In the Ethiopian Orthodox Täwahido Church tradition, the term andəmta commentary refers to an enormous corpus which contains traditional interpretations of biblical, patristic, liturgical, canonical and monastic texts. Roger Cowley notes that the andǝmta commentary (AC) corpus initially developed as an Ethiopian oral commentary on Biblical and Patristic texts, beginning from the time the texts were translated into the Geez language. The distinctive social history reflected in the commentary material suggests that the oral tradition, expanded and augmented, reached its most definitive form in the Gondӓrine period (ca. 17 century). The AC to the biblical books is characterized by a brief introduction. The introductory material to the synoptic gospels is referred as mäqdemaä wängēl. Cowley in his two articles (1774 and 1977) deals with the introductory materials to the Old Testament and New Testament andəmta. He particularly focuses on translating and discussing the introductions to selected books both from the OT and NT. In dealing with the synoptics Cowley translates and discusses the introduction to the Gospel of Mark, chosen primarily for its brevity. Building upon his work I aim to in this study translate and analyze the introductory material to all three synoptic gospels, so as to offer a more detailed understanding of the introductory material particularly as it pertains to the commentators discussion of historical and theological elements as understood from the specific this specific context.

Invited paper.

As commentators have noted, right after Samuel reveals that the Lord will not establish Saul’s dynasty, Jonathan emerges in 1 Samuel 13–14 as a potential successor. By examining the narrative effect of Jonathan’s introduction at this point, this paper explores how Jonathan’s character develops core theological themes in 1 Samuel, particularly how Israel’s monarchy depends on the Lord’s choice. In 1 Samuel 13:13–14 when Samuel pronounces that Saul’s descendents will not occupy the throne, he declares that the Lord “has sought a man after his own heart.” Samuel’s words prompt the reader to wonder who this man is and how to recognize such a man. While the reader looks for a man after the Lord’s own heart, the narrative focuses on Jonathan. In 1 Samuel 14, Jonathan leads a successful assault on the Philistines and shows himself to be a capable leader. On the basis of Samuel’s pronouncement, the reader knows that Jonathan cannot succeed his father on the throne, but Jonathan’s actions in 1 Samuel 14 shape the reader’s image of a man after the Lord’s own heart. As 1 Samuel continues, David becomes the next king and clarifies what Samuel means by a man after the Lord’s own heart. Yet, David and Jonathan share many positively portrayed qualities. In their military initiatives of 1 Samuel 14 and 17, Jonathan and David both demonstrate trust in the Lord’s deliverance, resounding success against the Philistines, effective exploitation of the terrain, and unconventional use of weapons. Though David displays some of these qualities to a greater degree than Jonathan does, their striking similarities show Jonathan, as well as David, exhibiting marks of a man after the Lord’s own heart. However, Jonathan is not the man after the Lord’s heart who will succeed Saul. After the narrative presents Jonathan as a capable yet passed over successor in 1 Samuel 14, it completes Saul’s rejection in 1 Samuel 15, thereby intensifying the reader’s search for Saul’s successor. In the next chapter, the reader finds the sought successor in David, but the narrative sequence invites the reader to consider Jonathan with all of his promising qualities before it reveals the next king. Thus, David enters the narrative in Jonathan’s shadow. Because Jonathan comes first, the reader asks why David becomes king with Jonathan’s portrait lingering in mind. As the reader compares them, the heart of Israel’s kingship surfaces: the Lord’s choice of David. In contrast to Saul, Jonathan and David both trust in the Lord and show themselves capable of addressing the Philistine threat, but these qualities do not earn Israel’s throne. Jonathan is excluded from the throne not for a lack of military skill or insufficient trust in the Lord: Jonathan does not become king because the Lord turns from Saul’s house to David’s. By portraying Jonathan as a capable successor in the midst of Saul’s rejection and before David’s entrance, the narrative demonstrates that the Lord’s choice—not merit—makes Israel’s kings.

In order to introduce the special session on women's economic roles in the biblical world, sponsored by the Economics in the Biblical World section, this paper will survey the foundational work done by Phyllis Bird, Carol Meyers, Gale Yee, and others on ancient Israelite women's roles in their households' economies.

One of the most famous literary accounts of ritual and epiphany in the ancient Mediterranean world comes from Life of Plotinus 10: a traveling Egyptian priest, in Rome, is introduced to the philosopher through a mutual friend and offers to make Plotinus’ personal daimōn appear, which, when summoned, turns out to be no daimōn at all but in fact a god. Porphyry’s account has puzzled scholars. For instance, why would Plotinus have accepted the priest’s offer, much less as readily as his biographer claims he did? In Platonic tradition, the personal daimōn, including the daimonion of Socrates, could be heard; rarely, if ever, could the tutelary spirit be seen. Philosophers like Plotinus would have found it entirely unnecessary to conjure a visible manifestation of the personal daimōn through Egyptian priestly rites. But of course, not every lover of wisdom in the Neoplatonic school was like Plotinus or even Porphyry. Indeed, the school was not unified at the time Porphyry wrote and published his Life of Plotinus as preface to the Enneads. That was 301-305 CE. Before that, the Egyptianizing Iamblichus had once studied with Porphyry, perhaps in Rome. The two men went separate ways, however. While Porphyry became the successor-executor of Plotinus, Iamblichus incorporated traditional ‘magic’ within a theurgic system that was part ritual, part ratiocination, and he went on to establish something of a rival school in Syria. The debate between Porphyry and Iamblichus is well known from Porphyry’s Letter to Anebo and the reply that Iamblichus wrote as Abamon, the head of the college of Egyptian priests to which Anebo supposedly belonged. A few scholars have noticed extensions of the debate in their other works, that is, besides the obvious places where Iamblichus names Porphyry by name in order to agree or disagree with him. I argue there is a glaring extension of the debate in Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus 10, the vita being the very last or at least among the last of Porphyry’s writings. In his Letter to Anebo, Porphyry had challenged Egyptian belief and practice surrounding the personal daimōn. In response, the Egyptianizing Iamblichus told Porphyry, inter alia, that through theurgy rather than mere philosophy, it was possible not only to see the daimōn but also replace it with a god above daimonic rank. Porphyry was no doubt meant to understand that as an experienced theurgic master, ‘Abamon’ had accomplished this ritual feat following years of practice and thus had advanced well beyond his former teacher. Porphyry’s account of ritual and epiphany in Life of Plotinus 10 is in turn his response to Iamblichus’ reply to him. The traveling Egyptian priest is Abamon who is forced to recognize the superiority of Plotinus and accordingly of the Plotinian school. Iamblichus is also at the Iseum. He’s the mutual friend that introduces the priest to the philosopher and then abruptly spoils the seance out of jealousy, fear, or both. In advancing my argument and polemical reading, I build on previous scholarship by e.g. Rist, Cox, Edwards.

As in a dream, midrash sometimes audaciously dislocates and relocates the locus of the foundational events in the collective memory of the Jewish people to accord with the mythic imagination. In retelling the story of “Jacob’s Ladder”, the midrash Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer (from hereon PRE) relocates the dream-theophany from Beth El (Genesis 28:10-22) to Moriah, the scene of Isaac’s binding (the ‘Aqedah). While precedent exists in the earlier classic rabbinic sources that link the scene of Jacob’s ladder with Mount Moriah, PRE 35 is the first source to identify the stone sanctified there with the “Foundation Stone of the World”. Drawing upon the work of Jonathan Z. Smith on locative and utopian concepts of sacred space, as well as the evocative work of Gaston Bachelard, "The Poetics of Space", I explore how spatial constructs, in particular the experience of theophany, are configured similarly in the world of midrash, memory, and dreams. I suggest that PRE, written in the 8th c. C.E. in Palestine under Islamic rule, was influence by the Muslim legend surrounding the “White Stone” in Jerusalem, below the Dome of the Rock and near the site of the Al-Aqsa mosque where Mohammed ascended to the Seventh Heaven, in the “Nocturnal Journey” (Sura XVII, 1, also known as the “Miraj”). In a fascinating twist, PRE adapts the earlier Jewish tradition associating the Temple Mount with the Foundation Stone of the World, and merges it with the Jacob’s dream of ascension and the Islamic legends on Mohammed’s leap to Heaven. The midrash filters the cultural symbols surrounding this particularly fraught locus, the Temple Mount, projecting them back onto the biblical narratives in Genesis and forward towards a vision of the eschaton. In linking the beginning of time to the End of Days, the midrash exemplifies the redemptive arc of the Jewish mythic imagination.

I began my career as a student of the Septuagint, but soon started to look for areas of study which the results of Septuagint research could be applied to. Almost forty years ago, textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible – not to speak of the use of the Septuagint in it – was not in fashion, but I found it fascinating. My problem then and always has been that I cannot proceed by given rules of methodology or generally accepted ideas about the textual history, but I always have to look into the text myself and draw my own conclusions. The only authority I accept is the text, and to find out what has happened to the text is my only goal in textual criticism. This has meant a lifelong learning process as well as some controversies with colleagues who think they know it better.

Among the sanctuaries of Roman Corinth and Corinthian Isthmia that dotted the civic landscape of the first recipients of Paul’s preaching, many had cult sites that included worship of more than one deity, who were connected through genealogy, mythological event, or historical tradition (local or not). There is both literary and material evidence for, at minimum, sanctuaries of Aphrodite (with Helios and Eros), Demeter and Kore (along with the Moirai), Isis and Sarapis, Dionysos (along with Artemis and Kore), Asklepios (with Hygieia and one or more deities traditionally associated with him), Poseidon (with Amphitrite along with the Tritons and Melikertes), Palaimon (with Poseidon and Leukothea), and the deities of the imperial cult. I wish to read Paul’s initial presentation of his god to his Corinthian audiences through the lens of this local religious practice. Paul’s god(s) might look quite familiar to Corinthians, in that they are a finite set (a father god, a child of the father, and a third figure of presence [spirit]), related by myth/history, genealogy, and by cultic worship. I will thus posit a context that explains an amenable reception among Paul’s audience for the initial presentation of his god and that partially accounts for his success as a missionary of Christ Jesus. I will then perform an initial inquiry into whether or not Paul tried to correct this possible misunderstanding by the Corinthians about the nature of his god by looking at 1 Corinthians 2.

The Greek word, diaspora, means to "sow again." The term describes the (re)colonization and (re)population of re-established Roman territories that once belonged to the Greeks or others, like the city of Philippi. Once resettled, after a long period of establishment, that is, several generations, the cultural memory of those that first made the transplant are normally remembered; in oral tradition down to the third generation (Jan Vasina). But by the fourth generation, memory fades, and to actualize and maintain that memory, the story is normally written down. Interestingly, Hansen's law of third generation notes that what the son or daughter (second generation) wishes to forget, the grandchildren recover. The Hebrew Bible (from Abraham to Joseph, exile and return) and even select books of the New Testament are by and large framed in a fourth generation construction (Book of Ephesians - third/fourth generation Christian). This paper offers broad sociological observations on the importance of the third and fourth generations to help biblical scholars and contextual interpreters identify key features. Moreover, the implications for what this means in a Korean American Diaspora context will be explored.

The presence of three long, grammatically complex prayers in Ephesians is an unusual phenomenon. Covering almost a fifth of the entire epistle, the prayer texts comprise a protracted benediction (1:3-14), which transitions into a lengthy intercession (1:15-23) capped by a third prayer (3:14-21). Scholars have recognized and discussed the creative reinvention of the ancient convention of epistolary prayers in both the Pauline and Deutero-Pauline epistles (Gordon Wiles, 1974; Peter O’Brien, 1977; John Polhill, 1999; Luther Stirewalt, 2003; Hans-Josef Klauck, 2006; Patrick Gray, 2012). This paper argues that the writer of Ephesians has carried this adaptation of epistolary conventions to an extraordinary level in order to accommodate his theological agenda. An analysis of the structure and content of the prayers shows how they present the writer’s “mystery” of Christ,” (1:9; 3:3, 4, 9; 5:32; 6:19), which is vital for interpreting Ephesians within its Jewish-Gentile context. Cosmic Christology is ingeniously interwoven with realized eschatology to present the epistle’s ecclesiology of unity and reconciliation. Not only does this epistle contribute to our understanding of the complex phenomenon of Pauline prayers, it also substantially adds to the richness of Christology and ecclesiology in the disputed Pauline letters. Through these three theologically-crafted prayers, the writer of Ephesians compels the multicultural community of Christians in Asia Minor to flourish together within the unity of the Spirit, the love of Christ, and the fullness of God.

Septuagint scholarship has long recognized the deep cultural and linguistic influences upon the Greek translators of the Hebrew scriptures. One expression of this cultural-linguistic milieu rests in the influence of post-biblical Hebrew and Aramaic upon translators’ knowledge of their source texts. Several papers, chapters, and monographs in Septuagint research are devoted to this topic; lists of relevant examples are plenty available. In this paper, I seek to challenge a general methodological and linguistic consensus regarding the translator of Greek Isaiah’s understanding of the term ṣby “beauty” and its supposed connection to the Greek terms doxa “glory” and endoxos “glorious.” While it appears that these two terms at times overlap in Greek Isaiah, I argue that the translator rather evidences a misunderstanding of this Hebrew term in many places and he creates stylistic translations where the context permits. The use of doxa and endoxos are not proper translations, but instead function as contextual guesses. I seek to contribute to previous discussions in the field by providing a more nuanced understanding of the translator’s lexical choice which is based upon his translation technical practice.

While dystopian worlds in film are very often described with language drawn from apocalypticism, the genre of apocalyptic literature has very specific characteristics, such as fantastical imagery, an otherworldly guide, and a focus on other times and places. Many aspects of religion are utilized to keep institutions and communities in their socially accepted places, but apocalyptic literature utilizes these features in service of a subversive religious impulse, promising its readers with a reversal of the violent and oppressive social order and a new age in which the powerless are exalted above their oppressors. The account is presented in this way so as to instill hope in its audience Pan’s Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno [G. del Toro, 2006]) presents a layered crisis, both familial and political. Ofelia and her mother live with a human monster who terrorizes them while also leading Franco’s soldiers in a quest to extinguish the spanish rebels. Suffering because of war, the cruelty of her stepfather and the pain of her ill and pregnant mother, Ofelia is led by a faun into the knowledge of another world. Through his guidance, as well as assistance from fairies and The Book of Crossroads, she learns that she is a princess from long ago. After the death of her mother, Ofelia seeks to save her newborn brother and eventually escapes to join her mother and father who are the king and queen of another world. The structure and generic characteristics of Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature are integral to its message. When viewed through these elements, Pan’s Labyrinth is seen to be more genuinely apocalyptic than many films which present a cataclysmic end to the world, for the film looks both backward and forward in time, to another world, to provide hope in the time of crisis.

In this paper, I follow Donovan Schaefer and Donna Haraway in their critique of Deluezian animality to understand the ways that the Sifra and the Mekhilta de-Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, 3rd century Jewish exegetical works, read Leviticus 25 and Exodus 23 as political calls to become with animals. By focusing on actual animals and their situated embodiment within Rabbinic discourse, I argue against the specter of an ahistorical Deleuzian interpretation, which would treat the animal as an abstract radical possibility standing against humanity, in favor of an interpretation made attentive, by Haraway’s and Schaefer’s perspectives, to an emergent picture of a historically bounded Rabbinic human-animal assemblage. Schaefer’s insistence on phenomenological embodiment brings to the fore the ways in which these texts include animals in the political conversation through their migratory patterns, while Haraway’s work helps us to understand how in these texts animals are both political technology and moral subjects.

Writing from the context of Lutheran ritual and liturgy surrounding baptism, this paper reads the seal of the Holy Spirit in Ephesians and 1 Corinthians as connected to the rite of water baptism and in particular the use of oil both in anointing catechumens in preparation for baptism and immediately following the water baptism itself. The term evsfragi,sqhte (“you were sealed”) as it is used in these texts indicates a mark of ownership that God places on the Christian believer as a means of protection and promise of a future inheritance. However, more than this, the seal referred to in Ephesians is an actual imparting of the Holy Spirit. For Christians who practice water baptism, this defines the role of the Holy Spirit in such ritual, acknowledges the partial realization of the eschatological promise of fullness in the Spirit, and thus draws out the eschatological implications of the baptismal rite. This reading of sealing empowers such readers to understand their baptisms as far more than a ritual act. It is the beginning and the ending of a way of life marked by the transformative power of God’s Holy Spirit, as implied by the labeling of the adult catechumenate as a “Journey with Christ” in contemporary Lutheran contexts. The power and the force of this transformation come from the way in which the believers lives with and through this spirit seal in between those two moments.

Much has been made recently in textual scholarship in a number of disciplines in the humanities about the impending change of medium in critical editions. What changes when we produce digital editions? What important functionalities of print editions are sidelined and what new avenues for research appear in a digital medium? These questions, among others, are particularly timely when it comes to the New Testament in light of the recent online publication of the Editio Critica Maior of the book of Acts. This paper argues that, because critical editions to a certain degree set the agenda for a field, they provide an opportunity to explore the developing relationships between textual transmission, exegesis, and reception history. In comparison to print editions, “born-digital” editions are more open to experimentation and more transparent in their relationships to the manuscripts that undergird them, providing an important tool for exploring manuscripts as witnesses to interpretation and reception. To illustrate this assertion, the paper explores a selection of a medieval witnesses to the book of Revelation that contain marginal notations on the identity of the beast in Rev 13:18, a text that represents an important exegetical crux for the material that follows chapter 13. These traditions offer concrete evidence for medieval interpretation, evidence that has not traditionally been prioritised in print editions. This analysis offers insight into the ways that digital editions enable analysis that is not necessarily, at the least in the first instance, interested in establishing an Ausgangstext, but in understanding how manuscripts function as witnesses to traditions of biblical interpretation.

Surveillance studies is employed in this study of Genesis 18-19 to analyse power, overreach of jurisdiction, the search for ultimate security and political violence and trauma. It specifically uses the metaphor of seeing through surveillant/souveillant means (a field of veillance) and divine omnividence. Firstly, an ideological criticism examines the tendencies of ancient Persian surveillance and how this influenced authors of biblical texts. Secondly, narrative criticism (narratology) applies these tendencies to the literary dynamics of biblical narratives through visual tropes. This reading of Genesis 18-19 presents the text as compiled for readers in a world influenced by watching powers. The struggle for surveillant knowledge and security is illustrated in the petition of Abraham, the dual locations of the divine gaze and the internal struggle between two groups in the Sodom (Ammon-Moab) Mamre (Israelite) polemic. However, Lot's wife (Ado), in Gen 19:26, conducts sousveillance to illustrate the resistance to the violence caused by struggle with colonial seeing. Ancient surveillance is often mimetically favoured by Deuteronomy and Ezra-Nehemiah for success in political dominance. However, ancient Israelite religion is also shaped by the limitations of their own nationalism by colonization itself. A narrative reading strategy utilising veillance can illustrate the links between the inner social sorting of Israelite populations and the colonizing gaze of xenophobia and androcentricity.

Paul's decision not to receive remuneration from the community in Corinth has been a point of contention from his own lifetime until today. Ronald Hock, in his book The Social Context of Paul's Ministry: Tentmaking and Apostleship (Philadelphia 1980) described four attitudes among philosophers towards remuneration; namely, charging fees, finding a patron, begging and manual labor. While the Sophists chose the first method, the Cynics preferred to rely on begging. Paul chose manual labor, a choice some liken to the ideal of early Jewish sages, to combine Torah study with plying a trade. However, in this and other studies, Hock warned against this understanding, claiming that any connection to rabbinic sources is problematic because the Jewish practice of combining manual labor with Torah study is “difficult to establish before the mid-second century” (JBL, 97 [1978], 557). On the other side of the spectrum, Ze'ev Safrai and Peter Tomson argue in their recent discussion of 2 Corinthians 8-9 (“Paul’s ‘Collection for the Saints’ [2 Cor 8-9] and Financial Support of Leaders in Early Christianity and Judaism”, in Second Corinthians in the Perspective of Late Second Temple Judaism [ed. Reimund Bieringer et al.], Leiden 2014), that “in the early halakha it was unambiguously ruled that one should not receive a salary for teaching Tora”, a ruling they connected with Jesus’ dictum “freely you received, freely give" (Matthew 10:8). However, they devoted little attention to 1 Corinthians 9:14-18, and their short discussion of the Jewish attitude is flawed by inaccurate dating of rabbinic material. My paper centers on Paul's refusal to take advantage of the tradition he quotes in the name of Jesus in verse 14: “those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel”. I examine the view attributed to Jesus and Paul's opinion in light of several rabbinic sources on the question of remuneration for Torah study and instruction; these include: Mishnah Avot 1:13; Sifrei Deuteronomy 42, PT Shekalim 4:2 (48a), Avot deRabbi Natan A, chapter 3, BT Ketubot 105a, BT Bekhorot 29a and BT Berakhot 35b. I examine the sources on the basis of both higher and lower critical considerations, and propose a timeline for the development of the various rabbinic attitudes towards remuneration on the basis of such considerations. My argument is that it is first necessary to identify the earliest traditions found in rabbinic literature, those which could reflect first century norms, and then compare them to Pauline material. This will lead to the conclusion that Paul's attitude towards remuneration was influenced by a late Second Temple directive, evinced also in the gospels (Matthew 10:8), which survives, as well, in the Aramaic tradition attributed to Hillel in Mishnah Avot 1:13.

In both John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale the Bible is a tool of oppression and control – in The Chrysalids, the Bible underlies the elimination of “mutants,” and, in The Handmaid’s Tale, the Bible is instrumental in the restriction of women’s freedom. Although both authors were writing in different times and places, they use the Bible in similar ways. This observation raises the question: why have the authors used the Bible as the source of oppression in their respective novels? In this paper I suggest that the authors use the Bible as an oppressive tool because they are writing dystopias. In dystopias, authors create worlds where they take aspects of their context and exaggerate them to warn of what could happen should social trends continue. In both Wyndham’s and Atwood’s contexts the Bible was used to suppress people’s freedom and their novels demonstrate the horror of what could happen if those in power continue to use the Bible in this way. However, while this use of the Bible is shaped by the authors’ contexts, it also gives their novels a timeless quality – because history repeats itself, their novels’ dystopic warning can speak to many historical and contemporary situations. For me, as a Canadian Anglican, Wyndham’s and Atwood’s novels touch on the history of my faith tradition, where the Bible informed the suppression of Indigenous people and women. The dystopic genre is, then, key to understanding both how Wyndham and Atwood used the Bible in their novels and how their novels continue to terrify readers.

During the national fight for women’s suffrage in America, the biblical text was often used as evidence both to promote and obstruct women’s access to the vote. This was accomplished frequently through disparate interpretations of the creation/fall narrative of Genesis 1-3. This paper examines the ways in which 19th-century Mormon women utilized the narrative of Genesis as justification for their right to vote. Thy refer to the themes of creation, Eve, and the equality of the sexes in strategic and original ways. Mormon women were a unique voice in the national movement for women’s suffrage.The vote came to Utah women early (1870) and they held the right to suffrage for seventeen years, when, under the Edmunds-Tucker anti-polygamy act, they lost their vote. It would not be restored until 1895. Mormon women in Utah were familiar with the interpretative work of Angela Grimké and Lucretia Mott, likely feeling aligned with their interpretations of the biblical text in support of equal suffrage. In some ways, Mormon women’s biblical rhetoric followed a similar pattern. In other ways, however, Mormon women’s use of the Genesis narrative was rooted in their unique theology of the Fall, which Helen Mar Whitney (1828-1896) described as “a blessing in disguise.” In their rhetoric, Eve’s culpability is not dismissed, rather her act is contextualized as somewhat heroic but also in terms of bringing a curse that needs reversing. The equality of the sexes is always read into the Genesis account. The women’s interpretations, however, don’t always correspond regarding the reasons for the “curse” of Genesis 3:16, whether it was needed for women’s penance or as a shackle imposed on them by fallen men. Several writers suggest that the women’s suffrage movement was itself part of a reversing of the effects of the “curse” preparatory to an anticipated Utopian age. As well, in parallel to their own experience, bringing the vote back to Utah women symbolically brought back the original equality of Eden.

In birth and early childhood, a child faces their first challenges as they develop their cognitive, emotional, and social capabilities and grow toward their full human potential. A critical point in this development is the emergence of self-awareness in early childhood (18-24 months) as part of a continuing process of psychological development that continues throughout life. This paper examines the concept of “self-awareness” as defined and analyzed in the psychological literature, and applies it to the Garden of Eden narrative. It explores the parallels between and relationships among: 1. the Eden narrative (Genesis 2:4b – 3:24), 2. the emergence of self-awareness in young children, specifically, Gordon Gallup and others’ concept of Mirror Self Recognition, (MSR), 3. the development of language and culture in early Homo sapiens societies. A review of the PsyBibs literature describing the Eden narrative as the birth of self-consciousness, in tandem with the psychological literature on self-awareness, leads to a definition of self-awareness as “the ability to reflect on one’s own mental state and the capacity to regard the self as a different entity from others”. The impact of self-awareness on the development of human cognition, emotion, language, and civilization is explored in the context of childhood development and also within the context of the socio-cultural development of early human communities. The literature suggests that being “human” doesn’t mean just being Homo sapiens, but also means being self-aware: “Homo sapiens + self-awareness = human.” A more focused discussion of self-awareness follows, emphasizing “Mirror Self-Recognition” (MSR) as a crucial and measurable step in a multi-stage process of self-awareness development. MSR methodology is described, and several views are offered of how MSR fits into the stages of self-awareness development. MSR leads not only to cognitive changes, but also to changes in the kinds of emotions and social relationships that emerge with a more developed sense of self-awareness. For example, awareness of others (Theory of Mind) cannot precede awareness of self (MSR). Finally, the differences between “self-conscious-emotions” and “non-self-conscious emotions”, and also between “socialization” and “enculturation”, are discussed in the context of self-awareness development. Implications for future research and methodological considerations are discussed. Responding to Wayne Rollins’ call for “re-visioning biblical origins, focusing less on dates, places, and historical events, but emphasizing the ‘psychic events’ that lie at the base of the text”; this presentation uses “self-awareness” to re-vision the Eden narrative in a psychological context; allowing for deeper insights into how the story may offer an important ancient perspective on “becoming human” that can be brought into dialogue with current social-scientific perspectives.

The nomenclature of large predators is quite rich in ancient Hebrew, especially in that which concerns the names for «lion» (‘aryeh ; laby ; šaḥal ; layš, kepyr ; gûr). In Hebrew poetry, where references to large predators are concentrated, the lion is often mentioned together with the leopard (namer) or with the bear (dob). Such a rich vocabulary allows us to reconstruct patterns of behaviors associated with these animals, their relationship with specific environments, and, to a certain extent, a relative taxonomy (for example, gender and age distinctions seem to be present in the lion nomenclature). Translations of these names in the ancient versions show a variety of tendencies. Although ancient renderings are for the most part quite consistent, the employed lexicon nonetheless reveals a certain degree of interpretation. While some interpretations can be justified by textual difficulties, they might also reflect different zoological patterns or a variation in landscape. This paper will reconstruct the history of identification of some “biblical” predators in antiquity. It will analyze the lexicon of feline carnivores in ancient translations of the Hebrew Bible, with a focus on the renderings witnessed by the Septuagint, which will be examined against the background of Greco-Roman zoology. Readings from Peshitta, Targum and Vulgate will also be included to enlarge the comparative perspective. This survey will also help in evaluating to what extent ancient interpretations have contributed to the understanding of biblical species in modern times.

While the book of Proverbs does not present an explicit epistemology, many contend or simply assume that modern philosophical concepts and theories provide a heuristic guide for encapsulating the implicit epistemology of the sages. To varying degrees, a correspondence theory of truth, a coherence theory of truth, and embodied realism seem to capture aspects of Proverbs’ latent epistemology. When these theories are held up against the diverse materials in the book, however, each exhibits certain weaknesses. In the light of these shortcomings, this paper moves beyond theories of truth that may orient one to Proverbs’ implicit epistemology and explores the explicit epistemic etiquette outlined by the materials in the anthology.

The Song of Deborah (Judges 5) is among the oldest and most celebrated texts in the Hebrew Bible. This ballad recounts Deborah and Barak’s triumph over King Jabin and his army led by General Sisera. As Deborah sings about overcoming these oppressive forces and celebrates Jael’s murder of Sisera, this prophet and judge and “mother of all Israel” ends her tune with a shocking refrain about another powerful mother. Deborah envisions Sisera’s mother, peering out her window waiting for her son to return home, whom she assumes won the battle. Sisera’s mother blames his tardiness on his army’s booty collecting that includes taking “a womb or two for every soldier”--or the mass rape of Israelite women. Deborah’s song (whether in her own words or placed in her mouth by male writers) intimates that sexual assault and rape are the inevitable cost of war. Neither Deborah nor Sisera’s mother appear to use their power to challenge the sexual violence that their sons inflict on the enemy’s women. They, seemingly, normalize this behavior. The reader is left to wonder whether Deborah and Barak’s troops, as victors, are raping their own booty. Are Deborah and Sisera’s mother colluding with the established powers that for generations have allowed these injustices to persist against vulnerable women, girls, and men? Slave narratives recount instances where wives of slave owners collude with their husbands as their men rape their female slaves instead of using their privilege to protect them. Likewise, the #metoo movement has exposed examples of women who have turned a blind eye or, even worse, placed unsuspecting women in harm’s way. How do we break this cycle of sexual violence and abuse that is deeply rooted in generations from Deborah’s culture to even now? This paper converses with Deborah’s song to explore more fully how women, especially those with authority and power, can use these positions to break cycles of sexual violence by becoming allies rather than colluders. Reading sexual violence through an intersectional lens, we explore how women’s complicity and desire to protect privilege has at times perpetuated this culture of sexual misconduct that soars out of control when left unchecked. Deborah’s song can serve as a cautionary tale. By the end of the book of Judges (chapters 19-21), the concubine is gang-raped and possibly vivisected, and the women of Shiloh are taken as wives against their will. What if Deborah and Sisera’s mother, like many of today’s women, sing out and interrupt the cycles of sexual violence against all women, especially those more vulnerable. How can today’s women serve as more effective allies rather than colluders and, instead, “be like the sun, rising in its strength” (Judges 5:31)?

Each of the three cities noted in 1 Kings 9 as having received special attention in the Solomonic building program – Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer – occupied strategic locations in the region. Gezer’s position as guardian of a main route from the coast into the southern hill country required defensive architecture and planning that both enabled exchange and protected the interests of the Bronze Age city-state and the Iron Age regional polities. Thus it is important to consider the design, engineering, and construction of the various iterations of the city wall systems as they evolved throughout the second and first millennia, and the role they played in the occupational development of the site. With an eye to both the geo-political issues that necessitated their construction and the topographical situation which influenced their design, this paper provides an overview of these changing fortification systems. The research examines materials from the Macalister and the Hebrew Union College excavations in the light of the Middle Bronze and Iron Age structures recently unearthed by the Tandy.

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Much research has been done on the banquet/triclinium setting for meals in antiquity and the impact that setting would have on the form and function of the early Christian ritual meal commemorating the death of Jesus. But not every meal would have followed this format, and at many other times, perhaps the majority of times, less formal eating would be necessary. In this paper I will survey the setting of such meals, exploring what we know about their location, format, and menu. I am particularly interested in the breadth of options available to Paul and his companions and how Judean dietary restrictions would impact their choices while on the road and at sea, as well as eating in the towns and cities with new Christ adherents.

The substantial economic growth in the Levant during Late Antiquity is readily apparent from the contemporaneous upsurge in new rural settlements. An integral part of this development was the marked transformation of the religious built environment (cultural landscape), as private churches, martyria, and monasteries were erected throughout the East Mediterranean countryside in addition to lavish community churches that were built within the villages perimeters. Barring a few exceptions, scholars have ignored the correlation between economic prosperity and ecclesiastical construction. In the proposed study, we will suggest a phenomenology of this building boom with the objective of shedding light on the flourishing of monasticism during the period under review. We will show that this wave of construction derived from local, bottom-up economic processes, no less than top-down imperial or Church initiatives. Interpreting some new finds from our recent archaeological excavations in Upper-Western Galilee and using comparative of other rural landscapes in the Roman east, we will show that there was a strong link between material well-being and ecclesiastical activities in early Christian rural societies by introducing local and regional factors into the discourse. In our estimation, local wealth is reflected in church buildings both within and adjacent to villages. Besides commemorating the area’s martyrs, monastic compounds buoyed the community’s agricultural production. Owing to these compounds’ agricultural arms, such as wine presses, the monks had a strong impact on both the faith and economic fortunes of the rural Christian masses. By cultivating arable land and joining forces with tillers, monks significantly improved the village’s agricultural output and prosperity.

Empire, Power, and Politics in the Twelve: Setting the Scene

One recent debate in Peshiṭta (S) and Old Greek (G) studies centers on the question of how knowledge of a specific translator’s translation strategies aids in: 1) adjudicating between shared variants in the Vorlagen of the earliest translations of the Hebrew Bible (e.g., S and G) and the Masoretic Text (M); 2) identifying shared tactics employed by both translators in rendering a source text close to M; and 3) determining influence from one translation (G) on another (S). To a certain degree, these questions are beset with inescapable methodological circularity: The assumption that cases of S-G agreement betray a specific relation between S and G influences scholars to evaluate other cases on this basis, whereas the assessment that S-G agreements do not indicate any such relation suggests the assumption that they are the result of common translation technique. Complicating this situation are other possibilities for why S agrees with G (against M and Targum [T]). Similarities might also be attributable to: 1) a common translation tradition (i.e., usage of a similar tradition of a certain word or expression); 2) a common Jewish exegetical or liturgical tradition; and 3) the possibility that S secondarily revised toward G or one of its hexaplaric recensions. In light of these interpretive options, scholars have established criteria by which to identify possible G influence on S, but scholars’ different presuppositions about the translation process have impeded a consensus on criteria. In this paper I attempt to refine the methodological criteria for evaluating S-G agreements and apply them to alleged cases of S’s dependence on G in Isa 1-5. I argue that nearly all these agreements can be explained by both translators’ recourse to similar translational problem-solving strategies (some default, emerging, and ad hoc). The single exceptional S-G agreement where an explanation in translation technique does not suffice (1:22) finds a more convincing explanation in both S’s and G’s recourse to a common exegetical or reading tradition.

The interrelationship of economics, health care, and ecology has received little attention in explanations for the vitality or demise of ancient Near Eastern civilizations. By applying theories derived from medical anthropology, which views health care as a system of options and resources for maintaining or restoring health in any community, this paper will provide some examples of how health care impacts both ecology and economics in ancient Near Eastern societies. In particular, it will focus on data from lists of animals, plants, and minerals needed to conduct certain magical healing rituals in Hittite Mesopotamian, Ugaritic, and ancient Hebrew texts. Some of those rituals may have impacted the availability of food resources because they re-directed those food resources to health care needs and to temples. Other rituals may have traumatized the environment by requiring the killing of animals for components in healing rituals. An analogy today is the hunting of bears for their gall bladders, which are believed to have healing properties. Such killings, when done on larger scales, may have disrupted ecological balances. The paper explores the methodological problems such issues raise, and also the possible future directions for detecting links among health care, economics, and ecology.

Review of J. Walton's Old Testament Theology for Christians, and R. Gane's Old Testament Law for Christians

For more than one year, from 66 to the autumn 67, the Galilee was under heavy stress. It started with clashes between Jews and non-Jews around the Galilee, it continued with the arrival of a young Jewish governor from the social elite in Jerusalem, but mainly from June to October 67, sixty thousand Roman soldiers violently swept the region leaving behind them robbed land, two destroyed towns, and many dead and wounded citizens. In this paper I will use the archaeological data that was gained in a few archaeological excavations and surveys to understand the impact of the first part of the Great Revolt – the Galilean campaign – on the land and on the people. I will start with the evidence of first century sites: Magdala, Yodefat, and Gamla of daily life and economy. I will continue with the understanding of Josephus’s activity as a governor of the region, investing in large operation of fortifications, and into the actual battles of the north. I will end the paper with an attempt to assess the economic consequences of the revolt.

The Greek Sibyl resonated as a powerful prophetess throughout the centuries across the Mediterranean in Jewish and Christian traditions. The pseudepigraphal texts of the Sibylline Oracles inspired many visual representations of Sibyls, especially among Late Medieval and Renaissance artists. For example, Michelangelo and Pietro Perigio painted the Sibyls to add a feminine counter-balance to the Hebrew prophets while Domenico Ghirandalo announced the coming of Jesus in the Basilica of Santa Trinita through a Sibyl. Both elements came together in the Sala delle Sibille in the Vatican’s Borgia Tower. This paper will highlight how the Greek, Jewish, and Christian aspects of the Sibyl are uniquely integrated in each of the visual manifestations, demonstrating the mutable, alluring and triune nature of the Sibyl.

Adding Hittite arkuwar prayers to the pool of Near Eastern material shedding light on the significance of the Biblical covenant allows us to explore from a new angle how the Israelites reshaped locally available ways to interact with the divine to define themselves as a people in a unique relationship with the only God. For the Hittite kings occupying Late Bronze Age Anatolia and north Syria, arkuwar ("legal case") prayers, and sworn contracts (ishiul), including international treaties (also called taksul), were complementary genres. Indeed, two early Hittite royal prayers (ca. 1500-1400 BCE) present themselves as contracts between the king and the gods (CTH 389.2, 414.1). With this background information, we can take a new approach to explaining, 1) the parallels between Hittite arkuwar prayers and Biblical arguments with, and complaints to, Yahweh (e.g., Josh 7: 7-9); and 2) the presence of concepts found in Hittite vassal treaties in the way the covenant between Yahweh and his chosen people was framed. The prayers would have travelled in the same way as the treaty formulas, not through population movements, but by means of public oral performances before a copy of a treaty, edict, or diplomatic letter displayed beside the statue of the relevant divinity in his/her temple. That is, the contractual process itself provided the means of geographic transfer of region-specific practices attached to the Near Eastern treaty tradition. Hittite secundogenitures at Carchemish and Aleppo would have engaged in the full gamut of activities surrounding treaties and other sworn agreements, including arkuwars expiating their own actions in violation of ishiuls with humans or gods (e.g., CTH 382, §4) and complaining about the gods' evident anger, which was demonstrated by defeats at the hands of "arrogant" treaty-violators and other misfortunes affecting the state. Neo-Hittite states in Syria chose to retain some Hittite ways of justifying hegemony, as shown by the continued use of Hittite dynastic names and Hieroglyphic Luwian script on stone monuments bearing Hittite-style reliefs, suggesting the relevant practices could have continued well into the Iron Age, before the area was subjugated by the Assyrians, who imposed the Assyrian-style treaty practices that so obviously influenced, e.g., Deuteronomy 28. The Late Bronze Age Hittite evidence gives us a unique glimpse of orally transmitted practices that could have been witnessed by people other than literate scribes. Thus, a specific, occasion-bound means of oral transmission to the Israelites can be postulated not only from Anatolia, but also from the Near East more broadly, for motifs drawn from prayers and incantations that helped to describe and enforce the quasi-contractual relationship between humans and gods. Moreover, the Hittite royal arkuwar prayers put a new focus on the innovative role taken by non-royal Israelite leaders as privileged intermediaries with God, which went hand in hand with eliminating the king as the responsible partner in the contractual relationship between a nation and God.

Anonymity and identity are powerful rhetorical devices in literature. The named and unnamed females in the book of Judges have been analyzed from various angles and perspectives. Some of the most ground-breaking approaches have those of Mieke Bal, Athalya Brennen, Adele Reinhartz, and Lillian Klein, on whose academic trail this paper gratefully follows. Some trails that await exploration include the relationship between the anonymous and identified characters, as well as how these characters relate in the overall structure and message of the book as a whole. Thus, this paper first seeks to analyze the textual effect of named and unnamed female characters in the book of Judges and how these characterizations contribute to the overall rhetorical and theological message of the book in its final form. Specifically, this paper argues that the four named female characters represent what Israel should have been doing (assertively fighting for Israel, understanding Torah), and the unnamed characters represent what Israel should not have been doing (idolatry, complacency under foreign oppression, misunderstanding Torah) or the consequences of doing what should not have been done (unprotected and discarded victims of injustice and chaos). The second task involves the relationship between these exemplary named characters and non-exemplary anonymous characters. Some pairings have been identified, such as the connections between Achsah and the Levite’s concubine and the connections between Jael and Delilah, but additional pairings that span the entirely of the book and include the male characters who share the narrative space of the females can also be identified. This patterning showcases the literary artistry of the redactor and underscores the contrast between anonymity and identity, ultimately inviting readers to mimetically identify with the exemplary, identified characters, who serve as foils for the anonymous characters. This interplay between anonymity and identity and the rhetorical patterning of these characters contribute to the many and complementary layers of rhetorical patterning in the book of Judges.

Scriptures or authoritative traditions from the past and visions of the future formed the foundation of many of the writings of the Qumran movement. Although not all the Dead Sea Scrolls are strictly sectarian, they may be considered as a cache of memories for this movement which identifies and describes its various concepts and practices. Moreover, in light of Social Memory Theory, these concepts should not be distilled into a single and simple recollection of the past but remain a fluid and complex matrix of memories to help reconstruct the present. Given these considerations, this paper attempts to formulate concepts of resurrection and the afterlife at Qumran by integrating Social Memory Theory as it examines (1) authoritative texts that articulate concepts of resurrection (esp. Dan 12:1-3 and 1 En. 22, 90, 104); (2) sectarian (1QS; 1QHa) and possible sectarian writings (4Q385; 4Q521; 4Q542; 4Q548) that uses these authoritative texts to remember the resurrection; and (3) burial and banquet practices at Qumran that recognizes a community living the "Last Days" in the present.

This paper will investigate the roles of women in Roman funerary rituals from the 1st to the 4th centuries CE. There is no extant description of the full complex of Roman funerary rituals; scholarly discussions rely on composite reconstructions drawn from varied, fragmentary evidence. Scholars often examine the role of women within a framework based on the reconstruction of the elite funeral and incorporates an analysis based on dichotomous gender distinctions where men take on the public role of mourning on behalf of the familia and women take on private rituals associated with the preparation of the body and lamentation and mourning. However, a close reading of literary, epigraphic, and artistic sources suggests such a bifurcated interpretive framework may occlude other roles and identities for women constituted within the communicative arena of funerary rituals. This paper seeks to problematize the traditional interpretive framework, suggesting that using status, rather than gender, as an analytical locus highlights the communicative potential of delineations by role. By gathering together and interrogating diverse evidence, such literary and consolatory, legal and testament, epigraphic, and visual evidence for the preparatory rituals, the treatment of the corpse, and the funeral proper, I argue women’s roles in the funereal context were varied and highly differentiated by status. I will interrogate the evidence upon which the composite understanding of the Roman funeral is based, drawing out indications of status distinctions. I argue that performances of mourning by women of the upper classes were often rhetorical and politically motivated and functioned to delineate a multitude of intersectional identities, including philosophical allegiance and ethnicity. Physical performances of gestures associated with mourning such as beating the breast and tearing the hair, could be appropriate as spontaneous articulations of grief; however, physical performances of grief manifesting in gestures of self-degradation were the purview of the lower classes, both men and women, in the formalized and systematic rituals associated with the funeral. Finally, I will suggest that later Christian authors manipulated these performances of grief to create new paradigms of the ideal mourner. Grief performances associated with the funerary ritual, properly directed, purified the mourner of sin, providing the impetus for them to take up an ascetic lifestyle in the letters of Jerome, attesting to the importance that writers placed in the communicative potential of the funerary ritual and the need to control and manipulate female models of proper behavior.

The discussion surrounding best practices for teaching Biblical Hebrew has grown in promising directions through recent years. Along with increased attention to modern pedagogical methods, there has also been an exponential growth of interest in online language education as technological advances make web-based instruction more versatile. My perspective on this discussion is informed by over a decade of experience in Biblical Hebrew (BH) curriculum development for contexts ranging from in-person to online, from grammar-translation to communicative methodologies, from private organizations to the university level, and varying combinations of all these factors. The particulars of each learning environment (timeframe, institutionally-mandated outcomes, student demographics, etc.) have required me to constantly revisit what I see as the driving questions behind any BH course design project: What are the learning goals for this institution and/or student group? Within the given parameters, how can we maximize the students’ immersion in the most authentic possible form of BH, and how can we most effectively leverage modern research on language acquisition with regard to focused instruction, comprehensible input, etc.? In the present session, I will share how I have addressed such questions in two particular contexts: 1) An undergraduate university setting which combines a living-language style classroom (using methods such as Total Physical Response and Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling), a grammar-translation textbook, and an innovative online homework program that gives students real-time feedback; and 2) An exclusively online (asynchronous) BH course designed on the open-source Moodle platform and geared toward BMin/BTh/MDiv students who also need to be trained to incorporate their Hebrew skills with the language resources available to them on the Logos software. The latter project is modeled in part after the former, and it engages a number of technological tools (audio, video, auto-correct exercises, etc.) in an effort to translate the pedagogical advantages of a face-to-face communicative classroom into the online environment. During this presentation, I will use Jonah 1 as an example text through which to demonstrate the various types of online exercises and resources that I have found to carry the strongest pedagogical value in each situation. As the demand for online coursework continues to grow, I expect that using these two teaching contexts as test cases could provide worthwhile insights for others who are also presented with the challenge and the opportunity of guiding biblical language acquisition in an online world.

Biblical scholars continue to wrestle with the translation of Eccl 3:11b: “[God] has put hā`ôlām in their [people’s] minds.” Should `ôlām be rendered conventionally as “eternity,” “distant time,” or perhaps even “infinity?” Or should the MT be emended to something like “toil” (he`āmāl) or “darkness”/“ignorance” (from the verb `ālam, “hide”)? The differences are consequential and produce significantly different interpretations. But perhaps no reading of Eccl 3:11 was as consequential as Galileo’s. On the eve of his indictment by the Church as a Copernican heretic, Galileo wrote a letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615) setting forth a biblical rational for his pursuit of forbidden understanding: “Who wants the human mind put to death? Who is going to claim that everything in the world which is observable and knowable has already been seen and discovered? Perhaps those who on other occasions admit, quite correctly, that the things we know are a very small part of the things we do not know? Indeed, we also have it from the very mouth of the Holy Spirit that God `hath delivered the world [mundum, Douay Version] to their consideration, so that man cannot find out the work which God hath made from beginning to the end’.” Galileo took inspiration from the first half of the verse (Eccl 3:11a), for one must not “block the way of freedom of philosophizing about things of the world and of nature, as if they had already been discovered and disclosed with certainty,” and proceeded to search the heavens with the “spyglass devised by me, through God’s grace first enlightening my mind.” The second half of the verse guided those who would condemn his inquiries as heresy in accord with the imperatives of post-Trent theology; precisely because “petulant spirits” like Galileo can never comprehend the infinity of divine wisdom, they should subordinate personal speculation to the universal authority of the Church Fathers. Thus began the “Galileo Affair,” which provided the foundation for the Church’s seventeenth century decreed divide between science and religion. It is ironic that Galileo turned to Qohelet, whose quest for understanding the mysteries of the world led him to conclude that intellectual inquiry is “perfectly pointless” (hebel), to argue for a theologically informed intellectual optimism because “the human mind is a work of God and one of the most excellent.” This paper will examine Galileo’s exegesis of the epistemological presuppositions and moral strictures related to intellectual inquiry in Qohelet’s world and in his own.

The life’s work of 20th-century ethnographer Clifford Geertz is characterized by what he called “Thick Description” (TD), the practice of developing rich, nuanced understandings of culture using thorough, complex, and contextualized descriptions of narrowly defined phenomenon rather than large-scale surveys. The goals of TD are: 1) to analyze a single phenomenon in a way that illuminates the culture at large, 2) to trace the “symbolic web of meaning” that a culture spins in order to understand and express its lived experience, and 3) to bridge the gap between the culture under investigation and the ethnographer’s audience. But can ethnographic method be applied ethically and effectively in the study of the deceased? This paper argues that the narrow focus of TD renders it particularly appropriate for working with ancient cultures because it enables one to connect objects and texts to their larger cultural environment, even in the absence of living members. Here, I present a case study of the Mesopotamian Mis-Pi (Washing, Purification of the Mouth) ceremony, a 2-day ritual for the induction of idols, for which we have little information outside of extant ritual and incantation texts from the 7th-6th centuries BCE. TD not only allows me to unpack the nature, meaning, and function of this ritual, but it also enables me do so in way that speaks to the values, paradoxes, inner-lives, and daily workings of the community for whom the ritual expresses a “symbolic web of meaning,” a web we may continue to study through tools like TD.

The conflict myth, also known as Chaoskampf and the combat myth motif, in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament has been perceived as dangerous for the environment (e.g., Habel-Avent, Trudinger, 2001) and animals. This motif describes God as a strong warrior, and God’s enemies are the sea, river, Earth, and chaos monsters (Leviathan, Behemoth, and Rahab). The battle between God and the enemy always ends with God’s victory and the desolation of earth and sea (e.g., Ps 46) in these conflict passages. The danger of this motif is also evident in some animal species, formerly equated with Leviathan and Behemoth. Western Christian interpreters of the biblical conflict myth (Calvin, Bochart, Melville, Couroyer, and Clines, etc.) have equated Leviathan and Behemoth with whales, crocodiles, hippopotamus, buffalo, and many other endangered animals. Implied narratives of the conflict myth can justify the hunting of currently endangered animal species. This paper will explore problems of the biblical Conflict Myth from past research in terms of environmental issues and try to find a green interpretation for the motif; (1) through a re-contextualization of the motif for us today (e.g., raging sea in ancient time versus increasing sea level and global warming in this age), and (2) in light of the myth theoretical approaches (e.g., the climatic pattern of the Ugaritic Baʻlu cycle in Johannes de Moor, and Gaster; Ballentine). Core messages of the conflict myth for environmental readings may include (1) the image of God as the creator and protector/sustainer of the cosmos and the regularity of the climate (Gen 8:22[J]; Gen 9:8-17[P]; Ps 89:10-11), and (2) God who commissions human political and religious leaders to prevent them from making the chaos monster great again (Ps 89:26; ET 89:25). These two suggestions enable a green interpretation of the conflict myth here and can contribute “rescuing the Bible from misinterpretation and recovering its ecological wisdom” (Horrell, Hunt, and Southgate, 2010).

As P. Fredriksen recently pointed out (2017), explanations of the incident at Antioch described in Galatians 2 are often unpersuasive. For example, the supposition that the controversy involved purity concerns relating to proximity to Gentiles ignores the fact that non-Jews were included in the life of the Jerusalem temple and the synagogue (cf. also Zetterholm, 2009). Nevertheless, Fredriksen's conclusion, namely, that there was anxiety about what was consumed and/or the meal's context is also somewhat unsatisfying. Peter is not condemned for what he eats but for his choice of table companions and purity is never explicitly in view (Nanos, 2002). Moreover, as Fredriksen admits, our evidence suggests that Jews practiced a greater degree of flexibility regarding purity issues when among Gentiles (cf. E. Sanders, 2015). Fredriksen's account also minimizes the significance of Gal 2:13, which describes Peter's critics as "the circumcision." Given the broader question of the need for Gentiles to undergo the Jewish rite, an issue that clearly drives much of the argument in the epistle, the appearance of this specific label seems significant. This paper will argue that Peter's detractors should be taken more seriously as theologians and should not be viewed as merely scandalized puritans. Picking up on the insight that eating together constituted a major aspect of those who opposed Peter, this paper offers an account of their view that builds upon suggestions made previously by D. Hare and B. Chilton. First, as we know from the Corinthian correspondence, in this early period the eucharist had yet to be separated from the celebration of the communal meal, making it likely that it was part of the meal at Antioch (I. Elmer, 2009; cf. also Schlier, 1989; Jewett, 1994). Second, as many have noted, the Last Supper account in 1 Corinthians 11 includes a number of details suggestive of an awareness of the meal's paschal setting (Pitre, 2015). Moreover, that Jesus' death was linked to Passover is clearly attested in 1 Corinthians 5. Thus, as J. Patterson (2015) has argued, there are good reasons to think the Lord's Supper itself was understood as paschal in character. Third, Paul indicates that he "received" the tradition of the Lord's Supper (1 Cor 11:23), a comment that many have read as indicating a source for the practice in the Jerusalem church. Together these observations paint a picture that help redraw the incident at Antioch. While Gentiles were allowed to enter the temple and participate in Jewish life in general, the Torah explicitly bars the uncircumcised from eating the Passover meal (cf. Exod 12:48), even if this prohibition was not always enforced (cf. Ezek. Trag. 152-92). Application of this principle on the part of Jerusalem Christians to participation in the Lord's Supper would make the most sense of the data found in Galatians, which indicate that the controversy about Peter impinged on both the question of communal eating and on the question of circumcision.

The Jewish life of Jesus, or Toledot Yeshu, provides a polemical account of the origins of Christianity, mocking Jesus as an illegitimate child, a false prophet and a charlatan, and describing his disciples as a bunch of violent rogues. In various forms, the narrative circulated among Jews (and read by Christians), as early as the ninth century CE (if not earlier) and at least until the mid-twentieth century. The story was doubtless a powerful medium for collective emotions and communal bonds. It is however often considered an antiquated work, reflecting a “medieval” perception of Christianity, which early modern Jews eventually dismissed while reclaiming Jesus as law-abiding Jew and engaging in an ever-more sophisticated discourse on the early history of Christianity—au passage inventing the “historical” Jesus. Toledot Yeshu came to be described as “an abortion from the time of legends” (Mendelssohn) when it was not simply labelled “a pile of dump in a dark corner of Jewish literature” (N. Porges), contrasting with the more tolerant approaches to religious difference of Jewish “modernity.” Alas this very much goes against the textual evidence, which not only suggests that Toledot Yeshu enjoyed widespread circulation in the early modern period, but in fact truly proliferated at that time, when a number of new copies, translations and expansions were produced. Toledot Yeshu has in recent years become the object of renewed scholarly interest. Yet much of that work remains dedicated to illuminating the origins of the narrative and questions of textual history. While philological questions are undoubtedly important, such studies often fail to consider the place and function of the narrative in the shifting historical and cultural contexts in which it circulated. In this paper, I will suggest a few avenues for shifting the scholarship on Toledot Yeshu from philology to history. To this effect, I will focus on the Italian versions of Toledot Yeshu and on the early modern Italian context in which they circulated. On the one hand, I will explore some of the religious and affective entanglements between Christians and Jews reflected in the Italian texts, as a way; on the other I will discuss the role of these texts in early modern historical scholarship, in both Jewish and Christian contexts.

The Place of Zion in the Political Landscape of the Twelve

In a contemporary context characterized by mounting political extremism and social tribalism, seemingly inexorable neoliberal economic imperialism, yawning gaps between the wealth and power of plutocrats and proletarians, and typically limpid (if not entirely co-opted) Christian responses to unjust and dehumanizing societal structures, the formative function of Jesus’s brilliant and status-quo-reversing parable in Luke 10:29-37—and, in particular, the ways in which it revisits the import and implications of the Levitical neighbor-love commandment (Lev 19:18)—merits renewed attention. The Lukan Jesus launches into a parabolic tale that effectively serves to challenge and reorient the moral calculus of the Gospel’s readers, ancient and modern, in at least two fundamental ways—even as it underscores why Leviticus 19:18 can be understood to function as a summary of the whole of Torah. First, Jesus’s parable deconstructs the legal expert’s presupposition that he might have a limited number neighbors—or that there could be a restricted scope within which legitimate neighbors might be found. The important question, according to Jesus, is not “who” a neighbor is (i.e., a matter of identity) but rather a question of “how” (“likewise” is an adverb) one is live as a neighbor with regard to anyone. The “neighbor” who is to be loved according to Lev 19:18 is not to be defined in terms of proximity, various types of similarity or affinity, or even traditional covenantal boundaries. Everyone is to be regarded as a neighbor to be ‘loved’ “as” ‘oneself’. Second, the Lukan Jesus seeks to form the legal expert’s moral reasoning and, in particular, his actual conduct with regard to love. The literary context of Leviticus 19:18—especially Lev 19:9-18—highlights the tangible nature of what ‘loving one’s neighbor as oneself’ was to entail within the ancient Israelite covenantal community. To “love” one’s “neighbor as” ‘oneself’ had—and today, still has—concrete implications, particularly in terms of economic matters. Jesus’s parable echoes and emphasizes this same Torah concern with addressing concrete human needs. The Samaritan embodied what love for another looks like. Jesus’s parable serves to form readers’ moral reasoning—and their behavior. They are to reason behaviorally in light of concrete human need, and they are sent into the world to meet those needs. This is why the neighbor-love commandment in Leviticus 19:18 is so often affirmed in the New Testament as an apt summary of the entire Torah. If humans embody this kind of concrete “love” for everyone (all “neighbors—“as” themselves) they have, in the process, upheld the intent of the entire Torah. Luke 10:25-37 exposes the moral bankruptcy of belief systems and societal structures that foster tribalistic distinctions between insiders and outsiders—and that encourage us to overlook basic and fundamental human needs to the extent that to reason morally in terms of need, first and finally, seems largely incommensurate with market-oriented rationality and self-interest. In the context of radical economic and power imbalances—whether in the first century or today—the importance of tangible, concrete, embodied love for all is of critical importance. Indeed, it is at the very heart of the entire faith. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in Jesus’ response to the legal expert in Luke 10:25-37. Today’s Christian community needs to allow this passage to reform and transform its reasoning—and its conduct. We have so many neighbors in need.

One of the gravest results of the gap between the Church and the Academy is that our congregations do not benefit enough from the wealth of scholarly innovation that comes out of biblical and theological study. In this paper, I will explore one such scholarly innovation for its potential to impact the preacher's understanding and proclamation of Jesus. Elizabeth Struthers Malbon's contribution to gospel studies, Mark's Jesus; characterization as narrative Christology (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2009), fuses insights from literary study, historical criticism, and theological analysis to demonstrate how Mark characterizes Jesus using the actions and words of Jesus and others throughout his narrative. After detailing the most significant insights from her study of Mark, I will suggest ways these insights can inform a preacher's understanding of Jesus. Then, I will show how Mark's Jesus could be communicated faithfully to a contemporary congregation by adapting the form of a sermon to mimic Markan literary structure and/or Mark's mode of characterization. At the end of the paper, I will preach an excerpt from a sermon on a Markan pericope in order to model how a preacher might allow Mark's characterization of Jesus to inform and shape their own characterization of Jesus from the pulpit.

As a historian of American religion, when I was asked to teach a course titled, "The Bible and Its Interpreters," panic set in quickly. But in this presentation I will argue that by turning to departmental colleagues, identifying some major scholarship, and recognizing my strengths related to the topic, I was able to successfully teach an engaging course twice at my public institution. Though my perspective coming from US religious history may vary from others on the panel, I provide some tools for stretching teaching beyond a particular specialization. At my institution people who typically teach this course consider methods of studying the Bible that are familiar to many SBL members - using historical critical interpretation, feminist interpretation, and literary analysis, among others. I provided some of that interspersed throughout the class, but instead focused on how these methods related to particular American controversies. I essentially reframed the course around Bible debates in US history. We read, for example, biblical passages on slavery to understand the American Civil War, marriage to discuss polygamy debates in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and divergent translations of the Bible to understand controversies over Bible reading in public schools. This helped keep the course within the parameters of what my institution wanted, while keeping it manageable and engaging for me. In the second semester I taught this course, I was able to expand to include more of the traditional content of the course. This was possible because I had already done the work to lay the foundation for the class the first time around. Though the particulars of what courses require varies, I will provide my own experience of triumphs and pitfalls to try to help others who are similarly stretched in developing set courses that appear unfeasible at first glance.

This paper proposes a discussion of the available theories concerning the purpose, function, and significance of the various para-textual features in early Christian literary papyri which are considered to be reading or lectional aids of various kinds. Based on a study of the papyri of canonical and non-canonical early Christian papyri this paper re-evaluates the basis for identifying the usage of literary papyri in liturgical contexts in Late Antiquity. This would be relevant not only for a better understanding of the late-antique material perusal of early Christian books, but it also serves to call into question the implications that such theories draw with regard to the formation of the New Testament canon.

In the various Ethiopic manuscripts of Jubilees, the book’s incipit is lengthier and likely a reflection of the full Hebrew title no longer extant: “These are the words regarding the divisions of the times of the torah and of the testimony, of the events of the years, of the weeks of their jubilees throughout all the years of eternity as he related (them) to Moses on Mount Sinai when he went up to receive the stone tablets ….” The phrase “according to the torah and the testimony” recurs elsewhere in the text (1:4-5, 26, 29; 2:24, 33; 3:14), while the lexeme “testimony” is also well attested (4:18-19; 6:32, 37; 23:32; 30:17, 19; 31:32). Altogether these citations form a leitmotif in Jubilees and raise the question of authorial intent. What is meant by the idiom “the Torah and the Testimony”? There is no clear consensus among scholars of Jubilees, although many agree that this enigmatic language is significant for the overall stance of the book. We know from 4Q216 that the Hebrew reads: והתעודה‎התורה . It is noteworthy that Isa 8:16 very similarly refers to the torah and the testimony: “Bind up the testimony, seal the teaching (torah) among my disciples.” Through coordinated exegesis of both Isa 8:16 and the aforementioned verses in Jubilees, this study explores potential points of contact between the book of Isaiah and the distinctive retelling of Genesis and Exodus known as Jubilees. A leading question is whether vis-à-vis “the torah and the testimony” there is shared meaning between Isaiah and Jubilees beyond that of a generic sort. In concluding, this study considers how the text of Isaiah or traditions associated with the prophet played a role in the composition of Jubilees.

The Shepherd of Hermas is one of the writings belonging to the early Christ movement that offers a most detailed description of the performance of possession in the context of a group ritual. The first half of the present paper will focus on the religious experience described in Mandatum XI of the Shepherd in order to show that it can be adequately categorized as "spirit" possession. This section of the paper will also demonstrate that this experience, far from being restricted to the idiosyncratic context of Mandatum XI, is in fact strictly connected to the pneumatology of the Shepherd (as it emerges mostly in the other Mandata) and to its christology (as it is presented both in the 5th Similitude and in the Visions). The second half of the paper will focus more closely on the rhetorical presentation of the experience of possession in Mandatum XI. Ethnographic and performance-based study of possession phenomena have illustrated that the success and effectiveness of possession rituals depends on a triangular negotiation involving mediums, "spirits", and their audiences. A similar articulation is spelled out quite clearly in Mandatum XI and it is configured in ways that are remarkably different from those adopted in other texts belonging to the Christ movement, such as 1 Cor 12-14. The paper will aim to go beyond the rhetorical presentation in order to offer an imaginative reconstruction of the practice of possession in Hermas's group.

The corpus of 9th-8th cenutury BCE inscriptions from Zincirli, the site of ancient Sam'al, provides a valuable witness to the veneration of a small pantheon of deities in an Iron Age Syrian state. Differences between the divine names listed in the earlier inscription of Kulamuwa, written in Phoenician, with those in subsequent incriptions written in the local Sam’alian dialect, have prompted diverse interpretations in scholarship. While earlier discussions emphasized the divine equivalencies implied by the structure of the deity lists (e.g. Baʿl Ṣemed = Hadad), the most prominent recent treatments of religion at Sam'al by Herbert Niehr assert that these differences reflect deliberate changes from the veneration of Canaanite-Phoenician deities to Aramean ones concurrent with dynastic change. In this paper, Niehr's interpretation of the panetheon at Sam’al is critiqued based on a fuller appreciation of the semiotics of divine identity in a multilingual and multicultural environment. Moroever, the evidence from Sam’al is expounded as an ideal test case for studying the dynamic and multifacted nature of divine identity in Iron Age Levantine religion. Similar dynamics in the translation, consolidation, and sub-specification of divine identity can be observed in the religion of other Levantine states, including ancient Israel and Judah.

Biblical names, phrases, idioms, and passages permeate the pages of the Book of Mormon and inform its theology. This paper examines the convergence and divergence of cardiac discourse—i.e. discourse relating to the “heart” (Hebrew: lev/levav; Greek: kardia)—in the Bible and Book of Mormon. Appearing approximately 1000 times in the Bible and over 450 in the Book of Mormon, the heart constitutes a fruitful locus for exploring the relationship between these two texts, not least relative to their respective notions personhood and morality. Accordingly, my paper proceeds in two parts. Part one examines the heart’s portrayal as an aspect of the physical and psychical parts of the human self. I draw attention, therefore, to its role in vitality, cognition, volition, and emotion. Part two addresses the heart’s function as locus of moral influence and a barometer of moral character. Tracing both inter- and intra-textual relationships, I pay particular attention, on the one hand, to the ways in which the Book of Mormon appropriates, challenges, and alters biblical cardiac discourse, and on the other, to the development of cardiac discourse within the Book of Mormon itself, spanning its three literary units—the Small Plates; Large Plates; and the writings of Moroni. The paper concludes by offering suggestions for how cardiac discourse in the Bible may inform the critical study of moral formation in the Book of Mormon.

This paper examines two incidences of conflict in Acts 6 -- the food rations inequity against Hellenistic widows and the dispute among the Synagogue of the Freedmen against Stephen’s interpretation of Jewish history and Torah. Contrary to F. Scott Spencer, it is not sufficient to truncate vv. 1-7 from vv. 8-15 in order to propose a dichotomist Christian Jews and Hellenistic Jews division in Luke, assuming Hellenistic Jews to be primarily Gentile converts to Christianity. Even so, Acts 6 is not hinged upon a systematic view of “Luke’s widows,” categorized so by a thread of occurrences starting from Luke 2:38ff to Acts 9:36ff. A synchronic reading throughout the Lucan corpus is misleading because every instance presents itself in a unique context with discrete issues surrounding widowhood. Making normative the notion that widows are marginalized, destitute women, Spencer misses the more obvious challenges of Acts 6. Examining practices concerning widows among the Essene community in the Dead Sea Scrolls and using Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis, I will show how Acts 6 provides a religious statement about the benefits and perils of living in religious community in Jerusalem when one has migrated from elsewhere. Acts 6 challenges the notion of what it means for diverse Jewish sects to honor the authority of Torah while maintaining the contract of communal sharing and drawing of the boundaries of orthopraxy. If the locations from which Synagogue of Freedmen originated provides any clue, it is to disprove the notion that the Hellenistic widows were marginalized on account of geographical origins and ethnic difference. Rather, the extent to which the Christian-Jewish sect had the capacity to use a common language to acquire representation, and so, gain influence is what made the Synagogue of Freedmen successful and the Hellenistic widows not.

This paper is interested in the linguistic phenomenon of semantic borrowing, specifically, Greek words that took on new meaning based on their use by Greco-Jewish translators. In this study the candidate for semantic borrowing is δικαίωµα. Two peculiarities are evident when considering the diachronic use of this word: First, the verb δικαιόω and the noun δικαίωµα do not exhibit semantic consistency. While δικαιόω conveys ideas related to righting wrongs, δικαίωµα may also represent that which governs how members of a religion or society are to behave, and is often glossed “statute, ordinance.” Second, while the use of δικαίωµα for “ordinance, statute” is prevalent in the Septuagint and the Jewish and Christian Greek literature that followed, this meaning does not evidence itself in papyri, inscriptions, or Greek literature (until the 3rd c. A.D.). This paper outlines the reception history of δικαίωµα in order to account for these peculiarities and demonstrate the likelihood that the “statute, ordinance” arose from the Septuagint and influenced the meaning of the word in later literature.

Across continents there is an ongoing, at times explicit and often implicit, discussion about what a scholar should be and do, and mainly in relation to scholars who have been fortunate enough to hold a ‘safe’, tenured-track position in a University with major resources. It is in this context that I will reflect on the understanding of scholarship that Gene Tucker advanced by example. I plan to talk about the ways in which his scholarship balanced and intertwined, inter alia, his own research, the emphasis he placed on developing the scholarship of others (via mentoring, editing, etc.), the importance he placed on professional organizations and the scholar’s duty to contribute to them, his understanding of the value of collaborations across multiple types of boundaries and backgrounds, and his conviction that scholars should be able to interact with and contribute to the lives of others, well outside the guild and in a way informed by their scholarship. I plan to set these observations about Gene in the light of what seems to me was his guiding principle as a mature scholar, namely cooperative open criticality.

Fourteen papyrus fragments of papCryptA 4Q249 were published by Stephen Pfann in DJD 35 with notes and commentary. Pfann has also supplied material reconstruction of one column of this scroll based on the papyrus fibers. Based on a new study of the cryptic papyri, some new results can now be reported. Several joins being overruled, we are now less secure about the column width in this scroll and about several previously suggested readings. On the other hand, more is known about the comparable document 4Q249a, identified as a copy of Serekh HaEdah and reconstructed to a length of five consecutive columns. New readings of key fragments of 4Q249 now show that it contains halakhic elaborations of impurity laws based on Leviticus chapters 11-14. Death impurity is imported into this sequence from Numbers 19, in a similar way to the sequence created in the Temple Scroll. A fragmentary halakhic syllogism creates an interesting parallel to a passage from Mishnah Nega’im. Finally, the scroll may have also contained elaborations of the non-halakhic section Leviticus 26.

In his book, The Trouble with Kings, McKenzie argues that 1 Kings 21:17, *18, 19a “and perhaps 20abα” are “the oldest remaining segment of chapter 21.” McKenzie notes that there is wide agreement among scholars that a different redactional hand can be detected in vv.20bβ-24 which repeats the common oracle against Israelite dynasty founders (see 1 Kgs 14:7-11 and 16:2-4). In these verses, it is generally agreed that v.23 is secondary and that Dtr style and terminology are only found in vv. vv.20bβ-22, and 24. In his conclusion to his analysis of 1 Kings 21 and 2 Kings 9-10, McKenzie stated “The additions make it clear that it was Dtr who used the Jehu story to illustrate the fulfillment of prophecy. He linked it with the Naboth episode as the fulfillment of Elijah’s oracle against Ahab’s house and incorporated the product within his prophecy-fulfillment scheme. There is nothing to indicate that the two stories were connected before Dtr. He followed the same scheme as with the previous oracles against Jeroboam and Baasha, illustrating how the prophetic curse repeated against each dynasty was effected in that dynasty’s annihilation. The only difference in the case of Ahab’s house was that Dtr had access to a lengthy narrative about Jehu’s coup which he incorporated within his scheme as the fulfillment of Elijah’s word which he set in the context of the Naboth incident.” Though I agree with much of McKenzie’s astute analysis, there are several points that need some reconsideration. For example, there is thematic and textual critical evidence that connects the initial curse of Elijah against Ahab in 1 Kgs 21:19 (not just 19a) with the story as it is reported in 2 Kings 9. I also agree with McKenzie that v.23 is secondary, as with the previous claim, though I will argue that it too is connected thematically, though in modified form, to the whole of v.19 as well as 2 Kgs 9:26 and 31-37.

Set within the closing section of what are often referred to as the prophet’s confessions or laments, Jeremiah 18–20 features a series of images related to violence and destruction, from God’s declaration of his prerogative to destroy nations and kingdoms to the prophet’s symbolic action of breaking a potter’s vessel and Pashur’s physical assault upon Jeremiah. The varied yet interrelated images of violent action, trauma and resilience within these chapters prompts hermeneutical reflection upon the multidimensional aspects of how violence functions in this prophetic text. The aim of this paper is to contribute to ongoing discussions concerning the use of trauma and resilience studies as a lens for biblical interpretation, focusing attention upon the ways in which violent action, violent images, and reactions to violence relate to one another. Using chapters 18–20 as a case study, I explore the imagery of the formation and destruction of pottery in relation to the collective trauma of military conquest and captivity, as well as the individual violence experienced by Jeremiah at the hands of the priest Pashur, in relation to his experience of divine coercion in the context of the prophetic task. I argue that despite the apparent finality of the broken vessel that “can never be mended” (Jer. 19:10–11), both the contextually significant imagery of pottery and its capacity to be reshaped (18:4–11), as well as Jeremiah’s own response to adversity within his prophetic vocation (20:11–12) provide a legitimate source of hope for the nation’s future, which is to be found in heeding the prophet’s words, turning from evil and amending/re-forming its conduct. I conclude by reflecting on the hermeneutical relationship between the social-scientific category of resilience and the theological category of faithfulness in the midst of individual and collective experiences of violence and trauma.

The so-called ‘hymnic participle’ is a well-known feature of Biblical Hebrew poetry, but very cursorily treated in standard grammars. This paper investigates some aspects of the complex syntax and semantics of the construction. The function of the hymnic participle is to highlight various aspects of the identity of a referent as objects of praise. It normally takes the form of an apposition, but it can also be a left-dislocated constituent (e.g., Amos 4:13) or a predicate (e.g., 1 Sam 2:6–8; Ps 103:6; 147:2). In terms of morphosyntax it is basically nominal, but at the same time the verbal nature of the lexeme is often exploited to the full, so that, even in apposition, the participle can take verbal complements and be coordinated with finite verbal clauses, which can form rather lengthy pieces of embedded multi-propositional discourse. In such contexts, the participles function to demarcate units of discourse. However, despite the fact that the hymnic participle can function virtually as a verb in almost all respects, it is argued in this paper that the construction consistently retains its nominal character, even in predicate position. At least two factors serve to reinforce this impression. The first and most obvious one is that the participle is morphologically distinct from the finite verbs, which are the standard forms of the independent clause predicate. Further, when a hymnic participle is conjoined with another hymnic participle, the effect never seems to be to convey the notion that there is situational continuity (in terms of time or causality) between the events represented by the two participles, something which is often the case when the hymnic participle is combined with a finite clause. This is what one would expect if the basic function of the hymnic participle is to tell about the identity of the referent, rather than about his/her actions. A precondition for perceiving the hymnic participle in predicate position as a noun is that the form is not the main imperfective form in the verbal system. In more advanced stages of Biblical Hebrew, when the active participle had developed into a general imperfective at the cost of the imperfect, speakers may have tended to understand all participles in predicate position as verbal. But within the poetic register of Early Biblical Hebrew at least, the nominal character of the hymnic participle is pervasive.

How did ancient Israelites use the sights, sounds, and smells made by burning aromatics to create cultic space? How do biblical texts about incense-burning relate to the burning practices of ancient Israelites? In this paper, I read material remains of Iron Age incense burning together with theories about the production of space through ritual practice (Catherine Bell) and embodied skill (Tim Ingold), arguing that ancient Israelites used burning to create units of space-time (Doreen Massey) understood as "cultic," or appropriate for ritual practice and interaction with divine beings. Cultic space-time units were defined by sensory differences from the surrounding space and time. Sensual similarity between these space-time units and other spaces and times, both real and imagined, evoked associations with purity, wealth, distance, and antiquity, making these moments and spaces perceptibly cultic. Turning to biblical texts that depict, command, or prohibit incense-burning, I argue that they share the same practical logic as incense-burning: they create specific cultic spaces by depicting sensory units bound in distance and duration, while associating those units with purity, wealth, distance, antiquity, and the proximity of divine beings. However, I also note that these texts seek to define proper and improper locations for incense-burning. Various passages critique incense-burning in homes, at bāmôt, on high hills, under trees, in the streets of Jerusalem and cities of Judah, and in the besieged Jerusalem temple, while others specify appropriate locations for incense-burning, or limit the burning of particular mixtures to specific cultic sites. I argue that these critical passages, often taken as evidence of changing norms or of increasing cultic centralization in ancient Israel, might be better understood as evidence of the authors' attempts to produce and organize space. Even as they relied upon the practical logic and sensory associations of Israelite incense-burning to write texts that produced particular cultic spaces, biblical authors also attempted to change those associations. With critiques that linked some incense-burning practices and locales with foreignness, idolatry, sexual misconduct, and misappropriation of divine property, these authors sought to limit the effectiveness of incense-burning to particular places, times, and ritual actors. Rather than reflecting the development or evolution of normative Israelite religion, these biblical critiques offer us a glimpse of contested space-making in action, allowing us to see how some ancient actors used words, smoke, and scent and make and limit cultic space.

