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.

According to the ASOR Policy on Professional Conduct, Section III.E.4 (endorsed by SBL), the publications and presentation venues of ASOR — with only a few exceptions — shall not serve as the initial place of publication or announcement of any object acquired by an individual or institution through purchase or donation after April 24, 1972, which is the date of entry into force of the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. But what counts as an initial place of publication or announcement of such an object? This paper describes the definition ASOR has developed of “Initial Publication or Announcement” and considers the implications that the ASOR definition of “Initial Publication or Announcement” has more generally for considering what counts as an editio princeps.

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.

Although “shepherd boys” have become a part of popular Christmas lore and children’s pageants, few scholars have taken seriously the age and socio-economic status of the shepherds in Luke’s gospel account. Drawing from Greco-Roman contemporaries and Hebrew Bible parallels, I will argue that for Luke’s original audience the shepherds portrayed in the nativity account would have been heard and imagined as children, either the sons and daughters of poor sheep herding families or the slaves of wealthier herd owners. From this perspective, I then re-read Luke’s nativity account with an emphasis on the participation of children as both the first to hear the good news of Jesus’ birth proclaimed by the angels (Lk. 2:10-12) and the first people to proclaim this message of good news of great joy (Lk 2:20).

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.

In Lev 4:2-12, the sin offering unit for the anointed priest, the regular outcome statement running through the section as a whole is conspicuous for its absence. There is nothing like the priest “will make atonement for” the person or group, and they “will be forgiven” (cf. Lev 4:20, 26, 31, 35; 5:[6], 10, 13). In my view, the absence of atonement and forgiveness in Lev 4:10-12 is crucial for understanding the mechanism of atonement. The priest could not atone for himself. He could manipulate the sacrificial blood to purge the tabernacle, but he could not “make atonement” for himself to obtain forgiveness because he still “bore the culpability” (nāśāʼ āwōn) for the original violation he had committed. Therefore, he could not eat the meat of his own sin offering (v. 12; cf. Lev 6:23). It was by means of the scapegoat ritual on the Day of Atonement that the priest(s) could unload the culpabilities for himself and the Israelites, for whom he had mediated throughout the year and so bore their culpabilities for them (cf., e.g., Exod 28:38; Lev 10:17; Num 18:1), On that day, the High Priest would lay both his hands on the head of the goat and confess over it “all the culpabilities (awônōt) of the Israelites – (from) all their transgressions (pišʻêhem) to all their sins (ḥaṭṭōʼtām) – and put them on the head of the goat” (v. 21). The next verse reduces the list to one word, “culpabilities”: “The goat will carry on itself all their culpabilities (awônōtām) to a remote place; and the man shall release it in the wilderness” (v. 22). The “culpabilities” were produced by transgressions and sins and born by the priests until the scapegoat ritual on the Day of Atonement. There are some similarities to this pattern also in the slain goat sin offering ritual in Lev 16:16. The High Priest offered the sin offering goat to “make atonement upon the Most Holy Place from the impurities (ṭumʼōt) of the Israelites – and from all their transgressions (pišʻêhem) to all their sins (ḥaṭṭōʼtām) – and thus he shall do for the tent of meeting which dwells with them in the midst of their impurities (ṭumʼōtām)” (cf. also v. 19). In this case, the end of the verse reduces the list to “impurities.” This is because the slain sin offering was concerned with “impurities,” as opposed to the scapegoat later in the chapter where the issue was “culpabilities.” Transgressions and sins (paired in vv. 16 and 21) could produce either impurities (vv. 16, 19) or culpabilities (vv. 21-22). The priests carried the later through the year as the mediators for the Israelites before the Lord. Impurities normally did not create culpabilities (awônōt), but they could if they were not attended to properly according to the normal purity regulations as, for example, when a person did not know they had contracted impurity until it was too late to follow the regulations (Lev 5:2-3 with 5-6; cf., e.g., Lev 15:5-11).

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.

