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During the first century Christians held communal suppers on Sunday evening. From the beginning of the second century Christians began to come together more frequently. In addition to their gatherings on Sunday evening, they began to meet early in the morning, first on one day, probably on Sunday, and later on more days of the week. The earliest evidence for Christian gatherings early in the morning comes from Pliny the Younger, who was the Roman governor of Bithynia-Pontus in ca. 110-112 CE. Scholarly opinions are divided with respect to the character of the morning gathering mentioned by Pliny and none of them provide a satisfactory explanation of this evidence. Moreover, there is no socio-historical explanation of the origins of the Christian gathering in the morning. Numerous evidence from Jewish, pagan, and Christian sources shows that coming together in the early morning for worship was a widespread phenomenon in the Graeco-Roman world. For Christians in Asia Minor about 100 CE, the idea of assembling by sunrise for worship was not something very difficult to conceive, therefore. This paper seeks to argue that the morning gathering formed the Christian counterpart of the meetings for prayer and worship which were held by many other religious groups in the Graeco-Roman world, including pagan and Jewish worshippers. Why the Christians in Bithynia placed their morning service on Sunday remains a matter for conjecture. Several possible reasons will also be presented in this paper.

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This paper deals with the history of interpretation of Luke 14:16-23, particularly with verse 23. First, the paper shows how the passage was interpreted by the early Christian Fathers until Augustine. Second, since none of the Fathers before Augustine used it to support compulsion, we want to see the context in which Augustine was determined to use it as an argument for the use of force against the Donatists. Particularly, we want to see the unique interpretation of Augustine, and the fact that, although it is an important argument in Augustine's justification of the use of force in conversion, it is by no means the most important one. As one might expect, the Ante-Nicene writers found little use of the command "compel people to come in" in Luke 14:23 because before 311 Christians were the ones compelled to renounce their religion. Therefore, the references we find are rather to the Great Banquet generally than to Luke 14:23. We find references to the Great Banquet in Clement oof Alexandria, Tertullian, and Origen, but none of these writers interpreted the passage as a way of supporting the use of force. After Nicea, we find references to the Great Banquet in Gregory of Nazianzus, John Chrysostom, and Jerome. As before Nicea, none of these writers thought to see it as a support for the use of physical force against schismatics. This paper will show that the Parable of the Great Banquet was interpreted by the early Christian writers depending on the circumstances in which they found themselves.

Even a casual reading of the Gospel narratives reveals a striking disparity between the synoptic words of Jesus and the Johannine words of Jesus. While the Church has accorded the same authority to both, leaving the impression for the average lay person that all Scriptural words of Jesus are verbatims of the pre-Easter Jesus, the issues of origin and transmission become clouded. If it is true that the only Jesus available to us is Jesus as he was seen and heard by those who first encountered him and formulated the traditions we now have, it is then imperative to consider the nexus of these traditions to those who spoke them. This paper proposes to examine issues of memory, orality, prophetic utterance, and literary construction as they apply to the Spirit-driven prophetic community of the Fourth Gospel in whose midst the living post-Easter voice of the Good Shepherd continues to be heard not as a tradition but as a contemporary experience.

The means of reason have co-existed with religious believes whether applied against religion or adapted for promoting religious thought or doctrine perhaps for as long as human beings acquired such level of intelligence. Schools of thought and religious associations are social institutions with links to individuals who have chosen to develop and practice such ideological convictions alone. Neither Xeonophanes of Colophon in Ionia (560-478 BCE), who criticizes mythology on philosphical grounds nor the rationalists of the early modern age or the empiricism of Francis Bacon‘s (1561-1626) concept of science (based on observation over against deduction) and Edmund Husserl‘s (1859-1938) phenomenology (based on pure consciousness) have ostracized religion or religious instituions from the cultural mix of the Western world or anywhere else for that matter. This paper discusses deconstructionist approaches to religion in which religious activities are thought to originate by pure coincidence to form social relations or changes subsequently expressed in fabricated texts (such as myth) following models suggested by comparative analyst Jonathan Z. Smith. It proceeds to discuss modern cognitive contributions to explaining religion with empirical models based on such different ideas as mental causistry (e.g. Andy Clark) and emotion (e.g. Martha Nussbaum and Antonio R. Damasio). In a final section, the paper compares ancient philosophical contributions to understanding religion as a human product to the modern models already mentioned using Cicero‘s (106-43 BCE) definition of religion as a neurotic phase of repitition over against the hysteric apperance of superstition in prayer and sacrifice.

John Chrysostom’s rhetoric against Jews, especially in his Adversus Judaeos, remains among the most infamous of patristic literature. Nevertheless, the function of the Jews in Chrysostom’s exegetical homilies has yet to be explored fully. Against the backdrop of fourth-century Antioch, in which Jews comprised a powerful and visible presence, this paper investigates the rhetorical function of the “Jews” in Chrysostom’s homilies on John – a gospel that ostensibly engendered the worst of patristic anti-Judaic trends. In order to shed light on his readings of Johannine Jews, this paper focuses on the role mimesis plays in Chrysostom’s homilies as well as the biblical text’s place within his vision of Christian education. Chrysostom, both implicitly and explicitly, casts himself in Christ’s role as the good but tough teacher, who seeks to shape his audience into Christ’s image. As such, there builds in these homilies a mimetic correspondence between, on the one hand, Christ and Chrysostom and, on the other, the Johannine Jews and Chrysostom’s contemporary Antiochene audience. Christ’s and Chrysostom’s virtuous and didactic goals are revealed to be one and the same, as are the faults and vices of the Johannine Jews and fourth-century Antiochene Christians. Contrary to modern assertions, Chrysostom does not wield the supposed hostility of the Fourth Gospel against contemporary Jews. Rather, Chrysostom, in keeping with his parenetic intentions, directs the gospel’s difficult words against contemporary Christians – despite the fact that he preached these homilies within a few years of his Adversus Judaeos. In this context of Chrysostom’s mimetic reading, this paper concludes with a consideration of the usefulness of the Alexandrian/Antiochene distinction, whose applicability begins to falter when the exegesis of the “spiritual gospel” takes center stage.

The paper deals with the examples of interpretation of the Bible in the Soviet times in Latvia, when theology experienced oppression. It also deals with the impact these interpretations have on today's hermeneutical tendencies after the political changes.

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Approaching the Hebrew Bible as one who identifies as both an evangelical and a feminist can create tension between, on the one hand, wanting to affirm the text's ongoing authority and usefulness as “Word of God” to the church today; and on the other, wanting to recognise, resist, and reject texts that are so thoroughly steeped in their patriarchal world view as to be practically irredeemable. This cognitive dissonance and ambivalence towards the biblical text is recognised as an increasing issue for a growing number of evangelical feminists. The crux of the issue is determining what to make of the stated evangelical commitment to the authority of the text, when faced with texts that perpetuate the oppression of women. This paper explores the interplay of voices in the book of Lamentations, a book that includes the troubling metaphor of Israel as female Zion. That the book of Lamentations contains various voices and perspectives, including that of female Zion, is well established. Less clear, however, are the implications of Lamentations' multiple and resisting voices for contemporary hermeneutics and constructs of biblical authority. Based on the interplay and progression of voices and perspectives in Lamentations, this paper will advance an approach to the Hebrew Bible as Scripture that allows for a variety of voices to be heard, acknowledged, and – when appropriate – resisted. The paper will then demonstrate how this hermeneutic of conversation and participation might adequately address both feminist and evangelical concerns regarding the authority of the biblical text.

The oldest source for the “sacred prostitution” that biblical textbooks have made a characteristic feature of “Canaanite fertility religion” is a second century CE travelogue known as The Syrian Goddess (De Syria dea), attributed to the satirist and rhetorician Lucian of Samosata. Lucian prefaces his account of the cult of Hierapolis with a report on the other “Syrian” temples that he has visited or learned of in his travels, imitating Herodotus in tone and dialect. His most elaborate account is of the Adonis rites performed at the great sanctuary of Aphrodite in Byblos. As part of the mourning rituals, he reports, the Byblians shaved their heads. But the women who refused to shave were required to stand for a day offering themselves to strangers for payment that became an offering to Aphrodite. This sole reference from Byblos, and sole evidence for Phoenicia prior to Eusebius’ fourth century report on Heliopolis, established “sacred prostitution” in its assumed homeland--and provided its only link to the cult of a dying-and-rising-god, lacking in all other references. This paper sets Lucian’s account in the context of other accounts of Adonis rites, prostitution in honor of Aphrodite, and Lucian’s own report on the Ashtart temple of Sidon, to demonstrate how Lucian, in parody of Herodotus, made Byblos “Babylon West.”

This paper employs Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of “symbolic capital” to show that religious discourse functions as a type of capital in Apuleius of Madauros’ The Golden Ass (Book 11) and in Pauline epistles. “Capital” is defined as any cultural product which can be exchanged for another culturally recognized form of capital, such as material goods or services involving human labor. “Symbolic capital” is capital which exists in narrative form (e.g., religious discourse). Symbolic capital in The Golden Ass consists of the promise of a beatific afterlife, a longer lifespan, and a more fortunate state in life, all of which are said to be mediated by the power of the goddess Isis. In the Pauline epistles, symbolic capital consists of promised deliverance from eschatological judgment, as well as a future existence in a heavenly realm. In the writings of both Apuleius and Paul, promises of post-mortem bliss, etc. are viewed as exchangeable for material goods or services involving human labor. In the Golden Ass, the protagonist, Lucius, devotes both considerable human labor and economic expense in return for the divine benefaction of a more pleasant afterlife (11.6). In Romans 15:27, Paul makes an equation between “spiritual things” and “material things,” and asserts that a donation of the former type is adequately recompensed by a counter-gift of the latter type. In 2 Cor 9:6–15, Paul declares that God’s “indescribable gift” (i.e., that of salvation from the eschatological judgment and subsequent existence in a heavenly realm) obliges the Corinthians to respond with their own material gifts to Jerusalem. Their property of exchangeability for material goods or human labor marks religious promises such as that of post-mortem bliss as forms of symbolic capital, and indicates that religious discourse, in Apuleius and Paul, at least, may perform a function properly characterized as economic.

It is well known that different images of God abound in the book of Hosea. Metaphors were used that became well-known ways of thinking about God in the Old Testament, but others remained unique Hosea images, not found elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible. In the light of contemporary iconography, the issue I wish to pursue is the origin of the images of God in the book Hosea. Were these images innovative constructs of the prophet/author, or do they reflect images known from contemporary iconographic depictions in the miniature art of Iron Age II in Israel. The issue underlying these questions is the problem of finding new information to facilitate research on the history of theological concepts. How do we come to a better understanding of an ancient text and ancient concepts? Archaeological results are by far the most productive source of new information on ancient societies. Archaeologists are often not the scholars who “translate” their finds to useful snippets of information for the historian of the religion of ancient Israel. Seals and seal impressions are some of the more common objects found in the archaeological process that shed light on ideological and theological ideas of the owners and of the period. More often than not, the depictions are presented text-less and the question is whether these depictions can lead us to a better understanding of the biblical text.

The martyrdom accounts of Eleazar and the seven brothers found in 2 Macc 6:18-7:42 are found again within the book of 4 Maccabees. These accounts are not simply re-told, but are re-interpreted in order to fit the purposes of the author of 4 Maccabees. This paper will focus on comparing and contrasting the martyrdom accounts of Eleazar and the seven brothers found in 2 Maccabees and 4 Maccabees. Special attention will be given to the re-interpretation of the martyrdom accounts in 4 Maccabees and propose reasons for the changes the author makes based on both cognate literature and historical context. It will propose that the shifts in focus, purpose, and function of the martyrdom accounts in 4 Maccabees play an important role in the development of the idea of vicarious sacrifice in second Temple Judaism. The re-interpretation of the martyrdom accounts, it will be argued, both meets the needs of the original audience of 4 Maccabees and functions as an important part in the development of the doctrine of vicarious sacrifice.