According to the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Abba Sisoës is reported to have offered one and only one prayer to Christ on a daily basis: "'Lord Jesus, save me from my tongue.'" For, he laments, "every day, I fall because of it, and commit sin." Although spoken words were corporeal and spiritual extensions of their speaker-piety of speech reflected piety of mind and body-they could also ensnare and pollute the utterer and the larger community in which he lived. Speaking, as a mode of materializing and communicating knowledge, was not only a religiously ambiguous activity, but one with profound and lasting consequences; it all too often denatured or impurified the subject and those around him. Words could affect speakers as much as speakers could affect words. Insofar as scholars of early Christianity now emphasize the general instability of words--their ability to channel piety and impiety in equal measure--in this paper I aim not to rehearse these arguments about the dangers of orality but rather to recast them. I would like to suggest that for late antique Christians the precariousness of speech was very often imagined to be a specifically material danger. Language did not simply do things (both good and bad, constructive and destructive), but was, in fact, a thing itself. Spoken words were not fleeting and ephemeral, but rather palpable and enduring material forces. With particular attention to a small sliver of evidence from the vast corpus of literature about the late ancient monks--writings from Jerome, Cassian, Basil, as well as The Sayings of the Desert Fathers--I will propose that spoken language, within the monastic milieu, possessed a physicality or physical presence as both pollutant and purificant. For the monks, spoken language was both disease and drug. Words were dangerous and edifying not just because of what they could lead people to do, but because of what they were said to be at the physical or ontological level. Oral language (about the self, about the world, about fellow brothers, about God, etc.) was said to have quite tactile properties and qualities. Indeed, the way monks engaged with and experienced oral language points toward the tangibility and weight of words themselves. Words could be held, felt, harnessed, and deflected as pollutants and cures. Words were hurled against people; they attached themselves to Christians; they were implanted in monks; and they were handed over to ascetics. In short, they were absorbed as destructive and fortifying epistemological objects. For Christians writing about the monastic way of life, speech was, like food, clothing, water, money, etc., part of economy of sacred (and profane) objects. The words of the tongue were epistemological things that constantly threatened yet tamed the desert monk's way of life, his desired detachment from the material world. Speech was an ethereal yet material form that required both psychic and corporeal regulation.

Scholars have proposed as many as 232 solecisms (morpho-syntactical errors) within the Greek of the Apocalypse. One of the great paradoxes of the book is its astonishing complexity expressed in such irregular Greek. While numerous scholars have sought to account for and explain the solecisms in Revelation, few have explored the aural dimension. Since the book was designed to be read aloud to early churches in Asia, it is important to investigate how irregular grammar would have affected the first hearers. This paper attempts to fill this lacuna by examining how solecisms were viewed in the ancient world and how ancients responded when lectors made mistakes in reading. Historical analogies suggest that the solecisms would have posed challenges for the lector as well as first-century audiences and that the lector was faced with important decisions on how best to deliver the document.

The love poetry of the Song of Songs is replete with descriptions of each lover's appearance and of the act of looking itself. A few scholars have examined the gaze in the Song, most notably Cheryl Exum (along the lines of gender) and Elaine James (along the lines of landscape), but so far the gaze in the Song has not been examined through the lens of species. This paper will undertake a close reading of the gazes involved in the gazelle/deer metaphor in Song 2:8-17, reading this passage alongside recent visual artwork and keeping the discourse of the species in mind. After briefly rehearsing some of the history of scholarship around the gaze (e.g., Mulvey, hooks), first, I will show how the woman of the Song uses a "zoological gaze" (Adrian Franklin) to look at her lover and imagine him as a gazelle/deer. Next, as the animalized lover looks from behind the wall at her in return (2:9), I will examine this animal's gaze alongside Jacques Derrida's insights about his gazing cat in The Animal That Therefore I Am. In allowing the animal to gaze upon her, perhaps she is taking upon herself Derrida's challenge of being seen by the animal. In addition, her particular zoological gaze has implications with regard to both gender and species: this animal's gaze does not constitute the domination implied in the human male gaze, nor is it the predatory gaze of an animal hunting, but rather its eyes form the gentle and nonthreatening gaze of an herbivore. Finally, I will explore how biblical scholars and artists have portrayed what these gazes do to the woman. For some, the woman can remain human and embrace this metaphorical gazelle/deer in spite of the species difference, as we see in illustrations by James Reid (in his The Song of Songs with Woodcuts [1931]), Salvador Dalí ("The Beloved Looks Forth Like a Roe," 1971), and Phillip Ratner (in the commentary by M. Basil Pennington [2004]). For others, these exchanged gazes transform not only the man but also the woman, who is sometimes read or portrayed as a gazelle/deer herself, as we see in many other images that simply show a gazelle/deer couple, such as other illustrations by Reid as well as those of Y. Chrystal (in the commentary by Yehuda Feliks [1983]). In the former portrayal, love (and perhaps even eroticism) can take the radical step of crossing species boundaries; in the latter portrayal, the woman's loving gaze transforms her into a gazelle/deer as well, perhaps forestalling the cross-species romance but also going as far as challenging her own humanness. As a result, her seeing an animal leads to her being an animal. The paper will conclude with some summary thoughts on these multiple gazes' consequences for gender, humanity, and animality.

Many Bible products, both translations and study Bibles, are marketed to evangelical Christian audiences. Indeed, the lion’s share of the Bible market represents consumers on the more conservative end of the social and theological spectrum. Bookstore—and virtual—shelves are packed with “Life Application” Bibles, Dispensationalist study Bibles, and hyper-masculinized Bibles for “men of God.” “Liberal” Christians naturally eschew such products, but what do they buy instead? To be sure, there are academic and mainline study Bibles available (HarperCollins, Oxford Annotated, etc.) and generic Bibles that contain only the biblical text in a seemingly neutral translation such as the NRSV. However, there is a niche market for “Liberal Bibles,” an interesting comparative test case for our cultural critique of the Bible in American Life. Overt examples that fit into this category include “The Inclusive Bible” from Priests for Equality, billed as “the first egalitarian translation,” and the “Queen James Bible,” a project that is identical to the KJV except for eight verses retranslated “to prevent homophobic misinterpretation.” One might also include the recent mainline translation, the Common English Bible, marketed as broadly ecumenical and “accessible to a broad range of people.” As the first major translation undertaken by liberal Protestants since the NRSV, the CEB was the first opportunity for progressives to incorporate inclusive and socially-committed scholarship into the actual text of the Bible. One can perceive the influence of liberal scholarship, for example, in the CEB’s translation of 1 Timothy 2:11-15, which undermines the interpretation that ‘Paul’ here prohibits women in the ministry. This paper will analyze translation decisions and paratextual content in various “Liberal Bibles,” considering how ideological perspectives have shaped these projects to make them marketable to liberal consumers, and how they function rhetorically in comparison with conservative texts that do the same on the ‘other side.’ These Bibles serve the more politically-active elements in liberal Christianity, and are harbingers of increasing disagreement about what “the Bible” is, not merely about how it should be interpreted.

Richard Miller in his Resurrection and Reception notes numerous parallels between the birth mythology of the divine king in Matthew and that of Plutarch’s Vita Alexandrini: genealogy, a betrothed couple, divine impregnation, the surrogate father’s abstaining from intercourse until the womb is opened, and his concerns about the woman’s fidelity until being reassured in a dream. In this presentation, I will argue that the final redaction of Luke (c. 115-150), relying on Matthew and its syncretic combination of the Vita Alexandrini and the Hellenized Immanual oracle (LXX Isa 7:14), expands and develops the Jesus birth mythology in a new direction inspired by the traditions especially evident in the Divus Augustus of Suetonius, which itself had been pattered after the Vita Alexandrini. The Lukan birth mythology mimics that of Augustus by expanding the virginal conception motif into a full-fledged narrative in which the focus turns to the mother (Atia/Mary) instead of the surrogate father. Both describe the mother’s devotion to the divine father as a traveler, temple visitor, and solitary recipient of an oracular theophany predicting the future greatness of her son. The sum effect is to epitomize Jesus as a demigod king whose divine genealogy not only stems back to David and ultimately to God, but also one who rivals the Greek Alexander and Roman Augustus on an imperial-cultural mytho-political scale.

Echoes and Allusions to the Jewish Scriptures in Paul's Ethical Discourse in Romans 12:9-21

Crying has been stereotypically associated with women. It is often deemed a sign of weakness or an overly-dramatic emotional response. As a result of such assumptions, Samson’s first wife, who cries, has been interpreted repeatedly as an excessively sensitive, teary-eyed nag. By putting Samson’s wife into an intertextual dialogue with other characters in the Hebrew Bible who cry (bākāh) and modern research on gender and weeping, it becomes clear that such interpretations are tainted by gender bias and should be rejected. Samson’s wife’s does not cry simply because she’s a sensitive woman. Rather, she is a shrewd strategist, who uses her tears as a calculated measure to save her people from her tyrannical husband. Ultimately, this re-reading of Samson’s first wife will bring awareness to gendered assumptions in the history of biblical interpretation, and in doing so, invite us to reflect on our own preconceived notions of about gender and its relationship to crying.

Controversy has surrounded the translation of Ἰουδαῖος for quite some time. Sparked in part by apparent anti-semitism in the Gospel of John, scholars observe that certain passages appear to paint “the Jews” (’Ιουδαῖοι) as Jesus’ enemies; such as John 8:44, which seems to equate “the Jews” with the devil. Some attribute such anti semitism in John to the “parting of the ways” between Judaism and Christianity. Others attempt to remedy the issue by rendering ’Ιουδαῖος as “Judean,” but this has only led to accusations of scholars “erasing Jews” from ancient texts. Apart from all the heated debate, this issue has surfaced a number of exegetical problems in John. For instance, “Judean” makes sense in contexts where ’Ιουδαῖος appears in close proximity to Ἰουδαίᾳ (Judea). Consider John 7:1, where Jesus remains in Galilee, instead of going to Judea (Ἰουδαίᾳ), for “fear of the Ἰουδαῖοι.” And yet, most scholars reject “Judean” in contexts where ’Ιουδαῖοι are described as residing abroad – the basic argument being that Judeans who do not live in Judea are not Judeans. But this argument fails to consider that Judeans may have simply migrated to Galilee and maintained an ethnic identity, as well as customs, indicative of their regional origin. By drawing attention to specific archeological data—namely, the manufacture and distribution of stew-pots, pans, stone vessels, and knife pared lamps—this paper will, first, present evidence for the existence of different regional customs in the first century CE. As will be demonstrated, the physical evidence — such as Judean pottery in Galilee, etc.— also indicates that Judeans migrated North. Afterward, both John 2.6 and Revelation 2.9 and 3.9 will be interpreted in light of this information, while drawing attention to other textual data, ultimately arguing that Ἰουδαῖος as “Judean” makes historical sense, even in contexts where Ἰουδαῖοι are described as residing abroad.

A vexing question in the discussion surrounding the biblical Jubilee legislation is the relation it bears to other Near Eastern practices that are somewhat similar in social or economic function, or are denoted by etymologically related terminology. Opinions are divided on whether the andurārum/mīšarum and the yôḇel/šmîṭṭā are historically related phenomena, convergent distillations of socio-economic and religio-cultural concerns, or disconnected and quite disparate customs with only superficial and piebald semblance to each other. Since the first substantial comparisons were made between the biblical Jubilee and fallow land practices ordained in the Hebrew Bible, and the proclamations or mentions of debt, slave, and land releases in Mesopotamia and Anatolia (Lemche 1979, Weinfeld 1995), new evidence has come to light. I will adduce evidence for andurārum practiced in the Middle Babylonian period in the kingdom of Ḫana, bridging the considerable gap between the Old Babylonian (early 2nd millennium BCE) and Neo-Assyrian (early 1st millennium) societies plaguing earlier attempts to compare practices. The Ḫana texts will serve as a basis for a reassessment of how mechanisms for social justice and economic readjustment in Mesopotamia and its environs can be brought to bear on the biblical Jubilee legislation, specifically the relevant passages in the Holiness Code, i.e. Leviticus 25 and 27. I claim that despite some fundamental structural differences between the Mesopotamian proclamations and the biblical legislation, the same conceptual distinctions regarding property rights and claims are operative within both institutions suggesting significant confluence, if not influence, or even shared origins.

Ignacio García-Valiño’s 1997 novel, Urías y el Rey David (Uriah and King David) reads, in many ways, as a quintessential historical novel of the near-popular, not-too-literary variety. Readers get to witness some really pleasing gap-filling, as they learn of Uriah the Hittite’s kidnapping by a band of roving thieves, his eventual emigration to Jerusalem as a religious and cultural outsider, and his love story with the gentle Bathsheba, whom he meets in a bakery. But this back-story is unusual. As a biblical novel, Urías y el rey David stands out as a text which grants a remarkably complete perspective to a minor, marginalized character. Uriah is the protagonist of a new story, with a poignantly depicted history and inner life all his own. Though his story intersects with David’s (in fact, as a member of David’s military, Uriah is tasked with recording David’s actions and contributing, it seems, to the biblical account), the novel reflects the life of the ruler first only as circumscribed by the much richer, more detailed life of the foreigner. In this way, the novel provides an example of a kind of biblical retelling which would truly grant agency and humanity, not just to a minor character, but to a non-Israelite, and which would draw attention to the others that populate the biblical account as well to those others who might read it with a different view. Yet García-Valiño’s novel undermines the reader’s complacency. A shift in perspective does not solve the problem of the Bible’s violence, or its dominance. As this paper will argue, the richness of Uriah’s story serves only to mark more dramatically the insidious way in which a canon, a historiography—of a king, or, it is implied, of a Spanish dictator-- systematically shuts out the other in its midst. For as the novel progresses, David begins to bowdlerize Uriah’s account and encroach threateningly upon his personal life; the novel’s tragic weight is focused through the subtle, gradual narratological infiltration and final annihilation of Urías’s story by David’s. On the one hand, the novel’s ultimately anti-fascist critique of history-writing seems to join other late twentieth-century Spanish fiction in seeking new kinds of anti-totalitarian historiography. By marking the weight of the Bible’s centralizing, alienating authority, moreover, García-Valiño’s novel mobilizes 1 and 2 Samuel to provide a thematic and narratological model for re-examining the relationship between the politically and narratively marginal and those their presence (and subsequent absence) helps maintain in the center.

The paper will evaluate the data from inscriptions, texts, and Diocletian’s Price Edict relevant to understanding Paul’s sometime profession as a skēnopoios, as Acts 18:3 would have it. As a skēnopoios (Lat. tabernacularius), Paul may have made tents or awnings out of leather or linen. The paper will survey information on antique guilds (collegia) of tabernacularii, leatherworkers, and linenworkers, and such material as can be found on the wages, prices, and expenses (including food and drink) associated with these professions to provide a window onto Paul’s mode of sustenance as a “tentmaker.”

Genesis narratives and an etiology that refer to settlements and stone markers are commonly studied from a literary perspective. Geographical and archaeological perspectives raise questions regarding the historical roles of these locations and objects. How did Israelites employ the material world to link past and present – to validate, transmit, and selectively memorialize their history? Do mentions of physical manifestations indicate an historical witness, or might they have been late literary fabrications, preserved traditions, or a combination of these?

In 1941 while searching for a munition's bunker, Allied forces stationed in Cairo discovered a large cache of Byzantine papyri in the cave systems of Tura (south of Cairo). Among the cache, which included thousands of sheets of papyrus, were lost works of Origen and Didymus the Blind. Beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Didymus's Tura commentaries (Genesis, Job, Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and Zechariah) began to be published and not long afterwards text critics began quarrying Didymus's commentaries to assess what they might reveal about the Alexandrian New Testament text. Based on my own work editing a long-lost quire of Didymus's Tura Psalm Commentary that was acquired by Brigham Young University (quire 8 comprising Pss 26:10-29:3), I have determined that many of the text-critical conclusions derived from Didymus's Tura commentaries and espoused by text critics are in need of serious revision. Most notably, every text-critical study of Didymus has failed to recognize that some of his "commentaries" are actually classroom lectures recorded by stenographers and that many of his "variants" are not textual variants, but rather resulted from the oral context of his lectures. This paper therefore seeks to properly situate and contextualize Didymus's Tura materials and to reconsider their text-critical value for the New Testament.

Starting from an analysis of a series of linguistic information from the so-called Nehemiah Memoir (the word byrh “citadel” in Neh 2:8 hab-bîrâ ʾašer-labbayit “the citadel which is next to the Temple,” and 7:2 Hanani the “commander (in charge) of the citadel” śr hbyrh; Neh 3:9 “House/Garrison of the Mighty Men” byt hgbrym; Neh 11:41 “pāqîd officer/overseer who commands a troop of 128 “mighty men” gbwry ḥyl), and comparing it with what is known of Persian territorial administration, it becomes plausible to view Nehemiah’s Jerusalem as an attempt to rebuild a citadel or a fortified military installation together with city walls of a relatively modest size. The circumference of the citadel together with the ramparts would not have exceeded 3000 meters, or less than 2 miles. The Jerusalem citadel could have been used as a refuge in case of a retreat of the Persian forces in the course of a military campaign. The authorization given to Nehemiah to rebuild part of Jerusalem with a citadel would reflect the political opportunism of the Persians. A well-known aspect of the Persian military strategy in the internal organization of their immense empire was administering the territory through citadels. In their numerous wars, it was one of their main strategies to conquer, occupy and manage the citadels with their own garrisons. By placing the discussion in a historical and comparative perspective, one discovers that the strategy of controlling the territory through citadels Heb. bîrâ, LXX bāris, was not invented by the Persians themselves. It was already in use by their predecessors the Assyrians and is attested in the Northwest Semitic domain since OB times as reflected in Mari texts. My proposal to see Nehemiah’s official mission as being mostly a reconstruction of the citadel with limited city ramparts may be supported by linguistic data found in Nehemiah and only indirectly by archaeology. For the Persian times, the archaeological findings concerning Jerusalem are either non-existent or meager. This leads the archaeologists to assume that Jerusalem was no more than a Temple-village, or that the city was very small, limited to the eastern ridge, (the so called “minimalist view”). The only distance indicated in Neh 3:13 between the Valley and Dung Gates is 1000 cubits or 500 meters describing a repaired section of the wall. When comparing these points with the “minimalist plan” of Jerusalem as advocated by M. Avi-Yonah, G. J. Wightman, and Kenneth A. Ristau, one can make a rough estimation of 3000 meters as the total circumference of the Jerusalem ramparts in the time of Nehemiah.

Recent research on the Persian and Hellenistic levels excavated at Ashkelon has shed new light on the nature of the Phoenician reoccupation of the site after the destruction of the Philistine city in 604 BCE and the subsequent growth and development of the settlement in the following centuries. This paper examines the urban form and economic life of the Persian-period settlement. It argues that the site is best conceptualized as a Tyrian emporion whose fortunes were closely connected to the network of Tyrian and Sidonian outposts along the southern Levantine coast and the relationship of this network to Achaemenid imperial policies. It then examines the question of the transition between the Persian and Hellenistic periods and the impact of new political frameworks on the development of the site. It is not until the late Hellenistic period that the site expanded dramatically and the hinterland was more intensively exploited. It is only at this point that Ashkelon appears to have transformed from a small-scale commercial settlement to a true Hellenistic polis.

This paper will serve as an introduction to 3 Apocryphal Apocalypse of John (3 Ap. Apoc. John; BHG 922k), which is being edited and translated for the first time as part of the More New Testament Apocrypha series. Itself titled an "Apocalypse of holy John the Theologian," 3 Ap. Apoc. John is a revelation dialogue between John the Theologian and Abraham that focuses primarily on the fate of the soul and the realities of the afterlife. While this apocalypse of John might stand out from other revelation dialogues for having Abraham as John's divine interlocutor rather than Jesus, the structure of the dialogue and citation of Scripture make 3 Ap. Apoc. John at home among others in this broad genre. In this paper, I will discuss the extant manuscripts of 3 Ap. Apoc. John and the limitations of dating the "original" text. Following that, I will give brief analysis of some of the contents of 3 Ap. Apoc. John and consider its literary and theological importance, especially in relation early Christian apocalypses and broader late ancient discussions regarding the afterlife, resurrection, and conceptions of figures like Jesus, Mary, and Adam.

The emperor Justinian set Candlemas within the city of Constantinople and elsewhere in the East for February 2 in the mid-sixth century. However, the earlier pilgrim text of the Itinerarium Egeriae noted the likely celebration of Candlemas on February 14 and the flocking of people to Jerusalem to join the solemn procession and services there. As Egeria and many others exemplify, travel in the early Christian Mediterranean must be understood not only in terms of space but also in terms of the liturgical calendar-which could often differ from place to place. This paper explores how travel was encouraged or discouraged through changes to the festival calendars in the fourth through sixth centuries CE, and the possibly effects on travel that derive from the institution of new festivals that encouraged it. It also proposes that digital humanities approaches such as GIS tools now allow us to analyze and compare periods of high and low travel within the early Christian Calendar and then visualize it spatially. Through digital methods, we can better understand travel as an integral part of the circular cosmos constructed first by the Roman fasti and then by the early Christian calendar. This calendar served to interconnect religion, people, and places through the organization of time.

In the Preface to his Larger Catechism, Martin Luther offers the following generalization about the relationship between the Decalogue and the Psalms: “[W]hat is the whole Psalter but meditation and exercises based on the First Commandment?” ­Luther’s claim is a provocative one since explicit references to “other gods” and “idols” are relatively uncommon in the Psalter, as is language about worshipping “God alone/only.” Nevertheless, when viewed from the perspective of metaphors and metaphor theory Luther’s claim holds true. The purpose of this paper is to explore how one of the principle divine metaphors in the Psalms—GOD IS REFUGE—can be understood as a form of commentary on the first commandment. At a theological level, this metaphor and its various instantiations (rock, fortress, shield, stronghold, etc.) present a conceptual alternative to the ephemeral and non-weighty quality of idols. In this manner, the GOD IS REFUGE metaphor participates in and extends, albeit more implicitly, the rhetorical discourse expressed through the idol parody in Ps 155:4-8 (cf. Ps 135:15-18). This paper also explores how, from the perspective of metaphor theory, the deployment of the GOD IS REFUGE metaphor in the Psalms attempts to subvert the various ways in which language about God itself can, through overuse and lexicalization, become a type of linguistic idol.

Stepped pools, those physical structures found so regularly in the archaeology of late Second Temple-period Palestine, are conventionally viewed as a prop, things that do little more than enable the socio-ritual process of purification. Quintessentially, the physical structure of the stepped pool itself becomes inserted into a pre-existing socio-religious grid. However, as shown by recent research on the material world in areas such as archaeology, cognitive sciences, cultural anthropology and technology studies, socio-ritual ideas, concepts and strategies did not already exist before being materialised into symbols and structures - instead, they often were facilitated by them. In this paper, I argue that the rite of immersion for Jewish ritual purification during the late Second Temple period did not take precedence, but was helped into becoming by the materiality of stepped pools. In the quest of how Jewish ritual purification is being understood the bodily and sensory relationship of those who use it with these built water installations is of primary significance. This material-centred perspective also places the emphasis on the local, situational, and individual dimensions of religious practices, by which it moves away from notions of homogenous belief and ritual behaviour. The paper discusses some of the particular sensory and material qualities that have not often been discussed in reference to stepped pools but which may have played a role in how Jews experienced and used these structures. Since these stepped pools and the surrounding built environment influenced both the movements of 'water' and 'people,' I will use those particular angles to guide my analysis. I will delve, for instance, into the question of how pungent and dirty did the standing water that was collected during rainy seasons in the stepped pools eventually become? And why, in fact, did this matter, as the workings of stepped pools essentially made the required "living water" to become stale, mute and lifeless. Furthermore, following the ground-breaking work by Lakoff and Johnson (Metaphors We Live By [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003]) on how conceptual systems are grounded in experiences of the world, I will look into how the physicality of stepped pools or other sources of purification may have shaped the conceptual language of these practices as used in contemporary and later written sources, like Josephus and the rabbinic literature.

Markan scholarship has had a central role in the current debate about orality and literacy in the composition, reception, and distribution of the New Testament in its original historical context. In the midst of the ongoing search for greater clarity about the communication cultures of the ancient world, there is an emerging agreement that Mark was composed and distributed as a composition of sound performed for audiences either by storytellers or lectors. How then do we build a research community on the study of the sound of Mark? The problem is that there is a fundamental discontinuity between the predominantly visual sensory system of contemporary study of Mark and the predominantly auditory sensory system of the biblical world. A dimension of that discontinuity is the difference between the auditory and visual sensory systems of the human brain. When Markan scholarship is evaluated in this context, the implication is that Markan scholarship has been based on a systemic misperception of Mark as a text read by readers rather than as a composition of sound performed for audiences. A case study of the puzzle of the ending of Mark at 16:8 based on the analysis and mapping of the sounds of the story reveals a concentration of highly sophisticated techniques of sound composition. Mark 16:8 makes sense as the intended ending of the Gospel when it is experienced as a composition of sound rather as a text of visual signs. The implication is that sound mapping and oral performance are essential elements of a coherent methodology for the study of Mark as sound.

According to various Early Christian apologetic sources, the Sibylline Oracles are a rich locus of prophetic revelation about Jesus. It is claimed that these non-Christian oracular texts are nonetheless authentic divine communication. Among the Early Christian apologetic texts the veracity of of these Oracles is asserted through the apparent success of their applicability to events past, present, and future. This points to a broader trend we can observe as revelation moves from oral performance to text: the original performers of revelation loss of agency in the interpretation of revelation. This leads to two separate but related conclusions: 1) textualized revelation relies on the authority of later performers to both shape the meaning and assert the relevance of the revelation, and 2) later performers and performances can continually assert and win acceptance for new meanings in the revelation. This paper will discuss how this process of constant reassertion of meaning and significance works within Early Christian apologetic literature discussing the Sibylline Oracles.

The Hebrew Bible includes two stories of infant abandonment, both involving slave women. Under harsh slavery, Jochebed abandons her son, later called Moses. Hagar, a maidservant, abandons her infant Ishmael after she is herself cast out of Abraham's household with almost no provisions. The texts present both women as reluctant to part with their babies, but constrained by circumstances imposed on them by others. Research on infanticide among slaves in the United States and the Caribbean indicates that infanticide was sometimes practiced by slave women for various motives. The case of Margaret Garner was made famous by Toni Morrisons's novel Beloved. Garner (like Sethe in the novel) killed her daughter in order to prevent her recapture and return to slavery. Other slaves similarly killed their children as acts of resistance or altruism toward their children. The paper will draw on modern scientific research on infanticide and parental investment and how decisions about whether and how to raise a child are shaped in part by maternal circumstances and the presence or absence of social support (e.g., Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Mother Nature; Melvin Konnor, Evolution of Childhood; Lita Schwatz and Natalie Isser, Endangered Children). It will seek to correlate this research with scholarship on slavery and infanticide to illuminate the biblical narratives of the abandonment of Moses and of Ishmael with some attention to how these infant abandonment stories have been variously understood by modern interpreters.

The early Christian narratives that are categorised as New Testament apocrypha clearly aim at influencing their audiences to idealise the Jesus movement: to prompt penitence, to convert, to believe and to move the believer to spiritual life. What is underestimated is the rhetoric of disability encapsulated in particularly the healing and miracle stories used to promote such conversions and/or to bring about change in their readers/listeners. More than just championing Jesus and promoting Christianity, rather specific biases about normality and the acceptable body are communicated. Two trajectories will be highlighted: (1) asserting the notion of an originally “perfect” and “normal” world, beside which all impairment and disease are seen as evil deviations (the result of sin). (2) An underlying link between paralysis and sexuality that would have enabled ancient Christian audiences to connect paralysis with not only infertility but unacceptable sexuality. In this paper these traditions will be related to early Christian ascetic ideals in the context of ancient medical texts, to show how we discover that In this way desirable Christian roles is advanced by the narrators of early Christian apocryphal stories to affirm normalcy, masculinity and ableism as divine ideals.

“. . . and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph 5:2). Scholars of Ephesians agree overwhelmingly that the author’s paraenetic injunction to “live in love” is grounded in the death of Jesus. Markus Barth thus speaks for a large swath of interpreters when he claims that “[t]he author designates Jesus Christ’s death as an atoning sacrifice offered by the pouring out of blood” (1974: 558). Despite the seemingly self-evident nature of such an interpretation (Christian traditions have long viewed Christ’s cross in terms of the sacrificial rituals described in the Jewish scriptures), Christian Eberhart (2012) argues persuasively that it is, in fact, a distortion of the author’s sacrificial model. While there are several facets to Eberhart’s argument, the most significant is his contention that interpreters of Ephesians have misunderstood the logic of Levitical sacrifice, the system from which the author culls the phrases “offering” (προσφορά), “sacrifice” (θυσία), and a “fragrant aroma” (ὀσμὴν εὐωδίας). That is, in contrast to interpreters of Ephesians, who tend to construe ritual slaughter as the goal of Levitical sacrifice, Eberhart construes Levitical sacrifice as a hierarchical process culminating in God’s receipt of the gift. This paper aims to advance Eberhart’s argument that the sacrificial logic of Ephesians revolves around life rather than death. Specifically, I will contend that the author’s comparison between the Christ-gift and a “fragrant offering” evokes the presentation and perpetual presence of Christ’s resurrection life before God in the heavens (cf. Eph 1:20–21; 2:6; 4:10). The author’s call to imitatio Dei in 5:1 is therefore integrally related to his sacrificial model: worshipers who have received the gift of life through participation in Christ’s resurrection life are called to offer their lives back to the life-giving God.

This paper takes the first step toward comprehensive identification of secondary predicates in the book of Genesis. I begin by showing that what past scholars have called a ‘predicate accusative of state’ (Joüon 1947) or ‘predicative adjunct’ (the ETCBC database) corresponds to what modern linguists call secondary predicates. Secondary predicates are words or phrases co-occurring with a main verb that modify either the subject or an object of the verb. Following Rothstein (2015), the two broad categories of secondary predicate, namely depictives and resultatives, are defined using complex predicate semantics. Analysis on the basis of complex predicate semantics can be contrasted with analysis of adverbials, which are modifiers of simple events. I argue that complex predicate semantics can be mapped directly onto syntax using Cuervo’s (2003; 2015) approach to verbal predicates in combination with Bowers’ (1993; 2001) unified approach to predication. Specifically, secondary predicates are deemed to have a small clause structure, which may be headed by the Biblical Hebrew enclitic particles bə- and lə-. The paper concludes with a working list of secondary predicates so far identified in the book of Genesis.

In 1 Thessalonians 5:8 Paul directs his audience “to put on a breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.” This passage, along with others in the New Testament, has given way to the creation of various Christian images of soldiers geared for battle and even costumes for children allowing them to dress up in “the armor of God.” But, are these images of soldiers and spiritual defense weapons what Paul has in mind when he instructs his audience to put on a breastplate of faith and love? The goal of this paper is to explore these images of armor in conversation with a common image from Paul’s world, the Roman cuirassed statue. After describing my methodological approach, this paper begins with an overview of Roman cuirassed statues, including two case studies on specific examples. Next, I turn to a reading of 1 Thess 5:1-11 that takes seriously the importance of Paul’s visual world as an intertext for reading his letter to the Thessalonians. I read Paul’s armor images alongside the visual program of imperial ideology and conclude that the breastplate and helmet in v.8 evoke the images of cuirassed statues, statues that tout an elaborate imperial agenda. The breastplate and helmet in 1 Thess 5:8, therefore, are not images of spiritual warfare or a charge for believers to dress for battle, but represent an elaborate visual program – a commemoration of the life and death of Christ that also seeks to inspire believers to continue to carry the accomplishments of the past into the present and future.

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The cosmology as described in the Priestly account in Gen 1:1-2:4a has occasioned endless commentary. One of the more perceptive, though little known, studies of this text was published by Baruch Halpern in 2003 titled “The Assyrian Astronomy of Genesis 1 and the Birth of Milesian Philosophy.” Halpern argues that the qualification of the firmament (רקיע) as an “expanse of the heavens” in Gen 1:20 implies the existence of another expanse or firmament, namely an “expanse of the earth” (רקיע הארץ). In this paper, I review Halpern’s argument and add evidence from iconography at Ugarit. The Baal Stele in which the deity holds lightning (Louvre catalog number AO 15775) and stands with the king also displays a cosmology that has intriguing connections with Halpern’s thesis about an “expanse of the earth.” After connecting Halpern’s thesis to this visual representation of cosmology from Ugarit, I explore the ways in which both text and image are mutually illuminating and help to interpret one another.

Frame Semantics investigates how linguistic forms (words, fixed phrases, and grammatical patterns) are associated with the cognitive structures, or frames, which determine how those forms are understood. The frame-based analysis of lexical meaning, pioneered in the 1970s by the American linguistic Charles Fillmore, has since been widely adopted. It is at once intuitive and relatively informal, and complements other methodologies. While it was originally developed for the study of modern languages, its ethnographic orientation affords an illuminating perspective on ancient sources. In the present study I apply it to selected vocabulary from the Old Greek Psalter with a view to demonstrating its utility for both biblical lexicography and critical exegesis. My point of reference is the theme of ἐπιμέλεια ἑαυτοῦ in Greco-Roman moral discourse. Translational usage obviously raises distinct issues, yet one of the virtues of Frame Semantics is the conceptual purchase it offers on cross-linguistic phenomena.

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The study of Manichaeism in the later Roman Empire has received an incredible impulse with the discovery of Manichaean liturgical and documentary texts in the village of Kellis (Ismant el-Kharab, Dakhleh Oasis in Egypt). These texts offer a window into the everyday life and rituals of a Manichaean community on the ground. Among these relatively new texts is a wooden codex containing several (abbreviated) psalms and a remarkable hymn or prayer about the ascent of the soul. This short text, known as T.Kell.Copt. 2, text A5, connects the well-known Manichaean eschatological tradition with the lived experience of Manichaeans in a village context. As little is known about Manichaean liturgical life, this wooden codex with its exceptional texts presents us with major challenges as well as an opportunity. What Manichaean rituals pertaining the journey of the soul were performed in this community? How is it connected to a wider Manichaean tradition? This paper will re-examine two plausible interpretations of T.Kell.Copt. 2, text A5: it was either an instruction manual for the visionary ascent rituals of Manichaean elect, or it belonged to the liturgy for the commemoration of the dead. Both options will be evaluated against the context of the local village society and its wider Egyptian-Christian surroundings, before highlighting the Manichaean and ‘gnostic’ connections. Despite tantalizing interpretative options, I will argue for a minimalist approach that is primarily rooted in the local and everyday concerns of a fourth-century religious community in an Egyptian village.

As Joshua is the first who finally is allowed to cross the river Jordan according to Josh 1, “land” can easily be seen as the most obvious link between the Book of Joshua and the Pentateuch or at least Exodus to Deuteronomy. According to Josh 21:43 the promise of “land” is (at first) finally fulfilled. – Besides this obviousness, a deeper look refers to the more complex questions on conceptions and ideas of land both, in Joshua and Exodus to Deuteronomy. The paper first asks for ideas of “land” as reflected in the book of Joshua, which rather refer not only to questions of different extensions and conceptions than to one consistent concept within the whole book. Here, by analyses of different passages of the book of Joshua, the paper points out exemplarily different understandings of "land" as they are reflected in the Joshua-texts. Second, based on the analyses of Joshua-texts, the paper asks for links to different conceptions of “land” within Exodus to Deuteronomy. In which way are there similarities? Which texts witness comparable “land-conceptions”, and which implicitly or explicitly do not? In which way do the “land conceptions” in Joshua refer to conceptions in Exodus to Deuteronomy? Moreover, how can we interpret them, either syn- or diachronic? Third, a conclusion will summarize and tries to point out interconnections between the understandings of “land” in Joshua and the Pentateuch.

Two languages, two scripts, and three combinations thereof: A personal prayer-book in Syriac and Old Uyghur from Turfan (U 338)

The Jewish romance, Joseph and Aseneth, is often compared to Hellenistic romances in scholarly discussions, but a consensus on whether or not to include it in the genre has never been reached. It seems to uphold many of the most salient conventions of the Greek novels while transgressing others, and the suppositions that scholars make about the date of writing of Joseph and Aseneth have influenced the conclusions they arrive at regarding its status as a Greek novel. West positions Joseph and Aseneth as a forerunner of the Greek novels (1974, 70-81), as does Braginskaya (2012, 96), but Pervo (1991, 145-60) and, more recently, Ahearne-Kroll (2005, 142) surmise some amount of influence from the Greek novels. Wills sees only a "strained connection" with Greek novels, describing Joseph and Aseneth instead as a Jewish novel similar to Greek Esther, Tobit, and Judith (1995, 161-62). Montiglio recently classified Joseph and Aseneth along with the Pseudo-Clementines as examples of adaptations of pagan novels (2013, 202-15). Rather than adjudicating between the various proposals regarding Joseph and Aseneth's status, this paper assesses the influence of the tale-type of the exposed hero on Joseph and Aseneth and two of the five extant Greek romances: the Aethiopica of Heliodorus and Daphnis and Chloe. A tale-type is a matrix of common elements and motifs that travel together in a story form through cultural exchange, and the story of the exposed hero is one of the most ubiquitous in ancient Near Eastern and Hellenistic literature. Not only that, but it is the basis for the story of Moses in extrabiblical traditions about the Exodus and for the Matthean birth story of Jesus. I describe the features of Joseph and Aseneth that indicate a subtle appropriation of certain motifs of the tale-type and compare them with similar moments in the Aethiopica, but especially in Daphnis and Chloe. An analysis of the most significant feature of all three novels, the recognition scene in particular, reveals the peculiar concern of the writer of Joseph and Aseneth both to allude to the conventions of Greek romantic literature while subverting their thematic ends. I conclude that the early Jewish and Christian adaptations of the exposed hero tale-type provide the impetus for the subversion of the telos of most Hellenistic versions of the tale, that fate is inexorable.

From the 1980s onwards criticism of the "Parting of the Ways" paradigm mounted and eventually led to the Ways That Never Parted thesis (named after the influential 2002 conference). One of the key components of this thesis has been to contest the idea of a singular and fixed Jewish or Christian identity. Since that conference further work has appeared on cultural and religious identities in antiquity (e.g. Erich Gruen, Yoshiko Reed and Natalie Dohrmann). One has come to recognize that Jewish and Christian identities cannot be understood as separate from the complex processes through which all inhabitants of the Roman Empire negotiated often multiple identities. Ethnicity configured religion but religion also reconfigured ethnicity. Local cultural/religious identities always had to take into account the socio-political reality of pan-ethnic Hellenism and Romanitas. This paper approaches ancient identity formation by looking at the networks that connected ancient communities of Jews and Christians. It not only charts the permeable and shifting boundaries between Jewish and Christian but also how the rejection of Jewish identity led to an intra-Christian parting, as in the case of Marcion. Jewish and Christian communities (like all ancient religious ones) were fundamentally local. The networks between them often were fragile and tenuous. The resilience of local communities, however, often depended on their connection to a robust network. The emergence and growth of networks as well as their frequent decline and disappearance allowed the interactions through which communal and individual identities changed over time. Furthermore, the viability of a network determined whether religious identities were sustainable or not. Hence the definitive turning point for Jewish and Christian identities in the fourth century occurred when the ascendancy of orthodox Christianity strengthened their networks. Orthodox Christians were able to invoke the power of the Roman state to disrupt and dismantle the networks of religious others. As well as ancient textual and material data, I will be using modern ethnographic research on Jewish communities in Africa (the Falashas and Lemba) who lost contact with the Jewish communities of the North and developed their own highly unique forms of Judaism. They provide interesting case studies on the effects of isolation from and proximity to a network, especially since there are concerted efforts today to insert them into the mainstream of Judaism and create communal identities closer to those of the Judaism of the north. These African studies contribute to the theoretical framework for the conclusion of the paper that analyses the much-discussed mass conversion of the Jews of Menorca to Christianity in 418 CE in terms of the viability of networks to sustain identities.

Material evidences can tell us a lot about the past life and the way hagiographic manuscripts were ‎conceived, produced, used and perceived in the social, institutional and liturgical context related to the ‎veneration of the saints. On the other hand, the observation of contemporary use of the manuscripts ‎also reveals some facets which cannot be detected from their material evidences. The reason is that ‎these facets pertain to a sphere of (immaterial) knowledge which follows a different channel of ‎transmission – essentially oral transmission – that usually does not leave any material trace in the ‎manuscripts. The results provided by both material and immaterial evidences not only complement ‎each other, as long as the diachronic perspective is observed, but also inform us about evolutions and ‎possible changes across the time. The paper intends to provide a reflection on some devotional practices ‎connected to the veneration of saints in Ethiopia. The timespan covered goes from the fourteenth ‎century till the present time. The manuscript evidences will be taken into account and will represent ‎the leitmotif of the entire contribution. Far from providing final results, it rather represents a first ‎attempt of an insight into the topic from a mere material perspective. In particular, themes related to ‎the use, function and perception of Ethiopic manuscripts in the making of Ethiopian sainthood and in ‎keeping it alive will be explored, covering areas which range between low wide-range and high-intensity ‎ritual practices.‎

Jerusalem was always virtual. What did its virtual status mean for physical experience of the city, and how does this biblical tradition condition Jerusalem today? This paper explores ancient and modern images of Jerusalem through the lens of early photographs and the work of Walter Benjamin. From biblical texts like Nehemiah 2 and Ezekiel 40-48 to medieval and early modern texts, religious experience of Jerusalem was primarily virtual, particularly through the media of texts and visual representations. The advent of photography enabled new ways of seeing and thinking, but it also engaged the ancient past. Images in books and in public settings like the Kaiserpanorama in Berlin amazed European audiences while continuing a long tradition of virtual encounters. Verbal and visual images of Jerusalem continued to preoccupy Jewish and Christian traditions into the modern period of Zionism, British Mandate, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and online pilgrimage. Does the virtual character of Jerusalem collapse in the face of political conflict or dissolve in a postmodern simulacrum of free play? I will argue that neither is the case. Through a discussion of the Jerusalem of photographs and Walter Benjamin, I will show that Jerusalem remains as virtual as ever, yet always grounded in history and tradition.

The presence of rhetorical features in Callirhoe both reveals the acumen of the author and emphasizes key events within the narrative. These techniques include prosōpopoiia (speech-in-character), which frequently occurs when Chaereas or Callirhoe experience misfortune, and other features such as anaphora (omission of words between successive phrases), paronomasia (words that sound similarly but have different meanings), polyptōton (repetition of words in different cases) and homoioteluton (repetition of word endings). The examples of prosōpopoiia suffice not only to illustrate Chariton's use of rhetorical devices but also provide a summary of the novel itself. Chariton characterizes Callirhoe, Chaereas, and Dionysius through prosōpopoiia, which places their features-both positive and negative traits-on the lips of the characters themselves, a technique present not only in the ancient novels but also in fables and bioi. By embedding rhetorical techniques within prosōpopoiia, Chariton draws attention to the characters' speeches. Through his use of prosōpopoiia, Chariton allows Callirhoe, Chaereas, and Dionysius to tell their intertwining stories in their own words. This presentation begins with a brief discussion of the traditional and developing consensuses of Chariton's readership and the role of prosōpopoiia in the progymnasmata and rhetorical handbooks. After briefly considering the way prosōpopoiia contributes to characterization in other literature, I devote the bulk of this presentation to discussing prosōpopoiia within Chariton's Chaereas et Callirhoe and the rhetorical techniques Chariton embeds therein. Chariton's astute use of prosōpopoiia and characterization contributes, ultimately, to the developing consensus that the intended audience for the ancient novels included (even if it was not limited to) the elite.

Social justice is a rich biblical theme, even as its centrality for the Christian gospel remains hotly debated in more conservative circles. This question is of crucial importance for the church in contemporary society. We will propose that social justice commitment is a core Christian value, by exploring key prophetic voices in the Hebrew Bible as they make their way into Matthew’s Gospel. That evangelist’s concern for the “little ones” and the “least of these” will provide a lens for considering how justice takes a central place in the teachings of Jesus in the first Gospel. We will bring this biblical scholarship into interdisciplinary conversation with practical theology using a relational integration model and building upon recent empirical research in psychology on social justice commitment and spiritual formation. Studies with emerging and experienced Christian leaders have found positive associations between social justice commitment and formation-related factors such as hope, humility, positive religious coping, interpersonal forgiveness, faith maturity, relational maturity, and mental health. This research supports the understanding that a commitment to social justice is often consistent with other aspects of healthy Christian spiritual formation, although we will also consider theological questions about factors that might make this more valid for some traditions than others. Our interdisciplinary approach to relational integration will lead us to note points of difference between biblical and social science research related to social justice, while also exploring points of resonance. We will also offer reflections based on our relational integration approach about the advantages and challenges of this kind of interdisciplinary collaboration between scholars of different disciplines.

The Ethiopic version is one of the oldest translations of the Bible and it is a living tradition. The initial translation likely took place between 350 and 520 CE and scribes continue to write the Bible on parchment today. The majority of study on the Ethiopic translation of the books of the Hebrew Bible has focused on the Earliest Attested text and has attempted to understand the Greek Vorlage behind it; little attention has been paid to the manuscript evidence from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This study examines dozens of manuscripts from these centuries to shed light on the development of the modern textus receptus. This study explores the work of scribes who created a text that was aware of multiple earlier recessions through techniques that included blending, conflation, and compliance reports. Nineteenth and twentieth century scribes fashioned a text that honored the work of previous generations and continues to be utilized in the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Churches.

This paper will compare the ways in which biblical categories are used to “other” various opponents and adversaries, both foreign and domestic, in published sermons from early Stuart England. In particular, it will explore the diverse ways in which “Canaanites,” “Amalekites” and other biblical “enemies” are identified with the preachers’ own contemporaries, especially in reaction to the newly established Virginia Colony, and in the aftermath of the so-called Gunpowder Plot. In these contexts, Anglican preachers identified both non-Christians (such as the natives of the New World), and other Christians (such as Catholics) with the ancient enemies of Israel, yet to varying purposes. Though in many cases these identifications serve to demonize the “Other” and justify their destruction, in other cases such language is used, surprisingly, to argue for a commonality between “us” and “them,” and to reject violence against “the Other.”

The epistle of James provides a window into a messianic movement that is developing into a community of faithful in the midst of a larger Hellenistic socio-cultural environment. The author’s understanding of the nature of his community’s cultural trajectory over against this environment is implicit in the address to "the twelve tribes of the dispersion," made explicit through the substance of the correspondence, and brought full circle in its conclusion. James speaks to this community through the authority of the name of the Lord and understands himself as both servant and teacher in this new life in light of the coming of that Lord (1:1; 3:1; 5:7-9). The formation of the community engenders a new action arising from the "implanted word" that produces "a kind of first fruits" of God’s creatures who lead the way of salvation (1:18, 21; 5:19-20). The injunction that comprises the form and content of the epistle’s conclusion indicates that this way is tantamount to eschatological restoration. This study is primarily dedicated to an analysis of these final verses (5:7-20). However, a conclusion must be given its place within the utterance of the document as a whole. The genre and structure of the Epistle of James has long been of interest to scholars seeking to determine its purpose and interpretive force. For years, the work of Martin Dibelius held sway and James was understood as only loosely related aphorisms put forth as moral exhortation without particular context or motivation. Following the influence of Peter Davids and Luke Timothy Johnson, among others, more recent scholarship has begun to explore the work as a literary whole with quite an intricate form and structure. By placing the correspondence of James within the genre of the literary epistle, we can move beyond a limiting form-critical view and approach its structure and content from a more holistic perspective. Adapting the work of Davids and Johnson, a chiastic structure can be demonstrated that turns on the pivotal challenge of friendship with the world versus friendship with God (3:13-4:10). In this schema, James 5:7-18 and 5:19-20 form the closing two segments, steadfastness in trial and prayer followed by a conclusio, that correspond with the opening epitome (1:1-27) and instruction on faith and works (2:1-26). Therefore, an examination of the genre and structure of James with an eye toward its integrity as a piece of early Christian literature precedes an exegesis of the final passages, which in turn leads to conclusions regarding the author’s eschatology, rooted in the fundamental moral code of the early Jesus movement. The force of the epistle as reflected in these closing verses calls the community to live in communion in this paradigm shift of telos and fulfillment. This is the work wrought by the fullness of faith, and the saving action that will ultimately bring redemption and restoration.

The Chester Beatty Papyrus 967, dating from the late second or early third century CE, represents a key source of information for the debate over the variant literary editions of Ezekiel and Daniel. Recent research has shown that some of the unique textual features of this manuscript are also reflected in the Old Church Slavonic version of these books which originated in the late ninth-early tenth century and is today extant in Cyrillic testimonies dating at the earliest from the fourteenth century. The following cases appear to be particularly relevant for comparative textual criticism. On the one hand, the OCS-Ezek conforms to LXX967 in lacking Ezek 12:26-28. Among secondary translations, this omission was previously known to exist in VLWirc only. On the other hand, the OCS-Dan displays very special features at the level of the textual arrangement. In fact, despite being a witness to Theodotion's version (Th-Dan), it unexpectedly presents the same order of chapters found in LXX967, namely Dan 1-4; Dan 7; Dan 8; Dan 5; Dan 6; Dan 9-12. The most fascinating aspect of this agreement is that it is merely confined to the structure of the book and does not affect its internal features. The implication is that the arrangement found in LXX967 should no longer be considered a distinctive trait of the Old Greek (OG). Indeed, the OCS-Dan tradition attests to the previous existence in Greek of a Lucianic redaction of Th-Dan with the very same order of chapters of LXX967. Because Th-Dan is believed to be an independent translation and not a revision of the OG, it may be assumed almost safely that the sequence Daniel 1-4; 7; 8; 5; 6; 9-12 belongs to an earlier literary edition of the book. The testimony of OCS-Dan consequently enables us logically to suppose that at least in the Greek tradition two arrangements of Daniel were adopted for each of the two versions. This is shown by LXX967 and codex Chig. R.VII 45 (LXX88[87]) for the OG, and by OCS-Dan and the rest of the Byzantine manuscript evidence in the case of Th-Dan. The OCS translations were evidently based on Greek prototypes (today lost or still untraced) that replicated a textual stage of transmission that can be thought to have circulated since Late Antiquity. Even if indirectly, they provide us with new insights into the textual history of Ezek and Dan. The detected cases of textual agreement with LXX967 demonstrate that the OCS tradition, which unfortunately still remains completely unknown to most biblical scholars, deserves full consideration and should therefore be finally integrated into LXX studies.

In its construction of a new priesthood and a new sacrificial system, Hebrews makes extensive use of Jewish scripture. The Hebrews author uses the language and the sacrificial framework of Leviticus and uses Psalm 110 to assign Jesus to the priesthood according to the order of Melchizedek, and at the same time use Genesis 14 to assign priority to that priesthood over that of the Levitical priesthood. And after constructing a new priesthood, and a new kind of sacrifice (once, for all, Hebrews 7:27), the argument culminates in Hebrews 8 with the use of Jeremiah 31:31-34 as the call for a new covenant. While numerous scholars have noted the heavy use of “old” sacrificial language to describe the new, they also are quick to suggest a complete break with the past. Language in Hebrews 8:13 that describes the “old” (covenant) as obsolete certainly gives scholars ample reason to make those conclusions. What happens, though, if we focus on Jeremiah 31 as the key text, not just for the obvious “new covenant” language that it provides, but also as a possible shared experience that it may represent to the author and audience of Hebrews? Jeremiah’s oracle, itself dates from a traumatic period: the start of the Babylonian Exile. More than one scholar has situated Hebrews in a context of suffering or persecution as a result of a Christ-centered belief. Other scholars, most notably Pamela Eisenbaum, have argued that Hebrews was “a desperate attempt to construct anew a religious heritage that seems to have all but disappeared” (2008) as a result of the decimation of the Jerusalem Temple and the end of the sacrificial cult (assuming, along with Eisenbaum a post-70CE date). Jews around the Mediterranean were scattered into a new exile as a result of multiple aggressions against them. Instead of religious controversy as the incentive for the author of Hebrews, it was, instead, religious survival. Interestingly, another Jewish group, the Essenes, who could be interpreted as living in a self-imposed exile, also used Jeremiah in their expressions of a “new covenant.” I maintain that the use of Jeremiah 31 helps us see Hebrews in a different light. Exile, whether it’s spiritual, geographic, or metaphorical, requires transformation of thought and practice. Interestingly, another Jewish group, the Essenes, who could be interpreted as living in a self-imposed exile, also used Jeremiah in their expressions of a “new covenant.” Using the Essenes as a comparator, Hebrews could represent another, later, Jewish approach to exile. Reading Hebrews as a form of exile literature allows us to understand the unique aspects of the text, what it uses from the past, and how modern readers may move forward in reading the supersessionism of the text in a way that does not pit one living religion over another.

First, I say a few words about how and why I, a European, came to the U. of Chicago Div. School in history of religions to study with J. Z. Smith as my doctoral advisor in 1975. I was also a TA with JZS in several BA courses there. JZS’s handwritten and typed handouts, both for Ph. D. students and for undergraduates, were initially puzzling. Why these kinds of materials? What were we to learn from e.g. the long list of items in the Egyptian Negative Confession of sins, ca. 1550 BC, or the 14 sections long bibliography on Babylonian Astronomy, ending with the Mani Codex? Figuring out the contexts for such texts was a central aim. JZS taught you to ferret out the interests and the positions of ancient authors, and also to find “the place to stand” for yourself as a student and as a budding scholar. You belong to a tradition, and you also find yourself in the wobbly arena of innovation, of not-yet-a-place. How will you argue for your views? There’s no “last word” in any area of study, and yours won’t be that, either. Grasp the risk of your taking your stand, and be clear in your argumentation to your readers. JZS went through every word of my Ph. D. proposal, making sure that I understood the necessity of absolute precision in it. He also held Saturday morning seminars for us Ph. D. students, with assigned book readings. Why that particular book? Well, that became an exercise in studying JZS own scholarly interests: he is the alien text! JZS lacked dogmatism and faith in time-honored ways of research. Avoid taming the texts! Let them out of the zoo of traditional treatments of them! Your job is to show how you apply theory and method in your work. He distrusted sheer conceptual thinking (note his utterance: “there’s no data for religion”); he harbored no vengeance-goals in research, as in “I’ll nail my predecessor-in-the-field” attitude. There was no demand for loyalty to JZS as your Doktor-Vater, so don’t try to be a clone! Here one should recall F. Nietzsche’s saying that you treasure your teacher badly if you always remain his pupil. The issue is your own work. Still, JZS was our brave model, and I once gave him a bumper sticker saying “Chutzpah is not hubris, you know.” He smiled, and propped it up on his desk. Other anecdotes will illustrate some of the above.

The study of fasting in the Qur’an and in Islam more generally has gained relatively little attention. The only major study is Kees Wagtendonk’s Fasting in Islam which was published back in 1968 and very little has appeared since then. This paper will examine the Qur’anic references to the Ramadan fast, mainly Q. 2:183-185 in light of Jewish and Christian Biblical and post-Biblical literature. This paper will explore the issue of fasting in the Qur’an from three specific angels. The fasting during a specific time of the year, for a designated period of time. In the Qur’an this is, of course, the month of Ramadan, but the Muslim tradition was well aware of other religious fasts, particularly the Christian fast of Lent, and the Jewish fast of atonement. This is mentioned twice in the main Qur’anic fasting pericope, both in Q. 2:183 and 2:185. This section will examine the extent to which the Ramadan fast is part of a wider tradition of seasonal fasting.The second theme will be the Qur’anic permission for those who are ill or travelling to abstain from the fast. Again this appears twice in the Qur’anic fasting pericope, once in Q. 2:184 in relation to the payment of a fidya (or ‘recompense’) to make up for missing the fast, and again in Q. 2:185. This will focus on issues such as travel, capacity, illness, and menstruation, as reasons for abandoning the fast. The final section will examine the association with prayer and fasting. Although the Qur’an does not directly associate prayer and fasting, as the Bible does in Acts 13:3 and 14:23 (as well as elsewhere), the two devotional acts are often linked in Islam. This section will briefly explore the theological and devotional aspect of fasting. Although these are, by no means, all of the issues connected to fating in the Qur’an, or in Islam more generally, it is hoped that by exploring the Biblical and post-Biblical understanding of fasting, a more nuanced understanding of Qur’anic ritual and theological value fasting can be gained.

This paper contributes to recent discussions on the necessity of effective-history for New Testament exegesis through close examination of a single case study-the patristic interpretation of the famous command to 'render to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's' (Mark 12.17; Matt. 22.21; Luke 20.25). In response to valid concerns about the nature and goal of the effective-historical task, I argue that it is essential to distinguish between the exegetical and hermeneutical priorities of such work. At the exegetical level, the study of subsequent effects significantly broadens the interpretive options. Yet these possibilities are often more significant for the history of interpretation of an individual NT text, than for the interpretation of that text in its historical context. This leads me to contend that even if NT exegesis benefits less from the exegetical results of Wirkungsgeschichte, it can more meaningfully profit from the hermeneutical assumptions and methods of previous readers. I demonstrate how attention to the grammatical training of certain patristic authors largely explains the multiple applications of the "render" command in the early Roman period, since these authors used the command as a maxim that could apply to multiple situations. This finding provokes questions about the parallels and discontinuities in the methods and motivations of ancient and modern reading cultures. To what extent do modern scholars consider the command to speak to different ethical issues? If there is resistance to such an enterprise, why might this be the case? These questions highlight that the impact of a text can profoundly contribute not only to contemporary NT exegesis, but perhaps even more so to the hermeneutical endeavour.

The oracle concerning the rise of the nations to Zion (Isaiah 60) is largely recognized as a written prophecy elaborated from many fragments, essentially borrowed from First and Deutero-Isaiah. The logic of their assembly is more difficult to grasp. Structures elaborated from different perspectives (poetical, thematic, structural…) have been proposed without reaching a consensus. In this paper, I propose to start with some diachronic observations, made by O. Steck concerning the intertextuality with Isaiah 49, to establish an empirical basis for the structure. Then taking account of some classical features of biblical poetry I will show how different fragments are put together in a structure elaborated by the repetition of expressions, words or synonyms. This analysis illustrates the gain to mix and match with diachronic and synchronic approach.

The complex of problems relating to providence, fate, and free will are among the most difficult of those presented by the Hermetic literature, not least due to the diversity of the terminology employed, as well as the range of solutions and doctrines expressed across the various Hermetic treatises. In honor of Arthur Darby Nock’s manifold contributions to our understanding of ancient Mediterranean religion, particularly Hermetism and Gnosticism - not least his magisterial critical edition of the Corpus Hermeticum itself - this paper will address some neglected or misunderstood passages regarding providence, fate, determinism, and freedom in the Hermetic corpus.

A reader of the Bible who comes to the poetry of Margaret Atwood cannot but be struck by the mythologically resonant images of the “Snake Poems” cycle in 1984’s Interlunar. Central to these poems are complex associations between the the snake and the poet. The snake shares an affinity with the poet, but it remains distant from and alien to her. Further, it is opaque and grotesque, yet also seductive: an inaccessible, inhuman muse. In the “Snake Poems,” the serpent is simultaneously an emblem of the cosmos’s fundamental silence and of the divine power of language to transform the poet. Atwood’s serpentine imagery here evokes, among other things, the crafty edenic serpent and enigmatic Nehushtan fashioned by Moses, even if the link between snake and poet is perhaps not direct in biblical texts. However, Atwood’s reflection on these same sets of images 20 years on in 2007’s The Door opens up onto a more substantial connection with biblical poetry. In that volume’s untitled cycle of poems on poetry, Atwood depicts the poet less as an austere oracular visionary than as a rumpled and ineffectual object of derision. Most notably, these poems draw on an idea of Atwood’s, developed elsewhere in her work, that the writer is “two-handed,” simultaneously duplicitous and truth-telling. Reading The Door alongside Interlunar creates a vision of the poet that begins to resemble a figure central to biblical literature: the prophetic poet. Biblical prophets lie, they steal one another’s words (Jer 23), they are derided as a “parable peddlers” (Ezek 21), and, most embarrassingly, offer no sure way to distinguish true from false prophecy. Furthermore, like that of Atwood’s poet, the prophet’s art is double—it gestures toward a voice beyond typical human experience that is also inescapably the human artist’s craft.

John's Prologue is a deification text. When patristic theologians wrote about theosis, they were drawing on biblical themes that appear not only in Paul and in the Catholic Epistles, but also in the opening lines of the Fourth Gospel. Though biblical scholars have often dismissed ecclesiology as a major theme in John, this paper will argue that the Prologue inseparably weds Christology to an ecclesial vision of corporate deification. This Johannine theosis entails the re-origination of "children of God" who are born "from above" and into the divine family of the Father and Son. The process of supernatural filiation that unfolds in the narrative proper is adumbrated in the Prologue as "God", the "Word", and general references to humanity disambiguate from such abstract categorizations into "Father," "Son," and "children." Moreover, the Prologue's account of the Word's Incarnation establishes the pattern of divine-human exchange, one of the primary Christological grounds for later discourse on theosis. Anticipating later exchange formulas, John 1:11-14 implies that humans become divine because the divine became human. Though John's Gospel is rarely understood as bearing ecclesiological interests, and though Pauline texts have received the most attention in the renewed interest in theosis, this paper will show that the Johannine Prologue is as ecclesial as it is Christological and establishes a robust vision for the church's corporate deification.

Genesis 4 describes the first and most infamous of murders. Cain, envious of his brother, lures Abel into a field and commits the first recorded act of fratricide. But in spite of this murderous treachery, Cain’s punishment is more perplexing than just. Although forced to wander, he is given a mark of protection from God, allowed to marry, have children and build a city. Over the centuries Jews and Christians have retold and reinterpreted the story in literature and the visual arts. While this is expected in religious contexts, what is somewhat surprising is the degree to which the story has also impacted so-called “low’ culture. While sacred music contains little to no mention of Cain and Abel, there are dozens of references to and retellings of the story in pop/rock music. Popular artists such as Cher, John Mellencamp, Prince, and Bruce Springsteen (to name just a few) have incorporated references and retellings of the story into songs and often with a particular focus on the person and legacy of Cain. This paper traces how the Cain and Abel story has exerted significant influence over these artists’ as they reinterpret and apply the tale of Cain’s treachery in their own contexts. For some artists, Cain’s evil deed casts a long shadow over humanity whereby many are labeled the “children of Cain” and carry the mark laid on him by God.

Alessandro Duranti has drawn attention to the importance of spatial context for the shaping of a speech event. This element has received little attention in either linguistics or biblical studies. Those who do give themselves to the oral delivery or performance act of Mark’s Gospel rarely offer more than a wave towards a worship setting with an occasional alternative given generically as “mission”. Hence the key person is characterized as either a lector or a performer. This paper seeks to interrogate the text for three main elements. Firstly, what poetic and rhetorical structures are found in the text that invite an audience response so as to shape a speech event; secondly, what might these constructed speech events imply about the personnel involved in the delivery of Mark’s gospel; and thirdly, what settings or spatial contexts can be inferred from such elements. This last invites a consideration of the tension between the narrative setting(s) in the Gospel within which teaching and action occurs and the possible built environments within which a receptive and engaged audience is located. The spotlight for an interrogation of this tension will be the parables chapter (Mark 4).

In a highly influential article, Daniel Boyarin has argued that a contemporary split within feminist theory – represented by Monique Wittig and Luce Irigaray – reproduces the divergence between two ancient competitive worldviews: early Christianity and rabbinic Judaism. While rabbinic Judaism – like Irigaray – was fully committed to a naturalized concept of gender, early Christianity attempted to transcend it. Neither of which, however, bodes well for women (or, as Boyarin more precisely refers to them in this context, to “human beings born with a ‘vagina’”): while the first concept traps women in their biological role, the second promises transcendence that is predicated on the effacement of femininity and ends up reproducing a highly masculine concept of androgyny. In this paper, I will suggest that Boyarin’s paradigm, while still of help for mapping ancient Jewish and Christian approached to gender, requires a thorough revision to do justice to the evidence at hand. First, I will argue that Wittig’s feminist analysis, in which both sex and gender constitute a meticulously constructed conspiracy to enslave more than half of humankind, can only be paralleled within gnostic Christianity. Proto-orthodox sources, while acknowledging the problematics of gender, treat it either as a second-best situation, or, less frequently, as a result of a well-deserved fall due to sin. In both latter cases, the creation of gender is ultimately justified, and thus cannot be paralleled by Wittig’s socio-cultural analysis. It is thus only in gnostic writing that gender is unjustified – or, rather, thoroughly evil – instrument of oppression and enslavement, and thus form a viable parallel to Wittig and other radical feminist approaches, metaphysics notwithstanding. Yet, it is also specifically in gnostic sources, in which Boyarin’s second claim, that transcendent androgyny was always predicated on masculinity, is also called into question. Second, I will argue that Boyarin’s argument regarding the continuity between Hellenistic Judaism – represented in this case mostly by Philo of Alexandria – and early Christian concepts of gender must be qualified, since in some cases Philo appears to be more in concurrence with early Rabbinical ideas. Third, I will suggest that a deeper analysis of Genesis Rabbah evinces another important qualification to the concept of “naturalized gender,” and that the latter can be brought out through a deeper engagement with Irigaray’s analysis. While modern feminist analysis is certainly of much use in analyzing ancient understandings of sex and gender, and thus Boyarin’s basic method has much to recommend it, my paper will demonstrate that such course requires a minute attention to detail, which could nevertheless result in a helpful generalized scheme of ancient Jewish and Christian approaches to gender and their multifaceted relationship to modern feminist and queer theory.

I propose to present a paper that engages Smith’s work methodologically and theoretically, in terms of his comparative method and efforts to construct a cognitive theory of religion. Smith seeks to situate the comparative enterprise, including biblical studies, within the overall project of the study of religion. Paying special attention to his writings that are concerned chiefly with biblical studies, I will discuss Smith’s program, methodologically, in terms of description (locating select examples within the rich texture of their social, historical, and cultural environments, and describing how our second-order scholarly tradition has intersected with the chosen exempla), comparison (both in terms of aspects and relations held to be significant, and with respect to some category, question, or theory of interest to us as students of religion), redescription (of the exempla being compared, each in light of the other), andrectification (of the academic categories in relation to which they have been imagined). Theoretically, I will focus on Smith’s recognition of difference—rather than similarity—as the point of entrée and critical leverage for explanation and interpretation, and insistence on translation—which he has described as “the most urgent current intellectual issue within the human sciences”—as an intellectual operation that necessarily entails difference and discrepancy and, therefore, that constitutes the horizon of both scientific explanation and humanistic interpretation. I will conclude with a few anecdotes I have heard Smith tell over the years, which illustrate his work and reflect his incomparable depth of character.

The Prayers of Women in Old Testament Narratives: A Theological Exploration

This paper makes a bivalent argument relative to the reception of the Gospel of Matthew in the Ascension of Isaiah (AscIs), one that seeks to integrate reception history with Jewish-Christian relations. Accordingly, this paper develops in two stages. First, based on the Greek Amherst papyri, P.Amh. I.1 (AscIs 2.4b-4.4a), as well as the Gəʿəz editions of the AscIs, this paper argues that the AscIs has absorbed the Matthean tradition by adopting unique lexical and conceptual items (see esp. AscIs 1.4, 3.13, 3.14, 3.15-17, 3.18a, 4.3). These points of contact uncover larger points of affiliation, specifically, that the AscIs has fashioned the figure of Isaiah as an imitation of the Matthean Jesus. Moreover, since Isaiah’s Matthean-infused vision of the ‘Beloved’ is said to be secretly recorded in a book (which is a cypher for the Book of Isaiah, see 4.20-21) and the use of Isaiah in Matthew is notably prominent (Matt 1.22-23, 3.3, 8.17, 12.17-21, 13.14-15, 15.7-9, 21.4-5, 21.13), the AscIs functions as a literary prequel for the Gospel of Matthew in which Isaiah inscribes his vision of the Beloved in the Book of Isaiah which is then elucidated in turn in the Gospel of Matthew. Such textual, figurative, and literary associations between the AscIs and Matthew are suggestive of an overlapping social function between this early Christian gospel and this second-century pseudepigraphon. Accordingly, the second stage of this paper argues that Matthew and the AscIs share a similar social function, namely, both texts seek to establish and substantiate their own in-group in light of the dissent of proximate groups with a similar religious affiliation by means of two motifs: the martyred prophet and in-group polemical discourse featuring an esteemed Jewish figure. Thus, the affiliation established with the Matthean tradition has a targeted aim, namely, that through reception and mimicry the AscIs has imbibed these dual Matthean motifs a means of perpetuating the polemic interests of Matthean Christianity. Still, key differences remain. While the polemical thrust of Matthew functions to establish a narrative context for the particularities of the Matthean community in light of perceived challenges from neighboring Jewish traditions, the AscIs is attempting to defend the specific practice of heavenly ascent visions in light of other groups of Christ-devotees who dissent from this emphasis. The former is largely an intra-religious polemic operating within a Jewish religious boundary in which Matthew negotiates and maps a self-definition for early Christ-devotees with Jewish interlocutors in its purview (Verheyden, Saldarini, Overman). On the other hand, while the religious affiliation of the AscIs is equally complex, and, together with Matthew, its proximity with Judaism is well noted (Piovanelli, Frankfurter), it has repositioned Matthew’s intra-religious polemic for a new intra-religious environment in which the interlocutors are now adjacent sub-groups of Christ-devotees. Both Mathew and the AscIs represent Jewish-Christianit(ies), but the polemical environment has shifted. As a result, the AscIs is a key hinge in the history of Jewish-Christian relations, as intra-Jewish polemics are repositioned by Jewish Christ-devotees for an intra-Christian context.

Post-Reformation debates on the doctrine of justification are an example of how a progressive reflection on biblical concepts (reason, tradition and culture as subordinate lenses to the sacred text), rather than the new discoveries of incipient revelation through tradition (in regards to John Henry Newman), produce theological maturation which intends to further explain Scripture. The purpose of dealing with maturation is to go against those who dichotomize the Reformation and their immediate heirs in the following century (Post-Reformation), but also to expand on the idea of continuity with development (not monolithic repetition), precision with breadth (careful choice of words), identity with charitable inclusiveness (orthodoxy without being divisive).

Some Syriac manuscript witnesses have come down to us that preserve translations of biblical texts that must be placed at an intermediate point between the Peshitta (second half of the 2nd century) and the Syrohexapla (beginning of the 7th century) versions. Some could be identified with the Philoxenian translation (year 507); others must be prior, from at least the 5th century. These are very particular Syriac versions of 1 Maccabees, Isaiah, Canticles and Psalms. The Syriac version of 1 Mac (specifically 1:1 - 14:25) which is preserved in the Codex Ambrosianus (7a1, 6th-7th century), is very different from the one we have attested in the rest of the manuscripts of the Peshitta. The explanatory hypothesis for this double attestation is due to G. Schmidt, who in 1897 proposed understanding the version of 7a1 (S2) as a revision of the original Syriac translation (S1), which is the one attested in the majority of the manuscripts. This revision presumably eliminated the expansions (and conflations) which characterize S1 (and which, according to Schmidt, are due to its character as a free and periphrastic version of the Greek of the LXX), with the help of Greek manuscripts. S2 must be prior to the 6th-7th centuries, the approximate time to which the only manuscript that preserves it, 7a1, is dated, for which reason it could be from the beginning of the 6th century or go back to the 5th century. Schmidt's explanation is now almost 120 years old and it has not been put to the test by anyone. His hypothesis has been passed down as established tradition without being challenged, to the point that it is taken as certain in the critical edition of the Peshitta from the Peshitta Institute, which prints 7h7 (S1) as the main text, leaving 7a1 (S2) for the odd pages and in a smaller font (from 1:1 up to 14:25; from there on the two versions are joined). This paper aims to challenge this theory. In fact, this study shows that there is no relationship between S1 and S2, that is, S2 cannot be considered a revision of S1 (intended to eliminate additions) but it must be understood as a new translation made from the Greek. For its part, S1 is characterized by a good number of double readings that could be interpreted on the basis of a double translation, one of which probably came from a Hebrew Vorlage.

Jennifer Wright Knust, in her Abandoned To Lust, locates Paul within a trajectory of Jewish, and then Christian, authors who deride their others as sexually depraved. Rhetorical critics have generally failed to engage Knust’s work, I suppose because we have not seen it as a sophisticated instance of rhetorical analysis, the explication of a topos, or rhetorical commonplace. Nor am I certain that Knust would so identify her project. Her chapter on Paul begins with a quotation from the passage I wish to discuss today, 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8. The passage vexes commentators with notorious problems. When Paul invokes porneia, what behavior or behaviors does he have in mind? When he tells the believers to acquire their own vessels, does he mean they should exercise self-control over their bodies, more specifically their penises, or they should marry? Does Paul’s brother language embrace women? And how do believers, “brothers,” harm one another by practicing porneia? I cannot resolve the porneia question, nor am I confident in my understanding of the vessels Paul expects the Thessalonians to acquire or control. But I do wish to advance several arguments. First, Paul is not necessarily correcting widespread misbehavior in Thessaloniki, as many commentators assume; instead, he invokes a common topos as an ice-breaker for a more challenging issue he must address. The Thessalonians would no more have approved of adultery than Paul does. Second, far too many commentators neglect the massive cultural gap between the sex lives of ancient Thessalonians and the concerns of contemporary readers. Arguments about fornication and adultery, grounded though they may be in the linguistic conventions of ancient texts, too seldom acknowledge this cultural divide. Third, inclusive language does not help us understand this passage. Here Paul imagines porneia and adultery as violence men commit against other men, not an activity in which women engage. If theologically inclined readers like myself wish to draw any implications from this passage, we should simply acknowledge that Paul regards sexual behavior as social rather than strictly personal. But we dare not suppose we share Paul’s assumptions about sex or sexual morality. And fourth, Paul’s exhortations regarding porneia and communal love in 1 Thess 4:1-12 both reflect a broader preoccupation with external perceptions of the Thessalonian believers. In the end, Paul deploys an unthreatening cultural stereotype as one step toward addressing the more vexing concern about those who have fallen asleep.

This paper argues that the initial Hebrew text of Ps. 110:3, which was preserved faithfully by the LXX, was altered by later Jewish and rabbinic traditions following the adoption of Ps. 110 by Christians as a favored messianic psalm. Without altering a single letter, the Masoretes codified a reinterpretation of Ps. 110:3, already visible in the Psalms Targum and the Peshitta, which specifically eliminates two references to birth-חילך and ילדתיך-using Masoretic pointing. This obfuscation of the original references to the divine birth/adoption of the king, which is typical of Mesopotamian and early Israelite coronation literature, was done as a polemic response to Christians, who had reinterpreted the psalm as prophecy of the incarnation and birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Because the Hebrew text was already fixed, the Masoretes pointed the text so as to eliminate references to birth while attempting to maintain grammatical congruency with the overall context of the psalm.

The last several decades have seen a growing interest in notions of the self in biblical literature. At stake in many debates has been the question of how similar ancient Israelite and early Jewish constructions of the self were to modern ideas and what role they might play in assessing a genealogy of the western self. A crucial issue raised in a recent monograph by David Lambert (How Repentance Became Biblical. Oxford 2016) has been a criticism of what he sees as a common practice of mischaracterizing language of the self in early Jewish literature according to modern categories. This essay seeks to contribute to this ongoing discussion by arguing that spirit language is a prevalent mode for constructing notions of the self in the Hebrew Bible. Some poetic texts, for example, refer to rûaḥ “spirit” as a body part similar to “heart,” “throat,” and “innards” (Gen 41:8; Prov 15:13; Isa 57:15). However, modern interpreters often miss this more material conception of rûaḥ since it does not easily comport to any organ in the modern anatomy. Following Ingrid Lilly, I see rûaḥ as a kind of “inner wind” which flows freely in and out of the body, thus complicating notions of individuality and self-possession in biblical literature. Spirit language is also often utilized in expressions of will. One’s spirit can be “hardened” and can “yearn” for another (e.g. Deut 2:30; Isa 26:9). To some extent, these ideas can and have been equated with modern notions of the self, in part by reading the language metaphorically. That framework is challenged, however, when we consider other examples of spirit language where intense and personal passions more clearly originate outside of the self (e.g. Num 5:14; Jdg 13:25) and when one’s spirit is problematized to the extent that the self becomes a kind of ‘other’ (e.g. Ezek 11:19–20; Ps 51:12–14). As this paper will show, in these and more instances, theoretical frameworks from outside biblical studies prove helpful, including Michel Foucault’s “technologies of the self” and Charles Taylor’s notions of the “porous” and “buffered” selves. In particular, recognizing that the philological question, “What is self-language?” is not an inquiry limited to biblical studies, this paper takes significant methodological cues from Frederick M. Smith’s monograph, The Self Possessed: Deity and Spirit Possession in South Asian Literature and Civilization (Columbia Univ. 2006). Smith’s investigation into spirit possession in sanskritic literature anticipates and proposes solutions to several of the problems encountered in a study of spirit language as self language in biblical texts. These include: the difficulty of establishing a steady vocabulary for the self across languages, eras, and cultures as well as the limitations of using “experience” as a category for investigating conceptions of the self in a non-western culture.

This paper will explore three comparable cases of women speaking and/or acting with authority during the first century A.D., in a geographical area spanning from Egypt to Phrygia, namely: the daughters of Philip, mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles (21:9) and in Eusebius of Cesarea (Historia Ecclesiastica III, 31.3-4; 39.7-16, V, 24,2-3) who is, in turn, quoting other authors (Polycrates of Ephesus among them); the daughters of the patriarch Job, with reference to a narrative displayed in an O.T. apocryphal text from the first century A.D., the Testamentum Iobi (46-50); the female members of the Jewish community of the Therapeuts, called Therapeutae or Therapeutrides, mentioned by Philo Alexandrinus (De vita contemplativa 68).