At Qumran, there is a polyphonic use of Daniel which includes and combines the various manuscripts of the book of Daniel, pseudo Daniel material, and quotations and allusions of Daniel in the Dead Sea Scrolls. This paper is a preliminary step to identifying and describing this hermeneutical polyphony as it examines the quotations and allusions of Daniel in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Building on previous work on the use of Daniel in 1QHa, 1QM, 4Q174, and 11Q13, this paper expands this list of scrolls, delineates the various ways that Daniel is used, and attempts to situate the quotations and allusions of Daniel within this hermeneutical polyphony at Qumran. Furthermore, two caveats underscore the examination of this use of Daniel: (1) use is not limited to the book of Daniel but includes traditions as well as the figure of Daniel; and (2) use does not necessarily imply that it is unidirectional or fixed but fluid at the time of these writings.

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).

It is widely known that the Gospel of Luke records a shorter version of the Lord's Prayer than that of Matthew, but surprisingly little has been done to determine the author's particular selection criteria. This paper offers a possible explanation for the specific petitions from within the narrative itself. Recent scholarship frequently presents Luke's text as an interwoven account, drawing connections between many passages within the Gospel, such as the miracle in 9:12-17 and the meal in 24:28-32 (cf. M. Wolter [2017]). However, apart from scholars who highlight the repetitions of thematic words like "temptation" (peirasmon) or "kingdom" (basileia), commentators generally neglect the more substantial intertextual echoes between the temptation narrative in Luke 4 and the prayer given by Jesus in Luke 11 (e.g. D. Allison [1999]; H. Betz [1995]). From the prayer's initial address ("Father"), the reader finds the answer to the central question of the temptations: "if you are the son of God" (Luke 4:3, 9; 11:2 NRSV). The subsequent petition ("hallowed be your name") reflects the biblical association of God's name and the Temple, summarizing both Jesus' disposition and location in the third temptation (Luke 4:9; 11:2). The next petition ("your kingdom come") calls to mind Jesus' refusal of "all the kingdoms of the world" in the second temptation, highlighting the same deference to God exhibited there (Luke 4:5; 11:2). The third petition ("give us each day our daily bread") echoes the first temptation, in which Jesus refuses to provide bread for himself and refers instead to God's authority (Luke 4:4; 11:3). In the fourth petition, the author diverges momentarily from the pattern developed thus far with a petition for forgiveness that finds no direct parallel in the temptation account, but a close examination of the narrative reveals several potential reasons for this departure (Luke 11:4). Finally, the Lord's Prayer concludes with an idea reflected three times in the temptation scene: that of being "led" into "temptation" (peirasmon) (Luke 4:1, 5, 9; cf. 11:4). Given the extensive and highly structured parallels between these passages, it would be hard to argue that the author of Luke's Gospel did not intend to convey a direct relationship between them, such that the Lord's Prayer acts as a reflective summary of Jesus' response to temptation, delivering his success in the desert to his disciples by petition.

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.

The Historical Jesus and the Parting of the Ways Revisited

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 paper will explore the role of the natural world (e.g., land, planta, animals, etc) within Isaiah 13-27. A corpus-based analysis permits all aspects of trauma and natural world to surface rather than only those aspects pre-selected for analysis which may not be representative of the corpus as a whole. The chapters show several diverse representations of trauma and the natural world. For example, the earth mourns (e.g., Isa 24:4), which is a characteristic emotional response to trauma. The text therefore extends trauma from human experience to the earth. But why is the earth mourning? At times, the earth suffers direct violence (e.g., 13:13; 24:19). At times, the natural world appears to reflect the experience of the people who inhabit it (e.g., 14:7). At times, humans cause nature to suffer (e.g., the cedars of Lebanon say to the king of Babylon, "Now that you are laid to rest, no one comes to cut us down," Isa 14:8). The land can communicate its trauma through changes (e.g., withered grass in 15:6, bloody water in 15:9). The paper will present the results of a systematic analysis of mentions of the natural world in Isaiah 13-27. These chapters describe human hubris punished by the wrath of God. How does the natural world fit into this divine-human relationship?

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.

