Biblical Interpretation-A Journal of Contemporary Approaches最新文献

{"title":"Hidden in Plain Sight: Saul’s Male Trauma Narrative in 1 Samuel","authors":"Barbara Thiede","doi":"10.1163/15685152-20231763","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685152-20231763","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract King Saul’s story is not simply a tool for justifying Yhwh’s decision to promote David in his place; it is a narrative of trauma that demonstrates how biblical hegemonic masculinity normalizes sexual violence perpetrated by men against men. Saul is the victim of repeated and sexualized assault by a controlling, coercive deity. After such attacks Saul loses control over his speech, his mind, and his body. He experiences dissociation, helplessness, terror, and rage. In abusing Saul, Yhwh is aided and abetted by Samuel and by David. The sexualized violence Saul experiences marks him and silences him; just before he dies, he a makes a single allusion to the trauma he long endured by invoking the rape he fears at the hands of the Philistines. In fact, after his death, Saul is metaphorically raped, his body stripped, decapitated, impaled, and displayed. He is no trauma survivor, but its victim.","PeriodicalId":43103,"journal":{"name":"Biblical Interpretation-A Journal of Contemporary Approaches","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135109023","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Ambiguous Prayers in 1 Timothy 2:1–2: A Postcolonial Reading","authors":"Donghyun Jeong","doi":"10.1163/15685152-20231738","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685152-20231738","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article examines the request for prayers ὑπὲρ βασιλέων in 1 Timothy 2:1–2 by focusing on three exegetical questions: (1) Who are the βασιλεῖς? (2) Are prayers for βασιλεῖς distinguishable from prayers to βασιλεῖς? And (3) to whom is this exhortation directed? The article argues that the rhetorical construction of this passage emulates and internalizes imperial ideology, but the very act of imitation has the potential to cause colonial anxiety by obscuring the colonial subjects behind this document and by disrupting any attempt at fixed interpretation.","PeriodicalId":43103,"journal":{"name":"Biblical Interpretation-A Journal of Contemporary Approaches","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134972156","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"‘It is Not Good for the Human to be Alone…’ (Gen. 2:18): yhwh Elohim Among the Weeping Gods of the Ancient Near East","authors":"Ekaterina E. Kozlova","doi":"10.1163/15685152-20231723","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685152-20231723","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Regarding the creation account in Genesis 2–3, D.M. Carr observes that this text freely repurposes prior cosmological traditions, and so it is a case of a ‘fluid adaptation of its Near Eastern precursors…’ (Carr, [2020], 52–53). Building on his discussion, this article analyzes an ane motif that has not been linked to Genesis 2–3 yet, i.e., the formation of humanity from divine tears or in the wake of divine laments. Known in various configurations from Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Greek sources, this motif includes tears of a god or gods either as a generative substance in the making of humans or as a driving force for their origins. In light of these traditions, this article considers the pronouncement ‘It is not good for the human to be alone’ (Gen. 2:18), arguing that it is a variation on the ‘divine tears’ myth. As such, this pronouncement addresses a multi-faceted form of ‘aloneness’ in the emerging cosmos.","PeriodicalId":43103,"journal":{"name":"Biblical Interpretation-A Journal of Contemporary Approaches","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134972155","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Thirteen Ways of Looking at Elijah’s Blackbirds","authors":"Ashleigh D Elser","doi":"10.1163/15685152-20231753","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685152-20231753","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Commentators have long struggled to make sense of the role that ravens play in the story of Elijah, questioning why these predatory birds with a reputation for cruelty would be recruited to share their food during a time of scarcity. This essay takes up the reception history of biblical ravens, considering how various interpreters have drawn upon observational knowledge of ravens to explain the mysterious role ravens play in the feeding of Elijah in 1 Kings 17 and Noah’s commission of the raven in the wake of the flood in Genesis 8. The essay both recalls and reenacts this interpretive tradition by assembling together pieces of this reception history together with the work of modern ornithologists on the corvus corax to provide some insights for how we might understand the particular significance of ravens in the care and feeding of Elijah.","PeriodicalId":43103,"journal":{"name":"Biblical Interpretation-A Journal of Contemporary Approaches","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134972154","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Announcing the Biblical Interpretation Reading List","authors":"","doi":"10.1163/15685152-20230002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685152-20230002","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43103,"journal":{"name":"Biblical Interpretation-A Journal of Contemporary Approaches","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135362881","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Biblical Interpretation Reading List","authors":"","doi":"10.1163/15685152-20230001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685152-20230001","url":null,"abstract":"Rita Felski, Hooked: Art and Attachment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020. Rita Felski’s argument in Hooked: Art and Attachment seems basic: namely, humans engage with art because we are attached to it. Drawing loosely on Bruno Latour’s actor-network-theory (she labels her approach “ANT-ish”), Felski highlights three kinds of aesthetic experience – attunement, identification, and attachment – in a multifaceted exploration of why and how art (including literary texts) works. Hooked builds on Felski’s widely-read 2015 monograph, The Limits of Critique. Together, these works have made her one of the most prominent proponents of what literary and cultural critics are now calling “postcriticism.” In brief, this movement objects to the constraints of conventional academic discourse and defends the value (and the values) of “lay” readers who engage with art not to explain or expose, dissect or analyze it, but simply to experience and enjoy it. Nevertheless, biblical scholars who are for myriad reasons wary of the critical theories and methods that challenge traditional disciplinary