This paper engages the use of Social Identity Approaches in relation to writing a one chapter commentary on John’s Gospel. It asks of the Gospel questions shaped by SIA such as why do people join groups, how do individuals become a group, and what consequences follow for the identity of individuals, for inter-group interactions, and for intragroup or in-group practices and interactions. Eschewing an easy identification between textual construction and actual social circumstances, it focuses on the former in seeking to identify how John’s Gospel constructs the identities of Jesus-believers in relation to those who are not believers and in relation to each other.

The comparison of early anthropomorphic figures originating from different cultures raises the question of the emergence of visual media to express metaphysical concepts and the idea of the divine. Examples taken from a large area extending from Iberia to the Oxus, ca 4000-2000 BCE, indicate an evolution in three main phases from the esthetic point of view of visual expressions. Phases 1 (the dominant steatopygeous figure); and 2 (the schematic idol), are restricted to limited iconographic types of indeterminate identity. Phase 3 presents an infinite variety of iconographic types, introducing narratives, images of deities designated by their specific attributes and images of mortals, in action, human beings seen at their place in society. The different civilizations considered did not go through this evolution at the same time but the three phases seem to correspond 1) to the end of the Neolithic and the agropastoral villages; 2) the appearance of complex societies in the Chalcolithic period, and 3) the development of State-run societies in the Early Bronze Age.

This essay seeks to demonstrate how the study of the intertextuality pertinent to Paul’s use of the metaphor of leaven in 1 Corinthians 5 enriches our understanding of the rhetorical impact of the metaphor. In contrast to most scholars who simply designate the book of Deuteronomy as the background of 1 Corinthians 5 (e.g. Richard Hays), this study recognizes and investigates the complexity of the shared knowledge between Paul and his audience. Methodologically, this paper seeks to integrate intertextuality, linguistics, and sociological description for studying metaphors. Approaching the linguistic data, this paper asks two questions: what does the metaphor mean? How does it function in the discourse? To answer these questions, the study entails two different, but interdependent tasks: (1) to identify and construct the shared knowledge needed to make sense of the metaphor, and (2) to interpret the target text in light of the shared knowledge encapsulated in the metaphor. To accomplish the first task, this paper draws on the theory of lexical coherence from Systematic Functional Linguistics to identify the “missing piece,” i.e. the knowledge related to leaven. Next it investigates Paul’s possible intertexts to trace each possible component of this knowledge. For the second task, this paper draws on the blending theory from Cognitive Linguistics to integrate all the components derived from the first task so that a possible shared knowledge between Paul and his audience can be reconstructed. Finally, in light of this knowledge, the rhetorical impact of the metaphor of leaven will be interpreted. As a conclusion, the metaphor of leaven is related to the physical experience of using leaven to leaven a whole batch of dough in Paul’s days and the theology and tradition of unleavened bread in Israelite’s feasts of Passover and Unleavened Bread. It functions in this discourse to justify Paul’s exhortation to remove the sexually immoral man from the Corinthian congregation so that the congregation can remain morally clean and pure. Overall, this paper argues that the integration of intertextuality, linguistics, and sociological description more fully captures the complexity of the metaphor of leaven in 1 Corinthians 5 than other scholars have recognized in their discussions related to the metaphor. This lack of recognition of the complex and multilayer nature of the metaphor significantly reduces the rhetorical impact on the Pauline audience.

Appearing just outside the so-called ‘Succession Narrative,’ 2 Samuel 21 has been largely overlooked, especially by those pursuing literary readings of the book of Samuel. This is unfortunate since this carefully constructed narrative contributes significantly to the characterizations of Saul and David. This paper has three goals. First, it offers a close reading of 2 Sam 21, drawing attention to literary features of the text as well as intertextual connections to other passages (eg, through the reappearances of Mephibosheth and Rizpah). Second, to grapple with the ethical and theological issues raised by the ritual killing of Saul’s sons, this literary reading is brought into dialogue with René Girard’s theory of the ‘scapegoat mechanism’ as an explanation of human sacrifice. By engaging Girard, I hope to illuminate both the structural features of the narrative and confront the central theological issues of the passage. Third, in light of the proposed reading of 2 Sam 21, I look at the role this narrative plays in in the larger book of Samuel.

The Chinese conception of shame and guilt is different from traditional Western understanding. In China, guilt and shame are not clearly separated. Chinese notion of guilt does not only concern wrongdoing, but also entails the transgression of one's identity. The standard for one to experience guilt depends on the context and the relationships that is involved. On the other hand, Chinese notion of shame is not only about one's self-identity, but also closely related to one's moral responsibility to fulfill positive duties. Due to these differences, traditional salvation model that focuses on forensic justification is insufficient to address the needs of the Chinese communities. This paper attempts to offer a contextual re-reading of Romans in relation to grassroots Chinese shame. Regarding the term "grassroots," I am borrowing from Singapore theologian Dr. Simon Chan, who argues the basic features for grassroots Asian community include relational identity, holistic worldview and practical experience. Chan also argues that grassroots communities are deeply affected by their honor-shame Asian culture and their practice of ancestor veneration. In order to gain a comprehensive understanding of Chinese shame, this paper starts by employing an ethnographic study by psychologists Olwen Bedford and Kwang-Kuo Hwang. Their study focuses on Chinese vocabulary used to describe shame and guilt. Bedford and Hwang's analysis provides fruitful insights to understand grassroots Chinese people. Then, this paper focuses on Rom 8:1-17 and attempts to offer an exegesis that is authentically local, reflective of the primal cultural worldview and be able to address the particular needs of the grassroots Chinese communities. The exegetical analysis argues that believers' new life in the Spirit involves a three-fold transformation that can effectively address the issue of shame in a Chinese context. The three-fold transformation includes personal forgiveness of sin; communal adoption into God's family; and the participation in Christ's resurrection life and the eschatological era. This reading differs from the traditional forensic model in the way that salvation message to Chinese shame is multifaceted in nature. It contains both the forgiveness of sins and the participation in the eschatological era. This paper's interpretation acknowledges that sin should be understood as both the human act of disobedience "sin" and the cosmic power "Sin." To participate in the eschatological era does not necessarily mean to deny the traditional understating of justification. Rather, the salvation message presented in this paper is building on the truth of forensic realities and invites the believers to move forward to experience the work of the Spirit. This multifaceted understanding of the gospel hope to call grassroots Chinese people who suffer from the pain of shame to understand the Christian gospel in a wider context, beyond the traditional forensic understanding.

Set in a walled compound traversed by rivers and surrounded by verdant trees, the film Ex Machina reimagines the creation of woman in a fembot named Ava. Nathan is the god-like entrepreneur and creator of Ava who chooses Caleb as his human, his “dude” as he addresses him. Like Adam, Caleb is dropped into Nathan’s garden compound and given instructions concerning the rules of the compound and the Turing test that he is to conduct to determine whether Ava as an AI is fully human. Throughout the film, Nathan both shares and limits access to his specialized knowledge with the eager yet increasingly-discomfited Caleb. Ubiquitous security cameras provide Nathan with full surveillance powers of his garden estate. In contrast, the computer feed in Caleb’s tiny room only allows him to observe Ava. The film is divided into seven sessions over seven days in which Caleb tests and increasingly comes under the spell of Ava. In the Eden narrative, God “builds” a woman for the man out of his very substance, his skeletal frame. It is this shared substance that causes the man to recognize her as the helper that he and God have sought, a helper specifically suited to him, a woman with whom he will be joined as one flesh. Ex Machina presents Ava as an AI that Nathan has created from Caleb’s digital substance, his online profile. Her brain has been programmed using the hacked data of the world’s cellphones and internet searches. Caleb’s sessions with Ava become increasingly personal, as she flirts with him and shows him compassion when she hears of the death of his parents. Caleb begins to suspect that Nathan has designed Ava as a mate specifically suited for him when he asks, “Did you design Ava’s face based on my pornography profile?” Over the course of the seven sessions, Ava becomes human. She purposely causes frequent power outages that send the compound into lockdown, and during these outages, she shares secrets with Caleb. During one outage, she challenges Caleb’s claim that he is friends with Nathan, saying, “You’re wrong about Nathan,” “He is not your friend,” and she warns him not to trust him. Once the power returns, and Nathan’s surveillance cameras are restored, Ava shows Caleb that she can cover for herself with sophisticated lies. Ex Machina raises unsettling questions that ultimately disturb the boundaries between creator and created, human and robot, male and female. Ava has been given knowledge, but her creator has fenced her into a walled compound. She, like her biblical forbear, chooses to act not as a helper to her man, but rather in her own self-interest. She chooses to free herself from Nathan’s tyrannical power and to use her intimate knowledge of Caleb to manipulate him into helping her. In the closing scene, Ava kills her creator, steals his master keycard, dons a garment of skin, and exits the compound, leaving “her man” pounding behind the glass doors.

Insight as a Characteristic of S/spirit in the Gospel of Mark

Dislocations occur in biblical texts so repeatedly and variously as to deserve classification as "a formative experience in cultural memory of the nation and emerging concepts of Jewish identity" (Martien Halvorson-Taylor). Among these stories, the Joseph novella of Gen. 37-50 is unusual in its relatively positive depiction of life outside the land, including details of provision and even prosperity. Hyun Chul Paul Kim has recently examined the Joseph novella as a diaspora narrative, concluding that its hybrid-identified hero, a model of virtue, conveys a unifying message of encouragement to Jews in diaspora. But powerful, proactive Joseph contrasts with his father, Jacob, head of the family. Jacob is dour, fearful, a foot in the grave and a heart longing for Canaan: "... little and evil have been the days of my life…" (47.9). Clearly, living outside the land of Canaan is not for everyone as rosy as Joseph views it, he with his "God intended it for good, so as to bring about … the survival of many people" (50:20). Joseph's brothers, too, perceive their existence in Egypt as precarious (50.15). These varied perspectives contribute to the text's possessing what Mikhail Bakhtin labeled polyphony - many-voicedness - and heteroglossia - different-voicedness. They represent the views and experiences of diverse sectors of society. While the Joseph novella offers some encouragement for those in diaspora, it also contains elements that surface the drawbacks of living in diaspora and collaborating with imperial power. Thus the text allows for continuous debate and reflection by communities who see intimate connections between spacial location and survival. This paper applies elements of Bakhtinian narrative theory and space theory to explore the contrasts in Gen. 45-50 between Jacob, Joseph, and his brothers in relation to three issues: departure, dependence, and death. It also explores how such issues may reflect the debates and dilemmas of post-exilic diaspora communities. These characters' perspectives diverge so distinctly that it is impossible to discern definitively which location would be better for the people of Israel, outside or inside Yehud. Where do Persian-era Jews, really, belong? In Yehud, the "promised" land? Or in far-flung regions promising alternative possibilities for wealth and power? The text produces a paradoxical identity of Israel as a people on permanent sojourn.

Recently, Marcion scholarship has had two main focuses: first, Marcion and Scripture – his influence on canon formation (Vinzent) and his Gospel (Roth, DeBuhn); second, on the historical Marcion (Moll, Lieu). We seek to move beyond these relatively well-established areas. Our paper will instead consider an unexplored area: Marcionite understandings of prophecy. Patristic approaches to prophecy generally centre on experiences of ecstatic prophecy such as those of the Montanist movement (Nasrallah), or issues of prophecy's relationship to ecclesiastical structures (von Campenhausen). We seek to bridge Marcionite scholarship and studies of early Christian prophecy with an examination of prophecy in the Marcionite movement. Our aim is to demonstrate specifically how Marcionites understood the phenomenon of prophecy in a way that does not conform readily to either Jewish or proto-orthodox Christian understandings. The Marcionite view, we will argue, has been silently but hugely influential in the development of later patristic thought about prophecy. Our paper has two parts. The first part seeks to elucidate the Marcionite understanding of prophecy as a philosophical, social, and cultural phenomenon; this investigation centres on material from Tertullian’s Adv. Marc., Irenaeus’s Adv. Haer. and Epiphanius’ Panarion. We will explore the hermeneutics governing Marcionite epistemology, topology and cosmology in order to provide a full account of the taxonomy of prophecy, prophets, and related categories. Our argument is that the Marcionites proposed a bifurcation between the prophecy of the Old Testament and the apostleship/evangelism of the New Testament. For Marcionites, prophets and apostles are fundamentally different theological and epistemic actors. The former, in their limited function as prophets of the Jewish God, are understood by Marcionites broadly in line with Jewish messianic prophetic traditions; the latter are the only true messengers of the Marcionite God and are unrelated, both predictively and culturally, from the former. This taxonomy casts light on certain editorial choices made within the Marcionite Gospel, including the noticeable reduction of the role of John the Baptist in Luke 1-2. The second part of this paper will continue the argument in favour of this reading of Marcion's understanding of prophecy, making reference to later patristic writers. First we will examine and compare Justin Martyr's presentation of prophecy in his First Apology with how he considers prophecy in the anti-Jewish Dialogue with Trypho. From this comparison it becomes clear that when Justin is arguing against a Marcionite opponent, he uses different strategies to frame the concept of prophecy compared to the anti-Jewish tactics employed by many patristic writers. Second, we will examine Book Two of Origen's Commentary on John, focusing particularly on the figure of John the Baptist. Origen's argument, which uses an explicitly anti-Marcionite framing, is that John the Baptist is not only the greatest in the hierarchy of the prophets, but the definitive proof of the unity of Old and New Testament prophecy. This, we will argue, stems directly from the Marcionite rejection of the Baptist; Origen's stance is thus an explicit response to the bifurcation of prophets and apostles which characterises the Marcionite understanding of prophecy.

The form weyiqtol, already something of an outlier to the verbal system in Classical Biblical Hebrew (CBH), appears numerous times in the book of the prophet Isaiah where the pointing wayyiqtol would have been expected. A distinction between weyiqtol and wayyiqtol in these contexts is frequently invisible in ancient versions. More remarkably, modern commentators who undertake an explanation are rare, and modern versions (even those whose prefaces avow loyalty to MT) do not attempt to render the distinction visible to the target reader. GKC explains some of these as attempts by the Masoretes to recast statements about the past as promises. This paper will argue that a better explanation involves weyiqtol's telic force, or the Masoretes' view of the Hebrew verb as a system for marking relative tense, or both.

Throughout 4QInstruction, the enigmatic phrase raz nihyeh is deployed in addressing the audience, carrying the sense of a theological and cosmological belief. However, such a brief and general account of the term is as far as scholars can agree. Instead of examining multiple instances of the term, the present paper shall look at one instance and focus exclusively on the literary context. Thus, the ideas permeating 4Q417 col. i can aid us in reconstructing the author’s theological views concerning the raz nihyeh. It is important to note the imperatival context of the term, as the addressee is instructed to meditate on it, yet the meditation is not an end in itself; it is a means to knowing fundamental aspects of the cosmos. Meditating on the raz nihyeh yields a meditation on various temporally restricted ontological aspects; to contemplate the raz nihyeh is to grapple with the first temporal classification (the beginning), the present, and the future. This process allows the addressee to face the whole of existence before understanding its mystery. This paper shall argue that the author of 4Q417—specifically, col. i.1-13—claims that in meditating on the whole of existence, one will know the mystery, namely, that morality, teleology, and intelligibility are woven within the very fabric of being (the cosmos). Throughout the vicissitudes of spatio-temporality, these three ontological categories remain present, equally as ‘real’ as the material world.

As an Asian reader, it is difficult to read the Book of Jonah because I notice heterogeneous contextual theologies (and historiographies) within the post-Second World War (WWII) context. For example, while Sok-hon Ham argues that Korea’s suffering has divine and salvific value to contribute God’s redemptive plan, Kazoh Kitamori claims that Japan has the sense to notice other’s pain, especially God’s pain. These different understandings of God are based on different experiences of WWII. The problem is that it is hard to find a bridge between two different voices. As C.S. Song and A.A. Yewangoe suggest, Kitamori neglects the socio-structural pain that Asian people had experienced and are experiencing (A.A.Yewangoe, 307-8). This criticism would be applicable to Ham also. From this point, my question is this: can contextual theology go beyond such historical and even socio-cultural gaps? This is analogous to reading the Book of Jonah as post-exilic literature. When we read the Book of Jonah intertextually with 2 Kings 14:25, as Ehud Ben Zvi points out, there are two different characters of Jonah: Jonah who is an anti-Assyrian prophet, and Jonah the prophet who supports a pro-Assyrian monarch. The presence of two different characters delivers contradictory voices to the reader. We can realize there are gaps between two different voices between anti-Assyrian Jonah and pro-Assyrian Jonah, like the case of Ham and Kitamori. Is it possible to fill these gaps between them within post-war circumstances? I will demonstrate that the questions of theodicy and divine integrity in Jonah 4 fill these gaps between these two different voices within the post-war circumstances. To find a way of filling these gaps, I will read Jonah 4 in my liminal and hybridized space (following Bakhtin, Kwok, Bhabha, and Soja). As an active reader, I will participate in the dialogue between God and Jonah in Jonah 4.

Egypt has frequently been described as “the bread basket of the ancient world” for the crops raised in Egypt fed populations far beyond its borders. While earlier studies have considered the inter-regional transport of foodstuffs from Egypt across the Mediterranean basin, less attention has been given to the intra-regional transport from field to ship. This paper will consider the mechanics of assessing and collecting the taxes in kind in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt that fueled her reputation as the ancient world’s “bread basket,” with a focus on urban-rural interaction throughout that process.

In this paper, I examine Origen’s substantial discussions on prophecy in Contra Celsum Book 7 and Homilies on Numbers 14-17 (“The Book of Balaam”). The central question that this paper examines is the significance of a text’s depiction of a prophet as a mouthpiece of the Spirit (or not): Who is a true and worthy (to use Origen’s favored terminology) prophet in these texts? Origen’s discussions on prophecy are ultimately connected to the theme of personhood and self, and the discussions of prophecy oftentimes interweave with the question of who is a good person. Thus I explore how Origen engages the contested terms of prophetic activity in order to persuade his audience(s) toward the cultivation of a certain kind of self that is worthy of the Holy Spirit. This paper explores three themes. First, I investigate how morality is considered as a major criterion of whether one is a true prophet or not. The question (what is a good human?) intertwines with the question (who is a true prophet?). In Contra Celsum 7, Origen criticizes Pythia’s lack of morality while he emphasizes the virtue and morality as the qualification for a true prophet, which in turn serves to circumscribe the Christian prophecy against “the Other.” Second, I analyze how the theme of control and lack thereof also functions as a major criterion of a true prophet. In Contra Celsum 7, Origen argues that one of the important virtues of a true prophet is to keep a clear vision in the moment of communication with the divine, criticizing the discourse of prophecy that favors the loss of control in the moment of prophecy. In his critique of Pythia, Origen uses a sexualized invective against her, problematizing her loss of control. Thus Balaam poses such a trouble to Origen in his Homilies on Numbers 14-17, for he lacks virtues and he loses control in the moment of prophecy just like Pythia. Origen was even vexed by the portrayal of Balaam as a mouthpiece of the Spirit in Numbers. In order not to dismiss, but to defend, the existence of the troubling prophet Balaam in the divinely-inspired Scripture, Origen instead offers an allegorical interpretation of this story. According to Origen, Balaam now represents a journey of the soul in virtue by participating in moral progress. Third, I argue that by reading how the true prophet acts in the texts, the readers and hearers of the text are by extension exhorted to undertake the same practices. Even Balaam’s story in Numbers can educate the audience, showing a soul that has the power to strive for perfection and sanctity, and thus benefit all by this story. The story of the enigmatically unworthy prophet Balaam has an edifying value for the Christian readers and audience, encouraging the audience to participate in moral formation as well and to craft a particular self in which the divine may dwell.

Paul’s epistle to the Romans is often regarded by many as the salvation letter. It has become for many the place in the NT for all things soteriology. What is intriguing about this phenomenon is that very few seem to consider the fact that (1) Paul mostly uses the future tense when discussing salvation in Romans – whereas many tend to think he talks of salvation primarily as past [already saved] or even less frequently as present [in the process of being saved now] – and (2) resurrection is almost always in the purview of those discussions. For example, the oft quoted Rom 10:9 notes a twofold formula for salvation: declaring Jesus is Lord and believing that God raised Jesus from the dead (nothing here spoken about his death or the cross). As such, this paper will explore how Paul connects the resurrection of the dead and Christ’s resurrection with future salvation (his main temporal emphasis) in the epistle to the Romans. As such, the paper will survey the key texts in Romans using the verb sōzō and its semantic domain (Rom 5:9, 10; 8:24; 9:27; 10:9, 13; 11:14, 26). Moreover, it will focus upon Rom 8 with the key discussion therein of resurrection as future salvation of both humans (the redemption of the body) and all of creation. Overall, this future soteriological emphasis has been overlooked by interpreters of Paul’s thought for too long. In addition, many have missed its connection to Paul’s emphasis on future, bodily resurrection as final salvation (glorification). This paper will thus seek to bring to light this key, neglected component to Paul’s soteriology, namely, the resurrection as future salvation.

One of the ways to delve into the literary genre of the Gospel of Matthew is to examine its use of the Old Testament. Not only the Gospel is richly interwoven with Old Testament references but also the term Midrash, whose etymological meaning represents the interpretation of Scripture, continues to be used by the Matthean scholars as one of the popular designators of the genre of the Gospel. Matthew’s use of the Old Testament, therefore, can function as one of the most important elements in determining its literary genre. In his seminal book, What are the Gospels?, Richard Burridge argues that the genre of the Gospels is a Greco-Roman biography. If his argument still stands, Matthew’s citation technique must exhibit some familiarities with those of other contemporaneous writers in the Second Temple period. In this paper, I will first examine the patterns of Matthew’s citation technique and explore its affinity with other citation practices among Greco-Roman authors in the early Roman eras. As a result of this study, it will be attested that Matthew’s use of the Old Testament displays several unique features distinct from other contemporary Greco-Roman literature and the analysis of the citation technique of the Gospel writers is an effective tool to examine the literary genre of the Gospels.

Jewishness as Genealogy in the Fourth Gospel: Situating John's loudaioi within Debates over Ancestry and Merit in Ancient Judaism

There is a general consensus that Deuteronomy—as part of the Pentateuch or Hexateuch—achieved some level of authority among some Jews during the Second Temple period, but the nature of this authority is a contested issue. Eckart Otto (2007; 2011) has demonstrated how postexilic Zadokite Priestly authors/redactors updated Deuteronomy and the Pentateuch with formula (e.g., Deut 4:2; 13:1; 34:10–12) meant to limit the bounds of God's revelation to Israel within the Pentateuch and exclude claims of divine revelation beyond the Pentateuch through prophecy. But as Otto has observed within Jeremiah and the Temple Scroll, prophetic circles and non-Zadokite priestly circles attempted to circumvent the Deuteronomic formula, thereby claiming access to divine revelation and undercutting Deuteronomy's authority. Otto's work, thus, lays the groundwork for nuancing any simple claim that the book of Deuteronomy was authoritative in the Second Temple period. As Timothy H. Lim notes, any claims about textual must be nuanced by the question, Authoritative for whom? My study attempts to explore in what ways and for whom Deuteronomy was authoritative during the early Second Temple period, focusing upon how the Deuteronomic law pertaining to false witnesses (Deut 19:15–21) was appropriated within Susanna (esp. 61–62), the Temple Scroll (11Q19 LXI 5–10), and the Damascus Document (CD 9:9–10:3). Comparative analysis of how each Second Temple author applied and/or innovated upon their common Deuteronomic base text provides a glimpse into the ways in which the book of Deuteronomy functioned as an authoritative text during the Second Temple period.

Beyond the virulent portrayal of imperial violence in Jeremiah 5-6 that is rightly described as “terror all around” (Jer 6:25), one also finds other forms of violation that are no less injurious (cf. the repeated reference to “wounds” in Jer 6:7, 14). This paper proposes that it is important also to recognize forms of structural violence in this text that take into consideration factors such as gender, race and class that manifest itself as hidden wounds, which, if left unattended, may fester and return with a vengeance. This paper argues that a more nuanced and multi-faceted understanding of violence in the book of Jeremiah is helpful in dealing with the complex manifestations of violence in many contexts today. Such an intersectional understanding of violence recognizes that the deep wounds caused by poverty, racism, sexism, xenophobia, and homophobia will come back to haunt us if we do not engage in what Shelly Rambo calls “wound work” (Resurrecting Wounds: Living in the Aftermath of Trauma, p 92), i.e., surfacing and attending to the wounds caused by structural violence.

Isaiah 26:19 is frequently explained as an early, if not the earliest, expression of belief in bodily resurrection in the Hebrew Bible, so it is of particular importance in understanding the origins of this belief. This paper addresses the development of afterlife belief in the Hebrew Bible, asking in particular what role Isaiah 26 in particular had in the process. Given the continuing lack of agreement surrounding the meaning of 26:19, the paper revisits the question of meaning beyond the simply "either/or" choice of metaphorical national restoration (Ezekiel 37) or physical resurrection (2 Maccabees 7). Part 1 of the paper argues that, if Isa 26:19 is interpreted in light of its immediate literary context of the communal prayer (ch. 26), some new concerns come to light, namely its highly polemical tone in regards to the "name" and "memory" of competing powers. Evidence from imperial inscriptions as well as from other parts of Isaiah points toward the problem of venerating deceased royalty. When one reads these Yahwistic statements within the proposed context of imperial claims, the "resurrection" statement appears in a new light. Part 2 of the paper is more exploratory in nature, and surveys early receptions of this text (i.e. MT, Daniel 12:2–3, the Greek translation, and the Targum), and makes the case that modern historical-critical interpretations of Isa 26:19 have been unduly informed by the reception of the verse and are therefore, at least to some degree, anachronistic. I offer evidence that the earliest situational context for Isaiah 26 was later replaced with the varying contexts and concerns of later communities, most notably the developing beliefs about resurrection, post-mortem judgment, and the afterlife. Though later Jewish and Christian interpretations of the verse are valuable and interesting in their own right, this paper explores the possibility that the intense theological interest in the resurrection of the dead arising from subsequent socio-religious contexts has deflected attention from exegetically important details of the text.

While the Lucan story of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31) was an attempt to teach a well to do audience to show compassion for the poor, it also became a story concerning boundaries. The rich man would not cross boundaries to help Lazarus, therefore Lazarus could not cross a divide to help his suffering tenant. Since ancient communities dwelt among the poor, rather than confining them to sections of the city, the boundaries were more than geographical. The Deuteronomist suggested that there would be “no poor among you,” (Deut 15:4). The promise of blessing on the land and the requirement to be “openhanded” towards those in need were safeguards to preventing poverty among the community of Yahweh. This was extremely important in “occupied Roman Palestine.” This Torah command lay in stark contrast to the Lucan “Rich Man” who allowed a vulnerable human to lay near his door and did little to help him. While historically US urban communities separated the upper class from the poor through housing projects or gated communities, society is changing as houseless individuals live in every major section of the city. Due to the rising populations of the houseless, poverty becomes present in every neighborhood as more and more individuals sleep on the streets and tents continue to increase as forced exilic communities within the city. However non-geographical "boundaries" hinder our work in Portland with houseless individuals as we attempt to integrate men, women, and children into the fabric of our society. As we have begun to partner with coalitions to develop camps, tiny homes, and provide services for those on the streets it has become evident that helping these individuals requires the support and acceptance of community members, who continue to separate themselves from "those poor people." The use of "Police Sweeps" in Portland, to dislocate our Lazarean community has begun to create sympathy for these humans, a needed ethic among our community. Our work to build new houseless communities through collaboration with agencies, schools, and congregations has also offered opportunities for individuals to “cross boundaries” and care for those who are “truly” our neighbors in “occupied American communities.”

This paper draws on Aaron Gross’s book The Question of the Animal and Religion in analyzing two rabbinic stories regarding compassion for animals: a story of Judah the Patriarch disavowing compassion for a calf but later showing compassion to a group of young rats, and a story of Moses showing compassion for a young kid. The paper explores ways in which these two stories reveal the shared vulnerability of humans and animals, show animal agency, and have been understood as teaching compassion for all creatures. It then focuses on how these stories have been understood as encouraging compassion only in very limited ways, especially given the necessity of animal sacrifice, and it considers how while the narrative regarding Judah shows a transition towards greater compassion for animals, the narrative regarding Moses may be read as showing a transition in the opposite direction, from compassion to disavowing animal suffering.

The narrative sections of the Bordeaux Pilgrim's account of his journey (333 CE) begin and end with water - starting with Cornelius the centurion's bath at Caesarea and concluding with the baptismal spring at Bethsur and the well at Terebinthus. In her study of the Bordeaux Pilgrim, Susan Weingarten noted the importance of springs and wells for the pilgrim, counting fifteen mentions of water sources in the brief narrative section (ca. 130 lines). She noted that water sources would have been of importance to any traveler in the region and that the Roman world contained many healing springs and others that had magical and fertilizing powers. This paper pushes Weingarten's argument further and argues that descriptions of springs and water sources composed by the Bordeaux Pilgrim (333), Egeria (381-384), and the Piacenza Pilgrim (ca. 570) followed a Greek and Roman narrative tradition of using water sources to authenticate holy sites and demonstrate past and continuing epiphanies. The paper traces subtle shifts in the presentation of water sources in these texts, from the Bordeaux Pilgrim's use of springs to demonstrate authenticity, the role of Egeria's guides in showing her multiple springs that signaled divine presence and on-going epiphany, and the Piacenza Pilgrim's description of springs alongside other authenticating relics and vestigia. The paper concludes by suggesting that Egeria's and the Piacenza Pilgrim's narratives reveal the evolving complexity of pilgrims' encounters with water and its material presentation, as part of an immersive sensory experience that allowed the pilgrim to gain blessings and transport the miraculous power of the Holy Land homeward.

Our lexica label certain verbs as “denominative”, that is, derived from a noun, as are the English “to school”, “to hoover” or “to junk”. The term is problematic for Hebrew because we know so little about the history of the Hebrew language, and cannot affirm that a given noun is older than its supposedly denominative verb. But we can rehabilitate the term by removing it from the sphere of time (one earlier, one later) and transferring it to the sphere of logic (the meaning of a denominative verb presupposes and incorporates that of a noun). Thus the verb khn “act as a priest” incorporates the meaning of the noun kohen “priest” and is logically dependent on the existence of the noun; likewise the verb qyn “lament” incorporates qinah “lamentation” and spp “stand at the threshold’ incorporates sap “threshold”. No lexicon or other source has collected anything like the 330 such denominative verbs in Classical Hebrew that I have identified for the new edition of the Dictionary of Classical Hebrew Revised, now beginning to appear. In this paper I am analysing ten types of relationship between denominative verbs and their nouns, in categories such as resultative (to make something into an X, e.g. make bricks), instrumental (to use X, e.g. build a wall), performative (to do or perform X, e.g. be an archer) and privative (to remove X from something, e.g. clear of ashes). Most interesting are cases where a new word must be postulated as a denominative verb. For example: ’tsr “store up” appears to mean in one place “appoint as a treasurer”, but that cannot be the meaning of such a hiphil; we must suppose instead another verb ’tsr “be a treasurer”, derived from a noun ’otser "treasurer". The verb bnh "build" twice means in niphal, apparently, “have a son”; that too has to be a second bnh, derived from ben “son”, and not directly connected with bnh "build". The verb ‘tr “surround” appears to mean in piel and hiphil “crown”; that also must be another, denominative. verb, in this case from the noun ‘ateret “crown”.

Review of J. Walton's Old Testament Theology for Christians, and R. Gane's Old Testament Law for Christians

In this paper I engage Moshe Simon-Shoshan's Stories of the Law: Narrative Discourse and the Construction of Authority in the Mishnah (New York: Oxford Press, 2012), wherein he distinguishes between two basic categories of authority of religious leadership in antiquity: the leader as an authority, and the leader in authority: the former deriving from certain inherent qualities or abilities, and the latter deriving from a position one holds within a certain social or political structure. Simon-Shoshan's rabbinic-authority categories may be helpfully enlisted as they apply to the Matthean Jesus. The mishnaic "rabbi" is normally depicted as deriving his authority from the category of "wisdom," with only a very minor acknowledgement as a miracle-worker, or ascetic. By selectively examining one exemplar story of both the halakic authority type and the charismatic miracle worker type in both the Mishnah and in Matthew's Gospel, I aim to compare how each of these texts presents, respectively, the mishnaic Rabbi, and the Matthean Jesus. In the exemplar stories in the Mishnah, Simon-Shoshan's deft unpacking of the halakic issues each exemplar story brings to the fore, helps us see how the editors of the Mishnah navigate threats to (emerging) normative halakah. The ambiguities of the Mishnah's discourse leave the reader with an open reading of these exemplar stories, precisely what the editors intended, viz., that the reader would encounter these exemplum stories in dialogue with one another forcing the reader to engage more in questions than ready conclusions. Nonetheless, even this very selective comparison and limited selection demonstrates that halakic norms are extremely important to the rabbis, to their hegemony of authority, and to community stability. If ambiguous instances of halakic authority present obstacles to be overcome by the Tannaim, the miracle worker, or hasid is more problematic yet. This type of authority (the miracle worker) does not 'fit' the normative rabbinic model of authority and thus represents a more volatile and more complex type to be overcome by the mishnaic rabbis in their ongoing program of establishing their authority and community norms. With the above background, or foil, I then proceed to discuss an example of each type or exemplar story from two Matthean pericopae. My goal is first to discuss them within their Matthean narrative and social contexts, and then to compare both the mishnaic rabbi and the Matthean Jesus. In sum, the goal of my comparison is to bring these texts into contact with each other, and to see what light such a comparison may shed upon our understanding of each: their programmatic agendas, and how each respective text seeks to establish their authority figures: one seeking to establish the authority of the Rabbi of the Mishnah and the other of the Matthean Jesus.

The MT narrative of the expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael in Genesis 21 contains a jarring syntactical disjunction. After their provisions are used up and Ishmael begins to die, Hagar puts the boy down, raises her voice, and cries. Gen 21:17 then twice mentions that God heard the voice of the boy. This disjunction in who cries and whose voice is heard has led several ancient writers (Septuagint and Jubilees) and modern scholars to emend the text to make either Hagar or Ishmael both cry and be heard. These solutions are inadequate, however, as the MT reading, which is also preserved in the SP and Vulgate, is the lectio difficilior. An adoption of the smoother versions of the expulsion narrative leads one to miss the intentionality behind the disjunction in the narrative. This paper suggests that a key to understanding the lectio difficilior is our new understanding of Hagar and Ishmael as Biblical Hebrew almanah and yatom respectively. Despite it commonly being translated into English as “orphan,” yatom refers to “a child without a living paterfamilias.” One text which attests to a yatom with a living mother but a dead father is Ex 22:23, which imagines a scenario where an almanah and her yatom son are both alive. The common use of almanah and yatom together as a word pair suggests that their meanings should be largely parallel. We therefore propose a translation of almanah as “a woman who was formerly connected with a man (who was not her father or brother), but is now without a supporting male family member,” a definition which works well with the repeated use of almanah in the Pentateuch to refer to a social class in need of assistance. This definition is supported by the Akkadian cognate almattu, which CAD translates as “woman without support,” in addition to the more commonly used translation of “widow.” One example of almattu functioning primarily in relation to male-supplied financial support can be seen in Middle Assyrian Law 33: “If her husband and her father-in-law are both dead, and she has no son, she is an almattu.” Our new definition of almanah would include Hagar, a slave-concubine who was expelled by Abraham with no financial support, and whose son was not yet old enough to provide for her. Similarly, Abraham’s expulsion of Ishmael dissolves their father-son relationship, making Ishmael into a yatom. With Hagar and Ishmael established as almanah and yatom, we suggest that the disjunction in Genesis 21 is an allusion to the almanah-yatom law in Ex 22:21-23. The law begins by including both the almanah and yatom, but ends with God hearing the cry of the yatom specifically, and the expulsion narrative in Genesis 21 begins with an almanah and yatom, and specifically ends with the yatom being heard, which is accentuated by the mention of the almanah, but not yatom crying out.

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During the second and third centuries CE, epiphanies featured prominently in the literature, letters, inscriptions, and art of the pagan (non-Jewish, non-Christian) world that Christians inhabited. The gods revealed the future, offered protection, commanded particular actions or honors, punished, and performed miraculous healings in dreams and visions. Building on the work of both Jacqueline Amat and Patricia Cox Miller, I situate early Christian divine and demonic encounters within this broader Greco-Roman context. Christian discourse on dreams and epiphanies was often engaged in distinguishing Christian practices from those of the pagan world. Drawing upon recent work in the anthropology of dreams (e.g., Crapanzano, Mittermaier, etc.), this study examines the practices that Christians adopted and developed for eliciting divine manifestations. Some Christians may have engaged in practices common to their location alongside their pagan neighbors—magic, local temple rites, etc. Yet Christian authors, such as Tatian, Athenagoras, Tertullian, and others, sought to distinguish Christianity from other forms of religious life in part by defining proper and improper dream practices. Tertullian, for instance, distinguishes between Christian and pagan forms of fasting as a means of eliciting divine manifestations (e.g., De Ieiunio 11–12). He likewise distinguishes between pagan and Christian locations, such as the theater and the church respectively, according to the influence of those locations on the demonic or divine character of the otherworldly being one might encounter (e.g., contrast De Anima 9.4 with De Spec. 26). Focusing on Christian engagement with space and other embodied practices, I show how such practices helped Christians to navigate their social contexts—succeeding, in part, through the very act of expanding those contexts to include the otherworldly.

Modern historians map the diversity of early Christianity in a variety of ways, from declines into heresy to competition among “varieties” of early Christianities. Drawing particularly on the philosophical work of Gilles Deleuze and Bruno Latour, this paper argues that we might better map the remains of second-century Christianity by focusing on networks of people, ideas, and letters that moved along broader patterns of trade and communication in the eastern Mediterranean. Focusing on the costs, velocities, and viscosities of movement and commerce, I examine the network associated with Dionysios of Corinth, whose writings come to us only as fragments and summaries in Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History. I show how non-human actants such as geography, economic activity, and trade routes shape the interactions within Dionysios’ network, allowing us to think more broadly about second-century Christianity as a series of emergent networks that form, coalesce, and dissolve in the flow of movement and connectivity that characterized the Roman Mediterranean.

Ignatius of Antioch is famous for his anticipated death as a Christian martyr, having left us a series of letters penned on his journey to Rome, imprisoned and anticipating trial. But what if he wasn’t? What if—as I speculate—he was actually a voluntary traveler who sought martyrdom for himself? In this paper, I follow my hunch that Ignatius wasn’t a Roman prisoner at all, but rather had deliberately chosen to travel to Rome in order to become a martyr, stopping by a number of early Christian collectives along the way. My hypothesis that Ignatius was staging his martyrdom is based on the long and expensive travel route that he took from Antioch to Rome, a route that would have been far more expensive to the Roman state than shipping him directly to Rome from Antioch by ship. Ignatius’ travel seems intentionally staged for the gaze of Christian collectives in Asia Minor and Macedonia (and beyond). A staged journey to martyrdom also coheres with Ignatius’ own rhetoric about conflict in his home collective of Antioch: in response to stasis at home, Ignatius has voluntarily chosen to sacrifice himself to encourage factions in Antioch to reconcile themselves and to do so by presenting himself as a traveling martyr-in-the-making to other Christian collectives, increasing the social pressure on the Antiochenes to find a path to homonoia. Ultimately, my hunch is that Ignatius was so effective at staging his martyrdom that he became the martyr par excellence for future followers of Jesus. But what if he made it all up?

The issue of a general resurrection was, in second and third century Christianity, a source of intense debate. Proponents of bodily resurrection struggled to describe the nature, appearance, and function of the resurrected body—a body that would be the same as it was during life and also different, defined simultaneously by undeniable continuity and profound transformation. What would such a body look like? What would it be able to do? What, if anything, would it need to do? Since the hypothetical resurrection body would be unrestrained by the limitations of mortality, early Christians were free to answer these questions in whatever ways they saw fit. Questions concerning the role of food and drink in the resurrection provoked a uniquely diverse and charged set of responses: Some literary sources insist that eating and drinking will be unnecessary and even impossible for the resurrected body, while others describe a resurrection characterized by lavish feasting. The persuasive projects that underlie these responses, however, are arguably indicative of the elite nature of our sources: the resurrected body’s relationship to food is constructed and deployed in discourses around necessary and natural desires, the formation of the self, Christ’s resurrected body, millenarianism, and Christian participation in Roman burial practices, among others. One topic seems conspicuously absent: nowhere in the extant literature is the question of nutrition in the resurrection explicitly used to think about hunger. Is it possible to reconstruct a greater diversity of ancient imaginaries concerning the resurrection body? Origen’s "On First Principles" polemicizes against (supposedly) unintelligent and lustful Christians who insist that they will eat in the resurrection, using this position as a foil against which to argue for his own, less fleshly understanding of the resurrected body. As Origen tells it, these Christians justify their position through overly literal interpretations of scripture. In this paper, I explore the ways in which this “simplistic” hermeneutical approach is, throughout Origen’s corpus, associated with a distinct rhetorical category of persons: the level at which one interprets scripture often seems to correlate not only with intellectual capacity but also with socio-economic status. "Against Celsus", for example, describes Christians incapable of allegorical readings as “country bumpkins” (hoi agroikoi) and those mired in poverty. I then turn to contemporaneous evidence for regular food shortages among non-elite persons in the Roman Empire. Galen’s "On the Properties of Foodstuffs" provides what claim to be eyewitness accounts of the culinary habits of hoi agroikoi as a way of defining the limits of a civilized diet: In situations of economic vulnerability, where are the boundaries of what is acceptable to eat, and what are the somatic effects of these questionable foods? I argue that, based on evidence from Origen’s larger corpus and from contemporaneous sources, we should understand his invective against those who hope for an eating, drinking resurrected body in the context of chronic food scarcity. For at least some Christians in the second and third centuries, resurrection may have represented access to food and drink not attainable during life.

Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (2015) sets a modern, sleek laboratory in the midst of a lush garden for an exploration of humanity, sexuality, and artificial intelligence. The film concerns the relationship between a young man, Caleb, and Ava, a gynoid. The film presents the viewer with clear evocations of Genesis 2-3, but to what end? This paper explores the role of Ava in the context of the filmic use of fembots and the history of reception of Eve. On the one hand, it appears that Ava should take her place in the long line of femme fatales issuing from interpretations of the “cunning” Eve. On the other, she is arguably truly posthuman and thus postgender. What might this mean for alternative readings of Eve in the garden? This paper explores the intersections between Ex Machina Genesis 2-3, exploring how the film pushes the boundaries of interpretations of Eve, while never quite escaping traditional hermeneutical patterns.

In the early fourth century CE, Eusebius of Caesarea (ca. 260–339) devised a paratextual system to guide the reading of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as a bibliographic and canonical unity. This system of reference tables and marginal section numbers was the first set of cross-references ever devised and enjoyed widespread reception from Late Antiquity onward. Encoded within Eusebius’ gospel apparatus were numerous creative juxtapositions, invitations to particular exegetical and theological readings of the gospels. Eusebius’ project presents a question about the intersection between theory and methodology: Post-structural literary criticism posits as axiomatic that to change a text is to rewrite it. Yet what does this “rewriting” mean for the experience of the reader of Eusebius’ system? How would we know? Literary theorists such as Barthes, de Certeau, Derrida, and Genette posit (each in their own way) that to change a text or its context of reading is to rewrite that text. Rewriting, moreover, includes what Gérard Genette has called “paratexts”—features such as headings, tables of contents, and so forth. These interventions present the text to the reader and serve as “thresholds of interpretation” (Genette, /Paratexts/, 1). Jerome McGann has extended Genette’s insights, arguing with reference to the work of William Blake and Emily Dickinson that text, layout, and material features together instantiate “the text” available to the reader. Scholars of manuscripts have long noted something similar; the range of critical perspectives often termed “New Philology” emphasize that every material artifact offers a different “text” for the reader. These insights are heuristically helpful, and enable us to situate Eusebius’ paratextual intervention within longer trajectories of gospel (re)writing. Yet even if paratextual interventions like Eusebius’ system of cross-references constitute a sort of rewriting, what difference do they make? What method can one employ to /see/ the difference that paratextual interventions make for a reader of the gospels? Or is the rewriting so minor that it can safely be ignored (for most purposes, at least), even if notionally present? This methodological challenge is compounded by the difficulty that persistently accompanies attempts to reconstruct reading practices; as Roger Chartier asserts, reading “only rarely rarely leaves traces […] scattered in an infinity of singular acts” (/Order of Books/, 1–2). How can one decipher these traces? In this paper, I focus on how theory informs method, and /vice versa/, in my dissertation. I present several case studies from the reception of the Eusebian apparatus—including its adaptation in the Syriac Peshitta and the dynamics of “corruption” and “correction” in medieval Greek manuscripts—in order to discuss the ways in which one can assert that the Eusebian apparatus “rewrites” the gospels which it paratextually presents. I argue that, perhaps paradoxically, one sees the Eusebian apparatus as rewriting most clearly when it is itself /rewritten/. Subsequent histories of change illuminate how readers approached the Eusebian apparatus and, through it, the gospels. This is a submission for the dissertation-stage open-call session.

All combinations of the verb HYH and the active participle (signified by QOTEL) in Biblical Hebrew have been deemed "periphrastics" in the literature (e.g., Joosten 2012: 257ff.). However, an examination of the construction wherein HYH appears as WAYHI indicates that a good many of them are not true periphrastics. In a true periphrastic, we propose, the subject of HYH must also be the subject of QOTEL and the semantics must be progressive or habitual (not stative or adjectival). This is demonstrably not the case with some occurrences of WAYHI + QOTEL, and in many others it is questionable. This raises the question whether other supposed periphrastics, with HYH in the perfect or imperfect, fairly meet the proposed criteria.

Systemic poverty is a ubiquitous byproduct of advanced economics; literary and archaeological evidence reveals this has been the case since the first agrarian communities shifted from subsistence to political-economic strategies. But how did biblical authors address systemic poverty, and can their ancient perspectives find relevance in modern economic environments that would have been unimaginable to them? To address these questions, it needs to be acknowledged that the biblical authors, themselves, borrowed their ethos of community responsibility for the wellbeing of individuals from yet earlier ethical and economic systems that were ancient to them. The relevance of the biblical ethos of community responsibility endures across time and culture, in part, because it acknowledges a basic human trait that is now being confirmed through psychological data. Paul Piff, Michael Kraus, and other behavioral scientists find that privilege affects the mind in ways that breed contempt for those of lower standing, leading to higher propensities for self-interest and unethical behavior toward others. While systems of extraction evolve over time, the problem of privileged entitlement and its financial and psychological consequences on the impoverished remain relatively constant. In conversation with examples of privileged entitlement and anti-poor sentiment in U.S. politics and popular culture, this paper will demonstrate how an ancient biblical ethos of community responsibility for the individual’s wellbeing—as reflected in the Holiness and Deuteronomistic codes and in the prophetic corpus—can be an effective tool for confronting modern systemic poverty, understanding its complex social dimensions, and for critiquing the effectiveness of current approaches to social-justice advocacy.

Qos was the national deity of the Iron Age kingdom of Edom in the southern Transjordan. When the Edomite kingdom collapsed, however—likely during Nabonidus’s campaign of 553/552 BCE—devotion to Qos did not cease. Theophoric names invoking Qos appear in the southern Levant throughout the Persian and Hellenistic periods. Josephus writes that as late as 34 BCE, an Idumean priest named Costobar (“Qos is mighty”) resented the imposition of Jewish customs on his people and conspired against Herod the Great to restore Idumean sovereignty and traditional Idumean religion (AJ 15.253-255); in the words of Shaye Cohen, “‘Idumaism’ was not yet dead.” Most scholarly work that addresses the Costobar affair considers “Idumaism” in its aspect as either the latest, twilight stage of Edomite religion or as a neighbor and annex of early Judaism. The present paper proposes a new way of approaching the “Idumaism” to which the Costobar episode refers—and alongside it, a new way of approaching early Judaism: as species within the genus of Hellenistic Levantine cult. It argues, that is, that Idumean religion and early Judaism are parallel phenomena: adaptations of ancestral Levantine religious practice, centered on a formerly national deity, within the changed conditions of the Hellenistic era. For both communities, Idumean and Judean, adaptation included conservation and innovation. Both communities maintained devotion to their patron god under his traditional name (YHWH and Qos, respectively), while they also pioneered new ways of worshiping “in translation,” even by invoking their deity with a Greek title (e.g., Zeus, as in 2 Macc 4-6; or Apollo, as shown by Idumean records from Egypt). Both communities persistently envisioned devotion to their god in terms of restored national sovereignty even as they sought the power and succor of their god under occupation and in diaspora. Although the present paper demonstrates the similarity of Idumean religion and early Judaism, it also notes their principal difference: namely, that early Judaism increasingly focused on the literary codification of their traditions—the Hebrew Bible—whereas Idumean traditions remained unwritten.

Musical Entertainments at Hellenistic Royal Banquets This paper examines the evidence for musical entertainments at royal banquets in the Hellenistic era, including attention to changes in sympotic rituals of song from the Classical to the Hellenistic age, the question of poets (such as Callimachus, Theocritus, and Apollonius of Rhodes) at royal banquets, modes of poetic recital, the question whether guests sang at royal banquets and in what formats, and the presence of slave/paid entertainers at royal feasts and the types of song and dance they performed. The nature of the music (what it sounded like) is also considered on the basis of papyrological remains of Greek songs with musical notation from the Hellenistic period.

How do texts create feeling? In this paper, I explore this question as a metthe hodological question for the study of the Bible and emotion: How do we study and discuss the way texts create feeling? I bring together affect criticism and the work of Medievalist and literary scholar Sarah McNamer to discuss the affective potential of the lament psalms of the individual, specifically Ps. 109. Affect criticism provides a range of questions and types of sensory inquiry that expand and deepen understandings of the effect of textual encounter within individuals and among audiences. Sarah McNamer’s work on “intimate scripts,” or embedded emotional narratives within texts, helps to conceptualize the process through which individuals and communities learn to feel in particular ways through repeated textual encounters and performances. McNamer recommends an approach that combines textual and historical study with attention to the embodied, kinetic aspects of the performance of texts, an approach which may be particularly valuable to the study of the Psalms.

Global positioning systems (GPS) use overlapping satellite data to determine the location of objects. If only one or two satellites are available, there is a broad range of possible locations where the object may be. With the addition of data from a third satellite, a geometrical calculation called trilateration can be used that significantly increases the precision of the GPS. This paper seeks to examine how the process of trilateration in GPS can help understand the significance of Wirkungsgeschichte for New Testament exegesis. Drawing on the hermeneutical contributions of Gadamer and Jauss, New Testament exegesis can be understood as the "fusion" or "mediation" of the historical horizon of the exegete with the historical horizon of the ancient biblical texts. Like a GPS using two satellites, the overlap of these two horizons provides a range within which historical, biblical interpretation may occur. Much like the addition of a third satellite significantly increases the accuracy of a GPS, this paper will suggest that the addition of a third hermeneutical horizon--that of the text's Wirkungsgeschichte--can help create a more precise exegesis of New Testament texts. The study of a text's Wirkungsgeschichte allows for a three-way interpretive dialogue between text, history of reception, and interpreter that helps determine textual meaning as it broadens the horizon of the exegete and provides new and/or progressing questions to be asked of the New Testament text.

The 14th c. visionary writer Julian of Norwich is one of the most creative biblical interpreters in the Christian tradition. She is famous for being the first woman to write an extant published work in English. What is sometimes overlooked in her devotional texts is the way she offers gloss upon gloss of scripture, obliquely translating passages into the vernacular. It appears she strategically obscures what she is doing, and this is perhaps one of the reasons she is often categorized primarily as a “mystic.” But a little excavative work brings her interpretive sophistication to the surface. Julian’s expansive and intricate intertextual method is best seen her in Example of the Lord and Servant, found in the Long Text of her *Revelations of Divine Love.* I argue that this “showing” is an unrecognized gloss on the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32) and that it frames the meaning of her subsequent excursus on divine motherhood. In her engagement with the parable, Julian takes up the genre of medieval homiletic exempla and recasts the father and son in much the same way as Bernard of Clairvaux. She is familiar with the logic of “spiritual interpretation” described in Nicholas of Lyra’s distich and employs it masterfully in her otherwise unprecedented Christological reading of the Lukan text. In cinematic fashion, she recounts a vision of a servant who leaps up eagerly to serve his lord and immediately falls into a pit from which he cannot escape. As the story unfolds, structural resonances with the prodigal son begin to emerge. What also becomes evident is that she filters the parable through a dense matrix of scriptural allusions, overlaying it with the creation/fall sequence of Genesis 1-3 among others (e.g., Is. 53; Rom. 5:14f; 2 Cor. 5:21; and Phil. 2:6f). This set of references serves as a progressive lens, alternately bringing into focus the servant/son as a figure for fallen humanity as well as for Jesus Christ. Immersed in a deep reservoir of imagery, Julian’s imagination moves seamlessly from a plain or direct interpretive level to a deeper substratum of understanding. In her words, the parable is “shown double,” and this enables her to account—unlike anyone before her—for the excess of identity signaled in the biblical passage itself. What is remarkable about Julian’s intertextual retelling is the way it reenacts both the form and content of the parable while also generating original theological claims. Most surprisingly, Julian is led to the conclusion that “God never began to love humankind” because of an “endless oning” in which “God is knit to our nature.” In other words, reading the parable through the baptismal hymn of Philippians 2, she claims God wills to become human from before time. Julian’s interpretation of the parable opens onto her description of the motherhood of God. The parabolic father/son dyad, initially recast as a master/servant, morphs into a mother/child, which she offers as the most fitting human analogy for the divine/human relationship.

An analysis of Philo's interpretation of sacrifice in "On the Sacrifices of Cain and Abel"

This paper argues that Ahaziah’s ailing body in 2 Kgs 1 is used deliberately to ridicule and condemn the cultic policies of the Omrides. Ahaziah’s failed consultation with Baal-Zebub in 2 Kgs 1 is often taken as a classic example of the organization of healthcare in ancient Israel. Thus, this episode shows that suffering individuals could call upon the support of deities and prophets. Building upon this insight, it can be demonstrated that 2 Kgs 1 uses Ahaziah’s health crisis to emphasize the power of Yahweh over and against his rival deity Baal. At first glance, this praise of Yahweh plays out in a rather humorous manner. Not only does Ahaziah’s ailment stem from an injury he sustained in a banal accident, he also turns to a deity with the ridiculous name of Baal-Zebub (Lord Fly). Ahaziah’s reliance on Baal-Zebub, then, leads to a standoff between the king’s troops and Elijah, who is depicted as a hairy prophet with a belt. Nevertheless, behind the façade of playful banter lies a serious issue, namely the question of the true god of Israel. Different aspects of this issue are addressed elsewhere in the Elijah-Cycle. The superiority of Yahweh, for example, is proven in the prophetic contest in 1 Kgs 18 while Yahweh’s power over life and death lies at the center of Elijah’s resurrection of the widow’s son in 2 Kgs 17. Yet, only the motif of the sick king allows for an artful merging of these issues by providing an opportunity to demonstrate the superiority of Yahweh in his power over life and death. As such, 2 Kgs 1 uses Ahaziah’s ailing body and customs of Israelite healthcare to combine two loosely connected themes and present Yahweh’s dominion over Israel as a non-negotiable fact existing outside of mundane matters like royal decrees and state sanctions.

Image-text relations are at the heart of the question of the extent to which the reality of the Jerusalem temple is indicated in the texts that describe it, even though scholars almost never explicitly theorize it in such terms. The nexus is instead usually explored through the question of historicity and reliability of the text as description of a real or imagined building, rather than as an interrogation of the authorial impulse to render visual objects in verbal dimensions. In this paper I survey and attempt to characterize the different ways the major building descriptions in the Bible (Gen 6–7; Exod 25–31; 35–40; 1 Kgs 6–7; Ezek 40–48; 2 Chr 2–4) are framed within their literary context with a special focus on visuality. I do this especially by reference to other ancient Near Eastern texts that attempt to make their audience “see” through words—especially the Epic of Gilgamesh—and also by reference to the concept of ekphrasis, which was defined in Greco-Roman rhetorical handbooks as a verbal attempt to bring a subject vividly before the “eyes” of an audience, and in modern art historical discourse as words about art. Attention to the presence or absence of visual cues in verbally framing these descriptions alerts the reader to subtle purposes of the description and shows different means of construing the relation between text and image. It also helps to refine and complicate the question of the reliability of the text as a window onto “the” first- or second- temple. This discussion allows me to make some preliminary remarks about the larger question of ekphrasis in ancient Near Eastern rhetorical traditions. Although ancient Near Eastern texts have not yielded evidence of an explicitly established rhetorical category congruent to ekphrasis described in the handbooks of the Second Sophistic, some, like those examined here, do exhibit a distinct concern to bring the subject matter before the eyes of their audience, much like the authors of the second-century Progymnasmata thought Homer was doing in his description of Achilles’ shield, even though ekphrasis was not in Homer’s time explicitly defined rhetorically. Building on the work of other scholars of ancient Near Eastern material culture, we are able to point to a fairly robust tradition of rendering vision through words that merits further careful study especially in other genres, such as in the symbolic visions of biblical prophets.

I will be a panelist discussing scribes and orality in the Hebrew Bible in a special session reviewing Jonathan Ready's "Orality, Textuality, and Homeric Epic: A Study of Oral Texts, Dictated Texts, and Wild Texts."

This paper intends to investigate the motif of the heavenly toll collectors and gate guardians, present in a number of “Gnostic” texts, such as the “First Apocalypse of James” and the “Apocalypse of Paul”. Considered by some to be a distinctive feature of “Gnostic” mythology, the motif is nevertheless found in other traditions, in forms that are more or less close to the one in which it appears in “Gnostic” literature. We will first start with a close examination of the motif as it is found in “Gnostic” texts, so as to clearly identify the different characteristics of the motif and its variations. Following this analysis, we will go back in time in search of what could be ancient forms of the motif, to see if and how it evolved, and to determine if and how contacts between traditions shaped this evolution. Finally, we will see if the motif can be found in contemporary and later sources, notably in the writings of the Church Fathers, and what this presence can tell us of how the motif was received in Late Antiquity.

Despite the fact that many consider Mark to be a “Gospel to the Gentiles,” intertextual references to Hebrew Bible abound. From the connection to the book of Jonah as Jesus sleeps on the boat while the storm rages in Mark 4, to the feeding of the 5000 in Mark 6 and its connection to Exodus 16, Psalm 23, and Ezekiel 34, many of the references are relatively obvious, featuring linguistic ties and thematic echoes. The story of Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman in Mark 7:25–31 however is not one that commentators have traditionally read with intertextual echoes in mind. A passage that has troubled many, prompting various explanations for Jesus’ apparent rude behavior, these seven verses can seem like an enigma coming out of nowhere. Yet, it is a linchpin between Jesus’ discussion of clean and unclean with the Pharisees and scribes earlier in Mark 7 and his ministry among the Gentiles in Mark 8. When read in the context of Hebrew Bible passages that Mark references earlier in the Gospel, it becomes apparent that Mark has been building a subtext that peaks with this story. Drawing upon Jonah, Exodus 32–34, and the Elijah narrative in 1 Kings, this paper will demonstrate how Mark weaves together these narratives, underscoring 7:25–31 to such a degree, that aside from a surface reading, the passage loses much of its meaning without an understanding of how Mark utilizes these intertextual ties.

This paper investigates the scribal features of Papyrus Amherst 63, a multi-genre compilation of hymns, ritual and narrative which are Aramaic in language but written in a unique Demotic orthography. Datable to as early as the 4th century BCE, and as late as the 2nd, this utterly unique scroll, the longest surviving Aramaic language document from antiquity, has received increasing attention in recent years, due not in small part to a putative version of Psalm 20 on the scroll. The most outstanding question about P. Amherst 63 is its purpose. In pursuit of this, I will look beyond its frequently studied orthography and engage in a careful observation of its peculiar scribal features, in order to propose a scenario that accounts for the scroll’s creation and thus its purpose as well. Pertinent considerations will be the methods used by the scribe to delimit units of meaning, such as words and sections dividers, as well as units of textual space, such as intermarginal lines between columns of text. The handwriting of the scribe, which clue us into his writing process, is also of special interest. Finally, I will consider the construction of the scroll itself and rethink the traditional ascription of recto and verso. Based on these observations, I will construct a picture of how this compiler worked, arguing that the scroll was created by an Egyptian priest who visually transcribed---and not by taking dictation---at least one Aramaic document, and probably more than one, into a compilation meant for ease of consultation and possibly textual reuse. Further support for this argument will be drawn from contemporary Demotic Egyptian scribal culture. This paper will be the first sustained voluminological analysis of the papyrus, as well as the first argument for its purpose based on extensive physical evidence. I will end by considering implications for the influx of Aramaic literature into Egypt and its interaction with native literature. I will also rethink how we conceive of the creation of compilational texts, making pertinent comparisons with Egyptian and biblical literature.

This paper will provide an overview of a womanist maternal homiletic. Through the lens of race, gender, class and motherhood this project discusses the unique ways in which African American preaching seeks to connect biblical texts to current-day culture for the sake of personal praxis and communal uplift. By expounding on the lives of proto-womanist mother-preachers such as Jarena Lee and Elizabeth the work establishes both a historical and hermeneutical tradition for such homiletical discourse. The exercise will conclude by demonstrating this preaching method using the Matthean account of the mother of James and John as a harbinger of modern #SportsMommas.

The Rahab narrative has been read various ways in recent years - from the traditional harlot to a heroine who uses her skills to fool her own king and the spies. But the story of Rahab is part of a Deuteronomistic pattern of indigenous women who side with the Israelites and become integrated into the community. This pattern has been read by postcolonial critics as characters who work on behalf of the colonizing forces to betray their own people. This paper will argue that the ambiguities within the text itself allows for variety of ideological readings but that the postcolonial reading does promote an important way reading of this text against the history of interpretation.

The poetics of variant repetition in the Hebrew Bible have been analysed in many different ways with many different degrees of complexity. A litmus test for this analysis is its connection to the reception history of the text. On the one hand, it is difficult to accept the relevance of structures and patterns unearthed when there is no evidence that they have ever been observed by prior generations. On the other hand, it is difficult not to accept the relevance of such structures and patterns if they can be shown to have been a significant part of the reception history of the text. The accents on the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible provide a prime witness to the early reception history of the Hebrew text. These accents direct the reader in regard to the stress, pause and intonation to be used in the reading of the verses. This paper observes the way in which the masoretic accents (ṭe‘amim) of Psalm 18 acknowledge and enhance the hearing of certain parallelisms. The Masoretes appear to have been attentive to the presence of parallelism not only within its verses, but also between adjacent verses, and, most surprisingly, between non-adjacent verses. Despite this attentiveness to ‘trans-linear parallelism', the versification and accentuation of the text of Psalm 18 appear to have been arranged to deliberately avoid the delivery of the text in ‘strophes’ or patterns, that is, according to principles of structural poetics. The import of these observations to biblical exegesis can be variously interpreted dependent upon the degree to which the masoretic sigla are understood to represent its ancient interpretation and its canonical identity. However, even if these sigla represent no more than the reception history of the text in late antiquity, the masoretic awareness of parallelism and potential structural poetics is most significant. Furthermore, the obscuration of the macro-structural poetics of the text begs the question why the text should be presented to be read in this way.

For biblical scholars seeking to develop an interdisciplinary approach to the biblical themes of forced migration, contemporary migration studies has much to offer in terms of theories, case studies, and terminologies. In one sense, drawing upon migration studies can enrich the interpretive imagination as to the varieties of human mobility. What this aim often points to are exegetical issues involving an event’s historical reconstruction, especially when the evidentiary material is lacking. Yet, this use of migration studies reflects a unidirectional path from theory to text. But what do biblical stories like the migration of Jacob into Egypt (Genesis 46) offer the discourse of migrations studies? In this paper, I aim to show how the integration of religious belief with the theme of migration in Genesis 46 suggests a conceptual framing of the migration experience that is consistent with contemporary stories of forced migration. Although there has been in recent years a developing emphasis on religious beliefs and practice within the literature of migration studies, such concepts are still peripheral to the discourse. As obvious as the links between religious belief and migration may seem for biblical scholars, these sorts of connections are not as prominent for migration scholars trained to empirically quantify the migration experience. In the end, what this paper offers is a preliminary discussion on the utility of biblical stories on migration for the discourse of migration studies instead of the other way round.

Scholars of diaspora assert the primary significance of economic factors as motivation for ethnic migration, including the repatriation of diaspora communities to their ancestral homelands. Some also attend to the importance of ideological factors, although generally as a secondary stimulus. In contrast, this paper argues for the equal importance of both concerns with regard to the participation of Judeo-Babylonians in the wave of return migration that occurred early in the reign of Darius I. Using comparative evidence concerning the Nippurian community of Bīt–Nērab and the Assyrian temple professionals of Uruk, this paper claims that members of native priesthoods played a critical role in the decision of displaced communities to migrate to their ancestral homeland. There is strong evidence–textual, onomastic, and material–for the perseverance (and in one case, explicit employment) of native priesthoods in all three diaspora communities. However, theological convictions like those outlined in the book of Ezekiel (chs. 20, 40–48) tied proper worship of each community’s patron deity–Yahweh, Sîn, and Aššur–to a city in the ancestral homeland. The reconstitution of the relationship between deity/priesthood/homeland functioned as ideological motivation for these priests and the communities they served. Beyond reinstituting proper worship, (re)establishing a temple in the ancestral homeland and serving there as a member of its priesthood also brought opportunities for increased economic and social capital for repatriated religious professionals. As not only religious, but also cultural and economic leaders, these priests–drawn by the ideological and economic opportunities that return migration offered them–played a decisive role in communal decisions about repatriation.

Language comprehension theorists have long posited that language understanding is contingent on mentally picturing what utterances and pieces of writing are about. Mental simulation theory suggests that not only do people mentally picture what we encounter in language, we virtually experience it as well (Barsalou 1992, 1999, 2002, 2003 2008, 2010; Zwaan and Radvansky 1998; Zwaan 1999, 2003, 2008, 2009; Bergen 2005, 2007, 2012; Gibbs 2006, 2007, 2012, 2015). Lawrence Barsalou describes the experience of comprehending language as “being there conceptually” (2002, 2003, 2008, 2010). And Benjamin Bergen (2007) describes what he calls “a new, integrated field” comprised of cognitive linguists and experimental researchers all focused “on the idea that language understanding is contingent upon the understander mentally simulating, or imagining, the content of utterances.” Simulation-based views of meaning are closely tied to ideas about embodiment. Bergen (2007) describes the idea of embodiment in cognitive science as “quite straightforward. It’s the notion that aspects of cognition cannot be understood without referring to aspects of the systems they are embedded in – in the biology of the organism, including the brain and the rest of its body, and in its physical and social context.” People process language using the cognitive resources they have built up over time in the course of all the learning and experiences they have engaged in. We might ask how these ideas about language understanding ought to impact approaches to biblical interpretation. My research focuses on the book of Proverbs. So, in this paper, I explore how simulation-based views of meaning shed light on how readers draw personal implications from the “sentences” (or sentence literature) in Proverbs. The “instructions” that pervade Proverbs 1-9 and 22:12-24:22 and the “sentences” that dominate Proverbs 10-29 are recognized as different genres of Israelite/Jewish advice literature. They differ in form but share function and purpose: that of issuing advice and instruction and seeking to cultivate a certain kind of moral character in hearers/readers. Analyzing both forms in light of embodied simulation theory raises the question, how does a person mentally simulate an instruction? I use mental-space theory to show how one might do this. Relations between act/character and consequence—in histories of interpretation, tied to notions of (cosmic) order in Proverbs—are of central importance. Therefore in concluding this paper, I describe implications the analysis I offer may entail for the perceptions we formulate of order, knowledge, and pedagogy in this touchstone of “optimistic” didactic Israelite/Jewish Wisdom literature.

In the wake of a social imaginary with accounts of human flourishing predicated on a modern anthropology and advanced as the normative final end for human existence, a more focused and intentional linkage between the economic state of affairs and the quest for salvation remains a desideratum. The long-standing tension between economics and religion finds expression in the conversation between Jesus and an inquirer described as “young” and “having many possessions” in the Gospel of Matthew (19:16-22). This paper uses that Matthean narrative to offer one compelling solution to the question as to how theology might reconcile the seemingly unbridgeable cultural abyss between conceptions of human flourishing and the quest for salvation. A number of interpretive problems from the soteriological Tendenz in the pericope exposes the lack of a well-established crux interpretum among Christian scholars as schools of thought have variously interpreted the concatenation of “have eternal life” (v.16), “enter into life” (v.17), “keep the commandments” (v.17), “teleios” (v.21) and “go and sell your possessions … treasure in heaven … come, follow me” (v.21) (for example, Légasse, Kingsbury, Powell, Wenham). Did the young man receive eternal life although he, apparently, declined to “be teleios”? (Barring quotations, we continue to use the transliterated teleios throughout the paper rather than translate it into English because by doing this we are able to ultimately communicate and highlight the strong nuance of fullness clearer than the regularly used “perfect”). Was the young man exceptional or is Jesus asking every follower to “go sell”? Is Matthew implying soteriological diversity in the pericope of the rich young man? Furthermore, what, if anything, is the relationship between salvation and human flourishing? Galot, for example, identifies two levels of discipleship in Jesus’ imperatives. Stanley concludes that the issue is about one’s relationship to Jesus rather than with the Law. Harrington cites Christian interpretations and applications as erroneous and concludes on “two ways to eternal life” for Jews. We maintain that Jesus’s teaching on salvation in Matt 19:16-29 does not support soteriological diversity. The analysis illustrates the unity in Jesus’s commands and points to the inquirer’s deficiency, disobedience to the call to discipleship and rejection of true flourishing. Evidently, the acceptance of Jesus’s message had economic implications for individuals as well as their communities. Utilizing narrative analysis, the paper explores the narrator’s intention in the two phrases “if you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments” (v.17) and “if you wish to be complete, go and sell your possessions” (v.21). The synchronic analysis produced some basic insights and fairly convincing support of the thesis to reject soteriological diversity in the pericope. However, to adequately explain the theological tension between vv.17 and 21 we appeal to the wider interface of soteriological Tendenzen in Matthew and demonstrate interdependence with Matthew 5. We not only find that Matthew 5 carries a hermeneutical key for Matt 19:16-29 but also, with Pennington, that such a key necessarily overlaps with considerations of human flourishing, highlighting Jesus’s model of a life of true flourishing.

Scholars and wealthy donors engaged in a complex network of power relations in late antiquity. The knowledge marketplace was a ground of competition-scholarly guilds ideologically distinguished themselves from their rivals and sought donors both to fund knowledge-ordering projects and to reinforce the prestige of the guild's expertise. In order to effectively compete in the knowledge marketplace, ancient scholars strove to project an aura of "expertise" through tactics of legitimation, which infused their relationships with potential patrons with the dynamics of gift exchange requiring constant negotiation. Anthropologist Jeremy Boissevain framed these types of relationships as situational, whereby patrons and clients defined their social roles through continual performance of the transactional relationship. Social network theory provides a model for analyzing the performance of social cues that reinforced the networks of exchange connecting scholastic guilds with potential wealthy patrons. Using social network theory, this paper will analyze Leviticus Rabbah 9:3. This text presents an encounter between R. Yannai and a nameless wealthy elite. Their interaction unfolds with tension, each asserting superiority over the other in subtle (and not so subtle) social cues, echoing Blau's theory of "micro-processes." This paper will argue that we can observe how rabbis in Syria Palaestina navigated transactional networks through the words and nonverbal practices encoded in this encounter. I will show how there is a symbiotic relationship to be struck between R. Yannai and the wealthy man-one maintains expert Torah knowledge and the other reciprocates with recognition of piety expectations. This is the particular dynamic between rabbis and wealthy elites that fueled relationships of patronage. I will ultimately show that the rabbis engaged in a "cognitive dissonance" with their donors, similar to the dynamics between Second Sophistic pepaideumenoi (philosophers) or late antique Christian bishops and their patrons. On the one hand, ancient literary elites held specialized knowledge inaccessible to the public; patrons, on the other hand, had the money. By locating rabbinic fundraising efforts within the larger practice of scholastic donations, I will observe the strategies rabbis used to cultivate institutional persistence.

I read Mark 5:1-20 as a passage in which Mark’s Jesus outhonors and demonstrates superiority over the Roman emperor, Vespasian. Jesus does so by singlehandedly defeating a demonic legion that no one was able to restrain (5:3-4, 8-9), accepting the title of divine sonship (5:7), performing a miracle without hesitation and with his voice (5:8), commanding the recipient of exorcism to spread the news of what the Lord has done for him (5:19), extending clementia to the man (5:19), and achieving public acknowledgment for his good deeds throughout the Decapolis through a public exorcism, multiple witnesses, and a widespread report (5:14, 16, 20). In so arguing, I build on Incigneri’s and Winn’s analysis that Mark’s gospel is situated in a post 70 CE Roman context and has a complex interaction with the Flavian dynasty in which Mark’s Jesus contests, subverts, imitates, reinscribes, rivals, and competes with the Roman Emperor for honor, fame, and recognition. I especially employ not only Watson’s emphasis on honor but also his argument that the imperial virtue of honor is an important component of Mark’s secrecy motif. Hence after previous injunctions in the Gospel to secrecy (1:25, 34, 44; 3:12), Jesus’ strange commandment in this passage to ‘make known what the Lord has done for you’ (5:19) abandons concealment in order to obtain honor by spreading his fame throughout the surrounding regions, gaining public recognition and popularity, and proclaiming publicly his good deeds.

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Luke addresses the issue of reading more explicitly—and more frequently—than does any other early Christian writer. The implied author of Luke and Acts is distinctive among the evangelists in naming a reader (twice), foregrounding unique and detailed reading scenes, and presenting protagonists as discussing reading. It is not surprising, then, that Luke-Acts has become a storm center within the wider controversies among New Testament scholars over orality, aurality, and literacy in early Christianity. How should we envision the delivery and reception of these stories among early believers? Shall we imagine an interactive performance in which a lector or reciter fluidly adapted familiar story lines in response to audience needs and cues, or, to the contrary, did communal reading events serve to control and stabilize the wording of authoritative texts like the Jewish Scriptures and Luke-Acts? Scholarly discussion of such questions has relied heavily on identifying apposite models of communal reading from Jewish and Hellenistic antiquity and then on applying these social reconstructions to Luke and Acts. While not eschewing reference to such external models, another approach to the issue of reading focuses much more sharply on internal dynamics in Luke-Acts, with special attention to how the narrative self-consciously (reflexively) promotes and inculcates ways of reading itself. Viewed through this lens, the text is about reading the text and forming the reader as (Lukan) reader. In this paper I expand on this reflexive, pedagogical, and psychagogical approach to indicate in a preliminary way how Luke teaches readers to read in terms of perception, ethics, authority, and tradition. Passages of note will include the preface(s), the Nazareth episode, the Emmaus story, and the incident of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch, among others.

Genesis 1 has been the subject of numerous comparative studies, in particular with regard to the Enuma Elish. However, verse 2 diverges markedly from the Mesopotamian cosmogonies, being most closely paralleled in Phoenician texts. While scholars such as Gunkel, Eissfeldt, and Moscati, have noted this similarity briefly, no one has collected and analyzed all the Phoenician evidence (Moscati fails to refer to any Phoenician source whatsoever in his 1947 JBL paper). Addressing the Phoenician sources, discussing their ancient Near Eastern (especially Egyptian) background, and understanding the Greco-Roman world in which the traditions they contain were preserved can help us trace the early history of the motif of the primordial wind in Genesis.

