The world’s finest collection of early Christian sarcophagi is in the Museo Pio Cristiano, inside the Vatican Museums complex. This guided tour will introduce participants to this collection first hand, focusing on the development of the vocabulary (symbolic and biblical scenes) and syntax (design and iconography) of these manifestations of third- and fourth-century art and faith. For a preview of some of the sarcophagi, go to this site. (For the best virtual tour: Click on the numeral 1 [page 1, at the bottom left] first, then on first photo [the "Via Saleria"] to initiate the identification of individual scenes in automatically translated English, then click on next to continue.)

Early Kassite history, that of the sixteenth and fifteenth centuries BCE is still shrouded in obscurity, due to the lack of clear and trustworthy contemporary sources. The reconstruction of its chronology and political history heavily relies on later evidence from kinglists and chronicles. This dearth of material for the early Kassite period has rightfully led to labelling it the "Dark Ages" of Babylonian history. A tablet in the private collection of Shlomo Moussaieff contains an inscription by Kaštiliaš, son of Burnaburiaš, descendant/grandson (dumu dumu) of Agum. It recounts the king's digging of the Sumundar Canal in order to bring water to Nippur. Although hard to establish beyond doubt, the inscription does not appear to be a late copy. The present paper aims to identify the Kaštiliaš mentioned in the new inscription, and to evaluate the implications of this identification for early Kassite history.

There have been number of scholars who have attempted to determine the type of language used by Luke in the writing of his Gospel and Acts, with a number suggesting that there might be parallels with the Atticism movement. This article begins with an in-depth analysis of the nature of Atticism and its affect on the literary world particularly in the second century AD. Following this, the perspectives of Albert Wifstrand and Loveday Alexander will be evaluated which confirm that the label of “Atticism” and attempting to find its literary features within Luke-Acts is anachronistic and should be discussed in terms of “classicisms”. In light of this, Alexander has attempted to view Luke-Acts through the concepts of dialect and register, which is a positive step for understanding the motivations for language choice. This article pushes Alexander’s linguistic understanding and attempts to refine it by further developing the linguistic idea of register and including the concept of genre as a cultural construct that influences the choice of register, which in turn dictates the selection of dialect within a piece of writing.

The Kuntillet Ajrud Hebrew inscriptions of ca. 800 BCE, has much to contribute to many aspects of ancient Israel. Now that our study of the Kuntillet Ajrud inscriptions is completed, and will be soon published, it is a proper time to bring to the public the results of our study. It became quite clear that all the inscriptions were written in Hebrew, although in two different scripts: Hebrew and Phoenician. The inscriptions in Hebrew script were written in the northern dialect, as spoken and written by the people inhabiting the kingdom of Israel, but those in Phoenician script represent the Judean dialect. The fluency of the writing, the style and fixed epistolary formulas and blessings, and the high quality of the poetic texts, in such a small peripheral site like Kuntillet Ajrud, testify to the level of literacy in Israel and Judah in ca. 800 BCE. As to religion, it seems that the people who composed the texts, whether from Israel or from Judah, shared a common religion, and adhered to the worship of YHWH. Onomastics, as well as the blessing formulas and the poetic texts allude to the monotheistic tendency of the composers of the texts. As expected, special treatment is dedicated to the place of the asherah in the Kuntillet Ajrud inscriptions, as well as in the inscriptions from Makkedah (Khirbet el Qom), in the light of biblical texts.

kuriakon deipnon is a Hapaxlegomena of extraordinary significance for New Testament studies. Scholars usually affrim the kuriakon deipnon as the Eucharist in 1Corinthians 11. This paper will show that kuriakon deipnon is not to be understood as a terminus technicus for the Eucharist but rather for a ritual – the Hellenistic meal. The paper looks at the structure of Hellenistic meals to show that the ritual, described by Paul matches the overall social practice. M.Klinghardt, D.Smith and H.Taussig understand the ritual as a semi-private social act which allowed the participants to experiment with social variables so that they could put new social alternatives into practice. In 1Corinthians 11 Paul names this experimentation idion deipnon and criticizes their emphasis for it. Instead he is expecting the practice of the kuriakon deipnon. Knowing that the ritual expresses problematic social realities makes us understand that by giving the ritual another name Paul deals as much with the audience as he does with the given social reality of the audience. Paul expresses an individual and a social critique. The connection between utopian and experienced social realities is best described by discussing the role of the symposiarch, the leader of the meal, who had a limited role within the meal practice, because the course of the meal was defined by the common culture and was not directed through individual leadership. 1Corinthinas 11 is the only text which describes Jesus as the symposiarch. Paul is making his social critique: Jesus, not the Roman Emperor, is the leader of the ritual and his individual critique: it is the responsibility to the community to make the ritual work. The paper puts exegetical work into socio-historical practice and shows that the kuriakon deipnon became a Pauline topoi for the utopian Hellenistic meal.

During the past ten years a shift has occurred in the study of the weekly gatherings of the early Christians. The essence of this new approach can be formulated as follows: the local early Christian community, looked at sociologically, functioned as a voluntary religious association. In the Greco-Roman world of the first century CE, such associations were numerous. The main expression of all religious voluntary associations was a periodical gathering, which had a bipartite structure: a supper and a contiguous drinking party. This applies also to the early Christian congregations. Although the early Christian gathering had the same twofold structure, the emphasis in current scholarship has been predominantly on the study of the first part, that is, on the supper, also called the Eucharist. Less attention has been given to the study of the second part, which corresponds to the symposium of the Greco-Roman banquet. Before the paradigm shift in the nineties of the last century, much work was done on what was called “the service of the Word,” that is, the Christian gathering consisting of prayer, reading and preaching but without the Eucharist. Scholars, who studied the origins of the different components of the Christian gatherings (reading, preaching and singing), traced them back to Jewish gatherings in the synagogue. However, as appears from the descriptions of communal gatherings of early Christians, reading, preaching and singing were parts of the whole “package” that consisted of a supper plus a symposium. Consequently, the elements of the non-eucharistic part of the Christian gathering, such as reading, preaching and singing, have to be studied anew, and against the background of the Graeco-Roman banquet. This paper seeks to argue that the reading of Scripture, preaching and singing in the early Christian gatherings have their historical background in the reading of texts, preaching and singing during the Graeco-Roman symposium.

In this paper I'll try to show a different approach to the story of Judah and Tamar. According to my reading this story presents a pro-Judahite position, favoring an open attitude toward the integration of the local populace as a way of strengthening and consolidating the people, while depicting the superiority of Judah as a source of future political hope (Perez-David). The depiction of positive relationship between Judah and the Canaanite teaches me that the story was composed by a member of the universalist movement, which sought to bring in the strangers and opposed the isolationism that characterized the Deuteronomistic movement, whose position would later be favored by Ezra and Nehemiah. This story became an integral part of was inserted in the story of Joseph, because it harmonized with the aim of promoting the figure of Judah vis-a-vis the northerners, the people of Samaria, who regarded themselves as the descendants of the House of Joseph, and vis-à-vis the Benjamites, depicted in the Joseph story as the youngest and best-loved brother, as well as with the desire for demographic expansion involving the full integration of all interested elements. These aims correspond with the early years of the Second Temple and also express the world-view of the school of Holiness, which was established as a reaction to the Deuteronomistic and Priestly schools, i.e., in the Babylonian exile, and was effective in the beginning of the Second Temple period.

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Like other modern theoreticians of translation, Umberto Eco recognizes that interlingual translation is a complex cross-cultural and intertextual activity. It involves interpreting the source text and its culture as well as negotiating between the worldview of the original reader and the mindset of the target audience. This paper aims at examining Eco’s theory as it applies to Bible translation. In the history of converting the Hebrew Bible to other languages “interpretation” often meant importing religious and theological messages for a target audience whose values and practices were diametrically opposite to those of the original readers of the OT. Thus the mission of cultural interpretation was often colored by intertextual commentary. Eco explains that his theory is anchored in his experience as a translator and translated writer. Like him, I believe that specific examples should precede the act of theorizing. I therefore examine a selection of problematic translations (from the King James, the RSV, and the NEB) that came up in my teaching the OT as an English masterpiece while reading it (and first encountering it) in its Hebrew original. Among them: Gen. 27:39 (laden with ideology-driven biases); Ruth 1:15 (Naomi’s linguistic creativity is not captured); Gen. 3:12 (the poetic uniqueness of the primeval woman’s language is lost in the NEB); Judg. 5:27 and 5:30 (the “cleaning up” of the graphic vocabulary of the Hebrew), and more. Some of these examples put to test several of Eco’s ideas, proving the subjectivity and dangers of “interpretation” (when religious, ethnic or sexual biases interfere) and of the “target-oriented” approach. Others buttress Eco’s statements that equivalence in meaning is impossible to achieve, and illustrate the difficult choice between literal equivalency and poetic uniqueness, or the inevitable loss that occurs in the act of translation.

There is a correlation between the anti-Edomite oracle in Malachi 1:2-5, and Malachi's condemnation of mixed-marriage in 2:10-16. Both oracles share the key-words "love" and "hate" and both make use of the father-sons motif. In these two oracles only the relationship of the people with non-Jews is addressed. In both, the establishing of the people's identity is achieved through the rejection of an outside party, of Edom in the first oracle, and of the foreign women in the third. The aim of this paper is explore the possible meanings of the connections between these oracles. The paper will focus on the way in which self identity is established.

The Psalms of Solomon is the only clear witness to the expectation of a Davidic messiah in Jewish literature from the last two centuries BCE, apart from the Dead Sea Scrolls. This collection of poems contains an eyewitness account of Pompey’s 63 B.C.E. conquest of Jerusalem. The Psalms of Solomon merged the Old Testament notion of a messiah with the Roman general Pompey to create a figure that may be called the militant Davidic messiah. These poems use this messiah as a political tool to prepare their followers for an impending war with Rome. During this battle, the Davidic messiah will defeat the Romans, execute their leader, and kill all his Jewish partisans. This presentation will examine the changing nature of the enemy in the Psalms of Solomon, and explore how the community behind these poems adapted to the new reality of Roman rule. The Psalms of Solomon provides a unique insight into the Roman colonization of ancient Palestine. They describe political and religious conditions in Jerusalem before and after the Roman conquest. The authors of these poems seek to justify God’s righteousness in the face of Roman occupation. Pompey’s murder in 48 B.C.E. in Egypt appeared to vindicate their theology that God was allowing them to suffer as a test of their faith. Nevertheless, occupation was to be resisted; the community expected to help the Davidic messiah destroy the Romans. At that time, their present situation would be reversed: the Romans would be the Jews’ servants. This presentation will examine how the authors of these poems depict Rome, how they use Scripture to interpret their real-life political and social situation, and their belief that Pompey’s assassination showed that God had set limits to Roman rule.

The character of Michal does not play a significant role in the Book of Samuel. Her story is fragmented, she did not have children, and she was far from becoming David's chief wife. This data were known to Josephus as well when coming to rewrite the Biblical story of Michal. This paper seeks to analyze Josephus' rewriting of the Biblical story of Michal as reflected in his Antiquities of the Jews. The main questions I will be dealing with are the following: 1. What is Josephus' attitude towards Michal? 2. Was Josephus influenced by a general attitude towards women? 3. What are the exegetical problems that Josephus solved when rewriting her story? 4. Can Hellenistic elements be traced in his rewriting? 5. Was his text identical to the Masoretic text? These questions will be discussed alongside a literary analysis of the Biblical story which will help us evaluate Josephus as a Biblical commentator.

In John 8:31-47, Jesus chastises the “Jews” (Ioudaioi) for being children of the devil. Indeed, this passage comprises some of the harshest words in the entire New Testament. Modern studies frequently attempt to explain away the “anti-Jewish” tendencies of John, acknowledging that this passage has led historically to anti-Semitic feelings, beginning with the earliest Christian writers themselves. By investigating how patristic writers actually read this passage, this paper fills a lacuna ironically present in such modern studies of both this passage and the status and identity of the Ioudaioi in John. Origen, John Chrysostom, and Cyril of Alexandria, each of whom had his own unique relationship with contemporary Jewish communities, provide the material for investigation. Unlike later centuries, for each of these writers, the borderline between Jew and Christian was not always clear. Contemporary Jewish thought posed serious challenges to the Gospel, as they understood it. Perhaps surprisingly, this study reveals that these interpreters did not read this passage against their own Jewish opponents. Rather, they read this passage mimetically, as they frequently do the rest of the Bible, conceiving of the opponents in John 8:31-47 not simply as “Jews” (Jesus’ contemporaries or their own) but primarily as those within the Christian community who opposed the teachings the interpreter himself was proclaiming – that is, those opposed to either the higher, spiritual doctrines of the Logos Savior (Origen), the desire of Jesus to pull his followers away from materialism (Chrysostom), or the doctrines officially established by Jesus through his Church (Cyril). To assume that this passage, as interpreted by patristic writers, led to anti-Judaic tendencies anachronistically applies later medieval situations and sensibilities and overlooks the complexities of patristic hermeneutics as well as the ambiguity of the relationshipbetween Jews and Christians in the first five centuries of the Common Era.

In the final form of the Pentateuch, a wide variety of events happen more than once, because they were related in multiple sources, each of which was preserved in the canonical text. Yet births and deaths of characters occur only once - and this despite the fact that each source almost certainly would have provided this information, especially about the major biblical characters. In this paper, the evidence of birth and death reports in the Pentateuch will be investigated, with an eye toward better understanding the method of redaction in the Pentateuch.

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Critical theory has taken a new turn in Latin America. Post-colonial thought, post-structuralism, cultural studies, liberation thought, subaltern studies, world-systems theory, and other contemporary theoretical foci have combined with indigenous influences to produce a new form of critical theory called decolonial thought. Initiated in the early 1990s by Argentine philosopher Walter Mignolo, Peruvian thinker Aníbal Quijano, Argentine – Mexican philosopher Enrique Dussel, and others, decolonial thought has developed increasing complexity. Through its unique take on power, knowledge, culture, history, human existence, and globalization, this thought aims at elaborating not just another paradigm within the typically modern way of thinking but a totally new paradigm the shatters such thinking, a paradigma otro in the lapidary expression of Mignolo. Although it does not explicitly discuss the interpretation of Scripture, decolonial thought holds out promise for an innovative approach to the interpretation of the New Testament. In particular, it offers insights that can lead to refreshingly new understandings of the role of the exegete, the hermeneutics of New Testament texts, and the use of Scripture. In this presentation, we will offer an overview of decolonial thought, detail its potential contribution to Biblical studies, and illustrate this contribution with particular Scriptural texts.

The last (largely) sixty years have witnessed quite different results on the topic of the reception of the Fourth Gospel in the writings of the Apostolic Fathers. It is however within grasp to notice that these significantly differing results are indebted to the different methodological approaches assumed by each scholar. The aim of this paper is to reassess methodologically the bibliography on the reception of John – and generally the New Testament – in the second century and question whether and how it would fit best for an inquiry that places John in the center and restrains itself to the Apostolic Fathers. As far as the larger question of the New Testament reception in the second century is concerned it has been previously noticed that Massaux (1950) and Köster (1957) have set respectively maximalist and minimalist criteria for assessing this question. Subsequent scholarship on John in the second century is more or less to be confined to one of the two trends. Recently, however, the possibility itself to determine confident dependence on any New Testament text in the second century has been questioned, since our text editions reconstruct, for the New Testament, the fourth century text of the great uncials. In this perspective a more appropriate inquiry is: what do the recognizable parallels of the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers tell us about the dynamics of the documents from the two corpora? (Petersen 2005). Therefore, since on the one hand – even though it is artificially constructed – the Apostolic Fathers corpus is a convenient and not all too large group of texts, and, on the other hand, the material resembling to John is rather scarce, a study developed on several levels might be not all out of the question.

This paper examines in which macro-contexts creation myths were used. Generally creation myths are used in the contexts of national histories, of the establishment of political and/or religious hierarchies, as well as of ethic or cultic regimes. Biblical and extrabiblical texts like Genesis, the Book of Watchers, the Book of Jubilees, and others seem to have the same apologetic interest in creation myths as can be detected in their Ancient Near Eastern employments. Based on the example of the basic correlation of knowledge, nackedness, shame, and eternal life, this paper will ask for the structure, relatedness, and literary function of the creation myths especially in the Epic of Gilgamesh, Genesis 1-11, the Book of Watcher, and Jubilees 3.

One of the main differences between the Hebrew Bible narratives in Ezra and the Greek text of 1 Esdras is the presence of the story on the Three Youth in 1 Esdras 3-4. If 1 Esdras were first, then this story must have been willingly removed from the tradition. Arguments in favour of such a removal cannot be found, quite the contrary. In my paper, I will argue two points in favour of the view that the story was included. (1) The story fits the composition of 1 Esdras better than that of the Hebrew Bible narratives found in Ezra. (2) The story can easily be compared with court tales from the Hellenistic period.

Genesis 27, the story of Isaac’s deathbed blessing, exposes the problematic relationships among the members of his household, just as it raises questions about the Deity’s stance towards/involvement in the proceedings. This paper will examine two ancient rewritings of the Genesis story, those of Josephus in Ant. 1.267-277 and Jubilees 26.1-27.12(18). The paper will begin with a separate examination of the two rewritings in relation to their common biblical source (as represented by MT, the LXX, and the Targums), and then proceed to a comparison between them with a view to ascertaining the similarities and differences between their respective handlings of the problems posed by Genesis 27 itself. Some attention will also be given to other early Jewish treatments of the Genesis passage (e.g., Philo and the midrashic tradition).

The Astronomical Book (AB) came into being as an Aramaic translation of Babylonian astronomical material. Fragments of this initial Aramaic garb are contained in the Qumranic scrolls 4Q208 and 4Q209. This text, however, went through considerable changes until reaching its present form, as part of the Book of Enoch in Ethiopic. The paper maps the development of AB through its stages of transmission. A central conclusion from this endeavor would be diminishing the role usually assigned to Greek or Ethiopic translators. Thus, Hellenistic involvement could be seen only in the abortive octaeteris in 74:10-16. Ethiopic involvement is even harder to trace, as it requires a comparison of AB with the Ethiopic astronomical tradition. Although this tradition was deeply committed to Enochic astronomy, very little of it entered AB in the form of glosses or interpolations. A key question would be whether Aramaic or Ethiopic authors were responsible for the change in focus of the lunar passages: instead of the original interest in periods of lunar visibility, the text now focuses on the amount of light in the moon and on computing its distance from the sun. This interest, showing some affiliation with genuine Ethiopic interests, may have been introduced in Ethiopic as part of the recension of the Group II mss. Most editorial efforts in AB belong to the Aramaic stage of transmission. This transmission transformed AB from a scientific treatise, consisting primarily of numerical figures, to a literary composition enveloped in programmatic statements and embedded in a mimetic framework. The Aramaic stage accounts for two recensions of the pristine AB, both contained in the present composition. Tracking some paragraph headings in AB reveals how systematic this twofold division was. Finally, chapters 80 and 81 seem to take part in the literary framework of larger portions of 1 Enoch.

Within the last thirty years, a plethora of phenomena on the human scene has contributed to the appearance of alternative methods for examining the literature in the Hebrew Bible. On the one hand, a proliferation in contextual approaches to examining the data in the Hebrew Bible (hereafter cited as HB) has become a feature of the landscape in the academic study of the literature of ancient Israel. Prominent among these angles of vision on the HB is Afrocentric biblical criticism. The philosophical pre-commitments of this strategy for analyzing texts ground themselves in the Black cultural context. Noteworthy is it that Afrocentric biblical criticism has a history of development, with different voices speaking at different times in the conversation, and that this line of attack has been a welcomed development by many on the hermeneutical front. On the other hand, the ascendency of Pentecostalism as a salient movement in Christianity has made Pentecostal biblical interpretation an interesting development in the scholarly community. While bible scholars among Pentecostal circles come from diverse backgrounds, a large number of these persons are African-American. What is more, being African-American and Pentecostal has contributed to the formation of different strategies for studying and interpreting the data in the HB. The present essay, therefore, introduces African-American Pentecostal biblical criticism into the mainstream of interpretive strategies for studying the text. The task that this essay sets for itself is to demonstrate how this line of attack on the text has the philosophical capital to shed fresh light on the lexical data in the HB and to position the scholar to appreciate the social and life worlds from which the data in the Hebrew comes.

According to Raymond Schwager who made known the theory of René Girard (La violence et le sacré, Paris 1972) to a broader public there are more than six hundred entries in the OT where nations, kings or individuals are depicted to act violently against each other. Nearly one thousand times it is affirmed that YHWH smashes, destroys and kills peoples, nations or individuals. Approximately one houndred times it is stated that the God of Israel ordered the death of human persons. There can be no doubt that YHWH has a quite impressive record of violence in the OT. The book of Lamentations has to be especially considered in this regard because the anger of God strikes wrathfully the innocent children of mother Zion (cfr. Lam 2,18-22; 4,10). The literary presentation shows that God's legitimate pathos to reestablish his dominion over his people passes beyond theologically accepted limits. Should YHWH not have been obliged to restrain his anger in the face of dying children and the forced cannibalisme of their mothers? The severe critique of mother Zion that YHWH turned into a merciless enemy who killed, even slaughtered her inocent children, is the dramatic summary of this question. When YHWH, the God of Israel has turned into the slaughterer of his own people, there can't be no future anymore. Zion doesn't get an answer from God - as her children didn't get an answer to their plea for bread and wine (2,12)! The book of Lamentations as a whole seems to mark a closing stage in the presentation of Jhwh and his violent anger.

The paper will provide a literary and thematic analysis of a parallel tractate of Mishnah and Tosefta. I shall first consider the tractates from the perspective of their coherence considering their unity and their self-presentation or lack of it. Then, I shall look at which contextual elements the texts provide. Does the governing voice identify itself? Are addresses explicitly mentioned? But also, what elements if any do the texts supply that allow us to locate them in a specific spatial and temporal context. Usually mishnaic and toseftan tractates give no indication of being somehow bounded by a systematic or exhaustive treatment of any subject matter. However, they often display certain homogeneousness given by the recurrence of small forms and the repetition of a limited number of textual relationships. These factors are responsible for the internal small-scale coherence of text parts and their accumulation may help increasing the coherence of the overall treatment of the more general subject matter within the tractate. I shall consider these elements and compare the results emerging from the two tractates. Finally, I shall look at intertextuality relations between the two parallel tractates from the two distinct perspectives of wording overlaps and thematic isomorphism.

In the search for the meaning of righteousness language in Romans, studies rightfully focus upon the relationship of this language to other key concepts in the letter: faith, works, Law, and covenant, to name a few. However, one important terminological companion of righteousness has been neglected--that of glory (d??a and its cognates). Accordingly, this paper, after a brief exploration of the glory motif, will analyze how Paul intertwines these two concepts in the letter. I argue that Paul presents justification as the means to immortal life, signified by glory. My argument consists of three points. First, although Paul uses glory language sociologically in his honour discourse, he frequently uses it ontologically in reference to the experience of immortal life. Thus, when humans lack glory, they experience mortality, and when they later experience glory, they experience the resurrection life of Christ. Second, throughout the letter Paul presents righteousness as the means to new life. Third, Paul similarly presents righteousness as the means to glory. Thus, the righteousness-glory association provides further evidence that Paul understands justification as the means for rectifying human mortality arising from sin. Accordingly, we can conclude that in Romans 1) justification, among other things, is God’s act of new creation and therefore fits within God’s larger plan of cosmic restoration and 2) Paul does not separate participationist and forensic categories but unites them in the act of justification which brings new life.

The tragedy of an innocent person suffering is no laughing matter. But dramatic treatment of a horrific subject which concludes with the sufferer laughing out loud could be cathartic for an audience. This paper treats the book of Job as a whole work of art. After traumas of losing his children, servants, animals, physical well-being, and community, Job maintains his integrity. While his friends condemn him, he questions the belief that anyone who suffers must have done something wrong. Job anticipates he will be vindicated by God. But Divine revelation ignores Job’s question of justice and challenges Job to respond to a grand-eloquent description of powers quite beyond human experience. Translators and commentators have interpreted Job’s response (42:6) in three ways by filling in the ellipsis. Job repents, that is humbly acknowledges he is wrong about something, even though YHWH states Job is innocent. Job rebels, that is rejects God. Or Job despises his lost wealth and comforts himself for loss of his children. Reading Job as tragicomedy offers an alternative. I propose that Job’s response to Divine revelation is just what YHWH intended for a favorite who is tested, laughter at the incongruity between what Job expected and Divine prodding. Appreciation of ancient Hebrew wit allows us to view heaven and earth, to identify with the anguish of an uncorrupted person, to explore arguments without an answer as to why innocent people suffer. Job’s community gathers to comfort him “for all the misfortune that YHWH had brought upon him” (42:11), so Job, more prosperous than at the beginning of the tale, dies “old and full of days.” (42:17) Acknowledging misery, this paper will show how the book of Job is intended to evoke relief. Cathartic laughter is healing.

In this last decade the early Enoch literature has undergone an unprecedented scrutiny. A growing number of scholars have come to the conclusion that this literature testifies to the presence, since pre-Maccabean times (and perhaps, since as early as the fourth century BCE), of an intellectual tradition that was at odds with the Zadokite priestly establishment. This movement of dissent left a clear imprint in the shaping of the Mosaic literary traditions and had a decisive influence on both Essene and Qumran origins, much so that the Enochic movement (more than the Zadokite movement) should be recognized as their parent movement. Yet, the Enochians cannot be identified tout court with the Essenes to whom they gave birth, as the Enoch literature never lost its distinctive ideological and sociological identity. Far from being the tribute to an ancient venerable Jewish tradition, the presence of the early Enoch texts at Qumran reveals a complex history of interactions among the cognate yet autonomous groups of Zadokites, Enochians, Essenes and Qumranites and sheds light on the process of formation of what we now call the Hebrew Bible.

Some passages in the Old Testament suggest that female deities played an important role in daily life. Whole families were for instance involved in the activities of backing cakes for the ‘Queen of Heaven‘ (Jer.7:18 and 44:17-25). But which goddess is she? Is she the same deity for whom the women wove garments in the Jerusalem temple? (II Kings 23:7) Traces of this goddess and her cakes can also be found in the archaeological record. Temples, inscriptions and artifacts such as figurines, seals backing moulds and loom weights from different sites in the Southern Levant give a surprising picture of the mysterious female deities Astarte, Asherah and Anat and their function in folk religion during the Iron Age.

This paper looks at Yahweh’s remark about the animals of Nineveh in the final verse of the Book of Jonah (4:11) in light of ancient Near Eastern sacrificial religion and royal ideology. Seen against these two backdrops, Yahweh’s singling out of the Ninevites’ many animals can be understood as reference to the future offerings the now obedient Ninevites will be making to Yahweh, thus symbolizing his extended dominance over the world beyond Israel—an understanding given full voice in biblical texts from the Persian period.

The paper aims to analyse the formal and ideological evolution of the iconography of Jonah in Christian art between the Third and Fourth centuries, in order to highlight social and political features of the Christinization process in Rome. The iconography of Jonah appears in Roman catacombs at the beginning of the Third century as a narrative cycle that shows the prophet swallowed and rejected by the sea monster, and reclining under the gourd. These three scenes are chosen for two reasons: their symbolic value – death and resurrection of Christ and importance of the repentant's forgiveness; and their formal analogies with some Late-Hellenistic funerary iconographies presenting death as passage to a condition of beatification. Between the Third and Fourth centuries this iconography undergoes formal changes intended to stress the narrative and descriptive aspects of the image and its relationship with the biblical text. During the Constantinian era, Jonah’s iconography on Roman frescoes and sarcophagus occurs more frequently but without any formal evolution. By the second half of the century and especially during the Fifth and Sixth centuries, the diminution of its diffusion is sensibly evident. The biblical evolution of the figurative repertory can be explained as an affirmation of the cultural and religious identity by Christian groups, that thanks to the Diocletian's administrative reforms emerged on the social and political scene between the Third and Fourth centuries . The boom of the funerary production under Constantine reflects the enlargement, but also the enrichment of these Christian groups. His policy favourable to Christians could therefore have been a way to get the support of these new social forces.

This short paper shall discuss a subject in the field of biblical spirituality: paintings that visualize the story of Elijah under the broom tree and on Mount Horeb. Firstly, the paper will discuss two 17th Century unique landscape frescoes at the Basilica San Martino ai Monti (Rome). Secondly, the paper will show the fascinating sequence of four paintings at the Benedictine abbey church of Kornelimünster (Aachen). At both places, the paintings depict the Elijah-story in a particular manner. What do the paintings actually depict – iconographically and iconologically? Analysis of the paintings unfolds aspects of correspondence and difference with the text. A thorough analysis will illuminate the intermedial relation between text and painting. In the hermeneutic process, text and painting receive meaning in the interaction with the beholders. Analysis of the way in which beholders perceive the paintings can also correspond or differ from the way in which readers perceive the biblical text. Tensions between (the perception of) both entities come into sight, which gets a dialogue going. In this way, paintings become far more than illustrations of the text. On the level of Biblical spirituality, the concrete interaction between this painting and this text will be analysed against the background of a theory of Biblical spirituality. Biblical spirituality not only refers to the ‘divine-human relational processes’ (Waaijman 2002) that come to expression in the biblical text, it also refers to the ‘divine-human relational processes’ of ‘the reader and God’, evoked or stimulated by reading the biblical text. Are these processes also evoked or stimulated in perceiving paintings that refer to a biblical text?

Suprisingly little attention has been paid to Patmos, the setting of the implied author (Rev. 1:9ff.), in modern commentaries on the Apocalypse. With some rare exceptions, comment is largely restricted to Patmos’ supposed status as a Roman penal colony, the reason for John’s presence on the island, and the implications of this for his social status. This is in sharp contrast to the diversity of interpretations found in the work of earlier interpreters, both commentators proper and artists engaging in ‘visual exegesis’ of the scene. These exploit more fully the ambiguity inherent in John’s reference to Patmos at Rev. 1:9ff, including some surprising figurative and typological readings. This paper will explore two very different visual portrayals of Patmos from the late fifteenth/early sixteenth centuries, reflecting different understandings of Patmos’ significance. As a distinctive example of the Italian Renaissance, Botticelli’s predella of St John on Patmos, from his San Marco altarpiece (c. 1490, now in the Uffizi, Florence) will be examined. Botticelli’s interpretation departs significantly from available antecedents, such as the Apocalypse frescoes of Giotto (1320, fresco in the Peruzzi Chapel, Santa Croce, Florence), Donatello (1428-43, stucco in the Old Sacristy, San Lorenzo, Florence) and Paolo Ucello (1435-40, San Bartolomeo, Quarate). This predella may well betray the influence upon Botticelli of Savonarola’s preaching. Comparison will be made with a slightly later German painting, Hans Burgkmair’s St John the Evangelist in Patmos (1508 or 1518, Alte Pinakothek, Munich). In contrast to the stark landscape of Botticelli’s altarpiece, Burgkmair presents Patmos as a lush tropical island, evoking the Garden of Eden. His interpretation comes in the wake of Columbus’ exploration in the new world, prompting expectation about fulfilment of biblical prophecies regarding ‘the islands’, as well as journeys to Eastern lands by German merchants.

Little still exists of non-Christian Graeco-Roman pilgrimage literature. Pausanias’ Periegesis (Geography [or Description] of Greece) is not too good a fit. To some extent the “Isis Book” of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses represents a pilgrimage to the shrine of Isis at Kenchreai near Corinth and to that of Isis in the Campus Martius at Rome. However, the clearest example is the work now generally attributed to Lucian, On the Syrian Goddess, an enthusiastic description of the Temple of Atargatis at Hierapolis in Syria (Manbog) through the eyes of one who both claims to be a Syrian and an initiate. Jane Lightfoot, who has recently written a massive commentary on the work, regards it as a rather faithful description of the site and the activity there, though translated into terms the wider Greek world could understand, while Marie-Françoise Baslez considers it the work of an outsider ignorant of real Syrian religion. Lucian seems to undercut the seriousness of his account at the end and may be “pulling the reader’s leg” throughout. Still, the work offers a valuable insight into the religious background of early Christians and readers of the New Testament, indicating the pressure of Hellenism on the religions of the time. Christians, moreover, had to compete against well-established religions with ancient and imposing temple sites. But they also had their weaknesses. In the cult of Atargatis, the most distinctive practices like tattooing and castration would have seemed aberrant or repulsive to most contemporaries, and a high moral code seems to be absent. It had nothing like the great religious texts of the Old and New Testament, with which to compete against Christianity. Rather it employed conflicting and confusing foundation myths, probably orally transmitted.