Since recent 20-30 years, psalms- and Psalter-studies focus on topics or even common threads running through the entire book of Psalms. E.g., the shift from lament to praise (cf. studies by Bellinger, Hossfeld, Rechberger e.a.), Zion (cf. studies by Körting, Janowski e.a.), divine power (cf. Tucker e.a.), or the theology of the poor (cf. Bremer e.a.). Together, these threats form the idea of a theology of the entire Book of Psalms. – By contrast, “land” is more prominent discussed as theme in single psalms (e.g. most prominent: ps. 37), even though its main terms ̓ӕrӕẓ and ̓adāmāh appear more than 200 times in the entire book and in almost but not all groups and subgroups of psalms. The paper focuses on different passages and conceptions of “land” in the book of psalms. Rather to a common understanding, the paper points out different understandings and conceptions of “land”. The goal is (a) to witness both, literal but also metaphorical understandings and (b) to set them in the context of the theology of single psalms, groups and books, and (c) at least to the theology of the Psalter as a whole.

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.

The presence of a wisdom Christology in Matthew has been a matter for ongoing debate. We will argue that Matthew’s Gospel portrays Jesus as the embodiment of Wisdom, most clearly in Matthew 11 but also across the Gospel and in tandem with the theme of Jesus as the fulfillment of the Torah. This motif suggests a “wisdom Christology” in Matthew, as the “Messiah’s deeds” are linked to wisdom’s “deeds” (11:2, 19). Matthew’s Jesus draws from Jewish wisdom traditions to invite his hearers to listen to him and follow him, but the motif also explains why he is often rejected. This wisdom Christology also impinges on Matthew’s perspective of discipleship—how followers of Jesus are to live in line with and in light of Jesus as Wisdom even as the kingdom remains partially hidden in the present. The community is to be guided by wisdom—and Jesus as their teacher is the embodiment of wisdom. We will also consider Matthew’s offering for a canonical theology of wisdom that thematizes hiddenness as well as revelation in the life of the believing community. Constructively, we will explore contemporary uses of wisdom Christology for their value in grounding a public witness for justice and wisdom “in an unwise world.” Drawing on Bultmann, Johnson, and Schüssler Fiorenza among others, we will argue that a wisdom Christology—informed by Matthew—has potential for justice-making through discipleship communities oriented around wisdom and its “deeds” embodied in Jesus.

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

The preservation of distinct legal corpora in the Pentateuch and the comparative analysis of these corpora have led numerous scholars to conclude that there was some form of systematized legal reasoning and/or jurisprudence in ancient Israel and early Judaism (e.g., Paganini 2013; Fraade 2011; Levinson 2008; 1997). Recently, some scholars have attempted to define these legal traditions more precisely by drawing analogies between the legal reasoning supposedly evident in Pentateuchal legal texts and either constitutional law or the common law tradition. For example, Patrick D. Miller (2004), commenting upon the position of the Decalogue in Exodus and Deuteronomy on the front end of Covenant Code and Deuteronomic Code respectively, concludes that the Decalogue functioned like a constitution that remained unchanged over time but needed to be applied and specified anew as new circumstances arose. And Dale Patrick (2014), commenting upon the preservation in the Pentateuch of the Covenant Code alongside the Deuteronomic Code—even though the latter apparently contemporizes the former, sees evidence that older law codes were not suppressed in ancient Israel and early Judaism, but rather became part of a growing common law tradition that remained normative and needed to be taken into account by the judges of each new generation. Yet, as Henry McKeating observed in 1979, such direct analysis of legal texts cannot provide insight into how such laws actually functioned; alternatively, analysis must be more indirect, investigating how such laws were actually used. Did the Decalogue function as an unchanged constitution to which successive generations appealed? Did the Covenant Code or the Deuteronomic Code function as normative legal traditions for subsequent generations? My own study follows McKeating's methodological proposal, tracing how the law of kings in Deuteronomy 17:14–20 was actually used during the Second Temple period in Daniel 5 (MT), the Temple Scroll (11Q19) LVI, 12–LIX, 21, the Damascus Document (CD) V, 1–2, and the Psalms of Solomon 17:33. My analysis reveals practices of legal reasoning far more diverse than Miller's or Patrick's constitutional law or common law proposals. While the study's limited scope on one Deuteronomic law cannot support generalizations about legal reasoning in the Second Temple period, the study's conclusions are significant for those interested in how Pentateuchal laws actually functioned in 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 Luke's story of the Rich Man and Lazarus 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 with the poor rather than confining them to sections of the city, the boundaries were more than geographical. 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 creating 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. Congregational leaders, and their congregations, have an important role in modeling “welcoming the others” who sleep outside in our cities, communities, and neighborhoods. Resistance from neighborhoods, law enforcement, service providers, and business owners has not only become a challenge but a barrier to "welcoming the stranger among us." Those who are "social refugees" not only struggle to find support from the community, but faith communities as well. Welcoming or accepting these individuals, families, and communities requires crossing boundaries of fear, judgment, and trust as our coalitions partner with others to create a "home" where peace, safety, and justice exist for social exiles needing support and love. In this paper I intend to discuss methods we are using to develop relationships and help our community "cross" these emotional/spiritual boundaries to create Luke's empire of justice, peace, mercy, and shalom.

