Here are some starting places for study at ATLA this week. If you are the graduate of an accredited U.S. theological school, you may have free access to these articles through your school. Check ATLAS access options. You can find full lists of ATLAS recommended articles for this week at The Text This Week's page for this week's texts.
December 26, 2010
Christmas 1A
Isaiah 63:7-9
- Bautch, Richard J., "An Appraisal of Abraham's Role in Postexilic Covenants," Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 2009.
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“By way of summary, there are four points, each with implications. First, today there is consensus as to when the biblical writers began to articulate the divine-human relationship covenantally. Following a period of perhaps centuries when covenant existed as a developing idea, a phenomenon that Dennis J. McCarthy calls the "evolution of the bèrît concept," covenant became a biblical paradigm in roughly the eighth century B.C.E. with the writing of Deuteronomy, whose structure follows the schema of ancient Near Eastern treaties and recasts them in terms of the Mosaic covenant. Significantly, the Mosaic paradigm remained operative for biblical writers in the postexilic period. Jewish communities living after the exile and return sought to restore their understanding of the divine-human relationship, evidently because they perceived the relationship as now fragile and tenuous, and they did so along the lines of the Mosaic covenant. Mosaic priority is operative in all three texts from the postexilic period, understood as 539 to roughly 400 B.C.E., and it informed later books such as Baruch as well.”
- Burnett, Joel S., "The Question of Divine Absence in Israelite and West Semitic Religion," The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 2005.
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“I would propose an examination of the form in which the concern for divine absence comes to expression most directly, that is, in the form of the question "Where is the Deity?" This question, formulated consistently by a verbless construction with the Common Semitic interrogative particle *’ay-, is posed in a variety of narrative and poetic contexts. After examining the use of this question of divine absence within the biblical corpus, I will consider its occurrence in personal names, both biblical and extrabiblical. As the literary and onomastic evidence will show, this particular question was a standard expression of the fundamental concern over divine absence in West Semitic religion during the Iron Age and earlier. Based on that analysis, I will consider evidence that this interrogative of divine absence was featured in the Israelite national cult.”
- Reid, Stephen Breck, "A Time for Dangerous Memory, Isaiah 63:7-64:11," Brethren Life and Thought, 2007.
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“This short passage underlines our human vulnerability and God's untiring willingness to take on that vulnerability. In the context to the tercentennial, our move to remember our own disobedience and failings and God's unending capacity to carry all our weakness should challenge us to a dangerous memory instead of a comatose nostalgia. Dangerous memory not only recounts the generosity of the redeemer and confesses our shortcomings. It risks inviting divine memory of all our disobedience and rebellion. But it is the risk that will pay off in courage, courage that will carry the church into the future.”
Hebrews 2:10-18
- Gray, Patrick, "Brotherly Love and the High Priest Christology of Hebrews," Journal of Biblical Literature, 2003.
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“Hebrews weaves together a wide range of concepts related to the role of brother in the Hellenistic world—inheritance, affection, trustworthiness, sympathy, moral uprightness, accountability, guardianship—to develop the image of Jesus as high priest. This goes unnoticed if one looks for parallels to the priestly image only among Jewish or Greco-Roman religious texts and institutions. Both elements were already present in other early traditions about Jesus: on occasion Jesus speaks of his appointed task in priestly terms (as in John 17)49 and also redefines membership in his own "family" to include all those who do the will of God (Mark 3:31-35; Gos. Thorn. 99; 2 Clem. 9.11). What originally inspired the author to merge these two disparate roles to make sense of the Christ-event? The question is impossible to answer with absolute certainty, but it may simply be that the author, after reflecting upon the full significance of the two roles, concluded that they were not so disparate after all.”
- Harmon, Steven, "Between Text & Sermon: Hebrews 2:10-18," Interpretation, 2005.
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“HEBREWS 2:10-18 PROVIDES THE MOST straightforward biblical support for Bonhoeffer's declaration from Tegel prison: it is most fitting for God in saving human beings to "make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings" (v. 10), and it is "because he himself was tested by what he suffered" that "he is able to help those who are being tested" (v. 18). The motif of God's solidarity in Christ with those who suffer is intensified by its connection on the First Sunday in Christmas in Year A of the Revised Common Lectionary with the slaughter of the holy innocents (Matt 2:13-23). Yet John Chrysostom reflects the received wisdom of the earliest interpreters of Christian Scripture on God's relationship to suffering when he denies passibility to God and the divine nature of Christ and relegates the sufferings of Christ to his human flesh. What is the preacher who reads and proclaims this text along with the communion of saints that includes both Chrysostom and Bonhoeffer to do with these seemingly opposite perspectives?”
- Still, Todd D., "CHRISTOS as PISTOS: The Faith(fulness) of Jesus in the Epistle to the Hebrews," The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 2007.
