Studying lectionary texts? 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.
Proper 10 / Ordinary 15 / Pentecost +4
July 10, 2011
Genesis 25:19-34
Abstract: “This contribution offers a new approach to explain the hostile attitude of the biblical sources towards Edom. It is suggested that the relations between Edom and Israel are influenced by the way in which Israel perceived the meaning of the struggle between their fathers—Esau and Jacob. The constant conflict between Edom and Judah may well have been connected by the inhabitants of Judah, consciously or subconsciously, with the conflict between Esau and Jacob over the birthright, and over the control of the promised land. Edom's aspirations to occupy areas in Israel may have been interpreted as Edom's wish to reverse the situation and to restore the election and the birthright to Esau. Following the events in Judah of 587 BCE the people were in despair because they assumed that God had cast off his people forever. They interpreted the destruction of the temple and the expulsion from their land as severance of the relationship between God and his people. The people's exile because of their sins could also be interpreted as the people's loss of their status as the chosen people. Two facts supported their thoughts that they were rejected and Edom was now chosen by God. The first was the Edomite participation in the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple and the expulsion of Judah from their country. And the second was the colonization of the land of Judah by the Edomites. It was not Edom's participation in the destruction or even in the colonization of Judah that led to the exceptional attitude towards Edom in the Biblical sources. The ideological and theological significance that Judah assigned to Edom's acts is what led the prophets to focus on Edom. The anti-Edomite oracles were meant to instill into the hearts of the people that, despite the destruction, Israel is still the chosen people and the sins of Edom against Judah would not remain unpunished.”
“The natives in Genesis, then, constitute an Other different from the Others in subsequent books. They are far from malevolent; they antagonize the first family not by design but by doing what comes naturally: extending sexual hospitality, offering economic integration, selling and protecting real estate. Recognizing themselves as outsiders, the fathers also come to understand the peculiar divinely imposed requirements of their identity vis-à-vis the natives: endogamy and land holdings apart from the local scene. Even voluntary circumcision, the fathers' ethnic marking, cannot domesticate the natives as marriage partners or residential neighbors. Though the ancestors tread softly in a land not yet their own, their tales establish a firm ethnic boundary between themselves and the local populations on the basis of which future enmities easily develop.”
Abstract: “Motherhood in the Hebrew Bible has been celebrated as indicative of female strength as well as derided as patriarchy's primary entrapment. Somewhere between the two, birth figures as a moment of narrative focus on female characters during which they reformulate their status. Birth seems to travel with its companion theme of barrenness as most central biblical characters undergo a prolonged period of infertility and an attendant struggle to conceive. Employing theories of the hero pattern, this essay argues that the movement from barrenness to fertility is a mode of female initiation into a relationship with the divine. While an explicit covenant promises men innumerable descendants and founder status, it is not realized until a parallel female covenant is forged. Where God makes the covenantal overture to men, women demand recognition through speech and deed. Barrenness motivates articulations that reveal concern with female memory and legacy and actions that distill the characters of individual women. Female volition draws divine attention and results in conception that, like circumcision, physically marks an alliance with God. The mothers encode their struggles and journeys from barrenness to fertility in the names of their children. Combining folklore and feminist methodologies, the essay proposes new parameters for understanding female heroism in the Hebrew Bible.”
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
“It would be in keeping with the character of this text for preachers and teachers, rather than simply explaining it, to try to bring their own hearers face to face with the dilemma with which Jesus confronts the crowds…”
“Seed, soil, sun, birds, rocks, grain-all common elements familiar to the first-century listener—combine to tell a subversive story, which announces to the listener that the new world view ushered in by the presence and teaching of Jesus will find a place of growth and development in the present world.”
“This article will seek to study each of these parables separately [the sower, the seed growing secretly, the mustard seed, the tares among the wheat], investigate the sequential steps of its tradition, and establish the earliest form of the story; then to ask whether this earliest version stems from the historical Jesus and, if so, what was its situational function in his ministry, and to see whether the basic theme of seed and sowing casts any common light on the four parables.”
“A friend once said that listening to Jesus tell a parable must have been a little like watching someone throw a ball into the air. Instead of reaching its apex and returning directly to earth, this particular ball starts back down and then veers off at a right angle. We watch astonished, and search for answers. The answers may not come, but now we watch more carefully the one who tosses the ball, understanding at least that he commands our attention.”
Proper 10 / Ordinary 15 / Pentecost +4
July 10, 2011
Genesis 25:19-34
· Assis, Elie, "Why Edom? On the Hostility towards Jacob's Brother in Prophetic Sources," Vetus Testamentum, 2006.