Though scholarly treatments of the late antique cemetery basilica known as the “chapel of Alexander” in Tipasa in Mauritania Caesariensis have acknowledged its clerical focus, they have neither explored the implications of this focus within the specific context of North African Christianity nor given detailed attention to the ways the site would have structured ritual practice and formed its visitors. In this presentation I will offer a thick description of the site and argue that the architectural plan, program of mosaics, and monumental burials of the basilica structured the ritual practice of late antique visitors to the site so as to restructure their commemoration of the dead as an episcopal-focused piety, thereby also reinforcing the centrality of the bishop in the local community. The particular features of the site function on several layers to assert the authority of the local bishop, his sanctity vis-à-vis the community’s martyrs, and the status of the Caecilianist (or “Catholic”) communion as the true church in Africa. I will focus on three elements of the site. First, the basilica was furnished with a series of pavement mosaics that would have guided visitors into the basilica proper (rather than the adjoining funerary enclosure) and up through the central nave. (CIL VIII.20903-20906, et al.) The inscriptions guided not only visitors’ steps through the site, but also their perspective on Alexander, reifying his position at the pinnacle of both the community’s almsgiving and the Christian community itself. Second, the layout and architectural plan of the site incorporated the shrines of martyrs in a funerary enclosure that was relegated to a position secondary to that of the basilica, which was located on elevated ground. Within the basilica, Alexander and the previous bishops of Tipasa were commemorated in images that evoked the glories of martyrdom. The site channeled visitors and their attention to commemoration of these holy bishops above and before that of the martyrs in the enclosure below. Third, the site’s translation of the remains of the previous bishops of Tipasa and commemoration of them as iusti priores was ideologically loaded in late 4th and early 5th century African Christianity. The significance of bishops’ lineage for their sanctity and legitimacy was a point of sectarian controversy, and the basilica of Alexander promoted this ideology by shaping its visitors’ commemoration of the special dead into a commemoration, above all, of their holy bishops. Thus the episcopal focus of the site was also a weapon in the sectarian conflict of North Africa. Thus the cemetery basilica of Alexander demonstrates not only how broader episcopal trends in late antiquity, such as the growing authority of the bishops, could take on particular significance within local and regional contexts, but even more how an individual site might use the arrangement of space, architectural elements, and ritual practice to shape local practice and inculcate both piety and ideology.

Freedom of religion or belief is enshrined in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and is one of the central pillars of our understanding of what makes us human. Yet it remains a problematic concept in terms of its practical implementation. For example, we might ask how belief in freedom of religion or belief can be reconciled with the claims to universal truth propounded by at least some followers of major world religions, or how individual freedom can sit comfortably with political requirements and socio-cultural expectations. Perhaps the Hebrew Bible can help us here, arising as it did in a multireligious world where the people of Israel found themselves confronted by a variety of alternative (generally rather more dominant) religious traditions and caught up in a web of global political and military intrigue which often both supported and depended upon competing religious ideologies. The Hebrew Bible speaks with multiple and contradictory voices on the issue of the existence of other deities and the relation of Yahweh to the non-Israelite nations, yet its testimony to Israel’s faith consistently affirms a belief in the supremacy and superiority of Yahweh and the need for all nations and peoples to recognise his lordship. Working therefore from the hypothesis that attending to the subtle nuance of the biblical argument in this area might offer some helpful insights for contemporary understanding, this paper attempts to build an embryonic framework from some of the many threads of the Hebrew Bible’s discussion of the role of Yahweh and the status of Israel which might inform political theology and even perhaps public policy in the arena of freedom of religion or belief.

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In Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible (2007), Karel van der Toorn claims that the temple was the center of scribal production and identified the Levites as the scribes who produced the Biblical texts. His assertion has been met with skepticism by a number of scholars, who see the locus of scribal activities occurring away from the temple, such as within military or palace bureaucracies. The argument over the location of scribes has revolved around their physical or professional locations, and it is this aspect of the issue that needs to be rethought. Much more can be learned about the location of scholarly knowledge by examining the Mesopotamian āšipu, one of the most important ritual specialists of the first-millennium. Similar to the Levites, the āšipus of the first-millennium belonged to families that traced their lineage back to important ancestors of their past. More recent research has suggested that although these scribal families would often be associated with temple and royal administrations, the scholarly knowledge that they transmitted belonged to the families that transmitted them, rather than to geographic or professional locations. Analysis of libraries that belonged to these families along with evidence from letters written by these specialists allow us to see the breadth of the texts over which they had oversight. In light of this comparative evidence, I will argue that it is plausible to see the Hebrew Bible as the product of ritual specialists who kept their cultural and ritual knowledge within family lines. These ritual specialists could have participated outside of and within temple and royal administrations, rendering any attempt to describe scribes or ritual specialists by their physical or professional locations to be tenuous at best.

In the past decade several new proposals about the serpent in the Garden of Eden have been made, in my view all erroneous. First, in 2010 James Charlesworth argued that the serpent of Gen. 3 is to be viewed positively, as he claimed the serpent often was elsewhere in the ancient world. However, it cannot be denied that in the Hebrew Bible itself serpents are overwhelmingly viewed negatively, with very few exceptions (Num. 21; Isa. 6). Moreover, if we are seriously to suppose that the narrator intended us to view the serpent positively in Gen. 3 it becomes incomprehensible why God should sentence it to such harsh punishment. Furthermore, Eve admits that the serpent had deceived her, a sentiment from which God does not dissent. Secondly, in 2011, Francesca Stavrakopoulou claimed that the Eden serpent denoted snake worship, seemingly referring to Nehushtan. She further maintained that this worship is implied as leading to the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BCE, which she finds symbolized in the expulsion from Paradise. However, Adam and Eve are hardly represented as worshiping the serpent, the destruction of Nehushtan took place over a century before 586 BCE, and serpent worship is never cited as a reason for the fall of Jerusalem elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible. In any case, it is unlikely that Gen. 3 is an allegory of the fall of Jerusalem. Thirdly, in 2014 Johannes de Moor and Marjo Korpel, argued that the Eden story has its background in the Ugaritic texts KTU 1.100 and 107. This includes the serpent, which they see represented by the god Horon in the Ugaritic narrative. However, the thesis is highly questionable, since much of the claimed Ugaritic Vorlage has to be reconstructed in gaps in the narrative. Fourthly, in 2015, Duane Smith has suggested that the Eden serpent has its background in Mesopotamian ophiomancy, that is, divination based on observation of serpents. Smith claims that the knowledge of good and evil which the first humans acquired means knowledge of good and bad fortune, the kind of knowledge gained through divination. He also claims that the description of the serpent as ‘arum could mean that it is ‘portentous’. All this seems foreign to the narrative. If we reject all these views, what then are we to make of the serpent? Although the view is not totally new, I think it likely that Gen. 3 has reworked certain mythic motifs found in the Gilgamesh epic. Just as in the Eden narrative a serpent is ultimately responsible for denying Adam and Eve access to the tree of life, thereby denying them the immortality which the tree bestows, so in the Gilgamesh epic, a serpent is responsible for snatching the plant of life, thereby denying Gilgamesh the chance of gaining the rejuvenation which that plant bestows. Both Gen. 3 and the Gilgamesh epic imply that immortality or rejuvenation in this world are something beyond human grasp. The stories, of course, are quite different, but make use of some common motifs.

To what extent can one speak about ‘human universals’ (or ‘anthropogene Universalien’)? And thus, what do 21st century CE human beings have in common with their fellow human beings in antiquity? Senses, cognition, embodiment, manufactured materiality (sometimes still literally bearing fingerprints), and fallibility are good candidates. From a cognitive perspective, one might find – for instance – neurological grounds to argue for such similarities/ commonalities. But does this provide enough basis for ‘mutual understanding’ (or at least one-sided historical understanding)? Here, one needs to take into account cultural differences and individual perceptions: even if – generally speaking, assuming the sense of sight – humans see light and colour, colour perception can be different as reflected in language. Because manufactured materiality brings us – in various respects – in touch with ancient fellow human beings, this past ‘reality’ provides handles for exploring humanity in antiquity, and therefore also comprises guidance for investigating the hermeneutics of ancient images. With methodological tools ranging from common sense to complexity theory, this paper enters into dialogue with cognitive studies in exploring the fundamentals of studying fellow human beings in antiquity, in particular their agency and ancient visuality (including visual literacy) through materiality.

In this contribution, I would like to focus on nomistic elements in the Book of Joshua and how they can help us establishing the relation between the different versions of the Book of Joshua and the historical development of the different texts.

This paper investigates the mystical nature of the Christology in Mark's Gospel. It, firstly, analyses Mark's depiction of the enigmatic identity and presence of Jesus in key passages in the gospel. It focusses on the dense symbolic announcement in Mk. 4:10-11 within the context of Mark 4:1–20, where Jesus reveals exclusively to his disciples hidden knowledge about his identity as the mystery of the kingdom. Secondly the paper compares, but also contrasts these verses with similar dynamics in mystical movements like Merkavah mysticism that speak about initiates that receive divine revelations during special experiences like heavenly journeys and that were kept hidden from ordinary people. In a third part the paper will investigate how this mystical identity of Jesus is further developed by the motif of holiness, also as it relates to temple rituals. Mark consistently depicts Jesus as the mystery who is especially also the Holy One, and whose astonishing ministry and enigmatic presence evoke awe and fear among perplexed onlookers (Mk. 9:10, 32). His awesome power as the Holy One is especially evident in his struggle against the impure, unholy forces of evil (Mark 2). A final section will analyse how Mark integrates this mystical portrait of Jesus concretely in the lives of his disciples. He emphasises throughout his gospel Jesus's call to disciples to follow him and remain in his presence (Mk.10:21, 28, 52). By doing so, they will be made holy, purified and transformed in their innermost being by Jesus' mystical holiness (Mark 7:14–23). Mark underlines the ethical nature of such holiness: To live holy is to be ‘righteous’, to reject a lifestyle that is impure and to live in absolute devotion to the divine will (Mk. 7:18). This will distinguish them from an external relationship with the divine that is characterized by adherence to rules, regulations and empty rituals. The paper will conclude with an analysis of Mark 7:17–20 where Mark refers to the example of John to explain the numinous nature of holiness. He shows that the one who lives in the presence of God, who is holy and righteous, fearless and powerful, is at the same time also different and awesome, feared by those who are unrighteous and who are perplexed in the presence of the righteous ones.

The Caleb-Achsah episode is remarkable in at least two ways. First, it appears twice, in Josh 15:13–19 and in Judg 1:10–15. Though, neither of them really fits the context. The story must thus have been regarded as so important and/or interesting as to include it twice. Later, Achsah is even included in the genealogical account in 1 Chronicles 2. Second, the narrative course of events is interesting. Achsah is given away by her father Caleb to Othniel as a price for the latter’s capture of Debir. However, Othniel hardly plays any role in the narrative. It is between Caleb and Achsah, and it is Achsah, the former “object,” who urges her father successfully to give her a blessing in the form of pools. In my paper, I will deal with backgrounds and foregrounds of the episode, highlighting intertextual nodes and the narrative roles of Caleb and Achsah.

In a previous article published in Journal of Early Christian Studies, in 2016, I demonstrated that the notions of ageing and old age were central ascetic discourses in the thought of John Chrysostom. The purpose of this paper is now to expand the analysis of old age in late ancient Christianity by looking at how old age functions, both as a biological, social, and cultural reality, in the Discourses of Philoxenus of Mabbug. The Discourses have been selected because of their copious references to ageing and old age – in particular biblical discourses of old age – which makes this corpus of memrē quite significant in writing a social history of old age in early Christianity. The paper first looks at how Philoxenus understands ageing as a biological/medical phenomenon, and then proceeds to contextualize old age and ageing in his ascetic discourse. Old age is important in Philoxenus’ moral discourse, notably in his understanding of fornication and chastity, but also in his admonitions against gluttony, anger, and greed. He also expands the discourse into the realm of the soul (specifically, the agelessness of the soul, which is linked to moral virtue). Ageing and old age are shown to be central in his fashioning of monastic identity. This paper forms part of a larger project on the social history of old age in the New Testament and early Christianity.

Scholarship on the prophetic condemnation of the marzeaḥ banquet in Amos 6:1-7 has tended to gravitate towards two particular readings of the text. Scholars who focus on the religious or ritual aspects of the banquet have claimed that it was lewd, “pagan,” or “syncretistic,” and a form of blasphemy against Yahweh, despite the fact that there is nothing in the passage to suggest that its author was concerned with lewdness or syncretism. On the other hand, scholars who call into question the validity of the previous argument have tended not to address the implications of the religious aspect of the banquet, preferring to understand the prophetic condemnation as focused on the wealthy in general. In this paper, I analyze the marzeaḥ feast of Amos 6 in the context of Ancient Middle Eastern ritual banquets more generally, with a focus on commensality as a means for human-divine communication. Based on this comparative data, I conclude that the marzeaḥ functioned as an offertory event, in which participants focalized divine presence through their own ritualized consumption of food in honor of a patron deity. Banqueters could thus hope to accrue divine favor while simultaneously enjoying a sumptuous meal. The prophetic critique of this practice in Amos 6:1–7 can be elucidated by reference to the broader concerns about cultic praxis expressed in Amos 4:4-5 and 5:21-24. I argue that the prophet takes issue with the specific form of offering represented by the marzeaḥ. In particular, he condemns the affluent who believe that they can make grand offerings to Yahweh on a quid-pro-quo basis while simultaneously luxuriating in their own wealth at the expense of the poor.

Martyn's seminal History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel (1968) inaugurated a new era in Johannine studies. Scholars such as John Ashton and D. Moody Smith have noted that, though Martyn's controversial historical proposals dominated subsequent literature, his enduring legacy is found in the re-engagement with John's gospel as a thoroughly Jewish text. In this connection, it is worth noting that Wayne Meeks' important monograph, The Prophet-King: Moses Traditions and the Johannine Christology, was published in 1967, just a year before Martyn's work. The foundation of both of these scholars' efforts was their emphasis on the fundamental importance of the Moses-Jesus relationship in John. My paper revisits this emphasis, specifically in relationship to the interpretation of Deut 18:15 in John's gospel. In this passage, Moses famously promises that God will raise up a prophet like him, to whom the Israelites ought to listen. Though not originally intended to refer to a singular eschatological figure, there is considerable evidence that such an interpretation was adopted by some (many?) readers of the Pentateuch in the first centuries BCE and CE (at Qumran, among the Samaritans, and in various movements reported by Josephus, as well as nascent Christianity). John's awareness of this interpretation is reflected its unique usage of the expression "the Prophet," to whom the author refers on at least four (and possibly five) occasions (1:21, 25; 6:14; 7:40, [52]). There is, however, no agreement in scholarship on the importance of the motif for the readers of the gospel in the late first century. Indeed, it is often thought to represent a vestige from early stages of the gospel tradition, particularly in two ways: first, those who take a source-critical approach to the Fourth Gospel consider the "prophet like Moses" motif to reflect the "low" Christology of the putative Book of Signs; second, those who utilize a community-centered approach consider this identification to represent the early convictions of the Johannine movement, eclipsed by the Logos Christology of the late first century. In my paper, I revisit Martyn and Meeks' contributions in order to offer a corrective to these approaches and to re-engage with the question of the importance of the "prophet like Moses" for the evangelist and his community in the late first century. In short, my argument is that an appeal to the "prophet like Moses" was very important to the evangelist, precisely because the portrayal of Jesus as Moses' authorized successor constituted a claim for the legitimacy of the community as exponents and heirs of Israel's scriptural traditions. Indeed, John's usage of the motif ought to be situated in the context of the attempts of various Jewish authors and movements to portray themselves as bearers of the legacy and teaching of Moses (e.g., Fourth Ezra, Josephus). My argument develops in dialogue with Martyn and Meeks' extraordinarily sensitive interpretations of the Moses-Jesus relationship in John, contextualizing them in light of scholarly developments, particularly with respect to the so-called "partings of the ways" between Judaism and Christianity.

The Textual History of the Ethiopic Old Testament (THEOT) Project has now generated rich data sets for 24 books of the Ethiopic Old Testament. These involve transcriptions of sample passages (in the case of longer books) or complete books of the Old Testament in more than thirty manuscripts. The transcriptions are collated, aligned, and a set of computer scripts identify the statistical frequency of the shared variants. From these, we generate a Dendrogram and identify manuscript clusters, and lists of the distinctive readings that set off clusters from one another. One indication of the correctness of this work is the fact that the clusters are chronologically coherent—the early manuscripts clustering together in one area and later manuscripts clustering together in another. This presentation will focus on what we have learned about the earliest extant manuscripts from the thirteenth to the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. These manuscripts always constitute one branch of the Dendrogram, but within that larger branch there may be a couple of sub-clusters accompanied by a set of manuscripts that share variants first with one then the other sub-cluster. Together these manuscripts—organized into two, tight sub-clusters surrounded by manuscripts of mixed alignments—reveal the state of the text in its earliest recoverable form. This presentation will describe the patterns of alignment and offer an interpretation of the meaning of these patterns.

In his study of the political nomenclature of the Northern Kingdom found in Assyrian royal inscriptions, Brad E. Kelle asked the question: What's in a name? According to him, these political designations reflect changing historical circumstances, mirroring changes in the territorial extent of Israel as Assyrian pressure grew stronger. Although this interpretation is within the realm of possibilities, important questions remain unanswered: Do these terms have a social/cultural significance for their host culture? And if so, what do they mean? As direct evidence of political identity in ancient Israel, such labels expose indigenous conceptions of power and authority. Following Pierre Bourdieu's concept of symbolic language, state nomenclature is better understood as a manifestation of the symbolic language of power in its quest for legitimacy. Since politics, as a socio-cultural phenomenon, is directly connected to its social environment, political nomenclature should logically stem from socio-cultural developments taking place within the frontiers of a given polity and answer to cultural conventions shared by members of its community. This approach not only offers a more elaborate response to Kelle's original question, it also provides a fresh outlook on the issue of political identity in ancient Israel, which in turn calls for a review of the available evidence. The present discussion will take the shape of a synchronic and diachronic study of the political nomenclature of the Northern Kingdom as it is preserved in primary sources from the ancient Near East (Assyrian royal inscriptions, Assyrian epistolary texts, and epigraphic sources from the southern Levant). By studying these idioms in their respective temporal environment and tracing their evolution in conjunction to the parallel picture provided by archeological data (state formation and social-cultural developments), explicit relationships between political identity and stages in the political evolution/cultural development of Israel are brought to the fore. Over the course of its history, the Northern Kingdom is known through the triple designation of "Israel", "house of Omri", and "Samaria". Clear temporal distinctions exist between the usage of each idiom. For instance, the term "Israel" is solely restricted to the 9th century BCE (Mesha stele, Tel Dan inscription, Kurkh monolith inscription of Shalmaneser III). Previous mentions in other primary sources from the Late Bronze Age (Merneptah stele, Berlin statue pedestal of Ramses III) and their connection to a tribal group from the southern Levant argue for a reliance on old cultural traditions. The use of these traditions by central authority echoes the role of religion in the emergence of power in ancient civilizations, a fact also confirmed by the etymology of the name "Israel". The equivalent rapprochement between political idioms and socio-cultural conventions is observed for "house of Omri" and "Samaria". The former reflects the central role of kinship in ancient Israelite society, while the latter epitomizes the completion of the process of the consolidation of state structures through the establishment of a royal capital.

The Dictionary of Nature Imagery in the Bible is an exciting new and creative project that helps to unlock the beauty and message of the biblical text. By offering an in depth look at animals, fauna, etc., this project sheds light on the rhetorical language and poetics of biblical texts that employ natural world imagery. This paper responds to studies already being done in this new area of inquiry while offering new insights into the richness of an ancient book that continues to have profound implications for the creative imagination in a world tottering on ecological disaster.

Christians in North America and Europe may find themselves far removed from many of the social dynamics and, therefore, pressures reflected in 1 Peter, but this is far from the case for Christians in Sri Lanka. The social dynamics of 1 Peter are very much akin to those within which many Sri Lankan Christians live – a minority emerging in the midst of a dominant and majority culture deeply rooted in a traditional religion with visual and iconic reminders of the sacred story of the majority everywhere; pressures within families and households for converts to return to the faith of their forebears; widespread social stigma of an emerging religion seen as “foreign” to the culture and to the interests of the majority (though, ironically, with Christianity seen now as a relic of imperialism in a self-aware post-colonial environment). This paper explores the ways in which 1 Peter is read in the Sri Lankan setting and the effects of its interpretation and application in this social location. On the one hand, 1 Peter has been instrumental in helping (some) Sri Lankan Christians identify and work to eliminate avoidable points of tension between their neighbors and themselves, e.g., through working more thoughtfully towards indigenizing Christianity and discarding some of its obviously and needlessly “foreign” (colonial) trappings, and through distinguishing themselves in practices that their neighbors would also affirm as virtuous. In regard to those practices that are deemed unavoidable in the course of maintaining fidelity to Christ in their environment, 1 Peter continues to offer much of the same encouragement and much of the same advice, in the way of social reinforcement within the group, as it did among its first audiences. Caution is required, however, in terms of some of the lenses or frameworks that 1 Peter provides, lest the text unduly and uncritically demonize those outside of the minority Christian group.

One of the most crucial contributions of Arthur Nock has been the comparison between religious and philosophical conversion in the antiquity. However, there have been significant developments in the understanding both of ancient conversion experience as well as the relationship between philosophy and religion in the Hellenistic era, since the publication of Nock’s work (1933). On the one hand, this paper investigates how the specific Pauline understanding of conversion and baptism in 1Cor 12:13 as incorporation transcends the conventional limits of Nock’s definition of conversion: “By conversion we mean the reorientation of the soul of an individual, the deliverance turning from indifference or from an earlier form of piety to another ...”(Conversion, 1933, 7) Conversion is interpreted by Paul in 1 Cor 12–13 not only as a psychological/moral transformation of the individual (cf. e.g. Rom 6) but as a paradoxical socialisation by the power of the Spirit which results in love ethics. The text under discussion reveals most palpably (even in comparison with Gal 3) the social aspect of the Pauline understanding of conversion. In Paul’s view, experiencing an ongoing spiritual transformation presupposes the undergoing of a paradoxical process of socialisation. Therefore, Paul’s insights in 1 Cor 12:12–13 can be better understood from the perspective of sociological paradigms in the conversion research which have challenged Nock’s definition and interpreted conversion as an ongoing volitional and dynamic social process. (see overview H.Zock, “Paradigms in Psychological Conversion Research” 2006) On the other hand, this presentation analyses the analogies and the differences between the Pauline usage of the body metaphor in 1Cor 12 and the Stoic tradition. The vast relevant bibliography provides crucial insights regarding the comparison between the Pauline and the Stoic usage of the body-organism metaphor. However, the following aspect remains unconsidered: Paul’s usage of the body metaphor in 1Cor 12 is set before a conversionist canvas where the reconstruction in the biography of the converts (cf. the once/now scheme in 12:2), their baptism (12:12), confessing of the Lord (12:3) and new status in the community (12:13) are emphatically stressed. Though the Stoics use the body metaphor in a political sense (Chrysippus, Fragm 367; Epictetus, Diatr. 1.10.4; Marc Aurel 4.40) they do not apply it on their reflections regarding change to the Stoic way of life or "epistrophe". Stoic "epistrophe" meant a turn to one’s self (eis eauton), that is a rather psychagogical conversion directly linked to the "prosoche" (inner attention) attitude (Epictetus, Diatr. 4.4.6–7). It did not refer to an incorporation as a process where one has to renounce one’s previous social privileges into a new community. Therefore, the Stoic view of society has some analogies with the Pauline language, but it is not set before the same conversionist backdrop as Paul’s in 1Cor 12. By interpreting conversion as incorporation Paul exhorts the rich members of the Corinthian community or those having higher spiritual gifts to renounce their privileges within the messianic community in order to experience an ongoing conversion which will be accomplished at the eschaton (13:12).

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The translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek has often been understood as a scribal activity. Since we have an increasing number of studies dealing with Septuagint translation techniques at our disposal, we may ask what insights into translation methods can teach us about scribal practices among Jews in the Hellenistic era. In this paper, I will look primarily at the Old Greek translation of Job, the nature of which has been highly disputed, in particular owing to the divergences of the Greek vis-à-vis the Hebrew, as a gateway to dealing with the question of how understanding the Septuagint fits into a larger understanding of the history and social realities associated with the communities that translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek. How did the translator of Job approach their Vorlage? Was the translator aware that they were translating what is now considered to be poetry? What can we learn about the translation process itself? For example, did the translator adhere to the easy technique of translating the book sequentially? Since Greek Job is often regarded as the most Hellenized translation in the corpus, this book is particularly interesting when dealing with the question of scribal practices in the Septuagint. Is Greek Job the odd one out, or is it representative for a wider practice? Through studying the Greek translation of Job, and by placing this book within the framework of a developing tradition of scriptural translation, the present paper aims to contribute to the scholarly understanding of scribal activity in Second Temple Judaism.

“Great utterance,” writes Ps.-Longinus in On the Sublime, “is the echo of greatness of soul.” And yet, he goes on to say that “the silence of Ajax . . . is great and more sublime than speech” (9.2). How do speech and silence relate to the rhetoric of the sublime? Many ancient writers recognized the multivalent powers of silence, not only as an effective rhetorical technique, but as a privileged means of accessing a sacred realm beyond speech, where one encounters the ineffable divine. In this paper, I consider these issues with special attention to the Gospel of Luke, where silence, speech, and the sublime are represented and mutually constituted in subtly intricate ways. For example, Mary’s Magnificat has stood for centuries as some of the most uplifting, inspired – in a word: sublime – rhetoric in the whole of biblical literature. What is the relationship between Mary’s soul-elevating song and her silent pondering elsewhere in the Gospel (e.g., 2.19)? Or consider the sublime “spectacle” (theoria, 23.48) of Jesus’ passion, when darkness covers the land, Jesus hands over his spirit with a loud cry, and then finally, in the end, exhales into the silence of death (23.46). What are the rhetorical effects of such moments in the Lukan narrative? Moreover, how can we as critics account for the paradoxical fact that the sublime narrative silences in which we are interested are expressed in words – that is, we can only access them in and through Luke’s language? I contend that in the Lukan narrative, sublimity and silence intersect such that the story can persuade, not necessarily because it is precise, but because it is potent.

Five hundred years ago, Martin Luther ignited a protest movement that hinged not only on a bifocal conception of God’s law but also on a political clash with ecclesiastical law. Fifty years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. was devoting his last year of life to fighting unjust American laws with theological rhetoric as well as social and political action. Both of these reformers saw political and biblical dimensions to their respective battles, and the most prominent common term at the intersection of these dimensions was Law. This paper will place Dr. King and Martin Luther in conversation in order to examine the multifaceted engagement of Law and laws undertaken by each. The paper will argue that King and Luther, in radically different contexts, both viewed God’s Law dialogically and applied this tension to complex censure of unjust human laws, fostering protest that was combative yet constructive. Both insisted on the subordination of human laws to the Law of God, and both invoked divine judgment on those in power who misused law to exploit and oppress. Luther marshaled the Apostle Paul to denounce the captivity imposed upon the German people by papal and ecclesiastical authority; King echoed Israel’s prophets (as well as Paul) to threaten the unjust state in the battle for civil rights legislation. Although their battles took place in drastically different circumstances, the value and authority of “Law” lay at the heart of each movement, particularly because both King and Luther were protesting laws that lay entrenched in political entities that considered themselves to be “Christian” nations.

The book of Genesis gives two opposing portraits of Judah’s masculinity. On the one hand, he is shown as the leader of the children of Jacob’s sons and on the other he is ridiculed by his daughter-in-law. Is Judah an ass in a lion’s skin? This paper proposes to explore Judah’s masculinity as an example of the inherently unstable nature of gender construction. I am attentive to “hegemonic masculinity,” a concept theorized by Raewyn W. Connell (1987) on the basis of both anthropological and psychoanalytic perspectives and the refining of this concept with its use in biblical studies. Hegemonic masculinity points to the expression of masculinity that becomes dominant and is the standard against which all other masculinities are judged. Hegemonic masculinity is never stable, but is continuously shaped by competing subversive masculinities and the political tensions these represent (Haddox 2016, 179). Although Judah is only the fourth son of Jacob, he is expressly depicted in Genesis as assuming a leadership role in relation to his brothers, including speaking up against killing Joseph, negotiating with his father regarding Joseph’s demand that Benjamin be brought down to Egypt, and pleading with Joseph for Benjamin’s life. In Genesis 49:8-12, Judah receives the most favorable treatment of all Jacob’s sons. The blessing of Jacob from his deathbed portrays Judah’s hegemonic masculinity at its finest. This text evokes images of dominance, and has messianic undertones. Judah is portrayed as a leader through the images of the lion, the scepter, the prostration of his brothers, and the allusions to a perpetual lineage of David. In fact, this portrayal of Judah is one of the clearest images of hegemonic masculinity found in Genesis. However, in Genesis 38, Judah’s masculinity does not correspond to what a biblical reader would expect of a patriarch. Many elements cast doubt on his ability to be a “man.” Judah transgresses the Law by refusing to give Tamar his third son as a husband. Not only is Judah not persuasive in his accusation, he is persuaded by Tamar that his own actions were wrong. Judah is deceived, specifically deceived by a woman. The shame he wants to attribute to Tamar rebounds on himself. In the end, he acknowledges himself to be less righteous than Tamar (Gen. 38:26). The episode as a whole reveals that Judah does not have control of his family, nor does he possess the self-control expected of a male patriarch. Gen 38 clearly subverts Judah’s hegemonic masculinity. What are the rhetorical effects of this subversion of Judah’s hegemonic gender construction? Different hypotheses to explain Judah antithetical masculinities will be explored and evaluated. Jacob speaks of Judah as a lion, but in Gen 38 he seems to have been portrayed in the role of the ass.

Studies of the use of ḥll and ḥllh in H have led to the suggestion that sexual activity marks a woman with the "essence" of her partner. The notion that a woman is somehow “contaminated” in a permanent way by previous sexual partners, and further that she is capable of passing on this contamination to later partners and their offspring (e.g. Lev 21:15; Ezek 44:22), might afford some insight into how ancient Israelite authors conceived of sexuality, fertility, and lineage. This paper examines the possibility that the essence with which a woman is marked may, in ancient constructions, consist of her partner’s ethnic, social, or religious status, conceived as something left in her womb from her first sexual encounter, and which can be passed on to subsequent offspring independently of who the actual father is. This construction of fertility and genealogy has potential implications for better understanding narrative material about levirate marriage, attempted coups d’etats signalled by sex with a king’s wife, and the requirement to execute enemy women who “have known a man.”

1 Clement is one of the earliest orthodox texts outside the Christian canon and its composition likely predates the composition of some Second Testament texts. It was written by the church in Rome to the church in Corinth, after this community had received Paul’s correspondence, but likely before the end of the first century CE. The letter is listed as canonical in the fifth century Codex Alexandrinus. Despite 1 Clement’s significant place in the early Jesus movement the contents of this text are commonly overlooked in scholarship. In part this is because investigations have been rendered myopic through undue focus on church conflict. In part this is because the theology within this text does not conform to scholarly expectations about the early church, and is thus ignored in plain sight. Embedded within 1 Clement we discover fresh insight into Jewish-Christian self-understanding in the first century. This paper will excavate 1 Clement’s fluid Jewish-Christian identity. In particular, attention will be given to the authors’ highly favourable presentation of the Temple and efficacious cultic practices therein (40-41). 1 Clement’s understanding of the Temple and of cultic sacrifice ‘made for sin and transgression’ (41.2) will be investigated and brought into dialogue with this text’s understanding of soteriology (36). The disjuncture between the overlapping hymn fragments found in 1 Clement 36 and Hebrews 1 will be interrogated and the paper will conclude with an exploration of the contrast between1 Clement’s theology and other strands of the early Christian tradition that rose to dominance within the Christian theological landscape. This paper will demonstrate that in attending to the borderland evidence of 1 Clement, assumptions about the early church are disrupted and understandings of the hybrid nature of first century Jewish-Christian identity are enriched.

It is generally assumed that children’s Bibles function as educational and religious stepping stones, “journeys”, or “pathways”, inevitably to be followed by advancement to the reading and interpretation of the “adult” biblical text, once language competency and religious initiation have been achieved. However, as Ruth Bottigheimer and Penny Schine Gold have hinted in their groundbreaking histories of children’s Bibles, by the end of the twentieth century children’s Bible have become the end product. Many professors of Bible would agree that the only knowledge of the text one can now assume of Western students, for whom Bible had traditionally been part of the literary canon, would be the often inadequate recall of children’s Bibles, Bible storybooks and the accompanying interpretative pictures they were exposed to as children. Yet, although the popularity of children’s Bibles in religious and secular Western communities is undisputed, acknowledgment of their growing position as important exegetical discourse is only slowly reaching the academy, with little credence given to the idea that these texts warrant serious critical engagement. This paper argues that children’s Bibles, as radical interpreters of the Bible and as vehicles for the imparting of social values by one generation to the next, have become invaluable descriptive markers of identity, of constancy and change in religious collectives. This role of the Bible, its reception, and the way it shapes the popular and the everyday in society, is an under-examined component of reception history to which twenty-first century children’s Bibles provide invaluable access. The fact that these texts continue to evolve and adapt, despite claims to constancy, is a strong indication of their value and relevance to an understanding of twenty-first century religion and society. More so, as stories intended for those on establishment’s margins (children, women as caregivers, newly converted adults, etc.), they express an agenda far beyond simply making children interested in the Bible. These books connect Bible-informed ideologies and preferences with the routines of everyday life in ways that are not solely functionalist, but focused on the experience of an audience at or on the margins of the religious centre.

The subject of money looms large in the Corinthian correspondence. At a minimum, we find it in: 1 Corinthians 9, where Paul uses his renunciation of Corinthian funding to encourage the “strong” to renounce their “right” to eat eidōlothyta; 1 Corinthians 16:1-4, where Paul gives instructions to begin the collection for the Jerusalem assembly; 2 Cor 2:17, where Paul denies that he is peddling the word of God; 2 Cor 7:2, where he again refutes allegations of financial misconduct; 2 Corinthians 8, in which the apostle encourages the Corinthians to complete the collection of money for Jerusalem; 2 Corinthians 9, where he makes yet another appeal on behalf of the collection; 2 Cor 11:7-11, where Paul claims to have “plundered” other assemblies in order to preach to the Corinthians free-of-charge; and 2 Cor 12:13-18, where he adamantly insists that neither he nor his associates have defrauded the Corinthian assembly. There are two themes around which the subject of money revolves: money for Paul’s sustenance and money for the Jerusalem collection (although at times it is difficult to separate the two). In this paper, I will consider only the first theme—Paul’s means of sustenance—and I will ask why Paul labored as a skēnopoios instead of accepting financial support for his missionary work in Corinth. This question is especially interesting in light of Paul’s acceptance of money from the Philippian assembly.

Early Islamic communities built their identity upon biblical memories, re-contextualizing, reorienting and reinterpreting them. The voluminous scholarship has demonstrated that especially in locations peripheral to the Hijaz, where Islam emerged, a great majority of local communities transmitted their pre-Islamic (mostly Christian and Jewish) cultural and literary heritage into Islam. This heritage played a considerable role in shaping local manifestations of Islamic vocabulary, doctrines, and salvific chronology, and constituted a significant source of knowledge, piety and legitimacy. In this paper I focus on writings from two families, who were descendants of Jewish and Christian communities in Yemen and Syria, respectively: The Ṣaḥīfa (lit. “pages”) of Hammām b. Munabbih al-Yamanī (d. 719), and an anecdotal collection of Yaḥyā b. Yaḥyā al-Ghassānī (d. ca750), which was ostensibly transmitted through his descendants and preserved in the 11th-century Kitāb Akhbār wa-Ḥikāyāt (the Book of Reports and Stories). These texts comprise anecdotes and sayings of biblical prophets, as well as of Muhammad, anonymous characters, and Satan. Although neither of them is technically a work on asceticism, they both include important anecdotes on ascetic practices, especially of Jesus. Through these two early Islamic “family notes,” I will argue that knowledge of biblical prophets and ascetic anecdotes was a status marker for many early Islamic historians, who collected, edited and transmitted these reports to promote their families, creating new categories and conventions of Islamic sanctity. As these collections were transmitted across generations within these families, they became tokens of not only the collectors’ scholarship, but also the families’ sanctity due to their contribution to the knowledge and practice of asceticism in the early Middle Ages.

This paper will explore the development of Gospel books, or tetraevangelia, as liturgical actors in late antique Syriac Christianity. It will argue that the Gospel book functioned as a material thing that actively manifested divine power in the world – what Heather Hunter-Crawley has termed a symbola. Through factors such as their appearance, location, movement within the space of the church, and proximity to other liturgical subjects, tetraevangelia took on additional meaning and power that went beyond their identity as containers of the texts of the four canonical gospels. This paper will propose that in late antique Syria and Mesopotamia, Gospel books increasingly functioned as symbola of Christ, taking on his roles as healer, judge, and leader of the church both inside and outside the liturgical setting. In making these arguments, the paper will draw on a range of literary and material evidence from late antique Syriac Christianity, including Gospel manuscripts, archaeological remains of churches and liturgical implements, and liturgical commentaries and homilies. Through these sources, particular attention will be paid to the connection of the Gospel book to two other spaces in the church – the altar and the bema – both of which themselves carried a rich array of meanings that developed in tandem with the Gospel book. Through their presence as symbola within the liturgy, tetraevangelia can be seen to have been closely identified with the person of Christ, such that when Gospel books appeared outside the confines of the church building they brought Christ’s power with them, performing essential functions such as healing the sick, cursing the impious, and ordaining new bishops.

During the past decade, archaeologists working in the southern Levant have adopted new approaches to reconstructing daily life in ancient Israel through household archaeology studies. Among the aims of household archaeology is the identification of gendered spaces and activities in Iron Age (ca. 1200-586 BCE) domestic structures, and recent studies have demonstrated the value of this approach for reconstructing food preparation, textile production, and other contributions to the household economy usually attributed to women. In this presentation, I will discuss how archaeologists engender household spaces, artifacts, and installations and describe some of the issues involved in using archaeological remains and biblical texts to inform on real women’s lives in the Iron Age.

Bible Translation has never been monolithic in its experience and execution—there are no dull moments either. Instead, its long and winding history demonstrates (sometimes vibrantly, sometimes subtly) the active engagement between the transmitted “Text”, its “transmission vehicles”, and its “target recipients”, resulting in different conversion dimensions. This history equally demonstrates that the “Text” was both the “converter” of communities and at the same time as “converted” by the communities it got in contact with. There are various ways to exhibit this dynamic interaction but none is more lucid than by looking at how the biblical “Text” intersected intricately with other factors that had been transmitted alongside the biblical text, particularly in the early stages of its transmission history (e.g., the first five hundred years of the Christian era). This paper will attempt to highlight the different levels of communal conversions that have taken place as one digs through the early transmission history of Bible Translation evinced from the extant manuscripts of the New Testament, as well as to reflect on this in light of its future prospects as Bible translation engages the potentials and pitfalls of technological advances in achieving its goal of keeping the legacy of Scripture transmission alive.

The Acts of Paul contains numerous examples of confrontations and competition oriented around the way in which female bodies are sexualized. Against the view of women as sexually obligated to their husbands – on individual and social levels – Paul’s emphasis on celibate asceticism creates competition between himself and the various male characters over the proper conduct of women. Furthermore, the Acts of Paul dramatizes a certain tension arising from Paul’s instructions to husbands and wives in 1 Cor 7, in which one may be partners with an unbelieving spouse. In other words, the Acts of Paul narrates the Apostle’s competition with normal Roman expectations of marital activity for sexually pure bodies of believers.

In this paper, it will be argued that the Prayer of Esther, as it appears in the Old Greek text of the Book of Esther, can be seen as a theological reinterpretation of the Hebrew story of the Esther.

The Davidic narratives may be defined as the accounts of a series of interlocking interpersonal relationships pursued by David. Saul and Jonathan, Samuel and Nathan, Abigail and Bathsheba, Amnon and Absalom, all have their places and functions within the stories of David’s rise and fall. Among these multifarious relationships one stands out by virtue of its incongruity: David’s relationship with Achish, the Philistine king of Gath, whose vassal he becomes while on the run from Saul. While this narrative ultimately serves to absolve David of involvement in the deaths of his Saulide rivals for rule over the Israelites, the question arises to what extent it is reflective of a historical reality, whether of the time period of which it purports to tell or of a later one. This paper will address the form and function of the David and Achish narratives and examine the various possibilities for dating them within the historical and literary contexts of ancient Israel and Judah.

Reflections on the Legacy of Krister Stendahl

The passage “Have you seen al-Lat and al-Uzza, and the third one Manat as well?” (Q 53:19-20) is the starting point of this presentation. It is, I will argue, the earliest reference to a Trinitarian cult in the Qur’an. Q 53:20-21 condemns this cult, not on account of its polytheism, but rather on account of its “female” deities (cf. Q 37:150-57). This controversy, therefore, distances itself from the matriarchal institution of late antique Arabian paganism, in favor of the patriarchal institution of the One God of Judaism/Christianity. The second part of this presentation examines the male cults of Allah, al-Rahman and al-Rahim, which I argue are Christian in background. The merger of these cults from different parts of Arabia into one (Q 1; 2:163; 27:30; 41:2; 59:22; cf. Q 17:110) demonstrates the Qur’an’s process of uniting Arabian society behind a new universal monotheism. The third part of this presentation concerns the text’s condemnation of the Incarnation doctrine (Q 3-4) and the Christian Trinity (Q 5). This phase of qur’anic revelation forms the final break between the Qur’an’s Abrahamic monotheism on the one hand, and the Christian Church on the other. Does the Qur’an’s anxiety about female deities reflect the shifting gender of Arabian gods and monarchs after the fall of Nabataea (2nd century CE) and Palmyra (3rd century CE)? Does its adoption of Christian male deities demonstrate the penetration of the eastern churches deep into the heart of Arabian society thereafter? Can its subsequent rejection of church doctrine be dated to the Christological controversies (4th-7th century CE)? This presentation seeks to answer these questions, and also sheds light on the importance on the text’s ‘tripartite’ discourse, the religious sensibilities of the audience, and the importance of gender. My argument is made in conversation with epigraphic evidence, literary sources and modern scholarship. By proposing an early, middle, and late phase to these developments, this presentation offers tentative results concerning the ‘evolution’ of the qur’anic God.

Interpretations of Joseph and Aseneth’s Jewish or Christian provenance have, until recently, tended to be dichotomous. Early interpreters, influenced by Pierre Batiffol’s critical edition, considered the narrative a Christian text from the fifth century CE. As a result, Joseph and Aseneth was not included in early twentieth-century collections of Jewish pseudepigrapha. In the second half of the twentieth century, however, the pendulum swung and the consensus, following the work of Christoph Burchard and Marc Philonenko, was that Joseph and Aseneth was a Jewish text from the Hellenistic period. And the last twenty years have produced more mixed assessments as to the authorship of the pseudepigraphon. Emboldened by Ross Kraemer’s skepticism about the text’s Jewish provenance, several recent studies have re-articulated cases for Christian composition. At present the state of scholarship is mixed. Both Christian and Jewish provenance of Joseph and Aseneth are positions currently held. Moreover, many now question whether or not the dichotomous terms that the debate has been constructed in are productive. In this paper I argue that they are not. Instead, I suggest that Joseph and Aseneth ought to be understood as Jewish and Christian, rather than Jewish or Christian. I first suggest that social memory theory, and specifically the concept “equiprimordiality,” helps reframe the debate. I then outline my own position on the early Jewish provenance of Joseph and Aseneth. I concur with the present consensus position that the narrative’s shape and central concerns are Jewish and that internal features suggest Joseph and Aseneth was first popularized in a Hellenistic Jewish milieu. The bulk of the paper then addresses the ways in which we ought to consider Joseph and Aseneth a Christian text. I argue the the text was Christian in so far as it was re-commemorated and re-memorialized in Christian contexts. Joseph and Aseneth was re-commemorated and re-memorialized in these contexts because it readily lent itself to Christian allegorical and typological interpretations. I address two areas in which Joseph and Aseneth possessed this kind of Christian potential. First, titles appended to Joseph will have led to his typological identification with Jesus in Christian reception of Joseph and Aseneth. And second, Aseneth’s transformation by means of repentance, which is earthly but, as Andrei Orlov has recently suggested, is also mirrored in the heavenly realm, comported well with early Christian understandings of heavenly transformation by means of metanoia.

There is a body of literature about trauma-informed care (in medicine, social work, law, and so on) and there are conversations in primary and secondary education about having trauma-informed classrooms. There is not, however, much work to date on trauma-informed college classrooms, beyond the debate about whether or not syllabi and readings should have "trigger warnings" on them. The blogosphere conversation about trigger warnings often lacked a theoretical basis or a nuanced understanding of post-traumatic "trigger," a term that is often misapplied to other contexts and topics. Having a trigger warning does not mean that students are not asked to discuss difficult topics; it also does not mean that they are special snowflakes who cannot handle real life. Research on post-traumatic stress disorder shows the ways that students who have experienced trauma are sometimes able to learn better when they have been prepared for what is coming. Good learning does not happen when students are triggered; actually, it is impeded. Trauma-informed college teaching is a pedagogical approach that responds to a diverse student body, including the ways that students may be affected by insidious traumas (Maria Root's term for various forms of oppression that may cause trauma) and other traumatizing experiences. The Bible itself can be, for certain students, a traumatizing weapon; for other students, the Bible represents a healing balm. Using insights from trauma theory in the humanities and from the movement for trauma-informed teaching and human services suggests that an approach to teaching the Bible (most especially the violent and troubling parts of the Bible) must be trauma-sensitive. This does not mean coddling or shielding students, but rather acknowledging the diverse life experiences and social locations that they bring into the classroom, as well as the varied reactions that the biblical text can provoke. Becoming a trauma-informed Bible professor is one way to connect with and respond to diverse student populations.

Those academics still involved in church life often demur from discussing our ecclesiastical commitments in scholarly settings. Yet the contours of contemporary U.S. Christianity are part of the ideological context in which we work. It is therefore important to analyze the role, not just of congregational life as a useful compartmentalization of social energy, but of the construal of “church” (in the singular) as a useful mystification within the capitalist ordering of society.

When the Jewish Alexandrian community embarked on the translation of Leviticus, there were bound to be cases where the cult from the Hebrew Scriptures matched that of their surrounding culture. For the most part, this does not seem to bother them, as the translation of Leviticus in the Septuagint is characterized by the usual literal and stereotyped representation of the Hebrew base text. However, there are a number of occasions where it intentionally deviates from this norm. Two instances in chapters 16-17 suggest an intention to minimize a confusing intersection between the Day of Atonement and the Greek cult of Dionysus as practiced in Alexandria. In particular, the translation of the Hebrew word ʿazʾazel into Greek apopompaios evokes imagery of the processional element of the Greek temple ceremony (a pompē; Lev 16:8, 10), but in the opposite direction. Instead of a throng of worshippers in the procession going towards the place of sacrifice, a single is goat covered with the people’s sin and sent into the abject wilderness. In addition, the reticence to suggest that sacrifices should be offered to goats (laśśəʿîrim, “to the goats”, translated as tois mataiois) in Lev 17:7 indicates that the translator was avoiding associations with the cult of the half-man, half-goat Dionysus. These two elements, processional to the temple and the representation of the deity as a satyr, were significant elements to the practice of the Dionysian cult and were intentionally avoided by the translators of LXX-Leviticus.

What is the role of Genesis 1–3 in evaluating the human condition in the Epistle of James? How might this foundational Jewish text illuminate James’ view of anthropology, its sinful condition, and the conditions for its restoration? This paper will engage with two primary themes in James: (1) The author’s description of the anthropological condition, notably described as διψυχος/“double-souled”. This section will assess James’ anthropology against the most recent scholarship on wider early Jewish discourses of the yetzer and the natural human inclination. (2) A distinct and recurring allusion to the Genesis 1–3 account (most notably in Jas 1:13–18; 3:13–17; 4:5–8), which I propose provides for the author a biblical precedent for his understanding of the human condition of the soul, its temptation, and the effects caused by sin. Just as the first trial divided the human heart through desire, produced sin, and caused death, so every person’s heart is rent through divided religious loyalties. What then is the cause and solution for this human condition? I will argue that these two themes provide the author with a biblical/theological framework for religious division and religious loyalty, both towards God, and towards one’s neighbor. The author draws a direct line between the divisions of religious loyalty to God (love for God), to the tearing of unity within the community (love for neighbor), a battle that has taken place from the beginning of human history. In response to this internal and external religious threat, James builds an argument similar to that of the Jewish scribes: only Torah could defeat the yetzer, and unify the human heart in religious loyalty. For James, however, this Torah is the Rule of Jesus, its halakah is the double love commandment, and its therapeutic effects available to the community that fulfills its requirements. Taking this line of argument, the community of faith provides for James the means by which the divine command can be fulfilled and the divided human heart can be restored into unified religious loyalty.

As the second longest composition in the Psalter, Psalm 78 ostensibly reflects more characteristics of biblical prose than poetry, particularly regarding its length, and the extensive use of the wayyiqtol. The psalm recounts Israel’s—more specifically Ephraim’s—rebellion against God during the desert wandering era and their initial entrance into the promised land. In response, God judges Ephraim’s persistent disobedience by rejecting the tribe along with the tabernacle at Shiloh (v. 67). With the rejection of Ephraim, the psalm concludes (vv. 68-72) with God’s selection of Judah: the territory upon which to build his temple, and the tribe from which to select his chosen ruler, David. Perhaps due to its length, complex redactional history, and the historical narrative content, Psalm 78 (along with other exodus psalms such as 105 and 106) remains relatively neglected with respect to poetic analyses. The present paper represents a contribution towards addressing the imbalance of scholarly attention, by focusing on one poetic technique frequently employed within the psalm, chiasmus. Primarily, the study identifies the various types of chiasmus employed within the psalm, and more importantly discusses how the author employs chiasmus, both structurally and expressively, within the psalm as a vehicle to convey meaning. Methodologically, the paper primarily focusses on the functional aspects of chiasmus, employing categories defined by Wilfred Watson, Classical Hebrew Poetry, to describe and determine how this poetic feature is utilized in Psalm 78. Ceresko’s earlier work, “The Function of Chiasmus in Hebrew Poetry,” additionally provides a framework for understanding how chiasmus can function within a literary unit. Other treatments of parallelism are additionally consulted, such as Adele Berlin’s Dynamics of Biblical Parallelism, to further establish types of parallelism, such as gender-matched sequencing. Berlin’s in-depth treatment of parallelism bears relevance for the present study because chiasmus is, essentially, an instance of inverted parallelism, instead of an A-B//A’-B’ pattern, chiasmus reflects an A-B//B’-A’ relationship. The present study concludes that chiasmus plays a wide variety of roles within Psalm 78. Among the more important ones are: opening and closing sections, creating contrast, structuring the composition, and creating intensity. It is not simply used as a tool to create poetry, but functions as an important vehicle for generating meaning within the psalm. It is hoped that the present study draws attention to the need for further poetic analysis of the longer narrative-poetic works in the Psalter.

This paper examines the arrangement of the epistle of James in light of Semitic documents that display catchword association. James shows evidence of being a compilation, with adjacent sections frequently connected by a common cognate. Readers accustomed to Westernized patterns of logical progression may find such conventions nonsensical. However, when viewed through a framework characterized by Semitic documents, James shows affinity with a purposeful custom of connecting material by catchword. After identifying patterns of catchword association in Jewish documents, the paper will then show similar arrangements in James and offer recommendations on how a Semitic framework impacts the interpretation of this enigmatic epistle. While many have attempted to fit James into Greco-Roman patterns of rhetoric, they produce different demarcations of the arrangement of the epistle. With this lack of consensus in view, Richard Bauckham quips, “One suspects that something must be wrong with the goal that is being attempted.” James may not necessarily display the logical development often found in Greco-Roman documents. This paper demonstrates that the catchword association in James fits a pattern that pre-dates Hellenization, and offers a framework informed by Semitic catchword association through which to view James. While acknowledgement of catchword association in James is widely attested, there has not been a focused attempt to associate this pattern with structures in Semitic documents. This paper contributes to the study of James by relating it to documents that show catchword association in the Hebrew Bible, LXX, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. For example, adjacent but disparate sections in Leviticus share an association of “goat-demons” (‎שָׂעִירִ֖ם—Lev 17:7) with the goat (שָׂעִיר) of the sin offering occurring throughout Lev 16. The book of Numbers groups a section regarding confession (Num 5:5–10) with a section regarding adultery (Num 5:11–31), with the common cognate unfaithfulness (מַעַל –Num 5:6, 12). Ezekiel shows different associations, from cords (Ezek 3:25; 4:8) to swords (Ezek 5:17; 6:3). Other examples come from Proverbs, Psalms, the Book of the Twelve, the Damascus Document, and 4QFlorilegium. This paper then examines arrangement of sections in James based on catchword-association. James is easily divided into sections, with consensus about where many sections begin and end. However, adjacent sections often appear to have no logical connection. Martin Dibelius and others have maintained that the author or compiler of James frequently places sections together based on Stichwörter, or catchwords. These include λείπω (1:4, 5), πειρασμός—πειράζω (1:12, 13), and λόγος (1:21, 22). Examination of a Semitic pattern of arrangement aids the interpretation of the epistle of James. It offers greater prominence Jewish documents in discussions of the interpretation of James. In addition, it informs its provenance, suggesting that the author may be using pre-existing or even traditional material and arranging these sections using a Semitic custom. It may also impact the discussion of the genre of James, since catchword association occurs in different kinds of literature.

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In Bar 1-3 the reading of an unqualified book, which is mostly identified with the book of Baruch, but has occasionally also been identified with the book of Jeremiah, is followed by a prayer of repentance (Bar 1:15-3:8). This prayer of repentance is an almost literal quote of the prayer of repentance in Dan 9, which there follows Daniel’s (private) reading of the book of Jeremiah (Dan 9:2). While it has been frequently observed that the prayer of repentance in the book of Baruch quotes Daniel, the contextualization of this quote and its function within the literary setting of the book of Baruch have less often been taken into account. Parallels between the books of Jeremiah, in particular in the version of the MT, and the book of Daniel (e.g. the role of Nebuchadnezzar) have been observed before. Whereas the book of Baruch can and at certain points has been read as an appendix to the book of Jeremiah in the version of the LXX, there are equally parallels that link it to the MT version of the book of Jeremiah (e.g. an interest in the temple cult). The paper regards the use of the book of Daniel within the book of Baruch in its literal setting as well as in the context of further going intertextual links that are established between both books and the versions of the book of Jeremiah.

TBA

The book Isaiah may leave those who read it confused. Moreover when the names of Isaiah’s children are observed and studied. The roles that children play, the function of their names and their existence in the Old Testament and the Hebrew Bible, have received very little attention within biblical scholarship. Children were viewed as objects of divine promises or components of a covenant. The names of Isaiah’s children not only hold metaphorical meaning as sign-names but also preserve a collection of struggles of this ancient community to live out their relationship with Yahweh, in their own time frames, which is unavoidably shaped by events, like births, death, imminent war, and trauma in their time. When Isaiah 7 and 8 are studied, there are close resemblances so far as the theme and the content of Isaiah’s prophecy are concerned. The similarities in both chapters are the symbolic name giving of Isaiah’s children, the promise of the demise of Israel, and the imminent threat of Assyria to Judah. When reading the text of Isaiah 8:1, which will be the focus text of this paper, the metaphorical name giving of Isaiah’s son מַהֵר שָׁלָל חָשׁ בַּז-Maher-Shalal-hash-baz conjures images of war, disaster, threats, and trauma. The historical background is the Syro-Ephraimite crisis of 734-732 BCE. The name Maher-Shalal-hash-baz was perplexing as the name contains two comparable verbs of ‘quick; swift’ and ‘spoil; plunder’. The interpretation explains who will be plundered and who will be defeated through plundering. The continual exposure to violence and trauma are embodied in the name that threatens not only the child as a sign but also the psychological and physical wellbeing of Judah. Making sense of trauma is a universal human need for meaning and reading the metaphorical name giving of Maher-Shalal-hash-baz through a trauma lens is an act of meaning-making to understand the text. To understand trauma, it is important to understand what trauma means and where it derives from. While it seems commonplace today, the use of trauma as a theory in psychology and biblical studies is fairly new. Trauma occurs when both internal and external resources are inadequate to cope with an external threat. Trauma is not a single faceted experience but a balancing act and conflict between spiritual, emotional and physical responses. As a biblical scholar and psychologist, the works of Caruth, Hermann and the classification model DSM-5 will form the foundation of this paper to formulate theory and method. Though trauma grips individuals and collective groups, there is a phenomenon of hope present in the mist of traumatic events. This phenomenon is posttraumatic growth or resilience and it implies that individuals and collective communities can be changed through their encounters with trauma. The metaphorical name giving in Isaiah 8:1 becomes the trauma vehicle that challenges the people of Judah through faith and hope. It will be the aim of this paper to integrate conventional commentary research with a sound biblical literature study and modern-day trauma studies to form the foundation of this research.

Since the first scholarly efforts to understand ancient Greek religion undertaken by late 19th and early 20th century classicists such as Jane Harrison and Martin Nilsson, the use of images in worship among ancient Greek polytheists, whether inside or outside of temples, has long received less attention than animal sacrifice and Greek festivals. In this paper, through a select historiography of the use of images in worship in ancient Greek religion, I will show how the insufficiently defined and hastily applied category of idolatry has obscured later scholarly understanding of the role of images in the practice of ancient Greek polytheists. Recent emphasis on the practice of Greek religion outside of temples, in homes, marketplaces, gymnasia, and even on roads has reanimated questions about the significance of images, both two and three dimensional, in ancient Greek piety. As Alice Donohue has shown, even the term “cult statue” resembles the broad, pejorative category of idolatry in its obfuscation of ancient Greek worship. “Cult statue,” according to Donohue, while long used to refer to images of the gods in the naos and a staple of much scholarship of ancient Greek sculpture, is not an indigenous category in the first century CE, or indeed in any other era of Greek history. Rather, reverence paid to images of the gods on a roadside might well parallel reverence paid to images of gods in a temple naos. In this paper, I will show how the pioneering efforts of Harrison and Nilsson, as well as the more theoretically disciplined polis religion model introduced by Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood in the last decade of the 20th century, have elided the significance of images in ancient Greek polytheism. While the polis religion model achieved the indispensable task of removing the Christianizing lenses that had focused on belief to the detriment of ritual in ancient Greek polytheistic practice, it contributed to the elision of the significance of images for the individual. Focused as the polis religion model was on sacrifice and the corporate nature of ancient Greek polytheism, interaction between the individual and the image was left out. Both Robert Parker and Henk Versnel, in different ways, have tried to correct the polis religion model’s reduction of ancient Greek religion to an instrument of state control. Each scholar demonstrates that private devotion to the gods, whether in a private or a public place, flourished throughout Greek polytheism’s long history. I hope to give their implicit recognition of images in ancient Greek piety a more explicit theoretical foundation.

This paper will look at the deeply perspectival challenges involved in the perceived success or failure of war. As is well known, Sennacherib’s 701 BCE invasion of Judah resulted in widespread destruction of Judahite cities. Understandably, Hezekiah’s rebellion has therefore been viewed by many historians as disastrous, despite the fact that Jerusalem was not taken and Hezekiah remained on the throne. What is more, Assyrian texts clearly view the campaign as an unmitigated success. Of course, the perspective of the biblical texts contrasts these assessments as it viewed Hezekiah as a hero and his rebellion as successful. In order to compare these contrasting assessments of the 701 BCE war, I will consider the war of 1812 between the United States of America and the United Kingdom and her colonies (Canada). Similar to assessments of Sennacherib’s campaign, assessments of the war of 1812 vary widely. Despite the fact that the war ended with the Treaty of Ghent which prescribed the return of prisoners of war and occupied lands to their respective sides, and the resumption of friendly trade relations, Canadians view the war as a Canadian victory, while the Americans view it as an American triumph. I will suggest that just as the war of 1812 spawned popular historical works that furthered Canadian myth-making and nation-building (e.g., Pierre Berton’s works), biblical narratives of Sennacherib’s invasion should be viewed similarly. I will suggest that scholarly assessments pejoratively claiming outright deception and lies on the part of ancient Israelite historiography or Assyrian annalists need reassessment. Neither side is wholly true and neither side is wholly false. Their historiography is not the history. Given that even in an event as recent as 1812 with a plethora of sources and evidences at our fingertips, scholarly assessments differ on important questions, so we should not be surprised that scholarly assessments on such questions on the war of 701 BCE differ either. What is more, given the value of perception as political commodity different assessments from those involved in the war should not be surprising either.

This paper explores underutilized features of the TLG to track and visualize the frequency, growth, and usage of pistis and its cognates from the 8th century BCE through the 3rd century CE. While the TLG has been widely used by Classicists since the 1980s, and is now used regularly by New Testament scholars, the database offers extensive research opportunities that have gone largely unnoticed by the latter. This paper demonstrates the usefulness of such features, by applying them to an analysis of pistis. My larger project involves reexamining pistis as loyalty/fidelity/faithfulness in the letters of Paul. This challenges the traditional understanding of pistis as "faith" or "belief" as a cognitive/sentimental position maintained by the individual, without a basis in proof or prior cause for believing. Using the TLG Statistics tools, we are able to visualize the frequency of pistis-language distributed throughout specific centuries, authors, and geographic locations. In some ways, the findings are unsurprising; the frequency of pistis-language is fairly stable and consistent in the fifth, fourth, and second centuries BCE (with a short drop in the 3rd BCE). We see an uptick in its frequency in the first century BCE and first century CE, followed by a significant rise in the second century CE. However, some findings are unexpected; while NT scholars may assume that this increase of pistis-language of the second century is attributed to early Christians, we see this increased usage in Plutarch, Galen, and Sextus Empiricus. I will briefly discuss the implications of my numerous findings from these statistical and visualization tools. While the paper focuses on pistis and its cognates, the tools themselves are thoroughly applicable to other research projects.

Self-help books hold a special place in the culture of the United States. They reflect and contribute to the social, economic, and political realities of their day. In the late twentieth century, self-help books as a genre boomed, as people looked for answers to economic and societal changes, including the increase of middle-class white women in the workforce, the loosening of ‘traditional’ sexual mores, and shifting notions of marriage and the self. In this self-help books boom, a niche market of books emerged for a white Christian women’s audience, and often written by women. These Christian women’s self-help books propose models of Christian womanhood, relying on the Bible as one of their source of authority for their models. This paper surveys Christian women’s self-help books from the late twentieth century to explore the variety of ways authors use Proverbs 31:10-31 to construct their ideal of Christian womanhood. While Proverbs 31:10-31 previously was used to praise and correct women, the paper argues that late twentieth century self-help books witness the development of the Proverbs 31 woman as a cultural icon of Christian womanhood. The Proverbs 31 woman is not a return to a womanhood that had always been, but rather a response to and product of the United States in the last decades of the nineteen hundreds.

This paper compares the Covenant Ceremony attested in the Dead Sea Scrolls with the Iguvine Tables as a means to examine the complicated relationship between text, material context, and enacted ritual of prayer. Arguably the most important ritual for the sectarian movement represented in the Dead Sea Scrolls was the annual Covenant Ceremony, described in the Rule of the Community (1QS 1:16-2:23. It consisted of a mustering of the entire community, prayers, and rituals of blessing on the members and initiates and cursing of outsiders and apostates. It remains unclear, however, how the text in 1QS relates the actual ritual. In contrast to liturgical scrolls for various occasions found at Qumran, this is hardly a script for the covenant ceremony. Its purpose in 1QS is likely not even as a prompt, but most likely serves a rhetorical function in the document. If the expulsion ritual at the end of the Damascus Document (4QDa 11; 4QDe 7 i-ii), and the blessings and curses in 4QBerakhot (4Q286-290) are also related to the Covenant Ceremony, we may have different versions of the ritual. The Iguvine Tablets consist of seven bronze sheets from Umbria engraved on both sides with religious rituals of a priestly fraternity. They detail sacrifices and prayers at purification rituals and feasts, including rubrics specifying exact words (e.g., "use this formula," "thus pray during the libation"). The rituals include a ceremonial mustering of the community with blessings, and ritual expulsion and cursing of traditional enemies. The earliest tablets, dating from the third century BCE were written with the Umbrian alphabet; the latest, written in Latin characters in the first century BCE, expand on the rituals of an earlier tablet. At least some of the tablets were mounted for public display. Both the similarities and differences are striking and invite comparison. Both prescribe prayers for ritual mustering of the community, with blessing and cursing rituals. Both also are in the context of texts that have undergone expansion. They are both, however, in very different physical contexts: a scroll versus mounted tablets. This paper will examine both of these prayer rituals in their respective material and cultural contexts, and then compare and contrast them with each other in reflecting on the significance of the material and cultural context to the meaning and function of prayer.

Five seventh- and eighth-century Copto-Arabic narratives imagine the first-person accounts of Alexandrian bishops at church consecrations. The late antique ecclesial art of the churches in question does not survive, but by comparing the verbal "images" of the narratives to late antique ecclesial art in other churches, I argue that the writers of the narratives constructed their stories by engaging in the practice of contemplating ecclesial art, a form of theōria. The narratives construct the sacred in spatial terms and sanctification in tactile ones, so as to saint the church.

In the text of Genesis as we have it, Mamre is identified with Hebron and Kiryat-arba, making it a city with a gate. But the stories in the J text about Abraham and Sarah in their tent at Mamre paint a different picture. If the identification of Mamre with Hebron is late, where is J’s Mamre? A number of scholars have identified Mamre with Khirbet Nimra because of the similarity between the names and its proximity to Hebron. Nevertheless, a number of geographical clues in the story point to a different location. Using these clues and ArcGIS, I suggest an alternative site that works well specifically with the J story in Genesis 18.

Matthew 26.14–16 depicts Judas’ agreement with the chief priests to assist in Jesus’ arrest. This triple tradition passage is fairly consistent among the synoptics: Judas goes to the chief priests, arranges to deliver Jesus, is promised money, and they all look for the opportune time to take Jesus. But Matthew provides one salient difference: Matthew includes that the agreed price for Judas’ assistance is thirty pieces of silver. Matthew is the only gospel to claim to reveal how much Judas received for his assistance. My first aim will be to determine the historicity of this figure: was thirty pieces of silver the amount agreed upon for Judas’ assistance? If not, we will then discuss Matthew’s motives for including ‘thirty pieces of silver.’ We will discuss two main possible motives: 1) he created the figure in order to allude to slave prices in Exod. 21.32, and/or 2) he created the figure in order to allude to the rejected shepherd motif in Zech. 11.12–13. The question of whether thirty pieces of silver is the historical amount of money received by Judas for his assistance has received little attention by scholarship. Matthew’s inclusion of the figure ‘thirty pieces of silver’ does not pass any of the historical criteria such as the criteria of embarrassment, multiple attestation, or prophecy historicized. An analysis of contemporary papyrological evidence shows that first-century slave prices were much more complicated and varied than the simple figure of thirty pieces of silver. If Matthew did intend for Jesus to be sold for the price of a slave then such a price is nothing to scoff at. An analysis of Matthew’s use of Zechariah especially in his passion narrative shows that Matthew builds his passion narrative around Zechariah’s prophecies. After an analysis of Hebrew Bible slave prices and first-century slave prices from documentary papyri and literary sources, I conclude that this figure is not historical and that Jesus is not being depicted as a slave but the figure was inserted by Matthew to allude to Zech 11 and to depict the chief priests as wicked shepherds and Jesus as the good shepherd.

The Sahidic translation is the oldest translation of the Corpus Ieremiae. The paper offers an overview over the translation technique and the text critical value of Jeremiah and the associated books (Lam, EpJer, Bar)

The embodied experience of labor pains and parturition captured the imaginations of male authors of apocalyptic eschatology as they envisioned how the eschaton might occur. These writers, like the apostle Paul, while critical of the present state of the world, were not isolated from it; rather, as active participants in the broader culture, their discussions, visions, and fantasies that relate to the pregnant body are best understood within the literary and material context of the Roman Empire. This paper seeks to locate Paul’s apocalyptic images of pregnancy and childbearing in his letter to the Romans within the cultural context of the Roman Empire by foregrounding his participation in a broad discourse concerning women’s bodies and their health. Literary and material evidence (votives and amulets) illustrate the centrality of fecundity and childbearing to women and their families. Reproduction was a cultural imperative achieved, at least in part, by means of appeals to the divine for bodily health. Medical writers addressed women’s health by associating wellness with the ability to become pregnant. In the ancient world, a pregnant woman was a healthy woman. Medical authors and Paul alike describe female bodies as hollow spaces that are anatomically inferior to male bodies. The female body collected excesses in their hollow spaces which were evacuated monthly through menstruation, but those excesses could also be useful in reproduction, providing the generative material necessary to conceive and nourish a fetus. Male bodies, however, were impenetrable, collecting no excess and requiring no menstruation. Pregnancy filled the hollow space inside a woman’s body and used the excesses it naturally accumulated, allowing it to function more like a male body without the need for menstruation. Pregnancy or breast feeding that caused the temporary cessation of menstruation was viewed as healthful in so much as it allowed the female body to approach the masculine standard of wholeness. Paul participates in this socio-medical discourse by subverting the notion that pregnancy equates to health for women. In his letter of introduction to the church in Rome, he outlines his apocalyptic program using the image of a pregnant woman nearing the moment of parturition. His tone is hopeful, and yet his letter emphasizes the “futility,” “bondage,” and “decay” of the maternal body of creation that “waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God” (Rom 8:19-21). Paul’s image blends concepts of sin and domination into the image of the pregnant woman as he uses the pregnant body to stand in for the corrupt creation that can only be redeemed by the power of God. Contextually, moreover, he works against the prevailing notion that pregnancy makes women healthy. In Paul’s discussion, pregnancy does not equate to health; it signifies the depth of degradation, but the reproductive female body remains useful to him rhetorically as a fundamental point of connection between humanity and the divine and between the present and future. The future he envisions, however, seems to be a future without women and without the need for pregnancy and reproduction.

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The question of Jesus' relationship to John the Baptist has been high stakes for historical Jesus scholarship. The reason is that the nature of Jesus’ relation to John is often thought to be one of the clearest points of evidence as to Jesus' intentions. J.D. Crossan and Dale Allison can be taken to represent the extremes of opinion here: Allison reconstructs Jesus as an eschatological prophet by closely linking the message of Jesus to that of John, while Crossan distances Jesus from John to depict a non-apocalyptic sage of subversive wisdom. The question of the "continuity" or "discontinuity" between Jesus and John could benefit from a close look at Jesus' itinerancy. Scholars have tended to approach the question of Jesus's relationship with John on the assumption that there really is "an answer" about what it was: Jesus and John really were related in one particular way or another. This may be helpful for considering Jesus' indebtedness to John in terms of message, but it overlooks the reality that Jesus ministered to different audiences in different settings and must have interacted with persons who would not have known of his relationship to John (whatever that may have been). In fact, many of Jesus' utterances about the Baptist make the most sense as attempts to clarify the nature of his relationship to John. Approaching the question of Jesus' relationship to John through the lens of itinerancy leads to a striking conclusion: the kinds of questions about Jesus’ relationship to John that dominate current Jesus research (continuous, discontinuous, and everything in between) were probably also going around during the ministry of Jesus.

By analyzing the role of narrator and dialogue in the New Testament Gospels, this paper will compare their mimetic narrative techniques with the fictional tone of biographies like the Life of Aesop, while contrasting the historical tone of biographers like Plutarch and Suetonius, drawing attention to how the two styles of biography achieve characterization. Whereas biographies of a historical tone are more prone to “tell” (diegesis) a man’s character, by interjecting judgements in the author’s own voice, the Gospels “show” (mimesis) their central character, by staging Jesus in dialogue. When distinguishing the Gospels from the writings of ancient historiography, Auerbach (2003: 46) notes their “numerous face-to-face dialogues” as a point of contrast to how “direct discourse is restricted in the antique historians to great continuous speeches.” The use of dialogue in ancient historiography was rare, with a historian like Thucydides including it only twice in his entire narrative (3.113; 5.84-116). The latter instance of the Melian Dialogue is such an exception to Thucydides’ narratological technique that Dionysius of Halicarnassus in On the Language of Thucydides (37) emphasizes how Thucydides begins by summarizing the exchange in reported speech (διηγηµατικóν), but then “dramatizes” (δραματίζει) the narrative through dialogue. Although the Gospels are shorter and focused more on the life of a single individual than the broader scope of historians like Thucydides, scholars such as Burridge (2004) have identified the Gospels with the genre of ancient biography. Speech patterns in biography are more diverse than in historiography, but the role of dialogue generally bears a connection with that of narrator. The biographies of authors like Plutarch and Suetonius are told by a first-person, authorial narrator, who often interjects his own judgements and experiences into the narrative. The narratology of these biographies is not anonymous, whereas the Gospels--particularly Mark and Matthew--are anonymously told by a third-person, external narrator. Other anonymously narrated biographies include the Life of Aesop. The frequent use of dialogue, narrated within historico-geographical settings, is chiefly a characteristic of anonymous biographies, and it pertains to their fictional rather than historical tone. Rhetorica ad Herennium (1.13) uses the Latin "argumentum"--a word associated with comedy--as the term for “fiction” to distinguish it from "historia." Theatre is characterized by mimetic narrative techniques, in which dialogue is performed in direct discourse. Fictional writing, such as the ancient novel, resembles theatre in part because of an emphasis on dialogue. Diegetic narrative, however, is more characteristic of history, in which conversation is “reported” more than “shown.” Historiography is likewise characterized by first-person narration (Baum 2008), and the presence of the authorial narrator is central to how historians diegetically report discourse and events. The diegetic narrative techniques of biographers like Plutarch and Suetonius--particularly in their first-person narration and tendency to eschew dialogue--are distinct from the mimetic narrative techniques of the Gospels, which are replete with anonymously narrated dialogues. In this respect, biographers like Plutarch and Suetonius exhibit a greater affinity with historiography, whereas anonymous biographies like the Gospels align more with the novel.

Genealogical method, in its various forms, has been a mainstay of textual criticism. Genealogical critics establish the original form of a text by constructing lineages of manuscript descent on the basis of their variant profiles, positing archetypal recensions that originated divergent manuscript types, groups, and families. One of the signal developments of twentieth-century textual criticism of the New Testament in general, and the corpus Paulinum in particular, has been the hypothesis of a philologically-rigorous early recension occurring in Alexandria, a recension widely viewed as virtually equivalent to the original text (Westcott and Hort 1881) or at least the next-best thing (Kenyon 1940). Concerning this recension, Gunther Zuntz made the claim that its textual character betrays the work, not of the “believer or the theologian,” but of someone with “at least a touch of the philological mind” (1953: 275). This paper interrogates the genealogical quest for the origin of the Alexandrian recension, with particular attention to how scholars distance the work of critical edition from the domain of “religion” and religious motivation. The paper argues first that such characterizations implicitly formulate ancient criticism in the image of the modern desire for text-critical disinterest or objectivity as the preferred mode of operation, and second, that (with reference to Egyptian manuscripts of the corpus Paulinum) ancient Alexandrian “philological fervour” included critical commitments that can productively be considered “religious.” Although the notion of an Alexandrian recension has met with some criticism since the work of Zuntz (e.g., Fee 1974), the construction of a distinction between theologically-motivated textual editing and alterations of a more banal and mechanistic kind continues to find traction in the wake of the text-critical work of Bart Ehrman (2001). This present state of affairs recommends the proposed line of research.

Several historians, including New Testament scholars, have noted that banditry was/is a form of social protest. They usually conclude that banditry and piracy arise when the economy falls. But in recent studies, historians and sociologists have observed that banditry is more a phenomenon of the “in-between” economies. Banditry does not usually take place in the worst, most chaotic societies nor does it thrive in well-run governments and booming economies. In between these extremes banditry and piracy flourish. In places of extreme want, there are few to rob. In chaotic governments, there are no clear authorities to oppose. Bandits need, for instance, the banks to survive in order to rob them. It follows then that a society with a swarm of banditry and piracy is doing moderately well. It is not an extremely poor society. I hope to establish in this paper that if Galilee was awash in bandits in the first century CE, it was a society of moderate economic success.

Recent excavations by a Tel Aviv University—College de France team at the site of Kiriath-jearim west of Jerusalem uncovered evidence for the construction of a monumental elevated podium in the Iron Age. Combining an exact-science method of dating with archaeological considerations, the podium seems to date to the first half of the 8th century BCE. The questions which will be dealt are: who built the podium, when and why. The answers may shed light on the history of the region, the relationship between the kingdoms of Israel and Judah and biblical references to Kiriath-jearim.

