixion.


Making the Cut for the Kingdom: Matthew’s Self-Made Eunuchs as Model Disciples
Program Unit: Matthew
Jennifer G. Pouya, Vanderbilt University

Matthew’s puzzling verse about eunuchs appears in no other gospel. For millennia it has generated divergent, sometimes dramatic, responses. If Eusebius may be trusted, Origen castrated himself because of Mt 19:12 (H.E. 6.8). That other early Christians practiced self-castration may be inferred from the ban on self-castrated clerics promulgated at the Council of Nicea (Canon 1). In modern times also, some Christians (e.g., the Skoptsy of Russia) found in this verse scriptural support for their practice of self-castration. With few exceptions (cf. Hester, Talbott), contemporary biblical scholars interpret Mt 19:12c-d metaphorically as Jesus’ recommendation for voluntary celibacy. They argue that Jesus encouraged unmarried disciples to embrace celibacy by not marrying (Davies & Allison, Keener, Nolland, France, Harrington, Talbert, Schnackenburg), divorced disciples to return to celibacy by not remarrying (Quesnell, Gundry, Barton, Moloney), or both (Carter, Luz, Senior). Several interpret this verse as Jesus instructing his disciples to eschew androcentric, patriarchal and hierarchical values (Talbott, Bernabé; cf. Carter). These interpretations, however, often succumb to one or more pitfalls: 1.) they reflect a predominant view of eunuchs as chaste figures of celibacy and thereby obscure disparaging ancient portrayals of eunuchs as highly-sexed actors (even adulterers) of questionable gender; 2.) they neglect to explore the verse’s position in its larger narrative context by considering 19:12 an independent logion or exclusively in light of antecedent verses (19:3-11); and 3.) they overlook androcentric, patriarchal and hierarchical features that 19:12 and its surrounding narrative share with the larger Matthean context. As a corrective, I offer a close reading of Mt 19:12c-d in narrative context--not exclusively in light of Jesus’ words about divorce and marriage, but also, and pointedly, in light of subsequent verses--to make explicit Matthew’s narrative and structural connections between self-made eunuchs, children, the rich young ruler, Jesus’ disciples, and the kingdom. This reading will be enriched by engaging Matthew’s characterization of discipleship (Carter, Kingsbury, Luz, Barton) and ancient perceptions of eunuchs (Kuefler, Stevenson, Scholz, Tougher, Hales). I argue that the Matthean Jesus offers self-made eunuchs as model disciples because they demonstrate the irrevocable commitment he desires of new followers who obey his summons to join his eschatological movement. Like court eunuchs and galli, Matthew’s self-made eunuchs were desired by their sovereign for uncompromising loyalty and service. They exemplify what Jesus has been teaching all along: listen to me, follow me, and leave behind people and possessions that might hinder your new life of itinerant service and proclamation. For their intentional, irrevocable sacrifice of bodily wholeness, progeny, property, and status--an appalling prospect in the Roman empire--Matthew’s eunuchs will be rewarded in the heavenly kingdom.


The Origins of Whiteness, the Bible, and the 'Slave Narrative' Tradition
Program Unit: African-American Biblical Hermeneutics
Emerson B. Powery, Messiah College

The so-called “curse of Ham” account (cf. Gen 9) was widely appropriated as a biblical warrant to maintain the slavocracy of 19th century North America. Occasionally, in response to the utilization of this passage, African American authors would also refute its implications for coloration, especially with respect to the ties between “blackness” and “enslavement.” They were forced to respond to situations when coloration was presumed in this text (e.g., Rev. Josiah Priest suggests that the character of Ham was like the color of Ham’s skin.). Rarely, if ever, was Genesis 9 utilized to discuss the origins of “whiteness.” There were other biblical passages more suitable for these purposes. African Americans turned to 2 Kings 5, in particular, in the biblical tradition to explain the skin origins of their oppressors. Gehazi’s leprosy was due to his greed (vv. 20-27) and, in turn, Elisha’s curse would extend beyond him clinging to his future descendants. William Anderson, in his 1857 account, seized on this passage as the literary and historical warrant for explaining the origin of white people. His presumption, indicative of many 19th century African Americans, was that all persons were “black” at the beginning of creation (cf. Gen 2:7). Our paper will take up Anderson’s discussion on 2 Kings, situate it within the broader ‘narrative’ tradition (of the formerly enslaved), and develop a theory for an African American perspective on the origins of “whiteness.” As widespread as the (in)famous Genesis 9 passage was in 19th century discourse, Gehazi’s skin disease was less well known, as Elisha’s curse altered Gehazi’s own skin color from “black” to something the biblical narrator (in the King James translation) described as “white as snow.”


Narrative Preaching as a Relevant Method for Indian Rural Dalits
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Anuparthi John Prabhakar, Andhra Christian Theological College

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The Shi’a of the Pre-Islamic Prophets in Isma’ili Exegesis
Program Unit: Qur'an and Biblical Literature
Michael Pregill, Elon University

Quranic narratives on pre-Islamic prophets, references to the history of ancient Israel, and allusions to passages from the canonical Hebrew Bible have often been examined in isolation from their later contexts of reception in Islamic tradition. However, in recent years there have been a number of significant scholarly attempts to focus on the role biblical traditions, episodes, and symbols play in their immediate context in Muslim discourse and their particular importance for Muslim thought, religiosity, and society, especially as a lens used for communal self-fashioning and the articulation and policing of communal boundaries. This paper seeks to demonstrate the importance of such an approach to Quranic biblical materials by exploring traditions from sectarian literature, especially Ismaili exegetical works, that imagine moments from the Israelite past as precedents to and foreshadowings of those moments of communal conflict that proved definitive for Shi’a sectarian identity.


Class: Assessing Its Relevance and Heuristic Potential
Program Unit: Economics in the Biblical World
D. N. Premnath, St. Bernard's School Of Theology And Ministry

The term class has been used to refer to a variety of things. At the risk of oversimplification, three possibilities can be suggested: class as symbolic inequality reflective of prestige, status, or life style; class as material inequality linked to economic and power structures and class/classes as social and political forces/agents. In recent decades, along side the efforts to nuance the conceptual potential of the term, there has also been a growing body of criticism challenging the relevance of the use of the term in particular and class analysis in general. Two things have contributed to this shift – post-modern theory and globalization. Post-modern theory has advanced a strong critique of the tendency to homogenize and essentialize, calling into question a particular view of society built on a set of defining elements. The influence of globalization has resulted in a broader frame of reference by way of global world view and practices, particularly with regard to economic and cultural aspects. As a result, the old divisions and unities have come under scrutiny. Class and stratification are two areas to undergo such scrutiny. It is important, therefore, to continue to reassess the heuristic relevance and potential of these concepts. The paper has a three-fold purpose. One is to clarify the term/concept of class by situating the discussion in relation to theories concerning stratification. With the help of key theorists from the field of social sciences an attempt will be made to bring greater clarity to the meaning and scope of the term/concept of class. Second, attention will be drawn to the limitations surrounding the use of the term as evidenced by the debates in the history of scholarship. In the final analysis, the relevance the term for analyzing economic practices in antiquity, particularly in the ancient Israel, will be addressed. Also implicit in this discussion is the broader issue of whether historical sociology is even possible.


Early Christian Networking: Irenaeus's Intertextual Reading of Scripture
Program Unit: History of Interpretation
Stephen Presley, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

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Jewish Synagogue Inscriptions as a Source for History
Program Unit: Hellenistic Judaism
Jonathan Price, Tel Aviv University

Jewish Synagogue Inscriptions as a Source for History


Fraud and Imposture in the New Testament
Program Unit: Metacriticism of Biblical Scholarship
Robert Price, Johnnie Colemon Theological Seminary

Was the phenomenon of "pious frauds" limited to the Middle Ages, or are there signs of it in the New Testament text as well? If zealous Christians could have perpetrated such hoaxes in the former, why not the latter? And is the practice carried on today in a more subtle form as Christian apologetics? One may consider parallels with the special pleadings of "sindonologists" and "scientific creationists." The motivation appears to be an allegiance to "Truth" in a material, not a formal sense, namely, in Tillich's terms, the tag "Truth" now attaches to a particular candidate for the truth, rather than to a "North Star" by which one navigates but knows one is never likely to reach. We will consider both whole writings with pseudepigraphical author-claims as well as particular elements and statements from particular NT writings. We will consider possible ways of distinguishing pious lying from midrash and emendation. There will also be attention to the work of Bart Ehrman, Gerd Lüdemann, and Joseph Wheless.


The Transfiguration and the Giving of the Law on Mount Sinai: The Mother Earth of the Gospel of Mark
Program Unit: Markan Literary Sources
Cosmin Pricop, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main

Intensive debates have been and still are made on the possible sources of the second Gospel in the canonical order. Many hypotheses that tried to discover in the given text either clues of the preliminary stages or connections with the Judaic heritage or the Greek-Roman world were launched. The fact that we do not possess a text which is that directly parallel or previously to the one of Mark means that there is nothing to make a comparison with and this process becomes difficult and even impossible. This is why some researchers consider that the reconstruction of some older stages of the Markan exposition is something purely speculative. In my opinion, the exclusive attention given to the text of Mark should be doubled by the attention given to the context in which this writing was formed. This has to be made in order to decipher the certain influences that the environment exercised on the already existent version of text. The context in which the Gospel of Mark appeared could be illustrated appropriately by the general term interference. Can we speak about priority in this „fluid prose narrative“? If we turn to the text from the Gospel of Mark (9, 2-8) that speaks about the Transfiguration of our Lord Jesus Christ, we observe that the influence of the Old Testament (Exodus) and of the theological reasons included in this frame is obvious. The texts prove a certain kinship, at least at the level of theological understanding, having the frame of the Judaic writings named artistically in this context as “Mother Earth”. Nonetheless, the Gospel of Mark, and especially the Transfiguration present certain relations with the writings of Hellenistic literature. The connection of Mark with the Hellenist environment can be observed as well especially from the literary forms and formulae. On the basis of these arguments it can be presupposed that from the content point of view, Mark is closer to the Judaic tradition of the Old Testament and, from the frame and expositive style point of view, it is closer to the creation of Hellenistic literature?


A Rhetorical Absurdity and the Demonic Jesus: The Function of an Apocryphal Resurrection Appearance in Ignatius’ Letter to the Smyrnaeans
Program Unit: Christian Apocrypha
Travis W. Proctor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

In his Letter to the Smyrnaeans, Ignatius of Antioch condemns his docetic opponents to a bodiless and ‘daimonic’ afterlife (ch. 2). Shortly thereafter, Ignatius corroborates his condemnation by quoting an apocryphal resurrection tradition, wherein the risen Jesus affirms his bodily nature and denies that he is a ‘bodiless daimon’ (3.2). While past scholarship has focused on the possible source for this apocryphal resurrection appearance, I aim to discern the rhetorical function of this passage in its ancient context through two heuristics. First, I conduct a comparative rhetorical analysis of the resurrection appearance in light of similar traditions, such as those found in The Gospel of Luke, the Gospel of John and the Epistula Apostolorum, as well as competing ‘docetic’ traditions, such as those found in the Acts of John and Irenaeus’ account of the ‘Ophites.’ I conclude that Ignatius’ emphasis on the dual “fleshly” and “spiritual” nature of the risen Jesus counters docetic Christologies by its unique emphasis on Jesus’ “fleshly” constitution. Moreover, the tradition concurrently marginalizes docetic Christians for their emphasis on the “spiritual” nature of the resurrected Christ. Second, I examine Ignatius’ use of the apocryphal resurrection appearance in light of ancient Christian and Greco-Roman daimonic physiologies. Building on the work of Gregory Smith, I note that ancient descriptions of daimonic bodies often describe them as ‘pneumatic,’ a term that is also used for descriptions of the soul. I conclude that while daimonic physiology would not have been differentiated from pneumatic (à la Luke’s resurrection appearance), Ignatius’ resurrection appearance and accompanying condemnation nonetheless carry particular rhetorical force. Namely, the resurrection appearance casts Ignatius’ Christology as stemming directly from Jesus, and thus as primitive and orthodox. Moreover, the situation of non-docetic Christology within a ‘dialogue of the redeemer’ directly counters the literary format likely favored by Ignatius’ opponents (docetists and/or ‘Gnostics’). Finally, the resurrection appearance implies that Ignatius’ opponents used ‘daimonic’ terminology to describe the risen Jesus, and thus distorts docetic Christologies into an indefensible belief in a ‘demonic Jesus,’ a misrepresentation that derides docetic Christians for their ostensibly-absurd heterodoxy.


The Role of Wilderness in the Ritual Life at Qumran
Program Unit: Religious Experience in Antiquity
Melissa Pula, University of Denver and Iliff School of Theology

One of the defining features of the Jewish sectarians at Qumran is their self-imposed separation from the Jerusalem Temple due to, at least in part, its perceived defilement. No physical temple has been found at Qumran and no extant text suggests such a temple was built. This raises the question: How did the Jewish sectarians imagine sacred space in a world without a temple? Treating the texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls as ritual objects, as opposed to merely historical documents, and drawing on the ritual theories of Jonathan Z. Smith, Catherine Bell, and Pierre Bourdieu, I analyze how the concept of wilderness in the ritual life and texts of the sect extends the idea of sacred space beyond the Jerusalem Temple. While a cursory reading of the foundational document of the sect, The Community Rule, makes clear that ritual played a major role in the community’s life, few studies have asked how ritual informs or transforms the religious imagination of the sect. To that end, I will examine how wilderness creates a ritual space that allows the sectarians to engage in actions that create a world away from the Jerusalem Temple, a world that shifts the presence of the deity to Qumran and allows the sectarians to be a source of divine revelation. Bourdieu’s concept of habitus helps us understand how the idea of wilderness both informs the actions and ideas of the sect and structures new behavior and thoughts, particularly around sacred space. The memory of wilderness in the sect’s cultural history, combined with their remote physical environment by the Dead Sea, helps shape the sectarian ritual life and understanding of their current social and geographical place.


The Lack of Action: Textual Evidence for Joseph’s Homosexuality
Program Unit: LGBTI/Queer Hermeneutics
Nicholaus Benjamin Pumphrey, Claremont Graduate University

When mentioning Joseph from Genesis to different people, several different responses are triggered: Joseph the Dreamer, Joseph the Prince of Egypt, but most importantly Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat. Although the “dreamcoat” is hot topic for debate, the musical by Lloyd-Weber helped spawn an interpretation of Joseph as a fantastical character who receives the attention of the gay community. However, it is possible that this interpretation is not far off from what the text is attempting to portray. Although homosexuality in the bible does not exist in the same concept as modern day homosexuality, we are able to look at characters and make comparisons between our sexuality and their sexuality. Through careful textual analysis as well as a look at the history of theological interpretations, it is obvious that Joseph’s sexuality is not as clear cut as most religious communities believe. The three major sections of Genesis that apply to Joseph’s sexuality are his purchase by the eunuch, Potiphar, his accusation of rape by Mrs. Potiphar, and the “giving” of Aesenath, who gives birth to two children, who may not be his. Being a character of high esteem in the Abrahamic traditions, theologians have contributed vast amounts of commentary and new texts that elaborate on Joseph’s character and sexuality, which sometimes yields evidence of uncomfortable alterations of the text. This essay shows that a careful reading produces a less than hetero sexuality for the beloved character of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.


Trophotropic Mystical Experience in Ancient Judaism: The Case of Bavli Sotah 49a
Program Unit: Religious Experience in Antiquity
Tyson L Putthoff, University of Durham

At least a small segment of ancient Jews seems to have attached a rather weighty value to the mystical experience, and it is my hope in this paper to understand why this was. By applying the model of the "trophotropic mystical experience" created by phenomenologists, I shall argue there was a specific type of mystical experience being proffered among ancient Jews that was very different from the well-known and oft-studied Merkavah and Hekhalot accounts, and that this experience was valuable for an equally different reason. Its importance lay in its subtlety rather than in its vibrancy, its passivity rather than its activity, and in its abeyance rather than its alacrity. The type of experience allegedly ushered the mystic into a state of peace and tranquility such that he or she was able to transcend even the most pressing of circumstances. The particular account I discuss is a rabbinic work called Bavli Sotah 49a. The type of mystical experience this text describes is a very subtle one, more closely resembling the meditative experiences of Buddhism, for example, than the highly-charged Shamanism of Hekhalot mysticism. Thus unlike the majority of Jewish mystical accounts, Bavli Sotah 49a does not center on the mystical ascent through the celestial temples (hêkalôt) and visionary encounter with the divine throne (merkabâ). It does, however, employ the language of vision, mention the mythical Pargod, and contain a sure reference to a mystical tradition known as the “nourishment motif.” The key to my study is that it employs models created by scholars in the field of Consciousness Studies, firstly, to distinguish between different types of mystical experiences, and secondly, to understand why the type found in Bavli Sotah 49a is so important to ancient Jews. Scholars in that field would discuss the experience in our text in terms of the “trophotropic mystical experience,” which I expand on in my paper. My investigation will prove to be an important contribution to the field’s understanding of ancient Jewish mysticism by moving our field toward deeper engagement with recent scholarship on the phenomenology of the mystical experience.


The Song is "Love": The Veiling of Sex in the Song of Songs
Program Unit: Biblical Hebrew Poetry
Tony Pyles, McMaster Divinity College

Are modern commentators fond of crudity, or are English Bible translators prudes? Is there a traitor in our midst? This paper examines the translation of dodim in the Song of Songs, with special attention to cognates and the distribution of dodim in the Hebrew Bible. The frequent translation “love” is found to be not only inadequate but misleading. In conclusion, “lovemaking” is proposed for its preservation of euphemism and ability to capture wordplay between dodi ("my love") and dodim.


Understanding as Colonization: Glissant, Opacité, and Resistance in Isaiah
Program Unit: Postcolonial Studies and Biblical Studies
Hugh Pyper, University of Sheffield

The leading Caribbean poet and postcolonial theorist Edouard Glissant died in 2011. As a tribute to his life’s work, the argument of this paper will be that his own writings and his theoretical discussions of the postcolonial literature of his native Caribbean, have much to offer biblical scholars, in particular through his concept of opacité. In a field which has historically sought to clarify, simplify and render coherent the obscure, complex and incoherent series of texts that make up the Bible, his championing of the basic right not to be understood and criticism of the implicit imperialism in the seemingly benign effort to understand the other offer an important counter. In this paper, the applicability of Glissant’s theoretical reflections to prophetic literature and the book of Isaiah in particular will be explored.


Transformation through Contemplation: New Light from Philo on 2 Corinthians 3:18
Program Unit: Second Corinthians: Pauline Theology in the Making
Volker Rabens, Ruhr-Universität Bochum

In 2 Corinthians 3 Paul compares and contrasts the effects of his ministry with that of Moses, which leads up to the much debated climactic statement: “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord as in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit” (v.18). In this paper I will argue that a number of intertextual echoes from the writings of Philo of Alexandria shed new light on the interpretation of this text. Next to some verbatim parallels to 2 Corinthians 3:18 (cf. Post. 12–13), Philo provides a broad textual basis for the thematic connection of (1) the work of the Spirit who enables (2) an intimate, mystical beholding of God that leads to (3) a virtuous life (e.g., Mos. 2.69; Gig. 54–55; QE 2.29; cf. Migr. 36). My paper will demonstrate that studying Philo on this issue provides us with deeper insights into the making of Paul’s theology in 2 Corinthians 3:18 where he describes the same causality, ascribing like Philo a transforming role to intimate beholding of the divine which is enabled by the Spirit. Moreover, reading 2 Corinthians 3:18 in the context of this Philonic tradition helps us to guard against one-sided comprehensions of the nature of “beholding” (reception of cognitive revelation [F. Back] vs. Damascus-Road-encounter [A.F. Segal, S. Kim]). Philo’s notion of beholding encompasses both a cognitive-noetic as well as an existential-mystical dimension. Accordingly, I will demonstrate that it is fitting to speak of transformation through contemplation with regard to Philo as well as 2 Corinthians 3:18.


Implications of the Material Aspects of the Dead Sea Scrolls for Qumran Studies
Program Unit: Qumran
Ira Rabin, BAM Federal Institute of Materials Research and Testing

This paper summarizes the results of recent material studies of various fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls and presents their possible implications in the context of the general studies. Features like colour and thickness belong to important characteristics of parchment resulting from the production process. Chemical and physical analyses of a large set of fragments allow us to divide parchment into three categories: tanned, non-tanned, non-tanned and split. This points to the co-existence of different preparation technologies resulting in parchment with distinct properties. We believe that the Talmud rules on skin treatment before inscription reflect these technologies. Within our studies we tentatively reconstructed the history of the Genesis Apocryphon. Written with a corrosive ink on a tanned parchment, it was found rolled together with an additional layer of non-inscribed non-tanned parchment. Chemical composition of the ink is in agreement with a 1st century AD ink recipe recorded in Materia Medica by a Greek physician, Pedanius Dioscorides. Study of the scroll deterioration as a function of time and exposition to light during the post-discovery period allows us to speculate that the scroll was rather “archived” than hidden in Cave 1. These results confirm the theory of Eliezer Sukenik who believed Cave 1 to be a “geniza”. A similar study of the Temple Scroll, discovered in the cave 11 indicates that the scroll was rather hidden than “archived”. Furthermore, only the sediments and objects found in this cave contain nitrate impurities, characteristic of the limestone caves inhabited by bats. We believe, therefore, that Cave 11 was an occasional hiding place for people unfamiliar with the terrain. We would like also to present another important aspect of our results: alteration of the original material introduced by the post-discovery interventions.


“Oh Precious Is the Flow”: The Scriptural Function of Blood Sacrifice
Program Unit: Christian Theology and the Bible
Ephraim Radner, Wycliffe College

A reflection on Leviticus 17:11 and 14 in relation to New Testament references to Jesus’ blood (e.g. Heb. 9:14, 1 Pet. 1:19), and an attempt to sketch a normative understanding of blood-shedding in Christian biblical terms. The focus, theologically, will be on the bearing of divine creation upon sacrificial efficacy, as well as the hermeneutical question of “symbol” and natural materiality.


Patristic Philosophical Receptions of the Gospel of John
Program Unit: Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti
Ilaria Ramelli, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore

I shall deal with the philosophical reception of John in the Fathers, particularly concentrating on the Prologue (with focus on the philosophical reception of the Logos therein, especially in Origen) and on Jesus’s priestly speech at the Last Supper, with the philosophical reception of the themes of Unity and Agape. In this connection I shall also discuss the respective influences of Scripture and philosophy in the Fathers at stake, who mainly come from the Origenian tradition. Particularly with regard to Origen and Gregory Nyssen, this is a controversial but crucial point.


Bardaisan of Edessa and Origen of Alexandria on Disability
Program Unit: Syriac Literature and Interpretations of Sacred Texts
Ilaria L.E. Ramelli, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart

I will investigate the concept of disability, its causes, its theological meaning, and its eschatological outcome in Bardaisan of Edessa and Origen of Alexandria. Both were Christian philosophers close to Middle Platonism (and familiar with Stoicism) who lived between the end of the second and the first decades of the third century. I will pay special attention to the influence of philosophy on their notion of disability, as well as to the New Testament basis of their conception, and to the literal and allegorical interpretation that they offered of some selected Scriptural passages in this connection.


Deuteronomy 27:11–28:68 as Ritual Oath Text
Program Unit: Assyriology and the Bible
Melissa Ramos, University of California-Los Angeles

While parallels between Deuteronomy 28 and Neo-Assyrian treaty texts, such as the VTE, have long been recognized, this paper presents a study of the influence of the magical texts of Maqlû and Šurpu upon Deuteronomy 27-28. Parallels between these two magic texts and Deuteronomy 27-28 include: parallel terminology of oath and curse; thematic, linguistic, and structural parallels among the curse formulae; parallels in ritual performance and setting; and parallels in cosmological framework. Both Maqlû and Šurpu employ parallel semantic terms to refer to a binding oath enacted by ritual ceremony and enforced by divine power. The dire consequences for violating such an oath are enumerated in lengthy curse formulae both in Maqlû and Šurpu and Deuteronomy 27-28. Indeed, these curse formulae of the two magic texts share many semantic parallels with Deuteronomy 28. Not only are parallel themes evident among these three texts, but also parallel linguistic structural elements are presented between Šurpu Tablets II and III and Deuteronomy 27:15-26. Finally, the ritual setting of Maqlû on Mt. Zabban is explored as a parallel to Mounts Ebal and Gerizim in Deuteronomy 27. The proposal is also presented that Maqlû and Šurpu exemplify a genre of text here titled “ritual oath text” which originated in magical incantatory practices and spread into religio-political texts such as the VTE and Deuteronomy 27-28. The “ritual oath text” is a genre of text whose distinguishing features are: specialized oath terminology, lengthy curse formulae, oral performance in a ritual setting, and a cosmological framework in which divine power enforces a ritual oath. Indeed, these parallels suggest that Neo-Assyrian ritual oath texts such as Maqlû and Šurpu may have shaped Deuteronomy 27-28 as much or more than the VTE.


The Case for Women’s Ordination: The Trajectory of an Egalitarian Ethic in the Pauline Letters
Program Unit: Adventist Society for Religious Studies
Leo Ranzolin, Pacific Union College

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Historical Criticism in the Dock
Program Unit: Metacriticism of Biblical Scholarship
Rebecca Raphael, Texas State University

This presentation surveys some recent defenses of historical criticism, in response to various sorts of challenges. In particular, I explore how historical critics have defended their methods against attacks, often in an ostensibly post-modernism vein, on “objectivity.” The influence of Ernst Troeltsch on the ethos of historical criticism, even in contemporary defenses, will be assessed, as will the adequacy, or lack thereof, of his arguments for responding to post-modern critique. I seek to provide other justifications for the possibility of historical knowledge and to show how these operate in the case of biblical studies.


Discharge, Defilement, Disgust: The Construction of Vomit in Leviticus
Program Unit: Senses, Cultures, and Biblical Worlds
Rebecca Raphael, Texas State University

Using sensory and body criticism, this presentation examines the relationships among discharges, defilement, and vomit in the book of Leviticus. Taking Leviticus 20:22, “You shall therefore keep all my statutes and all my ordinances, and do them; that the land where I am bringing you to dwell may not vomit you out” as a central statement, we see that the book casts the relationship between Israel and Yahweh as an economy of asymmetric flow and consumption. Extensive regulation of both food consumption and bodily discharges provides the regimen of purity necessary for priestly sacrifice, which in turn produces “a pleasing odor” consumed by the god. Violations of this regimen result in defilement. Although contravention of the regulations is, to an extent, manageable within the system (e.g. temporary impurities), extensive and persistent human refusal could cause the land to vomit out the community (18:25, 18:28, 20:22). Leviticus maintains a distinction between human discharges and the land’s vomiting, thus dissociating this image from discharges requiring regulation or remedy. An inventory of other passages shows a clear representation of vomit as disgusting (and usually a result of disapproved behavior, rather than a normal feature of illness). In sum, the non-compliant community becomes the land’s bodily emission; further, since the emetic agent is the god, the representation suggests divine disgust at human beings.


Intimately Linked? The Gospel, Letters, and the Apocryphon of John on Jesus’ Baptism and John’s Authority
Program Unit: John, Jesus, and History
Tuomas Rasimus, Helsingin Yliopisto - Helsingfors Universitet

The Apocryphon of John is a chief representative of so-called Classic Gnosticism. Together with some of its probable source material, which is paraphrased by Irenaeus, Adversus haereses 1.29–30, it may be connected to the literary history of the Fourth Gospel and the so-called "Johannine schism" reflected in 1–2 John. Significant points of contact include the correct interpretation of Jesus’ baptism (incarnation vs. possessionism), the representation of baptism as the culmination of the Savior’s cosmic activity in the form of a hymn, and the claim of the apostle John’s authorship. These issues are reflected in the various stages of the Apocryphon’s complex literary history. To some extent these stages mirror the probable literary development of the Fourth Gospel, including the secondary addition of the title “according to (KATA) John,” as well as some of the questions raised in 1–2 John.


Michael and YHWH-Yaldabaoth in Ophite Mythology
Program Unit: Mysticism, Esotericism, and Gnosticism in Antiquity
Tuomas Rasimus, University of Helsinki

Second temple Jewish traditions about the archangel Michael are multiform, and depict him, for example, as the principal angel, conqueror of Satan, and guardian of Israel. Such traditions have contributed to the presentations of Christ in the Book of Revelation and of the principal angel Metatron in later Jewish literature. What is less well-known, and often neglected in scholarship, is the contribution that these Michael traditions have made to the presentation of the demonic creator Yaldabaoth in Gnostic literature. Jarl Fossum is one of the few scholars who has taken this idea seriously. Due to some anti-Jewish “social dynamics,” which Fossum does not specify, the principal angel, the Angel of the Lord, became a demonic figure opposed to God. Fossum further argues that at least Saturninus and the Ophites considered their demiurge to be Michael, and that Yaldabaoth’s leonine shape in Ophite texts derives from apocalyptic and magical traditions about Michael. The purpose of my paper is to discuss the Ophite traditions (especially as found in Irenaeus, AH 1.30; Origen, Cels. 6.24-38; and the Apocryphon of John) about Michael, and to show how certain second temple proto-merkavah speculations about Michael as the leader of the four archangels—who were also identified as the four theriomorphic living creatures around the divine throne, each carrying a separate divine name—have contributed to the Ophite and Sethian (i.e., "Classic Gnostic") presentation of Yaldabaoth. Furthermore, in order to uncover Fossum’s unspecified social dynamics, I will investigate certain statements in Ophite and Sethian texts that hint at a theological, if not a social, conflict between certain Jews and Christians concerning monotheism and Christ’s divinity (in this last section of my paper I develop ideas of Alan Segal concerning the demonization of YHWH in what he called "extreme Gnosticism"). This suggested conflict may have led to the demonization of the "God of the Jews," perceived to be the nation's angelic guardian Michael, and to the creation of the Ophite myth of Yaldabaoth and the archons.


The Language of Qoheleth: An Update
Program Unit: Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew
Cristian G. Rata, Torch Trinity Graduate University

The latest studies on the language of Qoheleth have not come to a conclusive and convincing conclusion about the date of the book. In one recent SBL discussion about the Hebrew language (the debate between Avi Hurvits and Ian Young in 2010) this was one of the books that was left out of the debate because none of the debaters were fully convinced about the lateness of the book. However, it is a fact that most commentaries and scholars usually date this book late (around the 3rd century BCE). Are there any solid “foundations” for this dating? This essay will show that the argument from Aramaisms is a false “foundation” for the late dating of the book. However, recent linguistic studies on the use of the verb in Qoheleth and the use of ?????? seem to support a late date for Qoheleth and finally lay a more solid foundation for the dating of the book.


Darkness at Noonday
Program Unit: Theological Interpretation of Scripture
Patrick Henry Reardon, All Saints Orthodox Church, Chicago

From earliest times, Christian piety established the 3rd, 6th, and 9th hours of each day for prayerful meditation on the final stages of the Lord’s Passion, as it is outlined in the Gospel of Mark: Tierce (Mark 15:25), Sext (15:33), and None (15:34). The first written evidence of this practice comes, like the Gospel of Mark, from Rome: The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus in the beginning of the third century. This source follows Mark’s outline very closely, evidently representing a Roman tradition. Later variations of the prayer outline in Hippolytus include John Cassian, Basil of Neo-Caesarea, and The Apostolic Constitutions. In addition to the Passion of Jesus, these sources propose reflections on other biblical events, chiefly the coming of the Holy Spirit at Tierce. In the Western form of these Canonical Hours, the Markan emphasis on the Passion seems not to have influenced the choice of either the hymns or the psalms. Thus, there are no explicit references to the Passion in the hymns composed by Ambrose of Milan for those three Hours, and in the Rule of St. Benedict, which outlined the psalms apportioned to each day and each Canonical Hour, no formal attention was given to the Passion. In the Byzantine East, however, the texts chosen for recitation at Tierce, Sext, and None contain psalms related to the Passion of Christ. Thus, the Tierce psalms include Psalm 16 (Hebrew 17) to mark the hour of the Lord’s Crucifixion (as well as Psalms 24 [25] and 50 [51] to signal the Pentecostal gift at that Hour). The Sext psalms include two Passion meditations (Psalms 53 & 54 [Hebrews 54 & 55], as well as Psalm 90 (91), to ponder the darkness that descended on the earth at the noon hour. This noontide darkness represents Egypt’s ninth plague, which immediately precedes the tenth plague, the death of the First Born at the ninth hour.


Cicero’s De Divinatione and Philo of Alexandria’s Criticism of Artificial Divination
Program Unit: Society for Ancient Mediterranean Religions
Jason Reddoch, Colorado Mesa University

This paper will present Philo of Alexandria’s critical remarks about divination against the backdrop of Cicero’s De Divinatione. According to Cicero, there are two types of divination: natural and artificial. Natural divination is described as a spontaneous experience of divine inspiration such as predictive dreams or other prophecy. Artificial divination is described as a skill based on human observation, and includes, for example, haruspicy and augury. Philo recognizes the same distinction but tends to distance the two categories and is very critical of artificial divination. Philo accepts its legitimacy but thinks that it is theologically dangerous since it neglects the importance of personal divine agency. Both Cicero and Philo describe the Stoic concept of cosmic sympathy (sympatheia), which refers to the organic and determinate structure of the universe and was often used to validate divination. There is no question of Philo’s acceptance of the doctrine of cosmic sympathy since he explicitly says that Moses approved of it (Migr. 180). However, whereas Cicero relates cosmic sympathy to both artificial and natural divination, Philo avoids the explicit language of cosmic sympathy when discussing natural divination and prefers instead to emphasize the internal experience of the separation of the soul from the body. Philo associates artificial divination with the Chaldeans and claims that they are very successful at observing the sympathetic connections in nature; however, he complains that they have overlooked the fact that these connections are a product of God extending his powers into the world. The Chaldeans, he insists, have confused God with nature itself. Thus Philo’s rejection of artificial divination can be understood as the product of an inherent difference between monotheism and polytheism in terms of their theological implications. As a pious monotheist, Philo was uncomfortable with pantheism or an impersonal view of God, both of which were more easily reconciled with polytheism, in which natural phenomena could be identified with the gods. In other words, although Philo accepted the limited effectiveness of artificial divination and its theoretical basis (i.e. cosmic sympathy), he disapproved of its tendency to ignore the personal aspect of divine agency. Philo’s criticism of artificial divination also illustrates his general inclination towards mysticism and his preference for divine experience over human knowledge.


Presentation of F.S. Jones, Pseudoclementina Elchasaiticaque inter Judaeochristiana: Collected Studies
Program Unit: Construction of Christian Identities
Annette Yoshiko Reed, University of Pennsylvania

Presentation of F.S. Jones, Pseudoclementina Elchasaiticaque inter Judaeochristiana: Collected Studies. Leuven, Peeters, 2012.


Dining to Death: Stories of Death Following Eating
Program Unit: Meals in the HB/OT and Its World
Stephen Reed, Jamestown College

Several Biblical texts mention humans consuming food followed by death which is viewed as a punishment from God. After the people eat quail in the wilderness there is a plague and many died (Numbers 11:33-34). After delivering a message against King Jeroboam, an unnamed prophet eats a meal and then is killed by a lion on his journey home (1 Kings 13). After a great festival Belshazzar gave his nobles, and being frightened by the handwriting on the fall, he is killed that night (Daniel 5). In these examples, consuming food is not simply an irrelevant detail but is linked to the punishment in some way. While there are clues in the contexts of these texts which explain the reasons for death as punishment, the severity of the death punishment is puzzling and the speed of its execution is startling. Nathan Macdonald has drawn attention to texts which relate to the “literary motif of judgment at table” which provides some helpful background. In this paper I would like to explore reasons for death being linked to particular eating practices. I would also like to seek examples from other cultures and societies for similar understandings of death being linked to particular eating practices. Then I would like to propose explanations for particular texts like those mentioned above.


Explaining Defeat: Josephus among the Greco-Roman Historiographers
Program Unit: Violence and Representations of Violence in Antiquity
Caryn A. Reeder, Westmont College

The descriptions of the defeat and consequent destruction of Jotapata, Gamla, and Jerusalem in Josephus’s Jewish War are horrific: infants are thrown to their deaths; young and old alike are mercilessly slaughtered; the streets run with blood. Among Josephus’s explanations for the magnitude of the defeat is the suggestion that the Roman victory represents divine judgment (e.g., J.W. 5.401-403, 6.108-110). The language of judgment in the Jewish War is indebted both to biblical texts like Deut 28:25-57 or 2 Kings 17:5-23, and also to Greco-Roman historiographies in which extreme acts of violence perpetrated on the defeated, especially on women, children, and other “non-combatants,” are ascribed to (human) vengeance against rebels (as in Thucydides, Peloponnesian War 3.36.1-4; Diodorus Siculus, Library 12.76.3; Livy, History of Rome 28.20.6-7). This paper analyzes Josephus’s narratives of Roman victories in the First Jewish Revolt, particularly focusing on the historical realities of warfare in the Roman world, the literary borrowing evident throughout the Jewish War, and finally the rhetorical power of Josephus’s melding of biblical and Greco-Roman explanations of the catastrophic violence of defeat.


Ordination and Priesthood: Mediating Forgiveness in the Early Church
Program Unit: Adventist Society for Religious Studies
John Reeve, Andrews University

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The Dilemma of the Heart: The Struggle with Homiletic Appeals to the Personal and the Experiential in Contemporary American Preaching
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Robert Stephen Reid, University of Dubuque (Iowa)

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ET Phone Home: Exile and Gender in Post-exilic Storytelling
Program Unit: Exile (Forced Migrations) in Biblical Literature
Adele Reinhartz, Université d'Ottawa - University of Ottawa

The paper would focus on the books of Ruth, Judith, Tobit and Susanna and the themes of exile, return, and the representation of the female characters.


Supporting Career Planning in the Senior Seminar
Program Unit: Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion
Martha Reinike, University of Northern Iowa

In this presentation, I establish the context for a senior seminar (religion major at a large, public comprehensive university), report on the rationale for learning outcomes in the seminar, and explain key features of the course. I discuss why our department believes that this seminar is an important curricular development. It establishes a cohesive platform for assessing learning outcomes achieved by our seniors. It also enables us to address an obstacle students face when declaring a religion major: the “You are majoring in WHAT?” question from parents or friends. With this seminar, we can promise our majors that we will not dump them at the exit ramp when they are seniors. We will guide them up it. Career discernment, professional portfolio development, and practice job interviews are included in the course curriculum. Presentation includes sharing course assignments, activities, and student outcomes in and reactions to the seminar the first two times that it was offered.


Using Traditional Exegesis Today
Program Unit: Theological Interpretation of Scripture
R.R. Reno, First Things/Creighton University

The reception of ancient, medieval, and Reformation interpretation of scripture is ongoing. Contemporary efforts to develop a develop a mode of scriptural interpretation that overcomes some of the limitations of the historical-critical method often draw on pre-critical commentaries. The results are not always successful. In this paper I plan to draw upon my experience as the general editor of the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible series to discuss the ways in which writers in the series have used pre-critical sources, or have not, as the case may be. One striking fact is that in the Brazos series the commentators on New Testament texts rely very little on ancient and medieval sources, and the historical-critical tradition plays a prominent role. By contrast, the commentators on Old Testament texts are much more likely to rely on pre-critical exegesis. This basic difference suggests that there is not a single reception history for traditional exegesis. Instead, there are different histories that reflect the needs of contemporary interpreters.


Calcidius, Philo, and Origen
Program Unit: Philo of Alexandria
Gretchen Reydams-Schils, University of Notre Dame

This paper reexamines the influence of Philo of Alexandria on the section in Calcidius' Commentary on Plato's Timaeus that appears to refer to Origen's Commentary on Genesis (chs 276-278). Contrary to common assumptions, there is more of Philo and less of Origen to be found in these chapters. This conclusion also has implications for Calcidius' alleged Christian identity.


The Johannine Jesus and Angelic Mediators in Jewish Apocalypses
Program Unit: Johannine Literature
Benjamin Reynolds, Tyndale University College

In his book Understanding the Fourth Gospel, John Ashton states that within the Gospel of John the Jewish apocalyptic characters of the angelic mediator and the seer merge in the person of Jesus. Ashton has rightly noted the apocalyptic nature of John’s Gospel and that there are similarities in the portrayal of Jesus and angels. These similarities between Jesus and the angelic mediators of Jewish apocalypses include Jesus’ descent from heaven, that he is “from God,” that he reveals heavenly things, and what Charles Gieschen and Robert Gundry refer to as “angelomorphic Christology.” While these similarities indicate possible links between Jesus and the heavenly mediators, the Johannine Jesus is clearly not an angel because there are striking differences. Two of these differences include the fact that Jesus is a human being, as the logos made flesh, and that Jesus is the content of the revelation he reveals. To return to the second part of Ashton’s claim, can we say that the Johannine Jesus is an apocalyptic seer? Jesus does come to earth from heaven and reveal heavenly things that are recorded and passed on to “his own” and those who “believe,” yet it seems more likely to argue that the disciples are the apocalyptic seers rather than Jesus. Jesus comes from heaven to begin with and is from above. The disciples are earth-bound figures who are told they will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending on the Son of Man. If there are “intimations of apocalyptic” in the Gospel of John as Ashton argues, they are not to be found in angelic portrayals of the Johannine Jesus or in understanding him as an apocalyptic seer.


Visionary Poetics between Prophecy and Apocalypse: The Case of Daniel
Program Unit: Book of Daniel
Bennie H Reynolds III, Millsaps College

The 1960’s–80’s witnessed debates over whether the genre apocalypse had its origin in Wisdom (von Rad) or Prophecy (Hanson, von der Osten Sacken). Today most scholars recognize that the literary seedbed of the genre apocalypse is diverse and many have switched their focus away from literary studies to examinations of the social world that helped to produce apocalypses and apocalypticism in Hellenistic times. Nevertheless, most describe the primary ancestor of apocalypse as prophecy. In this paper I use recent research on the literary techniques used by Israelite and Near Eastern prophetic writers to set into relief the techniques used by the writers of Hellenistic visions and apocalypses. I use the Book of Daniel as a test-case and analyze the techniques used to produce symbolism. I argue that while the symbolic language of prophetic oracles in the Hebrew Bible is produced by executing the type of puns typically found in divinatory oracles (adapting Noegel), the symbolic language of visions from the Book of Daniel is the product of widespread symbol systems with significant generic and cultural currency during the Hellenistic Period. While prophetic symbols depend almost entirely on their immediate literary contexts, visionary and apocalyptic symbols depend on much broader cultural associations. In other words, I argue that one of the most prominent literary techniques in the Book of Daniel is not only different from but unrelated to the linguistic techniques used to produce symbolism in biblical prophecies. This difference opens new possibilities for considering the social world in which apocalypses were produced, especially as concerns the education of the writers of apocalypses. The Book of Daniel is doubly significant as a test-case since it provides data from both pre-Maccabean visions and Maccabean-era apocalypses. Thus, the book bears witness to a century or more of literary evolution.


Some Reflections on the Apostles in the Qur'an and Christian Tradition
Program Unit: Qur'an and Biblical Literature
Gabriel Said Reynolds, Notre Dame

In three passages the Qur?an mentions certain companions of Jesus which it names al-hawariyyun. In each of these passages the Qur?an has al-hawariyyun declare their belief in Jesus and his God. In Al ?Imran (3), 52 they declare “We will be helpers of God; we believe in God; witness thou our submission;” in al-Ma?ida (5) 111, “We believe; witness Thou our submission;” and in al-Saff (61) 14: “We will be helpers of God.” In light of these declarations the classical Muslim commentators consider al-hawariyyun to have been faithful companions of Jesus. In addition, they use details from the New Testament narratives on the apostles of Jesus in their explanations of the Qur?anic material on al-hawariyyun (for example, that they were twelve in number). Moreover, the classical Islamic sources (perhaps inspired by the ending of Q 61.14, which declares that al-hawariyyun were made victorious) explain that Muhammad had 12 hawariyyun (or, according to another tradition, 12 leaders [nuqaba?]) of his own. For their part critical scholars generally agree that with al-hawariyyun the Qur?an refers to the apostles of Jesus (the term is almost universally translated as “apostles” or “disciples” and the entry “apostles” in the Encyclopedia of the Qur?an deals exclusively with al-hawariyyun). They often note that this term is derived from Ethiopic hawarya, which is used to translate Greek ?p?st???? in the Ethiopic Bible. At SBL I will argue that the Qur?an indeed uses al-hawariyyun to refer to the apostles of Jesus – this is evident from a reference to the rusul (“apostles”) of Jesus in Q 23:51. However, according to the Qur?an the apostles of Jesus are not entirely faithful. Their principal role in the Qur?an is to exemplify those who declare their faith in Jesus, but who later turn away from his teaching. It is accordingly in regard to al-hawariyyun that the Qur?an declares (Q 3:54), “And they devised, and God devised, and God is the best of devisers.” Thereby the Qur?an makes the apostles of Jesus a metaphor for the Christians of its own day. Thus the verse of al-Ma?ida in which al-hawariyyun declare their faith in Jesus (Q 5:111) is followed by an episode in which they nevertheless demand a sign from him (Q 5:112-15) and an episode in which Jesus declares that his followers have not remained true to his words (Q 5:116-18).


Historical Linguistics and Textual Criticism: Observations from the Standpoint of the Book of Samuel
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Historical Books
Robert Rezetko, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen

Discussions of the language of "Early" and "Late" Biblical Hebrew are customarily based on only (or mainly) the Masoretic Text of biblical books. This paper will explore the complex relationship of historical linguistics and linguistic dating on the one hand and literary formation and textual transmission on the other by examining a selection of differences between the Masoretic, Qumran and Septuagint versions of the book of Samuel. To mention only one of many potential illustrations, according to the conventional wisdom mamlakah is the normal word for "kingdom" in "Early" Biblical Hebrew and was replaced (or displaced) by malkut in "Late" Biblical Hebrew. So, for example, in 1 Sam 20:31 the "early" lexeme mamlakah in 4QSam-b may suggest that the "late" lexeme malkut in the MT is a late adjustment, but in 2 Sam 7:13 the minus of a word for "kingdom" in the LXX and synoptic MT/LXX 1 Chr 17:12 may suggest that the "early" lexeme mamlakah in the MT is also a late adjustment (or insertion). In short, a close look at text-critical data highlights the fluidity of both "early" and "late" linguistic features in the literary-textual histories of biblical books. Hence the question: what are the implications of the textual criticism of biblical writings for the historical linguistics of Biblical Hebrew?


Do We Not Have the Right to Our Food and Drink? A Peek into the Development of Clerical Compensations in Christianized Patronage
Program Unit: Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism
Helen Rhee, Westmont College

This paper will examine the ways in which Christian communities in the second and third centuries developed practices (and theology) of clerical compensations as the church as a growing institution centralized its charitable ministries under clergy (bishops in particular) and Christianized patronage through which the clerical control of charity for those in need and the episcopal control of clerical salary took place. From the Didachist community to Cyprian’s congregation in crisis, from the itinerant prophets to the resident bishop, Christian leaders expected financial and practical support from their congregants, who apparently shared that expectation and brought them various gifts. While the fixed Christian salary developed in the sectarian groups such as the New Prophecy in the late second century and was deemed a deviant practice then, it became a standard fixture in the proto-orthodox churches in the third century, according to the power and distribution of episcopal beneficia. I will focus my examination on Syrian Christian communities through the lenses of the Didache and Didascalia and North African practices through the works of Cyprian. The episcopal control of charity and clerical compensations then went hand in hand with increasing function of the church as an economic institution with “corporate” ownership and commercial dealings.


Levitical Sacrifices in Hebrews: Does Hebrews Violate the Literal Sense of Leviticus?
Program Unit: Christian Theology and the Bible
Benjamin J. Ribbens, Wheaton College (Illinois)

When comparing Christ’s sacrifice to the levitical sacrifices, the author of Hebrews makes some critical statements about the old covenant sacrifices that appear to contradict the literal sense of Leviticus. Whereas Leviticus says that sacrifices made atonement and forgave sins, Hebrews argues that the old covenant sacrifices did not cleanse the conscience or take away sins. Such a deliberate contradiction of Leviticus, however, seems to conflict with the author’s commitment to the Septuagint as the very words of God. While Hebrews freely reinterprets the Septuagint in light of the revelation of the Son, it seems unlikely that the author would deliberately contradict the literal sense of Leviticus. Scholars have offered a number of proposals concerning what, according to Hebrews, the old covenant sacrifices accomplished compared to Christ’s sacrifice. These proposals ascribe to the levitical sacrifices a diminished efficacy (a different kind of purification), and they then offer reasons why the author might diminish the significance of the levitical sacrifices. However, each of these proposals must accept to varying degrees the disconcerting conclusion that Hebrews contradicts the literal sense of Leviticus. This paper proposes that John Calvin’s interpretation of Hebrews offers a way forward. According to Calvin, Hebrews considers the levitical sacrifices to be sacramental, Christological types, and by understanding the old covenant sacrifices in this way Hebrews is still able to consider the levitical sacrifices to have achieved atonement and forgiveness of sins. This is a concrete example of how, as Hans Frei notes, Calvin employs figural reading in order to maintain the literal sense of the Old Testament.


The Long Afterlife of Sennacherib-at-Jerusalem: A Post-colonial Reading
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible, History, and Archaeology
Seth Richardson, University of Chicago

In Akkadian, in Hebrew, in Aramaic; in Syriac, Greek, and Egyptian; in Arabic, Armenian and Serbian: why did Sennacherib-at-Jerusalem, 701 B.C., hold such particular appeal and durability as a basis for Volksgeschichte towards the latter end of antiquity? This paper will make the case for the substrate conditions – beyond mere availability in the Hebrew Bible – that enabled this particular story to remain fresh and productive into the tenth century A.D. and beyond. I will outline the major clusters of the story, beginning with its earliest incarnations in Akkadian documents, and then some of the historical conditions conducive to its transmission, to argue for its flowering as an “archipelagic” literature; crucial to this was its instantiation in multiple registers of textual authority, e.g., in its generic diversity. I will then focus on the specific themata that made the story complex so attractive to its authors and audiences: its focus on wise counselors and deëmphasis of kings; its narrative dependence on miracles, magic, and martyrs; its persistent motifs of flight and hiding. I will conclude by giving a post-colonialist consideration of the ambivalent position the “Sennacherib archipelago” reflects on the literati of the age – passively resistant to high emperors in distant capitals, but inextricably complicit in the practices of imperial rule.


Reception History as a Challenge to Biblical Theology: Literary Historical Readings of the Bible as Informative of Transformational Exegesis: Reflections on Galatians
Program Unit: Theological Interpretation of Scripture
John Riches, University of Glasgow

Biblical theology in the English speaking world has passed from a descriptive to a narrative theological phase, both heavily endebted to historical modes of study. Narrative theology has however been cast in oppositional mode to historical critical studies and has appealed to pre-modern readings of the Bible as its authority. However, closer inspection shows that this appeal is to a relatively narrow historical base in certain of the Reformers. Closer study of the reception history of Galatians shows that there is a much richer, dialogical form of engagement with Scripture where interpreters respond and react to the rich history of readings of a given text as they seek to use it to give meaning to their worlds. The dialogue, that is to say, is not simply between the interpreter and the text but rather between the interpreter and the text as it has been articulated and realised by different voices in the tradition. It is a dialogue which takes place in a specific context where the culture and political and social economy have been changed and affected by those earlier readings of the sacred text. And out of such dialogue and exchange arise. The paper will draw on the work of H-J Jauss to illuminate this process of literary development and consider examples from the reception history of Galatians. Reception historical readings are authentically historical in that they recognise the context-bound character of biblical interpretation and its inevitable plurality. Finally, the paper will consider the place of reception historical studies in the process of theological interpretation which is individually and socially transformative. How does a study of the ways in which Galatians has been read in the past assist contemporary readers to enjoy their own conversations with the text and its interpreters?


The Coptic Versions of Acts
Program Unit: Novum Testamentum Graecum: Editio Critica Maior
Siegfried Richter, Institute for New Testament Textual Research, Muenster

Translations of the Acta Apostolorum into Coptic are preserved in four dialects: Sahidic, Bohairic, Middle-Egyptian and Fayyumic. The paper offers an overview of the text and its witnesses and gives a progress report about the representation of the Coptic versions in the Greek apparatus of the ECM.


The Divine Response to Treachery
Program Unit: Assyriology and the Bible
Andrew J. Riley, Xavier University

In modern American social discourse, hate can have two extreme interpretations. The first understands the term as an expression of flippancy. For example, someone committed to nutrition may declare, “I hate unhealthy food.” In this case, the audience tends to interpret hate as dislike and understands the statement as hyperbolic for rhetorical effect. The second interpretation reflects a function of hate bordering on taboo. For example, proclaiming hate for people is deemed unacceptable and intolerant. In these instances, listeners tend to take seriously hate and understand the speaker to wish for the end of said people. The use of this word in the ancient Near East is different, because there are cases, for which it is the expected response. For example, Qoheleth says there is a time to hate (3:8). The purpose of this paper is to explore one such instance, when hate is the appropriate reaction: treachery, one of antiquity’s cardinal sins. Specifically, this study considers hate as the divine response to covenant faithlessness in the Hebrew Bible (sane’) and Mesopotamian documents (Akkadian zêru). How does one interpret these instances of hate? Is the interpretation similar to either of the aforementioned modern interpretations?


Does Yahweh Get His Hands Dirty?
Program Unit: Warfare in Ancient Israel
Jason A. Riley, Fuller Theological Seminary

Impurity from killing in battle seems to have been a near universal phenomenon in the ancient world. Purification rituals intended to cleanse warriors and armies physically and ritually are attested in various cultures such as ancient Israel, Mesopotamia, Rome, and Macedonia. Both human and divine warriors could become ritually impure from shedding blood in battle and needed to be purified. However, Yahweh stands out as an anomaly among ancient warrior figures. Arguably, Yahweh is by far the ancient deity with the greatest number of references to killing in battle; however, in all but one possible exception, no purification imagery is ever used in reference to Yahweh. This study seeks to understand ritual impurity and purification rites in the ANE and specifically addresses the question, is Yahweh impervious to impurity from bloodshed in battle?


About Schmidt and/as the Rich Fool: A Cinematic Parable of Disorientation
Program Unit: Bible and Film
Matthew S. Rindge, Gonzaga University

This paper constructs a mutually-enriching dialogue between Alexander Payne’s 2002 film About Schmidt and Luke’s parable of the Rich Fool (Luke 12:16-21). Luke’s parable illuminates not only the content of Payne’s film but also the specific ways in which About Schmidt functions as a religious text. Drawing on Ricoeur, Brueggemann, and Borg, I employ the categories of conventional/alternative wisdom and narratives of orientation/disorientation to explicate the film’s subversive critique of the religion of the American Dream. In doing so I seek to offer a critical approach that moves beyond examining the “Bible in Film”—and even “Bible and Film in Dialogue”—and analyzes instead the religious function(s) of films. I conclude by identifying examples of how the film can help reinterpret Luke’s parable (e.g. highlighting the parable’s existential texture, the role of character identification in the parable’s rhetoric, and the parable’s potential to shape character transformation). These latter insights will be underscored by a brief comparison of Luke’s parable with the parallel version in Thomas.


Glorious Death, Imperial Rome, and the Gospel of John
Program Unit: Jesus Traditions, Gospels, and Negotiating the Roman Imperial World
Jason J. Ripley, Saint Olaf College

Like gladiators in the arena, competing ideologies contended on the battleground of the rhetoric of glory in Rome’s late republican and early imperial periods. Sharing a common rhetoric of glory but differing sharply in the definition of the actions that win this glory, these ideological contests culminated in various expressions of spectacular, voluntary deaths. Whether rebublican or revolutionary, each portrayal appropriated the vocabulary of glory to undergird and gain support for its particular ideological vision. In this paper I will argue that John’s rhetorical stylization of Jesus’ voluntary death both participates in and subverts aspects of the Romana mors. Like the portrayals of the Stoic suicides of Cato the Younger and Seneca the Younger, and Josephus’ depictions of the voluntary deaths of the Jewish revolutionaries at Masada, the idealized death of Jesus in John proclaims that freedom and glory come by giving one’s life in faithful resistance to Roman imperialism. Nonetheless, John’s glorification of Jesus’ crucifixion inverts the shame associated with the cross and subverts the configuration of glory embedded within Roman noble death discourse. In so doing John also subverts the values and means by which honor was won, reconfiguring it around the cross. In the turmoil between the first and second Jewish Wars against Rome, John’s hybridized discourse of Jesus laying down his life in love creates a type of ideological third space in-between the imperial violence of the Pax Romana and the revolutionary violence of Jewish zealots.


The Music of Silenced Harps in Psalm 137
Program Unit: Book of Psalms
Charles Rix, Oklahoma Christian University

American composer John Cage’s legendary composition “4’ 33’” invites the listener to re-imagine music as the symphony of surrounding ambient sounds heard in the absence of someone playing on a stringed instrument. This paper draws upon John Cage’s revolutionary and insightful musical theory to suggest ways in which the imagery of silenced harps in Psalm 137 enables us as readers to bear witness to issues of human suffering raised in the Psalm. In addition, the paper draws on Gene Plunka's recent analysis of Post-Holocaust dramas to illuminate ways in which the failure to listen to the "alternate music" of Psalm 137's silent harps coheres with strategies employed by the Nazi's to dehumanize Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, political dissidents and others maladaptive to Nazi ideology. I suggest that the “music of silent harps” in Psalm 137 is particularly relevant for contemporary religious liturgies that, wittingly or unwittingly, dehumanize those who are suffering through turning away difficult and painful imagery within the Psalter.


Exegesis and the Paragogic Nun
Program Unit: Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew
Elizabeth Robar, University of Cambridge

The history of the paragogic nun is bound up with the history of the verbal system, in particular with indicative and non-indicative modality. Modality cannot explain the distribution of the paragogic nun in biblical Hebrew, however, nor are phonological or prosodic explanations fully satisfying. By combining both the ‘top-down’ perspective of cognitive linguistics and its basic understanding of a text or discourse as being coherent when united by a single theme, with the ‘bottom-up’ perspective of distributional studies of verbal forms bearing the paragogic nun, an intriguing correlation is revealed. Clauses with verbs with a paragogic nun tend to be pivotal, or discourse ‘peaks’, with a discourse peak defined as the point in a discourse at which provisional themes are exchanged for final themes. The clause with the paragogic nun marks the final theme that unites the text or discourse, which heretofore may have seemed disconnected. It thus indicates the required depth of cognitive processing for the reader to be able to successfully reconstruct the author’s intended theme for the text. The paragogic nun can thus be a valuable aid in thematic discovery, or, to use the more traditional language of biblical studies, in exegesis. The discussion includes Genesis 3 and the origin of death, Genesis 18 and the presence of righteousness, and Deuteronomy 1 and the purpose of the land grant to Israel. Possible grammaticalisation paths explaining the development from modality to thematic marker are explored.


Using Social-Scientific Models in Socio-rhetorical Interpretation
Program Unit: Rhetoric of Religious Antiquity
Vernon K. Robbins, Emory University

The publication of Dennis C. Duling’s A Marginal Scribe: Studies in the Gospel of Matthew in a Social-Scientific Perspective provides the opportunity to see how social-scientific models can function in socio-rhetorical interpretation of social-cultural texture. A Rhetoric of Religious Antiquity mode of socio-rhetorical interpretation requires continual refinement and reconfiguration of models as interpretation of texts proceeds. Duling’s introduction of multiple social-scientific models along a spectrum from macro-level to micro-level, as well as socio-historical, socio-economic, socio-cultural ethnic, cultural-psychological, and cross-cultural to interpret the Gospel of Matthew, makes it possible now to design and display heuristic guidelines for ways socio-rhetorical interpreters can incorporate social-scientific models in the dynamic context of topos-oriented socio-rhetorical interpretation.


Framing the Healing of the Daughter of the Syro-Phoenician/Canaanite Woman in Mark and Matthew
Program Unit: Cognitive Linguistics in Biblical Interpretation
Vernon Robbins, Emory University

It is possible for the story of the healing of the daughter of the Syro-Phoenician/Canaanite woman in Mark 7:24-30//Matthew 15:21-28 to prompt different frames in a hearer's mind, especially in relation to the hearer's response to various verbal aspects of the opening, middle, and/or closing of the story. It also is possible that the progressive texture of the story will prompt a shifting or blending of frames in different ways as the story unfolds. The opening can prompt a frame primarily related to geographical location focused on ethnic "otherness." The middle of the story can prompt a focus or blending based on the gender of the person requesting the healing, the gender and age of the afflicted person whom the woman requests Jesus to heal, and/or the daughter's affliction as the presence of an unclean spirit or demon. In addition, the Matthean version can prompt a shifting or blending of the frame in relation to Jesus as "Son of David." In the context of one or more of these blendings and/or shiftings of frames, the hearer's mind may prompt various meanings for the speech of Jesus and for the actions and speech of the woman. In many ways, therefore, the two versions of the story naturally invite dynamic blending and shifting that may prompt various semantic leaps as the story unfolds.


History Writing, Cognitive Plausibility, and 1 Corinthians 4:8
Program Unit: North American Association for the Study of Religion
Erin Roberts, University of South Carolina

This paper highlights the ways that realized eschatology and Jewish apocalyptic have functioned in interpretations of 1 Corinthians 4:8. While the influence of Jewish apocalyptic on Paul is undeniable, I suggest that it is not the most convincing historical narrative in which to situate this particular section of the Corinthian correspondence. Through a comparison with the Stoic paradoxes, I argue that 1 Corinthians 4:8 and its surrounding literary context may be viewed as paraentic discourse rather than sarcastic mockery of Paul's Corinthian opponents.


Paul, Philodemus, and Epictetus: A Study of Form and Content
Program Unit: Pauline Epistles
Paul M. Robertson, Brown University

Paul’s letters are described in a variety of ways in modern scholarship, ranging from unique products of revelation to fundamentally Jewish to manifestly philosophical (the Greco-Roman kind). The problem with such categorizations, aside from the essentializing inherent to these categories, is that such attempts lack transparent criteria for comparison. By contrast, the useful work that has been undertaken on Paul’s letters, in my estimation, revolves not around these broader categorizations but around specific passages (Abraham Malherbe’s ‘gentle as a nurse’) and/or concepts (Carolyn Johnson Hodge’s ‘if sons then heirs’). Thus if we are to try and categorize Paul we need manifest a comparison on the basis of specific, testable criteria, and to do so empirically. This paper is an attempt to show that Paul’s letters match certain of Philodemus’ and Epictetus’ works on several specific areas of literary style: appeals to authority, universal or novel abstract claims, exhortation, and types of argument (such as the use of rhetorical questions, examples, and analogies). The only way to empirically compare Paul’s letters with other works on the basis of these textual strategies and literary stylings is to map out the location and frequencies of such incidences in each text. Thus the paper will start with an overview of my findings, detailing these basic facts about each text. Then the paper will discuss these incidences in their context, discussing the types of content that these literary features supported and overlaps between different features. Finally, the paper will compare these findings between these different texts and conclude with thoughts about the mutual intersections between form, content, purpose, and socio-literary convention. Further suggestions will be provided with regard to how we can use analytical tools from mathematical graphing and set theory to express and aid such types of literary comparison. My findings, the product of nearly two years of dissertation research, have shown that Paul’s letters intersect closely in terms of literary form with Epictetus’ ‘Discourses’ and Philodemus’ texts ‘On Death’ and ‘On Piety’. When we make the same type of comparison with other types of literature, such as hifalutin epideictic speeches, so-called apocalyptic literature, or Jewish Wisdom literature of a roughly contemporary time, we do not find similar intersections of form and content. While there is still space to argue that certain elements of the content line up between Paul and these types of literature, my empirical findings go far to dispute the categorization of Paul’s letters along these lines, which bears further implications for our understanding of Paul as historical figure and author.


The Coptic Testament of Job and Its Reception in the Early Christian Period
Program Unit: Christian Apocrypha
Gesine Schenke Robinson, Episcopal Theological School at Claremont

The apocryphal Testament of Job has been known for quite some time, but mainly through Greek manuscripts from the early to late medieval period, or by some even later translations of the text into Old Slavonic. It is generally assumed that the Testament of Job was composed sometimes between the first century bce and the early second century ce. Hence these medieval renditions are removed from the original composition by almost thousand years. This made it difficult, thus far, to provide definite answers regarding its original make-up and assumed later redactions, as well as its early tradition- and transmission history. In 1964 however, the papyrus collection of the University of Cologne bought remains of a papyrus codex that contained at least four Coptic translations of apocryphal texts, one of them being the Testament of Job. Given that the Cologne copy of the text – on codicological grounds as well as based on the palaeographical evidence – can be dated to the fourth century, the Coptic witness is by far the earliest testimony of this literary product. Hence it had raised high hopes for the advancement of the study of this important haggadic document of the Jewish lore. Though the text of the Testament of Job follows along the general lines of the narrative familiar from the medieval manuscripts, it became clear that the Greek text lying behind the Coptic translation represents a recension independent from the tradition of the younger witnesses. Compared to those versions, the Coptic text not only shows different variants as they normally occur due to the process of repeated copying and revising of a document, but it also reveals different interpretations of traditional material, dissimilar explanations of events and situations, distinct motivations, and the like. This makes it particularly interesting for the analysis of the transmission history of the various traditions. Of special importance has always been the question of the reception of Jewish lore by early Christianity, and its possible influences on the development of the text. The mere fact that the Testament of Job was translated into Coptic shows the great interest of the early church in this narrative that eventually led to the veneration of Job as a model martyr in the later church.


Teaching about Teaching about Religion
Program Unit: Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion
Joanne Maguire Robinson, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Teaching is a marketable skill for both undergraduate and graduate students, but we rarely address teaching directly in our classes. A traditional and rather loose “method” of preparing teachers holds sway today, even though the scholarship of teaching and learning and the demands of the job market might encourage us to consider a new paradigm. This roundtable would focus on the growing need for a pedagogy of religious studies pedagogy and would likely appeal faculty who are interested in devising such a course as well as those who have done so in the past and former students who participated in such courses or colloquia. Our questions will mirror those in designing any introductory course or forum. What should hold pride of place in a plan for teaching about teaching and why?


Ignatius's Views of Authority and Tradition
Program Unit: Extent of Theological Diversity in Earliest Christianity
Thomas A. Robinson, University of Lethbridge

What can we learn about early Christianity from the letters of Ignatius? Does Ignatius represent a major and mainstream development or is he an idiosyncratic oddity, with his ideas unrepresentative of early second-century Christianity? Ignatius addresses a range of important topics. His use of first-century Christian literature may offer insight regarding the ease with which early Christians moved from oral tradition to authoritative text, and this might call into question some commonly repeated assertions that early Christians preferred the oral over the written. Further, rather than a long process by which first-century literature (such as the Gospel of Matthew) gained acceptability, Ignatius’s treatment of Matthew’s gospel may suggest that such a text was designed to be authoritative from the start, and largely accepted as such. On another matter, Ignatius presents the first-generation apostles as having authoritative status in the second-century church. But Ignatius also has authoritative bishops, presbyters, and deacons in his second-century community. Ignatius’s treatment of these various authorities may suggest there was less trauma and tension in the transition from apostolic to episcopal authority than is often proposed. A further question is the degree to which any question about Ignatius’s views is affected by when his letters are dated (first decade of the second century or decades later). This paper is an attempt to rethink some of these fundamental issues.


An Eighth-Century Israelite Source in Kings
Program Unit: Deuteronomistic History
Jonathan Miles Robker, Kirchliche Hochschule Wuppertal/Bethel

It has generally been accepted in some fashion that the Deuteronomist reworked earlier literary and/or oral traditions into the composition that has come to be known as the book of Kings. But where did the traditions in Kings come from? Was the Deuteronomist the first person to compose a history of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah? Is it possible that an earlier narrative existed that was successively expanded from a simple core into the more complex synchronistic history that we have today? Might such a source be reconstructed from the book of Kings? Based on a text and literary critical examination of some passages of Kings, it seems plausible that the Deuteronomist was not the first person to compose a larger narrative about the history of Israel. Instead, this paper will present and support the thesis that the oldest narrative level of Kings can be identified as a contiguous, propagandistic, political narrative from eighth-century Israel, which was successively expanded into the synchronistic history known from the canonical text of Kings.


Character Studies in the Acts of Pilate
Program Unit: Christian Apocrypha
Jörg Röder, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

In the fourth-century, parabiblical or apocryphal NT text entitled Acts of Pilate, one finds numerous amplifications and reinterpretations in the presentation of Jesus´ trial. This paper focuses on these changes through a reader-centred approach to character studies. Through the mental images of characters generated in readers and the possibile ways in which readers can identify with those characters the potential impact and influence upon the addressees and subsequent readers can be inferred. The character of Pontius Pilate, for example, is constrained in his identity to a historical Roman governor in a Roman Province during the trial against Jesus. Within a text, his „personhood“ is a phenomenon in a narrated „possible world“ that becomes more and more vivid in the reader´s imagination. So, Pontius Pilate may be a judge between Jews and Christians for a reader in the fourth and fifth century who lives in a religiously pluriform society. Alternatively, he may be a symbol for someone who, despite of all his sympathies, doubts Jesus and his own faith. In this paper, perspectives such as these are examined and elucidated on the basis of Jens Eder´s, Fotis Jannidis´ and Ralf Schneider´s methodological approach („Characters in fictional worlds“, 2010). In this way, characters can be analyzed on several levels, i.e., the artificial, symptomatic, and symbolic, as well as be considered on the level of fictional phenomenon. Character studies of so-called apocryphal texts ultimately reveal the great potential of parabiblical texts as independent sources of reflection upon the Christian life and have much to offer to a new perspective and appreciation of these texts.


The Preposition "tachat": A Cognitive Linguistic Account
Program Unit: Biblical Lexicography
Daniel Rodriguez, Universiteit van Stellenbosch - University of Stellenbosch

This paper addresses the problem of polysemy in describing the biblical Hebrew lexeme "tachat" in the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. Traditionally treated as mainly a preposition, it is demonstrated in this study that "tachat" can also be used as a noun, adverb or conjunction. A critical analysis of standard biblical Hebrew lexica reveals that they typically lack a clear lexicographic framework with which polysemous lexemes can be organized. Ideally, this would offer lexical explanations to users of a lexicon rather than supply lists of alleged meanings. Further, it is also made clear that target language glosses can no longer be accepted as "meaning", a practice which has been uncritically accepted for years. In order to move beyond English glosses, cognitive linguistic tools for categorization and lexical semantics are utilized. This thesis contributes a cognitive linguistic analysis of the polysemous lexeme "tachat" and a semantic network of "tachat" that can be useful for digital lexicography. The proposed network is complemented by frame semantic diagrams which describe meaning imagically rather than only with a target language gloss.The various senses established are: substantive (underpart), place (spot), substitution (in place of), exchange (in exchange for), vertical spatial (under), approximately under (at the foot of), control (under the hand), causation (because), and implied perspective (x below [the speaker]). These senses are organized in the proposed network showing the semantic relationship between the senses. The semantic network also provides an evolutionarily plausible explanation of how "tachat" came to symbolize so many distinct polysemies.


