Shining Garment of the Text

Shining Garment of the Text
Author: Alison Jasper
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 273
Release: 1998-09-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1850758891

Taking the prologue of John's Gospel as a case-study in feminist biblical criticism, the author engages with a persistent view that the biblical text is seriously compromised by its association with patriarchal values. Close analysis of five interpretations by Augustine, Hildegard von Bingen, Martin Luther, Adrienne von Speyr and Rudolf Bultmann shows how, unavoidably, interpretation clothes the biblical text with the varied and dazzling patterns of the patriarchal reading context. But in a second turn, drawing on the techniques of both structuralist criticism and deconstruction, and offering three further inventive readings of this powerful passage, Jasper reflects woman and the feminine in the shining garment of her own contextualized reading.

Women and Men in the Fourth Gospel

Women and Men in the Fourth Gospel
Author: Margaret Beirne
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2004-12-10
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567042502

e fourth gospel presents the reader with an early christian text in which women and men are treated as "a discipleship of equals" as this term is broadly understood in the work of Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza but qualified with respect to her discussion of the meaning of 'equality' when applied to gender. Specifically, the gospel contains six examples of "gender pairs" of characters (a widely-accepted lukan feature). The members of each pair are portrayed in a parallel or contrasting faith encounter with the Johannine Jesus which is of substantial theological importance to the gospel's stated purpose (John 20:31). The six pairs are the mother of Jesus (2:1-11) and the royal official (4:46-54); nicodemus (3:1-12) and the samaritan woman (4:4-42); the man born blind (9:1-41) and Martha (11:1-54); Mary of Bethany and Judas (12:1-8); the mother of Jesus and the beloved disciple (19:25-27); Mary Magdalene (20:11-18) and Thomas (20:24-29).

Rhetorical Criticism and the Bible

Rhetorical Criticism and the Bible
Author: Stanley E. Porter
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 577
Release: 2002-04-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1841270938

This volume is the fifth in a series that explores the use of rhetoric in the study of biblical literature. Contributions from scholars in North America, Britain, Continental Europe and South Africa focus here on four major categories: The Theory of Rhetoric and Biblical Interpretation, Rhetorical Interpretation of Luke's Gospel and Acts, The Rhetorical Interpretation of Paul's Writings, and Rhetorical Interpretation of Hebrews and Ignatius. Author include Tom Olbricht, Douglas Campbell, Arthur Gibson, Craig Evans, Vernon Robbins, Greg Bloomquist, Pieter Botha, Paul Danove, Gerrie Snyman, Anders Eriksson, K. K. Yeo, Lauri Thuren, G. A. van den Heever, Marc Debanne, J. N Vorster, and the editors.

Paul and his Story

Paul and his Story
Author: Sylvia Keesmaat
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 297
Release: 1999-01-08
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1441152873

The author discusses Paul's reading of his scriptures by exploring his intertextual echoes and allusions to exodus themes and motifs in Israel's scriptures and the literature of Second-Temple Judaism. This exploration reveals that Paul evoked the exodus narrative in a way that is both faithful to the tradition and innovative for his new situation in Christ. Paul affirms and transforms the tradition in ways that speak to the tensions present in both Galatians and Romans.

Servants of Satan, False Brothers, and Other Opponents of Paul

Servants of Satan, False Brothers, and Other Opponents of Paul
Author: Jerry L. Sumney
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 361
Release: 1999-12-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567404935

This book sets out a method for identifying the opponents in view in Paul's letters, and then applies it to the relevant writings of the Pauline corpus. The method limits the use of parallels or prior constructions as a basis for identification, dealing with each letter on an individual basis and taking full acount of the historical and social context. Sumney concludes that the Pauline letters address different kinds of opposition in different places, including two distinct anti-Paul movements. Here is a fundamental study for research into a basic problem of the Pauline correspondence.

New Light on Luke

New Light on Luke
Author: Barbara Shellard
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2004-10-27
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567081680

This radical new interpretation reveals many connections between Luke and Johannine traditions. Comparision of pericopae shared by Luke and John suggests that the usual assumptions of Lukan priority may be mistaken; instead his may be chronologically the fourth gospel. Luke neverthless treats his sources in different ways, his response being both critical and creative. He aims to give security to Christians by including as much as possible and reconciling conflicting traditions, while firmly excluding heretical misinterpretation. Shellard also includes a consideration of Luke's use of possible sources, both canonical and extra-canonical, and places Luke-Acts in its literary context, noting among other things the presentation of Rome as a facilitatator of evangelization and a promoter of co-existence. This is volume 215 in the Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement series.

Border Lines

Border Lines
Author: Daniel Boyarin
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 404
Release: 2004
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780812237641

The historical separation between Judaism and Christianity is often figured as a clearly defined break of a single entity into two separate religions. Following this model, there would have been one religion known as Judaism before the birth of Christ, which then took on a hybrid identity. Even before its subsequent division, certain beliefs and practices of this composite would have been identifiable as Christian or Jewish. InBorder Lines, however, Daniel Boyarin makes a striking case for a very different way of thinking about the historical development that is the partition of Judaeo-Christianity. There were no characteristics or features that could be described as uniquely Jewish or Christian in late antiquity, Boyarin argues. Rather, Jesus-following Jews and Jews who did not follow Jesus lived on a cultural map in which beliefs, such as that in a second divine being, and practices, such as keeping kosher or maintaining the Sabbath, were widely and variably distributed. The ultimate distinctions between Judaism and Christianity were imposed from above by "border-makers," heresiologists anxious to construct a discrete identity for Christianity. By defining some beliefs and practices as Christian and others as Jewish or heretical, they moved ideas, behaviors, and people to one side or another of an artificial border--and, Boyarin significantly contends, invented the very notion of religion. Boyarin demonstrates that it was early Christian writers who first imagined religion as a realm of practice and belief that could be separated from the broader cultural network of language, genealogy, or geography, and that they did so precisely to give Christians an identity. In the end, he suggests, the Rabbis refused the option offered by the Christian empire of converting Judaism into such a religion. Christianity, a religion, and Judaism, something that was not a religion, stood on opposite sides of a borderline drawn more or less successfully across their respective populations. As a consequence, "Jewish" to this day is an adjective that can describe both an ethnicity and a set of beliefs, while Christian orthodoxy remains, perhaps, the only religion on earth.