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.

Archaeology has always been political. The excavation of ancient sites has long been tied to national identity and the findings of archaeologists continue to be sifted through the lens of nationalist politics. Archaeology can also be theo-political. Biblical archaeologists have long been conscripted into fights between Israelis and Palestinians over the meaning of their “discoveries.” Archaeology in Israel and elsewhere has also been used in arguments about the historicity of the biblical narratives, arguments that are really about whether the Bible is an authoritative and divinely inspired source of legal, theological, and moral authority. The theo-political use of archaeology is on full display in the newly-opened Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC. With a massive footprint, a $500 million price tag, and a location just blocks away from the Capitol, the Museum makes a powerful argument about the historicity and value of the Bible through a selective deployment of its collection, much of which is drawn from the 40,000 objects and manuscripts owned by the Museum’s founder Steve Green, the conservative evangelical owner of Hobby Lobby. In this paper, I show how the Museum uses archaeological materials to argue for the historicity of the Bible, an argument that is tied to larger political interests in presenting the US as a Christian nation that should be governed more in line with evangelical theology. This paper, based on several visits to the Museum, includes close readings of several different aspects of the Museum’s presentation and collection of archaeological materials: the use of ancient objects in a modern re-creation of Jesus’s Nazareth, a series of documentary-style videos that are featured throughout the Museum (called “Drive Thru History”), the Museum’s collection practices and selective curation, and the use of objects borrowed from state archaeological services (such as the Israeli Antiquities Authority) or copied and displayed as facsimiles in the Museum’s exhibits. The paper will also ask about the ethical role that biblical scholars and archaeologists have in engaging with the Museum.

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.

My recent book Sex and Slaughter in the Text of Jael: A Cultural History of a Biblical Story (Oxford Press, 2016) is framed as a case study for how one might study “cultural performances” of biblical texts. The book offers in-depth analyses of several cultural moments in which the biblical tradition of Jael and Sisera proved useful for both reflecting and shaping contemporary debates about gender, sex, power and violence. Given this project, my contributions on a panel discussion would be focus on certain methodological interventions that undergirded the book. One such intervention concerns the use of the term “reception.” While the term has become quite firmly engrained in biblical scholarship and perhaps is a useful in some cases, I join other scholars in urging a consideration of the limits of the term. Especially in the case of artistic renditions of biblical traditions, I suggest that the “use” of the bible and its ongoing “effects” are not receptive as much as performative. Cultural uses of biblical traditions transmit and transform ancient stories, again, by speaking with and through these traditions to contribute to more immediate cultural conversations. In this case, the study of the use and impact of biblical traditions apart from ecclesial and theological contexts can be particularly revealing in terms of what elements of a tradition become the key “talking points” of the tradition. A second intervention concerns how biblical scholars have tended toward the “artist as exegete” model for analyzing the intersection between Bible and visual art. While this may be appropriate in some circumstances, in many instances it overlooks other factors that contribute to the production of a particular painting. I urge a more nuanced consideration of the ways that visual art intersections with the Bible. Following Mieke Bal, one can acknowledge the biblical “pre-text” of the work, while also considering the ways that the “visual narrative” of the painting may respond to or revise the tradition, again often in ways that link with the cultural setting and conditions for artistic project.

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.