This presentation examines and evaluates the major interpretations of Paul’s reference to “vessels of wrath prepared for destruction” in Romans 9:22. Special attention is paid to the non-Calvinist and moderate Calvinist interpretations. The analysis proceeds as follows: 1. The lexical meanings of kathrtismena (prepared), ajpwleian (destruction), and skeuh ojrgh" (vessels of wrath) are discussed and resolved within the context. 2. The grammatical structure and possible intentions of 9:22 are analyzed. 3. The syntax of the perfect middle/passive participle (kathrtismena) is discussed, including interaction with D. Wallace, C.E.B. Cranfield, G. Delling, etc. The syntax of this form and this lemma is traced throughout the LXX, the GNT, and other Greek literature of the period (200 B.C. – A.D. 200). 4. The relationship of 9:22 to all of Romans 9 is discussed within the context of Paul's argument regarding the vindication of God's dealings with Israel. Special attention is given to how verse 22 relates to Paul's reference to the hardening of Pharaoh and the illustration of the potter and clay. 5. Finally, the reference to the "preparation" of the vessels of mercy for destruction is related to patristic interpretation and the historical development of the doctrine of "reprobation."

Mary Beard, John North, and Simon Price explain at the beginning of Religions of Rome that they have chosen “not to provide any formal definition of ‘religion’” for their two-volume work. Not to define a term so central to its subject matter might seem problematic; and yet, many who study the religions of ancient Rome sympathize with the authors, and perhaps would have opted for the same approach. This paper explores the reasons for such defiance towards a strict conceptual construct of Roman “religion.” It begins by considering representative scholarly definitions of religion, and then turns to a consideration of a variety of Roman phenomena that typically are deemed to be “religious.” The paper endeavors to show that certain common features in the Roman perspective tend to hamper the applicability of modern concepts of “religion,” specifically: 1. Do ut des: “I give in order that you might give.” This notion tends to be at odds with such common definitional concepts as “transcendence” and the like.2. Juxtaposing of religio and superstitio. Modern concepts of religion often leave little room for acknowledging the sort of restraint implied by religio. 3. The multiplicity and moral ambivalence of divine forces. Assumptions involving not just monotheism, but ethical monotheism, pose challenges when striving to understand polytheistic forms of religion. 4. Relative lack of concern in Roman religion for ethics. Drawing upon Émile Durkheim’s conception of religion involving a “moral community,” theorists in the sociology of religion, among other fields, have tended to regard as a chief function of religion the provision of social order with significant ethical aspects. 5. Emphasis on material needs and interconnectedness with politics. This fundamental feature has wide and far-reaching effects with regards to conceptualizing religion.

Incense that was burned in the Temple, as part of the ritual, to create "a soothing aroma, as its memorial offering to the Lord" is actually used to fulfill other important roles like avoiding the stench, disinfection, and avoiding diseases, using the varied ability of the incense plants, despite the fact that there was no explanation for this. When Aaron, the high priest, burned incense and stood between the living and the dead, he stopped the plague among the people. Allegedly, the religious ceremony of atonement, but actually burning incense provided protection for the healthy from infection from the sickly. The incense materials are antibacterial and burning them prevents the germs in the air from dispersing among the people. The aromatic resins, that were produced from various plants, some of them in Israel, like the mastiche gum- resin from the Pistacia lentiscus, and others that were brought from Arabia, like myrrh and frankincense, were used for a wide variety of purposes aside from their ritualistic role:. They used "as a present" that described as "the best products of the land" when they sent by Jacob with his sons to Joseph in Egypt, The Queen of Sheba brought them to King Solomon and their price is measured in gold. In Song of Songs they are used as a seducing perfume, Dioscorides, described a wide range of medicines for treating hemorrhages and used when giving birth, and the Egyptians used them for embalming.. Today, we can explain these many uses and others in a scientific way, through comprehension that the use of the aromatic resins contains tannins, terpenes, antioxidants and many more substances. It turns out that the substances that the plants produce for their protection from obstruction and disease can be used by us in the same way.

Since the publication of the long-lost Gospel of Judas in 2006, there has been a flurry of interest in canonical and non-canonical traditions about the famous betrayer of Christ. One text overlooked in this excitement is the Legend of the Thirty Pieces of Silver (LTPS), which traces the transmission of the coins paid to betray Jesus from Terah’s gift of the coins to Abraham to Judas’ purchase of the Field of Blood in Acts 1:18-19. LTPS was a very popular text in medieval times and appears in a number of languages and forms, including Latin, Syriac, Arabic and Armenian, and several European languages including German, English, Italian, Spanish and Catalan. To date, relatively little work has been done on this text; indeed, there has yet to appear a formal critical edition. This paper aims to address this neglect by presenting, for the first time, an edition of the Syriac branch of the tradition. Here the text is extant in at least eight Syriac manuscripts and is found incorporated into the Book of the Bee by Solomon of Basrah. The paper will include also an overview of previous scholarship on the text and a discussion of its origins and transmission.

In the Book of Isaiah there are only thirteen occurrences if the divine designation "redeemer", ten instances in Deutero-Isaiah, three in Trito-Isaiah and none in Proto-Isaiah. This paper seeks to examine the use and meaning of the term in the Hebrew Bible as a whole where it is infrequently used, in order to understand the function of the term in this prophetic text. By examining in detail some of the occurrences of the term in the Book of Isaiah in conjunction with other divine designations, an insight may be gained into the theological message of the three traditional sections of the text.

Over against the all encompassing traditionalism of the Greco-Roman world of the first centuries CE, many “Gnostic” texts seem to evince a radical and maverick approach: Far from trying to base ideas and notions on ancient texts, these writings vehemently reject traditional authorities and take pride in innovation. While early proto-orthodox Christians did their best to demonstrate their religion should not be considered an innovation, these early “Gnostics” took pride in their originality and claimed that traditional authorities were actually obstacles in the way of the true believer. I will exemplify and describe this remarkable attitude in a few important “Gnostic” text, including the Apocryphon of John the Gospel of Thomas and Zostrianus as well as in writings written against these “Gnostics,” by people as different as Irenaeus of Lyon and the Neo-Platonist philosopher Plotinus. These texts will be studied over against a wide range of contemporary sources including pagan, Jewish, and early (proto-orthodox) Christian authors, in order to underscore the fact that this “modernist” stance adopted by some early (“Gnostic”) Christians was no less than a full fledged denial of a cultural premise of the times. At this point, I intend to raise the question of how should one understand such a position, and what are the implications that such a stance, which chose to do away with a cultural premise of the times, entitles for the study of the phenomenon. I will raise the possibility that this stance can and should be considered as a defining element of the Gnostic phenomenon as a whole. As this “modernist” standpoint is primarily a cultural, and not only a religious, characteristic, the proposal will be made that an attempt at a cultural definition of Gnosticism may be worthwhile and that such an attempt may help to solve the recurrent problem of defining the Gnostic phenomenon.

For some time, scholars have questioned the traditional Aktionsart understanding of the Greek perfect tense-form. The understanding that the Greek perfect communicates a past action with present consequences has come under fire from various quarters and for various reasons. While Greek scholarship is yet to reach a consensus on what the perfect does communicate, one issue that has almost reached the level of consensus is that the Aktionsart understanding is flawed. This paper will suggest that, as a community of scholars who are engaged with Greek, now is the time to leave the old behind. We may not yet see eye-to-eye on what the successor should be, but, it will be suggested, we now know enough to agree on this point. Rather than rehearse the various arguments that have been leveled against the Aktionsart approach to the perfect, most of which are easily accessible, this paper will mount a new type of argument against it. The argument is simple: translators choose to translate the Greek perfect "against the rules" most of the time.

Paul’s letter to the Romans has a double character. It addresses gentiles directly at several points in the letter, but never directly addresses Jews as such. Yet it discusses the relation of both Jews and gentiles in salvation, the divine plan for both, and the discussion of the weak and the strong in chapters 14-15 seems to imply a context in which both Jews and gentiles interact closely with each other. The abundance of scriptural citations in chs.9-11, and ch.15 suggests a context in which a knowledge of scripture is assumed. In view of this, some recent publications maintain an entirely gentile audience as the addressees of Romans. The thesis of this paper is that Paul does address his letter to the gentiles, who may have belonged either to house or tenement churches. But it is argued that these also were in close contact with Jews, including Christ-following Jews whether these worshipped in synagogues or in private houses. The address to ‘all God’s Beloved’ in chapter 1 and the lack of any mention here of ekklesia, may indicate a letter primarily addressed to gentiles who lived and interacted directly with Jews; the diversity in meeting places (and leadership) may help to explain Paul’s inclusive language and a certain blurring of boundaries amongst the diverse groups.

The history of the book of Job has undergone a long process of re-reading, which has included many attempts to re-present it in a different way, in order to obtain a narrative less dramatic and less intense then that presented in the Hebrew Bible. Such attempts began more than 2000 years ago with the Septuagint version; they continued into the Christian Era and the Middle Ages and right down to the present time (for example, the various books written on subject of Job, especially after the Second World War). A very important stage in this developing process is the Septuagint version, which can be considered the first "transformation" of the history of Job as presented in the Masoretic Text. Another defining moment was The Testament of Job from an Old Testament Apocryphon ". Many ancient images of Job, found in the Christian Catacombs , are to be connected to these “re-writing” of the Job’s history rather than to the biblical text itself. Not only in Ancient Near East, but also in Medieval Europe there is evidence of other traditions connected to the book of Job, other than the canonical one. In these traditions some themes and figures (such as the Devil, Job’s wife or friends, Angels) appear very differently from the way they appear in the biblical text. This phenomenon, witnessed by Mystery plays such as “La pacience de Job” (France, XVth century) or “The Life of Holy Job” (Britain, XVth Century), in turn influenced much medieval and modern iconography.

In Josephus’ Bible there are passages where the author makes use of exegetical methods different from his own standard, and where he feels compelled to add a personal remark. The accounts of the water from the rock (Exodus 17) and Jephthah’s daughter (Judges 11) might show the need to oppose contemporary interpretations of the same biblical episodes.

Between the intention expressed in the prologue to the Third Gospel and the way its readers perceived it, there seems to be a serious gap: there is apparently no adequacy between the author’s stated purpose and the final result. The problem stems from various factors including our understanding of the literary expression “pa???????????t? p?a?µ?t??”, borrowed from Demosthenes, which literally means: “to go along with events” and which has been clearly explained by Flavius Josephus who opposed it to “informing oneself” (Against Apion I.53). Yet the translation given in Lk 1.3, inspired from more ancient Latin versions, proves to be disconcerting since it is no more than the antonym to which Josephus opposed it. One might wonder whether Luke used it wittingly, since no other example is to be found to confirm the use he made of it. While the same verb without a prefix is to be found over 15 times in his work and bears the usual meaning, should the translation generally found in Lk 1.3 not be questionned? We would then have to face a choice: to acknowledge that, referring to himself, Luke had not expressed himself clearly and was mistaken, or to admit that we were unable to understand what he meant. This prospect involves applying a different approach from the one which is conditioned by reflexes acquired in the last two thousand years, and beginning to consider him not as a historian but as the observer of events he would have witnessed. Is it only possible? Is it advisable, considering the impact this may have on our comprehension of the message and on our knowledge of Christian communities at the dawn of their existence?

This paper reviews evolutionary approaches in sociology and offers some critical remarks on their potential for the analysis of biblical social worlds and processes of change. After a brief survey of classical evolutionary traditions in sociology, the paper moves to consider the work of Talcott Parsons, before concentrating work on the contributions of W.G.Runciman who is a strong contemporary advocate of evolutionary sociology. The paper concludes with some consideration of the prospects and limitations that would accompany an evolutionary sociological perspective, especially as applied to biblical data.

The Qumran corpus contains more than 300 psalms, hymns and prayers, about 100 of which are found in the biblical psalter. The most frequently asked questions about the Qumran prayer corpus are: What does it tell us about the formation and "canonization" of the biblical psalter?, How did these prayers function in the life of the Qumran community?, How representative or unrepresentative are they of Second Temple Judaism?, What connection is there, if any, between this corpus and the later, post-70 C.E., Jewish synagogue liturgy? In this paper I will take up a different challenge and ask: What do the prayers from Qumran teach us about biblical prayer? I will focus on the deployment and forms of the blessings in the two corpora with a view to distinguishing similar as well as different functions and modes of prayer. It is my contention that the blessing becomes a tag by which we may trace the development of fixed, communal prayer during the Second Temple period and that the rabbinic liturgical benediction marks the culmination of this gradual process. In the present study I seek to examine how early this development gets underway and to explore its path(s) of development. The fixed, periodic liturgies from Qumran will be at the heart of the discussion but blessings in other scrolls and Second Temple period literature will also be taken into consideration and compared with the biblical antecedents and later rabbinic trajectory.

Scholars have widely accepted Barrett’s argument that the Sarah-Hagar allegory in Gal 4:21-31 was first developed by Paul’s opponents. A part of his argument, Barrett claims that Paul’s argument in Galatians distorts the plain sense of the Abraham narrative in Genesis. But careful exegesis reveals that a close intertextual relationship exists between Isa 54:1, Gen 11:30, and Gal. 4:21-31. The centerpiece of this intertextual relationship is Sarah’s barrenness. In Galatians, Paul focuses on this Leitmotif to explain the Abraham narrative of Genesis. This paper argues that Paul’s argument in Gal 4:21-31is consistent with the intent of Genesis.

Im Zentrum dieses Vortrages stehen die Behandlungsmöglichkeiten mit pflanzlichen Heilmitteln. Die Heilkräfte von Pflanzen waren den damaligen Heilpraktikern bereits bekannt. Erfahrungen darüber hat man in therapeutischen Texten niedergeschrieben, wie dem pharmakologischen Handbuch Uruanna = maštakal. Anhand dieser therapeutischen Texte und mit Hilfe von Briefen und Wirtschaftstexten, welche Lieferungen von Heilmitteln oder Drogen thematisieren, möchte ich aufzeigen, welche Pflanzen genutzt und in welcher Kombination sie verwendet wurden. Aufgrund der Aussagen und Beschreibungen der Pflanzen in den Texten sollen die von Seiten der Assyriologie erfolgten Pflanzenidentifikationen geprüft werden. Ein weiterer Punkt, der in diesem Vortrag besprochen wird, ist die Beschaffung der Heilpflanzen. Von wo stammen diese? Lässt sich etwas über deren Anbau sagen? Wurden Pflanzen eigens für medizinische Zwecke angebaut? Die Texte werden auch dahingehend untersucht, ob Pflanzen zur medizinischen Verwendung aus dem Ausland importiert worden sind und aus welchen Regionen man die Rohstoffe für Heilmittel und Drogen bezogen hat. Kann sogar von einem Handel mit Medizinalpflanzen gesprochen werden?

In this short paper we shall proceed to examine the idea of the resurrection of the body as expressed in the Greek translation of Job 19, 26. We shall first of all examine the concept of corporal resurrection as it appears from a philological and theological point of view in the forthcoming texts: Masoretic text, Septuagint, Targum, Testament of Job, New Testament and as accepted in some Fathers of the Church, for example in Clement of Rome.

Psalm 19 reflects the tight revelatory relationship between nature as God’s creation proclaiming his glory, and torah as his teaching. The paper explores this relationship from a body perspective. Israel knew no dualism within the body (body/mind). The coherence of cosmic order (nature) and individual conduct (torah obedience) in Ps 19 is most probably an outcome of Israel’s social and cultural definition of the ideal body as a whole body. The theological dichotomy of torah as the supreme revelation of God and nature as the minor mode of revelation is contradicted by Psalm 19. Approaching the psalm from a ‘body phenomenological’ and an ‘embodied understanding’ point of view, implies that knowledge, as reflected by the psalm, can be understood in terms of structures of embodied human understanding based on an interaction with the environment, including language, cultural traditions, values, institutions, and the history of the social community of Israel. Both perceptions of reality and the putting into language of such perceptions through metaphorical expressions emanate from the poet’s body, the latter which is a reflection of the social and cultural body. In this psalm speech and bodily experience are juxtaposed in an unfamiliar way: Nature silently proclaims God’s glory, and torah is depicted in terms of bodily experiences. It is argued that this unfamiliarity reveals something about Israel’s social and cultural notion of the ideal body as a whole body.

I will examine the letter of James through the postcolonial category of nativism and show how the use of “purity” constructs a native center for James. This center (James/Jerusalem) stands as the authority for the margins (diaspora/Roman Empire) and constructs the boundaries that separate the “pure” from the “defiled”. In light of this argument, James’ nativist discourse is set in an anti-imperial context that cannot tolerate empire or hybridity. In the first section of the paper, I define nativist discourse and then argue for its usefulness as a category for examining the letter of James. The last section will deal specifically with the use of “purity” in James as an example of nativist discourse.

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The contextual ambiguity surrounding prophetic complaints against land ownership abuse in eighth-century Judah has posed a problem for biblical scholars. Passages attributed to the eighth century, such as Isaiah 5.8-10 and Micah 2.1-4, reveal that land was taken and people were oppressed, but these writers do not explain the socio-economic variables that would have been apparent to their audiences. Questions as to who seized land and how it was taken are left unanswered. Faced with a lack of extra-biblical evidence regarding land ownership in the eighth century BCE, biblical scholars have had to look outside the field of biblical studies for answers. For example, Marvin Chaney and D.N. Premnath have used cultural-evolutionary theory. Cultural-evolutionary theorists, such as Gerhard Lenski and Timothy Earle, find that since the development of inter-regional trade, agrarian societies have undergone a reoccurring pattern of forced land consolidation, abandonment of subsistence policies, and class division. Chaney and Premnath use this pattern combined with archaeological evidence of heightened trade activity in eighth-century Judah to understand the socio-economic contexts behind prophetic complaints. Although their work has resulted in valuable insights, their arguments could be strengthened through comparative analysis. Considering that this reoccurring societal pattern is evidenced in modern agrarian societies and that Judah experienced a significant trade increase during the eighth century BCE, comparisons can be drawn between modern land ownership abuse and the prophetic complaints. Expanding on the work of Chaney and Premnath, this paper considers Isaiah 5.8-10 through the context of land ownership abuse that took place in the twentieth-century CE agrarian society of Tunisia as that country experienced increased trade activity. Through this approach I argue that studies of cultural-evolutionary theory and corporate globalization can help to shed light on the contextual questions that surround the prophetic complaints attributed to eighth-century Judah.

The depiction of the Roman Catholic Church as an evil institution, more specifically, a power-hungry organization is a recurring trait of apocalyptic blockbuster cinema. Films such as END OF DAYS, THE SEVENTH SIGN and THE DA VINCI CODE feature malevolent, antagonistic characters representing the Roman Catholic Church. In this presentation, I will discuss these contemporary films as examples and reworkings, which echo historically earlier interpretations of Revelation.

It has been recently suggested that Jesus’ title in Hebrews as “Son” should be understood as a Davidic title (Heb. 1:5). If this is the case, the relationship between the Davidic king and the nation in the context of the covenantal relation between God and Israel could help us better understand the relationship between the “Son” and the “sons” in Hebrews in the context of the new covenant. This paper explores the theological relationship that exists between the “Son” and the “sons” in the Letter to the Hebrews from the perspective of the Davidic traditions in the Hebrew Bible. It suggests that the function that the Davidic king played as embodiment and representative of the nation in the covenantal relationship between God and Israel explains better the roles of Jesus as priest, forerunner, and sacrificial substitute of believers—the “sons”—in Hebrews.

Prior to the manuscript discoveries in the Judean Desert, the reigning theory of the textual history of the Hebrew Bible divided textual witnesses into three recensions, according to their closeness to the three best-preserved ancient exemplars, the Masoretic Text, the Septuagint, and the Samaritan Pentateuch. However, the discovery at Qumran of biblical manuscripts that did not fall neatly into one of those recensions, manuscripts that came to be called “non-aligned,” cast doubt on this tripartite division. This paper will consider these “non-aligned” manuscripts, to determine if any new or different relationships can be discerned among the various witnesses.

Eight of the forty-eight verses which make up the book of Jonah (chapter 2, verses 3 to 10: verses 2 to 9 in English Bibles) constitute a literary and musical composition of rare quality. We all recognize that Jonah has written a psalm, but we sometimes forget that every psalm is 50% poetry and 50% music. Although the prophet's circumstances at the time of writing are uniquely grotesque, it is wrong to conceive of the fish as Jonah's enemy, for the fish is a faithful and obedient servant of God. It is therefore wrong to feel sympathy only for the prophet. Both parties suffer after a fashion. While Jonah undergoes 'affliction', the poor fish has to endure something much worse than an oversized bolus. The masculine fish of chapter 2 verse 1 which swallows Jonah becomes a feminine fish in verse 2. It appears to have been 'impregnated' by Jonah's advent, and it becomes a masculine fish again only in verse 11, when at the LORD's command it vomits out Jonah upon the dry land. For three days and three nights Jonah and the fish are not two adversaries, but two partners. The song which ascends to God is partly a whale-song, since Jonah prays to the LORD out of the fish's belly. In fact, Jonah prays to the LORD out of the fish's INTESTINES (mem-ayin-yodh). The strings of plucked instruments have often been made from animal intestine. It is most likely that the stringed instruments of Psalm 45:10 (mem-nun-yodh) and Psalm 150:5 (mem-nun-yodh-mem) were GUT strings (compare mem-nun-he-wau in Psalm 68:24). So if Jonah is the singer, the fish is his instrument, whose resonating cavity makes its own contribution to the overall harmony. I'm not using the word 'harmony' in a loose sense, because the psalm is a two-part ‘song upon Alamoth', a fact which is encrypted in its first three sung words. The notes of its melody are transcribed from the first and last letters of alternate words, in accordance with the Davidic system: aleph = one-beat d, beth = one-beat e, gimel = one-beat f, daleth = one-beat g, he = one-beat a, wau = one-beat b, zayin = one-beat c’; cheth = two-beat d, teth = two-beat e, yodh = two-beat f, kaph = two-beat g, lamedh = two-beat a, mem = two-beat b, nun = two-beat c’; samekh = three-beat d, ayin = three-beat e, pe = three-beat f, tzaddi = three-beat g, qoph = three-beat a, resh = three-beat b, s[h]in = three-beat c’, and tau = three-beat d’. The Alamoth scale-notes accompany the corresponsive melodic scale-notes in perfect fifths, as follows: Alamoth a goes with melodic d, Alamoth b with melodic e, Alamoth c’ with melodic f, Alamoth d’ with melodic g, Alamoth d with melodic a, Alamoth e with melodic b, Alamoth f with melodic c’, and Alamoth g with melodic d’. I hope that on the day we’ll be able to perform at least a rough-edged textless version of the psalm in two-part Alamoth harmony. If six or more of those who mean to attend are prepared either to sing or to play their instruments, they’ll allow everyone else to hear what one piece of ancient Israelite music sounded like. Don’t stay away if you think you’re not musical! We need an audience as well as a group of performers. I’ll talk about the psalm for a while, and then we’ll rehearse the music together. It should be great fun!

Jesus’ prayer, the ‘Our Father’ appears to have been a typically Jewish prayer. However, what was typical of Jewish prayer at the time of Jesus? Were there established patterns? What sources can be examined? The paper will examine the different contexts of Jesus’ prayer, the ‘Our Father’ in the synoptics and how they differ, and explore the reasons. Using sources from the time of Jesus, the exact meaning of the expression abba at the time of Jesus will be researched.. In addition, relevant liturgical texts and kaddish texts from Qumranic sources will be compared with those of rabbinic origin. Conclusions on the basis of this study will be drawn. Did the prayer of Jesus pre-empt a pattern in latter prayer texts? Was there anything original about the Lord’s Prayer, or is it an example of a typical Jewish prayer, composed freely for a specific occasion.?

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The aim of this paper is to illustrate and critically evaluate how John Chrysostom vilifies the rich and the accumulation of wealth in his homily 40 On First Corinthians. It is shown that three trajectories are used in this process. Firstly, some remarks are made on the rhetoric Chrysostom utilizes in the homily. In this instance, rhetoric refers to the specific language and terminology that is present in his argument. Secondly, the social scientific trajectories of honour and shame, the limited good and envy are implemented by Chrysostom to traduce the rich. Thirdly, a theologico-ethical trajectory is present. This includes the soteriological and eschatological implications of being rich and the ethical issues of necessity and covetousness as ascetic ideals. The paper is concluded with a critical discussion of the problems of vilifying the rich which was a common phenomenon in the Christian literature of the first five centuries.

The ancient site of Lachish (Tell ed-Duweir), is situated ca. 40 Km. North of Beer-Sheva and covers an area of ca. 30 acres. In the Iron Age II (8th-7th century BCE), Lachish was the most important city after Jerusalem, and its destruction level called “Lachish III”, is well dated to the conquest of the city by the Assyrian king Sennacherib in 701 BCE. The conquest was commemorated by paneling the walls of a room in the palace in Nineveh with scenes of siege of the city. The city was conquered again in 586 B.C.E. by the Babylonian king Nabuchadnezzar II, and its destruction level is called “Lachish II”. In 1966, on the floor of a small room, Yohanan Aharoni found six inscribed Judaean stone weights a Hebrew ostracon and a rich group of ceramic vessels. One of the vessels, a typical Iron Age II cylindrical juglet, contained a surprise, a group of 17 Hebrew clay seal impressions. Evidently, an official at Lachish had the habit of collecting the seal impressions which he removed from the incoming mail and kept them in the juglet. The finds were dated to the “Lachish II destruction Level”, ca. 586 BCE. Unfortunately, only 7 bullae are fully or partly legible, while the reminder are poorly preserved and are illegible. Six of them are bearing personal names while one, which is damaged and its lower right corner is missing, belonged to the high official: “Shebanyahu“. In the light of the new epigraphic evidence from Keilah, we have to reconsider the attribution of the Lachish juglet and its content to Lachish II level.

In a previous study which focused on the Saul cycle, I demonstrated how the deuteronomistic historiographer’s editing of the Saul cycle consisted in presenting a pejorative portrayal of “the people” as instruments capable of receiving and revealing the divine will. This paper explores further the characterization of “the people” in the Deuteronomistic Historiographer’s modification of his sources (or pre-deuteronomistic material). We will then conclude by proposing a rational for the critical depiction of the People in this literary corpus.

Since World War II, the question of the New Testament and “antisemitism” or “anti-Judaism” has received considerable attention. In recent years, however, these “isms” have been joined by another. “Supersessionism,” originally used in Christian tradition with a positive (even triumphalistic) valence, is increasingly used as a negative characterization of traditional Christian claims that the church has superseded Israel in the divine purposes and has inherited all that was positive in Israel’s tradition. The term has some advantages; for example, it focuses attention on the issue of self-definition, which in many ways is antecedent to any actions, speech or attitudes directed against (anti) the other. Still, in that it was first used with respect to a Christianity that existed as a distinct institution, separated from its original Jewish matrix and now self-consciously Gentile, it has limitations when used with reference to an earlier, transitional—or proto-Christian—period. During this period, lasting at least until 150 C.E., any description of Christian self-definition needs to take several variables into account: the terms on which Gentiles were included; whether Jewish believers had any distinct, ongoing status; the relative status of Jewish and Gentile believers; the relationship of the movement to scriptural Israel; the relationship of the movement to contemporary Judaism; whether a positive place was envisaged for Israel as a distinct entity in the (eschatological) future. Since we can discern a range of opinion on these matters within this period, what might loosely be described as supersessionism at a lower resolution displays significant differentiation at a higher. Moreover, it is part of a larger spectrum where, at either extreme, “supersessionism” is not really applicable. The purpose of this paper is to describe this spectrum—in other words, to provide a taxonomy of supersessionism in proto-Christianity.

In the Hebrew Bible Jacob and Moses both are said to have a disability. Jacob was limping after his fight with YHWH at the river Jabbok (Gen 32:25-33) and Moses had a speaking impediment (Exod 4:10; 6:12.30). Interestingly, the lameness of Jacob and Moses’ stuttering are not recast in the Book of Jubilees. This Hebrew composition from the second century BCE retells Israel’s primeval history from Genesis 1 through Exodus 24. In his rewriting, the author of Jubilees deleted, added, modified and rearranged the Pentateuchal texts to match with his own Sitz-im-Leben and theological ideas. This paper discusses the question as to why the author of Jubilees chose to omit the passages about Jacob’s wrestling at the Jabbok and the objection of Moses to YHWH that he could not speak properly.

The extensive debate concerning the meaning of the pistis Christou construction in the Pauline epistles has focused almost exclusively on the occurrence of the phrase in three authentic Pauline letters (i.e., Gal 2:16, 20; 3:22; Rom 3:22, 26; Phil 3:9). The use of pistis in the Pastoral Epistles has played little role in the discussion. Indeed, it is sometimes suggested that the frequency with which the article precedes the noun pistis in the Pastorals (e.g., 1 Tim 1:2; 3:9; 4:1, 6; 5:8, 12; 6:10, 12; 21; 2 Tim 2:18; 3:8; 4:7; Titus 1:13) indicates an objectification of “the faith” in the PE characteristic of second- or third-generation Pauline Christianity. While eschewing questions of authorship, this paper argues that the construction dia pisteos tes en Christo Iesou in 2 Tim 3:15 should be interpreted as a reference to salvation that comes through the faithfulness of Jesus. Following a recent trend in the study of the Pastoral letters (e.g., Johnson, Towner), the paper offers a reading of 2 Tim 3:15 in its own literary and rhetorical context. One of the effects of “grouping” the Pastoral Epistles together has been to mute the potential contribution to the pistis Christou debate offered by 2 Tim 3:15. The paper contends that, in light of the emphasis on salvation through the faithfulness (pistos) of the risen Christ in 2 Tim 2:8-13, the phrase dia pisteos tes en Christo Iesou in 2 Tim 3:15 refers not primarily to the faithfulness of the human Jesus but to the faithfulness of resurrected Christ. In this regard, the author of 2 Timothy, while emphasizing the subjective aspect of Christ’s own faith, locates “the faith that is in Christ” not primarily in the life and death of the earthly Jesus but in the continuing faithfulness of the risen Christ.

Since the publication of the first fragments, Milik (1972) started calling this work “Visions of Amram” because the Aramaic text names it a “Copy of the Writing of the Words of the Vision(s) of Amram” (4Q543 frg. 1 a, b, c 1). The shortened version of the title, “Visions of Amram” took hold in the scholarly imagination and publications until today, and justly so. The fragmentary manuscripts of the Visions of Amram preserved the whole introduction to the Aramaic composition and the first lines of the narration by Amram in first person singular. The first introductory lines (4Q543 frg. 1 a, b, c lines 1–4; 5–8) refer to the whole composition, before the narration begins, and contain a lot of information concerning the literary form of the text, its content and purpose of its composition.

This paper will investigate the situation in Israel during the 8th c. BC as described in 2 Kings 15. The goal of this paper is to capture the dynamics of Israelite historiography. This biblical text presents its own interpretation of the political and cultural situation in Israel just before the downfall of the Northern Kingdom. Therefore, this study will concentrate on the literary analysis of the biblical text and will present some reasons of the downfall of the Northern Kingdom.

The author of Hebrews describes his work as a “word of exhortation” (13:22). In the sermon, the author makes steady use of narratives to warn, encourage, and exhort his hearers. After making some preliminary observations on narrative theory and the appropriateness of a narratival approach to Hebrews, I address the larger stories at play in the sermon. Given time constraints, this paper can deal in specific detail with only two passages: the story of the wilderness generation in Hebrews 3-4 and the story of Jesus in the Habakkuk 2:3-4 citation in Hebrews 10:37-39. These passages depict stories of pi,stij and avpisti,a, which function as two stories into one of which everyone participates. The author leaves his hearers with no doubt about the ending of each story. For those who continue in avpisti,a, they can expect to die in the wilderness and fail to enter the rest (3:12-19). Put succinctly, shrinking back leads to destruction, while faith(fulness) leads to life (10:39). If they are participating in the story of pi,stewj, then they already know their end, since the story has already been told in Jesus. Readers are left to decide into which story to participate, but the author expects better things for his hearers (6:9-10; 10:39; 11:40). Read through the lens of theological exegesis, these narratives function as illocutionary speech-acts that speak as God’s word even to readers in the present. These narratives in Hebrews do more than tell a story – they are pastoral tools.