In Mesopotamia and Hatti, liturgists counteracted omens predicting misfortune by using apotropaic rituals, including the Neo-Assyrian namburbis and the rituals of the Hittite bird-augurs. In this paper I compare and contrast performative speech in these two groups of texts with what I call “apotropaic intercession” in the Hebrew Bible—acts of intercession, primarily by Moses and a few prophets, against foretold doom. Although the literary genres differ, the three bodies of texts all seek to overturn divine decrees communicated to humanity, answering the deity’s message with their own. The nature of the speech acts in these apotropaic texts illuminate aspects of the cultures’ implicit theology.

This paper will be a brief comparison of some of the body language in the Hodayot with the catena of body quotations used and quoted by Paul in Romans 3. Attention will be paid to the character of the language used and how it is placed within the structure and rhetorical argumentation of the two bodies of text. Particular consideration will be given to similarities in purpose and differences in genre.

Analysis of marriage practices usually takes for granted the primary objects of study as “male” and “female.” Connecting marriage practices with the construction of identity focuses attention on the ideological aspects of these practices, on the ways in which marriage practices fit into the symbol system of a society, enacting and rationalizing meanings and power relationships both in and beyond the kinship group. Full appreciation of this ideological dimension of marriage requires critical attention to gender: the constructed-ness of “male” and “female,” and how this construction constructs other aspects of identity. This paper begins with the fundamental feminist insight that, in an androcentric, patrilineal culture, Woman is Other, which means, on a deep level, all marriage is intermarriage, a relationship that men both require and resist in different measures in different circumstances. In the Bible this female Other can and does stand for a range of other Others. The particulars vary: some intermarriages are tolerable, even desirable, others are abhorrent, but the line is shifting, not stable. This gender-critical stance means that we have to compare and contrast “intermarriages” of all sorts, beginning with the null set—the unfulfillable patrilineal desire for female-free reproduction—and including as well the (usually prohibited) practice of incest. Although this point of departure may seem abstract, I shall argue in this paper that it actually offers some leverage in dealing with texts that both beckon us to ask the question about the social significance of intermarriage and also veil any direct answers in the folds of ideological literature.

Laws and narratives in the Pentateuch are integrated in that the laws take up issues from the narratives. A prime example is how the idolatrous character of Joseph’s dreams in Genesis 37 inspires the five laws in Numbers 15. In his first dream, Joseph’s brothers as sheaves of grain reverently bow down to his sheaf. The first two rules lay out the proper role of grain offerings in Israelite worship. The third deals with unintentional offenses and with a deliberate, high-handed offense against God. The rule recognizes that Joseph is not responsible for his dreams but nonetheless takes seriously his hubris. The fourth rule judges a man who gathers sticks on the Sabbath. The offense parallels how the stalks of grain in Joseph’s dream have been gathered for an idolatrous purpose. The rule’s focus is on someone competing with God as Creator. Joseph’s second dream dramatically illustrates such a phenomenon: the sun, moon, and stars bow down to him. The stick-gatherer provides another example because the offender intends an idolatrous act, probably involving fire. The fifth rule requires the placement of colored fringes on an Israelite’s garment so that he is alert to observing all the commandments. In focus is how Joseph’s special (colored?) garment provoked envy. Not only did it signify Joseph’s importance but was intimately tied to the immediately following dreams that brought out his overweening arrogance. A later son of Israel has to provide himself with a tangible reminder of how easy it is to offend. The narratives that precede (spies creating trouble) and appear after (infighting among the sons of Israel) Numbers 15 similarly link up with the Joseph narrative. The same integrating process applies to the presentation of both laws and narratives throughout the Pentateuch.

This paper will review recent developments in sociological approaches to the city, urban life, memory, and spatial mobility (contrasting with earlier classic and modernist sociological treatments), from the perpsective of their potential use for the analysis of ancient biblical social worlds.

Ritual studies can shed light on the social rhetoric of the Apocalypse of John. Apc 1:3,10 give hints about the earliest Christians' worship and lection. In light of Victor Turner's ritual criticism (as well as others' ritual theories), the presumed service of the earliest Christianity is analyzed. The Apocalypse signifies all three stages of any rite of passage: (1) "On the Lord's day" (1:10) implies the stage of separation; (2) the lectionary reading in the presence of the Christian communities (1:3a) leads to the liminal stage; and (3) the observance of the prophecy in the everyday life (1:3b) belongs to the phrase of "incorporation". Besides, the epistolary genre offers the participant, on the one hand, a threshold in Apc 1:1-8 to gradually enter the new Communitas, and on the other hand, an exit in Apc 22:6-21 to return to his/her everyday life. In between, the apocalyptic genre (1:9-22:5) serves as a process of liminality. A literary device of John, which is similar to Mise en abyme (I term it as Mise en apocalypse or "Story within a story"), is found in the structure of the Apocalypse that can strengthen the "Communitas". By means of the aforesaid device, Christ meets his followers (i.e. participants) in the ideological communitas in the course of the rite. Thus, they engage in the liminality, just as shown in the studies of cultural anthropology. Consciously or unconsciously, they experience status change in the rite, which functions as a social critique. Lastly, according to Gerd Theissen's analysis, a combination of aggression reduction and intensification characterizes in the rites of the earliest Christian communities, and the Apocalypse of John is no exception.

Was Pharaoh flattened by the last plague and thus let the Israelites go? I suppose that is hardly the reason. In fact, Pharaoh was getting angry and had showed no interest in hearing further from Moses even after the previous plagues. I suggest that Pharaoh did not know about the last plague until it happened. In Exodus 10:28-29, Pharaoh had commanded not to see Moses again. Therefore, Moses had declared the coming of the last plague in front of the officers and the people, but not the Pharaoh. Moreover, if the last plague is so threatening, it is hard to understand why Pharaoh chased the Israelites after they had left the land of Egypt. In order to resolve the ambiguity, we need to take a close look at Exodus 11. The Egyptians suffered a lot and were completely fed up with the plagues. However, Pharaoh was still reluctant to change. Therefore, I suggest that the saying “Pharaoh hardened his heart” means that Pharaoh was not only unwilling to listen to Moses, but also to his people. In addition, most of the Egyptians and the officers were afraid of the Israelites and their leader Moses after the plagues. That explains why they were willing to offer gifts to the Israelites. The increasing discontentments of the Egyptians would create the political instability in the land of Egypt. Hence, I suggest that it was the political instability in the land of Egypt that made Pharaoh flattened. After the Israelites left the land of Egypt, discontentment of the Eygptians and the threat of the political instability were lessened. Pharaoh decided to chase after the Israelites with his army.

The treatment of so- called “mixed marriages” in the Ezra-Nehemiah narrative is to be considered as one of the most prominent and elaborated accounts on this topic in the Hebrew Bible. The dismissive attitude towards exogamous matrimonies contracted between groups of “Judean” men (cf. Ezra 9-10; Neh 13.23-28) among them prominent figures such as the High priest’s son (Neh 13.28) with women labelled alien is on the one hand conveyed by the use of specific terminology that creatively utilizes existing Pentateuchal law. On the other hand the relevant passages within Ezra- Nehemiah have been seen as one particular position in an ongoing inner biblical discourse on the question of legitimate access to the post- exilic community. Therefore the key- passages for the “mixed- marriage crisis” in Ezra- Nehemiah have been closely scrutinized with regard to their literary dependencies in order to elucidate a possible historical setting and to shed light on the operant logic leading to the condemnation of the exogamous marriages. Yet this has often been done by dissolving the relevant passages from their wider literary context as given by the narrative as a whole. This paper will deal with mixed marriages in Ezra-Nehemiah in a more “synthetic” approach arguing that concept and understanding of mixed marriages as Ezra-Neh unfolds it are essentially related to and influenced by the account on “Temple restoration” and the notion of Jerusalem as “Holy City” (e.g. Neh 11.2;18). For that matter Ezra-Neh is first of all to be taken as a literary unity where the comprehension of single sections is shaped by its textual embedment. For a profound understanding of mixed marriages a discussion of the other two parameters is therefore indispensable and can offer new insights into underlying concepts. The paper will discuss the rationale of Temple- building (Ezra 1-6) and the concept of the holy city with regard to the communicated community construction. Thereupon it aims at disclosing the interrelations with the mixed- marriages and implications for the book’s attitude towards them resulting from dynamics initiated by structure and representation of the respective topics.

The demarcation of postexilic boundaries is prevalent in the narratives regarding Nehemiah’s activities in the province of Yehûd. Within the debate on whom to include in and whom to exclude from the Jerusalem centered community the topic of marriage ties between “inside” and “outside” appears several times (cf. Neh 6.18; 13.23-27; 13.28). The thereby rejected or criticized spouses represent “the Other” with its ascribed negative and threatening influence to be held off, as it is also discussed with regards to other occasions within the narrative (cf. Neh 2.19-20; 4.1-3; 6.1-19; 13.4-9). At the same time the texts highlight the ideal picture of Judean identity drawn by the book of Nehemiah as a whole. Thus, at the critical point of marriage policy, boundaries are clarified politically as well as socially and religiously. According to its character as theologically shaped account on Judean history the narrative takes up and transforms earlier biblical traditions which reject “foreign” influence. Thus, the book of Nehemiah lends itself quite perfectly to investigate the relevance and function of the rejection of mixed marriages for self-definition at the beginning of Judaism. The paper will examine which kind of self-assessment of postexilic identity can be found in the texts on mixed marriage and, furthermore, how they can be related to the ideology expressed by the book of Ezra, the other half of the composition of Ezra-Nehemiah and prominent for its elaborated treatment of the topic. As will be shown, a clearly defined ideological picture of society after the Exile is drawn by the Nehemiah narrative. That has to be brought into discussion with other voices of Persian and Hellenistic Period identity discourse.

Hebrews 12:28 contains an allusion to Dan 7:14 and 18 where God promises that the saints will receive an everlasting kingdom. This is one of only three allusions to Daniel in the Letter to the Hebrews. A more careful look to the theology of Hebrews will reveal, however, that the relationship in Hebrews between the enthronement of the “Son”, the defeat or submission of the enemies, and judgment provide more points of contacts to Daniel 7. Furthermore, the sacrifice of the Son for the expiation of sin and the inauguration of a new covenant and a new sanctuary in Heb 9 resembles the theological argument of Dan 9:24–27 as well. These echoes of Daniel suggest a new perspective that will throw new light on the argument of the author of Hebrews who considered to be living in the “last days”.

In recent years there has been considerable controversy concerning the structure and nature of the Ancient Greek verb system. This has been the case particularly in the analysis of the Greek of the New Testament. Using a predominantly synchronic approach some, including Porter and Decker, have argued that tense is not encoded within the Greek indicative verb system. Rather they argue that the verb system encodes aspect alone, tense being expressed by implicature. In this paper I adopt computational methods to identify statistically significant patterns of collocation with particular temporal adverbs and clause types, focusing on the perfect, pluperfect and aorist indicative actives. I use for an ancient language a large corpus of approximately 1.5 million words stretching from the early first millennium BC through to the first century AD, including but not limited to the writers Polybius, Josephus and Plutarch as well as parts of the New Testament. By tracing the path of development of these verb forms over this period I show that the Greek verb system follows a cross-linguistically well attested path of development. By these means I intend both in general to demonstrate the necessity of diachronic study for understanding the verb system of a language at any given point in time, and specifically to set the current debate concerning the verb system in the New Testament in perspective.