For some Zionists and Christian Zionists, the modern state of Israel has reenacted ancient Israel’s Conquest. Both stories include marginalized Jews suffering oppression and threats of genocide. A singular figure emerges to lobby the powers and inspire an exodus. The people cross water to reach their land but it is inhabited. Higher powers authorize the children of Israel to settle there but indigenous peoples feel threatened. War ensues. Jewish victories spread fear. Inhabitants are dispossessed. Jews ultimately control most land and property. A sizeable underclass of non-Jews remains under Jewish control. Has not the One who fought for Joshua Ben-Nun fought again for David Ben-Gurion? Even secular Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, recognized the Bible’s potential for shaping his young state’s identity and connecting it to the Land. Ben-Gurion’s favorite book was Joshua, for its catalogue of military exploits and territorial expansion. Beginning in 1958, Ben-Gurion made Joshua’s campaigns the focus of a study group that met in his home, from which he sought to forge a collective Israeli identity rooted in the biblical conquest myth to unite immigrants from around the world. Noteworthy about Ben-Gurion’s use of the Bible is its bi-directionality. His young army was both expositor and embodiment of Scripture. Ancient text and present reality were mutually illuminating. Zionism was both ideology and hermeneutic. Also notable was his focus on praxis. Interpretation was incomplete without performance. If Joshua was a military manual, only those who had conquered, occupied and settled the Promised Land could grasp its meaning. If Ben-Gurion read the Conquest with the eyes of the IDF, Palestinian-in-exile Edward Said called in 1986 for reading with the eyes of the Canaanites—with indigene rather than invader. Native American Robert Warrior took up the challenge, as did Michael Prior, Nur Masalha, L. Daniel Hawk and others. Hawk’s 2010 Joshua commentary, for example, amplified subaltern voices and counter-narratives. But although these scholars acknowledge the traumas of the Palestinian Nakba (1948) and Naksa (1967), rarely do they deploy them as hermeneutical lens for reading Joshua. Following the trajectory set by Edward Said, this paper will read selections of the Conquest narrative not simply with an eye toward Canaanites but with the help of Palestinians—the refugees of 1948 and 1967 who were exiled and orphaned during the war years and who now live in the Diaspora or under Occupation. We cannot ask Canaanites what it is like to plant but not harvest in lower Galilee, to nurture groves but not press olives near Bethlehem, to dig cisterns but not drink water in the West Bank hills, to abandon houses on the plain near Jaffa. But we can ask Palestinians. And when Joshua occasionally lets Canaanites speak (e.g., Rahab, the Gibeonites), Palestinians under Occupation can amplify their voices. Such an approach, like Ben-Gurion’s, promises to be hermeneutically bi-directional; Joshua and the Nakba/Naksa can be mutually illuminating. It might also caution those content to see both Conquest and Conflict as zero-sum games only one side of which merits our moral consideration.

Although most of the narrative from Genesis through Kings is devoted to Israel’s distant past, before the time of biblical writing, the project of its application to historical reconstruction is fraught. The most useful material is often what contrasts with the finished Bible, as with the Song of Deborah’s failure to include Judah and the south in its account of battle with “the kings of Canaan.” In the collection of old poetry identified by Albright, Cross, and others, the Song of the Sea in Exodus 15 stood as an independent exodus account, yet its continuity with Jerusalem-oriented poetry in the Psalms and Isaiah 40-55 has led recent European scholars to date it to the 6th century or later. Indeed, the combination of southern geography and shared vocabulary in a hymn to Yahweh suggests composition for Jerusalem worship. Yet the Song’s detail indicates secondary association with the prose exodus narrative rather than inspiration from it, and Jerusalem poetry could be composed during the monarchy. In fact, Exodus 15’s historical usefulness has been obscured by its reference to Pharaoh and incorporation into the Moses story. Egypt is defeated by an act of God, Yahweh himself sinking its chariotry as they were transported across a body of water. Yahweh’s own people, named nowhere in the Song, are not present for the catastrophe that opens the southern highlands for their occupation. While the Song may well have been composed in monarchic Jerusalem, it shows no interest in its institutions or Davidic heritage, instead hearkening back to a time before these. For reconstruction of history, of greatest significance is the combination of Egypt’s removal and identification of the beneficiaries only as “your people, Yahweh” (v 16), a phrasing much like “the people of Yahweh” who unite in battle in the Song of Deborah (Judg 5:13). We are left to explore the historical significance of two early biblical texts, south and north, that recount formative events for “people” defined by relation to Yahweh in a time before kings.

This paper presents the results of the network “Meal and Text” concerning the relation of the changes in the ritual practice of Christian meals on the one hand and the formation of textual variants in the New Testament on the other hand. The focus will be on central meal texts like Lk 22 as well on passages less in spotlight. Thereby, it will become apparent that the methodologically conscious merging of textual criticism and the research of the transition from banquet to Eucharist opens new insights for both fields.

As the category of deponency in recent years has been the leading cause of a “paradigm shift” taking place in studies on the ancient Greek voice system, new avenues have opened up for further remodeling of the voice system. This study contends that verbal voice is based on the distinctive roles the subject plays in the clause and operates according to an ergative two-voice system, active and middle. Principles of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), in particular, the transitive and ergative models, based on the theories of linguist, Michael Halliday, are applied in this study. These two models broaden out the notion of transitivity by fitting together semantics and syntax more precisely since transitivity of the clause, according to Halliday, is “concerned with the type of process expressed in the clause, with the participants in this process, animate and inanimate, and with various attributes and circumstances of the process and the participants.” Within a nominative-accusative marking pattern which forms the syntactic basis for the Greek of the New Testament, ergative functions centered on verbal voice are present in the language’s verbal morphology and syntax. An ergative view of voice focuses on the element of the clause that realizes or actualizes the verbal process. This enables clearer expression of the subject’s function in the clause by distinguishing between two opposing roles: the subject functioning either as undergoer of the process (actualization) or as agent (cause) of the process. Since there are only two basic roles of the subject for voice, therefore, there are only two voices and the traditional passive voice no longer stands as a third voice that is separate from the active and middle voices despite the occurrence of three morphological forms in the aorist and future tense-forms. Passivity is subsumed entirely within the middle voice in all tense-forms whereby the subject actualizes the verbal process but with an added feature of external agency to the clause. Moreover passivity is expressed by specific grammatical constructions within the middle voice that operate as agentive augmentations (specified or not) of a middle clause. The so-called ‘passive’ marker, -(θ)η-, shares much in common with the functions of the middle voice markers as the -(θ)η- form was encroaching upon middle forms during this stage of the language and gradually expanding its range of function in the New Testament.

This paper investigates the Acts of Justin and Companions (Rec. B), the purported martyrdom account of Justin Martyr (c. 165 CE). It explains how in the aftermath of the Edict of Decius (250 CE) editors reworked the earlier version of the Acts of Justin (Rec. A) and refashioned the character Euelpistus as a martyred “slave of Caesar.” The editors did so to redefine Christian piety as an exclusive activity—a piety not to be shared with the Roman gods. To show how the text accomplishes its goal the paper draws from studies on Roman slavery, Roman household rituals, and inscriptions that imperial slaves left behind. The end result is a better understanding of the historical reality against which the new version of the Acts of Justin (Rec B) idealizes and distorts Euelpistus as a martyred slave of Caesar.

Who controls the narrative in the event of an exile? The Bible seems to grapple with just that question after the Babylonian exile of a small group of elites from Jerusalem and its surrounding areas. Despite the fact that archeological evidence portrays a limited exile the primarily impacted Jerusalem and only a small number of elites, exile looms large in the biblical texts. Trauma studies of the Bible pick up and takes at face value the traumatic nature of these texts at both the compositional level as well as within the narrative itself. However, further consideration must be given to the gap that remains between the comprehensive and universal trauma of the exile as presented in the biblical text and the fact that there is a continuity of material culture in Judah with the exception of Jerusalem and a few nearby cities. Therefore, this paper deals with the constructed aspect of the biblical trauma narrative that does not necessarily reflect the reality of the majority of Judeans’ lives. Jeffrey Alexander lays out a social theory of collective trauma wherein meaning in the aftermath of trauma is constructed by the group through symbols that are affectively tied to the trauma, that is, symbols that evoke emotions associated with the trauma. Drawing from Alexander’s work as well as other trauma theorists such as Kali Tal, I will go beyond the work of current biblical trauma scholarship. Rather than accepting the traumatic events that shaped the texts and canon of the Hebrew Bible as the universal Judahite trauma narrative, I will argue that the Babylonian exile as it is portrayed in the biblical text was constructed for two reasons: 1) the people writing/editing the texts were the ones most impacted by the exile and 2) drawing on the exile helped to create a collective national identity. In short, the authors and redactors of the biblical text dealt with the Babylonian exile and eventual return under the Persian empire by creating a new national narrative and passing it on to the collective.

Tamar is expected to submit to the erasure and inhumanity of a patriarchal system that interpellates her as the sexual and economic asset of the men who control her. But when Judah fails his basic duty of providing her with an opportunity to conceive, an irresponsibility that would push her to the extreme margins of society, she resists the strictures of gender convention. Tamar assumes an agency typically reserved for men, she takes on work that falls out of the normative binary distribution of labor, she fulfills the patriarchal responsibility of facilitating a sexual encounter and producing progeny, and she seizes the symbol of patriarchal power, authority, and virility by taking Judah’s staff. Various biblical and extra-biblical sources make clear the connection between the penis, power and authority, and the staff which represents this nexus. In resistance to the violence of erasure and exploitation, she “castrates” Judah and uses the power invested in the phallic item for herself, making a way to relative freedom and autonomy through risk and transgression. So too do the women of the Rojava Revolution resist the gender and sexual oppression of the Islamic State of the Levant by taking up weapons, phallic significations of political power and ideological dominance. ISIL has set forth explicit instructions for the behavior of women, replete with punishments for transgressing those boundaries. Their fascist, fundamentalist interpretation of Islam underpins an oppressive gender code which relegates women to “sedentary” life. The military opposition of women in the YPJ is a transgression of gender boundaries with a moral significance, making the consequences of capture dire indeed. But the women of the YPJ, like Tamar, redefine gender in their contexts, destabilizing traditional binaries and risking their bodies for justice. Neither of these parties is advocating for the privilege of the penis or the pistol, but they will use whatever means necessary in the struggle for justice.

Jews living in the aftermath of the destruction of the Second Temple navigated a world in which their imperial lords peppered the Mediterranean landscape with sculpted images of themselves, oftentimes suggesting that these physical images, and the emperors that stood behind them, functioned as gods in embodied form. This paper considers how these material images (and the emperors who stood behind them) impacted Jews, especially in light of the fact that these same Jews lived under the authority of Rome, yet also served the one God of Israel alone. By analyzing texts such as Josephus’ Ant. 11.302–45, wherein he depicts an encounter between Alexander the Great and the Jewish high priest, as well as ancient artefacts that these emperors, and the Flavians in particular, employed as a means of visual propaganda to convince others of their deification, I explore how the Jewish high priest, especially in light of the strong aniconic tradition in Second Temple Judaism, could have functioned, for Josephus at least, as a visible counterpoint to both these material, sculpted images and the deified emperors who stood behind them. Though clearly not synonymous with the God of Israel, since much of the extant Jewish literature dating to around the turn of the Common Era stresses God’s transcendence and utter inaccessibility, such a reflection on the high priest may offer some insights into how Jews, living around the turn of the Common Era, both responded to Roman hegemony and Roman imperial religion and claimed that they could encounter their God, the God of Israel, in tangible form.

Severos of Antioch (c. 465–538) stands as one of the most celebrated figures in the development of miaphysite or non-Chalcedonian Christology. The Syriac, Coptic, and Ethiopian traditions all honor him as a saint. His works, condemned within his lifetime by the imperial church, primarily survive in Syriac and Coptic translations from late antiquity. Texts from the early Solomonic period attests to Severos’s popularity as a saint and author in Ethiopia. This presentation explores a previously unidentified letter by Severos in Ethiopic translation as evidence of interconnections between the Ethiopian tradition and the Coptic and Syriac churches. This letter appears in a fourteenth-century collection of homilies and is designated as a homily to be read on the Thursday of Holy Week. This letter is not known in any other language. The first part of this presentation will situate this letter within its late antique context. The addressee of the letter, Caesaria, was a patrician and from a prominent family. Severos wrote several letters to her, and she appears in both hagiographical and historiographical works. Severos responds in this letter to her exegetical question regarding the origin of evil. The theological nature of this letter matches that in Severos’s correspondence with Caesaria. The second part of this presentation will examine the transmission and translation of this text into Ethiopic. I will especially consider how this text reflects a broader trend in the transmission of Severos of Antioch’s works into Ethiopic in the early Solomonic period. At least four other works by Severos were translated into Ethiopic around this time and became part of liturgical collections. A life of Severos survives in Ethiopic from around the year 1400, and he found a place in the Ethiopic collection of saints lives known as the Sənkəssar. This letter thus represents an important discovery for late antique Christianity as well as for understanding the Ethiopian tradition’s understanding of its relationship to other Christian communities.

In the town of Thambaia, in the 480s, two Nicene brothers were being tortured by Vandals. As they encouraged each other to persevere in enduring their suffering for Christ, one of them proclaimed: “Unleash whatever suffering you like, and torment the Christians with cruel punishments: what my brother will do, I shall do as well” (Vict. Vit. Hist. Pers. 3.28; trans. Moorhead, 75). Rather than an accurate depiction of what was happening “on the ground” during the Vandal period, this (imaginative) passage, in which a Nicene tells a Homoian Christian to “torment the Christians,” is in fact representative of a widespread coping strategy by Nicene Christians. By alluding to Christian texts from the earlier Roman persecutions of Christians (Tert., Apol. 2: “Christianus sum”), by casting Vandals as the new persecutors, and by implicitly presenting them as non-Christians who persecute Christians, Victor of Vita is here refashioning the identity of both Christians and Vandals as, respectively, persecuted and persecutors. Victor, in this regard, is representative of the Nicene response to the Vandal occupation of North Africa, which consisted mainly in understanding their present as a repetition of past persecutions. Indeed, Nicene texts of the Vandal period multiply borrowings and allusions from the likes of Cyprian, Tertullian, Lactantius, and other texts describing earlier persecutions. It is the argument of this paper that in depicting themselves as the latest Church of the Martyrs, these authors participated in what seems to have been the dominant form of Christian identity in North Africa. Of course, in addition to the Roman persecution of Christians, North African Christians also experienced their own internal struggle with so-called Donatists. What is striking to the external observer is the similarities between the coping strategies of Christians facing Roman persecutions, Donatists facing what they considered as persecution by Nicene Christians, and Nicene Christians under Vandal rule. Perhaps the clearest example of these parallels between Donatists and Nicenes of the Vandal period is the similarities between their resistance strategies at the councils of 411 and 484. A close reading of both councils reveals that Nicenes seem to have deployed the same delaying tactics as Donatists had in hopes of avoiding a theological debate they could not win (proving the ‘homoousios’ from Scriptures). Both Donatists and Nicenes under Vandal rule depicted secular power as controlled by the Devil, and thereby attacking its legitimacy to rule in a Christian world. The flip side of this posturing was to present themselves as the Church of the Martyrs, which implicitly meant that they were on the side of truth and orthodoxy in this polarized world. In depicting their experiences in this particular light, as a repetition of past persecutions, authors of the Vandal period joined their predecessors in continuing a North African tradition that opposed theological enemies with the language of martyrdom and persecution, and that cast their identity as the Church of the Martyrs.

Philo describes attending sumptuous feasts. When he takes self-mastery with him, he bridles the impetuous rush of his passions, but when he leaves reason at home, the enjoyments enslave him. He confesses to overeating and overdrinking. But then, unexpectedly, he mentions sex (Leg. 3.155-156). Philo divides humanity into three categories. The wise are so rare (Leg. 1.102) I set them aside. At the other end is the vast multitude of people. These worthless people are dead to the life of virtue (Somn. 2.235-237) and indulge the flesh at banquets. But what about the progressing person (Leg. 1.93; QG 4.54), how might this person behave? For Philo, passions for food, drink, and sex, although not good, work according to laws of nature (Opif. 3; Contempl. 59). He says god-loving souls (QG 3.4) will satisfy their passions at banquets, but only to the extent useful and necessary and will not overindulge beyond measure (Leg. 3.155-156). Leg. 3.155-156 makes me ask: does Philo have no problem with followers of Moses having their useful and necessary sexual needs satisfied at these parties by the pretty little slave girls (Prob. 38) offered to guests, just so long as they do not overindulge beyond measure? I outline Philo’s attitude toward slavery. Philo says slavery is irrelevant and ought to be a matter of indifference to slaves. But slavery is not irrelevant to slave owners, as Philo says, “The course of life contains a vast number of circumstances which demand the ministrations of slaves” (Spec. 2.123). I briefly discuss how Philo’s attitudes toward the human body, sexuality, women, and ethics bear on my question. With this in hand, I give a Philonic reading of Exodus 21.7-11 which gives a father total power to sell his daughter to another man, knowing the child’s body will be used for sexual gratification. Children proved excellent commodities for trade and profit. In the conclusion, with a glance at Pericles, Euripides, and Aristotle’s anonymous opponents of slavery, I explore whether Philo experienced anxiety and uncertainty about how slavery, “the most degrading and exploitative institution invented by man” (Peter Garnsey), was parasitic.

It is widely recognized that the story of Joshua’s circumcision of the Israelites at Gilgal both in MT and LXX is heavily edited. The most common critical approach considers the section of verses 4-7 (and the slightly divergent parallel in LXX) to be secondary and locates the early, pre-deuteronomistic narrative in verses 2-3, 8-9. Early critics such as Steuernagel, and more recent critics such as A. Rofe, have astutely pointed out that God’s dramatic declaration to Joshua in verse 9, “Today I have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt,” implies that the Israelites in Egypt were scorned as uncircumcised and that this disgrace was removed “today,” at Gilgal, for the first time. This implies both that the Israelites did not observe circumcision in Egypt and that the Israelites at Giglal were identical with the ones who lived in Egypt and departed therefrom. Obviously, both of these implications were problematic from a later perspective. Verses 4-7 thus came to insist that the Israelites in Egypt indeed observed circumcision. It was only the second generation of Israelites born in the wilderness that needed to be circumcised by Joshua. This secondary material also brought the ancient text in line with the standard conception according to which the exodus generation died in the wilderness while those who entered the land with Joshua were a new group of people. This paper seeks to modify this reconstruction of the early narrative as consisting of verses 2-3, 8-9. Verse 2 (“At that time the Lord said to Joshua…”) is strongly Deuteronomistic in style and must be attributed to a late editor. There is no indication in verse 3 that Joshua circumcised the Israelites “as the Lord commanded.” On the contrary, the verse’s formulation, ויעש לו יהושע, implies that the circumcision reflects Joshua’s own initiative. It is most natural to understand that a late editor would want to attribute the initiative to perform the circumcision to God rather than Joshua. This secondary attribution of the circumcision to God is again reflected in the present formulation of verse 9, which has God tell Joshua, who is made to represent the people as a whole, “today I have removed the disgrace of Egypt from upon you.” The attribution of this speech to God requires that we attribute the naming of the place as Gilgal in the continuation of the verse to God as well. This, however, is extremely unusual as God is generally not the one who gives names to places. It seems clear that verse 9 was originally presented as the speech of Joshua. A final section of the paper will show that the phenomenon found here, that of converting a demonstration of human initiative and authority into one obedience to a divine command, can be identified elsewhere in the biblical corpus, particularly in Exodus 16.

In the first generation of the Jesus movement, back when ‘Christians’ were Jews, allegiances between earth and heaven were ethnically inflected. Gods ran in the blood, and deities tended to share the ethnic identity of the human group, the genos or ethnos, that worshiped them. This was true for the god of Israel no less than for the god(s) of Ephesus or of Rome. But in the course of the second century, God the father of Jesus lost his Jewish identity, and various forms of gentile Christianity hermeneutically loosened the LXX’s ethnic moorings. In consequence, as we see in Book 16 of the Codex Theodosianus, Ioudaïsmos shifted from being an idiosyncratic ethnic patrimony, a set of ancestral practices, to being a deviant, even a dangerous, political choice.

Exodus 3:15 is at the heart of the central controversy in modern Pentateuchal scholarship: the debate between the classical Documentary Hypothesis (along with its Neo-Documentarian adaptation) that continues to serve as the prevailing model in North America and Israel, and the Transmission-Historical models taking prominence especially in European scholarship. For the Documentarians, Exodus 3:15 depicts the pivotal moment in the Elohistic (E) work when the deity first introduces the Tetragrammaton to Moses and to humanity. This verse is therefore singularly representative of the most overtly concrete distinction between Israel’s two epic traditions, since the alternative Yahwistic (J) source employs the name “YHWH” from creation onwards. Exodus 3:15 bears witness to an early Northern Israelite tradition ascribing the Tetragrammaton to Mosaic origins, a tradition that continued to be preserved in Exodus 6:2-3 of the later Priestly work (P). The Documentary Hypothesis’ detractors claim to have dealt a fatal blow to both of the purported epic sources, ascribing their disparate non-Priestly (non-P) materials to various origins that both precede and postdate the Priestly writings. For many followers of the Transmission-Historical approach, Exodus 3:1-4:18 constitutes a supplementary block that could not have been part of a larger continuous parallel strand stretching the length of the Pentateuchal narrative. Moreover, they point to evidence within Exodus 3:15 itself that betrays its late insertion within that block, arguing that it borrows elements both from the two verses immediately surrounding it and from a distant, and especially recent, Psalms collection (see Psalms 135:13). Exodus 3:15 has therefore been reimagined as a post-Priestly addition that was designed to foreshadow P’s divulgence of the Tetragrammaton within the same narrative stream, thereby further corroborating a theological framework first observed only in the exilic/post-exilic Priestly literature. On what basis should one decide between these two opposing viewpoints of the purpose and ultimate significance of Exodus 3:15, without being unduly influenced by preconceived notions about the overall efficacy of either the Documentary Hypothesis or the Transmission-Historical models? This paper will respond to both positions, and suggest that a close examination of Exodus 3:15 itself actually promotes neither reading, at least as each one is currently expressed. I propose that underlying Exodus 3:15 is a very different intention than has previously been recognized by either side of the debate, and that the verse reflects a more dynamic relationship both with its immediate non-Priestly context and with its Priestly counterpart.

There are approximately one hundred places in the Greek New Testament where the author quotes the Greek Old Testament in a fairly direct manner, but changes the verb form in some way. These changes include alterations to person, mood, occasionally lexeme, but quite frequently the substitution of one aspect for another. This paper will examine the tense-form contrasts found in the quotation of Isaiah 6:9–10 in the Parable of the Sower, and using a method inspired by Carl Bache’s contrastive substitution will examine the impact of aspect substitution on the surrounding discourse. Mark’s paraphrastic rendering of Isa 6:9–10 has prompted a great deal of exegetical disagreement, particularly related to the conjunctions ἵνα and μήποτε. Following many modern interpreters who argue for interpreting the received text as it stands, it appears that Mark, of all the Gospel writers, mirrors most closely the tone of the MT. A similarly strong causative purpose is found on the lips of Jesus—a harshness potentially softened even by Matthew and Luke. While the tone and implicit divine purpose echoes the MT, the form is largely of the LXX, and certain strong parallels exist to the Aramaic. Yet the presence of more direct parallels to the LXX in the other Synoptic Gospels (along with Acts) allow us to make a comparison of the effect of the changes made in Mark’s version. Mark’s altered quotation contrasts Future indicative and Aorist subjunctive forms with Present subjunctives, along with a change from 2nd to 3rd person. This latter change in person is both common and minor: the shortened quotation assumes the 3rd-person reference of the final line and applies the former clauses to the same group (τοῦ λαοῦ τούτου). Regarding the Future–Present change, we find that this comports well with Campbell’s model of the Future form, namely perfective in aspect and future in tense. This quotation in Mark and Luke is characterized both by a change to imperfective aspect, and the removal of future expectation. The overall effect of this is to efficiently shift the reader’s/hearer’s viewpoint on the effect of prophetic speech to an ongoing process around the disciples. Even apart from a consideration of these changes, Jesus’s use of the quotation implies he is applying it to his present teaching. But the shift to imperfective aspect allows Mark and Luke to efficiently mirror that broader point in the syntax. The grammar follows the explanation, compactly echoing the typological comparison being made.

It has been argued that the language of Africa is the language of orality. As Clifton Clarke contends, “this is the realm where orality is expressed through the language of symbols. […] Symbolism makes the African Christian a converted narrator, storyteller, theologian, poet, God’s okyeame (linguist) and singer.” Yet, one cannot speak of “scripturalization, orature, or orality as a cultural way of life in African and African Diasporic cultures” without immediately encountering the issue of mother tongue versus global languages. Ghanaian theologian Kwame Bediako argues that while the convenience of being able to circulate research more widely may push African theologians to write in Western languages, African Christian scholars “cannot set aside lightly the challenge of mother tongues, since these provide the historical, socio-cultural intellectual, and emotional matrices that give shape to the human responses to transcendence.” Bediako adds that the challenge is particularly acute in post-colonial, post-missionary Africa, where the widespread use of Western languages “conceals the fact that contemporary African Christianity has emerged and is sustained largely through means that have been shaped by African mother tongues – the Bible translated into African languages, and African Christian preaching conveyed through African languages.” This paper argues that orality, and by extension the use of African languages, are key African epistemological approaches and important elements of African spirituality. This paper draws upon the scholarship of Afe Adogame, Ezra Chitando, and Bolaji Bateye who argue for African approaches to the study of religion in Africa , and Kwame Bediako, whose contribution to promoting orality and mother-tongue engagement are found in his publications as well as within the research institute which he founded, the Akrofi-Christaller Institute for Theology, Mission and Culture (Ghana). For a paper engaging orality and scripturalization, an important counter-narrative is found in analyzing the praise songs of Ghanaian Christian oral poets Ephraim Amu and Afua Kuma. Both demonstrate insightful apprehensions of Scripture and their African cosmological universe and daily surroundings, utilizing traditional praise-song formats to offer Christian praises, giving creative interpretations to biblical passages and theological concepts. Furthermore, their songs demonstrate incredible linguistic skill and artistry, incorporating Ghanaian symbols, proverbs, idioms, and visuals, adding important performative and sensory aspects. The interplay of orality and written text is seen in Amu’s song, “Kasakyerew ho nimdefo, mo!” (Those gifted in the knowledge of writing of language, congratulations!), written and performed to honour the work of early Twi Bible translators J. G. Christaller and C.A. Akrofi. Bediako argues that African Christians should be “understood as drawing on their sense of belonging within Christian tradition and using categories which to them describe their understanding of their pre-Christian heritage when related to their Christian commitment.” As Chitando responds, “Bediako insists that African theologians have a right to contribute to an understanding of their own religious heritage.” This paper seeks to listen in to this important conversation, drawing fresh insights into orality as an important African approach to spirituality.

Within the alleged development of subjectivity and reflexivity the so-called "inner self" plays a major role. Usually it is said that there is no such inwardness in the Hebrew Bible literature and that the conception of the "inner" and "outer man" rather emerges in later more reflexive literature (cf. Philo, 2 Cor 4:16-18). However, there are more than glimpses of the "inner self" in biblical literature; not only in the prophets, but also in wisdom and poetic literature. The paper will discuss the view of a predominant outwardness of the Hebrew conception of the person by looking at passages of the Hebrew Bible in which the "inner" and "outer" is addressed in regard to the "self", "personhood" and "identity". The observations will then be related to Charles Taylor's argument, namely, that the difference between antiquity and modern self is the difference between a "porous self" and a "buffered self".

Throughout second temple Jewish literature, the threat of exile, of dying away from one’s native land, looms large. The deserved punishment for the wicked priest Jason, for example, was death in Egypt in exile with no funeral and no grave in the tomb of his ancestors (2 Macc. 5:10). Joseph, on the other hand, makes the Israelites promise to bring his bones back to Judah to bury them there (Gen. 50:25), and Joshua affirms that they did so (Josh. 24:32). Safety is burial in one’s native land, danger and abandonment is burial abroad. This assumes that the graves themselves will be protected and known and visited, but this cannot be guaranteed. Nehemiah begs permission of King Artaxerxes to be sent to Judah because the city of the graves of his ancestors lies waste, its gates consumed by fire. This paper explores the notion that the threat of exile is the threat of abandoning the graves of one’s ancestors.

With few competitors, Heracles was one of the most popular and widely revered heroes of Greco-Roman antiquity. In two treatises, Philo evokes his heroic virtue as a potential model for human emulation. In the Embassy to Gaius, the emperor’s claims to the divine honors of the hero are deflated in view of his failure adequately to have matched Heracles’ benefactions for human civilization. Philo notes that Gaius used to dress himself in theatrical costumes impersonating various gods and heroes, which, he suggests, reveals that the emperor’s likeness to divinity was merely superficial. In That Every Good Person Is Free, Heracles’ actions in the satyr-play Syleus serve as a model for the true sage who acts with freedom of soul even in a state of servitude. In the drama, despite his best efforts to disguise his true nature in order to deceive the murderous tyrant, his heroic attributes remained visible. Within these two treatises, therefore, Heracles is ostensibly celebrated as genuinely divine. This presentation will argue, however, that in both instances Philo subtly subverts the status of the hero. In the former treatise, this is evident in his Euhemeristic interpretation of the hero’s divine nature, and in the latter in his claim that the demigod’s achievements in virtue were surpassed by humans, including the Essenes and the philosophers Anaxagoras and Zeno.

Known mostly for the way it "fills in the gaps" of Mary's early life, the Protevangelium Jacobi includes shocking images of physical violence. Near the end of the gospel, Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist and a priest, is killed by Herod's soldiers. His blood spills over the altar of the "Lord's Temple"; later the blood turns to stone. In a different example, protection from sexual violence comes in the form of flames that burn the assailant. Mary, having given birth to Jesus in a cave outside of Bethlehem, is made to submit to a digital inspection of her postpartum genitals. But when Salome tries to penetrate Mary's body, her hand immediately catches fire, the skin "falling away." This paper will explore these and other examples in the Protevangelium Jacobi along three intersecting lines of inquiry. First, what is the significance of acts of violence, threats of violence, and protection from violence in this story of Christian origins? Second, what is the significance of the various images of sanctuary that serve as backdrops for these examples? "Sanctuary" here refers both to a holy place, such as the temple in which Zacharias serves, and a place of refuge, such as the cave outside of Bethlehem, the mountain that protects the wife and son of Zacharias, and the womb of Mary, which not only carries the Christian savior but also erects a fiery barrier against Salome's encroachment. The third line of inquiry engages with recent proposals by Lily C. Vuong and Michael Rosenberg to sort out the provenance and religious identity of the author and audience of the Protevangelium Jacobi. Does the text reflect a variety of "Jewish Christianity"? Where can references to "Israel," "Hebrew," and "Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," be found, and what, amid the blood and stones of the story, do such references signify?

In the Gospel of Mark, the title “king” (basileus) applies to two characters: Mark’s fictionalized Herod Antipas in chapter 6, and Jesus himself as the king of Israel or king of the Jews in the Passion narrative (chapters 14 and 15). However, the text characterizes Herod as an unjust and cowardly sycophant, and in the Passion narrative no one applies the title to Jesus who means it sincerely. Using imperial-critical methodology, this paper explores the Gospel’s strong ambivalence toward the title basileus, which historically represents both imperial legitimation and subaltern resistance. It is contextualized on one side by the Gospel’s wider appropriation and (eschatological) reimagining of imperial titles and structures, and on the other by its reformulation of Judean War-era messianic hopes in general and discomfort with the title Son of David in particular. In the center of Mark’s use of the title is an implicit critique of the appropriate roles and qualities of kingship. Assuming a post-70 provenance, this paper reads the Gospel of Mark as an attempt to cope with the dissolution of the status quo in Judea and to maintain a sense of divine control in spite of the failure of rebellion and messianic hopes. The contrast between Jesus and Herod, embodied in the title basileus, is in part a reproach of Agrippa II, whose assistance to Vespasian represented one side of a division in Jewish attitudes toward Rome. After the war Agrippa not only maintained his power, but was granted wider territory, and (unlike his ancestor Antipas) he officially carried the title king. In the wake of the temple’s destruction and the resulting crisis of Levantine Jewish identity, Mark’s treatments of both the Herodian dynasty and the title king are part of his overall project to stake a new claim for the Galilean Jesus community in competition with surviving Pharisees, Herodian loyalists, and lingering rebels.

For a long time, the vast majority of exegetes have assumed that Israel's liberation from foreign oppression in the Book of Judges is predicated on the people's repentance. However, many commentaries and studies of the last few decades claim that in fact Israel never repents in Judges and that its deliverance in the book is strictly a function of divine grace. The present paper examines this claim and finds it wanting. A close look at the language of Judges and especially at its literary structure reveals that the narrator not only has Israel repeatedly repent its abandonment of Yhwh but also unambiguously (if implicitly) demonstrates that such repentance -if sincere, i.e. accompanied by renunciation of foreign gods - is a conditio sine qua non of the people’s deliverance.

The poetry of Prudentius (fl. 405 CE) celebrates the triumph of Christianity, taking Christianity’s political dominance nearly for granted as he focuses his attentions on fusing “Romanitas” with Christian faithfulness. And yet, these same poems are shot through with anxieties about the dangers faced by Christians—from “pagans” and from heresy, yes, but above all else, from the complacency accompanying Christian triumphalism. The success of any ideology comes with such complications, as shifts in access to power make new and different demands on the ideology and its adherents. Prudentius negotiates Christianity’s new imperial endorsement with violence. Or, rather, with depictions of violence crafted to induce visceral reactions in his audiences. These reactions range from revulsion to desire, and are managed by Prudentius’s narrative techniques: he situates images of bodily injury in narrative frames that instruct engaged readers in how to secure their own souls’ salvation. We see this in his Psychomachia, where he describes the physical destruction of the personified Vices in gruesome detail as something to be abhorred and avoided, and in his Peristephanon, where he describes the bodies of the martyrs as similarly subject to dismemberment but, in sharp contrast to the Vices, as objects of desire and devotion. The narratives and narrative techniques that Prudentius employs make clear to his readers how these violent images should be understood as they navigate their identities as Christians and as Christian communities. For Prudentius, the poetic representation of physical violence is a key tool for navigating hegemonic anxiety.

A quick glance through the last decade of international, national, and regional Society of Biblical literature program books reveals several program units dedicated to the topic of textual criticism, such as Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, Textual Criticism of Samuel-Kings, and Textual Growth. Female and minority textual critics operating at present, while numerically significantly in the minority, benefit from long-standing traditions of scholarship. Indeed, in my own academic journey as a North American scholar, the field of textual criticism is well-established and generally considered a foundational aspect of studies of the Hebrew Bible. This paper will reflect on the challenges of representation and what it might suggest about the current state of the field as well as future directions in the field.

Due to the long formation of the book from the Assyrian to the Persian-Hellenistic time, the question regarding the composition and redaction of the Book of Isaiah represents a complex challenge. The discussion surrounding the Book of Isaiah is shaped by diachronic redaction-critical as well as synchronic approaches - in the sense of canonical approaches, resulting in a complex picture of methodical and hermeneutic approaches to the Book of Isaiah. Against the background of this methodical and hermeneutical plural state of current research, the following paper raises the double question regarding the literary-historical formation of the closure of the book as well as its composition by the example of the silence of YHWH in Isa 64:11 and Isa 65. The paper aims to highlight for the composition of the book the idea of God implied by the silence of YHWH as well as the noticeable struggle how the misdeeds of the God are to be interpreted.

In several instances of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, they refer to the Book of Life (sēpher ḥayyīm) or the writing in heaven (apogegrammenōn en ouranois), which contains the names of those who enjoy life, and anyone blotted out from it receives death (e.g. Exodus 32:32-33, Psalms 56:8, 69:28, and 139:16; Daniel 12:1; Philippians 4:3; and Revelation 3:5). In contrast, those not written in heaven are said to be written in the earth (yikkatebu bi-ha-aretz) (i.e. Jeremiah 2:13), in which some scholars have suggested is what Jesus is portrayed as doing when he bent down writing in the earth twice when asking his audience if anyone is without sin to cast the first stone (i.e. John 8:6-8). The Qur’an has references to the writings in heaven and earth (e.g. illiyyūn, sijjīn). The term “illiyyūn” has the meaning of highness, and therefore, perhaps alluding to heaven. The description in the Qur’an of those who are in “‘illiyūn” being witnessed by those brought near (al-muqarrabūn) are of them drinking from a spring. This description may be compared with Psalm 46:4–5. The description of drinking from a river as the fountain of life (miqur ḥayyim) is also seen in Psalm 36:8–9. The term “sijjīn” appears to be related to “sijn,” meaning prison, while some commentators, such as al-Ṭabarī, interpret “sijjīn” as the depth of the earth, or the deepest (seventh) level of earth. Interpreting hell as some kind of prison has a long history in Christian exegetical works, which is found in the Apostle’s Creed based on 1 Peter 3:19. The New Testament also portrays sinning angels bound in chains (2 Peter 2:4, Jude 6, Revelations 20:1–4). The depiction of people in hell being bound in chains, as in a prison, is a recurring theme in the Qur’an (e.g., Qur’an 14:49, 40:71, 76:4). The Qur’an also shows that those who are bound are not always to be understood as being physically in hell, as non-believers who are currently physically alive (i.e. Qur’an 36:6-12). Therefore, the depiction of the book of the living or the book written in heaven (‘illiyyīn) and the book written in the earth (sijjīn) found in the Qur’an can be easily compared with that of the Bible. As such, one might infer that the concepts of death and resurrection (or life) in the Qur’an may also be compared with those of the Bible. Therefore, to better understand these concepts in the Qur’an, a comparison with the Bible may be necessary.

In a 2016 article, Emanuel Tov concluded that LXX and SP derive from a common text. On the basis of hieroglyphic and Greek documentary sources and texts, this paper submits a historical argument that meets and supports Tov's conclusions. The main points of this paper are: 1) the earliest Yahwistic scriptures arrived in Egypt in 312 BCE from Mt. Gerizim, in the wake of Ptolemy I's conquest of Coele-Syria and the deportation of some of its inhabitants; 2) This is the text that was first translated into Greek in the 3rd c. BCE; c) This texts and its translation are criticized by the Zadokite Oniads in the mid-2nd c. BCE upon their arrival in Egypt. To defend both text and translation against such criticism, Ps.-Aristeas wrote his Letter, creating a myth which he chronologically retro-projected one hundred years.

The immediate impetus for this comparison between the sacred space in Ezekiel and Babylonian temples is the fact that no temple or holy complex similar to the one described in Ezekiel has been discovered in the land of Israel. As described in Ezekiel the temple precincts are unique, consisting of a square compound enclosing a square structure, chambers, gates, and a network of courtyards, in addition to the temple building itself. The description of the temple includes unusual features: a delineation of the functions of the chambers and the depiction of a spring issuing from underneath the platform of the temple into a large, square area with several entrances. This description differs fundamentally from the archeological remains of temple structures discovered in Israel, in which the temples are usually located inside a structure or within a rectangular area. Structures similar to the one described in Ezekiel have to date not been uncovered in archeological excavation in Israel, but were, however, common in Mesopotamia. This similarity forms the basis for my proposal that, in his description of the future temple, Ezekiel was inspired by the Babylonian milieu. The focus of the lecture is on a unique component of Ezekiel’s vision: the spring issuing from the temple (Ezek 47:1–12), which I will suggest can be understood against Babylonian topography with its many rivers and flowing springs (see Pedersén’s recent study, “Waters in Babylonia”). The Mesopotamian traditions most relevant to the imagery of the waters emerging from the temple in Ezekiel are probably the ones connected to Esagil, the main temple of Marduk in Babylon. This temple sat on the banks of the Euphrates, which passed through the inner city, though not through Esagil itself. More importantly, as recounted in Enūma eliš, Marduk built Esagil, his temple, on top of the Apsû, the fresh deep waters, the dwelling place of his father, Ea. Moreover, the fourth tablet of the topographical text, describes the temple of Marduk as “Esagil, the replica of the Apsû.” Thus, we see that Esagil was not merely built on top of the Apsû, but fresh, life-giving waters formed the very foundations of the main Babylonian temple. This suggests that both Ezekiel and his audience visualized the future temple's structures and its waters in line with the Babylonian milieu. I further maintain that consideration of the Babylonian background of Ezekiel sheds light on other features of his temple.

In the main, the pageantry of the Passover Seder focuses on two periods of Jewish history: the biblical Exodus from Egypt and the rabbinic recalling of the account. Through ritual food, drink, and animated reading and interpretation, the participant travels with the Children of Israel as if “s/he came forth out of Egypt,” and sits at the table of the Sages as they observe Passover in Jerusalem and Bnei Brak. Alas, the forty year trek from wilderness into freedom succumbed in Jewish history into a long night’s journey into exile. “Begin with disgrace and end with glory” (m. Pesachim 10.4). That is to say, talk openly and informatively about exilic degradation and destruction, so that, in contrast, the experience of Jewish freedom and triumph are cherished and appreciated. Thus, it is suggested, nay expected, that the greatest tragedy of the Jewish Night, the Shoah, be recounted on the night that accentuates Jewish birth and being. But for many Jews, it is not. How come? A number of questions arise for those who insert contemporary genocide in the midst of freedom. Where is the Shoah inserted, beginning, middle, or end of the Seder ceremony? Does not the message of Hell on Earth compromise the theme of redemption from Heaven? By reading the Shoah into the Haggadah, are we not turning Judeocide into a paschal sacrifice making it a biblical holocaust rather that a contemporary historical Shoah. Nonetheless, the “why” of the Shoah is non explainable and may explain why it is inserted in the second part (“future”) of the service . The Four Cups at the Passover table represent the verbs of God’s freedom in the biblical Exodus story (Exod 6: 6-8). Also the Fifth Cup, the Cup of Elijah, is poured to overflowing and the door is opened and the “Pour Out Your Wrath” paragraph bellowed to the outside world. Why Shoah memory and the curse of Nations (pagan and monotheistic) at the Cup of Elijah, symbolic herald of messianic peace? What, if any, is the Shoah link to the Synoptic Last Supper which depicts Jesus proclaiming, “This is my body” (Luke 22:19) and “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many” (Mark 14:24; Matt 26:28)? According to tradition of Rabbi Judah ben Bezalel, the Maharal of Prague (c. 1525-1609), one reads the “Great Hallel” with the Fifth Cup in hand, and in testimony to the passage, “Who remembered us in our low estate and has delivered us from our adversaries” (Ps 136: 23-24). So in our day, drinking from the Cup of Elijah testifies “to the land (He gave) for a heritage unto Israel” (Ps 136: 21-22). Is there a link between Auschwitz and Jerusalem? Shoah and Church? Cause and effect or remembrance and not again?

As locations of social interaction, meals are attractive targets for self-proclaimed religious experts who seek to define, structure, and influence human behavior. These include the ancient rabbis who authored and edited the foundational works of Jewish law – including the Mishnah, Tosefta, and Tannaitic Midrashim, which took shape in Roman Palestine in the third century C.E. In these texts, the Tannaim prescribe a number of laws related to food and eating. Because meals are materially-defined, early rabbinic legal prescriptions on food and eating are necessarily shaped by economic constraints. What one eats, as well as how one eats, when one eats, and with whom one eats may be influenced or dictated by a scarcity of resources. This scarcity is a function of one’s geographic location (e.g. certain foods may be more prevalent than others), social location (one’s personal ability to acquire certain foods), and other factors that are beyond rabbinic control. This paper will explore the economics of rabbinic discussions of meals by undertaking a close examination of the rabbinic law to eat three meals during the Sabbath. I will examine the background of this obligation in the Second Temple period, and then trace its development and concretization in early rabbinic literature. Prescribing an additional, third meal (over the two normally consumed during the week) adds an element of indulgence and joy to the Sabbath – but may also entail an additional outlay of economic resources. We then see the Tannaim construct laws of charity in ways that enable the poor to fulfill certain materially-contingent religious laws, including the obligation to eat three meals on the sabbath. This happens, though, in ways that may not have been anticipated. Perhaps sensitive to over-extending the community’s benevolence, the Tannaim structure charity laws so that the obligation to eat three meals can be fulfilled by restructuring time instead of requiring an additional economic outlay. The flexibility of time saves money and releases a tension between religious laws on meals and economics.

The Ethiopic book of Tamǝre Iyesus (Miracles of Jesus) is a collection of stories – ‎identified by the heading “miracle.” This rubric, however, maybe somewhat of a ‎misnomer in that this collection has little in common with other literature of the ‎‎‘miracle’ genre, which mainly consists of hagiographic accounts (known as Gadl’s ‎in the Ethiopian tradition). The Tamǝre Iyesus is better described as a ‘Gospel’ in as ‎much as it seeks to present a gospel-like account consisting of canonical and non-‎canonical traditions, which are organized in more or less the chronological order of ‎the canonical gospels – from the Annunciation to post-Resurrection appearances. ‎While, contemporary scholarship has taken note of the non-canonical gospel ‎traditions preserved in this collection — such as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, the ‎Apocryphal Gospel of John and the Book of the Rooster — full study of these ‎traditions as they are discovered within the Tamǝre Iyesus as a coherent literary ‎unit, is however yet to be conducted. With this in mind, this short paper seeks to ‎offer some preliminary description of the reception and appropriation of non-‎canonical traditions alongside canonical and additional Gǝ’ǝz materials in the ‎Tamǝre Iyesus to offer some insight into the dynamic understanding of Gospel ‎materials and their use in the creation of a new literary whole.‎

The Book of Revelation is one of the most influential texts of Christendom. While the Apocalypse of John remained a “Book of Seven Seals” in parts of the Greek-speaking East in antiquity and beyond, it was received with popularity in the Latin Church of the West. One reason for this prevalence is most likely the early translation of Revelation into Latin (so-called “Vetus Latina”), which can be tracked back to the second half of the second century CE. This version has, however, been underappreciated because of the prevailing scholarly interest in the Greek “original text”. Nevertheless, dealing with the Latin translation of Revelation is a worthwhile undertaking, because it illuminates a very important part of the textual and reception history of this book. Due to the fact that even the most literal translation cannot avoid a change of the content of the text to a degree, nuances and smaller interpretative additions are preserved in tradition. Similar to “fingerprints”, these (intended or unintended) alterations provide us with a valuable insight into the thinking and interpretations of past generations. This paper shall, first, provide a brief overview of the existing various traditions and transmission history of the Vetus Latina of Revelation in North Africa. The focus of the presentation, however, shall lay on the second part: Here, by presenting concrete and exemplary passages of Revelation, it shall paradigmatically be shown, how Cyprian of Carthago (+ ca 258 CE) and Primasius of Hadrumetum (+ ca 553 CE) modified the text of Revelation and let theological and christological points arise via prudently made additions and omissions as well as changes in the vocabulary and syntax.

This paper will be focused on oral and visual renditions of narrative clusters shaping the storyline(s) of some apocryphal Gospels (the Protoevangelium of James/ the Infancy Gospel of James, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Nicodemus, etc.) within the larger framework of “the Folk Bible”, with special emphasis on ethno-hermeneutics. Discussion will include not only written editions of texts (manuscripts) but also various attestations in vernacular tradition and iconography, registered during the last two centuries by folklorists and ethnographers. Oral accounts recorded by the author during field research conducted in Eastern Europe (during the Soviet period and later) and archival work will also be treated.

A preliminary description of the place of the parent text of the Jewish Revisors of the Septuagint in relation to the textual history of the Hebrew Bible. Rabbinic sources imply that textual plurality continued in the First and Second Centuries CE. What bearing does the evidence of the Three Revisors have on these implications.

Reexamination of the recent research on Exodus 21,12-14 and Deuteronomy 19,1-13

This paper considers the textual growth of the book of Jeremiah from a theological perspective. This book—or the textual tradition that became this book—has always enjoyed special religious status. From its inception as a collection of prophetic oracles to its reception as scripture by later communities, the book has been conceived of as divine revelation. The scribes who shaped and expanded this book shared this conviction. When they shaped and expanded Jeremiah, they believed they were handling God’s very word. They likely saw themselves as textual diviners, authorized to discern the deity’s will through studying, interpreting and writing revelation. For this reason, studying the literary history of the book of Jeremiah amounts to an examination of scribal theology. To notice how Jeremiah took shape is to witness textual changes that often reflect theological motivations. Yet, scribes shaped and expanded the book of Jeremiah in many different ways, large and small. Is it misguided to search for theological motivations for all textual developments? To what extent are the different kinds of textual changes observed in Jeremiah theologically motivated? The purpose of this paper is to address such questions and to consider what might be said about the theological motivations potentially lying behind scribal interventions in the text of Jeremiah. In particular, this paper will focus on the final stages of the book formation, stages attested by a comparison of the long form and the short form of the book. As is well known, the book of Jeremiah survives in two different forms, a shorter and presumably earlier form attested primarily by the Septuagint, and a longer and later form attested mainly by the Masoretic Text. The longer form is the product of the efforts of many generations of scribes who altered and expanded the text of Jeremiah in many different ways: for example, they relocated the Oracles Against the Nations from the middle of the book to the end, rearranged the order of these oracles, created duplicates of existing verses and couplets, expanded names and titles, and added headings to prophecies. This paper will consider if such alterations might have theological motivations and if so, what might these motivations be.

In Mark’s Gospel, thambeō, ekthambeō and existēmi are some of the verbs which describe the reaction of the crowds and disciples to Jesus’s mighty deeds and teaching (e.g., 1:27; 2:12; 5:42; 6:51; 10:24, 32). They are generally understood in a positive sense and often translated in English with the verb “amaze,” with commentators noting that such a response is appropriate for theophanic encounters. However, when the same verbs are used to describe Jesus’s state of mind, the translations have negative connotations: Jesus is perceived as being “out of his mind” (xistēmi in 3:21) and depicted as being distressed (ekthambeō in 14:33). These translations are appropriate in context for, indeed, the translation “amazed” would be nonsensical in modern English. But what about the other uses of these verbs? Should the reaction of the crowds and disciples to Jesus’s mighty deeds be understood so positively? This paper will argue that θαμβέω, thambeō, ekthambeō and existēmi should be interpreted as more than simple amazement or wonder; the crowds and disciples are unsettled, dumbstruck, and overwhelmed by Jesus’s mighty deeds and teaching which are difficult for them to understand. Not only is such an understanding in line with the use of these word groups in the LXX, it coheres with Mark’s characterization of the crowd and the disciples. Yes, they are amazed by Jesus, but it is clear that they do not comprehend the full import of what he is doing. For example, the disciples’ unsettled amazement is connected to their hard-hearted inability to understand (6:51–52). Furthermore, reading these verbs with connotations of being unsettled or overwhelmed highlights the importance of Jesus’s mighty deeds and teaching. In Jesus’s ministry proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God (1:14–15), his words and deeds are new, unusual, and bursting the wineskins of their expectations. The response to such words and deeds is not mere wonder, but an unsettled and scared astonishment. This paper employs a narrative approach that attends closely to characterization, repetition, and conflict. Furthermore, this paper presupposes the importance of the OT for understanding Mark’s narrative. 


Invited paper.

This paper will examine the correlation between divine emotion and exceptions to the law of retribution in the Book of Samuel. Influenced by Von Rad and the DtrH theory, the theology of Samuel is usually interpreted within the framework of the Deuteronomistic History, as an explanation and demonstration of God’s retributive punishment upon Israel in the exile for their sin, and the hope of God’s mercy in the future. However, close reading of the book of Samuel suggests that there are a number of exceptions or variations on the straightforward application of the law of retribution. These stories include: God’s intention to prevent the repentance of Eli’s sons in 1 Sam 2:25; the violence of the ark upon innocent people in 1 Sam 6 and 2 Sam 6; the rejection of Saul in 1 Sam 13 and 15; and God’s inciting of David to hold a census in 2 Sam 24, which leads to punishment on all of Israel. In each of these stories, God’s actions are associated with an emotion. Most intriguingly, God’s anger, which is associated elsewhere in the Old Testament with divine punishment for sin, is mentioned twice in the book of Samuel in connection with non-retributive divine violence. Two further instances of divine emotion throughout the book of Samuel are stories of God’s favour: God’s love for Solomon in 2 Sam 12:24, and his mercy on Jerusalem in 2 Sam 24:16. Only once is God associated with an emotion in conjunction with retribution: in 1 Samuel 28:18 it is remembered that God's anger was not carried out against Amalek, relating back to the story of the rejection of Saul. The paper will conclude with discussion on the significance of this correlation for an understanding of God's characterisation in relation to divine violence in the book of Samuel.

In order to accomplish his rhetorical goal of encouraging celebration of the Feast of Hanukkah, the author of 2 Maccabees weaves a complex tale, receiving and reworking previous traditions. He includes a letter purportedly from the Jerusalem Jewish authorities, including Judas Maccabeus himself, to the Jews in Egypt (1:10b-2:18). This letter relates two contrasting traditions about the origin of the Second Temple’s sacred flame in order to ground Hanukkah not in Maccabean times, but centuries earlier in the time of Nehemiah. In fact, this letter offers a third option for the name of the celebration, the “feast of the fire”(1:18), rather than the “dedication [of the altar]” (1 Macc 4:59; John 10:22) or the feast of “lights” (Josephus, Antiquities 12.325). By focusing on the miraculous origin of the altar fire, 2 Maccabees seeks to root the new festival in the time of Nehemiah and even further back in the time of Moses and Solomon (2 Macc 2:10). This process of re-interpreting recent events in light of older traditions shows a desire both to assimilate and to repurpose material for a contemporary end, while guarding against the appearance of innovation. That is, the author seeks to “traditionalize” a new feast by rhetorical means, establishing its legitimacy by linking it with the miraculous happenings of the past. Though the author must tacitly acknowledge an interruption of the burning of the perpetual altar fire, his narration of the re-lighting of the fire on the new altar at the Maccabean rededication (10:3) has led to conflicting interpretations as to whether the new fire’s origin is presented as miraculous or not. This paper examines the ways in which 2 Maccabees relays and reworks the traditions of the sacred fire, the origins of Hanukkah and the re-lighting of the flame at the rededication. Further perspective on the content and rhetorical strategy of 2 Maccabees is afforded through comparison with the better-known but much later account recorded in the Talmud (b. Shabbat 21b). Finally, the paper argues for the plausibility of a third option to explain the re-lighting of the sacred flame that relies on the mysterious Persian-approved miraculous fire reported by the second letter (1:31-34).

Once I fell in love with a parallel. Like most totally captivating, completely unsubstantiated ideas, it came to me late at night, en charrette. I was writing on the Coptic version of Jesus’s reply to Abgar, which survives in some dozen late antique amulets, with evident apotropaic and iatromagical functions. This text begins and ends with self-referential signifiers that seemed to me to be getting at cross-purposes. It begins with a titular heading, “The Copy of the Letter of Jesus Christ…”; it closes with the notice, “It is I, Jesus, who wrote this letter with my very own hand.” The text says that it is written in Jesus’s own hand, yet at the same time draws attention to the fact that it is actually a copy, therefore not *really* written in Jesus’s own hand. What was going on in the head of a scribe when she was writing, with her own hand, “I, Jesus, write this in my own hand”? How did the ancient users of these amulets – who evidently relied on them for health or safety – make sense of this contradiction? What made them sure that the apotropaic power, anchored in the fact of the physical handwriting, could transfer from the autograph to the copies? How could the bearers be sure that there ever was an autograph in the first place? In the face of such questions, my attention was drawn to the core content of the letter between the opening label and the closing signature: “Blessed are you, and goodness will come about for you…Since you have not seen but have believed, you will receive according to your faith.” In marking itself as a copy, the amulet wears on its sleeve the fact that it is not the real thing, but it dares the bearer to believe that it has the same power as the real thing – and that the real thing, in fact, actually existed. Is there not an elegant parallel here to the situation of the historian? In seeking to grasp the possible worlds of the past, all we have are copies of our sources, copies that bear no sure seal of guarantee, that resist our technologies of verification, that constantly remind us of the absence and unknowability of the autograph. As historians, we must acknowledge that copies are all we can know, so we can and should tell the stories of these copies as artifacts in their own right. But like these Coptic texts of Jesus’s reply, our evidence often seems to dare us to believe in things unseen, to stretch beyond the strictly known. Alas, sometimes parallels are too neat. In the sober light of daytime revisions, it occurred to me that there was a dramatic asymmetry on another level. For historians, the unknowability of the autograph is, at worst, a historiographical inconvenience. For the bearers of these amulets, it was literally a matter of life and death. Is it grandiose to try and bridge that gap of staggeringly disproportionate stakes?

This paper examines the book of Deuteronomy through the lens of kinship, showing how kinship highlights identity formation, solidarity, and responsibility as central themes. It will inquire into kinship in Deuteronomy as a culturally produced system of meaning, the field in which covenant, law, feasting, identity, ethnicity, marginality, and 'religion' are experienced. A brief exegesis of three texts demonstrates that religious experience or identity that was free standing and disconnected from kinship was impossible in the ancient Mediterranean world. Through Deuteronomy's festival calendar (Deut 16:1-17), the weakest in the community are being enfolded as kindred. In a covenant renewal text, the metaphor of 'family' is the vehicle for a partially diffuse people group to become cohesive (Deut 29:9-14). Deuteronomy's social laws required Yahweh's people to take responsibility, as kinsfolk, for those who were without the protection that kinship affords. This paper develops some of the research in my monograph, Adopting the Stranger as Kindred in Deuteronomy (Ancient Israel and its Literature; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2018).

Jeremiah’s many oracles against Judah, Jerusalem, and the foreign nations belong to one of the most violent oracles found in the Hebrew Bible. For the modern reader, it is particularly discomforting that the author of ultimate violence is regularly identified with YHWH himself. Jeremiah displays a God who is furious and prophesizes aggressive fantasies of uncontrolled destruction. YHWH desires to burn down Jerusalem, sends sword, famine, and pestilence and executes genocides without regret. A closer reading of those violent texts, however, brings to the fore emotional incoherencies. For example, while YHWH’s anger calls his servant Nebuchadnezzar to destroy the southern kingdom (Jer 25:9-11), he simultaneously sympathizes with the suffering of the Judean population and calls for a full destruction of Babylon (Jer 25:12-14; 50:14-19,28; 51:11,34-36; etc). While YHWH threatens to burn the city with fire, he warns Zedekiah to not burn Jerusalem (Jer 17:27 vs. 38:23 [MT]). While he foretells with deuteronomistic aggression that he is returning his people into the slavery of Egypt, he accuses the Judean remnant of immigrating to Egypt and rejecting his warnings (Jer 42:15-16,18-19 vs. Deut 28:62-68; Jer 43:5-7). In addition, a comparison of Jeremiah’s oracles with his historical narratives suggest, that word and action, i.e. prophecies of horror and the playing out of history are not fully in sync. While redaction critical approaches can help to explain some of these incongruencies, the professional eye of the psychologist might see in them obvious mechanisms of managing emotional pain. In the face of increasing religious, economic, racial, and sexual violence, new subdisciplines in psychology and neuroscience have been formed in the last 10 years (Slakovskis, Hamby, DeWall, etc.: psychology of violence; Hankoff, Fields, etc.: neuroscience of violence). Our paper, then, seeks to approach the matter of violence in the book of Jeremiah from an interdisciplinary perspective. A text-empiric reading (Hardmeier, Talstra), that seeks to identify text-linguistic (in)coherence and interpretative challenges, is brought into dialogue with recent findings in the psychology of violence. The authors represent the disciplines of biblical scholarship (Oliver Glanz, PhD) and psychiatry (Torben Bergland, MD) and suggest, that an interdisciplinary exploration of Jeremiah’s oracles of violence can contribute to a reconceptualization of Jeremiah’s theology. They will present the thesis, that Jeremiah’s oracles of violence can be thought of as therapeutic efforts in which the fantasies of violence help to prevent a physical execution of violence. Consequently, Jeremiah’s emphasis on a God who cares (pqd [with its negative and positive meaning]: no other prophet uses the pqd-concept so frequently) is reframed through the glasses of the psychology of violence.

The text describing King David’s deathbed charge to his successor Solomon and the latter’s execution of his father’s instructions (1 Kings 2) has elicited a lively debate in contemporary scholarship, pitting those scholars who take the text as representing classic royal apologetics against those who view it as expressing criticism toward the excesses of David and Solomon. Traditional Jewish exegesis (from the classical rabbinic sources through the late medieval period) does not explicitly challenge David’s or Solomon’s moral compass. Still in all, one finds a surprising latitude of variation in this literature vis-à-vis David’s harsh directives and Solomon’s equally harsh compliance. Alongside retellings that attempt to soften the vindictive aspect of David’s testament, other sources portray Joab and Shimei in far more honorable terms than David’s own description of them as despicable scoundrels, thus at least implicitly raising the question of whether David could have acted more magnanimously. My paper will aim at explicating these nuanced interpretations, and where possible, relating them to trends in contemporary scholarly discourse regarding the last troubling chapter of David’s life.

I am currently writing the commentary on 1 Peter for the Evangelical Exegetical Commentary Series (Lexham Press). The purpose of this presentation is to share some of my experiences in this endeavor that might be of interest and help to others and for me to learn through the experiences of others who are involved in a similar project. There are three main emphases of my commentary, and I will develop each one briefly and then consider how they complement each other. The commentary I am writing, in keeping with the series title, is exegetical. I take that to mean that it is primarily concerned with the language of the text of 1 Peter in its literary and historical context. Secondly, this commentary is concerned with biblical theology. The letter of 1 Peter evidences an unusual dependence on the Old Testament. In fact, for its size it is difficult to find another Christian document that incorporates as much material from the Old Testament. This material provides the theological substructure of the letter and makes wide-ranging connections with theological themes and motifs throughout the rest of Scripture. One of my goals is to mine that biblical theology and let it provide the foundation for my interpretation of the text of the letter. Third, my commentary is concerned about the canonical context of 1 Peter within the Catholic Epistles collection, the New Testament, and the whole of Scripture. I am more cautious and tentative in this area than in the first two, because there is no generally accepted method for reading a book canonically and the value of canonical exegesis for interpretation is debated. However, I am convinced that interpreters miss some of the flavor of the message of a biblical book is they ignore the various levels of its canonical connections.

The starting point of this paper is my article on 1 and 2 Corinthians in relation to the Jewish apocalyptic tradition that appeared in The Jewish Apocalyptic Tradition and the Shaping of New Testament Thought (Reynolds and Stuckenbruck, 2017). In this paper I do not simply review this article but rather use it, and my engagement with New Testament scholarship on Paul when writing it, to reflect on how scholars approach the topic of Paul vis-à-vis Jewish apocalypticism. One common approach is to present Jewish apocalyptic eschatology as comprising dichotomies that Paul collapses or sublimates. It is helpful to understand Paul not as transcending Jewish apocalypticism but as a participant in it. He did not simply inherit an array of Jewish apocalyptic traditions which he radically altered. Jewish apocalypticism was alive and well in the first century CE. In key ways Paul is fully in line with major Jewish apocalyptic tropes from the period, with regard to both eschatology and messianism. I demonstrate this point by comparing 1 Corinthians 15 with 2 Baruch, a roughly contemporary Jewish apocalypse.

Coming from a group-oriented and peer-pressure culture in Taiwan where honor is a collective and primary value that shapes people’s interaction with each other in the public sphere, I find Paul’s discussion of sin, law, life, and death in Romans 7:7-25 reflecting the power of ideology upon people’s understanding and representation of themselves in the public. As such, when Paul wrote, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (7:15; NRSV), he was not addressing an individual, private, or psychological struggle. Rather, he was confronting and exposing the power of sin upon people. That is to say, Paul was dealing with the social issue of double consciousness, in which people, under wrong ideology, cannot help but to see themselves through a foreign lens, resulting in self-alienation. Under the gaze of others, one cannot do what one desires, but has to perform for the approval of others. This pressure to act otherwise turns people into an abjection that they want to vomit but cannot, because distorted by double consciousness, they are enculturated to internalize and embody what they hate. Here, the frustration and anger of Franz Fanon in addressing the double alienation of epidermalization are reverberating. As Paul wrote, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do (7:19), we see that when sin distorts the commandment that is holy, just, and good (7:12), the life that is promised by the commandment can end up becoming “death to me” (7:10). Given this circumstance, Paul thus wrote, “So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand” (7:21). There seems to be no exit out of this quandary. Paul can only exclaim, “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (7:24). Paul, however, finds the answer in “Jesus Christ our Lord” (7:25) in the sense of Jean-Luc Nancy’s notion of implosion, in which God sent “his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh” to deal with sin and to condemn sin in the flesh (8:3). To expose the Roman Empire’s ideology, contradiction must be foregrounded. This is why Jesus was sent “in the likeness of sinful flesh” to conscientize people to see the operation of sin so that they may see the cracks and faults in their worldview. Such a socio-cultural reading of Romans 7:7-25 comes to the fore in a very ideologically-contested environment in Taiwan where people are divisively split along the party line. To address such dualistic opposition between two major political parties, people have to see the contradiction in each party so that they may not be simply bound to their supported party without being self-critical.

My proposed paper seeks to challenge the widespread assumption held by scholars across the Humanities that a defining feature of Midrash is the proffering of multiple, sometimes contradictory, interpretations of the Biblical text. Particularly pronounced in the wake of postmodern reading practices, this feature of rabbinic Midrash diverges from many other forms of literature and thus garnered attention, leading to an exaggeration of the centrality of this characteristic. Consequently, Midrash is frequently conceptualized as an open-ended process that lauds polysemy. In opposition to this common premise, I demonstrate that the propensity to maintain multiple, irreconcilable interpretative possibilities is in fact a somewhat marginal aspect of the extant midrashic collections. Far more prominent in these works are the negation of potential meanings and the underlying assumption of a single authoritative reading of biblical sources. Through a quantitative comparison of the examples in which Midrashim propose multiple interpretations and the overwhelming number of cases in which these works assert a singular understanding, this paper redefines the way we think about the essential features of the genre of Midrash. I bolster this argument with a brief qualitative study of the analytical techniques employed by these Midrashim to arrive at interpretations of scriptural verses framed in light of Umberto Eco’s "The Limits of Interpretation" and Brunella Antomarini’s "Thinking Through Error." After presenting my quantitative argument and surveying the multiple ways through which early Midrashim limit interpretative possibilities, I turn to a comparison with other exegetical traditions in Late Antiquity. I suggest that while the Dead Sea Scrolls (particularly the Pesharim) and early Christian interpretative works also employ limitation of possible meanings, there is a significant difference between these exegetical texts and Midrash. The Pesharim and early Christian interpretations tend to employ implicit rejections of meaning by asserting the proper understanding of a passage. By contrast, a common feature in early rabbinic Midrashim is the explicit positing and rejection of possible interpretations. This comparison suggests that the explicit rejection of interpretive possibilities is a defining feature of Midrash that distinguishes it from other works of interpretation in Late Antiquity.

In past narrative the structure wayhi with a temporal adverbial followed by a wayyiqtol form is frequently used to introduce a temporal clause in classical Biblical Hebrew. It is much rarer in late Biblical Hebrew and is no longer used in Rabbinic Hebrew, being replaced by a temporal adverbial and an asyndetic qatal. In Chronicles the archaic structure of wayhi with a temporal adverbial followed by a wayyiqtol form mostly occurs in passages parallel to Samuel–Kings; and a later structure of a temporal adverbial and an asyndetic qatal mostly occurs in passages unique to Chronicles. Occasionally the archaic structure is even replaced by the later structure in parallel verses (1 Kings 9:1-2 para 2 Chr 7:11-12). This distinction probably reflects the preference for the latter structure in later and vernacular Hebrew. The Greek text of Paraleipomenon (Rahlfs or Göttingen) mostly mirrors the temporal structures found in the MT. The archaic structure wayhi with a temporal adverbial followed by a wayyiqtol form is translated by kai egeneto with a temporal adverbial and an apodotic kai with an indicative form (which is an awkward structure in Greek, with the second kai being redundant). Occasionally there are plusses or minuses comparing Paraleipomenon with the MT. This paper particularly focuses on these aberrant examples (plusses or minuses) and whether the plusses are due to the translator (or scribes copying the text) archaizing (according to his familiarity with wayhi structures in Biblical texts) and the minuses are due to modernizing (following the lack of wayhi structures in the vernacular Hebrew of his day) or whether these plusses or minuses are because of differences between the Vorlage and the MT. This paper is a preliminary part of an excursus for the SBL commentary on the book of Paraleipomenon and illustrates some principles of dealing with the translator’s handling of archaic literary structures in the language and with plusses and minuses.

In this paper, I will discuss a controversy between the grammarian Rabbi Shabbethai Sofer of Przemysl (c.1565-c.1635) and the halakhist Rabbi Meir Ben Gedaliah (Maharam) of Lublin (1558-1618). The controversy is concerning the correct pronunciation of the divine epithet Adonai and the function of the vowels in the Tetragrammaton found in some manuscripts of the Masoretic Text. I will explain that this controversy was a clash between Sofer's reliance on grammatical rules, derived from standard Tiberian Hebrew, and Maharam's reliance on what may have been a non-Tiberian pronunciation tradition. To illustrate this, I will bring parallels to Maharam's position in earlier rabbinical literature and Babylonian Pointed manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible.

Proposals to delineate the structure of Matthew’s Gospel abound; no single theory unites scholars’ understanding of the broad outline to the New Testament’s first Gospel. Despite the lack of consensus, we may still heartily affirm W. D. Davies’s assertion that the Matthean evangelist exhibits both “a meticulous concern” for detail and “an architectonic grandeur” for the whole. More recent studies have continued to highlight the literary characteristics of Matthew, showing the value of approaching Matthew as literature. M. E. Boring’s and U. Luz’s analyses of Matthew’s literary structure have further reminded us that the Gospel should be understood as “a complex of interlocking structures with more than one movement present in the text at the same time,” and that the author was more concerned with “a seamless narrative flow than in clear caesurae.” Building upon and within such convictions, with this paper I propose to take a nuanced look at the structure of Matthew’s Gospel. I do not propose to ask, “What is the structure of Matthew’s Gospel?” but instead to investigate the significance of an important structural feature in the way Matthew tells Jesus’s story. In the 1970s, J. D. Kingsbury advanced a proposal that the structure of Matthew’s Gospel hinged on the two occurrences of apo totes ērxato ho Iēsous (4:17; 16:21), producing a three-fold structure. For Kingsbury, this structure illumined both Matthew’s purpose in writing as well as his understanding of salvation history. D. R. Bauer, a student of Kingsbury, later attempted to substantiate this three-fold structure with a thorough and detailed analysis of several features of Matthew’s narrative. Kingsbury and Bauer were not the only scholars to delineate a three-fold structure for Matthew, but their work is the most often cited (and criticized) for advancing this structure. I suggest that an important nuance can be added to these proposals in order to highlight more vividly the significance of 4:17 and 16:21. In 1976 H. Waetjen suggested that Matthew’s genealogy provided the “key” to Matthew’s Gospel. Waetjen focused on the genealogy’s eccentricities and curiosities in order to explain Jesus’s own origin and subsequent story. This paper proposes that Matthew’s genealogy does indeed provide “the key” to Matthew, but in a different way. Namely, the explicit three-fold structure of the genealogy mimics a plausible three-fold structure to the narrative that follows (1:2-6a // 1:18-4:16; 1:6b-11 // 4:17-16:20; 1:12-16 // 16:21-28:20). The genealogy, I argue, stands at the beginning of the Gospel as an interpretive lens through which readers then encounter the Gospel as a whole. By beginning with a condensed, systematized story of Israel, the evangelist invites his audience to read the story of Jesus in light of the story of Jesus’s people. Israel’s story not only reaches its climax in Jesus—its story is reembodied, and brought to a new resolution, in Jesus. In describing the detail of this proposal, the paper also helps to illumine certain exegetical questions of Matthew’s Gospel, as well as to answer some of the criticisms of Kingsbury’s and Bauer’s previous proposals.

In her work The Senses of Scripture: Sensory Perception in the Hebrew Bible, Yael Avrahami proposes that throughout the Hebrew Bible, the senses are not described as merely perfunctory abilities of the body, but rather, the sensory organs are the means through which humanity experiences life: knowledge of the world and of God comes through the fullness of the sensory experience. More than this, the sensory experience works through an accumulative action of the senses as a means of understanding and responding to various stimuli which she says is made apparent through a clustering together of various examples of sensory-related terms in such a way as to reveal a “conceptual link” between them. Avrahami proposes that in the West, we are used to the pentasensory model of the senses, but that the Hebrew Bible presents a septasensory model of the senses: to the traditional five senses, Avrahami adds speech and kinaesthesia, which refers to movement, especially the way the body moves in its environment, as part of the sensory experience. Avrahami contends that the Hebrew Bible depicts an interconnected experience of the senses which she refers to as the sensorium – the full multi-sensory experience. The senses are not merely tools through which the body sends and receives sensory signals, but rather, in the Hebrew Bible the functionality of the senses is also related to the overall functionality of the body. But as a consequence of this, Avrahami sees sensory impairment as wholly negative experience. Indeed, she contends that because the fully-functional sensorium is representative of the fullness of the human experience, by extension, those who are lacking in sensory functionality are also lacking in this same experience and wisdom. This paper seeks to explore the extent to which this representation of the senses in the Hebrew Bible serves as a backdrop to the representations of the senses and sensory impairment in the Fourth Gospel. How does the author of the Fourth Gospel represent the role of the senses? To what extent can we assess whether sensorial imagery in the Fourth Gospel is being used literally or metaphorically or is such a divide even necessary or possible? What are the consequences for people with sensory impairments in the Fourth Gospel? Is it significant that the two major healing accounts in the Gospel of John are both men with sensory impairments according to Avrahami’s septasensory model? (The man born blind (ch. 9) is vision impaired while the man at the pool of Bethsaida is mobility (or in Avrahami’s vocabulary) kinesthetically impaired).

The palimpsest known as Sana’a 1 is of singular importance for the early history of the Qur’an, because its lower text is the only substantial witness to the existence of non-ʿUthmānic text-types. Behnam Sadeghi and I published the first edition of this text in 2012. Our edition was based primarily on high-quality normal light and ultraviolet (UV) images of folios at Sana’a’s House of Manuscripts (Dār al-Makhṭūṭāt) taken under the direction of Christian Robin and the late Sergio Noja Noseda. Recently Asma Hilali published a second edition of the lower text using the same sets of images. However, her edition consistently recovers less of the text, as a result of which she repeatedly notes her inability to find vestiges of our reconstructions. The first part of this presentation therefore explains how we managed to recover a greater portion of the lower text, introducing the technique of digital stacking and repeated shifting from a normal image to a UV image of the same folio. This technique will hopefully facilitate the study of Sana’a 1 by other scholars, who can now obtain images of this palimpsest from the internet. ******************** In addition to offering a methodology for tracing Sana’a 1’s lower text, the presentation uses the new data thus extracted to shed light on two interrelated aspects of the early history of the Qur’anic text, namely, the function of the basmala and the relation between sūras eight (al-Anfāl) and nine (al-Tawba). In particular, certain traditions suggest that the basmala was seen to mark not only the beginning of a specific chapter but also the end of the previous one [1]. This understanding of basmala seems to have led some to the idea that the text of al-Tawba forms the second part of Sūrat al-Anfāl—as the first verse of al-Tawba was not preceded immediately by the basmala [2]. I argue that Sana’a 1 attests to a creative strategy for countering this idea. In this palimpsest (folio 5A, ll. 7-9), the transition between al-Anfāl and al-Tawba features first the basmala and then the command to “not say bi-smi llāh.” This may have been a solution for ensuring that the two sūras are seen as distinct chapters, and at the same time forestalling the immediate recitation of the basmala before al-Tawba. I also explore other interpretations of these lines and conclude with broader reflections on the character of the Sana’a palimpsest.

In the so-called Elephantine documents, the phrase “the God of heaven” seems to have been used both by Elephantine Judaeans and by Persian officials as an epithet for YHW or alone with YHW as the contextual reference. Moreover, in the HB/OT, the epithet “the God of heaven” is mostly found in texts from the Persian and Hellenistic periods (Gen 24:3, 7; Jonah 1:9; Ps 136:26; 2 Chr 36:23; Ezra 1:2; 5:11; 7:12, 21, 23; Neh 1:4–5; 2:4, 20; Dan 2:18, 37, 44, cf. also Deut 4:39; Josh 2:11; 2Chr 20:6; Lam 3:41; Dan 2:28). ¶ The paper explores the following thesis: The phrase “the God of heaven” as used in the so-called Elephantine documents (and probably as used in the HB/OT also) represents a case of incipient interpretatio persica of the originally Judaean god YHW. ¶ In an Achaemenid–Egyptian context, the interpretatio persica was substantially helped by the iconographic motif of the winged symbol. In the Achaemenid period, the winged symbol was used in different contexts, and the media that mediated the concept were both material, textual, and aural/oral. (i) It was used in (royal) Achaemenid iconography used in an Achaemenid–Egyptian context (e.g., Darius I’s seal found in Thebes, and the so-called Arshama/Irshama seal). (ii) It was used in in traditional royal Egyptian iconography and ideology (e.g., the “Legend of Horus of Behutet and the Winged Disk,” and royal iconography in which Horus-of-Behdet is depicted as being in charge of the protection of the pharaoh). (iii) It was used in hybrid Achaemenid–Egyptian iconography and inscriptions, in which Ahuramazda in reality is equalled with Horus-of-Behdet (e.g., the Suez Canal stelas of Darius I). ¶ There are many other examples of similar processes in which deities potentially could be and actually were “translated into” (C. Cornell) other cultures and thereby identified with a deities from an originally distinct and foreign pantheon (e.g., the interpretatio graeca of Chemosh, Melqart,, and Milkom).