In recent discussions about Paul’s stance concerning the Torah it has been argued that the references to clean/unclean in Rom 14.14, 20 are clear indications that he actually no longer adheres to the Jewish regulations concerning these distinctions, ( and thus considers the role of the law as having come to an end in Christ). It has further been argued that the apostle only advocates tolerance in relation to those Christ-followers who have not yet come to terms with freedom from the law in Christ. Moreover, this is considered to be for a limited period of time until they too have overcome their reservations, and joined the ‘strong in faith’ in their law-free practice of ‘eating everything’. Such readings presuppose that Paul’s statements are repudiations of Jewish perceptions of purity, ‘clean’ and ‘unclean’, and the commandments related to these distinctions. However, it will be argued in this paper that if Paul’s statements are read in the context of a) purity concerns in the Graeco-Roman world generally, and b)Jewish perceptions of koinon and kathara in particular, a different image emerges. Issues concerning purity are not a peculiarity of Judaism but common around the Mediterranean in the first century CE; thus to discuss such issues must have sounded normal in the ears of any first century person. Far from repudiating Jewish distinctions between koinon and kathara Paul affirms Jewish perceptions concerning these. These are rooted not in some natural quality or essence or defect of the item under discussion, but in God’s Torah. Thus the distinctions are relevant for those to whom the Torah is given, that is, Jews, but, consistent with Paul’s stance elsewhere, not for gentiles. It is not these distinctions which cause dissensions in Rome. At the heart of these lies a failure to recognize that differences are neither ridiculous (Petronius), a sign of antagonism, nor an issue for competitive boasting. Rather than being viewed as obstacles they should be seen as constitutive of the body of Christ.

The book of Kings describes the wars in which Israel was involved as attacker or as a side that had been attacked, in a restrained way. Even the rebellion of the Aramaic Rezon in the course of Solomon's peaceful reign is depicted as action of quiet colonization ("and they went to Damascus, and dwelt there, and made him king in Damascus" 1Kgs 11:24). In the divided kingdom period, throughout two hundreds years, only three campaigns between Israel and Judah are described with limited military and political targets. The wars of Israel and Judah against surrounding nations are presented as justified wars, and their target was a self-defense or subjugating rebels. In those wars Israel fought in a fair manner, and the author does not mention any enemy's casualties. Similar trend is discernible also when other nations unjustifiably attack Israel. Egypt attacked Judah only once, when king Shoshenk carried off the treasures of the temple and the royal palace. When other nations attacked Israel and Judah the both side's causalities are not mentioned. The only exceptions are the confrontations between Aram and Israel that took place recurrently and vigorously. The moderation of wars descriptions in the book of kings is conspicuous on the background of the other nation's atrocities and war crimes that are accounted in the book of Amos, and the Assyrian's maltreatments depicted in the Assyrian annals. The biblical description coincides with the portrayal of Israel's kings as "merciful king" (1Kgs 20:31), and is intented to prevent the foreigners' hostility toward Israel in the exile's period, at the time in which the book of kings was composed.

Religion is destructive or healing, depending upon two things 1)how it interfaces with a specific person's spirituality, and 2) the nature of the specific person's personality, character structure, and pathology. This paper explores through a clinical lens a taxonomy of personalities and religious models that interact to create psychospiritual health and illness. This lecture defines the terms and constructs a taxonomy of personality types and or religious models that interct in this process for good or ill. This is a phenomenological and heuristic, not empirical study. It engages relevant biblical theological considerations and biblical case studies, drawn largely from my recent books entitled: Understanding Religious Experience, What the Bible Says aAbout Spiritualit; and Radical Grace, How Belief in a Benevolent God Benefits Our Health. (Both - Praeger, 2007).

When this document appeared in 2001 academic theologians were hardly quick to respond. There was an essay by M Girard in the Québecquois Théologiques in 2002. The document was then translated in 2002, to an unfavourable reception, if one can judge by the reviews in the Biblical Theology bulletin of 2002 by R.E. Murphy and by Charles Miller who concluded: ‘Given the number of errors in the English translation, it would appear that the French original should be used in any future scholarly work involving this document.’ Eventually Pro Ecclesia in 2004 carried two significant responses, by M. Levering and R. Hütter. Yet the review with perhaps the best grasp of the issues was that by D. Farkasfalvy in Communio 2002 who queried the salvation-historical model contained in the doument and proposes that a consideration of the divine perspective can mean that the fullness of meaning is 'already' contained in Scripture. The document itself deals in issues of a dual tradition as allowing two possible doctrinae, one Jewish the other Christian, but sees the difference between interpretations arising from the minds of the interpreters, not the original communities of authors. This paper will contend that since so much of the Hebrew bible is not directly Christ-focused, the commission in on the right lines, but that what lets it down is a lack of engagement with biblical critics from all parties, such that the academy and just as worryingly, the Protestant Church, has ignored this important work, and the gap between church and scholarship has in turn widened.

Pacino di Bonaguida’s Tree of Life, c. 1305-1310, in the Accademia in Florence (tempera on wood, 248 x 51 cm) portrays Christ crucified on a tree from whose branches hang more than thirty roundels depicting New Testament scenes. The painting is closely related to St Bonaventure’s mid thirteenth century treatise, the Tree of Life. This paper inaugurates a research project to explore how artists functioned as biblical interpreters in Italy during the pivotal period from 1250 to 1450. In these two centuries three-dimensional space reappeared in painting, as the rules of perspective were formulated and applied, while religious fervour and the growing wealth of Italian city-states fostered an explosion of painting, much of it on biblical subjects, that has shaped the way artists have painted the Bible ever since. Moving on from existing concerns with the background and pictorial themes of such painting, this paper will ask critical but often unasked questions: How did Bonaguida interpret biblical passages in paint? And why did he do so in this case? What is the balance between tradition and originality in this painting? How was he responding to the religious beliefs and practices, social relations and intellectual currents of the time? In particular, just how closely does Bonaguida follow Bonaventure?

Generations of Romans left their mark on Athens, and over time the Roman empire embedded itself deeply into the Athenian cityscape. Monuments prominent in Athens today bear witness to Roman citizens and emperors alike who paid tribute to a powerful Greek culture that emerged all the more dominant under Roman rule. Imperial cult provided one way for the comprehensive yet elastic Roman system to make its presence felt in Greece. When Athenians responded to the demands of empire they relied on their city’s customs and monuments to help them negotiate their shifting relationship to imperial authority. But the empire of the Romans was not the first to impact Athens in such a significant way. Long before Augustus Athenians had already experienced three other imperial regimes and they had learned how to oversee changes to the city itself, and to the civic calendar and customs of public worship. Encounters with foreign powers and empires could mean destruction on a mass scale, as with the invasion of Persia in 480 BCE and later during the occupation of the Roman general Sulla (88-85 BCE). Destruction then opened up possibilities for rebuilding, sometimes on a lasting monumental scale. The building boom of the fifth-century BCE occurred thanks to wealth of the Athenian empire, and important first- and second-century CE projects were attached to the emperors Augustus and Hadrian. This paper will contextualize the impact that Rome had on Athens by surveying major changes to the city and its public spaces, and then inquiring into how Athenians might have experienced imperial cult within the larger historical context of local polytheistic traditions. Together the survey and inquiry will provide a window into the city that Paul visited when he addressed the Athenians from the Areopagus in the early 50s of the Common Era.

Is the criticism of the fleeing women in Mark 16:8 justified? It is only there that the Greek 'ekstasis' is not translated in modern languages as 'vision', as opposed to the other occurrences in the NT. But do they obey Jesus' command to keep silent, because they are (God-)fearing, like Sara or the woman in Prov. 31:30, or because it is an addition to silence them? Then again, do the women represent themselves, and therefore women as such, or do we see 'Daughter Sion' keeping silent and not accepting the Good News? and is the person clad in white 'neither male nor female' in Christ - subservient woman transformed into autonomous man?Before we can find our autonomous selves in this story, maybe we need to update, translate the metaphorical message of the text. But in the end, woman is silenced again - be she real or metaphorical.

Word studies have been a staple in the exegete’s toolbox for centuries. These complex studies involve examining a word’s development, usages, and attempting to determine its meaning in a particular context. However, the vast amount of data used in this process may result in contamination with elements foreign to the author’s intended meaning. Lexical pragmatics is a recent approach to words from the perspective of modern communication theory which emphasizes the meaning of a word in a particular context. This meaning is determined from contextual clues resulting in an ad hoc meaning and may be unique or exclusive to a particular context. This approach generally has little or no use for historical development. It may result in accurate meaning for contemporary communication; however, it is much more difficult to use in an ancient context in which we do not have access to much of the cognitive environment. This paper will consider a lexical pragmatic approach that is informed by traditional word study elements in order to provide important background necessary to understand a word in context. A biblical example will be used to demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of each approach and the benefits of using a method informed by both.

Over the past century a unique body of Jewish tombstones from Byzantine Zoora, known to Jews at Zoar, modern Ghor el-Saft on the south eastern shore of the Dead Sea. More than fifty Jewish inscriptions are known to exist. Of these, eleven are housed in the Moussaieff collection, and half are published. I am in the process of publishing the others. Th recent publication of nearly 400 Christian tombstones from Zoora provides rich opportunities for contexualizing the Jewish exempla. In this talk I will attempt a deep description of the Jewish community that flourished at Zoora between the 4th and 6th centuries, with particular emphasis upon the unpublished Moussaieff exempla.

In 1967 O.H. Steck wrote a dissertation intitled „Israel und das gewaltsame Geschick der Propheten“. He claimed that in postexilic Israel a “levitical-deuteronomistic movement” existed until about 200 B.C.E. and that a “repentence-movement” suceeded it from about 200 B.C.E. until the first century C.E. According to Steck the “deuteronomistic view of history” and the “deuteronomistic view of the prophets” were essential to this “repentence movement.” Steck found an echo of these views also in the Dead Sea Scrolls. In my presentation I seek to address Steck's still unrefuted hypothesis by asking whether there is evidence for a movement with deuteronomistic ideas in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

In Canticles it can be noted that there is a difference between the fictitous author Solomon and his function as a legendary figure. The few times Solomon is mentioned he takes over different roles. They refer to different images which are ascribed to Solomon e.g. as a king, a lover, a bridegroom, a wise men, an apostate. It is analyzed how these influence the reading of Canticles. It is also asked what what would it do to Song of Songs if there wouldn't be a Solomon. This clarifies his function for the interpretation of the book.

The Book of Jonah has inspired scholarly investigation in diverse perspectives such as, debating its literary category (fable, parable, allegory), analyzing its narrative art (narrator, character roles, modes of speech, scenes), comic interpretation (satire, parody, farce), and finally defining the book of Jonah as an anthology of biblical religious thought (obedience, forgiveness, repentance, providence). This lecture will examine the last perspective, i.e., the theological, and in particular, the concept of providence through several motifs: the sea, the ship, the great fish and behemah (beast). The occurrence of these motifs in Psalm 104 (vv. 14, 24-26) and almost all of them in Psalm 8 (vv. 8-9), and the poetic echo of Jonah's narrative in Psalm 107:23-31, 38, illuminate the universal quality of God's cosmic providence, which stands in pivotal contradiction to Jonah's limited concept of the Israel's God.

In Romans 16:1-2, Paul recommended Phoebe to his audience and described her as a prostatis, both in relation to him and to many others. Recent scholarship has concluded that prostatis is best rendered in English as “benefactor.” This conclusion has led to speculation that Phoebe was a wealthy businesswoman, had high social standing in Kenchreai, and was perhaps ready to fund Paul’s projected Spanish mission. An examination of relevant literature, inscriptions, and papyri, however, shows that the benefactor interpretation is wrong. I argue instead that 1) a better translation of Rom 16:2b would be, “…for she has taken care of many (saints), including me;” and 2) Paul’s rhetoric implies that he wanted the Roman congregations to take care of Phoebe during her visit. Thus, Phoebe is not an example of a wealthy, high status believer in Corinth. Rather, Paul’s reference to her suggests ways in which his practice of commendation, patronage, and reciprocity differed from those of dominant society.

Luke focuses, like no other of the Evangelists, on the matter of rich and poor, criticizing wealth and the wealthy and holding the poor in high esteem. Yet he makes an interesting shift in his two books, moving from a full renouncement of property as part of the call to discipleship in the Gospel towards the idea of community of goods and almsgiving in the Christian communities in Acts. At the same time, he radicalizes the understanding discipleship in Acts, as seen, e.g., in the severe punishment of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5. From a source critical point of view one can easily explain this shift by referring to Luke’s sources. But source criticism cannot explain the impact this shift could have had for Luke and his addressees. Therefore, this paper investigates the character of this shift in its literary, socio-economical and cultural context, applying coeval economic works (such as Philodemos, Peri Oikonomias) as well as philosophical and religious writings dealing with the significance of property and its renunciation.

Recent scholarship highlighting Paul's political engagement with the Roman Empire focuses on the intersection of Paul's gospel with that of Caesar. One theme which can be traced through both gospels is violence, even though this has received inadequate attention. In Galatians, Paul's past, present, and foreseeable future were all marked by violence, though the trajectory of violence in his life had been altered. Where he once employed violence to advance his cause, Paul was now an object of violence. Tracing the trajectory from violence to peace in Paul's biography, we will outline the way in which Paul and the new-creation communities he formed constituted a new politics of peace in a world which depended upon the politics of violence. These new-creation polities necessarily negotiated their way in the polities underwritten by Roman violence, but they were formed by practices which sought to engage the violent Roman world on the church's own peaceable terms rather than by reflecting Rome's violent practices. Galatians thus offers us a picture of the habits which Paul sought to cultivate in order to encourage the formation of peaceable communities in the midst of larger communities marked by hostility, competition for honor, and violence.

Recently, there has been much scholarly debate concerning the relationship between Empire and Gospel. In addition, a renewed dialogue has taken place regarding the social/historical setting of Matthew’s Gospel and Galilee. Some scholars, including myself, have even hypothesized that the Gospel could have originated from the region. This paper will add to these discussions by further exploring the Roman Empire (as viewed) through the eyes of the author(s) of Matthew’s Gospel. In particular, I will discuss three converging lines of evidence related to imperial Rome and the first Gospel. First, I will utilize archaeological evidence (taken in part from my own experiences digging at Bethsaida) in order to draw a sketch of Jewish Galilean life within the first century Roman world. Second, I will re-examine aspects of Jesus’ birth narrative (2:1-18) and their relationship to King Herod and Rome. In the course of this analysis, I will focus upon three key points: Herod’s role in the story as it relates to Roman history and kingship, the meaning of Jesus as the “true” king (in both Jewish and Roman contexts), and Matthew’s intended message for a (still) predominately Jewish audience. Third, I will discuss several short but important pericopes related to Jesus’ Galilean ministry (4:15, 23-25; 11:20-24; 13:54-58; 15:21-28) in order to try to discern whether the geographical setting portrayed in Matthew’s Gospel was shaped and/or influenced by prevailing Jewish views of the Roman Empire. Also of relevance here is Jesus’ apparent rejection by his fellow Jews in Galilee. Could this rejection have been meant to signal to the reader that something greater, such as the Matthean community’s new role in the larger Roman world, was at stake? Ultimately, I hope to shed light on the meaning and interpretation of the Roman world as portrayed by the author(s) of Matthew’s Gospel.

In line with classic arguments of ancient rhetoric illustrated with real experiences, Tertullian’s early work Apologeticum (composed around AD 197) is an intense defence of Christian beliefs opposed to intolerance and religious persecution. The work explores on the one hand the literary topos of moral decadence and the triumph of material luxury in the Roman society, and on the other hand, it provides a solid portrait of the Christians’ claim for full social and legal integration in the world they shared with pagan Romans. Among the ignorant prejudices on Christian life, Tertullian refers to the absurd accusation of being infructuosi negotiis. Yet the Christian community, like the Romans, not only contributed to the public treasury with their taxes, but also attended the forum, the market, the tabernae and all those places where goods were regularly traded and exchanged. The dynamic participation of Christians in business is thus perceived by Tertullian as a necessary part of daily life. He also outlines the fact that not the money itself but the nature of its uses and users determined the moral rightness of these practices. This paper analyses Tertullian’s painting of Christian economic behaviour based on responsible spending, restraint and rationality, as a valid alternative to the negative consequences of material excess and immoral investment. Tertullian’s rhetoric on ancient economics in Apologeticum will be also compared with some of his later works dealing with the active participation of Christians in normal life, such as De idolatria. To what extent did Tertullian’s depiction of material life – both Pagan and Christian – mirror particular economic practices and real perceptions of trade and business activities attested in the prosperous Roman city of Carthage and also in the broader context of the Empire under the Severans?

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This will be an extract from a book for OUP on Psalms 1 and 2 through the Centuries. Like my first volume called Psalms through the Centuries (Blackwell:2007), it is a reception history work, and I shall apply to this psalm the methodology I used there. I will focus on the very different Jewish and Christian interpretations of the Law in Psalm 1,mainly using early Jewish writings (from Qumran up to Midrah Tehillim) and early Christian works (from the New Testament and the Greek and Latin Fathers). However, to make the point that Jewish and Christian reception moves from dissention to a gradual rapprochement in an understanding of this Psalm, as seen, for example, in collaborative academic and liturgical projects today, I will also (through Powerpoint) give examples of this through Art and Music from the Middle Ages up to the Twentieth Century. For those who have read or been at a presentation of my work on Psalm 8, the approach taken there will be similar to that for Psalm 1.

Most historical-critical scholars continue to consider Rom 12:1–15:13 to be primarily parenetic in function, and most rhetorical-critical scholars follow their lead while also considering some portion of 15:14ff. to be the peroration (peroratio) of Romans. Both perspectives are misleading and obscure the rhetorical function of 12:1–15:13. This essay will demonstrate that 12:1–15:13 functions as a suitable peroration for the arguments of Romans. Failure to recognize this function is the result of continuing historical-critical confusion about the purpose and occasion of Romans and rhetorical-critical confusion on the subject of the rhetorical structure (dispositio) of Romans in relation to its epistolary frame. Many New Testament rhetorical critics have taken an approach to the analysis of rhetorical structure that is overly influenced by handbook definitions of the parts of the discourse and a commonly repeated narrow and misleading definition of the length and function of the peroration. A more accurate understanding of the flexibility and purposes of perorations will enable scholars to see why the identification of 12:1–15:13 as the peroration of Romans is quite plausible. Furthermore, an analysis of verbal and structural parallels between this section, the thesis (propositio) and arguments (probatio) of Romans will show why this identification is highly likely. Finally, this analysis will allow a more integrated and persuasive understanding of the purposes of Romans.

Currently scholars generally dismiss the existence of the Elohist as a viable Pentateuchal tradition, although a few authors date it to the 7th century BCE as a loose pool of oral traditions that were later used by the Yahwist in the 6th century BCE. If this theory is viable, then the north Israelite prophetic traditions found in Samuel and Kings could have arisen prior to the Pentateuchal Elohist narratives and may have influenced their evolution. Therefore, we shall consider the theological themes and literary motifs in these prophetic traditions to observe whether they might be precursors to the so-called Elohist narratives in the Pentateuch. We shall pay special attention to themes such as fire, holy mountains, dreams, immediate retribution, “angel of the Lord/God,” prophetic identity, and animals.

The Mosaic memory of the name of God from Exod 3:11-15 was that Yahweh, the God who constituted Israel, was associated with the verb hayah. The presence of the deity, always with the people, defined their community. The verb for being implicitly discouraged iconic representation and encouraged epitaphs such as “God of eternity” and “the living God”. It held no inherent contradiction to fully realized monotheism as the people’s claims for their God became increasingly universal. According to Ibn Ezra’s grammatical explanation, I Am Who I Am in Exod 3:14a is a proper noun defined by its verbal sense. This unity of identity and action is also true of the name Yahweh. If the name Yahweh is also the essential activity yahweh, there should be examples in the Pentateuch where it operates as a verb in the syntax of a sentence. The balance of divine attributes in Exod 34:6,7—essential goodness (v. 6) weighed against forgiveness and judgment (v. 7)—is an archetype for how Israelite history would be told in relation to its God. It begins with a doubled name, read either as two names, Yahweh, Yahweh or as a name and a verb, Yahweh yahweh. The latter reading implies the Mosaic name theology in which the name signifies what God does, further characterized by divine attributes. The theological underpinnings of the genuinely monotheistic Shem‘a of Deut. 6:4 evolved along these lines, using the name twice in a “verbless” sentence. Does the Shem’a, like Ex. 3:14a and 34:6, contain wordplay on the nominal and verbal functions of the name? Is its theology of unity traceable to the cultural memory of the Mosaic name theology?

Determining the administrative rank of Erastus, ho oikonomos tes poleos (Rom 16.23), has been a pursuit of great scholarly interest for many decades, not least because Erastus’s municipal position holds the potential for unlocking the socio-economic status of at least one sector of the earliest urban churches. This seemingly simple lexical exercise has proved very difficult, however, largely because there exist no non-Christian, bilingual text from a Roman colony containing the municipal title and a Latin correlative. Still, several possibilities have been proposed: arcarius, quaestor, and aedilis. Aedilis is a particularly attractive rendering for many NT scholars, if for no other reason than because a famous inscription found in Corinth testifies to an Erastus who in the early empire served as aedilis of the colony (Corinth 8.3.232). While this paper does not attempt to affirm or deny the identification of the two Erasti, its modest goal is to shed light on municipal oikonomoi of Greek and Roman cities through a host of relevant inscriptions. First, it will identify the administrative responsibilities associated with the post, showing oikonomoi to be city treasurers of various social standing who on occasion also participated in certain citywide religious activities. Second, fresh epigraphic evidence will be marshaled from the nearby colony of Patrai. This data, in keeping with the warning of A.D. Clarke, that 'No clear parallel can be drawn with Corinth unless recognition is given that the city was a colony, with a different administrative organisation than other Greek cities' (Secular & Christian Leadership in Corinth, [1993], 52), will demonstrate that in Roman colonies like Corinth the title oikonomos referred to a magistracy (thus ruling out arcarius), yet was not used synonymously with agoranomos (thus ruling out aedilis). Quaestor will then be suggested as the likeliest equivalent.

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The variant reading that in some “D-type” witnesses of Col. 3:11 presents the insertion of the words “male and female”, is normally held as secondarily generated by the influence of Gal. 3:28. This paper proposes an assessment of that judgement through a reconsideration of the variant reading in the light of the anti-women scribal tendency detectable both in the “D-type” text and in the rest of the manuscript tradition of the Pauline Epistles. In this way it shows that some noteworthy reasons can be found supporting the case that this reading was part of the earlier text of the epistle.

Analyzing Jn 2, it’s impressive the amount of similarities in narrative construction and communicative purposes between the episode of the marriage at Cana (2,1-12) and the so-called incident in the temple of Jerusalem (2,13-22). They work together, in John, as a diptych to build the main double-sided characterization of Jesus: the “private” one – though more universal and less marked by conflicts- as the bridegroom and the “public” one – much more problematic - as the fulfilment/replacement of Jewish symbols and institutions. Not by chance here are introduced several significant Johannine patterns and oppositions which will be developed along the narrative: the geographical one (Cana-Jerusalem), the receptive one (faith-unfaith), the polemic interest (insiders-outsiders; family-strangers) and so on. John puts intentionally both episodes at the beginning of his narrative as a sort of main entrance into Jesus’ mystery as well as into the matter of his revelation and reception by a many-sided audience. The proleptic force of this diptych is enhanced by the double reference to Jesus’ death (the hour to come; the body to be “destroyed”). Narrative analyses will show similarities and parallels between the episodes in strategies, functions, themes and involved characters to prove their common functioning as “opening signs” in the Fourth Gospel.

Three Royal Deaths in Early Prophets: Type-scene or Intertextuality? A Comparison of Judg 9:50-55; 1 Sam 31:1-6; 2 Sam 1:1-16 The description of the death of Abimelech at Thebez (Judg 9:50-55) and the two depictions of the death of Saul (1 Sam 31:1-6; 2 Sam 1:1-16) all belong to the same literary type-scene: the death of a defeated king on the battlefield. At a critical point in battle the king, who is in distress, turns to a figure at his side to end his life; at the same time he voices the underlying motive for this request. The story concludes with the king’s death. Not restricted to biblical narrative, this pattern has parallels in the Assyrian Annals. Comparison of these three passages indicates, however, a closer relationship of direct literary affinity beyond the shared literary convention. Building blocks from the story of Abimelech’s death appear in both accounts of Saul’s death but for opposite purposes. By contrasting Saul’s end--his falling on his sword--with Abimelech’s death at the hands of his armsbearer, the author of 1 Sam 31 sought to highlight Saul’s bravery and the tragic dimensions of his death. The purpose of the author of 2 Sam 1 differed. He sought to mute the glory of Saul’s act of falling on his sword by contrasting the figures that ended the king’s life: Abimelech’s armsbearer, on the one hand, who spares Abimelech a despicable death, and an Amalekite youth who, by happenstance, is on the battlefield searching for spoils. Saul’s death at the hands of this Amalekite lad is framed as a “measure for measure” punishment for his sparing of the Amalekite king in contradiction to the divine command (1 Sam 15).

The lecture is an attempt to find a root for Jesus' word about 'careless word' (Matthew 12:36) in Exodus 20:7, and the 'wrongful use' of the name of God. To illuminate the question Matthew 12:36 will be investigated semantically, editorially and contextually.

The Theme of the Seminar, "Why Me? Send Someone Else!", invites comparison to Moses at the Burning Bush. Without minimizing that particular aspect of the story, I see things in the "novella" that are truly puzzling. In the first place, Jonah does not belong among the prophets, either major or minor. His only prophecy, if you can call it that, is a warning that Nineveh might be destroyed. And his "prayer" from inside the big fish reads suspiciously like a psalm, not a supplication. Secondly, God and Jonah have a peculiar one-on-one-only relationship. God "causes a storm" to harm Jonah, "prepares" a big fish to swallow him only to have the fish spit out Jonah after three days. Next, God "prepares" a plant to give Jonah shade and to make him happy, then he "prepares" a worm to kill the plant. Then God "prepares" a hot wind to make Jonah's life even more miserable. I have two questions: Why can't God make up his mind on what to do with Jonah, and second, doesn't God have anything else to do? Lastly, the "novella". A novella has a begining, a middle, and an ending, but the Jonah story stops too soon. Something is mssing. After getting all these details in the beginning--Jonah paying his fare, going down to the bottom deck, falling asleep, later walking so many miles into Nineveh, then all the minutiae about the repenting of the populace, and suddenly the abrupt end. This is bad story-telling. Something is "fishy" about this story, from beginning to end. I shall try to make sense of it and explain it to the best of my knowledge.

The place and function of the Pharisees in the late Second Temple Jewish society has been assessed in a variety of ways. The older scholarship was based on the assumption that the Pharisees were the leading group, but it has become common to emphasize that there was nothing which could be called “ normative Judaism” in this period. Consequently, the Pharisees have recently been categorized as one party among many parties or even as a sect. There has also been dispute over the program of the Pharisees. While especially the older Jewish scholarship presented the Pharisees as liberalizers and reformers of the society, recent, chiefly Christian, scholarship has described them as retainers promoting the interests of the ruling elite. These different portraits reflect the scarcity and nature of the source material related to the Pharisees. Recent research has revealed how deeply the portraits of the Pharisees in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Gospels, Josephus and early rabbinic sources have been influenced by the rhetorical and ideological agendas of these sources. Therefore, scholars have become quite cautious in their quests for the historical Pharisees. To complement the scarce historical data, scholars have used various sociological models and theories in their reconstructions of the Pharisees. In this paper, I assess the pros and cons of the social-scientific models used in the study of the Pharisees. I propose that the study of the Pharisees could be advanced by the use of social psychological theories that focus on cross-cultural regularities in group and intergroup processes. Especially the so called social identity perspective is useful in clarifying how the extant portraits of the Pharisees were created to promote distinctive social identities of various Jewish groups. We may never have direct access to how the Pharisees understood themselves, but more refined explanations of their role and function for other identities may make our historical reconstructions more plausible.

In the opening narrative of 1 Samuel (1:1-28), the prominence of the verb ‘alah?("to ascend or go up") coincides with the prominence of the preposition ‘al ("on, upon"). Particularly noteworthy are the instances (vv. 10, 13) where ‘al appears in the MT instead of the expected (and widely attested in the mss) preposition ‘el. This paper offers a reading which suggests that rather than being fortuitous textual corruptions requiring emendation these unexpected usages of ‘al may be read as cohering with the overall rhetorical strategy of the narrative whereby the legitimate priest Eli(‘ali) is marginalized as the verb ‘alah and its companion preposition ‘al move the narrative upward as the smoke of a sacrifice and lift the narrative's reader to a vantage point where the most visible cultic activity is Hannah praying "to" (‘al) Yahweh and speaking "to" (‘al) her heart while the priest Eli (’ali) sits passively “on” the seat “beside” the doorpost of the temple of Yahweh (‘al in both instances). The development of the paper, dealing as it does with an artfully constructed narrative that nevertheless has a complex compositional and textual history travels terrain well traversed by scholars working with a variety of interests--the poetics of Hebrew narrative, textual criticism, and the relationship between synchronic and diachronic readings of a text. In addition, given the narrative's subject matter and pivotal position within the Former Prophets, the paper intersects with feminist readings of the text and the concerns of Hebrew Bible theology. In particular, the paper proffers a reading of 1 Samuel 1 that creates space for imagining a variety of theological appropriations available for various postexilic communities seeking identity with/in the text.

Drawing on social scientific approaches to identity, this paper looks at the role of both internal definitions and external categorizations in the expression of identities in early Christian congregations and in Judean synagogues (first two centuries). In particular, I focus attention on how we can better understand dynamics of identity within such groups by looking at associations and cultural minorities in the Greco-Roman world. Both outside observers and members of congregations and synagogues sometimes expressed Christian or Judean group identity within the broader context of association life.

'And God said "I will blot out the adam which I have created"'. Genesis 6:7 is one of the first of many apparent references to the P creation account found in the flood narrative. So frequent are the allusions that they beg for an explanation. The current answer is that the flood is an act of de-creation that returns the world to the watery void of Genesis 1:2, only to be re-created so as to give humanity a new start in a new world. However, a careful study reveals that Genesis 6-9 focuses almost exclusively on Genesis 1:20b-1:31, the sixth day, and ignores most of the rest of the creation account. The story does not then, it seems, portray a systematic de-creation of the world, which might, anyway, be in contradiction to the story's resolution to preserve a remnant of the old creation, despite its evil inclination (8:21). At most, the flood undoes the prolific spread of humanity found in Genesis 4-5 with its concurrent spread of evil and performs a kind of purification of the adamah, although the theme of cleansing is muted. After exploring the links, this paper will demonstrate that the current de-creation interpretations of the flood story all have substantial weaknesses. A possible alternative way forward would be to see the flood narrative, not as uncreation, but as part of the ongoing creation and organisation of the known world, begun, but not completed, in Genesis 1. (A similar suggestion is sometimes made for Atrahasis). Nothing physically new is created but the world is re-ordered (killing is prohibited, meat eating is permitted), fear of curse and punishment is alleviated and covenant, grace and promise are introduced as essential elements for the existence of the world.

Scholars have often commented on the prominent role of the Holy Spirit in the Third Gospel. The Spirit of the Lord descends upon Jesus at his Baptism (3:22), he enters the wilderness full of the Spirit (4:1) and he returns to Galilee to begin his ministry filled with the Spirit’s power (4:14). When Jesus declares his manifesto in the synagogue at Nazareth he reads from the prophet Isaiah that, ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor...’ (4:18). The language and role of the Spirit fills the infancy narrative, the time of Jesus’ ministry in Galilee and on his journey to Jerusalem. Jesus is filled with the Spirit’s power and the text ends with the promise of the power of the Spirit for the disciples (24:49). Less recognised is the role of Satan in the text as antagonist to the mission of God, and how the battle is strategically placed in Jerusalem, the seat of religious power. This paper looks at how God is on a quest to seek out and save the lost (19:10) and Satan will ultimately not prevail. For Luke, God is in control of salvation history and historical figures move on a divine timetable. Narratives of angels and demons pepper the text, and language of d??aµ?? and p?e?µa abound as Luke shows his understanding of the cosmic battle where people turn from darkness to light, the power of Satan to God (Acts 26:18). Augustus and the Graeco-Roman world play a key role in the narrative as do the Jewish leaders. Both exhibit different but inadequate models of power in the text. Although they exert considerable force in the world, for Luke, they are merely pawns ultimately in God’s real battle with Satan.

The manuscript tradition of Hebrews 2:9 overwhelmingly supports the reading, “by the grace of God ['chariti theou'], he tasted death for everyone.” Commentators note, however, that multiple church fathers supported a variant: “apart from God ['choris theou'], he tasted death for everyone.” Theodore of Mopsuestia had used the variant to argue that Jesus died “distinct from his deity.” Although Theophylact maintained that “Nestorians” had introduced this alteration for their purposes, several evidences refute his position. First, "choris theou" appears long before the fifth-century Christological controversies. Second, various Patristic authors had accepted the "choris theou" variant, but as a limitation of “cosmic salvation”: Jesus tasted death for everyone [or everything], “except God.” Origen, an early proponent of this “cosmic interpretation,” maintained that Jesus died for all rational beings (humans, angels, and even the stars), “apart from God.” Within a Patristic milieu that emphasized the “cosmic” ramifications of Jesus’ work, such a reading possessed great power. Nevertheless, the word order of Hebrews 2:9 and the overall argument of the passage counter such a death for all beings “except God.” In fact, verse 16 insists that Jesus died for humans and not for angels. One should not assume, however, that Patristic interpreters provide no hermeneutical assistance. Their “cosmic” insights into Hebrews 2 demonstrate that Jesus died as the representative Human in order that humanity might share in his subjugation of “all things” (2:8). In this manner, a “cosmic” outcome retains a secondary yet important role within the passage. This “cosmic” framework solves another interpretive quandary within 2:9. Although many commentators interpret the "huper" construction as denoting “substitution,” the wider context (with its emphasis upon humanity’s rule over the cosmos through Christ) supports a broader sense of "huper." Jesus died “for the benefit of” humans, so that they might participate in his exalted authority.