This paper examines the argument from case-precedent in the story of Jesus’ disciples plucking grain on the Sabbath (Mark 2:23–28 // Matt 12:1–8 and Luke 6:1–5), which appeals for a precedent to David and his men consuming the Bread of the Presence (1 Sam 21:1–6). Special attention is given to John Chrysostom’s perspicacious treatment of this story in one of his sermons on Matthew, particularly his analysis of the appeal to David through the concepts of pertinence (ti to pros to zētoumenon), equivalence (to ison), and exonerating principle (nomos apologias). A wider cultural context for understanding appeals to case-precedent is provided through brief surveys of such appeals in Roman law, oratory, and rabbinic interpretation (Mishnah).

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.

Located somewhere between ancient fiction and Christian hagiography, and set in 395 CE Edessa with the invasion of Mesopotamia by the Huns (although possibly composed much later in the fifth century), the Life of Euphemia and the Goth recounts the tale of a young woman, Euphemia, who is deceived and manipulated into marrying an unnamed Gothic soldier. Unbeknownst to Euphemia and her mother, Sophia, the Goth already has a wife in a different city in the West. The theme of the deceived and abducted bride is a common one in the literature of the time. When he arrives at his home, the Goth gives Euphemia as a slave to his wife. The wife treats Euphemia with great cruelty. When Euphemia has a son, the child is poisoned by the Goth’s jealous wife. In retaliation, Euphemia poisons the wife of the Goth and is imprisoned by the victim’s relatives. Like Dorothy in the land of Oz, it is only when Euphemia prays to the martyrs of Edessa that she is miraculously transported back to Edessa; later, Euphemia and her mother exact revenge on the Goth by reporting him to the authorities. Slavery functions as a constant yet complex theme in the Syriac ascetic literature of late antiquity, and the Life of Euphemia and the Goth is no exception. In this narrative slavery intersects with discourses of cultural identity and ethnicity (especially Syriac identity), law and warfare (and displacement), and morality and asceticism. The purpose of this paper is to investigate more closely these doulological dynamics in the Life of Euphemia and the Goth. Geopolitically, the narrative betrays the anxieties of inhabitants living in regions plagued by military conflict, where captivity/kidnapping, enslavement, and displacement were very real possibilities. Socially, the story also relies on the common ancient stereotype and anxiety of the slave as the foreigner and domestic enemy, and the dangers of treating slaves cruelly. Finally, from a moral and especially ascetic perspective, the tale further builds on the common Syrian-Christian motif of marriage and sexual intercourse as slavery, and may act as a warning (perhaps similar to earlier works like the Acts of Thomas or Jerome’s Life of Malchus) against embracing the pleasures of the secular life. An analysis of the Life of Euphemia and the Goth will give us a glimpse not only into the complicated dynamics of slavery, displacement, and freedom on the margins of the Roman Empire, but will also lay bare the complicated dynamics of slavery as an ascetic discourse in the late ancient Christian cultures of Syria and Mesopotamia.

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.

Sin and Its Remedy in Galatians

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.

(no abstract)

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.

The most extensive copy of a collection of Festival Prayers from Qumran is on the recto of a poorly preserved opisthograph papyrus (4Q509+505). The verso bears a copy (or part) of the War Scroll (4Q496) followed by a copy of a collection of prayers, the Words of the Luminaries (4Q506). To date, however, a satisfactory reconstruction of this scroll has not been accomplished. The original editor Maurice Baillet placed fragments 1-16 near the beginning of the scroll on the basis of content on the verso with parallels to the first four columns of 1QM, and fragments 131-2 late in the scroll, since the verso belongs to the prayer for Sunday from a copy of Words of the Luminaries. Otherwise, his suggestions are mostly conjectural. Subsequent studies-e.g., by Falk, Chazon, Hamidović, and Qimron-have made some corrections, but there is still considerable disagreement and uncertainty about the identity of the fragments labeled 4Q505, the arrangement of fragments, and the order of festivals. Particularly puzzling is the failure to produce an order of prayers that consistently corresponds to the calendar of festivals. This paper will attempt an improved reconstruction of the Festival Prayers on the recto of this scroll on the basis of a fresh examination of the papyrus fragments and the latest high resolution images, in combination with insights from Martin Abegg's new analysis of the War Scroll (4Q496) on the verso.

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.

(no abstract)

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.