EBSCO ATLASerials, Religion Collection
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Abstract: “This contribution offers a new approach to explain the hostile attitude of the biblical sources towards Edom. It is suggested that the relations between Edom and Israel are influenced by the way in which Israel perceived the meaning of the struggle between their fathers—Esau and Jacob. The constant conflict between Edom and Judah may well have been connected by the inhabitants of Judah, consciously or subconsciously, with the conflict between Esau and Jacob over the birthright, and over the control of the promised land. Edom's aspirations to occupy areas in Israel may have been interpreted as Edom's wish to reverse the situation and to restore the election and the birthright to Esau. Following the events in Judah of 587 BCE the people were in despair because they assumed that God had cast off his people forever. They interpreted the destruction of the temple and the expulsion from their land as severance of the relationship between God and his people. The people's exile because of their sins could also be interpreted as the people's loss of their status as the chosen people. Two facts supported their thoughts that they were rejected and Edom was now chosen by God. The first was the Edomite participation in the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple and the expulsion of Judah from their country. And the second was the colonization of the land of Judah by the Edomites. It was not Edom's participation in the destruction or even in the colonization of Judah that led to the exceptional attitude towards Edom in the Biblical sources. The ideological and theological significance that Judah assigned to Edom's acts is what led the prophets to focus on Edom. The anti-Edomite oracles were meant to instill into the hearts of the people that, despite the destruction, Israel is still the chosen people and the sins of Edom against Judah would not remain unpunished.”
· Cohn, Robert L., "Negotiating (with) the Natives: Ancestors and Identity in Genesis," Harvard Theological Review, 2003.
EBSCO ATLASerials, Religion Collection
EBSCO ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials
“The natives in Genesis, then, constitute an Other different from the Others in subsequent books. They are far from malevolent; they antagonize the first family not by design but by doing what comes naturally: extending sexual hospitality, offering economic integration, selling and protecting real estate. Recognizing themselves as outsiders, the fathers also come to understand the peculiar divinely imposed requirements of their identity vis-à-vis the natives: endogamy and land holdings apart from the local scene. Even voluntary circumcision, the fathers' ethnic marking, cannot domesticate the natives as marriage partners or residential neighbors. Though the ancestors tread softly in a land not yet their own, their tales establish a firm ethnic boundary between themselves and the local populations on the basis of which future enmities easily develop.”
· Havrelock, Rachel, "The Myth of Birthing the Hero: Heroic Barrenness in the Hebrew Bible," Biblical Interpretation, 2008.
EBSCO ATLASerials, Religion Collection
EBSCO ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials
Abstract: “Motherhood in the Hebrew Bible has been celebrated as indicative of female strength as well as derided as patriarchy's primary entrapment. Somewhere between the two, birth figures as a moment of narrative focus on female characters during which they reformulate their status. Birth seems to travel with its companion theme of barrenness as most central biblical characters undergo a prolonged period of infertility and an attendant struggle to conceive. Employing theories of the hero pattern, this essay argues that the movement from barrenness to fertility is a mode of female initiation into a relationship with the divine. While an explicit covenant promises men innumerable descendants and founder status, it is not realized until a parallel female covenant is forged. Where God makes the covenantal overture to men, women demand recognition through speech and deed. Barrenness motivates articulations that reveal concern with female memory and legacy and actions that distill the characters of individual women. Female volition draws divine attention and results in conception that, like circumcision, physically marks an alliance with God. The mothers encode their struggles and journeys from barrenness to fertility in the names of their children. Combining folklore and feminist methodologies, the essay proposes new parameters for understanding female heroism in the Hebrew Bible.”
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
· Achtemeier, P. Mark, "Matthew 13:1-23, Expository Article," Interpretation, 1990.
EBSCO ATLASerials, Religion Collection
EBSCO ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials
“It would be in keeping with the character of this text for preachers and teachers, rather than simply explaining it, to try to bring their own hearers face to face with the dilemma with which Jesus confronts the crowds…”
· Bridges, Linda McKinnish, "Preaching the Parables in Matthew's Gospel in Ordinary Time: The Extraordinary Tales of God's World," Review & Expositor, 2007. (Section on this text begins on p.340, but is best read in context of entire article.)
EBSCO ATLASerials, Religion Collection
EBSCO ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials
“Seed, soil, sun, birds, rocks, grain-all common elements familiar to the first-century listener—combine to tell a subversive story, which announces to the listener that the new world view ushered in by the presence and teaching of Jesus will find a place of growth and development in the present world.”
· Crossan, John Dominic, "The Seed Parables of Jesus," Journal of Biblical Literature, 1973.
EBSCO ATLASerials, Religion Collection
EBSCO ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials
“This article will seek to study each of these parables separately [the sower, the seed growing secretly, the mustard seed, the tares among the wheat], investigate the sequential steps of its tradition, and establish the earliest form of the story; then to ask whether this earliest version stems from the historical Jesus and, if so, what was its situational function in his ministry, and to see whether the basic theme of seed and sowing casts any common light on the four parables.”
· Gaventa, Beverly R., "Hearing the Questions," The Christian Century, 1993.
EBSCO ATLASerials, Religion Collection
EBSCO ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials
“A friend once said that listening to Jesus tell a parable must have been a little like watching someone throw a ball into the air. Instead of reaching its apex and returning directly to earth, this particular ball starts back down and then veers off at a right angle. We watch astonished, and search for answers. The answers may not come, but now we watch more carefully the one who tosses the ball, understanding at least that he commands our attention.”