textweek

Textweek/ATLAS June 28, 2015 - Proper 8 Ordinary 13 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/yearb/properb8.htm

Proper 8B / Ordinary 12B / Pentecost +5
June 28, 2015

Tull, Patricia K., "Jonathan's Gift of Friendship," Interpretation, 2004. (See also, Friendship, issue focus of Interpretation, 2004.)
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“The story of Jonathan and David stands out as the Bible's lengthiest and most complex narrative reflection on friendship. Far from idealizing the mutuality of their devotion, however, this story invites readers to ponder the human freedom to accept, reject, exploit, or reciprocate the gift of a friend's loyalty.”

Britt, Brian, "Unexpected Attachments: A Literary Approach to the Term HSD in the Hebrew Bible," Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, 2003.
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Abstract: “The biblical term HSD, variously translated 'loving kindness' and 'steadfast love', displays a wide range of biblical uses and meanings. This article concentrates on poetic and narrative texts in which HSD appears surprisingly, often to denote unexpected attachments. While HSD is a formulaic term in covenant tradition, some poetic texts, notably Ps. 89, Isa. 54, and Lam. 3, place the term in striking contrast to its immediate context. Narrative cases of unexpected HSD include the attachments between Ruth and Naomi, David and Jonathan, Abraham and Sarah (in the wife-sister scenes), Yahweh and Israel, and three episodes about spies. By attending to the literary uses of HSD, this article illuminates the place of HSD in biblical theology.”

Craddock, Fred., "The Poverty of Christ: An Investigation of II Corinthians 8:9," Interpretation, 1968.
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“The poverty of Christ consists, therefore, in the identification of Christ with the human situation, an identification without reservation.” 

Rhyne, C Thomas, "2 Corinthians 8:8-15," Interpretation, 1987.
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“Equality does not impoverish the more affluent. Indeed, both parties will benefit from sharing. Those who share their resources with others will be freed from anxiety. Those who receive from the abundance of others will be sustained in their crisis; and if the church is a microcosm of the world, then surely our text tells us that society may benefit by following the principle of equality.”

· Dube, Musa W., "Fifty Years of Bleeding: A Storytelling Feminist Reading of Mark 5:24-43," Ecumenical Review, 1999.
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“Mama Africa is standing up. She is not talking. She is not asking. She is not offering any more money - for none is left. Mama Africa is coming behind Jesus. She is pushing through a strong human barricade of crowds. Weak and still bleeding but determined, she is stretching out her hands. If only she can touch the garments of Jesus Christ...”

Loader, William, "Challenged at the Boundaries: A Conservative Jesus in Mark's Tradition," Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 1996. (Section on this text begins on Page 58.)
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“Even more so will the purity issues have been central in any pre-Markan form of the story, especially in a Jewish setting.49 In such a setting Jesus' response would have most likely been interpreted primarily in relation to the woman's disregard of Torah. Characteristically Markan concerns, such as Jesus' quasi-magical power and the disciples' insensitivity, now govern the narrative, all but obscuring Jesus' response as one which might have been expected from a conservative Jew confronted with such a violation of purity law. This conservative image is strengthened if it was indeed Jesus' tassels that she touched (cf. Mt. 9.20). Yet, challenged at the boundary, Jesus responds as in the other anecdotes by a significant boundary crossing.”

 Willimon, William H., "Ready for Interruptions," The Christian Century, 1991.
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 “Jesus will have none of our imposed order. He leads us down a road more circuitous than that toward Nazareth. He inserts into the journey those frightened parents and the suffering sick from whom we have averted our gaze…”

 

Textweek ATLAS June 21, 2015 Proper 6 Ordinary 11 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/yearb/properb7.htm

Proper 7B / Ordinary 11B / Pentecost +4
June 21, 2015

Beck, John A., "David and Goliath, a Story of Place: The Narrative-Geographical Shaping of 1 Samuel 17," Westminster Theological Journal, 2006.
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“…the geographical setting allows the reader to draw an unmistakable contrast between the characters of David and Saul. The economic and national security issues associated with an invasion of the Elah Valley by the Philistines opened the door to greatness, and it was David rather than Saul who walked through that door.”

Thompson, Kenneth, Jr., "Out of the Whirlwind: The Sense of Alienation in the Book of Job," Interpretation, 1960.
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Taylor, Barbara Brown, "On Not Being God," Review and Expositor, 2002.
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“Humankind's most basic theological problem, says Franciscan Richard Rohr, is that God is God and we are not.”

King, Michael A., "Storm System," The Christian Century, 2006.
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“Amid an almost endless list of hardships, calamities, beatings and persecutions, [Paul] celebrates the power of God. There turns out to be a kind of spiritual immune system for someone enduring storms for Christ, a system that turns ‘having nothing’ into ‘possessing everything.’”

Wink, Walter, "The Projector Is Running," The Christian Century, 1994.
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Textweek ATLAS June 7, 2015 - Proper 5B Ordinary 10B Pentecost +2

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/yearb/properb5.htm

Proper 5B / Ordinary 10B / Pentecost +2
June 7, 2015

Fretheim, Terence E., "Is Genesis 3 a Fall Story?" Word & World, 1994.
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 “I return to the question of the ‘fall’ as a metaphor for
what happens in this text (whether it is a legitimate metaphor apart from this
text is a larger issue). At least two issues present themselves: (1) the congruence
of this metaphor with those in the text; (2) the idea of this sin as a decisive
rupture in the history of the God-human relationship.”

Miller, Patrick, "Psalm 130," Interpretation, 1979.
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 “The Psalm speaks out of the paradoxical but very real and
human experience of an encounter with God that is the source of the despair in
the depths and at the same time the only way out.”