A Syntactical Analysis of OUN in Papyrus 66
Program Unit: Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics
Trent A. Rogers, Loyola University of Chicago

Greek particles are often overlooked in the interpretation and translation of ancient texts, but a better understanding of their syntactical functions aids in understanding the relationships among clauses and results in a better understanding of the texts’ meanings. This article examines the use of oun in Papyrus 66 and provides examples and explanations of the different uses of oun. It clarifies established uses and paves new ground by locating the comparative use. Moreover, it notices a dialogical pattern wherein lego + oun serves as an alternative to apokrinomai (kai lego), and in this pattern, asyndeton may convey increased markedness.


Forgiveness as Social Network Maintenance in the Early Christ-Movement
Program Unit: Cognitive Science Approaches to the Biblical World
Rikard Roitto, Stockholm School of Theology

Countless are the ethical assessments of Jesus’ ethics of forgiveness and non-retaliation. Fewer have asked about the group dynamic effects of this ethics, if it was practiced by local communities of Christ-believers. This paper discusses a model based on social network theory and meme theory to understand how relentless forgiveness and non-retaliation could function to create new points of contact, so called weak links, through which the meme of the Kingdom of God could be distributed. It also discusses how the Christ-movement limited forgiveness in various ways to protect their social network from resource exploitation and competing memes. Limiting conditions, such as a) only the repentant (Luke), b) only sins “not unto death” (1 John), c) every sin but “sin against the Spirit” (Mark), d) not believers who have fallen away or sin intentionally (Hebr), affected how the social network developed.


Archaeology and Themes of Judgment in Q
Program Unit: Q
Sarah E. Rollens, University of Toronto

That Q has an overt preoccupation with judgment is often held to be a truism in Q scholarship. Typically, Q's themes of judgment tend to be analyzed in terms of their literary affinities and functions. Indeed, the judgment and prophetic sayings have a long history of development within Judaism and constitute an important redactional frame through which the whole of Q should be interpreted. It is, however, also important to realize that these themes of judgment employ extremely vivid (and violent) metaphors which may be overlooked if viewed only at the textual level. Although we are able intellectually to understand this imagery even in the absence of archaeological evidence, surely Q's first-century audience had *specific* images in mind when they heard/read Q's references to millstones, swords, winnowing forks, and the like. This paper suggests that often it is very useful to examine archaeological evidence to illustrate some of the Q passages dealing with judgment, especially to highlight the evocative images of judgment which Q seems to have in mind and to assess their impact on its audience. Overall this confirms the idea that violence and violent imagery were often taken for granted in antiquity, and Q is no exception.


The Script of Moab in the Ninth Century BCE: New Epigraphic Evidence from Excavations at Ataruz
Program Unit: Ugaritic Studies and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy
Christopher A. Rollston, Emmanuel School of Religion

During recent excavations at the site of Ataruz (a site famously mentioned in the Mesha Stele), a brief Moabite inscription was discovered. Based on its script (and corroborated by the associated archaeological remains), I date this new Moabite inscription to the Ninth Century BCE. This paper will focus on this new inscription and the data it can provide about scribal practices in this critical period in Moabite history.


When Ezekiel and Jeremiah Evoke the Same Pentateuchal Traditions—Are They in Dialogue?
Program Unit: Israelite Prophetic Literature
Dalit Rom-Shiloni, Tel Aviv University

Verbal similarities, resemblances in imagery, and shared themes and conceptions have brought scholars to notice over 60 parallels between the two prophetic books. Closer examination of the texts, however, shows among them a great diversity that permeates the entire spectrum of textual relationships. Having reexamined the long list of suggested parallel phrases and passages (from Smend [1880] to Kasher [2004]) from the methodological standpoint of intertextuality and allusion, this study focuses attention on three different types of textual relationships between passages in Ezekiel and in Jeremiah: A. Verbal or idiomatic resemblances show a lack of allusion or literary dependence. B. Literary allusions may be noted in a very limited number and themes. But most intriguing are C. Some eight verbal resemblances between Ezekiel and Jeremiah that actually cover up quite independent allusions to and interpretations of pentateuchal legal traditions. The presentation will focus on those instances and raise the challenging questions concerning the possible relationships between the prophets and their tradents. Two of the examples show underground ideological differences between the prophets (Jer 9:15 and Ezek 12:15-16, evoking Deut 4:27-28; 28:36; Jer 29:5-6 and Ezek 28:25-26, evoking Deut 20:5-7; 28:30-32, and Lev 26:5). They shed light on polemical utilizations of the same pentateuchal traditions, that implicitly reveal, profound yet silent, ideological disagreements between these two prophets of YHWH.


Joshuah’s Encounter with the Commander of Yhwh’s Army (Josh 5:13–15): Reflection of a Royal Ritual?
Program Unit: Warfare in Ancient Israel
Thomas Römer, Collège de France-Université de Lausanne

The short episode of Joh 5 :13-15 has often puzzled commentators who often considered the text as an old fragment relating originally the founfation of a sanctuary. A diachronic analysis demonstrates that the original form of the passage was the opening of the original account of the conquest of Jericho. Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Syrian ticonography and texts allow to conclude that joshuah’s vision is based on a ritual of a divine equipment of the king before going to war.


Rabbinic Attitudes toward the Fetus in Late Antique Palestine
Program Unit: History and Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism
Sara Ronis, Yale University

The fetus is a legislatively constructed subject/object. Without the fetus being able to articulate its own personhood, the fetus is what scholars, sages, and scientists project onto it. The question of the rabbinic approach to fetal personhood has been widely discussed by scholars of Ancient Judaism, with the scholarly consensus being that the rabbis of Late Antique Palestine believed that the fetus is a dependent part of its mother and not an independent juridical or ontological person, before birth. However, these works have exclusively examined the traditionally normative material, the halakha, and have not examined how the aggada, or non-normative material, may reflect the attitudes and understandings of the rabbis. Expanding upon the work of Robert Cover and Jerome Bruner, my paper addresses the issue of fetal personhood in the rabbinic world through a holistic reading of both law and narrative. Specifically, I look at the Mishnah, Midrash Halakha, Talmud Yerushalmi and amoraic midrashim to show that the rabbinic position on fetal personhood is actually far more complex than has been previously suggested. I argue that, in fact, the legislative position of the Tannaim and Amoraim is characterized by tensions between fetal juridical personhood and non-personhood, and that the Amoraim in particular develop an understanding of the fetus as ontologically independent in conversation with their larger cultural context. The Amoraic position reflects a world that had shifted from a Roman standard in which the fetus was a juridically dependent entity that could be killed by the pater familias, to a world, both Christian and pagan, in which the fetus was a legally protected and spiritually replete individual. By moving both within and beyond distinctions between law and narrative, normative and non-normative materials, the rabbinic understanding of the fetus is clarified and expanded upon, and important tensions within the Palestinian rabbinic worldview are brought to light.


"When She Goes to Serve Her House:" Pre-coital Vaginal Examination in Palestinian and Babylonian Rabbinic Law
Program Unit: Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism
Michael Rosenberg, Jewish Theological Seminary of America

In Tractate Niddah of the early 3rd century Mishnah, we read that a woman must “inspect…when she goes to serve her house,” a phrase that in context means to perform, prior to an act of sexual intimacy with her spouse, some sort of vaginal examination to establish her status vis-à-vis the menstrual laws of Leviticus. However, in the Babylonian Talmud’s discussion of this mishnah, mid-fourth century rabbinic authorities express the view that not only is such an examination unnecessary, but that it is in fact forbidden, or at least discouraged. What, if anything, do these opposite statements tell us about the actual practice of women in rabbinic Jewish households in the 3rd and 4th centuries? And what accounts for such a radical change in legal holding in so short a time? Careful examination of the history of pre-coital vaginal examinations in rabbinic texts reveals a meandering trajectory. In the early 3rd century (and likely earlier), internal vaginal examinations were originally considered important for clarifying one’s purity status and consequent permission to come into contact with sanctified goods and space, but were largely irrelevant for purposes of determining status with regard to marital relations. Sometime after the mid-3rd century (and likely specifically in the context of Babylonian rabbinic law) rabbis begin encouraging a pre-coital examination in order to permit sexual relations, at least for some women. In the mid-4th century and later, however, the legal narrative takes another turn, as rabbis and Talmudic editors in fact discourage and/or forbid vaginal inspection prior to sexual relations. This history, it will be argued, sheds light on the relationship of rabbinic Jewish households in Palestine and Babylonia towards the menstrual laws, sancta, and marital relations, and it possibly reflects, at least in part, the influence of Zoroastrian practices. While the particularly invasive and objectifying practice of internal vaginal inspection is of a piece with other practices in rabbinic literature regarding regulation of sanctified goods, its application to the regulation of sexual relations in early-post-Mishnaic Babylonia is a legal innovation and represents one of the effects of the increasing irrelevance of sancta and sancta-related law in the lives of Babylonian rabbinic Jews. Although the reasons for the later Babylonian turn against this household practice are more difficult to ascertain, this turn may be explicable in part from cognate beliefs and practices in Zoroastrian law.


Home Is Where the Hearth Is? Jewish Household Sacrifice as Appropriation
Program Unit: Religious Competition in Late Antiquity
Jordan Rosenblum, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Household sacrifice is a common feature of the ancient Mediterranean. While offerings are made in temples, a home altar is a frequent sacrificial site. This raises an intriguing question for scholars of Judaism in antiquity: do Jews also sacrifice on household altars? While Judaism in antiquity is riotously diverse, it often looks very much like other ancient Mediterranean religions. It would therefore seem reasonable to expect to find at least some Jews offering household sacrifices. In fact, we do – though the evidence is slender, sometimes cryptic, and speculative. In this paper, I survey the extant literary evidence for Jewish household sacrifice in antiquity. In doing so, I explore how household sacrifice serves as a means of appropriating Greek and Roman ritual practice. In this act of appropriation, ancient Jews bring Greek and Roman practice into their home and “domesticate” them; thus, the home altar becomes a locus of social differentiation.


Heaven as Spatial Realm in Q: For God, for the Faithful,… and for the Birds?
Program Unit: Q
Dieter T. Roth, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

The images of vertical space, along the axis Gehenna-Earth-Heaven, are utilized in several Q pericopes and parables. Though each realm can be conceptualized, at least to a certain extent, simply as a discrete space in which certain entities act and certain events occur, there is also a clear theological dimension to the manner in which vertical space is presented in Q. For example, “heaven” is presented as the realm where birds are located (Q 13:18-19); the realm where the faithful are to store their treasure (Q 12:33-34) and where they will be rewarded (Q 6:20-23); and the realm where God is located and from which he acts (Q 11:9-13). It is not simply the presence of the image of “heaven” in various contexts, however, that is of particular interest; rather, it is the way in which Q develops this image within the document’s conception of God, his kingdom, Jesus, and the spaces of Earth and Gehenna. This paper, therefore, considers the manner in which Q presents “heaven” within its broader message in order to elucidate a conceptualization of heaven that Q ultimately would consider to be one that is not, theologically speaking, “for the birds.”


The Politics of Identity Construction: A Postcolonial Re-imagining of Exodus 1
Program Unit: Institute for Biblical Research
Federico A. Roth, Fuller Theological Seminary

The Politics of Identity Construction: A Postcolonial Re-imagining of Exodus 1


Centre and Periphery as Constitutive Spatial Terms in the Study of Divine Kingship in the Graeco-Roman World
Program Unit: Greco-Roman Religions
Nickolas Roubekas, University of South Africa

In this paper two spatial terms are used, i.e. centre and periphery, in order to reexamine the always-in-fashion but also quite complicated phenomenon of the deification of kings and monarchs in the Graeco-Roman world. The main question always accompanying the problem of divine kingship in the Graeco-Roman world is whether this was a political or a religious phenomenon. This question is closely associated with how people of that time conceptualized their deified kings. Kings lived in the palaces of the capitals of their (often vast) kingdoms but their rule was expanded in big geographical areas. In such vast kingdoms not all of the king’s subjects had the opportunity to encounter “in flesh” their ruler. Nevertheless, these individuals were recipients of both the king’s benefactions and of the royal propaganda that accompanied his divine nature. Thus, the main question that arises is if these people actually believed that their king was a god. By utilizing the distinction of center and periphery, the paper argues that this scheme allowed for the creation of an ideology – enhanced by a well-organized propaganda through the creation and circulation of coins with mythical references – that it is directly associated to the way the people who lived in distant parts of the kingdoms saw/imagined their rulers.


“The Glory and the Honor of the Nations” (Rev 21:26): Orlando as the New Jerusalem
Program Unit: Bible and Popular Culture
Robert M. Royalty, Jr., Wabash College

In Orlando, Florida, tourists can visit “The Holy Land Experience” (http://www.holylandexperience.com/). At the “holy land” in Florida, near both Walt Disney World and Universal Studios, visitors can see a full model of Jerusalem in 70 AD (the world’s largest of its kind); an ancient street market; the Great Temple and the Calvary Tomb; the Scriptorium that shows “how the word of God was preserved and transmitted through history”; and actors portraying the ministry, actions, words, sacrifice, and even love of “Jesus” (although the video online implies that it is Jesus, not actors, that visitors will experience). And there is much more. The Holy Land Experience is anchored in the Orlando theme-park universe. The Epcot Center in Walt Disney World features a “World Showcase,” which includes a series of “Pavilion of Nations” where visitors can “experience” other nations such as China, Japan, France, Italy, and Morocco, plus many others. The vision of the New Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation describes a glorious, open city of wealth and light in which all the nations walk and to which all the kings of the earth bring their glory. Trinity Broadcasting Networks placed the Holy Land Experience not only in the world headquarters of theme parks, but juxtaposed to a theme-park “world of nations,” a secularized New Jerusalem that includes the people of all nations, as recreated by Disney. Using methods drawn from cultural criticism and architectural and film studies, this paper will examine Orlando as a “New Jerusalem” and the biblical tropes expressed in these “secular” and “religious” recreations of other nations. The Holy Land Experience emerges as a locus of realized eschatology and cultural struggle as well as meaning-making entertainment for the evangelical and fundamentalist Christian communities.


Did Philo Publish His Works?
Program Unit: Philo of Alexandria
James R. Royse, Claremont, CA

This paper will present some reasons to believe that Philo did not publish his works, but rather developed them within his own circle of discussion and study. First, the evidence for any use of Philo prior to Clement is very debatable and elusive. Second, there is some evidence that Philo's cross-references to his various works are in fact circular. This is what one finds in Aristotle's works as well, and indicates (as with Aristotle) that Philo's works were revised rather than published (where an earlier work could not refer [except as a prediction] to a later work). The context of Philo's works may thus be a philosophical circle of discussion, rather than publication.


The Circumcised Apostle: Paul, Jews, and Judaism in 1 Corinthians 9:19–23
Program Unit: Pauline Theology
David Rudolph, Messianic Jewish Theological Institute

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"Gar" When "De" is Expected
Program Unit: Biblical Lexicography
Michael Rudolph, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

Recent editions of the Bauer lexicon have proclaimed with increasing fervor, "'Gar' under certain circumstances ... is one and the same thing as 'de'." The motivation for this affirmation apparently stems from the use of "gar" in circumstances where not only is the expected causal force lacking, but the transitional force of "de" seems more appropriate. The primary support for their position is taken from statements of the ancient Greek grammarian Trypho (1st c. B.C.). The solution offered by the editors of Bauer, while convenient, rests upon a very weak foundation and cannot be sustained by the reference cited. This study examines the context of these statements and draws upon the recent work of classical Greek scholars to suggest the fallacy of the Bauer these as well as a more profitable direction for further research. The opening of the epistle to the Romans illustrates the significance of this issue.


The View from Patmos: A Puerto Rican (Post)colonial Reading of the Politics of Apocalypse before and after Election Day 2012
Program Unit: John's Apocalypse and Cultural Contexts Ancient and Modern
Jean-Pierre Ruiz, Saint John's University

More often than not, commentators on Revelation 1:9 note that John’s situation “on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus” was, in all likelihood, a matter of exile from the mainland of the province of Asia. This paper offers a reading of the politics of Apocalypse from the perspective of another island—Puerto Rico—with its precarious colonial relationship to the United States. Visiting the island to campaign just prior to the March 2012 presidential primary, Republican hopeful Rick Santorum (in)famously suggested that if Puerto Rico wanted to become the 51st state, it would have to adopt English as its official language. In so doing, he unwittingly echoed the words of U.S. Education Commissioner Martin G. Brumbaugh who said of Puerto Ricans in 1907 that “Their language is a patois almost unintelligible to the natives of Barcelona and Madrid…There is a bare possibility that it will be nearly as easy to educate these people out of their patois into English as it will be to educate them into the elegant tongue of Castile.” Santorum, himself a Roman Catholic, likewise made a point of seeking the support of Puerto Rican evangelicals with a visit to El Sendero de la Luz church in San Juan. This paper will reconsider the first century view from Patmos from the standpoint of the twenty-first century (post)colonial politics of another island, Puerto Rico.


Entering a Synagogue with Paul: Torah Observance in First-Century Jewish Institutions
Program Unit: Paul within Judaism
Anders Runesson, McMaster University

Communal aspects of Jewish law as associated with ancient synagogues are not easily identifiable. In addition to the literary evidence, some conclusions may be drawn based on archaeological evidence, inscriptions, and papyri. However, it is of importance to distinguish between what we can know about Torah observance in public synagogues (i.e., in municipal institutions present in the towns and cities of land of Israel) on the one hand, and association synagogues on the other, the latter existing both in the land and in the diaspora. Such a distinction between public and association synagogues allows us, e.g., to identify concerns expressed in settings in which all Jews, including Jesus-followers and Pharisees, gathered on various occasions, including on Sabbaths to read and discuss Torah. In the association synagogues the situation was different, since each association made up their own rules based on their respective interpretations of ideal ways to express Jewishness. This paper will discuss the available source material and argue that, while there is some limited evidence that apply to public synagogues in the land, we have more—and diverse—information regarding the association synagogues.


Remembered Spaces of Judgment and Absalom’s Political Strategy (2 Sam 15:2–6)
Program Unit: Space, Place, and Lived Experience in Antiquity
Stephen C. Russell, Princeton Theological Seminary

According to 2 Sam 15:2–6, Absalom sought to usurp the throne by rendering judgment on legal disputes, thereby stealing away the loyalty of the people. Commentators have long focussed on the social basis of this political strategy. Drawing on Henri Lefebvre’s work on the social production of space and on Maurice Halbwachs’ examination of collective memory, I show that Absalom’s strategy also had a spatial dimension: he rendered judgment in a location with particular significance in tribal memory, the city gates. Recently, archaeological evidence has come to light suggesting a civic function for city gates before the monarchic period. The law codes of Deuteronomy remember a time when city gates were the site of legal decisions rendered by tribal elders (Deut 22:15; 25:7). According to Josh 20:4, the accidental manslayer could seek an audience before tribal elders at the city gate in order to request refuge. “Those entering/leaving the gates of a town,” was apparently an expression connoting tribal members with the ability to enter legal contracts with outsiders (Gen 23:10; 34:24; cf. Ruth 3:11). In a later period, the story of Ruth still portrayed the legal transaction of redemption as taking place by the city gate (Ruth 4:1, 11). The city gate, then, was the traditional site of tribal decision making, including decisions about important legal cases. The House of David, however, had shifted the space of legal decision making to the palace, where the king sat, as stated explicitly in 1 Kgs 7:7 and as implied, perhaps, by 1 Kgs 3:15–16 (contrast 1 Kgs 22:10). Absalom’s brilliance, then, lay not only in his charismatic manner but also in his strategic choice of a particular place. By rendering judgment in the traditional tribal space of legal decision making, he sought to align himself with traditional tribal structures of authority and hoped to gain tribal support for his ascent to the throne.


Naboth's Vineyard and Max Gluckman's Hierarchy of Estates in Land
Program Unit: Biblical Law
Stephen C. Russell, Princeton Theological Seminary

According to 1 Kgs 21, Naboth the Jezreelite refused to sell king Ahab his vineyard. Ahab’s wife Jezebel arranged for the execution of Naboth on false charges, paving the way for Ahab to take possession of Naboth’s land. Commentators have long puzzled over the legal basis of this land transaction. Some posit that Ahab was a distant relative of Naboth and thus entitled to redeem ancestral property following Naboth’s death, others suggest that Ahab held the royal right to seize land at will. The narrative, however, supports neither reading. It does not assume the legal principle of inalienable family land--Ahab’s offer to purchase the vineyard is not portrayed as illegal. Nor does the narrative assume the unhindered power of the king over land--Ahab sulks and sees no way forward after Naboth’s refusal to sell. I propose that Ahab’s acquisition of Naboth’s vineyard is better understood in light of anthropologist Max Gluckman’s work on the hierarchy of estates in land. According to Gluckman, several individuals and groups at different levels in a tribal society hold different kinds of rights in the same piece of land. He distinguishes between estates of use and estates of administration, nested in a hierarchy. Rights entail and are contingent upon responsibilities. Those with rights of use must render social obligations of honor to those with rights of administration. Otherwise, they forfeit their right to land. I trace here the relevance of Gluckman’s thesis to several ancient Near Eastern land transaction texts (the Obelisk of Maništušu, RE 7, RE 16, RE 34, PRU III 16.170, PRU IV 17.123, AIT 17, and Ekalte 2) and to 1 Kgs 21. As Gluckman’s work and these ANE parallels suggest, the nature of Naboth’s alleged crime is of central importance here. Naboth was convicted of reviling god and king. He was publicly shown to have failed in his duty to honor those with estates of administration in the land; he thus his rights to that land. His vineyard then reverted up the hierarchy of estates and Ahab took private possession of it.


"He Was Not a Father": Josephine Butler and the Interpretation of "Things Hard to Understand" in the Works of Paul
Program Unit: Recovering Female Interpreters of the Bible
Amanda Russell-Jones, University of Birmingham

Josephine Butler(1828-1906) addressed some of the most powerful men of the Victorian world and arguably had the greatest single impact of any woman of her day in advancing the cause of women’s equality as she lectured politicians, campaigned in elections and persuaded Cambridge dons to allow girls to sit Higher Examinations, thus paving the way for women’s colleges. In her twenties, faced with the attitude of Oxford men towards the female sex, Butler’s initial resolution was "to speak little with men and much with God." This was more than acceptable in the society of her day. Her later urging of other female speakers to show more anger was most certainly not! How did she interpret the Bible and Paul in particular, so that she did not feel bound by the silence enjoined by Paul and expected by her male peers? How is it possible that, nevertheless, she could still refer to "the beautiful epistle of Timothy"? This paper will examine how she became a confident and innovative Biblical interpreter through a Christocentric hermeneutic which privileged what she called the "humanness" of Christ over the "things hard to understand in Paul." Her criticism not just of Paul’s statements but the Apostle’s use of Scripture will be examined. "He was not a father," she states in rejecting Paul’s allegorical usage in Galatians of the narrative of Hagar and Sarah. This will be explored in relation to her own "motherly" typological exposition as she asserts that Hagar is "The Typical Outcast"- representative of women oppressed by chattel slavery and women oppressed by the sexual double standard. Butler’s Biblical interpretation convinced her contemporary Hugh Price Hughes that "the Bible will never be properly understood until it is interpreted by women as well as men."


The Jews Worship Angels: Early Scribal Reception of a New Testament Trope
Program Unit: Early Jewish Christian Relations
William Rutherford, Houston Baptist University

Scholars have often posited a measure of interdependence between the texts of Kerygma Petrou and Apology of Aristides, suggesting that they share a common source or have a relationship of direct literary borrowing. Notably, these texts evince similar semantic patterns and engage in a process of classifying human groups, positioning “Christians” as a genos alongside “Jews” and other populations in the Empire. In their respective strategies of articulating “Christian” difference, these texts also emphasize the observance of feast days as a quintessentially “Jewish” practice. And in both Kerygma and Apology (Syriac) this latter claim is closely integrated with the curious accusation that Jews worship angels. This presentation examines the specific claim of Jewish angel-devotion in Kerygma and Apology with a view to its literary function in these texts and to implications that it may have regarding a formal literary relationship between them. The claim that Jews worship angels appears to be rooted in certain New Testament textual traditions that regard the ritual prescriptions of Torah as mediated through an angel(s). Yet Kerygma and Apology have adapted and advanced this New Testament topos quite differently in their respective arguments in relation to the Jews. This suggests that the theme served quite distinctive (and even competitive) functions among various communities of early Christian readers. This literary approach also sheds some light on the question of the verisimilitude of these Christian accusations against Jews.


Exploring the Depth of the Politics of the Gospel of Matthew: Brokership, Diabolic Dominion, and the Distinction between National and Municipal Level Politics in the First Gospel
Program Unit: Matthew
Jordan Ryan, McMaster University

Recent examinations of the politics of the Gospel of Matthew have explored the challenge which Matthew presents to Roman imperialism. This paper goes beyond that notion towards an understanding of how the Jewish leadership and the Pharisees fit into the overall schematic of Matthean politics. Rather than positing Rome as the primary Matthean political opponent, this paper proposes that Matthew presents the devil as Jesus’ primary political opponent, a patron for whom Rome is a power broker of whose power the Herodians and Jerusalem leadership partake as clients. Moreover, previous examinations of the political dimension of Matthew's gospel have largely focused on the national/imperial level, and have left the local/municipal level of political discourse unaccounted for. This paper seeks to address the role of local/municipal level politics in Matthew, through incorporating recent synagogue research into an examination of the political dimension of Jesus' Galilean ministry. The national/imperial level of political discourse at which Jesus engages the devil, Rome, the Herodians and the Jerusalem leadership is thus distinguished from the synagogue-based local/municipal level of political discourse at which Jesus engages the Pharisees in Galilee. This distinction allows for an understanding of Matthew's politics which accounts not only for the Matthean challenge to Roman imperialism and to Rome's clients, but also for Jesus' engagement and criticism of the Pharisees throughout the gospel narrative.


Christian teaching(s), pagan genre: the incarnation in the Latin biblical epics of Late Antiquity
Program Unit:
Gabriela Ryser, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

With the growing confidence which accompanied the rise of their religion in the 4th century CE, Christian authors in the Latin West at the time finally made their attempt at the poetic genre par excellence, the epic. As the classical texts – and among them very prominently Vergil’s Aeneid – still formed the backbone of the educational system followed by both pagans and Christians, writers like Juvencus, Sedulius, and Arator were perfectly familiar with the conventions and language required by this form of poetry. However, being of Christian faith, they could apparently not approve of the traditional subject matter treated in epic poems. Their endeavour of avoiding this flaw by rendering core Christian texts and teachings in the most traditional genre which bears typically pagan connotations, might, consequently, be characterized by the tension between poetic form and content, classical paideia and Christian religion. Therefore, whether and how this twofold demand on these authors to write biblical and at the same time epic texts, shaped their literary depiction and also their exegetical approach to Christian doctrines is of central interest in the study of biblical epics. Focusing on the Christian epicists’ literary treatment of the concept of incarnation will thus shed some light on the interaction of both their educational and the religious background.


Early Christian Literature Preserved in Arabic Translation: The Significance of the Manuscript Witnesses
Program Unit: Manuscripts from Eastern Christian Traditions
Timothy B. Sailors, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen

Arabic witnesses to Christian literature of the earliest periods have been given very little attention, even by specialists. This is unfortunate, given what they can tell us about this literature. This paper aims to draw attention to these Arabic witnesses by offering a broad overview and general assessment of the Arabic manuscript witnesses (or potential witnesses) to this literature. These include not only catenae, but also running texts. The following second-century Christian literature or traditions are covered in this summary: the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch, a fragment of or tradition about Papias of Hierapolis or the Pericope adulterae, the Longer Ending of the Gospel of Mark, the Apology of Aristides, the Paidika Ièsou (a.k.a. the “Infancy Gospel of Thomas”), the Protevangelium Jacobi, Tatian’s Diatessaron, fragments attributed to Melito of Sardis and Irenaeus of Lyon, the Acts of Andrew and Matthias in the City of the Cannibals, the Acts of Peter, the Acts of Paul, and fragments of Clement of Alexandria. Though such an overview precludes any detailed analysis, it does offer additional evidence to be considered by those working with this second-century literature in other languages — evidence which is often otherwise overlooked.


Rebirth of Descent: Rabbinic Conversion as Invention of Fictive Ethnicity
Program Unit: Religious World of Late Antiquity
Joe Sakurai, University of Tokyo

In this presentation, I will examine the ways in which Gentile conversion (giyyur) in rabbinic Judaism shaped its own construction of Jewishness by uncovering the dynamics of how the notion of ethnicity and genealogical descent defined religious identity in antiquity. Palestine of the Tannaitic period saw the emerging development of the rabbinic conversion process, undoubtedly redefining and expanding the cultural parameters of its genealogical conceptions of Jewishness. There is evidence in rabbinic sources that Gentile converts are regarded as those born of Jewish seed. As Avi Sagi and Zvi Zohar argue, conversion is perhaps understood to be a birth; it enables a Gentile to be symbolically born as a Jew. Although the rabbis seem to have been aware of the constructed nature of the convert’s identity, yet they stressed the significance of ethnicity and genealogical descent in defining their conceptions of Jewishness. Following the views of Denise Kimber Buell and Caroline Johnson Hodge, who have challenged a widely held view that religion and ethnicity are mutually exclusive, I argue that in antiquity religion acted as a catalyst for rabbinic identity formation to redefine their conceptions of genealogical descent. Calling attention to the halakhic discourse of conversion, I will explore how religion and genealogy were mutually meshed to construct a “fictive” kinship structure in defining ethnic membership. With careful textual analysis of the sugya of the Yerushalmi Bikkurim 1:4 64a as well as the Bavli Yebamot 22a, I suggest Gentile converts should be defined as what Joshua Levinson calls “fictive ethnicity,” whose genealogical descent itself was socially and fictively constructed and subject to change, indicating that ethnicity in antiquity was understood as fluid and discursively open to negotiation in identity formation. Attention will also be paid to the contemporaneous development of early Christian self-definition and its ethnic reasoning in reference to the views held by Buell and Johnson Hodge.


How to Do Surveillance with Words: Acoustic Immanence and Divine Supervision in Early Monasticism
Program Unit: Religious World of Late Antiquity
Tudor Andrei Sala, Yale University

The omnivident gaze of God was collectively tangible in early monasticism not only in the utterances of clairvoyant monastics. Monks were confronted with the all-encompassing divine surveillance, which closely observed transgressions of thought, word, and deed, also in the appalling imprecations that enforced and divinely legitimated some of the monastic rules they were supposed to follow. This practice had a venerable tradition both in the Ancient Near East and the Graeco-Roman world. Manipulating popular fears, early monastic leaders could employ curses to regulate behavior and even more so as a means of keeping the community pure from unobserved pollution. Being cursed, the malefactor was symbolically excommunicated and left in the hands of God. For this to happen, the ideology of monastic curses relied on the notion of an all-encompassing divine surveillance. Only the close scrutiny of God could guarantee that the curses actually worked, for the sinner was watched even when he or she thought they were escaping the eyes of their fellow monastics.


The Pigmented Text: Reading for Art in Manichaean Literature
Program Unit: Art and Religions of Antiquity
Tudor Andrei Sala, Yale University

The great discoveries of Manichaean manuscripts in the early twentieth century caught scholars for decades in a textual trap. With rich literary sources to decipher and explore, the few remnants of Manichaean art fell into neglect, even though most of them were recovered in the very same expeditions that brought back to light the long lost Manichaean books. The allure of the text was stronger than that of the image. However, Hans-Joachim Klimkeit, and more recently Zsuzsanna Gulacsi, reminded us of the Manichaean outside-of-text: book illuminations, mural paintings, and painted and embroidered textiles. The pioneering publications of these two scholars, and of few others, put an end to the text-focused approach to Manichaean religious discourse. My paper, which aims to contribute to this iconic shift in Manichaean studies, marshals evidence that suggests that the Manichaean texts are not simple repositories of circumstantial references to lost Manichaean art. Some of the texts were actually written within an iconic context—explaining, describing, or interpreting—a now lost Manichaean artifact. By relocating Manichaean religious discourse in its artistic context, I draw into focus the fragmented materiality of Manichaean visual culture scattered in the Manichaean books. From behind the texts, vanished Manichaean artifacts emerge, some mysterious, others until now unknown. The result is partial glimpses on lost artwork that shaped Manichaean literature, for example Mani’s elusive Picture-Book or remarkable pictorial cycles of apostolic heroes such as Thecla and Paul.


Inheriting the Earth: Ps. 37:29, Q.21:105, and the Dominion of the Righteous
Program Unit: Qur'an and Biblical Literature
Walid Saleh, University of Toronto

Q.21:105, which quotes Ps. 37:29, promises earth to the righteous. Who were the righteous? And how does the Quran understand the phrase "inheriting the earth"? Muslim exegetes, interestingly, were ill at ease with a promise so categorical. The commentary tradition has preserved clear sings of internal dispute among Muslims about how to understand such a promise made by God. The early Islamic conquest left a dark shadow on this promise, which is the opposite of what we would have expected. Triumphalism is muted, and instead an insistence on a spiritual understanding is attempted. Yet the dominion of God on earth remained alluring and the tension in the tradition is clear. This paper will attempt to understand the notion of inheritance both in the Quran and the commentary tradition.


The Archaeology of Nazareth: A History of Pious Fraud?
Program Unit: Metacriticism of Biblical Scholarship
René Salm, University of Oregon

This presentation will be divided into two parts. The first part will consist of brief survey of the most significant material finds from the Nazareth basin as they relate to the existence of a settlement there at the turn of the era, namely: (a) the lack of general material evidence from c. 700 BCE to c. 100 CE; (b) the 25 CE+ dating of the earliest oil lamps at Nazareth; (c) the 50 CE+ dating of all the post-Iron Age tombs at Nazareth, which are of the kokh type; and (d) the existence of Middle Roman tombs under the Church of the Annunciation. The second part of the presentation will focus on the question of “pious fraud” as this may relate to the history of Nazareth archaeology. Three aspects will be touched upon: (a) The non-rigorous nature of “Christian archaeology” wherein priests train in seminaries and are unable to conduct a rigorous modern excavation; (b) The monopoly exercised in Nazareth by the Catholic Church, evident in Church ownership of the “Venerated Sites” where most of the digging has taken place (thus limiting access, evaluation, and publication); (c) A persistent history of error, internal contradiction, and outright fraud which continues to mar critical findings from Nazareth.


Sacred and Profane in Sumerian and Biblical Proverbs: A Comparative Viewpoint
Program Unit: Assyriology and the Bible
Nili Samet, Bar-Ilan University

One of the most influential theories regarding the redactional history of the Book of Proverbs suggests a distinction between earlier, profane proverbs and later pious ones. According to this theory, a Yahwistic redactor used various tools such as additions, rearrangement and reinterpretation to place the older secular wisdom in a new religious framework. During the last decades, however, this dichotomy has been heavily criticized. Instead of interpreting the religious proverbs as contradicting the profane ones, scholars began to view the two types as complementary, and sometimes even as synonymic. I would like to examine this issue from a comparative viewpoint, namely, in light of the Sumerian Proverb Collections. These collections are generally considered to be purely 'secular', but a thorough examination shows that they include many religious components. My paper will examine the relation between 'secular' and 'religious' contents within the Sumerian Proverb Collections, and its implications on theological and redactional aspects of the Book of Proverbs.


New Syriac Inscriptions from the Qadisha Valley, Lebanon
Program Unit: Syriac Literature and Interpretations of Sacred Texts
Gaby Abou Samra, Lebanese University

This paper presents newly discovered Syriac inscriptions from the Qadisha Valley in Lebanon. The discussion places the new evidence in the context of already known inscriptional evidence that is found either carved in stone, painted in fresco on walls, or preserved in other media, from several churches, monasteries, and hermitages in that region. The analysis of the inscriptions casts new light on already published material, improving on established readings and offering new interpretations. The newly discovered inscriptions will be presented to the public for the first time. Taken together, all the text shed new light on the history of the Qadisha Valley and its inhabitants throughout the different periods of its history.


Crucifixion in Early Christianity
Program Unit: Historical Jesus
Gunnar Samuelsson, University of Gothenburg

The research on The Historical Jesus is known for a high level of critical scholarship. Problems connected to nearly every part of the life of the historical Jesus have been addressed and questioned, with maybe one exception. There is a firm consensus about what happened on Calvary. Even famously critical scholars offer detailed accounts of the death of Jesus. The basis for this knowledge will be addressed in the present paper. A basic theory that will be discussed is that the meaning of the words commonly connected to crucifixion changed with the death of Jesus. The execution Jesus charged the hitherto diversely used terms (see my book Crucifixion in Antiquity: An Inquiry into the Background and Significance of the New Testament Terminology of Crucifixion [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011]) with a historically new and distinct meaning, that which we today call crucifixion. My aim with the present paper is to apply this theory on early Christian literature. In what sense does the usage of the terminology among the early Christians differ from the earlier usage? Is it possible to trace any semantic evolution in the texts at all? The reason behind the question is an objection raised against my earlier book on crucifixion that the ambiguity of the earlier texts diminishes or even disappears after the turn of the first Century. An accompanying objection is that when the pictorial contributions of the time, e.g., the so-called staurogram, also are taken into consideration the vague picture of the punishment becomes clear. The detailed information of the fate of the Historical Jesus could be fount is this younger material. My preliminary research points however in another direction. The striking ambiguity of the older texts is far more present in the younger texts – and depictions – that is commonly assumed. By that the detailed knowledge of what struck the historical Jesus on Calvary might basically be without support.


How Did Biblical Literature Begin? Epigraphy, Theory, and Anachronism
Program Unit: Ugaritic Studies and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy
Seth Sanders, Trinity College - Hartford

This talk will analyze recent approaches to using empirical evidence, especially epigraphy, in reconstructing early stages of biblical literature in the historical context of the Iron Age Levant. It will discuss methodological problems and promising ways forward, and conclude with guidelines for attuning ourselves to ancient voices and contexts in the material and literary evidence and avoiding anachronism.


Naming the Dead: State Formation and Ancestor Formation in the Iron Age Levant
Program Unit: Ritual in the Biblical World
Seth Sanders, Trinity College - Hartford

Amorite kings of the Old Babylonian period shared with Hittite kings an interesting practice of making funerary offerings to "kin," such as Sargon, Naram-Sin, or the tribe of Hana, from whom they were not actually descended. This practice, attested from the Genealogy of the Hammurapi Dynasty to Mari kispu and Hittite šarrena rituals, worked to forge power relationships with the dead. It did this by allowing the current ruler to inhabit the ritual role of guardian and successor to hungry and needy but still powerful groups of dead, emblematized in the famous West Semitic royal name ?ammu-rapi? "(my) kinsman-is-(the powerful ancestor) Rapi". The benefits this relationship offered are stated most explicitly in later Ugaritic rituals for the veneration of the rapa?uma or "fixers," an influential social class of dead ancestors. But in the first millennium this type of dead ancestor is demoted to a feeble and impotent group of shades, the distant repha?îm of the Bible. Was this the result of some pious monotheistic rejection of myth? Given that the biblical evidence tends to be highly mythic, hardly monotheistic, and very hard to precisely date, a more concrete historical explanation must be sought. Based on a comparison of funerary themes in Anatolian and North-West Semitic inscriptions with Deuteronomistic narrative, this paper will connect the death of the repha?îm with the rejection of prestigious ancestors and the rise of new sources of power and relations to the past in the Iron Age.


Towards the Identification of the Model of Scripture in the Apotropaic Record of Late Antique Egypt
Program Unit: Christianity in Egypt: Scripture, Tradition, and Reception
Joseph E. Sanzo, University of California-Los Angeles

The use of the “Christian” scriptures in apotropaic circumstances was a well-established ritual tactic in late antique Egypt. Whether forming part of a large and formally complex ritual or the only recognizable element on the apotropaic device (e.g., an amulet), citations from the Psalms, the Gospels, and other portions of the scriptures are ubiquitous in the extant record. While this phenomenon has been widely recognized and treated in scholarship, little attention has been paid to the conception and textual model of the scriptures, which is presupposed by these artifacts. It is simply assumed that the Bible, as a collection of entire books, was the operative model behind this ritual tactic. It is the purpose of this preliminary essay to challenge this assumption, arguing that (1) the prominence of individual units from the scriptures (e.g., [portions of] a given psalm, Gospel pericopae, etc.) and (2) the arrangement of these units on a hierarchical scheme of relevance suggests that a different model was operative, something akin to the late antique miscellany. The identification of this model has at least two broader implications for understanding the apotropaic world of late antique Egypt. First, this way of viewing the scriptures helped to facilitate the authoritative status of ritual specialists: in a world where not every passage “worked” against demons, ritual specialists were the perceived “experts,” knowing which passages from scripture would be most efficacious for healing, exorcism, etc. Second, this model challenges a pars pro toto relationship between the Gospel incipits (i.e., the opening words and/or titles of the Gospels) and the Gospels, which is the dominant view in scholarship.


Theological Metaphysics and the Ethics of Interpretation in Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana
Program Unit: Development of Early Christian Theology
Darren Sarisky, University of Cambridge

This paper proposes to investigate the relationship between Augustine’s exposition of “things” in book 1 of De Doctrina Christiana as the necessary background for his treatment of the interpretation of unknown and ambiguous “signs” in books 2 and 3. More specifically, the proposal is that Augustine’s view of the proper norms for interpreting signs are intelligible only against the backdrop of his theological view of Scripture, according to which it consists of signs that directs its readers toward the Trinity. Much of the research that has been done in recent decades on the interpretive techniques that patristic theologians applied to the Bible has focused on the historical origin of these techniques; that is, it has revealed how patristic theologians took up reading strategies that they learned in their education. This research has been tremendously illuminating, but the present paper seeks to delve further into the relationship of these techniques to the theological metaphysics that Augustine sets out in the first book of his treatise. In this sense, an ethics of interpretation follows from Augustine’s commitment to a theological metaphysics, the key to which is his doctrine of the Trinity.


Masoreric Elements in Medieval Karaite Manuscripts
Program Unit: Masoretic Studies
Ilana Sasson, Sacred Heart University

Yefet ben Eli was a Karaite sage who lived in Jerusalem in the tenth century. He translated the entire Bible into Judeo-Arabic and wrote a systematic commentary in that language on every verse of Scripture. Yefet’s work was held in great esteem. The abundance of copies of his commentaries in Geniza collections attests to their popularity. Yefet’s manuscripts date from the 11th to 19th centuries. While his entire work is written in Judeo-Arabic, his earliest manuscripts are written in Arabic characters, whereas the later ones are written in Hebrew characters. Examining these manuscripts we find that they include different elements of masorah both in the body of the text and in the para-text. Some of the topics that will be treated in this paper are: the order of the biblical books in Yefet’s codex; an attempt to surmise the division into pisqa’ot according to his codex; evidence of an alternative system of text division; the exegetical meaning of Kere/Ketiv; the hermeneutic value of the trop system; and the role of the copyists in the preservation of Masorah.


Siege Mentality
Program Unit: Warfare in Ancient Israel
Jack M. Sasson, Vanderbilt University

When cities are besieged, opposite forces often have to settle down for the duration on either side of fortifications. This paper focuses on the discourses, negotiations, banter, wisecracks, and tricks that occur on these occasions. Illustrations will draw mostly from Old Babylonian letters of the Mari Age.


”The Intimate Link”: The Ecumenical Contribution of Fulfilled in Your Hearing
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Craig A. Satterlee, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago

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Dominique Barthélemy’s Contribution to Masoretic Studies
Program Unit: Masoretic Studies
Harold P. Scanlin, international Organization for Masoretic Studies

Dominique Barthélemy (1921 - 2002) undertook, on behalf of the United Bible Societies, the leadership of the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project, intended to direct Bible translators to make text-critical decisions based on the latest in textual research and manuscript evidence. He incorporated consideration of masoretic issues in the UBS HOTTP Committee’s work, which may be found in Barthélemy reports, Critique textuelle de l’Ancien Testament (4 volumes). The massive introductions to the first three volumes are now available in English, Studies in the Text of the Old Testament (Eisenbruans, 2012), providing a wider audience access to information on the importance of masora in relation to exegetical and text-critical issue. Barthélemy demonstrates the value of masora to the general field of Hebrew Bible studies. At this juncture it seems appropriate to offer an assessment of his work and its value to the field of masoretic studies.


Laying the Pedagogical Groundwork for ‘Green’ Preaching: Using Social Movement Theory to Undergird Eco-justice Sermons
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Leah Schade, Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia

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Indications and Implications of a Seventh Day in Psalm 104
Program Unit: Sabbath in Text and Tradition
A. Rahel Schafer, Andrews University

Although Psalm 104 contains similarities to Egyptian solar hymns, the portrayal of Yahweh’s ultimate power and provision for his creatures transforms and reapplies the Canaanite picture. Along with other scholars, I see Psalm 104 as a poetic reenactment of the creation narratives. Although some contend that Psalm 104 is governed by various Hebrew verbs rather than the six-day creation order, the striking lexical parallels and similar basic structures seem to form a foundation around which these other verbal patterns are situated. The broad structural similarities between Psalm 104 and Job 38–41 corroborate this connection with creation by highlighting God’s care and provision for all his creatures. However, the relationship between creation and Psalm 104 is not limited to the first six days. In this paper, I analyze the relationship between Ps 104:27-35 and the Sabbath in Gen 2:1-4. Both passages revolve around similar sounding Hebrew words, and mention God’s creative power, blessing, and the works of God. In addition, Ps 104:27–30 seems to broadly summarize Genesis 2, including references to the breath of life given to animals and humans. This connection with the Sabbath relates to Exod 20:8–11 (cf. Deut 5:12–15), which also involves animals in the command to rest and be rejuvenated. In addition, I examine the parallels between other Sabbath passages and Psalm 104. For example, the title of Psalm 92 describes it as a song for the Sabbath that calls for singing praises to God, reflected in Ps 104:33; Ps 104:35 discusses the perishing of sinners, paralleling Ps 92:7, where evildoers will be no more; and God rejoices in his works in Ps 104:31, similar to Ps 92:5, where humans rejoice in God’s works. Thus, I contend that Psalm 104 affirms the important aspects of Sabbath rest, and provides further support for the environmental implications of the links between Sabbath and creation.


Wisdom and the Norms of Prophetic Critique in the Twelve
Program Unit: Book of the Twelve Prophets
Aaron Schart, Universität Duisburg-Essen

Since Wellhausen it became clear that the critique of the prophets was not based on the legal stipulations contained in the Torah. For example there are only few and disputed allusions to the decalogue in the book of the Twelve. As an alternative, it has been proposed by Hans Walter Wolff and others that norms from the wisdom tradition formed the basis, from which the prophets judged the behavior of their addressees. The paper will try to trace the influence of wisdom within the different stages of the redaction history of the Twelve.


Laughing at/with Adam and Eve: Humor as Subversion and Affirmation of Genesis 1–3
Program Unit: Bible and Popular Culture
Linda S. Schearing, Gonzaga University

Everyone loves a good laugh. But while humor is a seemingly non-threatening mode of discourse, the opposite is often true. This presentation examines how both verbal (jokes) and visual (cartoons) humor based on Genesis 1-3 reflect both affirmation and subversion of cultural expectations concerning gender perceptions and practices.


An Anti-prophet among the Prophets? On the Relationship of Jonah to Prophecy
Program Unit: Book of the Twelve Prophets
Annette Schellenberg, San Francisco Theological Seminary

The Book of Jonah is an atypical prophetic book. Some even claim that Jonah is a caricature of a prophet. Yet, the book with the same name became one of the 12 Prophets. Apparently, the relationship between Jonah and Prophecy is complex. Taking up observations of others, in my paper I will argue that the role of prophets is one of the main topics in Jonah. Most obvious in this regard is Jon 4:2 where Jonah formulates that he did not want to prophecy against Nineveh because he knew that YHWH is going to change his mind. Here as well as at many other points, the book of Jonah is in intertextual dialogue with other writings of the OT. Beyond questions of content such intertextual relationships are interesting because they indicate that the authors of the book of Jonah were learned scribes – as it is typical for the authors and redactors of younger prophetic texts. After summarizing how the figure of Jonah is depicted in the book of Jonah and where the latter is in intertextual dialogue with other books, in my paper I will focus on the question about the self-understanding of the people in whose circles such a book could have been written and handed down to future generations. I will point out several tensions: cases that indicate both a high self-esteem and self-criticism of these people, instances that imply that they both felt as important as the classical prophets and inferior to them. My thesis is that these discrepancies have to do with the changes in prophecy in post-exilic times and the tensions in the self-understanding of the “literate prophets”.


From Wise King to Royal Wise: On the "Royalization" of the Sage in OT Wisdom Literature
Program Unit: Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
Annette Schellenberg, San Francisco Theological Seminary

Throughout the ancient Near East there were close connections between kings and sages. Scholars mainly have investigated one aspect of this “royal connection” of wisdom: how wisdom was fostered at royal courts and how wisdom was considered to be one of the characteristics of kings. This paper focuses on another aspect: how the sage is depicted as a king in ancient Near Eastern wisdom texts, and especially in the canonical and deuterocanonical wisdom books of the Old Testament. After an introduction that deals with the interconnectedness of these two aspects, I will draw the attention on different strategies of how the sage was “royalized” in ANE and especially OT Wisdom texts: the metaphor of a coronation of the sage, descriptions of royal deeds (like the fight against chaos and the protection of the poor) and acquisitions (like long life, wealth, health, and honor) of the sage, and statements about a special proximity of the royal sage with God (cf. the sage as the “son” of God, or the “image” of God). The paper concludes with a short discussion of OT texts that criticize the idea of a royal wise (Job; Eccl; Ps 8; Gen 1).


The Samaritan Pentateuch — Its Importance for the Textual History of the Hebrew Bible
Program Unit:
Adrian Schenker, University of Fribourg

The Pentateuch or the Torah, consisting of the five books of Moses, stands as the core of the Hebrew Bible. It contains many of the central tenets of the Jewish and Christian religions. The text of the Pentateuch has been transmitted at least since the 5th century BCE. It is known in a Jewish recension, the so-called Masoretic text. Another important edition, with some differences, is the text read and transmitted by the Samaritans. By comparing editions, textual historians are able to determine which text of a literary work is its earlier or more original form. An example of this in the case of the Torah is the passage in the fifth book of Moses, Deut 11:30. Here the Samaritan text contains two words, “opposite Shechem,” which do not occur in the Masoretic text. It can be shown that these two words in the Samaritan text may well have belonged to the original text.


Joshua’s Circumcision (Josh 5:1–9)
Program Unit: Transmission of Traditions in the Second Temple Period
Adrian Schenker, Université de Fribourg - Universität Freiburg

Joshua’s circumcision (Josh 5:1-9) is an example of theological correction and rewriting of a Biblical text. It has implications for the general conception of how we understand the text-history of the Bible. The complexity of the Greek and Old Latin text of this passage shows the difficulty raised by a Biblical tradition that contradicts the Pentateuch. This passage also illustrates the general tendency in Biblical research to cling to a smooth non-problematical Hebrew text, at the same time ignoring other text witnesses which would indicate that the textual history is far for from simple and straight-forward.


The Construction and Codification of Origenist Traditions: The Intersection of Heresiology, Scholia, and Text in the Late Ancient Archetype of Codex von der Goltz (Gregory-Aland 1739)
Program Unit: Religious World of Late Antiquity
Eric Scherbenske, Independent Scholar

In the late fourth century, when Origen’s legacy came under increasingly intense scrutiny, Epiphanius of Salamis expressly tried to bind him to a heretical tradition, in which he reprised earlier heretics (such as Gnostics, Valentinians, and Marcionites) and prefigured later ones (such as Arians, Anomoeans, and Pneumatomachians). Epiphanius contrasted this heretical tradition with an orthodox ecclesiastical “tradition (paradosis) of the Fathers” that linked back to the Apostles. Around this time a late ancient scholar prepared an edition of Acts and the Catholic and Pauline epistles that presented a scriptural textual tradition expressly collated with and, in places, reconstructed from Origen’s commentaries; this text was additionally circumscribed by numerous marginal notes (i.e. scholia) drawn primarily from Origen’s works, but also interlarded with less divisive and more orthodox figures such as Irenaeus, Clement, Eusebius, and Basil. This production thus not only codified Origen’s exegesis as scholia, but also his alleged scriptural text. This fourth/fifth-century production then served as the archetype of multiple traditions and was most importantly preserved in a tenth-century manuscript known as Codex von der Goltz (Gregory-Aland 1739); furthermore, its preservation here may not even be simply fortuitous, since J. Neville Birdsall and Caroline Hammond Bammel have shown that other New Testament manuscripts (M, 1908, 4, 6) and select scholia codified in a collection of catena (Vat Pal 204) can be traced back to this same archetype—possibly hinting at its active dissemination. I argue here that in this archetype, upon which Codex von der Goltz depends, we see an attempt to defend and rehabilitate the much-maligned Origen at the end of the fourth century by constructing an orthodox (and Origenist) exegetical tradition, wherein Origen’s place is central and secure—a tradition that then quite literally circumscribed a physical textual tradition. The debates and concerns over Origen’s legacy, epitomized in Epiphanius’s construction of a heretical tradition, are thus engaged and deflected: 1) by forging an alternative exegetical tradition that defended Origen through alignment with an orthodox patristic tradition; and 2) by deploying this tradition in the margins to circumscribe and thus mediate an accompanying textual tradition codified and figured as Origen’s.


"Wisdom and Torah" in Proverbs and in the Book of the Twelve
Program Unit: Book of the Twelve Prophets
Bernd Schipper, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Older research often declared wisdom as a kind of an “alien corpus” in the Old Testament. Especially the book of Proverbs was seen as something that has nothing (or very little) to do with the main theological traditions of biblical Israel. The paper presents the thesis that the book of Proverbs participated in a discourse on Wisdom and Torah which influenced Proverbs not only at specific points but also shaped the book as a whole. This theological debate on the status of Torah can be found in different literature from the Persian and early Hellenistic periods and affected wisdom literature as well as late prophetic texts. After an overview of the thesis itself, the paper will give some examples from Proverbs and the book of the Twelve which can show that theological wisdom in Proverbs is not far away from the phenomenon of scribal exegesis in late prophecy.


Scribal Exegesis and the Book of Proverbs
Program Unit: Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
Bernd U. Schipper, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

In his article “Is the ‘Wisdom Tradition’ a Tradition?” Mark Sneed argues that “the same authors who composed the wisdom literature are also responsible for the composition and/or preservation of the other types of literature” (CBQ 73, 2011, 54). Sneed’s main argument is that all literature is of scribal origin. As a result, one should not separate between prophets, priests, and scribes as previous scholarship used to do. The presentation takes this assumption as a starting point and focuses on some literary evidence from the book of Proverbs and the book of Jeremiah. All texts allude to passages from Deuteronomy but do not follow the deuteronomistic theology in the same way. Moreover, a closer examination of the texts shows that the authors used the same literary technique (“scribal exegesis”) but came to different accentuations. Against the backdrop of the Ancient Near East in general and Egyptian wisdom texts in special, one cannot say that this gives support to a courtly nature of Proverbs but to a scribal setting where texts were written by literati. These literati (in the post-exilic time: priests) were familiar with the theological traditions of Ancient Israel but argued on the base of different theologies. Even if the worldview of these scribes “was largely the same” (Sneed, ibid, p. 64) the literary evidence presents different theological concepts.


From Anxiety to Curiosity: Reflections on Teaching Hebrew Online
Program Unit: National Association of Professors of Hebrew
Matthew R. Schlimm, University of Dubuque Theological Seminary

Although instructors can be tempted to make their online courses mirror their on campus courses, such practices often produce poor course sites that make the learning process clumsy and fraught with anxiety. This presentation gives tips for avoiding this pitfall, showing how to create course sites that are clear, orderly, engaging, and dynamic. Drawing on personal experiences and reflections, this presentation describes some of the joys and curiosity that instructors and students can experience when Hebrew is taught online.


The Central Role of Emotions in Biblical Theology, Biblical Ethics, and Popular Conceptions of the Bible
Program Unit: Bible and Emotion
Matthew R. Schlimm, University of Dubuque Theological Seminary

This paper illustrates how emotions are central to [1] biblical theology, [2] biblical ethics, and [3] popular conceptions of the Bible. Few verses are more important to biblical theology than Exod 34:6-7, the description of the Lord passing before Moses. These verses portray God first and foremost in emotional terms, speaking of divine compassion, anger, and love. Regarding biblical ethics, few concepts are more significant than justice, which has close ties with anger, an emotion that arises in response to injustice but ironically can lead to further injustice. Books like Genesis and Proverbs spend considerable time reflecting on the ethical dimensions of this emotion. Finally, regarding what people make of the Bible itself, consider the opinion asserted in some Christian circles that God is angry and wrathful in the OT but loving and compassionate in the NT. Such a claim is immensely problematic. It has close ties with Marcionism and supersessionism, devaluing three-fourths of the Christian canon—all of the Hebrew Scriptures—and giving readers a lens for viewing the NT that screens out meaningful expressions of anger by God and Jesus. In sum, biblical emotions merit careful scholarly attention: we ignore this challenging area of study to the detriment of our work, our discipline, and the broader public.


No Bridge over Troubled Water? The Gap between 2Cor 1–9 and 10–13 Revisited
Program Unit: Second Corinthians: Pauline Theology in the Making
Thomas Schmeller, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main

Most NT scholars assume that 2Cor 1-9 and 10-13 originally belonged to two different letters. Usually, the reasons for this common view result from one of the following fields of observations: 1. The personal relationship between Paul and the Corinthian congregation seems friendly and conciliatory according to 1-9, but difficult and conflictive according to 10-13. 2. The circumstances reflected by the two parts of 2Cor (esp. the role of Paul’s opponents and the visits of Titus in Corinth) seem different. My paper will argue that the arguments belonging to the second field are not convincing. It is not by accident that there is no consensus whatsoever whether 1-9 predates 10-13 or the other way round. If we look at information only which does not belong to the personal, but to the factual level, we cannot really decide what has changed in which direction nor whether anything has changed at all. What we see, then, are clear hints pointing to a change in personal relationship while we do not have clear corresponding hints pointing to a change of the factual situation. One can try to explain this by assuming that the situational circumstances were so familiar to the Corinthians that there was no need to repeat them. This means to start with the discontinuity on the personal level and to conclude that there must have been a corresponding discontinuity in terms of situation. But this is not the only possibility. My paper will propose a different solution. If we go the other way round and start with the continuity on the factual level, we can account for the discontinuity on the personal level by assuming that Paul’s aims are different. Chapters 1-9 and 10-13 do not contradict each other, but are complementary.


Magic's Social Matrix in Early Israel: '...Top Down' or '...Bottom Up'?
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible, History, and Archaeology
Brian Schmidt, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

Magic's Social Matrix in Early Israel: '...Top Down' or '...Bottom Up'?


Luke's Use of Matthew in Crafting the Controversy Sayings in Light of Ancient Compositional Conventions
Program Unit: Synoptic Gospels
Charles J. Schmidt, Duke University

Explaining the literary relationship between the synoptic gospels, especially between Matthew and Luke, has long occupied critical scholars. Arguably the most significant trend in recent study of the synoptic problem has been examining the main solutions in light of what we know about ancient compositional practices. However, scholarship on ancient compositional practices and the synoptic problem—particularly F. Gerald Downing’s key study on the Beelzebul Controversy—has failed to examine the controversy accounts of Matthew and Luke narratively, choosing instead to examine individual pericopae. A comparison of the events in Matthew (12.22-50) and Luke (11.14-33; 12.10 // 6.43-45) in synopsis reveals narrative contradictions in their ordering of events that must be accounted for. My paper addresses this difference in the narratives of Matthew and Luke with special attention to their editorial and literary actions in light of our knowledge of contemporaneous compositional practices. Specifically, in my paper I will analyze the conflicting order of the controversy episodes in the two gospels in order to show that Matthew either engaged in unconventional methods of conflation with his source material, or that Luke ‘fixed’ Matthew’s account by rejiggering the order of events. I argue that Farrer’s Luke, rather than the 2ST’s Matthew, better fits the conventional patterns of ancient writers. In conclusion, this paper, by closely examining the controversy episodes narratively in light of the evidence for ancient compositional conventions, sheds new light on the neglected issue of narrative coherence in synoptic problem studies.


Herod's Edifice Complex
Program Unit: Space, Place, and Lived Experience in Antiquity
Emily A. Schmidt, University of California-Santa Barbara

This paper considers Herodian expansion of the Jewish temple complex from a Roman perspective. In 20 BCE Herod began an extensive expansion and renovation of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. The result was the transformation of a small, relatively unimportant (from the Roman perspective) temple complex into one of the largest temple complexes in the eastern Roman Empire. This paper investigates the significance of this change by contextualizing the expansion with civic competition in the Roman Empire and with Roman thought on temples and asylum and approaches Herod’s expansion with theoretical concern for the way that the use of space and architecture can be manipulated to shape memory and identity. This paper argues that Herod’s expansion of the Jewish temple deliberately engaged Roman spatial and architectural ideals to link an independent Jewish past to current subjugation to Rome, an idea called “the reconfiguration of memory” by Susan E. Alcock. Herod knew how to play the Roman game of civic competition game he understood the threat or challenge an exceptionally large temple to a non-Roman god might be. This expansion may have affected anti-Jewish sentiments among non-Jews by increasing the space in which Jews might assemble at festival and holiday times, while also stirring anti-Roman sentiments among Jews. This paper ultimately seeks to understand how the Romans might have understood Herod’s expansion of the temple: was it seen as a challenge or a threat to Roman overlordship of Judaea? Was Herod staking a claim for more land on behalf of the Jewish god?


The “Binding of Isaac” (Gen 22) as Part of a Pre-Exilic “Elohist” Composition and as Part of the Enneateuch
Program Unit: Pentateuch
Hans-Christoph Schmitt, Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg

The basic stratum of Gen 22 (v. 1-14*.19) emphasizes Abraham’s “fear of God” (22,12). The motif of the “fear of God” connects these passages (Gen 20:11; 22:12; 28:17; 42:19; Exod 1:17,21; 3:5; 18:21; 20:20) as does the use of “elohim” (“God”) as designation of God and are therefore assigned to a pre-exilic “Elohist” stratum of the Pentateuch from the time after the fall of the Northern Kingdom 722 B.C. “Fear of god” not only designates “numinous awe” combined with “confidence in God's guidance in history” (Gen 22:12; 28:17; Ex 20:20), but also “ethical reliability” as consequence of this awe (Gen 20:11; 42:19; Ex 1:17,21; 18:21; Ex 20:20). In Gen 22:12 and Ex 20:20 the recognition of the “fear of God” is the result of God’s “testing” (which is different from Yhwh’s testing of Israel’s obedience to the law in Exod 15:25-26 and others, from late Deuteronomistic layer of the Enneateuch). The theophany Exod 19:10ff.*; 20:18-21* does not present Moses as giver of the Law, but as prophetic leader of the people (cf. Hos 12:14). In a similar way, the “Elohist” layer of Gen 20-22* describes Abraham as prophet (Gen 20:7; see also Abraham’s speeches to his servants and to Isaac Gen 22:5-8; Moses’ intercession Exod 20:18-21*), which answers to the experience of a “hidden God” in the catastrophe of 722 B.C.E. The secondary literary layer, Gen 22,15-18 relates to the promise to Isaac Gen 26:3b-5: Gen 22:18 and 26:5 are the only passages in Genesis that speak of Abraham`s “listening to the voice of Yhwh”. Additionally, both passages mention Yhwh’s promise to make Abraham’s offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and to call Yhwh`s promise to Abraham an oath. Gen 22:15-18 and 26:3b-5 seem to belong to a Enneateuchal redactional layer about “listening to the voice of Yhwh” at every pivotal point in the History of Israel from Abraham to the exile (cf. šmc beqwl in Gen 22:18; 26:5; Ex 5:2; 19:5; 23:21-22; Num 14:22; Dtn 8:20; 9:23; Jos 5:6; 24:24; Judges 2:2.20; 6:10; 1Sam 12:14,15; 15:19,20,22; 2Kings 18:12). This Enneateuch redaction identifies “listening to the voice of Yhwh” with “keeping the laws of Yhwh = his covenant” (Gen 26:5; Ex 19:5, and others). It was probably composed in postexilic times and it presupposes the Deuteronomistic History and the Priestly Source. For this redaction, Abraham`s obedience (to Yhwh’s laws) guarantees Yhwh`s permanent promises to Abraham`s descendants (cf. “for the sake of my servant Abraham” in Gen 26:24) in spite of their disobedience.


Apocalyptic Peace in Romans, with Comparison to the War Scroll (1QM)
Program Unit: Pauline Epistles
Mary K. Schmitt, Princeton Theological Seminary

Studies of peace in Romans have tended to emphasize personal reconciliation to the detriment of cosmic dimensions of peace in Romanns. On the other hand, recent apocalyptic readings of Romans have drawn attention to the proliferation of conflict language, without giving sufficient attention to peace as an apocalyptic theme in Romans. Paul uses the word e????? more frequently in Romans (1:7; 2:10; 3:17; 5:1; 8:6; 14:17, 19; 15:13, 33; 16:20; cf. e????e?e?? 12:18) than in any of his other epistles. Although some of the occurrences of e????? in Romans are directed at interpersonal relationships, other verses suggest a cosmic perspective (e.g. 16:20; 8:6). I will argue that the frequent occurrence of e????? in Romans is not coincidental but part of Paul’s larger apocalyptic vision of God’s redemption, which includes but is not limited to human reconciliation. Finally, I will compare and contrast the apocalyptic themes of conflict and peace in Romans to the War Scroll (1QM), an apocalyptic text in which both conflict and peace are central concerns. In 1 QM, an eschatological conflict results in peace, with important implications for human history. While it is quite difficult to say what, if anything, Paul would have known of 1 QM, the latter provides an interesting point of comparison to a reading of peace as an apocalyptic element in Romans.


Royal Rites of Military Loyalty
Program Unit: Warfare in Ancient Israel
Ruediger Schmitt, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster

In the context of Absalom’s coup de etat two ritual acts by David are reported in 2 Sam 18:1-5 and 2 Sam 19:6-9 that were performed to re-inform or to re-establish community between the king and his military leaders and soldiers (see R. Schmitt, “Der König sitzt im Tor: Überlegungen zum Stadttor als Ort herrschaftlicher Repräsentation im Alten Testament,” UF 32 (2000), 475-485). Using Turner’s theories of liminality and communitas the paper will examine the structure of both rituals, were the city-gate was used as a symbol of liminalty in rituals that were aimed to re-establish communitas between the ritual participants, in a case when communitas is endangered. The paper is both focussing on the symbols of liminality and communitas in those rituals as well as on the theoretical framework applied on these rituals.


Jezebel: A Phoenician Princess Gone Bad?
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
Tammi J. Schneider, Claremont Graduate University

Jezebel is not traditionally viewed as a complicated figure as she is so evil as to deserve little other consideration. This is especially evident in her portrayal in the New Testament where “Jezebel” is used as a generic catchword for a whoring non-believing female adversary. While her characterization is interesting and reveals almost as much about her spouse, Ahab, as it does Jezebel, for the purposes of this session the focus of this paper will be on what her characterization says about the biblical view towards the residents of Tyre. This paper will examine the characterization of Jezebel through her descriptions, actions, and places where she is an object first to gain a fair view of her biblical picture. The focus will then turn towards why the most fully fleshed out Phonecian individual described in the Hebrew Bible is embodied in the character of this woman and what that might be saying about both Northern Israel its relationship with its neighbors.


Johannine Scholarship in the German-Speaking World
Program Unit: Johannine Literature
Udo Schnelle, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg

No abstract


Bible Studies at the Monastery of St. Gall in the 9th Century
Program Unit:
Franziska Schnoor, Abbey Library of St. Gall

The monastery of St. Gall in north-eastern Switzerland was founded in 719, where the monk Gallus had lived in his hermit’s cell about one hundred years before. It became one of the most important spiritual and cultural centers of Europe in the 9th century. One abbot in particular, Hartmut (d. after 895), contributed to the monastery’s theological development. Hartmut was “pro-abbas” (vice abbot) from 849 on, and became abbot after the resignation of his predecessor Grimald in 872. Hartmut also ruled the abbey’s scriptorium. During his tenure, two multi-volume Bibles were written at St. Gall, the so-called “small Bible” and the “large Bible of Hartmut” (their names deriving from the size of the manuscripts). The “large” Bible, in six volumes (all of which are still at St. Gall), was used in the choir of the monastery’s church. The “small Bible” in ten volumes, on the other hand (of which five or six volumes remain at St. Gall), was designed for Hartmut’s personal studies. For the two Bibles commisioned by Hartmut, the monks working at the scriptorium drew on older manuscripts that had been copied at St. Gall, as well as on more recent Bibles, such as the Bible pandects composed by Alcuin of York (c. 730–804) and Theodulf of Orléans (c. 750/60–821). The Bible of Alcuin, inscribed at the abbey of Tours during the lifetime of Alcuin—the oldest complete Alcuinian Bible extant today—is still kept at the Abbey Library of St. Gall (Cod. Sang. 75), whereas the copy of the Theodulfian Bible that was used at St Gall has been lost. Closer examination of volumes from both the “small Bible” and “large Bible of Hartmut,” which contain the prophecy of Ezekiel (Cod. Sang. 46 and 81), reveals that the “small Bible of Hartmut” was copied from older Bible manuscripts kept at St. Gall (Cod. Sang. 44 and 43) and afterwards corrected according to the Bibles of Alcuin and Theodulf. On that occasion, one of the older manuscripts (Cod. Sang. 43) was corrected as well. The emended text was then copied again as one volume of the “large Bible of Hartmut.” Although Alcuin’s Bible served as a model, its authority, however, was by no means regarded as beyond question at St. Gall, as shown by several corrections added in the Touronian manuscript at St. Gall. Thus, the scribes working under Hartmut procured four manuscripts containing the correct text at one go—the older manuscript and its copies, the “small Bible” and “large Bible of Hartmut,” as well as the emended exemplar of Alcuin’s Bible. The Bible text established under Hartmut remained valid at St. Gall at least until the 11th century. This shows how strong local scribal traditions were before what is known today as the “Vulgate” finally became accepted.