More than twenty years ago Lawrence Zalcmann observed in his article 'Death and the Calendar' [Hebrew University Studies in Literature and the Arts 16 (1988), 99], 'Italian Jewish poets of the early modern period wrote poems which could be read in both Hebrew and Italian.' That astonishing feat was regularly equalled by the musician-poets of ancient Israel, whose poems not only mean what they mean in Hebrew, but also contain their own musical notation. Every one of their compositions is 50% poetry and 50% music. The notes of a melody may be encrypted in the letters of consecutive words, in the first or last letters of consecutive words, or in the first and last letters of alternate words. In the basic system of notation the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet denote musical notes as follows: aleph = one-beat d, beth = one-beat e, gimel = one-beat f, daleth = one-beat g, he = one-beat a, wau = one-beat b, zayin = one-beat c'; cheth = two-beat d, teth = two-beat e, yodh = two-beat f, kaph = two-beat g, lamedh = two-beat a, mem = two-beat b, nun = two-beat c'; samekh = three-beat d, ayin = three-beat e, pe = three-beat f, tzaddi = three-beat g, qoph = three-beat a, resh = three-beat b, s[h]in = three-beat c', and tau = three-beat d'. We shall see how the letters of the Hebrew alphabet are married both to the pitches of the white-note scale of d (d, e, f, g, a, b, c', d'), and to different units of musical time. Then we shall observe how the melodies of Psalm 124 and The Song of the Bow are encrypted in particular verses of the Hebrew text. Finally, we shall explore the Davidic organum of Alamoth and Sheminith.

Within the inscriptional tradition of a single Assyrian king, this paper examines the changing ideological landscape of military activity and theology, as Assurbanipal attempts and fails to divert traditional cosmological language away from the problematic Babylonian Marduk and onto his favourite, the prophetic Ištar. Both the problem of Marduk and the choice of Ištar arose and were influenced by the political circumstances of Assurbanipal’s reign – emphasising the importance of analysing divine attributes and theological concepts in close connection with their concrete historical background in mind. The convergence of Esarhaddon’s and Assurbanipal’s indebtedness to the Ištar tradition with the ongoing troubles of Babylonian governance converge to create a novel, though ultimately unsuccessful, theological and mythological exercise.

The Cappadocians’ use of the figure of Moses has recently been explored by scholars such as Andrea Sterk (Renouncing the World Yet Leading the Church, Cambridge 2004) and Claudia Rapp (Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity, Berkeley 2005). In continuation of two articles by Marguerite Harl, they have argued that the Cappadocians used the figure of Moses to advocate a particular monk-bishop ideal. In my paper I shall re-examine the Cappadocians’ use of the figure of Moses. I will argue that they employed the figure of Moses much more differently than argued in recent scholarship: while Basil compared the figure of Moses not only to bishops, but also to holy men, and Gregory of Nyssa set forth the figure of Moses as a ‘possible self’ for all Christians, Gregory of Nazianzus rather reserved the figure to himself and his closest kin. Rather than promoting a certain episcopal ideology, the figure of Moses and the book of Exodus were creatively rewritten and adapted to highly different contexts by each of the Cappadocians. I shall especially focus on the way Gregory of Nazianzus in his orations and his autobiographical poems took the figure of Moses as an exclusive figure in order to construct his own character and personal authority.

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The BIBLE+ORIENT Museum Database Online of the BIBEL+ORIENT Museum in Fribourg (Switzerland) is a web based database created for the electronic management of ancient Near Eastern image and object data. The numerous data fields enable not only a precise cataloging of the museum inventory but also systematic searches for purposes of scientific research. The consultation of digitalized catalogs of the collections is of special help for scholars interested in different applications of ancient Near Eastern pictorial material. This introduction will access the database online and thus present the different possibilities and applications of the database. An survey of some other databases and some practical advices for employing images in Biblical Studies will round of the presentation.

This paper aims at adding one more aspect, so far mainly neglected, that may have influenced the choice of the LXX translators; namely, euphony. Some non-standard renderings, especially in poetic passages, create more regularity in rhythm and more alliterations than standard equivalents would do. For instance, in Exodus 15:1 the Hebrew "ashira lYHWH ki ga'o ga'a" was translated as "aswmen tw kyriw endoxws gar dedoxasqai". This line contains a few unusual renderings, and the best explanation for them seems to be the quest for a better rhythmic structure (cf. a more standard rendering "asw tw kyriw hoti doxasqai dedoxasqai"). The same we see in the next line where LXX has a highly unusual word order ("houtos mou qeos" instead of "houtos ho qeos mou") and in many other places. The paper will propose a number of examples from Genesis 49 and Exodus 15.

The Hebrew ideology of the kingdom as presented in Psalm 72 has customarily been interpreted as being influenced by the traditions of Ancient Egypt and Ancient Mesopotamia. In most cases, scholars focused on the traditions of enthronement, as well as on the everlasting idea of justice (Ma'at; kittum and misarum) to interpret Psalm 72 in the light of Egyptian and Mesopotamian sources. Without doubt, the idea of fertility is connected with these traditions: When the king is enthroned by god resp. the gods, he has to ensure both justice and fertility in the land. Nevertheless, the tradition of the king's responsibility for fertility seems to have strong similarities, not only with Egypt and Mesopotamia, but also especially with Ancient Syrian traditions. In this paper, the speaker will follow the Syro-Palestinian images and texts concerning the king's responsibility for fertility to interpret Psalm 72 in its Ancient Syrian context. At the end of the paper, the difficult Verse 5 is interpreted in the light of Mesopotamian as well as North-West Semitic inscriptions.

2007 saw something of a phenomenon in bible publishing when three separate publishers each produced a “Manga Bible”. These bibles are promoted as graphic, illustrated bibles employing the Japanese, comic illustration style known as ‘manga’. Manga is hugely popular with teenage and young adult readers. It is also controversial and known in some quarters for its darker, adult content. The treatment of female characters both visually and in storylines has been problematic for many readers and, indeed, artists. This paper explores the visual characterisation of the female characters in the Book of Judges across the three manga bibles. Judges presents us with a great diversity of female characters, including: Deborah and Jael; the mothers of Abimelech, Gideon and Samson; Delilah, Jephthath’s daughter and the so-called ‘levite’s concubine’ to mention but a few. As a very current, contemporary visual interpretation of these characters, in a popular and controversial graphic idiom, do these bibles offer us new insight into these characters? Or do they repeat previous interpretations found in traditional art forms and commentary? How have the female characters of Judges been interpreted and drawn in manga style? What is the relationship between the text and the manga? How has the violence in the text been dealt with in these manga bibles? This paper offers a critique from a feminist perspective.

In 1693, the English composer Henry Purcell (1659-95) composed his only sacred Dramatic Dialogue 'In Guilty Night' (Z 134), based upon the biblical story of Saul and the Witch of Endor (1 Sam. 28: 8-20). The reception of this text in music retells the story of Saul's visit to the Witch of Endor, and her summons of the ghost of Samuel to foretell Saul's fate. The reception of this biblical text in music enjoyed considerable popularity in the Seventeenth Century by numerous composers, and later in the Twentieth Century by Benjamin Britten (1947). Purcell retold this story in music by employing the techniques of the Italian seconda prattica, and setting the composition for three voices: Saul (counter-tenor), the Witch of Endor (Soprano), Samuel (Bass), and an ensemble. This paper will examine the reception of 1 Sam. 28: 8-20 in the text and music of Henry Purcell's 'In Guilty Night' (Z 134).

A good teacher in the old days was something quite different from a good teacher nowadays. The paper will explore what it means to be a good teacher today, arguing that the good teacher today must integrate many more perspectives and functions in order to meaningfully interact with today's students. This is in line with some theories of psychological development, like that of Clare W. Graves (2005), who argues that humans are growing and maturing in precisely the ability to reconcile more perspectives (not just our own) and that we grow in our ability to care for larger and larger circles of people. The paper will apply this theory to the role as teacher.

One of the limitations facing historical Jesus studies has been his virtual absence from contemporary historical accounts, outside of the New Testament. Considering the fact that other first century records, primarily the works of Josephus, depict in detail the Jewish political and messianic movements of the time, the most common conclusion has been that Jesus probably was less important in his own time than the gospel narratives suggest. However, in a comparison between the New Testament and the works of Josephus, a number of hitherto neglected parallel events were found, that in Josephus’ writings occur with a consistent delay of fifteen to twenty years. The parallel events are presented, as well as a hypothesis for why a time shift could have taken place.

This paper develops the relationship between David as mythic literary character, the life of David in Kings and Chronicles, the Psalms of exaltation and enthronement, and the enthronement notions in the Son of Man traditions of Second Temple Judaism (Ezekiel, Daniel 7-9, I Enoch 37-71, 11Q13Mel, The War Scroll, and the Hoyadot, IV Ezra, The Testimony of Abraham, and The Synoptic Gospels). David is a mythic character in that it is clear from the Hebrew Bible presentation of him that the tensions in his story indicate heroic mythicization. For example, he is graphically depicted as an adulterer and premeditating murderer, on the one hand, and yet a Man after God's own heart, on the other; a guerilla warrior constantly acting to undermine the very effective and divinely anointed king Saul and kingdom of Israel, on the one hand, and yet the heroic savior of Israel on the other; the philanderer with Abigail and others, and the abuser or neglecter of his wife Michael on the one hand, and the establisher of a divinely appointed dynasty, on the other; the disciplinarian, on the one hand, and the indulgent father, on the other, resulting in the rape of his daughter, and the rebellion and death of his prized son; he is the man God judges negatively as having bloody hands, on the one hand, and yet the man commended for his spiritual vision of bringing the ark of the covenant to the "Holy City - Zion" and anticipating the Solomonic Temple, on the other. In the life of David in Kings and Chronicles we can discern from the shape and contrasts of the two narratives that his story is manipulated to devalue Saul and even Samuel, and enhance David. He is, on the one hand, a reprehensible character, and on the other hand, Superhuman caricature. The interesting thing for this paper, however, is the relationship between this man of myth and manipulated history, on the one hand, and the exaltation and enthronement Psalms that may refer to him as the Idealized Man, on the other. There is significant reason to believe that Psalm 2, 8, 80, 110, and perhaps Proverbs 30 are related to this Idealized Man tradition. Such a tradition dominated Second Temple Judaisms after the Exile in the form of the Son of Man myth. We know when that started. The Son of Man in Ezekiel is merely human and the title means just that: "mere mortal". Ezekiel's Son of Man is not a Davidic Superman, nor an Idealized Man, nor an exalted enthroned heavenly figure. In Daniel the Son of Man, however, is an exalted idealized heavenly figure but not an enthroned man nor the heavenly judge. He is simply another "man after God's own heart," who must carry out, through his field forces on earth (The People of the Holy Ones of the Most High) the destruction of evil powers and institutions and the establishment of the reign of God on earth. In I Enoch and the Synoptic Gospels the Son of Man starts as an Ezekiel-like human but becomes through suffering and ordeal the exalted heavenly man appointed to be the Eschatological Judge, exterminating the wicked, collecting the righteous into God's kingdom, and ending, cataclysmically, history as we know it. In the DSS the virtual Son of Man is an exalted Heavenly Man and Savior (11Q13Mel). In the War Scroll and Hodayot he is king, priest, suffering servant and savior. In John's Gospel the Son of Man starts out as the divine Logos who is the Eschatological Judge; but he sets aside that function (5:27-47) to exercise instead his function as the suffering servant and savior of the whole world, who then returns to his exalted status as God. This paper draws the lines of force in David's life through the Psalms (and Prov.) of exaltation, to the Son of Man as Exalted Eschatological Judge, and on to the alternative image of Savior, to discern whether the David myths and the Psalms shaped the early Second Temple Judaisms' Son of Man, and whether John got his alternative vision from the Psalms as well.