This paper explores the phenomenon of aspirationalism in rabbinic law with an emphasis on differences between Palestinian and Babylonian sources. A close examination of references to angels in halakhic contexts reveals differences between east and west, early and late rabbinic sources on the question of human striving for ethical perfection. In the modern period, the field of normative ethics has been dominated by two main streams of thought. Consequentialist theories hold that the rightness of an act is determined by its consequences. Deontological theories consider duties and obligations, rights and principles when determining whether actions are right and wrong. Beginning in the mid-20th century, however, virtue ethics – an Aristotelian theory that prevailed in the ancient and medieval periods – has been revived by philosophers like G. E. M. Anscombe and Phillippa Foot. Virtue ethics emphasizes character and the cultivation of individual virtue through moral action. Because it envisions an ultimate purpose for human life, virtue ethics is fundamentally teleological and aspirational. Insofar as biblical law consists of the commands of a divine lawgiver, it is generally understood to be deontological in orientation: focused on duties and rules, obligations and prohibitions. Likewise, the edifice of rabbinic law constructed on the base of biblical law, is assumed to be deontological in orientation. Recent scholarship has begun to challenge this assumption by identifying teleological and aspirational crosscurrents in both biblical and rabbinic legal materials. Aspirationalism appears in the two Talmuds and in midrashic sources, in passages that feature angels as paradigmatically perfect or ethical beings. However, our sources differ in their depiction of the appropriate human response to angelic perfection. Palestinian and early Babylonian sources employ the trope of angelic perfection to expose human weakness and as a spur to aspirationalism. Late (i.e. primarily stammaic) Babylonian sources mobilize the motif of angelic perfection quite differently. The uniquely Babylonian phrase “the Torah was not given to the ministering angels” implies no criticism of humans. Indeed, at first glance, the phrase appears to assert and accept the physical limits that inhibit our emulation of angelic perfection. However, closer examination reveals a more complex late Babylonian attitude to ethical aspirationalism. Virtue ethics and aspirationalism are characteristic of Greek and, to a lesser extant, Christian philosophy. Thus, the shifting fortunes of the trope of the angels promises to tell us something about the rabbis’ interaction with their larger cultural environment. This paper considers aspirationalism in Greco-Roman and Christian culture in an effort to account for the difference between Palestinian and Babylonian rabbinic views of ethical aspirationalism.

The lack of explicit reference to Sinaitic revelation in 1 Enoch has led some scholars to allege a dissident group of Enochic Judaism that abandoned the Torah, preferring Enoch's revelation. Few scholars opposed this speculation; others are undecided. This paper will dispute the above allegation. The absence of Sinai was imperative for upholding 1Enoch's fictitious primeval origin. Omission is not proof of non-existence; I will cite many "normative" texts that don't mention the Mosaic Torah. Implicit references to Sinai were downgraded as insufficient positive evidence for confirming adherence to Mosaic Torah by "Enochians," yet omission is deemed adequate evidence for the revolutionary assertion that a group of Israelites denied the supremacy of the Mosaic Torah. Deductions ex silentio, when applied to arguments against such allegations, were not granted the same credence by these very scholars. The terms commands and law allegedly refer to Law of Nature, obligatory for all humans, thus blurring the identity of sinners in Enoch and making it unclear whehther they are Jews or gentiles. Ritual rules, like circumcision, Sabbath and Temple cannot be deduced from Natural Law. Unquestionably, "Enochians" did not reject these and the prophets in which they are cited. Enoch did not reveal these laws; thus, they must have been known from Sinai. Scholars agree that before the publication of Enoch and shortly thereafter, "Enochians" believed in Mosaic Torah, so it is difficult to understand how drastic changes regarding this crucial issue occurred in a relatively short time. An author of fantastic writing, attesting to animated, disobedient stars, would not reflect on the philosophy of Natural Law. The author's purpose in 1 Enoch was exhortation for repentance, complementing Mosaic Torah, which was not explicitly mentioned because it wasn't central to this aim. Instead, the author relies on the readers' independent knowledge of Torah.

In the 19th century, scholars in Britain and on the continent were forced to investigate very carefully a hoard of "Moabite" sculptures and inscriptions, and some biblical manuscripts,brought to their attention by Moses Wilhelm Shapira. The conclusions they finally reached, and the general observations they made, can also be very helpful today.

This paper examines how two more or less recent ideas in research of Valentinianism – emphasizing the Christian nature of the so-called heretic groups and the idea of Valentinian Christianity as a school compatible with philosophical schools of antiquity – are evident in the Gospel of Philip of the Nag Hammadi library. First, the text reflects strong Christian self-understanding. The Christians are deemed superior to Jews, Hebrews and Gentiles, and the arrival of Christ is connected with various events of central salvational importance. Furthermore, the Christian identity in the Gospel of Philip is based on apostolic authority. “We” are viewed as part of apostolic succession. The text is also full of quotes from and allusions to the New Testament writings. Thus this text supposes the idea of viewing Valentinianism as a part of Christianity, rather than a form of “Gnosticism”. Secondly, spiritual progress is a central theme in the Gospel of Philip. The text stresses the importance of giving teaching to everyone according to his/her level of understanding. However, the point of view is not deterministic. Rather, concerning an individual Christian, the text also stresses spiritual development achieved through ritual, teaching and experience. This emphasis on different levels of students supports the idea of Valentinian Christianity as a school, or a group of schools.

Both Eastern and Western Christian traditions usually remember Athanasius of Alexandria as an unwavering defender of the divinity of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word of God. However, Athanasius was also one of the first writers to argue explicitly for the divinity of the Holy Spirit. In his four Letters to Serapion, Athanasius attempted to present a Scriptural demonstration of the Spirit's divinity. Athanasius' central argument in this enterprise relies on a premise shared with his opponents: the Holy Spirit deifies Christians. Based on this premise, Athanasius argued that the Spirit, by working to deify human beings, must be God—for, Athanasius assumed, only God can deify others. This paper argues that Hebrews 6:4 made three significant contributions to Athanasius' pneumatological arguments in the Letters to Serapion. In Heb 6:4 Athanasius found not only further support for the Spirit's divinity, but also answers to two crucial questions: i) How is it that Christians are deified by the Spirit? ii) How can the Holy Spirit's divinity be distinguished from the 'divinity' of deified Christians? By highlighting the significant role Hebrews 6:4 played in Athanasius' pneumatology, and by observing the concerns and assumptions that Athanasius brought to the text, this paper aims to offer a window into Athanasius' larger exegetical approach, which is an approach that is not uncommon to early Christian interpreters, because it consists of a movement from Christ and the Spirit, to the Scriptures, and then back to Christ and the Spirit. For Athanasius, the Scriptures must be interpreted in light of Christ and the Spirit, yet Christ and the Spirit are also revealed and interpreted by the Scriptures. In this way, the paper shall conclude by highlighting the paradoxical nature of this patristic hermeneutical approach itself.

The parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) solved the problem of the possibility to love one’s enemy. The lawyer asks a question of choice – who to love? Jesus’ parable presents a situation of no option and forces him to see neighborly love from the receiving end, from the perspective of the victim – sometimes even an enemy’s love would be badly needed. The parable of a man with a visitor arriving at night (Luke 11:5-8) is creating yet another situation of no option for his neighbor. It is self-interest and not generosity that is at work to prompt the neighbor to give what he is being asked. The parable of the lost son (Luke 15:11-32) presents a son who is forced by the situation of no option and returns to his father. It is not clear whether he repents from his heart or he just behaves like the wise steward – he knows too well what his father wants to hear from him. The unjust steward (Luke 16:1-8) also asks a question – what to do after being fired by his master? He has no choice and self-interest dictates what he could and should do. And finally the pestering woman (Luke 18:1-8) has annoyed the unjust judge so much that justice is finally granted to her. It is self-interest and not concern of justice that has prompted the bad judge to action. All these parables share the common motif of good work generated out of self-interest in situation of no option. They are literary product from the same hand and not oral source or disparate sources put together. And if they are typical of Lukan composition, than the so-called L source is but Luke’s own work.

The prosodic parse reflected in the Masoretic text of Lamentations 1-5 is a linguistic artifact of the first order. However, since the pioneering analysis of Karl Budde, the attempt has been made to identify the organizing principles of the prosody of the underlying text. This has led to a revision of the traditional parse in specific instances. In this paper the prosodic regularities of Lamentations 1-5 in terms of a formula that embraces prosodic word count and a phonological length parameter. As one would expect given the analogy of strong-stress meters in poetries cross-culturally, the meter in question is not strict but nevertheless subject to specifiable constraints. The result is a working hypothesis whose impact on questions at the level of Einzelexegese is not insignificant.

For many well-established perspectives within ancient Israel, blindness was viewed as a significant disability, and it could entail exclusion from the sanctuary (2 Sam 5:8). The prophetic perspective, however, supports a different understanding of blindness. In this perspective, blindness in itself, whether a physical or an ideological feature of an individual or a group, is not a disability. Physical blindness may represent divine judgment, as in 2 Kings 6, or it may be a neutral characteristic, as with the blind prophet, Ahijah (2 Kings 14). Ideological blindness, in particular being "blind" as to God's engagement with and intention for the people, represents a major fault, one to be condemned, as with the blindness of God's servant, Israel, during the exile (Isa 42:18-20). The presumption of this perspective is that, like the eunuch (Isa 56:3-5), those who are physically blind but religiously obedient are welcome within the actual cultic community, not just within the eschatological community. This paper explores the prophetic understanding of the various aspects of blindness and the ramifications of this understanding of the faithful community of Israel.

Although form and redaction criticism would seem to be the ideal tools to use to investigate the history behind the Gospels, such methods fail to take adequate account of the narrative nature of the Gospels. This paper will present Umberto Eco's theory of the Model Reader as an approach that at once does full justice both to the narrative and historical aspects of the Gospels.

The concept of divine glory continues to garner attention from scholars and non-scholars alike. However, scholars have not adequately determined the nature of the glory in the Priestly texts and its relationship to divine presence. The present paper attempts to provide this necessary foundation. Beginning with an analysis of the noun, kab?d, in the non-priestly texts and its ancient Near Eastern (ANE) synonyms to provide a field of reference, I examine the role of kab?d in the Priestly texts and its relation to the divine presence. I then explore the function of the cloud and fire and their intersection with glory and presence. Each of these elements features in non-priestly theophanies and the Priestly writers, in turn, co-opt and give definition to them. In the Priestly system, they form three tiers of presence: YHWH himself, his glory, and the cloud and fire. Each in its own way ensures that YHWH's presence is both assured and enigmatic. In particular, the glory serves as an effulgent cloak that at once reveals and conceals divine presence. As a cloak, it renders YHWH's presence more elusive than his ANE counterparts, while minimizing the potential weaknesses of ANE conceptions of presence.

In this paper I will outline the way the land of Babylonia and its (Jewish) inhabitants are viewed both in the literature of the Land of Israel and in the Babylonian literature. It will be shown that while the rabbis of Eretz Israel, basing themselves on the prophesies of doom in the Bible, viewed Babylonia as a land of sin and punishment, the Babylonian rabbis, based on other prooftexts (such as the text which identifies the rivers of the Garden of Eden with the Euphrates and the Tigris) view it as a land of plenty and a safe haven for the Jews.

Following the two major messianic driven revolts against Rome, the one that brought about the destruction of the Temple (70 CE)and the other that resulted in the crushing of Bar Kochbah's rebels (135 CE), it would seem that the rabbis embarked on an effort to quell the messianic and eschatologic ferver and advocate a more passive attitude towards Rome. In their new dealings with the ruling power the rabbis entertained not only political restraint but also novel schemes about the eschatological future all based on biblical and extra biblical notions about time, progress and the "end of days". Among other matters the presentation will deal with the question whether the Constantinian era had any impact on the rabbinic views and in what way did the above mentioned notions clash with the Christian / Patristic world view of the expected Parousia (Second Coming).

The story of the Syrophoenician/Canaanite woman in Mark's and Matthew's gospels takes place in what is known today as Lebanon. The "district of Tyre and Sidon [modern-day Sour and Saida]" plays a unique role in those stories because Jesus is on non-Judean turf. My sabbatical in Lebanon obviously provided insights into the land and people of today's world, but also into a culture from two thousand years ago.

The book of Malachi depicts a fractured relationship between YHWH and the chosen recipients of the Deity's love (bh)). The tone of the book contributes to the representation of discord between the deity and Israel; yet, questions about the addressees' awareness of their response to the deity have arisen. Among the interpretations of the book of Malachi are perspectives that recognize the tension between YHWH's love for Israel and the priests' and community's disregard for that love. While this paper does not survey the various understandings of the addressees' awareness of their behavioral and attitudinal contribution to the YHWH-Israel relationship, the study proposes Israel's cognizance of its behavior. It further proposes that the representation the deity, the prophet, and the addressees in the discourses produce a characterization of the deity and the addressees, including, the nature of YHWH's love, the validity of noted responses to the deity's love (e.g., honor, dbk), and strategies—including cultic practices—for gaining, maintaining, or redefining the relationship constituted by the Deity's love. While noting the behavioral responses of the addressees, the book also displays the attitudinal responses of that shape the priests responses. This paper examines the concept of YHWH's love for Israel through the question-answer schema of the book of Malachi, the inter-textual dimensions discerned in the accusations against the addressees, and relationship of YHWH's love to honor and shame.

Centuries of selective and mistakenly narrow reading of especially First Corinthians chapters 6 – 7 has led to a common mis-perception that for Paul marriage and sexual activity within marriage was at best to be tolerated for those believers incapable of controlling their sexual urges. Such misunderstanding arises from exclusive focus upon those texts which reflect the early “Marana tha” or parousia Christology that prevailed at the time Paul became a believer. Careful attention and focus on other segments within the same texts from First Corinthians shows that at the time Paul writes First Corinthians marriage among believers was his norm. Each man should have his own wife and mutually, each woman should have her own husband. Further, within such marriages Paul envisioned mutual, frequent, sexually expressed love as the norm, and even more, as prayer. Finally, while Paul attempted to remain positive about his own single status, his own words betray occasional jealousy, even envy, of those who successfully combined marriage and their apostolic ministry.

Scholars generally agree that the christology of the Book of Revelation is “high.” But unlike other writings with an exalted christology, it is held that the title “God” is not used for Christ. This paper will challenge this view. By way of introduction it will be observed that “God” is implicitly used for the Lamb in the worship prohibitions in 19:10 and 22:8-9, as the Lamb is worshipped in Revelation. The crucial evidence for the thesis of this paper, however, is Rev 7:10. In contrast to the traditional understanding of this verse I will argue that it should be translated: “Salvation is to our God, the One sitting on the throne and the Lamb,” that is, the entire phrase “the One sitting on the throne and the Lamb” is in apposition to “God.” Support for this reading comes from the similar worship scene in chapters 4 and 5. There John deliberatively avoids the title “God” in his portrayal of the heavenly worship, using “the One sitting on the throne” instead. It is only in 7:10 the title “God” is introduced, when for the second time the two figures on the throne are worshipped together. The similarities between 7:9-12 and 5:13-14 are noted, most importantly that exactly the same phrase is found in 5:13 and 7:10: “to kathemeno epi to throno kai to arnio.” Further support is found in the context (7:9-17) which depicts the Lamb on the throne and worship directed to both figures on it. Revelation applies the title “God” to Christ, but unlike other NT passages which call Jesus “God,” the title is not given to Christ in separation from the Almighty one, but together with him.

The fragmentation of Jewish life in the Second Temple period in different groups with different practices, beliefs, and aims is nowadays often taken as a given. Yet, many commonalities as well as hierarchical relationships between different factions of society are also acknowledged. The Qumran evidence may first of all help us in methodological questions: what could go wrong in reconstructing Jewish life on the basis of ideologically colored texts? What to do with all the uncertainties about the social realities behind the documents? Secondly, the Qumran evidence provides an example of a social movement on the basis of which we may evaluate the usefulness of our sectarian ideal types. In what ways can the Qumran movement be used as a mirror of the wider society? Can modern sociology cultivate our sociological imagination of the period? Thirdly, with the whole Qumran corpus in mind, we may focus on the novelties in Jewish life. What is it that seems to be changing? What is a continuation of earlier developments? The paper wishes to connect these topics to earlier discussion before the discovery of the Scrolls and discussions in other areas of biblical scholarship.

The Sayings Gospel Q’s rhetoric of apocalyptic violence has been described as “terrifying,” its attitude towards “this generation” hostile and its pronouncement of impending judgment an overarching literary-rhetorical orientation of the community. The Q community’s strained relationship(s) with its fellow Jews thus provides a classic case-study of nascent sectarian formation and social identity theory. Social identity theory is a socio-psychological research method that explains how identity is constructed in and through the exclusion of others, i.e., by discrimination, prejudice, stereotyping and intergroup conflict, attitudes and orientations that often lead to violence. In this paper, I will analyze the use of rhetorical violence in the Sayings Gospel Q (widely regarded as manifesting in the secondary stratum of Q, or Q2) through the socio-psychological lens of social identity theory in an effort to trace the origins, history and development of Q’s intergroup conflict, a conflict that represents not only a seminal moment in the emergence of early Christianity, but a pivotal point in the parting(s) of the way(s) between Jews and Christians and the construction of ancient (and contemporary) Christian identity.

The first safe haven bill in the U.S. to prevent infant abandonment and protect the parent from prosecution was initiated by John Richardson, M.D. a pediatrician in Fort Worth, Texas. The proposal of allowing and promoting the anonymous release of a newborn at a fire station or hospital was met with initial resistance until Richardson intuitively called it "The Baby Moses Bill." Its swift passage by the Texas Legislature in 1999 illustrates the power of the narrative to frame an acceptable understanding of this controversial strategy to prevent "dumpster babies." Baby Moses laws quickly spread to forty-six states and several other countries. A video clip from my interview with Dr. Richardson will reveal the connection he intended with Exod 2:1-10. He likened the around-the-clock availability of safe havens to the mother who arranged for her daughter to "monitor” Moses prior to his discovery by Pharaoh's daughter. But my research will show that many regard baby Moses as a legendary "esposito," abandoned baby, and his mother, a baby-abandoner. I will tell the story of the Baby Moses Law and engage the impassioned social questions, many of them reflecting the conflicting perceptions of the biblical tale. Are the parents who release their infants still considered baby-abandoners, as the mother of Moses is often understood in popular memory of this story? Would not Jochebed’s agency be more comparable to birth mothers who arrange open adoptions than a mother who abandons her baby or exposes him to neonaticide?

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Social behaviours and societal structures are largely dependent on, and deeply rooted in, our emotional capacities. The human sense of justice or feeling of fairness is, besides primary emotions such as disgust, empathy and fear, an important factor behind the structuring of human interaction. A feeling of justice or injustice is present in some other social animals, too, notably in primates and canines. In close relation to or as part of this emotion, we find strategies for reconciliation and practices for mitigating wrongs that were committed or injustices that have been suffered. The present paper utilizes insights from cognitive sciences in order to analyze ritual and moral aspects of the biblical concept of kofer/kipper, with a focus on how this root is used in Leviticus. Emotional aspects of fairness or justice are shown to be crucial for interpreting ideas of ransom and reconciliation/atonement in Biblical legislation, by providing common denominators for a number of allegedly disparate usages. From such a perspective, the chattat sacrifice, which is often involved and serves both for purification and forgiveness, is taken as a mitigating token, signifying a wish of the offending party to remove the cause of offence, rather than as a substitutionary payment.

This paper assumes the importance of suffering in the Christian life and as a component of Paul’s defense of his authority in the undisputed Pauline letters (for example, 1 Thess 2:14; Rom 8:17; Gal 5:11; 6:17; 2 Cor 11:23b-33). The purpose of this paper is to explore issues of continuity and development in First and Second Timothy relative to the undisputed letters. First, the explanation of Paul’s past role as a persecutor of the church in 1 Tim 1:13 will be compared with Paul’s depictions of his former conduct in 1 Cor 15:9-10; Phil 3:6; Gal 1:13, 23. In only one of his undisputed letters does Paul divulge the ongoing legacy of his past actions for his present status as “the least of the apostles” (1 Cor 15:9). By contrast, the polemical contexts of Philippians 3 and Galatians offer no such acknowledgment. Significantly, 1 Tim 1:13 also reflects awareness of the potential negative implications for Paul’s status, explaining that Paul acted in ignorance and thus received divine mercy. The paper also addresses Paul as a model of suffering for every believer (2 Tim 1:12; 2:9; 3:11-12; 4:5). In Second Timothy both the figures of “Paul” and “Timothy” offer precedents and positive examples of enduring persecution as a necessary component of the Christian life.

It is well known that the Greek text exists in two different forms („Old Greek“ versus „Theodotion“). Less known is the situation of the Syriac manuscripts which show much greater differences (and narrative variants) than the usual textcritical experience. What are the causes of this extre-me pluriformity? This paper tries to give answers which could be stimulating for other writings, too, and for problems of canonization. The paper will be held in German – with a synoptical handout of the full text in English and German.

This paper reviews the pleas of mitigation by Reuben and Judah in Genesis 37:21-22, 26-27. Many historical-critical commentators of Genesis believe that a discrepancy exists between these two speeches, which results from a theory of multiple sources, J and E. They consider these speeches as duplicate or doublets, that is, ‘rival versions of the same story.’ However, I support a literary approach, which promotes ‘a literary unity’ in the narrative. A close reading of the text as a subtle communicative device of the author can account for this discrepancy better than the results of the conflation of sources. I demonstrate how the speeches by Reuben and Judah have a function in the larger unit of narrative. It will be the purpose of this paper to examine the debate on the leadership between Reuben and Judah amongst their brothers.

Biblical scholarship during the recent decades has seen the appearance of numerous interpretive methods. One common denominator among such diverse methods may be the influence or impact feminist criticism has generated. The present study will thus review the diversified growth of feminist hermeneutics—-including womanist, mujerista, and more—-and especially examine in what specific ways—-both explicitly and implicitly—-it has contributed to the reshaping and/or evolution of the literary-historical methods, e.g., form, source, and redaction criticisms. To do so, a focused attention will be given to the prophetic texts in which form criticism has been not only re-formed but also transformed into multifaceted criticisms, what we may call “feminist form criticism.” This transformation has not only influenced an evolutionary growth of traditional criticisms but also will be instrumental in guiding the future of interpretive methods.

Repetition is typical of stylistic phenomenon in John and John's letters. Repetitive expressions in John show how John's ideas and phrasal expressions are connectively related to themselves or among themselves, demanding to meticulously study these features in terms of how they are related so as to produce certain Johannine meanings. Meanings are not laid only in thematic contents but also in stylistic form. On the process of interpretation of the text, careful research on the textual style appearing in the text is so much helpful and even necessary, if we wish to understand the text better and correctively. The shepherd discourse in John 10:1-14 is consisted of two parts: vv. 1-6 and 7-14. Each of them demonstrates similar themes or topics between them: thief, door, shepherd, relationship between sheep and its shepherd, etc. Stylistic analysis in this text shows that significant factors in two parts are deliberately repeated, demonstrating a shepherd cycle. In John, repetitions are not the matter of producing literary repetition that simply emphasizes certain idea or expression twice or thrice, but rather they are the typical Johannine style of parallelisms or chiasms causing specific, relational meaning-network. This type of combined, repetitive phenomenon in John is so unique that may distinguish the author from others. In the shepherd cycle, we can manifestly see certain Johannine style in writing. What are the difference, in interpreting the text, between paying a proper attention to the authorial way of style and ignoring it without attention? If there are certain differences between them, what kinds of differences are in there? Can this distinction in interpretation cause somehow distinct understanding of the text?

Traditionally, Luke-Acts is one of the significant loci of attention to the role of the Holy Spirit in New Testament scholarship; Shepherd describes how Turner rightly observes that modern scholarship has shown more interest in the theological conceptions lying behind Luke's language than in the language itself. Nevertheless, recent scholarship has actively seen a blooming of what Gaventa names the struggle to cultivate the character of Luke-Acts as narrative. In this paper, we shall examine the characterization in the narrative episodes of Jesus' disciples' narrative preaching (Acts 2-28). We do not undertake a full scale study of the characterization of Jesus' Disciples' Spirit-inspired narrative preaching, but a necessary preliminary. The writer's core use of these narrative theories concisely scrutinizes, how, what, and why the Spirit-inspired preachers/characters Jesus' Disciples' preach (Acts 2-28) in relation to the story of the restoration of the kingdom of Israel, through the narrative pattern of 'rejection/acceptance' as a mode of 'Divine-into-Personal Narrative Criticism (Narrative Criticism where the Spirit comes upon persons/characters/preachers)' towards a Lukan Narrative Pneumatological Theology. So we shall attempt to propose a new point of view, which conceptual Scholars have really ignored: Could the canonical emphasis in Luke's understanding of the Spirit be that of the Spirit for restoration (salvation) by Spirit-empowered/inspired preaching accessible to narrative theory?

One of the characteristics of Rabbinic Literature is the presence of the gap between the literary traditions which transmigrated between the Palestinian rabbinic milieu and the academies of Babylonia. This phenomenon is very complicated and different explanations to it were produced by scholars. In this paper I will discuss one aspect of this phenomenon – these differences between two narrative traditions stemming from relatively ancient Palestinian origin and metamorphosed in various later redactions within the literature of the Land of Israel and in the Babylonian Talmud. The case analyzed will be the story about misfortunes of the Elihoreph and Ahiah, the sons of Shisha (IKings 4:3) in its different versions. The purpose of the analyses is the identification, behind the metamorphoses, of the transformed literary traditions and the changes in the cultural patterns of the two rabbinic milieus which produced these stories. By analyzing the abundance of the plot in the Babylonian version I wish to identify remnants of Iranian Myth and topoi of the narration of the Ancient Orient .

Although most traditional scholarship, situated as it has been in militaristic societies, describes the battles depicted in Joshua as a “conquest”, in fact, the two major phases of that “conquest” are self-defense; first against an attack by a coalition of kings from the south of Canaan against the Gibeonites who had recently joined Israel, and then defense against an attack on all of Israel by a coalition of kings from the north. The absorption of outsiders preceding an anticipated battle, the hyperbolic language of total destruction, the rules regarding the spoils of war, the extraordinary (divine) interventions, and the self-defensive nature of the battles are motifs which Esther shares with Joshua. This essay explores the implicit message of such texts for the Diaspora existence and identity of the Jewish people whether that be relatively early as is the case of the “exilic” Joshua, or later as in Esther.

Iconographically Michael is often depicted as an angel fighting against Satan or the Devil. Michael is holding a sword on his right hand and stepping on the head of the Devil. In his left hand Michael is holding a balance. This iconographic representation resembles to the function of Christ mentioned in the Scriptures. I would like to explain the resemblance between the iconographic representation of Michael and the function of Christ mentioned in the Scriptures. I will also check whether Michael and Christ are different persons or not in the Scriptures.

The „Wissenschaftliche Bibellexikon im Internet“ (www.wibilex.de) is a free access encyclopedia made by the German Bible Society, well known for its edition of the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS). The first articles of the lexicon appeared in 2007. By August 2009 it will contain almost 750 articles on the Old Testament written by about 250 scholars, not only from Germany. More than 2000 articles are planned. The main editors will introduce the project and its concept.

In 2008 and 2009 a number of activities were undertaken concerning ms. F (09). The Codex was indexed for the Münster Virtual Manuscript Room, it was subject of an exhibition on "Current Research" in the Utrecht University Museum, and the new internet images were used to evaluate part of the IGNTP edition of John. The paper presented will briefly comment on these activities, and draw conclusions on the ways in which they promote our knowledge of the manuscript and of text-critical methods.

This paper considers religious, socio-political and literary examples of the universal cultural phenomenon of the mundus inversus (a topsy-turvy world), the earliest instances of which can be traced back to the cultures of the ancient Near East. Mundus inversus refers to manifestations of expressive behaviour where everything is inverted in relation to the normal state of affairs. These inversions could entail aspects relating to cultural codes of behaviour, values and norms and they could be of a linguistic, literary, artistic, religious or of a social-political nature. Five spheres in the ancient Near Eastern world where this cultural phenomenon is especially prominent are (1) mundus inversus and the conceptions of life after death, (2) mundus inversus and the world of mourning, (3) mundus inversus and social criticism/utopism, (4) mundus inversus and the phenomenon of cursing, and (5) mundus inversus and the literary phenomenon of the adynaton. Examples from some of these occurrences are presented.

The apocalypse is one of the best represented genres in early Jewish literature. Even though the apocalypses survived mainly in translation, at least some of these popular works must have had Hebrew and Aramaic originals. These facts contrast strikingly with the absence of a Hebrew or Aramaic term for the genre. I will demonstrate that, although no equivalent term attested as a title or genre definition in the extant corpus of Hebrew or Jewish Aramaic documents, some early Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic texts contain rudimentary evidence in favor of the existence of a Hebrew or Jewish Aramaic term for "apocalypse." Moreover, the reconstruction of the term can contribute to better understanding of certain apocalyptic imagery, which must be closely connected to the semantics of this term.

I will analyze a new artifact from the Moussaieff collection.

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Rabbinic Judaism is often trying to define Jewish identity using persons of the Bible, especially brothers. This is true for example regarding Esau versus Jacob or Cain versus Abel. Aaron and Moses are of special importance cause they do not symbolize an evil and a good aspect, but different and common elements of positive Jewish identity. Therefore this paper concentrates on the rabbinic view on Aaron in comparison to Moses and especially focuses on the aspect of Aaron als conciliator and peacemaker, which gives him - due to some Midrash - priority over Moses.

Do characters in the book of Genesis inhabit a world which is devoid of holiness and the danger entailed by the holy? Commentators rarely call attention to the fact that the Hebrew root denoting holiness (qdsh) is almost totally absent from Genesis after the proleptic reference to the sabbath in Gen 2:3. It reappears when Moses first treads on "holy ground" at Mt. Sinai. Does this signal that a new dimension of holiness has been introduced into the biblical landscape, or is the absence of qdš in Genesis merely a case of what has been called "vocabulary rather than substance"? While several scholars have noted a change in divine-human relations beginning with the revelation of God's name Yahweh in Exod 6:3, none have asked whether the present text of Genesis presents a different—and safer—spatial world than the one we encounter after the _'adamah_ has been divided into holy and profane zones. I will argue that this is in fact the case. After discussing in general the relationship between danger and the divine in Genesis and later books, I will focus on God's appearances to Jacob and Moses. After first encountering God at Bethel, the patriarch Jacob wrestles a blessing out of God at Penuel. Such an outcome is inconceivable after the danger of holiness enters the world. This becomes clear when one contrasts the Penuel theophany with Yahweh's later attack on Moses (or one of his sons). While aspects of holiness are indeed anticipated in Genesis and intimated by several characters, the lethal danger presented by holy space enters the biblical world only with the burning bush, due to the fact that Yahweh's deadly royal wrath and his need to jealously guard his prerogatives as divine suzerain and exclusive deity are themselves absent from Genesis.

At first glance, the Samson saga depicts its protagonist as the quintessence of the primal male energy and sexuality, the ‘hairy wild man’, the ultimate macho-killing machine. This paper investigates the multiple ways in which the text undermines Samson's masculinity, or rather altogether unmans him, and the way in which his final vengeance further complicates the picture.

In his ground breaking work Orientalism, Edward Said briefly points at the revolution in Biblical studies in the eighteenth century as an important impulse to the development of the discourse of Orientalism, thereby making an interesting invitation to Biblical scholars to engage critically in the history of their own field. Responding in a very limited way to Said’s invitation, this paper engages in the question of how nineteenth century Biblical interpretation was related to discourses of Christian mission and European colonialism. Building on the theoretical framework of Michel Foucault, according to which subjects are seen as generated in discourses rather than the other way around, nineteenth century Markan commentaries are placed side by side with texts from Protestant mission and British colonialism in order to analyze how and to what extent they are intertwined and interrelated. In particular, exegetical commentaries on the story about the Gerasene demoniac (Mk 5:1-20, curiously a text that exegetes today tend to read as communicating a subtle yet sharp anti-colonial message) and their discussion about how the “bestial nature” of “the brutes” could be capable of being possessed by demons is related to the construction of “the savages” and their mental disposition in the discourse of Protestant mission and British colonialism.

