The Gospels of the Marginalized

The Gospels of the Marginalized
Author: Marvin W. Meyer
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 155
Release: 2012-10-16
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1621894738

The Gospels of the Marginalized provides an exciting new study of three of the most maligned figures in the New Testament story of Jesus: Thomas, usually considered the quintessential doubter among the disciples; Mary Magdalene, characterized as a repentant prostitute during much of the history of the church; and Judas Iscariot, presented as the despicable disciple of Jesus who betrayed his master for money. In this book Marvin Meyer, one of the most prominent of the scholars of gnostic texts and other early Christian literature, offers fresh and accurate translations of the Gospels of Thomas, Mary, and Judas, with their proclamation of the good news of the wisdom of Jesus, and he uses these gospels as the occasion to reexamine the place of Thomas, Mary Magdalene, and Judas Iscariot in the Jesus movement. His striking analysis suggests that Thomas was no doubter, that Mary Magdalene was a beloved disciple in the inner circles of disciples around Jesus, and that the tale of Judas Iscariot as betrayer of Jesus is a piece of fiction. Meyer adds a "Gospel of the Redeemed" as a vivid illustration of how the gospel story of Jesus might read with Jesus as a Jewish teacher of wisdom and Thomas, Mary, and Judas restored as loyal followers of the teacher from Nazareth.

Women, the Family, and Policy

Women, the Family, and Policy
Author: Esther Ngan-ling Chow
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 312
Release: 1994-06-07
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780791417867

The authors highlight how structural circumstances in countries with various degrees of industrialization are associated with specific policies. The analyses of women’s experiences reveal the variety of ways in which private patriarchy in families combines with public patriarchy in economies and states to create a system of domination which subordinates women. The authors detail how gender is constructed under specific political, economic, and cultural circumstances, and seek to understand how state policies with differing sensitivities to women’s issues have produced mixed outcomes for women and their families in the process of economic development.

Intercultural Christology in John's Gospel

Intercultural Christology in John's Gospel
Author: Biju Chacko
Publisher: Fortress Press
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2022-07-19
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1506480705

Christology with a planetary vision, blurring the boundaries and breaking the rhetoric of polarities of domination and exclusion, is the need of the hour. It is only by taking seriously these two dimensions (intercultural and subaltern) that christological articulations can be made intelligible, understandable, and relevant. Intercultural Christology in John's Gospel unravels the intercultural intersections and subaltern dimensions of John's Christology. John's Christology, crossing the boundaries of traditional Messianic categories of Judaism, even while echoing those traditions in an intercultural milieu, and creating a hybrid space of "inter" by blurring the categories of "above" and "below," gives an impetus for developing such new expressions in any given subaltern context. Christological articulation in John has a multidimensional orientation: toward God, world, and life. Therefore, John's Christology could be termed a Christology with a planetary vision. John's Gospel articulates its Christology through an intercultural route from a subaltern negotiating space. The Johannine Messiah is a subaltern Messiah, and the Johannine community is a subaltern community. The evangelist is not the one who collaborated with the colonizers. Therefore, the text cannot be treated as a colonial document, as some of the postcolonial readers do. Rather the evangelist resists and disrupts, even while resonating with the surrounding linguistic and conceptual milieu. Therefore, a hermeneutical framework of intercultural resonance and subaltern subversive rhetoric is a key to unlock the Gospel. Such a hermeneutical approach is a viable option in any subaltern context.

Jesus Before the Gospels

Jesus Before the Gospels
Author: Bart D. Ehrman
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2016-03-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0062285238

The bestselling author of Misquoting Jesus, one of the most renowned and controversial Bible scholars in the world today examines oral tradition and its role in shaping the stories about Jesus we encounter in the New Testament—and ultimately in our understanding of Christianity. Throughout much of human history, our most important stories were passed down orally—including the stories about Jesus before they became written down in the Gospels. In this fascinating and deeply researched work, leading Bible scholar Bart D. Ehrman investigates the role oral history has played in the New Testament—how the telling of these stories not only spread Jesus’ message but helped shape it. A master explainer of Christian history, texts, and traditions, Ehrman draws on a range of disciplines, including psychology and anthropology, to examine the role of memory in the creation of the Gospels. Explaining how oral tradition evolves based on the latest scientific research, he demonstrates how the act of telling and retelling impacts the story, the storyteller, and the listener—crucial insights that challenge our typical historical understanding of the silent period between when Jesus lived and died and when his stories began to be written down. As he did in his previous books on religious scholarship, debates on New Testament authorship, and the existence of Jesus of Nazareth, Ehrman combines his deep knowledge and meticulous scholarship in a compelling and eye-opening narrative that will change the way we read and think about these sacred texts.

The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament

The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament
Author: Craig S. Keener
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Total Pages: 821
Release: 2014-01-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0830877827

Craig S. Keener presents fascinating, wonderfully useful information on the historical and cultural backgrounds of nearly every verse in the New Testament.

Otherness and Identity in the Gospel of John

Otherness and Identity in the Gospel of John
Author: Sung Uk Lim
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2020-12-23
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3030602869

In this book, Sung Uk Lim examines the narrative construction of identity and otherness through ongoing interactions between Jesus and the so-called others as represented by the minor characters in the Gospel of John. This study reconfigures the otherness of the minor characters in order to reconstruct the identity of Jesus beyond the exclusive binary of identity and otherness. The recent trends in Johannine scholarship are deeply entrenched in a dialectical framework of inclusion and exclusion, perpetuating positive portrayals of Jesus and negative portrayals of the minor characters. Read in this light, Jesus is portrayed as a superior, omniscient, and omnipotent character, whereas minor characters are depicted as inferior, uncomprehending, and powerless. At the root of such portrayals lies the belief that the Johannine dualistic Weltanschauung warrants such a sharp differentiation between Jesus and the minor characters. Lim argues, to the contrary, that the multiple constructions of otherness deriving from the minor characters make Jesus’ identity vulnerable to a constant process of transformation. Consequently, John’s minor characters actually challenge and destabilize Johannine hierarchical dualism within a both/and framework.

The Kingship of Jesus in the Gospel of John

The Kingship of Jesus in the Gospel of John
Author: Sehyun Kim
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2018-08-21
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1532617224

This book studies kingship with reference to the Johannine Jesus. Postcolonialism leads us to an avenue from which to read this Gospel in the more complex and wider context of the hybridized Jewish and Greco-Roman worlds of the Roman Empire in the first century CE. This provides a new perspective on the kingship of the Johannine Jesus, whose kingly identity is characterized by hybridized christological titles. For the Johannine readers in the first century, who were exploited, oppressed, yet at odds with both the colonizer and the colonized in the Roman Empire, this Gospel was deemed to reveal his identity. Using many christological titles, it presented Jesus as the universal king going beyond the Jewish Messiah(s) and the Roman emperors and also as the decolonizer who came to “his own” world to liberate his people from the darkness. In this respect, the ideology of the Johannine emphasizes that love, peace, freedom, service of the center for the margins, and forgiveness are the ruling forces in the new world where Jesus reigns as king. Raising an awareness of these ideologies, John’s gospel asks readers to overcome the conflicting world shrouded in darkness, thenceforth entering the new Johannine world.