Research on the Apocalypse of John in general, and over the past two decades in particular, has brought forth a plethora of ideas regarding the political orientation of the apocalyptist as revealed in his work, with major points of view dubbing the author 1) anti-Roman or 2) anti-empire, or calling the book a product of 3) anti-imperialism. However, collectively and individually these terms are both misleading and, to a considerable extent, erroneous. First, while Revelation undeniably possesses an anti-Roman tint, there are many images and ideas that can also, or better, be described as anti-Parthian, an expansion which invalidates the former classification. Second, John never takes issue with the political entity of empire, and in certain instances even portrays such a structure in a positive light: this is evidenced most clearly in the inclusion of the “kings of the earth” in the New Jerusalem vision (21:24), whose obeisance (21:26; cf. 22:2-4) casts the governance of the utopian city in a de facto imperial manner with God as emperor. Indeed, the focus of the authorial attacks is not the empire, but the person of the emperor and those who assist him in conducting despotic imperial actions. Third, while the use of "anti-imperialism" to describe the Apocalypse is not entirely fallacious as with the preceding duo of terms, the modern meaning of this word is inextricably intertwined with various unwanted associations, such as territorial jingoism and colonization, that are either historically inappropriate or inaccurate, thereby rendering it a problematic nomenclatorial choice. Consequently, as it is the matter of despotic tyranny which underlies John’s antipathy to political power, either "anti-Caesarism" or "anti-autocratism" would serve as more suitable terminological alternatives.

Driver, Treatise on the Use of Tenses in Hebrew, states that: circumstantial is any phrase or clause used to qualify the main action by assigning the concomitant conditions under which it takes place. Driver is hesitant to name a number of backgrounded constructions circumstantial: the circumstance at hand should be descriptive of an actant at the time of the action featured by the principal verb. In a diachronic perspective and with reference to inscriptional Hebrew and versiones, this paper discusses phrases and clauses that are circumstantial by indicating what the subject or object is or was at the time of the action performed, as well as the circumstantial character of inter alia, statements made on two subjects, of which the second highlights the contrast to the preceding, and clauses introduced by wehinne after verbs of perception.

The paper discusses some parallels detectable in the concepts of creation myths of the Old Testament and wider context of Ancient Near Eastern mythology. In the Sumerian "Enki and Ninmah" myth and in the Akkadian "Atrahasis" epic, the first man is created in the presence of the creator god Enki/Ea and possibly inseminated by that divine figure himself. A parallel leading to the conclusion that a divine figure somehow takes part in the process of impregnating the first female in the context of the Ancient Near East is found in Genesis 4, 1b where the first female Eve states that she had given birth to a man with the help of YHWH. The statement by Eve ???????? ????? ???-???? seems to refer to the fact that she expresses gratefulness to the Lord who has somehow helped or made possible the birth of the first child. If to consider the larger Ancient Near Eastern mythological context, the passage might point to the Sumero-Akkadian idea that the first woman was impregnated by the creator god himself. The idea was probably used indirectly: the motive is similar (borrowed) but the religious meaning is already totally different in Hebrew perception. The similarities between different anthropogonies in the Ancient Near Eastern and Old Testament mythologies were clearly pointed out by I. M. Kikawada in his paper “The Double Creation of Mankind in Enki and Ninmah, Atrahasis I 1-351, and Genesis 1-2” (Iraq 45, 1983) where it is shown that in those three myths, the mankind is created in similar terms and in two different phases. Literary dependence of the myths seems indisputable in comparative perspective which also points to the possibility that at least Genesis 1-11 was composed by a single author(s) trying to fit the Hebrew world view into the previous Ancient Near Eastern mythological corpus.

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Arthur Vööbus: Refugee, Adventurer, and Researcher

The Genesis´ narratives about Israel´s matriarchs and patriarchs reflect the different views on adequate marriages within post-exilic community: from a plea for strictly endogamous marriage (Gen 27.46-28.9), a moderate position preferring marriage within extended families (Gen 24), the possibility to marry a converted foreigner (Gen 34), to the position of ethics alone as criteria for the right spouse (Gen 38; and in the same line Ruth). The whole range of arguments can be found here. In spite of the absolutely agnatic genealogies constituting the affiliation to the temple community, the texts shed light on the importance of women, their origins and conduct of life in the Persian Period.

Since the groundbreaking work of Wilhelm Gesenius the study of the Samaritan version of the Pentateuch, and especially research involving textual criticism of that version, has progressed considerably. An important step forward was achieved with the publication (by Z. Ben-H?ayyim) of the recitation of the Samaritan Pentateuch in its entirety by the members of that community in their synagogues; however, until the present we have not possessed a fully detailed picture of the Samaritan version in all its uniqueness. A new comparative diplomatic edition of the Samaritan Pentateuch aims to remedy this situation by presenting, for the first time, all the instances in which the Samaritan version of the Pentateuch differs from the Masoretic text. Essential differences visibly reflected in the written text are indicated by us in bold face type, while those that cannot be seen on the printed page but are expressed only through the traditional pronunciation are both marked and discussed. Over five hundred such cases (not including grammatical differences) are adduced in this new edition. To give one illustration: ??????????? ?????????? ??? ???????? ???? ??????? ????????? MV (Num. 22:5) And he sent messengers unto Balaam the son of Beor, to Pethor ????? ?????? ?? ???? ?? ???? ???? SV Analysis of the Samaritan pronunciation combined with examination of other Samaritan sources leads to the conclusion that the two versions do not differ from each other merely in terms of plene / defective writing. In point of fact, the meaning of this excerpt from the Samaritan Pentateuch is actually as follows: And he sent messengers unto Balaam the son of Beor the interpreter. Note that the Vulgate takes a similar tack in translating ariolum.

The general floor plan of Iron II gatehouses is well known to Levantine archaeologists. The building, with its characteristic “piers” and “guard chambers,” has turned up at dozens of excavations in the past century. A full understanding of the gatehouse, however, is complicated by the fact that usually not much of the building’s superstructure – only a few courses of masonry, in most cases – is preserved in the archaeological record. The actual purpose of the piers and chambers, for instance, is not often discussed, and there is some dissent among those who have raised the topic. Another point of interest is the broad and rapid proliferation of this architectural style in the Levant beginning ca. 1000 B.C.E. The sudden popularity raises many questions, one of which is the gatehouse’s origin. In this paper I will use archaeological data, pictorial data from Egyptian and Assyrian reliefs, and biblical descriptions of gates in order to give the most probable reconstruction of the gate’s superstructure, determine the architectural purpose of its distinctive floor plans, and discuss the first attestation of this gate type and possible sources of its origin.

The fragmentary text of 11Q11 was identified by E. Puech as that of the four songs of David „for the stricken”, i.e. for the demon-possessed (mentioned in 11QPsAp/a =11Q5 a Psalm scroll, col. 27.4-10). The paper aims to deal with Qumran demonology, the idea of the relationship of impurity and demonic activity; the effort to maintain purity in the community in order to avoid harmful demonic effects; the question of prohibition and practice of magic and magical healing in Qumran; the purpose of the text of 11Q11, and its possible use and calendrical setting.

Many listeners and critics have openly acclaimed Anglo-Irish rock band U2 as a "Christian band." In support of such acclamations, they have perceived, listed and analyzed biblical and theological themes, motifs and allusions within the band's lyrics, performances and media engagements. By contrast, other listeners and critics have doubted, dismissed or simply even failed to notice U2's Christianity and biblical references. One reason for this dichotomous audience response lies in the deliberately vague, ambiguous or allusive nature of U2's music and media statements. U2 frontman, Bono has occasionally admitted a strategy of secretly playing to two separate audiences - believers and non-believers - via musical and media manipulation he describes as "sort of draw[ing] our fish in the sand." The attention paid to the role of the reader in recent studies on allusion provides insight into this strategy, by highlighting the manner in which an author "makes possible the allusion" without controlling or determining its interpretation, thus opening up a space for a "full-knowing reader ... to recognize and to make coherent what is formerly hidden" (Joseph Pucci, 1998: xi). This paper argues that, while such a reader-oriented theory of allusion goes some way to explain the different and even opposing receptions of U2, it fails to adequately account for their diversity. The paper then supplements the analysis by drawing on a recent body of work within media and cultural studies which argues for an appreciation of the embeddedness of various groups of musical consumers within particular social, cultural and ideological frameworks, and which shifts the focus of analysis from deciphering musical meaning to analyzing concrete ways in which music is used. Such an approach both offers a more complex understanding of the diverse reception of U2's biblical allusions and problematizes any attempt to delimit the meaning of biblical allusion.

The purpose of the paper is to delimit and explain the concept of refuge in ANE literature, especially the Bible. In the first section, I will begin by examining the semantic field of “refuge” and distinguish it from concepts of “permanent exile,” “diaspora,” and “criminal asylum.” The second section will survey refuge as a topos in ANE literature outside the Bible and examine figures who seek refuge in the ANE. In the third section, I will narrow my focus to the Bible and examine refuge as a topos within its literature. I will pay careful attention to figures who flee hostile situations since in biblical literature, refuge and flight go together. Finally, I will consider the idea of liminality that we see in ANE and biblical figures such as Moses and Joseph (Genesis). While all these figures have an ambiguous relationship with their own cultures, they remain important figures within those cultures. I will explore many different examples of flight in this paper. Major figures from Sinuhe to David all share the characteristic of fleeing from a position of centrality and finding themselves in a liminal position. Unlike low-status refugees, these high-status refugees are not content to stay in a liminal position. Many of these stories (e.g. Idrimi, Jacob) tell of a successful return to centrality. We also have stories of doomed refugees like Absalom, Adonijah, Urhi-Teshub, and the Philistine princes. The flight stories studied here thus do not have a consistent ending. I will briefly explore how refuge becomes a more abstract, spiritual idea of relying on God alone in the Psalms, whereas refuge appears as a concrete reality, involving literal flight in all the above stories.

The study of the emotions has become a topic of much interdisciplinary focus in the past decade. Among recent trends in scholarship on the emotions constructivist approaches have examined the differing cultural views of the nature of the emotions and their conceptions of the appropriateness of exhibiting or occasioning of certain emotions. These diverse cultural specific views interconnect with broader positions of the particular social-cultural group on their identity in its various dimensions, bodily, religious and social. The concept of identity also has been the topic of much recent theorization which raises questions about what exactly the term covers. My own recent writings have explored early rabbinic views on the nature of emotions in general and on two "emotions" that have often been seen in modern times as inappropriate emotions, hatred and shame. In my work until now I have largely compared rabbinic views with biblical ones. The session on Embodiment and Identity is a perfect location for beginning to explore how certain apocryphal and other works from the Second Temple period understand embodied emotions. In my paper for this conference I seek to examine how two works, Ben Sira and the Thanksgiving Hymns from Qurman employ and represent the notion of shame. Among questions that I would examine are whether they see shame as an appropriate or inappropriate character trait and emotion to exhibit and occasion, what they see as the causes of shame, and how shame is occasioned in interpersonal and divine-human relationships. Sorting out these documents views on these questions in turn clarifies a component of their anthropological assumptions, their understanding of what it means to be a human, including the contribution of the divine-human interconnection to "human identity." My paper would grow out of my own analyses of texts in Ben Sira and the Thanksgiving Hymns and draw upon recent scholarship on these matters.