This study aims to explore the intertextual relationship among the three water crossing narratives in Ex. 13. 17-14. 31; Joshua 3-4, and II Kings 2. However, our analysis of words, themes, and motifs in these three narratives leads us to unexpected conclusions. Shared words, themes and motifs in these narratives do not supply us with evidence regarding their historical priority. Therefore, it is argued here that it is not easy to establish a line of development or a historical order of the texts and further study may be required to probe the implications of these findings.

The second half of Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities is the only literary source which informs us about Jewish history throughout the Hellenistic and Roman period – that is to say, from the death of Alexander the Great to the revolt against Rome. This fascinating text is crucial to our understanding of the evolution of Judaism as well as of the relationships between Jews, the Hellenistic kingdoms and Rome. Focusing in particular on Antiquities XII-XIII ? that is to say on the events which took place in Israel and in the surrounding world between the end of the 4th century and the end of the 1st century BCE ? we will attempt to establish the context in which the Hasmonean state was born and to follow its development down to the reign of Alexander Jannai and Salome Alexandra. The comparison between these books and parallel sources, both Jewish and non-Jewish ones, will allow us to tackle questions regarding the reliability of Josephus as a historian, the sources available to him and the use he made of them; and to what extent, and what purpose, he modified them.

The bond between Ruth and Naomi is more powerful than either woman’s ties to her own people or her own land. Theirs is a committed relationship that crosses the boundaries of age, nationality, and religion. Their bond is explained as an emotional, romantic tie in many musical retellings of their story. Ruth’s pledge of fidelity to Naomi is one of the most well-known and oft-quoted verses in the Hebrew Bible. Read out of context, her words would be understood as a declaration of a primary commitment; and readers unfamiliar with its origins would assume it to be a declaration of heterosexual love. Yet the writer no more explains Ruth’s motives for her vow than Naomi’s complete lack of response to it. In this paper, both music and librettos are treated as midrash—a creative re-telling through both altered text and in the language of music. Love and affection are attributed to both women in many musical settings of the story. This paper will introduce and discuss three musical works that extensively treat Ruth and Naomi’s relationship: two late 19th-century oratorios, and a 20th-century opera. Ruth’s pledge is a musical highlight and a leitmotif running through all three works. Musically, this centers the entire story on the committed relationship initiated by Ruth’s famous text. Ruth’s and Naomi’s words can be heard in many keys and diverse melodies, and various musical techniques breathe life into the text and suggest emotion that can only be read between the lines of the biblical text.

Preposing of clausal and phrasal constituents in Koiné Greek occurs for two distinct reasons: (1) to give prominence to a focal constituent, and (2) to provide a cohesive anchor “to something which is already in the context (i.e., to something accessible in the hearer’s mental representation” (Dooley & Levinsohn 2001:68). This paper argues that the second reason for preposing explains nearly every instance in Luke-Acts in which the indefinite adjective t?? precedes a head noun in the same case (N). Such preposing of t?? cohesively anchors the referent to the context (e.g. to signal, in Acts 16:14, that Lydia is a member of “the group of women mentioned in the previous line”?Read-Heimerdinger 2002:100). When t?? follows N, in contrast, the referent is unmarked for anchoring. Since N t?? order is default (“usual”?ibid. 99), a positive claim that the referent is unanchored is not possible. Nevertheless, referents of N t?? are typically not tied to anything in the context (e.g. because they occur at the beginning of a parable or an episode). The paper will contrast N t?? and t?? N orders in references to animate participants (e.g. S?µ??? t??a in Acts 10:5 versus pa?? t??? S?µ??? in 10:6), to times (e.g. µ??a? t?? ? in Acts 9:19 with ?et t??a? µ??a?, in 15:36), and to places (e.g. e ? ??µ?? t??? in Luke 10:38 with e ?t??a ??µ?? in 17:12). It will also discuss passages in which variant orderings exist (e.g. ?et µ??a? t?? ? versus ?et t??a? µ??a? in Acts 24:24), as well as instances of t?? N order where it is not immediately apparent that the referent is anchored to the context (e.g. t?? ? ? in Acts 3:2).

The Christianization of the Holy Land as an Imperial project, although a long and gradual process of localizing Christian myths and remodeling the religious landscape of Palestine, was well under way in 4th and 5th century Palestine. Like the grains of sand falling from an hourglass, the Rabbis and other Jews must have felt how their own land and identity were gradually slipping away from them, and it must have been apparent to them that they were on the way to becoming strangers in their own land. And yet, rabbinic texts are surprisingly silent about this new and threatening phenomenon that changed forever the map of the Palestine. Does this aporia indicate indifference, ignorance or a mistaken sense of security? This then is the question I wish to examine: can we find in rabbinic literature responses to this appropriation of Palestine as a Christian holy land.

The present study aims at resolving three dichotomies about the disciples in Mark with insights from social psychology studies. The seemingly contradicting performance of the disciples before and after Chapter 8 of Mark would be explained by the group member socialization theory. The tension between Jesus and the disciples would be resolved by the concept of groupthink. Lastly, the polemic and pastoral explanations for the disciples in Mark would be reconciled under psychological hermeneutics. The limitations of introducing psychological concepts into biblical studies would also be discussed. The breakthrough in exegesis brought about by the social psychological theories in the present study would show that it might be worthwhile for biblical studies to absorb the nourishments from the psychology discipline.

This paper considers the issue of whether or not Paul’s apocalyptic eschatology stands against Roman imperial eschatology without negotiating the Roman imperial world. Homi Bhabha’s concept of “colonial mimicry” sheds new light on Paul’s position on the dominant Greco-Roman culture, given that he is a diaspora Jew under the Roman Empire. One strategy of colonialism is for the colonizers to enjoin the colonized to mimic their image, in an imperfect shape: “almost, but not quite.” Due to its “almost, but not quite” nature, mimicry disrupts colonial authority by causing ambivalent identity to the colonialist. Paradoxically, mimicry is thus eventually changed into a site of resistance against colonial authority. This paper explores Paul’s apocalyptic eschatology in the Greco-Roman and Jewish matrices through Bhabha’s lens of “colonial mimicry.” In the paper, I argue that Paul’s apocalyptic eschatology is a product of cultural hybridization between Greco-Roman and Jewish cultures, between colonizing and colonized cultures. In other words, Paul negotiates between Roman imperial and Jewish apocalyptic eschatology and thereby creates a third one, Paul’s so-called apocalyptic eschatology, which is both Roman and Jewish simultaneously. Consequently, Paul’s compromise between Greco-Roman and Jewish cultures brings about ambivalent identity, thus undermining the dominant Roman culture. To delve into the formation of Paul’s apocalyptic eschatology in interaction with both Roman imperial and Jewish apocalyptic eschatology, I shall first bring to light Roman imperial eschatology as reflected in Roman coinage and Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue and Aeneid. Then, I shall investigate Jewish apocalyptic eschatology in Second Temple Jewish literature such as 1 and 2 Maccabees, Daniel, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Finally, I shall examine the ways in which Roman imperial and Jewish apocalyptic eschatology are transformed into Paul’s apocalyptic one.

Sacred history tells the origins of the world and a people and their interaction with gods. Religion has two aspects: the rituals; and the history that explains them. The Hebrew Bible tells the origins of the Jews and their encounter with their god. This paper examines the story of Moses and its inconsistencies with known archaeological and historical material from the region, and attempts to explain how the story arose and its relationship to historical events. The Pentateuch, an oral/written composition like Homer's epics, relates that Moses became a prince of Egypt and led thousands of freed Hebrew slaves/serfs out of Egypt to resettle in Canaan. However, no Hebrew could have become a prince of Egypt, given the nature of Egyptian royal society. A vast exodus of slaves/serfs is unlikely and without corroboration in Egyptian material. Several scenarios are possible. One is some small historical event, a handful of slaves fleeing from Egypt across the desert-such events are recorded in Egyptian records-became magnified into the Exodus story. Another is the Exodus reflects a well-known non-Jewish event from Egyptian history. In the 17th century BCE, Semites, the Hyksos, established a dynasty in Lower Egypt in the Delta. Stylizing themselves as pharaohs, they adopted Egyptian names. A Ya'qob-har appears on seals. In the middle of the 16th century, the pharaoh Ahmose, the founder of the 18th dynasty, expelled the Hyksos and drove them back into Canaan. Sacred histories are amalgamations of oral tales, historical events and interpretations of those events, woven together throughout generations to present a coherent story of origins of a people and the world. To function as sacred history, the events need not have happened as described, but only to have been believed to have happened. This may be the case with the Exodus.

“I was sitting on a rock … It was sunny, in winter. I just prayed to die, but it didn’t work.” So Robert Rijxman, a survivor of Bergen-Belsen, recalls. “Praying for death ‘didn’t work’ is what he said. ?Not to this day,’ he added.” (New York Times 22/01/09) Several of the characters in the Hebrew Bible express a wish, a hope to die. Jonah, Elijah, Job, and others with them, all wish their lives would end; some even wish it had never started. They pray for death but death does not come. “Please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” (Jonah 4:3) “It is enough; … take away my life (1 Kgs 19:4).” “Let the day perish in which I was borne.” (Job 3:3) The Hebrew Bible also has stories of characters who do decide to die, characters who take their lives and deaths in their own hands and commit suicide. In these stories death wishes as a lament or prayer to God is not expressed, with the exception of Samson. The story of Robert Rijxman and the stories of the Hebrew Bible raise the same kind of questions: does it “work” to pray for death, what drives man to pray for death, what does the death wish express and what does it achieve? This paper will examine the genre and the function of the death wishes in a selection of stories from the Hebrew Bible.

Relics have represented the most powerful objects in Christianity and they are still venerated in the Roman Catholic Church today. What about the relics of Jesus or the relics of the Apostles in the first centuries? A structured cult of relics started only after the presumed discovery by Helena of the True Cross in 325 CE. However, popular devotion towards places that were mentioned in the canonical gospels was alive much earlier. People started dying for their new faith and the places where they were put to death began to be rembered too as martyria. The conversion of Constantine changed everything. Not only Jesus' True Cross was discovered, but also its Titulus, the crucifixion nails, the crown of thorns, the spear, the sudarium and all the other Passion Relics mentioned by the authors of the New Testament. This was a turning point in Christianity and started pilgrimages to the Holy Land, a sort of religious tourism ante litteram. Relics did not only mean faith and devotion, but they become a symbol of power and wealth starting from the Late Roman Empire and represented cultural objects of transition between the Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. A relic could be forged and sold, and it created prosperity and richness in and around poor and forgotten villages. In a world where religion dominated everyday life, relics and priesthood played a large role in the functioning of the ordinary economy. The presumed relics of Jesus--in Jerusalem, Rome or Constantinople--were able to arbitrate disputes, maintain armies, attract sick people and pilgrims, fight wars, and promote the Christian faith.

In the Latin Church, the late fourth century was a time of intensive reflection upon the limits of scriptural authority. By the turn of the century, Jerome, Rufinus of Aquileia, and Priscillian had all delivered opinions on what scriptures ought to be considered authoritative. There had even, at the Councils of Hippo (393 CE) and Carthage (397 CE) in Roman Africa, been formal conciliar statements on the extent of the biblical canon. These writers expressed a variety of opinions on the authoritative status of what are now referred to as the deuterocanonical books of the OT: Jerome and Rufinus severely restricted their authority; Priscillian affirmed their inspiration, alongside other books of the Apocrypha; and the Councils, while rejecting the Apocrypha, did not distinguish the deuterocanonical books from the other books of the Hebrew canon of the OT. During this period, Augustine, the great doctor of the African church, did not remain silent on the limits of inspired scripture or on the authority that the deuterocanonical books held for Christians. In this essay, I examine the authority that the deuterocanonical books possessed for Augustine through a focus on his comments on the authority of the Book of Sirach, along with an enquiry into his actual use of this deuterocanonical book in his exegetical and theological writings. I argue that Augustine's view of the authority of the deuterocanonical books differs significantly from those of Jerome and Rufinus, on the one hand, and the view of Priscillian, on the other, but that it is in keeping with, and represents an expression of the spirit of, the decrees of the African Church.

The collection of Shlomo Moussaieff includes a Hebrew scaraboid personal seal with the icon and the inscription separated. The glyph is on the upper surface of the seal and the legend is on the bottom arranged in two lines.The paper is designed to provide an alternate approach to the meaning of the owner's name as well as to the ornamental choice of the engraver.

Recently, there has been growing interest in explaining Christianity, and religion in general, in the framework of cultural evolution. In this respect, an interesting contribution is David Sloan Wilson’s Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society (2002). Wilson’s starting point is in evolutionary biology and he argues for an organismic understanding of religious groups. In Wilson’s view, early Christianity was a “functionally adaptive” religion. He criticises Rodney Stark’s (and William Sims Bainbridge’s) rational choice theory of religion because it does not allow functional explanations that are an indispensable part of Wilson’s own model. On the other hand, Wilson builds his description of the success of Christianity exclusively on Rodney Starks’s Rise of Christianity (1996). Wilson seems to be unaware of Gerd Theissen’s groundbraking functionalist explanation of the early phases of Jesus movement and the discussion and critique it has raised among social-scientifically oriented Biblical scholars. This paper reviews Wilson’s evolutionary model in a wider perspective of recent social-scientific study of early Christianity. Special attention will be paid to the character of explanations provided by Wilson’s model as compared to explanations provided in social-scientifically oriented descriptions of early Christianity, particularly in Theissen’s functionalist analysis. The classification and discussion of explanations will also draw on recent philosophical research on the role of explanations in social sciences.

In this paper the relationship between two prominent modes of discourse in biblical scholarship, Historical Criticism and Reception History, is examined. Often seen as discrete alternative approaches to the biblical texts, the assumed division between the two is often reflected in the Academy’s evaluation of their subject matter, with work on later cultural artefacts being seen as somehow ‘lesser’ than work on, say, the historical Paul or Jesus. Taking Barton and Muddiman’s ‘chastened Historical Criticism’ as a dialogue partner, this paper considers three possible characterisations of their inter-relationship. First, that they are indeed separate. Second, that they share a common element, either (a) with the concerns of Reception History being central to certain historical-critical methodologies (e.g. Redaction Criticism), or (b) with the essential and imaginative role of the historical-critical scholar in the construction of ‘audiences’ being taken to imply that all such approaches are a sub-set of ‘Reception History’, one in which a real contemporary response is usually ‘re-categorised’ as an ancient one. Or, third, that they somehow overlap—more or less—completely. Rejecting 1 and 2, this paper argues that the discipline of Biblical Studies is dominated by an overarching, if largely unrecognised, disciplinary framework in which every reading offered, whether scholarly, artistic, or sectarian, is—without exception—both a received reading (that is, a suitable topic for Reception History) and a historically located reading (that is, a subject requiring historical-critical investigative tools). What is now needed is an explicit recognition of this reality, a renewed interest in chastened historical approaches like that of Barton and Muddiman, a higher level of study of the impact of individuals on scholarly interpretations previously regarded as being ‘person-free’, and a much greater focus upon a wider set of ‘biblical readings'.

Veneration of the dead in one's extended family was familiar in Rome from time immemorial. They were addressed both collectively and individually at many festivals characterized by grave-side meals of communion. Christian converts continued these traditional practices not only for families but also for martyrs and bishops of a distinct degree of holiness. These latter, special celebrations, and the family ones, together explain the great majority of Rome's church construction in the fourth century and involved the vast majority of Christians in the city as elsewhere in the empire.

Scholars have devoted considerable time to the possible compositional history of the book of Job. Majority opinion generally allows that one early document, containing the prologue and epilogue, underwent a four-stage redactional process. Of late, a number of interpreters have questioned this view of the text. They challenge the use of a diachronic evolutionary paradigm to solve every literary problem in biblical texts, especially those within the book of Job. This article will, therefore, take up once again the question of Job’s compositional history and dating. In particular, it will argue that when the legal materials of the book are compared against ancient Near Eastern trial records, using comparative legal historical and legal hermeneutical methods, the book manifests fewer literary fractures than previously thought and that many of the so-called literary fractures resemble the normal legal story-telling conventions of the ancient world. In fact, the book bears considerable resemblance in legal procedure and story-telling technique to that found in late Neo-Babylonian and early Persian period trial records. After analysis, the article concludes that the book was probably written in the early Persian period and that only the Wisdom poem of Chapter 28 is not original to the book.

The governing of large empires requires the use of a broad range of methods to subdue, stabilize, control, and ultimately unify the diverse kingdoms and ethnic groups of an empire. Law is one of the key mechanisms through which empires control their multi-ethic populations. Colonial powers may impose their legal systems, in whole or in part, on conquered regions in order to achieve stability and consistency across their empire. Scholars have long held that the Achaemenid kings instituted no apparent changes of consequence to legal procedure in southern Mesopotamia after the conquest of the Neo-Babylonian Empire until the supposed legal reforms instituted toward the end of the reign of Darius I. Further, scholars have generally argued that this was part of a "home rule" policy that the Achaemenid kings implemented in the farthest reaches of the empire. Yet, more biblical historians are criticizing this view. In exploring this question further, this paper examines the theoretical work of legal anthropologists in the field of colonial legal studies. These scholars have been studying for some time the various relationships that might exist between colonial law and indigenous law in such situations. This paper and asks how such constructs might inform the work of both Assyriologists and biblicists, who are exploring the use of law by the Achaemenid Empire to control its vast regions. The paper concludes that the theoretical construct of such legal anthropologists would be a highly valuable tool in this inquiry.

Since its inception, the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS) had insisted that in order to achieve interdenominationalism, all the Bibles it distributed must avoid any sectarian or theological bias by being translated “without note or comment.” Therefore, although the cultural and religious differences between Chinese and Jewish societies made it very difficult for Chinese readers to understand the Bible, throughout the 19th century, the BFBS as the largest Bible publisher and distributor in China simply ignored the urgent pleas of the Protestant missionaries in China for changing its mind. However, increasing competition from the National Bible Society of Scotland (NBSS), which had published and distributed annotated Chinese Bibles to fill the niche since 1890s, made the BFBS consider altering its stance and finally allow its Chinese Gospels and Acts portions to be annexed with translational helps in late 1900s. This paper provides a historical review of how the BFBS made use of its Chinese translational helps not only as a compromise in response to the threat of losing missionary support in the face of the NBSS’ competition in China but also as a means of defending its “without note or comment” principle. The textual analysis of the BFBS’ Chinese translational helps and the NBSS’ version in the Gospel of Matthew will show that the BFBS did not see exposition of the Scripture as its task, since it tried to confine its ‘helps’ to the explanation of historical, philological and ethnological peculiarities. In contrast, the NBSS’ version of Matthew includes remarkable notes interpreting the Scripture in ways adapted to Chinese culture. The paper will throw light on the BFBS’ identity within the Protestant Church and its stance on ideas such as the self-sufficiency of the Bible and an individual’s right and ability to interpret the Bible within the Chinese context.

Walter Brueggemann (2005a:57) has pointed out that the literary rhetorical study of texts pay very close attention to the workings of texts as an intentional system of signs. The purpose of this is to recognize that a text is not merely a “report” or “history”, but “a characteristic act of generative imagination that conjures an alternative world well beyond what is taken to be a given”. Thus texts “form worlds outside and alternative to our taken-for-granted systems of power and meaning” (:57). This is especially true of poetical texts where a world of new possibilities within the covenantal relationship is generated. Such poetry describes a world that is known to be true, but it is also more than just a description of such a world, it also summons and evokes such a world (cf Brueggemann 2005b:46). The purpose of this paper is to investigate how poetical texts that describe the appearance of Yahweh on behalf of his people express these alternative realities. Yahweh was often envisioned as a warrior God, an all-conquering hero who fights on behalf of his covenant partner. The theophany report occurs frequently in the Old Testament, and for the purpose of this study, in poetical texts, specifically the Book of Psalms (cf Pss 18:8-16, 68:8-11, 77:17-20, 97:2-5; cf also Hab 3:3-15; cf Gerstenberger 2005:616-617). In this paper I intend to analyze theophany reports in the Book of Psalms to ascertain what the rhetorical function of these reports are and how they express alternative realities to the readers / hearers of these texts.

The hina clause "that the Scriptures might be fulfilled" is normally taken with the word legei which follows it. Rather, for several Johannine stylistic reasons, it should be taken with eidws and the hoti clause which precedes it. In no other place does John ever say that Jesus initiate an action in order to fulfill Scripture. The reference to Scripture fulfillment in regard to an event in John is always made after the event and not before it. Also in Johannine literature we find the oida...hoti...hina construction in 4 other places, which would lead to the conclusion that here also the oida...hoti...hina material should all go together. This leads to a profoundly better understanding of the death scene in John where the death of Jesus and the delivering up of the Spirit are the perfect fulfillment of Scripture which comes at the death of Jesus when he passes over from this world to the Father. The words meta touto, ede, tetelestai (twice), teleiwthei, and dipsw are ald, of course, involved in this interpretation as is the scene at the well with the Samaritan woman.

Monna ke nku, mosadi ke pudi, “a man is a sheep, a woman is a goat”. The preceding proverb is one of the South African indigenous sayings which reveals the gendered nature of lamentation in African cultures. In fact, not only in African cultures, but also in other global cultures, the act of lamentation appears to be gendered. Informed by the latter state of affairs, the present text explores Job’s lament in Job 3, with its focus not only on the curse of Job’s birthday, but also, on female reproductive biology, through an African story telling approach. In the midst of affliction, and overwhelmed by the injustices prevalent in their contexts, could African women in general, and African-South African women in particular, these human beings whose wombs sustain fragile lives until they are eventually ushered on Earth, have the courage of Job, to curse the day on which they were born? Does gender play a role in human lamentation in general? Using the story-telling approach, the paper will hopefully bring yet one more contextual reading of a biblical lament with a view to making a contribution and / or initiating a debate on lamentation in African biblical hermeneutics.

Name-calling, or labelling, was and is an effective means of creating boundary markers and forming community identity. The sectarian documents found at the Qumran site demonstrate a sustained practice of using associative labels and sobriquets to make distinctions between the faithful community, as they understood it, and their opponents. In addition, some of the non-sectarian documents that were found at the site also demonstrate a similar practice, indicating this was a convention more widely circulating among Second Temple writers. One document in particular that employs significant labels for its enemies is the Epistle of Enoch. Interestingly, this same practice is shared by the author of the Book or Revelation, in particular with regard to his correspondence to the seven churches. Previous studies of this phenomenon have tended to focus on organizational terms that can be traced among the manuscript traditions of sectarian texts that define the leadership roles within the Qumran communities. What has not been discussed is how labels and sobriquets are employed across a variety of texts to discover if it is possible to identify different phases of community development. This essay examines both sectarian and non-sectarian documents from Qumran in order to ascertain the degree to which Second Temple writers demonstrate any coherent use of such devices in their writings. Moreover, attention is given to how these devices function within the development of a community’s identity. Finally, to the extent that the writer of the Book of Revelation shares in the implementation of these rhetorical devices and exhibits a decided concern for sectarian ideas, I compare what we can learn from the Second Temple texts with the Johannine Apocalypse to see if it is possible to surmise if and where the Book of Revelation might fit into the trajectory of sectarian formation.

There is violence – but there is not a comforter facing the widespread human violence and unjustice (cf. 5,8 etc.), that’s the answer of Qohelet (Qo 4,1), which is probably a polemical allusion to God’s speeech in Is 40,1. Being so, is Qohelet helding God as the ultimate responsible of the human violence? According to many scholars the qoheletic God is no more the LORD of the israelite tradition: he (or perhaps even it, that is to say an abstract divinity) is a Deus absconditus, the maker of a problematic world (A. Schoors), or he is a jealous deity who denies humanity the access to life, as the same God of Gen 2-3 (J. Crenshaw). The heart of the matter is to investigate the strong accent that Qohelet puts on God’s trascendence (cf. 5,2): in reality, Qohelet stresses more God’s freedom than His trascendence (cf. 2,25; 3,14; 7,14). Sometimes, as in Qo 9,1-3, quoting a traditional belief, Qohelet seems to come close to blaming God for the spreading of violence and wickedness; but he is in reality criticising a traditional theology (the so-called Tun-Ergehen-Zusammenhang), as in Qo 8,11-14. The qoheletic God is not an absent and perhaps cruel landlord (even if the Qohelet’s image of God depends strongly from the image of the Ptolemaic king). God himself gave to mankind the painful task of «searching and exploring» (1,13; 3,10-11) the sense of reality, leading the human explorer to conclude that «all is hebel». But humanity can always experience God as the giver of life and joy, even if the God’s dark side remains unexplored: God is simply beyond human comprehension (cf. 8,16-17). So there is not a problem of God’s violence: there’s a problem of human speech about God; mankind can only have an everyday experience of God’s deeds.

This paper argues that the book of Job informed the post-exilic Yehud community’s model for divine restoration. This will be demonstrated by highlighting the theme of restoration in the book of Job and investigating connections with the book of Job in Zech 1-8. Job and Joshua, the great priest, are the only characters in the Hebrew Bible who are antagonized by ????. This commonality would bolster the Yehud community’s connection with Job as they sought their own restoration. The vocabulary used to describe Joshua’s new attire (?????? and ????) is not the couture which is historically associated with a priest (???? and ?????). The only other occurrence of ???? is found in Job 29:14, and ?????? (rf. Isa 3:22) is festive attire, and not cultic. The choice of non-traditional clothing shows Joshua is being depicted more like a tribal leader—Job—than great priests of the past. The deprivation which Job experienced would have resonated with the Yehud community, especially as fertility was the primary reason temple construction began. It follows that a subsequent divine restoration, like Job’s, was the goal of the Yehud community. This leads to the conclusion that Job was perceived as a preeminent example of divine restoration in the post-exilic Yehud community.

The motif of the 'fille d'Eve' in 19th century France, with its connotations of temptation, eroticism, and evil, emerges in art and literature along with the accompanying images of 'amazones' and the 'femme fatale'. Representations of the 'foreign woman' of the Bible in the work of the French illustrator Gustave Dore, while mostly from an earlier period, resonate with this particular cultural expression. Dore's work, in turn, occupies a foundational place in the modern practise of Bible illustrations for adults and children alike. This presentation will illustrate how the representations of foreign women and/or? 'evil' women, in children's bibles continue to mark the otherness of these women through an iconography inherited from this French tradition. Drawing on the work of Elizabeth Menon, it will also investigate how such illustrative practises may serve the ideological function of inculturating a spiritualized/moral censuring of feminism as a threat to christian orthodoxy.

The prevalence of the book of Leviticus in the Dead Sea Scrolls community is evident not only by the large number of copies of this book found at Qumran (seventeen) but also by the large number of quotations from Leviticus found in the non-biblical material (over seventy). Of the twenty-seven chapters of Leviticus, twenty-two are quoted somewhere in the non-biblical scrolls, and more than twenty non-biblical works contain quotes from Leviticus. This paper explores the ways in which the book of Leviticus both shaped the life and self-understanding of the priestly community at Qumran and contributed towards creating its unique culture of elitist ritual purity with clearly defined boundaries toward the outside world. The material to be discussed centers on issues of community discipline and cohesion.

The paper uses spatially-linked concepts such as map, territory and geopolitics as tools for exploring the construction of meaning in the book of Joel. Its aim is to view the text as a spatial site and then to consider how aspects of the imagery of the book provide meaning through the treatment of the physical reality of land and through the cosmic space afforded by the day of the Lord. This leads on to a consideration of the geopolitical stance of the book. The paper is part of a series of explorations of prophetic texts through the lens of cultural geography and the social construction of space.

The homiletical commentary Leviticus Rabba is a proof of the interest that proselytism aroused among the Sages. In fact, in this Midrash there are several quotes in connection with converts to Judaism in general, as a collective with similar characteristics, and other ones about certain figures who became proselytes or at least sympathizers. In this paper the texts related to this matter were analysed in order to answer the following questions: which was the proselytes picture–as a well known group– transmitted by the Rabbis in a work dated from the forth or fifth century CE Palestine, when Christianity had already become the religion of the Empire?, were they accepted as a part of the true Israel?, what kind of individuals converted to Judaism according to the Sages?, were they outstanding or anonymous people?, either biblical or contemporaries characters? Therefore, this study will provide some keys to understand how the Rabbis addressed this phenomenon in a moment in which there were even specific decrees against this practice and the role of the Church was decisive against it.

In diesem Vortrag wird der Versuch unternommen, eine theologiegeschichtliche Entwicklung der israelitischen Religion auf der Basis bestimmter literaturgeschichtlicher Thesen nachzuzeichnen, insbesondere der Annahme des „Efraimitischen Geschichtswerks“ (EfrG; Jos 24 – 1 Sam 12*) aus der Mitte des 8. Jh., zweier literarischer Werke aus der Zeit Hiskijas (um 700): des „Ur-Dtn“ (Dtn 6,4f.17.20-22.24f*; 12,1aa.13-19*; 16,1-7 [ohne Mazzotbestimmungen].9-15; 26,16*; 28,1aa.2a.3-6.15aa.b-19.45*.46) und des „Hiskijanischen Geschichtswerks“ (HisG; 1 Kön 15,9 – 2 Kön 19*), sowie des „Joschijanischen Geschichtswerks“ (JoschG; Dtn 1 – 2 Kön 23,25a*). Nachdem in Israels frühester Zeit JHWH zunächst als der eine Rettergott Israels verehrt worden war (auf der Ebene des Gesamtvolkes), Salomo aber dann die Verehrung der Götter anderer Völker in den israelitischen Staatskult eingeführt hatte, leitete das EfrG (noch kurze Zeit vor Hosea) die Rückbesinnung auf JHWH als den Gott der Rettung Israels aus Ägypten und damit den Kampf für die ausschließliche Verehrung JHWHs und gegen die Verehrung anderer Götter ein. Um 700 wurde diese Forderung der Verehrung JHWHs als des einen Gottes Israels vom Ur-Dtn und dem HisG um die Forderung nach der – von Hiskija eingeführten – Ausübung des (Opfer-)Kultes an dem einen Ort (dem Jerusalemer Tempel) ergänzt („ein Gott, ein Kultort“). Während in diesem hiskijanischen Anfangsstadium der Kultzentralisation der Kult außerhalb des Jerusalemer Tempels zwar erstmals abgelehnt wurde, dabei aber dennoch noch als jahwistisch galt, wurde er weitere 80 Jahre später im Zusammenhang mit der erneuten Kultzentralisationsmaßnahme Joschijas im JoschG als idolatrisch gewertet – ein weiterer Schritt zum in der Exilszeit aufkommenden Monotheismus.

Based on the ontological hermeneutics and Foucauldian poststructuralist views on text meaning and discourse, and also the principle of religious relevance in the modernizing context of Muslim societies, this paper will present a philosophical approach to the comprehension of Muslims’ sacred text and study the necessity of different contextualized translations of it -based on its diverse interpretations and understandings- as the basis for encompassing the message of such texts. Hermeneutics and poststructuralism shed critical light on two different mainstreams of the Quran interpretation, namely, the traditional one focusing on the absolute achievable truth, by excluding the context and the subject from influencing the meaning, and the reformist view by stressing the role of both context, and to a lesser extent the subject in shaping the meaning. By emphasizing and modifying the latter viewpoint, the philosophical hermeneutics’ approach goes beyond Jakobson’s ‘proper translation’ to include an enlarged concept of translation in which reading, interpretation, understanding, application and translation become one and the same concept. This becomes of significant importance for the unavoidably contextualized translation of sacred texts in theocracies, for the application of a universal meaning without considering the context (defined in its details by Sperber and Wilson 1986a) in the form of legal rules can lead to monolithic undemocratic governance. This paper tries to go beyond the linguistic, local and temporal context that semantic minimalists have in mind to include the context of historical subject surrounded by discourse and power relations. Besides its application in translation, this view draws upon deconstruction to stress the necessity for new readings and translations of the Quran. A corpus of women related verses of the Quran serves to show how the relevance theory and contextual effects have practical effects in the understanding/translation in real life. This should account for willingly ideological forces which lead to certain understandings/translations of the selected passages, which must reinforce both the significance of the interpretation context and the fluidity of meaning in the Quran.