Fredrickson, David, "Pentecost: Paul the Pastor in 2 Corinthians," Word & World, 1991.
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 “What accounts for Paul's insistence that human existence
is, even in the transformation worked by the Spirit, always given in a body?
Certainly, his Judaism is part of the answer. Yet notice also the role of the
body in the eschatological judgment envisioned in 5:10…”

Busch, Austin, "Questioning and Conviction: Double-voiced
Discourse in Mark 3:22-30," Journal of Biblical Literature, 2006.
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 “Mark is not ultimately interested in settling these
questions to establish that God and his representatives are, in the end,
unambiguously good and holy. He rather recognizes that the problems latent in
the apocalyptic eschatological world-view that he holds, especially the
"Holy" Spirit's willingness to cooperate with demons hostile to God
and to God's Son (1:10-13), raise troubling and irresolvable questions about
the character of God and Jesus. But despite the evangelist's commitment to
skeptical interrogation of Jesus's ministry and message in a Jewish apocalyptic
eschatological context, Mark will not go so far as to reject Jesus outright as
a representative of Satan.”

• Rubio, Julie Hanlon, "Jesus, Paul, and Family Values," Ex Auditu, 2012.
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"My hope is that both families of like-minded believers and the more mixed families in which many of us live can still find in the Christian tradition an inspiring vision of commitment, communion, and service to others."

• Steuernagel, Valdir R., "Doing Theology Together with Mary," Journal of Latin American Theology, 2013.
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"This notion of theology as mere knowledge is for people who have no womb' Mary reiterates, ’It's for people who want to keep their womb for themselves. it's a lot of blah, blah, blah and very little of 'Here am I, Lord.'"

 

 

Textweek ATLAS May 31, 2015 - Trinity B

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/yearb/trinityb.htm

Trinity
May 31, 2015

Yaqob, Olga, MVM, "The Face of God in Suffering: Iraq," Theology Today, 2006.

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 “Media coverage of Iraq generally has overlooked the daily lives of ordinary Iraqis. In all the wars Iraq has endured since 1980, we have lost sight of human faces. Every nation is its people, not merely its geographic territory, and these people are all made in the image of God. The illustrations accompanying this article include both images of Iraq's geography (the land) and an image, in the shape of Iraq, formed out of the faces of many different ordinary Iraqi people, from all different religious and geographical areas of the country. In the center of this image is the face of Jesus on the cross. In the suffering of the Iraqi people, I have seen the face of God.”

Mays, James L., "Expository Article: Psalm 29," Interpretation, 1985.

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 “Religion and theology are increasingly dominated by
psychology and existentialism because they have retreated to inner space to
contemplate the human psyche and consciousness. The thunderstorm as theophany
is a sign that the Lord is God also of outer space. Perhaps Psalm 29 is in the
canon of Scripture to call us to see the world afresh as creation — and say
‘glory!’ before ‘the Lord, maker of heaven and earth.’”

 

Carlson, Richard P., "Between Text and Sermon: Romans
8:12-17," Interpretation, 2004. (See also, Romans, issue focus for Interpretation,
2004.)

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 “One way to proclaim Paul's vision here is to highlight how
Christian life in the present is a matter of ‘No Longer, Already, Not Yet.’
That is, we are no longer in sin's dominion so that we no longer utilize the
self-centeredness of the flesh as our motivation and guide in
life…Nevertheless, we have not yet received the full inheritance of
eschatological life and glory that awaits us. Our life in the present as God's
spirited-children entails the cross, for that was precisely the way of life set
forth for God's Son, Jesus Christ.”

 

Munro, Winsome, "The Pharisee and the Samaritan in John: Polar or Parallel?"
Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 1995.

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 "Despite the tension of contrasting polarities in the
juxtaposition of the woman of Samaria, who was possibly a slave, and Nicodemus,
the Jewish Pharisee and member of the Jewish council, the Gospel seems to hold
these two figures together as parallel, rather than polar, opposites.”

Textweek ATLAS May 24, 2015 - Pentecost

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/yearb/pentecdb.htm

Pentecost
May 24, 2015

• McCann, J Clinton, Jr., "Between Text and Sermon, Psalm 104," Interpretation, 2012.
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"The traditional use of Ps 104 on the Day of Pentecost serves to remind us that God’s creation of the church continues the story of God’s crea- tion of the world. It is a love story; it is still unfolding; and we are part of it."

• Reed, Stephen A., "Imagining Resurrection in the Old Testament,'" Living Pulpit (Online), 2012.
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"We should not overlook the power of the idea of the resurrection of groups of people. There may well be groups who need this message of hope."

• Tuell, Steven Shawn, "True Metaphor: insights into reading Scripture from the rabbis," Theology Today, 2011.
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Abstract: "The history of the interpretation of Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones (Ezek 37:1-14) reveals that while this passage is a metaphor for Israel’s exile and restoration, it has also served as the source text for Jewish and Christian reflection on the resurrection of the dead. That the same passage can be read in both ways has implications for the way all of Scripture can be read. In the Talmud, Rabbi Judah calls Ezekiel’s vision ‘emeth mashal: a true metaphor. This is an apt image for the entire Bible, as a text both historically specific and theologically multivalent."

• Flesher LeAnn Snow, "Caution:uncontainable tongues of fire!," Review & Expositor, 2012.
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"The Spirit of God is being poured out on ALL flesh. Uncontainable tongues of fire—God is doing a new thing. Will we be part of it?"

• Barreto, Eric D., "Negotiating Difference: Theology and Ethnicity in the Acts of the Apostles," Word & World, 2011.
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"Acts narrates the intrusion of the gospel into the myriad populations of antiquity, A number of cultural boundaries are crossed, but at no point in Acts does Luke narrate the cessation of ethnic difference. Instead, the text invites us to enter a world in which ethnic difference and faithful unity coexist."