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“My purpose in this essay is to examine the recurring comments regarding Jesus' fidelity in Hebrews in order to discover both the substance and significance of this christological belief for the author and auditors of this first-century CE. λόγος της παρακλήσεως ("word of exhortation'* [Heb 13:22]). Furthermore, I seek to make possible a fuller understanding of, and appreciation for, Hebrews' signal contribution to the NT canon along lines of christology in general and Jesus' faith(fulness) in particular.”
- Williamson, Clark M., "Anti-Judaism in Hebrews?" Interpretation, 2003. (See also, "Hebrews," issue focus of Interpretation, 2003.)
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“The question of whether Hebrews is anti-Jewish has vexed readers. To answer it, one must pay careful attention to what the text says and does not say. Moreover, the coherence of the author's claim that the old covenant is superseded by the new covenant is open to question.”
Matthew 2:13-23
- Alison, James, "Risk and Fulfillment," The Christian Century, 2007.
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“From before his birth, Jesus' Life was a living forth into a narrative beset by danger and risk.”
- Carlson, Richard, "Reading and Interpreting Matthew from the Beginning," Currents in Theology and Mission, 2007. See entire issue of Currents in Theology and Mission 34, image focus on Matthew's gospel.
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“One begins to understand and interpret a narrative at the beginning of a narrative. This may seem like a literary no-brainer when it comes to novels, biographies, television presentations, plays, or films. Yet, probably because of the confines of the lectionary, preachers and teachers regularly ignore what seems obvious when it comes to scriptural interpretation. Matthew's Gospel presents a rich and complex theological narrative designed to be embraced and understood beginning with its tantalizing opening line, "The book of the genesis of Jesus Messiah, son of David, son of Abraham." Matthew 1 and 2 present the formative materials for constructing a theological and literary framework by which astute readers, preachers, and teachers will be empowered to interpret the contours, designs, characters, and claims set forth in Matthew 3-28.”
- Carter, Warren, "Matthew's Gospel: An Anti-Imperial/Imperial Reading," Currents in Theology and Mission, 2007. See entire issue of Currents in Theology and Mission 34, image focus on Matthew's gospel.
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“Three times the chapter mentions the death of Herod who seeks to kill God's anointed (2:15, 19, 20) while Jesus is protected— albeit at the expense of Bethlehem's male babies. From such violent and oppressive sinfulness Jesus is to save the world through his life, words, actions, death, resurrection, and return (1:21).”
- El-Amin, Imam Plemon, "The Birth of Jesus in the Qur'an," Review & Expositor, 2007.
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Abstract: “Muslims cannot compare or associate anything or anyone with G-d, yet we must maintain a high regard for Christ Jesus, son of Maryam. His birth was special, as was his life, his work, his message, his death, and (or, as will be) his resurrection. In this article, I will stay with the Qur'anic revelations associated with Jesus, the Christ, and his birth. In the Qur'an, Allah tells Maryam that she will be blessed with a Word from Him. I suggest that this Qur'anic reference and the Biblical reference to the Christ as Word may be an interfaith bridge to understanding.”
- Erickson, Richard J., "Divine Injustice?: Matthew's Narrative Strategy and the Slaughter of the Innocents (Mathew 2:13-23)," Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 1996.
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“The death of the Innocents, like the death of the male Hebrew babies in Egypt, is a harbinger of the coming New Exodus. Tragic though the massacre in Bethlehem may be, it is in the end no more tragic than the death of any single human being in the history of the human race. The one who escaped at Bethlehem comes back to endure it all himself, and to reverse it! Therefore, says Matthew by implication, weep no more!”
- McClaren, James S., "Jews and the Imperial Cult: From Augustus to Domitian," Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 2005.
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Abstract: “The primary concern of the article is to provide a comprehensive review of the available evidence about Jewish interaction with the imperial cult from its beginnings during the reign of Augustus until the last Flavian emperor, Domitian. Six cases are examined: the temples built by Herod, an incident in Alexandria, an incident in Jamnia, the order of Gaius, an incident in Dora, and the offering of sacrifices at Jerusalem on behalf of the emperor and Rome. It will be argued that Herod effectively established separate but parallel sacred space for the imperial cult and the Jewish faith tradition that lasted until the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple.”
- Vinson, Richard, "'King of the Jews': Kingship and Anti-Kingship Rhetoric in Matthew's Birth, Baptism, and Transfiguration Narratives," Review & Expositor, 2007.
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“I completed a draft of this article on Veterans' Day, 2006, not long after the Iraqi government released a report that 150,000 civilians have died since the war began in March 2003; our government estimates just over 2,800 American forces killed during the same period. Surely it is right and proper for Christians to consider the downsides of empire, of projecting values by means of military intervention, and of the lessons Matthew might have to teach us about kings and their decision-making tendencies. Just to state the obvious, in Matthew 1-2, the refugees are the good guys, and the king who can order the deaths of villagers is the bad guy. Maybe we Christians, if we read our Bible more closely, would be more suspicious of government-directed, military-delivered salvation.”