The traditions about Peter in Rome provide excellent teaching opportunities within the field of religious studies. The stories and artifacts present a veritable microcosm of critical biblical studies and church history, combining denominational in-fighting with textual, art historical and archaeological debates that span over eighteen hundred years. When students work through the issues surrounding the lively accounts of Peter’s life and teaching—including the debates about whether Peter lived and died in Rome—they are introduced to New Testament scholarship on Acts and the Letters of Peter, they are presented with a hotly debated archaeological site in Rome with considerable modern media attention, and they have an opportunity to think about how stories about the saints and martyrs developed and inspired ritual activity in the history of Christianity. The stories about Peter also provide students of religious studies an opportunity to connect to scholarship on Roman religion, especially in light of questions about the Cult of the Saints in the context of Roman religious practice. Thus the idea of “Peter in Rome” provides an opportunity to introduce students to the study of ancient and modern religion, in all its complexity and interdisciplinarity. This paper is not specifically interested in whether Peter actually lived in Rome (though the topic is presented); rather, the paper demonstrates how a contentious question can lead to good pedagogy. The story of Peter provides critical thinking exercises and interdisciplinary studies that are loaded with historiographical and archaeological intrigue.

Post-exilic Jewish religious ideas were deeply influenced by Persian (Zoroastrian) culture and religion, among the most prominent examples being the concept of the paradise garden, the pardes. The ancient Persian term paradaia literally means enclosure, and also the loan word pardes in Hebrew particularly refers to a walled garden - a structure which is defined as a certain protecting barrier. That might explain why the paradisiacal garden both in Persian and ancient Jewish thought has similar functions as royal space, and in many cases both terms are used synonymously. The wall hints to something which is enclosed, which might be defined as a secret (throne, royal face …). Thereby the dialectical momentum of enclosure and disclosure might signify a fragile tension that, if suspended, endangers the essence of the secret itself. It therefore must be asked: how pardes is indeed structured, what allows it upholding this tension, and what protects the inner secret? Such a tension between enclose and disclosure in the structure of pardes is also found in medieval kabbalistic literature, where we observe a (re)formulation of the ancient paradigm. We want to examine how such motifs of royal gardens could serve as a matrix for the mystical ideas on both textual interpretation and the heavenly realm in medieval kabbalah. Of special interest for our research are the models of spiritual and intellectual “royal gardens/paradise” as presented in the writings of Abraham Abulafia, Joseph Gikatilla and the Zohar. What architectonic structures underlie their ideas of Gan Eden or the mystic’s entering into these heavenly realms? How are these motifs transferred on the realm of language and hermeneutics? How are these new models related to ancient ideas of paradisiacal gardens from Babylonia and Persia? As those ancient ideas entered Jewish mystical thought at an early stage it will be obligatory to have a short glance also at the Hekhalot literature. With such a panoramic perspective it will be possible to situate the later textual witnesses within a broader cultural and religious framework and elaborate on their specific structures and models.

The rabbinic oft-quoted statement 'Proselytes are as hard for Israel as leprosy' was considered emblematic to the rabbinic negative approach towards converts and conversion. A study of the history of the phrase demonstrates its essential role in the formation of the unique Babylonian approach towards converts, conversion and the demarcation of Jewish Identity. Identifying the original Babylonian use of the phrase, comparing it to the original version in the Palestinian Midrash, and tracing the late redaction processes that led to the dominancy of this phrase – all will enable us to portray another example for the Babylonian emphasis of clear-cut delineation of Jewish Identity, and to describe the literary processes that enabled this development.

Apocryphal literature is often studied in relation to its 'canonical' equivalents. As with any comparison, the introduction of a third term can focus the comparison. I propose introducing the genre of historiography as the tertium quid. Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History (1.13) and the fifth century Syriac work The Teaching of Addai (TA) tell basically the same story: Jesus’ correspondence with Abgar, king of Edessa and the latter's conversion by Jesus' disciple Thaddeus/ Addai. EH and TA are normally thought of as belonging to different genres: ancient historiography and 'apocrypha.' The fact that both tell the same story shows that 'historicity' cannot be the criterion for distinguishing between them. It is the manner in which the story is told which differentiates them. Previous scholarship has focused on the literary and historical relation between the two accounts, without reaching much of a consensus. While not denying the validity of such work, I suggest adopting a comparative discursive approach instead. My comparative examination of the two works' modes of presentation leads me to postulate two ancient discursive models for writing about the past: 'historia' and 'tashi'ta.' The first model, based on Herodotus' usage of 'historia' in the sense of 'the process of inquiry,' seeks to rhetorically persuade by presenting multiple sources, engaging the reader, and entertaining doubt. It 'exposes' the process behind the writing of the history. The second model, based on the Syriac word for 'history,' relates to the telling of the story itself. It speaks in one voice; does not quote multiple sources, but seeks to persuade by a semblance of narrative omniscience including the minutest details of time, place and character. I demonstrate how Eusebius' account operates within the mode of historia, whereas TA reflects tashi'ta. The rhetorical comparison between these two accounts also allows us to judge other, borderline cases.

The issue of magic in the first seven centuries of Christianity is complex and controversial. On one hand, Christians identified clear boundaries between magic and Christianity. Before Constantine, these boundaries were part of a larger distinction between the polytheist Greco-Roman world and those who followed Christ. Magic was considered to be of the outside world, and thus not something properly practiced by members of the movement. New members were required to renounce former practices and lifestyle (e.g., magic), and potential candidates were screened to exclude magicians. After Constantine, the issue of boundaries persists but is redefined. Now it is marginal Christians who engage in magic, and who must be dealt with by the official church. Orthodox polemic against magic labels it as heretical, church decrees forbid Christians (particularly clerics and even bishops) from practicing magic, and some texts speak of excommunicating such members. On the other hand, it is evident that early Christians continued to live, think and act within their Greco-Roman context. Evidently there were those who wished to join Christianity and continue the practice of magic (e.g., the account of Simon Magus in Acts 8). There may have been baptized, even long-time Christians, who wanted to take up magic practices. There were even Christian priests and bishops who had no problem in combining Christian beliefs with magic practice in their leadership roles. For these people, the issue of boundaries may have been blurred or even non-existent. In early periods, the term ‘conversion’ to Christianity may not accurately describe the situation – affiliation and syncretism may come closer to the mark. In later periods, the terms ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘heresy’ need to be considered as socially-imposed labels, with underlying social functions.

Paul's stated policy of adaptability in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23, that he seeks to "gain" those hupo nomos ("under law") as well as the anomos ("lawless," often translated "without law") by "becoming like" each different target audience when among them, has been interpreted to refer to adaptation of his conduct to that of his audiences, and thus along the same line signified in the popular cliché, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." In this long-standing interpretive tradition, "becoming like… all people in order to gain all people" thus ostensibly signifies for Paul "conducting himself in the same way as each kind of people do when among each kind of people in order to gain every kind of people." In the case of Rome itself, would it signify, for example, eating like a Roman eats in order to evangelize among Romans? If so, would he be willing to eat pork, a favorite delicacy of Roman tables, when among Roman non-Jews? If so, this would indicate that he was not Torah-observant as a matter of covenant faithfulness, but only when evangelistically expedient, in keeping with the traditional portrait of Paul as Torah-free after his turn to faith in Christ. This paper will challenge the prevailing views of what Paul meant by the language of "becoming like" various audiences in order to "gain" them in 1 Cor 9:19-23, and specifically, that it had to do with "behaving like" them, as is usually signified in the epithet, "when in Rome, do as the Romans do."

The tales in the Book of Daniel (Dan 1-6) do not have typical apocalyptic features. The tales form part of a book that also includes visions (Dan 7-12) that show definite apocalyptic features. The question is asked: must the tales be interpreted as apocalyptic literature because the writer in the second century placed it as a prologue to the book with its apocalyptic message of the end of all known kingdoms? To answer the question, it is necessary to define what apocalyptic literature comprises, a difficult question because each apocalyptic work has unique features. To define the historic and social origin of apocalypticism is also very difficult because the modern researcher only has imprecise historical information relating to the phenomenon of apocalypticism. The conclusion is that each apocalyptic work should be investigated in its own right, and that the tales in the Book of Daniel should be interpreted with the writer’s unique apocalyptic aims in mind.

The paper explores the practical teaching of the well-known Wisdom motto “The beginning of Wisdom is the Fear of the Lord” (Proverbs 1:7; 9:10) in Proverbs 23:15-28. This passage of the Third Collection of Proverbs, usually considered as a group of disconnected exhortations, will be proved to be a literary unityf. The analysis of Proverbs 23:15-28 as a literary unit, which can be called a “parental discourse”, reveals a pragmatic strategy the father uses to introduce the son into basic principles of wisdom (the fear of God, listening to the parents, avoid bad company, especially the strange woman), where the fear of God is represented as the very first recommended virtue to learn, in order to becoming wise. Moreover, through the repeated appeal to the son’s heart (vv.15, 17, 26) and description of concrete life situations (vv. 21, 22, 28), the parental discourse in question appears to base its instructions on an intimate transmission of life experience and observation from father to son. The analyzed passage can be then considered as a practical exhortation-illustration of the principle concerning the fundamental role of the fear of God for obtaining Wisdom as well as a model of pragmatic ethical-religious teaching in the Biblical traditions.

In the overall study of the early Christian church, one of the most vexing, troublesome, and provocative areas, as Hans Lietzmann has stated, is that of the history of its canon. Central in the canon debate and one of the hot-topic issues has to do with the dating of a 'final' canon. Though most scholars agree that the end product took its final form, more or less, during the latter half of the fourth century, there are, however, scholars past and present who either ignore or reject this position. Theodor Zahn advocated that the canon was formed in the first century, certainly the earliest position by any scholar to date. Adolf von Harnack and Hans von Campenhausen both argued that the canon was formed out of a response to external theological challenges issued by Marcion, Gnosticism, and Montanism in the second century. More recently there have been many influential studies that ground the formation of the Christian biblical canon in the fourth century, but a considerable amount of doubt remains. Those who advocate an early dating often look to Irenaeus to provide examples of a fixed New Testament canon. It is true that he firmly holds the traditional four gospels to be authoritative, but to assume that he granted the same authority to the rest of the modern 27-book canon stretches Irenaeus’ witness beyond the evidence. This paper will analyze his use of all early Christian texts in proper context and show that Irenaeus should be seen as providing evidence for a later dating of the canon due to his flexible use of other texts, such as the Shepherd of Hermas, which he called scripture (graphe), the same term used for books of our New Testament. Upon careful analysis, Irenaeus’ writings make significant contributions to the debate over the final dating of the canon of the New Testament.

Since the days of bishop Ulfilas who made the first translation of the Bible into the language of an oral culture, several hundred literary languages all over the world have come into existence thanks to the efforts of Bible translators, mostly missionaries. Their use of the Bible has affected and changed cultures all over the world, but the Biblical text itself is also altered as translation is always tantamount to change. In Greenland it is possible to trace such a clash of cultures and its subsequent influence during more than two and a half centuries as Christianity came to Greenland in the year 1721 when the norwegian missionary Hans Egede arrived. His catechisms and Biblical texts in Greenlandic are among the earliest texts written in any Inuit language. As early as 1725 Hans Egede drafted an impressing manuscript containing Biblical passages, a catechism, a number of admonitory speeches, the first known attempt at writing a Greenlandic grammar, and a small dictionary. The manuscript has been preserved, and its linguistic parts have long since been under scrutiny by specialists in the field, but the religious contents have been largely disregarded in spite of the fact that the manuscript bears witness to Inuit’s first encounter with the Bible. Though the language of the document is very pidginlike, it indeed marks the beginning of Greenlandic Christianity as a Greenlandic Christian terminology is founded. I wish to give a presentation of the manuscript in the context of a research agenda concerning the history and subsequent influence of the Greenlandic Bible and its relationship to the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament.

In 1995 Neil Elliot published his Liberating Paul. This book is a typical product of the first phase of the newly flourishing research on the apostle Paul (and generally on the New Testament), that was taking new impulse in those years, focused on the apostle’s relationship with power, specifically the Roman power. The main interest of these studies (Elliot is but one example) was to liberate Paul from the chains of almost two thousands years of misuse of his theology as an oppressive tool both in church and in society. Also thanks to (finally!) some European scholars, the focus seems now to move slowly towards a more literary and historical approach. The aim of this paper is to suggest that it is now time to focus with more attention on the possible contributions that some Apocryphal books can give. Beside some general remarks, here the specific contribution of the Fourth Book of Ezra will be studied: comparing this apocalypse with the apostle Paul’s political thought and approach to Rome’s imperial power can open interesting paths of research. Both think in apocalyptic terms; both deal with Rome’s propaganda and ideology. The point is to understand why they give their readers two different political answers.

Over the last 15 years, considerable energy has been invested in developing models for the Book of the Twelve as a redactional entity. At least five dissertations dealing with this topic have appeared since 2005. While unanimity has not been attained regarding the dates and the processes by which the twelve writings in this corpus were combined, one may safely say that broader agreement has been reached on these issues relative to six of these writings (Hosea, Amos, Micah, Zephaniah, Haggai, and Zechariah) when compared with the other six (Joel, Obadiah, Jonah, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Malachi). The role of interrelated superscriptions and themes has figured prominently in the discussions of the former group. This paper will focus on a neglected issue in discussions of the second, debated, group of writings. Specifically, this paper will suggest that not enough attention has been paid to the role of pre-existing source material in the compilation of these six writings in particular and the relationship of this pre-existing material to cultic concerns. The redactional compilation of these six writings likely incorporated pre-existing texts with existing collections. Frequently, this pre-existing material reflects genres traditionally more closely aligned with the cult than with prophetic activity. Further, the function of these “cultic texts” in their respective writings often makes more sense when one analyzes the Sitz im Buch in relationship to the multi-volume collection rather than the isolated writing. The literary and theological function of the theophanies in Nahum and Habakkuk will serve as the primary case studies for this paper. It is hoped that drawing attention to the reflective use of this source material will further the conversation regarding the nature of the redactional work on the Book of the Twelve in general, but especially on the six more debated writings.

New Testament scholarship has paid scant attention to the origins of the designation, Sea of Galilee, a place name that does not appear in literature of late antiquity outside of Matthew, Mark and John’s Gospels. In this study, we will trace references by Jewish and pagan writers to the Lake of Gennesaret in the first three centuries of the Common Era. Particular attention will be given to the application of the Greek terms THALASSA and LIMNH (and their Latin counterparts, Mare and Lacus) to the body of water in non-Christian literature as background to their appearance in the Gospels. Finally, we will investigate the uniquely Christian toponym, “Sea of Galilee.” We suggest that the origins of the Christian place name lay in creative exegesis of Isaiah 8:23 [LXX: 9:1] in early Christian circles to present the locus of Jesus’ ministry as a fulfillment of Scripture.

Taking Yvonne Sherwood’s A Biblical Text and its Afterlives: The Survival of Jonah in Western Culture (Cambridge University Press, 200) and Bezalel Narkiss’ ‘The Sign of Jonah’ (Gesta, Vol. 18, No. 1, pp. 63-76) as starting points, this paper explores the reception history of Jonah in visual culture. Ranging from early Christian art, through to Michelangelo’s Jonah in the Sistine Chapel to illustrations by the 20th century Welsh artist, David Jones, the paper draws attention to the appeal of the Jonah story and its principal characters. It will re-examine the claims that Jewish midrashic traditions had a very considerable influence on the iconography of Jonah as it developed over the centuries and explore the Christological significance of the Jonah tradition in art.

* A Rhetorical Reading of Rom 1:8-17 (exordium) and Rom 15:12-33 (peroratio).

The paper investigates the authenticity of the prophecy in Isaiah 39:5-7 concerning the spoliation of the tresure of thr royal palace in Jerusalem, and the taking into captivity of the king's sons. A comparative approach to this problem based mainly on the account of the conquest of Susa by Ashurbanipal leads to the conclusions 1)that Isaiah 39:5-9 is not a mere vaticinium ex evento but a genuine composition, albeit slightly altered by a late redactor. 2) the prophecy utilizes the style of a typical motif and modeled upon conventional patterns of Assyrian hitoriography. 3) the many unique parallels and points in common shared by biblical and Mesopotamian scribes, undermined the view that most of the biblical texts (if not all) as well as "biblical Israel" are the product of Jewish theologians during the Persian or even the Hellenistic-Roman Period.,

The oldest artistic representations of Paul as attested in the Roman catacombs correspond to his portrayal in the Acts of Paul and Thecla 3 where the apostle is depicted as ‘a man small in size, with a bald head ... with eyebrows meeting and a rather prominent nose'. This paper holds that the passage in the Apocryphal Acts does not reflect a memory of Paul's real outer appearance but that according to ancient physiognomical traditions it is to be understood as embodiment of his apostolic identity (cf. Omerzu, Portrayal). By adding to this portrayal the feature of a (often pointed) beard, the artistic imagery especially respresents Paul in analogy to a pagan philosopher-teacher (cf. Zanker, Sokrates). The paper will be concluded by remarks on the socio-historical context of Early Christianity in Rome as reflected in the visual imagery of the catacombs.

Karl Galinsky in his 2008 SBL paper focused attention on the religious pluralism of the Roman empire, a phenomenon which stretches back to the 2nd century BCE and which may have accustomed the “locative” religious system of the Roman state to “utopian” modes of worship, to use J. Z. Smith's terminology. My paper suggests that Roman religion itself developed in a more “utopian” direction over the last centuries of the Republic and early empire. The performance of Roman rituals at locations other than the city itself and the spread of “Roman” practices in Italy suggest an overall diminution of the emphasis on place, though one should not imagine that this development was uncontested or that the city lost its importance as a symbolic center. The reign of Augustus marks an important moment in this development: the conscious archaizing of Augustus and the highly publicized temple restorations in Rome, along with the reliance on written documents such as stone festival calendars outside Rome and the ability to worship Roman gods at other than their cult centers in Rome display characteristic features of the utopian mode. These developments in Roman religion, far from being a move away from religion as embedded in Roman society, came about precisely because of the embedded nature of that religion: the growth of the polis into a territorial empire, and then the transformation of the government into a political empire had a consequent impact on the religious system of the Romans. These changes forced Romans to reconceptualize a new sense of their place in the world, and those changes created the context within which the religious pluralism of the early Roman Empire flourished. The locative religion of the Republic had no place in the new imperial world.

A brief presentation of plot and characters in Bartimaeus' episode serves as an introduction. Then, following the methodology proposed by Gari Yamasaki, the paper analyses verse by verse the spatial, temporal, psychological and ideological planes of viewpoint in Mk 10:46-52. Finally, a section studies the meaning of the episode in its context (specially Mk 8:27-10:45). The analysis of plot and characters shows a primacy of a revelatory plot over the plot of resolution: that is, the miracle story serves to reveal mainly the faith of Bartimaeus and indirectly the mercy of Jesus, Son of David. This conclusion is confirmed by the analysis of point of view, specially on the ideological plane. The narrator chooses to tell the actions in a rather neutral way, making no comments or evaluations, because he wants Jesus to have the final word. The narrator keeps spatially near to Bartimaeus, but his ideological point of view remains hidden, until Jesus both interprets the blind's behaviour as an expression of faith and declares he is saved. Then, the narrator can show his agreement, informing about the healing and saying that Bartimaeus "followed him by the way" (10,52). This use of point of view is typical of Mark's Gospel, which begins presenting Jesus as an authoritative character, whose point of view is shared by God himself. The immediate context of Bartimaeus' episode shows the importance of Jesus' point of view, stated clearly by himself in 8:31ss and shared by the narrator, but not accepted by disciples. Bartimaeus is the first who follows Jesus on the way to the cross after the Passion's predictions. His figure shows both to the disciples and to the readers that Jesus' point of view can be accepted in practice.

There are several references to Geshur and the Geshurites in the Hebrew Bible. Reading them together, one may receive the impression that there was a clearly definable area called Geshur, inhabited by Geshurites and ruled by a king. The Biblical view is often adopted in scholarly literature and the kingdom of Geshur plays a role in the reconstruction of the political situation during the early monarchic period. The existence of such a kingdom is often taken as granted in histories of Israel and studies of Israel’s early history. However, historical sources for Geshur and the Geshurites are shaky. The Hebrew Bible contains only very weak and short traditions about Geshur and their historical value is much smaller than what scholarly discussion would implicate. They do not justify many of the views in scholarly discussion. Scholarship has also sought to corroborate the Biblical traditions with external sources and archaeology, but the evidence is very problematic, and, in the worst case, its use is reminiscent of Biblicism, where the main function of external sources is to corroborate Biblical texts.

*

In 1998, Saint John’s Abbey and University in Minnesota, USA launched a project to produce a Bible on parchment and in English using the arts of calligraphy and manuscript illumination. Now ten years later, as the Saint John’s Bible nears completion, five of its seven volumes have already been displayed in major American cities as well as in London and Rome. The Committee on Illumination and Text (=CIT), stands as the oversight group for the Saint John’s Bible. Comprised of artists, New and Old Testament exegetes, church and art historians, and patristic and systematic theologians, the CIT works in conversation with the scribal and artistic team in Wales. Thus, theology and art have married in common purpose and have produced a Bible, which has set the Word of God in dialogue with the human, scientific, and artistic achievements at the turn of the Millennium. This marriage has made its imprint on the greater society, as the Saint John’s Bible takes scriptural exegesis and moves it from the academy to the museum. Consequently, both secularists and biblical fundamentalists have been challenged by the passages the CIT has chosen for artistic treatment, the manner in which those passages have been portrayed, and the themes which they have manifested. With a selection of slide images, this paper demonstrates how the calligraphy and art of the Saint John’s Bible expresses its exegesis just as the exegesis determines its calligraphy and art. The result is a hermeneutic that draws on the rich, varied, and ongoing catholic Christian intellectual and artistic traditions even while it contributes to them. Not only do society and culture inform the text, but the biblical text also influences and transforms that selfsame society.

The death of Rabbi Akiva at the hands of Roman executioners is told in the Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 61b. As found in the printed editions of the Talmud, this tale describes the martyrdom of Rabbi Akiva – including a description of his torture – while he is preparing to recite the Shema. The tale concludes with a scene taking place in Heaven, assuring Rabbi Akiva’s place in the world to come. This tale has become central to discussions by scholars of Jewish history and literature concerning Jewish martyrdom during the Hadrianic persecutions of the early second century CE, and the relationship between Jewish and Christian attitudes towards martyrdom in late antiquity. However, a careful study of the transmission of the Talmudic text in medieval manuscripts, as well as a comparison of the literary structure and content of the Babylonian tale with its Palestinian counterpart (attested in the Palestinian Talmud at Berakhot 9, 5 and at Sotah 5, 5), lead to the conclusion that the original tale does not deal with R. Akiva’s martyrdom as a central issue, but with Rabbi Akiva’s fortitude as a religious leader vis-à-vis outside elements: in the Palestinian version - the Roman procurator, in the Babylonian version – Rabbi Akiva’s own students. The fact of Rabbi Akiva’s execution serves as background only in the Babylonian version, and indeed is not explicit in the Palestinian version. During the transmission of the story in later versions of the Talmud, martyrological and fantastical elements were added under the influence of a later Byzantine version, appearing in the work entitled Midrash ‘Aseret Harugei Malchut, as well as, perhaps, through later European models of martyrdom. A detailed literary and philological study of the versions of the tale demonstrates the evolution of motifs and literary models current in early rabbinic Palestinian and Babylonian cultures, and emphasizes the historical and theological influences peculiar to the later Byzantine and European cultural milieux.

'This presentation will explore some aspects of Philo's interpretation of Jewish Scriptures in light of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Special attention will be given to issues in the interpretation of Philo's De Decalogo and De Specialibus Legibus.'

In this paper I would like to present the three basic premises or principles of the Semantic Analysis Method used by GASCO research group when drafting the entries of the Diccionario Griego-Español del Nuevo Testamento (Greek–Spanish New Testament Dictionary): 1) The systematic distinction between meaning and translation in the treatment of the entries of the Dictionary. The meaning of a Greek word is not another word from another language (=translation), which in turn is subject to being defined in its own way, and can have a different meaning, but a descriptive statement of the same word, which we call definition. 2. The construction of the definition of the lexemes and each sememe or sense of every entry. The existing dictionaries of the New Testament, with the exception of the Louw-Nida Dictionary, do not usually make any distinction between meaning (= definition) and translation, except on rare occasions. They are rather repertories of words in which for every Greek word a list is given of terms in the reference language, of which not all correspond exactly to the lexical meaning of the word (or “grundbedeutung”), but different translations of the word in a definite context. On the other hand, in the NT dictionaries the structuring of the entries under different sections does not always correspond to different senses or meanings of the word. Divisions frequently answer to grammatical and syntactic criteria rather than semantic ones. 3) The establishment of the contextual factor. The third principle of our Semantic Analysis Method is the establishment for every entry of the contextual factor or factors that change the meaning of a given word, producing different translations of the same word. The three premises will be exemplified with different entries of the Dictionary.

Giorgio Agamben, building on Aristotle’s discussion of an opposition in the polis between “bare life” (to zên) and the “good life” (to eu zên; Pol. 1252b.30), contends that Western political life from its very inception was premised on the exclusion of some forms of human being from full civic participation (1998, 7). In his words, “the ban is the original political relationship,” and “the sovereign is he who decides on the exception” [the ban] (1998, 181). Agamben invokes an archaic Roman figure, the sacer homo, as an example of “bare life” because sacer homo enters the juridical order in the form of its exclusion from legal protection (“that is, in its capacity to be killed)” (1998, 8). This paper argues that the Roman legal dichotomy between humiliores and honestiores evolving in the early imperial period generated new categories of “bare life” by causing numerous free persons across the empire to be excluded from protection from judicial death and exposed to brutal violence. The paper further contends that this assault on the status of numerous free persons with its brutal repercussions sparked a resentment that contributed to Christianity’s appeal and to its institutionalization as a counterweight to Roman sovereignty. In poems written for the opening of the Flavian amphitheater, Martial showcases the imperial construction of “bare life” in his descriptions of “fatal charades.” He describes the condemned as mute objects available for entertainment and testament to the emperor’s sovereignty They die deprived of personal identity, role-playing in costume. The paper contrasts this representation with the dynamism of Christian martyr literature that refigures and rejects the portrayal of “bare life’ as unfit to speak “on what is just and unjust”—Aristotle’s criterion for the “good life” —- and attain bare life’s inclusion in public dialogue.

In this paper I would like to expand and clarify some of the theological conclusions proposed in my recent study: The Honeymoon is Over: Jonah’s Argument with God (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2006). Three issues will be highlighted: 1) Is the primary question one of Jonah’s refusal to carry out the divine mission, in which case Jonah is guilty of willful disobedience? 2) Is the problem one of the interpretation of the divine command (Nineveh will be “overturned”), in which case Jonah is the hapless victim of oracular ambiguity? 3) Is the issue one of the level or quality of prophetic consciousness? This concept was dear to earlier exegetes and is one I shall stress here.

Interpreters as early as Origen and as venerable as Brown have understood the Temple Cleansing (2:13-22) during the first Passover of Jesus' public ministry to be supercessionist. Schnackenburg, however, has departed from this near consensus. He claims that the pericope and its larger unit of chapters 2 through 4 share the same focus: to worship God "in Spirit and in Truth." This paper develops Schnackenburg's reading with two pieces of evidence: 1) the Johannine additions of "emporiou" and Temple livestock to the Synoptic parallels, and 2) the depiction of belief in the sign of Jesus' resurrection as a post-Easter event (2:22). In the Gospel of John, the scriptural "den of thieves" found in the Synoptic parallels is replaced with "house of emporion." Though translators and commentators uniformly construe the term "emporion" as "market" or "trade," the use of "emporion" in Strabo and other authors indicates a political resource of a combined temple and treasury. Such a Roman understanding had its Greek analogues in temples as prominent as the Parthenon. John's use of large animals as opposed to the Synoptics creates further similarities between the Jewish Temple in the Johannine gospel and Greco-Roman temples. Recognition is made of this on the story level as there are no recriminations from the Jewish religious establishment for the Temple Cleansing in John as there are in the Synoptics. Instead, John's narrative voice closes the incident by informing the reader that the disciples only later remembered and interpreted the sign correctly. Negative interactions between Jesus and the Pharisees do not occur until 4:1. Thus, the issue in the Temple Cleansing scene is the Roman control of the Temple, just as 1) the Jewish leaders decide to hand him over because of the Roman occupation and 2) the major trial scene is not with the Sanhedrin but with Pilate.

The opening section of the body of 1 Corinthians is often treated as evidence for an early theological understanding of Jesus that differs fundamentally from Paul's. This non-Pauline Christology, detected also in the earliest layers of Q and the Gospel according to Thomas, is thought to have focused on the "wisdom" embodied in Jesus' words rather than the divine saving action accomplished through his death and resurrection. Methodologically, analysis of the argument of 1 Corinthians 1–4 as an expression of Paul's hortatory purpose is a prior step to the use of this text as a source for early Christian history. This paper builds on the neglected work of Nils Dahl and his students and surveys the argument of 1 Corinthians 1–4, in particular the rhetorical function of the term "wisdom" and Paul's understanding of Jesus' cross as an ironic revelation of divine wisdom. The survey offers grounds for concluding that in this section of the letter Paul critiques the moral dispositions implicit in the behavior of those Corinthian Christians who have questioned his apostolic authority rather than opposing any explicit theological commitments involved in their challenge to him. In the process, this analysis shows that 1 Corinthians 1–4 supplies no clear evidence for an early Christology unconcerned with Jesus' death and resurrection.

This contribution explores ancient descriptions of places and concepts of space as they are reflected in texts and visual media. Particularly, it focuses on two different aspects: practices of representation and media are regarded as on the one hand crucial elements in the contemporary reconstruction of ancient space, and on the other hand, in their function within ancient religious systems. Combining a hermeneutical and a cultural studies approach, this paper explores theoretical and methodological questions illustrated by selected examples of representations of the otherworldly. Expanding the vision to not directly perceivable spaces, the intricate relationship between space, media and religious orientation will be developed.

This paper argues that an examination of e)pistre/fw, turning to God, in Judith, Tobit, Sirach and Joseph & Aseneth reveals notions of anti-imperial thinking. In their own unique circumstances, faced with the challenges and pressures of living under the tyranny of Empire and furthermore, seeking to work out what it meant to live as the people called by God, they speak of what it means to turn to God from under Imperial culture. We shall engage with the immediacy and urgency of Judith’s situation, the subtle influence of idols in Tobit’s context, the subversive anti-imperialism of Sirach and then finally the radical shift brought about by Aseneth as she turns from idols and empire to the true and living God. A final note considers the inspiration that these writings may have had upon later writers such as Paul, as he, is his own circumstances, seeks to work out what his gospel means to those living under the power of the Roman Empire.

With this paper I attempt to show in a brief summary and analysis of samples how a discourse-analysis based study of verbal usage in relationship with typology of textual units can shed some light in a time-old problem in Hebrew linguistics: clause construction and the value of verbal forms (particularly the qatal-yqtl opposition) in the so-called Archaic Biblical Hebrew compositions. This particular linguistic feature has not been particularly explored, whereas the coverage on phonetic, orthographic, morphological/morphosyntactic,and lexical “archaic” elements has been pretty extensive. It has also given rise to considerable academic debates on the limits in our capacity to discriminate between original archaic features and later archaizing elements, which might compromise or at least complicate the validity of dating the poems via single-word or single-clause feature surveys. My proposal, developed in tandem with an extensive analysis of textual typology and syntax in Ugaritic narrative poetry, attempts to use textual typology and text-type function based verbal syntax to define, if possible, syntactic usages of the Hebrew verbal conjugation which may remain distinct in the archaic corpus from later verse compositions of the Bible (Classical and Late BH.) Considering the possibility of a literary continuum in Syria-Palestine, comparative typological analysis and syntax between ABH and Ugaritic narrative poetry could offer data on a supra-sentence linguistic feature with considerable solidity, as it implies overarching structures with later archaizing authors would find harder to imitate than individual morphological and lexical elements.

Relevance theories have been developed in many different disciplines to explain the important role of implicit inferences in disciplinary expert communication, proposing that the expert mind will instinctively react to an encoded message by considering information that it conceives to be relevant to the message. By "relevance" is often meant whatever allows the most new information to be transmitted in that context on the basis of the least amount of effort required to convey it. This paper reformulates relevance theory for the field of legal interpretation, examines its implications for a more comprehensive legal hermeneutical approach, and discusses how these insights are relevant for bible translation.