Biblical accounts of Israel’s origins imagine a land without dominant kingdoms, where diverse peoples represented by Hebrew plurals were more significant than cities, excepting Sodom and Gomorrah as famously gone. The names of these peoples appear alone and in combinations that include lists of those to be replaced by Israel. In historical context as currently known, these peoples include names from the Bronze Age, many centuries before their biblical use: Canaanites, Amorites, Hittites, and perhaps Horites as Hurrians. All of these are surprising, and we are left to wonder how such old labels found their way into the Bible’s distant past. The Hittites may be most straightforward now that we know about Hatti’s Iron Age survival in its Syrian vestiges. Canaan was one way to name Egypt’s New Kingdom holdings in the Levant, however such a notion of the land before Israel survived into texts from the mid-first millennium. The Amorites are more difficult. Already by the early second millennium, use of the term in cuneiform sources appears secondary to the earlier Amorite population as a community bound to pastoralism. There was already a specific “land” southeast of Ugarit; and this term could name the entire West Semitic language contrasted to Akkadian. There is no reason to name the peoples of the Middle Bronze Age Levant as Amorites in any literal sense. Yet some version of such secondary use was recalled as appropriate to the land before Israel, as with the Canaanites and the Hittites. It is possible that the Amorite name attached itself especially to regions associated with old-time pastoralism, as perceived in much later periods, such as the Transjordan people of Sihon. Any answers must be cast in terms of a self-conscious notion, not to explain by “memory,” of separation between an idealized early Israel and its antecedents.

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.

The history of the Maccabees exerted a great influence on the Syriac tradition. The four books of Maccabees circulated widely among Syriac communities in antiquity and secured a place in early pandects of the bible. Their narratives shaped Syriac martyrological and historiographical writings as well as art and poetry, and these stories continue to be read in liturgical settings. Studies on the reception of the Maccabean narrative have exposed the importance of the books of Maccabees for the Syriac tradition as a whole. Yet the impetus for the translation of the four books of Maccabees into Syriac in late antiquity remains poorly understood, as the translation of the four books of Maccabees was undertaken at a later period than most books of the Old Testament. I will address this gap in scholarship by examining the Peshiṭta translation of the four books of Maccabees from two complementary perspectives. First, I will investigate the textual tradition itself to argue for a fourth-century date for the translation of the four books of Maccabees. A comparison with the Greek text demonstrates connections between the translation of the books of Maccabees and the Lucianic recension of the Greek. A further appraisal of the text of individual books exposes similarities and differences in the translation style. Second, I will explore the use of the story of the Maccabees in Syriac literature in the fourth and fifth centuries. References to the narrative as well as linguistic allusions support a date of the fourth century for the initial translation of these books. But they also suggest that the translation of the books of Maccabees into Syriac was a product of a wider trend. Christian communities across the Mediterranean World adopted the narrative of the Maccabees for liturgical and exegetical purposes in the course of the fourth century. Syriac communities chose to translate these works for their own use as a part of this cultural movement.

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.

In Pentateuchal studies, the emergence of major parts of the Book of Numbers has moved beyond classical source criticism. Following scholarship which dates the composition of the Book of Numbers to the 5th and 4th centuries BCE, the work is viewed broadly as the latest book of the Pentateuch, clearly composed in the Persian period. However, the book is most concrete in terms of land issues, itineraries, etc., and some of these components do not fit a Persian period setting. The role of Kadesh or of Shittim, the kings of Arad, Moab, and Edom and other information gives the impression of concreteness in terms of history. However, neither settlement information regarding Gilead nor the border description in Num 34 give the impression of deriving from recent times but rather from LBA “Canaan” and Iron Age Jordan. The Book of Numbers attests a settlement process in Transjordan mostly contemporaneous to the conquest in Cis-Jordan. The paper inquires into intersections between the literary history of the narrative and the history reconstructed by external evidence and by the archaeological record. Are the two realms more separate in the Book of Numbers than in other books of the Pentateuch? What is the outcome of an archaeological approach for the Book of Numbers and the literary-narrative or literary-historical approach read against the background of archaeological and historical information? This raises methodological, hermeneutical and content related questions the paper will discuss.

Throughout second temple Jewish literature, the threat of exile, of dying away from one’s nativ