This paper explores the correspondence between military activity and theological themes in the book of Samuel, particularly II Sam 7. The battle accounts and lists of military victories in the book usually receive attention for their historical and political interest. However, some level of intersection between these accounts and the theological themes are also evident: as Saul wanes in God’s favour, so does his level of military success, culminating in his death in battle in I Sam 31. Similarly, David’s reign is characterized by a shift from external to internal military conflict, coinciding with his rise as God’s anointed, then ‘shadow’ reign under God’s punishment. In light of this interplay, attention to the nature of military activity in the chapters surrounding II Sam 7 offers insight into the interpretation of the theological concept of ‘rest’ in this chapter. We will observe that ‘rest,’ as an aspect of the establishment of David’s kingdom, is an important motivation for David’s scheme for a temple, and God’s rejection of the proposal. The contradictory messages about ‘rest from enemies’ in II Sam 7-8 can be illuminated by observation of the shift from defensive to offensive military activity in this section of the narrative, which demonstrates that there is partial but incomplete rest. David’s kingdom is therefore not fully established, and recognition of this theme provides an important link between the issue of the temple and God’s subsequent promises for a dynasty.

The interpretation of Jesus’ teaching on adultery in Matthew 5.27-28 has a very long history. Luz identifies two strands: “the tendency to expand and sharpen the text in a dualistic aversion to sexuality and a different tendency to weaken this antithesis…in order to be able to live with it.” There is, nonetheless, consensus that the focus of the teaching is on the psychology of erotic love, as is clear not only in the commentaries, but also in translations of the phrase pros to epithumesai auten as “to lust after her” (NKJV), “with lust” (NRSV, NASB, NLT), “with lustful intent” (ESV), or simply with the adverb “lustfully” (NIV). The focus is misplaced. The key is to see that pros to epithumesai auten points to the tenth commandment (ouk epithumeseis ten gunaika tou plesion sou…), the commandment on coveting. The sermon on the mount cannot be understood unless due attention is paid to the explicit and implicit referencing of the OT. The echo of the tenth commandment in Matthew 5.28 is ignored in popular commentaries; in scholarly works, although noted, its full importance is neglected. Three lines of inquiry are relevant: i) the language of coveting and desire in the OT, LXX, and NT; ii) the meaning and nature of adultery in the context of OT texts and in the setting of the first century; and iii) the relationship between the second exegesis and the other five in Matthew 5.21-48. Putting the tenth commandment at the centre of the interpretation of the second exegesis reveals that: it is not about a general erotic psychology, nor is it simply a matter of internal thoughts and feelings; rather, as with the other five exegeses, it entails real and external matters of conduct vis-à-vis others.

The famous, very emotional child-epitaph of Lucius Minicius Anthimianus from 3rd century CE (CIG 3272; Peek GVI 1166) has often been medically discussed over the last century (Zingerle 1928; Meinecke 1940; Klitsch 1976) and was throughout interpreted as classical clinical picture of tuberculosis in childhood. Today, this single medical interpretation appears simplistic. We present here together an alternative new careful and interdisciplinary approach to this epitaph in its own context. Retrospective diagnosis still is feasible, but has to be regarded only as relative, self-reflecting thought experiment with its own historicity.

This paper examines the views of the Shepherd of Hermas on the life of the Christian community beyond the eschaton. After reassessing some of the major positions in the literature on the apocalyptic character of Hermas, it is argued that the common idea that Hermas lacks or avoids apocalyptic speculation (see, e.g., Dibelius 1923:419; Vielhauer-Strecker 1989:538, 546; Brox 1991:36; Osiek 1999:11, 189; but cf. A. Collins 1979:74-75) needs to be modified. In fact, various passages throughout the text implicitly contain revelations about the life of the Christian community in the world to come (see esp. Vis. 2.2.7; 3.2.6; 5.5; 6.1; 7.2, 5-6; 8.8; Sim. 8.2.5; 6.6; 7.3, 5; 8.2-3; 9.7.5; 8.7; 9.7; 13.5; 17.4; 18.2, 3-5; 25.2 (all related to the metaphor of the tower); and also Sim. 1; 4; 5.6.5-6; 7.1-2; 9.15.2-3; 29.2). Especially the metaphor of the building of the tower incorporates ideas about reward and punishment in the afterlife. Several questions will be addressed. First, what does Hermas imply about the life of the eschatological community? Second, to what extent is the life of the eschatological community regarded as a continuation of that of the historical community? Third, what are Hermas’ views on the place(s) where the people will dwell? Finally, what is the aim and function of the use of the apocalyptic discourse in the text? An inquiry into these questions will attempt to show that Hermas is not so much averse of apocalyptic speculations, but that its views on the life of the community in the world beyond follow naturally from its ‘realistic’ views on the earthly community and serve as a powerful aid to its call to conversion.

During the Mount Gerizim excavations which were carried out between 1983 and 2006 under the direction of Yitzhak Magen a Yahwistic sanctuary and a Hellenistic city were uncovered at the site of Mount Gerizim. Some four hundred inscriptions were found in and around the temple precinct, presumably belonging to the second building phase, i.e. the early second century BCE. The majority of the inscriptions are written in Aramaic using either lapidary Aramaic or Proto-Jewish script. The remaining inscriptions are written in Neo-Hebrew (Paleo-Hebrew) and Samaritan. The Aramaic, Hebrew and Samaritan inscriptions were published by the excavators in 2004. The largest group of the Mt. Gerizim inscriptions is votive inscriptions and they follow either a long or short version of a dedicatory formula. The short formula is ‘That which offered PN son of PN (from GN) for himself, his wife and his sons’. The long formula begins in the same way but adds the ending ‘for good remembrance before God in this place’. The phrase “for good remembrance” and the more common “may he be remembered for good” and variations of these appear frequently in both inscriptions and graffiti from Egypt, Nabataea, Palmyra, Dura Europos, Hatra and Palestine. This paper offers a presentation of the occurrences of ‘good remembrance’ formulae in Semitic inscriptions from the late Persian and Hellenistic period and traces the concept of remembrance in connection with cultic acts in the Hebrew Bible. It is suggested that the key to understanding the concept of ‘good remembrance’ is to be found within the larger framework of gift-giving theories.

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According to an Islamic Prophetic report, that is often related to Qur'an 7:190, after the Fall from Paradise, Adam and Eve had a number of children. However, all of these children were born dead, or died short after their birth. The Devil therefore suggested that Adam and Eve should name their next child 'Abd al-Harith (servant of al-Harith), al-Harith being one of the names of the Devil. The protoplasts took the Devil's advice, and indeed the child lived. Although this narrative is widespread in Islamic sources, so far it has received little notice by modern scholarship. Nevertheless, this narrative evokes many diverse questions, relating to various aspects of the text itself. My discussion will focus on a textual analysis of the different versions of the Abd al-Harith narrative, combined with a comparative study of the relevant literary parallels from the Quran, the Bible, the Apocrypha and folk literature.

I was initially tempted to title my presentation "Why Are We Being Strung Along?" Because that's the impression I got from reading about David. According to the biblical text, he is one of the great men in Hebrew History, but he is also a man without scruples. He is only the second in the line of kings, an institution God is not happy about. Both hi predecessor (Saul) and hi successor (Solomon) were initially favored by God but later incurred his wrath. The there is the Temple. God never asked for one, only consented to have it built, with the caveat that obeying His laws was more important that any edifice. Solomon builds the Temple, then immediately sacrifices to other deities. I note a certain element of uncertainty and confusion here, some of it attributable to God. What did He expect when he transformed a band of roving sheepherders into a sedentary nation ruled by clerical hierarchy and hundreds of do's and don't laws? How could He possibly expect the Hebrews to not intermingle and intermarry with the nations around them when they were situated at the commercial and military crossroads of the Near East? I will try to come up with some answers to all these questions.

A new text from the Dead Sea shores has been published in 2007. Ada Yardeni and Binjamin Elitzur named it: Hazon Gabriel in Hebrew or Vision of Gabriel. The angel Gabriel speaks at the first person and he describes probably a vision of the eschatological war. The function of Gabriel like the revealer is well known in the Book of Daniel and the Gospel of Luke. Gabriel has also a militant role in the Jewish literature like in 1 Enoch, the Qumran War Scroll and probably Daniel 10. We propose to examine two Aramaic texts from the Qumran library: 4Q529 and 4Q557. The manuscripts are fragmentary but they may add to the assigned functions of Gabriel in the Jewish literature around CE.

The past decade of New Testament research has enjoyed a flurry of scholarly activity on the early Christians in their Roman imperial context. By means of a cross-disciplinary conversation between classics and New Testament studies, a growing number of scholars have made the case that the Apostle Paul's gospel carried with it a polemical challenge to the claims of the emperors. At present, however, these conclusions are being hotly debated in the guild, and there seems to be no agreed upon method to tracing such anti-Roman rhetoric in Paul's letters. As a contribution to this debate, the aim of this paper is to evaluate this recent trend in interpretation.

This paper explores the relationship between the interpretation of the Christ-event in the Fourth Gospel and Paul. Over the last century scholars have posed various degrees of continuity between John and Paul. Early in the twentieth century Bousset and Wrede, and later Bultmann, claimed the decisive influence of the Hellenistic religious thought world on John and Paul, especially on their convergent Christologies, and posed a decisive discontinuity between Paul and John on the one hand and the earliest Palestinian community of believers with their links to the historical Jesus on the other. More recently Martin Hengel has argued that both Paul and John are indebted to the Palestinian community, thus opening up the possibility of greater coherence between them and Jesus. Literary connections between John and Paul were claimed by A. E. Barnett in his Paul Becomes a Literary Influence (1941), a study applying the theory of Edgar Goodspeed that an early Pauline letter corpus exercised a substantial influence on the formation of the NT, John included. Other scholars, such as Larry R. Helyer (2008), have argued for theological unity between Jesus, Paul and John that is the result of the work of the one Holy Spirit in which contradictions and diversity of theological viewpoint only appear to be the case. With scholars such as William Sanday, Hans Conzelmann, and J. Christiaan Beker, I will argue that there is a preponderance of discontinuous elements between John and Paul, basing this contention on Paul’s futuristic apocalyptic worldview that was confirmed in the revelation (apocalypse) of Christ to which he refers in Galatians 1. However, Ephesians and Colossians may well reflect indebtedness to the thought of the Fourth Gospel, precisely at junctures that are most redolent of their post-Pauline authorship.

Images of the body figure prominently in the Qumran Hodayot, particularly in the texts known popularly as the Teacher Hymns. Language about the body includes references to specific body parts and their sensory experiences, as well as descriptions of physical locomotion. Such references appear in both the laments and also the accounts of exaltation in the TH. This paper will explore the possibility that the language about the body in these compositions functions to flesh out an authorial persona-a rhetorical construction of a fictional self. While these references to the body evoke strong and vivid imagery of an individual and his experiences, they may not point to an actual historical figure's experiences.

No proposal. This is an invited speaker

Although significant similarities between 1QHa VI 19-33 and XX 7-XXII, on the one hand, and the concluding hymn of 1QS, on the other, are generally recognized this has not made much impact on the understanding of the social milieu behind any of the texts. The Hodayot texts are generally regarded as “community hymns” whereas the 1QS hymn is rather linked to the leadership of the maskil. In this presentation, I will argue that all of these texts stem from the same intellectual milieu and reflect a common elitist self-understanding. Using the socio-cognitive concept of mental contexts, I will discuss how perspectives held in independent parts of heterogeneous corpuses like 1QS and 1QHa could help to explain their overriding editorial logic.

Starting from a model of text formation which primarily presumes literary revisions or transformations if changes have taken place in the history of religion I would like to suggest another hypothesis of the literary relationship of Gen 1:1-2:4a and 2:4b-3:24. While the classical explanation was to suppose that two parallel documents from different sources (J and P) were connected by a redaction, recently some attempts have been made to explain the succession of the texts by supplementation „Fortschreibung“. They understand the paradise story (Gen 2f.) as an appendix to Gen 1. But in my opinion this option is inappropriate to explain the discernible differences in style and structure between both texts. A solution is however possible on the basis of a broader examination of the tradition history. From there this paper can show that the priestly story of the creation may be seen as a revised (transformed) text but part of a larger creation story from which Gen 2f. has also been taken. This way it is possible to explain the connections between both texts but also the significant differences. In my opinion this clarifies the use of the tetragrammaton in Gen 2f. as opposed to the use in Gen 4 and helps to solve the problems of understanding Gen 1:1f. as well.