The Place, Space and Identity in the Ancient Mediterranean World Program Unit proposes to illustrate the centrality of space in the interpretation of the literary and visual heritage of ancient Mediterranean peoples. Notions of place and space determined the self-orientation of individuals and peoples alike. Place and space were indeed determining factors in the formation of individual and collective identity. This study focuses on the representations of place/space in the literary heritage of ancient Mediterranean peoples and argues that these representations should be interpreted as narrated space reflecting the ideology of the real and/or implied author and his/her intended audience. References to place/space should not be equated to "real" place/space. They are, per definition, "ideological" references. Representations of place/space either support or contradict the ideology of the intended audience, and thus contribute towards the formation of the audience's orientation and identity. It is argued that a combination of a narrative approach towards spatiality and social scientific spatial analysis (especially so-called "critical spatiality") embedded in the ancient Mediterranean worldview will enable modern readers to arrive at a contextual interpretation of ancient texts. These theoretical considerations will be illustrated with reference to the Book of Jonah. It will be argued that the diametrically opposed "spatial" identity of the two main characters (YHWH and Jonah, ironically both voiced by Jonah in 1:9), viewed against the backdrop of the Assyrian capital Nineveh, is aimed at changing the ideology of the intended audience in the Persian province of Jehud. The importance of Nineveh (and not Jerusalem!) as the centre of the book's "universe" will be discussed. In the process, the centrality of space in the interpretation of the Book of Jonah will be elucidated.

The two archaeological projects discussed are evaluated critically. The discussion of Ramat Rahel deals mainly with its identification as Beth-haccerem. Points are stressed concerning the alleged altar on Mt. Ebal; each point in itself is enough to negate the interpretation of the site as an altar.

This paper examines the healing narratives of deaf-mutes in the Gospels, primarily the Synoptics, from two perspectives. First, a historical analysis grounds the Synoptic traditions in the earlier prophetic traditions that are appropriated, either by allusion or by explicit citation. The general trend is that the Synoptics invariably concretize in bodies a condition that was, in the prophetic literature, primarily used as a metaphor. Further, I shall assess the extent to which deaf-muteness was associated with demonic possession, in order to determine how the authors integrate this motif into the theme of apocalyptic-eschatological combat. Second, I shall use the representational analysis of disability literary critics to examine whether the deaf-mutes are represented differently before and after their encounter with Jesus. Here, the general answer is that they are not, but rather remain representationally deaf-mute, reported to speak and hear but never shown doing either. Thus their presence in the text remains a function of the authors’ abled-bodied perspective and does not constitute a fully-represented disabled presence. This, too, can be understood in terms of the deployment of disability images in the underlying apocalyptic combat myth. Key passages treated are Mk 7:31-37, parallel Mt 15:29-31; Mt 9:32-34, 12:22-24, parallel Lk 11:14-15; and Mk 9:14-29, parallel Mt 17:14-21, Lk 9:37-43a; and interpretive statements such as Mt 11:5 parallel Lk 7:22. Attention will be given to each gospel’s distinctive purposes with respect to this motif.

Biblical scholars have noted some characteristics of progressions in the book of Daniel. Some had noted the “progression in symbolism” in Dan 8. For example, one observes that there was not only progression of the “greater importance of the successive actors” in that chapter such as from Persian ram to the Greek goat, to the greater and stronger little horn but also the “progression from the comparative to the superlative” of the language used (i.e., the verb gadal, “to become great”) in the vision of chap. 8. Others also recognized progression in Daniel, more precisely Dan 7:25, which one scholar called as “broken numerical sequence (or progression). However, the study of progressions had not been thoroughly pursued yet. Thus, the present article further pursues this element of progression in the book of Daniel. Different types of progression found in the selected chapters in the book of Daniel are thematic, numerical, and linguistic. The progressions found in our study lend further support to the literary beauty of the book of Daniel. If an attentive reader could see the pattern of progressions in this book, then, he or she can only appreciates its literary beauty and its message, as well. Our study opens the question whether progression is one of the distinct characteristics of an apocalyptic literature. This study could also be used as an impetus for similar study in other apocalyptic literature in the Bible.

Despite the fact that many influential studies have declared symbolic language to be a sine qua non of ancient Jewish apocalypses, investigations of the symbolic language found in apocalypses have focused almost exclusively on how individual symbols relate to their antecedents. In this paper I attempt to illuminate the symbolic language of Daniel 2, 7, and 8 by borrowing the methodology used by Claude Lévi Strauss in Totemism. In other words, I focus on the relationships between the symbols themselves and not only the relationships between each symbol and its referent. Crucial to this endeavor are the symbolic apocalypses found among the Dead Sea Scrolls such as 4QFourKingdomsa-b ar and the Book of the Words of Noah (1QapGen 5 29-18 ?). These texts bear witness to the same symbol-systems found in Daniel. Together with the Animal Apocalypse (1 Enoch 85-90), they provide sufficient data to ask about the function of symbols more broadly within the genre apocalypse. I argue that Jewish historical apocalypses employ a limited and stable repertoire of symbol-types and that these symbol-types bear witness to a series of conventional relationships. The Dead Sea Scrolls help to illuminate the symbolic language in the Book of Daniel. But as Lange and Mittmann-Richert note in DJD 39, they also call into question the notion that symbolic language is a ubiquitous feature of ancient Jewish apocalypses. For example, whereas Daniel 7 describes the kingdom of Greece (Macedonia) as a terrifying beast, the Apocryphon of Jeremiah C represents Greece with the locution ??? (“Greece”). 4QPseudoDaniela-b ar even mentions the personal names of particular Greek rulers (e.g., ?????? “Balakros”) in its historical review. I argue that these texts from Qumran provide the best models for understanding the non-symbolic language of the largest apocalypse in the Book of Daniel: chapters 10-12.

In the centenary celebrations of the Pontifical Biblical Institute and the Gregorian University, we could perhaps pause a short while and consider the contributions of Pierre Jouon towards a scientific exegesis of Canticles. It is so easy either to belittle his contribution or to glorify it beyond measure. Either approach will not do justice to one of the giants of Old Testament scholarship from 1909-1919, the period of his most important works. Jouon elaborated the allegorical interpretation with strict adherence to the allegory as genre. This approach was continued by Vulliaud (1925), Robert (1944, 1945, 1951, 1963), Feuillet (1952, 1953) and Tournay (1963), by way of an attempt to determine the meaning of Canticles through the supposed allusions to earlier biblical books. Most probably the greatest contribution was his exhaustive attempt to find in the prophetic marriage allegories a key to the understanding of Canticles, although, in the mind of the author of this paper, it was without success. The presuppositions underlying the allegorical and parabolic interpretation have a very insecure base. Such a thorough investigation of the applicability of this theory should not just be denigrated. It is one of the pointers toward another approach as a possible solution.

No one has so far persuasively succeeded in figuring out the exact meaning and connotation of some terms related to poverty in the late post-exilic Judaism used as self-designations by religious groups. These terms of poverty seem to have played a special role in the self-understanding of a movement or direction related to a certain religious group. It is also by no means clear, which religious movement first used these terms of poverty for the self-designation in the history of Israel. However, since 1947 the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, and some texts of them seem to be profoundly influenced by the so-called “piety of the poor.” From this fact, it might be possible to examine new aspects to clarify the pre-history of the piety of the poor presented in the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as illuminate clearer criteria regarding the evaluation of the relevant texts of the Old Testament. For this purpose, this paper will analyze some texts of thanksgiving songs called “Hodayot” in which the relevant terms of poverty are used significantly more frequently than in other texts out of Dead Sea Scrolls. The relevant texts of “Hodayot” indicate terminological, structural and theological analogies with some “Psalms of Poverty” like Ps 12; 25; 34; 40; 69 etc.

Despite the existence of growing sub-fields devoted to human emotion in areas such as anthropology, cognitive science, history, and linguistics, many interpreters of the NT gospels continue to read passages dealing with emotion (Matthew 5.21-26, for example) strictly in terms of theology or “religion.” This paper argues that by ignoring the advances made in the study of emotion in other academic fields, NT interpreters underestimate the impact that emotion-discourse could have had on ancient readers; by conceiving of emotion as a purely internal and private experience, interpreters miss out on the social significance of the discourse and practice of emotion in the gospels. In particular, it will examine how anger functions as a social practice in the Gospel of Matthew. By attending to cross-disciplinary advances in the history of emotion to construct a set of theoretical and methodological correctives for what is a relatively thinly theorized use of the category of emotion in gospels studies, the paper will demonstrate how progress may be made in both intellectual and social history of the synoptic gospels.

The purpose of this short lecture is to inquire if the advent of Christianity, that brought in its wake the slow transformation of Rome from residence of the Emperor and capital of the universal pagan Roman Empire into the capital of Western Christianity, dominated by the bishop of Rome, the pope, influenced the identity of the Jewish community of Rome. It seems to me that the cultural identity of Roman Judaism metamorphosed between the Third and Fourth Century C.E., as the Jewish catacombs of Rome and the synagogue of Ostia, for example, clearly demonstrate. Thus, if in the Third Century C.E. various sarcophagi, as well as hypogea I and II of Vigna Randanini, testify to a close interaction and dialogue with pagan surroundings, throughout the Fourth Century C.E., the Villa Torlonia catacombs as well as various tomb markers testify that the Jews of Rome moved towards a cultural identity different from that of the surrounding society, emphasizing its Jewish identity. It seems to me that this change must be attributed to the outside transformation from the pagan world, which had been open to universal values, to the dogmatic values and intolerant position of the slowly rising Christian church.

This paper presents the results of a study of the treatment of biblical themes in stained glass windows in Roman Catholic and Church of Ireland cathedrals and churches within Ireland. The research looks at the prevalence of biblical themes within the stained glass art of these two traditions and plots the range, type and frequency of biblical texts depicted. The differences in the results of the survey for Roman Catholic and Church of Ireland buildings is correlated with the particular role that the Bible has played in these traditions, as well as with the history of church building in Ireland. Particular attention is paid to the work of Harry Clarke, Evie Hone, Michael Healy, Wilhelmina Geddes and An Túr Gloine (The Glass Tower) co-operative. Recent works are highlighted and interrogated for the way in which they reflect attitudes to and perspectives on the Bible in contemporary Ireland. The paper concludes with comments on the interpretation of the biblical text reflected in a few particularly interesting windows.

The paper will show the influence of H. Cazelles for the French speaking Biblical scholarship on the Pentateuch. It was Cazelles who brought the Documentary Hypothesis to broad acceptance (not without resistance from the church) in France. Trained as a legal expert, Cazelle did focus his work on the Torah on the law collections and was in this respect a forerunner of a current trend.

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In this paper I will use critical theory in two different but closely related readings of Romans, Luke-Acts, and 1 Timothy. The first is to explore the idea of “heresy” in both the Second Temple Jewish and early Christian (New Testament) texts that are usually excluded from the study of early Christian heresiology. The discursive negotiation with internal ideological differences in second-century heresiologists drew on rhetorical patterns in earlier Christian discourse to identify “truth” and “error.” Following Foucault, I am looking for the origin of the idea that someone could be a “heretic,” a genealogy of heresy. I am analyzing the discursive and ideological origins of heresiological rhetorical practices before “heresy” becomes a technical term. Second, I use post-colonial theory to analyze the political functions of heresiological discourse by early orthodox Christians against other Christians labeled “heretics.” Christian orthodoxy employed the discourse of heresy not because every “us” has a “them” but because the politics of orthodoxy positioned both the oikoumene of the Roman Empire, and all other Christianities, as “them.” Political discourse will be implicated in the dominant culture wherever located, classically expressing the problematic of “hybridity,” as formulated by Homi Bhaba. The heresiologist is not necessarily, however, the subaltern voice. The rhetoric of difference internal to the community (the rhetoric of heresy) often precedes the appeal to the colonial cultural paradigm, although the patterns of rhetoric will be doubly-implicated in imperial ideologies, inscribing polemics against the other colonial subject as well as entangling the community in the ideology of a suppressive empire. In this paper, I will use these critical theories to show how the imperial discourse inscribed in these texts (later chosen by the Orthodox party for the canon) marks, delineates, and condemns other Christians, the nascent “heretics” of the second century.

The phrase meta tauta functions as a sequence marker in narrative passages of both the LXX and the New Testament. Of the thirty-one occurrences of meta tauta in the New Testament, only two times it occurs in the epistles (Heb 4:8; 1 Pet 1:11), due to the fact of the non-narrative genre of the epistles. Almost one-third of the occurrences of the phrase is in the book of Revelation (Rev. 1:19; Rev. 4:1 [two times]; 7:9; 9:12; 15:5; 18:1; 19:1; 20:3). This suggests that the book of Revelation, with an apocalyptic genre, is presented in a narrative framework. This study examines the nine occurrences of meta tauta in the book of Revelation focusing on their immediate literary contexts. The analysis concludes that meta. tau/ta functions as sequence marker for two narratives in the book of Revelation: the sequence of the apocalyptic events portrayed in the visions as they are unveiled by the heavenly Revealer, and the sequence of the visions themselves as they are seen by the earthly visionary. It seems that the sequence of the visions does not necessarily go together with the sequence of the events portrayed in the visions.

Three versions of the books of Adam and Eve (the Armenian 'Penitence of Adam', the Latin 'Vita Adae et Evae', and the Georgian 'Book of Adam') contain a Christian interpolation about the baptism of either Jesus (Latin, Georgian) or Adam (Armenian). In the Latin: The Son of God will come and be baptized in the river Jordan and will then anoint all who believe on him. In the Armenian: (Adam?) will come to the Jordan and be baptized by (the beloved Christ?), then Michael will come and anoint the 'new Adam' and 'all the wild beasts of the earth'. In the Georgian: The beloved Son of God, Christ will come and be baptized in the river Jordan, will come forth from the water 'with the (anointing) of oil' and will anoint (Adam) and all his descendants. Though these passages contain some ambiguities, in the Georgian it appears that Christ is anointed in his baptism, and in the Armenian it appears that Adam is baptized by Christ. This paper investigates the relation of these texts to each other and to the traditions which stand behind them - including the question of whether the Armenian casts the story of the baptism of Jesus as the baptism of Adam.

The prevailing opinion about crucifixions is that they were carried out in approximately the same way as the crucifixion of Jesus, i.e., that the condemned were attached by their limbs to crosses in order to be executed. In search of the historical background of this punishment, scholars often referred to ancient Greek texts containing the verb anastauroun or anaskolopizein. The present paper suggests that conclusions drawn from these texts may be unsatisfactory – if not erroneous. This suggestion is based on the fact that the absolute majority of the texts share the same weakness, which disqualifies them in such a study. In order to create a firm textual basis for the study of crucifixion, other intra- and extra-textual features are needed. The result of the reading proposed by the present paper is that it significantly reduces the num-ber of relevant texts (the hitherto studied) and takes some new (hitherto neglected) texts into consideration.

In the 1560's, former Austrian military leader and governor, Hans von Ungnad, gathered a group of southern Slavs for the purpose of translating the Bible into Croatian and Serbian. This group, working in Bad Urach, Germany, realized that if the translation project was to be a success they needed to raise literacy levels among the southern Slavs. To accomplish this goal they printed thousands of literacy training pamphlets. The translation and printing was successful, but the distribution faced major obstacles. What were the obstacles and what prevented the project from reaching its goals? On the other hand, in the 1800's well- known Slavic literary figure, Vuk Karadzic, introduced langauge reform through his Bible translation and introduced a simplified alphabet that is still used. Why were his efforts more successfull and did the the efforts of the 1560's pave the way for his suceess?

The use of Hebrew in Christian art is rare before the Renaissance and after the advent of historical criticism, and where it is used, it frequently has a blatantly anti-Semitic aim. There are a number of beautiful examples, however, mostly from the period 1450-1650, some probably done with converts in mind, but some clearly addressed to thoughtful Christian Hebraists. Such a visual context in which familiar verses of scripture appear adds a significant new dimension to how they are interpreted, and prompts the question why the beautiful Hebrew script in which most of our Bible was originally written, does not figure more frequently in Christian art and architecture.

Throughout the history of Christianity Luke’s peculiar emphasis on poverty has been appropriated in a variety of ways in various contexts (e.g. monasteries, church and individual charity programs, Marxism and Liberation Theology). In this paper an attempt is made to construct the economic-historic context (structure and performance) of the addressees of the Lukan writings. This is followed by the question to what extend present-day perspectives on Luke’s stance are either challenged or confirmed by the analysis. The relevance of Luke’s stance for the contemporary global economic crisis and situations of poverty is briefly reflected upon.

The Temple Scroll as a whole rewrites the legal sections of the Torah, beginning with the command at the end of Exodus to build a tabernacle, here turned into the command to build a gargantuan Temple, and continuing through the various regulations of Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The individual sources of the scroll deal with specific areas of Pentateuchal legislation and provide detailed interpretations and harmonizations of Torah texts, resulting in numerous rulings on questions of Jewish practice. This study will explicate the complex relationship of the Temple Scroll and its sources to the canonical Torah, in terms of the nature of the Pentateuchal text upon which it was based, the hermeneutics of the scroll, shared literary characteristics, and comparison of the actual contents. At the same time as we study the scroll looking backwards towards its origins in Pentateuchal tradition, we will explain the manner in which its prescriptions and interpretations presage later developments in Jewish law and tradition, especially in the rabbinic corpus.

When one consults a survey of Psalms studies in the first half of the twentieth century, one sees a rather lively discussion of the “I” in the Psalms. A survey of current Psalms studies reveals that the vitality of this topic has weakened considerably. This paper briefly traces the options about who the speaker is, and chooses one of the options to test its validity on selected Psalms. The option it tests is the proposal that the speaker is a personification of the people Israel.

The Temple of Zeus Philios and Trajan was an imposing monument in the landscape of ancient Pergamum. Anastylosis at the site gives modern visitors a sense of the extent and quality of that imposition. The temple was built on an artificial platform constructed to ensure that it would dominate the acropolis of the city. A bilingual dedicatory inscription provides insight not only into the temple, but also regarding associated games and festivities. Because these activities are described with reference to the Temple of Roma and Augustus, the inscription provides an opportunity to consider imperial honors for a living emperor in light of historical precedent, political change, and regional context. The fact that Hadrian also comes to be honored in the temple adds a further layer of complexity to these connections.

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The special role and function of animals in the book of Jonah will be examined. Throughout the book, all elements of creation (natural forces, flora and fauna) serve as emissaries of the Lord. Among animals, this applies specifically to the “great fish” and the worm. Their subjection to God’s will contrasts with the behavior of His human messenger, Jonah, who runs away and tries to evade his mission. At the end of the book animals are viewed as part of the penitent community and an object for divine forgiveness, alongside the human citizens of Nineveh. In fact, the book’s concluding words are “many beasts,” who also merit God’s mercy. I believe there may be a link between the role of animals in the story as divine emissaries and their special status as members of the community and as worthy of divine compassion.

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Following Milik’s publication of the Enochic Qumran fragments, several scholars have followed his suggestion that the abbreviated geography in the Book of Luminaries 77 is based on the so-called ‘Babylonian World Map.’ This paper critiques that view and instead posits that a better context for part of the geography might be found in official Achaemenid royal ideology and the traditional Iranian conception of karšvars, or the traditional idea of a seven-part earth. From this are drawn several observations on the context of late Persian and early Hellenistic scholarship.

As proposed in a paper presented at SBL Auckland 2008, gam is an additive particle that encodes an instruction to interpret the piece it introduces as a new assumption, which invites a search for an antecedent parallel sentence (immediately preceding or earlier in the text), and which is of equal thematic prominence with its antecedent. In considering a range of examples, it was proposed that gam influences the inferences to be derived in interpretation, in context variously strengthening an existing contextual implication; adding a new contextual implication; or cancelling an existing contextual implication. The present paper extends a procedural treatment to cases where gam occurs in interrogative and directive sentences. Although these cases only cover around 2% of the corpus, an understanding of the contribution gam makes to interpretation must cover non-declaratives as well as declaratives. The paper argues for a modal analysis.

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At least since C.H. Dodd’s 'According to the Scriptures' (1952), it has been widely recognized that Ps. 110.1 ‘was one of the fundamental texts of the kerygma, underlying almost all the various developments of it’ (p. 35). Echoes of the text may be heard across the New Testament corpus (cf. Mk 12.35-37; 14.62 & pars.; Acts 2.34; Eph. 1.20-22; Col. 3.1; Heb. 1.13; 2.5-9; 10.13; 1 Pet. 3.22), and subsequent detailed studies by D.M. Hay (1973), W.R.G. Loader (1977) and R.B. Hays (1993) have confirmed Dodd’s assessment, underscoring the significance of Ps. 110.1 in the development of the earliest Christologies. Nevertheless, as G.H. Guthrie’s 2007 survey demonstrates, little attention has been given to the function Ps. 110.1 may have played in the formation of the early Christian conviction that Jesus would ‘come again’. This paper seeks to redress this oversight, and proposes that Paul’s reading of Ps. 110.1 provided a key to the logic of the parousia which underlies his argument in 1 Corinthians 15.20-28. In the Second Temple Jewish literature, there is no evidence for any expectation of two chronologically distinct Messianic ‘comings’. The early Christian conviction that Jesus would ‘come again’ was, therefore, a remarkable novelty. It will be argued that in this context Paul (and other early Christian writers) found in Ps. 110.1 an indication that the Messiah’s role was to be framed by two chronologically distinct advents. The ‘sit at my right hand’ of the text was correlated with the culmination of Messiah Jesus’ first advent, namely, his enthronement by resurrection; the ‘until I make your enemies your footstool’ was read as a prophecy of Jesus’ future parousia. A close analysis of Paul’s logic in 1 Corinthians 15.20-28 will be offered in support of this hypothesis, demonstrating that Ps. 110.1 provided a crucial Scriptural framework for the characteristically Christian conviction that Messiah Jesus would ‘come again’.

The year 2009 is the 500th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin, the Genevan Reformer. The research gap addressed by this paper relates to the lack of a commentary by Calvin on the book of Revelations: "If Calvin had indeed written a commentary on the book of Revelation, what would have been his point?" The reason why the present researcher raises this problem is based on the notion that the present interpretation comes not from the vacuum but from previous interpretations. Therefore, the more we familiarize ourselves with Calvin's previous biblical interpretations, the better we are able to find the correct meaning of the book of Revelation. The apparent lack of Calvin's commentary on Revelation raises some interesting questions: (1) why did Calvin not expound Revelation in either sermons or commentary? (2) When and how did Calvin quote and employ texts from the book of Revelation? (3) Can Calvin's use of texts from Revelation tell us something about his hermeneutics? In order to solve the problems, the historical research on the 16th century exegetes and intertextual-comparative interpretation will be done. In order to investigate Calvin's thoughts about Revelation, his commentaries and the Institutes, which include the references to Revelation, are probed. The central theoretical argument is that Calvin was similar to the other Reformers in that all of them followed the world-church historical interpretation in order to resist the Roman Catholic Church. Consequently, Calvin might have applied the evil characters in Revelation to the Pope and his followers. But Calvin is different from the other Reformers in that his eschatological interpretation was strongly based on the progressive revelation history in which the resurrection of Christ plays the role of crucial turning point. On the one hand, we need to overcome Calvin's mistakes, such as, the world-church historicism, on the other hand, we need to refer to Calvin's insights on the critical acumen to understand Revelation.

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There has been an explosion of interest in intertextuality in Biblical Studies in the last two decades. Intertextuality has become such a “vogue” word that it now describes a plethora of approaches, to such an extent that there is no such thing as a single, unified intertextual approach. Nonetheless, intertextual approaches share three presuppositions in common; that texts are a “mosaic” of quotations of other texts, that the meaning of a text arises out of a “dialogue” between texts, and that the reader of a text plays a role in the production of meaning. Intertextuality, thus understood, recognizes (and indeed delights in) textual “play”, in which one text may be transformed or absorbed or adapted by another. The variety and nebulous nature of these textual transformations create problems for Biblical Studies, because the traditional methods for finding textual re-use can’t detect textual play like this. Computer-based concordance programs are well suited to the task of identifying verbal repetition, but will often fail to pick up instances of thematic allusion and more wide-ranging textual transformation and adaptation. Since these kinds of textual play are a feature Hebrew Prophets, we need additional methods for detecting Intertextuality in the Prophets. This paper will conclude with a brief examination of some of these new methods, which providing searching across semantic domains, synonyms and word families, in addition to the traditional searches based on verbal repetition. These new tools and techniques provide ways to search for intertextuality in the Prophets that goes beyond the “word-search”.

In 2005 Eilat Mazar announced that she was excavating a monumental building on top of the hill now commonly called the City of David in Jerusalem. Based of the size of the building and the associated pottery she interpreted it as the palace of king David, mentioned in several biblical texts. This discovery has attracted a lot attention, especially among biblical scholars. Most archaeologists remained aloof, as several other expeditions had targeted the same area before, and re-excavating older walls is a tricky business. An article has been published in Tel Aviv 2007 arguing that most walls belonged to the Hellenistic buildings uncovered there by Macalister and Duncan in the 1920s. The purpose of this paper is to discuss Mazar’s building in the light of Kathleen Kenyon’s excavation in the same area in the 1960s and my interpretation of the earliest walls that Kenyon found there as belonging to the Middle Bronze Age and the Iron I period.

The canonical compilation of books into a specific sequence is often considered an invention of the codex and, therefore, an anachronistic concern in dealing with Hebrew canon. Also, different arrangements have led many to conclude that the order of books, in most cases, is irrelevant. There is evidence, however, that within the instability of arrangements, one can discern the codification of books into firmly established groups. Esther is a good example. In the Hebrew tradition there are no more than two different, but very similar, positions for Esther until the eleventh century. The first order is Baba Bathra 14b: Lamentations, Daniel, Esther, Ezra/Nehemiah, and Chronicles. The second is the Masoretic arrangement: Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, and Ezra/Nehemiah. In both orders Esther follows Lamentations and is associated with Daniel and Ezra/Nehemiah. The codification of these books highlights and gives specific shape to the absence of religious themes and even the name of God, that scholars have found so odd in Esther. In Lamentations, for instance, even though Israel has become orphans (Lam. 5:3), forgotten their sacred feasts (Lam. 2:6; Esther appears to have forgotten Passover), their dancing has been turned into mourning (Lam. 5:15) and it is possible that the Lord has utterly rejected them (Lam. 5:22), nevertheless in Esther due to his faithfulness the Lord will use an orphan to save his people, destroy their enemies and turn their mourning into dancing (Esther 9:22). The further associations with Daniel and Ezra/Nehemiah highlight the ‘pagan’ or at least ambivalent religious standing of Esther and Mordecai. In this light, the many coincidences that lead to the preservation of the Jew are due to the faithfulness and rule of God, not the ‘courage’ of Esther and ‘wisdom’ of Mordecai.

The recent theories identify Deut 34,10-12 as of the postdeuteronomistic or of the postpriestly redaction. In any case, they do not align v. 9 with the same redaction of vv. 10-12. Such diachronic solutions receive their strength from the synchronic reading, which have not yet achieved a satisfactory consensus. On the synchronic level, the two texts seem still to cause uneasiness among the interpreters: the promise of the prophet like Moses in 18,15.18 on the one hand and the negation of the prophet like Moses in 34,10 on the other. The first problem concerns the relation of these two texts. The second, major problem regards 34,10 alone and is the object of the present paper. For the great majority of the scholars the text apparently exalts Moses to an unreachable level of authority. Rare are those who claim, that 34,10(-12) on the diachronic as well as on the synchronic level does not create rupture between the Law and the Prophets. In spite of the present growing tendency to highlight the epitaph of Moses (vv. 10-12), I challenge a superlative interpretation of v. 10 and I present a different reading of 34,9-12, considering vv. 10-12 as dependent on v. 9. In other words, the proposal is to see Joshua as the prophet like Moses.

The book of Amos, perhaps the earliest vestige of prophecy in the Hebrew Bible, is constructed against the backdrop of religious and social interaction between Israelite and Canaanite culture. Amos’ use of marzeah festival imagery, which lies behind Amos 4:1-3 and 6:1-7, is an exemplar of this phenomenon. A feature previously unconnected to this context is the divine oath (Amos 4:2, 6:8, 8:7). However, ancient Near Eastern textual evidence suggests YHWH’s oaths in Amos can and should be understood in connection with El’s oath in the Ugaritic story of Aqhat (KTU 1.17-19). This connection is supported by both external evidence, though comparison with the Ugaritic formulae, and also internal evidence, via the Canaanite influences already known in Amos. In light of this evidence, it becomes clear that the book of Amos used this connection when announcing judgment against what it perceived as sinful worship influenced by foreign practices. Indeed, comparison shows that where El swore to give a blessing YHWH instead swears to judge Israel; this inversion heightens the force of these passages. Based upon this enhanced understanding of the divine oath, two implications must be considered. First, how might Amos’ use of the divine oath further contribute to understanding the components of the marzeah festival. Second, since key figures in Aqhat (Baal) and Amos (the prophet) intercede with God, the links revealed by the divine oath may shed new light on the role of prophetic intercession, which to date appears unique to Israel amid the ancient Near East.

Qohelet’s teachings seem quite different with other traditional teachings in the Hebrew Bible. For example, the statement, “there is nothing new under the sun” collides with the theology of creation in Gen.1 and the concept of God’s Creatio Continua. His attitude toward life, that is, uselessness of going to extreme seems to undermine the ‘either or’ of Deuteronomic admonitions and dichotomy between the pious and the wicked in Psalms. Q calls into question such doctrines as expressed in Proverb 16.31(“Gray hair is a crown of glory; it is gained in a righteous life”). Q’s alternative is that “it is good that you should take hold of the one, without letting go of the other; for the one who fears God shall succeed with both” (7.18). Surely Q suggests the way of moderation/equilibrium of life. It makes me turn my eyes to Confucian teachings, especially his teachings of the golden mean expressed in the Doctrine of the Mean (Zhongyong). As a general rule the master(Junzi) should take hold of the golden mean. In this presentation I will examine the similarity and dissimilarity between the Q’s teachings of wisdom and Confucian teachings of wisdom as a way of being taken hold by the master/the superior man.

This paper considers Martin Luther’s interpretation of Jonah as a model of faith. After a brief discussion of Luther’s comments on the literal and typological senses of the text, I turn to his tropological reading wherein Jonah’s descent into the belly of the whale and deliverance there from symbolizes the movement from despair to faith that characterizes the Christian conscience.

It is the purpose of this paper to discuss the creation of I Esdras in view of composition patterns reflected in other ancient works, such as: the use of extant works in their given form, the abrupt opening, the insertion of literary pieces of a completely different genre, the juxtaposition of alternative contradictory narratives, the transposition of large scale units, the questionable ending, the creation of a non-structured composition. All these patterns combine to substantiate our view that I Esdras is a secondary work created on the basis of the books of Chr-Ezr-Neh in their canonical layout.

The Asia Bible Society has been working on syntactic treebanks of both the Greek New Testament and Hebrew Old Testament to aid translation of the Bible into various Asian languages. Version 1.0 of the Greek syntax trees and version 1.0 of the Hebrew syntax trees are scheduled to be completed just prior to the international meeting of the SBL and the annual meeting of the SBL respectively. The purpose of this paper is to introduce version 1.0 of the Greek syntax trees and to give a sneak preview of version 1.0 of the Hebrew syntax trees. The trees are machine-generated in XML on the basis of machine-readable grammar rules that describe phrasal, clausal, and inter-clausal relationships. Some rules are completely automated, which the machine always carries out when certain conditions are met. Other rules are semi-automated, with human intervention often necessary. Still other rules are strictly manually applied. The grammar rules, which are being refined continually as the trees are manually checked, yields rich data on the conditions under which various syntactic relationships are formed. The set of rules used for the Greek New Testament may also serve as a foundation for building semi-automated syntax treebanks of other Hellenistic Greek literature. The rule-based, semi-automated design of the trees allows for the comprehensive tracking of complex features beyond what can be done by hand. It also provides inherent tracking of interpretive decisions and quality control. One current application of the trees is a phrase-based translation memory tool, built upon the syntax trees. This tool facilitates consistency and translation in context by identifying larger chunks such as phrases and clauses and enabling fast, convenient systematic tracking and review.

While some research of female figures’ evolvement in the pseudepigrapha such as Jubilees or LAB already exists, relatively little attention has been given to them in the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Qumran library contains texts that were previously unknown that can provide new insights to the portrayal of women figures in the Second Temple era (e.g. Genesis Apocryphon, Visions of Amram). Apart from them, this collection covers variants of already known texts. They can also contribute to the study of female figures in ancient Jewish literature. 4Q364 preserves a text that has been assigned to 4QReworked Pentateuch, but whose nature is still debated. This text rewrites Isaac’s farewell speech to Jacob (Gen 28:1-4) in 4Q364 3 II, 1-6. It has been argued (Tov & White Crawford DJD XIII, 1994) that in the passage preserved in 4Q364 it is no longer Jacob who talks, but his wife Rebecca. 4Q364 is not unique in its portray of Rebecca. Also other ancient Jewish texts dating to the Greco-Roman depict Rebecca, among other female figures, as a more empowered and active character. For instance, Jubilees (25:1-23; 27:1-18), Testament of Naphtali (1:6-9) and Josephus’ Ant. (1.278) reveal a more participatory side of this figure than the Hebrew Bible. This paper analyzes development of the figure of Rebecca in the Greco-Roman literature in general, and if other renarrations of Rebecca dating to the late antiquity, can shed new light for the understanding of the farewell address of 4Q364 3 II, 1-6 in particular.

