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06/16/2014

Textweek ATLAS Links July 20, 2014 - Proper 11A Ordinary 16A Pentecost +6

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:

http://www.textweek.com/yeara/propera11.htm

Proper 11, Ordinary 16, Pentecost +6
July 20, 2014

“The point of this story is that evil and good are living together, side by side.”

“Readers of Matthew recognize the disciplined flesh of parabolic slaves as an antitype, a model to avoid. Curiously, however, Matthew features another tortured body as a model to emulate, the battered and crucified body of Jesus. Jesus himself calls his followers to be willing to endure the sufferings of the cross (Matt 16:24). In a peculiar way, the corporal punishment of disobedient slaves in the Matthean parables foreshadows the broken body of Jesus: ridiculed, beaten, executed. A final, counter-line of inquiry into the Matthean ideology of slavery would ask whether the crucifixion of Jesus prompts us to reconsider our interpretations of the slaves whose representations prefigure the Gospels climactic scenes of torture.”

“As I will demonstrate, however, the evidence for the use of mustard seed and leaven as stock images in the early first century is surprisingly sparse. The putative symbolic valences of mustard seed and leaven are simply not well enough attested to bear the interpretive weight that has been placed on them. My intent here is not to propose an alternative interpretation instead, I hope simply to demonstrate that, lacking any evidence of established symbolism, interpretation of the parables of the mustard seed and the leaven must instead be derived from the internal logic of the parables themselves and from the narrative contexts in which they are embedded.”

Poetry – scroll down on page. 

Abstract: “The focal point of Jacob's dream at Bethel, the sulläm is almost universally accepted as a ladder or staircase Through an analysis of the language of Gen 28 10-22 it is evident that the biblical author makes reference to the physical structure of the sulläm within the context of the story The sulläm is identified as the 'gate of heaven' Thus, even though sulläm is a hapax legomenon, its meaning may be derived as the result of the description in the text This analysis suggests that the sulläm is to be understood as an enclosed Near Eastern gate structure It is oriented vertically in the manner and likeness of other Near Eastern gates through which deities and celestial objects traveled between realms.”

“The vision may be ambiguous; the message is clear. A trickster and a supplanter has been chosen to further the divine purposes. Jacob had used his wits and cunning to advance his own cause; now they are to be put into God's service. Later this same God will use the envy of Joseph's brothers, Nebuchadnezzar's lust for conquest, Cyrus's political acumen, and Caiaphas's worldly wisdom to advance the divine scheme of salvation.”

06/16/2014 at 07:42 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

06/14/2014

Textweek ATLAS links July 13, 2014 - Proper 10A Ordinary 15A Pentecost +5

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:

http://www.textweek.com/yeara/propera10.htm

Proper 10, Ordinary 15, Pentecost +5
July 13, 2014

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.”

“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.”

06/14/2014 at 01:06 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

06/03/2014

Textweek ATLAS links July 6, 2014 Proper 9A/Ordinary 14A/Pentecost +4

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:

http://www.textweek.com/yeara/propera9.htm

Pentecost+4, Proper 9, Ordinary 14
July 6, 2014

“God's silence in relationship to the machinations of religion is purposeful, according to Matthew's Gospel. The God of gods will not be contained or grasped by any generation and so is in hiding—even from those to whom God is said to have been revealed in the past.”

Abstract: “The article questions the view that this story has arisen as a "late connective piece" within the structure of the Patriarchal tradition as a whole. Through examining its narrative structure and comparing that with the structure of other Hebrew and Ugaritic narratives dealing with a marriage, it argues that the story arose and was transmitted orally within the setting of marriage, specifically on the occasion of the transfer of the bride, as the paradigm of the willing bride who joyously departs to her bridegroom's home to enjoy the blessings of marriage with the intention of invoking like joy and blessing upon the bride.” 

“The betrothal journey narrative is an archetypal narrative pattern repeatedly employed in biblical literature, often with important innovations, by different writers for different artistic purposes. The narrative always entails a journey by a suitor to and from a foreign land for the purpose of obtaining a bride among relatives and establishing his household. The climactic moment of the narrative is the betrothal "type-scene" identified by Robert Alter, wherein the suitor meets the bride-to-be at a well and a betrothal is arranged. In this article I will describe the larger narrative framework in which the betrothal type-scene is situated and, further, identify a few crucial elements of the type-scene that Alter overlooks. I will then show how this narrative pattern is creatively put to use in various stories from the OT, the Apocrypha, and the NT. First, however, it will be instructive to review Alter's discussion of type-scenes and, specifically, the betrothal type-scene.” 

Turner, Mary Donovan, "Rebekah: Ancestor of Faith,"Lexington Theological Quarterly, 1985.
  EBSCO ATLASerials, Religion Collection
  EBSCO ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials 

Abstract: “The Old Testament narratives are replete with women who came out of a patriarchal system to make an indelible stamp on the world around them. One example is Rebekah. In tempting subtleties the narrator of the Genesis story invites us to consider Rebekah, not Isaac, as the hero who follows Abraham and plays a crucial and distinctive role in carrying on God's promise to future generations. After a literary analysis of the scenes in which Rebekah appears, the author is encouraged to lay aside the exclusive designation of the "patriarchal narratives" and more appropriately refer to them as the story of our ancestors.”

“This diversity makes clear the issue that these groups were facing: who was Israel? Was the real Israel those loyal to the priesthood? To the Davidic family? To the urban elite in Jerusalem? To this or that sectarian group? Perhaps all of these different voices and others were cries that each group belonged to the real Israel. Each group reached to a part of Israel's overall tradition as the basis for its claim that it (and maybe even this or that nation outside Israel) belonged to God's people. Perhaps no one group could speak for all peoples; in pressing their own case, in reading their common history from their own perspective, they inevitably slighted this group, excluded that one. No one of them had the full truth; all saw the truth dimly. Therein lies one of their lessons and warnings today.”

“James D.G. Dunn advocates a well-accepted interpretation model that reads Rom. 7:14-25 and 8:1-17 together solely in terms of Paul's own Christian experience characterized by the dialectically reframed eschatological tension (i.e., both 'already' and 'not yet' 'at the same time'). However, Rom. 7:7-25 is not a self-portrait of Paul himself, neither a psychological description of the mature or non-mature Christian life, but a rhetorical discourse in which Paul explicates, from his Christian viewpoint, the negative function of the Mosaic Law as the most delicate issue representing his gospel. Pauline eschatology in Rom. 6, 8, and 7:1-6 puts a decisive weight on the 'already accomplished in Jesus Christ and gives a perspective that Christians prolepttcally experience in the Spirit liberation from the law, the sin, and the flesh, confidently anticipating the final victory.”

“In this essay I have argued that an appreciation for certain Platonic assumptions, images, and metaphors allows for a more coherent reading of Romans 7 as depicting reason's defeat at the hands of passions and desires. In making this case I have consciously avoided appeals to borrowings, parallels, backgrounds, or various types of "worldviews" such as Hellenistic, Jewish, Christian, or apocalyptic. Instead, I have understood Paul as having an intellectual repertoire and sought to explain certain aspects of that repertoire of interests and skills. Though the question of Pauls level of skill should remain open, his use of key moral-psychological assumptions and arguments is significant and requires explanation.”

06/03/2014 at 02:09 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)