The cultic remains at Arad and Tel Beer-Sheba offer an illuminating backdrop for garnering insight into the relationship between biblical and archaeological data. The exposure of a temple at Arad and parts of a large horned altar at Beer-Sheba have generated much debate regarding the authenticity of the Bible's account of Hezekiah and/or Josiah's drastic reforms. The issue has been complicated by disagreement between biblical scholars and historians on the correct interpretation of the biblical documentation, and by controversy among archaeologists regarding the stratigraphic relationship of the cultic remains at these sites. The current paper surveys the various opinions that correlate the biblical and archaeological data. The opinions covered include: 1. There was only one cult reform, conducted by Josiah (Na’aman, Edelman). 2. Neither of the reforms was a historical event but rather later theological reconstructions (Fried) 3. The reform was a lengthy process that started with Hezekiah and was then carried on by Manasseh and Josiah (Uehlinger). 4. An early reform was carried out by Manasseh and not Hezekiah (Knauf) 5. There were two reforms by both Hezekiah and Josiah (Aharoni, Rainey, Borowski, Finkelstein). The article maintains that the archaeological data has facts in its favor and points to the presence of a single act of cult reform, dated to the late 8th century BCE. The reform is thus plausibly attributed to the time of Hezekiah. No archaeological evidence supports a reform in the days of Josiah.

The short prophecy Micah 3:12-13 is one of the most enigmatic and disputed passages in this book. Scholars are disputed about its unity, authenticity, and even about the question whether it is a salvation or a doom prophecy. These questions are discussed in the paper very shortly in order to create the necessary point of departure for the main discussion, which is: Who is the king referred to by the words ????? ???? ?????? ("and their king will pass before them", v. 13). Is this king God himself or a human king? I approve the latter option, and hence the question is, who is this human king? The answer depends on the date of the prophecy. Scholars usually date it either to the 8th Century B.C.E time of Micah, or the post 586 B.C.E destruction of the Jerusalem temple. These views are examined and rejected. My claim is that dating the prophecy as well as the identification of "their king" in v. 13 should be derived from an understanding of the pattern upon which the salvation promise in the prophecy is based. This understanding and a close reading of the main metaphor in the prophecy could solve the enigma of the identity of "their king" and its historical background.

Béla Hamvas (1897 – 1968) was one of the greatest Hungarian metaphysical thinkers of the past century. Author of dozens of volumes – most of which never edited during his lifetime – he studied philosophy, cultural history, cultural anthropology, arts and literature, ancient and oriental languages on an endless quest to find and realize the lost normality of the human soul. Analyzing the social and material crisis before the Second World War, he set out for a spiritual archaeology and tried to reach the origins of man’s turbulent decay which he named apocalypse. He dug deeper and wider in the history of culture only to discover that the roots of foul are omnipresent from the earliest to the farthest civilizations of the world, but fortunately the cures for that are there everywhere in the great sacral books of humanity, and in the many myths, oral traditions, holy scriptures, mysticisms he recognized – just as other traditionalists, like René Guénon, Giulio Evola or Leopold Ziegler (but without their political ideology) – one single universal metaphysical tradition of humanity. His main preoccupation was to understand and actualize the message of the Eden, the status absolutus of Adam Kadmon, the unspoiled man of the original creation observed in all narratives of origin. In his major treatises like the Scientia Sacra, Magia Sutra, Tabula Smaragdina or his commentaries to Enoch, the Pert Em Heru, the Zohar, on Jakob Böhme, San Juan de la Cruz, or the Sufi mystics he worked always to (re)integrate the Judeo-Christian wisdom about the primordial perfection of Creation into the conscience of modern man. My paper will try to perform an analysis of the Hamvasian ideas on the Genesis story of Eden and Fall in the light of the metaphysical tradition.

A peculiar aspect of divine communication in ancient Israel is the normative understanding, labeled the “Yahweh Alone” perspective by Morton Smith, that the only genuine divine communication was communication with the one God. This kind of communication has its experiential analog in the conception of the Great King, the one and only suzerain to whom the king’s subjects could give allegiance, the one and only king whom the subjects could acknowledge as having power over themselves. As such the style of interaction by the vassals with the Great King provided a model for the exclusive recognition of God. The issue for the political person in the ancient Near East, as for the pious Israelite, was not whether or not other kings had power elsewhere or with others, but whether the Great King’s, i.e., God’s, people could recognize any other king/deity. To this end, the paper studies the limitations on communication with any other king in international treaties and similar texts from Israel’s world as providing an active and well-articulated experiential model for demanding that divine communication in ancient Israel must be exclusively with God—not with any other divine power. This is not a model for a development from polytheism to monolatry to monotheism but for the practical reality of the life of the (political or) religious person as assuming that divine communication is exclusively with the God of Israel.

The Russian revolution in 1917 made it possible for border districts of the empire to declare their independence. This happened also in Estonia and in its northern neighbor Finland. The unstable political situation led to violent crises in many areas. Short but exceedingly bloody civil war in Finland left moral problems which were hotly debated for decades, also with reference to the Bible. Lex talionis was the biblical principle which was widely used in public debates. In a way, it expressed a central moral conviction of the people. Church and state authorities had taught the principle since 17th century. This tradition, however, led to polyphonic interpretation after the civil war: lex talionis was used to justify punishments and vengeance, but also to blot out the moral responsibility; it gave reasons to violence and non-violence; it created impressions of the crimes committed by the executed persons. A story of its own is the influence of the rising democratic ideas on the interpretation of lex talionis. The reason for polyphonic interpretation is, first, the Bible itself, where lex talionis occurs in many contexts and has different functions. Second, moral and political needs also had an impact to the interpretation. It is a difficult matter to decide what is of biblical origin in the interpretations and what is not. However, one thing is clear: ”The Bible says...” means always more or less ”The Bible, as I (like to) understand it, says...”

In this paper the author presents a personal testimony of the brutality of evil, and the part it played in her own conversion. Seeking to find meaning she examines the process of graced transformation by psychological and theological reflection, with reference to historical and Biblical motifs. The conclusions from her findings are expressed with allusions to her current circumstance as an aspirant for ordination in the Anglican Church; with an aim to create a trajectory of hope.

Deuteronomy 25:11-12 has attracted an intriguing range of explanations in recent years, where the law prescribes the removal of a wife’s palm for seizing her husband’s opponent’s genitals in a brawl. The more sensational of these include Lyle Eslinger’s proposal, that this punishment was conceived as a form of female circumcision, and also that of Jerome Walsh, who argues, rather, that genital shaving of the offending wife was intended. An increasing number of scholars, however, view this prescription in relation to the talionic formulation in Exodus 21:23b-24: “the penalty shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot”. In this paper, I further suggest that Deuteronomy 25:11-12 was conceived not as finite, or strict sense talion, but instead as a form of instrumental talion, where it constitutes what Yael Shemesh defines as “a punishment of the offending organ”. A comparison of the available scholarly reconstructions of Middle Assyrian law (MAL A8-9), together with case law from Nuzi, will provide substantial support for this interpretation.

The paper suggests that the data was woven into the Book of Esther to add a layer of narrative concerning calendar manipulation. The presentation will include a discussion of an Achaemenid astronomical artefact that may be relevant to this theory. I will also look at the chronological information in the Book of Esther to show that the text contains didactic references to different calendars in Second Temple Judaism that were known about at the time of final editing.

The Pauline letters reveal different attitudes towards death. This paper is part of a project in which I investigate death in the authentic Pauline letters within the frame of psychological coping. Which strategies are suggested by Paul to the adressees, and which are adopted by Paul in the letters? Does the attitude towards death actually change, or do different situations of the adressees call for different approaches? Is it the same concept of death that is discussed in every letter or are different aspects of death in focus (e.g. psychological, biological, social or spiritual)? How is death appraised? Is it a threat or an opportunity? This particular paper will focus on 1 Corinthians. In this letter matters about death are brought up, on Paul's initiative, with a strong emphasis on the resurrection (1 Cor 15). The death of Jesus seems impossible to handle without the notion of the resurrection. In other parts of the letter death is spelled out as an enemy, but a well-balanced enemy who does not strike without reason (1 Cor 10). According to chapter 10, it was the members of Israel who had lust for evil things that died in the desert. Death becomes attached to the divine order. One of the overall purposes of 1 Corinthians is to confirm order and continuity and this concept of death is not in opposition to that order. Still, when it comes to Paul's personal experience, this picture of a well-advised death is not so easy to maintain. In experiences of weakness and fear, it is the crucified Christ, not the resurrected one, who sustains Paul's faith (1 Cor 2:2-3). How is this death of Jesus to be understood?

In an often cited article, “Rulers, Divine Men, and Walking on the Water (Mark 6:45-52)” (in Religious Propaganda and Missionary Competition in the New Testament World; ed. Bormann, Del Tredici, and Standhartinger; Leiden: Brill, 1994), Adela Yarbro Collins discusses Jewish and Greco-Roman evidence to determine how early Christians would have understood Mark 6:45-52. While noting that the image is associated with deities in both traditions, she nevertheless argues that the point for a fusion of these traditions would be the messianic character of Jesus. In support of this argument she refers on the one hand to Jewish traditions in which the messiah took on some divine prerogatives, on the other to that the power of walking on water sometimes was associated with rulers in Greco-Roman traditions. The significance of Jesus walking on the water should thus mainly be messianic. This paper argues that this conclusion needs some reassessment. While Collins correctly notes that walking on water is regarded as humanly impossible and that kings who claimed divinity or to whom it was attributed usually were associated with this ability, she does not pay due attention to the latter fact. Rather than being a power generally associated with rulers, it serves to highlight the divine status of rulers such as Xerxes, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, and Gaius Caligula. Walking on water is accordingly regarded as a divine prerogative in both Jewish and Greco-Roman traditions and the story of Jesus walking on water would present Jesus as a divine figure to Mark’s audience, whether of Jewish or Gentile background.

This study, based on the well-defined linguistic concepts of Richter using the clausal demarcation of the BHt5, tries the new methodological framework of the Quantitative Structure of the Biblical Hebrew (BH) clause to offer one more formal constraint for its better understanding. The psycholinguistic interpretation that the human languages have the strong tendency to be structured according to the PIC(Principle of Increasing Parts) for the more efficient cognition of the hearer, inspires the re-examination of the BH texts if it is also structured for the advantage of the hearer or not; and if not, why and what is going on. The PIC-keeping clause, that is, the smaller starting constituent with the huge ending one, is called Crescendo, which is unmarked and statistically absolute majority in the Hebrew Bible. Crescendo takes more than 70% of the verbal clauses in the prose of Gen-2King, whereas more than half of the verbal clauses in certain law text in Lev are formulated to Decrescendo, the marked one. This stark contrast between two genres correlate their different cognitive advantages, which leads to the most careful speculation of their different ‘ancient reading practice': The predominant structure in prose, which is suitable for the easy understanding of the hearers, could have been achieved through the innumerable oral performances of the religious assembly in ancient Israel. But the quantitative-structural distinctiveness of some law text is not ideal for the rapid understanding in the public reading and could refer to the different ancient praxis.