White Racism in Homiletic Textbooks: An Initial Glance
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Geoffrey Noel Schoonmaker, First Baptist Church, Valdese NC

*


The (Hypothetic) Hebrew Urtext and Its (Real) Readers: Revisiting the Urtext-Hypothesis in Light of Comparisons between the Samaritan and the Masoretic Text of the Torah
Program Unit: Orality, Textuality, and the Formation of the Hebrew Bible
Stefan Schorch, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg

Within textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible, the so-called Urtext-hypothesis has been one of the most influential principles since the 19th century, being connected most prominently with the name of Paul de Lagarde. In the footsteps of this hypothesis, textual criticism has been aiming at the reconstruction of a single text, which supposedly marked the end of the literary development of a given text. However, this Urtext-hypothesis seems to have especially two weak points: ? There is no clear-cut line between the literary development and the textual transmission. ? The written transmission of a given text cannot be separated from its oral reading and performance, and thus a single written copy may be read in different ways, creating several texts. The paper will illustrate and detail these two points, which are closely intertwined, on the basis of comparisons between the Samaritan and the Masoretic text of the Torah. As a consequence, it will be shown that the analysis of the ways in which the texts of the Hebrew Bible have been read and performed is an important and indispensable element of literary and textual criticism, while the Urtext-hypothesis should be abandoned.


Palestinian Hypertexts: Navigating the Onomasticon
Program Unit: Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism
Jeremy Schott, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

TBA


Echoes of Identity: A New Inscription from Roman Omrit
Program Unit: Archaeology of Religion in the Roman World
Daniel Schowalter, Carthage College

A new paving inscription from the Roman site of Omrit in northern Israel offers a terminus ante quem for the temple complex and also provides additional connections between Omrit and nearby Banias. The inscription also reveals new details about the socio-economic make-up of the region in the first century CE, and is dedicated to a rather unexpected deity, the nymph Echo.


Multiple Literary Editions of 1 Samuel 1?
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Historical Books
Sarah Schreiber, University of Notre Dame

The books of Samuel are a playground for scholars who appreciate the challenges of textual criticism. Already in the opening chapter we are greeted by a host of variants which have invited numerous interpretations. My paper evaluates one way of explaining the many textual variants observed in 1 Samuel 1: the hypothesis of multiple literary editions. According to this theory, the ancient witnesses present at least two distinct stories of Samuel’s birth, each with its own interests and design. Several scholars have proposed such an understanding of 1 Samuel 1, but evidently the first was Professor Stanley Walters in his 1988 article “Hannah and Anna: The Greek and Hebrew Texts of 1 Samuel 1.” Walters compares the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint Codex Vaticanus and concludes that the variants between the two texts form a pattern, demonstrating that each text has been intentionally and consistently shaped in order to portray Hannah a certain way. I test Walters’ thesis using similar methods of textual and literary criticism and argue that the differences he observes are not as significant as he claims. The Hebrew and Greek texts of 1 Samuel 1 do not represent two literary editions of Hannah’s story; it is more reasonable to explain the differences as the result of the separate transmission of the same general edition.


Double Entendre, Disguised Verbal Resistance, and the Composition of Psalm 132
Program Unit: Biblical Hebrew Poetry
David B. Schreiner, Asbury Theological Seminary

Opinions regarding the structure and origin of Psalm 132 are copious. While not neglecting issues of the psalm’s structure, this essay primarily focuses on discussing the composition of Psalm 132. Assuming some of the methodological comments of A. Laato, namely the possibility that any psalm could have existed in a pre-canonical form, this essay observes specific phenomena of Psalm 132’s content on the way to discussing the compositional process of the psalm. In particular, this essay observes 1) that much of the data often cited as evidence for an early date of composition appears in vv. 1-12, 2) that data in support of a late date of composition appears in vv. 13-18, and 3) there is a significant shift in the psalm’s focus beginning in v. 13. Consequently, this essay proposes that the canonical form of Psalm 132 came about through two distinct phases, which can be characterized as a post-exilic expansion of a pre-exilic psalm. Furthermore, the second portion of the psalm ostensibly manifests a “hidden reading” that, when understood against the hegemonic environments of the Second Temple period, may constitute what James Scott has characterized as “disguised verbal resistance.”


Fictive Informants and Omniscient Interventions: Romance as Comparative Religion in the Ethiopian Story
Program Unit: Ancient Fiction and Early Christian and Jewish Narrative
Daniel Schriever, Yale University

Recent work on the emergence of comparative religion in the colonial period has drawn attention to the problematic figure of the adventure novelist. In populating their romances with the customs and cultures of exotic peoples, novelists drew on the latest academic theories of “primitive” religion. In turn, scholars of religion praised these authors for their realism, citing adventure novels as authentic ethnographic data and composing romances of their own. Collaboration between novelists and scholars rendered the boundaries between these discursive modes fluid, even illusory. How, then, can we adjudicate relations among fiction, scholarship, and the production of knowledge about religion? And what does the locus of the romance contribute to this intersection? This paper explores these questions in a frontier romance from an ancient imperial situation: the Ethiopian Story, composed by Heliodorus in the 3rd/4th century CE. This novel has much to teach us about the possibilities for fiction to intervene in contemporary intellectual debates. I focus on two literary devices in particular: the omniscient narrator, whose interventions in the fictional plot invoke the postures of contemporary historiography, ethnography, and religious speculation; and ethnically marked speaking characters, who function as native informants for their respective religious traditions. By carefully juxtaposing these narrative strategies, Heliodorus forces readers to adjudicate between a series of religious perspectives; his romance can be read as comparative religion in narrative form. Finally, modern efforts to distinguish fact from fiction in the Ethiopian Story allow us as to reflect on the comparative practices by which scholars inscribe ancient fictions within narratives meaningful for our historical situation. These practices, I suggest, amount to a colonization of the past, in which novelists function as cultural informants from a distant historical frontier. Heliodorus, however, reminds us that ancient narratives were also interventions, shaping knowledge about fiction, religion, and scholarship from antiquity to the present day.


Coptic Studies on the Digital Frontier: Creative Approaches to Manuscript Publication
Program Unit: Manuscripts from Eastern Christian Traditions
Caroline T. Schroeder, University of the Pacific

This paper and presentation will explore the possibilities for the publication of a digital companion edition of a manuscript in addition to a traditional print edition. For many Greek and Latin texts, critical editions, or at least simple editions in the original language are available in digital form. The editions of manuscripts in languages of some of the other Eastern Christian traditions are not as widely available. I will present a potential digital exhibition of a Coptic folio from the monastery of Shenoute (also known as the White Monastery). This folio comes from one of the most important set of early Christian monastic sources—Shenoute's letters, sermons, treatises, and rules, written in the Sahidic dialect of Coptic. This monastery was (and still is) located near the ancient city of Atripe in Egypt. It consisted of as many as four thousand male and female monks in three residences. Shenoute led the monastery from the late fourth century to the middle fifth century and was succeeded in leadership by a monk named Besa. We no longer have any direct sources from the founder of the monastery, named Pcol, but we do have a fragment of monastic rules that date to the time of Pcol's leadership. This fragment is quoted at the beginning of the first known letter of Shenoute. It is unpublished, located in the Austrian National Library in Vienna. I hold the publication rights and am working on a traditional-media journal article to publish a photograph, edition, and translation of this two-page fragment. The digital edition of the manuscript will contain the original Coptic text, a translation, an introduction to the context of the text, and a visual and textual analysis of aspects of the rules in the text. My paper will present the edition in progress and discuss the technologies necessary for such a project, the advantages of the digital format, and the challenges to such a project. The digital edition of the folio will direct the reader to other monastic rules from the fourth through sixth centuries with similar regulations using linked maps. This visualization will identify consistencies across the early monastic tradition, dependencies of one set of rules upon another, and conditions unique to children in Shenoute's monastery. The edition will also direct the reader to later sections of Shenoute's letter, which reference back to rules he quotes in this folio.


The Apocryphal Gospels and the Development of the Four Gospel-Collection in the Early Church
Program Unit: Christian Apocrypha
Jens Schroeter, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

The discovery of apocryphal Gospels like e.g. the Gospel of Thomas, the so-called "Gospel of the Saviour" or more recently the Gospel of Judas provokes the question how these writings can be integrated into a history of early Christian literature in the second and third century. The question becomes even more urgent if we include fragments of other gospels like e.g. Papyrus Egerton or Papyrus Oxyrhynchos 840 in this picture. Christian authors of the second and third century show awareness (although not always knowledge) of "apocryphal" gospels and refer to them in different ways. Thereby, a distinct status of the four gospels which later will become part of the New Testament seems to be presupposed. The paper asks what these findings mean for the relationship of “apocryphal” and “canonical” Jesus traditions in early Christianity.


Form versus Function: Citation Technique and Authorial Intention in the Gospel of John
Program Unit: Johannine Literature
Bruce Schuchard, Concordia Seminary

The form of the explicit Old Testament citations in the Gospel of John is best explained in terms of John’s purposeful editing of the passages that he recalls from his consistently Greek Vorlage. John’s citations are products of his editorial activity which reflect his authorial intent. John has carefully adapted his citations to their eventual literary and theological context. As such, John’s citations consistently complement both the immediate Gospel contexts in which they appear and the context of John’s Gospel as a whole. John’s chief purpose in citing the Old Testament is to elucidate how the person and the work of Jesus, especially the death of Jesus, are to be understood.


The Priestly Primeval History as an Etiology of Torah
Program Unit: Genesis
Andreas Schuele, Union Presbyterian Seminary

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The Distinction between Covenant and Law in the Priestly Code
Program Unit: Covenant in the Persian Period
Andreas Schuele, Universität Leipzig

In the Primeval History, the Priestly Code introduces covenant and law as two distinct relationships between God and world and assigns different purposes to each of them. On the basis of this distinction, the paper will explore the priestly notion of covenant and its implicit critique of other covenantal traditions, especially in Deuteronomy and Jeremiah.


Critical Overview of Research on Arabic Manuscripts of the New Testament
Program Unit: New Testament Textual Criticism
Sara Schulthess, Université de Lausanne

The Arabic manuscripts of the New Testament suffered from a comparative lack of interest in Western research: even today this field is barely investigated by textual criticism. We will try to understand the different dynamics behind this phenomenon. First, this presentation offers an overview of current research, highlighting the interest running through it. Next, we analyze critically the disinterest of the research for these manuscripts. The academic blockage has its roots in two main factors: the first factor is found in the constant focus on the establishment of the original text, based almost exclusive on the criterion of the age of manuscripts, the Arabic manuscripts were thus disqualified for being too recent and secondary. The second factor refers to the Orientalism issue; in fact research is not immune to the complexity of the relationship "West-East". Finally, we show that the study of Arabic manuscripts of the New Testament is crossed by many identity questions: it leads us to think about identity and dialogue at the crossroads of the so-called "religions of the Book". The contribution provides an account for these different identity issues surrounding the Arabic manuscripts and furthermore will integrate them in the new discourse productions, which the Internet and digital age facilitate.


Psycholinguistic Research on Reading, Including Its Interaction with Speaking
Program Unit: Applied Linguistics for Biblical Languages
Brian Schultz, Fresno Pacific University

A survey of research on Reading has considerable suggestive benefit for training in ancient Greek and Hebrew, where the primary goal is the reading of ancient texts. While the majority of research is devoted to reading in a first language, there is much research devoted specifically to a second language and also to higher reading skills. Two items of specific interest for second language reading and higher-level reading skills are the benefits of speed and automaticity on the one hand, and a phonological competence on the other.


The Interpretive Reuse of Deuteronomy’s “Law of the Vow” in Ecclesiastes 5:4–6[MT 3–5] and Wisdom Poetic Style
Program Unit: Biblical Hebrew Poetry
Richard Schultz, Wheaton College (Illinois)

Commentators on Ecclesiastes consistently note the similarities between Ecclesiastes 5:4–6[MT 3–5] and Deuteronomy 23:21–23[MT 22–24]. They differ, however, in their assessment of the differences between the two and the implications of the parallel for their understanding of Qoheleth. Most, however, offer little discussion of how the author of Ecclesiastes draws on the “law of the vow” here. Drawing on intertextual theory, this paper will first examine the nature of the relationship between Eccl 5:4–6[3–5] and Deut 23:21-23[22–24], arguing for the author of Ecclesiastes’ dependence on and interpretive reuse of Deuteronomy 23 and responding to Martin Shields (2006) who argues for Qoheleth’s independence from¬¬—or even disagreement with—Deuteronomy. In analyzing the various ways in which the author of Ecclesiastes has modified the legal formulations from Deuteronomy, special attention will be given to how they have been incorporated into the larger poetic discourse unit, Ecclesiastes 5:1–7[MT 4:17–5:6] and adapted to conform to the distinctive wisdom style of Qoheleth.


The pesah in P's Account of the Exodus
Program Unit: Biblical Law
Baruch J. Schwartz, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Numerous critics and exegetes view the pesah rite prescribed in the opening Priestly section of Exodus 12 (vss. 1–13) as the reflection of an authentic, ancient form of the pesah? sacrifice: a dramatic ritual performed at home, without priest or altar, in which some evil is warded off by means of magical, apotropaic acts. The realization that vss. 21b–27a also belong to P would seem to support this conclusion, since they declare “this deed,” presumably referring to the blood ritual with all its attendant features, to be “an institution for all time, for you and for your descendants” (v. 24). It can be shown, however, that the Priestly author did not intend to imply that the pesah as he imagined it to have been performed on the eve of the Exodus was to be repeated annually. In fact, the dramatic and apotropaic features were evidently his own ingenious invention, a fictional reconstruction necessitated by his faithful adherence to the consistent historical claims of the Priestly narrative but reflecting no known practice whatsoever. With this, all of the purported evidence for the pesah ever to have been anything but a Temple ritual in priestly as well as non-priestly tradition falls away.


The High Priest in Ezra-Nehemiah
Program Unit: Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah
Steven Schweitzer, Bethany Theological Seminary

Who is the high priest and what does he do in the book of Ezra-Nehemiah? In previous work, I have addressed this question with respect to the book of Chronicles. In turning to an investigation of Ezra-Nehemiah, I will clarify the portrayal of the high priest, illuminating how this important role and position was constructed in a text devoted to the themes of restoration and continuity to a community’s past. Since Deborah Rooke’s book, Zadok’s Heirs (published 2000, which contains a chapter on Ezra-Nehemiah), there have been limited publications on high priesthood (James VanderKam, From Joshua to Caiaphas [published 2004]; Lisbeth Fried, The Priest and the Great King [published 2004]), and none specifically devoted to this “leading priest” in Ezra-Nehemiah. The presence, absence, identity, function and duties of the high priest will be explored in this book with a complicated redaction history. Comparisons to depictions in other texts from the Hebrew Bible, the literature of the Second Temple period, and extra-biblical evidence will aid in an analysis of the role of the high priest in biblical text.


Structure and Provenance
Program Unit: Gospel of Mark
Steven Richard Scott, Concordia University - Université Concordia

The question of the provenance of Mark is compounded by the three levels of the tradition found within the gospel: the level of the words and deeds of Jesus, the level of transmission, and the level of the final author. One should thus have evidence of at least three provenances: the Palestine of Jesus and the earliest followers, the Greco-Roman world of the mixed Jewish and non-Jewish Christian communities, and the location of the final author. This paper will focus on the provenance of the final author. One way to discover the provenance of the gospel author is by studying his arrangement of the Jesus tradition. This paper will analyse the arrangement of the material of Jesus at the temple mount, which is arranged in two sections: Jesus answering questions at the temple and the mini-apocalypse. In both there are clear chiastic arrangements which provide evidence for the provenance of the author. The first section indicates a time after the destruction of the temple, and the second the location of Rome. The advantage of this methodology is that it places the focus solely on the provenance of the final author and not on the provenance of early stages of the transmission and origin of the tradition. It will be shown to be most useful in determining the date of composition, namely, the early 70s. It is possible that the material was arranged outside of Rome, but the author seems to have close ties to the Roman community. This analysis thus gives weight to interpretative analyses, such as that of Incigneri, that argue that many passages reflect the situation in Rome.


John the Solitary’s Use of Paul as Validation for the Ascetical Life
Program Unit: Syriac Literature and Interpretations of Sacred Texts
Jason Scully, Marquette University

Scholars (i.e. Hausherr, Bradley, Lavenant) have pointed to the emphasis that John the Solitary (fourth-century Syriac author) places on the hope of the world to come, but no one has yet supplied a comprehensive account of John’s theology of the future world. This paper will show that John forms his account of the future world in response to monks who doubt whether the difficulties of ascetical labor are justified. In order to demonstrate the value of ascetical labor, John makes a connection between Paul’s description of the future world and the ascetical conduct of monastic life. Ascetical conduct, John says, enables monks to begin a process of transformation that culminates with life in the world to come. Paul’s description of the world to come is proof that ascetical labor will bear fruit. Pauline descriptions of the world to come permeate John’s writings because he thinks that they will provide hope to monks who are struggling with the ascetical life. Paul’s promise of future glory in Rom 8.18, the distinction between the inner and exterior person from Eph 3.16, Rom 7.22, and 1 Cor 4.16, and the distinction between the old person and the new person from Rom 6.6, Eph 2.15, Eph 4.22-24, and Col 3.9-11 all form John’s picture of the future life of the world to come. On the basis of these biblical passages, John builds a portrait of the world to come that emphasizes the future transformation that will take place after the general resurrection. After this transformation is made complete, John says that human beings will shed the conduct of the exterior person/old person and assume the glorious conduct of the interior person/new person. It is this promise of future glory — the transformation in the world to come — that forms the basis of the hope that should inspire the monks to commit to ascetical conduct in this world.


The Care and Feeding of Curses
Program Unit: Assyriology and the Bible
JoAnn Scurlock, Elmhurst College

The bloodcurdling curses which grace a variety of treaties, contracts and religious texts of the second and first millenium BCE may seem purely literary, but they were taken very seriously in antiquity. In this paper we shall examine the ceremonies which made them effective, explore the motivations of people who consented to bind themselves in this manner and the science of evasion employed to avoid the consequences of a broken oath.


Sorcery in the Stars: From Mesopotamian Tablets to the Mandaic Book of the Zodiac
Program Unit: Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti
JoAnn Scurlock, Elmhurst College

The texts, which we will examine here, give a rare opportunity to watch the development of a system of thought. In the Neo-Assyrian STT 300, sorcerous rites reaching north Syria show that the basis of Greco-Egyptian Hellenistic magic and theurgy had been laid before the demise of the Assyrian empire. Of astrology properly speaking there is, however, yet no trace. By the late Persian or early Seleucid period, by contrast, astrology has placed itself at the center of interfacing between the traditional sciences of Mesopotamia and the new “wisdom.” By the Sassanian period, as represented by the Mandaic Book of the Zodiac, various discrepancies had been ironed out into a consistent system. In the process, the sorcerous rites seem once again to have been relegated to the fringe of intellectual life but some of the values attached to specific signs of the zodiac lived on.


"I (Want to) Believe, Lord; Help Me in My Unbelief"
Program Unit: Bible and Popular Culture
Robert Paul Seesengood, Albright College

In 1997, 39 members of a UFO cult called "Heaven's Gate" took their own life in their southern California compound. They were convinced an alien space ship was approaching earth, hiding in the tail of the Hale-Bopp comet. Currently the internet is abuzz with predictions of the end of the world (or at least the end of our current age), arriving on December 21, 2012 via encounter with extraterrestrial (extradimensional?) life. This new eschatology famously blends Mayan and Incan chronology and mythology with pop astrology and the quest for extraterrestrial life. Like Heaven's Gate, it also is often infused with imagery from biblical texts. Both Heaven's Gate and 2012 communities (and others) are being recognized as fully formed UFO religions. As scholarship has noted, UFO religions, in many ways, systematically mimic aspects of religious expression found in more mainstream religious communities (see the work of Christopher Partridge and Diana Tumminia). Given that most UFO religions are located in the United States and Britain, they have a particular tendency to adopt and adapt elements of the Bible. For example, some argue that the Bible, itself, is a record of human interaction with alien life (the Raeleans). Other communities (the Urantians) have drafted their own "Bibles." This paper will explore how UFO eschatology both incorporates and mimics typical "rapture" eschatologies found in many fundamentalist, protestant communities. Both Daniel and Revelation contain vibrant and dire descriptions of the end of the world that incorporate myth and religious language from their broader contexts. I will argue that, in many ways, the very strategy of "mythic-mimicry" found in modern UFO religions, much of which mimics (readings of) biblical apocalyptic, actually most imitates the fundamental strategies of syncretism found in biblical apocalyptic, itself.


Mysteries of the Bible (Documentary) Revealed: The Bible in Popular Non-fiction and Documentary Film
Program Unit: Bible and Film
Robert Paul Seesengood, Albright College

This paper will examine an array of (mostly made-for-TV) film documentaries on the Bible using the work of documentary and film theorists such as Richard Barsam, Lewis Jacobs, Grant & Sloniowski, and Ellis & McLane and Sheila Bernard. In general summary, these theorists explore how documentary editing, structure, audio/music, use (or lack) of commentary and a host of other factors all coalesce to produce the director's vision, bias, thesis and perspective. I want to review the broadening array of Bible documentaries, including serious academic resources prepared for the classroom, clearly devotional and faith building documentaries, and the somewhat titillating "Lost Bible Discovered" variety of documentary. My focus will be films those that treat biblical eschatology and those that address Noah's ark. Using the techniques of film and documentary studies, this paper will look at how these documentaries are constructing an experience for the viewer and will also reflect on implications of the nexus of documentary-as-commentary and (print) commentary-as-documentary.


Dealing with Divine Violence in the Undergraduate Classroom: Helping Students Think Critically about Troubling Portrayals of God in the Old Testament
Program Unit: Teaching Biblical Studies in an Undergraduate Liberal Arts Context
Eric A. Seibert, Messiah College

Anyone who teaches the Old Testament to undergraduates knows that sooner or later questions will arise about God’s violent behavior and how to make sense of it. Some images, such as God drowning virtually the entire human race or commanding Israelites to commit genocide, can be especially troubling to undergraduates who view the Bible as authoritative yet find these depictions of God at odds with their own understanding. This paper will consider various pedagogical strategies for dealing with the troublesome issue of divine violence in the Old Testament. At various points, I will use the issue of Canaanite genocide, prescribed in Deuteronomy and described in Joshua, for illustrative purposes. The strategies considered will include things like being intentional about what readings are assigned for these classes, creating a safe space for dialogue and differing views to emerge, providing the necessary cultural context to help students put ancient Israel’s beliefs about divine violence into perspective, encouraging students to read these violent texts from the perspective of the victims, and providing students with multiple options for how the issue of divine violence can be–and has been–addressed, including options that differ considerably from the instructor’s own approach. Additionally, I will argue that it is important to help undergraduates realize the troubling legacy that texts containing divine violence have had over the years. This can be accomplished by introducing them to some of the ways such texts have been used to justify various acts of violence. I will also emphasize the importance of helping students find ways to use these texts constructively after critiquing certain aspects of them. Some attention will be given to how this conversation might be shaped differently depending on whether it happens in an introductory level Bible class, an Old Testament survey class, or an upper level class specifically designed for biblical and religious studies majors. Additionally, this paper will consider how one’s institutional context, particularly whether the undergraduate liberal arts institution is faith-based or not, affects the way this issue is addressed.


Preaching Peacefully from Violent Biblical Texts: Dealing Responsibly with “Virtuous” Violence in the Old Testament
Program Unit: Homiletics and Biblical Studies
Eric A. Seibert, Messiah College

Few preachers know what to do with violent Old Testament texts and therefore routinely ignore them. If they do use them, they typically do not confront the problematic assumptions about violence often contained within them. While this is understandable, it is undesirable. It is equally disappointing that many books devoted to helping people preach from the Old Testament offer no real help in this regard. In this paper, I will argue it is imperative for ministers to preach from these texts and to do so in an ethically responsible manner. This is particularly true of passages containing “virtuous” violence, where violence is portrayed positively, as something acceptable and even praiseworthy. Whether it be the slaying of Sisera (Judges 4), the slaughter of Canaanites (Joshua 6-11), or the massacre of Baal worshipers (2 Kings 10), such texts must be handled with extreme care. Otherwise, listeners may be inclined to view certain acts of violence favorably and may be likely to condone violent actions and attitudes they ought to condemn. This paper will consider how the insights of newer trends in biblical studies, such as postcolonial criticism, deconstruction, feminist criticism, ideological criticism, and reader-response criticism can inform the preaching of these texts. Specific suggestions will be made for how preachers can be honest about the problems these texts raise–and can critique the violence in these texts–while still finding constructive ways to preach from them. A number of creative ways to use these texts in sermons will be considered, including things such as preaching from the perspective of the victims and using violent texts to begin conversations about difficult issues (e.g., domestic violence). Some attention will also be given to how one might preach from these texts without alienating congregants who may be uncomfortable with the idea of “critiquing” aspects of these texts and/or may not find some of these violent texts to be particularly problematic in the first place.


The Once and Future King: An Evaluation of Calvin’s Christological Interpretation of Psalm 2 as a Model of OT Hermeneutics
Program Unit: Theological Interpretation of Scripture
Andrew M. Selby, Baylor University

The Psalms have ever functioned as a staple in the Church’s life and worship and yet originally belonged to the life and worship of Israel. How might a Christian exegete do justice to the historical meaning of the Psalms and yet find in them a witness to the God who made himself manifest in Christ Jesus? An interpreter who might provide a jumping off point for theological interpretation of the Psalms is John Calvin. On the one hand, he is concerned to closely observe the literal meaning of the text, which can be approximated by discerning the historical and literary setting of that text. On the other hand, Calvin interprets Israel’s historical institutions as finding fulfillment in the person and work of Christ in the NT. Calvin recognizes that in certain prophetic Psalms the authors were aware, if only obscurely, of this reality. So these prophetic authors linked their particular circumstances with a vision of the future fulfillment in Christ by virtue of the illumination of the Holy Spirit. This double referent of a single authorial intent can link the two parts of the Christian Bible. In this paper, I will focus in on Calvin’s exegesis of Psalm 2, arguing that he mostly provides an exemplary way to interpret the Old Testament as Christian Scripture without losing its distinctive voice. Calvin accomplishes this through (1) seeking the literal sense of the text, (2) by discovering types of Christ in Israel’s institutions as they point, albeit obscurely, to the Triune God’s one plan of salvation, and (3) using NT interpretation as a hermeneutical key when possible. While Calvin’s method begs questions about prophetic intentionality and is open to certain historical critiques, it nevertheless provides a usable theological framework for a Christian hermeneutic of the OT.


'If There Is No Bread, There Is No Torah,' Women, Food, and Knowledge
Program Unit: Women in the Biblical World
Claudia Setzer, Manhattan College

The association of food and knowledge is a traditional one in the Greco-Roman world, from Plato’s statement that knowledge is the food of the soul, to Paul’s use of the metaphors of feeding as religious teaching, to the rabbinic metaphors of Torah as wine, bread, and milk. How does the presence of women disrupt this metaphor? This paper will examine three cases where conflict over food and drink strike an initially discordant note. Looking at the figures of the Syro-Phonenician woman (Mark 7:24-30), whose logos (teaching) saves her daughter and merits her “the children’s crumbs,” Jesus’ mother at Cana (John 2:1-12), whose understanding of her son’s identity results in the replenishment of wine, and the Samaritan woman, whose repartée with Jesus over water (John 4:7-42) leads to her preaching to her people, food and drink become vehicles for showing women’s understanding of Jesus’ identity over and against others’ misunderstanding. We will also consider how race intersects with gender in two cases and amplifies the surprising quality of the stories.


Tamar's Sickbed Meal in 2 Samuel 13
Program Unit: Women in the Biblical World
Cynthia Shafer-Elliott, William Jessup University

The story of the rape of Tamar has no shortage of analysis. Various studies on women, violence, the family and succession of King David have used 2 Samuel 13 as part of their investigations. However, this passage is also one of the few in the Hebrew Bible that mentions food being prepared, at least more than in passing. In this paper, questions regarding food preparation in 2 Samuel 13 will be addressed by employing archaeological data from Iron Age Syro-Palestine and ethnoarchaeological studies. Tamar’s role as the preparer of the meal, its ritual implications and role as a catalyst of her change in identity will be emphasized using literary, ideological, and historical criticism.


Gastronomical Economics: Food Preparation and Its Importance within the Israelite Household
Program Unit: Economics in the Biblical World
Cynthia Shafer-Elliott, William Jessup University

The ancient Israelite house has been an important subject of inquiry, focusing primarily on the revolving discussion on the architecture and provenance of the house itself. More recently, however, research into households as a unit, their activities and behaviors has spread from the sociological sphere to the realms of Syro-Palestinian archaeology and biblical studies. One such topic includes the importance of households as an economic unit, which contains the daily task of food preparation. Sociologist J. Goody defines four basic roles of the household gastronomical economy: production, distribution, preparation, and consumption. This paper will concentrate on one aspect of Goody’s gastronomical economy - food preparation and its importance within the Israelite household. More specifically, the techniques and technology of cooking and the cooking group within the ancient Israelite household will be emphasized by employing archaeological data from Iron Age Syro-Palestine, ethnoarchaeological studies, and their illustration within the narratives of the Hebrew Bible.


"And Enoch Walked with God": Deification and Immortalization in Late Antique Judaism
Program Unit: History and Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism
Avram R. Shannon, Ohio State University

The Late Antique world in which the Rabbis lived was one of change and dialogue. As part of the general dialogue in the Ancient World, Jews, Christians and pagans alike asked questions about the nature of the divine realm, and humanity’s participation within it. One place where these dialogues played out was in questions of deification and immortalization of humans. How much participation did humanity have in the divine, and what did it mean to be like God? All three groups came up with different answers to this question. In Judaism, this question formed the basis of an internal dialogue, centered in the person of Metatron, an angelic figure who is said to have been raised to angelic heights from the person of the biblical figure of Enoch. The figure of Enoch was ripe ground for speculation and exegesis on the question of deification and angelization, because of the short and pregnant mention of his “walking with God” in Genesis 5:24. The interpretive room of that verse led Enoch inspire a whole complex of traditions in Late Antiquity, of which the tradition of his transformation into Metatron was only one. In Rabbinic sources, Metatron is described as the “little Yahweh,” whose glory similar to, although ancillary from, God’s own glory. The exaltation of Enoch/Metatron above the rest of humanity presents a specific Rabbinic example of deification or immortalization, one which derives from the biblical model, and which may be placed within the broader Late Antique discourse on the topic. The concept of divinization, however, was not uncontested within the realm of Jewish discourse. In the Talmud, Metatron is punished and removed from his lofty position. Therefore, the debate over Enoch and Metatron became part of a larger debate on the relationship between the human and the divine realms in Judaism. This paper will examine the literature on Jewish immortalization in general, and Enoch/Metatron in specific in order to place it within its broader discursive context, both within and without Judaism. The person of Enoch/Metatron and Rabbinic views on the relationship between the human and the divine realms may then be placed within the broader conceptions of immortalization, angelization and deification among the Jews’ pagan and Christian neighbors.


The Separation of Powers in the Hebrew Bible and in Ancient Greece
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible and Political Theory
Amnon Shapira, Ariel University Center of Samaria

Looking through the HB we learn that it doesn’t recognize democracy (at least from the time of the monarchy). Yet, we see a strong consciousness of many democratic values, such as equality, human dignity, criticism of the government and especially separation of powers (see in detailed by A. Shapira, Democratic Values in the Hebrew Bible [Heb.], Tel Aviv 2009). In contrast, the Polis in Greece did not recognize the "Separation of Powers" which stands as the basis of modern democracy (according to Montesquieu). The people of Athens were the rulers and the source of all authority in the state. The meeting of the Polis was the authority that made the laws, judged and executed them. That is, the "Democratic" political rule in Greece behaved completely opposite to the philosophic principle of Separation of Powers. In contrast, the HB apparently reveals, for the first time in the history of mankind, a Separation of Powers. The king of Israel did not make laws, but was subordinate to them; a king in Israel could not be a priest, and certainly not a high priest; in addition, across from the king stood the prophet, who could limit him in his authority and even impeach him (as in Eljah's call to Ahab: "Have you murdered and also inherited?"). In this way the political principle that stands behind the Separation of Powers existed in practice and an overriding principle of "Authority checking Authority / Checks and Balances", limited all areas of authority. There are scholars who think that this idea of Separation of Powers in the HB can be first ascribed to the prophet Samuel in his opposition to crowning a king (I Sam. 8), thus making the HB a source of inspiration politically in opposing absolute monarchy in Europe during the middle ages, and even in modern times.


Josephus’s Engagement with Greco-Roman Historians Concerning (the) God(s)
Program Unit: Hellenistic Judaism
Scott Shauf, Gardner-Webb University

This paper explores how Josephus, as a part of his attempt to bridge the Greco-Roman and Jewish traditions of historiography, conforms his portrayal of God to Greco-Roman expectations while trying to maintain distinctive Jewish beliefs about God and Jewish religious institutions. Apart from Thucydides and Polybius, the extant Greco-Roman historians tend to allow a significant role for the gods in their works, though there are significant differences among them as to the degree and nature of divine activity and influence. One of the principles of divine action across the spectrum, however, is the impartiality with which the gods are seen to act. The gods govern all of humankind with the same demands of piety and justice. A second common principle, related to the first, is the tendency of the gods in these works to act primarily in retributive fashion, rewarding goodness and punishing evil, in accordance with the demands of piety and justice. While it is well known that Jospehus attempts to bridge the Greco-Roman and Jewish traditions of historiography, and that this attempt extends to his portrayal of the divine, the details of Josephus’s engagement with the Greco-Roman historians in this regard have been only lightly explored. This paper delves deeper into the ways in which Josephus has accommodated his presentation of the divine to the Greco-Roman historiographical tradition, focusing on the issues of retribution and impartiality. Divine retribution plays a role in both the Greco-Roman and the Jewish historiographical traditions and so required no extraordinary effort, but not so with the issue of impartiality. On the contrary, divine partiality is one of the chief distinguishing features of the Jewish tradition vis-à-vis the broader Greco-Roman one. Josephus thus must maintain the special relationship of God to Israel while also asserting divine impartiality. There are many facets to his accomplishment of this point. The common point of divine retribution becomes a central link in his attempt to bridge this gap, as Josephus demonstrates that God acts retributively towards all, to the Jews and the nations alike. Josephus also weaves together other theological interpretations to bridge these perspectives. In the Antiquities, his interpretation of the Mosaic law is central. He interprets the law so that it functions as an instrument of a broadly applicable piety, and thus God’s relationship to Israel becomes merely a special case of God’s broader providence. This interpretation is also present in the Jewish War, but its importance is lessened here since the work focuses (theologically) on God’s punishment of the Jerusalem Jews. The situation in the work is complex. On the one hand, Josephus has to explain both God’s general favor toward the Jews and their disfavor at this particular point in history. On the other hand, he also has to explain his view that God currently favors the Romans while maintaining God’s general impartiality in regards to all. Josephus’ own recorded address to the Jerusalem Jews and the concluding account of Catullus’s ill treatment of Jews living in Libya become central in this regard.


The Institution of Communion
Program Unit: Historical Jesus
David Shaules, California Lutheran University

The institution of communion poses a difficult problem for the study of the historical Jesus. It is early and well attested, predating the Gospels in Paul, being found in the synoptic tradition, and even hinted at in John. This early and multiple attestation supports its historicity, however, accounts of the institution are dominated by theological overtones that seem more likely to reflect the beliefs of the early church than those of the historical Jesus. Reconstructing the original words of institution is difficult; however, both Paul and Mark may preserve early traditions that hint at Jesus’ original intention. The solution proposed here is that Jesus’ original intention was that his followers be willing to die for the Kingdom of God, as he was willing to do. Only afterwards, in light of early beliefs concerning Jesus’ death and resurrection, did Jesus’ command change from one of self sacrifice to one of ritual eating and remembrance. In this view, Jesus’ command in Paul’s account to “do this in remembrance of me” is not a command to break bread and take wine. Instead it is a command to die for the Kingdom of God. Jesus’ command is to repeat the action behind the symbol, not to repeat the symbol itself. The implication is less that Jesus’ followers misunderstood his message, as they did in fact die for their faith; instead they added an additional layer of meaning to it in light of their new found belief in Jesus’ death and resurrection. Additionally, Mark’s account noticeably lacks the word “new” in relation to the covenant. Jesus may have mentioned a covenant during the institution, but likely saw his self sacrifice as upholding the traditional Jewish covenant with God. Again, after his death his followers reinterpreted it in light of their newly found beliefs.


The Onomastica—Shouldn't They Be among the Pseudepigrapha?
Program Unit: Function of Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
Frank Shaw, Independent Scholar

Little academic use has been made of these lists of interpretations, composed in Greek, of characters' names (and place names) from the Hebrew Bible, yet they can be instructive for understanding the text of the NT. Originally drawn up by Jews shortly after the books of the Pentateuch were translated into Greek, these initial lists were evidently augmented as later biblical books were translated. We know Philo employed them, likely Josephus, and definitely church fathers such as Origen, Eusebius, Theodoret, Jerome, and the anonymous ecclesiastical interpolator(s) responsible for their appearance in Hesychius. At some point they were translated into languages such as Syriac, Arabic, Armenian, Ethiopic, Latin, and Slovanic. Thus while widespread among early Christians, their Jewish origin seems assured. The little scholarly attention given them has led to their non-use in NT studies. In fact, many NT scholars are not even aware of their existence. I show how first-century Christian knowledge of them seems to be indicated by at least one NT passage, and how they can be helpful in understanding others. The discovery and utilization of them for my own research is recounted, along with my recognition of their latent potential for NT and early ecclesiastical studies. As Lorenzo DiTammaso has put it regarding other Pseudepigrapha, these “treasures … had rested … untouched for decades” (The Pseudepigrapha and Christian Origins, 36), but now they need to be shared. A background of (1) their reconstructed history, (2) the extant critical texts, (3) their rare use in modern scholarship, and instructions on how to employ the two inseparable available editions (not easy for the beginner!) are included. Granted that, compared with existing accounts and narratives such as Jubilees and 4 Ezra, these make for boring reading. However, since they meet the criteria of non-canonical works originally composed by Second Temple period Jews who were expounding the biblical text, and since they are useful for understanding the NT and other early Christian works, should these humble documents not also be granted their proper place among the Pseudepigrapha?


Ephraem the Syrian's Incarnational Language in the Commentary on the Diatessaron
Program Unit: Syriac Literature and Interpretations of Sacred Texts
Oleh Shchuryk, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium

Ephrem’s ‘Commentary on the Diatessaron’ is best known as perhaps the most important witness to the Diatessaron’s text, but, it also elaborates a complex Christological system. This brief communication will focus on several selected passages from the ‘Commentary’ particularly relevant to Ephrem’s exposition of the mystery of the Incarnation. The texts will be analysed both linguistically and theologically. I will first present key features of Ephrem’s Incarnation-language, his use of a specific vocabulary, to express this mysterious event. As an example, I will examine incarnation formulas such as ‘he put on the body/flesh,’ ‘he appeared in the body,’ ‘he became flesh,’ ‘he became incarnated,’ ‘he came from Marry,’ and, on the basis of this linguistic analysis I will try to distinguish the key features and elements of these expressions. The brief presentation and analysis of such key notions as gušma?, besra?, and pagra? will contribute to the interpretation of the theological dimension of these formulas. In this stage I will explain why Ephrem sometimes prefers one word over another while describing Christ’s Incarnation. One of the passages that can shed some light on understanding of this puzzling problem is found in Chapter VI, 15, where Ephrem employ two words gušma? and pagra? side by side. Ephrem’s Incarnation formulas cannot be fully appreciated without the word keyana?, which basically means ‘nature,’ ‘reality,’ ‘existence.’ It seems that in Ephrem’s ‘Commentary’ this notion has much wider meaning than Aphrahat’s understanding of reality which belongs to Christ, or the existence belonging to Christ, or as F. Klijn interprets, as ‘the existence of someone or something is defined by the way it appears to man.’ Ephrem seems to be more interested in the qualitative character, rather than pure metaphysical side of Christ’s appearance in the world with/in two keyana? after his Incarnation. Furthermore, the passage from the Chapter II, 21a that contains the technical word ‘e?tgeshem’ (to be incarnated) to denote Christ’s appearance in the created world, seriously challenges A. De Halleux’s idea who states that this term started to be systematically used from 6th century onwards. This instance rather supports D.King’s idea who says that ‘the term (e?tgeshem) was already developed at the coalface of translation work before Philoxenos.’ Consequently, the word ‘e?tgeshem’ will be closely examined in this presentation. As a conclusion, some brief attention will be granted to hapax legomenon incarnation expressions that can provide additional information on understanding the peculiarity of Ephrem’s Christological vocabulary and the complexity of his language concerning Christ’s Incarnation.


Images of the Indentured: Reading the Biblical Narrative of a Slave Woman through Art
Program Unit: Bible and Visual Art
Andrea M. Sheaffer, Graduate Theological Union

The maidservant in the Book of Judith is a remarkable, yet undervalued character in Judith studies. The Apocryphal scene of the trusted maidservant actively aiding Judith in her grisly assassination of Holofernes is a common theme in Renaissance and Baroque art. Modern scholarship has paid scant attention to the maidservant’s important role in the narrative as an accomplice, and has glossed over her identity as a slave bound to the will of her mistress, Judith. Though her most common name is abran, or “favorite slave,” translations generally avoid names that connote the legal status and power conditions of an indentured slave, using terms such as “maidservant,” “maid,” or “handmaiden.” She has been labeled as “unimportant” to the narrative and has been charged erroneously of voluntarily accompanying Judith on her perilous mission into the enemy camp. However, artistic representation regularly exhibits the maidservant as an important figure in the narrative, and often accurately depicts her character as subservient to Judith. Utilizing paintings from the 16th and 17th centuries as a means of highlighting the role and servile status of the maidservant in the text, this paper endeavors to illuminate the vital function of the maidservant in Judith’s mission to save Israel, as well as discuss her social status as slave.


Oral Performance and the Form and Function of 4 Ezra
Program Unit: Pseudepigrapha
Shayna Sheinfeld, McGill University

Within the recent scholarship of 4 Ezra, the question of who or what group is represented by the various characters (Ezra, Uriel) of the text has often been considered. This paper suggests that asking ‘who’ is behind the various characters in 4 Ezra is perhaps the wrong question; in light of recent research on the development of the text through oral performance, a more effective question to ask may be: with which character(s) would the listeners/audience identify? In a recent article, Matthias Henze proposes that 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra developed into their final form through the dynamic process of oral performance and literary composition. Accepting Henze’s proposal, this paper furthers Henze’s suggestion of oral development and outlines a possible answer to the question of audience identification in 4 Ezra. I propose that Ezra is the character with whom the audience would identify. Ezra’s questions through the first three episodes are questions of theodicy that listeners might themselves be asking in light of the destruction of the temple, while the subsequent physical experience of the fourth episode suggests that the listeners—not the author!—would experience a shocking revelation that would open them to the subsequent dream visions in the fifth and sixth episodes, moving the audience to experience a sense of God’s ultimate plan behind the devastation of the destruction of the temple. The final episode serves as a conclusion to the performance, which I suggest distances the audience from the character of Ezra. Ultimately, I argue that the form and function of the text is better understood by paying attention to the audience's relationship with the characters; in this way, the unique movement from questions of theodicy to apocalyptic visions in 4 Ezra can be more accurately explained.


Images of Power, the Image of God, and a Kingdom of Priests
Program Unit: Adventist Society for Religious Studies
L. Jean Sheldon, Pacific Union College

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It's Personal! It's Eisegesis! Self-Awareness Tools as Catalyst for Moving Students from Instinctive Reactions to Critical Thinking in Biblical Studies
Program Unit: Academic Teaching and Biblical Studies
Jennifer M. Shepherd, Masters College & Seminary

Overcoming the under preparedness of many students in the academic teaching of biblical studies begins when both teacher and student take steps beyond acknowledging that presuppositions exist in the study of religion to deliberately examining those presuppositions and their impact on interpretation. The majority of current teaching efforts highlight the skills, the tools, the methods, and the resources available for stepping outside personal presuppositions to engage in the exegesis of a biblical passage – lead meaning out of a passage – as protection from the mere eisegesis of a biblical passage – read meaning into a passage. What is overlooked is the reality that eisegesis is naturally and innately at work in every teacher and student of religious studies and this disproportionate focus on exegesis in our teaching has failed to provide students with a balanced understanding of how eisegesis should be recognized, evaluated, and supplemented with systematic exegetical methods. In essence, they are given sufficient armor to defend against personal presuppositions but have little to no identification details of those presuppositions. Teaching eisegesis as well as exegesis is now required in religious studies classrooms. It takes extra time and work but teachers need to foster an accepting atmosphere and create the opportunities for students to react and be themselves. In doing so, students will be able to identify and evaluate eisegesis in action. Reactions are very helpful in teaching students to understand how their personal feelings/beliefs and those of their peers influence their interpretations. Once a student is armed with this knowledge, he/she may be more open to other religious ideas and find the words to articulate and the courage to evaluate his/her own position. Integrating self-awareness exercises and tools serves as a catalyst for developing critical thinking in religious studies by moving students beyond instinctive reactions to evaluation of their interpretations. The presenter will provide examples of and student responses to the integration of eisegesis into the study of Introduction to Old Testament, Introduction to New Testament, Introduction to Bible Studies, and Introduction to Theology over the 2010-2012 academic calendars in a Christian Liberal Arts Univeristy and a Denominational College.


Optimus Princeps: Character and Virtues in Pliny’s "Panegyricus" and the Fourth Gospel
Program Unit: Jesus Traditions, Gospels, and Negotiating the Roman Imperial World
Beth M. Sheppard, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary

In the third and fourth centuries the authors of the “Panegyrici Latini,” who laud a number of Emperors including Trajan, Julian, and Constantine, tend to describe Emperors via stock character traits and activities. These motifs reflect the authors’ images of ideal rulers. Even Eusebius’ “Life of Constantine” contains these standard themes in its portrait of the Roman leader and thus is sometimes described as a treatise that owes as much to panegyric as it does to biography. To determine if the qualities associated with an “optimus princeps” were already present in nascent form in writings dated near the end of the first century, attention falls first on the concepts of “industria,” “pietas,” and “beneficus” in Pliny the Younger’s 100CE oration in honor of Trajan. Then the Fourth Gospel’s portrait of Jesus is examined to ascertain how the character and behaviors ascribed to Jesus compare with the virtues and ethos attributed to Trajan. In addition, rough parallels are drawn between Trajan’s actions in regard to the “alimentia” and Jesus’ exceeding that accomplishment with miracle of the loaves and fishes; the expulsion of the “delatores” from the Temple of Juno in Rome and Jesus’ casting the money changers from the Temple in Jerusalem; and other scenes as well. In virtually every case, Jesus’ activities either parallel or surpass those viewed as excellent behaviors for an Emperor and provide additional justification for the assertion made by Tom Thatcher and others that John sets out to establish that Jesus is greater than Caesar.


"The Testimony of Two Witnesses": Intertextuality and John 8:17
Program Unit: Johannine Literature
Ruth Sheridan, Charles Sturt University

This paper uses insights from various strands of intertextual theory to analyze and interpret the enigmatic statement of Jesus in John 8:17 about the Father acting as witness on his behalf. Three Old Testament texts are alluded to: Deuteronomy 19, Deuteronomy 16 and Numbers 35. This paper argues that the concepts of homicide, idolatry and capital punishment that inform these OT texts also resonate in John 8, in subtle and even subversive ways.


Reading the Economic Ideologies for 99% in First Kings 21
Program Unit: Contextual Biblical Interpretation
Seungwoo Shim, Brite Divinity School (TCU)

This paper investigates the ideological clash concerning land and economy in the story of Ahab’s appropriation of Naboth’s vineyard in 1 Kgs 21 within the context of the contemporary Korean readers who belong to 99 % and live under the widespread economic injustice in the world of globalization and neo-liberalization, an injustice that creates an insurmountable economic inequality among people and seriously threatens the survival of the weak, the poor, and the marginalized. Above all, the paper understands the behavior of the king to expand land acquisition as reflecting what Norman Habel calls Royal land ideology. Royal land ideology regards land as the source of wealth which God bestows on the Israelite monarch as a gift. The paper goes on to explore various counter-ideologies for this Royal land ideology reflected in Naboth’s argument and Elijah’s criticism of the monarchy. Specifically, the paper draws largely from Norman C. Habel’s ancestral household ideology, James C. Scott’s notions of the moral economy of the peasant and the weapon of the weak, and the anthropological concept of the limited good. First, the paper identifies the ideology that underlies Naboth’s argument about land and Elijah’s criticism of Ahab as the ancestral household ideology, based on Lev 25:23-28. This ideology asserts that land belongs solely to God through whom it is distributed among the tribes and clans, and it cannot be sold permanently. Therefore, the ideology buttresses the small farming economy as the economic basis of Israel. In this regard, Naboth’s argument and Elijah’s criticism reflect their effort to protect the small-scale economy from the large-scale agro-economy that seriously undermines the traditional economic basis of Israel. Second, the paper understands the ancestral household ideology within the broader and more generalized concept of “the moral economy of the peasant.” This concept explains the economic strategies of the poor peasants the majority of whom live under the potential threat on their subsistence. The economic principle that undergirds such peasants society is “the safety first” principle. This principle primarily concerns guaranteeing the subsistence of the peasants who work in their small farms. Third, the paper employs the anthropological concept of “limited good” to get a better understanding of the mindset of the peasants in the society that restricts to some degree economic motivation in general and rational economic trade between Ahab and Naboth in the text in particular. Especially, the paper explores the notion of limited good in association with the moral code in the Decalogue. Fourth, the paper examines Elijah’s curse of death and destruction of the Omride dynasty within the context of “the weapons of the weak”--the dynamic forms of resistance that the poor peasants employ beneath the surface of peace and conformity. In conclusion, these theories are mutually formative and reinforcing in that they shed light on the overall portrait of the peasant world in the text and that they made almost the same argument despite their difference in terminology: the opposition and resistance to the exploitation of the poor by the powerful and privileged.


Audience Address in the Dialogs of the Gospel of John
Program Unit: Performance Criticism of the Bible and Other Ancient Texts
Whitney Shiner, George Mason University

The questions concerning the extent to which a written text implies a certain range of meanings in performance are complex, since all texts may be performed in a variety of ways that create a variety of meanings in performance. In spite of that, all discussions of texts that are records of embodied performance or were intended to be embodied in performance involve the interpreter taking a position, whether consciously or unconsciously, that one or more of the range of possible performances is implied by the words of the text and the interpreter’s reconstruction of the historical situation of its composition to be be the basis for stating the meaning of the text. The curious nature of the so-called dialogs of the gospel of John has been the subject of a great deal of commentary, and it seems to be the case that performers today find the curious dialogs a great deal more challenging to embody than the more narrative parts of the gospel. One important issue for the interpretation of John is the question of whether the gospel is anti-Jewish, and the dialogs are a central part of that discussion. Because of the overlap between the performer speaking words within a narrative world and within the social context of the performance, there is a range in which performer and audience take the words spoken in dialog within the gospels as also spoken directly to the audience. For example, the sermon on the mount rather naturally becomes in performance words of Jesus to the audience as much as if not more than the words of the narrative Jesus in the story world. Both performer and audience have important roles in determining the extent to which the words of the performed Jesus are spoken also to the members of the audience. This paper will argue that a preponderance of verbal cues in the gospel of John suggest that in the implied performance of the gospel the words of Jesus are very often performed as directed at the audience as well as spoken within the narrative world. In particular, the implied performance of the words of Jesus spoken to “the Judeans who had trusted him” in chapter eight rather than objectifying the Judeans as a hostile other places the audience in the position of being addressed directly by Jesus.


How Apocalyptic Discourse Functions as Social Discourse in Mark’s Gospel
Program Unit: Gospel of Mark
Elizabeth Shively, University of St. Andrews

My goal is to perform a social reading of Mark that looks at how apocalyptic discourse functions as persuasive rhetoric (Carey) to redefine power. I challenge ideological readings that interpret apocalyptic symbols as metaphors for socio-political entities. I affirm the social dimensions of Mark’s apocalyptic discourse differently, by focusing on its cosmic elements and offering an ideological reading that looks at the group formed by the Markan Jesus. First, I consider the work of scholars who take seriously the social dimensions of Mark’s apocalyptic discourse. Ched Myers’ ground-breaking work is my point of departure. He interprets Satan as a metaphor for the religious authorities: Jesus rescues people from the “strong man,” liberating them from the religious elite. According to Myers, apocalyptic discourse functions to “fire the socio-political imagination of the oppressed.” Second, I look at Jewish apocalyptic compositions to understand Mark’s symbolic world. Similar to these, Mark aims not simply to fire the socio-political imagination; but also, the moral imagination. Also, apocalyptic symbolism functions to reveal spiritual forces at work beyond that which is visible to the human eye. In Mark, the demonic realm does not stand for the human realm; it intersects with that realm. Therefore, the reduction of Satan to a metaphor for the socio-political establishment flattens Mark’s symbolic world. Third, I look at the social implications of Mark’s apocalyptic discourse, using Mark 8:27-10:45 as my test case. In this teaching block, Jesus solidifies a social group and defines its power structure by contrasting those who, under Satan’s rule, have their minds set on “the things of men” with those who have their minds set on “the things of God.” Apocalyptic discourse functions as social discourse by suggesting that those who seek conventional human ways of attaining power (e.g., reject suffering, lord authority over others) have Satan as a master. Jesus conveys a new way of displaying power: by conceding it, rather than wielding it. In my discussion, I employ the metaphor theory of G. Lakoff and M. Johnson (Metaphors We Live By) to illuminate how Jesus forms a social group, marked by certain behaviors and values that upend societal structures.


Reading Backward from Mark’s Ending: A Retroactive Reading Hermeneutic
Program Unit: Synoptic Gospels
Elizabeth Shively, University of St. Andrews

I examine anew Mark 16:8 as the ending of the Gospel from the perspective of a text-centered narrative strategy, using French literary critic Michael Riffaterre’s theory of intertextuality. While most interpretations of Mark’s ending read “forward,” I offer an interpretation that reads “backward.” Narrative critics generally interpret 16:8 as an open ending, employed as a rhetorical strategy of the implied author to invite the reader to complete the ending with a response. Opposing this view, a growing number of scholars since the 1990’s challenge the idea that Mark 16:8 is the intended ending, and some among them propose a lost or unfinished ending in which the risen Christ meets the disciples in Galilee. Both interpretations read forward by speculating a “text” to finish the story. I believe narrative criticism offers the best approach for intepreting Mark’s unexpected ending; but I use it by reading “backward.” I offer an interpretation of the text that employs Riffaterre’s theory of intertexutality, specifically his retroactive reading hermeneutic. According to Riffaterre, the reader decodes a text in two stages of reading, the first linear and heuristic, and the second retroactive and hermeneutical. “As he progresses through the text, the reader remembers what he has just read and modifies his understanding of it in the light of what he is now decoding…he is reviewing, revising, comparing backwards” (Semiotics of Poetry, 6). Reading includes a process of rereading, and the reader resolves textual oddities by referring to what he had encountered previously in the text. I will explore how the reader may seek for an explanation to the empty tomb account on an intertextual level through retroactive reading. In particular, I read the empty tomb account in light of the story of the Gerasene demoniac (Mark 5). Through a retroactive reading strategy the Gerasene demoniac story appears as a resurrection account, and offers a frame to tell the reader how to interpret the empty tomb account. The result is an ending at 16:8 that fits Mark’s Gospel.


Mary’s So-Called Life: A New Translation of the Earliest Life of the Virgin
Program Unit: Christian Apocrypha
Stephen J. Shoemaker, University of Oregon

This presentation introduces a newly translated apocryphon, the Life of the Virgin attributed to Maximus the Confessor. Although it was originally composed in Greek, the text presently survives only in an Old Georgian translation. If the question of its authorship seemingly remains undecided, the text itself is widely recognized as the oldest complete biography of the Virgin Mary. This Life was most likely written during the seventh century, and almost certainly in Constantinople. Its author was well versed in the Marian traditions of the imperial capital and of Palestine during this era, and accordingly Maximus stands as prime suspect, even if some scholars have not given this attribution the serious consideration that it would seem to merit. Although this apocryphon was previously translated by Michel van Esbroeck, who also prepared the edition, this new translation offers numerous improvements on both van Esbroeck’s translation and his edition. In many instances van Esbroeck’s translation is overly literal often to the point of near unintelligibility. Moreover, newer lexical materials published in the last decade have enabled further refinements to the translation. Likewise the edition contained numerous errors that had to be corrected through constant comparison with the manuscript tradition. The new publication thus presents not only a more readable translation but also extensive notes that emend the critical edition. The text itself is fascinating and informative for any number of reasons. The Life makes innovative reuse of earlier apocryphal traditions, particularly from the Protevangelium and the ancient Dormition apocrypha, and it also offers sophisticated exegesis of Old and New Testament material through the biography of Mary. This apocryphon also imagines Mary at the center of her son’s ministry and as the leader of the early church. Particularly intriguing is the Life’s portrayal of Mary at the Crucifixion, which seems to anticipate the “affective piety” of the western High Middle Ages by several centuries. The Life additionally illuminates the earliest history of devotion to Mary’s relics in Constantinople.


Muhammad Goes to the Mountain: An Unusual and Important Palimpsest from Mount Sinai (Cambridge Or. 1287)
Program Unit: Manuscripts from Eastern Christian Traditions
Stephen J. Shoemaker, University of Oregon

This intriguing manuscript once belonged to Agnes Smith Lewis, who purchased it in Suez in 1895 while returning from one of her famed expeditions to Mount Sinai with her sister. Although the manuscript was obtained from an antiquities dealer, its origin in the scriptorium and library of St Catherine’s monastery has subsequently been established with some measure of confidence. The manuscript’s upper script preserves a number of homilies by various the Church Fathers in Arabic translation, none of which is of particular interest beyond their value for the history of Christian Arabic literature. These homilies were themselves copied onto the reused vellum sometime around the turn of the tenth century, meaning that their lower texts were copied even earlier. The lower writing of the manuscript preserves an unusual assortment of texts. The majority of its leaves were taken from a much older manuscript, copied in the later fifth century, which contained the Protevangelium of James and the Six Books Dormition apocryphon, one of the earliest accounts of the end of Mary’s life. The other leaves witness to a variety of other texts, including a number of leaves from Greek and Syriac biblical manuscripts (several of which are double palimpsests). Nevertheless, the second largest group of folios originally belonged to two different early manuscripts of the Qur?an. These palimpsests are among the earliest witnesses to the Qur?an, although they have somewhat surprisingly been largely overlooked until quite recently. Moreover, despite their obvious value for studying the early history of the Qur?anic text, these folios raise intriguing questions as to how they came into the possession of the monks of Sinai for reuse in a Christian manuscript of the early tenth century.


Reading Job as a Model for Pastoral Care
Program Unit: Bible and Practical Theology
Jayne Shontell, Wesley Theological Seminary

This paper demonstrates that a study of the book of Job can be used to promote pastoral care conversations within a congregation and thus better equip the members of the congregation to be pastoral caregivers. The interactions among God, Job and Job's friends can help caregivers to understand the breadth and depth of loss; be comfortable with lament; see the difference between appropriate and inappropriate pastoral care; recognize the discomfort others have with suffering; acknowledge the length and volatility of the grieving process; and appreciate the role of creativity in the healing process. The paper concretely demonstrates how Scripture lives and continues to inspire today. The emotions expressed by Job, the well-intentioned but destructive words put forth by the friends, the apparent elusiveness of God and the question of theodicy continue to be relevant for discussion today among people who suffer and those who care for them.


Honouring and Protecting the Vulnerable: Artefacts From a Child’s Burial in Ancient Hauarra (Jordan)
Program Unit: Children in the Biblical World
Leslie Shumka, Mount Allison University

During excavations at the site of ancient Hauarra (Humayma) in Jordan, the tomb of a young female, dating to the sixth century AD, was discovered beneath the main aisle of the Lower Church. The girl’s interment in such a prominent location is surprising, for in Palestina Tertia burials within church complexes or precincts are usually those of clerics, other high-ranking ecclesiastics, and their adult family members. Children’s burials are seldom found in such contexts. The extensive and eclectic nature of the tomb offerings is also remarkable, for the funerary assemblages of sub-adults (those under the age of 12) in the Byzantine period tend to be spartan. They seldom comprise more than a single item of adornment or perhaps an apotropaic object. This assemblage contained a total of 17 artefacts, which reflect the wonderfully rich artistic and religious syncretism – Syrian, Greek, Nabataean, and Roman – that undoubtedly arose from the community’s location and role in a strong regional trade network. In this paper, I discuss the unusual nature of this girl’s burial and what the material remains tell us about attitudes towards children and childhood in Byzantine Jordan. Some artefacts, for instance, point very clearly to conventional ways of thinking about the domestic roles of females. Others suggest that customary methods of protecting children from malevolent forces (i.e. the evil eye) had been modified in response to the growth of Christianity. Of course we can only speculate on the impulse behind the rich grave offerings, but it must have been connected with a fervent desire on the part of her grief-stricken parents to ensure that their daughter went tranquilly and comfortably into the afterlife.


Wise Women in the Bible and in Ancient Egyptian Documents
Program Unit: Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
Nili Shupak, University of Haifa

The present paper deals with the wisdom of women in the Bible and aims to illuminate its uniqueness and variety as compared to the wisdom of women mentioned in ancient Egyptian documents. The wisdom of biblical women is multifaceted- technical or professional proficiency,wisdom of experience,and knowledge acquired through education. While in Israel wisdom is important feminine quality, wisdom is not a characteristic feature of the Egyptian women. The epithet "wise woman"(t3 rht)in Ramesside inscriptions relates not to a humain quality but rather denotes a woman magician and healer having a unique contact with the gods.


The Pseudo-Clementine Homilies and the Allegorical Reading of Scripture
Program Unit: Jewish Christianity / Christian Judaism
Karl Shuve, University of Virginia

Scholarship on the PsClem literature has in recent years begun to move away from the predominantly source-critical focus of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries towards analysis of the redacted forms of the novels within their fourth century contexts. However, Books 4-6 of the Homilies, a dialogue between Clement and an Alexandrian grammarian named Appion, present an obstacle in assessing the unity and coherence of the work. Since the monograph of Hilgenfeld (1848), scholars have accepted that the dialogue is an independent source appropriated by the “Homilist”, and since Heintze (1914) the general consensus has been that the dialogue originated as a Jewish apology. Most work on the dialogue has focused on its differences from the rest of the novel, with Adler (1993) recently demonstrating that it was not even artfully inserted into the narrative. In this paper, I shall argue that there is an intrinsic relationship between Hom. 1-3 and 4-6 and that together these originally distinct textual units form a tacit polemic against allegorical interpretation of Scripture. Both deal extensively with sacred texts—the Torah and the Greek myths—and the problems posed to their interpretive communities by anthropomorphic depictions of the divine. In both Hom. 1-3 and 4-6, it is the literal meaning of sacred texts that is privileged. In the former unit, this is most evident in the so-called doctrine of the false pericopes, according to which “everything that is spoken or written against God is false” (2.40). The biblical passages that suggest God experiences jealousy, rage, forgetfulness and other all-too-human failings (cf. 2.43-44) must be excised from the canon as false interpolations. There is no hint whatsoever that non-literal reading strategies could be employed to render them compatible with the Homilies’ understanding of God. Likewise, in Hom. 4-6 there is a concern solely for the literal meaning of texts; in this case, however, the Greek myths are at issue. Allegorical interpretation is here explicitly rejected as inadequate, because it does not cover over the impious, literal narratives, but serves merely to justify their continued use in Greek society. Given that the Homilies were likely redacted in Western Syria, my conclusions suggest that the text’s "Jewish Christian" redactors were part of a broader Antiochene reaction against allegory. The doctrine of the false pericopes, far from being an imported relic of primitive “Jewish Christianity,” is therefore imbricated in the agonistic context of fourth-century biblical interpretation.


Biblical Hebrew between the Jewish and the Non-Jewish Traditions of Interpretation: The Semantic Field of Loans as a Case Study
Program Unit: Biblical Lexicography
Avi Shveka, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

The purpose of this lecture is to draw the attention of biblical Hebrew lexicographers to the scope and importance of a quite neglected phenomenon: extensive and constant disagreements between the Jewish and the non-Jewish traditions of interpretation with regard to the meaning of biblical Hebrew words. As the non-Jewish tradition usually forms the basis of modern scholarship, biblical lexicographers and commentators are many times not dully aware to the semantic understanding reflected in the Jewish tradition. This argument will be demonstrated by presenting the results of a detailed study in which I examined systematically the terminology of loans in biblical Hebrew, notably the meanings of the verbs ?bl, nšh, ’rb and of their derivatives. Generally speaking, while the common tradition interpret these terms as refer to the loan itself or to actions taken at the time of the loan, according to the Jewish tradition they refer to a situation when the debtor failed to pay his debt in due time. In relevant scholarly literature, one finds almost no awareness to the very existence of this disagreement, let alone a serious discussion of the problems involved. According to my conclusions, the Jewish tradition’s view should be adhered, with a few minor corrections. This implies on the understanding of most of the biblical laws of loans. In my view, the semantic system held by the other tradition of interpretation, which is commonly adhered to in modern scholarship, reflects an unintended attempt to apply a later-period conceptual framework regarding loans to the semantic field of loans in biblical Hebrew.


The Twelve Quoting Itself: Jonah's Critique of Joel
Program Unit: Book of the Twelve Prophets
Anna Sieges, Baylor University

Scholars have long noted allusions to Exod 34:6-7 as a thread that runs through The Book of the Twelve promoting YHWH’s compassionate and merciful character as well as YHWH’s refusal to leave the guilty unpunished. The allusions to Exod 34:6-7 in Joel and Jonah create a striking tension. In Joel, the supposed recipient of YHWH’s compassion is Judah while in Jonah it is Nineveh, Judah’s enemy. Complicating the matter, both Joel 2:14 and Jonah 3:9 contain nearly identical allusions to Exod 32:12: “Who knows, he [God] may turn and relent...” Clearly, one writing borrowed the phrase from the other but the direction of borrowing remains unclear. Establishing dependence is complex because both Joel and Jonah are difficult to date and may have grown over an extended period. Nevertheless, Siegfried Bergler has developed a compelling case for Joel’s dependence on Jonah by examining the allusions to the Exodus narrative in each. Several scholars have followed Bergler’s conclusions. However, Bergler’s conclusions remain unconvincing for Aaron Schart, among others. For Schart, Jonah is a satire of the particularistic theology of Joel and uses Joel as an intertextual referent. This paper advances the scholarly conversation by using textual and rhetorical evidence to show that Schart’s impulse is correct. This paper substantiates Jonah’s dependence on Joel by examining the Exodus allusions as well as the particularistic (Joel) and universalistic (Jonah) ideology found in each. The examination concludes that Jonah’s message is enhanced when read in light of Joel while Joel’s message is not enhanced when read in light of Jonah. Additionally, this paper shows the extent of Jonah’s dependence on Joel by documenting Jonah’s use of catchwords and motifs from Joel 1:13-18; 2:12-17 in the narrative of the Ninevite repentance (Jonah 3:3-4:4). Previous scholars have not noted the extent of similar vocabulary and motifs in these sections.


The Presentation of Herod the Great in Josephus' Jewish War
Program Unit: Josephus
Joseph Sievers, Pontificio Istituto Biblico

This paper will review the ways in which Josephus presents the figure of Herod the Great in the Jewish War.


Red Bible, Blue Bible, and the 2012 Presidential Campaign
Program Unit: Bible and Popular Culture
Jeffrey S. Siker, Loyola Marymount University

Throughout American history the Bible has been wielded as a club by one political party against another, especially during the ever-lengthening presidential election season. It should come as no surprise, then, that the 2012 presidential campaign has seen its share of appeals to the Bible in the ongoing polarization of political culture in the United States, with each candidate tacitly claiming God’s endorsement by asserting that the Bible is on their side of the debate. In this paper I analyze the uses of the Bible in the 2012 presidential campaign, with particular attention to how Republican candidates have appropriated the Bible to argue for a greater role of religion, especially conservative evangelical Christianity, in the public square. From Senator Santorum’s accusations that President Obama has a “phony theology” that is not based on the Bible, to Newt Gingrich’s call for a more biblical government, to Ron Paul’s appeal to 1 Samuel 8 in arguing for a smaller government, and Governor Romney’s protestations that he is a Bible-believer (amidst occasional concerns about his Mormon understanding of the Bible), the Republican presidential field has taken square aim at President Obama’s policies as somehow unbiblical. In turn, President Obama has continued during his first term in office to make use of the Bible to argue for a more inclusive vision of American political culture, one that is particularly attentive to the prophetic voices of the Bible and the tradition of the black church. In this regard Obama has repeatedly called for Americans to be responsive to the biblical call to be our brother's and sister's keeper. But this vision has also been tempered with a keen awareness of the limitations of religious convictions in the face of the constant reality of political compromise. From Red Bible to Blue Bible, this paper will explore appropriations of biblical rhetoric in the 2012 presidential campaign.


Beyond the Urrolle Hypothesis: Evidence of Parallel Textual Encodings of Oral Prophetic Speech in the Book of Jeremiah
Program Unit: Orality, Textuality, and the Formation of the Hebrew Bible
Edward Silver, Wellesley College

Many scholars continue to assume that an originating documentary collection of prophetic oracles stands at the root of the Book of Jeremiah. Those working in the tradition of Bernhard Duhm and Sigmund Mowinckel assume there was a relatively unified body of prophetic poetry that was subsequently augmented with prose and homiletic material. Similarly, most redaction critics posit some sort of stable base text which was exegetically adapted and reframed in the course of tradition growth. The central evidence for this unified written collection of Jeremian poetry is the narrative account given in Jer 36. In view of the literary connections between Jer 36 and 2K 22, however, as well as both texts' evident valorization of a single scribal family, there are strong reasons to treat this narrative with caution. Without Jer 36, the fundamental conceptual unity of the Jeremian tradition lacks a stable empirical basis. If we cannot trust that the core of the Book of Jeremiah was inscribed in a single act of recollection, prophetic diction and unified inscription, then how are we to reconstruct its point of origin? To address this problem, the present essay draws upon the abundance of literary doublets present in the Book of Jeremiah. In contrast to Parke-Taylor's influential approach, the text's repeated cadenced phrases and reduplicated poems and poem fragments are adduced as evidence for separate, parallel literary encodings of Jeremian oracular speech. Several key doublets in the Book of Jeremiah are analyzed in terms of their structural and terminological variation as well as their differing literary frames. Drawing on evidence from Mari as well as some recent research into the oral prehistory of the biblical text, these doublets are treated as separate recollections and textualizations of original acts of verbal prophetic discourse. As such, they provide insight into the agonistic nature of the early post-Jeremian period as well as evidence for the later stabilization of that tradition in a unified, albeit inconsistent textual form.


