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.
Matthew 22:1-14
- Olson, Daniel C., "Mathew 22:1-14 as Midrash," The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 2005.
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“Matthew's parable of the Great Feast is a complex composition. In Matthew's hands, exegetical readings of Zephaniah and 1 Enoch were combined with a traditional parable of Jesus to create a new form of this parable, a king-mashal functioning as a midrash on Zephaniah/7 Enoch. The fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE. apparently struck Matthew and his community as fulfillment of Zepha-niah's oracle, and a midrashic pattern strikingly similar to Matthew's was already available in the Parables of Enoch, likewise composed with an attack on Jerusalem close at hand.”
Story, J Lyle, "All Is Now Ready," American Theological Inquiry, 2009.
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“In Matthew's parable, the invited guests were not content to merely refuse the invitation, but they seized the King's messengers, treated them shamefully and killed them. This underscores the radical nature of Jesus and the Christian life where people cannot be neutral to Jesus' message. A nondecision is a negative refusal.”
- Carter, Warren, "Resisting and Imitating the Empire: Imperial Paradigms in Two Matthean Parables," Interpretation, 2002. (See also, "Parables," issue focus of Interpretation 56.3 (2002).)
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“God's parabolic word always comes in cultural garb. Although employing the rhetoric and values of the imperial hegemony, the parables—and Matthew's gospel in general—render a trenchant critique.”
Exodus 32:1-14
- McCann, J. Clinton, Jr., "Exodus 32:1-14: Expository Article," Interpretation, 1990.
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“God does what the people cannot or will not do; God remembers and is faithful to the point of bearing human sinfulness. Israel's disobedience in Exodus 32:1-14 was not the end of the story. Peter's denial and the disciple's unfaithfulness were not the end of the story. The church's history of disobedience has not ended the story of God's dealing with a chosen people. The church is saved by grace!”
- Slivniak, Dmitri M., "The Golden Calf Story: Constructively and Deconstructively," Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, 2008.
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Abstract: “Unlike other postmodern reading practices, deconstruction suppresses the figure of the reader: the text is viewed as both engendering and undermining its meaning, while the reader's role is only to discover these processes. Yet, when one deconstructs biblical texts, 'anarchic' and 'lacking logic' according to traditional Western criteria, the illusion vanishes, and it is hard to get along without the reader as an active figure. The reader's role is actively to construct the meaning of the text, before it gets deconstructed. This is the reason why in some recent works the deconstructive reading of the text is preceded by a 'constructive' one. In this article the Golden Calf story (Exod. 32) is read both constructively and deconstructively. The constructive reading focuses on the opposition 'normative cult-deviant cult' which is viewed as central to the story. Normative cult and deviant cult are represented by the Tablets of the Law and the Golden Calf respectively. The deconstruction of this opposition is based on the fact that the tablets and the calf receive the same treatment: Moses destroys both of them.”
Philippians 4:1-9
- Bugg, Charles, "Philippians 4:4-13," Review and Expositor, 1991.
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“…another factor that makes this letter a favorite of most of us is its sense of joy in the midst of difficulty. Paul has been disappointed. He wanted to preach the gospel in other places, but now he is imprisoned. How does a person handle such disappointment? Many of us would spend our time whining and complaining. It is not easy to have dreams dashed or expectations shattered. Nor is it easy to move from independence to dependence on what others decide for you as Paul found in prison and as some folks find in aging.”
- Kelly, Geffrey B., "A 'Mysticism of Joy' in the Lord -- In Life As In Death," The Living Pulpit, 1996.
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“It is ironic that two of the most striking statements about the meaning of joy came to us during that period when Europe was traumatized by Nazi ideology. Writing in 1937 in a country under the spell of Adolf Hitler and beset by the idolatries of barbarous nationalism and blind patriotism, Karl Rahner insisted that true joy in the world must spring, not from what appeals with phoney lustre to the naive, acquisitive imagination, but from ‘conformity with him whom we have joined in the flight from the world contained in the foolishness of the cross.’”
- "Quotations on the Many Views of Joy," The Living Pulpit, 1996.
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