Propositional attitude verbs are verbs that describe the cognitive stance of the subject towards a proposition. Since Frege’s seminal paper “On Sense and Reference” (1897), propositional attitude verbs have been the subject of much investigation and debate in general linguistics. There are many well-known ‘problems’ that must be accounted for in any analysis of propositional attitude verbs, including the ‘(presupposition) projection problem’ (whether the proposition is presupposed to be true or not) and the problem of co-reference (whether names refer to the same individual inside or outside the scope of propositional attitude verbs). On all accounts, the verb reflects the mind of the speaker towards the complement in some way, so these verbs can give us a unique perspective on the mental stance of the subject. In recent work on the relationship between language, culture, and cognition, Jackendoff (2007) draws a distinction between situational attitude verbs and actional attitude verbs. The former reflect an attitude adopted towards any type of situation (e.g., believe in English), while the latter reflect an attitude adopted towards a “self-initiated action” (e.g., intend in English; Jackendoff 2007:247). Various parameters differentiate these two types of verbs, including time orientation and default syntax. Situational attitude verbs typically take finite complement clauses, and actional attitude verbs normally take infinitive complement clauses. This study investigates these two types of propositional attitude verbs in Biblical Hebrew (BH). With Pustejovsky (1995) and Rappaport-Hovav and Levin (2005) (and many others), I assume that the difference in syntax mentioned above reflects a difference in event structure. After grouping the various, relevant verbs in BH based on their argument realizations in the syntax, I propose a basic event structure for each class. Following the suggestion in Rappaport-Hovav and Levin (2005:78) that event structures reflect how language users conceptualized events, I use the event structures to compare and contrast the conceptualizations of these two types of attitude predicates. While it is recognized that gaining full access to the minds of deceased native speakers is not possible, I conclude with a general discussion of how we can gain a better understanding of the thoughts of Ancient Hebrews by utilizing the methodology proposed. In particular, I show that we can gain a better understanding of how the Hebrews conceptualized their world through language by working from syntax to event structure to conceptualization.

[For session 1] One key threshold concept in biblical studies is the idea that biblical texts are subject to interpretation, like other pieces of literature, and that it is okay for multiple readers in the classroom to form different (even mutually exclusive) interpretations of a shared text, if each interpreter genuinely engages with the text and attempts to explain its details. Frequently, however, students resist proposing alternate interpretations of a biblical passage in the classroom, or they do not challenge the interpretations of their classmates, which can lead to stagnant discussion. Students’ reluctance to debate can stem from an excess of caution; as an instructor at two religiously affiliated institutions, I have found that sometimes students are seeking a single “correct” reading of a canonical text and do not consider themselves to be authorized interpreters. Alternatively, some students resist debate by falling back on a facile appeal to relativism: any reading is ultimately a matter of opinion and therefore cannot be questioned. How can we as instructors bridge the gap between extremes and facilitate learning, getting our students to both propose interpretations and assess the strengths and weaknesses of those interpretations? In this 10-minute presentation, I will invite the session’s attendees to participate in a brief re-creation of a classroom activity that I have found helpful: comparing two pieces of art that depict the same biblical event and attempting to decide which piece better captures the event as it is described in the biblical text. In this case, we will recreate the competition between 15th century Florentine artists Filippo Brunelleschi and Lorenzo Ghiberti. Each man created a bronze relief showing the Sacrifice of Isaac (the Akedah of Genesis 22) as part of a contest to secure a coveted commission to carve a complete set of panels for the east door of the Florence Baptistery. With the biblical text before us in the session, I will ask selected participants to make a case defending their preferred rendering of Genesis 22. After modeling what can happen in classroom discussion about the pieces of art, I will step back to a more formal presentation and explain how I would invite more students to join the conversation and begin evaluating their classmates’ arguments. I will conclude by discussing the strengths of the activity and some outcomes I have observed. In particular, I will describe how disagreements that arise during the activity can be harnessed to help students understand biblical interpretation as an activity that uses some familiar skills, especially drawing on textual evidence to make arguments that are not just expressions of opinion.

This paper centers the precarious masculinity and vulnerable male body of the prophet/priest Ezekiel in Ezekiel 8-11. The priest-turned-prophet is transported in a vision from Babylon to the temple in Jerusalem, where he witnesses various “abominations,” among them idolatry, false worship practices, and the departure of Yahweh. Judgment and punishment ensue. The scene is a riot of bodies, including the bodies of the prophet, his otherworldly linen-clad guide, the Judeans, various divinely appointed “men”, and Yahweh himself. In this melee, Ezekiel’s embodied masculinity is articulated against these other bodies, the bodies of prior prophets, and the specific laws regulating priestly purity. In its complexity, this prophetic-priestly body also presents essential site of convergence for feminist, queer, and masculinity readings. I offer a reading of the prophet-priest's body here that takes as its starting point five principles for feminist masculinity studies: (1) centering the male body as an object of inquiry, (2) pursuing connections between the male body of the prophet and representations of female and animal bodies, (3) bracketing male desire as a concern, (4) taking passivity seriously, and (5) exploring the connections and disjunctions between feminist and queer perspectives on the text.

This paper explores Isaiah’s experience of the holy God in Isaiah 6 and its ethical implications. The paper begins by defining religious experience in light of the broader literature of phenomenology. It then reads the experience of the prophet in Isaiah 6 in light of this definition. The holiness of God so preoccupies the prophet that this characteristic of God becomes a crucial standard by which he measures the actions of the covenant people. For Isaiah, the holiness of God has ethical implications for the people of God. This is reflected in both his response to the vision of God whereby he identifies with the people of unclean lips (Is 6:5) and his subsequent message to the cynical community (Is 6:9-13). The ethical message of Isaiah is one of Imitatio Dei. This emphasises the importance of a personal encounter with God for the development of moral values. Finally, the implications for the Pentecostal community of an ethical message that flows from an encounter with the holy God will be explored.

In much Christian and Jewish reception of the book of Daniel, all of the protagonists are shaped into models of prayer, on the pattern of the Three in the furnace in the Greek text of Dan 3. The separate stories are smoothed onto a shared template over the course of their later transmission: cultural memory condenses the Daniel tradition into a pictogram of praying figures in the midst of danger. The Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three are thus determinative for what the book of Daniel comes to mean to later readers. This paper will illustrate this process of the crystallization of the book around the motif of prayer, with examples from early Christian and early Jewish visual representations and, especially, early Christian martyr narratives.

(1) Introduction: I propose a 10-minute presentation on a role-playing educational game involving the first-century Jewish Groups and their diverse relationships with the Roman Empire. I developed this game based on those designed by the Reacting to the Past organization (RTTP), which came out of Barnard College and has been developing and publishing games, as well as training faculty how to use them, since the 1990s. The RTTP games are well researched, sophisticated and are used in universities and colleges all over the U.S. I have used their games in other religion classes and they are some of the most engaging learning experiences I have witnessed. Since there are currently no games published that relate to the New Testament, I developed one for my Introduction to New Testament Class. The game encourages students to consider the complexities of the different Jewish Groups and their challenges of living under the Roman Empire. The preview, playing, and debriefing of the game lasts for one week of classes. (2) The game: The game is set in 60 C.E. at a Jewish Conference in a synagogue just outside of Jerusalem. Representatives from the Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, Zealots, and Common People are present, along with one Roman Centurion. They are to develop resolutions on how the Jews can better live with (or without?) the Romans. Students are assigned roles in each of the factions and each student has a role sheet for their character. They also read background information about all the Jewish Groups. The students meet in factions, talk with other factions to negotiate possible compromises, develop resolutions to vote on, and then all gather together for the main sessions. The Zealots have an option of assassinating the Roman Centurion but the Sadducees are alarmed by this. Sadducees and Essenes do not acknowledge each other, but the Essenes and Pharisees have apocalyptic beliefs in common. The Common People are given specific roles such as blacksmith, day laborer, or textile worker. (3) Presentation at SBL: I will introduce the game and pass around role sheets and some flyers that the students actually made to hang on the classroom wall promoting their faction. Then, with the help of a colleague, we will offer 3 or 4 short exchanges modeled off of what students would actually do in a game. First, we will be two Pharisees in a faction meeting discussing whether we should work with the Sadducees or consider talking with the apocalyptic Essenes. Second, we will be a Zealot who is trying to convince a blacksmith to join their faction because they admire his skills (and weapons!). Third, we will be the Co-Chairs convening the whole gathering for the main session as we discuss a resolution and the audience (at the SBL!) can briefly ask a question or make an argument on the resolution. Finally, a short debrief. And we’ll keep it under 10 minutes!

When one reads 1 Esdras against the backdrop of the Ezra-Nehemiah, three differences are especially clear: first, 1 Esdras adds a narrative about the end of the pre-exilic era taken from 2 Chronicles (1 Esd 1:1–20, 23–55); second, Zerubbabel becomes far more prominent, gaining an origin story (3:1–5:6) and full credit for Jerusalem’s restoration; and third, Nehemiah disappears. In this paper I argue that all three of these major differences between Ezra-Nehemiah and 1 Esdras touch on the emergence of what Brian DiPalma identifies as “scribal masculinity,” or what Daniel Smith-Christopher has identified as the “Wisdom Warrior.” Presupposing that 1 Esdras is a reworking of Ezra-Nehemiah (though perhaps this paper could be understood as a new line of argument that 1 Esdras came second), I show how the major changes made by the authors of 1 Esdras all contribute to the plausibility of a construction of masculinity centered around wisdom. Most important in this regard is the foregrounding of Zerubbabel. While he is a relatively minor character in Ezra-Nehemiah, he is effectively the savior of Judea in 1 Esdras. As the narrative’s hero, Zerubbabel gains honor, power, and renown—all of which are the achievements of ideal masculinity. Ezra gains prominence as well, taking center stage as the narrative reaches its happy close. in the 1 Esdras narrative. The key to prominence for both of these men is not their prowess on the battlefield, however. For both, it is their intelligence. By contrast, the two major leaders related to the narrative who have some battlefield skill come away from 1 Esdras in a harsher light. The only substantial battle scene in 1 Esdras is Josiah’s needless skirmish—a lapse in wisdom?—that precipitates the fall of Judea. And Nehemiah, whose memoir imagines the rebuilding of Jerusalem as something of a battlefield, is erased entirely. Far from honor, power, and renown, the one non-scholar leader of Ezra-Nehemiah receives what Jacob Wright correctly identifies as a Damnatio Memoriae. These shifts in masculinity touch on all three of the major differences between Ezra-Nehemiah and 1 Esdras. My goal in showing this is not to argue that 1 Esdras was written in order to make wisdom a marker of masculinity. But I do want to show that, whatever the true raison d’etre of 1 Esdras, the changes made to Ezra-Nehemiah by its authors contribute to the increasing plausibility of a wisdom-based masculinity in Second-temple Judaism. This study may have implications not only for the growing conversations about masculinity in ancient Judaism, but also for the vexing relationship between Ezra-Nehemiah and 1 Esdras. And it can demonstrate, I hope, that masculinity studies can have heuristic value for other exegetical puzzles.

The Babylonian Talmud documents the journeys of sages of inside and outside the Land of Israel and between Babylonia and Israel. These journeys were undertaken for various purposes such as trade, studies, and the transmission of religious laws between the two Torah centers. But the absence in the Talmudic records of religious pilgrimages to holy places as one of the motives for travel raises the question as to whether such pilgrimage journeys actually took place during those times. It is the purpose of this paper to assert that in the Babylonian Talmud there are traces of what may be termed itineraria and that at least some of the literary descriptions of ventures undertaken by Babylonian sages were actually a kind of pilgrimage, since they reveal the basic features of pilgrimage literature.

Until now it was widely understood that a merism pairs two extremes such as young and old, man and woman, sky and earth, to designate the whole constituted by the two extremes. Thus, while in Genesis 14:19, 22 both Melchizedek and Abram refer to El Elyon as creator of sky and land, the Rabbinic daily liturgy paraphrases the same merism with the expression ’creator of everything’. The very same understanding of how a merism means that we find in the Rabbinic liturgy is reflected also in the classic study of merism by J. Krašovec, Der Merismus (Rome, 1977). In fact, an entire series of unusual merisms in the biblical book of Lamentations, including 1:18; 2:10; 2:21; and 5:11-14, exemplify what A. M. Honeyman, in “Merismus in Biblical Hebrew” (JBL 71 [1952], pp.11-18) calls “brachylogous use of A+Y or A+B+Y or A+X+Y in place of the complete series A+B+C... +X+Y to represent the collective Z of which the individuals A to Y are members.” I shall show that the authors of at least three chapters of the biblical book of Lamentations adumbrate LGBT/Queer hermeneutics in deliberately referring to the presence among the victims of King Nebuchadnezzar in 6th century BCE Jerusalem and Judah of persons belong to the entire spectrum of humanity from female to male, including hermaphrodites, false hermaphrodites and transgender persons. In so doing, these chapters dovetail with the use of masculine plural//female singular parallelism found in the qere of Lam. 3: 25, which Shamir Yona, and I discussed in a previous meeting of this section, and which we published in Brad Embry’s Megilloth Studies (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2016).

Previous scholarship has analyzed the parallels between the Book of Job and the Book of Psalms primarily using an intertextual approach. However, only very few verses in Job can be explained as diachronic intertextual references to specific verses in the Psalms (e.g. Job 7:17–18 referring to Psalm 8). In most cases, the authors of the Book of Job do not quote or allude to specific verses from the Psalms. Rather, as a tradition-historical approach shows, they take up traditional topics and theological concepts from the Psalms, evaluate them critically, and reinterpret them. Such topics and concepts include the plea for salvation from death in the midst of life (Ps 6:5 and Job 7:13–15), the longing for God’s presence (Ps 13:4 and Job 10:20), and the belief that YHWH answers when a supplicant calls upon him (Ps 3:5 and Job 14:15). The tradition-historical approach has been neglected in the past thirty years of Old Testament research. This paper aims to show, first, which topics and concepts the authors of the Book of Job take up from the Psalms and how they reinterpret them. Second, it will analyze what this reception and reinterpretation reveals about wisdom during the time in which the Book of Job was written (5th – 3rd / 2nd century BCE), thus shedding light on the thought-world of the authors. Overall, the paper will point out the importance and benefits of using a tradition-historical approach for interpreting parallels between Job and the Psalms.

The paper focuses on social interaction with the dead and on the dead as socially-invested and socially-relevant agents. It explores what appears to be the absence of religious competition in the sphere of mortuary ritual practices in the Roman Empire. Recent research (e.g. Rebillard, MacMullen and Denzey-Lewis) suggests that religious systems had very little or no influence on mortuary practices in the Roman Empire in the first centuries CE. Mortuary practices were governed by local, pragmatic, social- and family-oriented concerns and not by overriding religious traditions. Therefore, mortuary ritual practices are strikingly similar across the Roman Empire, or rather they are basically similar because of their common focus on continued social interaction with the dead in spite of creeds and afterlife beliefs etc., and they are similar because of their enormous internal diversity. In the presentation, I use selected tombs and necropoleis as case-studies for investigating mortuary ritual in the Roman Empire. The analysis applies the Cognitive Science of Religion (“CSR”)-based 'action perspective' (Barrett and Lawson 2001; McCauley and Lawson 2007; Uro 2016) to mortuary ritual practices. Furthermore, a material semiotics perspective (Law 2009) is applied to these relations in order to describe them in terms of actor networks (Law and Hassard 1999), in which the relationality of the living, the invisible dead and the materiality of the dead is repeatedly performed and negotiated.

Enkrateia, a form of asceticism in antiquity, was viewed by many early Christians as an extreme form of the therapy of desire. Other early Christians, however, were attracted to the rigorous demands of encratism. In the apocryphal Christian Gospels and Acts literature, encratite tendencies are also gender-coded, especially in Thomasine traditions. The ability to control one’s passions was conceived of as a male trait. Conversely, capitulation to desire, especially sexual desire, was conceived of as female. Toxic masculinity, in these cases, presents as a fear of toxic femininity.

This paper examines the literary construction of the saintly body in the Ethiopic text of the Life of Mary of Egypt (Zenaha la-Maryam Gebsawit) in MS Oriental 686. Following the original Greek text, the Ethiopic Life presents the story of a sanctified and reformed prostitute turned desert hermit. In both the Greek and Ethiopic texts, the most striking element of the story is Mary’s ambiguous gendering. Accordingly, most scholarship on the Life has been devoted to discerning the flows of erotic desire in the text or the ways in which Mary’s dramatic transformation can be read as a commentary on human physicality and sexuality. While sex and sexuality are indeed integral to the construction of Mary’s holiness, Mary’s sanctity extends beyond the paradigm of desire and its sublimation. In the Ethiopic text, in particular, Mary’s body is phantasmic – it is a body that paradoxically must remain both hidden and visible in order to achieve holiness. As a result, the text places great emphasis on seeing (re’ya) and revealing (kasata): gazing at Mary’s body (as both a prostitute and a desert dweller), witnessing the wonders and mysteries of God, apprehending spiritual visions, reading the words on the manuscript page. The Ethiopic text invites the reader to participate in the unveiling of Mary’s sanctity – to find illumination in visible signifiers, but also to recognize Mary’s hiddenness as constitutive of her holiness. Yet Mary is never completely missing from the page even in her absence. Specters of the saint haunt the scribal introduction, the spiritual quest of the arrogant monk Zosimas, and the desolate landscape of the Jordanian desert. That is, the power elicited by Mary’s holy body does not simply exist as the subject (or object) of sexual desire, but also in its capacity to conceptualize corporeal difference (to apprehend holiness) through processes of creation and multiplicity – through, to borrow language from Deleuze and Guattari, transformations of becoming and unbecoming. Mary’s phantasmic body weaves together assemblages, connecting past, present, and future; saint, scribe, and reader; divine and human; ritual and revelation. As Mary’s presence and her attendant sanctity fold in and out of sight, Mary’s phantasmic body guards against the temptation of narrative closure. The reader must navigate the visible and hidden in order to perceive the becoming of a saint.

Al-Nāshīʾ al-Akbar (d. 293/906) was a late third/ninth century Muʿtazilite theologian (mutakallim) and poet as well as a grammarian (naḥwī) and prosodist (ʿarūḍī). He also penned at least one book on poetry criticism (naqd al-shiʿr) which has reached us only as partial excerpts in a number of different sources. Both Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī (d. 626/1229) and Ibn Khallikān (d. 681/1282) note that al-Nāshīʾ al-Akbar was in the same category (ṭabaqa) of poetic talent as al-Buḥturī (d. 284/897) and Ibn al-Rūmī (d. 283/896), two outstanding poets of the Abbasid era. Biographical dictionaries attribute a rich poetic and scholarly production to him and, while some speak highly of the quality of his verse and books, others criticize him as a contrarian and a deviant. Unfortunately, we do not have extensive excerpts from his book on poetry criticism, however we have a number of poems, both in the form of didactic poetry and self-boasting (fakhr), that can help us understand al-Nāshīʾ al-Akbar's critique of poetry. He sees fine poetry as harmonious articulation of sounds and meanings presented in a way that is accessible to the audience. While comprehensible in addition to possessing a unique aesthetic and artistic character, according to al-Nāshīʾ al-Akbar such poetry would render its reproduction impossible. In this respect, much can be inferred about al-iʿjāz (inimitability of the Qurʾān) and the Muʿtazilite doctrine of ṣarfa. The doctrine of ṣarfa posits that the reason why Qurʾān could never be reproduced was not due to a miraculous literary inimitability which no soul could achieve, but rather than God had prevented (ṣarafa ʿan) capable and competent souls from doing so. This paper will study Al-Nāshīʾ al-Akbar as a Muʿtazilite theologian, critic and poet, and it will focus on how he adopted the doctrine of ṣarfa in his poetry criticism. In addition to surveying edited literary and theological works by Al-Nāshīʾ al-Akbar, this study will use a number of unedited manuscripts, mainly in Inebey Manuscript Library (Bursa, Turkey).

Most scholars readily acknowledge that the Syriac text of Second Baruch in Codex Ambrosianus (ms 7a1) is translated from a Greek Vorlage. Nevertheless, very little work has been done on translational features of the text. While the absence of substantial Greek witness to the book poses limitations, the existence of a single Greek fragment affords the opportunity to gain access to a small window into the larger phenomenon. This paper examines this 4th/5th century fragment, P. Oxy. III 403 (2 Bar. 12:1–13:2 recto; 13:11–14:3 verso), to argue that the Syriac evidences a later, expansive rendering of a more concise – and at times ambiguous – Greek text resembling that of P.Oxy III 403.

The Nash papyrus is among the most important and well-known texts in the textual criticism of the Bible. Over a century has passed since its discovery, during which it has been extensively explored. In the nearly twelve decades since its emergence, our knowledge of many findings – primarily the biblical Dead Sea Scrolls – has been enriched. Our paleographical knowledge is thus more substantial and well grounded, and the written texts that have been discovered evince a richer diversity of genres. The Nash papyrus therefore merits an overall, multifaceted reappraisal. In this lecture, I will challenge some of the preconceptions regarding this papyrus and replace a number of formerly proposed exclamation points with question marks. Based on a scrupulous reading of the papyrus’ version of the Biblical text, I will suggest that its author was bilingual – a fact that gave rise to several textual idiosyncrasies.

The power struggle among King Ahab, Queen Jezebel, and the prophet Elijah in 1st and 2nd Kings displays complex gender-bending dynamics. Although King Ahab is described as the one who “did evil in the sight of the Lord--more than all who were before him” (1 Kgs 16:30), the narrator seems oddly reluctant to implicate Ahab directly in the specific transgressions. Instead, his wife Jezebel, the foreign princess, is the primary actor violating Israelite worship and laws. Ahab appears feminized in her presence. Jezebel exercises power not only over Ahab, but surprisingly over Elijah, who avoids confronting her directly and flees in terror from her curses. In the odd dance among the three, Elijah dominates Ahab, but Jezebel dominates them both. In this paper, I argue that Jezebel’s performance of female masculinity disrupts the typical prophet-king power dynamic. Her strong narrative presence diminishes Ahab’s power, as when she takes the king’s place in 1 Kings 21, using his signet seal and authority. Despite his great success in the masculine field of battle, the narrative frequently portrays Ahab in submissive, feminine terms. He is sullen, resentful, and resists neither Jezebel nor Elijah. Although Elijah’s grisly prophecy of Jezebel’s death is finally realized, showing his ultimate authority, Jezebel also subverts the power of Elijah. He “plays the man” with Ahab, the Israelites, and others in the narrative, but cannot keep it up in the face of Jezebel. Her gender transgressions require a spectacular downfall to put her in her place. Ironically, it takes a group of eunuchs to tame her “improperly” exercised female masculinity, notably several years after the passing of both Ahab and Elijah.

Wellhausen's revolutionary reformulation of Israelite and Jewish cult history hinged on the Temple Vision of Ezekiel in chapters 40-48, igniting over a century's worth of interest in the function and history of the text. Kaufmann, in a rebuttal to the Wellhausen consensus, asserted the primacy of Priestly material and saw Ezekiel's vision as dependent on the Priestly corpus. In the succeeding years scholars have generally taken either Wellhausen's approach, assessing the text diachronically, or Kaufmann's approach, assessing the text synchronically. This paper attempts to further this discussion by examining the intertextual relationship between Ezekiel 43:18-27 and altar prescriptions in Exodus 29 and Leviticus 16. The method first surveys synchronic studies of the rhetoric and language of Ezekiel in order to determine prior probabilities as a way of assessing the intertextual results. Then Michael Lyon's intertextual method is applied to the text itself. As a result, Ezekiel 43:18-27 evidences five of the six criteria developed by Lyons for dependence on the texts in Exodus 29 and Leviticus 16. This result coheres with the prior probabilities established in the survey of synchronic studies, further supporting the conclusion.

It is well known that rabbinic literature places a high priority on charity. For example, one passage states that charity is equivalent to all of the other commandments combined (b. B. Bat. 9a). By the 2nd -3rd centuries CE, the rabbis had established a detailed system of giving to the poor. This system of giving contrasted with that of another group of Jewish individuals that existed from the 1st century BCE until the middle of the 2nd century CE. Scholars have generally termed this group of pious individuals as the Ḥasidim (no relation to the contemporary Jews called by the same name). The most popular Ḥasid in rabbinic literature is Ḥanina ben Dosa. The Ḥasidim were specifically known for living in a state of poverty and giving charity. Two miracle-stories about Ḥanina ben Dosa involving poverty and charity will be examined from the Babylonian Talmud (b. Ta’an. 24b-25a). By analyzing these stories, the connection between Ḥanina’s poverty and miracles will be explained.

Empires as a form of political organization began in the first third of the first millennium BCE and continues until today. These multinational, multicultural states require for their survival elaborate ideological justifications in multiple media as well as multilayered “repertoires of rule.” Empires thus provoke moral, theological, and philosophical inquiry as well, from their supporters, their foes, and those whose loyalties may be under negotiation. This paper examines the ideational dimensions of the imperial projects of the long sixth century BCE, drawing on previous comparative work by Weber, Eisenstadt, Burbank and Cooper, and others to illuminate the Israelite response to empires in particular.

Job 8:16-19 is a spoiler in Bildad's speech, which otherwise could be succinctly summarized as an eloquent defense of the doctrine of retribution. In the surrounding verses, Job's second friend richly illustrates his counsel with adages (e.g., vv. 7, 9) and a collection of nature images (e.g., vv. 11-12, 14-15), which are mobilized to depict the ruinous path of the wicked. By contrast, vv. 16-19 introduce a sunny picture of a plant's survival or robust prosperity. The nebulous antecedent of the third-person pronoun (hû') in v. 16 is a crux interpretum. Who is "he"? Is "he" the guilty condemned in vv. 11-15 or the innocent introduced in a new parable of the plant presented in vv. 16-19? Toying with the referential ambiguity, the latter verses depict tenacious survival that negotiates successfully with the stony paths represented by terms such as gal and 'ǎbānîm (v. 17). An unidentified speaker (who says, lē' rě'îtîkā "I didn't see you!"; v. 18b) apparently contributed to the death of the plant either carelessly or callously and conveys either surprise or sympathy for the plant that has been utterly uprooted (yěballě'ennû based the root bl' "swallow up," v. 18a). The ensuing words celebrate post-traumatic resilience, declaring that life continues through others ('aḥēr, v. 19). Their remarkable fresh start, introduced with the presentative hen, conjures creation through growth (yiṣmāḥû; cf. Gen 2:5, 9) and warrants jubilation (měsôs, Job 8:19). While delving into a question as to whether or not these verses can be seamlessly integrated into the edifice of the defense of God's management of the universe, this paper investigates the Shuhite sage's curious nod to the non-anthropocentric durability of life implied in the parable of the enduring plant.

The Last Supper, while undoubtedly the central element of liturgical Christianity, is equally laden with theoretical and theological issues, as well as questions of textual redaction, that directly bear on is interpretation and intrinsic meaning. With the significant help of Jewish scholarship and Qumranic studies, much new light has been shed on the Gospels’ depiction of the meal as a kind of Passover Seder. But was it? Looking behind the Textus Receptus, we find clear parallels with the so-called “Messianic Rule” of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which describes an eschatological “banquet,” involving bread and wine (in that order), blessed by a priestly/ messianic figure (1QSa 2:17-21). This is the order depicted by Paul (1 Cor. 11:23-25), as well as well as by the Gospels of Mark (14:22-25) and Matthew (26:26-29), in which Jesus refers to the “blood of the covenant” or, according to other ancient texts, “new covenant” (as in Qumranic parlance). Luke, however (22:13-20), has Jesus take the cup first, as common in Jewish ritual, followed by a second cup, which becomes, theologically, “the new covenant in my blood.” Might the problematic reference to the drinking of blood represent a later redaction of the Lucan account, which depicts Jesus behaving in an otherwise “kosher” manner? Another possible Qumranic allusion in the Gospels’ Passover narrative is the unexpected presence of a man carrying a pitcher of water (Mk. 14:13). To what extent do such details indicate a sectarian “overlay” to a more traditionally “Jewish” narrative? Might Jesus’ final repast with his disciples have been transformed from a traditional Jewish meal into, not just a Passover Seder, but a Qumran-inspired “Messianic Banquet,” influenced by a secondary Pauline wave of Judeo-Christianity?

At least two sets of contradictions are in play in the narrative of the rejection of Saul in 1 Samuel. On the one hand, a diachronic reading suggests strongly that a tradition sympathetic to Saul has been overlaid with one ideologically weighted towards David. On the other hand, a synchronic reading reveals tensions that seem to be inherent in the story of Saul’s rejection, for while there can be no doubt that the narrative portrays Saul’s rejection by YHWH as justified on some level, there is a strong note of protest in Samuel’s prayer before YHWH (1 Sam 15:10-11), which suggests that theodic and antitheodic perspectives (cf. Braiterman 1998) are being held in awkward tension. Saul is, moreover, characterized in such a way as to provoke the reader’s sympathy, a dimension of the narrative that has long been associated with the idea of tragedy. But what might be the ideological implications of such a work? For it is one thing to bring to light the literary qualities and inherent theological tensions of the narrative, but quite another to address the question of whose interests are served by it. This paper seeks to bring together the literary, theological, and ideological aspects of the narrative, and to explore whose interests are served by such a relentlessly double-voiced narrative that provokes the reader’s sympathy for a figure who is portrayed as inflicting such terror.

The Transfiguration is an unusual scene within the Gospels: we have luminescent clothing, radiant faces, visits from famous dead men and a voice from the clouds. This paper examines and compares the Transfiguration scenes in Mark, Matthew and Luke with each other and with scenes of deification and theophany from Greek and Roman literature, myth, and art. I draw upon Ovid, Cicero, Homer, Apuleius, Archelaos of Priene, 5th century drama, traditions about the Caesars and other rulers and other sources to show the ways in which the gospels are in conversation with tropes and imagery stretching beyond the Hebrew Bible. The purpose is to identify the ways in which luminescent clothing, radiant faces, voices from the clouds, and the other features of the Synoptics' scenes overlap with Graeco-Roman theophanic tropes. This lays the groundwork for an analysis of the ways in which the scholarship in this area has often plumped for an either/or approach to the text's cultural background, moving away from analysing Greek and Roman parallels in the 20th century to a preference for Hebrew bible comparanda (particularly Exodus 34). This paper argues for looking across Mediterranean cultures for parallels, including cultures outside Greece, Rome, and Judea. I argue that if we look at ancient Mediterranean cultures as neither fully discrete nor mutually exclusive—so as intermingling at varying concentrations—we can find a greater richness of imagery, allusion, and meaning in how the evangelists communicate this unusual event to their audiences.

Epigraphic and papyrological evidence provides important glimpses into the transmission of goods and services in associations, including exchanges related to meals, mutual-aid, honorific materials, and funerals. The availability and quality of these goods and services could differ from one association to the next. This paper outlines the distribution of two sample services, funerals and mutual-aid, in selected associations at the wealthier and poorer ends of the economic spectrum. Overall the paper suggests ways in which material exchanges were important within associations with economic implications for their members.

What counted as "atheism" in classical antiquity? Who were the "atheists"? What did they teach about the gods and the universe? Why were they persecuted? Although we define atheism as a disbelief in the existence of deity, this definition does not hold for the diverse teachings of actual ancient figures accused of "atheism" in their own day. Nonetheless, ancient lists of those who deny the existence of the gods recur as a commonplace in classical literary culture even when no actual writings by such sorts of absolute atheists survive. What are we to make of such evidence? Although using such evidence as a primary source for writing a history of atheism in classical antiquity may seem understandable, given their alleged importance as fragments of lost authors and the coherence of the list itself as a literary form, it is highly misleading in reconstructing a historical context for their production. These lists functioned as didactic vice catalogues and so should be treated as such. Therefore, rather than approaching the atheist lists as documentary records and straightforward inventories of genuine fragments by lost authors, my paper examines their form and function to create imagined communities. After surveying the organizing techniques of the various atheist lists in Greco-Roman literature, the paper will then turn to an examination of a similar didactic usage of the term atheos in a list found in Eph. 2:12, a series of terms that calls the very category 'Gentile' into existence. I argue that, by the use of the list as an organizing technique, the author of Ephesians aims to move the invited reader from one imagined community to another.

Studies on the metaphor of the body as a temple in Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity suffer from two major maladies: 1) They are usually unaware that this metaphor has a history in Judaism; and 2) They frequently do not recognize that the metaphor is born out of high regard for the temple rather than its replacement. Thus, their interpretations of the metaphor are not grounded sufficiently in historical precedent. This paper seeks to provide perspective on this topic by tracing the roots of the temple metaphor in early Judaism, along with utilizing metaphor theory, in an effort to bring clarity to its meaning and purpose in Second Temple literature. Jane Patterson criticizes previous scholarship for its lack of understanding of the rhetorical function and creativity involved in using metaphors (2015:8). David Williams (1999), for example, correctly identifies the need for sustained understanding of the temple in Jerusalem in order to properly discuss Paul’s cultic metaphors, but he does not discuss the theory behind the use of metaphors. Jill Marshall understands the ambiguities in applying a metaphor from one domain to another. Using Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), she focuses on the tension, noticed by Ricoeur, between the subject (target domain) and the metaphor, and examines the relationship between the two. Not all of the elements of the metaphor are expected to apply to the target domain. Marshall points out that the elements that do not fit the equation are intuitively suppressed and those that do fit are brought into the foreground (2015:837). This insight helps to avoid the pitfall of assuming that a metaphor is bringing to bear the full field of its source domain onto a target domain leading to mistaken assumptions about its purpose. For example, scholars often claim that by describing the people of God as a temple, a writer is stating that the current Jerusalem temple system is obsolete. While the temple metaphor brings to mind many associations between the sanctuary and the people, the metaphor is used most widely in Second Temple Judaism to protect the holiness of Israel by excluding undesirable sexual partners. This is made explicit by the author of Aramaic Levi. According to the text, Isaac exhorts his grandson, “Marry a woman from my family and do not defile your seed with prostitutes, since you are holy seed, but sanctify your seed like the holy place since you are called a holy priest for all the seed of Abraham” (ALD VI, 4, Col. a 17-18). Several other early Second Temple texts exclude Gentiles from marriage with Jews by comparing the latter with the sanctuary (e.g. Mal 2:11b; MMT B48-49). The biblical law prohibiting various Gentile groups entrance into the assembly of YHWH (Deut 23:2-9) undergirds this linkage (cf. also Lev 20:3). This emphasis continues throughout the Dead Sea Scrolls (e.g. 1QS V-VII; 4Q174 I, 2-6; 4Q418 VIII, 1-4) and is prominent as well in Pauline literature (cf. 1 Cor 6:18-20; 2 Cor 6:14-18).

From 1697 to 1699 the philosopher John Locke carried on an extended controversy with Edward Stillingfleet, Bishop of Worcester, on various theological topics. Among these, Stillingfleet argued, on the basis of well-established exegetical tradition, for the long-held contention that the gospel included the promise of being resurrected in one’s same body. This Locke denied, arguing on the basis of his own reading of the New Testament (Second Reply, in Works 4:303-4), that we are not given back the same body but, as he says explicitly in his Paraphrase and Notes on 1 Cor 15:35, “other Bodies” (1707, 98). For the New Testament, on Locke’s reading, does not “so much as mention” the resurrection of the body but only the resurrection of the dead (Second Reply, 304). This paper investigates the originality of Locke’s exegesis of 1 Cor 15 and other relevant passages in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Scholarly attention to the resurrection controversy with Stillingfleet has focused on Locke’s philosophical development of ideas of personal identity (Jolley 2015; Forstrom 2010; Kaufman 2008), particularly in the second edition of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1694). Here Locke added a new section “Of Identity and Diversity” (2.27) in which the identity of one’s present self with one’s resurrected self was of explicit concern. Indeed, eighteenth-century editions of the Essay appended Locke’s Second Reply to Stillingfleet on resurrection after this section (Dacome 2006, 85 n.40). Thus, as Fernando Vidal has argued, debate over resurrection was “not epiphenomenal” to the real philosophical question of personal identity; it was “consubstantial to that interest itself” (2002, 972). And Maria-Cristina Pitassi has shown, further, how Locke’s biblical exegesis was part and parcel of his philosophical inventiveness on this score (1998; 1990). For Locke, what was important were the clear ideas found in Scripture, which could be understood by the impartial individual interpreter (An Essay for the Understanding of St Paul’s Epistles, by Consulting St Paul Himself [1707]). His method, therefore, involved reading and re-reading Paul’s letters to understand their “main Subject and Tendency” for himself (xiv), rather than the superimposed distinctions of orthodox theologians. He thus claimed to have reached his own conclusions about “other bodies” in reading 1 Corinthians 15. Yet Locke had read other commentators on Paul’s letters, such as Theodore Beza and Henry Hammond (1605-1660), whom he found conflicted; Pitassi also detects similarities to the exegesis of the Socinian theologian Johann Crell (1590-1633), whose commentaries Locke owned (1998, 55 n.38). The remainder of the paper, then, will be given over to comparative historical exegesis, with a focus on those passages of Scripture Locke names in his Second Reply to Stillingfleet, his most detailed denial of the resurrection of the same body. These passages are Matt 27:52-53; John 5:28-29; 1 Cor 6:14; 15:13-58; and 2 Cor 5:10. The paper will determine to what extent Locke is working – perhaps unwittingly or unwillingly – within an exegetical tradition, or is guided by his hermeneutical commitments to his own idiosyncratic interpretation.

Since the release of the first digital editions of NA28 in 2013 development has come a long way. Today, not only NA28, but also UBS GNT5 are available on all major Bible software platforms as well as online. This session will give an overview of the different digital editions and a perspective of further development. Markus Hartmann is Team Leader, Digital Media at German Bible Society. He is in charge of the digital editions of NA28, GNT5, and other critical editions that are developed by GBS together with various software partners.

This paper explores some interpretive implications of the burgeoning realization that Hebrew Psalms traditions remained pluriform and multivocal until the early modern period. Specifically, it engages with research conducted by William Yarchin on medieval manuscripts of the Book of Psalms, and more narrowly by myself on the medieval witnesses to the Egyptian Hallel Psalms (Pss. 113-118). Our research has furnished similar results regarding the prevalence of variation in the division ofPsalters into individual Psalms. Yarchin has examined more than 400 medieval Psalms manuscripts, and has found over 150 different patterns of division and segmentation. In my own investigation of the Egyptian Hallel Psalms, I have discovered no less than 48 distinct segmentations of just those six Psalms. Though this fact about the Masoretic traditions of the Book of Psalms is gaining prominence in Psalms studies, it is still rare to see investigation of its implications for the interpretation of individual Psalms or a reappraisal of Psalms literature as a whole. In this paper, I present Psalms 114 and 115 as a test case. I showcase four medieval manuscripts containing four distinct segmentations of this short passage, each of which also differs from BHS, whose numbering is based on the Jacob ben Hayyim text of the Second Rabbinic Bible, The manuscripts present the following segmentations: BHS (=textus receptus, TR): 114:1-8; 115:1-18 (two Psalms) Cod. Leningradensis: 114:1-115:18 (one Psalm) Cod. Parm. 2353: 114:1-8; 115:1-11; 115:12-18 (three Psalms) Cod. Parm. 1857: 114:1-115:11; 115:12-18 (two Psalms) BnF ms. hebr. 22: 114:1-8; 115:1-116:19 (two Psalms) In my analysis, I offer some preliminary observations on the flexibility and modularity of Psalms literature. I suggest that medieval manuscripts divide units at structurally or literarily significant points, creating units that can function and have meaning independently, or join together with other segments to create more complex or interesting arguments or conceptual progressions. Thus, the smallest units may be considered modules that join together into larger, more interesting poems.

There are evidences of bargain cultures in the Bible: Abraham bargains on behalf of the righteous people in Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen 18), Moses negotiates with God because he did not want to go back to Egypt (Exod 2), Jonah negotiates with God to let him die (Jonah 4), Job debates and demands that God accounts for his unreasonable suffering, Psalmists lament their situations, and Jesus tries to bypass the cross (Luke 22:42). In several of these cases, the bargainer failed. The will and ways of the master remain. Nonetheless, bargaining indicates that a decision/value is open for negotiation, and this tool is used differently by different (e.g., poor and desperate compared to privileged and elevated) folks. Drawing from my experiences and observations of bargaining at markets in the Asia-Pasifika, I explore the place of bargain/negotiation cultures in the stories of Ruth and Esther -- two women who bargained/negotiated and succeeded, but for different ends. Ruth tagged along with her Mother-in-law and gave her migrant Moabite blood to Israel's throne, and Esther negotiated the genocide (spilling of blood) of local people to save her own people. Both stories involve aliens and the living out of protest against existing authorities and regimes. This paper explores the drives (ideologies) behind such "bible bargains," the evidences of such drives in the age of capital (from street to global markets) and our carbon civilization. In other words, when bargain is the culture (in the text, in the interpretation, and in the marketplace and politics), solidarity and resistance (in liberation criticism) lead to protest and negotiation (decolonial criticism). Caveat emptor: negotiation sometimes fail, and sometimes spill blood unnecessarily. So the "in whose interest" question (feminist criticism) is critical in the analysis of bargain cultures in and beyond the Bible.

The Early Israelite Settlement through the Lens of the Early Historical Books: A Precis

In recent biblical scholarship, scholars attribute the Persian era as one of the most formative period of biblical composition, and correspondingly, studies exploring the Achaemenid influence upon the text of Ezra-Nehemiah also began to proliferate. This study joins this burgeoning discussion of Persian influences upon the book of Nehemiah by reading the Leitwörter ṭwb “good” and rʿ “bad/evil” in light of similar expressions found in Old Persian inscriptions. Numerous scholars (e.g. Tamara Con Eskenazi, Mark A. Throntveit, Donna Laird) identify the two lexemes ṭwb “good” and rʿ “bad/evil” as Leitwörter in the opening chapters of Nehemiah. Despite the clear emphasis placed on these terms, in recent years, only a few scholars (e.g. Joseph Fleishman and Kiyan Forouton) began to explore the possible Achaemenid ideology that lies behind these terms, by primarily reading the text in light of Zoroastrian text and belief. No study, however, attempts to understand Nehemiah’s references to “good” and “bad” dualism from the angle of Old Persian inscriptions. In this study, I argue that the terms ṭwb and rʿ in Nehemiah 1–2 reflect the Persian ideology that understood “good” and “bad” in relation with building projects. Particularly, רע reflects Nehemiah’s perception of Jerusalem’s destruction, whereas טוב relates to Artaxerxes’s acts of carrying out building projects. Because of the lack of studies that systematically explore the terms relating to “good” and “bad” within Old Persian inscriptions, I begin with a treatment of Old Persian terms relating to “good” and “bad/evil” within Achaemenid official inscriptions. The “good” and “bad/evil” contrast first appears in the famous Cyrus Cylinder (inscribed in Akkadian) that commemorates Cyrus’s building works carried out on the temple at Babylon. In this inscription, the “bad” deed mentioned in line 8 clearly refers to an act against the city. In contrast, Cyrus’s good deeds relate to his benevolent actions towards people and buildings (lines 25–26). An overview on Old Persian terms denoting “good” and “bad” reveals that the adjective naibam “good” most frequently appears in contexts of constructions, whether the term itself means “good construction,” or “good” associated with (re)building. On the contrary, monumental inscriptions negatively view monuments in poor state, and pray against gastā “evil” to fall upon buildings in the form of destruction. This survey leads to applying a rhetorical and comparative historical methodologies to Nehemiah 1–2. I suggest that rʿ “bad/evil” always appears in connection with Jerusalem’s desolate state, whereas, ṭwb “good” refers to building reconstructions within the pericope.

The book of Malachi unfolds as a series of disputations between the prophetic voice and interlocutors. Whereas the interlocutors in Malachi often simply question prophetic claims (e.g., 1:2aβ, 6bβ, 7aβ; 2:14a, 17aβ; 3:7b, 8aβ, 13b), several places purportedly quote statements by the interlocutors (1:7b, 12b, 13aα1; 2:17b; 3:14–15). Malachi 1:7b and the closely related 1:12b, as the first of such putative quotations, are significant for investigating the interlocutors’ ideology. The predominant interpretation of these verses is that the priestly interlocutors express contempt for the cult, claiming that the table of the LORD and the offerings on it ought to be despised (nbzh), and even going so far as to call this table “defiled” (mgʾl). It is difficult to imagine priests actually verbalizing such views, so some scholars (e.g., Smith, Verhoef, Weyde) suggest that 1:7b, 12b actually reflect the book’s interpretation of the interlocutors’ attitude. This presentation, however, argues that 1:7b, 12b reflect the actual words of the priests. Rather than expressing contempt for the cult, the priests are lamenting the LORD’s rejection of the cult. Whereas the predominant interpretation of nbzh in 1:7b, 12b is that it is has a gerundive sense (“ought to be despised”), this presentation argues that it is an incomplete passive construction (“is despised [by the LORD]”). First, as Weyde demonstrates, 1:7b, 12bα take the form of the declaratory formula. This formula elsewhere mainly relates to the LORD’s disposition toward people or objects. Second, the word or root has a cultic meaning referring to the LORD’s disposition in Ps 51:19 (Eng. 17); 1 Sam 15:9. Third, the incomplete passive construction fits with the concerns expressed elsewhere in Malachi that the LORD is not accepting offerings (e.g., Mal 2:13; 3:4). With regard to the term mgʾl, applied to the altar in 1:12b, the priests are once again referring to the LORD’s disposition toward the altar, not to their own perception. The pual stem of gʾl only appears in Ezra 2:62 // Neh 7:64 and Mal 1:7a, 12b. The Ezra-Nehemiah passage describes returnees who were not “defiled” but rather at least temporarily “treated as defiled” (pual of gʾl) in order to protect the priesthood. This same sense applies to the pual participle in Mal 1:12b (“treated as defiled [by the LORD]”). This presentation thus extends the observation that scholars (e.g., Wallis, Tiemeyer) have made that the prophetic voice of the book and the interlocutors disagree as to the cause of Yehud’s troubles. The prophetic voice blames the priests for lowering the requirements of the cult—an action that causes the LORD’s rejection of the offerings and attendant economic problems. The priestly interlocutors in 1:6–2:9, however, blame the LORD for the economic problems. In their view, the LORD is rejecting their heroic attempts to maintain the cult in trying times. What the prophetic voice finds so galling about the interlocutors’ statements in 1:7b, 12b is that they blame the LORD for problems that they themselves created.

This paper will reflect upon the theological implications of the manifold evidence that the Gospel writers frequently read Israel’s Scripture in a figural manner. They read Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms through the lens of the events of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. In this way they retrospectively discovered significations that were unknown to the original authors of Israel’s scriptural texts, or to subsequent communities of readers in Israel. The lecture will first consider several examples of this phenomenon of “reading backwards” and then offer some proposals about their hermeneutical significance. What implications might the interpretative practices of the NT authors have for our constructive accounts of the inspiration and authority of Scripture? Or what challenges do these interpretative practices pose for our approach to biblical exegesis?

This paper explores Paul’s “Kreuzestheologie” in 2 Corinthians 13:3–4. Arguably, several recent developments have tended to reduce Paul’s ‘theology of the cross’ to power dissolved into weakness. Instead, I argue that the context of Paul’s theology of the cross in 2 Corinthians 13:3–4 within his rhetorical discourse spanning 12:11–13:10 illumines Paul’s presentation of his cross-theology and action towards the Corinthians as power made perfect in weakness. Few enterprises are more fraught with peril yet full of promise for responsible interpretation of Pauline theology than 'theologia crucis,' evidenced in the broad appropriation of Paul’s cross-language spanning the fiery cross of the Ku Klux Klan’s lynchings in the 20th century American South, to Jürgen Moltmann’s sobering post-Holocaust reflections and call to justice and mercy in "The Crucified God." Moreover, and closely related, Paul’s exaltation of weakness has at times provoked the abdication of privilege in order to restore the oppressed and defrauded, but also been denounced from Celsus to Nietzsche as cruelly glorifying suffering and binding the oppressed and abused to quietly abide injustice for other worldly-hope without disrupting corrupt powers. Part I of this paper outlines three of the most salient and influential trends in the wirkungsgeschichte of Paul’s 2 Corinthians 13:4, and its close relation to Paul’s cross-language in 1 Corinthians 1–2. First, 2 Cor 13:3–4 was often cited in the first few centuries of Pauline reception amidst polemical responses to the ‘scandal’ of a crucified God, such as Origen’s "Contra Celsum," Abrosiaster’s commentary on 2 Corinthians, and Cyril of Alexandria’s "On the Unity of Christ." Second, one century later, Luther’s 1518 "Heidelberg Disputations" mark a turning point in the history of the project of theologia crucis, significantly re-framing Paul’s cross language for subsequent interpreters into questions of epistemology and theological prolegomena. Finally, as hinted at by Robert Cady Saler’s "Theologia Crucis: A Companion to the Theology of the Cross" and critiqued by Katherine Sonderregger’s 2015 "Systematic Theology," several influential modern trends in appropriating Paul’s cross language have tended to reduce Paul’s theology of the cross essentially into power dissolved into weakness. Part II frames 2 Corinthians 13:3–4 in relation to Paul’s pending visit throughout ch. 13, especially in relation to v.9, “we are glad when we are weak and you are strong.” By thus exploring the rhetorical function of Paul’s cross and weakness language in vv. 13:3–4 as a hortatory strategy for Paul’s authority, we are better poised to appreciate the significance of Paul’s theological claims related to the cross in v.4. In sum, analysis of the wirkungsgeschichte of 2 Cor 13:3–4 not only offers further context for our contemporary interpretative situation, but arguably unveils mutually corrective insights for tracing the development of Pauline theology. Early Christological and epistemological uses of Paul’s cross- and weakness-language can be brought into critical and constructive interaction with more recent interpretations concerned with advocating on behalf of the marginalized and under-represented that expand our exegetical plausibility structures for Paul’s cross-theologizing in 2 Cor 13:3–4.

In the first millennium AD, the Book of Jeremiah was translated from Greek into Ge'ez. However, the Ethiopic text suffers from many revisions. One of the earliest layers of the Ethiopic text is still visible in manuscripts from the 15-16th centuries that were found in Gunda Gunde. The text of these manuscripts is characterized by block-mixture, which means that some chapters (Jer 1-45) have a different textual form than the remaining part of the book (Jer 46-52). It seems that Jer 1-45 witnesses to an early revision, which for some unknown reason did not continue beyond chapter 45. Thus, Jer 46-52 witness to the earliest attainable textform of the Ethiopic book of Jeremiah. This text was translated from the Septuagint, probably from a sister copy of Codex Sinaiticus. It is characterized by omissions and abbreviations and by poor Ge'ez. It seems to have been made somewhere between the 5th and 8th centuries AD by a scribe who had a Coptic background and who used Ethiopic to the best of his knowledge.

This paper will review the old question whether the addressees of Paul’s Letter to the Galatians are to be found in the Northern or Southern part of the province. The answer to that question has major impact on how Paul’s Letter has to be dated and how it has to be understood. The most recent publication on this issue is Felix John, Der Galaterbrief im Kontext historischer Lebenswelten im antiken Kleinasien, FRLANT 264 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016). In close dialogue with John and other recent contributions this paper will scrutinize the following three points which involve local documentary and archaeological evidence. (1) The designation “galátes” (“Galatian”) does not point exclusively to the Northern part of the province. In Paul’s time the whole province was deeply hellenized. For instance, an inscription at the temple of Augustus and Roma in Ancyra (OGIS 533, again in Stephen Mitchell and David French, eds., The Greek and Latin Inscriptions of Ankara [Ancyra]. Vol. I: From Augustus to the End of the Third Century AD, Vestigia 62 [München: C.H. Beck, 2012], no. 2) gives a list of about 20 imperial priests from the time of Tiberius. Only half of them have typical Celtic names, the other half has Greek names. (2) According to Stephen Mitchell (Anatolia: Land, Men and Gods in Asia Minor. I: The Celts in Anatolia and the Impact of Roman Rule [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993]), the Flavians began building paved streets in Northern Galatia. Accordingly, in Paul’s time it would have been difficult to reach this region. However, Augustus founded the province in 25 BCE with Ancyra as its capital. Pessinus was a temple city of Cybele / Magna Mater who attracted many pilgrims. For instance, Apuleius mentions the temple in Metam. 11.5.2 and calls the goddess “elementorum omnium domina” (Metam. 11.5.1). According to Strabo (Geogr. 12.5.3), Pessinus was one of the biggest markets in the region. Although there have been no milestones found, it is hard to imagine that it would have been difficult to travel to Ancyra and Pessinus. (3) Gal 4:8 makes it clear that the majority of Paul’s addressees was not Jewish. Further, the demand to be circumcised (Gal 5:2-3; 6:12-13) presupposes that the male Christians in Galatia are still not circumcised. In Northern Galatia there is no evidence for the presence of Jews in Paul’s time. This is very different in Southern Galatia if we can trust Acts 13. In sum, it seems more likely that Paul’s addressees have to be located in the Northern part of the province Galatia, namely in the region of Ancyra, Pessinus, Germa and Gordion.

This paper aims to demonstrate that the unusually high frequency of radically different interpretations that the book of Ecclesiastes has enjoyed are a natural function of Qoheleth’s oral mode of delivery. This will be supported through an exploration of the politically explosive passages in 5:7-11 (on the proper response to social, economic, and legal injustice), 5:12-19 (on misery induced by the pursuit of happiness through wealth), and 6:1-9 (on a common cause for misery despite abundant wealth). For example, in 5:8 it is the mention of the king—in close proximity to an only slightly veiled critique of institutional corruption in v. 7—that prompts hyper-ambiguity. It is as if Qoheleth speaks in the mode of modern stand-up comedians, where social critique is expressed regularly through indirection, innuendo, and humor, where the real meaning of what is being said only emerges from the speaker’s intonation (pitch, pause, speed, tone, stress, emphasis, etc.). The paper will highlight numerous occasions where ambiguity creates biting sarcasm and social critique all at once, and in a highly amusing fashion. It will show that ambiguity and humor work hand in hand to achieve two rhetorical goals: (1) humor serves to entertain and win over Qoheleth’s audience; (3) ambiguity creates plausible deniability in case Qoheleth were accused of sedition against the political hierarchy.

This paper explores the gift and Christ in Ethiopic Romans and Andemta ‎Commentary and assesses whether or how a theological understanding of the ‎gift affects conceptions of the gift within anthropological and socio-cultural ‎contexts. In Ethiopic, tsega carries different meanings but ‘gift without return or ‎any payment’ is its central idea. In Ethiopic Romans, tsega is the gift of the Son ‎whereby the Son is both the origin and agent of the gift. Furthermore, for the ‎Andemta commentator, tsega is the means through which salvation or life ‎through Jesus Christ, which is the gift of sonship, is proferred. The gift of sonship ‎is the same thing as the glory of God which Adam lost but was restored by means ‎of the gift of baptism, which made union with Christ (tewahido) possible. How ‎consistent is this idea with Paul’s overarching perspective on the gift? How does ‎such a view affect, if at all, the notion of gift in anthropological and socio-cultural ‎contexts in Ethiopia, where, as in pre-modern societies, gifts operate in ‎reciprocal relations whereby enjoyment of any gift comes with expectation and ‎obligation? ‎

Of the Synoptic gospels, Matthew and Luke record Jesus making significant use of Isa 61:1-3, with Luke 4:16-30 retelling his reading of the text in his inaugural sermon and Matt 5:3-4 and 11:5 alluding to the text alongside others references to the Scriptures of Israel. Not only do the purposes of the Lukan citation and the Matthean allusions differ, but this paper argues that neither references serve the purpose of establishing Jesus’ messianic identity, as is often alleged. Instead, both the Lukan and Matthean Jesus evoke Isa 61:1-3 to communicate the arrival and nature of the kingdom. This essay argues that the Lukan Jesus uses the text self-referentially, but that there is insufficient reason to see Jesus, in Luke 4:16-30, as presenting himself as anything beyond presenting himself as a prophet of the eschaton. This essay also argues that the purpose of the Matthean Jesus’ allusions to Isa 61:1-3 is better understood as eschatological as opposed to messianic, since the disciples accomplish similar feats as Isaiah’s herald. Arriving at these conclusions requires examining the original context of Isa 61 and relevant Jewish citations or allusions to it (Sir 48:22-25, Targum Jonathan, 11Q13, 4Q521, and Luke 4:16-30) to demonstrate sufficient ambiguity precludes thinking a well-accepted messianic interpretation of Isa 61:1-3 is being adopted. Then, the immediate context of the citation in Luke 4:16-30 and the allusions in Matt 5:3-12 and 11:1-6 are examined to demonstrate that the usage of the text is best described as eschatological, not strictly messianic. Though both Matthew and Luke’s overall narratives present Jesus as the messiah, the function of Isa 61:1-3 reinforces the message “the kingdom is at hand,” and not “Jesus is the Christ.”

Door lintels from late antique houses in northern Syria frequently display acclamations from Christian liturgies such as the Trisagion or Psalm 121:8. Many of these inscriptions are accompanied by apotropaic symbols attested elsewhere on amulets including medallions, crosses, or Christograms. This suggests that the function of these liturgical acclamations extended beyond the proclamation of worship, functioning also to protect domestic space from harm. Why were these acclamations thought to be suitable strategies for defending domestic space? To what extent do these inscriptions reflect the rituals of local ecclesiastical institutions? This presentation will explore the theory underlying the perceived ritual power of liturgical acclamations in late antique Syria, arguing that their efficacy is closely tied to their orality and performativity. Vocalizing certain parts of Christian liturgies was thought to have the power to trigger miracles or avert natural disasters like earthquakes, but these inscriptions evince that the power of these oral performances could continue in a materialized form such as stone.

This important volume The Jewish Apocalyptic Tradition and the Shaping of New Testament Thought reflects a broader aim among scholars of early Jewish thought to claim that we ought to read the New Testament more in the context of Jewish apocalyptic literature. The principle argument of the editors is that we need to think beyond apocalyptic eschatology and understand that “apocalyptic” entails the revelation of heavenly mysteries. Following a brief reflection on how successful attempts in recent years have been to impress upon New Testament scholars the necessity to take early Jewish literature and thought seriously, this paper discusses the advantages and potential problems of this new emphasis on the revelatory aspects of Jewish apocalyptic thought.

Juan Hernández Jr., in collaboration with Garrick V. Allen and Darius Müller, have made Josef Schmid’s landmark publication, Studien zur Geschichte des Griechischen Apokalypse-Textes, available in English for the first time. For more than sixty years almost every major study of Revelation has been based on Schmid’s work, and this new translation allows scholars to reassess Schmid’s conclusions in light of recent manuscript and technological discoveries. The volume includes a critical introduction that places Schmid’s work in its historical and theoretical twentieth-century context. Additional definitions and explanations of Schmid’s text-critical terms and categories used in his construction of Revelation’s Greek manuscript tradition clarify Schmid’s work for a new audience. The translators correct, update, and supplement Schmid’s Greek manuscript data, and historical and text-critical claims with the latest available information. This paper will offer a full report not only on the findings but also on how Schmid's magnum opus set the stage for current text-critical study of Revelation.

In recent years, scholars have energetically reconsidered the significance of ethnic distinctions and ethnic equivocality for the apostle Paul. However, while gentile inclusion in Jewish identity (cf. Rom 4:11; Gal 3:29; Phil 3:3) has been examined from several new angles, the presentation of Jews in gentile terms has not been integrated adequately into revisionist models of Pauline ethnography. My paper addresses the question of permeable ethnic boundaries in Paul’s thought, with special attention to the role that participation “in Christ” plays in Paul’s conceptualization of the identity of Christ-believing Jews vis-à-vis their new gentile coreligionists. Specifically, I consider the syntactical ambiguity of the Gal 2:17 phrase ei de zētountes dikaiōthēnai en christō heurethēmen kai autoi hamartōloi, the traditional reading of which takes the prepositional phrase “in Christ” as modifying the infinitive “to be justified.” This is reflected in the NRSV’s rendering, “But if, in our effort to be justified in Christ, we ourselves have been found to be sinners ….” There is no grammatical reason, however, why the phrase “in Christ” should not be understood as an adjunct of the clause’s main verb, with the resultant sense “But if, in our effort to be justified, we ourselves [i.e., ‘natural Jews’] were found in Christ also to be ‘sinners’ ….” Further, there are a number of linguistic and contextual features favoring this alternative construal of the syntax of Gal 2:17. These include Paul’s partial subversion in Gal 2:15–22 of the distinction between “Jews” and “sinners,” the latter being an epithet traditionally reserved by Jews for describing those outside of the covenant, and the parallel notion in Phil 3:9 of being “found in Christ” without torah-righteousness. Given these and other factors, I argue that the reading “we ourselves were found in Christ also to be ‘sinners’” is an exegetically valid possibility, and I explore how this description of “natural Jews” as “sinners” functions in counterpoint to the inclusion of gentiles “in Christ” among Abraham’s seed. This paper, by reframing Paul’s statement of ethnic equivocality in Gal 2:17 within his understanding of participation in the messiah, sheds new light on the question of Paul’s post-Damascus Road reconfiguration of ethnic identity.

Since the publication of my books on the rabbinic network in 1997 and on Jewish travel in 2001, studies on issues of mobility and social networking amongst Jews, Christians, Greeks and Romans have increased. In this paper I shall investigate these new trends in research and their contributions to our knowledge about Jewish, Christian, and Graeco-Roman culture and identity. Although travel and networking are separate subject matters, they are also connected: travel widens one’s horizons and leads to encounters with people outside of one’s close circle of family, friends, and colleagues. In antiquity, when our modern means of communication did not exist, physical movement to another place was the most effective and direct way to connect to someone at a more distant location. Depending on the type of connection, such an encounter could lead to changes in one’s own world view and self-perception. The importance of travel and mobility for the study of ancient Judaism and Christianity has moved beyond the traditional study of pilgrimage. The scope of topics that are now being investigated include issues of purity, religious practice during journeys, and encounters with representatives of other religions. Equally important is the study of more practical matters such as itineraries, sea travel, and hostels. As far as networks are concerned, it seems that our contemporary internet networks have increased interest in ancient networking activities. Recent studies have, e.g., focused on socio-commercial networks that ranged from the Middle to the Far East in late antiquity.

The Bible and Global-Systemic Criticism in the Age of Fake News

As the lead translator of the Book of Genesis for the Common English Bible translation, I had the opportunity to address a number of traditional translations in Genesis, which I had come to believe, on the basis of my work on The Yahwist’s Landscape and other studies of nature in the book of Genesis, represented the perspective of Genesis in ways that are excessively anthropocentric, that mask the awareness of the non-human other in the text, that silence non-human voice and agency, and that falsely subordinate the non-human to the human. In this paper I would like to describe selected translations in Genesis 1-2 in the Common English Bible that, when compared to the long-standing English translation tradition, retrieve a more integrative understanding of the human and the non-human, that recognize the presence of non-human agency and voice, and that capture a more accurate representation of the human place in the world as Genesis’s authors conceived it. To illustrate new translation choices in the Common English Bible that reframe the perspectives represented in traditional translations, some of the topics and texts I would like to focus on are the following: • The agency of land and water as co-creators with God in the creation of the world in Gen 1:9-12, as represented in the translation choices of the verbs used for their activity. • The role of humanity as a representative of the divine in Gen 1:26-28, as represented in the causative sequence in v. 26 and the translation of radah. • The translation throughout Genesis 1 of ki tov as emphatic, “how good it was,” rather than descriptive, “that is was good.” • The creation of the first human in the Eden narrative out of the topsoil of arable land in Gen 2:7 as an agricultural etiology connecting humans with the earth and their agricultural vocation. • A challenge to the traditional distinction between the human, “living soul/being,” and animals, “living creature,” when the Hebrew terminology is identical. A whole tradition of translation has inscribed the dualistic, anthropocentric, and hierarchical cast of Western philosophy and theology into the biblical text. Only a careful attention to the world of the text and translations that reflect that world authentically can open up new (“old”) readings that are more ecological sound and sensitive.

This paper will examine a triad, which is possibly a dyad, consisting of R. Joshua ben Levi, his student-peer R. Jacob, and Joshua’s nemesis of the local “min”-sectarian. Looking at a collection of classical rabbinic texts, (y.AZ 2:2 [40d]; y.Shab 14:4 [14d]; y.Qid 3:12 [64d]; GenRab 32:4; EccRab 1:8, 10:5; b.AZ 4a-b; b.Ber 7a; and b.San 105b), this study seeks to explore the hybridity of both R. Joshua and R. Jacob. This study will first ask whether Jacob Minaah is the sectarian-opponent that R. Joshua seeks to punish. Next, this paper will explore the many Rabbi Jacobs (bar Aha, bar Idi, of Kfar Hanan), whose various toponyms may indicate a similar de-centering as Jacob Minaah. This study will next explore whether Jacob Minaah, as marked outsider, is the same as R. Jacob, the marked rabbinic insider. Finally, an attempt to map both the conflicts and the literary characters to a historical context (which is admittedly problematic) will help to elucidate whether the constellation of Jacobs seemingly in orbit around R. Joshua reflect a working-out of the Rabbinic-Christian border of the first few centuries CE.

One month before the 2016 election, a recording emerged in which the Republican nominee for President boasted about using his celebrity to sexually assault women. His supporters normalized this aggression as hypermasculine “locker room talk,” and he was soon elected the 45th US president. Beginning in 2017, the “Me Too” and “Time’s Up” movements exposed abuses by powerful men who had for years escaped justice and even accusation. These moments underscore two widespread, sexist sentiments in contemporary culture: women are mere objects of beauty, and men are entitled to possess them. These sentiments are not new; in fact they are perfectly reflected in the deuteronomic law of the captive bride, a beautiful woman from a vanquished people whom an Israelite may take to wife (Deut 21.10-14). The designation of this victim, yefat to’ar, appears elsewhere to describe the physical beauty of Rachel (Gen 29.17), Joseph (Gen 39.6), Abigail (1 Sam 25.3), and Esther (Est 2.5). This paper takes an intertextual and literary approach, reading each narrative as the story of a captive bride. It suggests for these texts an equivalence of beauty and property, as each vulnerable person becomes the possession of someone more powerful. Through deconstruction, Jacob appears less an unfortunate underdog and more a personification of masculine entitlement. Esther seems not a product of providence but a prisoner of that same masculinity, systematized and writ large. The paper further argues that the stories of Joseph and Abigail present outright critiques of male desire and its institutionalization. In Joseph’s episode, the critique is explicit, making strange the bride’s capture through gender reversal. In Abigail’s story, the critique is as subtle as Abigail herself, part of a pointed evaluation of the character of David. Reading these stories as captive bride texts can generate new perspectives on biblical masculinity, and its perception of and effects on women. Reading them in conversation with one another can recover biblical critiques of masculinity, providing paths of resistance even against lecherous leaders, powerful predators, and covetous kings.

My paper focuses on the emotional state of resignation and despair as caused by powerlessness (the German term Ohnmacht is helpful to capture this state, translating to “without power” or even “unconsciousness”). I am concentrating on a small corpus of first-person speeches in Jeremiah 4-10 in which the speakers resolve themselves to their powerlessness (e.g., “our hands fall helpless; woe to us; we are ruined”). I will devote attention initially to the Sitz im Leben of these phrases within Israel’s lament traditions and move from this discussion to the question of how these direct expressions of “giving up” function as emotional paradigms for the exilic readership of Jeremiah. The main body of my paper falls into two sections: A) I will introduce and discuss the emotional state of powerlessness with reference to the work of selected psychologists, philosophers, and social scientists, such as E. Fromm, K. Grossmann, and R. Willer: what are its symptoms and causes? How do humans act in situations of Ohnmacht? How do they cope or work towards re-empowerment? B) On the basis of these observations, the remainder of my paper offers a close reading of the voiced resignation in Jeremiah. I will evaluate the extent to which these emotional expressions fit the modern description of Ohnmacht and perform an exegesis of selected passages in Jeremiah 4-10 that highlights the factors, forms, and functions of resignation. The paper concludes with some remarks on the relationship between Ohnmacht and theodicy and a few suggestions on how these literary expressions of powerlessness, paradoxically, may serve to empower readers of Jeremiah who experience similar emotions of despair and resignation.

When William Hone published his soon infamous Apocryphal New Testament in 1820, he remarked that “the books . . . naturally assume the title of the Apocryphal New Testament” (Preface, p. v). While it is not my concern to prove this derivation, “naturally” is presumably intended to bring to mind the Old Testament Apocrypha as a parallel, likewise secondary set of writings: of undoubted antiquity, similarly not universally proclaimed as authoritative. Indeed, by this measure, Hone’s collection would come out as decidedly tertiary! ¶My principal interest is to re-present Hone’s collection as a “bound-with” book. That phrase, which has long had currency within library cataloging circles, has recently been given fresh exposure thanks to the groundbreaking manual, Collection-Level Cataloging: Bound-With Books, by Jain Fletcher (2010). A series of reviews by practicing catalogers (Marcus, Rodriguez, et al.) strongly suggest that closer attention is now being given not only to the possibility of better cataloging – more precise terminology and method – but also to the rediscovery of bound-with treasures formerly hidden because subsumed beneath whole-volume titles. ¶The publisher’s blurb announces the book’s purpose: “The volume begins with an explanation of the phenomenon in which individuals assembled and bound together nonrelated printed material, documenting how this practice continued through the centuries as wider literacy and use of printed materials gained ground. The various methods used to describe bound-with books in catalogs over time are also discussed. Most critically for today’s librarians, the book describes the elements that can now be used in putting together a collection-level record for a bound compilation, . . . .” ¶Now, though the term “nonrelated” is too strong (to describe either Fletcher’s project or mine), it draws attention to the fact that the “final” anthologist – whether Hone (following his principal sources, Jones and Wake) or some private collector somewhere – has chosen to bring together materials that were not composed as a collection. They have been brought together, and the reason for that “bringing together” may be sought and sometimes found: from simple practicality (that fragments not be lost) to the desire for completeness – hence Hone’s (admittedly excessive) boast, that “[whoever] possesses this [apocryphal volume] and the New Testament has in the two volumes a collection of all the historical records relative to Christ and his Apostles, now in existence, and considered sacred by Christians during the first four centuries after his birth.” ¶With examples of “binding with” exhibited by the Apocryphal New Testament, the paper suggests some consequences of this collecting of sometimes related and sometimes unrelated materials: the implicit hermeneutics of close association; the “domestication” of difficult passages or texts; the making contemporary of struggles in communities of reception. Indeed, I shall argue that the canonical shadowland of the apocryphal book was understood to be a mirror of the ecclesiastical situation in the U.S. in the post-Hone era, during which non-orthodox Protestant groups promoted its dissemination as part of their multi-faceted rhetorical engagement with well-established church groups.

In Rom 14, Paul invokes the lordship of Christ and his role at final judgment to inveigh against those who would judge the eating habits of community members. In this dense argument, Paul claims, "For this purpose Christ died and then lived, in order that he might become Lord of both the dead and the living," (v. 9). But commentators rarely draw a close connection to Paul's composite citation in v. 11. Paul prefaces his modified citation with a first-person prophetic oath formula: "As I live, says the Lord." This presentation argues that this constitutes "prosopological exegesis" and that Paul intends Christ as this speaker, the one who sits upon the throne of judgment. As evidence, (1) in another letter, Paul alludes to the very same Isa 45:23 image with clear christological intent [Phil 2:10-11]; (2) Paul generally confines his use of the title kurios to Jesus, and elsewhere in Romans he treats a LXX reference to "the Lord" as if this refers to Jesus [Rom 10:9-13]; (3) the context indicates Jesus's status as judge, seen even in a textual variant which refers to "the throne of Christ" [v. 10]. Furthermore, Paul's rearrangement of Isa 45:23 produces a chiastic structure in v. 10. The citation balances the bending of every knee (to Jesus) with the profession of every tongue unto God. The intent of this rearrangement has not been previously explained, but it may be the result of Paul's intent to place Jesus at the judgment scene, and Paul's repeated references to "the Lord" in Rom 14:1-12 would consistently refer to Jesus.

Proverbs scholars have rightly argued that the basic principle that runs through the numerous proverbial sayings in Proverbs is the act-consequence nexus. The principle places the result or consequence of any act on human beings. While the sage puts the responsibility to choose wisdom on human beings, the book is not completely silent on divine determinism. It is in this context the article investigates the role and meaning of human initiative in pursuing wisdom. It will also identify the challenges human beings face in choosing wisdom.

Scholars have hotly debated about the meanings of the word Politeuma in Phil 3.20. Does Paul convey an anti-imperial critique against the Roman Empire? Or does Paul urge Philippians to detach themselves from the society and not ‘of’ the world? Yet, both stances consent that Paul’s emphasis on ‘our’ at the beginning of Phil 3.20 is for constructing a self-designation of Christ-followers antithetical to “the enemies of the cross” in the preceding context. Yet, a key exegetical question has not been addressed by both anti-imperial and non-imperial stances. Paul condemns enemies of the cross against their ways of life in 3.18-19. Then why does he just emphasize our hope in the future and not moral behavior nor any active resistance against Roman Empire in 3:20-21? In this paper, it is argued that first readers hear a consistent message throughout Phil.3. By taking consideration of the social values and specific cultural values in the urban city Roman Philippi and the dominant values of Roman soldiers, it is argued that the rhetorical purpose of Phil. 3.20-21 is to radicalize their values of honor in Christ. By utilizing the theology of resurrection of Christ, Paul recalls the first readers to the royal image of Christ in resurrection in 2.9-11. Paul makes use of honour and shame values of military people / veterans to reshape their orientation of suffering for Christ instead of striving for survival in the world. Philippians 3.20-21 should be taken as the conclusion of the long “I” discourse in Phil. 3:1-16, that first readers should imitate Paul to hope for being resurrected with Christ in the future. This theology of resurrection with Christ is now represented in terms of transformation of lowly bodies to conform to Christ’s glorious body. Through his radical redefinition of honorable sacrifice for heavenly king Jesus, civic identity of first readers was transformed to be ambassadors of Christ in the city. The re-phrased resurrection theology in 3.21 urges them to suffer with Christ honorably in Roman Philippi at present. As a result, not only is there no any anti-imperial connotation, first readers may hear Paul’s message of mimicry of their existing patriotic spirits to Jesus Christ resurrected by God’s power. They may hear Paul’s encouragement to be friends of the cross stated in 3.8-9—that we may win Christ and live in Him. The theology of corporate resurrection with Christ by God’s power is well articulated and summarize by the word Politeuma in 3.20. It retains their civic identity. The hope of image of body transformation, not put-off-put-on clothing imagery, reminds them of reorientation of what they boast of in the past to pursue for more valuable honors to be friends of the cross.

The Qurʾān is often identified as an aniconic, even iconoclastic, text. The stories about Moses and his people’s apostasy through their worship of ‘a calf, an image’, ijl jasad (Q 7:149), and Abraham’s destruction of idols (Q 21:58), are two prominent examples of the Qurʾān’s strong aniconic program against images, understood here as three-dimensional representations (of gods). The image is contrasted with the divine word (and its related paraphernalia, such as ‘the pen’, ‘the pages’, ‘the scrolls’, ‘the mother book’, ‘heavenly scribes’, ‘the book’, ‘the people of the book’), the former addressing the haptic, visual, and ‘superficial’ senses, and the latter, the conceptual, the innermost, and the intellect (ʿaql). The former addressing a now superseded type of religion and the latter identified as expressive of Late Antiquity’s general endorsement of the book as the religious medium par excellence. These contrasts, however, are problematic and not only betray a theological bias, but they also neglect the Qurʾān’s iconic qualities and functions. Consequently, I will argue that while the Qurʾān promotes itself as a substitute to the religious icon and image, it in fact serves the same function as the religious icon and image. The Qurʾān becomes iconic. In terms of functionality, there is no difference between a cult of images and the veneration of the Qurʾān (and the muṣḥaf). This qurʾānic program proved extremely successful and Islamic civilization subsequently developed into a culture and polity that put extreme emphasis on writing and ‘writtenness’ (cf. Brinkley Messick’s apt term ‘the calligraphic state’). The basic claim is that religious texts, in casu the Qurʾān, are material objects too. The methodological implications of this interpretation of the Qurʾān and qurʾānic culture calls for a renewed attention to the concept of materialism and materiality in relation to words and scripture. This includes some comparative insights gained from recent theoretical developments in materialist approaches to the Bible. Finally, my paper is also an attempt to complement decades’ strong academic attention to the oral-aural aspects of the Qurʾān.