The Legal Function and Origin of the nsl Clause of Elephantine
Program Unit: Aramaic Studies
Brandon J. Simonson, Boston University

Over the course of the last century, the nsl clause of Elephantine has been translated and interpreted in several different ways, each of which can be traced back to a translation and interpretation of the biblical Hebrew nsl. This paper examines the appearance of the nsl clause in the Elephantine legal corpus in order to establish the specific legal function of the clause, and to explore the origins of this clause in both ancient Near Eastern and Egyptian legal material. In the exploration of legal function, traditional interpretations of testamentary succession are questioned, as the clause is much more versatile than scholars have suggested in the past. What is determined is particularly striking: the nsl clause of Elephantine was developed in the community to protect those who would not normally have evidence of clear title, especially those receiving property without mention of payment. After a thorough semantic analysis of the cuneiform and Egyptian legal terms, Persian period data is used to explore hitherto unnoticed parallels of the Aramaic nsl. Two Demotic antecedents of nsl reveal an exact parallel, in both form and legal function. In light of R. Ritner (2002), who emphasizes how locally prevailing law was often adopted into legal practice, and A. Botta (2009), whose paradigm shifting work provides evidence for an Egyptian origin of Aramaic legal terms, it is concluded that the nsl clause is a prime example of how Persian Egypt allowed local law to thrive within Persian legal practice.


Land, Barley, and Wheat as Pivotal Characters in Ruth
Program Unit: Ecological Hermeneutics
Alice M. Sinnott, University of Auckland

In this paper I attempt to read the story of Ruth from an ecological perspective by engaging with the principles of ecological hermeneutics. I seek to identify and retrieve something of the roles of the non-human characters of Land, Barley and Wheat in this narrative. Ruth offers an interesting example of a text where Land and its fruitfulness play major roles. This ecological reading of the familiar story of Ruth begins with the premise that Land and its produce - in this case Barley and Wheat - are not background for the human story but are pivotal players in the narrative. Traditionally anthropocentric readings of Ruth have usually concentrated on the human figures as central to the narrative. This paper challenges readers to hear the narrative from the perspective of Land, Barley and Wheat as primary characters in the development of the Ruth Scroll and thus identify and retrieve something of the fundamental significance of Land and Grain and recognise how such a perspective transposes this story – one traditionally interpreted as an account of the hesed of two women - to a story about the absolute dependence of the human characters on the fruitfulness of the Land and its Grain.


Genesis 22: What Question to Ask to the Text?
Program Unit: Pentateuch
Jean-Louis Ska, Pontificio Istituto Biblico

Sometimes it may become indispensible in exegesis to “question the question,” in other words to challenge the pertinence of certain questions. Is the attribution of Genesis 22 to a particular source of the Pentateuch, for instance the Yahwist or the Elohist, the first question to ask? Or are some other questions more relevant? This study starts with a famous reflection by Immanuel Kant: “That I should not kill my son is absolutely sure. But that you, who appear to me, are God in person, of that I am not sure at all even when your voice thunders from heaven”. From an exegetical point of view, this leads to a basic question: who is the “God” that asks Abraham to offer in sacrifice Isaac, the son of the promise? In other words, are there essential differences between the theology of this narrative and that of other narratives in Genesis 12 25, the Abraham cycle? If there are essential differences, what about the origin of Genesis 22? A second question is about the identity or non-identity of the “God” who requires the sacrifice and the “angel of Yhwh” who stops this sacrifice. If this is the case, how do we explain the apparent contradiction between the two behaviors and, moreover, the use of two different appellations? The answers to these questions are essential, in my opinion, if we are to find out a practical way of solving some problems about the origin and the significance of this famous piece of biblical literature.


Lost Portions of Q Found! . . . In the Lukan Travel Narrative
Program Unit: Q
David B. Sloan, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

This paper challenges a number of assumptions with regard to the extent and structure of Q. First, because only 49% of Mark’s 661 verses occur in both Matthew and Luke, we challenge the assumption that Matthew and Luke both copied the vast majority of Q and that Q was thus not much longer than the double tradition. If we throw off this assumption and study the style of Q, we will repeatedly find in the unique Lukan material in Luke 9:57 – 18:14 unlukan stylistic features that are characteristic of Q. Some of these features are unique to Q, Matthew, and Luke among all extant Greek literature, suggesting their having originated with Q. When the passages containing these features are considered to be from Q, almost every pericope in Luke 9:57 – 18:14 contains phrases from Q. Second, this paper challenges the assumption that Luke is more free in expanding Q than he is in expanding Mark, and it demonstrates based on style and on Luke’s redactional tendencies that when part of a Lukan passage is found in the double tradition, the entire passage (not merely the paralleled verses) is likely to be from Q. Third, the assumption that Q is comprised mainly of shorter sayings is challenged. To be sure, Q is over 80% words of Jesus. Yet Q 3 – 7 is generally held to have narrative introductions and dialogs; why not assume that the presence of these in Luke 9:57 – 18:14 (where we also have over 80% words of Jesus) represents what was in Q. A study of the style of these introductions and dialogs suggests the same hand as that behind the rest of Q. Once these three assumptions are challenged it becomes clear that the majority of Luke 9:57 – 18:14, with the exceptions of a couple passages (Mary and Martha, the Ten Lepers) and a few shorter transitions (11:27-28, 53-54; 13:22; etc.), is from Q. This is confirmed by a study of the resultant structure of Q. Since each Q pericope is introduced with a narrative setting, we can easily outline Q, and when all of these passages are considered, Q clearly contains two chiasms, the first answering the question “Who is Jesus?” (Q 3:1 – 7:35), and the second answering the question “What does it mean to be his disciple?” (Q 9:57 – 22:38). In this way Q is shown to be twice as long as most scholarly reconstructions and to contain many verses that are unique to Luke in the synoptic gospels. This has great implications for the future of Q research as well as for our understanding of Luke’s self-perceived role as a preserver of tradition.


Corrections in New Testament and Qur'an Manuscripts: Formal and Informal Textual Standardization
Program Unit: New Testament Textual Criticism
Keith E. Small, London School of Theology

Corrections to ancient manuscripts present important information concerning textual transmission. In New Testament manuscript studies, the examination of corrections has a long history and has provided valuable insights into the textual history of several significant manuscripts such as Codex Bezae and Codex Sinaiticus. Similar work is just beginning on Qur’an manuscripts and it holds out similar promise for illuminating not only the Qur’an’s textual tradition, but also for providing an important comparative situation for evaluating the New Testament textual tradition. This presentation will provide a survey of the general kinds of corrections one may find in the New Testament and Qur’an manuscript traditions. Special attention will be given to corrections which change the meaning of the text, which affect the continuing form of the text in its transmission history, and which have an effect in establishing precise text-types. Some preliminary conclusions will be made from these observations concerning the respective textual histories of these traditions. The major contribution of this presentation concerns the corroboration with Islamic historical records of a major project of formal standardization toward a specific and precise Qur'anic text-type in an early and formative period of its textual history. This standardization is a much greater one than is observable in the Greek New Testament tradition. This greater degree argues against there being for the New Testament a similar concerted widespread effort to establish a precise authoritative form of the Greek text in its most formative period of development.


The Invention of Adoptionism and the Development of Early Trinitarian Theologies
Program Unit: Development of Early Christian Theology
Peter-Ben Smit, VU University Amsterdam

“Adoptionism” is a category often used in the study of the history of early Christianity in order to describe “subordinationist” models of understanding the relationship between Father and Son in emerging Trinitarian theologies in the first through third centuries. However, the notion of early Christian adoptionism is in need of serious reconsideration for historical and historiographical reasons. This paper pursues two principal aims: 1) to show that the notion of “adoptionism” as a category of church history constitutes an unfortunate, but nevertheless influential 19th century invention, which is related to a particular (and questionable) model of the development of early Christian christology and Trinitarian theology, which cannot be documented in the literary remains of “adoptionists,” and, when applied to the relevant New Testament texts (i.e. Mk. 1:9-11parr., Rom. 1:3-4), yields anachronistic results. 2) to argue that that early “Adoptionists” (e.g. “Ebionites”, the Pastor Hermas, the Theodoti, to some extent Paul of Samosata, and others), were much rather developing a soteriological model than a Trinitarian theology and that the study of the emergence of early Christian Trinitarian theology (with all its soteriologial aspects, of course) would be well served by taking this into account. this background, it will be argued that in the NT, “adoption” is essentially a soteriological concept that is relatively far removed later Trinitarian theologies, especially from the 3rd and 4th century discourses leading to the conciliar formulations about the relationship between Son, the Father, and the Spirit.


From Job’s Messengers to Paul’s Hearers: Interrupted Discourses in the Greek Bible
Program Unit: Speech and Talk in the Ancient Mediterranean World
Daniel L. Smith, Saint Louis University

While conversational conventions vary from culture to culture, the “one-speaker-at-a-time” rule is generally valid both in modern Western culture and in the ancient Mediterranean world. In the Septuagint and New Testament, we find that narrators generally mark speaking turns, and these speaking turns tend to begin and end in an orderly fashion. However, the narrator will occasionally point out that subsequent actions or words take place before the end of a speaking turn (e.g., “while he was still speaking…”). This paper will begin by giving an overview of the interrupted discourses of the Greek Bible. Drawing on conversation analysis, we will then discuss some of the patterns of interruption. Most commonly, discourse is interrupted or “overlapped” in order to add drama to a scene; for example, the messengers in Job 1 dramatically arrive one after another, cutting into the speaking turn of the previous speaker. We will focus, however, on speech that is interrupted by a speaker’s audience. More than just adding drama or depicting simultaneity, these interruptions tend to reveal the audience’s extreme response to the speaker. Extremely positive reactions (e.g., Luke 11:27) and extremely negative reactions (e.g., 4 Macc 11:9; Acts 22:22) are marked by the violation of turn-taking practices. Whereas earlier texts translated into Greek from Hebrew tend to feature primarily dramatic interruptions that link a discourse with a subsequent or simultaneous event, later texts begin to focus more explicitly on the dynamics between speakers and their hearers (e.g., Acts 15:12-13).


Aesop, Paul, and Jesus: The Rhetorical Function of Fables in the New Testament
Program Unit: Institute for Biblical Research
Daniel L. Smith, Saint Louis University

Aesop, Paul, and Jesus: The Rhetorical Function of Fables in the New Testament


"Show Us the Place Where You Are": Spatial Metaphor and Communal Identity in Q, Mark, and Thomas
Program Unit: Q
Dan Smith, Huron University College

Focusing on a few illustrative texts from Q, Mark, and Thomas, this paper attempts to account for the rhetorical and narrative strategies by means of which these texts attempt to construct communal identity using spatial metaphors. Of special interest is how these documents construct ideas of kingdom and community and/or locate Jesus metaphorically, often (but not always) in relation to built or domestic space. In so doing, these texts both express a communal sense of identity in relation to Jesus and his instruction and press the reader/hearer to situate themselves accordingly. Texts considered include Q 12:39-40, 42-46; 13:25-27, 29, 28; Mark 1:29-39; 3:31-35; 10:23-27; and Thomas 3:1-3; 24:1-3; 77:1-3.


The Reimagination of Torah in the Social Ethic of Luke-Acts
Program Unit: Intertextuality in the New Testament
David A. Smith, Duke University

A number of recent publications on Jesus’ sermon in Nazareth in Luke 4:16-30 have drawn attention to the intertextual relationship between Jesus’ reading from Isaiah 61/58 and the institution of the Levitical Jubilee year. Recognition of the similarity between the liberation of the poor in the Jubilee year and the inclusion of the poor in the social ethic of Jesus and the early church in Luke-Acts has prompted fruitful reflection on the significance of liberation for Lukan theology, as well as for modern Christian ethics. However, few studies have analyzed sufficiently the intertextual relationship between the Nazareth sermon in Luke and the Jubilee institution in Leviticus. Likewise, scholarship has failed to explore thoroughly the Jubilee motifs throughout Luke-Acts. The present study therefore seeks, through such analysis, to strengthen the case that Luke should be understood as invoking a Jubilee background for Jesus’ Nazareth sermon and that, moreover, Luke has interwoven the scriptural tradition of the Jubilee (along with the related institution of the Sabbath year and other key economic biblical texts), into his narrative depiction of Jesus and the early church. Through this appropriation of the sacred tradition, Luke’s theology emerges as a complex picture not only of the release from sins occasioned by the death and resurrection of Jesus but also and especially of the peculiar social existence of the early church, in which a re-imagination of the Torah of Moses has become the ground for the proclamation of an early Christian social gospel.


“After My Departure Savage Wolves Will Arise”: Paul the Apocalyptic Prophet in the Acts of the Apostles and the Pastoral Epistles
Program Unit: Disputed Paulines
Geoffrey Smith, Princeton University

Despite the fact that the notion of heresy and the practice of heresiology reached full form sometime in the first half of the second century, the demonization of one’s opponents is not without precedent in the New Testament. In this paper I will discuss an important moment in the development of early Christian polemical culture, namely the recasting of the apostle Paul by the authors of the Pastoral Epistles and the Acts of the Apostles as an apocalyptic prophet who forecasts the rise of false teachers. I will explore the function of pseudepigraphy in these texts by showing how the authors place future warnings of rivalry and dissent on the lips of Paul in order to make sense of their present state of affairs. I will also discuss an apparent tension found in the Pastoral Epistles, namely that we find an intensification of apocalyptic rhetoric just as the church begins to settle in for the long haul by establishing long-term guidelines for community life, a more formalized structure of church leadership, and a clear set of qualifications for members aspiring to these leadership positions. Finally, I will briefly discuss the lasting effect the decision to demonize one’s opponents had on Christian polemical culture and in particular, on the formation of the Christian heresiological tradition.


Contained by God: Jonah's Unsuccessful Flight
Program Unit: Psychology and Biblical Studies
Marina C. Smith, Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York

I plan to expand upon a brief paper I wrote for a January term course given by Tiffany Houck-Loomis at Union. In it, I consider Jonah’s attempts to escape from God’s call and God’s “corralling” response, using concepts put forth by D.W. Winnicott and Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg as a framework for thinking about the holding environment God provides. Wherever Jonah runs, God is there, protecting and thwarting him at the same time. I also touch upon the nature of Jonah’s defiance,which contains both anger and paralyzing depression. In light of this, Jonah’s ultimate compliance, demonstrated by the rote conventionality of his prayer in the belly of the fish and his abbreviated trip to Nineveh, sends him into deeper misery, rather than toward reconciliation with God. Finally, I find it powerful that God “shows up” for a conversation about divine judgment and mercy when Jonah, exhausted and despairing, no longer has the strength to flee. And we are left not knowing Jonah’s response because God has the last word.


Warrior Song as Warrior Ritual
Program Unit: Warfare in Ancient Israel
Mark Smith, New York University

Central to understanding battle ritual in early Israel is the evidence provided by heroic poetry or better heroic song. At the same time, such song is a ritualized battle practice. The post-battle role of battle song itself marks transition from battle to post-battle, and it also provides evaluation and interpretation of battle. This paper will also address the importance of the battle song as a major genre in earliest Israelite literature.


The Emergence of Village Economy in the Transjordanian Iron Age: A Perspective from Ancient Edom and Its Neighbors
Program Unit: Historiography and the Hebrew Bible
Neil Smith, University of California-San Diego

Intensive surveys and recent excavations in the highlands and lowlands of southern Jordan (Biblical Edom) are shedding new light on domestic life in Iron Age II Southern Jordan. A synthesis of these data with literary texts, ethno-archaeology and regional archaeological parallels allow a reconstruction of the biblical time period’s village economies. This reconstruction provides an analytical lens for understanding many of the biblical paradigms and depictions of village life in the Hebrew Bible and other contemporary textual sources. These insights offer a new context in which details of a biblical passage can be brought into focus and lead to a greater clarity in one’s exegesis. It is this informed reading of biblical passages that anthropological archaeology proves to have the greatest impact on discovering implied and un-implied commentaries on topics of ideology, cultural values, ethnic identity, politics and society in Ancient Israel and its neighbors. In this paper, we present several examples of how recent excavations at domestic villages in ancient Edom have provided fresh new insights to biblical passages and compare similarities and differences between what is known of Transjordanian and Cisjordan Iron Age village economies through the Iron Age periods.


A Second Look at Heidegger on Aristotle’s Rhetoric: A Contribution to Basic Research for African-American Preaching
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
P. Christopher Smith, The University of Massachusetts Lowell

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Violence, Politics, and the Higher Law: Sermons on John Brown
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Ted A. Smith, Vanderbilt University

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Into the Lion's Den: Contesting Power in Daniel 7
Program Unit: African-American Biblical Hermeneutics
Terry Ann Smith, Rutgers University

Into the Lion’s Den: Contesting Power in Daniel 7 As literature of the marginalized and oppressed, the book of Daniel nuances the dichotomous relationship between empire and the Jews subjugated under imperial rule. For religiously committed readers, the book’s complex depiction of group conflict draws our attention to the ways in which religion and religious language contribute to the construction and contestation of power relations. An investigation of Daniel 7 yields enigmatic congruencies between the antithetical discourses of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. and the subversive and oppositional stances attending the Daniel narrative. Illustratively, I make use of the defiant rhetoric of Malcolm X and the passionate speeches of King to illuminate the possibility of similar rhetorical strategies operating in Daniel 7. Given the similarities, the competing rhetorics of Malcolm X and King may prove seminally instructive in illuminating our understanding and interpretation of imperial resistance as it is tendered in the chapter’s textual construction.


Transmission Peculiarities of the Eusebian Apparatus in Codex Alexandrinus
Program Unit: New Testament Textual Criticism
W. Andrew Smith, University of Edinburgh

The fourth century system for navigating between parallel passages in the Gospels called the Eusebian canons is well known (and used) by textual critics, but remarkably little work has been done to examine the positional relationship between the apparatus and the texts of the Gospels, or how the apparatus is transmitted in early New Testament texts. This paper presents an analysis of the Eusebian canons found in the fifth century Greek manuscript known as Codex Alexandrinus in order to shed light on the transmission of the apparatus at the headwaters of the Byzantine text tradition.


St. Hippolytus' Commentary on the Song of Songs as Mystagogical Transformation of Domestic Art
Program Unit: Development of Early Christian Theology
Yancy W. Smith, World Bible Translation Center

The theology of early Christianity grew as much from the experience of early house-church communities as from the interpretation of the texts of Scripture. Hippolytus' Commentary On the Song of Songs illustrates an approach to the texts and traditions of early Christianity that brings them into dialogue with the embodied experiences of new converts (in either Rome or Asia Minor, late 2nd or early 3rd century CE). The exposition of the Song lingers over sensuous aspects of the Song to develop an anti-Jewish, anti-Valentinian, and non-Monarchian theological stance. Rustic embodiment as a corollary of incarnation is the touch stone of his approach. Powerful scripts projected in the themes of domestic art form the primary topoi, of his exposition. As a mystagogy for the newly baptized, the commentary reads Scripture in the light of the experience of common themes of domestic art, the potent events of the Gospel narrative, and the experiences of Christian pilgrimage traditions. In this way both Scripture and the domestic sphere are themselves transformed into gospel texts. The mystical theology that Hippolytus develops in this way emphasizes the exclusive, intimate sphere of family and friendship within the church that opens up for newly baptized Hippolytan believers who receive the mystery of the anointing in the context of Paschal baptismal celebrations.


Retainer Class Consciousness in Proverbs
Program Unit: Economics in the Biblical World
Mark Sneed, Lubbock Christian University

Drawing on the phenomenological approach of Brian Kovacs, biblical scholar and sociologist, Weber’s notion of status group, and theorization on intellectuals, this paper will explore how class, group, and social category interact in the book of Proverbs to reveal a particular social location. Of all the genres of the Hebrew Bible, the wisdom corpus, particularly Proverbs, represents perhaps the most socially transparent literature because many scholars agree that this material was used originally in the training of scribes. And, significantly, Proverbs reveals the authors’ consciousness about their own class rather than solely their perception of external classes. The paper will first demonstrate how Proverbs reflects consciousness in these variables. As for class, the sages in Proverbs viewed themselves as neither rich nor poor, though this is a distortion. They largely shared the worldview of the governing class they served but differed with them when it came to abuses of power. As for status group, the sages saw a clear boundary between their own guild and others, and tolerated no breaches. As for social category, the sages’ identity as intellectuals meant inherently an air of superiority and the valuing of intellect and morality above wealth and power. The paper will then explore how the dichotomy between ????? and ????? serves as a social code that reflects the distinctions just delineated. For example, at times, “the wise” must necessarily be retainers because the classes above and below them are not able to conduct the sapiential life. The wealthy are fools when they inherently abuse their power and take advantage of the poor. But the poor are fools when their poverty prevents them from living up to the standards of the wise. Finally, it will be shown that of the three variables, group is the master status for the sages.


“Grasping after the Wind”: The Elusive Attempt to Define Wisdom
Program Unit: Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
Mark Sneed, Lubbock Christian University

“I know it when I see it” was US Supreme Court Justice Stewart Potter’s famous threshold test for defining pornography (Jacobellis v. Ohio [1964]). No specific criteria could be mustered except the vague notion that pornography had to have some sort of social or artistic value to distinguish it from obscenity. Yet no one would deny that such a genre exists. The same murkiness plagues any attempt to define the biblical wisdom tradition. However, unlike their ancient Near Eastern counterparts who do not devote nearly as much energy to defining their respective corpora, some in fact refusing to use the term “wisdom” to refer to their cognate traditions, biblical wisdom experts cannot seem to let the issue rest. This paper will explore why this is the case. It will have three parts. The first will show the great divide between biblical scholarship and Assyriology and Egyptology concerning wisdom literature and attempt to explain why it exists. One reason is the growing over-specialization in the modern academy and the insular tendencies this produces. Another is the persistence of erroneous form critical assumptions in biblical studies. The second section, drawing on genre criticism, will demonstrate that the wisdom corpus holds together only loosely at a high level of abstraction and that it constitutes merely a mode of literature. It reflects neither a distinctive world view nor employs a unique epistemology within the Hebrew Bible. The dynamic and unstable nature of the mode will be emphasized. Drawing on post modern criticism, the third section of the paper will explore the underlying ideological reasons why wisdom experts may have idiosyncratically fixated on this issue. The quest for a center to wisdom will be shown to parallel the similar quest by biblical theology.


Consuming Judgment (1 Cor 11:29)
Program Unit: Pauline Epistles
Glenn E. Snyder, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis

In 1 Cor 8–11 Paul debates with the Corinthians about eating and drinking. Based on the material in 11:2–16, it is common to divide Paul’s discussion into two separate topics: idol-offerings (8:1–11:1) and the bread and cup of the Lord (11:17–34). But were such matters separate for the Corinthians? We know that the Corinthians in question considered idol-offerings adiaphora due to their strong monotheism and critique of idols (8:1, 4, 8; 10:23; cp. 6:13). But Paul affirms that many gods and lords exist (8:5b), that the act of offering food to a divinity associates that food with the divinity in question (10:16, 20a), and that eating such food constitutes association with those divinities (10:18, 20b–21). In other words, for Paul the consumption of idol-offerings was idolatry (10:14)! Like the Moses of Deuteronomy, Paul therefore provides a thematic retrospect on Israel’s wanderings in the desert, in order to warn the Corinthians not to adulterate the Lord’s food and drink with idol-offerings (10:1–12). With an eye on the catastrophe with the Golden Calf (Exod 32, cited not only 1 Cor 10:7 but also in 10:18 and 20a), Paul claims that it is by consuming idol-offerings as their “lord’s meal” that the Corinthians are incorporating the Lord’s judgment into themselves and dying like Israel did in the wilderness (11:20–21, 29–30; 10:21–22). After explaining why Paul’s arguments for the “weak” in 1 Cor 8–9 and 10:23–11:1 are commonly misinterpreted as if he were aligning with the so-called “strong,” this presentation will re-examine Paul’s argument against the “strong” in 1 Cor 10:1–22 and 11:17–34.


Paul the Benjaminite: Tribal Affiliation in 1 Cor 15:8–10
Program Unit: Paul and Politics
Glenn E. Snyder, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis

In 1 Cor 15:8–10 Paul writes that, after his uprising, the Anointed appeared also to him. By adding his story to a sequence of post-mortem appearances, Paul’s story functions to authorize the euangelion he has proclaimed about bodily anastasis (see 15:3–11 as part of 15:1–58). But the meaning of Paul’s narrative is less apparent: Why does he say that the Anointed appeared to him “last of all”? In what manner is Paul like an “ektroma”? What makes him the “least” and “not sufficient” to be an apostolos? As a case study in Paul’s ethnic argumentation, I will argue that in 1 Cor 15:8–10 Paul identifies himself as a delegate of the tribe of Benjamin (see Rom 11:1; Phil 3:5; cp. 2 Cor 11:22). From the traumatic birth of Israel’s youngest son (Gen 35) to the practical annihilation of Benjamin (Jud 19–21) to the inspirited Saul (esp. 1 Sam 9–10), Paul represents his election through an evocative retelling of Benjamin’s history. Considering why and for whom Paul would claim such tribal affiliation will require us to reconsider, in the context of mid-first century Roman Corinth, what it meant for Paul to be apostolos of the “ethne.”


Negotiating the Power of Prayer: Gender, Social Status, and Authoritative Speech
Program Unit: Speech and Talk in the Ancient Mediterranean World
Anna Rebecca Solevag, School of Mission and Theology

References to prayer in early Christian texts reveal that this form of speech often caused tension and conflict. Passages such as 1 Cor 11:4-16 and 1 Tim 2:8-15 show that issues of gender, authority and submission come to the fore when prayer is under discussion. Prayer is a mode of speech that lends authority. Who had the right to address the deity on behalf of the community? Women as well as men? Slaves as well as free? In this paper I will present some early Christian text passages about prayer that may shed some light on these questions. Perhaps we see in these texts how gender categories as well as the categories of slave and free are negotiated within the early Christian communities that wrote these texts.


Disability and Sexuality in the Acts of Peter
Program Unit: Healthcare and Disability in the Ancient World
Anna Rebecca Solevag, School of Mission and Theology

This paper will analyze categories of disability in the apocryphal Acts of Peter (APt), looking in particular at the connections between disability and sexuality. In APt there are not only healing stories but several stories of un-healing and of inflicting disability. For example, a woman accused of adultery is paralyzed by the apostle Paul (2), and the sorcerer Simon is first made mute (15), then injured in his leg by the apostle Peter’s prayer (32): “…let him…be crippled, but not die; but let him be disabled and break his leg in three places”. The most important categories of disability in APt seem to be the so-called “biblical trilogy of disability”– the blind, deaf and lame, although muteness also occurs. Lameness in particular seems connected to sexuality and deviance, and may be seen as a punishment for sin in the two stories mentioned. Moreover, there is also a connection between sexuality and lameness in the Coptic fragment about Peter’s daughter (Berlin Coptic Papyrus 8502), usually considered to be part of APt. Here, the daughter’s paralyzed body functions as a protection from sexual violation. The value of this young woman’s body seems to lie primarily in her virginity, thus her disability is a guarantee against an even worse impairment (according to the logic of the text); i.e. that of a broken hymen. The intersections of gender, sexuality and disability in these stories of healing and un-healing will be explored with a hermeneutical lense drawing on disability studies as well as feminist approaches to early Christian literature.


Biblical Concepts of Death and Resurrection from the Cognitive Metaphor Theory Perspective
Program Unit: Metaphor Theory and the Hebrew Bible
Alexey Somov, Institute for Bible Translation, Moscow

This paper is dedicated to the application of the cognitive metaphor theory developed by G. Lakoff and M. Johnson to the study of the ideas of death and resurrection reflected in the Hebrew Bible and their influence on the development of the subsequent Jewish and early Christian views and beliefs. We examine death and resurrection as concepts (parts of the conceptual system of the biblical authors) and explore their basic representatives in terms of semantics and context. This analysis demonstrates that the core of the concept of the resurrection from the dead in the Hebrew Bible is represented by several lexical forms with the meaning of revival, waking up, and standing up after sleep. Meanwhile, the concept of death is closely connected with the descent to the underworld and with sleep. These representations had been transmitted into the world of Septuagint, the cognate Jewish literature, and the New Testament. The investigation of the conceptual metaphors of death and resurrection in this corpus of literature and their interaction makes it possible to model the metaphorical extension of death as sleep and that of resurrection as waking up and standing up. This approach helps us to enrich our understanding of some biblical passages about death and resurrection, as it will be demonstrated by the examples from Isa 26:19; Prov 15:24; Dan 12:1-3,13; Luke 8:40-56; John11:1-44, and Acts 7:56-60.


Examining Esther and Miriam as an “Asian under my Western Makeup’’
Program Unit: Asian and Asian-American Hermeneutics
Angeline M. G. Song, University of Otago

I am a Singaporean Peranakan female, also known as Straits Chinese. This means that I am a member of a distinct Southeast Asian ethnicity that has its roots in both the Chinese and the Malay peoples. My first language is English, my vernacular is baba Malay (creolized Malay), and during British colonial rule, my grandparents and ancestors were the ‘mimic-men’ of the British, looking West rather than East in their aspirations and ideals, even as they clung fiercely to many Asian values. I myself was born and bred in postcolonial, post-independent Singapore and had my first job as a journalist for an English-language newspaper in Singapore, before emigrating to New Zealand. Recently, I have also been spending much time in France. I therefore have a hybrid heritage and identity, and I read biblical characters such as Esther and Miriam from this in-between space, as an “Asian under my Western make up’’. For instance, whilst some Western feminist scholars see Esther as a heartless bimbo, “the scab underlying the impact of a striking worker’s sacrifice’’, I interpret her as a subversive role model, who saves the Hebrew people from destruction. And if the traditional view of Miriam of Exodus 2 is that of a ‘bit’ player, placed by the narrator merely to facilitate the deliverance of a future great leader of Israel, I read Miriam - perhaps against the implicit intentions of the narrator-focalizer - as a significantly important character. I argue that her speech to Pharaoh’s daughter may be couched in submissive language, but that it is part of a necessarily oblique but shrewd strategy by an oppressed, colonized Other. Miriam is, I contend, manifesting what I call a Pragmatism of the Powerless, a strategy which many Asians from formerly colonized countries, and/or those living in predominantly Western countries, may be familiar with.


The Theological Significance of Not Pronouncing the Divine Name in the New Testament
Program Unit: Christian Theology and the Bible
R. Kendall Soulen, Wesley Theological Seminary

Avoidance of the divine name (the Tetragrammaton) is a conventional Second Temple expression of respect for the holiness of God that saturates the New Testament, co-determining the literal sense of well over 2000 words and phrases in every conceivable context, including the portrayal of the paschal mystery. Insofar as the church lives by rehearsing this same scriptural language, the practice remains a living feature of Christian worship in the present day. Christians, however, have not often reflected on the theological significance of the practice, not least because they have often been oblivious to its very existence in their scripture and liturgy. This lecture attends to this lacuna, taking its starting point from an interpretation of the significance of name-avoidance in Jesus Christ’s own prayer, practice, and teaching, as this is knowable from his Gospel portraits.


The Reappropriation of Memory and the Temple of Apollo in Roman Corinth
Program Unit: Space, Place, and Lived Experience in Antiquity
Barbette Stanley Spaeth, College of William and Mary

On the basis of Pausanias (2.3.6), the Archaic Temple overlookin the forum of Corinth has been identified as the Temple of Apollo, both in the Roman period to which Pausanias’ work belongs, and also probably in the Greek period as well. Indeed, it is assumed that the Roman colonists of Corinth deliberately revived both the temple and its cult in an attempt to lay claim to the memory of the Greek city. This interpretation is problematic, however. First, the Pausanias passage is not clear evidence for the identification of the building. I will show how the topographical details provided by Pausanias may have been misinterpreted and suggest that passage may be referring instead to another nearby temple. Secondly, I will propose that this temple in the Roman period was the Capitolium of the city. This temple would have been among the first that the Roman colonists would have needed in their city, since the institution of the Capitoline cult was required by Roman colonial charters of the period. Moreover, the Archaic Temple would have still been standing, largely intact, when the colony was established, thus requiring little trouble to fit it for use. Certain details of the temple of the Roman period suggest that the Greek temple may have been recast as a Capitolium. This type of renovation fits in with other Greek sanctuary sites in Corinth that were reused by the Roman colonists. I propose that rather than reviving these temples and cults and with them the memory of the Greek city, the Roman colonists were remaking both the temples and the city in their own image. The colonists evoked the memory of the Greek temples by reusing the space where they had stood, but they reappropriated that memory by reshaping the space in a display of Roman power.


Analogy, the Scholar’s Shared Experience with the Testimony of Scripture, and Answered Petitionary Prayer
Program Unit: Institute for Biblical Research
Kevin L. Spawn, Regent University

Analogy, the Scholar’s Shared Experience with the Testimony of Scripture, and Answered Petitionary Prayer


From Artemis to Mary: Misplaced Veneration versus True Worship of Jesus in the Latino/a Context
Program Unit: Institute for Biblical Research
Aida Besancon Spencer, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary

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Why Did the "Leper" Get under Jesus' Skin? The Difficult Reading and Response of Anger in Mark 1:41
Program Unit: Bible and Emotion
F. Scott Spencer, Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond

Accepting the more difficult textual reading that Jesus was “moved with anger” rather than “with pity/compassion” in his initial response to a skin-diseased man’s request for healing (Mark 1:41), this paper investigates possible motives behind such a vehement reaction. Options focus on the nature of the skin-diseased man’s condition and what he says and does in approaching Jesus. Particular attention will be paid to the man’s questioning of Jesus’ desire (thelo) to heal in the immediate and wider co-texts of Mark’s Gospel. A complex emotional portrait of Jesus begins to emerge around the swirl of his anger and desire, raising key questions about his processing (appraisal) of these “passions”: to what extent does he resist and/or accept these emotions, and how do they affect his behavior? Following both ancient and contemporary emotion theory, this study assumes a strong connection, rather than bifurcation, between emotion and reason in human cognition and decision-making. It also maintains a deep rooting in Jesus and Mark’s social and philosophical culture, drawing on relevant LXX and other Hellenistic Jewish materials and Greco-Roman sources, such as Aristotle, Cicero, and Seneca.


Performance and Piety: Theaters and Synagogues in Later Rabbinic Culture
Program Unit: History and Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism
Loren Spielman, Portland State University

This paper examines the Palestinian Amoraic response to the popular theatrical entertainments of the Later Roman Empire. A new theme in Amoraic homiletics situated the moral difference between spectators and Torah scholars in spatial terms, stressing the essential incompatibility between theaters and circuses on the one hand, and synagogues and study-houses on the other. In this paper, I examine rabbinic efforts to distinguish the synagogue from the theater as a result of the same ambiguities and tensions that spawned similar rhetoric among the Fathers of the Church. Though much of their success in influencing the laity's beliefs about their religious obligations was rooted in performance and stagecraft, Christian orators demonized a whole range of values and practices by associating them with the theater. Though they saw the church as an analogous institution to the theater, the Church fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries vigorously tried to distinguish between the two. In this paper, I suggest that Rabbinic rhetoric comparing the theater and the synagogue worked in a similar fashion to neutralize the problematic performative aspects of synagogue worship. Rabbinic criticism of the theater functioned not as a form cultural antagonism towards a specific practice, but as part of a program of moral invective, in which the theater came to represent anything opposed to Torah study and therefore inherently wicked.


The 2011–2012 Excavations at Huqoq/Yakuk in Israel’s Galilee
Program Unit: Archaeology of Religion in the Roman World
Chad Spigel, Trinity University

Co-Authored by: Jodi Magness (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), David Amit (Israel Antiquities Authority), Shua Kisilevitz (Israel Antiquities Authority), Matthew Grey (Brigham Young University), Chad Spigel (Trinity University). In June 2011, new excavations began at Horvat Huqoq (henceforth: Huqoq) in Israel’s Eastern Galilee. The site had been surveyed in the past but was never excavated. The ancient village of Huqoq was relatively large (ca. 25-30 dunams) and prosperous thanks to a perennial fresh water spring at the foot of the eastern slope. Rabbinic sources indicate that Huqoq flourished during the Late Roman and Byzantine periods. The ancient settlement is covered partly by the modern (Ottoman-twentieth century) village of Yakuk, which was abandoned in 1948 and bulldozed in 1968. Finely-carved, decorated architectural fragments made of white limestone belonging to an ancient synagogue building are visible among the ruins of the eastern part of the modern village, roughly in the center of the ancient settlement. The ancient village is surrounded by associated features including cist graves, rock-cut tombs, and a mausoleum; quarries; agricultural terraces and installations; miqva’ot; and a wine press and olive press. This paper reports on the findings of the 2011-2012 excavations, which focused on three areas: the ancient synagogue building and overlying modern village houses; domestic structures in the ancient village; and one of the miqva’ot on the ancient village’s periphery.


Josephus on Haman’s Hostility
Program Unit: Josephus
Paul Spilsbury, Ambrose University College

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The Book of Judges in the Prophetologion
Program Unit: Bible in Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Traditions
Klaas Spronk, Protestantse Theologische Universiteit

The book of Judges is mentioned three times in the Prophetologion: two parts from the story of Gideon (Judges 6) and the story of the announcement of Samson's birth (Judges 13). In this paper I want to discuss (1) possible variations in the list of pericopes from the book of Judges; (2) the motives behind the choice of these pericopes; (3) consequences for the interpretation of the book of Judges in the orthodox tradition; and (4) the relation to modern (western) exegesis of the book of Judges.


Out of the Lowest Circle of Hell: Suicide, Self-Redemption, and Failure in Judas’s Repentance before the Priests (Mt 27:3–5)
Program Unit: Matthew
Judith Stack-Nelson, St. Olaf College

Throughout the centuries, the character of Judas has inspired equal parts fascination and vilification as the worst possible sinner, one whose betrayal of Jesus constitutes a sin so heinous as put him, according to Dante, in the lowest circle of hell, just slightly above the devil himself. The Gospel of Matthew also demonstrates a keen interest in Judas, particularly in his fate. Only Matthew tells of Judas’ return of the silver to the chief priests, his confession of sin, and his suicide by hanging. What are we to make of this passage, particularly as it differs so significantly from the Lukan version in Acts 1? Within this brief passage, Judas’ suicide has attracted a good deal of interest, many speculating that Judas chooses this course of action because he is overcome with grief and remorse for his betrayal. The key, however, to understanding Judas’ action and its significance lies in his interaction with the High Priest. By exploring the dynamics of their interchange in light of first century Jewish ideas regarding guilt and expiation and the broader narrative of Matthew, the passage becomes far more significant that an aetiology for the absence of Judas in the succeeding chapters or for the naming of the potter’s field. Judas comes seeking redemption and atonement. Judas confesses to having sinned, being guilty of “betraying innocent blood.” Though there is some evidence that an atoning sacrifice could be made by the priests for such an offense, it is more likely that the penalty would be death, yet this early death would have been seen (based on earliest Rabbinic sources) as discharging Judas’ moral debt such that he would be cleared on the day of judgment. The priests, however, refuse to do their priestly duty in either case—they neither accept Judas’ confession and arrange for the sacrifice nor condemn Judas for his crime. Rather, Judas must “see to it” himself. His suicide is precisely in obedience to the command of the priest, and in so doing, his sin is expiated. The priests’ dereliction of duty, however, makes them further liable to judgment. Their unconcern for the fate even of their own accomplice shows them to be, like the scribes and Pharisees, “ravenous wolves.” Thus, Matthew’s condemnation of the failure of the Jewish religious leaders, which throughout the Gospel has focused primarily on the Pharisees, is turned upon the temple leadership as well. So Judas, far from being portrayed as condemned to the worst sort of eternal punishment as Dante would have it, is portrayed as having done all that he could to atone for his misdeed: he confesses, makes restitution of the money, and finally even takes responsibility for inflicting expiatory capital punishment upon himself. The priests, on the other hand, demonstrate not only a failure to recognize God’s work in the person of Jesus (and thus violently opposed him), but demonstrate a failure to do their duty as priests, a dereliction that would cause them, rather than Judas, to stand under judgment.


The Treaty of/and Deuteronomy Once Again
Program Unit: Assyriology and the Bible
Jeffrey Stackett, University of Chicago

This paper will take up once again the question of the relationship between Deuteronomy and treaty. It will give special attention to both new literary arguments and new comparative data and proposals, including parallels identified between Deuteronomy and both Hittite and Neo-Assyrian texts.


“Jesus Was”: The Figure of Jesus in the Works of Yoel Hoffmann
Program Unit: National Association of Professors of Hebrew
Neta Stahl, Johns Hopkins University

In the works of many Modern Jewish writers, the figure of Jesus functions as an Other; in earlier works mostly as a threatening Other and in later works as a victim Other. In my paper I will argue that Yoel Hoffmann’s works provide a different and unique model for representing the figure of Jesus and its otherness. In his works, Hoffmann puts forth a model in which Jesus is not used as an Other, but rather as a figure that neutralizes the otherness of the Others through the holiness that is an inherent feature of his character. In order to make this move, Hoffmann adopts the pattern of the Holy Trinity (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit), transforming it into the triangular family archetype of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus, while also omitting one side of the trinity and only keeping the father (or the mother) and the son. Hoffmann is no doubt one of the most important contemporary Israeli writers. Born in 1937 in Romania and raised in Israel, he published nine books and is now considered one of the first Israeli Postmodernists. In his works, Hoffmann colors the triviality of the mundane with the presence of Jesus in order to confer an aura of sanctity onto his characters. In his famous novel The Christ of Fish (1991) for example, Jesus’ presence brings up the childhood memories of the narrator and illuminates an untold story – the story of Central European immigrants to Israel and their harsh adjustment to their new lives. These “others” in Israeli society, with their subculture of coffeehouses and apple strudel, are rescued from oblivion by being recast as players in a divine adventure, where Jesus plays a central role. In my paper I will discuss this unique way of representing the figure of Jesus and will show how Hoffmann presents Jesus as an Other that rescues the others from their Otherness.


Wisdom and Apocalypticism in Philippians 3
Program Unit: Wisdom and Apocalypticism
Angela Standhartinger, Philipps-Universität Marburg

While studies on Paul's apocalyptic thinking are more common than explorations of his reception of wisdom traditions, the interrelationship of both traditions in Paul is only very rarely addressed. This question might become more pressing in light of recent research that has shown how much wisdom and apocalyptic traditions can be part of the same context. In this paper I will examine how Paul conceptualizes both wisdom and apocalyptic traditions in Philippians 3,2-21. Here, in contrast to Gal 1:15-17, he presents his biography as similar to an ideal biography of the wise (c.f. Wisdom 7:1-21), while at the end of the passage he draws on the apocalyptic hope of the heavenly politeuma and a bodily transformation. Written in prison in a highly dangerous situation, this text might also give some clues regarding the social setting of wisdom and apocalyptic thinking.


“And All Ate and Were Filled” (Mark 6:42 par.) The Feeding Narratives in Their Economic Context
Program Unit: Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy
Angela Standhartinger, Philipps-Universität Marburg

Male and also some female benefactors of Roman provincial cities sponsored public feedings rather frequently. Providing food for the masses was something expected from someone in leadership whether in a provincial city or in Rome itself. This paper compares those public or civic banquets to the feeding narratives of the gospels. It will turn out that what is unique in Gospels is not ‘the surprising availability of material goods such as heaps of food’ (Gerd Theissen) nor the feeding of four or five thousand people at the same time. Not even the fact that five loaves and two fishes were not used up is unique. Rather there are some details of the feeding narratives where we find what is unique to them. Roman authors rarely tells of four to five thousand people reclining at table in the aristocratic position without any social differentiation. The amount of money and/or food available to the disciples indicates that this is not the usual milieu of benefactors and those receiving their beneficence. On the contrary, the feeding narratives present a milieu that was excluded from most other feedings and corn-distributions elsewhere. Instead of the emphasis on the donor’s generosity and how adequately the distribution was at the appropriate location in honor of a worthy cause, they developed the expectation and hope that the common meal of all turns out to become really the (u)topia where indeed all being truly ‘filled’.


Partitive vs Univocal Exegesis: Are We Really "Beyond" Alexandria and Antioch?
Program Unit: Development of Early Christian Theology
Charles Stang, Harvard University

In his book, _The Nicene Faith_ (2004), John Behr suggests that we view the conflict between Arius and Athanasius as a conflict between two methods of scriptural exegesis, the "univocal" and the "partitive." According to this model, Arius interpreted the scriptures "univocally," that is, he took the conflicting scriptural descriptions of the Son as together suggesting that the Son is a creation. Athanasius, on the other hand, interpreted the scriptures "partitively," that is, he understood certain passages as referring to the Son as the Word made flesh (human), and others as referring to the Son as full divinity eternally begotten of the Father (divine). According to Behr, the Athanasian, "partitive" method of exegesis led to the Trinitarian theology of the Council of Nicaea, in which the Son is confessed as homoousios with the Father, the selfsame Word made flesh in the Incarnation. This paper will critically assess Behr's new model of scriptural exegesis, in three parts: 1. The paper will explore whether and how well Behr's model explains the conflict between Arius and Athanasius. 2. The paper will explore whether and how Behr's model helps in understanding the conflict in the fifth century between Nestorius and Cyril of Alexandria. At least on the surface Cyril would seem to be practicing "univocal" exegesis, and Nestorius "partitive" exegesis. If this is correct, then there is a significant break in the exegetical strategy from Athanasius to Cyril, which rupture could challenge the integrity of a single "Alexandrian" school or tradition of exegesis. 3. The paper will conclude by revisiting the question of Alexandria vs. Antioch, and wondering whether we are yet ready to move entirely "beyond" this frame. It will suggest, drawing on the work of John McGuckin, that the frame might be salvaged not as a model for two different methods of scriptural exegesis, but as a model for two very different conceptions of selfhood or subjectivity.


Mapping the “Gentiles”: Deconstructing Paul’s Binary Ethnic Rhetoric
Program Unit: Pauline Epistles
Christopher D. Stanley, Saint Bonaventure University

In his letters, Paul routinely divides humanity into binary ethnic categories, contrasting Ioudaioi with ethne (or less often, Hellenes). Paul could not have traveled as widely as he did without having substantial interactions with people who identified themselves as members of various localized ethnic populations, yet he almost never mentions them in his letters; everyone except the Hellenes is lumped together under the generic term ethne. The closest that he comes to any recognition of real-world ethnic diversity is when he speaks of “foolish Galatians” (Gal 3:1) and possibly a couple of passing references to “Macedonians” (2 Cor 9:2; cf. Rom 15:26, where “Macedonia” is personified) and “Scythians” (Col 3:11), if Colossians is to be credited to him. In this he echoes the Greek practice of dividing the world into “Greeks” and “barbarians,” a division that he also cites on a couple of occasions (Rom 1:14, 1 Cor 14:11; cf. Col 3:11). The invisibility of indigenous people in the ethnic language of both Ioudaioi (including Paul) and Hellenes in antiquity suggests the influence of a colonial mindset. Postcolonial critics have often noted the tendency of colonial rulers to impose binary ethnic schemas onto ethnically diverse populations while demeaning their identities and cultures (especially those of indigenous peoples) in an effort to control the minds and bodies of those whom they have colonized. Over time, such schemas can become “naturalized,” so that even the subject peoples use them as a lens for interpreting the world around them. I have argued elsewhere that this is what happened with Paul and his fellow Ioudaioi under the influence not of Roman but of Greek colonial rule. The purpose of this paper is not to rehash that argument but rather to “repopulate” the ethnic world of Paul’s letters by examining literary and archaeological materials for evidence of the ongoing influence of pre-Hellenistic “native” cultures and identities in those portions of Asia Minor that might have been traversed by Paul, with special attention to the territory around the city of Pisidian Antioch. In addition to enhancing our understanding of the kinds of people with whom Paul might have come into contact, the paper will raise questions about how the mindset of modern biblical scholarship has been shaped by the ancient colonial practice of dividing the world into binary ethnic categories (“Jews” and “Gentiles,” “Greeks” and “barbarians”).


Social-Scientific Perspectives on Pilgrimage in Ancient Israel
Program Unit: Social Sciences and the Interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures
Gary Stansell, Saint Olaf College

Pilgrimage, the journey undertaken by the believer(s) to a sacred shrine for a variety of religious, personal, and even political purposes, is considered a universal phenomenon. There are Buddhist pilgrimages in Burma, Muslim Berber pilgrimages in Morocco, Bedouin pilgrimages in Sinai, Hindu pilgrimages in Sri Lanka, Christian pilgrimages in Mexico. And of course the ancient Israelites participated in this uralt religious practice, particularly with the three well-known pilgrimages of the tribal confederacy (unleavened bread, first-fruits, harvest; Ex. 23:14-17), and later sacred journeys to Jerusalem. Social scientists have been keenly interested in the anthropology of pilgrimage (e.g., Durkheim, V. and E. Turner, Eade and Saldo, A. Morinis), although “serious anthropological interest in pilgrimage has only been recent” (A. Morinis, Sacred Journeys 1992: 2). An important task for anthropology is to “plot the boundaries and analyze the meanings different cultures assign to the sacred journey.” Further, how do the ideological and practical aspects of pilgrimage relate to the socio-cultural, political and economic context in which is embedded? My paper attempts, by developing a typology and a cross-cultural model of pilgrimage, to examine selected social-scientific aspects of ancient Israelite pilgrimage.


“Rise, Kill, and Eat”: Animals as Nations in Apocalyptic Judaism and Acts 10
Program Unit: Book of Acts
Jason A. Staples, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Acts 10 rather straightforwardly presents Peter’s vision as a revelation of God’s mercy towards the Gentiles, culminating in the salvation of Cornelius’ household. This is troublesome, however, as Peter’s vision does not appear to concern Gentiles at all. Rather, the vision ostensibly concerns dietary laws, declaring all foods to be clean. Why then does Peter immediately assume this pertains to Gentile salvation? How Peter’s animal vision pertains to the events immediately following has remained a problem in Acts scholarship. As a way forward, this paper points to depictions of various nations as animals within Jewish apocalyptic visionary literature, most notably within the Animal Apocalypse of 1 Enoch, where Israel is portrayed as sheep, while the surrounding nations are depicted as various types of unclean animals. Likewise, the visions of Daniel, 4 Ezra, T. Naphtali, and Revelation all feature hybrid beasts representing empires. In addition, the paper points to Jewish explanations of the food laws from the Second Temple period (such as that in Aristeas), which often suggest the forbidden animals represent those peoples with whom Israel must not mix. In the context of apocalyptic Jewish depictions of Gentile nations in the form of animals and allegorical explanations for the food laws, Acts’ interpretation of Peter’s vision as primarily concerning Gentiles makes far more sense. What seems on the surface to refer to food is naturally understood within this genre as a reference to nations and peoples. Acts 10 thus makes use of standard Jewish apocalyptic tropes familiar to its audience but less familiar to literalistic modern New Testament interpreters.


The Love Commandment in the Synoptic Gospels
Program Unit: Synoptic Gospels
James Starr, Johannelund Theological Seminary, Sweden

The Synoptics do not promote an abstract love ethic as a fitting description of the Christian moral life. Observable features in the Synoptic Gospels suggest that the love commandment’s ethical role has been carefully positioned in relation to the gospel as a whole: 1) Jesus never teaches the love commandment to his own disciples. The commandments only appear in dialogue with explicit outsiders. 2) The confessional elements that preface and conclude these commandments (“The Lord your God is One”, Deut 6:4; “I am YHWH”, Lev 19:18) are lacking in Jesus’ teaching except in Mark 12:29. 3) Jesus takes liberty to edit the Jewish Shema by expanding it into a four-part command, adding mind to heart, soul and strength. 4) Jesus further repositions the Shema’s commandment to love God by making it intrinsically related to the command to love one’s neighbor. In order to determine what significance these observations have, this paper examines the love commandment’s role in Second Temple Judaism and how fixed the commandments’ literary form was in Greek and Hebrew. The literary context of Jesus’ teaching on the double love commandment is examined as are Jesus’ additions and deletions to the commandments. It is found that Jesus in the Synoptics modified the Shema in ways that cannot be explained by variant formulations current in the first century. The thesis is advanced that the Hellenistic understanding of the human person required the expansion of the Shema to a four-part command that included the mind in order to signal that Jesus exhorts a love that is not only central, intentional and all-inclusive, but also rational. While the Synoptics portray Jesus as sharing the Jewish priority given to the Shema, his agenda in the Synoptics exceeded its bounds. In Matthew and Mark, the pericopes on the love commandment are Jesus’ final teaching to non-disciples before his crucifixion. In that position, the love command both summarizes God’s will for humanity and anticipates the culminating events in Jesus’ life. In the end, though, the love command in the Synoptics is dwarfed by the narrative about Jesus, which constitutes the proper theological and ethical starting point and centre for Jesus’ disciples. The omission of the confessional statements in Mark and Luke confirms this shift of focus to Jesus. The disciple’s knowledge of love is no longer anchored in Old Testament history but in the history of Jesus’ life and death. For those outside the group of disciples, Jesus confirms that love accurately represents God’s will but does not necessarily exhaust it. For the disciples, attention centers on the person of Jesus, whose life explicates love. The Synoptics neither portray Jesus as the pathway to love, nor love as a pathway to Jesus. Instead, love (properly understood) is what non-disciples ought to see when they look at Jesus’ disciples, but the disciples’ own explanation of their life will be in terms of the Synoptics’ history of Jesus’ life and death.


"A Man of the Highest Repute": Did Josephus Know The Works of Philo of Alexandria?
Program Unit: Philo of Alexandria
Gregory Sterling, University of Notre Dame

Josephus openly cited non-Jewish sources in his histories; however, he was far more reticent with respect to Jewish predecessors. Relatively little attention has been devoted to Josephus' possible use of the writings of Philo of Alexandria. Josephus knew who Philo was and celebrated his social standing (AJ 18.259-60). The historian spent some time in Alexandria (V 415-16; CA 1.48) and extended time in Rome where he would have had access to works of Philo. This paper will explore whether Josephus knew and used Phlio's treatises and their possible significance for his histories.


Orality, Multivocality, and the Performance of Torah in Rabbinic Judaism
Program Unit: The Bible in Ancient (and Modern) Media
Elsie Stern, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College

Contemporary descriptions of the rabbinic ideology of scripture are largely grounded in observations regarding the content and form of midrashic literature. This focus on midrash has led contemporary scholars to describe a rabbinic ideology of scripture that is highly textualized and text-centered, in which the scriptural text, as text, lies at the center of the rabbinic worldview and is easily discernible from the other forms of religious cultural production that it generates and undergirds. However, the rabbinic academies in which the midrashic literature was produced and transmitted were not the only locus for the construction and deployment of scripture in rabbinic Judaism. For women and uneducated men, the groups that made up the majority of the adult Jewish population in late antiquity, the synagogue would have been the primary locus for the engagement with scripture. In this paper, I will demonstrate that the portrait of scripture/torah that emerges from this synagogue setting is vastly different from the one described above. According to rabbinic sources the ritual recitation of torah in the synagogue was a multivocal, multilingual oral performance which consisted of a text supported recitation of an excerpt from the Hebrew scripture which alternated with an exclusively oral, interlinear translation into Aramaic. In addition to this lectionary performance, sources also refer to the antiphonal liturgical performance of additional biblical material while ancient liturgical poems bear witness to the further integration of scriptural material into orally performed liturgy. I will demonstrate how the rituals of performance in the synagogue generate a new set of answers to questions regarding the nature of the rabbinic torah and the role of scripture within it.


Location and Locution: Rethinking Spatial Context in the Interpretation of Jewish Inscriptions
Program Unit: Hellenistic Judaism
Karen Stern, Brooklyn College of City University of New York

Location and Locution: Rethinking Spatial Context in the Interpretation of Jewish Inscriptions


Inscription as Competition: Graffiti and Cultural Identity in the Greco-Roman Levant
Program Unit: Religious Competition in Late Antiquity
Karen Stern, Brooklyn College of City University of New York

Scholars increasingly consider how Jewish, Christian, and neighboring populations throughout the Hellenistic and Roman worlds manipulated their built environments to reflect varied, complex, and competitive features of their cultural identities. Aspects of devotional and mortuary architecture, architectural decoration, and monumental inscription often dominate these studies, which have contributed significantly to traditional text-centered debates. This paper directs attention, by contrast, to distinct sets of neglected data for Jewish, Christian and neighboring populations in antiquity—figural and textual graffiti that adorned devotional and mortuary spaces throughout the Levant. Closer attention to vernacular methods of inscription and decoration, I argue, offers renewed perspectives on relationships between Jewish, Christian, and neighboring populations in their local Mediterranean environments.


Stepping Stones to Creativity
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Rick Stern, Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology

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“Stronger than a Castle Is an Altar”: Greco-Roman Altar Asylum and the Fifth Seal of Revelation (Rev. 6:9–11)
Program Unit: John's Apocalypse and Cultural Contexts Ancient and Modern
Gregory Stevenson, Rochester College

Scholarly interpretation of Revelation’s fifth seal almost universally assigns it a Jewish context, often by identifying the slaughtered souls under the altar as a form of sacrifice. This restriction of the imagery to a Jewish context ignores a common practice prevalent throughout the ancient world and one that provides a better context for the imagery of the fifth seal – Greek altar asylum. Any individual who was a victim of war, oppression, or injustice could claim the protection of a deity by coming into physical contact with an altar. In addition this act was an attempt to seek justice from the deity, often functioning as a precursor to the initiation of judicial proceedings. Since the suppliant who was in contact with the altar became in effect the property of the deity, any violation of the suppliant and the protection the deity afforded was thought to incur the wrath of the deity. These three concepts (protection, justice, wrath) that were fundamental to the practice of altar asylum are all present in the fifth seal of Revelation. To John’s audience in western Asia Minor, this vision of oppressed suppliants in contact with an altar and crying out for justice and the outpouring of divine wrath upon their oppressors would have evoked the practice of altar asylum much more so than sacrifice. This is particularly true in a city like Ephesus, which played a prominent role historically in Greek altar asylum. This understanding of the Greco-Roman context for the fifth seal grants us a better appreciation of the meaning and function of the fifth seal within the context of Revelation.


"Love Wisdom and She Will Guard You": The Pedagogy of Desire in the Book of Proverbs
Program Unit: Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
Anne Stewart, Emory University

The book of Proverbs is saturated with the language of desire. In chapters 1-9, woman Wisdom and the strange woman are figured as enticing temptresses, both objects of the young man’s desire and those who, in turn, desire him. However, discussion of desire is restricted neither to erotic dimensions, nor to the first nine chapters. Throughout the rest of Proverbs, we learn that the righteous have desires (11:23), as well as the lazy (21:25) and the wicked (21:10). Food, wine, women, righteousness, honor, wickedness, and folly are all mentioned as objects of desire. But how can one define the range of this motif within the book? And what significance does it hold for the book’s function? This paper will map the language of desire in Proverbs and consider its pedagogical function. It will suggest that Proverbs employs the language of desire as one of its models of character formation. Not only does the book spend a remarkable amount of time describing the desires of the wise and the fool alike, but it patterns the student’s desire as part of its pedagogical goal to shape his character. By presenting both positive and negative paradigms of desire, the book offers the student alternative possibilities and prompts him to choose the desires that the text sanctions. In so doing, the book in fact guides the student to become his own ethical critic, one who is able to compare various patterns of desire and discern the helpful from the harmful.


Sacred Space and Ecclesial Leadership in Third-Century North Africa
Program Unit: Space, Place, and Lived Experience in Antiquity
Bryan A Stewart, McMurry University

It has long been recognized that the beginning of the third century witnessed an eruption of Christian material culture in the Roman world, including the emergence of distinct places of Christian worship. In particular, the work of Adémar D’Alès, Franz Dölger, and Harry Janssen has demonstrated the existence of such space and place in North Africa through the archaeological evidence of Damous el-Karita, a vast Christian complex which included an array of church buildings, a baptistery, and a cemetery. Few scholars, however, have explored the manner in which the emergence of such “sacred space” influenced early Christian understanding of ecclesial leadership. Using the North African writer, Tertullian of Carthage, this paper will explore the dynamic between an emerging Christian sacred space and the understanding of the Christian bishop as a “priest” (sacerdos) in early Christianity. In his treatise De Pudicitia, Tertullian demonstrates an explicit awareness of a distinctly Christian religious space, describing the spatial boundaries of the church in terms of the threshold (limen), doors (fores), and roof of the church (tectum ecclesiae). In this same treatise, Tertullian also identifies the bishop as a sacerdos whose central task is to guard this sacred space of worship. In particular, Tertullian explains the task of the Christian sacerdos by developing an extended analogy with the Israelite priesthood and their responsibilities to guard the sanctity of the Temple space. He likens the physical Christian ecclesia to the Israelite templum Dei and the Christian minister to the Israelite sacerdos. The responsibility of the Christian leader, as sacerdos, is to ensure the sanctitas of the Christian worship space. There is, then, for Tertullian a direct link between his knowledge of an emerging Christian sacred space and his understanding of the Christian bishop as a sacerdos who must guard the boundaries of that space and preserve its sanctitas. In short, such an examination of Tertullian’s work demonstrates that an emerging Christian sacred space had a direct influence on the understanding of ecclesial leadership in the third-century North-African Christian community.


Another Look at Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13: Can Anything New Be Said?
Program Unit: LGBTI/Queer Hermeneutics
David Tabb Stewart, California State University, Long Beach

Contemporary discussion of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 treats these “texts of terror,” orphaned from their contexts, as if there were no question about their meaning—as if there were no ambiguities. Yet Ibn Ezra argues that “the whole interpretive problem”—there is one—is that it “literally refers to ‘sexual relations as with a woman’ using a plural”—i.e. mishkebei ishah, ‘lyings of a woman’. This implies that (at least) two types of intercourse are in view: perhaps those dictated by active and passive relations or vaginal sex and not. Medieval Jewish exegetes—Gaonic, Rabbinic, and Karaite—mostly stop here, or are silent in the face of the interpretive crux. However, if one takes Ibn Ezra’s amazement seriously the text remains “open.” If this is an abstract plural, what might it mean? Can we be sure the text speaks about conventionally gendered bodies, or might they address the bodily differences of those who are intersexed (as the eleventh century exegete Chananel seems to suggest)? Is the phrase metaphoric? After all, the Byzantine Karaite, Aaron the Younger, offers that “lyings of a woman” functions similarly to the phrase “thighs of a freight ship” (Jonah 1:5.) Jonah gives sexual innuendo to something not sexy: a "ship’s hold." What about the issue of erwat zakar, ‘nakedness of a male’, in the case of the father at Leviticus 20:11? This appears in near context to Leviticus 20:13. If these phrases mutually illuminate one another, then Aaron the Younger seems to suggest they both refer to incest. Thus, if one returns Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 to their contexts—the linguistic system, the natural world’s variations in human bodies, biblical literary conventions, and the verses’ setting in the texts, etc.—the focus of their terror shifts.


“Listen to the Sibyl...As She Pours forth True Speech”: Speech and Hearing in Sibylline Oracles 4
Program Unit: Speech and Talk in the Ancient Mediterranean World
Olivia Stewart, Yale University

The author/redactor of book four of the Sibylline Oracles uses the Sibyl's speech to create an elaborate system of insiders and outsiders, namely those who are on the side of the Sibyl and the true God, and those who are not. One of the ways the author accomplishes this is to make divisions according to proper and improper ways of speaking and hearing. This not only applies to the human hearers of the Sibyl, but also to deities and even to systems of worship. Through the vehicle of the Sibyl's direct prophetic speech, the author of book uses various types of speech and hearing to demarcate the insiders and the outsiders.


Lament and Victory: LXX Psalm 43:23 in Romans 8:36
Program Unit: Greek Bible
Tyler A Stewart, Lincoln Christian University

Though a favorite text in the Pauline Corpus, Rom 8.31-39 contains a baffling citation of LXX Ps 43.23 that has been largely ignored by the scholarly community. This paper is an attempt to follow Paul’s interpretive logic by contextualizing Psalm 43 among laments in Second Temple Greek literature, the reception history of Psalm 43 and the book of Romans. Among Second Temple laments Psalm 43 departs from the typical Deuteronomic scheme by claiming covenant faithfulness for sufferers. The reception history of Psalm 43 suggests a Christological reading in Romans that describes suffering as a means of identification with Christ. The rhetorical movement of Psalm 43 begs the question of God’s faithfulness, resonating with Paul’s argument in Romans. These triangulated contexts show that Paul understands the cross and resurrection as the divine response to the disturbing lament of Psalm 43. This understanding transforms suffering from a sign of divine displeasure into a means of participation in Christ.


Reconsidering the Meaning of Satan
Program Unit: Biblical Lexicography
Ryan E. Stokes, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

In recent decades, scholars have taken great care not to assume that “the Satan” of Job 1-2 and Zechariah 3 is depicted as the archenemy of God and of good as is “Satan” in later Jewish and Christian literature. Nevertheless, they have yet to eliminate anachronistic assumptions from their discussions of this figure as he is presented in these texts, maintaining that the Satan in Job and Zechariah holds the office of heavenly "prosecuting attorney" or "accuser." After surveying the uses of the noun satan and the verb satan in the Hebrew Scriptures, giving attention to Ps 109 in particular, this paper suggests that these words never denote “accusation” in the Hebrew Scriptures but refer instead to physical “attack” or “execution.” Finally, this paper considers the implications of translating satan as “attacker” for one’s understanding of “the Satan” in the Hebrew Scriptures, arguing that the earliest manifestations of the Satan tradition present this figure as God’s attacker or executioner of rebellious human beings.


Schoolboy Ezekiel
Program Unit: Book of Ezekiel
Jonathan Stökl, University of London

This paper examines some of the cases in which the book of Ezekiel is said to be influenced by its exilic setting. This paper will look at these texts and look for possible textual sources from where they originate. The texts identified by me can be understood as texts that someone would have had access to in scribal training. This indicates that the author(s) of the book of Ezekiel had either direct or indirect experience of such training. The image presented by Daniel 1 would suggest that such a setting was also assumed by that book’s authors. But before we can confidently say that ‘Ezekiel’ went through formal scribal training, we have to consider that among the hundreds of attested Neo-Babylonian scribes, there is not a single one with a recognisably Jewish name. Waerzeggers recently analysed the social network of 6th century Jews in Mesopotamian cities with a view to their access to temple libraries. The surviving texts do not provide evidence for any direct link between an exile and any major Babylonian temple or school. This leaves open several options: the Jewish scribes who went through Babylonian scribal training may have used Babylonian ‘nomes de style’; alternatively, it is merely the chance of the survival of texts which suggests the absence of Jewish scribes. The third option is not very likely: those passages of Ezekiel that are influenced by Mesopotamian material were written in the Persian and Hellenistic periods. Finally, our analysis of literary influences may be flawed or coincidental and suggest influence where there was none. Out of these, options 1 and 2 seem the most likely, even if they require an argument from silence. The significance of this finding, if correct, would be that it would provide indication that exiled Jews lived in a variety of social settings in Exile: the Weidner lists show that Jehoiachin received rations from the royal court, the al yahudu texts suggest that many Jews were deported to Babylon’s southern agricultural regions. Ezekiel may broaden the picture by providing indication that some Jews lived middle class lives and went through scribal training.


Sifting the Canon: Lectionaries and the Impact of Scripture on the Illiterate
Program Unit: Use, Influence, and Impact of the Bible
Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes

The impact of the Bible usually implies a written text. Until quite recently, however, many if not most Jews and Christians were illiterate. Their only possible exposure to Biblical “text” was not by reading a book themselves but by regarding art or listening to someone reciting Scripture. A crucial step in investigating the history of impact of the Bible, is researching what could be known. For the illiterate, one major source was the lectionary, fixed liturgical readings in the church or the synagogue. But also for the literate, those texts performed orally were supposedly much better known than those not. This establishes a Canon in the Canon. Furthermore, lectionaries not only contextualize the Biblical texts in a given liturgical context, they also create or reinforce intertextuality through the juxtaposition of pericopes in the same liturgical setting. Until recently, the comparative study of the liturgical use of a given passage was very complicated and frequently largely neglected, even in large history of interpretation projects such as the EKK or EBR. This paper proposes to study the different selections of passages made from the Minor Prophets in some ancient and medieval Christian and Jewish communities with the help of a new database, ThALES.


Making Academic Reading of Biblical Texts a More Friendly Affair
Program Unit: Academic Teaching and Biblical Studies
Keith Stone, Harvard University

Many students enrolled in introductory-level biblical studies courses are—and feel distress at being—unequipped to read the primary sources in the “critical” manner we ask of them. It may not be just the texts themselves that they are encountering for the first time, it may be a particular way of approaching texts—and therefore also of writing about texts. This can be especially frustrating for students (and for teachers of students) who do know how to make reasoned arguments and to produce competent writing in other academic settings. Drawing on my experience as a teaching assistant for introductory-level, undergraduate courses in both biblical and non-biblical canonical texts (that is, both in Hebrew Bible and in Classics), I will briefly offer my understanding of one particular way in which reading and writing about these ancient texts can be unsettling for students. Students to whom biblical texts are authoritative in a religious sense can find it threatening to examine—or to hear their teachers, who may or may not be members of their own religious communities, examine—the texts outside of an accustomed interpretive tradition. However, even when willing suspension of religious belief is not at issue, the analogous act of reading with attention not so much to the “take-away” meaning as to a text’s literary features (the text “on its own terms”) can also be threatening to students who are often expected in other academic settings to skim, to summarize, and in other ways to read for content. Stated most strongly, we may be asking students to perform in ways that make them feel academically incompetent and possibly religiously unfaithful. I will describe ways of framing these tasks that I have found to be successful in overcoming these issues. In addition, I will share a model for a writing assignment that, due to its particular collaborative nature, offers a unique opportunity for progress on the aforementioned concerns as well as for more active learning of the course material and for improving students’ writing skills.


Mother and Whore, Vine and Water: Rhetorical Violence and Comfort through the Blended Metaphors of Jeremiah
Program Unit: Biblical Hebrew Poetry
Beth M. Stovell, St. Thomas University - Miami Gardens

As Milan Kundera has famously said in his Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, “Metaphor is dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor.” As many scholars have demonstrated, the metaphors in Jeremiah have the potential to be both dangerous due to their intensity and violence, and yet at times they may act as a source of comfort. Many scholars have examined the metaphors associated with women in Jeremiah and provided various explanations for these female depictions and their impact on readers, while other scholars have examined the use of agricultural metaphors. Yet scholars have rarely examined how the blending of feminine and agricultural metaphors reinforce the rhetorical power of these images by conveying mutual themes of violence and comfort alongside abundance and loss. Towards this end, this paper will use the conceptual blending theories of Fauconnier and Turner to analyze the conceptual blending of metaphors related to femininity (e.g., mother, wife, prostitute) and metaphors related to agriculture (e.g., vines, waters, land). This paper will argue that through this conceptual blending the prophet intensifies his alternating messages of warning and comfort to Israel in three different ways: 1) violence against and comfort for Israel depicted through feminine and agricultural metaphors; 2) inner-biblical allusion with Hosea with its interweaving of feminine and agricultural metaphors; and 3) blending these depictions with the alternating language of abundance and loss. The rhetorical use of blended metaphors reminds the readers/hearers of the history of the relationship between God and Israel and demands a response from the reader/hearer.