“And I doute not but there be, & shal come aftir vs, that canne & shall correcke our workes and translacions in many places & make them miche more perfayt & better for the reader to vnderstande” (George Joye, An Apologye, Antwerp, 1535, sig. D5v) One year before the 500th anniversary of the King James Bible, 2010 marks the 450th anniversary of the publication of the Geneva Bible. For this occasion my paper will study how the Antwerp bible translations of William Tyndale, George Joye and Myles Coverdale made their way into the Geneva Bible and the King James Bible, two of the most important versions in the history of the English Bible. I argue that the King James Bible’s majestic language is the result of the contrasting translation strategies of prior Tudor Bible translations of ‘modernizing’ and ‘naturalizing’ on the one hand, and the ‘historicizing’ and ‘exoticizing’ on the other, as these terms are defined by James S. Holmes’s literary theory of translation. As such, the King James Version incorporated the very best of all prior English Biblical scholarship on its way from Antwerp to London through Geneva.

In a slave-holding culture, family values are only for free persons. Slaves are only footnotes in great men’s biographies. Our interest in “family as strategy” in antiquity has much to benefit from taking into account how roles and functions in the family were determined by class, age, and gender, and how slaves belonged to a different discursive reality in the households than free persons. In the parable in Luke 12:35-48 hierarchical reasoning contributes to the construction of early Christian identity and theology: One trusted slave misuses his privileged position and starts to beat his subordinate in the household. The language used opens up a variety of scenarios: Either he strikes his fellow slaves, both male and female, or he strikes boys and girls. Such physical punishment was probably common in ancient families, where slave bodies were part of their owner’s property, and where children had to obey adults. Interpreters are confronted with several challenges when New Testament texts are used as models for family life or religious practice, without considering seriously how various power structures intersect and reinforce each other in the ancient world and today.

This study is part of a larger project, employing insights from cognitive sciences for interpreting biblical texts dealing with moral and ritual issues. Special attention is paid to the role of emotions and emotional development. Fear is a primary emotion that has evolved to protect living organisms from damage and death. Four general categories are usually acknowledged: interpersonal fear, fear of death and injury/illness, animal fear, and agoraphobic fears). The present paper examines the role of fear in three areas that are displayed in various Pentateuchal law codes: the Covenant code, the Deuteronomic Code, the Holiness Code, and various purity and sacrificial laws. The areas are 1) attitudes to strangers, 2) apotropaic rites, 3) obedience and divine punishment. Xenophobia is found with a number of social species and is reasonable from an evolutionary perspective. Ethnocentric tendencies serve to protect the integrity of the group. Purity rules have sometimes been taken to display traits of disease-avoidance. Some purification rites suggest a fear of demonic powers. Fear of divine punishment can be utilized both for motivating obedience to certain humanitarian laws, and for enforcing strict laws of holiness and separation. The paper attempts to trace various types or categories of fear, and asks how fear interacts with, or counteracts other crucial emotions, such as disgust or empathy.

Whether the ‘the genealogy of David’ in the book of Ruth (4.13-22) is a later addition to the narrative or not, the story of Ruth has been living its life encompassing the Davidic genealogy within. Consequently the story of Ruth has inevitably interfered with the reading of the life of David. Since Tamar, mentioned at 4.12, clearly relates her life with that of Ruth, we may legitimately see into the strings of Ruth in the life of David. Specifically I am going to pay attention to the ‘loyalty between a couple’, evidently enjoyed between ‘Ruth and Naomi’, and examined it in the relations between ‘David and Jonathan’. As the controversial move of Ruth to Boaz seems to shadow Bathsheba’s move to David, it will be argued that the former could be understood as a propaganda that supports Bathsheba’s move toward David.

Genesis 37 to 50 is traditionally known as the story of Joseph, or sometimes referred to as the story of Israel (Jacob)-Joseph. It seems that these two fathers are considered as the main characters, and their influence is predominant in various ways within the storyline of the novella. In this paper, I challenge the titles traditionally given to the story because they do not fit into the wider context of the Primary History-Narrative (Genesis ~ 2 Kings). Chapters 37-50 do not merely focus on Joseph or Jacob, but also have an interest in other characters and a wider perspective. This is the reason, for instance, why a chapter such as Genesis 38, and the characters Judah and Tamar exist in the present form in their stories. These considerations lead me to propose a more suitable title for this section of narrative, that is, The Story of Jacob and His Sons. Reframing these chapters in this way assists the reader in understanding how the multiple threads of the subsequent narratives are to be combined.

I' d like to present a study of the relationship between The Apocalypse and the Gospel according to St. John. The first question is: “Can we read the concept of the Apocalypse in the Fourth Gospel.” If the answer is yes, the second question is “What is the relationship between the Apocalypse and the Fourth Gospel and how does the apocalyptic concept function. This research methodically concentrates on the synchronic dimension of the text. The Fourth Gospel includes, not only implicit ‘quasi-apocalyptic’ expression, but also explicit ‘apocalyptic’ motifs and structures. In addition to anonymity, visional and auditory experiences of the Redeemer’s self revelation, the Fourth Gospel includes a survey of history in future form, a metaphorical story and the dualistic motifs on the surface. Through these apocalyptic elements, the author attempts to allow the readers to understand the World of the faith. In the Fourth Gospel we read about the cosmic drama of the Redeemer’s earthly and heavenly journeys. , He comes to earth to seek his place and departs to heaven to prepare the place of the believers who follow him, and find the true way, because he is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6).

Repetition is typical of stylistic phenomenon in John and John's letters. Repetitive expressions in John show how John's ideas and phrasal expressions are connectively related to themselves or among themselves, demanding to study these features in terms of how they are related so as to produce certain Johannine meanings. Meanings are not laid only in thematic contents but also in stylistic form. On the process of interpretation of the text, careful research on the textual style appearing in the text is so much helpful and even necessary, if we wish to understand the text better and correctively. John 8:12-52 is consisted of two parts: vv. 12-36 and 37-52. Each parallels in both structures provide the reader calculable repetitive effect with emphasis on certain ideas and expressions. Johannine style such as parallel design here needs to be researched in terms of how this type of meaning-network could lead the readers to repetitively be impressed, in the Johannine way, by ideas that the text tells about. In John, repetitions are not the matter of producing literary repetition that simply emphasizes certain idea or expression twice or thrice, but rather they are the typical Johannine style of parallelisms or chiasms causing specific, relational meaning-network. This type of combined, repetitive phenomenon in John is so unique that may distinguish the author from others. What are the difference, in interpreting the text, between paying a proper attention to the authorial way of style and ignoring it without attention? If there are certain differences between them, what kinds of differences are in there? Can this distinction in interpretation cause somehow distinct understanding of the text?

Abstract: While the narratives of the distribution of the land of Canaan in the book of Joshua undoubtedly have a complex tradition history, the ideology of the final redactors is expressed both by what they retained from the tradition handed down to them as well as by how they modified it and what they added. This essay examines the ideology of the final redactors and their purposes in presenting the distribution narratives which we have. Focus in particular is drawn to the accounts of those tribes which in some sense or another are dissatisfied with the allotment which falls to them, whether that be expressed by refusal even initially to settle in the Cisjordan, or only partially settle there, or by expression of initial dissatisfaction, or by later abandonment of an allotment. The essay argues that these narratives are retained and shaped for a variety of ideological reasons among which is to suggest that the seeds for the eventual break-up and dissolution were sown in the earliest days of the nation, no matter how ”successful” the entrance into the land may have been in other ways.

As there is no such thing as “secular” warfare in the ANE, or at least in ANE literature, this paper compares the conception of divine intervention in war in Joshua 3-11 and Neo-Assyrian inscriptions concerning the campaigns of Sargon II, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal. In my opinion a core, of Josh 3-11 can be dated into the last third of the 7th century BC which implies a possible reference to Assyrian war ideology. The study of the texts reveals a range of similarities in the conceptions of divine intervention and of double causality of divine and human action, e.g. encouragement of and instructions to the human military leader, psychological warfare or direct intervention in the battle. Differences concern e.g. the more prominent role of the human military leader (i.e. the king) and the reference to the enemy’s deities in the Sargonid inscriptions, as well as the more frequent occurrence of divine instructions in direct speech or the ??? in Joshua. The differences can be explained by the different genres, intentions and Sitze im Leben of the texts as well as by the varying theological and ideological conceptions of warfare. While the Book of Joshua narrates how in the past Jhwh fulfilled his promise of land through Joshua’s campaigns, the Sargonid inscriptions tell how the Assyrian kings achieved the extension of the Assyrian power sphere by (more or less) contemporary campaigns. As it is not clear how far Joshua and the Sargonid inscriptions participate in a common ANE tradition of warfare theology and ideology and how far the book of Joshua relates to and re-interprets Assyrian war theology and propaganda, the exact relation of the similarities cannot be satisfyingly clarified.

Much has been wrtitten on the role of apocalyptic eschatology in Matthew's Gospel, but considerably less on the social function of apocalypticism as such. Working from the hypothesis that apocalypticism is broader than apocalyptic eschatology alone, this paper investigates the origin and significance of the strong emphasis on apocalyptic knowledge in Matthew. Following a review of such key passages as 11.25-27 and 18.18, I relate the question both to wider issue of apocalypticism and the historical Jesus and the role of apocalypticism in early Christianity more generally, including the matter of Gnostic origins.

Ezekiel 16 has been studied productively from a number of different perspectives in the past decade. Some scholars have detected echoes of Ancient Near Eastern legal practices in the text; others have focused on the sexuality described therein. This paper argues that no "adoption" is described, and that this is critical for understanding the depiction of God in the narrative: he is not a nurturing parent at all. His behavior in fact raises serious moral (i.e., theological) problems, especially in light of many modern psychological studies which show a link between childhood sexual abuse and later sexual desires and activities. All of this is background, however: the real question is how Ezekiel uses this complex narrative to further the theological goals of his book. It will be argued that the very problems the text raise support the radical theological platform propounded by Ezekiel throughout.

This paper intends to explore how the book of Qohelet introduces the Sage as a Teacher in his instructions on behavior. In my opinion it is clearly the author’s intention to instruct the readers and give them wise counsels on many topics related to real life situations. This apparently creates his role as a teacher – one who explains, instructs, and challenges. One of the arenas of the life situations dealt with by the author is that of social interactions. In his book Qohelet introduces several interpersonal settings in which one should conduct himself like a wise man. These include for instance, interaction with God (in Qoh 5), interaction with public officials (in Qoh 5), dealing with women (in Qoh 7), facing the king (in Qoh 8), and living among the wicked (in Qoh 8). In my paper I will attempt to explore the Sage’s instructions for these specific interpersonal settings with a special focus on the character of the Teacher these instructions reflect. For this purpose I will use tools of didactic theories, as well as rhetorical approaches in order to fully explore the methods Qohelet uses to instruct his readers. Secondly, I will look at the settings of the above mentioned interpersonal dynamics and how they relate to Qohelet’s teachings on wise conduct, as well as his character as a teacher.

In this paper, Jens A. Krasilnikoff discusses and explores the potentials of humanistic geography as a theoretical and methodological tools and approach for the study of the Classical Greek city of Athens and the earliest Alexandrine history. Thus, by comparison to Archaic city founding and Classical Athens, it is argued that the city of Alexander differed fundamentally form the majority of classical cities. The evidence suggests that the rulers of Alexandria were soon to create their own standards of urbanism, conspicuous consumption and cultural amalgamation in close resonance with a profound exclusiveness of its royal ideology. Undoubtedly, the heirs of Alexander exercised great impact upon the religions and cultural amalgams of the city. Concurrently, however, they also subscribed to the institutions and traditions of the classical Greek polis, a dominant feature in the ancient literary tradition on and about Alexandria. Paradoxically, the acute need of the first Ptolemaic rulers to create Alexandria into a distinct, unique and self-preserving urban entity in its own right demanded that the city of Alexander was made exactly that by the creation of Alexandria as a distinct Greek place. This was achieved partially by exploitation of the logics of earlier Greek colony foundations, a process which allows for the newly founded city to become its own, to win its independence. Secondly, the Ptolemies, by claim of ancestry to Alexander’s project and by exploitation of the relationship between the oikist, Alexander and his city, created a place for royal ideology, which was not dependent on either a Graeco-Macedonian or an Egyptian political of cultural-religious dependency but uniquely Ptolemaic.