boundaries, or who long to make biblical studies great again, will find no salvation here. Felski is an equal-opportunity iconoclast; she is as eagle-eyed and probing when interrogating forms of faith and fealty as when picking apart hegemonic hermeneutics of suspicion. Felski pushes professional critics to recognize that attachment is a fundamental “condition of any conceivable form of intellectual life” (122). We are simply taught not to acknowledge this: “Scholars are adept at theorizing, historicizing, and politicizing the investments of others – while often remaining coy or evasive about their own” (3). Felski has hooked her own critics in both positive and negative ways. While some praise Hooked as “erudite and compelling” or a “marvelous achievement,” others experience her rhetoric as a personal affront (one reviewer describes the book as “an inventory of abuse” directed at other critics). Yet this mixed reception illustrates Felski’s primary point: we engage with art (including critical scholarship) in affective, often unpredictable and even opposing ways. “Commentary,” Felski writes, “is connection” (122). This is precisely what makes Hooked relevant for the increasingly fractured field of biblical studies. Felski’s invitation to accept and foreground our own attachments might help us to forge affinities and communicate across the rifts Biblical Interpretation (2023) 1–5","PeriodicalId":43103,"journal":{"name":"Biblical Interpretation-A Journal of Contemporary Approaches","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135452832","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Seeing the Biblical World of Sodom-Mamre Through Surveillance","authors":"C. Alsen","doi":"10.1163/15685152-20231724","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685152-20231724","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Genesis depicts a world of tension and collaboration among the groups and families that constitute the stories of the formation of early Israel. The obedience and behaviour of characters within the narrative determine covenantal inclusion or exclusion. The narrative of Sodom-Mamre can be interpreted as a story of surveillance, wherein characters observe each other and act based on their desire for knowledge and control. Though surveillance promises omniscience, knowledge ultimately remains limited. The divine character yearns to witness human experience, while the human characters act as mirrors to this impulse. Lot’s wife highlights the chasm between the desire to see and know and the limits of a gaze. Ultimately, this desire begets violence as the surveillant gaze produces cognitive dissonance and narcissism. This essay references surveillance studies, critical biblical scholarship, psychoanalytic and philosophical traditions concerning desire, particularly the desire of the eyes, the gaze, and ancient imperial surveillance practices.","PeriodicalId":43103,"journal":{"name":"Biblical Interpretation-A Journal of Contemporary Approaches","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46414420","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Jeremiah’s Temple Sermon as a Traumascape: Reading Jeremiah 7:1–8:3 Through the Metaphor of the Phantasmagoria","authors":"Joshua Axtens","doi":"10.1163/15685152-20231773","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685152-20231773","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This interdisciplinary study integrates spatial theory and trauma studies to explore Jeremiah’s Temple Sermon (7:1–8:3) as a literary landscape in the context of cultural trauma. This study reads the Temple Sermon as a traumascape: a literary landscape constructed to shape and contain trauma stemming from Babylon’s subjugation of Judah. This reading proceeds in four parts structured around the metaphor of the phantasmagoria: the first analyses how the Sermon navigates the politics of memory to legitimise its interpretation of Judah’s past; the second explores how the Sermon constructs Judah’s past as a geography of national failure culminating in divine punishment; the third examines the rhetorical techniques which position the reading community to affirm yhwh’s rejection of their past selves. The final part integrates the findings of the prior three to read the Sermon as a traumascape wherein the tension between remembering and repressing trauma is navigated in the act of reading.","PeriodicalId":43103,"journal":{"name":"Biblical Interpretation-A Journal of Contemporary Approaches","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41761350","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Combat Furlough and the Characterization of Uriah the Hittite","authors":"Joshua Berman","doi":"10.1163/15685152-20231784","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685152-20231784","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000In the narrative of David and Bathsheba (2 Sam 11) Uriah the Hittite is encouraged by the king to go home to his wife yet refuses to do so. For some, Uriah’s refusal is born out of piety and idealism, and he is unsuspecting of what has transpired between the king and his wife, Bathsheba. For others Uriah has caught wind of what has happened and realizes that David has summoned him precisely so that he should visit home, and cover David’s malfeasance. A review of the evidence finds both approaches wanting. This study turns to the clinical literature concerning the challenges of homecoming from the battlefield and the emotional minefield that is combat furlough between two battlefront deployments, offering a deeper understanding of the figure of Uriah the Hittite and resolving many of the questions raised by Uriah’s behavior in the narrative of 2 Sam 11.","PeriodicalId":43103,"journal":{"name":"Biblical Interpretation-A Journal of Contemporary Approaches","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42328618","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Silencing Leah: The Construction of Idealised Femininity in The Book of Jubilees","authors":"Chontel Syfox","doi":"10.1163/15685152-20231760","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685152-20231760","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This paper examines the depiction of the matriarch Leah in the Book of Jubilees. It argues that, through a careful rewriting of the Leah tradition found in the Book of Genesis, the author of Jubilees transforms Leah into the model wife, and in doing so provides a discursive reconfiguration of notions about idealised femininity. The silencing of Leah’s voice is central to the transformative rewriting through which the matriarch becomes the perfect wife and the embodiment of idealised femininity in Jubilees.","PeriodicalId":43103,"journal":{"name":"Biblical Interpretation-A Journal of Contemporary Approaches","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42507566","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}