Interpretations of the "Image of God" in Biblical and LDS Thought
Program Unit: Latter-day Saints and the Bible
Gaye Strathearn, Brigham Young University

I will examine the question of God’s embodiment and it’s implication for understanding the nature of humanity. Much of modern Christianity’s view on the nature of God is articulated in the AD 1646 Westminster Confession, which states in part, “There is but one only living and true God. . . a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts or passions” (2:1). Latter-day Saints, however, have a very different understanding. In 1843 Joseph Smith declared, “The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit” (Doctrine and Covenants 130:22). At the heart of the issue is the interpretation of Genesis 1:26 “Let us make humans in our image.” What is the image of God? This was the specific question at the heart of the debate in 399 CE in Egypt between Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria and the Egyptian Anthropomorphites. This debate polarized the “image of God” into either a spiritual or a physical entity. Although the desert father Sopatros strongly suggested that a person “not speculate about the image…. [because] it is impossible for any creature to understand this matter,” in this paper I will ignore his counsel and instead agree with John Cassian who wrote that “the standing of this great teaching [on image of God] is being undermined, and to know nothing about it is surely a great blasphemy and a great danger to the [church]” (Conferences 10.1). Although Latter-day Saints have traditionally emphasized the physical interpretation of the image and have sometimes argued that the non-physical interpretation came from philosophical influence, in this paper I will argue that a textual analysis indicates that “the image of God” can be understood in both physically and non-physical ways. Therefore interpretations that argue for either end of the pendulum swing may miss important implications for understanding the nature of both God and humanity.


Memorializing Violence in Hellenistic Accounts of the Exodus
Program Unit: Hellenistic Judaism
Kimberly Stratton, Carleton University

References to Israel’s origins in the Exodus and desert wanderings appear in every stratum of the Bible from archaic poetry to post-exilic prophecy, yet archaeology has made it clear that Israel’s origins are to be found indigenously, in the collapse of the Canaanite city states of the Late Bronze Age. The persistence of this myth throughout the biblical period and across many different genres of biblical writings indicates its centrality for ancient Israel’s self-conception. In the Hellenistic and Roman periods, this story about enslavement, liberation, and conquest, continues to play a central role in focussing Jewish identity. Rabbinic literature, for example, uses it as a foil for understanding the cataclysm of the war with Rome and to instil hope for imminent divine vindication (Mechilta deshirah 2; b. Sanh. 111a; Pesikta de R. Kahana 7; Shemot Rabbah 15.16). This paper will investigate the ideological use of Exodus in Jewish Hellenistic writings, considering specifically how the rhetoric of violence operates in these accounts and what roles it plays in fostering collective identity through the memorializing of violence in myth and ritual. As is evident in the biblical Exodus narrative and its subsequent Nachleben in texts such as Jubilees, Wisdom of Solomon, Philo, Josephus, and Sibylline Oracle 3, memory is not a simple reproduction of past experience, but a selective recreation shaped by present context. Theoretical approaches to cultural memory (Halbwachs, Assmann, Derrida, and others) illuminate the memory work that Hellenistic interpretations of Exodus perform as well as grant insight into the transmission of this memory through ritual commemoration at Passover, clarifying why Passover became a flash point for insurrection during the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Such memory practices enable inchoate experiences of violence to be subsumed into powerful cultural narratives that shape collective identity and serve as calls for vengeance. Exodus, in this case, provided an authoritative narrative for framing contemporary experiences of persecution and nationalist hopes for redemption in all these texts as well as served as a foil for the formulation of a distinct, righteous, Jewish identity in contradistinction to idolatrous gentiles. Each text’s presentation of the biblical narrative betrays a different ideological agenda and social context that illumines both the text and its context as well as the ongoing construction of Jewish identity in the ancient world.


The Relative Merits of Foreignness and Domestication in Contemporary Bible Translation
Program Unit: Bible Translation
Mark Strauss, Bethel Seminary

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Eschatological Interpretation of Psalm 80 in Early Judaism
Program Unit: Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity
Andrew D. Streett, University of Wales, Trinity Saint David

Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum is heavily indebted to Ps 80 in its employment of a vine image for Israel. Pseudo-Philo quotes Ps 80:15 once directly and alludes to a number of other features from Ps 80, including (1) connecting the vine to Eden, (2) combining the vine image with a flock/shepherd image, and (3) linking the vine to the concept of resurrection. Another contribution of Ps 80 to L.A.B. is that the vine image is used as an expression of confidence that God will act on the part of his people, a feature which is unique to Ps 80 among the vine passages in the OT. Although not all of the allusions to Ps 80 in L.A.B. are explicitly eschatological, the overall context of the book in the foreign occupation of the first century CE looks forward to the eschatological restoration of Israel and the age to come. Noticeably absent from Pseudo-Philo’s use of Ps 80 is any messianic interpretation. In the late first century CE, 2 Baruch 36-40 interpreted Ps 80 in combination with Dan 7 and Is 10:34 in Baruch’s vision of the messianic vine and the forest. It appears that the author connected the messianic figures of Ps 80:16, 18 and Dan 7:13 by way of the phrase “son of man,” in addition to other similarities between the two passages outlined in chapter 4. In recognition of the strong connection between the vine and the king Ps 80 he portrays the Messiah as a vine who will rise to dominate and bring low the opposing cedars and mountains. In the following centuries, the Psalms Targum interpreted Ps 80 in an explicitly messianic way by translating "ben" in v.16b as “King Messiah.” Leviticus Rabbah identifies the boar from the forest in v.14 as a prophetic reference to Rome in parallel to the destructive fourth beast in Dan 7:7. The text also interprets the massive size of the vine and spreading shoot in vv.11-12 as referring to Israel’s eschatological dominance and the Messiah’s universal reign, respectively.


YHWH Is as YHWH Does: The Role of Foreign Leaders in Ezekiel and Isaiah's 'Monotheistic' Affirmations
Program Unit: Unity and Diversity in Early Jewish Monotheisms
C. A. Strine, University of Oxford

The designation ‘radically theocentric,’ commonly attributed to Ezekiel, implies monotheistic tendencies. Studies of monotheism in Ezekiel are, nevertheless, rare. Recently, John Kutsko and Sven Petry have examined the issue by focusing on Ezekiel’s ‘idol polemics.’ Whilst the theme is prominent in Ezekiel and suggested by its role in Isa 40–55, their work has yielded limited insight. Perhaps their efforts can be profitably supplemented by pursuing another similarity: YHWH’s use of foreign leaders to control events. I shall argue that Ezek 17, which depicts Nebuchadnezzar’s role in Jerusalem’s defeat, uses its form and imagery to expresses a strong synergy between YHWH and Nebuchadnezzar. Through its form, Ezek 17 equates Nebuchadnezzar’s work in the earthly realm with YHWH’s activities in the divine realm; through its cosmological imagery, the text portrays YHWH in ways strongly reminiscent of Marduk. The combination of features substitutes YHWH for Marduk and commandeers Nebuchadnezzar as YHWH’s servant. It advises the exiles that YHWH, not Marduk, directs history. The rhetoric of Ezek 17 has a close parallel in Isa 44:24–45:7, which analogously announces Cyrus’ role in Israel’s restoration. Although Ezekiel emphasizes judgment and Isaiah restoration (cf. Ezek 20 and 34), both insist upon loyalty to YHWH because events are under his direction. Each text juxtaposes this claim with its ‘idol polemic’ to form an argument that goes beyond similar non-Yahwistic texts (e.g. Cyrus Cylinder) to contend that YHWH is unique. Thus, they share a ‘monotheistic’ affirmation that is neither ontological nor simply soteriological, but mutatis mutandis, a form of narrative identification: YHWH is as YHWH does. When they affirm that YHWH guides events through a foreign human agent and deny the ability of foreign deities to do the same, the texts assert that YHWH is unique. YHWH’s incomparability warrants the call for uncompromising, exclusive fidelity.


How Isaiah’s Formation Influenced Early Jewish and Christian Interpretation
Program Unit: Book of Isaiah
Jacob Stromberg, Duke University

The origins of Ancient Judaism intertwine with the beginnings of scriptural exegesis, which, as a mode of religious imagination, comes into full view in the Late Second Temple period. By most accounts, understanding Second Temple interpretation is crucial to understanding the development of early Jewish (and with that early Christian) thought. How, then, should one characterize Second Temple interpretation? Any answer to this question must wrestle with how best to describe the relationship between what the Bible meant as a product of Ancient Israel and what it was later taken to mean in Second Temple Judaism. How much of this later interpretation was innovation, and how much of it was inheritance? Did the perspectives of these later readers have ‘native roots’ in what came before? Or were they wholly the product of their own day? One common answer is given clear expression by James Kugel, who has characterized biblical interpretation at the turn of the Common Era as “a massive rewriting.” It was an interpretive revolution that produced a fundamentally changed document – not because the words themselves had changed, but because their meaning had. On this showing, Second Temple interpretation appears to be largely an innovation with very few semantic antecedents in its textual past. By way of contrast, I shall argue that a different picture suggests itself when considering the editorial history of the book of Isaiah. The Isaianic oracles saw an interpretive revolution which preceded the period in question by some 300 years, and this revolution fueled a massive rewriting of the book. This rewritten Isaiah in turn mediated the prophet’s message to later interpreters in the Second Temple period. Hence, later Judaism was heir to a much older exegesis, a point calling for a much subtler, more complex picture of Second Temple Interpretation.


Finding Judeans in Aphrodisias
Program Unit: Hellenistic Judaism
Christopher Stroup, Boston University

The city of Aphrodisias in Caria provides us with a unique collection of material evidence for Hellenistic Judaism in the Roman East. This presentation examines three pieces of epigraphic evidence for Judeans in Aphrodisias in their respective contexts. An investigation of the inscribed statuary base of the conquered “ethnous Ioudaion” (“Judean people”) in the city’s Imperial temple complex, the inscription(s) from seating of the city council building, and the so-called god-fearers’ inscription(s) offers three glimpses of how Judean identity could be imagined by different groups for different purposes in a single civic context. In the first half of the first century CE, two elite Aphrodisian families dedicated a monument to the Julio-Claudian emperors, a Sebasteion. In the midst of the nearly 200 carved reliefs stood a personification of the Judean people represented as a captive female and grouped with other conquered foreigners. In this setting Judean identity is imagined as a universal, foreign category by local Aphrodisians. Sometime in the next few centuries an inscription appears in the seating of the bouleuterion that marked the place of the “Hebrews.” Unlike the inscription from the grand theater of nearby Miletus, at least some Judeans of Aphrodisias were identified as Hebrews in this civic context. A third piece of evidence, two donor lists inscribed on a single stele, construct a taxonomy of affiliation with the Judean community by listing individuals according to their relationship to the god of the Judeans. The famous stele provides a glimpse at the complex dynamics of Judean identity in Aphrodisias. This presentation argues that each of these pieces of evidence reveals how insiders and outsiders could employ Judean identity in a civic context for the negotiation of identities. When these negotiations are viewed diachronically, a more complete picture of the negotiation of Judean identity can emerge from this Carian city.


The Revision of the Critical Apparatus of the Entire Edition
Program Unit:
Holger Strutwolf, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster

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The Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM): Basic Concepts
Program Unit: New Testament Textual Criticism
Holger Strutwolf, Muenster University

The paper will deal with the theory behind the CBGM, its basic assumptions, the picture of the textual transmission that lies behind this method and the impact the method has on our views of textual history.


Jewish "Apocalyptic" through the Lens of Pauline Theologians: A Misunderstanding?
Program Unit: Pauline Epistles
Loren Stuckenbruck, Princeton Theological Seminary

This paper deals with four or five Pauline theologians' (mis)understanding of Jewish apocalyptic as, simply put, shaped by a "this age" versus "age to come" structure which Paul modified by introducing an "already" and "not yet" scheme in light of the Christ event (Cullmann, Käsemann, Beker, Dunn, Martyn). The paper tries to demonstrate that Jewish "apocalyptic" already has the tension between "already" and "not yet" well worked out and that it is precisely this kind of tension that drives the interest of this literature, insofar as it is concerned with time, in the eschatological future.


Written Prophecy as Survival Literature
Program Unit: Israelite Prophetic Literature
Louis Stulman, University of Findlay

Although the prophetic literature in the HB bristles with a wide range of concerns, social constructions, and symbolic arrangements, its rich and varied iterations can be subsumed under the heading of "war literature." Put differently, written prophecy is a “meditation on the horror of war” (Stulman and Kim, You are My People, [2010], 6) by besieged communities that have survived the geo-political designs of three empires of the ancient Near East — Assyria, Babylon, and Persia. To address the collapse of social and symbolic structures, this corpus often speaks of war as divine judgment, thus placing the worst of human conditions, the practice of war itself, within a context of meaning. As astonishingly, written prophecy envisions communal life beyond military invasion, forced relocation, and captivity. And so this disaster and survival literature creates hope for the historical losers (see, e.g., Sir 49:10).


The Other Prophetic Imagination: Brueggemann, Isaiah of Jerusalem, and the Internal Critique of Empire
Program Unit: Israelite Prophetic Literature
W. Derek Suderman, Conrad Grebel, University of Waterloo

In The Prophetic Imagination, Walter Brueggemann contrasts the “royal consciousness” of empire with the alternative community represented by the prophetic tradition. In doing so, he identifies true prophecy primarily with “peripheral prophets;” in effect, God rules rather than an earthly king. Where Brueggemann employs II and III Isaiah to illustrate the prophetic role, this paper employs Robert Wilson’s categories to demonstrate that Isaiah of Jerusalem also provides a critique of empire, but does so as a “central prophet” linked directly to the royal administration rather than as a voice from the outside. Isaiah’s call for radical trust in the LORD underlies his message of judgment but also challenges the logic of empire and its tendency towards militarization.


"What’s in a Name?" Demons, Exorcisms, and Esoteric Knowledge of Names
Program Unit: Mysticism, Esotericism, and Gnosticism in Antiquity
Kevin Sullivan, Illinois Wesleyan University

This paper will examine the names of demons and evil powers (e.g., Satan) in relation to the theme of secrecy (esotericism). In the New Testament, Jesus reverses the expectations of ancient audiences by dispelling the demon Legion without needing to even know its name (e.g., Mark 5:9). More commonly, though, exorcists would need to ascertain the name of the demon in order to have power over it. Thus, demons would have sought to keep their names secret, while exorcists and mystics involved in understanding the heavenly realm would have sought to bring those names to light, but how would them come to know these names? Were they received through revelation or by some other means? Texts such as the Testament of Solomon attest to the complexity that could be involved and the essential role that knowledge of demonic names played in combating evil. An examination of ancient Greco-Roman and Egyptian texts on demons and exorcisms will illuminate our understanding of demons and exorcisms in Second Temple Jewish and early Christian writings.


Jacob’s Ladder: Angelic Locomotion in Second Temple Jewish Literature and the New Testament
Program Unit: Religious Experience in Antiquity
Kevin Sullivan, Illinois Wesleyan University

It is common in medieval depictions and modern conceptions for angels to have wings. Primarily, these “wings” are understood to be symbolic or representative of the power of flight. Nevertheless, ancient depictions of angels (and here, I am careful to mean “angels” and not necessarily cherubim and seraphim) are not depicted with wings or in flight. Yet, angels are first and foremost, messengers, and as such, it is expected that they must travel great distances, and more importantly, must travel across boundaries that humans cannot (i.e., from heaven to earth and back). So, how did ancient writers believe that angels traveled? In what ways are angels portrayed as traveling and when they did, how did they interact with the physical environment? This paper will focus on the ascent and descent of angels as depicted in late Second Temple Jewish and early Christian literature. Additionally, it will examine texts where angels travel in forms familiar to and even with human beings in order to understand how angels traveled and were thus understood to bridge the gap between heaven and earth on a regular basis.


Is Heaven Up or Down or Here? Or Why It Is Useless to Establish Celestial Coordinates
Program Unit: Religious Experience in Antiquity
Carla Sulzbach, Independent Scholar

Much energy has been spent on discussions regarding the direction traveled by mystical practitioners (or readers!) in their quest to reach the heavenly palaces (hekhalot) and achieve a glimpse of the Divine Chariot (merkavah). The question is informed not in the least by the confusing language used in the Hekhalot texts themselves, describing a heavenly journey as a descent to the merkavah, and the reverse journey, as ascent. Likewise, the location of heaven is not altogether clear in the earlier Jewish and Christian apocalypses. Even in a number of biblical texts dealing with the heavenly realm in relation to earthly observers there seem to be cases of loss of the pivot. This paper proposes that the entire confusion is illusionary, the question a non-question, resulting from a traditional mis-placing of heaven “up there”.


The Coherence of Psalm 24
Program Unit: Institute for Biblical Research
Philip Sumpter, University of Gloucestershire

The Coherence of Psalm 24


What about the Children of Job? A Jewish Perspective on Theodicy and Hope
Program Unit: History of Interpretation
Chloe Sun, Logos Evangelical Seminary

In its history of interpretation, the Book of Job has been centered on its main character, Job. Consequently, the status of the lost children of Job is relatively neglected. Job is restored by God after going through a period of undeserved suffering, yet his original set of children is not given the same opportunity as such and the text even suggests the possibility of their replacement at the end of Job’s suffering. This article explores the history of interpretation of the children of Job from a Jewish perspective - from the Second Temple period until the post-holocaust era. In its early history of interpretation, the status of the lost children of Job has been treated either as a test for Job or as a case of “lost on earth and found in heaven”. However, it was not until the post-Holocaust event that the status of the lost children of Job posts a severe challenge on theodicy. The article argues that the holocaust event has dramatically shaken the Jewish understanding of theodicy and the symbolism of the lost children of Job undergoes personal appropriation after this national catastrophe. The issue of theodicy has since then become a dialectic tension between living in the known aspect of God’s mercy and restoration as well as in the unknown aspect of his justice and mystery.


Ritual and the Promise to Jehu: Dynastic Ancestors and Delimited Legitimacy in the Book of Kings
Program Unit: Ritual in the Biblical World
Matthew Suriano, University of Maryland College Park

In the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah the survival of a ruling house was maintained through royal funerary rituals. This ritual process, or rite(s) of passage, which began with the dead king’s burial in the royal tomb, included the acknowledgement of the heir’s right to the throne (dynastic succession), and the veneration of the dead king along with the royal ancestors (importantly, the dynastic eponym). As such, the ritual process encompassed a complex of ideals relating to death: burial in the family tomb, the survival of progeny, and the preservation of one’s name. Literarily, these transition rites generated a political ideology that was expressed at the end of a king’s reign through a series of formulaic statements in the Book of Kings beginning with the phrase, “and [the defunct king] lay down with his fathers.” The wider cultural background for these expressions are Iron Age practices of ritually disposing the dead, however the immediate context for their interpretation are West Semitic royal inscriptions. A comparison of the formulaic epilogues used in Kings with similar statements found in royal inscriptions (particularly the Tel Dan Stele and the Eshmunazor Sarcophagus) will suggest new ways of under-standing the biblical presentation of Jehu’s dynasty, the longest lived in the northern kingdom. In the Book of Kings, the legitimacy of Jehu’s dynasty was measured according to the divine promise of 2 Kings 10:30 by means of the formulaic idiom “lay down with…” This was done specifically through the formula’s use (Jehu through Jeroboam II), reuse (twice for Joash/Jehoash), and non-use (with the assassination of Zechariah). In this manner, the writer of Kings was able to delimit the divine right of Jehu’s ruling house by bracketing its dynastic history through a set of formulaic images that were taken directly from royal funerary rituals.


The New, Newer, and Newest Perspectives on Paul—and Mark
Program Unit: Early Jewish Christian Relations
Jesper Svartvik, Lund University

Two questions in NT scholarship stand out as more important than all other queries: why did Paul write the epistle to the Romans and why did Mark write his narrative gospel? On these two questions hang all NT studies; the rest is commentary. This paper not only addresses these two questions but also and in particular seeks to explore the interplay between the Pauline and Markan theologies of the Torah. The new perspective (e.g., George Howard, James Dunn et alii) and the newer perspective (e.g., Paula Fredriksen, John Gager, Mark Nanos et alii) on Paul both resist that idea that the Torah was an existential problem in Pauls’ life and theology. Arguing that Christ-believing pagans are not to become Jews, his focus is gentile mission, and he also describes himself as a messenger to the gentiles (ethnôn apostolos; Rom. 11.13). As a growing number of scholars (e.g., Joel Marcus, David Sim, Jesper Svartvik et alii) argue persuasively for a Pauline-Markan connection, Paul’s and Mark’s importance for early Christian perceptions of the Torah and the development of Jewish-Christian relations cannot be overstated. In this paper it is argued that there is the cloud of misunderstandings of “Paul and the Law” that obscures the theological similarities between Paul and Mark. Once we understand Pauline theology better, we also see the similarities between these two influential theologians. It is not a question of establishing a genetic relationship (asserting that Paul necessarily had access to a proto-Markan text or that Mark of necessity had read some of the Pauline epistles), but rather whether the similarities between the Pauline letters and the Markan Gospel are so conspicuous that placing them together furthers the investigation of early Jewish-Christian relations. In a nutshell, what are the consequences of the new and newer perspectives on Paul for Markan studies, especially in terms of how to interpret the role of the Torah in the early Christian movement? And what are the consequences for Jewish-Christian relations?


The Reception History of Heb. 8:13: A Stumbling Block or a Stepping Stone?
Program Unit: Hebrews
Jesper Svartvik, Lund University

During the last two millennia no single New Testament text has dictated Jewish-Christian relations more than has the Epistle to the Hebrews. Whereas biblical scholars continue to grapple with the “whence” of Hebrews (i.e., authorship, context, genre, structure, date etc.), no one can be in doubt of its “whither”. This anonymous text of unknown origin, with its tremendously influential metaphors and thoughts, has been at the very centre of Christian theology in at least three respects. (a) First, the author of Hebrews interprets the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth with first-century sacrificial nomenclature: Jesus is being compared to both the high priest who brings forth the sacrifice and the sacrifice being brought forth. He is also compared to the parokhet, the veil which separated the Holy of Holiest from the rest of the Holy. Due to this metaphorical multiplicity, the various images collide. If they are taken too literally, they negate each other: in a literal sense, he cannot be the high priest, the sacrifice, and the parokhet at the same time. (b) Secondly, this epistle played an important role in early Christian debates on whether it was possible for Christians to return to faith after having relapsed. We ought to ask ourselves whether it is a coincidence that Heb., emphasising the one-ness of Jesus’ sacrifice, also wrestles—perhaps more than any other early Christian text—with the question of whether there is forgiveness a second time for sinners. In other words, is there a connection between the emphasis of a sacrificial ephapax (Heb. 9.12) and the once-for-all forgiveness? Is there a correspondence between a daily forgiveness and a discourse of continuing sacrifice? (c) Thirdly, another area of immeasurable influence is the discourse of an “old” and a “new” covenant in the Heilsgeschichte, and that the default setting of much Christian theology when it comes to Jewish-Christian relations is comparative, i.e., that Christianity is “better” than Judaism. This is certainly not isolated exclusively to Jewish-Christian relations, but it is, no doubt, accentuated in an unparalleled way in Jewish-Christian encounters. Few Christians in the pews and in the pulpits would spontaneously argue that Christianity has “fulfilled” Hinduism or “terminated” Buddhism. Those Christians who are critical to other faith traditions are perhaps inclined to state that they are “at fault”, but when it comes to Judaism it is likely that they would assert that Christianity is “better” than Judaism and that Judaism, theologically speaking, has ceased to exist post Christum. In this paper it is argued that no single biblical text has influenced Christians’ understanding of the relation between Jews and Christians more than has Hebrews. Its impact is enormous, and a past without its Wirkungsgeschichte is unimaginable. Subsequent Christological thinking has nourished from Heb., but detrimental models of how to understand Judaism have also profited from this epistle. The paper will explore the role Heb. 8.13 has played and continues to play in shaping the agenda for Jewish-Christian relations.


Middle-Platonic Moral Psychology as a Unifying Theme in Philo's Allegorical Interpretations of Genesis 2:21 and Deuteronomy 23:13
Program Unit: Philo of Alexandria
Hans Svebakken, Loyola University Chicago

In the course of an allegorical interpretation of Gen 2:21, Philo cites in Leg. 2.27-30 the allegorical interpretation of a different text, Deut 23:13, to elaborate his train of thought. This paper considers why Philo associates the two texts, noting first the absence of any literal features (either wording or content) to account for the association. Instead, Philo bases his citation of Deut 23:13 on relevant features of his Middle-Platonic moral psychology—in particular, convictions regarding bipartition of the soul and the proper management of non-rational emotion (pathos). In other words, the logic of Philo's association operates entirely at the level of allegorical content, not biblical text. Two fundamentally disparate texts become perfectly complementary in light of Philo's coherent Middle-Platonic moral psychology, which provides an overarching primary framework to which the biblical texts are secondary.


The Sabbath and Peace
Program Unit: Sabbath in Text and Tradition
Willard M. Swartley, Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary

This paper will explore dimensions of biblical theology in which biblical emphases on peace (shalom) are related to Sabbath, or vice versa. First is the relationship between Sabbath rest (Gen 2:2) and rest as it used elsewhere in Hebrew Scripture in correlation with peace emphases, including wholeness and trust in the Lord (Isa 30:15). Second is the relationship between shalom and Sabbath in the moral, peacemaking significance of Sabbath with its extended features in the prescribed sabbatical and Jubilee practices. Another potential correlation is the three occurrences of “covenant of peace” in Isa and Ezek (Isa 54:10; Ezek 34:25; 37:26). Is “covenant of peace” textually correlated with Sabbath? In the Second Testament, the Gospel of Luke is promising for correlating peace (eirene) and Sabbath. My findings on peace in Luke-Acts (see Covenant of Peace, pp. 20-22, 121-51) will be considered in relation to Luke’s emphasis on Sabbath (in the Gospel and Acts). This paper will pursue the question: did Luke intend a correlation between Sabbath and peace or are the two prominent emphases independent from one another? If time allows, some attention will be given to the designation of Christian believers as a “royal priesthood” (1 Pet 2:9) in view of the OT exemption of priests from the census and participation in war. The relation of (Sabbath) rest and peace in Hebrews may also be considered.


The Ezekiel G-d Creates
Program Unit: Book of Ezekiel
Marvin A. Sweeney, Claremont Lincoln University

This paper examines the transformation of Ezekiel from Zadokite priest serving in the Jerusalem Temple to visionary prophet serving YHWH in Babylonian exile. It considers the role in the book played by the premise that YHWH is the transformative agent in Ezekiel's inaugural vision, the conceptualization of the Jerusalem as the holy center of creation, the interest in presenting the purging of the Jerusalem Temple, the revelatory character of YHWH's actions, and Ezekiel's role in witnessing and articulating YHWH's proposed actions.


Cognitive Linguistics and the Interpretation of Sacred Texts
Program Unit: Cognitive Linguistics in Biblical Interpretation
Eve Sweetser, University of California-Berkeley

The current landscape of cognitive linguistics and the interpretation of sacred texts


The Narrative Function of Saul’s Suffering in Acts 9
Program Unit: Institute for Biblical Research
Brian Tabb, Bethlehem College and Seminary

The Narrative Function of Saul’s Suffering in Acts 9


Material Evidence for Early Christian Groups During the First Two Centuries C.E.
Program Unit: Construction of Christian Identities
William Tabbernee, University of Phoenix

This paper draws on the data included in a new book, Early Christianities in Contexts (Baker Academic, forthcoming), edited by the author. The presentation will concentrate on the archaeological, epigraphic, and other physical evidence relating to a number of diverse Christian groups scattered throughout and beyond the borders of the Roman Empire. These groups will be examined in their social, cultural, religious, and geographical contexts to determine how the Christian life and practice of these groups were shaped by the particularities of their own setting. The distinctive nature of each local or regional expression of these early “Christianities” will be highlighted.


An New Image and a Mixed Greek/Hebrew Inscription from a Sealed First Century CE Tomb in Jerusalem
Program Unit: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Bible
James Tabor, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Using robotic technology and HD cameras this tomb was explored remotely in 2010 under an Israel Antiquities Authority License directed by the author and Rami Arav of UN at Omaha. The technical operation was unprecedented. The tomb was briefly examined in 1980 but then sealed up and a modern condominium building was built over it. It is two meters below the ground level. The tomb was accessed by a series of drill holes. It contains seven ossuaries, two of which are inscribed with unusual feature. The first is an icon that we identify as the earliest "Jonah and the fish" image ever found, the second, on the ossuary next to it, a four-line Greek inscription that appears to be a mixture of Greek and Aramaic/Hebrew words written in Greek. The interpretation argued here is that it is an epitaph declaring God/Yahweh will raise up, has raised up, or an imperative to raise up. This paper interprets both in the light of one another and in the context of of early Jesus followers who during the pre-70CE period apparently believed that their slain leader, Jesus of Nazareth, had been exalted to heaven.


Is There Any There There? Genesis 1–3 as a Prophetic Call for Truly Local Churches
Program Unit: GOCN Forum on Missional Hermeneutics
Luke Ben Tallon, Pepperdine University

Gertrude Stein, upon returning to her hometown and discovering that she was unable to locate her childhood residence asked, “What was the use of my having come from Oakland... [if] there is no there there”? (Everybody’s Autobiography) Craig Bartholomew offers an interpretation of Genesis 1-3 that emphasizes the importance of “there-ness” or place in the drama of God’s creation and redemption of humanity (see especially, Where Mortals Dwell: A Christian View of Place for Today). An awareness of the importance of place in Genesis 1-3, like shifting the tumbler on a kaleidoscope, changes how one sees all of the subsequent material in the Christian canon. Redemption itself, Bartholomew argues, has a “structure of implacement-displacement-(re)placement” and to confess this God “is to be implaced.” It is within this context of redemption-as-implacement that the importance of the local church comes to the fore. If Bartholomew is correct about the importance of place, and I think he is, then we need to be asking the local churches, “Is there any there there?” If not, then that church is defaulting on its vocation to participate in the missio Dei. My presentation would do three things: a) introduce Bartholomew’s interpretation of Genesis 1-3; b) propose that attention to the tabernacle/temple imagery in Genesis 1-3 would improve Bartholomew’s interpretation and further elucidate its conception of place and human implacement; and c) explore the implications of Bartholomew’s interpretation and my amendment for missional theology, particularly ecclesiology. In the second section, special attention would be given to explaining the role of place in the missio Dei (drawing on C. Bartholomew, W. Brueggemann, and C. Wright), examining how churches might implement implacement as an aspect of discipleship and spiritual formation, and offering some reflections on mission to contemporary culture. In particular, theologians, missiologists and pastors have tended to diagnose post-modernity’s malady as a crisis of meaning and to shape outreach accordingly. The church offers, many say, better arguments or a better story. Yet, the centrality of place in Genesis 1-3 presents the possibility of another diagnosis and treatment. In Brueggemann’s words, “it is rootlessness and not meaninglessness that characterizes the current crisis,” people are searching for meaning, but Christian scripture indicates that “[t]here are no meanings apart from roots” (The Land: Place as Gift, Promise and Challenge in Biblical Faith, cf. Alasdair MacIntyre and Wendell Berry). The local church, the ecclesia hic et nunc provides these roots, offers a place with real, deep and lasting “there-ness.” It is an embodied, encultured, historical and implaced community that proclaims a redemption that ensures the survival of particular persons—as truly “other” (cf. John Zizioulas)—and stands in opposition to the Gnosticism that denies bodies, cultures, history, place, and (ultimately) our very particularity.


The Case for a Persian Date for the Prohibition of Intermarriage in Deuteronomy 7
Program Unit: Deuteronomistic History
Caryn Tamber-Rosenau, Vanderbilt University

In recent years, some scholars have argued that the Deuteronomistic History is the product of a much later time than what was suggested by M. Noth and his successors. This paper explores these claims and makes the case for a Persian-period date for at least one Deuteronomistic pericope: the prohibition of intermarriage in Deuteronomy 7. It will be argued that the order to keep separate from other nations fits best in a context where it was imperative to foster communal identity by enforcing strict separation between the in-group and other groups. This is a context that makes the most sense in the Persian period, but not before the exile when it is questionable whether the people of Judah had a strong collective ethnic identity. In addition, the economic implications of banning intermarriage will be explored, and it will be argued that such a prohibition fits best during a time in which there was a collective focus on keeping land from falling into the hands of outsiders. This would not have been the case under the monarchy, when there was a strong central authority to demarcate borders and defend land rights. It makes even less sense during the exile, when there was no land to possess. More general arguments for a late date for Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic History will be examined in light of Deuteronomy 7.


Johannine Scholarship in East Asia
Program Unit: Johannine Literature
Yak-Hwee Tan, Taiwan Theological College and Seminary

No abstract


The Incarnation of the Logos in Neoplatonic Perspective
Program Unit:
Ilinca Tanaseanu-Doebler, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

The incarnation of the Logos is traditionally viewed as the stumbling stone of pagan approaches to Christianity. However, the Prologue of John was interpreted favourably by at least one Neoplatonic philosopher, Plotinus‘ student Amelius. The paper will highlight different approaches of pagan Neoplatonists to the Christian authoritative texts related to the incarnation and the Biblical Jesus and will attempt to place them in a wider framework by discussing them against Neoplatonic theories of divine epiphany, which form a thematic focus in the extant corpus of Neoplatonic philosophy.


Cosmology, Anthropology, and Embodied Cognition: A Critical Reassessment of Dualism and Monism in Paul’s Resurrection Ideals
Program Unit: Pauline Epistles
Frederick S. Tappenden, University of Manchester

This paper examines the nature of both dualism and monism as they relate to cosmology and anthropology in Paul’s resurrection ideals. While standard scholarly treatments rightly understand cosmology and anthropology as interconnected in Paul’s thought, two problematic tendencies can be identified. On the one hand, there is a general trend toward viewing Paul’s cosmology in light dualistically configured understandings of Jewish apocalyptic; on the other, Paul’s anthropology is usually seen as essentially monistic. In both cases, however, claims to dualism/monism are overextended and incongruent. Examining Paul’s cosmo-somatic resurrection ideals afresh, the proposed study addresses issues of dualism and monism in three ways. First, this paper draws on recent advancements in cognitive science that suggest dualism is a natural by-product of human embodiment. At issue here is not the formal or “strong dualism” that has come to dominate the post-Descartes West, but rather a more folk or “weak dualism” that is characteristic of human thought more generally. Second, these theoretical claims will be historically contextualized within both antique Jewish and Greek traditions. Demonstrating the dubious distinction that is often drawn between Jewish and Greek modes of thought, this study argues that Paul works within a dualistic framework that is characterized by partitive interrelation rather than opposition; that is to say, individual parts of a system are understood to be inextricable within the whole. Paul does not oppose “earth to heaven” or “body to soul” but rather functions with a strong sense of interconnectivity between distinct elements. Seen in this light, attention will be finally given to Paul’s description of risen bodies in 1 Corinthians 15:35-50. It will be argued that Paul envisions a risen existence that is cosmologically and somatically fashioned vis-à-vis such integrative tension.


Laying Aside Deponency: Finding the Middle Ground
Program Unit: Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics
Bernard Taylor, Loma Linda University

In the 2010 SBL Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics theme session on the Middle Voice, the author presented a paper named "Greek Deponency: The Historical Perspective." The presenters reached a consensus that we should discard deponency as a grammatical category and treat all occurrences of the middle voice as true middles. However, this conclusion leaves a lacuna as to how our perception of the verbal system/voice system is effected by the elimination of this category, and as to the semantic contribution of the middle voice. The author will extend the trajectory of his past work to further fill this lacuna.


Bibioblogging: Confessions of a Newcomer
Program Unit: Blogger and Online Publication
Cory Taylor, University of Iowa

As a newcomer to biblioblogging, this paper will present the perspective of a relative outsider just beginning graduate school. I shall offer observations on the present world of biblioblogging, what I believe to be the strengths and weaknesses of blogging, and I shall offer suggestions regarding maintaining proper balance between academic research and public commentary, the use of blogging as a professional networking tool, and the use of blogging as a rough draft and peer review feedback mechanism for graduate research.


Translation Technique and Lexical Choice in Greek Exodus: e dynamis kyriou
Program Unit: International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies
Russell D. Taylor Jr., Trinity Western University

The phrase e dynamis kyriou combines two very common and theologically significant lexemes, yet occurs only once in Greek Exodus and a handful of times, in varying forms, elsewhere in the Septuagint. This paper will briefly examine the occurrences of this phrase along with other closely related phrases in ancient Greek literature, in order to shed some light on its exegetical implications in Exodus 12:41. We will begin by comparing the lexical choice made by the Exodus translator with similar lexical choices in other parts of the book. Then we will turn our attention to occurrences of these lexemes in the remainder of the Septuagint. Finally, we will consider their use in Classical and Hellenistic Greek outside of the Septuagint. Although this phrase is unique in Greek Exodus, and although it is mentioned only in passing in 12:41, it will provide us with some important insights about the way the Exodus translator approached the task of translation. We will argue that the peculiarities of these lexical choices fit nicely with the overall theological themes of the book, and allow the translator to underscore the greatness of God’s power in contrast to that of the Egyptians.


New Discoveries among Recently-Digitized Ethiopian Manuscripts
Program Unit: Ethiopic Bible and Literature
Melaku Terefe, Ethiopian Orthodox Church

The Ethiopic Manuscript Imaging Project (EMIP), along with its sister project, the Ethiopian Manuscript Digital Library (EMDL), have digitized well over ten thousand manuscripts in Ethiopia in the last few years. The first result of these projects is hundreds of thousands of digital images on over thirty terabytes of hard drive space. But, during the digitization process, only a very minimal amount of information is recorded about the manuscripts. Sometimes it is not until months later that we can carry out a careful analysis of all of the manuscripts. Metadata is what transforms the mountain of digital data into a searchable archive that is ready for scholarly investigation. For many months now, project personnel have been poring over the manuscript images day after day and creating metadata. And it is in these closer looks that we are making discoveries. Some of these have to do with rare and even previously-unknown literary works. Others have to do with references to known historical figures: kings, metropolitans and patriarchs, which enable us to date the manuscripts with some precision, but also sometimes provide previously unknown historical information. Virtually any manuscript older than the sixteenth century represents something of a discovery, since the numbers of manuscripts extant from this era are rather small. Melaku, EMIP's head cataloger, will recount some of these discoveries and explain some of their significance.


Function of the Levite Women in the Second Temple Period
Program Unit: Cultic Personnel in the Biblical World
Hanna Tervanotko, University of Helsinki & University of Vienna

The Levites have received much of attention in recent scholarship (e.g., Levites and Priests in History and Tradition, SBL, 2011). In relation to that the function of women in the texts pertaining the Levites has also been asked (Sarah Shectman, “The Social Status of Priestly and Levite Women”). While this study makes an important contribution and takes up new questions, it takes into consideration merely the Pentateuchal books. The Levite women are addressed in wider ancient Jewish literature too. Until now this topic has been usually addressed from the perspective of intermarriage. Several studies highlight the importance of endogamy in the Greco-Roman era. This practice applied in particular to the priestly lineage and thus the Levites. The women carried a particular importance when the family credentials of the priests were discussed. Despite their role in the priestly genealogies, the function of the Levite women is broader. For instance, I have previously argued that the figure of Miriam was incorporated into the Levites (e.g., Num 26:59; 1 Chr 5:29; the Visions of Amram [4Q543 1 5-7]; Jub 47:4) because she was thought to bring additional credit for this lineage. Moreover, it has been argued that the Aramaic Levi Document and the Visions of Amram emphasize the love and affection of the men to their wives. Furthermore, the figure of Rebecca, the foremother of Levi is highlighted throughout Jubilees chs. 19-35. Hence, whereas endogamy was certainly of interest in the texts interested in the Levites, the depiction of women was not limited to that theme in the Second Temple era. In this presentation I will argue a) that the function of the Levite women was more complex than only providing the right pedigree for the future priests b) that women’s function is not identical, but that it shifts in different texts that address the Levites (e.g., the Visions of Amram vs. Jubilees).


The 'Moderation Technique' as a Pastoral Tool to Overcome Entrenched Racial Positions
Program Unit: Bible and Practical Theology
Markus Thane, University of Edinburgh

The objective and content of this presentation and the integrated group-work is to critically engage theologically with the political and social division between African Americans and White Americans in the USA. With Barack Obama’s presidency it has to be asked if the Sunday division of our separate worship is not only anachronistically but also theologically inadequate. Therefore, a relatively new methodology originally from the marketplace can be introduced as a helpful tool. In Germany it is called ‘Moderationsmethode’, translatable as ‘Moderation-Technique’. The advantage of this method is to go beyond an individual level to the incorporation of groups or a congregation/church as a whole. By doing so, it also seeks to acknowledge the individual and his or her fears by simultaneously utilizing the strength of group dynamics. The session is divided into two parts. Part one is a very brief overview about the method itself. Part two is a demonstration of the technique to address the topic of racial division in church worship. To achieve this goal methodologically, the exercise will include three parts: i)One group of volunteers will be given the assignment to express their biblical understanding of Amos 5:11-15 and how this relates to the topic. ii)Another group will be asked to present how the concept of unity could enrich our worship experience. iii)The last group will compile a list of suggested steps that could and should be taken in order to overcome division.


Reading the Bible with the Poor
Program Unit: Poverty in the Biblical World
Liz Theoharis, Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York

This paper explores poverty and the Bible, particularly ways that organized groupings of poor people in the United States are using the New Testament to support their anti-poverty work. The paper describes a methodology of biblical interpretation developed in semester long courses at Union Theological Seminary; interpretative techniques developed by poor people in their own communities and organizations; and other experiences where religious leaders, scholars, and poor people have come together to reinterpret biblical texts and the overall biblical story towards the arc of justice. This methodology includes engaging texts that have been used historically and contemporarily to justify poverty and oppression; it also includes historical reinterpretation using primary sources about the Roman Empire, investigating contemporary social issues by placing them in conversation with historical ones (including debt, development, charity/almsgiving, patronage, poverty, wealth and political power) and drawing parallels between contemporary stories of poor people surviving and organizing today with New Testament stories. This methodology is being developed within the context of the Poverty Initiative at Union Theological Seminary. Emphasizing the belief that the voices of those most affected by the problem must be in the forefront, the educational model of the Poverty Initiative focuses on bridging relationships between poor people’s organizations and religious institutions in an effort to build a movement to end poverty, led by the poor. Through scholarship and practice, it seeks to create a strong theological and biblical foundation for anti-poverty efforts.


The Beginning of Solomon's Reign in the Septuagint at 3 Reg 2:46l–3:2
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Historical Books
Benjamin D. Thomas, University of Chicago

I argue that in the monarchic history composed in the period of Hezekiah, which I designate the "Hezekian History" (HH), the beginning of Solomon's reign may be reconstructed from the Septuagint at 2 Reg 2:46l-3:2. Methodologically, the paper employs a model in which textual witnesses may be used as evidence for composition criticism. I provide and defend my own reconstruction of the history's opening in Solomon's reign: LXX 3 Reg 2:46l: Solomon, son of David, reigned over Israel and Judah in Jerusalem. [HH 3:1: He did what was right in the eyes of YHWH and walked in the way of David, his father;] HH 3:2: only the people kept making incense offerings in the bamot, for the temple of YHWH had not been built until then.


At the Margins of the Rule of Faith: Reflections on the Reception History of Problematic Texts and Themes
Program Unit: Theological Interpretation of Scripture
John L. Thompson, Fuller Theological Seminary

Although the history of the Bible’s exegesis and reception is often viewed as a promising resource for the theological interpretation of Scripture, recovering and understanding this historical resource can be a monumental and ambiguous undertaking — especially in light of the hundreds of commentaries and commentators one might consult over the course of nineteen or twenty centuries. My own work in the area of theological interpretation has focused less on whole books of the Bible than on problematic themes that run throughout the Bible and on texts that are frequently bypassed by modern lectionaries on account of their controversial references to violence, abuse, and immorality. This paper will consider how the history of interpretation can inform our readings of these texts as well as the biblical books in which such texts occur. I will give particular attention to the question of whether the incompatibility of the varied readings and methods of the interpreters of the past necessarily subverts all hopes for our own sense of continuity with the past, or whether some sort of consensus in theological interpretation might emerge in other ways from a sustained conversation with biblical interpreters from the patristic era through the middle ages and Reformation era.


An Allegorical Discourse on the "Fear of God": Theology or Religion?
Program Unit: Metacriticism of Biblical Scholarship
T. L. Thompson, Københavns Universitet

This paper is an effort to challenge the relevance of the Hebrew Bible for an understanding of the religion of the historical Israel through an analysis of the theological trope of "fear of God" in several well-known Old Testament texts, in an effort to explore whether the figure of Yahweh, as represented in holy war traditions, is relevant to a study of religion in ancient Israel and Judah or whether it is better understood in terms of allegorical parable, related to the theology of a later period.


The Leaping Fetus (Luke 1:41, 44): The In Utero Baptist and Greco-Roman Theories of Fetal Development
Program Unit: Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti
Trevor W. Thompson, University of Chicago

In the Gospel of Luke, Mary visits Elizabeth who is in the sixth month of her pregnancy. The fetus within Elizabeth’s womb leaps in response to Mary’s greeting. Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit (cf. Luke 1:15) and without further prompting or information, offers a blessing to both Mary and the fruit of her womb. She then explains her effusive response by communicating to Mary the joyous movement of her son (?? ??a????se?; 1:44). Of note, the narrative seems to assume the in utero fetus is a sentient being with a heightened awareness of its surroundings. The mother, Elizabeth, and the fetus, the Baptist, share information. Elizabeth is able to understand and articulate knowledge acquired by the fetus. As potential background for the text, commentators have pointed to the in utero struggle between Jacob and Esau (Gen 25:22) and the eschatological leaping in Mal 3:20 (LXX). More recently, A. Weissenrieder (Images of Illness in the Gospel of Luke, 84-93) situates this text within Greek and Roman debates about the stages of pregnancy and the attending symptoms, circumstances, and dangers of each stage. Little to no attention has been given to Greco-Roman medical texts that discuss theories of fetal conception, formation, animation, sensation, and cognition (e.g., Hippocratic De Natura Pueri; Galen, De Foetuum Formatione; Pseudo-Galen An animal sit quod est in utero; Porphyry Ad Gaurum). This paper will argue that the narrative of the Baptist’s in utero growth assumes the gradualist view of embryonic development, a well-known position among Greek and Roman medical practitioners.


Writing the Nation/Reading the Men: Some Novel Thoughts on Manliness in Mark's Gospel
Program Unit: Jesus Traditions, Gospels, and Negotiating the Roman Imperial World
Eric Thurman, University of the South

This paper explores how the manliness of the Markan Jesus functions in the construction of early Christian social identity under Roman rule. The paper thus attempts to move the conversation from “what kind of man is the Markan Jesus?” to “how are notions of manliness used to articulate social norms and boundaries in the earliest Christian narrative?” To that end, the paper uses postcolonial theory and masculinity studies to draw together separate studies of Roman imperial ideology, manliness, and ancient fiction and Mark’s gospel. To begin, the paper suggests that Mark’s gospel be read as an early Christian analogue to the ancient novel, a genre that, on recent readings, betrays a preoccupation with the symbolic boundaries of group identity under empire. Within these texts, hegemonic manliness thus function as a key trope for defining relationships of superiority and inferiority among rival sub-cultures in colonial contexts. By “thinking with” these characters, audiences imaginatively reconfigure the symbolic boundaries of class and ethnicity in light of their respective groups’ social standing under empire. Without denying the influence of Roman imperial discourse on Mark’s gospel, the paper next suggests that the gospel, like other ancient novels, is more preoccupied with defining the boundaries of a nascent Christian identity, than with directly engaging Roman rule itself, the latter focus being the concern of most postcolonial studies of Mark. To support a change in focus, the paper highlights the theme of persecution as a key element in the construction of group identity. In Mark’s gospel, early Christian social identity is defined in response to the hostility of other groups represented by the Jewish leaders and Roman authorities in the text. Without disagreeing directly with recent work on masculinity in Mark’s gospel, especially the work of Colleen Conway, this paper next offers an alternative interpretation. It argues that the characterization of the Markan Jesus is not an attempt to conform to the hegemonic gender ideals of elite Greco-Roman discourse. It is an effort to valorize a non-elite male whose deeds and social standing would still mark him as a marginalized subject from an elite perspective. Ultimately, his manliness is best described as a hybrid of hegemonic and subordinate gender ideals. To demonstrate this interpretation, the paper compares the Markan Jesus to his Jewish rivals and Roman executioners. Through these conflicts, the hybrid manliness of the Markan Jesus is brought into focus. In fact, he is repeatedly presented as besting local Jewish elites in the male sport of face-to-face verbal debate despite his lack of social standing. This further suggests that he is meant to embody a socially marginalized, but morally superior model of manhood. Like male characters in ancient fiction, then, the Markan Jesus serves as a rhetorical figure through which the audience reflects upon the gendered values and practices that define the group’s social identity, in this case an implied audience anticipating persecution by Jewish elites and Roman imperial authorities.


Tebow's Bible: Toward a Cultural History of John 3:16
Program Unit: Bible and Popular Culture
Eric Thurman, University of the South

This paper focuses on the public piety of football star Tim Tebow in order to explore the appropriation of John’s gospel, especially John 3:16, by evangelicals in American popular culture. To do so it combines recent approaches to the Bible and popular culture with work on religion and sports as well as scholarship on the American Jesus. First, the paper situates Tebow and his displays of piety, especially his pre-game scriptural citations, in the recent history of evangelical engagement with sports culture. Developing the hints of other commentators, it suggests that Tebow combines different historical models of “muscular Christianity.” Like other Christian athletes before him, Tebow uses his sports celebrity status as a platform to promote his evangelical faith. Next, the paper situates Tebow’s citations of John 3:16 within a longer reception history of that passage as a key evangelical proof-text. Tebow’s citations include wearing the verse on his eye black, posting it on his website, and approving its use on his commemorative statue. Surveying select examples of evangelical discourse from the Great Awakening to the early 21st century, the paper focuses on the process of de-contextualization and re-contextualization that takes places with each citation. Next, taking a cue from Tebow’s favorite verse, the paper suggests that as Tebow promotes his faith he celebrates and emulates a Jesus who is both distinctively American and recognizably Johannine. To that end, it surveys recent work on American representations of Jesus to suggest that historically dominant images of that figure are also linked to John’s representation of Jesus. If, as one commentator notes, “Tebow has come to symbolize evangelicalism as a whole,” the paper argues that he also symbolizes many of the same features evangelicals project onto their image of Jesus himself, not least manly strength and movie star good looks combined with a winning personality. Last, the paper comments on Tebow’s status as a folk hero and its connection with John 3:16. Tebow is popular, it argues developing the views of other commentators, because he embodies an early 21st century version of “muscular Christianity” at a time when convincing examples of conservative male leadership among evangelicals are disappearing. The political context of Tebow’s celebrity in turn helps explain the ideological appropriation of John 3:16 exemplified by two Tebow-inspired TV ads as well as a pro-life commercial made by his mother, Pam Tebow. Even when he is not present in these ads, Tebow provides a kind, but strong face that inspires evangelical culture warriors almost as much as the face of the American Jesus he praises and so nearly resembles.


Daughter Zion and the Lament in Isaiah 63:7–64:11
Program Unit: Book of Isaiah
Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer, University of Aberdeen

This paper sets out to re-evaluate the rhetorical function and Sitz-in-der-Literatur of the lament in Isa 63:7-64:11. In particular, it aims to show that the theology of this lament has affinity with the voice of Daughter Zion in Isa 49. This shared theological outlook is best explained in terms of a shared origin, both in time and in place. It is likely that the persona of Daughter Zion in Isa 40-55 personifies the community in early post-monarchic Judah (i.e. 586 BC-520 BC) and that her statements reflect the concerns of that community. It is likewise probable that the lament in Isa 63:7-64:11 represents the opinions of many people in Judah at that same time. The similarities between Isa 49 and Isa 63:7-64:11 in their view of suffering and their dialogic approach to God shed new light upon the formation of the latter half of the book of Isaiah. I shall demonstrate that the lament and protest against God, expressed in Isa 63:7-64:11, are in agreement with the wider Isaianic tradition.


Proposals for the Critical Editing of Scrolls Compositions
Program Unit: Qumran
Eibert Tigchelaar, KU Leuven

Hitherto, virtually all editions of the Dead Sea Scrolls and fragments have been diplomatic editions of manuscripts (documents). This was initially necessitated by the fragmentary character of the material, which first needed to be correctly identified, transcribed, and interpreted. Diplomatic editions have also become a matter of principle for those who focus on processes of growth, collecting, and transmission of “texts,” and see each manuscript as a unique witness of this process. Nonetheless, we do have the task to go beyond individual manuscripts and to construct or reconstruct from all the textual material critical editions of the compositions (works) that indicate the relationships between the various manuscripts. The paper will reflect on the relationship between composition and manuscript (document and work) in the case of the Dead Sea Scrolls, discuss the necessity and the limitations of critical editions, and propose practical approaches to such editions.


What Has Wikipedia to Do with Judah? Using Modern Collaborative Technologies to Teach Pentateuchal Formation
Program Unit: Teaching Biblical Studies in an Undergraduate Liberal Arts Context
Nicole Tilford, Emory University

Each generation has produced its own model for explaining how the Pentateuch was formed. Jubilees had its angel, the early Christians their Logos, Wellhausen his JEDP, and Noth his tradition complexes. While it is certainly important that our students are aware of how individuals in the past have explained this complex unit of material, such models often say more about the perspectives and values of the individuals who produce them than about the formation of biblical tradition. In this paper, I would like to offer an alternative model, one more suited to our current students’ experiences as the consumers of cultural knowledge that takes into account recent theories of textual formation and multiple authorship. Using illustrative examples from the Abrahamic narratives, I shall demonstrate how we can use modern forms of collaborative technology like the wiki to teach students about the nature of authorial perspective; the development of polyphonic texts; the transmission of redundancies, mistakes, and errors; the production of alternative versions; and the restraint of communal authority. Despite its notable limitations (particularly, the anachronism of using a modern technological form to describe the production of ancient texts), such a “Collaborative” model of Pentateuchal authorship has various benefits and can, I argue, better speak to the fluid nature of Pentateuchal traditions during its formative years prior to its canonization than more traditional models. Such a model would also, I argue, fit well with the objective of a liberal arts education in that it not only imparts information but it also trains students in skills they need to be more responsible, educated citizens—-in this case, to be more conscientious (re)producers of cultural knowledge. I will conclude by offering some practical suggestions as to how such a model could be implemented in the classroom.


Nahum’s Representation of and Response to Neo-Assyria: Neo-Assyrian Imperialism as a Multifaceted Point of Contact in Nahum
Program Unit: Hebrew Scriptures and Cognate Literature
Daniel Timmer, Reformed Theological Seminary

This paper contributes to the discussion of Nahum’s degree of familiarity with Neo-Assyrian literature and ideology by focusing on the book’s depiction of Assyria and its response to that threat as depicted. Rather than attempting to identify specific cases of lexical intertextuality, the paper follows the lead of recent studies that develop the wider, conceptual sense of intertextuality (e.g. J. Sanders) in order to identify elements in Nahum that may reflect awareness of aspects of Assyrian imperialism (S. Astor, A. Bagg) on the conceptual rather than exclusively verbal level. The paper studies the various facets of Neo-Assyrian imperialism in Nahum (cult centers, army, envoys, etc.) against their religious and ideological matrixes (S. Holloway, W. Dietrich, B. Becking) in order to clarify two questions: the extent to which Nahum’s representations of Assyria correlate with, or deviate from, Assyria’s self-representation or current historical reconstructions of Assyria (M. Cogan), and the extent to which Nahum’s responses to Assyrian aggression involve similarities and differences between Judean and Assyrian ideologies and worldviews (M. Weinfeld, A. Berlejung, M. Zehnder). The study’s findings will be of interest to those studying Nahum, the relationship between Judah and Assyria in the seventh century, and related issues such as stereotypes and responses to imperialism in the ancient world.


When YHWH Goes to War, Can Peace Result? The Consequences of Divine Violence in Nahum
Program Unit: Israelite Prophetic Literature
Daniel Timmer, Reformed Theological Seminary

This paper examines YHWH’s combat against his enemies, and particularly against Assyria, in the book of Nahum (G. Baumann, B. Becking, K. Spronk). Taking the book’s opening hymn as the context for its subsequent focus on Assyrian and Nineveh, the paper considers both divine aggression and its results (J. O’Brien) across the book. Special attention is given to the variety of these results, which include YHWH’s destruction of his enemies/Assyria, his shaming of Assyria (C. Chapman), and the termination of conspiracies against him as well as celebration of the YHWH cult in Judah upon its rescue from Assyria's implicitly anti-YHWH hegemony (S. Holloway). The paper concludes with critical reflections on Nahum’s utopic vision (E. Ben Zvi) and ideology (D. J. A. Clines, T. Pippin, J. Dyck) and on the book’s use of “theological anthropology” (C. Newsom) in light of contemporary challenges in understanding how violence and religion relate (U. Beck and R. Livingstone, H. Kippenberg, K. Spronk).


Echoes of Colossae among the Enslaved African in North American Diaspora
Program Unit: African-American Biblical Hermeneutics
Annie Tinsley, The University of Birmingham, United Kingdom

Colossae’s history is buried beneath the devastation caused by one too many earthquakes visiting the Lycos Valley. Yet, we get a glimpse of the history of a small community of early believers through a letter written in the first century. The letter to the Colossians was reactionary and corrective admonishing the community of believers to be faithful. The author acknowledges their efforts to be faithful to God through Jesus Christ and then speaks to issues which have been brought to his attention. We have no record of their actual reaction to the gospel. The letters content is the only indication of their reception. What is thought to be their reaction has been the topic of many discussions and debates by commentators who have labeled them heretics and questioned their orthodoxy. What if the issues presented to the author were inaccurate? What if the author missed the mark in writing the letter? What if in the process of disseminating the gospel, the portrayal of the issues in this community was misconstrued to suit the needs of key players? This article, written from an African American postcolonial biblical perspective and focuses on the impact of one’s past in the reception of the gospel. A person’s history is essential to their reaction to new teachings which we all bring to the table. As stated, the letter to the Colossians documents their history. The letter also plays an important role in the history of the reception of Christianity among the enslaved Africans in North America. Knowing one’s past is essential to understanding their reception of the gospel.


Voluntary Martyrdom and Gnosticism
Program Unit: Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism
Philip L. Tite, Independent Scholar

There has been a recent surge of interest in early Christian martyrdom, though surprisingly with little attention given to the so-called “Gnostics”. This dearth of attention, especially beyond specialists in the study of Nag Hammadi, has largely been due to the long-standing consensus that the ancient Gnostics held no interest in martyrdom and indeed that they strongly opposed martyrdom (e.g., Frend). Although there have been a few exceptions to this consensus (such as Scholten, Löhr, and most recently Haxby), this consensus persist both within Nag Hammadi scholarship (Williams, Logan, King and Pagels) and within the broader field of scholarship specialized in martyrdom (Middleton). This paper challenges this understanding of Gnosticism’s relationship to martyrdom by offering a reassessment of those texts used to establish such a demarcation. Rather than articulating a rejection of martyrdom, the Testimony of Truth, Apocalypse of Peter, fragments of Basilides, and the Gospel of Judas (and perhaps the Interpretation of Knowledge) could instead be read as opposing voluntary martyrdom and not simply martyrdom in general. Building on the work of Ste. Croix, Middleton, and Moss, this paper will help re-situate the so-called “Gnostics” within the context of broader early Christian debates over martyrdom. Just as other Christians utilized, debated, contested and affirmed martyrdom language, so also did the so-called “Gnostics.” Like other early Christians, the “Gnostic” Christians were as concerned over proper martyrdom, where a spiritual empowerment, rather than individual choice, was essential for successful witness through martyrdom. By appreciating this more nuanced approach to martyrdom in our sources, we are challenge to move beyond the stereotypical caricatures of what modern readers presume constitutes “Gnosticism” while simultaneously facing the need to avoid re-presenting and thus representing the heresiological models of orthodoxy and heresy.


Stone and Sound Motifs in Surat al-Hijr: A Rhetorical Analysis
Program Unit: Qur'an and Biblical Literature
Sarra Tlili, University of Florida

Surat al-?ijr ( Q 15) exhibits important stone and sound motifs. The title is derived from the root *?-j-r*, denoting stone. The people of al-?ijr (*a??ab al-?ijr* ) hewed dwellings in stone mountains (v. 82). God tells the Prophet to "shout" (*i?da?* , from *?-d-?* , denoting cracking ) His message to the people of al-?ijr, who are destroyed by a "cry" (*al-?ay?a* in v. 83), implying the ability of words and sound to create an effect in rigid bodies. The sound motif is also present in the onomatopoeic word *?al?al* , the hardened clay from which Adam is created (v. 26), and Lot's people are destroyed with stones (*al-?ijara* in v. 74). The stone motif may be intended to underscore the rigid stubbornness of the Prophet's opponents, to counsel him to act forcefully, and to reassure him that God's Word is powerful enough break the opposition of the unbelievers.


Neuralgic Issues in the Interpretation of Philo of Alexandria’s Treatises Legum Allegoriae
Program Unit: Philo of Alexandria
Thomas H. Tobin, S.J., Loyola University of Chicago

One of the most vexing issues in the interpretation of Philo’s treatises Legum Allegoriae is the extent to which he has succeeded in creating a fairly consistent pattern of allegorical interpretation into which he has integrated and reinterpreted other kinds of interpretations. Using Leg. 1.43–55, 90–108 as an example, I shall argue in this paper that Philo does indeed present a complex yet consistent pattern of interpretation.


Paul, Apostle to the Gentiles: "Israelite, Hebrew, Pharisee"
Program Unit: Pauline Theology
Peter Tomson, Faculté Universitaire de Théologie Protestante

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A Comparison between the Morrison Bible and the Chinese Union Version according to Yan Fu’s Translation Principles of “Faithfulness, Accuracy, and Elegance”
Program Unit: Asian and Asian-American Hermeneutics
Clement Tong, University of British Columbia

Since 1919, the Union Version of the Chinese Bible (CUV) has been a clear favorite among Chinese Protestants all over the world. Despite repeated calls and attempts to provide a parallel if not better version for an alternative read, the CUV continues to dominate the Chinese Christian readership, after almost 100 years of circulation. Many have cited the problem of favoring a version which iss not based on the original Hebrew and Greek manuscripts (it was translated from the Revised Standard Version), and which uses old Chinese expressions that quiz the modern readers’ comprehension and beg their patience. This paper suggests that the problem of the CUV runs deeper than just the aging diction, but because of a clear preference of the translators to emphasize more on the fluidity of the reading, when sacrificing clarity, and in some cases, accuracy. If we take famous Chinese translator Yan Fu’s measuring stick for good translation practices – the balance of “faithfulness, accuracy, and elegance” (xin, da, ya) – the CUV translators can truly be seen as compromising “accuracy”, and perhaps even “faithfulness” too, for the sake of “elegance”. This paper will focus on the New Testament portion of the CUV, and uses the Morrison Bible (Malixun Xinyue Yizhao) as a comparison – an older version which was completed in 1823 by the missionary Robert Morrison, but represents a more literary translation attempt from the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts. This paper argues that the CUV, although a far better read, compares poorly to its predecessor in terms of accuracy and expression of the original texts. Two main reasons have been identified for this tendency: 1) The use of existing Chinese expression for terms which don’t have an obvious or straight-forward Chinese counterpart, but by doing so creates more interpretative problems for the readers. For example, when translating “the poor in spirit” of Matthew 5:3 the CUV translators passed over John Morrison’s choice of xintanzhe (literally “the poor in heart”) and chose xuxin de ren, which more closely means “humble in heart”; 2) The often unwise use of paraphrasing terms, which may sound more familiar to the contemporary listeners, yet resemble little of the original Greek expression, such as in the translation of 1 Corinthians 4:9 where “a spectacle” is translated as yitaixi (“a stage performance”), instead of Morrison’s more accurate guanwu (a “spectacle” or an “object of viewing”). This paper will also comment on how some of the undesirable translational choices of the CUV went on to influence hermeneutics among Chinese churches in the decades that followed, and yet why the ongoing effort to replace the CUV has never been successful enough.


"Dude Looks Like a Lady": Queering Wisdom in Proverbs 1–9
Program Unit: LGBTI/Queer Hermeneutics
M Adryael Tong, Yale Divinity School

This paper challenges the traditional female designation of the personified Wisdom in Proverbs 1-9. Although Wisdom may seem like a woman at first, a closer inspection reveals the cracks and fissures in her gender identity. First, I will attend to the feminist interpretations of this passage exemplified by Claudia Camp (1998) and Carol Newson (1989), which are different in almost all aspects except for an unqualified assumption of Wisdom’s femininity. I will then present a philological argument against the translation of the lexically feminine Hebrew word for Wisdom as feminine, and instead suggest that the gender characterization of Wisdom ought to be read within the context of the Biblical text itself. When personified Wisdom is compared to other characters from the Hebrew Bible, she actually seems far more similar to the male Israelite prophets than the women of the Hebrew Bible. Unlike most of the women in the Hebrew Bible, Wisdom is not primarily associated with her reproductive function, furthermore unlike the female Israelite prophets, she performs her prophetic mission in a conspicuous public space. The famous female prophets Deborah and Miriam both perform within gender constrained spaces, either in private (Deborah) or primarily among other women (Miriam). Wisdom, however, is described as present at the city gates similarly to Jeremiah and the guild of prophets from 1 Kings. In this way, Wisdom looks less and less like a woman and more and more like a man in a dress. But, if Wisdom is truly a fabulous drag queen, was does this mean for feminist interpreters who draw on the femininity of Wisdom as a source of feminine power and inspiration? I will thus conclude with some thoughts on the dangers of building queer readings in opposition to feminist readings, and how these related fields of biblical scholarship can work in cooperation rather than competition.


Scribal Composition and Exegesis in Targum Jonathan of Ezekiel 1 and 10
Program Unit: Aramaic Studies
William A. Tooman, University of St. Andrews

This paper examines how the visions of the divine presence in Ezekiel 1 and 10 have been translated and interpreted in Targum Jonathan (TJ). The paper focuses on the techniques by which the targumist expanded and adapted his Vorlage, and on the interpretive decisions that inspired the changes. I focus, in particular, on three exegetical phenomena. First, allusions to certain scriptural texts have been enhanced in TJ, widening the literary context of the visions and freighting them with select associations and concepts. Second, several large expansions have been added to the visions. These expansions serve to streamline the logical and conceptual coherence of the visions, fill certain gaps, and harmonize the two visions, creating new kinds of coherence out of potential difficulties. Finally, a few select elements of the visions have been removed, not rendered in the translation nor acknowledged in the expansions. These scribal endeavours point to the (perceived) potential of the two visions to spawn unacceptable interpretations and a desire to control interpretation through the scribal arts of translation and rewriting.


When Supervillains Cite Scripture
Program Unit: Bible and Popular Culture
G. Andrew Tooze, Independent Scholar

If asked to list the skills needed by the average comic book supervillain, most people would probably not include the ability to cite scripture. Even if it did make the list, that ability would, in all likelihood, be at the bottom, far below a ruthless business sense and crazy mad scientist skills. But as it turns out, knowledge of the Bible can be a useful skill in the supervillain toolbox. A casual review of mainstream superhero comics reveals multiple examples of villains, such as Lex Luthor, the Kingpin, and the Joker, being able to call just the right biblical quote to their lips at just the right time. This paper will examine these examples, briefly looking at the way biblical citations are used within the fiction world of the comic books. However, comic book characters may speak in their worlds, but their voices originate in ours. Their words are literally put in their mouths—or speech bubbles to be precise—by their writers. Examining the way these authors use scripture in their fictional worlds will offer insight into the different ways the Bible is perceived and used in our world.


The Two Parallel Texts of the List of Solomon´s Officials: 3 Reigns 2:46h and 4:1–6: A Preliminary Text-Critical Edition
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Historical Books
Pablo A. Torijano, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

In 3 Reigns 2:46h and 4:1-6 the Greek version offers the text of two parallel lists of Solomon’s officials. In the same way, the OL contains two parallel texts placed in 4:1-6 corresponding to each one of the two lists transmitted in the Greek text. The Armenian and Georgian versions preserve important variant readings that need to be taken into account in a critical edition of LXX. Besides, these lists offer rich material for the study of onomastics, a field that, although difficult, is fundamental for the isolation of different streams of textual tradition and the establishment of a critical text. In this respect, as well as in others, it will be necessary to re-assess Rahlfs’ work on the Lucianic recension, especially concerning its value for the reconstruction of the OG in the non-kaige section in readings that diverge from the B text. This paper will offer a preliminary critical edition of these passages.


Aspects of Biblical Interpretation in Sixth Century Gaza: Barsanuphius, John, and Dorotheus
Program Unit: Development of Early Christian Theology
Alexis Torrance, Princeton University

In the wake of studies by Brown, Burton-Christie, Kannengiesser, and others, most scholars would accept that the early monks were no strangers to exegesis, and that the ascetic impulse in early Christianity is guided more often than not by Scriptural precedents. And yet, the contours of the ascetic contribution to Scriptural interpretation have rarely been examined in depth, still less applied to the debate over models of biblical hermeneutics in the early church more broadly. Here, a modest contribution will be made to the quest to better comprehend ascetic modes of biblical reading, through an engagement with the Scripturally-steeped writings of Barsanuphius, John, and Dorotheus of Gaza. The analysis will pursue, first, the understandings of Scripture as a whole in their texts (how it should be treated, how and where it should be expounded, its relationship to other modes of revelation, such as the words of an elder to his disciple, etc.). Secondly, instances of unique or rare exegesis of specific passages will be outlined (such as the treatment of Mt 24:16, Is 8:18//Heb 2:13, and others), and their significance discussed. It will be concluded that the kind of approach to Scripture encountered in the writings of the Old Men of Gaza furnishes us with important materials for the task of forging new and better understandings of biblical exegesis in early Christianity.


The Love-Hate Relationship: Christ’s Commandment of Hatred (Lk 14:26) in the Theology of Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov)
Program Unit: Bible in Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Traditions
Alexis Torrance, Princeton University

The association of the Gospel with hatred is understandably neglected, on the whole, in the history of Christian thought. However, the need to address the issue is brought sharply to the fore by several passages in the New Testament, in particular the commandment in Lk 14:26 to hate father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, and one’s own life in order to be a disciple of Christ. This passage, of course, has a long history of interpretation in the Christian East, the main lines of which will be briefly sketched out at the beginning of the paper. The discussion will then turn to a contemporary and influential ascetic theologian in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov) (1896-1993), who in a striking and unique way, brings this passage to the heart of his ascetic theory. Christ’s call to hatred, most especially the call to hatred of one’s own life/soul/self (????), is taken to be a call, counter-intuitively, to the summit of love. This idea is usually articulated in Fr Sophrony’s writings with the expression, “love to the point of self-hatred.” His frequent use of this expression and others, as well as their contexts, will be noted, and his justification for making Lk 14:26 so central to his concept of the Christian life will be discussed. It will be concluded that the function and purpose of Fr Sophrony’s often startling if not discomfiting exegesis is not so much to scandalize his readers as to draw them towards an understanding of the seriousness of the Christian vocation, a vocation which calls for love that is neither superficial nor abstract, but concrete, demanding, and pre-eminently self-sacrificial.