Until the middle of the nineteenth century, ancient Babylon was known mainly through the Bible. The mythical reality of Babylon has been a powerful presence in European cultural history, serving in various ways as the ultimate ‘other’. The visual images of Babylon in Western art are plenty, ranging from visualizations of the Tower of Babel, the conquest of Jerusalem and the slavery in Babylon to the whore of Babylon. This paper will examine a number of works of art in order to explore the significant ways in which modern archaeological discovery, the decoding of cuneiform script, and new information brought back by travelers to the Middle East influenced the visual representation of Babylon. This analysis is a part of a larger study of the political, intellectual and scholarly background of the German excavation of Babylon (1899-1917), a study that takes into account the ways in which the personalities involved in this breakthrough excavation understood the Bible.

This paper focuses on the most important translation problems posed by the Letter to the Galatians. These problems are divided into two categories: 1. Translation problems arising from the source text; 2. Translation problems pertaining to the target language/ culture (in this instance, English). In the first group, the following translation problems are discussed: The expression ton theon (peitho) in 1:10; historeo in 1:18; hoi dokountes in 2:2, 6 and 9; the two anacolutha in 2:4-6; orthopodeo pros ten aletheian tou euaggeliou in 2:14; pistis Iesou Christou in 2:16; eks akoes pisteos in 3:2; the meaning of 3:20; and the expression kai epi ton Israel tou theou in 6:16. In the second group, the following problems are discussed: The expression apo tou kalesantos humas in 1:6; diatheke in 3:15, 17; the concept paidagogos in 3:24; and ta stoicheia tou kosmou in 4:3. In each case, the nature of the translation problem is discussed and suggestions are made as to how the phrase can best be translated into English.

It is well known that the Dead Sea Scrolls completely changed our understanding of many aspects of the textual transmission of the Hebrew Bible. Among other things there were many surprises among the Qumran scrolls, such as forerunners of the Samaritan Pentateuch, Hebrew manuscripts agreeing with the LXX, exceptional types of orthography, scrolls disagreeing with all the textual traditions known before Qumran, etc. What is less known is that also our understanding of the received text, the MT, should be revised. We now clearly see which groups espoused that text in the last centuries BCE and the first centuries CE, and which groups did not. This paper focuses on these aspects, provides the data, and places them in historical perspective.

In 2 Kgs 17:2-6 the Lucianic text (LXX-L), together with the Old Latin, presents Old Greek readings vs. the kaige text of LXX-B, which follows MT. Thus, in 17:4b three variant readings appear: MT `tsr ("confine, imprison"), kaige text poliorkein (tswr,"besiege") and Old Greek, preserved by the proto-Lucianic text, hybrizein (`rts, "abuse", "cause to tremble"; Old Latin iniuriam facere). Several repetitions in the text allow us to distinguish with accuracy the text of two juxtaposed notices. In vv. (3a).3b.4a.4b Hoshea cancels the payment of tributes to the Assyrian king, which leads him to imprison the Israelite king. In vv. 4a (LXX-L).5-6.24 Hoshea establishes a pact with Egypt, after which the Assyrian king conquers Samaria and deports its inhabitants.

This paper will present a variety of examples illustrating how the Qumran community appropriated their sacred texts for specific purposes relevant for the construction of ethics. It will demonstrate the complexity of how scriptural traditions were handled by the sectarians and their near contemporaries, showing that the Qumranites were not passive recipients of scriptural traditions, but creative users of sacred texts.

Flavius Josephus' twenty-volume oeuvre forms the basis for any historical investigation into Judean history of the Second Temple period. However, the simple fact that the bulk of his works deals with the history of Judea tends to obscure another important fact, namely, that all of his compositions were produced in Rome, and might therefore reflect a specifically Roman-Jewish point of view. True, in his writings Josephus repeatedly emphasizes his Judean priestly descent and status; he describes at length his involvement in pre-70 Judean religious and political life and is a first-rate eyewitness to many of the events which took place in Judea between 40 and 70 CE. But at the same time, we must take seriously the fact that all of these writings were composed in Rome, after Josephus became Roman citizen, and apparently with the knowledge that Rome would be his home for the foreseeable future. In other words, I will suggest that Josephus (especially in his later writings) has to be approached as a Roman-Jewish author, and as a representative of the Jewish Diaspora – somewhat similarly to Philo of Alexandria, who is routinely taken as a representative of Alexandrian Judaism. It is a well-known fact that the Judean War to a large degree reflects the Roman official point of view on the Great Revolt. In a different vein, I would like to concentrate on his later writings (especially Judean Antiquities and Against Apion) in order to analyze Josephus' personal cultural and religious evolution, I shall argue, he underwent in the decades he spent in Rome. Since it has been convincingly demonstrated in recent years that both of these later writings can be considered as learned expositions of Judaism, even with missionary tendencies, we would like to see what this Judaism was. In other words, we want to know what Torah was like when preached from Rome.

This paper is an introduction to the agenda and work of the “Mind, Society, and Tradition” program unit with special emphasis on evolutionary approaches.

The study of space in narrative has been much neglected in studies on narratology and biblical narrative alike. This holds especially true for studies on the New Testament, and the Fourth Gospel in particular; even though literary studies and commentaries on this book are not a scarcity, one does not find space as a category in works dealing with narrative criticism of this gospel such as Culpepper (1983) and Stibbe (1992). However, new avenues for research on narrative space have opened up with the introduction of the concept of critical spatiality to biblical studies. This paper assesses the viability of such an exercise in a twofold manner: first by investigating the theoretical concepts of narrative space and critical spatiality in order to combine them into a new model for reading narrative space, and then by applying that model to the court scene in John 18:28-19:16.

Twice in 1 John the author makes the statement that nobody has ever seen God: “qeo;n oujdei;~ pwvpote teqevatai ...” (4:12) and “… to;n qeo;n o{n oujx eJwvraken ouj duvnatai …” (4:20; see also 3:6 and 3 Jn 11). This is quite significant for such a short document. How does one explain the relationship between the invisible divine and visible human beings in a sensible way? The above statements in their particular contexts are rhetorical statements that make it legitimate for the author to portray the relationship between his adherents in the Johannine community and the God they believed in in terms of a family relationship; this view is also evident in other New Testament books. Family metaphorics is rhetorically used by the author to create a symbolic setting which was intelligible for people in the early Christian community: it gave them information about both their identity and ethics. This was a framework in which early Christians could think about and understand their corporate relationship with God and their relationships with each other. The author refers to God as the Father in a patriarchal way. The believers are God’s children and they have to act according to his character, which is spelled out as “to walk in the light,” “to live in righteousness,” and “to love”. To become part of this familia Dei, one has to be born into this family (God’s seed abides in them). Jesus is regarded as the Son of the Father who performs the duty of a paraclete and who also sets the example of life in this family. This investigation follows a socio-rhetorical approach. The socio-historical circumstances of the community are scrutinised. I shall point out how the author, in a literary sense, used the family metaphor rhetorically to guide his adherents in their conduct and fellowship. I shall also explain how this conduct and fellowship in the family are both based on a certain theology.

Investigates the history of Ashkenazic and Italian Jewry after the invention of printing and places these editions within this history. Special attention will be paid to the cooperation of Jews and Christians in Venice, that produced the Second Rabbinic Bible which for a long time functioned as textus receptus for Jews and Christians, and to the production of the London Polyglot.

If the canonical Gospels correctly ascribe an overriding purpose to the actions of Jesus in his last week, the question must be answered how a construction worker from Galilee could have developed this idea. In this paper I will first discuss why the arguments for a deliberate journey to Jerusalem. I will then investigate how psychological research into the way that religious people cope with personal loss and calling may shed light on the process through which Jesus developed his ideas.

The question examined in this paper is whether Yhwh is the proclaimed judge of all the earth or a partial judge who merely shares the view of Israel and the Abraham family. If the former is the case, his behaviour may be evaluated in the framework of social justice. Yhwh represents justice for all and Abraham is the defendant of the plaintiffs, namely the oppressed individuals in Sodom. Yhwh would then listen to the outcry of both non Israelites and Israelites and punish the guilty party. If, however, Yhwh is a partial judge, who merely defends the rights of one group and who aims at the destruction of two cities and all its inhabitants, then his preference for a small selected group would be at the heart of this section.

The book of Jonah presents the oddity of the “prophet” Jonah being less righteous and merciful than the pagans he encounters in his adventures. His character is further developed vis-a-vis his nemesis Nineveh. The book of Nahum presents a genuine prophecy against this same antagonist, but without a hint of Nahum being anything but righteous and a genuine spokesman for YHWH and without any sign of righteousness or mercy in Nineveh. Given the very different genres of these two short works, there is a surprising level of shared phraseology between them that hints at some intentional playing off of Jonah against Nahum. This paper examines the intertextuality of Jonah and Nahum with an eye to the development of the character of Jonah via the twin foils of Nahum and Nineveh. Finally, the paper explores what this literary character Jonah suggests about the purpose of the book bearing his name.

This paper will discuss the intersections of morality and religion in cinematic representations of ancient Rome. ‘Pagans,’ in terms of their excessive decadence, once offered a convenient and clear-cut contrast to exemplary ‘Christian’ heroes (and “our own” Christian morality), e.g. in Quo Vadis, 1951, and Ben Hur, 1959. More recently, directors in the English-speaking world (most notably Gladiator, 2000) clearly tried to challenge the Christian associations of proper conduct, and with Gladiator’s main character, Maximus, writer David Franzoni purposefully represented a “secular morality.” While seemingly secular, Gladiator nevertheless shares with the earlier movies a narrative featuring an individualistically religious/moral hero, who is then contrasted to the irreligious conduct of larger society, an “ancient” Rome, dangerous in its excessive immorality. Just like Fellini’s Satyricon (1969) once offered an alternative vision, with a strange Rome inhabited by even stranger and more fragmented characters, who inhabited ancient Rome’s immorality; HBO’s series, Rome (2005-6), offers a familiarly excessive Rome and less simplistically religious characters. Still in an individualistic manner, a young Octavia escapes the rough politics among Caesar’s relations to a sanctuary of Cybele, but then goes on to harm herself while there. Of two Jewish brothers, we see one completely assimilated and engulfed in the bloody politics of late Republican Rome, the other a practicing Jew. Yet these two characters are not made into clear moral opposites: the practicing Levi has a past of immoral behavior in Judaea, while the irreligious Timon has significant moments of ethical care for others. While HBO’s Rome still forgoes innovative explorations of our own relation to the ancient world, it suggests that individualistic religion as the sole source of morality in the face of this decadence may now be disappearing, allowing for more complex images of religion and morality to emerge in cinematic representations of ancient Rome.

Three renditions of the story of Dinah’s ravishment are investigated in this paper. Genesis 33:18-34:31 uses a construct of three interrelated concepts: progeny, marriage and land. Influenced by the interpretation of the Dinah story in Aramaic Levi, Jubilees 30:1-25 uses the interrelated themes of Law, identity, and marriage. In each case a triadic construct is used to propose a model of identity. In Genesis the unique identity of Jacob and his children is depicted in terms of avoiding wrong marriages and therefore preventing undesired progeny to be born to inherit the land. In the case of Jubilees a cultic oriented person, intending to teach halachic law to his contemporaries, used the Dinah narrative to link the laws revealed to Moses with his particular view on intermarriage and purity/impurity to propagate a new purified identity for the Jews of his day.

'Hermas' is often said to be a freedman turned merchant or businessman, warning his colleagues for the difficulties and dangers of trying to stay in business and to be faithful to one's religious convictions. The paper has a double purpose. It will look once more into the evidence from external sources that is put forward to support this view. And it will look for evidence in the text itself that might corroborate this conclusion beyond the introductory section which is the passage where 'Hermas' is said to speak most clearly about his position. The paper thus wants to make a contribution to the sub-project of Christianity and Economy in the Second to Fifth Centuries.

This paper aims to appropriate some aspects of spatiality to the Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic and to illustrate that ‘space’ plays a major role as the plot unfolds. Gilgamesh is the main character of the narrative; however, from the very beginning, the ancient city Uruk appears as the spatial focus of events. At Uruk, something happens to someone. Uruk is the city where the legendary king Gilgamesh had dwelled during the hey-day of Sumerian civilization, a spatial point that can be constructed on various levels: physical, psychological, and ideological. At the same time, at the centre of Uruk - according to the narrative – is Eanna, the sacred temple of Ishtar. Here, horizontal and vertical spatial axes intersect. At this point, the reader/hearer is invited into the very centre, to release the bronze cap of the tablet box, to lift the lid and to unveil the secrets hidden within. These secrets reveal the travails of Gilgamesh. It appears that Uruk is Gilgamesh’s point of orientation. When he is at-Uruk, he is at-centre, this is his positive space where he belongs. Away from Uruk lurks a negative space, filled with chaos, danger, uncertainty, even death. Uruk becomes a physical and psychological spatial dimension simultaneously. However, this narrative also exploits the temporal dimensions of space. By projecting events into the remote past, Uruk and the travails of Gilgamesh are cast into the realm of myth. The whole narrative is moved into a world of phantasy, into a time long-long ago and a place far-far from here. By means of a clever shift in focalization, the reader undertakes a journey ‘back into the future’, discovering a startling pedagogic principle: life is to be lived in the ‘space’ of here and now.

In my investigation of 1 Kings 8 I will start with a literary ciritcal analysis of the chapter and show that its basis is a redactional composition of two stories. These stories where enlarged in different ways using priestly material and deuteronomistic interpretation of the temple theology. The deuteronomistic idea is laid out in three prayers. They contain different ideas of the meaning of the temple in contrast to the priestly theology. The focus of my paper will lay on this interpretation and show the intertextual phenomena between the priestly idea of a temple as offering place and the deuteronomistic intention to open the temple as the place of public and individual prayer.

It has been pointed out by several acclaimed scholars in the field that Irano-Jewish interaction are of greater imortance than considered before and awaits a further detailed discussion (Segal, Himmelfarb, Reeves, Neusner, Shaked). Irano-Judaica and Iranian studies recently are coming to interesting conclusions. Few decades ago famous Iranist Mary Boyce has affirmed the primary importance of direct and indirect Zoroastrian influence on mankind apart from other religious traditions. It is a well established fact that during Sasanian period around 9th Century CA. Zoroastrianism develops it’s eschatological system. This is a time of considerable instability within both Jewish and Zoroastrian traditions in Babylonia for which reason both groups formulate and write down their oral traditions. It is necessary to make a structural analysis of both eschatological systems within Judaism and Zoroastrianism (4-10 Cent. CE) in order to clarify Zoroastrian influence on Judaism. This search is based on religious texts of those traditions. The common feature is that both of these belong to visionary genre and describe an otherworldly journeys of a God elected hero who travells accompanied by a divine guide. What do we need to take into account while dealing with Zoroastrian-Judaism encounter on afterlife matters? Can we assert Zoroastrian influence on Judaism and on what account? Is it possible to trace such a continuity or are we speaking about extant parallel eschatological descriptions? Are we addressing a question of „mechanism of cultural adaptation” or a phenomenon of Oriental „parallelomania”? These are several topics to be discussed in a given paper.

This paper seeks to read the Salutaris Foundation as a commentary on how Roman imperial honors were being integrated into the civic religion of Roman Ephesus. The foundation inscription can be read as something of a snapshot of an ongoing negotiation at the beginning of the 2nd century CE. Guy Rogers, in an important monograph, has argued that the Salutaris Foundation was an attempt to assert traditional Ephesian identity in the face of increasing Romanization. Lilian Portefaix, on the other hand, has argued that the procession that Salutaris endowed was an example of Roman political propaganda that made claims on both Artemis and the city. This essay argues that both are true: The Ephesians were reinterpreting their own history and traditions in light of Roman rule (with some resistance) at the same time the Romans—especially through Ephesians whose fortunes were intertwined with Rome’s—were wielding power in the city and in the province.

Gen. 18:19 is one of three additions to the Abraham narratives identified by David M. Carr as late. All three (the others are Gen. 22:15-18 and 26:5) are concerned with Abraham’s law obedience and the establishment of the obedience-promise connection. The addition in Gen 18:19 highlights Abraham’s ‘choseness’ and implies that his observance made him, if not an ideal, then at least an appropriate person to teach the righteousness and justice of YHWH. But how well does the late addition ‘fit’ with its host context, Gen 18:1-19:29, and does the context bear out the implication? This paper argues that the fit is good to the extent that Gen. 18:1-19:29 can be considered an extended narrative essay on YHWH’s righteousness and justice, including a case study on hospitality to strangers. However, the fit is poor in the sense that the implication about Abraham’s own observance is undermined by the host narrative, which portrays that observance as mixed. While Abraham offered exemplary hospitality to his divine/human visitor(s), he is implicated in Sarah’s denial of her laughter. He also breaches the provisions concerning sacrilege against oaths found in Leviticus 5:20-26. The effect of inserting a piece of text making a positive claim about Abraham’s observance into a narrative which undermines that claim is to convey a sophisticated understanding of the obedience-promise connection. If Abraham can be considered a ‘model’ or ‘type’ of YHWH’s chosen people, then his portrayal as a flawed model could be considered more effective than a consistently flattering one might be. Gen. 18:19’s re-statement of the covenant equation becomes richer and more nuanced when voiced in a context attesting to Abraham’s mixed record.

There are many references to women in the sectarian literature of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which have been thoroughly investigated by scholars. This paper will explore what light this information may shed on Jewish women in general in Israel in the latter part of the Second Temple Period. To what extent, if any, can the Scrolls add to our understanding of Jewish women outside of the Qumran movement? For example, do the laws concerning marriage and purity only relate to the sectarian women, or do they have a wider application? My paper will examine marital laws, purity laws, and particular communal regulations. The investigation will focus on D, 1QSa, 4QTohorot, and 11QT.

The alleged practice of cursing Jesus in the Corinthian congregation remains puzzling and seemingly without clear precedent or parallel. However, the supposition that "anathema" in 1 Cor 12:3 bears a sense similar to "katara" (accursed) appears misleading alongside of occurrences in the writings of Euripides, Plutarch, Pausanias, and other authors where "anathema" instead means “a placating sacrifice offered to a god or gods.” It is more likely that Corinthian votaries accustomed to propitiatory sacrifices in Greek worship were confused over the identity of Jesus and the meaning of his death. Instead of seeing Jesus himself as Lord, they saw him as a mere propitiatory sacrifice to a Lord. In the end, Paul was not responding to a grotesquely abusive verbal attack upon Jesus, but primarily to a deficient christology.

Rabbi Samuel David Luzzatto (b. 1800, Trieste) represents a crucial meeting point between traditional Biblical commentary and modern scholarship. His commentary to the Pentateuch makes use of modern literary and philological methodologies yet does not stray from the assumptions of traditional commentary that assume the divinity of the Torah text. Shadal seeks to explicate the pshat or simple meaning of the text, while assuming that such a meaning is not necessarily simple. Philosophy, theology, reason and literary style must all be taken into account. Implicit in this is a desire to reject allegorization or trying to create a meaning in the text that conforms to another agenda. When interpreting Genesis Chapters 18-19, Shadal uses this methodology. He assumes that there is an underlying literary structure to the text, that all of its pieces fit together as part of the whole and that they, in turn, fit with the themes of the Abraham story in Genesis. “Welcoming guests” is that underlying theme and it constitutes the test that the people of Sodom are to undergo. This theme is particularly germane to the perspectives of the universal and the particular. “Welcoming guests” is, on the one hand, a welcome to all (the universal). On the other hand, God has a special relation with Abraham and his family which also plays a role in the unfolding of the story (the particular). We speculate as well about the degree to which a post mid-nineteenth century Italian commentator is particularly sensitive to the tension between the universal and the particular. During Shadal’s lifetime, the Jewish community underwent a series of revolutions that enabled Jews to have a degree of entrée into the general community. Might this fact of life have created the context for a reading of the text particularly sensitive to these issues?

This paper will compare the interpretative approaches of the pesharim and other commentaries among the Dead Sea Scrolls with the approaches of other ancient Jewish exegetical literature. I will compare Pesher Habakkuk, Commentaries on Genesis and Midrash Sepher Moshe with the works of Aristobulus, Philo of Alexandria and early Midrashim.

Overshadowed by the incomparable ceiling of the Sistine Chapel are fourteen largely overlooked frescoes by artists no less than Botticelli, Rosselli, Perugino, and others. In parallel on opposite walls, these masterpieces depict typologically related scenes from the lives of Moses and Jesus. My presentation will discuss the origins and significance of typological thought regarding Moses in the Old and New Testaments, as well as in early Christian and Medieval exegesis, in order to examine closely the Sistine Chapel Long Wall frescoes as impressive Renaissance visualizations of venerable interpretations of these foundational biblical narratives.

The text of Deut 21:15-17 requires a father to grant the birthright to his biologically oldest son, when he has both a loved wife and a hated wife, and when the oldest son is the son of the hated wife. A common interpretation of this text is that it seeks to prevent fathers in general from acting out of favoritism and thereby demoting an eldest son and granting the birthright to a younger son. By contrast, this paper argues that the text assumes that fathers had the right to demote their eldest and that they would continue to have this right. It suggests that the prohibition becomes effective only in the particular scenario described: when a man has a "hated" wife. The hated wife is one who has been demoted arbitrarily (i.e., without fault on her part) by her husband to a lower status within the household (e.g., from first-ranking wife to second-ranking wife). Because of this action on the part of the husband, the text requires him to forfeit his right also to demote this woman’s son arbitrarily, a right he would otherwise have retained and a right that would ordinarily allow him to act out of favoritism. Other ancient Near Eastern legal texts, as well as the story of Jacob and his wives, support this conclusion.

The Epistle of Enoch (1 Enoch 95–105) employs a rich complex of forms and traditions in order to address the struggles of “the righteous” at the hands of the powerful. In drawing on these traditions, the author(s) does not simply create a symbolic, linguistic world intended to achieve psychological catharsis. Rather, the author seeks to reveal what is “really real” to those suffering, so that their lived experiences have a place within a greater cosmic reality. The author(s) attempts this in two ways. First, the voice speaking in the text is that of a visionary prophet who has ascended into the heavens and has seen what is written on the heavenly tablets. This figure has returned to earth to pronounce “woes/curses” on the wicked rulers like a prophet cursing an enemy before war. By applying the results of Austin’s and Bourdieu’s theories about speech acts and ritual, I will show the way in which the author enacts and acts within this greater reality, thus making it real to the listeners and leading them to experience their suffering in a new way. Second, the visionary prophetic figure gives the audience a ritual task¬—to pray, to bring a “reminder” to the angels who will then deliver it as an indictment before God (99:3). In following the instruction, those who suffer actually physically participate in this greater reality—in their own bodies—and enact that world. Caught in this liminal period of suffering that awaits God’s final victory, the visionary prophetic figure, those who suffer, and the inhabitants of the heavenly realm form a communitas bound in complementary activities. As one can tell, the work of ritual theorists such as Rappaport, Austin, Turner, and especially Bourdieu plays a significant role in such an analysis and interpretation of the Epistle.

It is fairly generally accepted that in Targumic Aramaic (Targums Onkelos and Jonathan) the noun with the ending of the determined state need not be grammatically determined. This supposed loss of the force of the ending of the determined state, which seems to be irregularly applied, is usually explained as due to the influence of Eastern Aramaic. I will attempt to demonstrate that the use of the determined state is perfectly regular according to a pattern which has hitherto not been recognized and point out some consequences for our view of the relation between Targum and Hebrew text.

The urban landscapes of late antique Egypt were, in many cases, still strongly marked by the presence of religious monuments dating back to pre-Christian times, and these temples and shrines had often served for centuries as prominent landmarks, lending their names to streets, neighborhoods, and administrative districts. As the temples fell out of use and cities were reshaped by the passage of time and the growth of Christian institutions, toponyms with pagan cultic referents gradually began to fade out of the documentary record, but this was neither a uniform nor an entirely predictable process. By considering diachronic changes in the use of such toponyms, it is possible to gain a clearer sense of how the ancient pagan monuments were perceived in the Christian period and how they functioned in the mental landscapes of that time. This paper will consider the use of theophoric toponyms in Greek and Coptic documentary papyri from Oxyrhynchus, Hermopolis Magna, and the Theban village of Jeme, three sites where the physical vestiges of pagan cult-places still constituted a major portion of the monumental landscape and might therefore be expected to appear in the papyrological record as well. Based on the late antique documentation from these sites, it will be argued that we should not expect to see a wholesale Christian re-writing of the mental landscapes of late antique Egypt, but rather a re-orientation of urban residents’ mental maps away from the dromoi and public buildings of the Classical city and towards a more personal experience of the urban landscape.

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Recent thought has understood God's creation in terms of kenosis, that God self-limited in order to make a separate creation possible. This is especially the case when things created have some ability of self-determination, a feature consistent with elements in the Genesis creation narrative, such as humanity in imago Dei. The means of creation is then not simply by fiat, nor by naturalistic evolution, but, in accordance with theism, by a God both transcendent and immanent. This is both compatible with the Genesis narrative and consistent with the scientific evidence. Then being in the image of God means not just a measure of self-determination, but also the ability to enter covenant with God, so that people have responsibility for care of the creation. Further confirmation of this view of origins is seen in that redemption, the second creation, resulting, in particular, in a sanctified community in increasing conformity to the image of God, follows the same pattern. Then sanctification itself should involve the care of creation, as it must involve a measure of self-limitation in imitation of Christ's own kenosis.

What are the factors which facilitate cultural change? Cultural change is most often successful when it can establish new ideas as coterminous with existing values and accomplish this by the use of methods which have symbolic currency within a given society. The Emperor Constantine and his Christian coalition accessed the physical and ideological territory of empire, using its physical space, discourse, and cultural roles to manufacture new Roman identities. This transition from old to new, from periphery to center, and from questionable status to legitimacy was achieved by Constantine and his Christian supporters by appropriating Roman architecture and symbols, reinterpreting cultural views of physical deportment, and legitimizing Christian ideas using established Roman rhetorical strategies. Visual symbols etched in stone, social status drawn on the canvas of human bodies, and rhetorical commonplaces uttered in defense of Christian ideals were three means by which imperial Christianity gained cultural ascendancy. This paper will examine the use of three culturally embedded strategies whereby Constantine and church leaders depicted themselves as the rightful successors of the pagan Roman aristocracy and imperium. Spolia involved the capturing and/or converting of honored pagan architecture and symbols. Physiognomy was a rhetorical strategy which used body language to fashion a new Christian aristocracy in the roles of bishop, monk, and virgin modeled on the pagan Roman roles of the patrician, philosopher, and vestal virgin. Finally, rhetorical commonplaces such as arguments from tradition and antiquity posited Christian views as a continuation of Greco-Roman traditions. These three methods were individual tactics in the broader array of discursive approaches which Averil Cameron calls a totalizing discourse. Constantine’s military and political prowess elevated his Christian coalition to the place of ascendancy, but it was their effective use of cultural language and symbols which allowed them to secure and maintain cultural hegemony.

The law of circumcision in Gen 17:9-14, within the report of God’s covenant with Abraham, is mainly regarded as focusing on a distinction between the people of Israel and the foreign nations. Based on an analysis of the formation of this passage and its interconnections within the Pentateuch, the paper will show that the law of circumcision also fulfills an integrative function. It offers foreigners a way to become a member of the God’s people and thus to receive a share in the land of Israel and to participate in the cult.

Some efforts in contemporary theological interpretation have turned to the traditional doctrine of the fourfold sense of Scripture. Recent Catholic pronouncements on biblical interpretation have been ambivalent toward the fourfold sense. Focusing on the 1993 and 2001 documents of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, I argue that some anxieties in these documents over the fourfold sense can be allayed when they are brought into conversation with the work of Henri de Lubac. The 1993 PBC document defines the senses of Scripture as textual meanings. This articulation creates tension within the document. In emphasizing the historical-critical method’s primacy, the 1993 document defines the literal sense the text’s original meaning expressed by the author. But it also admits that the literal sense is not singular and that texts acquire new meanings in later contexts. The spiritual senses are understood as the meaning of biblical texts in light of the paschal mystery. But the uneasiness about any more-than-literal reading, which might appear “alien” to the author’s original meaning, renders much traditional Christian exegesis (and doctrine) suspect. Henri de Lubac contends that the spiritual senses are proper to the things presented by the texts, and not the texts themselves. As Levering has argued, this presupposes a participatory metaphysics in which all things participate in God and Christ. Articulating the spiritual senses as relations between things, not texts, opens conceptual space for historical analysis of the biblical texts, which preserve the validity of non-Christian readings of the Old Testament—a concern of the 2001 document. It also allows for the Paschal Mystery’s revealing of the ways that the things, presented by the words, participate in Christ—the spiritual senses. The fourfold sense of Scripture may be a more helpful resource for the kind of theological interpretation advocated by the PBC documents than might be expected.

I would like to press Esther into a deeper conversation with Ezra, Nehemiah, and the Chronicler to expose the ways in which the book resists, subverts, and contests the political agendas implicit in these other texts. When I put these discourses side by side, I detect Esther countering various attitudes and institutions common to Yehud: Yehudite parochialism, priestly authority, Torah, temple, and ritual. This new intertextual reading is influenced by the canonical context. Esther’s canonical migration from within the Tanakh’s Megilloth to the historical books of the Septuagint and the Christian Old Testament affects literary expectations, reading strategies, and interpretations of both the whole book as well as some individual passages within it. Now living in the shadow of the Chronicler’s corpus, the Book of Esther unavoidably makes intertextual overtures to its canonical neighbors. The subversiveness of Esther’s carnivalesque features clashes prominently with the monologic discourse of the Chronicler’s corpus and with the imperial situation both within and beyond the Esther text. By comparing the corresponding texts, I investigate the possibility that the satirical polemics and carnivalesque mockery inherent in Esther may not be confined to the book’s story world, but may actually be “long range weapons” used against the Chronicler’s corpus. In its most recent canonical relocation, the Esther narrative seems to subvert, and even mock, Ezra’s priestly law (vis-à-vis Persian edict), the Chronicler’s Davidic temple (vis-à-vis Persian palace), and Nehemiah’s Judahite Jerusalem (vis-à-vis Persian Susa), through the following contrasts: Esther’s fast and Passover feast; pur casting before Haman and Urim inquiring before YHWH; descriptive details of palace and temple; Esther’s entering the inner court and priest’s entering the holy of holies; Benjaminite-Saulide Mordecai and Judahite-Davidic Solomon; deliverance from Susa and Jerusalem; Judaization of the people of the land and de-Judaization of the foreign wives.

Necromancy is mentioned in Deuteronomy among the methods of divination that were practiced by gentiles as part of their abominations, and thus prohibited to Israelites. In the Mishna, the early phase of rabbinic law, divination through the deceased was punishable by death. This, of course, did not put an end to necromancy in Judaism. Rabbinic sources relate various cases of consulting the dead. They also specify methods of necromancy in relation to three kinds of practitioners (all mentioned in the Bible): ba‘al ov, yid‘ony, and doresh el ha-metim. An examination of these sources reveals differences in the ways the praxis employed by these mediators was understood in Palestine and in Babylonia. In any case, it had nothing to do with the methods of necromancy proposed in ancient Jewish books of magical recipes, such as Sefer ha-Razim (The Book of Mysteries) and Harba de-Moshe (The Sword of Moses). Moreover, when stories about communication with the dead are taken into consideration, the Sage's approach to necromancy becomes confusing. On the one hand we find an unequivocal prohibition of communication with the deceased, while on the other hand we are informed of cases of such communication initiated by the Rabbis themselves. I believe that the rabbinic evidence concerning necromancy should be re-considered in light of the Rabbis' aspiration for hegemony and their consistent delegitimizing other mediators of occult power. In my paper I will present and discuss a selection of sources from both the Sages literature and the Jewish magical literature of their time.

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The Aramean general, Naaman, seems quite content to live out his life with a skin affliction since it does not interfere with him serving the king of Aram; that is until his Israelite maidservant convinces him otherwise. Naaman’s leprosy and conversion is not a typical healing story for the Hebrew Bible. It lacks a scene in which a foreign god is consulted for a cure and a majority of the action plays out among servants rather than kings or other elites. Naaman undergoes a therapeutic course mostly in keeping with the popular medical culture of the ancient Near East; his healing and conversion occurs in the context of the everyday world as a means of highlighting the need for all members of the Israelite community to maintain purity, not just kings and priests. This reading of II Kings 5:1-19 combines two approaches: an historical comparison of medical practices that shows how Israelite healing both fits in the ancient Near Eastern medical culture and deviates from it, as well as a literary analysis in which Naaman represents everyone under the protection of Yahweh. The historical accuracy of the common medical culture underscores the “every man role” of Naaman.