In the stories of King David the reader encounters several women who are dominated by men, specifically through acts of male violence. Michal, Bathsheba, Tamar, the so-called concubines of David – all of these woman share the same fate: they are victims of violent male acts. In contrast to these female characters, there is Abigail who appears in 1 Sam 25 and also there is the nameless wise woman of Abel Beth Maachah in 2 Sam 20. They present a counter-image. These wise women are successful in minimising male violence; although a so-called “worthless man” must die, a great number of human lives are saved. Both women speak on behalf of JHWH, they place themselves in a dangerous situation and face a combat-ready man and they both use dialogue as a means of fighting back and avoiding war and violence. The theme of male violence being minimised by female acts will also be compared with how it is portrayed in classical Greek lyric poetry. Within the paper it will be demonstrated that a close literary relationship exists between the two stories 1 Sam 25 and 2 Sam 20. Both stories are not simple anti-war or anti-violence narratives. Instead they advocate speech as an efficient tool and better instrument than war and violence for the advancement of interests. The fact that the superiority of human speech is presented by wise women should be understood as an opinion against the victimisation of female characters in the David Stories. The last part of the paper will show that the story of Abigail in 1 Sam 25 should be seen as a counter to the narrative of David and Bathsheba in 2 Sam 11. In both stories the reader encounters a significant use of similar motifs such as the marriage of married women, the death of a former husband and the negative portrayal of an rich owner of sheep.

The concept of “childhood” is a modern phenomenon and the perceptions of children vary with time, language and culture. This circumstance raises a serious methodological question for the study of children in the bible. How does one delineate the object of study in these texts? Assuming that reality is constructed through language, this paper begins with a brief presentation of the semantic field of the “child” in classical Hebrew. From that point of departure, the paper proceeds with an exploration of the child as a literary subject in the biblical books of Genesis and Exodus. To what extent do children see, speak and act in these texts? How do the subjectivity of for example sons and daughter, boys and girls differ? What are the tensions and continuities between the concrete children of Genesis and Israel as YHWHs metaphorical son in Exodus? It will be shown that children feature as complex subjects and that the position of the child in these books is a precarious one. It will also be argued that “the child” is a problematical category to use in relation the Hebrew bible, a category that needs to be qualified and nuanced.

The current debate about the meaning of Biblical "diakonia"-words (J. N. Collins 1990, 2002; A. Hentschel 2007) has strongly challenged the traditional interpretation process. The essential element of the traditional interpretation was the German 19th century context: diakonia words were connected to health care or care of the poor and were seen as acts by deacons/deaconesses. The whole modern diaconia movement and the practice of many churches are still based on this assumption. In this paper, the analysis of the reception of the text aims to clarify the historical steps of this process: how has Acts 6:1-6 been understood and interpreted during the different historical periods? As a summary of the analysis, the following steps or stages can be noticed. The first stage was the identification of the seven men as deacons (diakonoi) by Irenaeus and others. The second stage of the development was the identification of deacons as caritative functionaries in the texts of Martin Luther. The third stage of development was the establishment of the permanent caritative ministry of deacons by John Calvin. Finally during the 19th century T. Fliedner interpreted Acts 6 in the context of poverty and health care. Among other locations the deaconess institute was established also in Tallinn (in 1867). The whole reception process is cumulative and, thus, it is not possible to understand these stages without a conception of the previous steps. During the process, the understanding of Acts 6 changed in a remarkable way and showed how deeply the interpretation was affected by each historical context.

As is generally agreed, the New Testament writings use several expressions, terms and titles that were part of Roman imperial discourses, many of which one can find in the Gospel of Mark, i.e. Gospel (euangelion), Son of God (huios tou theou), kingdom of God (basileia tou theou), Lord (kurios), Legion (legion) and others. There is considerably less agreement, however, regarding how to interpret such usage of imperial language. Usually, there are two or three suggestions of how to read them: pro-Roman, anti-Roman, and a-Roman (indifference). In this paper it is argued that additional categories are needed in order to conceptualize a more complex meaning in Mark's language of Empire. With a special focus on the title Son of God, I will try to show how postcolonial studies — with concepts such as mimicry, colonial ambivalence, hybridity and catachresis — can help understand how Mark relates to imperial discourses.

Commissioned by André Malraux, the French composer Olivier Messiaen wrote Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum for the dead of two World Wars in 1964. He revisited Christ’s resurrection and ascension as the theme again after his earlier work L’Ascension. To focus on the belief of the eternal life and the commemoratory context, Messiaen sought inspiration from St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica on resurrection. Inscriptions from the Bible are quoted before every movement. These create a narrative for the music: the dead will live again through Christ’s resurrection and ascension, and share God’s glory in heaven. In the first part of this paper—biblical narrative—I review the discussions in “Of the Resurrection” in the Summa Theologica. I explain the relationship between Christ’s resurrection and the dead: His resurrection is the cause of the resurrection of all others. This illustrates Messiaen’s careful choice of the inscriptions by adapting and reordering the related scriptures, which enhance his faith in God and the eternal life: the promise for those who overcome and be faithful to enter the heavenly Jerusalem, share the eschatological banquet and praise God loudly. The fourth movement is the climax where Messiaen presented two chromatically altered plainchants—Easter Introit and Alleluia, “the theme of the depths”, and the Simhavikrama rhythm by superimposition. These layers are interpolated by the birdsong of Alouette Calandre. The second part—semiotic reading—demonstrates how Messiaen transformed the Easter Mass into his musical setting to reflect his Catholic faith and the commemoratory context. Thus, Messiaen displayed the joyful moment: Christ is risen—Easter proclamation. Christ’s sacrifice has merited for us (and the dead) the eternal life in God. This is Messiaen’s faith through the celebration of the “Mass”: the glory of the raised Christ foreshadows the eternal banquet and the praise of the joyful concert in heaven.

On the basis of some mostly Phoenician inscriptions the paper will demonstrate how a refined method of palaeographic analysis may reveal structures of unconscious text design by a scribe using spaces or dividers not regularly and consequently. In many cases, this so-called ‘space syntax’ is nothing less than the impact and ‘background radiation’ of the oral process in which the text was modelled, and its aural environment. This is important not only for oral poetry in general, but also for Northwest Semitic phonology and for the quest for an appropriate model of Northwest Semitic ‘prose’ metrics in particular. A wider perspective also for Hebrew inscriptions and for Biblical Hebrew will be included.

The memory of Jerusalem has been a dominant part of the cultural memory of three religions. In Judaism they sing about the golden Jerusalem, the wonderful Lebanese singer Farouz sang about the streets of Jerusalem (al-Quds, of course). Since Antiquity Jerusalem has thus had a special position in the mind of western civilization, not really based on the actual remains of Jerusalem, but on all kind of religious ideas and sentiments. Thus Hezekiel is moved by the angel to Jerusalem, Jesus is cruxified in Jerusalem, even Muhammed is in tradition related to this place. An old collegue once answered when asked why he had never been to Jerusalem: Jerusalem is in my heart. Physical Jerusalem and memorized Jerusalem are two very different things, and the memory hardly needs the physical Jerusalem to create a memory of Jersualem, on the earth or in heaven.

For the international academic auditory the best known alumnus of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Tartu (Dorpat) is probably the syrologist Arthur Võõbus (1909–1988; later the professor at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago) – if to consider the period after 1919, when the University of Tartu became the Estonian national university. As it is not unusual in the history of scholarship, the academic career of Võõbus was not anything what we define nowadays as ‘normal academic career’. It is hard to take as natural in the 1st half of the 20th c. that the most splendid fruit of a Lutheran theological faculty was a syrologist. In the traditional Lutheran context the Syriac studies should remain within the limits of Biblical exegesis. Võõbus certainly crossed the limits of the prevailing scholarly ‘paradigm’. Although the biographical writings on Võõbus stress the uniqueness of his research interests at that time in Tartu, yet in this paper the question will be posed: how much the earlier academic traditions and ‘the common theological attitude’ of the Theological Faculty of that time supported or not the forming of the specific profile of Võõbus’ interests. What was ‘normal’ in this institution? To find an answer (1) an overview of permanent and intensive language studies (incl. Syriac) at the Faculty of Theology during the 19th c. will be given; (2) the whole set of postgraduate unprinted research works on Christian asceticism and monasticism from the time of Võõbus’ studies will be characterized; (3) it can be concluded that Võõbus’ interests were not exceptional, but his remarkable achievement was a creation of fruitful new connection of two separated academic disciplines.

A Second Case for the Book of Deuteronomy

This paper considers three approaches to prominence in Koiné Greek. It begins by reviewing and evaluating Stanley Porter’s analysis of the prominence conveyed by the aorist (‘background’), imperfect (‘foreground, remote in staging’) and present (‘foreground’) in Mark 11.1-11. The OED defines ‘background’ as ‘explanatory or contributory information or circumstances’, which makes it an unfortunate term for a tense-form that ‘characterizes the mainline or storyline of narrative discourse’, ‘unmarked’ (for prominence) being a more appropriate designation for the aorist. The paper then outlines Robert Longacre’s claims about the same tense-forms, and argues that both men are wrong in EQUATING respectively ‘foreground’ (Porter) and ‘background’ (Longacre) with the imperfect. A better approach to prominence is found in Relevance Theory, which claims that a variety of cognitive effects may be achieved by the use of a non-default form or construction. This explains both the CORRELATION between imperfect and background that many linguists have observed, as well as the foregrounding effect of the imperfect that is sometimes found. It also explains why some relative clauses convey supportive material, while others can present foreground events. Such an approach also allows for the accomodation of additional non-default tense forms such as the inchoative aorist (‘began’) in Luke 19:37, which corresponds to the imperfect of Mark 11:9, and of structures such as the combination of aorist egeneto and a temporal expression in Luke 19:29, which corresponds to the historical presents of Mark 11:1-2. The paper concludes by reaffirming that, when a non-default form or structure is used, prominence is often given not to the event concerned, but to the following event(s).

Influenced by the work of Richard Hays in Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul, New Testament scholars have found the notion of “echo” or metalepsis useful for uncovering subtle invocations of Old Testament context and typology in New Testament passages, whereby an author uses key words and phrases from the original passage to trigger his reader’s memories and make them aware of connections between the two narratives. I use this paper to explore the echoes from Exodus that Mark evokes in his account of the healing of the man with the withered hand in Mark 3:1-6. Mark’s strategic use of the phrases “he went in,” “into the midst,” “stretch out your hand,” “hardness of heart,” and “was restored,” along with broader narrative context, compellingly link this healing narrative with various episodes in the Exodus narrative. This link, however, leaves some nagging questions about the purpose of certain unique elements in this passage, such as Jesus’ summoning the man to be healed without prompting. Closer attention to the use of metalepsis in this passage resolves these ambiguities by showing that Mark’s evocation of the Exodus context does not place Jesus as the typological fulfillment of Moses, as other typological uses of Moses in Mark and the other Synoptics might suggest. Rather, the man with the withered hand is being cast in the role of Moses, with Jesus perhaps filling the role of Yahweh who summons Moses. After demonstrating these apparent typological connections, my paper seeks to provide some tentative answers as to what broader narrative and theological purposes Mark might have for giving the narrative this startling twist.