Transfigurations: Transgressing Gender in the Bible
Program Unit:
Peterson Toscano, Performance Artist and Guest

Transfigurations: Transgressing Gender in the Bible


Three Different Versions of the Genealogical Lists in Genesis 5 and 11
Program Unit: Transmission of Traditions in the Second Temple Period
Emanuel Tov, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Genesis 5 and 11 preserve two genealogical lists of the antediluvian and postdiluvian generations. With the exception of the addition of one generation in the LXX of the second list, the names are identical, but there are major differences between the MT, SP, and LXX in chronological details. Systematic patterns are visible in SP and the LXX, partly overlapping, and possibly they revise a text like MT. This paper attempts to find the logic behind the differences between these three texts, to locate parallels in the biblical and extra-biblical world, and to analyze their importance for understanding the development of the ancient Hebrew texts.


The Foreshore and Seabed Debate and Jesus' Honor (Doxa) in John's Gospel: A Perspective from Aotearoa New Zealand
Program Unit: Contextual Biblical Interpretation
Derek Tovey, Saint John's College (Auckland)

This paper examines the character and tenor of the Foreshore and Seabed debate in Aotearoa New Zealand through a comparative inter-cultural and contextual analysis of the character, tenor, rhetoric and narrative dynamics of the presentation of Jesus’ honour in John’s Gospel. The Foreshore and Seabed debate, sparked in 2003 by a court ruling in favour of Maori customary land rights in respect of the foreshore and seabed, led to a “backlash” from Pakeha (non-Maori, mainly European New Zealanders) and Government legislation to retain ownership in Crown hands (regarded as “confiscation” of rights by many Maori). As I have argued elsewhere (in a paper previously presented to this Group), the Maori concept of mana may be understood analogically with the concept of doxa in John’s Gospel. Hence, Maori attitudes to land ownership resonate with the portrayal of Jesus’ doxa. Furthermore, the dynamics by which the concept of doxa informs the presentation of Jesus’ status and honour in the Gospel may illumine Pakeha attitudes and approaches to resolving this issue (at one level, the tenor of the debate bears resemblance to the stand-off between Jesus and “the Jews” over his honour). The paper will briefly describe the debate, in particular focusing on the attitudes and reactions of many Pakeha, and the perceptions of some Maori of Pakeha reactions. Does the manner in which the honour and status of Jesus in John’s Gospel is portrayed and developed hold any implications for Pakeha relations with Maori in the resolution of issues surrounding this debate? I will suggest that the character and presentation of Jesus’ doxa in the Gospel has implications for the way in which Pakeha should view Maori aspirations, and how Pakeha attitudes may be informed and shaped by an understanding of the nature of Jesus’ doxa. However, the paper will also necessarily explore the appropriateness and pitfalls of such an approach, as well as examine the promise it holds.


Eugene Nida and the Turn to Power in Translation Studies
Program Unit: Bible Translation
Philip Towner, American Bible Society

In modern translation studies there has been a turn to power, that is, the underlying dynamics of powerrelations in translation practice and theory has been deconstructed and problematized. This main presentation will focus on providing insights from Nida's work in relation to this (post)modern trend, which in a sense does not contradict Nida's seminal insights as some might argue.


The Weapons of the Storm God in Biblical Texts
Program Unit: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Bible
Joanna Töyräänvuori, Helsingin Yliopisto - Helsingfors Universitet

The worship of divine weapons seems to have been practiced all over the ancient Near East. These weapons, often forged of precious metals and encrusted with jewels, were viewed as magical objects imbued with divine power. There is indication that divine weapons were housed in temples, and were leased out by the temple clergies for various purposes, such as oath-taking or the settling of disputes. A famous letter of an Old Babylonian Mari prophet to his king Zimri-Lim mentions the weapons of the storm god of Aleppo, conveying to him the ownership of the items with which the deity struck his enemy, the sea. The weapons are also mentioned in another Mari text, heralding their arrival in Mari territory. The letter suggests that the weapons were not merely mythological symbols, but actual cultic objects. K. Kohlmeyer later connected the Mari texts to a relief discovered in the temple of the storm god on the Aleppo citadel, which suggests that the weapons of the storm god were once kept there. Weapons of the storm god also feature heavily in mythological texts. The weapons of the storm god Baal play a pivotal role in his defeat of the sea god Yamm in the Ugaritic Baal Cycle, and they are featured famously in Marduk’s defeat of Tiamat in the Babylonian Enuma Elish. Weapons, especially the bow and the sword, are also found in connection with the god Yahweh in the texts of the Hebrew Bible. It has long since been accepted that Yahweh exhibits aspects of the storm god, and the storm god’s weapons were certainly one of the divinity’s most recognizable characteristics. It is my intention to discuss the relationship of the narrative trope of the storm god’s divine weapon as featured in texts and iconography, and its physical manifestation in the cultic weapon, with special focus on what the Hebrew Bible has to say about them.


Preaching Development and Aid: The View from Elsewhere
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Sarah A. N. Travis, Knox College

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The Masoretic Divisions Petuhah and Setumah and Their Relation to the Insertion or Transposition of Literary Units: Qumran, MT, and LXX
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Historical Books
Julio Trebolle, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

In the context of a growing interest in the formation of the Bible and its textual growth, this paper proposes examples of a joint textual criticism and literary criticism analysis. In order to accomplish this, it connects the different textual forms (MT, LXX, 6Q4 15) with the techniques used in the literary composition of 2Kgs 6-7. This method of analysis allows one to explain the process of development of textual variants. Double readings and repetitions fulfill their role as they make possible the assembly of the different literary units which the composition is made of.


Not Being above the Teacher: The Impact of Q’s Growing Literary Context on the Interpretation of Q 6:40
Program Unit: Q
Jeffrey M. Tripp, Loyola University of Chicago

The Q saying in Lk 6:40 and Mt 10:24-25a is applied differently by each of the evangelists, with Matthew focusing more closely on Jesus’ suffering and the possibility of the disciples suffering as he did. This paper assumes John S. Kloppenborg’s stratigraphical analysis of Q, allowing us to track the shifts in interpretation that take place as Q 6:40 moves from an independent aphorism into the sermon that begins the first edition of Q, then to track how the interpretation shifts again as subsequent layers of Q are added. It is with the addition of material in the main redaction that elements of suffering become more likely in an essentially pedagogical proverb. Yet this process is additive: interpretations that are added do not eliminate earlier layers of meaning. As the focus narrows on the character of Jesus, the Q people are not only encouraged to be like Jesus in their suffering, but in their character and ethics, the model of which is given in Jesus’ teachings.


First the Gathering of Matter in Explosive Densities: Creating a New Theopoetic for the Sake of Creation
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Thomas H. Troeger, Yale University

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Slow Sailing in the Book of Acts: Suspense in the Final Sea Voyage of Acts (27:1–28:15)
Program Unit: Formation of Luke and Acts
Troy M. Troftgruben, University of North Dakota

Within the narrative of Acts, the sea journey of 27:1–28:15 has long been an exegetical puzzle. While it resembles exciting travel narratives from ancient novels, it uses sixty verses to relate a story whose relevance to the surrounding narrative is far from clear. Scholars have argued that Acts 27:1–28:15 reflects personal memoirs of the author (Cadbury et al.), imitates a secular source (Dibelius), simply relates “the facts” (Rapske), or carries symbolic meaning (Pervo et al.). While these theories highlight truths about the sea journey, they underestimate the importance of its literary impact upon the concluding chapters of Acts: creating a powerful effect of suspense, to a degree unrivaled elsewhere in Luke-Acts. The sheer length of Acts 27:1–28:15, its abundant details, its merely indirect symbolic significance (unclear enough to require argumentation), and most of all its placement in the concluding chapters of Acts all contribute to an intensely heightened interest in the events to follow: namely, what finally happens to the Apostle Paul? Drawing on literary studies of narrative and suspense, I argue that the sea journey slows the pace of the narrative, heightens interest in the fate of Paul, and intensifies narrative questions about the conclusion to the book. Altogether, I propose that the sea journey is a marvelous literary work, which creates in the reader an acute sense of suspense concerning Paul’s fate by way of “slow sailing” (Acts 27:7) through perilous waters.


The Redactional History of Dan 14:1–22: The Evidence of the Tension between Daniel and the Priests of Bel in the Old Greek
Program Unit: Transmission of Traditions in the Second Temple Period
Jonathan R. Trotter, University of Notre Dame

The story of Bel and the Dragon seems to have its own complex history of textual development as is suggested by the differences between the Theodotion and Old Greek witnesses to this text. To account for these divergences, some scholars suggest, for example, that there were various Semitic versions circulating independently or some interaction between the Greek witnesses themselves. Needless to say, the complexity often suggested cautions scholars against reaching definite and conclusive solutions or reconstructions of every detail of the textual development of Bel and the Dragon. Yet, as is the contention of this paper, with regard to the Bel narrative specifically where the divergences are greatest, a comparison between the Theodotion and Old Greek does give indications about the textual history of the story. While in some cases the Theodotion has unique material that can be understood to provide examples of textual development, it seems that the Old Greek in its core narrative actually represents a more developed version of the story when compared with the central Theodotion narrative. In the Old Greek, evidence of the development of the Bel narrative can be seen in its very concentrated focus on (1) the deception of the priests of Bel and (2) the centrality and cunning of Daniel. Both of these emphases in the Old Greek result in a more pronounced tension between Daniel and the priests of Bel. Understanding the nature of these differences will naturally lead into an evaluation of the light this evidence sheds on the textual history of Bel and the Dragon.


Wehayah + Preposed Phrase + Viqtol as Schematic Unit
Program Unit: Cognitive Linguistics in Biblical Interpretation
Ronald L. Troxel, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Recognition that weqatal forms are not marked for tense or mood but are contingent on the preceding clause(s) applies to specific instances of wehayah. While wehayah and wayhiy as heads of clauses subordinate to other clauses headed by weqatal have become so entrenched (grammaticalized) as to lose their individual semantic values, there remain cases in which wehayah, in particular, retains its semantic value. Distinct among these are thirty-six instances where wehayah introduces a preposed phrase followed by a yiqtol verb, without an intervening conjunction. The distinctiveness of this syntagm is signaled by the virtual absence of an analogous structure involving wayhiy and by its opposition to the more frequent use of weqatal as simple predicate. Its semantic significance is signaled by its frequent position at the end of a discourse unit. This distribution indicates that it is a productive schema whose instantiations are motivated by semantic function. Unfortunately, this schema has suffered lack of attention since Eduard König isolated it in 1899. Most often it is passed over without comment, although Driver (Notes on the Text of Samuel) and Propp (Exodus) were unsettled by it and toyed with the possibility that it was a scribal error in 2 Sam 15:35 and Exod 4:14, respectively. Nevertheless, examination of its instantiations in the light of Cognitive Grammar supports understanding wehayah as profiling a thematic process, while the preposed phrase + yiqtol is a complement clause. In more traditional syntactic categories, the clause headed by a preposed phrase is the subject of wehayah, which serves both to link it to preceding clauses and to foreground its action as the goal of the unit.


Kol haqqore': An Alleged Discontinuity between Joel 1–2 and 3
Program Unit: Israelite Prophetic Literature
Ronald L. Troxel, University of Wisconsin-Madison

A robust tradition of scholarship on Joel has alleged that discontinuities between the book's third chapter and its first two are severe enough that chapter three must be considered an interloper between chapters two and four. Although chapter 4 is considered a secondary supplement to chapters 1-2, it is perceived as closer to 1-2 ideologically than to chapter 3. Prominent among the alleged discontinuities in chapter three is that it insinuates a division among the people by making salvation a choice of the individual, since only "everyone who calls upon the name of the LORD" will be saved (3:5) (Bewer, Plöger, Redditt, Jeremias, Beck, Schwesig, Müller). Other scholars have rejected this interpretation of kol haqqore' as distributive, maintaining that the phrase is collective, embracing all Israel, or at least those in Jerusalem (Mowinckel, Ählstrom, Bergler, Allen, Wolff, Cook, Strazicich). However, each of these alternatives has merely been asserted, not argued. While the translations "everyone who" and "jeder der" seem to validate a distributive meaning, comparisons of the use of kol + a relative clause elsewhere show that it often enough serves as a collective that a distributive meaning for Joel 3:5 cannot be taken for granted. The only criterion for deciding between these options is context. This paper argues that the structure and semantics of 3:1-5 favor a collective meaning that aligns with the emphasis on a full cultic assembly in chapters 1-2, thereby disconfirming this alleged discontinuity.


Thessalonian Women: The Key to the 4:4 Conundrum
Program Unit: Feminist Hermeneutics of the Bible
Lindsey M. Trozzo, Baylor University

The situation surrounding the Thessalonian correspondence, for which we have limited historical data, represents well a common hurdle in the interpretation of the Pauline Epistles – the delicate task of reconstruction. While evidence gathered from the text of the letters can be paired with historical data concerning the city and its inhabitants at the time of writing, limited sources and the passage of time make the approach unavoidably piecemeal. Thankfully, rhetorical analysis offers an ancient framework with which to analyze the evidence offered by a text. Since rhetorical approaches aid in the reconstructive task and clarify modern interpretation, they are useful in addressing impaired readings of problematic texts. One such text, 1 Thess 4:4, has long been haunted by a stubbornly androcentric perspective. This paper begins by rehearsing androcentric interpretations – from Richard Ascough who argues for an exclusively male Thessalonian congregation, to significant commentators like Gordon Fee and Abraham Malherbe who, acknowledging the presence of women in the congregation, do not bring this to bear on their interpretations of 4:4. Even feminist commentators like Lone Fatum have tended toward pessimism when approaching this Pauline imperative. As we will see, androcentric approaches to 1 Thessalonians have indeed affected certain readings in the interpretive tradition, and the exclusive approach has led to inaccurate interpretations of the text. I will argue that the Thessalonian women were a significant part of Paul’s reception community, and their presence calls for an alternative to previously androcentric analyses. My gender-inclusive audience-critical approach will offer a fresh interpretation for the age-old conundrum of 1 Thessalonians 4:4. *Perspectives in Religious Studies has accepted an article to this same effect, forthcoming.


"Creation" Motif in Psalm 74:12–14? Reappraisal of the Theory of the Dragon Myth
Program Unit: Hebrew Scriptures and Cognate Literature
David Toshio Tsumura, Japan Bible Seminary

Ps 74:12-14 has been interpreted as referring either to the deliverance of the Israelites at the time of the Exodus or to the time of the creation. The phrase salvation in the earth (v. 12) and God is "dividing" the sea (v. 13a) appear to be related to the Exodus theme, while on the other hand it has been asserted that the "dividing" of the sea in association with the sea dragons and Leviathan (vs. 13-14) refers to the defeat of the chaos monster, like Tiamat of Enuma elish, at the time of creation. Both interpretations take the verbal root *prr in v. 13a as meaning "to divide" (so NRSV, ESV) or, more specifically, "to split open" (so NIV) or "to cleave the sea monster in two" (REB). However, these translations do not have strong etymological support from any cognate languages (see HALOT, pp. 974f.; NIDOTTE, Vol. 3, p. 695) or support in the ancient versions (see LXX: su\ e?kratai÷wsaß "to prevail [over]"). The subsequent context (vs. 13b-14a), which refers to the smashing and crushing of the dragon's heads, supports rather the view that the verb *prr (v. 13a) means "to destroy," that is "to defeat (the enemy)"; see Ug. prr "to break" (DULAT [2004], p. 681); Akk. pararu A "to break up, shatter, etc." (CAD, P [2005], pp. 161-64). The expression "to smash/crush the heads of" comes from actual battle field practice: the Assyrian and Egyptian reliefs show maces being used to crush the enemy's head. I would like to propose that Ps 74:12-14 has a destruction motif as in KTU 1.5:I:1-3, Ps. 46:2-3, Hab. 3:8, 9 & 13 (see D.T. Tsumura, Creation and Destruction [2005], pp. 164-81), etc. rather than a salvation (Exodus) motif or a creation motif.


Textual Corruptions or Linguistic Variants? The Cases for 2 Samuel (MT)
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible
David Toshio Tsumura, Japan Bible Seminary

It has been often claimed that the MT of Samuel is corrupt in various places, and it has been customary to reconstruct the "original" text eclectically in the light of the LXX and the DSS. However, I believe that many places that have been explained as textual corruptions due to scribal errors should be explained rather as linguistic variants, such as phonetic spellings, resulting from assimilation, metathesis and sandhi. Moreover, recent advances in studies of discourse grammar and poetic parallelism can provide different and better explanations to unusual features which have been explained as textual corruptions. For example, 1) The difference in the MT between tittappal (you show yourself perverse) in 2 Sam. 22:27 and titpattal in Ps. 18:26 should be explained as assimilation and metathesis, rather than as a textual corruption, of the latter passage. 2) The term wattazrenî (You girded me) in 2 Sam. 22:40 is a sandhi spelling of the corresponding term watte?azzerenî in Ps. 18:39. It should not be explained as a scribal error or a misspelling, i.e. a loss of ?. 3) In 2 Sam. 13:16, the MT ?al-?ôdot has been taken as "untranslateable" (Driver). But this could be an assimilated form of ?al ?ôdot "because of” and an example of aposiopesis, a case where the sentence stops before the main clause begins in a conversation; also 1 Sam. 1:22 (“[Not] until”). 4) The phrase thick clouds of the skies in 2 Sam. 22:12 (also Ps. 18:11) has been taken as a gloss but the structures of two parallel passages rather support its existence in the original. 5) 2 Sam. 4:5-7, which describes the murder of Ishbosheth, has been much emended, but a close look at the discourse sequence suggests that most emendation is unnecessary.


The Continuation of Social Identities in Philemon–Paul’s Particular Problem
Program Unit: Institute for Biblical Research
J. Brian Tucker, Moody Theological Seminary

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Assessing 'The Formation of Q'
Program Unit: Q
Christopher Tuckett, University of Oxford

A critical assessment of J.S. Kloppenborg's 'The Formation of Q'


Ilimilku of Ugarit: A Diplomat-Scribe?
Program Unit: Ugaritic Studies and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy
Aaron Tugendhaft, New York University

Building off of recent research by the French Ras Shamra team, this paper will discuss evidence relating to the figure of Ilimilku---scribe of the three major Ugaritic literary works: the Baal Cycle, the Kirta epic, and the Aqhat epic. A combination of factors now make a 13th century date for Ilimilku's activities far more likely than the older view that set him to work in the 14th century. Among these are documents attesting a 13th century Ilimilku who was involved in high level political activities. This paper will consider the likelihood of these two Ilimilkus being one and the same individual. It will then reflect on the possible implications for understanding the political perspective of the poems if they are to be associated with a man who walked the corridors of power at a decisive moment in Ugarit's history.


Visions of Moral Agency among the Isaiahs
Program Unit: Theology of the Hebrew Scriptures
Patricia K. Tull, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary

Isaiah is one of the Hebrew Scriptures’ most literarily and theologically complex books, offering visions of the relationships among God, Jerusalem, and the Judean community from distinct moments during the havoc of the eighth to the fifth centuries B.C.E. The book addresses the causes of destruction and the meaningfulness of the radical human suffering left in its wake; the presence of God to survivors; and the theological identity and calling of Judeans in relation to both their own history and to surrounding peoples. What I hope to do in this paper, in response to the model of theological anthropology offered in Carol Newsom’s 2011 presidential address “Models of a Moral Self: Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism,” is first to map some of the major strands of thought concerning moral agency found in the book of Isaiah, especially placing the distinct language of Second Isaiah within the spectrum. Second, in light of Newsom’s observation that differing models of human moral agency coexisted within the writings of the Qumran community, I would like to consider the relationships that might be drawn among the models found in the various voices comprising the Isaianic corpus. Is there consistency? And if so, what is the vision? Or is there multiplicity—and if so, can meaning be made of it?


Consumerism, Idolatry, and Environmental Limits in the Book of Isaiah
Program Unit: Ecological Hermeneutics
Patricia K. Tull, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary

The second chapter of Isaiah offers two portraits back to back: first, the much-loved scenario of divine instruction inspiring international disarmament in 2:2-4, and second, the terrifying scene of the rest of the chapter, in which “God has a day” against human pride and idolatry. Here as elsewhere Isaiah demarcates sharply between living within ethical limits that honor God and creation (both human and non-human), and giving allegiance instead to useless and even destructive enterprises, envisioned here as the exploitation of silver, gold, and horses and the reliance on human products—weaponry and even gods (2:7). Such a demarcation can be seen throughout Isaiah: attention to God and God’s plans (often envisioned in terms of animals and plants) leads to human wisdom and environmental stability, but consumption of (and, ultimately, by) lesser ends and objects leads to destruction and waste. This message finds striking resonance today in a culture that values commodification over citizenship, consumerism over contentment, greed over gratitude, and acquisitive economics over environmental ethics. Isaiah’s vision of a different kind of prosperity can inspire alternative hopes for the human future in a fragile world.


The Causal Model as a Framework for Studies in the Translation Technique of the Ancient Versions of the Bible
Program Unit: Bible Translation
Eric J. Tully, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

Biblical scholars have long recognized the importance of considering the translator’s technique before using ancient versions of the Bible for textual criticism or historical reconstructions. However, most studies of ancient Bible translations have not taken advantage of the experience, research, and methodological models provided by the relatively recent discipline of Translation Studies. Three broad approaches have made a significant contribution to Translation Studies: the Comparative approach (Catford; Toury), the Process approach (Nida), and the Contextual approach (Wilt; Wendland). Each of these perspectives focuses on a critical dimension of translation, but without presenting a comprehensive model for research. Andrew Chesterman’s Causal Model incorporates the insights and emphases of all three approaches and will provide biblical scholars with a framework for research that integrates synchronic comparison, diachronic process, and contextual causes. The greatest significance of the model is its emphasis on the logical order of individual phases. After categorizing shifts in the target text, the critic identifies the translator’s norms which then allow for the proper identification and observation of the source text. Finally, all of the information from previous phases contributes to our knowledge of the socio-cultural context of the translator. This kind of analysis is foundational for establishing the source text of ancient versions, appreciating the translator’s influence and artistry, and learning of the ancient communities that commissioned them.


Baptismal Vision, Angelification, and Mystical Union in Sethian Literature
Program Unit: Mysticism, Esotericism, and Gnosticism in Antiquity
John D. Turner, University of Nebraska - Lincoln

This paper will attempt to trace the process by which the Sethian baptismal rite of the “Five Seals” developed into the contemplative practice of mystical union with the supreme deity (the One, Monad, or Invisible Spirit) as emerges from a comparison of five Sethian treatises: the Apocryphon of John, the Trimorphic Protennoia, the Holy Book of the Invisible Spirit, Zostrianos, and Allogenes. These texts contain many instances of celestial liturgy, doxological glorification (and self-glorification), celestial rapture, and physical and gender transformations, and the common element shared by them is visionary experience. What we see in these texts seems to be a process in which earthly liturgical practice becomes displaced by the verbal performance of a heavenly liturgy whose holiness and transcendence leads the participant into increasingly silent acts of visionary imagination. Thus we seem to have a general line of development from ritual action through verbal liturgy and prayer that culminates in acts of self-reflexive cognition and assimilation to the divine reality itself.


Ethical Dimensions of Succession Politics: A Critical Analysis of Davidic Hesed in 2 Samuel 9
Program Unit: Biblical Criticism and Literary Criticism
Dr. Cephas Tushima, Jos ECWA Theological Seminary (JETS)

Employing a narrative critical approach, this paper analyzes David’s supposed show of covenant loyalty (hesed) to Mephibosheth in 2 Sam 9. It pays careful attention to the lexical, motific, and thematic features of the intertextuality between 2 Sam 9 and 1 Sam 20. It also explores the interdigitated appearances of Mephibosheth in the story of David in 2 Samuel and their implications for David’s overall attitude to the Saulides. Its primary focus, however, is on 2 Sam 9. In the study of this chapter, the paper shows that contrary to the traditional reading of this passage, it is ingrained with a salient voice of counter-testimony that exposes the subtleties of Davidic succession politics injustices toward the vanquished house of Saul. The paper then underscores the implications of all these, for justice in contemporary Africa.


The End of Ammon: What Archaeology, the Bible, and Epigraphy Say
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
Craig W. Tyson, D'Youville College

In the late Iron IIB and Iron IIC, a small polity known as the “sons of Ammon” or simply “Ammon” grew up around modern Amman, Jordan. The main lines of the growth of the Ammonite polity are intelligible from archaeology and Neo-Assyrian texts, but the end of Ammonite political autonomy is still not well understood. Scholars have suggested that Ammon was provincialized under Nebuchadnezzar II, but this is now uncertain because the main evidence for this reconstruction was a narrative in Josephus, Antiquities 10.9.7, which does not retain independent historical data (Tyson, forthcoming). Therefore, this paper reassesses the available archaeological, biblical, and epigraphic evidence for the end of Ammonite political autonomy. The archaeology of the region provides a few indications of site destruction from the sixth century BCE that can possibly be connected with a Babylonian attack, but these do not provide a precise data nor can they necessarily be attributed to the same attack. Biblical texts, and especially the so-called Oracles Against the Nations (OAN), if viewed as vaticinium ex eventu, suggest that Ammon did meet its end under Babylonian rule. However, the OAN use stereotyped language that are not easily correlated with a specific event. Two Neo-Babylonian texts may provide clues to the Ammon’s end. The more important of these is the as-Sila Rock Inscription in southern Jordan, which commemorates Nabonidus’ destruction of Edom on his way down to Tayma. While the as-Sila Rock Inscription cannot provide definitive proof for Ammon’s destruction by Nabonidus, taken together with the other available evidence, this paper argues that it details the most likely occasion in which Babylon militarily subjugated and provincialized the Ammonites.


“Ben ha-melek”: An Official Title or a Familial Position?
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible, History, and Archaeology
Frank Ueberschaer, Universität Zürich

Many seals were found with inscriptions mentioning a “ben ha-melek.” The OT scriptures also record several appearances of “bene ha-melek.” What are the implications of this term: does it deal with only a familial position? Or was it an official designation complete with duties, authority, and power? Or is it some combination of both: a familial term that becomes an official title by the official nature of the king’s family? This paper will consider the archaeological and textual evidence together in order to unfold the connotations carried by this designation.


Virtual Vision vs. Actual Show: Visualizing Strategies in the Book of Ezekiel
Program Unit: Book of Ezekiel
Christoph Uehlinger, Universität Zürich

This paper will address various ways of handling and manipulating visuality as displayed in reports on ‘vision’ (especially Ezek. 1, 11) and on so-called ‘sign acts’ (especially chs. 4-5). I shall first summarize and critically update my previous studies, which followed a strictly historical-critical approach combining biblical exegesis with iconography and other ancient Near Eastern background material. The second part of the paper will raise more theory-driven questions related to visuality, gaze, and visual culture. I shall argue that the textual materials under review display different visual culture backgrounds (roughly: Babylonian, Levantine, Egyptian); that visualization serves different aims and strategies of communication; and that the texts also imply different cognitive stances (roughly, from scholarly insight to persuasive performance) towards the objects of vision which they put on show.


Utopian Theory and the Hebrew Bible
Program Unit: Social Sciences and the Interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures
Frauke Uhlenbruch, University of Derby

This paper addresses methodological issues in reading the Hebrew Bible drawing on utopian theory. Some obvious problems are the definition of the elusive concept of utopia, a utopia’s relationship to the circumstances at its creation, and the oscillation of utopia and dystopia. Before biblical texts can be read as utopia, a working definition of utopia has to be put in place, but attempting to define the concept of utopia cannot be the end of the investigation. If biblical passages are to be read as utopia it will be necessary at some point to depart from More, Manuel, Bloch, and Mannheim and actually work on the Bible. A taxonomy chart of utopia was proposed by Tower Sargent, but many (biblical) examples of utopian material do not fit into rigid categories easily. A more flexible approach to the concept is advocated by Levitas and Suvin, and by drawing on them and on Weber, this paper will suggest to approach utopia as a flexible ideal type, to which each case can be compared to highlight continuities and discontinuities. It has been suggested that reading biblical texts as utopia can offer some insight into the social realities at the time of the creation of the texts, since utopia is seen as a specific response by the author(s) to their perceived reality. This notion will be examined critically. Many critics see increased numbers of literary utopias in certain eras as evidence that utopias are most often produced by members of non-dominant groups in periods of revolutions or social upheaval. It will be shown by drawing on utopian texts from the Bible and elsewhere, that this is not necessarily true. A utopia’s relationship to realities is complex and often involves its implied counter-piece, the dystopia, especially when read from a modern perspective.


Animal Sacrifice, Christianity, and Appropriation in the Third Century
Program Unit: Religious Competition in Late Antiquity
Daniel Ullucci, Rhodes College

Christian thinkers apparently began using sacrificial terminology to refer to Jesus quite early. Paul already has a set of sacrificial metaphors for Jesus and his ekklesia. Later Christian authors continue this trend. This is not at all surprising. Animal sacrifice was one of the most important and omnipresent religious ritual of the world these authors inhabited. Thus, it is not surprising that when these authors began to think through their beliefs about Jesus and the Jesus movement, sacrificial terms were part of their vocabulary. Scholarship on this data has often claimed that the Christian use of sacrificial terms for Jesus, the Eucharist, or other Christian practices represents an example of Christian appropriation of sacrifice. This is sometimes framed in terms of a spiritualization of sacrifice, or a cooption of the social formative power of sacrifice, or the creation of an alternate discourse of sacrifice. Each of these approaches, I argue employs a vague and under-theorized concept of appropriation. Christian practices are not animal sacrifices, simply calling them sacrifices does not change this. The power of animal sacrifice (its ability to index hierarchies, demonstrate costly commitments to non-obvious beings and the cosmology they imply, and allow reciprocity with such beings) does not lie in its terminology and thus cannot be coopted by simply calling Christian practices sacrifices. Terms such as ‘appropriation’ or ‘replacement’ serve to obfuscate and mythologize the competitive process whereby Christian rituals came to dominate the religious landscape of the ancient Mediterranean. This paper seeks to contextualize Christian uses of sacrificial terminology by explicating some of the competitive reasons 3rd century Christian experts uses sacrificial terminology for Christian practices.


The Christian Rejection of Animal Sacrifice
Program Unit: Redescribing Christian Origins
Daniel Ullucci, Rhodes College

This paper challenges the predominant scholarly model, which posits a connection between so-called critiques of sacrifice in non-Christian Greek, Latin, and Hebrew texts and the Christian rejection of animal sacrifice. According to this model, pre-Christian authors attacked the propriety of animal sacrifice as a religious practice, and Christians continued this trend by replacing animal sacrifice with a pure, ''spiritual'' worship. Instead, the paper argues that Christian religious experts were involved in an ongoing competition to define the meaning and purpose of animal sacrifice.


Scribal Intervention in the Hebrew Book of Samuel and the Old Greek Translation
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Historical Books
Eugene Ulrich, University of Notre Dame

This paper has a two-fold purpose: to describe some of the ways that scribes transmitted, augmented, and confused the traditional Hebrew text of Samuel during its transmission, and to support the legitimacy of the Old Greek as a faithful translation of its Hebrew parent text, whether that text be extant or lost. An earlier, dominant view saw the consonantal MT as basically the textual standard by which to measure the work of the Greek translator, and attributed the vast majority of “changes” between the MT and the OG to the activity of the translator. In contrast, the textual evidence from Qumran shows the fallacy of that assumption and supports Anneli Aejmelaeus’ principle that the first consideration for Greek variants from the MT should be as accurate reflections of an alternate Hebrew text that simply varied from the MT, not as deliberate changes from the MT on the part of the translator.


The Philosopher Type in Late Roman Art: Problematizing Cultural Appropriation in Light of Religious Competition
Program Unit: Religious Competition in Late Antiquity
Arthur Urbano, Providence College (Rhode Island)

With the emergence of an identifiable Christian visual vocabulary on sarcophagi, in cemetery frescoes, and other media in the late third century, Christians are often said to have “borrowed” or “appropriated” preexisting themes and types from Roman art, such as the philosopher type. With the increased participation of Christians in philosophical and rhetorical education in the second through fourth centuries, the “philosopher’s look,” along with paideia itself, became a locus of debate and negotiation, both between Christians and pagans who invested in paideia, and between Christians of various stripes who disagreed on its usefulness or suitability. In this paper, I will propose an alternative method for understanding the location of early Christian art in the late Roman world through a comparative analysis of third- and fourth-century philosopher portraiture in both Christian and pagan contexts. I will argue that the philosopher type ought to be studied in light of the contours of the debates surrounding education, philosophy, and status in the late Roman world. In so doing, I consider the philosopher portrait as a dynamic type rooted in shared and intersecting beliefs regarding education and proper living, and practices related to the intellectual life (such as reading and interpreting texts and ways of dressing) that continued to evolve in various directions into the late Roman period. By focusing on the type of the philosopher, I will problematize an understanding of appropriation that constructs the employment of philosophical themes in early Christian art as extrinsic to the “pure” development of that type in pagan contexts. Drawing on cultural theory and dress studies, I will argue that Christian art employed, adapted, and innovated intrinsically the iconography and conventions of Roman art as a mode of participation in social and cultural competition that sought to define pedagogical and moral authority. Through this analysis, I aim to present a more nuanced understanding of the role of ancient visual media in the contexts of broader cultural and religious competition.


John the Baptist and the Jesus Movement: A Ritual Perspective on Christian Beginnings
Program Unit: Construction of Christian Identities
Risto Uro, Helsingin Yliopisto - Helsingfors Universitet

This paper investigates the relationship between the movement inaugurated by John the Baptist and the Jesus movement from the perspective of ritual. The majority of scholars accept the view that the two movements had historical connections and John’s activity had an impact on the rise of the Jesus movement. The paper sheds new light on the issue by focusing on John’s ritual innovation, its catalytic function in both movements and the adoption of John’s water rite as an initiatory rite by early followers of Jesus. Cognitive ritual theories (by Thomas Lawson and Robert McCauley, and by Harvey Whitehouse, in particular) are used to demonstrate the innovative nature of John’s rite and to employ comparative evidence on how ritual innovations can function as driving forces in the emergence of religious movements. The paper also discusses and summarizes the most reliable historical information concerning John’s activity and its connections with the Jesus movement (topographic questions, evolution of the movements, reasons for the rise, archaeology) and illustrates how ritual theories can serve as helpful tools for the historian of religion.


Wisdom Instruction and Identity: Macarisms and Curses as Social Markers in 4QBeatitudes
Program Unit: Qumran
Elisa Uusimäki, Helsingin Yliopisto - Helsingfors Universitet

The function of the pre-sectarian wisdom writing 4QBeatitudes (4Q525) is to instruct: the author is promoting a wise, God-fearing and Torah-oriented life. The recurring calls to hear instruction are addressed to sons in the plural or an understanding one in the singular, indicating that 4Q525 is directed to a community and aims to affect it. The text is evidently didactic and has practical implications, but the pedagogic character does not exclude performative elements that function as speech-acts. Behind such acts the writing seems to operate at a level of abstraction: it teaches by doing, that is to say, it endorses a certain view through the performance of studying, memorization and reciting the work in an educational setting. The focus of the paper is on sorting out the formation of social identity through language. How did 4Q525 affect the self-understanding of its addressees? What does it aim to achieve on a more abstract level? The text contains a series of macarisms (col. 2 ii) – closely linked even if not identical with blessings – and a description of “eternal curses” (frg. 15). It will be argued that the language transmits a sense of group identity: beatitudes and curses are speech-acts that do something in and to the community addressed. They operate as social markers by disclosing who is in and who is out, i.e. by dividing people into in- and out-groups. The macarisms build up the positive group identity of the recipients by endorsing a state of happiness and blessedness as well as a sense of security, while the threatening future judgment and punishment are projected unto the “others” and function only as a warning to the intended audience. The division into groups is not arbitrary in that it is based on Torah obedience or the lack of it.


The Homeless Apostle and His Jewish Identity
Program Unit: Paul and Politics
Leif E. Vaage, Emmanuel College/Victoria University

Among the various plights to which in 1 Cor 4:9-13 Paul says that “God [has] exposed … us [who are] the apostles” (1Cor 4:9) Paul mentions “homelessness” (1Cor 4:11). Or perhaps the verb in question (astatoumen) should better be translated “without a fixed address,” which is to say “statelessness.” Or maybe a paraphrase is required to convey the full force of its specific implication, which would be: “without any political identity.” In any case, it is apparent that Paul did not mean by the statement (astatoumen) in 1Cor 4:9 anything like “freedom to travel” or even the obligation to do so but, rather, some other kind of travail directly in line with “hunger and thirst and nakedness and being beaten” (1Cor 4:11). Among such apostolic attributes Paul says that he also knew the peril and weariness of a life lacking the kind of domicile considered residence and therefore also without all the prerogatives and commitments of citizenship. He was, in other words, a migrant, émigré, displaced person, undocumented alien, or, to restate his own claim, not at home anywhere at all in the ancient Mediterranean world. Beyond demonstrating that something like this is, in fact, the quite specific, concrete, political meaning of the phrase “astatoumen” in 1Cor 4:11, the proposed paper also will explore some of the political implications of such a claim. Where, for example, did such a statement inevitably place Paul on a political map of the ancient Mediterranean world? And how would the conclusion drawn in turn condition the interpretation of other political statements made by Paul, for example, about the ekklésia he promoted or the divine basileia into which he looked to be incorporated? Most especially, how would the deep cultural deracination which Paul projects for himself with the statement about apostolic homelessness go together with the equally singular description of himself in Gal 2:15 as one who nonetheless was inherently a Jew (as also, he claims, were other Jews) “by nature” (physei)? Which of the two identities – politically homeless or a Jew by nature – qualifies the other (if they do not simply cancel each other out)? Can one be without a “home-place” – which is to say (with Aristotle) without that which would have made one properly a human being qua zoon politikon – and yet simultaneously somehow indelibly someone able to be identified quite specifically: namely, as one of “us Jews” (Gal 2:15)? Does this mean that, for Paul, being a Jew had nothing to do with ancient politics? Or is it rather the case that Paul’s apolitical apostolicity reveals a very different conception of being Jewish than the one prevalent in current biblical scholarship (which understands it to describe a kind of “people,” viz. “nation”)?


Revelation in Light of Portuguese History
Program Unit: John's Apocalypse and Cultural Contexts Ancient and Modern
Ana Valdez, Yale University

During the period of the Iberian Union (1580-1640) several exegetes argued that the time of the end was at hand. In fact, a wave of neo eschatological hope penetrated deep into the Peninsula and into its oversea territories. In this paper, we will analyze the work of António Vieira, S.J. (1608-1697) and his belief in the biblical forecast concerning the end of time. We aim to demonstrate how Vieira thought possible to interpret the content of Revelation in light of Portuguese historical events. He was not the only one to use the content of Revelation and Daniel during this period has one has to remember the Ribera’s commentary on Revelation, but he was certainly one of the most accomplished authors and probably one of the last to undertake such task. In his “History of the Future” Vieira discusses the future of the Portuguese Empire identifying the Portuguese king with the figure of the Last Emperor. In the "Clavis prophetarum" he goes further and uses only arguments considered part of the Church’s orthodoxy to support his point of view. Consequently, in these two books, one can find two distinct approaches to the content of Revelation. In the first, Vieira addresses the Portuguese people who should support the punishment inflicted by God, using the content of Daniel and Revelation side-by-side with popular writings. In the second, he limits his sources to the Church’s authorities offering his Roman peers a solid piece of exegesis concerning the end of time. In this way, Vieira’s exegesis of Revelation and Daniel was influenced by the Portuguese historical situation while it influencing some of the Portuguese political moves of the time.


The Anglican Journey to Equality in Ministry
Program Unit: Adventist Society for Religious Studies
Gilbert Valentine, La Sierra University

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Occupy Heaven: Bakhtin, Resistance, and the Visions of Daniel
Program Unit: Book of Daniel
David Valeta, University of Colorado at Boulder

The recent Occupy Movement phenomena have galvanized disparate individuals and groups in various cultures worldwide to protest current political and economic realities. Apocalyptic narratives and images propose alternative realities that challenge the status quo. This paper briefly surveys Bakhtinian analyses of current Occupy movements and then examines how these insights help us understand the Vision material of Daniel 7-12 as resistance to larger than life realities. This presentation extends my previous work on the usefulness of Bakhtinian categories in analyzing and appreciating the narratives of Daniel 1-6 to the visionary material of this corpus.


The Legacy of Bultmann: His Most Influential Contribution in the Twentieth Century
Program Unit: Westar Institute
Andries G. van Aarde, University of Pretoria, South Africa

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Johannine Scholarship in Dutch-Speaking Belgium and the Netherlands
Program Unit: Johannine Literature
Gilbert Van Belle, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

No abstract


Christianity from Egypt: Dying and Rising Gods Revisited
Program Unit: Christianity in Egypt: Scripture, Tradition, and Reception
James Van Cleave, Claremont School of Theology

Early in the last century, eminent scholars of the History of Religions School, such as Wilhelm Bousset and James Fraser, noted similarities between certain declarations of St. Paul concerning salvation and the earlier beliefs of Egyptians – both ancient and Hellenistic. The most intriguing similarity concerned a god who descended into the material world to assume a human body, then died a tragic human death, but was brought back to life. This dying-and-rising god, then, by overcoming death, was considered to be uniquely qualified to become the judge of the dead. This god took many names: Osiris to the Egyptians, Serapis to the Egyptian Greeks, Dionysus to other Greeks, and finally, Jesus the Christ to St. Paul, a name above all the other names. This thinking fell out of favor by the mid 20th century, but deserves to be revisited from a theological viewpoint, as opposed to that of historical coincidence. A new and fresh approach is now possible. The original supporting written material had been destroyed by the 5th century in Alexandria, but in recent decades the underlying Egyptian theology has been recovered via the Pyramid texts, Coffin texts, and others. It is now a valid speculation that St. Paul’s theology concerning the soul’s final judgment was based on a previous widely known belief that originated with Egyptian religion.


Following the Footsteps of Ancient Baptists from the Fathers to the Scholars
Program Unit: Construction of Christian Identities
Gerhard van den Heever, University of South Africa

The variety of early Jesus or Christ cult groups has to be surmised from under the veneer of a seemingly mono-origined and unitary Christian movement as exemplified and embodied in the codified mythmaking process that spans the earliest canonical apostolic writings through the early fathers to later heresiological tradition. It is especially the polemics so characteristic of the emerging mainstream tradition that testify to the existence of a variety of early Jesus or Christ cult groups. However, while the names of founders and Christ cult groups proliferate in our sources, the identification and accurate description of the character of these groups is notoriously fraught with difficulty due to the polemically biased and fragmentary nature of the references. This is especially true with regard to cult groups identified as Jewish-Christian. From F. C. Baur to the present, scholarly reconstructions of (what came to be known conventionally as) Jewish Christianity have produced many collections and critical editions of fragments, citations, and the rhetorical and polemical contexts of these citations in mainstream Christian literature, but the precise nature of Jewish-Christian cult group identities and their relation to other strands of tradition (‘orthodox’, Gnostic, etc.) is much more difficult to delineate. The recoverable Jewish-Christian traditions suggest that the interaction and interplay between the later (so-identified) Judaism and Christianity must have been much more complex in the earlier centuries. The thesis explored in this paper holds that there is a broad continuity spanning such utopian Jewish groups as the Qumran Essenes (Doron Mendels), through various types of baptist millennial groups in the ancient Near East. Jewish-Christian cult groups existed on the fringes of these, and in various configurations continued to exist into later Gnosticising traditions. In this paper an attempt is made towards a more accurate social contextualisation of Jewish-Christian groups by starting not so much from what is known about the groups and their leaders from the sources (or the contents of their theologies), but from the opposite end, namely to trace the evidences for a spectrum of ritual practices broadly characterised as water lustrations. The many indications of interpretations of rituals of washing as purification, as well as a framing of these by apocalyptic discourse, enable us to reconstruct a trajectory of doomsday, world-renouncing, counter-cultural groups which reconstruction is informed by cross-cultural comparisons for greater applicability and accuracy in theorising of ‘heterodox’ Jewish-Christian cult groups. As such this paper advances the position that cross-cultural studies in discourse, ritual, and identity formation can greatly assist in drawing more detailed pictures of Jewish-Christian hybrid identity formations. In this, simultaneously, an evaluation is made of the tradition of scholarship on ancient baptismal cult groups from Joseph Thomas (1935), through Kurt Rudolph (1981) to the present day (inter alia, Marjanen/Luomanen, 2005).


Kingship and the Hittite Royal Funerary Ritual
Program Unit: Ritual in the Biblical World
Theo P.J. van den Hout, The Oriental Institute, University of Chicago

The Hittite Royal Funerary Ritual is among the most extensive compositions in Hittite literature. It describes the scenario of the 14-day rites carried out at a king's or queen's death. A statue of the deceased king or queen was manufactured on the second day after the body had been cremated. This effigy personified the royal person during the remainder of the ritual. The first six days concentrated on appeasing the netherworld deities to whom the deceased seems to have descended at first. In the second part, days seven through thirteen, the role of the king as provider for his people in the most essential aspects of their lives (agriculture, animal husbandry and its secondary products, viticulture, hunting) is stressed and each day was devoted to a particular one of these. Unfortunately, the description of day fourteen, on which the apotheosis is supposed to have taken place, has not been preserved or has not been recognized thus far. This paper will concentrate on the importance of the funerary ritual for our interpretation of Hittite kingship.


Daniel 11:14 and the Hasideans
Program Unit: Book of Daniel
Arie van der Kooij, Universiteit Leiden

The text of Daniel 11:14 is difficult to interpret, in particular the second part of it which, according to John Collins, “is very obscure”. Scholars have advanced various proposals regarding this verse which actually is about events of ca. 200 BCE. Questions are, Do the “violent men” refer to a messianic party or rather to a pro-Seleucid party? In this paper I will present an interpretation in which the first half of the verse is read as referring to seditions in Ptolemaic Egypt, i.e., to revolts of Egyptians against Greek/ Ptolemaic rulership. Recent studies such as the one by A.-E. Véïsse (Les “Révoltes Egyptiennes. Leuven, 2004) have made clear that the Egyptians were able to create a kingdom of their own in the south of Egypt (kings known to us are: Haronnophris, 205- 199 BCE, and Chaonnophris, 199-186 BCE). Against this background I will discuss the second half of the verse, dealing in particular with the expression ‘violent men’, not only from a philological point of view, but also by raising the question to which group of people the designation might allude. It will be argued that the ‘violent men’ may well be the same group of people as the ones referred to in Dan 11:34 (those being a “little help”), and that, furthermore, there are good reasons to assume that this group of people can be equated with those called Hasidim / Hasideans in 1 and 2 Maccabees.


Johannine Scholarship in Africa
Program Unit: Johannine Literature
Jan G. van der Watt, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen

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Invitations and Excuses That Are Not Invitations and Excuses: Gossip in Luke 14:18–20
Program Unit: Social Scientific Criticism of the New Testament
Ernest van Eck, University of Pretoria

In modern Western culture gossip is seen as a malicious activity that should be avoided. Gossip in ancient oral-cultures, as a cultural form, did not have this negative connotation. Gossip was a necessary social game that enabled the flow of information. This information was used in the gossip-network of communities to clarify, maintain and enforce group values, facilitate group formation and boundary maintenance, and assess the morality of individuals. Gossip was a natural and spontaneous recurring form of social organisation. This understanding of gossip is used to interpret the two invitations and three excuses in the parable of the Feast (Lk 14:16a-23). The conclusion reached is that gossip, when understood as a social game, can be a useful tool to curb anachronistic and ethnocentristic readings of texts produced by cultures different from that of modern interpreters analysing these texts.


Health as Light: Understanding a Biblical Hebrew Cultural Model
Program Unit: Cognitive Linguistics in Biblical Interpretation
Pierre Van Hecke, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

In Biblical Hebrew, as in other Semitic languages, health and illness are often conceptualised - among other things - as respectively light and darkness filling the container that is the body. In this presentation, this metaphorical conceptualisation of health in terms of light will be analyzed, and several metaphorical expressions drawing on this model will be studied (blackening the eye, extinguishing one's fire, lightening the eye, shining, ...). While the focus of this presentation will be on the Biblical Hebrew model, some attention will be paid to the Akkadian literature in which this model is even more strongly elaborated. A deeper insight in this cultural model will enable a more accurate understanding of several biblical expressions.


BIBLINGUAL: Towards a Reading-Oriented Approach in Biblical Language Teaching
Program Unit: Applied Linguistics for Biblical Languages
Pierre Van Hecke, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

The main desired learning outcome of biblical language classes is that students are able to autonomously read and understand biblical texts. Yet, our language classes typically do not teach students specific reading skills, nor are they explicitly conceived from the perspective of reading. This observation is the starting point for the K.U.Leuven (Belgium) funded project BIBLINGUAL, in which biblical language classes are thoroughly redesigned from the perspective of what each aspect of the courses adds to the acquisition of reading ability. Based on research in second language acquisition, and on previous research projects on the acquisition of classical language reading skills, a modified approach to teaching biblical languages is proposed. This approach aims at explicitly and gradually teaching the students reading skills and the necessary cognitive as well as meta-cognitive reading strategies. Questions involved are: what does it take for students to effectively and successfully read texts in a foreign language, and how can language courses help students to constantly adjust and improve their reading strategies? The project’s rationale also implies that the way in which grammar and vocabulary are acquired is reconsidered: rather than a systematic treatment of grammar, this approach focuses on a grammar aimed at understanding ('Verstehensgrammatik'), balancing considerations of frequency and of systematicity. At the same time, vocabulary acquisition is not solely based on frequency, but aims to facilitate the reading experience of authentic text material. This presentation will present the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of the BIBLINGUAL-project and will illustrate its practical consequences.


Creating or Destroying the Home of All Living Beings on Earth? The Separation Motif in Genesis 1:1–2:4a and in Thomas Berry's Thoughts on the Place of the Human on Earth
Program Unit: Ecological Hermeneutics
Willie van Heerden, University of South Africa

Over the centuries, life on earth has become vulnerable to certain forms of development that led to potentially catastrophic processes we witness at the present time. Thomas Berry has argued that six "transcendences" that characterise Western thinking and culture have contributed to this situation: (1) separating a personal, transcendent God from an impersonal, phenomenal world; (2) separating the spiritual world from the material world; (3) separating humans from the natural world; (4) separating mind from matter; (5) separating technology from natural limits; and (6) separating this world from some other, transphenomenal world. In the same vein, Ernst Conradie contends that ecological theology will remain shallow unless an adequate response to four problems related to crucial areas of Christian doctrine can be provided: a worldless notion of God's transcendence, a dualist anthropology, a personalist reduction of the cosmic scope of redemption and an escapist eschatology. The separation motif serves as a thread on which all the above transcendences or problems can be strung together. My paper, which involves a hermeneutic of suspicion and retrieval, is an attempt to respond to the above challenge. It shows that the separation motif also features prominently in the first creation account (Genesis 1:1-2:4a) where acts of separation serve a completely different purpose, namely to create space or a home for living beings. This interpretation is based on (a) Ellen van Wolde's analysis of the meaning of br? in Genesis 1, (b) the prevalence of bdl in this creation account, and (c) the composition of the narrative. Some ecotheological implications of the contrasting uses of the separation motif will be considered.


The Presentation of Herod the Great in Josephus' Jewish Antiquities
Program Unit: Josephus
Jan Willem van Henten, Universiteit van Amsterdam

This paper will review the ways in which Josephus presents the figure of Herod the Great in the Jewish Antiquities.


Plato’s Symposium and John’s Gospel, with Particular Attention to Diotima’s Speech on “Childbirth according to the Soul”
Program Unit: Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti
George van Kooten, University of Groningen

SESSION “PLATO AND THE GOSPEL OF JOHN”, by invitation of Rainer Hirsch-Luipold In last year’s session on John and classical literary forms, Harold W. Attridge drew parallels between John and the symposia literature, as exemplified in Plato’s Symposium and Plutarch’s Amatorius. In my paper, I will pay attention to further parallels between Plato’s Symposium and the Gospel of John, and deal in particular with Diotima’s speech to Socrates, in which she differentiates between a “childbirth according to the body” and a “childbirth according to the soul,” or between a “pregnancy according to the body and a pregnancy according to the soul” (206B-C, 208E-209A), or two sorts of engendering (206E, 207D). Is it a coincidence that Diotima’s speech includes a very “Johannine” theme, the differentitation between physical birth and spiritual birth? It will be argued it is not, and that this should not surprise us. Firstly, John opened his Gospel with the Platonic notion of “the true light” (Phaedo 109E). And secondly, we know that Jews such as Aristobulus, Philo of Alexandria, Josephus, and Justus of Tiberias had a high regard for Plato. John is no exception.


Think Global, Buy Local: Shopping for a Church in Hermopolis
Program Unit: Christianity in Egypt: Scripture, Tradition, and Reception
Peter van Minnen, University of Cincinnati

One of the great revolutions in Late Antiquity was the disestablishment of religion. This leveled the playing field and created a religious market place worthy of its name. How did the abandonment of religion by the government affect the inhabitants of the Roman Empire? One way of finding this out is a case study: Hermopolis in Middle Egypt. The trappings of traditional religions were still in place, and the material evidence for their presence was hard to miss, for much of the fourth and early fifth century. Likewise Christian churches and ascetics lived happily side by side with pagan priests and temples, as we can tell from contemporary papyri. Yet, inexorably, the inhabitants of Hermopolis shifted away from traditional religions and adopted Christianity. Why? The most plausible answer is the two-sided appeal of Christianity: on the one hand it was a universal religion (“think global”), on the other hand it only asked for local support (“buy local”). “Universal religion” here means that Christianity (“ready-to-assemble”) was basically the same everywhere and that it came with an (unparalleled) empire-wide network that local Christian communities could tap into. Local Christians, who supported their local church, lived among the visible results of that support without having to go through the government anymore. As a bonus Christians could “shop,” choose from a variety of churches, all of them pretty much the same, yet deeply divided. The evidence, mainly papyrological and archaeological, for these “visible results” of local support will be reviewed. It eventually consisted of a multitude of churches and other religious facilities in and around Hermopolis. The evidence for the variety of churches there and the persistence of divisions at the local level before and after the early fifth century will also be reviewed. Also inexorably, the trappings of traditional religions disappeared in fourth- and early fifth-century Hermopolis. Why? Again, the most plausible answer is twofold: on the one hand state support eventually dried up altogether, on the other hand people started to put their money more and more on the Christian ticket. Both of these tendencies can be documented for the fourth and early fifth century, in part with the help of the onomastic revolution, which also took place at this time. As a bonus traditional religions had produced a lot of materials that could be recycled, most obviously the pagan temples, which, after they were no longer used, could be used as quarries for building material for churches or given some other purpose. This latter aspect can also be documented for early fifth-century Hermopolis.


Shared Traditions and Competing Identities in the Gospel of Philip
Program Unit: Construction of Christian Identities
Bas van Os, Vrije Universiteit

The Gospel of Philip is, despite its first appearance, a conscious composition with a clear rhetorical strategy. Its author or composer is to a large extent concerned about the relationship between various groups of Christians. The author's main focus is on the dynamics between his group of 'Christians' and other Christians whom he calls 'Hebrews' or 'Apostolics.' But he also needs to establish his position with regard to other 'gnostic' Christians who reject his practice of the sacraments. We can perhaps recognize some of their criticisms in works like the Gospel of Judas or the Testimony of Truth. In this paper, I wish to discuss the value of polemics in reconstructing the dynamic diversity of early Christianity in the time and place in which the Gospel of Philip was composed.


The Testimony of Truth Reconsidered
Program Unit: Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism
Bas van Os, Vrije Universiteit

The Testimony of Truth is often cited as a clear denunciation of early Christian martyrdom. The text speaks of martyrs and their martyria (testimony) which earns them their crown. This understanding is clearly the reading behind the 1981 translation of 34.1-6 by Giverson and Pearson in the Nag Hammadi Library: “But when they are "perfected" with a (martyr's) death, ...” In The Nag Hammadi Scriptures (2007), however, Pearson translates the same phrase as: “But when they are full of passion, ...” But martyrs that don't die are simply witnesses. Is the author really writing against martyrdom? In this paper, I will reconsider the translation and the interpretation of this text.


Preaching Prophetically from the Prophets
Program Unit: Homiletics and Biblical Studies
Andre van Oudtshoorn, Perth Bible College

Preaching from the prophets entails more than distilling a set of general principles from the text and applying it to our situation. Preaching from prophetic texts calls for prophetic preaching – sermons which are able to disrupt the listeners' own definitions of reality and interpretation of current events. Without this the church loses the viva vox Dei. Prophetic preaching, however, often operates from a contemporary ethical framework and may end up co-opting the text in the service of a dominant ideology. To counter this, this paper proposes a model by which the dominant ideology (both personal and cultural), the contextual local theology and theological tradition are set in tension to the prophetic text in its original context, the symbolic world that the prophets inhabited and the Christological intensification of that symbolic world to form an interpretive framework for addressing current issues and events. Such messages should not only expose sin but also serve as a catalyst to generated social capital within the church that may be used to practically transform the world according to God's eschatological vision for it.


Messianic and Christological Interpretation in Ishodad of Merw's Commentary on Ezekiel
Program Unit: Syriac Literature and Interpretations of Sacred Texts
Harry van Rooy, North-West University (South Africa)

In agreement with his East Syriac heritage, Ishodad's commentary on Ezekiel does not contain any direct messianic interpretations. There are, however, interpretations that link the text to Christ or are of importance for Ishodad's Christology. As far as Christology is concerned, his interpretation of Ezekiel 1:27-27, where he rejects interpretations related to the two natures of Christ. The interpretation of Theodoret of Cyr is especially relevant in this regard, but also others, such as Gregory. In addition to this, in some instances Ishodad sees a double meaning in a text or a typological reference. These texts will receive attention in this paper, with special attention to Ishodad's exegesis of Ezekiel 1 and 47. In his interpretation of Ezekiel 1, he looks in the first place at the time of the prophet, for example in referring to different interpretations of the living creatures and their faces, such as the four regions of the world, the four seasons, the four elements or kings of Babylonia, of the Medes, the Persians and the Greeks. It can, however, also refer to Christ, with the four creatures representing the gospels. The river of Ezekiel 47 is also linked to the dispensation of the New Testament. These texts will be studied in detail, especially in comparison to the interpretation of Theodoret.


The Use and Interpretation of the Book of Jubilees in the Ma??afa Milad
Program Unit: Ethiopic Bible and Literature
Jacques van Ruiten, University of Groningen

Jubilees is mostly considered as a very early reflection of the reception history of the books of Genesis and Exodus. The reception history of Jubilees itself has been hardly subject of investigation apart from the study of passages in Qumran and passages among the writings of the Church Fathers. As part of a larger study of the reception of the book of Jubilees, this paper focuses on its use and interpretation in the Ethiopic Ma??afa Milad attributed to emperor Zar’a Ya‘qob. The paper discusses the consequences of the Christological reading for the interpretation of Jubilees, as well as the role the book plays in the observation of the Sabbath in Ethiopia.


The Image of Jacob in the Targum of Hosea 12
Program Unit: Aramaic Studies
Jacques van Ruiten, University of Groningen

This paper investigates targum Jonathan’s interpretation of the image of Jacob in Hosea 12. A detailed analysis of the transparent structure of the translation shows clearly the meturgeman’s concern to offer an image of Jacob which is the opposite of his source text. In an open dialogue with the Hebrew text, the targum of Hosea 12 counteracts the negative image of Jacob. In the context of God’s judgment on the prophet’s contemporary Israel, the Hebrew text presents Jacob as the deceiver of his brother, as the one who struggled with God, and as the one who served for a woman. The meturgeman shows by means of allusions to those traditions in Genesis which are situated in the context of God’s promises to Jacob that, according to him, Jacob is the blessed and exemplary father of Israel. All possible negative connotations of Jacob in the Hebrew text are covered with new positive allusions. The continuity in the source text between a disenchanted Jacob with the sinful people, which cannot be examined apart from each other, is substituted in the targum for a sharp contrast between them. Whereas the Hebrew text values the time of Moses and the exodus as the paradigm for Israel’s positive contact with God and the prophet, the targum puts Jacob on par with Moses. The Jacob tradition and exodus tradition are taken together. In fact, the whole history of Israel is considered exemplary with the effect that the behaviour of the prophet’s contemporaries have lost their legitimation. Finally, the meturgeman applies the text to his own situation by equating his addressees with Israel and Ephraim. He summons his contemporaries to return from their wicked ways. The day of punishment he announces is not yet definitive, because the outcome can be both positive and negative, lest the addressees reflect on their proper behaviour.


Ezekiel's Picture of God in Ezekiel 1
Program Unit: Book of Ezekiel
Ellen van Wolde, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen

In his first vision, Ezekiel emphasizes the glory of YHWH. The topic of ‘radiance’ develops in chapter 1 from a reference to clouds and a storm at the outset to the bow in the cloud at the end. In v. 4 Ezekiel sees a storm with clouds and fire and radiance surrounding it, as well as a gleam of amber coming out of the fire. In vv. 27-28, he sees the gleam of amber and fire enclosing it, and radiance surrounding it, and a bow in the clouds with radiance surrounding it. In this configuration, the word qešet is conceived as a phenomenon in the sky that shines in itself as a fire and has a brilliance round about it. All these shining phenomena are used as terms of comparison for YHWH’s glory or majesty. From Assyrian iconography we are familiar with ancient illustrations of the god Shamash shooting with a bow in which the warrior’s bow is part of the flamed circle surrounding and enclosing the deity. In this paper the hypothesis will be tested whether this vision of a deity with a warrior’s bow in his hands is plausible for Ezekiel 1, too. The consequences of such a portrayal of YHWH in Ezekiel will be sketched as well.


Emotions in the Hebrew Bible: Somatic or Psychological?
Program Unit: Bible and Emotion
Ellen J. van Wolde, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen

Are all emotions in the Hebrew Bible conceived as embodied? Are they part of the brain or of the mind, or of both? Since somatic expressions of emotions are both attributed to human beings and to God, and since they frequently involve heart, bowels, belly, bones, womb, and eyes, would this imply that God’s emotions are also somatic? Take for example “distress” which is related to the bowels, and “compassion” related to the womb. If God is called compassionate and the same term for womb is used, would this imply that God is thought of as having a womb? This and similar questions will be discussed in this paper.


Serving John for Dinner: Herodias and Salome as Man-Eaters
Program Unit: Use, Influence, and Impact of the Bible
Caroline Vander Stichele, Universiteit van Amsterdam

The biblical story about the tragic death of John in both Matthew 14:1-12 and Mark 6:14-29 has been the source of numerous artistic representations. In this paper I discuss some of these representations, focusing on the scene in which John’s severed head is presented to Herodias on a dish, suggesting it is served to her as food. In my paper I use the notion of the abject as developed by Julia Kristeva and of disgust as analysed by William Ian Miller to explore how these particular representations have contributed over time to the vilification of both Herodias and her daughter. I also show how the shift in focus from Herodias to Salome affects the way in which these characters relate to the head of John the Baptist.


The Head of John and Its Reception: Giovanni di Paolo’s Interpretation of Mt 14:1–12 and Mc 6:14–29
Program Unit: Bible and Visual Art
Caroline Vander Stichele, Universiteit van Amsterdam

This paper discusses the story about the death of John the Baptist (Mt 14; Mc 6) and its representation in the work of Giovanni di Paolo (Italy, c. 1399-1482) on display in the Art Institute of Chicago. Three of the six panels devoted to the life of John the Baptist, dated 1450-60, represent scenes related to this story: Salome asking for John’s head; the beheading of John and the head of John brought before Herod. This last painting is remarkable because it is clearly at odds with the underlying biblical story insofar as the head is presented here to Herod rather than Herodias as is stated in both Mt 14:11 and Mk 6:28. In this paper I will explore why that is the case. To that end I will consider the reception history of this particular scene and its interpretation in both literary and visual sources.


Acculturation in Ezekiel
Program Unit: Prophetic Texts and Their Ancient Contexts
David Vanderhooft, Boston College

Acculturation encompasses a variety of possible forms. In contemporary psychological research, e.g., scholars have commonly understood acculturation to involve several options, including: integration; separation; assimilation; and marginalization. Elements of each affected Judeans in Babylonia, including Ezekiel. New research will be presented that illuminates particular ways in which the prophet responded to the Babylonian context. The paper investigates the choice of select lexical items, idioms and narrative techniques in the book of Ezekiel that clearly derive from a Mesopotamian context. Despite their relatively wide distribution in the book, its animus where it concerns moral comportment is less on the actions or intellectual pretensions of the Babylonian kingdom than on the deficiencies of Ezekiel’s fellow Judeans. Acculturation within the Babylonian milieu thus afforded raw materials to generate a critique of Judean thought and action.


Visualizing Domesticity in the Religions of the Roman Empire
Program Unit: Archaeology of Religion in the Roman World
Zsuzsa Varhelyi, Boston University

In new evaluations of material and epigraphic evidence from the early Roman empire, the significance of the home is emerging as a key focal point in which symbolic values were enacted and (re)created (cf., most notably, Milnor 2006). Moving beyond the once popular notion that separates the public and the private realms as opposites, this paper endorses the importance of domesticity in contemporary religions as well, and argues that we can identify clear visual connections between mainstream religious celebrations, often in relation to or by the imperial family, on the one hand, and religious celebration performed in the context of the individual home, on the other hand. The visual motifs I trace across imperial representations and domestic contexts are the libations and the dextrarum iunctio (or manuum), the joining of hands, primarily associated with weddings, and by extension, with the wedding ritual. First, I aim at establishing a model for the relation between imperial and non-imperial representations by examining wall paintings from Pompeii that depict a libation and could be part of the domestic lararia. My interest is primarily in a select number of depictions that include not only the paterfamilias, or his genius, but also his wife, a matrona, or her iuno, standing by a centrally placed altar and performing a libation. I draw on epigraphic and visual parallels focused on the imperial family, depicted in religious contexts (not only on the Ara Pacis, but also on altars of the Lares in the vici of Rome, as well as on inscriptions from Italy), to argue that these visual notions of domesticity had significant religious associations. The most intriguing surviving image in a non-imperial setting can be found in the House of Sutoria Primigenia, in Pompeii (I. 13.2, Fröhlich L29). Here the owners chose a unique combination of mid-sized images of the genius of the paterfamilias and the iuno of his wife together with thirteen markedly smaller figures—likely slaves in the familia—to enact the value of domesticity in what is clearly a religious context. In the second century CE, the image of couples at libation gave way to representations of the dextrarum iunctio. Closely corresponding, again, to the imagery of the imperial family on reliefs and coins, these depictions became a staple of funerary representations in this period and the third century CE, and appeared on early Christian sarcophagi as well (Reekmans 1958). Using the model established earlier, I discuss how far such imagery can be seen as addressing, directly or indirectly, the imperial ideals of domesticity popularized on their monumental counterparts, frequently in religious contexts. I will conclude by raising some questions related to the religious associations of domesticity in this period, in particular how what we know of early Christian house-churches may be compared to the visual ideals we find in contemporary non-Christian households.


Appropriating Homer: Compositional Practices of Vergil and Luke
Program Unit: Book of Acts
Katherine Veach Urquhart, Claremont Graduate University

The influence of Greco-Roman writings on the author of Luke-Acts is widely discussed, with a number of scholars noting particularly the evangelist’s use of Homer. However, the discussion lacks a full explanation of the ways and means by which Luke might have appropriated Homer (and, by extension, other Greco-Roman literature). Yet a paradigm for this appropriation does exist: Vergil’s composition of the Aeneid. This paper first discusses Vergil’s use of Homer in composing his epic, noting particularly the influence of the Homeric scholia, then applies this methodological model to Luke-Acts, which may have been influenced itself by Vergil’s epic as well as the Homeric scholia. The picture of the author of Luke-Acts that emerges is one of both a creative author crafting a Christian epic and a scholiast commenting on his sources.


Nakedness and the Abject, or Don’t Get your Coat! The Naked or Semi-Naked Body in the Synoptic Gospels
Program Unit: Social Scientific Criticism of the New Testament
Erin Vearncombe, University of Toronto

Garments are a social obligation in a dressed society, and going without clothes is generally to risk social punishment or some degree of social exclusion; the common dream of appearing naked in public is interpreted as a nightmare. The contrast of nakedness and dress communicates some of the most basic differentiations of human experience: death and life, weakness and power, savagery and civilization. Naked bodies may be described in terms of Judith Butler’s category of the abject; without the social categorization of clothing, naked bodies are abjected, removed from codes of cultural intelligibility, yet still have the discursive power to disrupt. This paper will explore the notion of the discursive abject in the context of clothed and unclothed bodies in the synoptic gospels; examined within this framework of the abject, Jesus’ commands regarding the clothed/unclothed performance of the body have important unexplored social consequences.


Taking the House out of House Church: Domestic Religion in Ostia and the House Church Model
Program Unit: Archaeology of Religion in the Roman World
Jeffrey Veitch, Graduate Theological Union

Central to domestic religion are the rituals surrounding the lararium. Study of lararia in Pompeii and Herculaneum has provided a window to the hierarchy and function of spaces within domus. The visibility of lararia, in connection with rituals taking place in the atrium, point to the importance of proper household piety, a point confirmed by literary sources, as well. The works of Andrew Wallace-Hadrill and John Clarke have set out the broad social characteristics of domus in Pompeii and Herculaneum. Using these findings as a comparative model, this paper will look at the evidence for domestic religion in Ostian accommodations. Jan Bakker notes two central differences between evidence from Pompeii and Ostia, (1) axial positioning, (2) presences of shrines in accentuated rooms in Ostian evidence. These differences influence the manner in which domestic religion takes place. Janet DeLaine has explored the relationship between the configuration of insula and the atrium houses of Pompeii. Drawing on the distinctions made by DeLaine, the placement and decoration of Ostian lararia can offer insights into the practice of domestic religion within insulae. The use of Ostian evidence for domestic ritual is helpful in understanding early Christian gatherings in insula. Studies of accommodations in Pompeii have progressed our understanding of the social structure of early Christian gatherings, while at the same time, the differences between domus and insula have often been a stumbling block to developing a model for Christian groups living in Rome. With the insights from domestic rituals and religion in Ostian insula, some closing comments will help bridge the gap between Ostia and Pompeii in terms of possible house church settings.