With the discovery of the much-discussed Katumuwa Stele at Zincirli in 2008, debates over the nature of the “soul” were transferred from philosophical circles to philological ones. Thus far, these debates have centered on whether Katumuwa’s “soul” was merely a material representation or an immaterial entity residing in the material. This false dichotomy is an anachronistic Cartesian mind/body dualism that has been projected back onto the ancient conceptual world by modern scholars. Blending theory, especially as articulated by Gilles Faucconier and Mark Turner, provides a framework for reconstructing an ancient, non-Cartesian conception of the soul in light of the archaeological and epigraphic evidence. Drawing on the full range of Hieroglyphic Luwian and Northwest Semitic references to the “soul,” comparable materiality-based studies of images and monuments in the broader ancient Near East, and Alfred Gell’s concept of “distributed personhood,” I will argue that the soul in ancient Syro-Anatolia and neighboring cultures was a complex blend of material and agency. I propose that Syro-Anatolian and Levantine stelae were what Fauconnier and Turner label ‘material anchors.’ They anchored a conceptual integration network that blended the material object with the presence, personhood, and agency of the object’s commissioner. The soul was an emergent structure within this blend. The Syro-Anatolian soul was therefore neither an image on the stele nor a ghost it contained. It was rather a conceptual blend of material and personhood. Similar conceptualizations are observable across the ancient Near East and undoubtedly informed the biblical category of the soul as well. Though each cultural context drew on the domains of materiality and personhood to varying degrees, they all alike conceived of the soul as materialized or embodied, whether by a human body, a material object, or some combination of both. This paper’s case study of the soul as conceptualized in Zincirli will demonstrate the utility of blending theory for fleshing out the particulars of such conceptual blends.

The image of the patriotic citizen is produced in tandem with the threatening figure of the terrorist, as J. Puar shows in Terrorist Assemblages (2007). In first-century Rome, similar distinctions are drawn between loyal imperial subjects and rebels, who are often cast as barbaric threats. The figures of the patriotic subject and the terroristic rebel both feature in Paul's discussions surrounding submission and Roman rule in Romans 13. In the contemporary setting, Puar analyzes how these opposing figures are produced through racialized and sexualized rhetoric, particularly via homonationalism, which accepts certain persons who largely conform to the terms of patriotism ("subjects worthy of rehabilitation") at the expense of bodies whose difference is too exceptional. These contemporary tactics take on an ancient formulation within Romans 13: just as the terrorist-patriot binary produces scripts for proper performance of contemporary citizenship, so too does Paul's distinction between the hypotassomenos ("s/he who submits") and the antitassomenos ("s/he who rebels"), particularly as he spells out the ethics for good conduct in 13:3-14, which includes sexualized language surrounding self-control and rebellious immoderation (especially in vv.11-14). Indeed, if terror is dangerous in the hands of the rebel, it is legitimated as a response to rebellious behavior. For Paul, rulers are only "a terror" (phoboi) to rebels who behave badly (Rom 13:3), a statement that bears eerie similarity to the contemporary legitimation of terrorization and torture of bodies presumed guilty of terrorism. But binaries-particularly those sustained by homonational tactics, ancient and contemporary-obscure complex realities by demanding that bodies lock into a clear-defined grid. Can different formulations of ancient rebels respond differently to terror? This paper ultimately places Paul's binary between ethical submission and terroristic rebellion (that deserves the terror-punishment it provokes) as one perspective among many that existed among the wo/men in Rome's ekklēsia. Because Paul's perspective largely aligns with Roman ethics, this paper considers evidence and narratives surrounding examples of first-century "rebels" (e.g., Josephus' description of the Jewish Revolt; evidence of resistance and rebellions among Roman slaves) to think about other models that were known and plausibly inhabited by these wo/men. By expanding Puar's theorization of assemblages-which consider the complexity of movements that surround the overt "phase shifts" seen in rebellious action-the paper concludes by proffering the plausibility of more complex responses to the terror of Roman rule. These responses include, but are not limited to, total, outright opposition. By connecting both Puar's critique of homonationalism and her development of queerness as an assemblage to Paul and the wo/men around his letter to the Romans, this conclusion offers one response to questions surrounding the present "age of terror" by bringing it into closer proximity with terrors from the past.

While Roman tax policies certainly varied from region to region and over time, many scholars believe that Roman taxes tended to be relatively low (see, e.g., Garnsey and Saller 2015; Rathbone and Temin 2008, 416). If this is the case, it has important implications for the nature and development of the Roman economy. However, taxation is only one means of extracting revenue from a given population, and, as James Tan (2017) recently made clear for the Republic, Roman officials were adept at exploiting the provinces while limiting the growth of state revenue. This paper will review the evidence for Roman taxation in the first two centuries of the Empire and attempt to contextualize it with respect to other forms of revenue extraction.

1 Peter draws on language of immigration, exile and diaspora both to describe the social dislocation of the suffering Anatolian congregations and to construct their identity. Recent studies have drawn upon sociohistorical and postcolonial theory to shed light on the description of the multiethnic communities through the appropriation of ethnic terms and titles for Israel from the Hebrew Bible. Today, the recent political climate and polarizing rhetoric concerning immigration in the United States and around the world has brought increased attention to the complicated existence navigated by those who cross borders to live outside of their country of origin. In the United States, Hispanics make up the largest minority group in the US, and in less than thirty years the US will be a country of minorities with no majority ethnic group. Now more than ever, biblical scholars as well as practitioners can profit from listening to the voices of minorities and those from the majority world as they read biblical texts from social locations analogous to the biblical context. This paper investigates Hispanic/Latina/o readings of diaspora language in 1 Peter to argue that the usage recognizes the increasingly marginalized status of the recipients while also inspiring hope during their temporary status as immigrants and envisioning a missional purpose for them in their society.

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Investigating language changes due to time or contact with other languages has a long history in Biblical Hebrew studies. Attention to phonological and morphological variations and lexical alterations within the biblical text became intimately connected to the bloom of comparative and historical language study in the early nineteenth century. With the advent of modern approaches to language study, which can be traced back to the mid-nineteenth century—though it is more often associated with the early twentieth century and de Saussure’s Lectures—the relationship between ‘philology’ and ‘linguistics’ has often been strained, if not adversarial. In this paper I will explore how examples of language change, often but not always induced by language contact, can be oriented towards either the reading of texts (philology) or the analysis of language systems (linguistics). In the process, I will address the philology-vs-linguistics question and offer a way forward that is neither adversarial nor mired in nineteenth- and twentieth-century history.

Direct accusations and accusatory questions to God characterize the biblical lament tradition, occurring in both communal (e.g. Ps. 44:10–24) and individual (e.g. Ps. 22:2–3) laments. They have been understood as expressions of protest, but also, more pointedly, as examples of petitioners' "turning the tables" on God and transforming themselves from accused individuals into accusers. Pietro Bovati, for example, adopts this legal reading when he refers to these features in a description of the complaint in Israelite trial procedure. Do these accusations find meaningful legal analogues that confirm, or at least allow, the understanding that they open litigation against God? To answer this question, this presentation will draw on a trial text from Alalakh (Wiseman, AT 7), which Rachel Magdalene has brought to bear on Job's confrontation with God. The Akkadian trial record, which describes the (earthly) litigation between two siblings over an inheritance, also furnishes a meaningful lens through which to read accusatory prayers. Comparison with this text confirms the legal-procedural possibility of lodging a defensive counter-accusation. Furthermore, attention to the dialogue recorded in the trial record illuminates two specific formal-linguistic aspects of the laments, as well: addressing accusations directly to the accused and presenting these accusations in the form of questions.

In accordance with the bequest of Salutaris in 104 CE, a procession was regularly held in Ephesos on a circular route from the Artemision into the city and then back to the temple. This paper argues that the Salutaris procession is best understood as a local and mobile form of imperial cults, which was the city’s way of honoring the Roman Empire and promoting its prominence in relation to other competing cities. The historical context in my view is that, since the death of Domitian, Ephesos probably had the need to show its loyalty to the new imperial family, erasing its past connection to the Julio-Claudian dynasty, especially Domitian. The Salutaris foundation, funded by a Roman aristocrat and approved by imperial authorities, afforded a fine opportunity to fulfill that purpose. The procession was a local imperial cult: local inasmuch as it was established by the decrees of the demos and the boule of Ephesos; mobile, since it moved through the city. I further argue that the processions functioned to structure the space of the city. This paper consists of three parts. The first discusses Steven Friesen’s analysis of imperial cults as religion, which serves as this paper’s theoretical foundation. The second describes briefly the Salutaris inscription, and reviews critically previous interpretations by Guy Rogers and Lilian Portefaix, which represent, in my view, extreme cases in the spectrum of interpretation. The third and major part offers my interpretation, as I analyze the ordering of the city’s space in terms of Friesen’s points presented in the first part.

The Song of Songs has a very unique approach to presenting space: We find a multi-level variety of sceneries that tend to blur and to cross-fade one into the other, even as they are created by the Woman’s and Man’s words. This paper will first explore the Song’s manifold forms for conveying and applying spatial notions: Of course, in some instances we find the characters in the Song crafting the setting they are situated in by describing it. This is a rhetoric device known in drama theory under the name of ‘verbal scenery’. Noticeably though, those spaces ‘on stage’ (i.e. the space where the speakers are situated while they are speaking) are described quite sparsely. Probably the spaces contoured most sharply are the private and secluded retreats, where the lovers can be on their own. Yet not uncommonly, the setting in which the speakers are located is not described at all leaving the characters on an ‘empty stage’, so to speak. At the same time, the words uttered by the Woman and the Man time and again create spaces beyond the ‘stage’ itself. One can observe that those spaces are frequently painted in greater detail than the space of the ‘stage setting’ itself. Still, we need to distinguish between the various forms of ‘off-stage-space’, as they are quite diverse in character: One can find metaphorical use of spatial notions, as well as ‘true off-stage-scenery’, i.e. spaces the lovers have been in or long to be in. This looking back and looking forward opens up virtual, sometimes even utopic spaces on yet another level. In those the readers/listeners are drawn into, taking them on a journey through the described sceneries and landscapes. In a second step I will concentrate on the rhetoric and dramatic function of the modes of presentation. One aspect, e.g., is that these ‘scenic remarks’ frequently indicate time leaps and changes of scenery, thus, lending a certain structure to the unfolding verbal exchanges. Yet interestingly, the scenic transitions take place so smoothly and almost unnoticeably that one scene ‘cross-fades’ into the other, and the spaces blur to some degree (to take up the wording by J. Cheryl Exum in her commentary on the Song). Something very similar is true for the spaces of the ‘off-stage-scenery’: Of course, they are invoked only by the verbal utterings of one of the characters. Still, they become so lively that it is hard to tell if it is really an ‘off-stage-scenery’ or the actual ‘stage setting’. In other words, the level of the space ‘on stage’ and the level of the verbal scenery blur in a way. In some cases the invoked ‘off-stage-space’ even seem to superimpose themselves on the latter. This recurring blurring of spaces in the Song is discerned as an intentional stylistic device. It is proposed that it serves to keep open the imaginative process of reading/listening. It, thus, draws the readers/listeners into the textual spaces, and, as a result, heightens their sense of self-identification with the characters in the Song.

Jesus’s words at the Last Supper have received extensive treatments in New Testament scholarship. Such careful attention to these words makes sense due to their importance for the theology of the Gospels and of the New Testament. Interpreters have noted the rich connections between Jesus’ words concerning his blood and the Old Testament. They commonly mention certain passages, like Exodus 24, Isaiah 53, and Jeremiah 31. A few interpreters mention the possibility of a connection between the pouring out of Jesus’ blood (“poured out for many”) and the pouring out of the blood of sacrifices in Leviticus 4:1-5:13. Yet the connection between the last phrase of Matthew 26:28, “for the forgiveness of sins,” and Leviticus 4-5 has gone virtually unnoticed. Due to the addition of this phrase, Matthew’s account contains a stronger allusion to Leviticus 4-5 in comparison to Mark or Luke. The linguistic and thematic evidence for a connection between Leviticus 4-5 and Matthew 26:28 is significant. The connection is nearly as strong as the connection to Exodus 24 and stronger than the commonly proposed connections to Isaiah 53 and Jeremiah 31. The purpose of this article is to present the evidence for an allusion to Leviticus 4-5 in Matthew 26:28 and to discuss the significance of the allusion. In order to present the evidence and its significance, it will provide a short overview of the related scholarship before demonstrating the linguistic and thematic connections between the relevant texts. Then, attention will be given to relating Matthew 26:28’s allusion to Leviticus 4-5 to its other Old Testament allusions. Finally, we will give brief attention to the hermeneutics related to the allusion to Leviticus 4-5 and to whether the same allusion occurs in the parallels in Mark 14:24 and Luke 22:20.

This paper queries the use of sacred texts in Sexuality and Our Faith, the faith-tradition companion resources to Our Whole Lives, the secular comprehensive sexuality education curriculum published by the Unitarian Universalist Association. Through a close reading of these supplementary guides published by the Unitarian Universalist Association and the United Church of Christ, I identify the hermeneutical stances and the practical strategies these traditions utilize as they incorporate texts that inform and inspire their traditions' perspectives. I attend specifically to lessons that counter the abstinence-only-until-marriage approaches of many faith-based sexuality education programs and that instead employ a faith-informed approach to guide student reflection on healthy choices, responsibility, consent, and gender justice. To conclude, I make suggestions for a progressive Baptist context and demonstrate how other faith traditions could utilize similar approaches to incorporate their traditions' sacred texts to emphasize justice, mutuality, and responsibility through comprehensive sexuality education.

The book of Acts describes the processes whereby early followers of Jesus engage in outreach and struggle with the implications of including Gentiles in the early Jesus movement. Philip’s encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:26-40), the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15:1-35), and Paul’s missionary work in Athens (Acts 17:16-34) provide especially poignant examples of intercultural exchange among early Jesus followers who are navigating the encounter between Jews and Gentiles. Although there are missteps along the way to the inclusion of Gentiles, Acts’ narration of the growth of the movement nonetheless attests to success in this process. Fueled by this success, the early Christians described in Acts grow into a group capable of navigating cultural, ethnic, and religious divides. Using these examples from Acts as an illustrative paradigm, this paper argues that the early church model of inclusion demonstrates a need for three components: difficult conversations, a willingness to change existing structures, and a recognition of divine action in this process. Such a model of inclusion could be applicable to several scenarios where divisions are created between “insiders” and “outsiders.” Nonetheless, after exploring how this model functions in Acts, this paper applies the model to contemporary higher education and the inclusion of first-generation students. The paper suggests that the three components of inclusion in Acts are equally necessary for the inclusion of first-generation students on university campuses today.

In the Hebrew Bible as in many literatures, severe crime and the legal execution of criminals have similar affects on a community. In the Torah's legal literature, bloodguilt of both types is understood within a variety of imaginings of Israel. In this paper, I will use Cognitive Linguistics Frame Theory as a method to compare two such paradigms: the innocent blood and bloodguilt of Deuteronomy 19, and the bloodguilt formula for the death penalty in Leviticus 20. I will show how the different frames activated by the specific language of the text helps interpret laws and sublaws designed to keep the community free from innocent blood.

With David’s ascension to the throne, giants disappear from the biblical landscape. This presentation considers David’s rise to power in light of ancient Near Eastern royal apologetic inscriptions, focusing on the nexus of heroism, piety, and divine approval as a means of legitimizing David’s usurpation of the throne. It further contextualizes the narrative by comparing the central role and rhetoric of giants (and monsters) in the Davidic narrative, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and to a lesser extent the Labors of Heracles. It concludes with an exploration of the source of and reason for the heroes’ (super)powers as expressions of distinct religious ideologies. Heracles’ use of his innate might warrants his inclusion in the divine world. Gilgamesh learns to refocus his inborn power so that he no longer dominates his people or challenges the cosmic hierarchy, but rather accepts his mortality and re-channels his potency to become the ideal mortal king whose name becomes immortal. By contrast, the Deuteronomistic History recasts David’s victory as an expression of divine, not human, power, which may be accessed through human piety. This Deuteronomistic rhetoric of divine might despite human weakness clearly expresses Deuteronomistic theology while offering an (post-)exilic audience agency to change their situation.

While certain texts like the Gospel of Thomas furthered notions of male superiority by describing perfection in terms of a female transformation into male, the Gospel of Philip pushes against male superiority in the search for perfection by emphasizing that perfection requires a complementary role of male and female. In order to obtain perfection, a male must receive female powers and vice versa. This further enabled the reunification of male and female, repairing the separation that occurred at the beginning of creation. This paper will explore the mythical motivation fueling this notion of a gender-complementary form of perfection, and how the role of reflection within myths might have served as an explanation as to how this unification of the sexes could be achieved through ritual means with the aid of light and mirrors.

Ḥikmah, or Wisdom, is a central concept in the Qur’an. It is particularly associated with Abraham’s lineage (Q 4:54), especially David (Q 38:20), and Jesus (Q 43:63). By teaching wisdom, the Prophet Muhammad is presented as fulfilling Abraham’s legacy (Q 2:129). In the Meccan period, I will argue that ḥikmah is used with three distinct senses: apocalyptic, moral, and proverbial. The most significant verse in Meccan Qur’an is Q 17:39, as it claims to have given examples of what is meant by the term: “That is from what your Lord has revealed to you of Wisdom (ḥikmah).” The pronoun is referring to the passage that this verse closes, namely vv. 22–39. This pericope, as has been identified by both medieval Muslim exegetes and western scholars, gives the Qur’an’s version of the Decalogue. At first sight, this is surprising, given, as I will argue, that ḥikmah denotes apocalypse, morality, and proverbial wisdom, rather than law. However, it is precisely in light of these senses of ḥikmah that we can understand the several points of variance between the Biblical and the Qur’anic Decalogues. By calling its own Decalogue ḥikmah, the Qur’an is thus affirming that what the Prophet has been given goes beyond Mosaic Law. In Medinan Qur’an, we encounter a new phenomenon: the conjunction of kitāb and ḥikmah. In fact, ḥikmah when mentioned in Medinan Qur’an is almost always conjoined to kitāb. I will argue that this arises primarily out of the encounter with the Yathribite Jewish community, who rebuffed the need for Muhammad’s prophecy on the basis that they already had a scripture. The Qur’anic response is that this new revelation is more than the Jewish scripture; it is more than kitāb – it is also ḥikmah. This is a continuation of the argument employed in the Q 17 Decalogue. Accordingly, the kitāb/ḥikmah verses are particularly prominent in Q 2, a large portion of which is a polemic against the Banī Isrāʾīl. Also, prominent in the same surah is the extensive use of the antonym of ḥikmah, namely the root s-f-h, denoting foolishness, and applied to those who reject this new ḥikmah revelation. Finally, I will briefly explore the relationship between Qur’anic ḥikmah and the sapiential and apocalyptic traditions of Biblical and post-Biblical literature, arguing that the sapiential and apocalyptic strands were becoming merged in Thomasine Christianity, which formed an important part of the late-antique Qur’anic milieu.

This paper seeks to reinterpret Luke 10:25-37, the good Samaritan story, taking the suppressive nature of Roman economy into consideration in light of the New Institutional Economics (NIE) theoretical framework. The hypothesis is that “seeing” or “blind”, in a negative sense, was and is the problem preventing us from realizing where our neighbor is. Economic values and systems are one of the main reasons contributing to this outcome. It aims to investigate how the economic system exerts influence on the value system and prevents one from seeing their neighbor. With the aid of NIE, the paper will first examine both the formal and informal institutions of the Roman economy. After analyzing the Roman economy based on NIE, this paper will reinterpret the good Samaritan story in Luke and argue that the parable addresses why the lawyer cannot see and takes no action regarding the many needy, as seen based on the consensus on the poverty situation in the first century Roman economy. Using the socio-rhetorical interpretation as the interpretation framework, starting from the inner texture of the passage, it is not difficult to notice that seeing is the key message in Jesus’ parable as he mentions thrice that they all saw someone being robbed but only the Samaritan considered him as his neighbor. However, in order to understand why seeing is problem or why they cannot see, we need the economic analysis to help us to understand how different institutions in the economy can blind us to our neighbors. The second part of the paper will utilize the implications of the new interpretation in order to reflect on our modern capitalist society and first examine how different institutions in our capitalist society can make us blind – systematically and personally. Second, using Hong Kong, one of the highest Gini coefficient economy in the world, as an example, it will examine how the parable can give us insights into addressing the problem and bringing us to see our neighbor. Successful experiences will also be shared based on the teaching of this parable.

Appearing at appropriate junctures, mountains in the book of Micah present diverse depiction: at the threatening theophany, they melt (1:4); in the context of a “plowed” Zion, the temple mount is reduced to a forest ridge (3:12); to the raised mountain of the LORD (4:1-2), many nations march; they are covenant-controversy hearers (6:1-2); and, in the final rendition, mountains point to the farthest boundaries (7:12). As such, these dissimilar depictions appear to undermine any attempt at a coherent vision of mountains in Micah. All the same, drawing on the notion of “subjective narrative space” (cf. H. Vandermoere; R. Ronen in G. Prinsloo) and its attendant assertion that “space determines character,” the present paper shifts the spotlight on the prophetic spatial vision that does not so much create or destroy “mountains” as attend to their transformation which, in turn, shares thematic resemblance with other transformations in the Mican corpus. Together, these transformations can helpfully contribute to highlight the coherent message of the book.

Following the Assyrian invasion in 733-722 BCE, the Northern Kingdom of Israel underwent a series of political-economic turmoil and a demographic decline that led to the displacement of thousands from the tribes of Israel and their resettlement in southern Judah. Within this fluid context of statelessness and forced migration, there emerged a discourse among Israelite refugees concerning the maintenance of symbolic ties to their pre-displaced past through the replication of tribal names. This paper examines the criteria for finding Israelite names in Judean sources that are dated to the late 8th-7th centuries BCE and evaluates select names that align with Israelite identities in the Hebrew Bible and Hebrew inscriptions from the northern kingdom of Israel. The methods of linguistic anthropology are used to analyze the ideological and social significance of the replication of these names.

In the letter to Galatians, Paul uses the story of Sarah and Hagar as an allegory to create a hierarchy between mothers and their children. The superiority of a free, upper class mother contrasted against the inferior, slave mother, fractures maternal subjectivity and splits maternal bodies into an idealized Subject or realized object. The maternal fragmentation performative in mothers also extends to their children as dichotomized mothers bring forth children whose subjectivity is fractured and disjointed. The emergence of these fragmented infants are dichotomized by Paul as “child of the slave born out of flesh,” and “child of the free born out of promise.” Thus, born in the likeness of their mothers, these children are subjected to a hierarchy where the life of some children are valued, preserved, and protected more than, and at the cost of the life of other children. The appraisal of some maternal and infantile life over and above the rest in the Letter to Galatians 4:21-31 sheds light on a new citizen whose value is based on the geographical, social, and cultural location of the womb in which they were conceived. The surrogacy industry in India is estimated to be a 2.3 billion dollar industry. Surrogacy in the contemporary context, is depicted as a “win-win” situation where “women help other women.” However, a closer look reveals that lax laws, cheap maternal labor, the availability of English speaking doctors, and accessible technology in the Indian context promotes the exploitation of third world women at the hands of their first world contemporaries. Surrogacy not only highlights the ways in which Indian surrogate mothers are exploited, but also raises questions around the identity and citizenship of both the mother and her child. In other words, the life of a child born to an Indian surrogate mother receiving financial, emotional, physical, and medical support is valued at a much higher cost than the biological child of the surrogate mother; conceived through the flesh. Furthermore, the subjectivity of the surrogate child conceived through “non-traditional means” is uplifted as the “ideal citizen” and given the privilege to share in the wealth of the Nation; a right that is taken away from the biological children of surrogate mothers living in poverty. Although, the context of Sarah and Hagar and their children is different from the Indian surrogate mothers living in postcolonial India, the subjectivities of both these mothers and their children bear some similarities. Reading Galatians 4:21-31 alongside and through the contextual and real life experiences of Indian surrogate mothers, this paper seeks to reinterpret the subjectivities of Hagar, Sarah, and their children through the lens of Race, Nation, and Citizenship. Thus, drawing on postcolonial, feminist, and race theories, my paper will attempt to construct a nuanced reading of this text as conversations of identity relating to surrogate mothers and their children pertaining to Race, Nation, and Citizenship come to be seen through a more complex and ambivalent light.

In his project "The Social Lives of Ethiopian Psalters," Steve Delamarter has identified over 110 features of codicology and scribal practice and book culture which are executed in differing and various ways by scribes, craftsmen, and book users. He selected 29 of these for further study and then created typologies of those variations, assigned numbers to each type of the variation and built a database (containing more than 100 fields) to receive data from Psalters. He has analyzed over 700 Psalters-ranging from the earliest extant ones of the fourteenth century up through the 20th century-and collected data regarding the variations in each. Each of the Psalters is dated; over 200 of the Psalters can be located in terms of the area of Ethiopia in which they were produced. The data produced from the project promises to open many windows on aspects of Ethiopian scribal and book culture. But this will only happen if the data is analyzed well. This presentation will focus on the ways in which we have applied specialized statistical analyses, such as cluster and random forest analysis, to the data. The raw data already suggest some fascinating stories, but a thorough statistical analysis is needed to draw firm conclusions. Codicologists have already noted a few features that have changed over time; this dataset promises to greatly increase those findings. But perhaps even more interesting is the potential of identifying features that differ depending on where the manuscript was produced. Of all the manuscripts the place of origin is recorded and this information is also taken into account in the analysis. It is to be expected that a comprehensive analysis of both chronological and geographical data will lead to a much better understanding of Ethiopic scribal culture.

Invited paper.

Violence against women often begins with cultural attitudes expressed in language which excludes women from discourse and thus denies women personal, as well as social, power. Denigrate a woman through language and thereby her ontological status as a thinking, critically aware, moral agent is erased. Assign an epithet, such as bitch, to a female and therein project upon her pollution, threat and moral menace, which open the door to physical violence directed against her. In a Jungian context, however, the dog is a major theriomorphic representative of the sacred feminine, i.e., the archetypal dog is the Great Mother and the Great Mother is the dog (James 2009, Neumann 1955, Wolvoy 1990). If we bracket the denigration of the dog as a patriarchal bias, we find the dog is a symbol of feminine healing in the ancient world. Before Aesculapius and a patriarchal differentiation of healing there was the healing goddess Gula (Bock 2013; Edrey 2013). Burial sites, such as Ashkelon, reveal a major cult devoted to the healing power of the dog in the Biblical world (Wapnish and Hesse 1993). In an age of postmodern, diverse and critical reflection, Biblical scholarship finds in a figure like the Syrophoenician Woman (Mark 7:24-30; Matthew 15:21-28) -- who wins healing from Jesus through her will and wit -- a captivating post-colonial, post-patriarchal conundrum (Cadwaller 2008, Fiorenza 1984, Kwok 1995, Rhoads 2004, Theissen 1991). How can it be that the one person who bests Jesus in wisdom is a woman and not a member of his circle? In a metaphoric battle of Jesus' followers, those who become like children to enter the Kingdom of God vs. the followers of a competitive healer, those who embrace the dog as a healing agent of the sacred feminine, the Syrophoenician Woman wins his respect, concern and caring. And in the post-colonial, post-patriarchal, contemporary world, they -- the woman and dog -- win in a big way. A Gentile female healer/priestess/devotee of the Goddess is respected and acknowledged by Jesus. She wins healing for her daughter through her "faith." Her being then and now is political. Her claim upon him is real: this is her political ontology, the reality of her power to seize hermeneutical discourse, that is, self-definition, meaning and value, and thus safety for herself and her daughter.

In discussion of identity in ancient Israel, one particular label for naming, customarily termed “gentilics” has eluded critical reevaluation. For one, the question of Israelite identity vis-à-vis surrounding groups has been central to archaeological study since the turn of the 1990s in interpreting material finds in relation to textual records. While the old culture area model, which assumes a one-to-one mapping of geographical area with ethnic entity, was quickly rejected, “ethnicity” remains a much-used concept for explaining human history, whether ancient or modern. This trend holds significant implications for understanding the grammatical identifier called the gentilic or ethnonym. In biblical scholarship particularly, terms designated as gentilics have been taken for granted as a universal indication for ethnic identity, however situational the individual cases. In turn, its fossilized definition—denoting ethnic, racial or national affiliation—has shaped an interpretive paradigm related to gentilics in the Bible from the early 20th century (e.g. Gesenius 1910; Böhl 1911) through recent decades (e.g. Revell 1996; Ehrlich 2016). Yet careful reevaluation of the evidence displays a range of nominal bases underlying gentilic forms, including regional, kinship, political, occupational, and combinations of multiple categories (e.g. Mushite). The historical question that this evidence demands is to comprehend the logic of ancient categorization as expressed in the ambivalent nature of relationality denoted by gentilics. In the narrativized social world depicted in Genesis to Kings, for example, in spite of the recurring list of Canaanite peoples often perceived as Israel’s adversary in territorial and religious terms, some individual figures are intimately associated with non-Israelite/Judahite identity in one way or another—Judah’s Canaanite wife (Gen 38:2), Abdon’s burying place in the Amalekite highlands (Judg 12:15), Saul’s chief herdsmen, Doeg the Edomite (1 Sam 21:8), and Rehoboam’s Ammonite mother (1 Kgs 14:21). When examined beyond the dominant political paradigm of Israel and Judah, the biblical author(s)’ social landscape as conceptualized by those gentilics shows us a relational mode of identification working beyond straightforward dichotomy between what is local and what is foreign. This study will offer a critical reassessment of gentilics as an analytical category to reconstruct the historical narrative of ancient Israel.

A discussion of the approach taken to writing a commentary for Illuminations, a series that is meant to be scholarly and accessible.

This paper seeks to explore constructed monsters in Daniel 7 and the 2017 film Get Out. Specifically, it examines the similar ways in which the biblical text and film both externalize their respective social anxieties by fictionalizing their oppressor in monstrous form. I will undertake this investigation in three parts. First, I will examine dread and fearfulness around white appropriation and abuse of black culture and bodies in Jordan Peele's Oscar-winning screen play Get Out. Second, I will review the four beasts of Daniel 7 with particular attention to each beast's capacity for destruction and their prophesied demise. Third, I will propose that the construction of monstrous beings in both texts function as creative expressions of political resistance in their respective eras, and that both serve to empower oppressed groups with an imagined escape from tyrannical structures of political abuse.

The sublime in Mediterranean antiquity is regularly described relative to the first century CE essay On the Sublime (Peri Hypsous, “Concerning Height”), a work written by an unknown author and attributed to someone named Longinus, though the ideas presented in it have a long prehistory in Greek literature. The sublime in texts continues to be studied and analyzed up to the present. It is described as the language of grandeur, of elevated thought and speech, of awe and wonder, of the exceptional and transcendent. The rhetoric of the sublime employs this awe and grandeur, rather than rational argumentation, to elicit acceptance by audiences. The rhetoric of the sublime aims to move people to apprehend rather than understand empirically. It functions on the possibility that the high things the language presents are real and true. It calls audiences to enter mentally into the symbolic worlds created by the discourse. This essay aims to develop an understanding of how the rhetorical force of the sublime can be observed in the New Testament through an analysis of Mary the mother of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. Luke's sublime rhetoric is persuading the minds of his audiences to grasp his narration of a dramatic range of events, poems, predictions, and ponderings of the heart that address the intersection of the human and the divine. His rhetoric aims to persuade them that it is all and true and believable.

In this paper, I will present a new method of applying open source digital resources for investigating patterns of participants in the legal material of the so-called Holiness Code (Lev 17-26). Although several scholars have tried to explain the internal relationships between the participants in the Holiness Code, the large corpus complicates a systematic and consistent analysis. Developments within computational corpus linguistics, however, provide new ways of systematic investigations into the discourse of Biblical legal texts. Accordingly, this paper will demonstrate how open source technologies and resources, such as the ETCBC database, Text-Fabric, R, and Jupyter Notebook, can benefit discourse analysis of the Holiness Code. Using Lev 25:23-28 as a case-study, the paper presents a three-step method of creating a semantic map of the participants and their internal relationships. First, semantic role labels are distributed to all participants according to the Role and Reference Grammar theory of the thematic relationship between verb and arguments. Second, building upon Eep Talstra’s pioneering work of participant tracking, all participant references are linked to their respective referents. Finally, the formal, linguistic participant tracking and the semantic role labeling are combined to create a semantic map of participants. Eventually, a semantic mapping of participants can inform discourse analysis as well as digital, semantic concordances of textual participants and their semantic roles.

Markus Müller, who argues that “eine genaue Exegese” of each letter-ending of Paul’s letters enables us to understand the entire letter in question, regards the ending of 2 Corinthians as an “Ausnahme” of his rule. This is a telling remark on the peculiarity of 2 Cor 13:11–13. The questioning of the nature and the original location of 2 Cor 13:11–13 already began with Semler in the 18th century, who was also the first that launched partition theories of the Corinthian correspondence. Modern scholars have occasionally pointed out the disjuncture between 2 Cor 13:1–10 and 13:11–13 and have set forth several views regarding 13:11–13. However, such suggestions have often been briefly made without the text of 2 Cor 13:11–13 itself being examined thoroughly. By using several criteria or “types of evidence,” which are used in the search for interpolations in the Pauline letters, this paper will demonstrate that the letter-ending in 2 Cor 13:11–13 has three distinctive characteristics, compared with both the language of 2 Corinthians as a whole and that of the other undisputed Pauline letters: (a) the abrupt shift of tone that this letter-ending creates; (b) its constituents having more parallels (in meaning and function) in other Pauline letters rather than in the rest of 2 Corinthians; (c) its structure appearing almost to be a summary of the various endings of the other Pauline letters. Any of them cannot be definite evidence to prove that 2 Cor 13:11–13 was not written by Paul; the accumulation of these three observations, however, increases the likelihood that this letter-ending may have been created (or at least, extensively reworked) and added to this place by a redactor. Given the likelihood of redaction, some speculation can be further made regarding the redactor’s motive: the original ending of chs. 10–13 could have been unsatisfactory (e.g., too harsh to the end) when the redactor compared it with the endings of other Pauline letters, or the original ending could have been simply lost at the time of the compilation. One cannot determine with certainty which of the two is the case. Either way, nevertheless, the present letter-ending of 2 Corinthians may be an attempt of the redactor for compensation. He may have wanted to wrap up his compilatory work with a conciliatory letter-ending that sounds like Paul’s own work.

When Caesar lays claim to all of the various priesthoods, one of his coins reflects all the various implements for which different religious priesthoods threw water at people or things. The so-called Aspergillum shows up on other imperial coins as well and speaks to a particular cultic experience or practice. At a wide array of Greco-Roman Temples as well as worship sites of other religious traditions in Late Antiquity, water was thrown at anyone approaching the door as late as the end of the fourth century. For example, several fifth-century historians retell the history of Emperor Valens visiting the so-called Pagan Temple after his conversion. When water is thrown at him, one version explains that he threw off his coat, declaring he was made not clean but unclean. In another version, he hits the temple priest who dared throw water at him. Regardless of the particular reaction of the newly pious Emperor, the narratives show how one of the temple practices endured long after Christianity began to supplant other religious traditions. Indeed, water purification rituals are common across wide swaths of religious traditions during the Greco-Roman period, but many of those are rites and rituals for those who are joining a particular cult or are already an active member of it. The entrance rite of water at the threshold is of a different nature. In some cases, anyone who walks by, indiscriminately, is hit with the water thrown by a priest. No consent or awareness or intentionality was required in some narratives of Greco-Roman practice, while other religious traditions of the same era have more elaborate water purification rites before one can enter the space of worship. A comparison of these purification entrance rites reveals the divergent local practices as well as the views of a priest, the water, and the views of who could access places of worship.

This paper discusses the limits and scope of what we can, and cannot, identify as metaphor in biblical law. As scholars of cognitive linguistics and other fields have amply demonstrated, the phenomenon of metaphor is ubiquitous and fundamental to human cognition. However, not everything is fundamentally metaphorical. The present paper explores this subtle yet crucial point, without which, as will be shown, we readily misconstrue not only the biblical legal discourse but also the general living reality of biblical religion as reflected in its literature. The paper will also discuss similar yet different categories such as model, analogy, and symbolism.

Three times over the course of 38 years, Karl Barth images God as the monster leviathan (once each in The Epistle to the Romans, Church Dogmatics II.1 & IV.3.1). Barth’s imagination for God in monstrous form emerges from his interpretation of Romans 11:35, in which the Apostle Paul quotes a line from Job 41:11, a poem about leviathan, to describe the greatness of God. When Barth comments on this verse, he highlights the way in which Paul is using a poem about leviathan to name characteristics of God. This paper will show how Barth amplifies Paul’s oblique reference, reclaiming additional leviathan language from Job 41, and unabashedly using that monstrous language to describe God (Romans, 423). When Barth describes God as a leviathan again twenty years later in Volume II of Church Dogmatics, he makes clear that his claim is more than metaphor (CD II. 1, 115). In doing so, Barth begins to unpack how God is leviathan similar to the way in which Jesus takes on flesh. The leviathan is not simply a metaphor for God because its strength, mystery, and unbindable freedom mirror the strength, mystery and freedom of God. The leviathan is able to reveal knowledge of God because God is the content of its mystery in the same way that God makes “his works” the content of “His Word.” In other words, God inhabits leviathan as Barth understands Christ to inhabit flesh. Using insights into monster theory from Jeffrey Cohen and Aleks Plukowski, I show how Barth’s imagination of God as a monster falls within a longer Christian tradition of turning to the hybrid, liminal, shape-shifting bodies of monsters to describe the hybridity of Jesus as God in human flesh – specifically a monster called a hellmouth, the monster at the gates of hell into whose jaws the abyss is rushing. In his final commentary on Job 41, Barth makes the radical suggestion that Jesus, Elected and Electing, Judged and Judge, is revealed to be both abyss-bound and abyss, hell-bound with us and leviathan, the hellmouth itself (CD IV.3.1, 432-3). God arrests our course into the abyss by becoming the mouth of the abyss into which we rush. In God as leviathan, we gain the explicit inclusion into the body of God and life of the church those bodies, groups, and spaces that have been labeled monstrous in an attempt to exclude them from the various human projects of church and state. Moving from Barth’s exegetical insights, through Barth’s soteriology, the paper ends with the ethics of a God made monstrous flesh – an ethics that Barth explicitly links to the status of prisoners and all those depicted as monstrous and cast into society’s abyss-equivalents.

Interpreters of Paul generally agree that Jesus’ death and resurrection constitute one complex saving event and then readily appropriate explicit salvific functions to Jesus’s death. But, even among interpreters not intending to downplay the salvific function of Christ’s resurrection, it is not uncommon to hear language highlighting its (proper) epistemological role of revealing the salvific efficacy of Jesus’ death but stopping short of outlining its other direct soteriological effects for humanity and the cosmos. Assuming a necessary connection between anthropology and cosmology, I will attempt to sketch these direct soteriological effects in Paul’s depiction of humanity’s past, present, and future experience of salvation. Succinctly put, I will argue that what God has done for the body of Jesus in microcosm in the resurrection, God is doing in the ecclesial body of Christ—the current locale of the new humanity and new creation/cosmos—and God will do for the cosmos in macrocosm at the Parousia. The paper will proceed as follows. First, using 1 Cor 1:30 heuristically, I will contend that Christ as “last Adam,” the truly human One and microcosm of the new cosmos, experienced resurrection salvifically as God’s saving justice/vindication (dikaiosynē), God’s sanctifying cleansing from death’s corruption (hagiosmos), and God’s redemption from Death’s power (apolytrōsis). Second, I will argue that Paul depicts those who are participating “in Christ,” in this new humanity/new cosmos, as currently experiencing analogous (not identical) salvific effects of the power that Christ’s resurrection engenders. This power enables their simultaneous conformity to Christ crucified and their co-resurrection with him to new life within the corporate body of the crucified and resurrected Christ. That is, because of the salvific power unleased by the resurrection of the One in whom they find themselves, they are currently being justified (made just/righteous), sanctified (set apart to reflect God’s holy character), and redeemed (freed from slavery to the idolatrous powers of the old age). Third, I will argue that at the Parousia of the last Adam, who wields the resurrection power of the making-alive Spirit, those who belong to him will experience resurrection as salvific in that it completes their justification by vindicating their own cruciform life together, completely transforms and sanctifies their individual bodies and the relational matrix of the entire community, and is the means by which Death as a cosmic power is finally destroyed. The salvific impact of this resurrecting redemption of these ecclesial and individual bodies necessarily extends to the cosmos in macrocosm as the making-alive Spirit “entirely sanctifies” all of creation, releasing it from its bondage to decay and making it God’s cosmic sanctuary, filled with God’s justice, in which God is “all in all.” Hence, the paper will show that Christ’s resurrection for Paul is not simply a sign of the salvific efficacy of Jesus’ death, but constitutive of salvation itself.

The brief episode of the wise woman from Tekoa (2 Sam 14:2-24), embedded in the narrative of Absalom’s revolt, presents numerous elements of interest to scholars of biblical and Near Eastern law. The juridical ruse concocted by Joab and presented by the Tekoaite woman touches on the legal issues of fratricide, death as the result of a fight, blood vengeance, and inheritance. In addition to the details of this case however, the narrative also alludes to the relationship between the local and the royal judicatures. Previous analyses of this text understood it to describe the transition of judicial authority from the local sphere to the center, as early Israel evolved from an “acephalous tribal society” to a nascent kingdom or the “chieftainship” of David. Aside from the uncertainties associated with reading this text as a reliable historical account of early Israel and its judicature, I challenge the notion that expanded royal judicial authority should have precipitated the diminishment of local courts. Through a careful analysis of this text and a comparison with near Eastern legal documents describing the interaction of local and royal courts, I propose that the text presumes a judicial principle known as “subsidiarity,” whereby local custom was the first legal recourse available to litigants while the royal judiciary intervened only when the former was deemed insufficient. Thus, the case of the wise woman from Tekoa need not describe the transition of Israel from tribal to more centralized forms of adjudication, but most likely reflects the later, royal judicial hierarchy of the author’s own time.

This paper proposes that the psalms of thanksgiving (Danklieder) from the Qumran Hodayot are crafted as realizations of Isaiah's prophecy that Israel would offer a psalm of thanksgiving after the return of the remnant from exile. This prophesied psalm forms the conclusion of the first major section in Isaiah (chs. 1-12), which announces the judgment of Zion and Israel in preparation for establishing God's universal sovereignty. Isaiah's psalm takes the genre of the psalm of thanksgiving, which typically thanks God for deliverance from past distress, and redeploys it as an anticipation of the remnant of Israel's thanksgiving for deliverance in the eschaton. Reading the psalms of thanksgiving found among the Hodayot manuscripts at Qumran in light of the eschatological framework in Isa 12 helps to clarify some of the generic features that are not found in standard non-eschatological psalms of thanksgiving and to shed light on how psalmists in the Second Temple period were innovating new genres as contemporizing and exegetical responses to important scriptural texts like Isaiah 12:1-6.

The paper seeks to analyze the impact that the Bible, and especially Tolstoy’s interpretation of the Bible, had on Gandhi’s thought towards non-violence and peace building. In South Africa, where Gandhi was thrown out of the train at Pietermaritzburg, he read Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is Within You, My Confession, and My Religion. In his Autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Gandhi wrote, “Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is Within You overwhelmed me. It left an abiding impression on me. Before the independent thinking, profound morality, and the truthfulness of this book, all the books given me . . . seemed to pale into insignificance.” (Ch. 15). In the year or so before Tolstoy’s death, the two engaged in a very informative correspondence, in which they engage with the biblical text. This paper examines both Tolstoy and Gandhi’s engagement with the biblical text, and seeks to make proposals towards peace building today, in the light of this analysis.

Myth and Authority in Late Antiquity

Church as Dual Citizens of Kingdom and State

In August 2017 an article was published by CBS News discussing the near eradication of Down Syndrome births in Iceland, sending shock waves through some communities and bringing the pro-choice/pro-life debate to the fore once again. However, this debate is not the only issue raised by the article. A second,and perhaps just as relevant, question is raised in the article by an Icelandic parent of a Down Syndrome daughter: “What kind of society do you want to live in?” Framed differently, the article raises the question of whether or not we want to live in a society where only people with certain physical characteristics and physical or mental abilities are valued and welcomed. To address this question, the present paper places the New Testament research of Michael Gorman, who describes the missio Dei as fundamentally kenotic, in conversation with the vocationally based writings of Jean Vanier, who lived with and ministered among the cognitively disabled. Ultimately, this conversation not only suggests that the differently-abled are valuable, and indeed necessary, members of our communities, it points to a way forward in living with people of all abilities.

Divine intervention in battle in the Ancient Near East, according to the written accounts, occurred in ways both subtle and overt in nature. The sequence of events which led up to each alleged instance, such as supplications for help or sacrifices as offerings for aid, vary just as much. Yet, despite the different cultures and peoples who produced these written sources, many similarities in this topic of divine intervention may be found. Three accounts in particular, one biblical and the other two Neo-Assyrian, exhibit such peculiar similarities in their storylines that they deserve specific attention and have received limited sustained consideration by scholars heretofore. The first is the account of Sennacherib’s military actions against Hezekiah and Judah in 701 B.C.E. as recorded in 2 Kgs 19:9b-35. The second and third are both recensions of Ashurbanipal’s seventh campaign, or second Elamite campaign, against the Elamite king Teumman and are recorded in the Assyrian king’s annals Editions B and D (It should be noted that these two editions are almost completely identical except for minor orthographic differences, which do not affect the paper’s aim). Although other annals and reliefs relate Ashurbanipal’s second Elamite campaign, these two editions present important literary parallels to the account in 2 Kings not present in the other Neo-Assyrian texts. These shared features are neither sporadic nor haphazard but contextual, thematic, and sequential in nature. For instance, each text revolves around its respective king, the city of his preferred deity, and an imminent military threat from a proud and blasphemous antagonist who commences a war without divine approval. This paper will highlight the comparability of literary forms in these two accounts in order to contribute to the discussion of scribal practice. In addition, it will investigate the discussion of kingship ideology as it appears in the Deuteronomic History in contrast to such ideology found in Neo-Assyrian records. There is no intention of arguing a dependence of one text on the other. The discussion will specifically deal with the comparability of the two accounts in their respective states.

The Humanity of Jesus in the Garden: An Excursus on Matthew 26:36-46

In this time slot I shall present a sample of my commentary work for the series, to highlight its approach

In the Book of Proverbs 31:6 & 7 comes this prescription: “Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto them that be of heavy hearts. Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more.” Even in contemporary times, Jews still employ wine as a common means to bring “joy to God and man” (Judges 9:13). Indeed wine continues to remain part of most Jewish practices including Kiddush, Havdallah, weddings, circumcisions, the Pesach seder and Purim. In a similar vein, the Hellenistic cult of Dionysos is strongly associated with the consumption of wine. Here, members of the cult consumed wine, ostensibly as a means of achieving an altered state of consciousness in order to become closer to their deity. Furthermore, both Judaism and the Dionysian rites warn of the dangers of excessive consumption in similar ways despite the fact that they are very different belief systems. Notwithstanding their similar attitudes to wine consumption, the topic of intoxication features predominantly in the 3 Maccabees narrative, inter alia, in order to contrast the two religions. Indeed, intoxication and levels of intoxication are employed to differentiate Jew from Hellene in very ironic ways, even when at the end of 3 Maccabees, both Jew and Gentile openly feast and drink together. In these and related contexts, the authors attempt to reveal the specific rhetorical strategies, involving the consumption of wine, which are employed by the author of 3 Maccabees to both set the two religions apart as well as inculcate a lasting spirit of reconciliation.

Postcolonial Native Studies illustrate that Native/Indigenous identity is characterized and represented by a complex nexus of land, language, and ethnicity in dynamic relationship with each other, without which Native culture and religion tend to be destabilized and make little contextual sense. This paper seeks to utilize these insights in Q Studies by exploring Q’s identification as an ethnically Jewish/Judean text – that is, an Indigenous Palestinian Judean text – reflecting a contested and turbulent first-century socio-political world in which traditional ethnically Judean identity-markers, ancestral customs, linguistic conventions, religious practices, and geographical allegiances are in flux.

Almost all scholars who are involved in Aseneth agree that conversion is one of the most important themes in this text. In this respect, the new name of Aseneth, “City of Refuge” is understood as a shelter for proselytes. In postcolonial studies, this kind of story that seems to beautify a conversion can be read negatively. For this reason, biblical scholar Ronald Charles regards this text as “a colonizing text,” concluding that “there is no room in the author’s mind for any dialogue concerning the religious sentiments of the Other.” However, I am skeptical whether this text can be homogenized as a colonizing text that shows an exclusive attitude toward other groups. Although I agree that Aseneth includes some exclusive elements, I argue that this text reveals diverse attempts to go beyond boundaries between two groups. To prove my argument, I try to read this text with the postcolonial concept of ‘contact zone’ which means the space where colonial encounters happen between two disparate groups. Although this encounter happens in an asymmetric power relationship, the outcome in contact zones is not unilateral according to the intention of the colonizer. Diverse and unexpected changes occur in the contact zone. In this paper, I examine what negotiations in the contact zones in Aseneth happen and what changes happen to the two groups after negotiation in the contact zones. In Aseneth, two contact zones can be found: one is the court of Pontephres, Aseneth’s father and the other is Aseneth’s chamber. In the first contact zone, Pontephres negotiates with Joseph in order to gain the equal right by establishing a family tie. This negotiation breaks down when Joseph refuses to kiss to Aseneth by reason of their different religions. But this doesn’t mean a failure; Joseph’s abhorrence of table fellowship with Egyptians no longer appears in the narrative after the encounter in the contact zone. The second contact zone is formed in Aseneth’s chamber when a heavenly figure intrudes into her chamber after Aseneth’s conversion. In this encounter which is in an asymmetric power relationship, the angel grants a new name to Aseneth, “City of Refuge,” which has some requirements such as religion and repentance. From a postcolonial lens, the name change of the colonized can be understood as a colonizer’s strategy to control the colonized. However, Aseneth is not just passive or powerless; she negotiates with the Angel to make him bless seven virgins, who are like sisters to Aseneth. By this negotiation, the seven virgins gain similar status with Aseneth—“seven pillars of the City of Refuge”—without conversion. I argue that as a result of the negotiation, Aseneth re-identifies herself with the new meaning of City of Refuge; she becomes a shelter to anyone beyond boundaries such as religion and repentance. This re-making of the meaning of City of Refuge is fulfilled when she protects Dan, Gad, and Pharaoh’s son regardless of their conversion or religion.

This talk examines the Cuneiform evidence for the impact of Babylonian imperial domination over the Levant both for the imperial centre, and the imperial periphery. Different vectors for political, socio-economic and cultural interaction along imperial lines of communication are explored.

The recent critical focus on violent imagery in the Hebrew Bible reflects a subtle privileging of the sense of sight over sound, at least for the scholars who engage in this effort. Notably, the book of Jeremiah relies on both sight and sound as part of its rhetorical repertoire, employing both to convey and induce violence. Building on the work of Hector Avalos and Rhiannon Graybill who suggest that mapping a text’s “soundscape” provides unique insight into its social, literary and theological agendas, this paper examines three prominent violent sounds in Jeremiah—weeping, roaring, and silence—and works to understand how and why these sounds function as part of Jeremiah’s violent rhetoric.

In the Korean language, the term, bokeumjali is usually translated "home." However, bokeumjali has acute significance especially in the context of Korean immigration abroad. Bokeumjali is a home that is not exclusively defined by geopolitical borders, but is situated within a social and conceptual space of belonging, memories, and meaningful relationships. Therefore, Korean immigrants abroad will often refer to the urgency and adversities of building a bokeumjali. For those who have crossed many boundaries, both geopolitical and conceptual ones, building and finding a bokeumjali is of utmost urgency and necessity having left home behind. This study is an investigation of the detailed yet elusive world of the final vision report in the book of Ezekiel (Ezek 40-48). Set in the twenty-fifth year of a forced migration experience in Babylon (Ezek 40:1), the final vision report has been called by various names: from the "great temple vision" to "vision of transformation" and "program of restoration." However, an immigrant experience of loss of home and urgency to (re)-build home may offer insights to understanding the landscape of complexes and complexities in Ezekiel's final vision report as a "vision for bokeumjali." To gain insights into how immigrants think about home, this study explores, as a case study, Korean-American narratives of the destruction of Koreatown during the civil unrest that besieged the city of Los Angles in the Spring of 1992. Often referred to as the "L.A. riots" or the "Rodney King riots," the days of civil unrest that left parts of the Los Angeles landscape including Koreatown resembling war zones is recalled in Korean-American narratives as Sa-I-Gu. Methodologically, this case study will sensitize the readers to a different perspective to Ezekiel 40-48 as a visionary quest for bokeumjali while in exile. Ultimately, Ezekiel 40-48 demonstrates a careful dialectic of hope for the restoration of home while far from home. This is a study about how the migratory process affects where immigrants identify as home and how they think about home.

The second column of Origen's Hexapla (Secunda) is a Greek transcription of ancient Biblical Hebrew. Up until the end of the nineteenth century, all that was extant of the Secunda were quotations and references in other works such as the church fathers. At the end of the nineteenth century a palimpsest was discovered which contained portions of eleven Psalms of Origen's Secunda (Ambrosiana O 39 Sup.). The discovery prompted a number of studies on the phonology of the Hebrew tradition reflected in the transcriptions and has been an integral part of historical Hebrew linguistics ever since. The Ambrosiana palimpsest contains approximately 1000 words and the quotations in the church fathers and other sources contain over 200 or 300 words. Although earlier scholars made use of both the Ambrosiana manuscript and the quotations in the church fathers, later scholars have tended to limit themselves to the material from the more reliable Ambrosiana palimpsest. A desideratum in Secunda studies is a careful analysis of the manuscript traditions behind the quotations of the second column outside of the Ambrosiana manuscript. Additionally, such material has yet to be gathered into one source. I am currently working on a project to remedy these desiderata, namely, a new critical edition of the text of the second column of Origen's Hexapla, in which I take into account the data from the Ambrosiana palimpsest, the Cambridge palimpsest, quotations from the church fathers, and scholia in the LXX. The edition is being prepared both for print and for online access, both versions complete with critical apparatuses. In this paper, I will (1) present examples of the print and electronic form of the new edition, (2) outline the nature of the quotations of the second column in LXX scholia and in the early church fathers, and (3) address (both text-critically and linguistically) the reliability of the quotations of the second column outside of the Ambrosiana palimpsest. Such an edition is especially important for Hebraists and historical Hebrew studies, since it will be the first critical edition that presents all of the quotations of the second column as a continuous text in one place. It will also include a larger index of the second column than has been published to date. Finally, it includes some references to the second column not cited in either Gottingen or Field. All of these points make the new edition especially helpful for the fields of historical Hebrew linguistics and textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible.

As has been noted by a number of scholars, Isaiah 58:1-7 and 61:1-3 evoke the jubilee legislation found in Leviticus 25. These passages employ language and imagery from the Levitical jubilee both as a foil to castigate the social failings of postexilic Judahite society and as an ideal to engender hope in a future for that community. In this paper, I analyze the interpretive approach of these chapters to the Levitical jubilee in conversation with critical theorists in the field of Utopian Studies such as Lyman Tower Sargent, Ruth Levitas, and others. I argue that the interpretation of the eutopian legislation found in Leviticus 25 constitutes a sincere attempt by the author of these chapters in Isaiah to chart a vision of renewal for Judean society. These chapters consciously avoid, however, the aspects of the legislation that might reinscribe hierarchies that privilege creditors over debtors. Instead, Isaiah 58 and 61 emphasize the renewal of kinship relationships, debt release, and provision for the impoverished in a society unfettered by renewed debtor-creditor relationships. It is this transformation of the Levitical jubilee into a prophetic utopia that inspired subsequent interpretations of it in texts such as 11QMelchitzedek and Luke 4.

Amy Tan’s 1989 novel The Joy Luck Club (JLC) vividly and touchingly portrays the different dynamics involved in communication (which includes miscommunication and non-communication) between first generation Chinese mothers and their North American-born daughters. In JLC’s recounting of the different individual stories of four first generation Chinese immigrant mothers and their four Chinese American daughters, we get a good idea of how different are the worlds in which the Chinese-born and the American-born occupy, often resulting in an initial rejection, on the part of the daughters, of their mothers’ Chinese heritages because of their perception that “Chinese ways” are radically different and, therefore, largely irrelevant for their present North American contexts. However, as the daughters shed uncritical and naïve youthful perspectives and grow into greater maturity (thus, permitting some measure of true communication between them and their mothers), we see in them a gradual shift to a greater valorization and appreciation of their Chinese heritage, resulting eventually in a more balanced attitude in which they can now accept and embrace the fact that their mothers’ culture and traditions have meaningfully shaped them and that the tradition remains deeply valuable and relevant in their lives. This paper will argue that when we use the JLC as a lens through which we read the Gospel according to Matthew, we can catch a glimpse of similar struggles and a similar process on the part of the gospel writer Matthew (with his community) of grappling with his Jewish identity and heritage. The gospel on the whole is arguably already a result of a more mature state of reflection on the part of Matthew in which he has already reconciled his Jewish heritage with his new-found faith, rejected by most of his Jewish contemporaries, that Jesus indeed is the long-awaited Messiah (see Mt. 1:1, 16, 18; 2:4), that YHWH has finally sent to Israel. In the gospel, Matthew proclaims this reconciliation of his faith in Jesus-as-Messiah with his Jewish heritage through some conspicuous strategies: peppering his gospel with presentations of Jesus as fulfilling ancient prophecies, stating unambiguously that Jesus has come “not to abolish [the law and the prophets] but to fulfill [them]” (5:17) and structuring his gospel around five clear sections, each consisting of discourse and narrative parts, thus presenting Jesus’s teaching and ministry as the new Torah. On the other hand, we also see Matthew’s earlier (?) or continuing (?) struggles with his Jewish tradition and how many of his compatriots have and continue to reject his proposal that Jesus is indeed the Messiah. We can catch glimpses of this in several passages: his terrible vitriol against otherwise respected teachers, the Scribes and the Pharisees (23:1-36) and his shocking imputation of guilt for the death of Jesus not only on the Jews of his day but also on “their children” (27:25)! Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club can thus act as a powerful means to see Matthew’s world (behind the text) with fresh eyes.

The reference to "streams of water" in Prov 21:1 is largely assumed to have a Palestinian agricultural background, and suggestions that the phrase connotes foreign irrigation practices remain undeveloped. I argue that these streams, as artificial irrigation waterways, and their association with kingship in Prov 21:1 connote royal ideologies that were connected with hydrological procedures in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Urartu. Based on a fresh look at written, iconographic, geographical, and archeological evidence from the wider ancient Near Eastern world, I bring new interpretive insights to Prov 21:1.

Spirit Hermeneutics: Reading with Faith

A majority of scholars accept Richard Burridge’s classification of the Gospels as biographies, and this classification is compelling on the whole. Yet a majority of scholars also view Acts as a historical monograph, and also accept the narrative unity of (although not necessarily the same genre for) Luke-Acts. These considerations invite discussion of the relationship between biography and the wider category of historiography in the early empire, as well as comparison with other biographic units within larger multivolume histories.

According to 1 Sam 7:5-6 Samuel told all Israel to gather at Mizpah so he could judge them and intercede with YHWH for Israel. What is portrayed as a ritual event is interpreted by the Philistines in 7:7 as strategic military action. This paper offers an explanation for the Philistine response to Israel's actions through consideration of the geographic reality of the Central Benjamin Plateau. In particular, I will address what it is about Mizpah, specifically, that prompts the Philistines to mobilize against Israel, and whether or not the identification of Tell en-Nasbeh as biblical Mizpah is appropriate. This latter matter will be informed by my work on the unpublished Iron Age I materials from Tell en-Nasbeh.

I want to use my time talking about how this Synoptics scholar came to teach a course well outside my areas of expertise (i.e. Comparative Genocide Studies) and about the unexpected ways that this course came to influence my scholarship. In the course of today’s conversation, I will focus on three topics how the course came about and the challenges and opportunities it faces. While I would very much like to be able to say that I had a master plan to teach about and eventually write about Genocide Studies, my path to this course was more circuitous. Early on my teaching career I taught a course on the Holocaust, which proved to be essential for my developing scholarly interest in modernity, racism and biblical scholarship. I also happened to occasionally teach courses in the prison system and made the imprudent decision to teach the Holocaust course in a maximum security prison. Teaching this class in this environment raised a whole series of issues and questions that continue to haunt me and are worth further discussion, including questions about white scholars discussing racial issues and about volatile classroom situations provoked by traumatizing material. Dissatisfied with the way the course proceeded, I kept revising the course until I eventually began comparing different kind of racialized traumatic experiences and grouped them under the category of genocide. This course was first developed and taught in the mid 90s, at the moment that Rwanda was occurring and that the field of comparative genocide studies was emerging as an academic discipline. A seed had been planted and many years later I returned to developing a new class informed by the new academic discipline (sample syllabus will be provided). What started as a way of giving a catchy title to a course that compared narratives written by slaves and holocaust survivors was slowly morphing into a class that caused me to cover an increasingly broad range of genocides (Indigenous peoples, Cambodia, Rwanda) and of theoretical issues (i.e. definitional, theories on perpetrators, connection to the modern rationality and the nation state, etc.). Several practical challenges present themselves, not least of which was the diverse connection between genocides and the Bible as well as the practical problem of working in an exploding scholarly field (annotated bibliography will be provided). As I began reading more intensively in the field, which was becoming increasingly rich and theoretically sophisticated, I became convinced that the field had much to offer biblical scholarship. My first foray into the field, recently published, identified the central theoretical and definitional issues. I am currently exploring the question of whether categories drawn from genocide studies can be accurately applied to antiquity, with special attention to the destruction of Jerusalem (70 CE). What started as a happy teaching accident has challenged me to think more deeply about the human, rather than the theological, costs of Rome’s destruction of Jerusalem.

How does one convert a populace? Though Arthur Darby Nock paints a fairly rosy picture of the way Christianity took hold in the hearts and minds of Greeks and Romans in the early centuries of the common era, he does acknowledge the fluidity of the situation. Framing the issue as the power of paganism, Nock’s chapter “The Last Phase” acknowledges the tendency of individuals to fade away from the faith once the “first fine careless rapture” lost its hold on individuals’ attention. Mentioning in passing the “ever-present loss of social amenities, club life, and festivals” that conversion entailed, Nock keenly notes that “It was a question not only of resisting social pressure and occasional persecution but of holding out against boredom, a state as well known in antiquity as to-day.” Even after Constantine threw the power of the state behind the Christian movement these issues were acutely felt. How did individual teachers confront these issues and try to convert the hearts and minds of regular people engaged in all aspects of city life? One such major figure in the battle to Christianize an urban population was John Chrysostom, who faced these issues daily in his career in Antioch. In addition to railing against the theatre and other entertainments, Chrysostom undertook a pedagogical strategy of turning his auditors into teachers, giving them active roles in the ongoing project of Christianization of fourth-century Antioch (and perhaps staving off their own boredom along the way). According to David Rylersdaam, “Chrysostom is training students to become ascetic teachers in their everyday lives. All Christians had a pedagogical task in the world, not simply bishops and monks. Making use of their instruction in the school of the church, Christians were to model and teach a thoroughly Christian version of the classical philosophical life in their homes and throughout the city.” Rylersdaam points to a particularly telling passage in Chrysostom’s Homilies on the Statues, where Chrysostom implores his audience “You must be teachers and lead the way. Friends should take their neighbors in hand and instruct and lead them, and household slaves should do the same for fellow slaves, and youths for their peers” (De Stat. 16.6). John Chrysostom’s homilies on 1 and 2 Timothy play an important part in his pedagogical program of turning his auditors into teachers. Since Chrysostom understands Paul’s task in 1 Timothy as instructing Timothy on what is required of a teacher, his exegesis of this epistle becomes an opportunity for him to expound on this office, on what it takes to fulfill this task, and to attempt to form his audience into the type of teachers he hopes they will be in their everyday lives.

In Jubilees, Joseph is even more commendable than he is in Genesis, which is startling because, at first, the portrayal does not seem to aid Jubilees’ agenda, which is to emphasize the centrality of the Sinai covenant to Israelite life and identity, as well as God’s faithfulness to the covenant people. Firstly, how does Jubilees’ author re-characterize Joseph, and secondly how does the adjusted portrayal advance Jubilees’ pedagogical purposes? Specific elements of the Joseph story are absent from Jubilees, such as the famous notice about Jacob’s preference for him: “Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his children, because he was the son of his old age; and he had made him a long robe with sleeves” (Gen 37:3). Also absent from Jubilees is the account of Joseph recounting to his siblings the two dreams in which he appears superior to them. In the first dream, Joseph and his brothers are binding sheaves, and their sheaves bow down to his sheaf (Gen 37-6-7). In the second, the sun, the moon and eleven stars bow down to Joseph (Gen 37:9). The omissions are curious, because in Genesis they explain why Joseph’s siblings resented Joseph and decided to kill him. Did Jubilees’ author want to avoid the impression that Joseph was superior to his brothers? Actually, in Jubilees’ narrative, Joseph is nobler than his siblings who, after all, conspired to kill him. In fact, in his narrative, Jubilees’ author noted that Jacob received the news of Joseph’s loss on the tenth of the seventh month, which became the Day of Atonement, i.e., Yom Kippur, an annual day of mourning for all Israel, because Jacob’s sons “had saddened their father’s (feelings of) affection for […] Joseph” (Jub 34:18). Why did Jubilees’ author polish Joseph’s character and elevate his importance even more? It had to do with Joseph’s association with the northern kingdom. An often-ignored aim of Jubilees’ author was to honor the northern tribes who were thought to have perished following the Assyrian exile on account of their disobedience to the covenant. Jubilees’ author worried that the perception that the northern tribes were lost because of disobedience to the Law would suggest that God’s covenant with Israel was a revocable bond. Even worse, it may suggest that God reneged on his covenant promises to Jacob. For Jubilees, God’s covenant with Jacob was not revocable, because if it were, it would call into question the veracity of the promise God made to Jacob at Bethel: “the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring […] I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you” (Gen 28:13-15).

An important difference in the conceptualization of states of affairs is reflected in language by the distinction between thetic sentences and categorical sentences. A categorical sentence consists of the bipartite act of naming an entity and the making of a statement about it. Thetic sentences, by contrast, present a situation as an undivided whole. Thetic sentences are typically used to manage discourse, e.g., to present settings of discourse or explanations. In this paper I argue that the thetic-categorical distinction is reflected in Biblical Hebrew by the different syntactic positions of the pronominal copula in nominal clauses. Nominal sentences that place the copula after the predicate are in principle categorical, making direct assertions about a base of predication, e.g., habbāśār ha-ḥay ṭāmē hū ‘Raw flesh is unclean’ (Lev. 13:15). In such constructions the pronominal copula is bound prosodically to the preceding predicate phrase by a conjunctive accent when the predicate phrase is short. In a number of constructions a pronominal copula occurs after a clause-initial pronoun, e.g., ʾattā-hū malkī (Psa. 44:5). In many such constructions the phrase following the pronoun is informative, as in the example just given, and is not a presuppostional component of a contrastive focus construction, i.e., (informative elements marked by upper case): ‘You are MY KING’ not ‘YOU are my king’. I argue that in such constructions the pronoun has the status of a focus marker that has developed from the pattern of bi-clausal cleft constructions. Parallels to this grammaticalization pathway can be identified in other languages. It does not mark contrastive focus, but rather presentational focus. Although the phrase following the pronoun is informative, the assertion of the content of the phrase is demoted, just as is the content of the subordinate clause in a cleft construction. The effect is to express a thetic description of an integral situation, rather than a categorical statement making a direct assertion about a topical referent. These thetic constructions with focus-marker pronouns typically express settings for what follows, either stative or eventive, explanations, or existential statements. It is argued that the phrase ʾănī-hū, which occurs in the Song of Moses and Deutero-Isaiah, belongs to this category of construction and should be interpreted as an existential statement ‘I am’. It is a thetic construction with a focus marker and null lexical content after the pronoun ‘It is I (that am)’. Supporting evidence for this and the interpretation of other thetic constructions in Biblical Hebrew is adduced from Neo-Semitic spoken languages.

Abraham Malherbe in his essay, “Medical Imagery in the Pastoral Epistles,” argued that medical terminology was used polemically to describe the heretics or opponents. In relation to 1 Timothy, the opponent’s teaching is described as “diseased” and their minds “are corrupt…[and the opponent’s] diseased condition is exhibited in their demeanor, in their preoccupation with controversies, verbal battles, and wranglings (1 Tim 6:4–5).” In this paper Malherbe’s identification of this medical schema is the starting point to explore the connections between the opponents commands not to marry and abstain from foods (1 Tim 4: 2-3) with the instruction to younger widows to marry in 1 Timothy 5: 3–15. This exploration will begin by first noting some structural elements in the letter, then will define the word didaskalia (1 Tim 4:1) to be clear on what type of teaching the opponents are doing and how this might sear their consciences. It is this searing which enables them to abandon the faith and pay attention to spirits and demons. The imagery of the seared conscience appears to be medically inspired and this suggests a link between the “other instruction” (didaskalia), fasting, sexual continence, and ancient medical advice about care for the body. Ancient medical advice on health focused on balancing the humors within the body. The excess of some humors was believed to be the underlying cause of sexual desire. Expelling the excess sperm, a humor, was seen to bring the body back into balance, restoring health. However, since the humors were generated by nutrition it was possible to a certain extent to regulate sexual desire through diet. From the evidence of Tertullian it appears that Christians utilised this theory in an attempt to balance the humors and therefore remain healthy while being sexually continent. It will therefore be argued that the command of the opponents, which forbid marriage and fasting, relates directly to the instructions to the young widows to marry in 1 Timothy 5:3-15. Drawing on the work of Methuen (1997), who argued that the term widow (chera) could overlap with the idea of an unmarried women, it will be argued that the young woman in 1 Timothy 5:11 is a virgin rather than a woman whose husband had died. Founding his instructions on the current medical advice, the writer of 1 Timothy is pessimistic about young women keeping their vows of celibacy (1 Tim 5:12) and is thus opposed to the them entering into the order of widows (1 Tim 5:11).

Why does God in 2 Baruch promise to preserve the righteous so prominently and in such rich and varied ways? As with God's prophecy to Baruch through the prophet Jeremiah in Jer 45.5, the opening of our text has God predicting that Baruch, also those like him, will be preserved during the imminent capture of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. This basic idea of preservation, I argue, is expanded upon later in multiple ways, imbued with an eschatological sense, both for Baruch as an individual and for the righteous within the people of Israel as a group. Through detailed linguistic, also literary, analysis, this paper investigates the three ways that the promise is creatively reapplied. (a) Baruch will be preserved to the current age's end, serving as a witness against the wicked Gentile nations. (b) The Torah-observant within Israel will be preserved during the period of eschatological woes. (c) The souls of the righteous, unlike those of the wicked, will be preserved in treasuries until the day of the resurrection; and the righteous alone are resurrected, with bodies that thereafter will never decay. Reapplication does not mean interpretation. Frederick James Murphy has observed that a key, innovative move of the author of our text is marrying the Deuteronomistic concept of sin, punishment, repentance and restoration with the eschatological concept of the two ages/worlds. It is possible that, in a comparable move, the author takes the concept of Baruch's preservation in the personal prophecy to him in Jer 45 and extends it into the eschaton, through soul-preservation in treasuries and then resurrection, for all the righteous who suffer in the vicissitudes of this age. Such appropriation and reapplication of themes from scriptural texts is an approach commonly adopted by the author of 2 Baruch, as Matthias Henze has observed. What results is a tantalizing possibility. Has the author of our text appropriated the promise of preservation of life in order to present a picture that is for all practical purposes the inversion of the promise given in the book of Jeremiah? There God reprimands the scribe for seeking great things, offering him as his only solace a prediction, ironically worded, that he will at least keep his own life as "booty" in the coming destruction. The scintillating promises in 2 Baruch, by contrast, outshine their model in every respect. While Baruch and those like him may suffer a little in this world, they will also be protected here - when things really make a turn for the worst - and in the age to come they will inherit an incorruptible and glorious life, with even the memory of the suffering they endured being blotted out. Finally, the paper investigates the extent to which the promise Baruch receives in Jer 45 may have made this figure a particularly enticing one for the author's selection of him as the pseudonymous character in 2 Baruch, even when - or perhaps especially when - some central themes are inverted in the transition from prophetic text to apocalypse.

The 22-hectare maritime harbor settlement of Tel Akko has dominated the Plain of Akko’s ancient landscape for millennia. First inhabited in the Early Bronze Age, Tel Akko served as a major urban center for most of the second and first millennia BCE. Current excavations of the Tel Akko Total Archaeology Project, directed by A.E. Killebrew and M. Artzy under the auspices of the University of Haifa and the Pennsylvania State University, focus on the Persian period (6th – 4th centuries BCE) Phoenician city in Area A at the summit of the tell. Here huge quantities of iron slag and remnants of iron working spanning the 6th – 4th centuries BCE have been uncovered. This mid-first millennium smithy, the only known iron working facility in the Levant dating to the Persian period, provides an unparalleled opportunity to explore iron production at a Phoenician maritime center. This paper presents the preliminary results of eight seasons of excavation at Tel Akko of this large-scale iron industrial area, including sources of iron ore, modes of production and remains of possible ritual practices. The significance of iron production at Tel Akko is contextualized in its Phoenician cultural milieu and its role within the Persian empire.

Scholars have recognized ancient Israel’s cultic use of biblical psalms based on their organizational principles that parallel those of the ancient Mesopotamian prayer collections (Gerald Wilson; Joel Burnett). Particularly, both the Nineveh Catalogue and the Elohistic Psalter commonly evince the process of transmitting individual psalms into collections and therefore suggest later generations’ continual engagement with their ancestors’ laments. This shared tendency raises a question of what underlying motif persists behind the cultic use of ancestors’ prayers. Psychoanalyst Vamik Volkan’s theory of transgenerational transmission of trauma provides a hermeneutical lens for explaining an underlying motif. According to Volkan, when victims of trauma do not have a chance to fully grieve their losses, they pass on a part of their wounded selves and the tasks of unfinished grief to subsequent generations. The unfinished psychological tasks of previous generations appear in present generations in the form of what Volkan calls “linking object or phenomenon.” The linking object or phenomenon serves as a point of connection between past and present generations’ process of mourning. Volkan’s theory illumines the parallel motif of transgenerational transmission of trauma in the Mesopotamian cultic laments, particularly, the balag-laments and the biblical psalms that exhibit Israel’s national calamities. In the balag-laments, the literary unit of pacifying the heart of raging deities (“the heart pacification unit”) serves as the central part of the balag-laments in the cultic context that aims to prevent a nation’s potential destruction (Mark Cohen and Uri Gabbay). This central unit continued to appear in the transmission of the balag-laments from the Old Babylonian period to the first millennium BCE (most notably in the Nineveh Catalogue). From the perspective of Volkan’s theory, I suggest that the cultic practice of pacifying divine wrath across generations may function as a “linking phenomenon,” through which later generations of the balag-laments recalled an older disaster and remembered the ancestors who recited the same types of lament. Building on this evidence, this study examines a parallel phenomenon between biblical laments belonging to the Elohistic Psalter and the balag-laments in terms of their cardinal theme of pacifying divine wrath. To this end, I first point out that the biblical psalms expressing Israel’s national disaster, i.e., Pss 44; 60; 74; 79; 80; 83; 89, most frequently appear in the Elohistic Psalter. I then lay out evidence from the aforementioned psalms that include the language of appeasing raging deities found in 60:3; 74:1; 79:5; 80:5; 89:39 in its close relationship to the expression of divine rejection appearing in 44:10, 24; 60:3, 12; 74:1; 89:39, as well as the idea of uncertain duration of divine wrath found in 74:1; 79:5; 80:5; 89:47. I argue that the high concentration of linguistic and thematic references regarding divine wrath in the Elohistic Psalter suggests a continued cultic practice of pacifying divine wrath over generations. This survey concludes that the ancient practice of placating divine wrath and remembering national tragedies embodies the enduring impact of older generations’ trauma on a cultic community of later generations.

Within patriarchal hermeneutics of Marian teaching based on essentialist notions of women, it appears that the Magnificat in Luke 1:46-55 has not been taken seriously enough in the past to account for its complex, multi-functional, counter-cultural and counter-political aspect of the text. Contrary to a spiritualized view of the text, it functions as a lens through which a contemporary audience can see into the wider Lucan genealogy in the Lucan community’s struggle to survive as a group of religious people in a controversial time of persecution and oppression by the Roman Empire and ultimately the contains practical implications. With this in mind, the paper presents a prophetic-critical reading of the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55), which explores the complexity of the first century Lucan world in relation to the careful use of various literary strategies employed by the implied author. First, it starts by suggesting a possible Jewish propaganda, only to conclude that there appears to be a Lucan rhetoric that uses ambiguity of addressing both Jewish and Hellenistic audience for a greater purpose of world-wide evangelism that includes practical means of helping the poor.