Intertextuality? In Justin? On Using Modern Approaches for Understanding Ancient Texts
Program Unit: History of Interpretation
Joseph Verheyden, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Invited


Hideous Language: What You Can Hide in dbr str (Judg. 3:19)
Program Unit: Semiotics and Exegesis
Karolien Vermeulen, Ghent University - University of Antwerp

In Judg. 3:19, Ehud talks himself into king Eglon’s chambers by saying: “I have a dbr str (hidden/covered word/thing, matter) for you.” The double polysemy in this phrase has led many scholars to interpret in terms of moral judgment of the character. An untruthful man uses devious language, while a hero’s words are a skillful tool. The language is but a symptom of the character’s intentions. The current paper addresses this symptomatic approach by analyzing the mechanisms of polysemy in the text on the one hand and its effect on the interpreter on the other hand. It will argue that the ambiguity plays a double role. Firstly, Ehud’s words serve the story, as they enable the character to accomplish the impossible: murder the king. The polysemy has a well-defined narratological function creating and simultaneously filling a gap in the story world. Secondly and more importantly, the words of Ehud provide the exegete with a tool to interpret the story in whatever framework he or she prefers. Various and opposite readings of the passage demonstrate that the gap also functions outside the narrative in the interpreter’s world. Thus, polysemy works inside the narrative’s borders and beyond, giving the disambiguator the benefit of the doubt in both instances.


Did Mark Read Romans?
Program Unit: Markan Literary Sources
Anne Vig Skoven, Københavns Universitet

The Gospel of Mark was once called “a passion story with an extended introduction” (M. Kähler). Although this designation may seem too minimalistic, it points to the fact that the Gospel of Mark is a “Chronicle of a Death Foretold”. Like Gabriel Garcia Marquez the evangelist has had to plot the events leading to the death of Jesus. The thesis of my paper is that in plotting these events the evangelist made use of a scheme employed by Paul; thus meeting a criterion put forward by Thomas B. Brodie at the SBL Annual 2010 for testing a potential literary dependence between documents: “significant similarities…, beyond the range of coincidence”, including elements like plot and order/sequence. Based on a narrative analysis of Mark and taking up ideas from B. W. Bacon (Was Mark a Roman Gospel?, 1919), I shall compare the theological discourse of Romans 9-11 to the Markan plot and outline and discuss the probability that the evangelist knew and made use of Paul’s letter to the Romans. It will be argued that the Markan gospel is structured by elements identical to those of Paul’s discourse in Romans 9-11: divine election, the composition of Israel, faith and the divine strategy of hardening. These elements are not only present in both texts but appear in almost the same order: the very first act of the Markan Jesus is an act of election (1:16-20; cf. 2:14). After the appointing of the 12 leaders of a new Israel (3:13-19), the criteria for belonging to Israel are discussed (3:20-35). Gentiles are included by faith and understanding (i.e. 7:24-30). Divine hardening, however, prevents the non-Gentiles from understanding (4:10-12). This strategy of hardening which in Romans 9-11 leads to the salvation of “all Israel” finally leads to the salvific death of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark. Furthermore, the Messianic secret may be seen as a narrative consequence of this ideological strategy.


Literal, Anti-literal, and Metaphorical Interpretations of Genesis in relation to Psychological Type: A Study of UK Churchgoers
Program Unit: Psychology and Biblical Studies
Andrew Village, York Saint John University

The creation accounts in Genesis have been key texts in disputes over biblical literalism and evolution. Richard Hunt (Hunt, R. A. (1972). Mythological-symbolic religious commitment. The LAM scales. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 11, 42-52.) argued that rejection of literal meaning generally in Christian religion could mean either adopting an 'anti-literalist' approach (and rejecting faith) or adopting a metaphorical interpretation that maintained faith commitment. Hunt devised the 'LAM' scales to assess Literalist, Anti-literalist and Metaphorical commitments to faith, but these have had limited use in empirical studies. The present study is based on LAM scales specifically related to the first few chapters of Genesis. These were completed by 509 churchgoers from mainline and conservative churches in the UK, who also completed the Francis Psychological Type Scales. Previous studies on psychological type suggest that religious conservatism is linked to psychological type preferences for sensing over intuition and for thinking over feeling. This studies tests the idea that literal biblical interpretation is linked to preferences for sensing and thinking, while metaphorical interpretation is linked to preference for intuition and feeling. Church tradition is a powerful predictor of literalism, and psychological type varies with church tradition, so the analysis tested if psychological type could predict biblical interpretation after allowing for church tradition.


The Bible in the Life of the Church Project: An Empirical Study of Anglican Hermeneutics
Program Unit: Contextual Biblical Interpretation
Andrew Village, York Saint John University

Within the field of contextual biblical interpretation, empirical studies are relatively unusual, and most involve qualitative studies. This paper reports on a quantitative study of over 1400 people from across the Anglican Communion who completed an online or paper questionnaire. The questionnaire asked them to read Mark 9:14-29, the healing of the boy possessed by an evil spirit, and then to answer a series of questions designed to examine the constructs of horizon separation and horizon preference. Horizon separation was a measure of how strange, distant or alien the story appeared to the reader. Horizon preference was the extent to which readers opted for interpretations that were 'behind', 'in', or 'in front of' the text (author, text or reader horizons). The quantification of these constructs allowed them to be examined in relation to individual differences in socio-demography, general religious tradition, or specific beliefs about the Bible. The results of this study are compared with similar studies of other Anglican readers. Empirical studies of this kind have both advantages and disadvantages for helping scholars to understand the ways in which context can shape the interaction of text and reader. Quantitative studies necessarily involve some simplification, but they do allow the complex interaction of different factors to be described and understood in ways that are difficult or impossible by any other means.


Healing and Care for the Sick in East Syrian Monasteries: Evidence from Late Ancient and Early Medieval Syriac Monastic Texts
Program Unit: Syriac Literature and Interpretations of Sacred Texts
Cynthia Villagomez, Winston-Salem State University

The East Syrian Monasteries of the Church of the East were centers of healing and care for the sick in the late ancient and early medieval periods. In fact, East Syrian monasteries were widely-recognized for the quality of compassionate treatment they gave to sick individuals, which included the provision of daily comforts and the working of miraculous cures. It was typical for special spaces and individuals within East Syrian monasteries, whether they were large or small communities, to be assigned to the care for their sick brethren as well as non-monastic individuals. In this paper, I demonstrate that many East Syrian monastic writers reflect not only a deep concern for the sick, but also an informed awareness of a specific range of diseases afflicting people in upper Iraq. Both of these make their writings important sources regarding the manner in which the sick were cared for and the types of diseases that people suffered from in the late Sasanian and early Islamic eras. I argue that by the sixth century, care of the sick was a deeply embedded obligation to East Syrian monastic institutions, traceable to the fifth-century directives given to ascetics by Maruta of Maipherkat. Moreover, the relationship between ascetical practices and responsibilities and health care is valorized further from the sixth century onward when the theological training of some East Syrian ascetics is supplemented by education in medical knowledge in religious education institutions such as the School of Nisibis. Drawing upon evidence in the monastic rules of Abraham of Kaskar and his successors at the Great Monastery, the monastic histories in The Book of Founders of Monasteries and The Book of Govenors, and the lives of monastic saints such as Bar Idta and Rabban Hormizd, I explain how attention to the reputation of individual monasteries as places for healings of particular illnesses allows one to develop a list of diseases that commonly afflicted people living in upper Iraq.


Abba Moses the Ethiopian: Positive Portraits of Black Persons in Medieval Syriac Sources
Program Unit: Syriac Literature and Interpretations of Sacred Texts
Cynthia J. Villagomez, Winston-Salem State University

This paper compares and contrasts late ancient and medieval perceptions of black persons in Syriac sources that are in evidence in texts from Greek and Syriac backgrounds. The focus of discussion is on material that presents Abba Moses the Ethiopian. Thus far, scholarship has emphasized negative, anti-black narratives in Syriac texts that represent material derived from Greek sources translated into Syriac. Largely neglected, however, has been the evidence that is available in native Syriac sources, for example the writings of Isaac of Nineveh, who offers a positive presentation of this Egyptian Father and places him in the same category as Evagrius and Macarius the Egyptian. Finally, the positive images of black persons in Syriac literature is matched by the sacralization of monastic sites through their associations with Abba Moses and other Ethiopian saints in Syria and Lebanon that attest to a long-term commemoration and historical memory of the ethnic origins of these saints.


A Cognitive Turn: Conceptual Blending in a Socio-rhetorical Framework
Program Unit: Cognitive Linguistics in Biblical Interpretation
Robert von Thaden, Jr., Mercyhurst College

Socio-Rhetorical interpretation (SRI) is an interpretive analytic that enables exegetes to examine how persuasive language works from multiple angles. Because SRI provides theoretic space for putting multiple analytical tools into conversation with one another when examining relations that allow interpreters to make sense of texts, it is possible to adopt a late twentieth/early twenty-first century theory of meaning construction (conceptual integration theory) to help explain a first century document. Part of the reason this is possible is because cognitive science focuses on the capacity for meaning shared by all human beings based on common physiology, yet it also successfully takes into account cultural and situational data. Based on common human anatomy, including neural anatomy, cognitive science understands itself to posses the tools necessary to begin to understand human meaning making in general while maintaining that human subjects are embodied in specific cultural environments. Thus, the full tapestry of human meaning production is only understandable in relation to specific social and cultural worlds.


Paul's Blended Rhetoric: Apocalyptic Wisdom in 1 Corinthians
Program Unit: Wisdom and Apocalypticism
Robert von Thaden, Jr., Mercyhurst College

Thesis: Wisdom and apocalyptic discourse can be fruitfully examined as rhetorical dialects that evoke different topoi, background information, and modes of argumentation. A socio-rhetorical reading of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians demonstrates that Paul invites the cognitive resources available in apocalyptic rhetorical dialect into his wisdom teachings to achieve and intensify his rhetorical goals. Biblical research in the 21st century has repeatedly noted the importance of shifting our focus away from arguments over whether certain texts are best described as wisdom OR apocalyptic to an emphasis on analyzing HOW wisdom and apocalyptic resources interact in extant literature. Such a shift helps us to take texts on their own terms rather than imposing some rigid genre classification upon them. The difficulty, of course, is developing a principled means of analyzing how this interaction occurs and what it means for our interpretations of the text. This paper performs a socio-rhetorical reading of 1 Corinthians that analyzes the blending of wisdom and apocalyptic rhetorical dialects. I hope to show that this interpretive analytic contributes to our ongoing attempt to explain how texts exploit the meaning potentials of these related, but distinct, cognitive arenas. In the first four chapters of 1 Corinthians Paul attempts to resolve problematic behavior in the Corinthian community through a meditation upon wisdom. Throughout, he is at pains to make the Corinthians understand that appearances in this age are deceiving – a standard topos of apocalyptic discourse. According to Paul, "the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the sight of God" (3:19; cf. 1:21, 25). The wisdom of God is evident not through persuasive words of human wisdom, but through God's crucified Christ (1:24, 30) and understanding this wisdom is only possible through the revelation of the spirit (2:10). Understanding this hidden wisdom, Paul apparently believes, will help the Corinthians bring their behavior into conformity with the very structure of God's created order (2:7). Although the wisdom which Paul speaks in 1 Cor 1-4 is different from some aspects of traditional biblical wisdom, most notably in its reliance on revelation, "the conception of Old Testament wisdom teaching is still included in the Pauline argument. This applies especially to the concerns of Old Testament wisdom to proclaim the will of God with regard to the concrete, everyday management of life," as Joachim Theis rightly notes (Paulus als Weisheitslehrer, 281). Having explicated the paradoxical nature of God's hidden wisdom and secured his own position of pedagogical authority in 1 Cor 1-4, Paul goes on to discuss methods for this "everyday management" in 1 Cor 5:1-11:1. After examining 1 Cor 1-4, I will discuss one concrete example of this "everyday management": Paul's arguments regarding the proper use of the sexual body in 1 Cor 6:12-7:40. It is by blending wisdom instruction with apocalyptic conceptual resources that Paul is most like his Hellenistic Jewish contemporaries who also were combining their robust wisdom heritage with argumentation and themes from other cognitive arenas.


Use of the Old Testament in the New Testament: Deconstructing the Modern Scholarly Use of the Terms "Quotation," "Allusion," and "Echo"
Program Unit: Intertextuality in the New Testament
Erik Waaler, NLA Høgskolen

The terms ‘quotation’, ‘allusion’ and ‘echo’ are vital to our description of reused text, but the definition of these terms with respect to New Testament use of the Old Testament tend to be vague and anachronistic. By use of these three terms we describe at least 14 variables. Reuse of text happens with variable degree of 1) reference, 2) verbal agreement, 3) intentionality, 4) strategies for implicational change and 5) continuity. Ancient writer’s interpretation could be 6) “inspirational” or “scholarly” and 7) degree of perceived authority or perceived inspiration possessed by the sources they used varied. In addition to this comes factors like 8) metalepsis, 9) culturally agreeable modes of interpretation, 10) meaning of words and phrases in their respective cultural setting, 11) sociological dynamics, 12) change of worldview; 13) isolation of particular text elements from the pretext (choice of part to repeat), and 14) embedding of text elements in the new text (contextual add-ons). The variation of these factors in actual texts makes the definitions of the terms 'quotation', 'allusion' and 'Echo' break down. Thus we may ask: was there ever an ancient quotation that abided with “our scholarly standard of such”? How do we know that the ancient ideal was exact repetition rather than interpretation? To which degree is change intended, subconscious or blind? What is the role of the original and secondary context?


Applying the CBGM to Acts
Program Unit: Novum Testamentum Graecum: Editio Critica Maior
Klaus Wachtel, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster

The Coherence-Based Genealogical Method is used for reconstructing the initial text of the Acts in the Editio Critica Maior. In a hands-on presentation it will be shown how the method is applied to several complex variation units.


The Revision of the Catholic Epistles according to the Editio Critica Maior
Program Unit:
Klaus Wachtel, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster

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Recontextualizing the Infancy Gospel of Thomas: A Proposal
Program Unit: Christian Apocrypha
James Waddell, University of Toledo

Recent analysis has attempted to locate the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (IGT) in a context of developing Christian thought about Jesus’ childhood, and has suggested that the author(s) imitated a popular children’s stories genre of late antiquity. The function of this genre, when applied to the infancy of Jesus, is to embellish the status of Jesus in terms of his power, wisdom, and authority. The earlier strand of tradition in IGT, however, indicates an ideological stance that is much less complimentary of Jesus and more satiric in nature. This paper proposes a reading of IGT that contextualizes this document as a Jewish or Jewish-Christian satiric response to late first-, early second-century developments of infancy narratives that treated Jesus as a supernatural child with miraculous abilities.


Wisdom in Enochic Scribal Communities—Ekstasia and Apocalypse as Religious Experience
Program Unit: Religious Experience in Antiquity
James Waddell, University of Toledo

The Parables of Enoch is one of the most extraordinary sources for our understanding of the development of Jewish thought in the Second Temple period. This is the first Jewish text to have as its protagonist a messiah figure that is both heavenly and human, a messiah figure that is also given the divine function of universal judgment. But the Parables also suggest that those who were responsible for its composition and redaction were members of an ecstatic scribal community. This paper will explore evidence in the Parables indicating the practice of a community of Enochic scribes who were open to ecstatic, revelatory experiences that directly informed their understanding and use of wisdom.


1 Kings 21 Revisited: A Postcolonial Reading of Naboth’s Vineyard
Program Unit: African Biblical Hermeneutics
Robert Wafawanaka, Virginia Union University

This paper critically analyzes the narrative of Naboth’s Vineyard from an African cultural and postcolonial perspective. This familiar text displays classic tensions between power and powerlessness as demonstrated by the contrast between King Ahab on the one hand, and the peasant Naboth on the other. The narrative contrasts the power and might of the king with the weakness and powerlessness of Naboth. The king’s seizure of Naboth’s vineyard will be read as symptomatic of European behavior in Africa and elsewhere. Using the insights of ideological criticism, the contrasting power relations in this brief narrative will be used to open a window into the larger history of colonial expansion and subsequent seizures of African lands. While the prophet Elijah intervenes to rectify the situation, liberation movements in Africa have played a similar role. The paper concludes with reflections on how we might appropriate biblical texts to shed light not only on the biblical world, but also in our postcolonial and cultural contexts.


This Land Belonged to the Amorites: A Kenyan Postcolonial Reading of Numbers 22–24
Program Unit: African Biblical Hermeneutics
Robert Wafula, Drew University

Ethnic identity around questions of land is the perennial problem that plagues land questions in both the Hebrew Bible as well as postcolonial Kenya. In the case of the Hebrew Bible Regina M. Schwartz notes that: … Monotheism does not simply define a people as a covenanted community. It [also] defines them as] a people…who belong to the land [Schwartz continues that it is in this regard] that monotheism has left its deepest, most lasting, and undoubtedly its most troubling political legacy…whether the territory in question is big or small, the land is fertile or barren, or the impulse to possess it is long-or short-lived, horrific acts of human violence have been committed and continue to be in the service of what is after all an idea: the notion that a group…must “possess”…a “piece”…of land...But people do not possess land. Such a notion of land possesses them, for the land becomes soaked in the blood of the people who claim it. In the case of Kenya, between December 30 2007 and January 3, 2008, over a thousand Kenyans were killed and property worth thousands of dollars was destroyed due to disputed presidential elections, but more importantly due to questions of land belonging to ‘us’ over and against ‘them.’ In Both the Hebrew Bible and the Kenyan context justifications and a stake on land has three underlying ideas: (1) We did not take it from you (2) We fought for it and we deserve it (3) It was given to us. The purpose of this paper is to explore these ethnic-oriented claims over land with the purpose of exposing their postcolonial imperialistic motives and the attendant violence that results from these motives.


Translation, Rhetoric, and Theology: The Day of Atonement in OG Isaiah 1:11–15
Program Unit: International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies
J. Ross Wagner, Princeton Theological Seminary

The intense energy devoted in recent years to translation of and critical commentary on the Old Greek scriptures has raised pressing questions concerning “Septuagint Hermeneutics.” By what methods, and for what ends, should one interpret a text that originates as a translation rather than a fresh composition? One weighty proposal regards it as axiomatic that, in order to discover the translator’s own understanding of the text he produced, the interpreter must sharply distinguish “text production” from “text reception.” The present paper challenges this assertion by taking up a well-known interpretive crux in OG Isaiah, the rendering of qr’ mqr’ in Isa 1:13 as hêmera megalê, “great day.” Isac Leo Seeligmann hailed this phrase as the earliest occurrence of a name for Yom Kippur attested in the Babylonian Talmud (b. Rosh Hash 21a), finding here yet one more indication that the Greek translator infused his rendering of Isaiah with the piety and religious traditions of his own day. I argue, however, that the ancient literary evidence adduced in support of this hypothesis by Seeligmann and those who have followed him is far more equivocal than these interpreters acknowledge. As a result, close attention to the Greek translator’s Übersetzungsweise must play the decisive role in determining the significance he attached to the phrase “great day.” In tracing the strategies of translation employed in OG Isaiah 1:11–15, I demonstrate the value of careful attention to the rhetorical shape and theological implications of the Greek text that lies before us. I also show ways in which consulting ancient interpreters of the Greek version (including scribes, revisers and translators) can prove illuminating. The interpretive payoff of this approach suggests that a sharp theoretical distinction between text-as-produced and text-as-received should be rejected.


The Origins of the Hezekiah-Story: A Text-Critical Test Case
Program Unit: Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible
Thomas Wagner, Kirchliche Hochschule Wuppertal/Bethel

The story of the siege of Jerusalem, the desease of Hezekiah and the delegation of the Babylonian king Merodach-Baladan in Isa 36-39 // 2Kgs 18-20 has been discussed using different methodological approaches. Beside the major differences that the Isaianic version of the text contains the prayer of Hezekiah in Isa 38, the two versions possess several textual variants which treated OT scholars to a text-critical investigation of the texts. In the last decade the results of LXX research leaded to a new understanding of the original LXX. In the Book of Kings the original LXX is largely preserved by the Antiochean text. This text contains the extent of the Kings-text but in several cases it displays a text which is closer to IsaMT than to KgsMT. In my paper I will line out to major points. First, I will present the orientation of the different versions (for Isa 36-39 MT, Codex Vaticanus, 1QJesA and 4QJesB and for 2Kgs 18-20 MT, Codex Vaticanus and the Antiochean text) by describing their special characters. Second, basing on my observations I will ask if it is possible to reconstruct a ,Vorlage‘ for both texts.


Of Borders, Bread; Dogs and Demons: Reading Matt 15:21–28 Ecologically
Program Unit: Ecological Hermeneutics
Elaine Wainwright, University of Auckland

Matt 15:21-28 has been interpreted from a variety of perspectives: historical, feminist, ethnic, postcolonial and a combination of these. No-one has yet brought an ecological hermeneutic to bear on this text. Lorraine Code sees such a hermeneutic within the context of a new imaginary which she names as ‘ecological thinking’. Within such a framework, ‘habitat’ is a key analytic tool and it enables an integration of “social-political, cultural, and psychological elements … (together with) social-moral-political analyses of the geographical, institutional, and material circumstances (which) are integral to ecological thinking.” It is clear, therefore, that a focus on political and economic textures of the text together with the materiality and sociality woven within a narrative are integral to an ecological reading. Matt 15:21-28 is a story which interweavers political aspects of boundaries or borders with a claim to centrality using the metaphor of the ‘lost sheep’. Intimately linked with this is access to resources, an access that is not only ethnically but also gender-inflected. Interwoven through this narrative is also the fracturing named as demon-possession. This pericope is, therefore a rich text for reading ecologically. It is such a reading that I propose to undertake in this paper.


Muhammad, Women, and the Eschaton: Reflections on the Significance of Form and Context for the Interpretation of Sura 66
Program Unit: Qur'an and Biblical Literature
Carol M. Walker, London School of Theology

Surat al-Tahrim is sometimes called the sura of the Prophet because it deals with aspects of his personal and family life. Introductions to it in 20th century commentaries take the opportunity to explain the normal human inclinations and desires which made Muhammad the ideal example for the faithful. At its opening the Prophet is exhorted, through rebuke related to an unspecified decision he made in relation to his wives. asbab al-nuzul provide various suggestions as to what the trigger for the decision might have been. The sura is short, consisting of only twelve verses. It nevertheless usually features in discussion on women in Islam, as it contains the greatest concentration of different women characters of any sura. It refers to two unnamed wives of the Prophet and four women from earlier epochs of monotheism who are succinctly presented as negative and positive examples. Tradition based commentaries commonly observe that the two positive examples, the wife of Pharaoh and Mary, daughter of ‘Imran, are amongst the perfect women of Islam (along with Khadija and Fatima, and possibly A’isha). Some even identify them as amongst the wives (companions – azwaj or zawjat) of the Prophet in Paradise. Verses 6 to 9 carry a string of warnings and encouragements related to judgement, Hell and the final abode of believers, disbelievers and hypocrites. The distribution of formulaic addresses, specific words, and thematic echoes, suggest that the sura is a ring structure. When this is taken into account, elements in the sura which seem juxtaposed and disjointed reveal themselves to be focused around a common concern. In this paper I demonstrate the ways in which Surat al-Tahrim conforms to the conventions of what is commonly termed ‘semitic rhetoric’. I explore the interpretative impact of reading in light of those conventions, when combined with appreciation of where the sura sits chronologically within the Qur’anic corpus. As a consequence I argue that the sura likely provides the final answer to the vexed question, for the early community, of who the companions in Paradise are, and how these relate to wives of believers and especially to the Mothers of Believers. But I find that this is an ancillary concern to that emphasised when theological implications of the internal correspondences between the Prophet’s domestic situation and core stories in Jewish and Christian traditions are taken into account. I suggest that this Medinan sura is not simply appropriating women from across the previous monotheistic epochs to establish answers to essentially intra-Qur’anic, or intra-Muslim community questions, but to validate an Islamic perspective on marriage and freedom from oaths of celibacy. I ask whether the correspondence between the beginning of the sura, with its exhortation to the Prophet, and the end, which creates particular kinds of resonances with Mary, indicates underlying polemical intent or is intended to reassure those, perhaps on the fringe of the community, whose sensibilities have been shaped by contemporary Christian esteem of the ascetic life.


Demythologizing and Christology
Program Unit: Westar Institute
William O. Walker, Jr., Trinity University

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The Thunder: Perfect Mind as a Queer Approach to Trauma
Program Unit: Bible and Cultural Studies
Alexis G. Waller, Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York

In this paper I explore possibilities for mutual amplification between Ann Cvetkovich’s An Archive of Feelings and a Nag Hammadi text, The Thunder: Perfect Mind. Following a new translation and recent scholarship on Thunder, I read this ancient Coptic poem as being deeply concerned with violence, spectacles of humiliation, and the complexities of triumph and loss. Thunder boldly brings to speech a mostly female-identified character who figures herself as both god/dess-like and as one “thrown to the ground” in shameful, painful circumstances, alongside broken and “viciously slaughtered” bodies, shamed and rejected bodies, raped and brutalized bodies. The many roles Thunder’s speaker inhabits and dramatizes strain against institutionalized or stable forms of containment and against vocabularies that too starkly pit triumphalism against victimhood. In dialogue with Cvetkovich, I read this very act of representing these mobile affective experiences as an "unpredictable form of politics" that emerges "when trauma is kept unrelentingly in view" (An Archive of Feelings). This paper imagines Thunder’s shifting gendered self-characterizations and provocatively performed vulnerabilities as, so to speak, a queer archive of affective experiences which do not settle easily into stable identities or consolidated linear narrative.


Ecological Perspectives on Domestic Animals
Program Unit: Ecological Hermeneutics
Carey Walsh, Villanova University

This paper examines the interrelationships between the farmer, his arable land, and the work animals to argue that the domestic intimacy of animal and human life, and the common goal of plowing yielded a kind of practical ecological ideal, namely, of a limited complementarity wherein the sacredness of life, i.e., that life was in the blood, was vouchsafed. The narratives of farming with animals in the Jacob cycle, in the Deuteronomistic Historian, and the legal traditions about animal use and maintenance show a curious consistency of the humane treatment of domesticated animals. This paper seeks to show that this was not merely sound economic judgment, but also a theological expression of the ecological landscape as home and as gift. A limited complementarity existed between the farmer and his work animals which while unsentimental, nevertheless did yield the beginnings of a harmonious coexistence and even community within the domestic sphere.


The (Dis)possession of Jesus
Program Unit: Biblical Criticism and Literary Criticism
Richard Walsh, Methodist University

Modern stories of possession often begin with characters that reanimate ancient deities by unwisely playing with occult instruments or texts (Blatty’s The Exorcist; The Evil Dead). Mark begins similarly as John trifles with prophecy and an (unnamed) spirit enters Jesus (1:10). Having taken control, this spirit casts Jesus, like some demon, into the wilderness, an abode of demons, for a test with Satan. Jesus returns with powers over spirits and a message about supernatural sovereignties. The authorities name him demonic; his family thinks him “not himself” (3:20-27); and others simply want him out of the area (5:1-20). As the baptism has already suggested, flexible, esoteric notions of inside/outside fascinate and ultimately consume Mark’s Jesus (4:10-12; 7:1-23; 8:14-21). This (d)riven character also repeatedly (mis)directs questions/comments about himself to “the Son of Man,” to whom Jesus refers in the third person (see Aichele). It would go too far to say that “Son of Man” is Jesus’ name for his possessing spirit, but “Son of Man” aptly symbolizes Jesus’ obsession (the “dei” of 8:31) and the (Markan) script to which he is finally affixed (14:41-42). Scholars often cover over these “differences” in Mark’s protagonist with notions like messianic secrets and dying messiahs; however, Mark’s horrible tale, while not quite The Exorcist or El Mal Ajeno, seems more like something out of Kafka, Borges, Scorsese, or Aronofsky than the good news (of something like Stranger than Fiction). After losing his spiritual connections (15:34) in his final “Ramjet” (see Aronofsky’s The Wrestler), Jesus is finally, hauntingly “not here” (16:6). Mark’s scary Son of Man script remains. Is it waiting to ensnare other reckless sons of men (compare 3:28 and Dornford-May’s Son of Man)?


Redefining "Adhesion and Conversion" as Categories of Religious Change in Late Antiquity
Program Unit: Religious World of Late Antiquity
J. Edward Walters, Princeton Theological Seminary

A.D. Nock's influential work on conversion provided the vocabulary and categories that pervaded scholarly discussions of religious change in Late Antiquity for much of the twentieth century. Moreover, Nock's reading of Augustine's conversion presented him as the example par excellence of that "reorientation of the soul" characteristic only of religions like Judaism and Christianity, which required a decisive break with the past. In contrast, Nock argued that Greco-Roman religions allowed for the acquisition of new beliefs and practices with no sense of discontinuity or discomfort. Contemporary treatments of conversion, however, suggest that Nock's simple categorization does not stand up under scrutiny; likewise, alternate sources of evidence from Late Antiquity also suggest that Nock's categories cannot bear the weight of the evidence opposed to them. For example, archaeological and literary evidence from Augustine's own lifetime suggests that the relationship between Christians and their "pagan" neighbors was far more complex than Nock's treatment allows, such as the famous conflict concerning the Altar of Victory in the Roman Forum. Even Augustine's own works betray the fact that the "conversion" in the garden of Milan is not representative of the experience of Augustine's contemporaries. In stark contrast with this conversion narrative, many of Augustine's recently discovered sermons (namely the so-called "Dolbeau Sermons") suggest that Augustine's audience did not experience a radical discontinuity with their "pagan" past, and these sermons also reveal a much more complex view of Augustine's own "theory" of conversion. Based on this evidence, this project seeks not to replace Nock's terminology, but rather to re-define it so that the definitions match the complicated picture of religious change presented by the data of Late Antiquity. Through this re-interpretation, the categories of "adhesion and conversion" are depicted not as opposing principles determined by the practices of particular religions in Late Antiquity, but as stages in a process of religious change as one adjusts to the new requirements of communal identity defined by the new religious community. Moreover, the relationship of adhesion to conversion is not necessarily linear, but cyclical, as one is continually required to adjust beliefs and practices held in continuity with the past in order to identify more fully with the community of the present and future.


"Placing" Paul in Roman Corinth
Program Unit: Polis and Ekklesia: Investigations of Urban Christianity
James C. Walters, Boston University

Recent excavations at Corinth and reappraisals of previously published materials are generating lively conversations regarding the foundation of the Roman colony, its early development, and the "identities" of its inhabitants. These conversations offer opportunities for fresh thinking regarding how one imagines Paul and the social context of his mission in Roman Corinth. Stanley Stowers has argued recently that in order to explain the attraction of some Corinthians to Paul, "...one must view Paul as a producer and distributor of an alternative esoteric paideia different from the dominant sophistic or philosophical kinds, yet still recognizable as a form of the same broader game of specialized literate learning." In this paper I explore how thinking about Paul as a "ritual specialist" rather than simply (or primarily) a philosopher might affect where we "place" Paul in Roman Corinth.


The Tower of Babel and the Covenant: Rhetorical Strategy in Genesis Based on Theological and Comparative Analysis
Program Unit: Genesis
John Walton, Wheaton College (Illinois)

The story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11:1-9 is in a critical position in the book. It serves an inclusio role with Genesis 1-3, a climactic role in Genesis 1-11, and a transitional role to Genesis 12. Canonically it can also be seen as serving an inclusio role with Acts 2. Starting with the lexical and comparative findings proposed in my dissertation thirty years ago, this paper will develop the rhetorical and theological role of Genesis 11 that is founded on those lexical and comparative materials and enhanced through conversations with students and further research conducted through the last three decades.


Can Preachers Faithfully Force a Creative Hermeneutic? Constructive Insights from Ricouer and Levinás
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
David Ward, Indiana Wesleyan University

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Mark, the Jerusalem Temple, and Jewish Sectarianism: Why Geographical Proximity Matters in Determining the Provenance of Mark
Program Unit: Gospel of Mark
Tim Wardle, Furman University

In this paper I investigate a hitherto unexplored line of reasoning that bears directly on the question of the provenance of Mark’s gospel; that of the sectarian nature of Mark’s presentation of his gospel. It is my contention that the Gospel of Mark displays remarkable similarities to Jewish sectarian documents of Mark’s day, and that that this shared sectarian outlook necessitates that the composition of this gospel occurred in close geographical proximity to Jerusalem and its temple. In the latter half of the Second Temple period, sectarian momentum generally coalesced around dissent against the current overseers of the Jerusalem temple, specific interpretations of the Jewish law, and the authority by which one undertakes this interpretation. Mark has these three elements in spades. In his gospel Mark presents a sustained argument against the temple and its priests; in his first mention of the temple, Jesus briefly shuts down all activity in it (11:16), and in his final remark on the Jerusalem sanctuary the temple veil is torn in two (15:38). Significantly, critical assessment of the temple and priesthood in the Second Temple period appears to have arisen almost exclusively in circles geographically and socially contiguous to these two institutions, with virtually all of the condemnation originating in Judea and its environs. Moreover, the legal issues which are of concern to Mark (e.g. marriage, Sabbath observance, purity issues), and the authority by which one makes these interpretations, are precisely those which were of great concern to Mark’s sectarian contemporaries in and around Jerusalem. Building upon the insights of those like Marcus and Theissen who argue for a Syrian provenance, this paper argues that placing Mark and his community in close geographical proximity to Jerusalem helps not only to make sense of the sectarian tendencies exhibited in the Gospel of Mark, but also provides a rationale as to why Mark takes such a strong stance on the Jerusalem temple and Jesus’ interactions with his contemporaries on specific legal issues.


Matthew 27:51–53, Isaiah, and the Kingdom of Heaven
Program Unit: Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity
Timothy Wardle, Wake Forest University

In contradistinction to the gospels of Mark and Luke, Jesus’ death in the gospel of Matthew provokes a series of extraordinary and eschatologically significant events. The purpose of this paper is to explore the apocalyptic and eschatological character of the events at Jesus’ death through the lens of Matthew’s intertextual use of Isaiah 48-52. Many scholars have argued that Ezekiel 37 and Zechariah 14 provide the prime building blocks from which Matthew constructs this narrative scene. On both literary and theological grounds, however, I will argue that Matthew is primarily reliant upon a complex of chapters in Isaiah for his description of these auspicious events. This is true on both linguistic and theological grounds. Linguistically, there are tight semantic connections between Matthew 27 and these chapters in Isaiah that occur nowhere else in the Old Testament (e.g. stones breaking apart, resurrection language, use of the term “holy city”). Theologically, the appearance of the herald of good news in Isaiah 52 mirrors the announcement of Jesus’ resurrection by the holy ones in Matthew 27, and in both cases the message of salvation is now for the Gentiles. Moreover, the Targum of Isaiah goes beyond the MT and LXX of Isaiah 52:7 by glossing “your God reigns” as “the kingdom of your God is now revealed.” For the Targumist, the proclamation of peace, good tidings, and salvation is tantamount to saying that the kingdom of God is revealed. My contention in this paper is that the linguistic parallels and shared theological worldview of Isaiah and Matthew suggest that Matthew not only thought deeply upon Isaiah as he narrated his gospel, but also that he illustrated the significance of Jesus’ death through a particular emphasis on Isaiah 48-52. The very moment of his crucifixion marked a new moment in the eschatological timeline. Now the Isaianic themes that Matthew threaded through his gospel could fully shine forth. Now the “holy ones” raised from the dead function as Isaianic messengers who proclaim this good news. Now the doors to the kingdom of Heaven open ever wider, as the gospel message goes out to the Gentiles.


The Meaning of "Homeiromai" (1 Thess 2:8)
Program Unit: Biblical Lexicography
David H. Warren, Faulkner University

Of the more than 1900 hapax legomena in the New Testament (which comprise nearly one third of its total vocabulary), the great majority are known also from secular writings. Only a few are attested in the New Testament alone and thus pose a real problem for translators. But there is one hapax legomenon which has continued to puzzle scholars despite the fact that it also occurs at least three other times in extant Greek writings: "homeiromai" (1 Thess 2:8). One finds quite a wide diversity among the various translations that scholars have proposed. This paper reviews interpretations and the other occurrences, including one which has not yet been reported.


Blessed Are the Cheese-Eaters: Relocating Perpetua’s Transformational Meal
Program Unit: Women in the Biblical World
Meredith Warren, McGill University

Perpetua’s heavenly meal of cheese has frequently been viewed in terms of the eucharist; while this is far from inappropriate, I argue that the meal should also be viewed through the lens of hierophagy, a type of eating which relocates the eater in a heavenly world and imbues her with heavenly knowledge. This is indeed what happens to Perpetua after she consumes the cheese: she knows that she no longer has a place in the earthly world and gives up her earthly cares. While before her meal she is anxious for the wellbeing of her child, after her vision she and her child have no anxiety for each other, and even her breasts no longer ache with milk. Perpetua’s meal of cheese transforms her. The description of Perpetua’s meal as eucharistic is therefore not enough to explain the changes she experiences as a result of the ritual meal. Hierophagic ritual is a prevalent but frequently overlooked literary phenomenon. The trope of hierophagy occurs in many texts composed around the turn of the millennium and represents a cultural understanding of the ritual ramifications of consuming other-worldly food, namely, that such eating relocates the eater to that other world and gives her access to secret knowledge about that world. In examining Perpetua’s cheese-eating in the context of other transformational meals (the honeycomb eaten by Aseneth in Joseph and Aseneth; Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, where Lucius is transformed by roses; the description of Persephone’s imprisonment-by-pomegranate in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, e.g.) I argue for the (re)newed implementation of the category of hierophagy to describe what occurs to Perpetua. This category provides a clearer understanding of the transformation Perpetua experiences, from earthly mother to heavenly martyr.


Purity and Temple in 2 Cor 6:14–18 and the Dead Sea Scrolls
Program Unit: Second Corinthians: Pauline Theology in the Making
Cecilia Wassen, Uppsala Universitet

With its dualistic terminology and call for separation and purity 2 Cor 6:14-18 stands out as a separate unit in the letter. Scholars have pointed to similarities in terminology and ideology with the sectarian writings of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Against the background of the Qumran writings, I will explore the temple metaphor and the call for purity in 6:14-18, which are closely related to each other. I will address two primary questions: First, how may the metaphors of the community as a temple in the Community Rule (1QS) shed light on Paul’s use of temple imagery? Second, are we to understand Paul’s language of purity also as a metaphor? I will argue that Paul’s call for purity is not primarily metaphorical but part of his overall concern for holiness in the communities of Christ believers.


Are Paul’s Daimonia Apocalyptic Powers? Gods and Non-Gods in Corinthians 8–10
Program Unit: Wisdom and Apocalypticism
Emma Wasserman, Rutgers University

Scholars have often emphasized the role of demonic beings and so-called powers in apocalyptic texts. Many interpreters construe these beings as primarily responsible for evil and as eschatological opponents of God and Christ, a view they especially associate with Paul’s letters. This paper situates Paul’s language about “others gods and lords,” eidola, and daimonia in 1 Cor 8–10 within Jewish idolatry polemics. Critical of scholarly generalizations about powers, evil, and apocalyptic, I argue instead that Paul’s language reflects a distinctive weave of traditional anthropomorphic conceptions of the gods with Greek concepts drawn from philosophical theology. I offer two arguments to this end. First, idolatry polemics such as those found in Deuteronomy 32, Isaiah 40–48, and Wisdom 13–15 illuminate Paul’s text in that they similarly attack other gods as at once powerless, non-existent, and threatening. This helps to explain why 1 Cor 8–10 evokes and celebrates the great power of the cosmic creator and ruler God while vacillating between affirmations of the non-existence, insignificance, and powerlessness of other beings. Though Jewish traditions are distinctive in demanding exclusive worship, they fit more broadly with traditional anthropomorphic assumptions that gods function as powerful agents that are available for negotiation and exchange with humans. Second, 1 Cor 8:6 uses metaphysical and philosophical language to elaborate Paul’s more anthropomorphic conceptions of God and Christ. On these terms, Paul works with certain theological premises but these amount to basic commitments, not some imagined Jewish thought-world or rigidly construed intellectual tradition. I conclude that this approach also sheds light on the appropriation of Greek traditions in the Letter of Aristeas, Wisdom, and the writings of Philo of Alexandria.


CBGM as a Tool for Explaining Textual Changes
Program Unit: New Testament Textual Criticism
Tommy Wasserman, Orebro School of Theology

This paper will discuss the advantages of the Coherence Based Genealogical Method in the reconstruction of the development of the New Testament text. Specifically, the paper will present examples from passages in the New Testament where the method detects multiple independent emergences of textual changes which result in coincidental agreements between textual witnesses. The results have relevance for the explanation of how textual changes in these passages might have originated.


Second Corinthians 10–13 as the Best Evidence that Paul Received a Rhetorical Education
Program Unit: Institute for Biblical Research
Duane Watson, Malone University

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Is There a Diminutive Proto-Concept in the House?
Program Unit: Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics
Jonathan M. Watt, Geneva College and Reformed Presbyterian Seminary

At the past two SBL conferences, I presented cross-linguistic studies relating to NT Greek diminutive suffixes, demonstrating in 2010 (“A Short Study of Greek Diminutives”) that their range of meanings in the NT (e.g. smallness, endearment, derogation and quality alternation of some sort) was comparable to that of modern languages and, in 2011, that there is evidence (“The Community Diminutive”) of a situation-sensitive pragmatic effect behind the use of some NT diminutives (e.g. for politeness and in-group identification). In them, I interacted with two substantial studies specifically addressing ancient Greek diminutives (Petersen 1910; Swanson 1958) and with relevant modern language data. In this third and final study, I examine the problem posed by the diverse variety of diminutive meanings in the Greek NT. How can one little derivational morpheme simultaneously mean both “dear” and “foolish,” both “small” and normal-sized, both derogation and politeness, both community-centered and socially marginalized – all at the same time? Diminutive affixes are like Janus-words gone wild. Two major cross-linguistic studies of modern languages address this semantic and pragmatic chaos, and I aim to connect them with the NT. Dressler and Barbaresi’s (Morphopragmatics, 1994) pragmatics-based approach to modern European languages begins with desired purposes and effects and thereafter considers which morphemes are suitable to one’s intended outcomes. Jurafsky (“Universal Tendencies,” 1996), however, proposes a universal conceptual prototype behind diminutive semantics; its pragmatic implications are construed under a “structured polysemy” model that captures the diachronic growth of a category and offers a synchronous “archaeology of meaning” – an extension of Lakoff’s “radial category” from the illustriously-titled Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things (1987). These studies offer the following to our conceptualization of NT diminutives. First, the prevalence of Petersen’s “faded diminutives” (in the NT, words such as paidion and teknion) would be accounted for in Jurafsky’s model as it addresses what elsewhere has been labeled “bleaching,” “generalization” or “desemanticization.” Second, complex diminutives like biblaridion, which transparently evidence “the semantic paths” words sometimes take over time (as proposed in Jurafsky’s model), would be viewed as evidence of a metaphoric shift to a new domain – the earlier reference evoked at first gradually gets conventionalized, until a new and more generalized sense is acquired and the diminuted form becomes “less informative than the old one.” Furthermore, Dressler and Barbaresi, whose discussion appears to account for the fact that many NT diminutives relate to hearth-and-home, would have something to offer on such words as wtion, pswmion, sxoinion, strouthion, opsarion, wtarion and klinidion, which may be indicative of vernacular speech underlying the written gospels and vestiges of once-living community speech habits in which identification was flagged, among other ways, by morphological diminution of familiar things. ______________


Scripturalization and the Aaronide Dynasties
Program Unit: Cultic Personnel in the Biblical World
James Watts, Syracuse University

Priests claiming descent from Aaron controlled the high priesthood of temples in Jerusalem and on Mt. Gerizim in the Second Temple period. These Aaronides were therefore in a position to influence religious developments in this period, especially the scripturalization of Torah and TaNaK. My thesis is that the priests’ dynastic claims to govern the temple and to lead Israel were among the most important factors in the elevation of these books to scriptural status. I will illustrate this claim by correlating what little we know about the Aaronide dynasties with what little we know about the scripturalization of two different portions of the TaNaK: the Pentateuch and Ezra-Nehemiah.


From Blogging to Book: The Fruit of Accessible Scholars
Program Unit: Blogger and Online Publication
Joel L. Watts, United Theological Seminary

How is that a blogger went from knowing it all, to knowing nothing, to writing an academic book? This paper answers those questions, showing the value of accessible scholars and scholarship online, and the effect it has had on me, moving me from fundamentalism, pushing me into seminary, and finally allowing me to engage other scholars. Between book reviews, follow-up comments, biblioblog wars, and questions of where the female bloggers are, I managed to find a workable thesis and a publishable idea. The importance of "biblioblogging" is that it can serve to reach interested minds as well as provide pushback against various pseudo-scientific and pseudo-scholarly claims. This paper will detail how biblioblogging brought me from amateur enthusiasm, through the murky fields of academia, to a point where I am now engaged with world-renown scholars (calling some of them friends), and finally to becoming an academic author.


Luke-Acts and Antisemitism: Twenty-Five Years after Jack T. Sanders
Program Unit: Book of Acts
Jon Weatherly, Cincinnati Christian University

Published in 1987, Jack T. Sanders’ The Jews in Luke-Acts offered a comprehensive case that the Lukan corpus was deliberately composed to denigrate Jews and exalt non-Jews, articulating the perspective that came to dominate Gentile Christianity and justifying the already-accomplished parting of the ways. Over the subsequent twenty-five years, others have tempered Sanders’ conclusions. Still, it remains problematic precisely to locate Luke-Acts in the conflict between church and synagogue. Yet read against the backdrop of Israel’s heritage of promise and its own self-critique, Luke-Acts subverts all ethnic division in ways that continue to challenge commonplaces about group identity in Christian theology.


Teaching the Bible through “Writing to Learn”
Program Unit: Teaching Biblical Studies in an Undergraduate Liberal Arts Context
Jane S. Webster, Barton College

Teachers of Biblical Studies in the Liberal Arts often need to include elements of the General Education curriculum, such as oral and written communication or critical thinking. This paper will describe pedagogical objectives and strategies designed to teach writing by using the content of Biblical Studies. More specifically, the paper will describe a number of formative writing assignments that will inform differentiated student learning.


Writing about the Bible: Yes You Can!
Program Unit: Academic Teaching and Biblical Studies
Jane S. Webster, Barton College

Students often have difficulty writing about the Bible; they just don't know where to start. This paper will describe some strategies to get students started, to encourage them to improve, and to help them build confidence and competence. In particular, three pedagogical strategies and their concrete application will be described: formative writing assignments, differentiated instruction, and developing trust.


Knowing Combabus’ Eunuch Body
Program Unit: Religious World of Late Antiquity
Philip Webster, University of Pennsylvania

At first glance, the second century C. E. work, The Syrian Goddess, appears to be an insider’s attempt to describe for a Greek readership the cult of Hera in Syria. The author tells his readers about the rites and festivals of the temple, along with its physical features and even the stories of its founding, all while impersonating the style and language of Herodotus’ descriptions of the customs and habits of “barbarian” peoples. On its surface, the self-described Syrian author of the text simply collects and preserves a body of knowledge about the site, customs, and stories of his native religion, even if he somewhat oddly imitates Herodotus’ template for presenting such knowledge. Scholars have largely understood the text in this light, seeing the work as a more or less reliable handbook of information about a cultic center in the ancient “Near East.” Against this view, I will argue that the text satirizes such bodies of knowledge, especially ethnographic descriptions of “the East.” The imitation of Herodotus is neither homage nor tangential. Instead, in the terms of Homi Bhabha, it is a satirical act of colonial mimicry. The text, therefore, is not an insider’s account of an exotic cult, and it should not be treated as a transparent source of potential information about the ancient “Near East.” It is rather a pointed response to the “knowledge” produced about “the East” by the even-by-then ancient Greeks. My specific focus will be upon the etiological Combabus legend at the center of The Syrian Goddess. While the legend putatively explains the origins of the most distinctive feature of the Syrian cult, its eunuch priests, I will show how the story actually serves to mock Greek-based Roman notions of the effeminacy of “eastern” males. Combabus, at first glance confirming and epitomizing Greek and Roman notions about the effete Eastern male, shows himself to be quite the man, even while he castrates himself. For the purposes of this session, my paper will show The Syrian Goddess to be not so much an example of a late antique cultural impulse to gather, collect, and reformulate bodies of knowledge, but to be a response to such an impulse. Through understanding The Syrian Goddess as a response to what I will argue was a Roman imperial project of appropriating Greek bodies of knowledge about ethnic others, I hope to suggest the richness of interstitial identities the Roman provinces, a richness that has all too often been passed over by scholars overcome themselves by the rhetoric of Greeks and Romans about the objective status of imperially constituted bodies of knowledge about ethnic others.


Rock Band Heretics: The Case of Unstructured Musical Ritual in Early Christianity
Program Unit: Ritual in the Biblical World
Jade Weimer, University of Toronto

The apparent freedom of emotive religious expression in the Pauline churches seems to have been quelled relatively quickly within a more stringent liturgical framework. Scholars have no evidence to suggest that the earliest Christ-followers had any rigid ritual practices and in fact the Pauline epistles in particular demonstrate that religious worship in the earliest Christian movements was emotional, unstructured, and fluid. Participants were welcome to engage in activities such as glossolalia and there are no extant prohibitions in the Pauline literature regarding song, instrumental usage, or polyphonic musical arrangements. Yet musical ritual becomes a contentious issue as early as the second century. This paper will examine several key second-century Christian authorities who used music as an identity marker of correct praxis and belief. For example, the writings of Ignatius of Antioch demonstrate an increasingly inflexible approach to the incorporation of music into ritualized worship practices. He places a profound emphasis on the unity and harmony of one voice. In other words, a group of Christ-followers ought to sing in unison because for Ignatius, this type of ritual engagement represents the unity of the group. Clement of Alexandria is another (albeit later) second century Christian theologian who was also particularly preoccupied with the appropriateness of musical expression in religious ritual. He expressed his distaste for polyphony and its association with the excesses of the Greco-Roman symposium and banquet. Interestingly, later heresiologists denounced Montanus for creating his own hymns, which reinforces the argument that musical ritual not only separated “Christian” liturgical practices from non-Christian religious practices but that proto-Orthodox authorities used musical ritual to demarcate the boundaries between “correct” and “incorrect” practices among Christian groups.


Metaphoric Clusters in Psalm 18
Program Unit: Metaphor Theory and the Hebrew Bible
Andrea Weiss, Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion (New York Branch)

Psalm 18 contains several clusters of metaphors, where a single entity is depicted through a string of several metaphors in the same verse or adjacent verses. This paper will investigate how these metaphoric clusters operate in the context of Psalm 18 and how they compare with similar groupings of metaphors in other biblical texts. To gain additional insight into the interaction between the metaphors in this psalm, this paper will utilize broader metaphor theory, such as the work of Claudia Müller and Andrew Goatly.


Socio-cultural Identity in Urban Galilee: The Epigraphical Evidence
Program Unit: Hellenistic Judaism
Zeev Weiss, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

This paper will focus on the socio-cultural identity of the people residing in the two major urban centers in Galilee using the epigraphical evidence,numismatic finds and recent archaeological discoveries.


Stories Just under the Skin: Lepra and the Meaning of Otherness in the Gospel of Luke
Program Unit: Healthcare and Disability in the Ancient World
Annette Weissenrieder, Graduate Theological Union

Prevalent among New Testament scholars today is the notion that New Testament passages often enhance their self-perception by contrasting themselves with the so-called other, the circumcised, Jews, Gauls, and Samaritans, frequently through hostile stereotypes. The paper aims to show that skin in ancient times was not interpreted as a limiting boundary of the body and that the illness construct of lepra in New Testament texts must be related to its context, of which ancient medicine is an important part. In using the illness lepra and not negotiating the ritualistic aspect connected with this illness, the Gospel of Luke expressed admiration for the Samaritan religion. The illness lepra is not seen here as a boundary marker that focuses on the otherness as exclusion than more as a sign that represent fluctuating borders, like the place where Jesus encounters the ten lepers, the geographical region between Samaria and Galilee or the understanding of allogenes as the one who is different.


Bodies and Space: Sitting or Reclining in 1 Corinthians 14:30
Program Unit: Polis and Ekklesia: Investigations of Urban Christianity
Annette Weissenrieder, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley

Paul refers to one who is “sitting” (kathemenai; 1 Cor 14:30) in the assembly (ekklesía 1 Cor 14:19, 23), a contrast to one who “reclines” (katakeimenon; 1 Cor 8:10) in the temple of an idol. Where in the Roman world would an assembly of persons sit? In this paper I argue through a substantial analysis of ekklesía in the Hellenistic and Roman periods against a consensus in current New Testament scholarship that notable features of the civic assembly are mirrored in 1 Corinthians one of which is sitting instead of reclining. The word kathemenai is used in the context of civic assemblies to describe When Paul uses kathemenai, therefore, to describe the sitting of the Corinthians, he could be drawing on the Greco-Roman context in which sitting in the political ekklesía was familiar and was interpreted as an act of silent listening, including however an appropriate and respectful reaction on the part of the listeners. In silent, attentive sitting, in the ordered speech, in commendable behavior etc., the ekklesía constitutes itself as an embodied space which connects binds together religious and political organizations of meaning.


The Copper Scroll and other Imaginary Treasures from the Greco-Roman World
Program Unit: Hellenistic Judaism
Steven Weitzman, Stanford University

Since its discovery sixty years ago, the Copper Scroll has provoked two seemingly incompatible readings. Many scholars believe that the immense treasure it records is genuine, probably offerings derived from or destined for the Temple and hidden in the period of its destruction, but others argue that the treasure is a figment of the imagination, comparing the scroll to stories about the Ark and other sacred objects concealed in the mythical past. This paper seeks to get beyond this impasse by situating the scroll more precisely within a Hellenistic cultural context. In a dissertation that he did not live to finish, David Wilmot suggested in the 1980s that the Copper Scroll should be compared to Greco-Roman temple inventories, detailed lists that document a temple’s treasure or the offerings deposited there. Since Wilmot’s unfinished work, another text that seems related to this genre has received renewed attention from classicists, the so-called Chronicle of Lindos from Rhodes, a monumental inscription that itemizes the possessions of the city’s Temple of Athena. What makes this inscription such an intriguing analogue for the Copper Scroll is that the temple treasures that it records in such detail did not exist at the time of the inscription: they were lost long before, as the inscription itself acknowledges, and indeed may never have existed since many are tied to mythological events and personages. A comparison of the Copper Scroll with the Lindos Chronicle offers a new perspective on the scroll’s composition--what might have led an author at this time to inventory a lost treasure which may have never existed—and challenges the implicit opposition between myth and reality that has polarized scholarly efforts to understand the scroll.


Voluntary Exile as the Solution to Discord in 1 Clement
Program Unit: Inventing Christianity: Apostolic Fathers, Apologists, and Martyrs
Laurence L. Welborn, Fordham University

In one of the most important chapters in 1 Clement, the author addresses a highly rhetorical appeal to the leaders of the revolt at Corinth, placing into the mouth of the agents of discord the resolve to undertake voluntary exile: “If sedition and strife and divisions have arisen on my account, I will depart, I will go away wherever you wish, and I will obey the commands of the multitude; only let the flock of Christ be at peace with the presbyters set over it” (1 Clem. 54:2). The paper examines this rhetorical stratagem in the context of contemporary texts on exile (e.g., Musonius Rufus Dis. 9, Plutarch De Exilio, Dio Chrysostom Or. 13, Favorinus De Exilio) and accounts of voluntary exile in historical sources. Analysis of the rhetoric and vocabulary of 1 Clem. 54, in the context of ancient literature on exile, casts light upon the social status of the leaders of the revolt in the church at Corinth and the political theology of the author of 1 Clement.


Formulaic Features and the Chronology of the Qur'an
Program Unit: Qur'an and Biblical Literature
Alford T. Welch, Michigan State University

A fundamental feature of the style and the rhetorical force of the Qur?an is its pervasive formulaic nature. Recent publications have treated a variety of aspects of the Qur?an's formulaic features and other literary structures, but one crucial element in understanding the significance of the unique character of the Islamic scripture has been neglected—the close relationship between its style and literary forms and the chronology of its message. This paper will discuss just three of many types of formulaic language in the Qur?an that relate to the chronology of the text: introductory formulas (ranging from entire verses to single words), refrains, and various types of rhymes or assonance—including the transition from patterns with end-words that are integral to the meaning of the verses to frequently-occurring rhyme and assonance formulas that are sometimes "detachable", e.g. those that contain dual divine-epithets and those with warnings about the Day of Judgement.


The Roots of Anger: An Economic Perspective on Zephaniah's Oracle against the Philistines
Program Unit: Archaeology of the Biblical World
Eric L. Welch, Pennsylvania State University

In Zephaniah 2 the prophet presents an oracle against the nations that begins with the Philistines (2:4-7). Starting at the coast, the oracle foretells the abandonment and desolation of the cities of Gaza, Ashkelon, and Ashdod. Moving to the inland city of Ekron, the prophet indicates that the city will be uprooted. This highly geographic oracle looks forward to a day in which Judah will possess the Philistine lands and her fortunes will be restored. Traditionally scholarship on the oracle has focused on its use of assonance in association with the first and fourth cities in the oracle. Significant attention has also been devoted to what has been interpreted as an extended metaphor of divorce applied to Philistia. This paper will focus primarily on the oracle’s fourth Philistine city, Ekron and present an alternate interpretation of the oracle grounded in the changing economic circumstances of the 7th century BCE. First, the paper briefly reviews the archaeological evidence for the changes in the olive oil industry between the 8th and 7th centuries BCE. It is then suggested that the curse aimed at Ekron, in addition to being an excellent play on Ekron's name, is directly related to Ekron's role as the premiere olive oil production center in the Southern Levant in the 7th century BCE. The background and implications of this economic curse are then examined in the context of the geo-political history of the late Iron Age. Finally, the paper concludes with a brief consideration of the implications of this economic rhetoric for the book of Zephaniah as a whole.


Limited Liability: Carrying Guilt in Priestly Texts and Late Babylonian Temple Documents
Program Unit: Hebrew Scriptures and Cognate Literature
Bruce Wells, Saint Joseph's University

The system for dealing with sin in the priestly texts of the Pentateuch has been much discussed. Nevertheless, several aspects of this system are still debated. This paper will consider two such aspects, both of which relate to the idiom nasa' 'awon (“bear iniquity” in the KJV), which occurs frequently in priestly material. The paper will look, first, at how the priestly authors used the expression to assign liability for sins and, second, at what it meant within the conceptual world of these authors. The paper will argue that documents drawn up by Eanna temple officials in the city of Uruk during the Neo-Babylonian and early Persian periods shed important light on these issues. These religious officials used similar terminology to assign liability and did so within the context of an administrative hierarchy. Their primary goal was to keep liability limited to individuals so that larger segments of the administrative structure--and themselves as well-- were not tainted by wrongdoing. Reasoning by analogy, I will argue that the Hebrew Bible’s priestly authors used nasa' 'awon for a similar purpose. I will also side with B. Schwartz and G. Anderson (and against J. Milgrom) in the debate concerning the connotation of nasa' 'awon (opting for “guilt” as opposed to “punishment”) but argue (against Schwartz and Anderson) that the meaning of the expression is distinct from 'ašam ("be guilty" in the KJV) and has its own place within the priestly understanding of guilt and culpability.


Another Jesus, A Different Gospel: The Religion of Independent Specialists and Its Consequences for Earliest Christianity
Program Unit: North American Association for the Study of Religion
Heidi Wendt, Brown University

Several recent publications have profitably reinvestigated dynamics contributing to the spread of early Christianity amidst the religious complexity of the first centuries. Nevertheless, most begin from a premise of groups and leadership structures without interrogating the social processes by which Christian entities or authority came into existence. What they lack are plausible sources of agency responsible for assembling eclectic religious programs (diversity), for diffusing Christ phenomena (spread), for designating kinds of expertise (leadership), and for forging social formations of subscribers to such programs (groups), with varying success. This paper identifies areas of murkiness in existing theories in order to offer an explanation that locates emergent Christianity within a discrete class of religious activity populated by varieties of independent specialists. I mount a case for the significance of the religion of independent specialists in the early Roman Empire and for how imperial conditions promoted it, for example, by enabling the recognition of unaffiliated experts in novel, often ethnically coded forms of religion. From this wider class of actors I move to evidence for Judean religious specialists specifically, to evidence for Judean specialists who enlisted the biblical figure of the Christos, and finally, to competing appropriations of Jesus Christ in the Pauline epistles, the Gospels, and early witnesses like Justin Martyr and the Didache. These sources point to tremendous rivalry among brokers of religious services implicating Christ, which scholars tend to interpret as a symptom of heresy or of religious opponents, deviations from a regular religious program as opposed to competing versions of pliable concepts and practices. The context of entrepreneurial religion, however, offers a plausible social setting for competition among innovative Christian authorities. And while their contingent social formations varied, it is my contention that rival specialists are the overlooked mechanism behind the traction and heterogeneity of earliest Christ phenomena.


Interpretes Legum: Judean Diviners in the Early Roman Empire
Program Unit: Society for Ancient Mediterranean Religions
Heidi Wendt, Brown University

Lamenting the superstitions of Roman women, Juvenal introduces a Judean priestess and interpreter of the laws of Jerusalem among the litany of exotic religious experts whom they are liable to consult. He also mentions Judean oneiromancers, who will divine the meaning of any dream for a fee. Josephus profiles another enterprising Judean, who poses as an interpreter of Mosaic laws to swindle a Roman noblewoman into sending gifts to the Jerusalem temple, which he appropriates for himself. Justin Martyr notes that in his time death had been decreed for those who read the books of Hystaspes, the Sibyl, or the Prophets, by which he seems to mean prophetic biblical literature. All of these examples feature or imply unaffiliated experts in Judean religion participating in a wider class of religious activity that is populated by varieties of independent specialists. Though Judeans appear often in contexts where specialists are of interest, for example, in expulsions targeting astrologers and other kinds of diviners, their implication in this form of religiosity squares neither with assumptions about ancient Judaism, nor with the model of conversion presumed for Roman experimentation with Judean religion. This paper mounts a case for the salience of Judean religious specialists in the first century of the Roman Empire, and in particular, of ones whose divinatory expertise enlisted the textual authority of the law and the prophets, even if notionally. It also explores conditions enabling the reception of Judean diviners: the triumphal removal of the Jerusalem temple scrolls to Rome, their possible incorporation into the state prophetic collection, and the centrality of Judean prophecy to Flavian dynastic claims. Finally, I argue that earliest Christ phenomena emerge from this class of activity, as rival Judean specialists craft innovative religious programs around the biblical figure of the Christos.


Ritual Performance as a Trigger for Experience in 1 Enoch 1–36
Program Unit: Religious Experience in Antiquity
Rodney Werline, Barton College

1 Enoch 1–36 is the result of a complex editing of traditions. While the text developed over time and in shifting socio-political contexts, the problems of suffering, oppression and upheaval remain constant. In part, the author(s) offered assurance to the audience through the presentation of the myth of the fall of the watchers and their certain judgment. However, within this narrative, the authors also employ various rituals and liturgical actions, such as prophetic pronouncements, blessings, curses, prayers, and doxologies. More than just literary dressings and plot devises, the inclusion of ritual acts and liturgical performances tapped into the embodied dispositions (Bourdieu, Holland) of the text’s audience, especially if/when the text was read aloud in a communal setting. Further, if the audience at times joined in the blessings, curses, prayers or doxologies in the text, the ritual/liturgical performances would have bodily joined the participants to the mythic world of the text (Rappaport). The readers/audience acquired these dispositions and would have been sensitive to the experiential power of ritual through their life-long, lived experiences. In other words, engagement with the narrative would have triggered the experiential and referential features of various ritual activities (Rappaport). A primary goal in using ritual in this way was the transformation or formation of the audience. The very structure of 1 Enoch 1–36 suggests this as the prophetic voice in chs. 1–5 encourages the audience to experience the world as the visionary knows it to be. Again, the audience is encouraged not simply to think, but to “observe” or “see”—to bodily experience—the cosmos as the first step in transformation.


Yuri Lotman’s Paradox and Obadiah’s “Day of the Lord”
Program Unit: Semiotics and Exegesis
Nicholas R. Werse, Baylor University

The semiotic system of Yuri Lotman contains a theoretical contradiction. According to Lotman a symbol may only be established by consistent repeated utilizations within a semiotic system. Yet he conflictingly asserts that a symbol may never be truly repeated due to the ever changing syntagmatic value ascribed to it by a developing semiotic system. I propose to present a paper exploring this logical inconsistency. Since a symbol may never fully duplicate the syntagmatic positioning of an earlier occurrence within a poem, I conclude that there is no such thing as a static symbol in poetry when assessed as a semiotic system. Thus, the developing value of a symbol within a semiotic system may be traced as the poetic system develops. Herein lays the exegetical fruit for biblical scholars. I demonstrate my conclusion by assessing the development of the “day of the Lord” as a symbol within the prophetic book of Obadiah. I trace how the paradigmatic value of the day of the Lord remains the same in the repeated references, but the syntagmatic value shifts as the poem unfolds. The result is what appear to be two separate symbols represented by the single lexical unit, “the day.” The first symbolic employment of “the day” is in reference to a future oriented day of judgment for Edom. The second occurrence of “the day” identifies a past completed day of suffering for Jacob. I trace how the various linguistic levels of the poem bring these two apparently separate symbols together in a state of heightened tension. The tension is finally resolved when the next to last stanza of the poem fuses the two symbols into one expression, effectively incorporating the meaning previously embodied by the two separate signs.


What Kind of Man Does Tamar Want? In Search of Redemptive African Masculinities
Program Unit: African Biblical Hermeneutics
Gerald O. West, University of KwaZulu-Natal

In 1996 the Ujamaa Centre for Community Development and Research was invited by a group of church women to facilitate a Bible study on gender violence. This was the start of a long journey, mainly with women, on issues of gender, sex, and sexuality. After almost every workshop women asked the Ujamaa Centre to work with men, but men were reluctant to invite the Ujamaa Centre to work with them on these matters. Until recently, that is. With the advent of HIV men are beginning to take responsibility for their sexuality, and so work with men has become a normal part of the Ujamaa Centre's work. This paper tells the story of the journey and analyses how the Bible has been used in the search for redemptive African masculinities.


Voluntary Associations and the Ancient Economy: Initial Research
Program Unit: Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy
David Wheeler-Reed, University of Dayton

This paper will explore information on voluntary associations found in Greek and Latin inscriptions from Attica, Central Greece, Macedonia, Thrace, and Italy. It will then focus on some preliminary results regarding what voluntary associations can tell us about the ancient economy. In particular, it will utilize these results to see if the economic practices of voluntary associations fits with recent discussions concerning the "poverty scale" of the ancient world.


Vision, Emotion, and Imagination: The Rhetoric of Fear in Revelation 1:9–10
Program Unit: Wisdom and Apocalypticism
Robyn J Whitaker, University of Chicago

The book of Revelation is steeped in visual language and primarily communicates through descriptions of visions, yet there is surprisingly little scholarship addressing the way vision functions in the text particularly in relation to ancient understandings of vision, imagination, and emotion. This paper locates Revelation within its historical literary culture, both Jewish apocalyptic and Greco-Roman rhetorical traditions, and asks how the vision of Rev 1:9-20 functions in the text. The opening vision of “one like the Son of Man” (Rev 1:9-20) is both a narrative of the author’s epiphanic experience and, as I will argue, a vivid description that provides a similar experience for the hearer. My thesis is that an ancient hearer would likely have experienced the opening vision as an ekphrasis. Using examples from Greco-Roman literature I will demonstrate how ekphrasis was a well-known rhetorical technique that plays upon the imagination and the emotions of the hearer, seeking to persuade through an appeal to emotion rather than reason. The vivid description associated with ekphrasis allows hearer/readers to “see” in the mind’s eye what is being described and thus experience it for themselves. When read through this lens, we see that the vision of the Son of Man seeks to transform the hearers’ worldview through an appeal to one of the most powerful emotions – the experience of fear.


Caught in the Tangle of Discrimination and Elimination: Preaching Esther with Integrity
Program Unit: Homiletics and Biblical Studies
Kelly Whitcomb, Vanderbilt University

The story of Esther has had a complex history of transmission and interpretation, as the numerous witnesses from antiquity to postmodernity testify. Whether reading from the Hebrew or Greek, Esther is fundamentally a story about stereotyping, discrimination and the oppression which can result from human fear of the "Other." At the same time, the social location of some preachers and their congregations may differ significantly from the heroes of Esther. How has Esther been preached, and how does the perspective of commentator, preacher and audience affect the interpretation and application? This study will begin by investigating approaches to Esther in recent years in sermons and sermon resources with a particular interest in the social locations of the readers, including the authors, preachers and congregations. I will then propose several ways to consider this text for contemporary audiences and situations. Ultimately, I will argue that social location and experience affect how Esther is interpreted and applied, especially with regard to the issues of stereotyping, discrimination and oppression, so the cautious interpreter, whether commentary author, preacher or congregant, must be aware of potential misappropriation which may perpetuate such stereotyping and oppression.


The Eschatological Conversion of “All the Nations” in Matthew 28.19: What’s Paul Got to Do with It? Or, (Mis)reading Matthew through Paul
Program Unit: Matthew
Benjamin L. White, Clemson University

The so-called “Great Commission” at the end of Matthew’s gospel describes an evangelization and socialization process whereby Jewish believers in Jesus are commanded by him to travel to “all the nations” and through teaching and ritual initiation bring them under the risen Messiah’s authority. For most of Matthew’s later interpreters, this passage has been heard in symphonic concert with the Gentile mission of the Apostle Paul. The final redaction of the Gospel of Matthew, in the last quarter of the first century C.E., recognizes, authorizes, and appropriates the Pauline anti-circumcision mission to the Gentiles. One recent account by Joel Willitts refers to the “splendid friendship” between Matthew and Paul. This reading of the Great Commission has been strongly challenged over the past two decades by David Sim, who, rather than hearing the Great Commission in concert with Paul, has argued for the inherent probability that 1) Matthew’s ending envisioned Gentile conversion to Christian Judaism and 2) that it was consciously anti-Pauline in this regard. While strongly affirming the first of his theses, this paper offers a critique of the second. I will argue that Sim’s intertextual methodology for isolating Pauline echoes in Matthew is unconvincing and that his portrayal of competing “Pauline” and “Petrine”/“Matthean” Christianities at the end of the first century C.E. is too dependent on the Tübingen School’s reconstruction of early Christianity. Rather, Jesus’ stunning proclamation that “all the nations” should be converted to Law-observant Israel is fully coherent within Matthew’s own eschatology without having to filter the text through Paul. The death and resurrection of Jesus, accompanied by many more apocalyptic signs and wonders than Mark, one of Matthew’s sources, marks the beginning of the end for Matthew. And at the end, according to Isaiah 56.7, proselytes to the God of Israel from "all the nations" will be included among the righteous. My proposal argues a third-way of understanding the “Great Commission” in current Matthean studies. It, along with the rest of the gospel, is neither pro-Pauline nor polemically positioned against Paul, yet still presents a view of Gentile inclusion in Israel that is ultimately in disagreement with Paul’s eschatological vision. Matthew and Paul stand in canonical tension on the issue of how the Gentiles will become part of Israel at the end. They are neither enemies nor friends, but witnesses to the diversity of early Jewish Christian eschatology.