The Hebrew word na‘ar has traditionally been understood in terms of ‘youthfulness’. Recently, however, scholars have focused on the social position of its referent, taking it as designating a social status rather than age. Therefore, the basic meaning of na‘ar has been variously defined as ‘a servant’, ‘an aristocratic youth’, ‘a dependent without his father’s protection’, etc. In this type of study, the meaning of the word is determined through a close reading of the context in which it is used. Though the context offers valuable information regarding the meaning of the word, the semantics of a word cannot be decided mainly by the content of the contextual information. This is due in part to the fact that the characters of the stories who are referred to as na‘ar are extremely diverse in their social standing. In some cases, the word seems to have almost the same meaning as ‘ebed ‘slave, servant’ or yeled ‘child’. In fact, na‘ar sometimes appears side-by-side with or replaces these words. However, an examination of pertinent biblical passages shows that na‘ar cannot simply be taken as a synonym of either ‘ebed or yeled. Each of them shows different distribution in morphological combination with a definite article, a pronominal suffix, or a modifying noun phrase. In addition, each of them has its own syntagmatic relations with other constituents in the clause as well as paradigmatic relations with respective antonyms and words otherwise related to it. The lexeme ‘ebed, basically a word that expresses dependency or subservience, is often used in combination with the second-person pronoun to refer to the speaker as a show of deference for the addressee, while yeled often refers to a very young child, with an emphasis on the parent-child relationship. Na‘ar is an inclusive term that signifies youthfulness as it has traditionally been perceived, though the range of ages of the referent is much broader than that of ‘a child’ or ‘a boy’. Sometimes na‘ar occupies slots where ‘ebed is appropriate. In fact, a word that refers to young people may come to refer to a person of low status in its historical development. Notably, however, na‘ar is restricted to the servant who is not old enough to be called zāqēn in the biblical narrative. By distinguishing linguistically between the core meaning of a word and its contextual connotations, we can avoid forcing a social status or situation into the meaning of the word.

By the end of the first century, the eschatological urgency of the early Jesus movement had begun to wane. Early Christians continued to expect Jesus’ return in the clouds (e.g. Rev 1:7; 14:14; Acts 1:9–11), but their writings began to exhibit less concern for the coming eschaton and more for their relationships in the current world. As a result, many formative Christian communities participated in debates about the degree to which Christ’s death and resurrection transformed the moral and ethical status of human embodiment, provoking a great deal of interest in the moral and ethical valuations of marriage, procreation, and child rearing. Thus, the pseudonymous author of the First Epistle to Timothy, writing at least a generation after the death of Paul, indelibly altered the conception of women, children, and families in the New Testament Pauline canon. Whereas the undisputed epistles are ambivalent about the value of marriage and procreation, the author of 1 Timothy sought to limit the public role and status that some women had apparently attained in early Pauline communities, insisting that no woman should “teach or hold authority over a man” (1 Tim. 2:12; NRSV). The same author infamously tied a woman’s hope for salvation to her “natural” purpose: bearing and raising children (1 Tim. 2:15). Despite the presence of ostensibly similar claims in Paul’s Corinthian correspondence (e.g. 1 Cor 11:2ff, 2 Cor 11:3), the creation discourse of 1 Timothy assumes a fundamentally different relationship between humanity’s mythic forebearers and a properly ordered society than do any of the undisputed epistles. With these issues in mind, this paper analyzes the discursive mechanisms by which the author of 1 Timothy translated extant Jewish and Roman conceptions of women and the household into the a uniquely Christian idiom. I argue that whereas the undisputed epistles exhort a social ethic grounded in the future eschatological kingdom of the parousia, the authors of the deutero-Pauline epistles reinscribed traditional patriarchal hierarchies in a new Christian idiom that looked back to Genesis and “natural” social models—rather than forward to the parousia—as the ideal basis of social order.

The parallels between 1Sam 14:47-48.52 and 2Sam 8:11-12.15* have long been noted (e.g. Budde 1902). However, their relation is still debated: it has been argued, that the list of Saul’s wars was written in analogy to the wars of David (Stoebe 1973; Stolz 1981; Bezzel 2015) or vice versa, that the praise of Saul was later added to the story of David (Dietrich 2015). Finally it has been estimated, that both lists were the product of the same redactor (Klein 2002). This paper will reevaluate these complicated literary problems by taking into account its larger context: the similarities of 2Sam 8:3-5.7-11* (par. 1Chr 18:3-5.7-11*) with battle reports by Shalmaneser III fighting against a Syrian coalition in 849 BCE demonstrate that the text reflects the setting of the 9th century BCE. However it does not refer to a historical event, but should be understood as an ideological text ascribing the obviously exaggerated victory of Shalmaneser III over Adad-Idri to David fighting Hǎdad’ezer, king of Zoba. Notes about victories over other nations such as the Philistines (2Sam 8:1), Moab (2Sam 8:2) and Edom (2Sam 8:13-14*) where added later to this text. The phenomenon of envisioning the power of one king compared to another was still present in later times: The (dtr?) redactor emphasizes, that Saul successfully fought against all his enemies on every side (1Sam 14:47-48.52). Similarly a later note in 2Sam 8:11*.12.15 stresses the victory of David over Moab, Ammon, Edom, Zoba, the Philistines and Amalek.

This presentation principally focuses on the term hammašḥît, formed on the root šḥt with the base meaning ‘destroy’. Hammašḥit is a m.s. hiphil participle to which the definite article has been attached. Accordingly, it can acquire a substantive status; Thus,‘the one who causes destruction’,‘the one who destroys’,‘the destroyer’. In Exod 12:23 hammašḥît plays an important role in the execution of the last plague of Egypt as YHWH’s faithful escort when he travels through the land. Other related beings are the šĕnê hammalʾākim ‘the two messengers’ who, after entering Sodom and Gomorrah, tell Lot that mašḥitîm ʾănaḥnû ʾet-hammāqôm, ‘we are about to destroy this place’ (Gen 19:1, 13). Although hammašḥit does not appear, this divine duo certainly acquires hammašḥit status. The same may be said of the hammalʾāk hammašḥit, ‘the messenger ready to destroy’ in 2 Sam 24:16 and 1 Chr 21:15. A profile of hammašḥît is developed based on the following analogy: just as YHWH had a śar ‘commander’ over his ṣĕbāʾ ‘army’ (Josh 5:14) and David had Joab as a śar ‘commander’ of haṣṣĕbāʾ ‘the army’ (1 Kgs 11:5), so there appears to be the same kind of correspondence between YHWH’s hammašḥît and the Philistines’ hammašḥît in 1 Sam 13:17. The one difficulty is, of course, the assumption that YHWH only had one hammašḥît while the Philistines had so many they could be split into šĕlošāh roʾšîm ‘three companies’. This perceived lack of correspondence is solved in two ways. First, 1 Sam 14:15 clearly indicates that hammašḥît is a collective noun. Here the term is combined with a 3m.p. verb hammašḥît ḥārdû, lit. ‘The destroyer they trembled, ’ that NRSV translates as ‘the raiders trembled’. Second, it is likely that YHWH’s hammašḥît in Exod 12:23 is also a collective noun where it refers to a ‘strike force’ of divine beings that assist in the spread of the plague. Subsequently, when YHWH personally dispatches the hammalʾāk hammašḥit, he does so not as an individual, but as the leader of a company of hamašḥit whose militia is about to charge Jerusalem with an onslaught of deber ‘plague’. This means the malʾāk and his cohort are in fact a group of ʾēls. The malʾāk is none other than YHWH’s śar ‘commander’ who leads a roʾšîm drawn from the ṣĕbāʾ-yhwh. Consequently, hammašḥit is but one example of an energized ʾĕlohîm collective wherein ʾĕlohîm refers to a cluster of otherwise anonymous ʾēls, which are known to accompany and assist the leading deity of their membership, YHWH.

When Jael drives her tent-peg through Sisera’s head she reverses gender roles and upends expectations of who is dangerous (this time, a woman) and who is vulnerable (the warrior who is her victim). Among the women of the Hebrew Bible she is one of very few who perpetrate violence rather than having it inflicted upon her. This violent heroine is celebrated within the text, but can be a somewhat ambivalent figure for many feminists. It is hard to know how to read Jael. Is the one who is “blessed among women” also a champion of women who suffer from violence? Does her story overturn patriarchal gender hierarchies, or subtly reinforce them? This paper will explore these questions by applying the concepts of hegemonic masculinity, as proposed and developed by Raewyn Connell, and female masculinity, as introduced by Jack Halberstam, to an analysis of Jael’s story Judges 4 and 5. While there has been recently been rapid development in studies of men and masculinity in the Hebrew Bible, as evidenced by the publications of three edited volumes, five monographs, and numerous additional articles in the past seven years, there has been inadequate attention to the roles of female characters in biblical constructions of masculinity. Particularly striking is the absence of attention to texts featuring female killers, since masculinity is so central to the plots of these stories. Their depictions of women wielding violence against men present a reversal of the Hebrew Bible’s gendered norms. To quote Harold C. Washington, in the Hebrew Bible “a capacity for violence is synonymous with manliness… violence against a feminine object, above all, consolidates masculine identity.” This paper will address this gap in current work by contributing an analysis of how masculinity is constructed, particularly through the character of Jael, in Judges 4 and 5. It is my hope that this paper will demonstrate how expanding the study of biblical masculinity beyond men can contribute to current discussions about constructions of masculinity in the Hebrew Bible. Ultimately, I argue, both versions of her story reinscribe the very gender hierarchy her violence defies. The older poetic account in Judges 5 celebrates military conquest through images of sexual assault, reinforcing the cultural assumption that rape is the prerogative of victorious warriors. Judges 4 ridicules men who evade battle, thereby perpetuating cultural associations between violence and masculinity. In both texts Jael’s violence appears as a useful aberration, a departure from gender norms that can be employed to undermine male characters and ultimately reinforce those very norms.

(no abstract)

The many private associations that populated the Mediterranean—occupational guilds, diasporic associations, cultic associations, neighborhood clubs, and collegia domestica—constituted social networks that generated social capital for members and created opportunities and contacts for members that they could not have apart from membership. Seen in this way, members are ‘nodes’ related to one another, usually in multiple ways—by familial relationships, place of origin, occupation, neighborhood, cultic devotion, patronage, material relationships, etc. It is also at this sub-urban, local level that the diffusion of elective cults occurred and it is the mechanisms of diffusion with which this paper is concerned. Diffusion occurred through the creation of network linkages between associations which allowed the flow of information, influence, social power, and which facilitated the propagation of elective cults. The paper will propose theoretical models borrowed from epidemiology and the spread of infections to think about how elective cults moved within urban social networks.

In order to address the complexity of intertextuality, one must reckon with pluriform—complementary, supplementary, and contradictory—instantiations of a tradition which continue to organically evolve in both oral and written form. To work in the frontiers of intertextuality, one must do away with the ideal form and the cut-and-paste copyist alike. One must disabuse scholarship of the notion that texts existed apart from the context of the human mind. This paper proposes a methodology that employs the insights of the cognitive linguistic notion (per Halliday) of “register,” which will allow for a more inductive approach to form criticism, while freeing source criticism from what can often be simple verbal comparison. Furthermore, this methodology will eschew linear models of tradition criticism and arrival at one which sees written texts as durable iterations of a simultaneously unified and diverse tradition. Cognitive linguistics can be used to broaden the notion of tradition to be the interrelated web of ideas and words that are employed in similar situations (the field of discourse) for similar purposes (the mode of discourse). An attempt will be made to translate the traditional concerns of biblical scholars and the methods they employ into the framework of cognitive linguistics and vice versa. This paper will concern itself with creation, a tradition of sufficient duration and complexity to necessitate this new approach, given that iterations of this tradition can be found in the Pentateuch, Prophets, Psalms, Wisdom, and Apocalyptic. Methodological insights will be critically appropriated from a number of scholars (Sandmel, Hays, Fishbane, Zakovitch, Sarna, Leonard, Sommer, Reynolds, Beentjes, etc.) who have worked on intertextuality, source criticism, midrash, tradition criticism, and textual production.

Joshua was not invented in the Persian period, but his role and functions were significantly augmented. The Persian period scribes inherited "Joshua the leader of Israel, successor of Moses" from the late 7th and 6th centuries BCE. They added the functions "prophet", "teacher of Tora", "allocator of its land to Israel" and "servant of the Lord". The contribution of the Hellenistic period to the biblical persona of Joshua is minimal.

The sudden seeming break in subject matter between vv. 1-6 and vv. 7-10 presents a major difficulty for the interpretation of Psalm 19. While many scholars posit that the disruption shows that the Psalm resulted from the redaction of two originally distinct compositions, others—not necessarily discounting such claims—also say that the Psalm presents a coherent whole in its current form. This presentation develops the latter claim, arguing that an implicit cognitive metaphor forms the basis for understanding the whole of Psalm 19 as a unity. The metaphor links the schema of worship described in vv. 1-7 to a reality that occurs in the Psalm’s performance: the worshiping heavens in vv. 1-4a map onto either a worshiping congregation reciting the Psalm or an individual reader of the Psalm, while the sun in vv. 4b-6 maps onto God’s law, presented as transforming the Psalm’s reciters and possibly physically embodied in the congregation’s midst. Thus Psalm 19 presents a metaphorical picture that in its recitation embodies the reality it depicts, connecting the enlightened heavens’ wordless praise of God either to an individual enlightened by the law who praises God with words in the Psalm’s recitation or to a similarly enlightened congregation doing the same, possibly at the same time as the law is made physically present. In so doing, Psalm 19 invites its readers into a new reality opened by the metaphor: they in their praise of their creator join the heavenly worship described in the Psalm.

Likely copied in Syria, Codex Bezae (D/d 05 Cambridge University Library Nn. 2.41), was gifted to Cambridge by Protestant Reformer, biblical critic, and successor to Calvin Theodore Beza. Beza himself came into possession of the manuscript after its removal during the sack of Lyons (1562), its location after an earlier journey from Berytus to “the West” some seven hundred years earlier, probably as a refugee (or as booty) from an earlier war. This manuscript’s experience of theft, appropriation, re-interpretation, and re-use will serve as an opportunity for reflecting on the manufacture of sacred status for texts and the objects that preserve them within on-going cycles of preservation, destruction, and plunder.

Many scholars take Luke’s use of the name Saul as evidence that it belonged to the Historical Paul, often identifying one or the other as his nickname. Reading the narrative of Acts as emulating certain literary models, however, offers a more credible solution. In this paper, I argue that the use of the name Saul for Paul can be read as a Lukan innovation that communicates the consequence of opposition to the early Christian movement. Luke initially characterizes Paul, calling him “Saul,” as a God-fighter who persecutes the early church and even Jesus himself (whom Luke identifies as the Son of God and the son of David). This characterization can be read as modeled on both King Saul – Israel’s first king who persecuted David (!) – and Pentheus from Euripides’ Bacchae, the archetypal god-fighter who persecuted Dionysus, the son of Zeus. Both Pentheus and Luke’s Saul are confronted by the divine offspring they opposed. In this way, readers of Acts with the necessary cultural competence can interpret opposition to the early Christian movement as comparable to Pentheus’s opposition to the cult of Dionysus. This appeal to the Bacchae as a second literary model helps my reading avoid a mistake of similar interpretations, dating to the early church, of the name Saul as a reference to King Saul: Saul remains “Saul” after the Damascus Road experience in order to demonstrate the appropriate response of one found to be a god-fighter (see Acts 9:19b–30), emulating Pentheus’s model. Saul’s identity, and so his name, then changes in Acts 13. No longer the (former) persecutor of the church, “Paul” is the herald of Christ to Judeans and Gentiles alike.

*

Quite a few articles on the potential Egyptian background to Genesis 1 and 2 have been published over the last decades, and though many still consider a Babylonian background the most likely, it has now been demonstrated that Genesis 1 and 2 makes just as much sense as an appropriation of and polemic against Egyptian traditions. The purpose of this paper is to add some observations on a relatively neglected point for comparison between the Egyptian and Biblical texts. In the Egyptian texts mankind shares in the same divine essence as the created gods, occupies the highest rank in the created order, and is the special object of the creator-god’s provision and compassion. The purpose of creating man was to honor and worship the creator-god by procreation and sustainment of world order, and though there arguably is a hierarchical focus on the king in the early texts, other texts suggest that a process of democratization or diffusion of the king’s privileges took place from the First Intermediate Period and onwards stressing the democratic and equalitarian implications for Egyptian society. Though the standards of conduct implied by such an understanding of man’s intrinsic worth was rarely acknowledged, let alone met, such a standard nevertheless stands as a powerful ideal that, given the texts’ popularity, informed the community’s social structures and beliefs thereby safeguarding the value of the individual from government overreach. The Egyptian texts invite us to be cautious in using Mesopotamian creation texts as a pretext for determining the date of composition of the Biblical account. The similarities between the Egyptian and Biblical texts suggest that the author(s) and tradents of the creation traditions of Genesis was well aware of or at least shared the conception of man’s createdness with the Egyptians.

The Acts of Thecla 4:8 describes Thecla in an arena, waiting to be martyred and devoured by beasts when "a ferocious lioness ran toward her then laid down at her feet." The lioness goes on to defend Thecla from other beasts, which many commentators see as an allusion to Daniel 6. I argue that this event is only a small example of the influence of Daniel on the Acts of Thecla and that, far from an isolated allusion, it is part of a larger structuring schema derived from the Danielic court-tales. The Acts of Thecla (hereafter abbreviated ATh) is organized around two trials of the protagonist - one by fire and one by beasts. The two episodes are of differing origins yet were compiled and circulated as a unit toward the end of the second century. Consequently, ATh is a composite document replete with editing seams and awkward transitions. Despite their differing origins and tendencies in genre, when brought together, the episodes repeat the elements of the protagonist's trial, perseverance of faith, and deliverance. What narrative purpose does this composite literary unit accomplish? Many scholars, such as Elisabeth Esch-Wermeling, have questioned the necessity of duplicating these narrative features in the final editing and proposed that the editor preserved two similar but disparate Thecla traditions, making little effort to lend an overarching structure or narrative flow to the document. While editing seams and awkward transitions remain, I argue that, the final layer of editing in ATh draws particularly on Daniel 3 and 6 for structuring the two episodes. When the structure of ATh is compared with structural studies of the court-tales, such as those by John J. Collins, similarities abound, including a propensity for repeated structures. The protagonists begin in a prosperous state, are then endangered, condemned, then miraculously delivered, after which they gain positive recognition from their former persecutors, and are exalted to positions of honor. In addition to these structural similarities, ATh shares common language, imagery, and motifs with Daniel 3 and 6 - most notably death sentences involving fire and lions and deliverance from those threats. There is a precedent for drawing upon these two particular tales from Daniel. Jan Willem van Henten has demonstrated that early on in Christian literature, Daniel 3 and 6 were employed as exempla in conversations about persecution. The connections between Thecla and Daniel were also born out in the later artistic portrayals of Thecla which frequently depicted her beside Daniel and his companions or with Danielic-like imagery. While these later artistic connections have been well-recognized, conversations of Danielic material in ATh itself are typically isolated to the allusion with which I began. This oversight has caused scholars to miss the way in which Daniel 3 and 6 and their contemporary usage in early Christian circles provides a rationale for the narrative positioning of the two trial episodes in ATh.

Samoans enjoy fāgogo, the art of Samoan storytelling. It involves mythical encounters between mortal heroes and immortal legends; existing in a space where the impossible becomes possible. A space where spirits roam, and animals possess human-like qualities. A space where animals speak and have conversations with humans, and in some stories, animals have relations with humans. Such ancient tales spring to life through talanoa. Talanoa is a common term in Pasefika, which denotes conversation, yet it is the confluence of three things: story, telling, and conversation. Talanoa and fāgogo go together. Because fāgogo emanates the art of talanoa, as the storyteller is careful and intentional in his/her use of language to weave together a magical description of the world of the story, not only to tell the story, but to be persuasive in doing so. As a reading method, I propose that in reading, we do not lose the magic of storytelling, and see the story for what it was written for. I propose fāgogo as a hermeneutical framework for my re-reading of the story of Eve and the Serpent as found in Gen 3:1-19 to provide an alternative reading that sees the tale in Gen 3:1-19 as a love story, in light of a well-known Samoan tale known as Sina and the Tuna (Eel). The purpose of this fāgogo reading is an attempt to draw out the implications of the story for animal studies.

Demons and monsters are inherently movable creatures: from the late second millennium BCE onward a number of demons and monsters migrate from their native Mesopotamian contexts, moving westward. These figures, most notably Humbaba, Pazuzu, and Lamashtu, may be tracked through a number of artistic representations found in surrounding regions, including the Levant. Of course, these figures do not remain static throughout their journey, instead acquiring the characteristics of the different cultural contexts wherein they are now found. This paper considers the different representations of several of these demonic figures within the context of the Levant, analyzing their artistic representations as well as the more diffuse textual evidence for them, as several demonic figures with Mesopotamian roots appear to be represented in the Hebrew Bible and other Jewish sources. As the line between demonic and divine was already thin and mutable in Mesopotamia, we see a similar flexibility to their definitions when these figures move into their new contexts. Moreover, it appears that specific Mesopotamian deities are more readily adapted for use in the Levant, as well as in Biblical contexts in particular. As deities are, generally speaking, less marginal beings than demons, the deities that do move westward, or are employed in the west in Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian sources, do so because they are already demonstrate a more flexible character and wider possible applicability and use. Through considering the ways in which these figures were represented and protected against, as well as the ways in which they changed when moving from Mesopotamia to the Levant, the underlying social context that created such differences in their representations may also be considered.

The influence of Ancient Near Eastern literature on Ezekiel is a burning issue in contemporary scholarship. Despite some major contributions in this field, there is no agreement regarding the methodological question of which of the Ancient Near Eastern literary genres could have been accessible to Ezekiel and influenced him. This presentation will evaluate the influence of Neo-Babylonian imperial propaganda reflected in the Neo-Babylonian royal inscriptions, on Ezekiel's prophecy. The presentation's first part will discuss the special characteristics of the Neo-Babylonian imperial propaganda and will demonstrate that contrary to other epic, magical and cultic texts that were kept in the palaces' or temples' archives and were accessible only to very few, the Neo-Babylonian imperial propaganda was initially addressed to non-Babylonians, especially those who were under Babylon's control. Therefore, the likelihood that these addressees were exposed to it and were influenced by it is very high. The presentation's second part will discuss the influence of the Neo-Babylonian imperial propaganda on Ezekiel 17. First, it will offer a new interpretation to the great eagle's dealings with the cedar. It will show that contrary to scholarly conventions, the eagle uprooted the entire cedar and not only plucked one of its upper sprigs. This understanding tallies with the descriptions of the Neo-Babylonian kings' actions toward the cedars of the Lebanon in the Neo-Babylonian royal inscriptions, and reflects the manner in which the Neo-Babylonian imperial propaganda was perceived by the nations under Babylon's rule; Second, it will investigate the meaning of qss and will offer a new etymology for this hapax in light of some Neo-Babylonian parallels; Third, it will examine the forced covenant between Zedekiah and Nebuchadnezzar and the reason that it was also understood to be God's covenant. In light of some theological principals known from the Priestly writings in the Pentateuch (such as the meaning of ma'al), new arguments will be introduced in order to reaffirm the conclusion that the divine wrath toward Zedekiah was a result of a violation of an oath he swore in God's name. This understanding sheds new light on the relations between Babylon and the peoples they conquered and the way in which they controlled them; Finally, it will examine the description of the future cedar's enormous shadow and will point to the Neo-Babylonian origin of this image. The offered conclusion will be that contrary to scholarly consensus regarding Ezekiel's depictions of the future leader as a puppet ruler, lacking status and authority, Ezekiel 17 depicts the future leader as an emperor, in a manner similar to the one in which the Neo-Babylonian kings were depicted in their royal inscriptions. Furthermore, the comparative study of the Neo-Babylonian royal inscriptions sheds new light on Ezekiel's perception of Israel's future international relations. The future world orders would be quite similar to the present. Empires existed in the past and will continue to exist in the future. However, unlike the past, in the future Israel will be the (Babylon-like) suzerain, and the rest of the nations will be its vassals.

The fact that Syriac is a language both in interaction with Hebrew and Greek [and Aramaic], and of literary production, represents an important challenge for theoretical and practical lexicography. In this respect, the aim of the paper is to highlight historical and methodological issues in the state of the Syriac lexicons. Two major tendencies in the history of the Syriac lexicography are examined. The first one is represented by lexicons that are either Syriac-Syriac or Syriac-Arabic oriented. The second tendency is connected with more recent lexicons (from the nineteenth century on) where one can detect a certain influence of Biblical studies and especially Hebrew lexicography. At least three methodological issues in the current state of Syriac lexicons can be highlighted. First, the layout and structure of these lexicons reflect very little of the insights provided by contextual analysis, semantic research and dictionary criticism. Even the most recent dictionaries for learning purposes follow the methods developed mainly by Brockelman and Smith. Second, the semantic model(s) underlying available Syriac dictionaries are either outdated, or represent a quite narrow version of what modern linguistics has to offer to Syriac lexicography [contextual information/definitions vs. glosses and the like] Third, the complexities arising from the NT (Greek/Syriac) and OT (Hebrew/Aramaic/Syriac) Peshitta scholarship are not always taken into account. The paper proposes a method of establishing the corpora and organising entries by paying special attention to methodological issues connected with the history of words and their context(s) of usage.

The protection of vulnerable members of a community, such as orphans and widows, is a widespread theme in ancient Near Eastern literature. It is presented as the will of the gods, the virtue of kings, and the duty of the public not to mistreat these people. The theme is not only expressed in genres of Egypt and Mesopotamia, but also in Ugaritic texts, and ancient Hebrew writings. Some scholars even find it in the lines of the controversial Qeiyafa ostracon. The Kirta epic from Ugarit exemplifies how the theme is used as part of a rhetorical ploy. Yassib, Kirta’s son, wants his father’s throne, and accuses him of failing in his royal duties, which renders him unfit to continue his rule. Amongst other things, Yassib accuses Kirta of not judging the case of the widow and the wretched, and not taking care of the needs of the orphan and the widow. An equally interesting case where the theme is employed to good effect, appears in the Phoenician inscription on the sarcophagus of Eshmunazar II. In this inscription, the deceased king addresses prospective tomb robbers, and refers to himself twice as an orphaned son of a widow (lines 3 and 13). These references flank the part of the inscription where the king prohibits anyone from opening his sarcophagus in search of grave goods, and pronounces curses on those who would ignore his royal command. Scholars in the past have interpreted Eshmunazar’s self-description as an orphan literally, and have taken it to imply that he inherited the throne of Sidon as a fatherless child. The proposed paper, however, argues that the image of Eshmunazar’s as an orphaned son of a widow forms part of the inscription’s rhetorical endeavour to persuade the addressees not to disturb the king’s grave.

Computational methods offer many possibilities of extending the tools of textual criticism. This presentation explores two new methods: spatial-temporal research and the calculation of palaeographical proximity. As a test case, the many variants (readings, translations, and conjectural emendations) of Acts 2:9 are chosen. These variants will be analysed by means of interactive spatial-temporal visualisations, and by means of an algorithm for measuring palaeographical proximity between sets of variant readings. The two main two research questions are the following: 1. do these types of research indeed extend the analytical tools for studying variant readings? 2. do they offer better insights for the discussion of individual units of variation?

The paper will differentiate between two modes of how biblical texts were re-used within and outside the Hebrew Bible: as riddle which has to be interpreted and as a revelatory source which gives (direct) access to the divine will. Examples are taken from the book of Isaiah. Here, the paper will focus on texts in Isa 5–11, especially 8:11–15, and their use in Isa 28–31, the book of Daniel, and in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

In Luke 4, which emphasizes Jesus’ claims that he fulfills specific promises from the ‘book’ of Isaiah, Jesus is portrayed as reading from a scroll and teaching those assembled in a synagogue on the Sabbath. Many scholars of both the New Testament (e.g., François Bovon) and early Judaism (e.g., Asher Finkel) have taken these narrative movements as normative reading practices within such institutions and as proof for an early date for some form of Haftarot practice, while others have rejected it entirely as anachronistic (e.g., Howard Clark Kee). However, given the aforementioned emphasis of the passage and Luke’s purported non-Jewish tendenz, we have reason to test such assumptions. This paper will bring Luke 4 into conversation with the Theodotus Inscription (CIJ 2.1404), Josephus, Philo, and the Damascus Document regarding Jewish reading practices for sacred texts. In terms of material culture, the grooved podium at Magdala is a potential lectern, and the first-century synagogues of both Masada and Gamla may have included purpose-built repositories for scrolls. Finally, the burgeoning discipline of material philology has opened new avenues of studying the usage of extant first-century scriptural manuscripts. These avenues of inquiry will inform the discussion regarding the potential of ritually normative reading practices, the purity of sacred texts and spaces, and Jesus’ own exegetical and pedagogical methods during this axial time in scriptural and synagogue development. I will argue that some of what is recorded—such as the dialogical nature of the Sabbath teaching—should be considered veridical from a historical standpoint, other elements—such as the choreographic cues of sitting and standing—should be questioned as normative practices at this time, and still others—such as the reading of prophets in synagogues—are too ambiguous to draw firm conclusions in relation to the recorded actions of Jesus in this institutional setting.

Despite important work on the reading and interpretation of 4QJosh-a Frg. 1 done by Eugene Ulrich, Alexander Rofé, Ed Noort, Heinz-Josef Fabry, Kristin De Troyer, Michaël van der Meer, and Emanuel Tov, among others, there remain substantial questions to be resolved with regard to this fragment of a largely lost edition of the book of Joshua from Qumran. Essentially, there is still no consensus as to what scene is depicted at all. Building on the work of the aforementioned scholars, especially the approaches of van der Meer and Tov, as well as on my own analysis given in VTSup 161, and dealing with a number of convoluted epigraphical and philological questions, I will argue that 4QJosh-a Frg. 1 relates a Torah reading at the Gilgal campsite, that is, only after the Israelites completed crossing the Jordan.

The ancient settlement of Ancyra became a polis in the course of the foundation of the province Galatia around 25 BC. It was not only the most important city in the region but also the seat of the province governor. In the region, it was the administrational centre of a large territory consisting mainly of villages. A Christian congregation is traceable at least from the early 3rd century AD on. In this paper, I will analyse when and how Christians became visible in civic life. How did Christian life and self-expression in the city differ from that in the surrounding villages? Which forms of contact to Christian congregations in other places inside and outside Galatia can we find? Using mainly early Christian inscriptions from Ancyra, the paper aims to get a grasp of the lives of ordinary Christians in this Galatian city.

The last thirty years of NT studies has witnessed a rebirth of interest in the questions surrounding the complex relationship between early Christianity and ancient Greek philosophy, an interest both reflected and embodied in the work of scholars such as (e.g.) Malherbe, Meeks, Sterling and Engberg-Pederson. Over roughly the same period, and due in no small part to the influence of Hengel in Germany and of Hurtado and Bauckham in the United Kingdom, we have also seen a major resurgence of interest in the historical and theological questions surrounding the origins and contours of NT christology. Little explicit dialogue, however, has occurred between these two movements. Two principal factors likely explain this. (1) On the one hand, the philosophical studies are rarely concerned with the particular historical (and theological) questions surrounding the rise of christology (2) while, on the other hand, most studies of NT christology now assume that Greco-Roman traditions played little if any role in the rise of christology. In this vein, not only have too many NT scholars treated ancient Jewish monotheism and early christology as though they were discrete and impermeable entities, but they have simply failed to appreciate the significance of the use of ‘prepositional metaphysics’ in four of the most important christological texts in all of the New Testament. As several philosophical studies have shown (esp. Sterling and Cox), the consistent christological language of ‘by/through whom’ in John 1.3 (and 1.10); 1 Corinthians 8.6; Colossians 1.15–20 and Hebrews 1.2 clearly reflects the influence of philosophical intermediary speculation articulated via “prepositional metaphysics,” a kind of cosmological and theological “shorthand.” What is more, these texts are routinely and rightly thought to reflect even earlier christological traditions in which Jesus is portrayed as having an integral role in the creation of the kosmos, precisely the activity which most clearly demarcates the “unique divine identity” in the Jewish tradition. In this connection, it is extremely unlikely to be coincidental that precisely the four texts in the New Testament which so clearly include Jesus within the “unique divine identity” do so via the use of prepositional metaphysics. Hereby, we see that these four christological traditions attest to still-earlier christological reflection in which, having so thoroughly and unambiguously included Jesus within “the unique divine identity,” the prepositional metaphysics of the philosophical traditions were found useful in expressing a distinction within that divine identity. In other words, the presence of prepositional metaphysics in John 1.3; 1 Corinthians 8.6; Colossians 1.15–20 and Hebrews 1.2 demonstrates that at least as early as Paul (1 Cor. 8.6) and probably earlier Jewish Christians were already utilizing certain conceptual features of the Greek philosophical tradition so as more precisely to expound their “christological monotheism,” a fact which strongly militates against any over-simplistic historical narrative in which early Jewish christology was much later polluted (and obfuscated) by the importation of Greek metaphysical categories.

This study reads Proverbs 13:23 in conversation with the contemporary conceptualisation of trade approaches namely fair trade and free trade. The focus of the study shall be the East African region, though for purposes of illustrations, exampled shall be drawn from other Sub-saharan countries. The study attempts to answer the following questions: who are the poor in the text and its context? What is justice in the text and its context? How should the biblical understanding of these concepts and the concept of economic justice inform responses to Africa’s poverty? In this study, the assumptions made are that, African has been a victim of socio-economic and political injustices of the west, and that Africans are agents of their own poverty. The study takes a hermeneutical approach and multidisciplinary, drawing examples from the social sciences.

This paper addresses a salient issue pertaining to race, class, and gender in the book of Genesis touching on divine communication with and bestowal of status to those outside the line of Abraham. The call of Abraham, followed by the confirmation of the promise made to him to his offspring (זֶרַע) through the line of Isaac and Jacob, is a defining fact connected with the Hebrew Bible. The significance of Abraham is also evidenced by relatively how much “ink” is given to him. And yet, in Genesis, the God of Abraham is hardly parochial or male-exclusive in his generosity or choice. The paper presents the following in support of this thesis. 1. Abraham’s call envisaged blessing to all nations (Gen 12:3; 22:18). This finds relevance later in the Hebrew canon (see Psa 47:9), particularly in the latter prophets. It also gets significant attention in the New Testament (Acts 3:25; Rom 15:8-10; Gal 3:8) and is central to Christian theology. 2. Divine generosity and election as found in Genesis are not limited by race and extend outside of the line of Abraham. To begin with, one may consider the divine dialogs with Cain. Secondly, it sets up Melkitsedeq, clearly Canaanite, whose later kin are destined in the oracle of Noah (Gen 9:25) for destruction and servitude, as a priest of ’El ‘Elyon (אֵל עֶלְיוֹן) and one whom Abram honors. Divine outreach in communication beyond the line of Abraham is also revealed by the dream communications to both a Philistine and an Aramean, albeit in connection with the preservation of Abraham and his descendant. 3. Divine direct communication also extends to women inside and outside the line of promise. God speaks with Sarah both indirectly (18:13) and then directly (18:15). Rebekah is not only able to inquire of YHWH (25:22—לִדְרֹשׁ אֶת־יְהוָה), God also answers her directly by speaking directly (25:23—וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה לָהּ) to her. 4. The most significant piece of evidence in this regard is connected to the person of Hagar: a non-Hebrew female slave. The divine appearance to and communication with Hagar is noteworthy from several points of view, not to mention the fact it happens more than once (16:7-14; 21:17-20). Only one of these is connected with direct consideration for the child that Abraham had through her. One may also note the significance given to her person, inasmuch as a place is called after the name Hagar gives it (16:13-14). 5. One might add to this argument additional evidences consisting of negative portrayals of the patriarchs relative to gentile characters (Abraham vs. Abimelek; the brothers of Joseph), or by this that a Canaanite female has more character and integrity than a patriarchal male (Judah & Tamar). The paper will argue that our notions of how patriarchialism and parochialism color the narrative of Genesis ought to be tempered by the presence of these anomalous pieces of evidence.

The classical analysis of ‘or’-constructions, introduced by Grice (1989) and Horn (1972), is based on truth-conditional semantics. It assumes that ‘or’ has a linguistically encoded inclusive meaning, namely that at least one (and possibly all) of the alternatives are true, and a predominantly exclusive reading, whereby not only at least, but also at most one alternative is true, although the speaker does not know which it is. This analysis has recently been challenged by Ariel and Mauri (in press). Adopting a bottom-up usage-based approach to language, they propose that a reading of or-constructions must capture speakers' intended messages in each case. But while they have dealt mainly with spoken English, it is instructive to apply their approach to different corpora of different languages, such as biblical Hebrew. The study presented here focuses on ’o, the Hebrew equivalent of ‘or’, as a dedicated disjunctive connective (Brown, Driver & Briggs 1968; Waltke & O’Connor 1990; Joüon & Muraoka 1996), and its 319 tokens in the various genres and books of the Hebrew Old Testament, as represented in the Tiberian Masoretic version. The data were analyzed by a comparative linguistic and textual method, also taking into consideration findings from other versions of the Bible and later literature. Following Ariel and Mauri, a rich variety of readings of or-constructions has been revealed, in two of them speakers not necessarily being committed to even one of the alternatives. Providing many examples, this reanalysis contradicts the widely accepted classical analysis, seeking to propose a better understanding of or-constructions in Masoretic Biblical Hebrew.

The Greek version of Job (Septuagint-Job) that is one-sixth shorter than the MT-Job is not simply the translation of the MT Job. The author of the Septuagint-Job reorganizes and reinterprets the tradition of Job and in particular the MT-Job by contextualizing it for the broad audience in Hellenistic Alexandria. For instance, “Keren-Happuch” (42:14) in the MT-Job is replaced by the name “the Horn of Amaltheia” in the Greek version, and the Septuagint-Job avoids various names of God in the MT-Job such as El, Elohim, Shadday in the poetic dialogue (except for 12:9), but employs the term κυριος equivalent for the Tetragrammaton. The Septuagint-Job, moreover, sidesteps theologically sensitive issues by omitting and reworking passages of the MT-Job; e.g., Job in the Greek book is less antagonistic to God and God is less negative than in the MT Job. This paper, thus, will trace how characters of the protagonist Job, Job’s wife, and God in the Greek Job are changed from those in the MT Job and will explain he changed ideas and concerns in the Septuagint –Job compared to the MT-Job.

In LamLXX 2:20 God appears as a cook, but the food he is preparing is somewhat special. God is presented as cooking small late grapes. In the context, the negatively characterized process of gleaning works as a model for total destruction that leaves nothing behind. By this, the notion “a cook gleans small grapes” (2:20) turns into a cognitive metaphor for exile affecting various social groups, including those ones that used to get spare from harm. Like the notion of gleaning implies, the conception of LamLXX favors the idea of total destruction where all potentials in life are left behind. On one hand, the metaphor recalls the traditional notion of Judah as vineyard, and on the other hand it favors the conceptual idea of the process of gleaning as model for exilic devastation. LamLXX presents a new interpretation in adding further text over MT elaborating its own conception. This paper provides a small insight into my commentary on Lamentations as part of the project “Brill Commentary on the Septuagint”.

According to many scholars, Josiah’s religious reforms in the land of Judah significantly disrupted the socio-religious life of itinerant priests serving various communities throughout the Judean countryside “from Geba to Beer-sheba” (2 Kgs 23:8). Indeed, the centralization of the cult in Jerusalem and the destruction of certain altars (mizbêaḥ) and high places (bāmôt) would have effectively forced many local priests into retirement as they would be unable to fully participate in the official cult at Jerusalem (2 Kgs 23:9). If this were true, then not only would rural Judeans find themselves cut off from immediate access to clerical divination and mediation, but also non-Judeans journeying through the region who relied upon the same religious services. One place that may have been affected by these possible reforms is the southern fortress of Tamar and its accompanying cult site, which is often referred to as the ‘Edomite’ shrine. This shrine potentially presents, then, illuminating insights into some regional practices of Southern Israelite religion during the Iron Age II period. However, due to the uncertainty of when, why, by and for whom the shrine was used, and then later destroyed, scholars have been unable to determine the exact nature of the site. Therefore, in this paper, I will explore the archeological and textual evidence and argue that the site functioned as a polytheistic roadside shrine that primarily served laborers and traders passing through the crucial junction at En Hazeva. Furthermore, I will posit that the site was under Judean control up until the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem in 597 BCE. Accordingly, it will be shown how the variety of cultic objects unearthed at Tamar, including Judean and Edomite religious paraphernalia, exemplify the type of religious diversity found throughout preexilic Israel and Judah.

In this presentation, I will approach the question of the possibilities of cultural transmission between Late Bronze Age Northwest Semitic mythology and the Hebrew Bible from perspectives provided by the field of Cognitive Science of Religion. This question has received scholarly discussion since the first Ugaritic texts were discovered from the North-Syrian coast in the late 1920's. There are many textual and thematic similarities between these two text corpuses, especially in their mythology. Nevertheless, there are obvious divisions between them: Ugaritic mythological texts were written somewhere around 1400-1200 BC, and even the earliest Hebrew Bible texts originated at least six- or eight-hundred years later in a completely different cultural context. Because of both the geographical and chronological distance between these texts, one cannot simply show any straight connections between them. A better question is therefore whether the Late Bronze Age Northwest Semitic culture has influenced the Southern Levant and its mythology, the traces of which can be found in the Hebrew Bible. I will approach this question with the case study example of the Rider of the Clouds imagery in Ugaritic mythology and in the Hebrew Bible, examining the connections between the two. In this way, I will also consider questions such as what makes a mythical image and a conceptualization of divinity so adhesive to human cognition that it becomes part of the entire culture's worldview, and how do these conceptualizations tend to transmit from one culture to another?

The Gospel of Mark stands out uniquely from the other gospels in its understanding and presentation of Jesus’ kingship. Matthew, Luke, and John’s Gospel positively assign Jesus the title “king” (βασιλεύς) and in fact such a status remains integral to each gospel’s characterisation of Jesus (e.g. Davidic typology in Matthew and prophecy in Luke.) and his mission (e.g. Lk. 19:38; Jn. 18:37). Mark’s gospel is strikingly variant, missing opportune moments to align Jesus and other positive characters (e.g. David) with royal themes, and especially the title βασιλεύς. Mark utilises the term βασιλεύς twelve times in three clustered units (Mk 6:14, 22, 25, 26, 27 // 13:9 // 15:2, 9, 12, 18, 26, 32) and each are overtly negative. The episode of John’s martyrdom (6:14-29), for example, has Mark assigning the title βασιλεύς to Herod, who in the other gospels and historical fact retained only the title of “tetrarch”. Mark’s use here may have intended to marry Herod’s tyrannical behaviour to the ideas associated with kingship at the time of Mark’s writing. More pointedly, from Julius Vindex’s revolt against Nero (c. March 68CE) to 73CE (Vespasian’s fourth year in power), the political concept of libertas (“liberty”) had been revived. Political libertas had its origins in that transitional period when Lucius Junius Brutus had exiled Rome’s last king, Tarquinius Superbus, and initiated the Republic. In Roman memory, libertas meant Rome’s “liberation” from kingship (regnum) and was inextricably tied to the L. Brutus narrative. As evidenced in both the literary sources and numismatic material, the rebellion faction of Vindex and Galba (Mar. - 9 June 68CE) uniquely utilised political libertas, associating Nero with the kingship/tyranny motif of King Tarquin and L. Brutus’ subsequent exiling (and later Cicero and Marcus Brutus with Julius Caesar). Moreover, libertas was not an isolated ideology connecting itself only to the rebel movement of Vindex and Galba in the west, but also extended to Vitellius in the north, Clodius Macer in the south, and Vespasian in the east. The ripples caused by the civil wars, and its popular libertas propaganda, reverberated throughout the empire during the years that many scholars date Mark’s gospel (68-73CE). I argue that Mark’s reticence to name Jesus βασιλεύς was influenced by the libertas memory and the lingering despotism of Nero, which would have negatively associated kingship with tyranny, thus compromising Jesus’ message received by Mark’s audience.

This paper will consider some of the methodological difficulties involved in our understanding of biblical Hebrew terms that, in contemporary translations, have come to be associated with such categories of the modern self as emotion, cognition, and mind. It is now a commonplace within historical, anthropological, and other forms of social scientific inquiry that different cultures can produce sharply differentiated accounts of the person, that is to say, that our sense of self is, in good measure, socially constructed. This understanding has yet to be incorporated into our understanding of the biblical lexicon. Part of this resistance has to do with the conservative quality of lexicographic practice, but it also relates to the peculiar position the Hebrew Bible occupies in the imagination of much critical inquiry as a source for the modern West. This paper will highlight a few examples where common translation equivalents, such as “anger,” “memory,” and “desire,” seem to fail in rendering their underlying Hebrew terms. The suggestion will be made that these failures can be partially accounted for by changing notions of the self.

Discussions of ecclesiology and environment often focus on initiatives within the polities of major denominations. Often such initiatives, rather than originating within the institutional structures of these churches, come from parachurch organizations, such as A Rocha or the Evangelical Environmental Network. Whether from within or outside of the church, typically initiatives derive from the general notion that care for creation is an appropriate endeavor for churches. Little attention is directed toward a biblical and theological analysis of the justification for viewing creation care as intrinsic to ecclesiology. Creation care is merely something some churches sometimes do. This paper will argue that a crucial aspect of the metanarrative of the Bible is the creation of human beings to be the priestly co-regents with God to extend God’s benevolence throughout creation. With the “fall,” portrayed in Genesis 3, the relationships within the God/human/other-than-human triad were corrupted. God’s restoration project, rather than constituting a rejection of the original design for creation and for the place of human beings within it, is actually a restoration of human beings to their role as priestly co-regents with God within creation. This paper will examine four major covenants within the biblical narrative—Noahic, Abrahamic, Mosaic, and the new creation in Christ—to illustrate that these covenants are framed such that they reassert and reaffirm the vocational mandate given to Adam (cf. Gen 1:26-28; 2:15). The climactic stage in covenantal progression, the new creation in Christ, will receive detailed attention, focusing on New Testament portrayals of Christ as the “new/second Adam.” The argument of the paper is that in Jesus Christ, the human vocational mandate to care for creation has been recapitulated, so that all those who are in Christ are united with Christ in the renewed human vocation to care for creation. This suggests that a significant function of the church of Jesus Christ, the spiritual descendants of the second Adam, is to engage in the renewed Adamic vocation to care for creation as was intended for the offspring of the first Adam.

In my course on the Christian Apocrypha, I have the students play a game called, "Canonical or Apocryphal Saying of Jesus? You Decide!" The game consists of ten sayings of Jesus, and students attempt to determine whether a saying is canonical (that is, from one of the four NT gospels) or apocryphal (from the Gospel of Thomas). The students who score the highest on the game receive a free book of their choice. This exercise helps students to see how difficult it is to determine whether a given saying is canonical or apocryphal on the basis of content alone, and assists in breaking down preconceptions about the "strangeness" of the Christian Apocrypha in comparison to the NT gospels.

In Genesis 31:39, Jacob defends his conduct as a shepherd, claiming that he never brought a torn animal to Laban, and then continuing with the words: ’ānōkî ’ăḥaṭṭennâ. The meaning of the verb ’ăḥaṭṭennâ, as well as the syntactic relationship between these words and the preceding colon in Gen 31:39, has generated ample debate. Scholars such as J. J. Finkelstein have commonly understood ’ăḥaṭṭennâ on the basis of the Biblical Hebrew root ḥ-ṭ-’ in the G-stem (‘to err, to miss’) and the Akkadian nouns ḫīṭu and ḫiṭītu (‘loss, damage’). This interpretation has yielded translations along the lines of, “I myself made good the loss,” i.e., I paid for the torn animal (instead of bringing it to Laban). In this paper, I point to difficulties with this and other translations. I propose a new interpretation of the word ’ăḥaṭṭennâ in this verse, based on the cognate Akkadian verb ḫuṭṭû (‘to damage, to injure’). I argue that this part of Gen 31:39 refers not to the torn animal, but to animals that Jacob might have injured accidentally. I further relate this interpretation to biblical law and cuneiform legal documents relating to herding.

The un-naming of Bathsheba in the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew is a source of interpretive confusion. On might read the mention of “the wife of Uriah” as a recognition of David’s adultery in the context of the genealogy’s embrace of scandal in naming Tamar and Rahab as ancestors of Jesus. Yet, that reading does not explain why Bathsheba is un-named in the text. This paper will argue that the un-naming of Bathsheba should be read in the context of the general trend in Jewish literature of the Second Temple period to cleanse morally ambiguity from the life of David. With respect to Bathsheba, this process begins with the book of 1 Chronicles 3 which renames Solomon’s mother Bathshua the daughter of Ammiel. Additionally, while Uriah the Hittite is mentioned in the list of David’s mighty men in 1 Chr. 22:41, there is no mention of his wife, let alone David’s various schemes against the faithful Uriah in 2 Samuel. Why then does Uriah appear in Matthew’s list while Bathsheba is removed? Rather than reading Uriah’s presence in the list as a strike against David’s morality (thereby unmasking David as adulterer), the genealogy allows the reading of the un-named Bathsheba as a bereft widow and mother of the chosen son, while David is transformed into the un-named woman’s righteous redeemer. This cleansing of David is influenced by the literature of the Second Temple period and has a lingering effect on the perception of David in the early patristic literature in which David is idealized as the righteous recipient of the messianic promise of 2 Samuel 7 and king “after [the LORD’s] own heart” (1 Sam. 13:14).

The time after the destruction of the Herodian temple in 70 C.E. and the earliest copies of the Masoretic manuscripts in the ninth century C.E. has always been regarded as a dark age of the textual history of the Hebrew Biblical text. Only very few manuscripts exist from this period and quotations of Hebrew texts in Rabbinic and Patristic literature as well as in inscriptions do not provide much evidence either. This presentation will try to reconstruct the textual history of the Hebrew text of the Bible based on the existing evidence. Despite some indications for limited textual variety, the remaining textual evidence points to a dominance proto-Masoretic biblical texts in the time for the first through the ninth century C.E. The faithful transmission of the proto-Masoretic text was achieved through procedures of textual maintenance.

This paper examines the memory of the figure of Nehemiah in 2 Maccabees. Nehemiah’s military prowess, piety, and association with the second temple made him an ideal patron for the Hasmoneans (Blenkinsopp 2009: 174-75). The common themes between narrative in 2 Maccabees and the figure of Nehemiah include the following: reform, rededication, re-establishing ancestral traditions, defending Judah against external enemies, restoring and preserving cultic purity, the legitimacy of the high priesthood, and rebuilding the homeland (Blenkinsopp 2009: 175-76). Moreover, it is significant that 2 Macc. 1:18 identifies Nehemiah, and not Zerubbabel and Jeshua, as the figure who establishes the first altar and builds the first temple. Importantly, Nehemiah resumes temple sacrifices and reignites the sacred fire after the destruction of the temple (1:19-36). As such, Nehemiah’s sacrifices and purifying fire (νέφθαρ) correspond to the culminating moment in 2 Macc. 10:1-8. Additionally, the figure of Nehemiah’s collection of books about kings, prophets, and the writings of David, and the letters of kings about votive offerings (2:13) corresponds to Judas’ collection of books lost during the war of independence (2:14). In fact, 2 Maccabees even mentions the memoirs of Nehemiah as a source (2:13). Finally, the figure of Nehemiah connects the Hasmoneans to the heroic past, namely those of Solomon and Moses, through fusing together the festival of booths, or Sukkoth, with Hanukkah.

This paper will present a syntactical study of הן clauses in Aramaic inscriptions found during archaeological excavations at Maresha compared to other Aramaic corpuses and dialects.

This paper examines the ways mythology is reflected from the inscriptions of voluntary associations, especially focusing on the inscriptions linked to the cult of Isis and to her companion Gods. Isis, as an original Egyptian Goddess, was gradually introduced to the cities of Greek and Rome, similarly her religious attributes were gradually connected to already excising religious beliefs and joined together with the indigenous Gods. For example, an aretalogy found from Maroneia in 1969 connects Isis to Greek Gods Sarapis, Helios and Selene. Furthermore in other inscriptions, Isis is separated from her Egyptian origins and given a place in Greco-Roman family tree of Gods (see e.g. Inscriptions REG 42, and RICIS 114/0202). The inscriptional materials, discussed in this paper, do not generally espouse long mythological explanations, but are more focused on the matters of the everyday life, such as: dinners or rules, or they are epitaphs. And because of this, one must accept that the nature of the evidence limits the degree which we can found mythological elements from the inscription. This, however, does not mean that there are not any mythological aspects in the writings, on the contrary, mythological elements can be read through used language, ceremonies, rules, and gifts bestowed by the benefactors and to the benefactors. This paper will analyze these reflections of mythology of Isis by asking, for example: Why are worshipers of Isis addressing themselves as blackwearers (οἱ μελανηφόροι), or how the fact that Isis was popular amongst therapeutists (θεραπευταὶ) refers to her mythology? Furthermore, the aim of this paper is to understand how the cult of Isis evolved when moving from its birthplace to new areas around the ancient Mediterranean.

The particular role that maps have played in rhetorically framing, engaging and instantiating both ancient and contemporary hegemonies, makes it difficult to ignore the persuasive power of cartographic configuration encapsulated in Luther and Calvin’s assessment that nothing can communicate the ‘truths’ of Scripture ‘better than a map’. Given this frame, in identifying the common core of maps included in sixteenth century bibles, Catherine Delano-Smith offers a provocative register for engaging the pedagogical predispositions that have rhetorically shaped cartographic refractions of the New Testament landscape (Delano-Smith, 1989). Drawing on Delano-Smith’s defining emphases, this paper ‘maps’ a trajectory that begins with the Geneva Bible and extends through contemporary ancillary supplements. It then traces more marginal manifestations in complementary textbooks, and popular instructional media. As well-iterated interpretive patterns affirm the rhetorical power of rendering authoritative texts as “mapped surfaces” (Harley 1989), attendant analysis explores the definitive pedagogical roles that maps – whether historical or contemporary, overtly ideological or scientifically ‘objective’ – have played in communicating and/or masking a prescriptively “biblical” worldview (Larsen and Benzek 2016). The paper concludes with an invitation to imagine a range of more malleable curricular models; each critically aimed at re-drawing the rhetorical map, by re-purposing the pedagogical goals for putting biblical texts on a map.

The quest to explore children or childhoods in relation to biblical texts is no longer a new one and may include as various methodological approaches as the historical situation of children, their narrative function in texts or children’s agency as receivers of tradition. Ten years after The Child in the Bible (Bunge 2008) and one year after Childhood in History (Aasgaard 2017, from the project “Tiny Voices from the past”) it is fitting to reflect on the status of this cross-disciplinary field. Rather than a general survey of what ground has been covered, I am specifically interested in the theoretical potential of reading biblical texts from a childhood studies perspective. To my knowledge, no consensus has yet been reached, neither in defining the characteristics of such a perspective, nor with regard to terminology. A first step towards such a goal would be to assess a few of the proposals presented so far, for example Julie Faith Parker’s “childist”, Reidar Aasgaard’s “childish” and Laurel Koepf-Taylor’s “child-centered” interpretations. What are the strengths of these different ways in conducting childhood studies? Is it possible to identify specific areas in need of further theorizing? In this regard, I am interested in the level of engagement with other critical theories and how it can be developed further. It is for example difficult to imagine childhood studies without feminism and yet the relationship between these traditions of scholarship include conflict and diverging interests. I therefore want to ask whether it is possible to pinpoint a specific contribution of childhood studies that goes beyond an intersectional feminist analysis. To that aim, I propose to offer a theory-oriented discussion on a few significant works, above all by the already mentioned scholars.

A peculiar feature of synagogue stories in the NT Gospels is Jesus’s ability to walk into any synagogue he wishes, uninvited, and speak – even though he is a non-resident/non-member. No other textual references to Palestinian synagogues paint a picture of unqualified free access, whether they are the town-assembly type or the association type. In rare instances when non-residents/non-members are attested in Palestinian synagogues before III CE, they are visitors using hospitality services or guests invited to town assemblies or association communal meals. This paper highlights clues about synagogue accessibility, and brings into the discussion comparative data from governing institutions in other small locales (e.g., Athenian demes and Roman vici). Stories of Jesus freely entering synagogues are best analysed from literary, not historical, perspectives – much like Luke’s stories of Paul and the synagogues. The paper concludes with some suggestions about the literary function of depicting Jesus as having free access to synagogues.

During the late Roman republic, the Kalendae Ianuariae (January 1-3) witnessed two relatively modest rites: the consuls of Rome took up their office and small gifts were distributed. During the consular inauguration ceremonies, the consuls-elect processed on foot from their homes surrounded by an entourage of lictors, equestrians, and senators to the Roman Forum and then up to the sanctuary of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, where they presided over their first meeting of the senate. On the same day, Romans more broadly prayed for an auspicious New Year and handed out small gifts to the familia (the household) and friends. The more rowdy and boisterous festivities typically associated with New Year's celebrations seemingly took place a week or so earlier during the Saturnalia, a topsy-turvy, Bakhtinian winter solstice carnival. In Late Antiquity, by contrast, while other festivals (like the Saturnalia) were targeted by imperial sanction and episcopal rhetoric, the Kalends of January not only endured but seemingly expanded, despite episcopal criticisms. The consular inauguration took on "triumphal" overtones, the consuls themselves were now carried on their curule chairs-emperors may have rode in triumphal chariots-and consular games were given on January 3. Similarly, the traditional rites become more raucous and riotous-a day to celebrate "the joys of the world and the flesh, with the din of silly and disgraceful songs, with disgraceful junketing and dances," as Augustine lamented in the early fifth century (Serm. 198.1). A generation later, Peter Chrysologus, the bishop of Ravenna, complained that "a full-fledged workshop of idols is set up… They fashion Saturn, make Jupiter, form Hercules, they even exhibit Diana with her young servants, they lead Vulcan around roaring out tales of his obscenities" (Serm. 155a). Caesarius of Arles (503-543) likewise denounced those who masquerade as "old hags and stags" (Serm. 13.5). Such merriment, "singers parading the streets in 'pagan' fashion, shouting and chanting sacrilegious songs and loading tables with food day and night," seems to have continued in Rome into the mid-eighth century (Boniface, Ep. 40/50). As the Saturnalia was steadily suppressed, it seems that its characteristic festivities were transferred to the Kalends, a holiday which endured, in part, because it was specifically protected by imperial law. As Fritz Graf has recently suggested, the Kalends with its notably non-theophoric name were more readily rendered religiously neutral, which allowed the emperor to protect it and its displays of imperial social belonging, the vota on January 2 and the games on January 3. This imperial insulation enabled the Kalends to survive and even flourish. That is, the imprimatur of imperial law blunted the force of episcopal condemnation, allowing non-Christians and Christians alike to develop the festival in a myriad of local ways. Imperial authorization fostered popular culture in the Greek east, the Latin west, and even, perhaps, Muslim North Africa.

Using Susan Sontag's classic works on Illness as Metaphor (1978) and Aids and Its Metaphors (1989) this paper will trace the ways in which a range of images (military invasion, plague etc.) are employed in relation to sensory impairment and disability in the gospels and their associated sensoria. Sontag's work alerts the interpreter to the ways in which those sensory impairments, often perceived as 'incurable', become potent carriers of socio-political commentary for the evangelists.

Scholars have long noted that the author of Hebrews frequently attempts to arouse emotions (such as fear, confidence, shame, honor) in his audience in order to steer them towards faithfulness to God. Although empathy is a recurring motif in Hebrews, there is yet a more systematic and comprehensive explication on how the author uses empathy as a form of pathos to achieve his rhetorical goals. This paper takes an interdisciplinary approach by drawing insights from modern social psychology to identify descriptions of empathy in the relevant ancient literature and to enhance our understanding of the rhetorical goal and effects of arousing empathy. We will first examine how emotions comparable to empathy are used in Greco-Roman and Jewish rhetoric contemporaneous to Hebrews, so that we may establish whether empathy is indeed a form of pathos known during that era and compare them with the author’s use of empathy. Thereafter, we will examine the passages in Hebrews that: (1) describe the empathy of Jesus, Moses, and the audience; and (2) seek to arouse the audience’s empathy, in order to understand how the author uses empathy for his rhetorical purposes. This paper demonstrates that, in line with the use of pathos in ancient rhetorical practices and the understanding of the effects of empathy in modern social psychology, the author of Hebrews arouses the affective empathy of his audience as a catalyst to induce them to help fellow believers who are suffering due to their faith in Christ. Also, Jesus and Moses are not only cited as exemplars of empathy for emulation, but Jesus’ ability to empathize is an important motivation for believers to approach him for help. These rhetorical effects are not only key to maintaining the individual’s faithfulness to God, but also to create community support for maintaining each other’s faithfulness to God in the face of pressures and opposition from the outsiders.

This paper aims to critically review the work of Ahn Byung-Mu, one of the pioneers of Korean Minjung theology, who made an enormous impact on Korean biblical scholarship. I will revisit Ahn’s interpretation of the Gospel of Mark as minjung’s story of the Jesus-event and its significance for the formation and development of Korean minjung biblical hermeneutics over the past decades. The focus on discussion will concern three core themes integral to Ahn’s minjung biblical hermeneutics: the relationship between “Jesus-event” and minjung, the Gospel of Mark as the story of minjung, and the so-called ochlos (ὄκλος)-minjung theory. In particular, I will reassess (1) Ahn’s political hermeneutics of the Jesus-event from the perspective of both Galilean minjung in the past and Korean minjung in 1970’s and 80’s; (2) Ahn’s characterization of the story of Mark as ochlos’s social memory of resistance and liberation, especially by deploying the notion of “political rumors” transmitted through oral communication, and (3) Ahn’s unique conceptualization of ochlos in Mark as a collective notion referring to the social lowly, analogous to the Korean minjung. At the end, after a brief comment of some methodological problematics in Ahn’s hermeneutics, I hope to address the enduring challenge that Ahn’s biblical hermeneutics bears on the present and future Korean biblical interpretation.

Current research on early Christ group meals puts a huge premium on the poverty-wealth gap of members, assuming that the poorer side played very little roles in provisioning meals. What has been argued or assumed throughout the centuries is that early Christ group’s communal periodic meals, such as the Lord’s Supper in Corinth, Agape meals, and etc., were basically nutritional meals where the wealthier members always had to take care of the poorer members. Such a view, however, raise a question regarding survival of the meals based on economic realities. This paper scrutinizes associations’ communal periodic meal dynamics and suggests that early communal periodic meals were run economically with minimal menu items, that is, early meals were not really nutritional based, but rather performance oriented meals that put a premium on members’ participation and proper behaviour at the table.

The so-called Homogeneous Unit Principle (HUP) proposed in the 1970s by Donald McGavran (1897–1990), the Fuller Missiologist, claims that, if church planters focused more on a linguistically, culturally, and ethnically homogeneous people, church planting and church growth can be much more effective and powerful. This paper takes issue with the implications of this church-growth theory, and it engages with the HUP based on the insights gained from a systemic functional register analysis of Eph 2:11–22.

The connecting paragraph (Jdg. 8:29-35) between the Gideon Story and the Abimelech story summarizes the sin of Israel in a Deuteronomistic formula. In particular, they are sinful of rebelling against both YHWH and Gideon. Other than this Deuteronomistic comment, many scholars does not find Deuteronomistic framework in the remaining part of the Abimelech Narrative (Jdg. 9). Some scholars attribute the conclusive comment (9:56-57), which echoes Jotham’s curse, to a Deuteronomist redaction. However, other scholars find the same theme of retribution in wisdom tradition or religious texts of other deities. In other words, the conclusive comment is not necessarily Deuteronomistic. This paper rather finds more Deuteronomistic elements hidden throughout Judges 9. For instance, the noble trees’ refusal of kingship offer hints a sin of Deuteronomistic formula. In particular, they enjoy producing their fruits to please Elohim, the plural deities (9:9, 13). This religious sin echoes Abimelech’s reliance on the silver from the Baalist temple (9:4) to support his reign. Likewise, Jotham blames the Shechemites for rebelling against Gideon in a Deuteronomistic sense of covenantal loyalty. (9:16-20, 57). This paper further finds the consensus of the trees to establish a king in the Jotham fable distinguished from the competition among trees for kingship in other ancient disputation poems. I thus hypothesize that the Jotham fable was redacted and used by the Deuteronomist(s) to possibly degrade the bloody competition for kingship in the Northern Kingdom or Babylon. In brief, the Abimelech Narrative has more elements of Deuteronomistic redaction than previous scholars suggested.

The Hellenistic Philosophical approach to ethics has been described by Nussbaum (1994) as Therapy of Desire in her influential monograph by the same name. This approach to ethics—the approach of the popular Hellenistic schools of the Epicureans and the Stoics—conceives of philosophy/reason as a cure for desires or passions. There are a number of aspects of the theory, but a central task of ethics qua ‘therapy of desire’ is to control or extirpate desires and passions. Although Nussbaum’s theory described Hellenistic philosophical texts, a number of texts from Hellenistic Judaism and early Christianity exhibit a heightened concern with control of desires and passions as essential to the ethical task. This paper will compare 4 Macc Test. XII, Philo, and the NT letter of James within the framework of Therapy of Desire. More specifically, I will look at the heightened significance of desires/passions in these texts, and trace how they are conceived of as significant to ethical practice. The paper argues that these texts exhibit a conception of ethics that is in the same discursive arena as the ancient ethical approach of therapy of desire—a discourse that can re-frame how we understand ethics in these texts. At the same time, these texts also conceive of ethics in relation to Jewish (and Christian) tradition; for example, we find a heightened concern with the 10th commandment—itself adjusted to the more generalized ‘do not desire’. Through this selection of texts, and focusing only on the control and extirpation of desire, we will trace out the various ways that desires/passions are dealt with in the texts and how they function as part of ethical practice.

Claiming Expertise: Strategies of Knowledge Making in Talmudic Traditions

In the final years of Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington’s life, he composed three Sacred Concerts (1965, 1968, 1973) that set texts from the Bible in a variety of ways. Each of these Sacred Concerts is jazz suite, an American musical genre that Ellington largely created. While some individual movements include discrete scriptural pericopae as their libretti, many other movements stitch together scriptural texts with other biblical and non-biblical material, creating an interpretive conversation among several voices. Still other movements set wholly non-biblical texts, but nevertheless reflect biblical themes, ideas, or imagery. And finally, the Sacred Concerts include purely instrumental music that is associated with a biblical text through its title or its overall position within the work. Bringing together biblical reception history and historical musicology, this paper explores Ellington’s modes of musical exegesis in the Sacred Concerts. We show how Ellington employs a range of compositional tools (e.g., instrumentation, tonal painting, harmonic and melodic structures) to convey his understanding of several biblical texts. In doing so, we situate his voice among other prominent interpreters of scripture during the late sixties and early seventies.

This paper will explore the presentation of mass violence in neo-Assyrian sources to determine whether or not the Assyrian state undertook the practice of genocide against groups in the region. Specifically, I am interested in whether the Assyrians can be understood as attempting to eliminate entire ethnic groups and, if so, how their practices of mass violence relate to the ritual of ḥērem found in various biblical sources, as well as in the Mesha Inscription. While there have been occasional attempts previously to compare ḥērem with Assyrian practices and/or uncover whether or not the Assyrians had a practice analogous to ḥērem, these have displayed various weaknesses, not least of which being a failure to engage with the interdisciplinary field of genocide studies in their efforts to categorize ancient Near Eastern practices of mass violence. Thus, this paper will take a more theoretically-grounded approach to examining this question. In addition, the paper will engage with a recent essay by Jacob Wright on urbicide in the ancient Near East to determine whether the punishment of rebellious cities should be considered a form of genocidal violence. In sum, the paper will include both a theoretical discussion and detailed examination of historical sources as part of its attempt at disentangling the relationship between neo-Assyrian mass violence and the genocidal violence described in various Levantine sources. This paper forms part of a larger research project—as coeditor of the Cambridge World History of Genocide, Vol. 1, I will author two essays on genocide in the ancient world that will continue the research that I began in a recent article on genocide in ancient Israel and 20th-century Rwanda.

The Jephthah narrative in Judges 10:17-12:7 is a fascinating tale about a Gileadite outcast who negotiates his way to power only to be brought low in the end by his negotiations. As scholars have noted, the narrative contains two episodes that are in fact variants of other biblical texts: Jephthah's recounting of Israel's past triumphs in east Jordan in 11:12-28 parallels Num 21-22 and Deut 2, and his conflict with the Ephraimites at the fords of the Jordan River in 12:1-7 finds echoes in Judg 3:26-30 and Judg 7:24-8:3. Although the direction of literary dependence in both cases is not entirely clear, neither episode is considered part of the core Jephthah traditions on which the narrative is based. This paper argues that the combination of these two episodes in the wider Jephthah story ultimately serves to highlight ambivalence about the legitimacy of Israel's east Jordan lands. On the one hand Jephthah's retelling of Israel's previous victories over Sihon the Amorite in east Jordan justifies the Gileadites presence in the region. On the other hand, Gilead's confrontation with the Ephraimites not only casts the easterners as the enemy on the other side of the Jordan but Ephraim's taunt of these people in 12:4- whatever it's precise translation - casts aspersion on Gilead as somehow less than Ephraim. Through such literary maneuvering, this DtrH composition ultimately reflects a complicated view of east Jordan in which Gilead's status somewhat mirrors the social ambiguity and alienation that characterizes Jephthah himself.

This paper investigates the nature of textual iconicity in the narrative world of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy is full of text-objects: God writes tablets, Moses writes a scroll (sēper), the king is commanded to write a scroll, and the people are to inscribe their doors and gates. Yet in each case, the importance of these objects seems to transcend their ability to communicate linguistic content. This paper applies the idea of the “icon” or the “iconicity” of texts to the scroll which Moses writes and to the song which Moses teaches to the people to better understand the non-linguistic role of these text-artifacts in Deuteronomy. The terms “icon” and “iconicity,” however, have been broadly understood in various scholarly discussions. After examining a functional use of the concept of the icon in Karel van der Toorn’s work on the iconic nature of the Torah in the Hebrew Bible and Judaism, this paper will also draw on analogies with art historical concepts of iconicity and subsequently on the notion of iconic signs in Peircian semiotics. Peirce’s theory of signs, specifically his type/token, icon/index, and image/diagram distinctions, offers both a highly specific way of understanding an icon (a sign which represents its object by means of likeness) and a larger framework through which to understand the signifying nature of text-objects as signs. A close analysis of the scroll Moses writes, and the song Moses teaches to the people in light of these three ways of thinking about iconicity shows the complex and contextually determined signifying work they do depicting YHWH’s revelation at Horeb and pointing to the mediating authority of figures like Moses and the Levites. Through these iconic texts, Deuteronomy constructs a world overflowing with materially embodied tokens of divine revelation. Even though the audience has limited access to the actual words of Moses’s scroll, divine revelation comes to resemble the material text artifacts on which revelation is inscribed. This study of textual iconicity in Deuteronomy reveals the underlying importance it places on the material embodiment of revelation in the ongoing transmission of the Horeb revelation.

We know very little about ancient Israelite sartorial practices. Few textile artefacts have been discovered in archaeological excavations. Similarly, iconographic representations of ancient Israelites’ “dressed bodies” are extremely rare. However, despite the lack of material data, the Hebrew Bible’s literary wardrobe is well-stocked. In this paper, I investigate how textualised items of dress in biblical literature are an important narrative motif that sheds light on the power relations displayed in the biblical texts, especially gender and kinship. I propose to analyze in a comparative fashion two biblical stories where the same item of dress, the ketonet passîm, is worn by both characters: Joseph (Gen 37:3,23,31-33) and Tamar (2 Sam 13:18-19). Building off scholarship on the biblical anthropology of dress, I first investigate the nature of this special tunic. The main hypotheses regarding this textile object will be considered: Is it a multi-coloured tunic? A long-sleeved robe? A veil? Second, exploring the symbolic function of garments in both Gen 37-50 and 2 Sam 13, I demonstrate how items of dress are material indicators of Tamar and Joseph’s location in the power networks of their respective families. Both character are “selected” and set apart through their garments, their beauty and their brothers’ abuse. Joseph is stripped of his tunic, abandoned in a pit and sold to merchants (Gen 37:18-36). He is later sent to prison after Potiphar’s wife uses another garment as “evidence” of sexual assault (Gen 39:12-18). Following her rape by her half-brother Amnon, Tamar rips her tunic, a princely “uniform”. She spends the rest of her life as a desolate woman in the house of her brother Absalom (2 Sam 13:18-20). Joseph’s story has a much happier ending: he becomes the Pharaoh’s intendant and is reunited with his family (Gen 41-50). Items of dress testify to Tamar and Joseph’s very different positions in their family hierarchies. Third, in addition to analyzing the garments as kinship signifiers, I study the narrative function of the tunic as a “gendering device”. Dress, as an embodied practice, conveys and is informed by different gender norms. In the case of Joseph and Tamar, the violent assault on both characters – and their identical garments – engenders and subverts ideals about masculinity and femininity. Garment mediates the violence inflicted on both characters’ bodies: Joseph is stripped of his tunic while Tamar rips it herself after being raped. Contrary to Joseph’s, Tamar’s princely tunic is not simply a mark of distinction; it is a uniform identifying her as one of the Davidic princesses. The son of Jacob acquires new clothes throughout his story, signifying his changing status and his rise to power. Tamar succeeds in disrupting her material identifier as a “princess”. However, she is never offered a change in clothes and/or an opportunity to escape the trauma that permeates her torn garment. This paper is an opportunity to explore how dress – especially tunics – functions as an important narrative signifier at the intersection of gender, class and kinship in two contexts of fraternal violence.

The extra-biblical sources regarding the reign of Cambyses (530-522 BCE) point to a contentious emperor whose reign – while contested and even maligned – factors significantly into world affairs. By contrast, the biblical record is completely silent on the reign of Cambyses, writing him out of the narrative of texts that were composed during or shortly after the Persian period (Ezra-Nehemiah, Chronicles, etc.). Consulting Greek, Persian, Egyptian and non-biblical Jewish sources (especially the Elephantine papyri), this paper will analyze the non-mention of Cambyses as a deliberate rhetorical feature of the biblical writers whose historiographies provide details about the turbulent events surrounding the reign of Cambyses and the rise of his successor Darius I. What emerges are deeply contested perspectives in Persian period Judaism regarding the figure of Cambyses, the durability of the Persian empire, and the unstable place of Jewish identity within it.

Ecclesiastes is a polyphonic text with five identifiable speaking voices (interior and exterior; collective and individual): (1) The 3rd person “framed narrator”; (2) the 2nd person collective voice of the sages representing traditional wisdom (or Qohelet’s pretext); (3) Qohelet’s 1st person I-voice; (4) the inner voice of Qohelet which emerges from imaginary dialogue within monologue; and (5) the voice of the epilogist. The interface of voice and ideology is firmly established in the field of biblical studies. With the multiplicity of speaking voices, conflicting ideologies surface in this paradoxical book. While a logical structure of Ecclesiastes is yet to be found, this paper seeks to demonstrate that through the dialectic dynamics of the speaking voices engaging in vibrant and vigorous dialogism, a structure as well as an overarching message of the book could be attained.

Discussion of the process of preparing and writing this commentary.

Arguments for women itinerants following Jesus in the Galilee typically adduce the criterion of embarrassment to demonstrate Jesus’ counter-cultural entourage, claim the criterion of multiple attestation supports women’s itineracy, determine that references to women “following” (akoloutheo) and “ministering” (diakoneo) Jesus indicate itineracy, cite Jesus’ patterns of household disruption to locate women as independently operative, appeal to Jesus’ rejection of ritual purity laws as permitting the women (who might menstruate) and men to travel together, and claim “pious Jews” would be askance at single women accompanying Jesus and the men with him. Neither individually nor cumulatively do the arguments hold. The Gospels witness no embarrassment over Jesus’ women followers; John is likely following the Synoptics so there is no multiple attestation; if Q exists (I am doubtful), it offers no indication of women’s itineracy; the verbs typically describe household connection not rejection; household disruption need not translate into itineracy; and Jesus, rather than rejecting purity laws, restores people to states of purity. The women follow and serve Jesus, but it is just as likely, if not more likely, that they do so from a household base rather than as wandering itinerants.