The Sexologist’s Bible: Homosexual Acts and Sexual Identities in the Science of Biblical Interpretation
Program Unit: Gender, Sexuality, and the Bible
Heather R. White, New College of Florida

In 1946, the “homosexual” appeared in an English Bible. Translators for the Revised Standard Version (RSV) used the word as a modern update for two Greek nouns in I Corinthians 6:9, which the King James Version had long rendered as “effeminates” and “abusers of themselves with mankind.” Though initially uncontroversial, questions about the meaning of these works have since generated robust debate. This paper traces the process by which mid-century translators came to assume that “homosexual” was an apt translation for texts like this one in I Corinthians, a process that addressed two bodies of literature. I begin with the late nineteenth and early twentieth century literature in sexual science. Sexologists, who galvanized the project of understanding human sexuality through a scientific endeavor, commented extensively on Biblical texts and addressed how these texts fit with the new medical terminology. Sexologist spoke self-consciously of their project as an epistemological revolution, one famously rendered by Michel Foucault as “the invention of the homosexual.” Biblical scholars also utilized sexology, and I also examine early twentieth century biblical interpretations, which continued and extended the epistemological revolution and worked to interpret the Bible through the new scientific lenses. By the midcentury, this hermeneutic was fixed to an extent that liberal Christian translators could insert the “homosexual” with little controversy. As this paper examines the influence of sexual science on biblical interpretation, it also suggests an alternative understanding of the epistemological shift effected with the influence of sexology. Just as important as the invention of homosexuality, I argue, was the invention of its opposite, heterosexuality. This divided typology re-inscribed, through a new category, the moral dangers of same-sex behavior; however it also facilitated the categorical transfer of previously circumspect acts into a charmed circle of heterosexual pleasure.


Trying Jesus: Rhetoric and Testimony in the Markan Passion Narrative
Program Unit: Synoptic Gospels
Michael R. Whitenton, Baylor University

Previous scholarship has long noted that Mark portrays Jesus as the suffering Son of God; however, the ancient rhetorical strategy underlying this portrayal has been long neglected. This paper suggests that the topos of testimony is an important part of Mark’s rhetorical plan throughout his gospel and uses the Markan Passion Narrative as a test case. The paper proceeds in two steps. First, I will attend to the definition of the concept of the topos of testimony in the rhetorical handbooks and Progymnasmata. Second, I will then elucidate Mark’s rhetorical strategy in the Passion Narrative in light of the rhetorical conventions of the topos of testimony. At this point, the paper will break new ground by locating and elucidating no less than five instances in which the topos of testimony is used by Mark to persuade his readers of Jesus’ true role as the suffering Son of God (14:62; 15:33, 34, 38, 39). These testimonies were meant to persuade the audience of Mark’s portrayal of Jesus as the suffering Son of God positively (from Jesus’ own testimony, the divine testimony via the heavenly portents, and the testimony of the centurion), as well as ironically (the high priest’s and Pilate’s unwitting testimonies, and Jesus’ own cry of abandonment). This paper thus provides strong evidence that the traditional trials of Jesus before the high priest and Pilate are only parts of a larger forensic “trial” where the defendant is not Jesus per se, but rather the unique Markan portrayal of him.


Jesus' Victory over Satan: A Figured Critique of Imperial Power in Hebrews
Program Unit: Hebrews
Jason A. Whitlark, Baylor University

Hebrews 1:5-13 celebrates the enthronement of the Son and his victory over his enemies. That victory is articulated in 2:14-15 in apocalyptic terms as victory over the devil who has the power of death and as liberation from the fear of death. In this way, Jesus helps the “seed of Abraham” (2:16) and leads “many sons” to glory (2:10). How might this portrayal of Jesus’ victory have been received by early Christian audiences in the Roman Empire? What I will argue in this paper is that Jesus’ triumphant enthronement upon his victory over the devil in Hebrews represents a figured critique of Roman imperial authority. The critique is twofold. First it correlates Roman power with the devil. I will establish this correlation in two ways. (1) I will examine other New Testament documents and early Christian martyrdom texts that identify persecuting imperial culture and its authorities with the devil. (2) I will examine the notion in Roman imperial discourse that Roman authority was supremely manifested in its power over life and death. Second, as noted by some interpreters of Hebrews, the victory of Jesus is portrayed in these verses in a manner similar to Hercules. Jesus’ Herculean victory is then over Roman authority rendering Roman power unable to enforce ultimate loyalty to its rule because Jesus has liberated Christians from the fear of death. This investigation demonstrates possibly why Hebrews circulated widely among early Christian communities who faced ongoing pressures from their Roman imperial culture. The apocalyptic portrayal of Roman power encourages Christians to resist the pressures of their imperial culture with patient suffering, a steady witness, and bold confidence because of their hope in the victory of the Son.


Disambiguation with Parallel Verbs: yrh-H, ysr-D, and Isaiah 28:26
Program Unit: Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew
Wendy Widder, University of the Free State - Universiteit van die Vrystaat

In her book /The Dynamics of Biblical Parallelism/, Adele Berlin asserts that one of the main semantic functions of parallelism in Biblical Hebrew is disambiguation. The concept of disambiguation is helpful on a case-by-case basis, but it can also be a useful tool when considering the semantic range and particular nuances of a lexeme that occurs in several parallel structures with different verbs. This paper incorporates the notion of disambiguation in an analysis of two BH verbal roots that fall within the semantic domain of teaching: ???-H and ???-D. Each lexeme occurs in numerous parallel structures and each demonstrates a preference for the first clause of a parallel structure. This paper argues that this preference indicates a need for clarification – or disambiguation – of meaning. The preference of each lexeme for first position comes into conflict in Isaiah 28:26, which has a parallel structure in which both lexemes occur. This text thus prompts the questions, What motivates the order of the lexemes when both cannot have their preferred position? and How does the order contribute to the meanings of the verse? To answer this question, this paper analyzes the parallel structures of ???-H and ???-D in order to determine how parallel verbs contribute to the semantic range and particular nuances of each. After concluding that each lexeme prefers first position in a parallel structure and then assessing how the second verbs contribute to the meaning of the first, it evaluates Isaiah 28:26 in light of how the lexemes ???-H and ???-D typically function in parallel structures to explain why each lexeme occurs in the verse where it does, as well to demonstrate how the two words interact to create the meaning of the text.


The Prophetic Bridge between Law and Gospel: Tertullian’s Spiritual Hermeneutic
Program Unit: Development of Early Christian Theology
David E. Wilhite, Baylor University

In his debate with the Marcionites, Tertullian – for the sake of argument – conceded the opposition between Law and Gospel. In doing so, however, he continues to read the Law in its Spiritual sense thereby circumventing Marcion’s attack on the Old Testament God. This traditional reading of Tertullian’s rebuttal is usually seen as accurate (since Harnack 1924; however, cf. Moll 2010). A recent study by Stephen Cooper on Tertullian’s Adversus Marcionem has substantiated this dichotomy in Marcion’s thought, and thereby raised questions as to how the Law/Gospel opposition do not drive Tertullian toward either an extreme legalism or an extreme antinomianism – neither of which does the North African writer succumb. I propose to build on Cooper’s work to show that Tertullian’s soteriological framework bridges the Law and Gospel divide by means of his understanding of prophecy. He understands there to be a third category which bridges Law and Gospel: Prophecy (see esp. Adv. Marc. 2.19.1). It is the prophets, after all, including Moses himself, who taught that the Law was to be followed in a spiritual sense. For Tertullian, who of course famously champions “prophecy,” Christ is the one who “since the beginning had addressed to them the utterances of both law and prophets” (Adv. Marc. 4.17.13), which is why the Law has “secret and sacred meanings… it is both spiritual and prophetic, and in almost all its concepts has a figurative significance” (Adv. Marc. 2.19). Because Tertullian understood the “prophetic Spirit” to transcend all such binary oppositions, he never slipped into the mistake of pitting figurative and allegorical (not to mention historical/literal) meanings against one another.


Multisensory Preaching
Program Unit: Academy of Homiletics
Angela K. Williams, Fuller Theological Seminary

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Christ Redeemed Us From the Curse of the Law. . .: A Martyrological Reading of Galatians 3:13
Program Unit: Pauline Epistles
Jarvis J. Williams, Campbellsville University

Thesis: This paper will argue that Paul borrowed from the martyrological traditions in 2 and 4 Maccabees and reconstructed them to fit his exegetical, polemical, and theological purposes in Galatians 3:13 regarding redemption from the curse of the law. Arguments: I will argue that there are at least 60 points of contact between Maccabean Martyr Theology and Galatians 3:13. These 60 points of contact can be placed under three categories: (1) theological/conceptual points of contact, (2) lexical/grammatical points of contact, and (3) polemical/argumentative points of contact. Thus, my three primary arguments will be that Galatians 3:13 has (a) theological/conceptual points of contact, (b) lexical/grammatical points of contact, and (c) polemical/argumentative points of contact with 2 and 4 Maccabees. Method: The method by which I will argue the thesis will be via an exegetical, sociological, and comparative analysis of key texts in 2 &4 Maccabees and in Galatians 3:13. Conclusion: The method and the arguments employed in the paper will seek to support the conclusion that Galatians 3:13 should be read in front of the background of Maccabean Martyr Theology, that reading Galatians 3:13 through the lens of Maccabean Martyr Theology freshly illuminates Galatians 3:13, and that such a reading grants new insights into the crisis at Antioch in Galatians 2:11-14. Contribution: To my knowledge, no scholar has offered a detailed argument that supports Maccabean Martyr Theology is the background in front of which Galatians 3:13 should be read. In 2001, Anthony Cummins’ Cambridge monograph (Paul and the Crucified Christ in Antioch) argued that Paul’s autobiographical sketch in Galatians 1-2 should be read in light of a Maccabean Martyr model of Judaism. But he does not argue the same for Galatians 3:13. In fact, he mentions the latter verse only in passing in the monograph. In Walter T. Wilson’s work (Pauline Parallels) in 2009, the connections between Galatians 3:13 and 2 and 4 Maccabees are altogether unnoticed. In my 2010 monograph (Maccabean Martyr Traditions in Paul’s Theology of Atonement), I offered a brief argument (one paragraph to be exact) in favor of the connections between Maccabean Martyr Theology and Galatians 3:13. However, due to space constraints, the majority of my investigation focused on Romans 3:25, and I only mentioned one of the 60 points of contact between Maccabean Martyr Theology and Galatians 3:13 (i.e. the conceptual connection of the vicarious death of a pious, Jewish human for the benefit of impious people). Thus, my paper will seek to do what has (to my knowledge) not yet been done with regard to Galatians 3:13: viz. offer a detailed argument regarding the martyrological background behind Galatians 3:13.


Exploring Individual and Group Identity and Power through Names in the Elephantine Contracts
Program Unit: Literature and History of the Persian Period
Jennifer J. Williams, Vanderbilt University

The formulaic titles that name people in the 5th century Elephantine legal contracts represent not only a person’s identity but also point to the everyday, lived reality of persons living in this Jewish garrison under the rule of the Persian Empire. The titles demonstrate the multiple ways in which people are identified according to their gender, place of origin, age, family, status, profession, location of residence, and ethnicon. Paying careful attention to these formulaic titles, how they are formed, what elements are included, and when digressions from the formula appear, modern readers get a glimpse of how the community in Elephantine functioned and how it understood and identified its individual members. This paper explores the elements and purpose of the formulaic title that names individuals in the Elephantine contracts and then suggests a hierarchical social structure in Elephantine based on people’s names and identified foreign status. The paper also proposes that the bureaucracy of the Persian Empire required a specific method of official identification for persons in Elephantine. Specifically, the paper notes the remarkable fluidity of the identifiers/ethnicons of “Jew” and “Aramean” and considers whether the usage of these terms was determined by the type of legal document, by the preference of the named party in the document, or by the required designation imposed by imperial regulations. The usage of ethnicons in these documents reveals both a social hierarchy and the Persian Empire’s practice of distinguishing between those who might be Persian/“local” and those who are “foreign” by designating only foreigners with an ethnicon (e.g. Jew, Aramean, and Caspian). When the formulaic titles also include profession signifiers, it is clear that the potential for local and imperial power resides in the persons with Persian and Babylonian names.


Revisiting Israel in 1 Chronicles 5:1–2
Program Unit: Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah
H. G. M. Williamson, University of Oxford

1 Chronicles 5:1-2 makes a startling and unparalleled claim to the position of Joseph within the tribal divisions of Israel. After a brief examination of a textual problem in these verses the paper will explore the unusual claims advanced and suggest that later Samaritan literature, especially the Memar Marqah, may be based on much earlier traditions which retain a clue as to the Chronicler's positive concession at this point.


A Matter of "Life" and "Death": Symbolic Immortality in Proverbs 10–29
Program Unit: Wisdom in Israelite and Cognate Traditions
Robert Williamson Jr., Hendrix College

Scholars have long debated the meaning of Proverbs’ claim that the wise and righteous are rewarded with life while the foolish and wicked descend to Sheol. A minority of scholars, notably Delitzsch, Dahood, and Waltke assert that the “life” Proverbs offers to its adherents is a literal life after death. In this view, Proverbs “teaches immortality,” as Waltke has argued. The majority of scholars has rejected this interpretation, arguing instead that the “life” offered to the righteous consists of a long life filled with abundance but includes no possibility of death transcendence. As Adams puts it, the authors of Proverbs “do not allow for a blessed afterlife, but only for the shadows of Sheol.” To this position, Lobngman objects that “such a minimalist reading makes the sages seem incredibly naïve. What does it mean to promise life to those who are wise and death to those who are foolish when everyone knows that all die?” The present paper attempts to shift the terms of the scholarly debate by appealing to the insights of a branch of empirical social psychology known as Terror Management Theory (TMT). Drawing on the work of social anthropologist Ernest Becker, TMT offers empirical evidence that human beings require a sense of death transcendence in order to maintain psychological equanimity. However, TMT also shows that this sense of death transcendence need not imply a belief in a literal afterlife. Rather, research suggests that human beings may achieve a sense of death transcendence through various modes of “symbolic immortality,” including (1) the natural mode, in which immortality is achieved through one’s progeny; (2) the creative mode, in which one obtains immortality by producing something that lasts beyond death, whether a work of art or one’s influence on another person; (3) the natural mode, in which one gains a sense of death transcendence by becoming one with the cosmos; (4) the religious mode, in which immortality is either literal or comes through participation in a way of life thought to stem from the divine realm; and (5) the transcendent mode, in which an individual transcends the body through meditation or other means. Approaching the issue of death transcendence from the perspective of TMT shows that the debate over the “life” offered to the righteous in Proverbs has until now proceeded with an inadequate understanding of the multiple ways in which life may transcend death. The paper will argue that in the book of Proverbs, death does indeed encounter the righteous differently than it does the wicked. For the wicked, death serves as a termination of life, an utter annihilation ending in Sheol. In contrast, Proverbs insists that death does not terminate the righteous. While it never offers them a “blessed afterlife,” it does offer a rich array of symbols through which they may see themselves as “living on” beyond the moment of physical death.


Becoming the God of the Covenant: An Anthropo-theological Reading of Genesis 22
Program Unit: Theology of the Hebrew Scriptures
Robert Williamson Jr., Hendrix College

In her 2011 presidential address, Carol Newsom called for a focus on “theological anthropology,” understanding the human being as it is in relation to the divine. The present paper proposes to engage in an “anthropological theology,” seeking to understand the God of the Hebrew Bible as a god in relationship to humankind. It focuses on Genesis 22 as the passage in which the God of the Hebrew Bible comes to terms with what it means to be a god in covenanted relationship with Abraham rather than a god who acts freely in relationship to humankind, as was the case in Genesis 1-11. When God blesses Abraham in Genesis 12, promising him land and progeny, God fundamentally changes the nature of the relationship between God and humankind. Now God’s own future and reputation are tied up with the success of this one individual. Abraham’s failure to thrive would now represents the filure of God’s own promises, so that God cannot destroy Abraham without destroying himself. This requires a fundamental change in God’s way of being God, which in the primeval history has consisted of God’s punishing or destroying humankind when they disobeyed God’s command. The paper will argue that this transition in God’s way of being God reaches its culmination in Genesis 22, when God demands to know whether Abraham will be obedient—that is, whether Abraham will conform to God’s will. But the price of this knowledge is the very destruction of the child upon whom everything depends. Engaging in a close reading of Genesis 22, and in dialogue with the midrashic readings of the chapter, the paper will argue that this text is not finally about Abraham conforming his will to that of God. Rather, the text fundamentally concerns a transformation in God’s self-understanding—the realization that being a covenanting God means accepting the autonomy of the covenanted Other, whom God can no longer control but now must trust.


Challenged Boundaries: Gender and the Other in Periods of Crisis
Program Unit: Exile (Forced Migrations) in Biblical Literature
Lawrence Wills, Episcopal Divinity School

Much modern social theory posits a connection between political and social boundaries on one hand—the macro level—and bodily and gender boundaries—more of a micro level. In times of political catastrophe such as the defeat of Judah and the forced migration of many of its citizens, one might assume, either that texts would not comment on micro-boundary maintenance, or that such comments would seem trivial compared to the larger developments. But tracing the re-negotiation of gender and other boundaries in the texts of this period remains a valuable way to “read” this period. Social theoretical approaches will be presented to allow for a means of comparing, first, gender with other boundary definitions, and second, this distinctive period with others.


John Chrysostom’s Analysis of Paul as Preacher
Program Unit: Homiletics and Biblical Studies
Courtney Wilson VanVeller, Boston University

John Chrysostom is considered one of the most skilled and influential homilists in Christian history, and yet research on his fourth century homilies is both understaffed and undervalued. This paper aims to contribute to illuming these important sermons with a study of how Chrysostom’s training in public oratory, in particular his attention to the dynamics between speaker and audience, critically shaped his homilies, in particular, his Pauline exegesis. Scholars have long agreed that Chrysostom received a classical rhetorical education, a context that has fueled numerous studies into John’s use of standard Greco-Roman rhetorical conventions. This paper demonstrates ways in which Chrysostom’s oratorical context had a broader influence on the delivery of his homilies and on his approach to the biblical text. For although Chrysostom describes Paul as rhetorically unskilled, a study of Chrysostom’s exegesis of Paul’s portrait and teachings in select homilies on Acts and the Pauline epistles shows that Chrysostom frequently exalts Paul as an ideal orator, drawing attention to Paul’s skilled engagement with his first century audience, noting his wise insight into his audiences’ various temperaments and needs, and demonstrating his skilled choices of the appropriate words and arrangements that engage their interest and move them gradually and effectively towards virtue. Chrysostom’s analysis of Paul as an exemplary preacher underscores the dynamic intersection of public performance and biblical exegesis that is at the core of every homily.


Sinai 345 and Some Linguistic Features of the Proto-Sinaitic Inscriptions
Program Unit: Ugaritic Studies and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy
Aren Wilson-Wright, University of Texas at Austin

The 40 or so inscriptions from Serabit el-Khadim constitute some of the earliest evidence for alphabetic writing. Although these inscriptions have not been fully deciphered, they are nevertheless an important source of information about the West-Semitic languages in the early 2nd millennium BCE. The words and phrases that can be read hint at underlying linguistic phenomena. Nowhere is this more apparent than Sinai 345. In this paper, I offer a new reading of this inscription and demonstrate its importance for both alphabetic origins and comparative Semitics. On the surface, Sinai 345 is a straightforward dedicatory inscription—no more than five or six words long. Yet it reveals four things about the language of the Proto-Sinaitic corpus: the existence of sandhi writing suggests that the case vowels had been lost or were in the process of being lost; the presence of an Egyptian loanword (w? written wz) points toward further Egyptian-Semitic contact and suggests an affricated pronunciation for the sibilant series; and the form of the demonstrative supports recent theories concerning the development of the definite article. This linguistic data will help facilitate the decipherment of the remaining Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions.


The Role of Bible Translation in the Formation of Creole Identity: Voices from the Carribean Basin
Program Unit: Ideology, Culture, and Translation
Marlon Winedt, United Bible Societies

This paper seeks to explore the role of Bible translation in the Creole languages of the Caribbean region in the ongoing process of Creole identity formation as defined by concepts like liminality, hybridity, heteroglossia and the positive ideological construct of creolité as defined by Aimé Césair. What is the cumulative effect of translations in different vernacular languages across the Caribbean basin, where they co-exist with the dominant European language to some degree or the other? How does standardization, language development and language conservation contribute to the formation of the Creole identity? While Bible translation in the past was used by some to inhibit or oppress the cultural identity of people groups, it has now, in many contexts, become a key vehicle in forging or confirming a new, resilient, group identity. Thus the post-colonial practice of Creole Bible translation itself, became a vehicle for the deconstruction of the detrimental colonial construct of “the pure”. However, the forces of “de-creolization” and “anti-creolization” which threaten Creole identity are also at work in Bible translation practice. There is the extreme attitude of negation: the very need for Creole Bible translation is denied, and there is the more subtle, imposed or internalized, undermining strategies, based on the dominance of the language of prestige. Moreover, the tyranny of the “Gutenbergian” paradigm, often leads to the artificial creation of a rigid written register, while neglecting the seminal role of orality in these languages. A critique of the power structures, as articulated in post-modern translation studies, will conclude this essay on the ideological nature of the actual praxis of sacred text translation in these relatively young languages, as it relates to different aspects of collective and individual identity formation.


Gilgamesh in Ezekiel's Eden
Program Unit: Book of Ezekiel
Abraham Winitzer, University of Notre Dame

Can the writings attributed to Ezekiel be shown to include knowledge of Mesopotamian literary traditions, that is, not merely to an oral lore in the priest-prophet’s surroundings but rather to the standard literature that recalled these stories? If so, can something be said about the context or transmission responsible for this? In this paper I will try to answer both these questions affirmatively by way of a case study of Babylonian learning and its application in Ezekiel. This will center on the granddaddy of the Babylonian literary composition: /Gilgamesh/*. I will demonstrate that Ezekiel not only knew of Gilgamesh but of /Gilgamesh/*, that is, the standard literary composition telling the story of the legendary hero. I will suggest that Ezekiel acquired this knowledge in one of the Babylonian schools, where – judging by a quintessentially Babylonian literary convention in the midst of his Eden tradition (Ezek 28) – he may well have been a first-grade student. ------ * NOTE: the slashes around two attestations of the name Gilgamesh (but not the others) indicate italic font. They are NOT to appear in the abstract, nor is the asterisk.


Resisting Honor: The Messianic Secret and Roman Imperial Ideology
Program Unit: Jesus Traditions, Gospels, and Negotiating the Roman Imperial World
Adam Winn, University of Mary Hardin-Baylor

David F. Watson’s recent monograph has made a strong case that major features of Mark’s so called “Messianic Secret” should not be understood in terms of “secrecy” at all, but rather should be understood in terms of intentional resistance to honor. This paper builds on Watson’s conclusion that Jesus’ commands for silence after healings and proclamations of his identity are not attempts at secrecy, but are efforts to resist honor. However, Watson’s claim that through this motif the Markan evangelist inverts standard honor/shame conventions is ultimately unsatisfactory. The paper explores alternative explanations for the Markan Jesus’ resistance to honor, suggesting that a possible explanation might be found in Roman Imperial Ideology. While examples of resisting achieved and proscribed honor are few and far between in the ancient Mediterranean world, they are frequently found in the lives of first century Roman emperors. Using primary Roman sources, this paper will establish resistance to honor as characteristic of Rome’s good/ideal emperors. The paper proposes that this Roman imperial background might be a useful way forward in understanding Jesus’ resistance to honor in Mark’s gospel. Three pieces of evidence are significant here: 1) Mark’s gospel clearly presents, Jesus as a king and world ruler; 2) Good internal and external evidence suggests that Mark was composed in Rome, presumably for Roman readers; and 3) Numerous features in Mark’s gospel suggest that the gospel is engaging/challenging Roman imperial power/rulers. The paper argues that the Markan evangelist has appropriated the Roman imperial ideal of resisting honor in an effort to present Jesus as ideal ruler to Roman readers, a ruler that challenges and even “out Romans” the existing Roman emperor.


Gaius Julius Spartiaticus' Influence on the Polis and the Ekklesia
Program Unit: Polis and Ekklesia: Investigations of Urban Christianity
Bruce Winter, Macquarie University

A neglected tribal inscription honoring Gaius Julius Spartiaticus, a leading benefactor, bears eloquent witness to his impact on the Roman forum of the city of Corinth where typically commerce, courts, civic administration and cults were all located. Members of the Christian ekklesia were naturally not affected by what occurred there in the polis. One of the liturgies exercised by Spartiaticus would prove to have a major disorienting influence on the early Christians who were divided as to how to deal with the celebrations of an annual provincial imperial cult that had been inaugurated on the accession of Nero and to which Spartiaticus was appointed for life by Rome as its first high priest. This paper explores the epigraphic evidence of this most prestigious of all liturgies that any provincial could hold and the ideological conflict the celebrations he presided over posed for the Christian ekklesia in 1 Corinthians 8:1-11:1.


How to Classify Hebrew Verbs: A Flow Chart for Verb-Specific Role Classification
Program Unit: International Syriac Language Project
Nicolai Winther-Nielsen, Copenhagen Lutheran School of Theology

In Biblical Hebrew verb semantics, one of the challenges is to understand how referents are associated with the predicate as bound or free entities and how this determines the nature of the event expressed in a particular language use. Without an understanding of this relational aspect of clause structure, it is neither possible to build a Hebrew lexicon, nor, in particular, to explain the function of verbal valency patterns and exploit them for learning purposes. Role and Reference Grammar is a theory which assumes that event structure can best be explained by verb-specific roles. Classes of verbs are characterized by characteristic configurations of actors and undergoers in typical groupings. This allows the linguist to map from syntax to semantics through a lexicon which stores the logical structure of the predicates. The meaning of a verb is described in semantic representations which takes the characteristic role configuration into account. This paper will describe a database application called the Role Lexical Module which has been built for verb classification from the Werkgroep Informatica database at the Vrije Universiteit (http://lex.qwirx.com/lex/clause.jsp). It will describe the flow chart for lexical decomposition used in this application and then suggest how this could be turned into an account which would be teachable in introductory grammar and which could be programmed into a simple tool for language learning. The research behind this paper is part of combining the EuroPLOT EU project with the Dutch NOW project (http://www.eplot.eu/project-definition/workpackage-5)


Self-Tutored Reading and Writing of Biblical Hebrew
Program Unit: Applied Linguistics for Biblical Languages
Nicolai Winther-Nielsen, Aalborg University & Copenhagen Lutheran School

Can the Hebrew Bible teach beginners to read and write? The answer is yes, if the learner uses a database from German Bible Society and then develops learning technology which triggers skill practice, influencing the motivation and ability of learners. This is one of the aims of the Europe Union project EuroPLOT (http://www.eplot.eu/home). During 2012 our project will develop the second prototype of PLOTLeaner, and we will continue to explore how the Hebrew Bible can be used as an intelligent tutoring corpus for Hebrew language learning (cf. www.3bmoodle.dk). In the present phase of participatory user-centered development, we are testing the effect and efficiency of this approach to corpus-driven language learning in Copenhagen, Gothenburg and Madagascar. We are exploring to what degree a persuasive tutoring system can motivate the learner to improve his reading skills through reflection on interpretative tasks and to increase mastery in writing through typing text from the Bible. We are also experimenting with a transliteration based on Modern Israeli pronunciation, and we are using glosses to support vocabulary learning from texts. The goal is for learners to be motivated to achieve autonomy, mastery and purpose. The paper will discuss our data on persuasive learning from questionnaires, interviews and think-aloud observation in order to substantiate our case for self-assessment in reading and typing. Our hope is to be able to collaborate with fellow teachers to enhance corpus-driven self-determination and persuasive tutoring. We will suggest ways for other course developers and teachers of online courses to reuse and repurpose this approach.


"But I Would Rather Persuade"...: The Necessity of Understanding Rhetoric for Understanding the Text and Context of the New Testament
Program Unit: Institute for Biblical Research
Ben Witherington III, Asbury Theological Seminary

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A Prophet with Nowhere to Lay His Head (Matthew 8:19–20)
Program Unit: Matthew
Brendon R. Witte, University of Edinburgh

The interpretation of Matthew 8.18-22 (parr. Lk 9.57-62) has been the subject of monographs, as well as countless essays and journal articles. This is due in large part to the shocking nature of Jesus’ apophthegm in his dialogue with the disciple—‘let the dead bury their own dead’—and its bearing on the Synoptic concept of true discipleship. In this large exegetical shadow sits the eager exclamation of 'a certain man, a scribe,' and the ambiguous aphoristic response of Jesus (Mt 8.19-20//Lk 9.57-58): 'Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head.' Unfortunately, in spite of the fact that 8.20 contains the first occurrence of 'son of man' in Matthew, a particularly important observation for those undertaking an analysis of the idiom, this portion of the pericope is frequently overlooked or inadequately handled by modern authors, even in those works that take up the task of examining Matthew’s use of the designation 'son of man.' It is the objective of this paper to analyze the dialogue between Jesus and the man keen on becoming a disciple in Matthew (Mt 8.19-20//Lk 9.57-58), questioning what aspect of the man’s proclamation Jesus is challenging—his loyalty to the mission of spreading the word of the kingdom, his hubristic attitude, his self-serving motives, or his inadequate understanding of the mission and nature of Jesus. To anticipate the results of this study, the case will be made for reading Jesus’ aphoristic response as indicative of his prophetic role and authority. Jesus is not only a teacher of the ‘weightier matters’ of the Law, he is portrayed throughout the Matthean narrative as an itinerant prophet like Elijah and Jonah who calls individuals to join him in his commissioning and is unwilling to accept those who have not been called or have placed the cares of the world above the cares of the kingdom.


Abraham amidst the Nations: The Concept of Covenant in the Priestly Passages of Genesis
Program Unit: Covenant in the Persian Period
Jakob Wöhrle, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster

It is one of the well known peculiarities of the priestly passages in Genesis that these passages present two covenants, one with Noah and all the people of the world in Gen 9 and one with Abraham and his descendants in Gen 17. The paper will show that the priestly concept of covenant is a highly political concept, which has to be understood against the background of the early Persian time. With it the priestly authors present their individual prospect of how the people of God and the members of foreign nations can and should live together under the new circumstances in the multiethnic state of Persia. They legitimize the existence, the integrity and even the growth of foreign nations. But they reserve the right to live in the land of Canaan and the special contribution of God to their own people.


Apotropaic Prayer at Qumran and Matthew’s Gospel
Program Unit: Matthew
Benjamin Wold, Trinity College - Dublin

Documents related to demonology among the Qumran literature have been seen to relate to exorcistic activity and/or apotropaic prayer. 4Q510-511 (Songs of the Sages a-b) 4Q444 (4QIncantation), 6Q18, and perhaps also 11Q5-6 (11QPsalms a-b, or Plea of Deliverance) express ideas related to prayers that are intended to prevent demonic activity. Indeed while some demonologies from the scrolls are found in “non-sectarian” literature, in the case of the 4Q510-511, 4Q444, and 6Q18 these have been viewed as expressing the thought world of the Qumran group. Since the publication of the Cave 4 materials a great deal has been written about “Qumran demonology” and its significance for interpreting Jesus’ exorcistic activities. However, very little has been said about apotropaic prayer in the Qumran documents in relationship to the synoptic gospels. This paper focuses on the Qumran apotropaic tradition within their apocalyptic context in order to relate them to traditions found in Matthew’s gospel, especially the Temptation (4:1-11) and the Lord’s Prayer (6:13).


Universality of Creation in 4QInstruction
Program Unit: Qumran
Benjamin Wold, Trinity College - Dublin

This paper addresses the relationship of the particularism of election in 4QInstruction to the universality of creation. Whether or not 4QInstruction should be read as a sapiential work universal to all of humanity or only the elect community is dependent upon views about the universality of creation in the document. Indeed it is not only the universality of creation but also the universality of the evil that afflicts humanity and the availability of the “mystery of existence” to them. Central to considering the question of what separates humanity from evil is the interpretation of 4Q417 1 i lines 15-18 and, therefore, this passage will be addressed within a broader assessment of creation in 4QInstruction. It shall be argued that while there have been convincing arguments made about the interpretation of key terms in 4Q417 1 i lines 15-18 that the phrase “va’od lo natan” at the end of line 17 and beginning of line 18 is pivotal for this crucial question and that D.J. Harrington and J. Strugnell’s translation of it in DJD 34 as “and no more” should be reassessed. The tensions between eschatological reward for the righteous as dependent upon the pursuit of the mystery of existence verses a predetermined fate will be asked alongside similar questions as they relate to a division of humanity who suffers judgment and destruction.


The Meaning of "Gulla" in Zech 4:2–3
Program Unit: Biblical Lexicography
Al Wolters, Redeemer University College

The noun "gulla" describes a part of the menorah in the fifth night vision of Zechariah, but its meaning is disputed. The ancient versions diverge widely, and modern commentators cannot agree either. I will argue that the most common meaning assigned to it, namely "bowl" (originally suggested by Rashi, and made popular by Luther) cannot be correct. Instead, the word most probably refers to the "branchwork" of the menorah, that is, the upper portion consisting of the curved branches which support the lamps.


“Claudicasse Populum Judaeorum”: Disability and Religious Identity in Augustine of Hippo
Program Unit: Healthcare and Disability in the Ancient World
Colin B. Womack, Florida State University

Near the close of the fourth century Ambrose of Milan mentions a novel interpretation of the account of Jacob’s struggle with an angel found in Genesis 32. The interpretation of this passage, known in the west since at least the time of Novatian, following typical patristic exegesis understood the angel to be the Word, the second person of the Trinity and understood Jacob to be Jewish people. The struggle and apparent victory of Jacob, then, was understood to foreshadow the passion of Christ. The interpretation noted by Ambrose, however, focuses entirely on the person of Jacob, specifically on the physical disability inflicted upon him by the angel. Jacob is described as claudus et benedictus–lame and blessed. Jacob’s lame leg, his curse, prefigures the rejection of Jesus by the vast majority of Jacob’s progeny, the people of Israel. Jacob’s whole leg represents both Jesus himself and those Jews who do except Jesus. This line of interpretation is developed in at least four different works of Augustine of Hippo. While Augustine specifically associates claudus with the rejection of Jesus by the Jewish people, he associates it more generally with infidelis. I will attempt to reconstruct the origin and development of Augustine’s interpretation, and I will analyze Augustine’s hermeneutic as it develops, focusing primarily on the way in which Augustine constructs Jacob’s body as a locus of religious identity. I will examine the association of a specific acquired disability with unfaithfulness in light of Claude Levi Straus’ observation that bodily modification affects and communicates specific information about an individuals social position.


The Importance of a Pneumatic Hermeneutic and Scholarly Analysis of the Role of the Holy Spirit in Biblical Scholarship
Program Unit: Institute for Biblical Research
Archie T. Wright, Regent University

The Importance of a Pneumatic Hermeneutic and Scholarly Analysis of the Role of the Holy Spirit in Biblical Scholarship


Analogy and Metaphor in Biblical and Near Eastern Ritual
Program Unit: Metaphor Theory and the Hebrew Bible
David P. Wright, Brandeis University

This paper builds on the author’s earlier study of analogy in biblical and Near Eastern ritual (OBO 129, pp. 473–506; JBL 113 [1994]: 385–404; RB 103 [1996]: 213–236). Using examples of full analogy in Hittite incantations as a gateway to analysis, this study identified a range of forms and degrees of explicitness in analogy throughout ritual practice. These include full analogical expressions (e.g., “Just as this cow is fertile, in the same way may the offerer be fertile!”), simile (“May enemies be like chaff before the wind!”), metaphor (“Evil will hunt down the violent man”), and even analogy implied in ritual performances (such as ablutions, where mundane washing is used to rectify non-mundane dirt). These various forms entail, conceptually if not explicitly, a “theme” (reference to the immediate condition that obtains or is to be ritually treated) and a “phoros” (reference to an external phenomenon that is applied to describe or treat the condition in the theme). Throughout ritual, the use of analogy is a means of concretizing expression and thus, psychologically at least, removing a threat or achieving blessing. This paper brings the analysis of ritual analogy into dialogue with more recent studies of metaphor as well as contributes to the debate about “meaning” in ritual activity.


The Priestly Center of the Sons of Levi: Temple Familial Patronage Differentiation in the Book of Chronicles
Program Unit: Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah
John W. Wright, Point Loma Nazarene University

Scholars have constructed the history of the relationship between the priests and Levites through source critical differentiation in the lists of priests and Levites in Chronicles, especially 1 Chron 6:1-66 and 23:1-24:20. I will show the formal and literary unity of these passages in order to argue that the priests genealogically stand at the center of the Levitical family. All priests are Levites, but not all Levites are priests. These intra-familial distinctions provide different levels of access to the Temple sacrificial economy in the narrative world of Chronicles. The sons of Levi from the family of Aaron have direct access to the distribution of prepared goods in the Temple; the non-Aaronide sons of Levi provide supportive work and indirect access to the goods prepared in the Temple. A consistent relationship between functions and genealogical relations within the sons of Levi households appears throughout the narrative world of Chronicles.


Mary at the Tomb from the Point of View of "Point of View": A Perspective-Critical Look at "The Miracle Maker" and "The Gospel of John"
Program Unit: Bible and Film
Gary Yamasaki, Columbia Bible College

While "point of view" ("POV") is best known as a literary concept, it is just as much an issue in the crafting of films as it is in the crafting of written narratives, involving a number of filmmaking techniques that control whether the audience experiences the action subjectively through the POV of a character, or objectively through the POV of an uninvolved observer. This paper will examine the techniques in play in the depictions of Mary at the tomb (John 20:11-17) in two Jesus films: "The Miracle Maker" (1999) and "The Gospel of John" (2003). Specifically, it will borrow some analytical tools from Perspective Criticism—a new methodology designed to analyze the POV crafting in biblical narratives—and focus in on three planes on which POV functions: the spatial (the actual physical positioning of the cameras), the psychological (the degree to which the cameras capture the emotional lives of the characters), and the informational (the degree to which the audience's information database converges with, or diverges from, that of each character). First, a determination will be made on how successful each of the films has been in maintaining a consistent POV strategy across these three planes in providing the audience with either a subjective experience of the action through the POV of a particular character or an objective experience of all characters involved, or whether POV techniques on the various planes work at cross purposes, some promoting a subjective experience and others an objective experience. In addition, an examination will be undertaken to determine to what degree the POV crafting of each of these films adheres to the POV crafting in the text of John 20:11-17. Finally, an assessment will be made of the interpretive significance of the POV strategies utilized by the two films.


Biblical Christology from the Majority World: Beyond Chalcedon?
Program Unit: Institute for Biblical Research
K.K. Yeo, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary

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Contours of Desire in Israelite Wisdom Literature
Program Unit: Bible and Emotion
Christine Roy Yoder, Columbia Theological Seminary

In a manner unparalleled in the ancient Near East, the Israelite sages employ language about desire to praise and commend wisdom and to caution against misplaced impulses that harm the self and community. This paper considers how the sages speak about desire and to what ends. How is the language about desire in wisdom organized? Where does it come from? What are its primary tropes? Is it principally erotic or centered around something different? What do its metaphors suggest about the nature of wisdom, the search for it, and the relationship between desire and knowledge? What is to be desired and what is not? And how does the language contribute to wisdom’s aim to educate and form moral persons and communities? I contend that the ancient sages cultivate and discipline desire as a vital means by which the moral self maps the world and maps oneself in it.


Speaking of Slavery: Reading 1 Corinthians 7:17–24 with Epictetus
Program Unit: Intertextuality in the New Testament
Joshua Yoder, University of Notre Dame

This paper demonstrates that a number of features of 1 Corinthians 7:17-24, such as the term “calling” (KLHSIS) and the expressions “MH SOI MELETO,” “??LL?? ?R?SAI” and “MH GINESTHE DOULOI ANTHROPON,” are best understood in relation to the discourse of first century Stoic philosophy, especially as reflected in the teaching of Epictetus, a student of Paul’s contemporary Musonius Rufus. Paul adapted familiar philosophical conventions for his meditation on responding to different life circumstances in order to make his argument sound comprehensible and reasonable to first century residents of Corinth. The Stoic framework Paul employed did not commend passivity; rather, it articulated a complex interplay of accommodation and resistance – accommodation to those circumstances over which one has no control, but resistance to what is morally degrading. It is in this context that Paul’s seemingly contradictory admonitions not to be concerned if one is a slave and not to be “slaves of men” must be understood.


Ezekiel 29:3 and Its Ancient Near Eastern Context
Program Unit: Assyriology and the Bible
Tyler R. Yoder, The Ohio State University

The chief aim of this essay is to posit a well-known Mesopotamian royal and divine epithet, ušumgallu “great dragon,” as the source behind Ezekiel’s enigmatic description of Pharaoh in 29:3, hattanni¯n hagga¯dôl, “the great dragon.” This relationship sheds new light and meaning on an old problem: why does Ezekiel refer to the Egyptian overlord as a dragon? I will begin with a survey of the titular use of such Sumerian and Akkadian expressions. This will set the stage for reconsidering the allusion in Ezekiel 29:3. While the nature of tanni¯n (literal vs. mythological) arrests the attention of many, the meaning and derivation of this usage has elicited little comment. Many scholars have sought Egyptian parallels to elements in Ezekiel’s oracle against Egypt (chs. 29-32), but the prophet’s historical context, 6th century Mesopotamia, proffers its own salient, comparative data. Though one prominent view interprets the expression hattanni¯n hagga¯dôl as a pejorative, the cognate evidence argues for the converse by rooting it in an enduring tradition of regal titles. An Israelite prophet turned Babylonian resident alien, drew upon a common Mesopotamian epithet to be used in his own royal address, depicting an even more familiar object: Pharaoh. Replicating Akkadian ušumgallu “great dragon” (Sumerian UŠUM.GAL) as efficiently as possible and drawing upon Israelite cosmological history (viz. Gen. 1:21), he feigned including Pharaoh within a venerable, long line of Mesopotamian kings and deities to receive this title. Instead, and as is characteristic of Ezekiel’s rhetoric, he upended the putative associations of the “great dragon,” thereby exposing its true subordinate position under the hegemony of YHWH.


Jeremiah 9:24–25: Imagined Contradiction as Rhetorical Strategy
Program Unit: Israelite Prophetic Literature
Shamir Yona, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Both Leviticus 26:41 and Deuteronomy (10:16; 30:6) appear to substitute circumcision of the heart for circumcision of the flesh. Jeremiah and Ezekiel both advocate circumcision of the flesh and circumcision of the heart (there understood as the seat of human perception, emotional sensitivity, and cognition). In a poetic tour de force, which is characteristic of the Book of Jeremiah, Jer 9:24-25 combines both the established fact that Israel and many other peoples of the ancient Middle East practiced circumcision of the flesh and the consensus of Deuteronomy and the Holiness Code that circumcision of the flesh is not sufficient. Granted that Ezek 44:7 and 44:9, also combining the traditions of both P and D, asks the people of Judah to observe both circumcision of the flesh and circumcision of the heart, Jeremiah, on the other hand, fulfilling the prophetic call to be a prophet unto the nations, speaks a universal message addressed not only to Judah and Israel but also to all nations—circumcised in flesh or not—to adopt both circumcision of the flesh and circumcision of the heart. While Ezekiel rather characteristically speaks in prose, the Book of Jeremiah—which is known to combine both poetry and prose—adopts a poetic medium to present a particularly poignant sermon to both Judah/Israel and humanity at large, and as we shall demonstrate, the uniquely Jeremian strategy of combining form and content lend clarity to the Book of Jeremiah's message concerning circumcision. Central to our understanding of the Book of Jeremiah's method and message is the recognition of the apparent contradiction between v. 24 and v. 25 with reference to 'all the nations'. The paper will show that the brilliance of Jer 9:24-25 is found in two possible and not mutual exclusive solutions to the aforementioned contradiction.


"After These Things" and the Composition of Genesis
Program Unit: Pentateuch
Philip Y. Yoo, University of Oxford

The phrase "after these things" (and its slight variations) occurs six times in the Book of Genesis (15:1; 22:1, 20; 39:7, 40:1; 48:1). In every occurrence, this phrase appears to introduce a new narrative unit. Julius Wellhausen attributed this phrase to an Elohistic document and this assignment was accepted by some adherents of the source critical method. Other critics, however, did not readily accept this assignment for two main reasons. First, as illustrated by some of the highly dubious reconstructions among source critical practitioners, a strict assignment of this phrase to only one document raised serious methodological concerns. Second, coinciding with the steady rejection of E in pentateuchal criticism, scholars questioned the validity of an "Elohistic" introductory phrase. This paper will consider the arguments against the classical source critical assignment of "after these things" and propose another suggestion concerning the authorship of this phrase. What is revealed upon examination is that this introductory phrase is a "bridge" employed to address a perceived temporal gap when originally disparate narrative units were connected in the formation of the first book of the Pentateuch.


The Related Roles of the Bible on Robben Island (South Africa) and the Island of Patmos (now Patino): Imperial Sites of Both Banishment and Punishment
Program Unit: Islands, Islanders, and Scriptures
Gosnell Yorke, University of KwaZulu-Natal

Unlike the vulnerable 43-member Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) which have banded themselves together for mutual support and to strategize for their collective survival within the political context of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Robben Island and the island of Patmos (now Patino) can best be associated, perhaps, in terms of their use as imperial sites of both banishment and punishment. In the case of Patmos under the Romans, John, the banished prisoner and revelator, was inspired to use the encoded Biblical tradition, through the medium of Hellenistic Greek, the lingua franca, as a source and site of both revelation and resistance to the Imperium Romanum while in the case of Nelson Mandela and other banished prisoners on Robben Island, the Bible, translated in the vernacular, was used, during the imperial regime of the then apartheid South African Government, as a hermeneutical weapon to justify both subversion and silent resistance to oppression. In this presentation, a comparative and contrastive analysis will be made to demonstrate how the Biblical tradition, in two different locations, has played a surprisingly resistant anti-imperial role for those who found themselves on islands meant to serve as sites of both banishment and punishment.


Paul and the Prophetic Writings: Mythmaking with Sacred Books about Christ and Gentiles
Program Unit: Pauline Epistles
Stephen L. Young, Brown University

Though many publications continue to appear on Paul’s “use of Scripture,” most take for granted the basic practices in question: ideas of sacred books, the use of them by a religious expert, and so on. Drawing upon and participating in recent research approaching Paul as an ancient Mediterranean ritual specialist, this paper proposes to re-examine these basic aspects of Paul’s practices. Rather than starting with questions that presume categories such as “Judean scripture” and “use of Scripture,” I commence by exploring the ubiquity of religious practices and claims involving notions of sacred books in the ancient Mediterranean. People on the ground, so to speak, in Corinth, for example, would have been familiar with the notion of sacred books and their relevance for various divinatory or other religious practices. Different kinds of religious experts also populated the landscape. Parsing Paul and his practices from this vantage point allows us to redescribe his “use of Scripture” in non-theological terms and beyond standard questions of his Gentile audiences’ potential synagogue participation and thus familiarity with Judean “scripture.” We can explicate the significance of Paul’s making a show of using Judean sacred books in tandem with how he would have been recognizable to different people in this world: as a religious expert who brokers access to the power and blessings of the Judean god – a notionally foreign, ancient, exotic, and Eastern deity – to Gentiles. He offers intelligible religious services such as moral progress and essence transformation, an ideal afterlife, and even membership in a cosmologically-charged association in the present life. His practice of using Judean sacred books takes its place within this (re)description of Paul. His audiences could recognize Paul as such a self-styled Judean religious expert who represents the efficacy and mythic underpinnings of his religious services as matters taught and prophesied in the sacred books of the Judeans, exactly where people would expect lore and knowledge of Paul’s exotic deity (the Judean god) to reside. He markets his services through propounding myths about Christ, Judeans, Judean ancestral figures like Abraham, Gentiles, pneuma, new possibilities for ethnic adherence, and so on – myths that he explicitly interprets and expounds from Judean sacred books. At places he further represents the manner of his engagement with Judean sacred books as that of a skilled or “inspired” reader who interprets such previously hidden eschatological and soteric mysteries from Judean sacred books for Gentiles – thus adopting the self-presentation of other kinds of philosophical experts who plumb sacred books for their esoteric cosmological, moral-psychological, and eschatological wisdom. I hope to demonstrate the plausibility of this analysis of Paul and Judean sacred books through both examining relevant data about sacred books in the Hellenistic and Roman-periods of the ancient Mediterranean and exploring how Paul’s engagement with Judean sacred books in his letters illustrates the productivity of this approach.


A Ridiculous God: Job Uses Psalm 8:5 to Respond to Eliphaz
Program Unit: Biblical Hebrew Poetry
Charles Yu, University of Wisconsin-Madison

The allusion to Psalm 8:5 [4] in Job 7:17 is widely recognized. It is generally interpreted as Job’s parodic or ironic expression of his distaste for God’s “concern” for humanity. This paper explores a previously neglected avenue of reading—Job’s allusion of Psalm 8:5 serves as a rhetorical response to Eliphaz’s prior speech. We follow Clines in summarizing Eliphaz’s speech (Job 4–5) as a theodicy for Job’s suffering that is founded on an ethically stringent God (Job 4.17) and human insignificance (4:19–21). In such a world according to Eliphaz, human suffering is simply the fate of mankind, as these insubstantial beings are incapable of satisfying God’s rigid standards. In Job 7:1–21, Job, while not attempting a point-by-point rebuttal, molds his critique into performance art, adopting the persona of one who lives in a world that is organized along the principles espoused in Eliphaz’s speech and performing an apostrophe; in so doing, this persona, by assuming what Eliphaz argues, demonstrates via reductio ad absurdum the incoherence and absurdity of living in such a world. The speech strikes at the foundation of Eliphaz’s argument by pointing out how ridiculous it is for God to pay close attention to the insignificant sins of insignificant humans (7:17–21). Within this context, the rhetorical function of Job’s allusion to Psalm 8:5 requires re-analysis. First, the allusion to Psalm 8 in its entirety challenges Eliphaz’s knowledge of traditional wisdom as Psalm 8’s exaltation of humanity in God’s sight (Ps 8.5–7 [4–6]) contradicts Eliphaz’s low view of humanity. Second, by introducing Psalm 8:5 into the mouth of a persona who lives in the world according to Eliphaz, Job creates a collision between the two worldviews, turning God’s attention, worthy of joyous exclamation in Psalm 8, into a burden and the exalter of humanity into the “man-watcher” who stares at Job to make certain that Job disposes his spit properly. Finally, the overall effect is to make clear that Eliphaz’s combination of the retributive principle with an exacting deity and a low view of human status turns out to have a ridiculous god at the center of it.


Jewish Iconoclasm in Late Antiquity: The Faces of Effacement
Program Unit: Art and Religions of Antiquity
Noa Yuval-Hacham, Schechter Institute for Jewish Studies, Jerusalem

The ancient synagogues erected in the Land of Israel during the Late Roman and the Byzantine periods represent a prolific and diverse chapter in the annals of Jewish art. Careful consideration of the manifold works of art adorning these synagogues reveals among other things phenomena of destruction and effacement of zoomorphic and anthropomorphic figures. The effacement of images is manifest in over 20 synagogue sites, in the sculptural medium as well as in the mosaic carpets. The first question that arises in the wake of the exposure of such an enigmatic phenomenon is the identity of the effacers. The selective and meticulous character of the effacement is the central factor in attributing agency to Jewish groups who adhered to a strict conception regarding figurative art. In this lecture I will focus additionally on the question of dating the iconoclastic activity and examine the various attestations that shed light on this question. Through a collection of evidence from archaeological and literary sources, from the Jewish but also Christian and Muslim worlds, I will propose reconstructing two waves of iconoclastic outbursts. One occurred towards the close of the 6th century or the start of the 7th century. The second erupted with greater force during the 8th century and for good reason: the iconoclasts benefited from a tail wind generated by Christian iconoclastic groups active in churches during this period, and also from the Islamic anti-figurative conception cultivated by the regime.


Jeremiah and "I" / "We" and Jeremiah: The Poetics of Changing Speakers in the Book of Jeremiah as a Whole
Program Unit: Biblical Hebrew Poetry
Naama Zahavi-Ely, College of William and Mary

Almost ten years ago, I set out to investigate the literary device of changing speakers in Biblical Hebrew poetry, and chose to focus on the poetry in the book of Jeremiah. I have come to realize that speakers’ identity, both clear and ambiguous, plays a major role as a literary device in creating some of the important effects of the book of Jeremiah. In previous presentations I have shown how speakers’ identity functions in small sections of the text; this time I would like to explore the book as a whole, with all its genres, and the manner in which changing speakers’ identities contribute to specific effects in it. The book expresses and molds the response of the community, and of the individual member of the community, to the fall of Jerusalem. It wrestles with the Babylonian destruction from three basic points of view: God the destroyer, the suffering community, and the individual who witnesses the destruction and yet holds on to a vision of hope. I would like to outline five intertwined major elements or trajectories in the book and the contribution of speakers’ identity to them: 1. Identifying the audience of the book as the people who went through the destruction. 2. Persuading the audience that God, their destroyer, loves them and is pained at their pain. 3. Modeling the image of the faithful individual within the community: one who suffers from the people’s misdeeds, yet is unable to stop them. 4. Exploring the extent to which the faithful individual can speak for the community and mold its behavior. 5. Persuading the audience that Jeremiah is a true prophet, despite his inability to avert the destruction, and that his vision of hope in the book is a true and valid prophecy, unlike the false prophecies of others.


Qumran Evidence for the Development of the Book of Numbers
Program Unit: Transmission of Traditions in the Second Temple Period
Molly Zahn, University of Kansas

The evidence for the Book of Numbers at Qumran provides fertile ground for considering the issue of textual growth. On the one hand, the Qumran manuscript 4QNum-b represents a text-type very similar to that found in the Samaritan Pentateuch (SP). As such (along with 4QpaleoExod-m), it demonstrates that this “Samaritan” text-type is not Samaritan at all but in fact circulated more broadly in Second Temple Judea. Yet 4QNum-b does not match SP in all its particulars: it sometimes differs from the Masoretic Text (MT) in cases where SP does not, and sometimes follows MT where SP differs. On the other hand, the manuscript 4QReworked Pentateuch C (4Q365) preserves two major unique readings in the text of Numbers. The manuscripts thus witness to a variety of forms of the book, which apparently circulated more or less simultaneously. In this paper, I will use examples from 4QNum-b and 4QRP C to reflect on the ways scriptural texts were transformed in the process of their transmission. In particular, I will consider the question of what light might be shed by the various versions of Numbers extant at Qumran on earlier stages in the literary history of the book and on the composition and redaction of scriptural books in general.


"Displaced Pseudepigraphy" in the Sibylline Oracles: Christian and Jewish Appropriation of a Pagan Mouthpiece
Program Unit: Function of Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal Writings in Early Judaism and Early Christianity
Brigidda Bell, University of Toronto

'The Sibylline Oracles' are collections of oracular texts composed by Jews, Christians and pagans alike, in different regions of the Mediterranean and in different periods of antiquity, but attributed to the common figure of the Sibyl, thus complicating the commonly drawn picture of pseudepigraphic practices in the ancient world. Figures such as Moses, Enoch, Ezra and Paul are commonly appropriated pseudepigraphically, to the extent that we may talk about 'Mosaic discourse' and 'the pseudo-Pauline corpus.' Part of the idealization of these particular individuals as mouthpieces of pseudepigraphic writings is the status that their written traditions have maintained; these are figures whose ‘writings’ have become canon. This tendency to ascribe pseudepigraphic writings to 'canonized' figures suggests that it was common and, to a certain degree, acceptable, to write in the name of a forefather of one’s canonical tradition so as to further their authoritative theology, to adapt their thinking to the present, or to honour their memory for the future, among other things. The occurrence of Jewish and Christian Sibylline pseudepigrapha, however, complicates taxonomies that implicitly understand pseudepigraphers to locate their mouthpieces exclusively within their own authoritative traditions of writing. What were the underlying conceptions of writing and authorship that would incentivize a Christian or Jew to step outside of their own canon to write under the name of another authoritative, written tradition’s mouthpiece? This paper explores this idea of ‘displaced pseudepigraphy’ with recourse to the Jewish and Christian Sibylline collected oracles and interpolations, assessing conceptions of authorship and writing present in the ancient Mediterranean world.


Josephus and the Augustan Cohort of Acts 27
Program Unit: Formation of Luke and Acts
Christopher B. Zeichmann, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto

It has become increasingly common for scholars to suggest that Luke–Acts was literarily dependent on the corpus of Josephus and this paper will contribute to that discussion by examining the evidence concerning the Augustan Cohort (speires Sebastes) of Acts 27. While the identity of this unit had long been a topic of scholarly debate, commentators since the 1980s have concluded that it is a historically plausible reference to an auxiliary unit named cohors I Augusta, marshalling epigraphic data in support. This paper will challenge this line of interpretation by first challenging the interpretation of the epigraphic data and second by showing that the author of Acts was dependent upon the work of Flavius Josephus at this juncture. That is, the author of Acts seems to have misunderstood Josephus’ references to the Sebastene auxiliary cohorts in Judaea (e.g., A.J. 20.6.1; B.J. 2.3.4; 2.4.2; 2.12.5) as technical references to an “Augustan Cohort.”


The Johannine Jesus in Extra-Canonical Gospels from the Second Century
Program Unit: John, Jesus, and History
Lorne Zelyck, University of Cambridge

The identity and role of Jesus in multiple extra-canonical gospels from the second century may be dependent on his portrayal in the Fourth Gospel. The placement of Jesus on the seat of judgment in Gospel of Peter may be an interpretation of John 19:13 that intends to depict Jesus as the king. The Unknown Gospel (P.Eg.2 + P.Köln.255) presents Jesus as the one foretold by Moses (John 5:39-47), who has come from and is one with the Father (John 3:2; 10:30-31). Jesus is also the peace-giver who imparts his peace to the distressed disciples in Sophia Jesus Christ and Gospel of Mary (John 14:27). The introduction of Gospel of Thomas may be an adaptation of John 8:51-52, which emphasizes the soteriological importance of Jesus’ words. This same theme also appears in a quotation of John 8:32 in Gospel of Philip, where these words are interpreted as a call to moral purity. In these instances, it appears that the Jesus remembered in these extra-canonical gospels, was (at least partially) based on the Johannine Jesus of the Fourth Gospel. Methodological issues surrounding the reception of the Fourth Gospel will be addressed throughout the paper, and other extra-canonical gospels from the second century that have minimal parallels with the Fourth Gospel (P.Oxy. 840; Gospel of Judas; Dialogue of the Savior) will be briefly mentioned.


P.Oxy. 840 and Israelite Synagogues
Program Unit: Christian Apocrypha
Lorne Zelyck, University of Cambridge

The majority of scholars have evaluated the historical veracity of P.Oxy. 840 within the framework of first-century CE Judaism and the context of the Herodian temple. This paper explores the similarities between this fragment and Israelite (Jewish and Samaritan) synagogues in the Roman-Byzantine period: Jewish synagogues are already identified as temples in the first century CE; a Samaritan high-priest named Levi may have reigned in the latter half of the second century CE; there is archaeological evidence for water installations and miqva’ot adjacent to Jewish and Samaritan synagogues from the first through fourth century CE; Jews and Samaritans may have worn white garments in the synagogue during the third century CE; two Jewish and two Samaritan synagogues from the third and fourth centuries CE contain depictions of the holy vessels with a curtain pulled back to reveal the holy ark within a temple. Although the scarcity of archeological and literary evidence undermines the certainty of any conclusion, P.Oxy. 840 may reflect a contemporaneous debate in the second through fourth centuries CE about the efficacy of Christian baptism performed in the church and Israelite ablutions performed in the synagogue.


The Deliberate Numerical Discrepancy of Generation in the Genealogy of Matthew
Program Unit: Matthew
Simona Zeng, Trinity International University

There is a general neglect of the numerical ‘discrepancy’ between the actual totals of generations (fourteen, fourteen, and thirteen) recorded in Matthew 1:12-16 and the stated totals (fourteen, fourteen, and fourteen) in 1:17 in scholarship. Fortunately, some commentators paid attention to this 'discrepancy'. After surveying their approaches, this paper argues that the synoptic Gospels derive from the synoptic texts of the OT. Consequently, Matthew was profoundly influenced by Chronicles. Thus, the obvious numerical ‘discrepancy’ is deliberately devised by the Matthean author, just as the Chronicler uses the numerical discrepancy to highlight his emphasis in the genealogies. This argument will be defended by displaying the similarities between Chronicles and Matthew: (1) Matthew follows the Chronicler to put the genealogy at the beginning of the whole book as an introduction to convey the significant Matthean messages; (2) Matthew follows the Chronicler to combine the kingship and priesthood tightly; (3) Matthew follows the Chronicler to mention ‘the sons of Israel’ and ‘all Israel’ in the genealogy; (4) Matthew follows the Chronicler to mention Gentiles in the genealogy; (5) Matthew follows the Chronicler to exercise retribution theology; (6) Matthew follows the Chronicler to employ similar intensification in his chiastic genealogical structure; (7) Matthew follows the Chronicler to make connection between Judah and David; (8) Matthew’s omission of several kings is in line with the Chronicler’s ideology of cultic-oriented kingship; (9) Matthew echoes the Chronicler’s view that Judah’s deportation to Babylon does not invalidate Yahweh’s promise for the Davidic kingdom. Thus, Matthew’s genealogy is devised by inserting breaks to disrupt the perfect rhythm based on the pattern and concept of Chronicles in order to convey the unique Matthean message and function as an introduction to the whole book just as Chronicles does. The deliberate numerical discrepancy explicitly highlights that Jesus Christ is the promised king.


The Prayer, the Enemy, and the Witch
Program Unit: Hebrew Bible, History, and Archaeology
Anna Zernecke, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

In the Psalms of individual lament, the praying person frequently laments the evil actions of hostile enemies. These evil actions have been identified as witchcraft by several authors, a claim which has been much discussed. The debate about the enemies and the character of their actions has heavily drawn on Mesopotamian texts. The corpus of Akkadian ritual texts dealing with sorcery is continually growing and as a result permits a more thorough understanding of the concepts of witchcraft and sorcery in ancient Mesopotamia. The terminology in biblical texts is mostly ambiguous, but some passages cognate to the Akkadian terminology have been overlooked so far. The paper seeks an evaluation of the differences and analogies between the enemies in sample texts of both cultures. It thereby contributes to the discussion of the complex relation between religion and magic in matters of prayer and ritual.


El and Elyan in the Sfire Inscription
Program Unit: Ugaritic Studies and Northwest Semitic Epigraphy
Anna Zernecke, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

The divine title Elyon is used only 31 times in the Hebrew Bible, and 4 times in Aramaic in Daniel. In later Hebrew and Aramaic literature, in the Dead Sea Scrolls and especially in Ben Sira it is much more frequent. Extrabiblical references from pre-Qumran texts are rare. One of the most important is the mentioning of El and Elyan in the god-list in the Aramaic treaty inscription from Sfire. The combination ?l w?lyn seems to be a parallel to El Elyon in Gen 14, longtimes believed to be the key to all biblical references to Elyon. The paper asks for the meaning of ?l w?lyn in the context of the god-list of the Sfire treaty. Subsequently, the significance of the results for the references to Elyon in biblical texts is discussed.


Torah and Non-Rabbinic Judaism
Program Unit: Paul within Judaism
Karin Hedner Zetterholm, Pennsylvania State University

To determine the level of Paul’s Torah observance one must address two main issues: a) what it means to be Torah observant in general (which includes defining the ideology and outlook of the interpreter), and b) what it meant to be a Torah observant Jew in the first century (which includes analysis of their location and of the variety of Jews and Jewish groups). This paper will deal with the second question. Using rabbinic sources to shed light on first-century Judaism has its limitations, not only because they are later but also because rabbinic Judaism seems to have developed, at least in part, in conversation with and in response to other forms of Judaism, among them Jesus-oriented non-rabbinic Jewish groups. Thus rabbinic literature cannot automatically be trusted as evidence of first-century Jewish practices, and especially not concerning such a contested issue as Torah observance. In this paper I will investigate Torah observance, including oral Torah, and the meaning of the concept “Torah” generally, from first-century Jewish sources. This will be supplemented by consulting later rabbinic and non-rabbinic sources (such as the Didascalia Apostolorum and the Pseudo-Clementines) to fill out the picture.


Adam as Alpha Male: Genesis 1–3, Christian Domestic Discipline, and the Erotics of Wife Spanking
Program Unit: Bible and Popular Culture
Valarie H. Ziegler, DePauw University

A long line of Christian writers since Milton have found the Adam and Eve story redolent with intense sexual love. Numerous Evangelicals such as Joshua Harris, Elisabeth Elliot, and Albert Mohler have also found in Genesis 1-3 a mandate for wives to submit to their husbands. A grassroots movement popularized by Kentucky homemaker Leah Kelley has combined these two ideas (marital sexual ecstasy and wifely submission) to create Christian Domestic Discipline, a faith perspective that not only encourages husbands to spank their wives regularly but has also spawned a new literary genre: Christian erotic spanking fiction. Numerous online groups are practicing CDD and writing novels about it. Though these Christians ground their understanding of gender relations in the story of Adam and Eve, it is also clear that Tarzan and Petruchio have infiltrated Eden. As Leah Kelley says, “Folks out there LOVE to read stories about dominant men and the women they tame.” In the CDD world, taming invariably involves spanking—and lots of it. Which is fortunate, since women, in this world, are aroused by alpha-males exercising their God-given mandate to discipline them, just as men are excited by women submitting to male authority. My paper will lay out the exegetical premises undergirding CDD, describe the complicated regime of corporal punishment it entails, assess the role of romantic spanking fiction for CDD women, and examine internet communities debating and practicing CDD. Finally, I will also argue that CDD is a logical extension of the valorization of romance and wifely submission typical of Evangelical discussions of biblical manhood and womanhood.


What Makes a Royal Messianic Claimant? The Preliminary 'Messianic Question'
Program Unit: Historical Jesus
Michael Zolondek, University of Edinburgh

The question of whether Jesus was a royal messianic claimant continues to be significant for historical Jesus research. However, it appears that a significant preliminary question has not been adequately addressed, namely, What is it that makes someone a royal messianic claimant? The answer to this question must involve more than simply laying out messianic expectations around the time of Jesus. This paper offers a detailed answer to this preliminary question by analyzing numerous biblical and Second Temple Jewish texts, royal messianic claimants and their movements, and the Gospels themselves. The findings presented in this paper are significant for historical Jesus research in at least four ways. Firstly, the texts and movements discussed here indicate that a person’s reputation among others, particularly those close to him, played a significant role in that person becoming a messianic claimant. Therefore, as the findings of Bruce Malina and others suggest, Jesus’ reputation should play a far more significant role than it has in discussions concerning whether he was a royal messianic claimant. Secondly, one finds that there is little indication that a royal messianic claimant was expected to, or did, in fact, make a verbal claim. This suggests that the question of whether Jesus verbally claimed or affirmed a royal messianic status for himself should play a far less significant role than it has in discussions concerning whether he was a royal messianic claimant. Thirdly, it is not simply a person’s words and deeds that make him a royal messianic claimant. Rather, it was the interplay between the person’s words and deeds and others’ perception of him that determined his royal messianic status. Consequently, scholars who argue that Jesus was a royal messianic claimant on the basis of his ministry being ‘performatively messianic’ have really only argued half the case. Fourthly, and finally, a royal messianic figure did not proclaim himself, but proclaimed and sought to enact the will of God for Israel, which indicates that the often repeated observation that Jesus did not proclaim himself, but God, is not nearly as significant as some have suggested. Ultimately, I hope that the findings presented in this paper will help refocus the debate concerning the question of whether Jesus was a royal messianic claimant.


Mosaic Torah as Encyclical Paideia: Reading Paul’s Allegory of Hagar and Sarah in Light of Philo of Alexandria’s
Program Unit: Wisdom and Apocalypticism
Jason M. Zurawski, University of Michigan

Philo’s allegorical reading of Genesis’ Hagar, Sarah, and Abraham narrative deals with the advantages, and possible disadvantages, of a Greek education. In his reading, Hagar represents encyclical paideia, or what we might call liberal arts, subjects pertaining to a specifically Greek education such as grammar, rhetoric, or music. For Philo, this education (i.e. Hagar) was an absolutely essential step for Abraham in the attainment of his true desire, virtue or wisdom (i.e. Sarah), the former preparing him for the latter. While for Philo, Greek paideia was an often necessary means to attaining wisdom, there were dangers involved, namely becoming too devoted to the maidservant to the detriment of the mistress. Sarah banished Hagar because once Abraham obtained wisdom, he no longer had need for the encyclical studies. Paul’s reading of the narrative, on the surface, seems completely unrelated, and scholars, not surprisingly, have almost universally rejected any connection between the two. While I do not suggest that Paul was necessarily reading Philo, I do believe there is good reason for attempting to understand Paul’s exegesis in light of Philo’s. Two popular topics of conversation among Jews in the Diaspora were, one, Mosaic Law as a means to obtaining wisdom, and two, Greek paideia as a more cautious means to wisdom. Paul’s reading, then, becomes part of this conversation, yet with some fairly drastic innovation due precisely to his new understanding of wisdom, fully available now only as or through Christ. Paul conflates the two paths to wisdom, Mosaic Torah and Greek paideia, the Torah itself becoming Hagar, Philo’s encyclical studies. It has a definite purpose, but once the goal of wisdom is reached, it is no longer needed. Paul, therefore, warns the Galatians of the dangers of returning to the Mosaic Law, as pedagogue and paideia, once having attained true wisdom via Christ. This reading of the allegory shows a consistency in Paul’s argumentation in the letter which has been lost due to the more typical interpretations of the allegory.


Creation—Inverted: The Impact of the Bible on Bela Tarrs "The Turin Horse“ (2011)
Program Unit: Bible and Film
Reinhold Zwick, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster

The Hungarian director Bela Tarr (born 1955) is notorious for his radical cinematography that explores the borders of the moving image by slowing down the speed of the narration to a minimum, in order to charge the images with density and deepness. Surprisingly to many, but very well-deserved his latest and – as Tarr proclaimes – for all times last movie „The Turin Horse“ in 2011 won the „Silver Bear“ for best directing at the Berlin Film Festival. The film takes its starting point at the famous episode in which German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in January 3rd 1889 in a street in Turin embraced a horse, that was severly beaten by his coachman. After embracing the horse Nietzsche became dement and lived for his last ten years under the care of his mother and sister. Tarr retells this story in an insert in the beginning of the movie, ending with the notion that he does not want to talk about Nietzsche but about the horse. With only twenty-eight shots in 146 minutes of running time Tarrs fictional meditation on the horse, the old coachman and his daughter living in a deserted, windy steppe turns out as a tremendous intensive reversal of the biblical story of creation as told in the Book of Genesis, combined with allusions to Old Testament prophecy and apocalyptic imagery. Thus „The Turin Horse“ becomes a masterpiece in reworking biblical traditions in new, unexpected and stupendous ways, a movie waiting for viewers who open themselves for a seemingly absolute ascetic, but in truth very rich visuality and ingenious sculpturing of time.

 
 


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