{"title":"Priestly Offering: Law and Narrative in the Aramaic Levi Document","authors":"Hillel Mali","doi":"10.1017/s0017816023000421","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0017816023000421","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, I propose a new reading for both law and narrative in the <jats:italic>Aramaic Levi Document</jats:italic> (<jats:italic>ALD</jats:italic>). In the first section, I show that the passage of “the law of the priesthood” pertains to the daily morning service in the Temple. In the second section, I suggest that the narrative that contains these instructions, in which Isaac speaks to Levi at Abraham’s home, exegetically connects the laws to the story of Isaac, whose father offered him up on an altar, and reflects a priestly theology that views the priest himself as an offering.","PeriodicalId":46365,"journal":{"name":"HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-01-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139583565","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":"’Ενευλογηθήσονται as a Speech Action Middle in Genesis 12:3b LXX","authors":"Dan York","doi":"10.1017/s0017816023000433","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0017816023000433","url":null,"abstract":"Interpreters unanimously read ἐνευλογηθήσονται in Gen 12:3b LXX as a passive. Good evidence, however, exists to challenge and problematize this conclusion. Recent linguistic studies on the ancient Greek middle voice reveal that aorist and future -θη- forms express a semantically middle domain. When we reexamine the word ἐνευλογέομαι within this light, a better option emerges for seeing its -θη- forms as manifestations of speech actions within this middle domain. In their own unique ways, the LXX as well as Philo, Paul, and Acts further corroborate this alternative. As a result, we may read ἐνευλογηθήσονται in Gen 12:3b LXX as a speech action middle: “to pronounce blessings.” The proposed reading promotes a better understanding of Abraham within Genesis LXX. Rather than a means to an end, Abraham remains at the center of God’s blessing as the earth’s families cry out: “God make me like Abraham!”","PeriodicalId":46365,"journal":{"name":"HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-01-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139583377","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":"Χλωρός in the Septuagint: Color or State?","authors":"Lourdes García Ureña","doi":"10.1017/s0017816024000014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0017816024000014","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The adjective χλωρός appears in the Septuagint to translate Hebrew terms that not only denote color, but state as well. In fact, in biblical Hebrew color is not a quality, but rather a “state” of the entities it describes. It is logical to wonder, then, whether it also expresses this in the Septuagint or if it denotes only color. To answer this question, it is necessary to carry out an interdisciplinary study of color and color language. The methodology followed will first study the concept of color in the Hellenistic world and in the Septuagint, as well as the cultural context in which the Septuagint translators lived. Subsequently, an approximate account of the “encyclopedic knowledge” that those translators possessed will be given, followed, finally, by a semantic analysis of χλωρός in the Septuagint. After applying this methodology, it will be shown that in the Septuagint, as in the Hellenistic world in general, natural color expresses both color and state, with color being the visual reflection of that state.</p>","PeriodicalId":46365,"journal":{"name":"HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW","volume":"51 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-01-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139421375","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":"How the Gospel of Truth Depicts Paul’s Secret Teaching: A Study in Second-Century Reception History","authors":"Elaine Pagels","doi":"10.1017/s001781602300041x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s001781602300041x","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article shows that the Gospel of Truth (NHC I, 3), dense with allusions to sources now in the New Testament, most often explored for its resonances with Johannine literature, also offers significant evidence for second-century reception of Paul’s letters, while highlighting poetic images often overlooked. Correlating the language and literary structure of such Pauline passages as 1 Cor 1–6 with the opening of the Gospel of Truth shows that the latter implicitly claims to reveal the secret and primordial “wisdom of God” that Paul declares he teaches only orally to initiates (1 Cor 2:6–7). Thus, this text exemplifies a kind of “heretical” reading that heresiologists like Irenaeus deplore, when, for example, he cites this very passage to complain that “each of (the heretics) declares that this ‘wisdom’ is whatever he invents ( fictionem videlicet ), so that sometimes they claim that the truth is in Valentinus, or in Marcion, or in someone else …” ( Haer. 3.2.1). Furthermore, this research suggests that the Gospel of Truth, narrating primordial creation, followed by a dramatic account of Christ’s incarnation and redemption, claims to offer, as the “true gospel,” a spiritual interpretation that far transcends the brief kerygmatic version set forth in 1 Cor 15:1–3. Finally, I suggest, investigating the Gospel of Truth’s interpretation of Paul’s teaching (which here includes echoes of Ephesians and Colossians) invites us to recognize elements of Paul’s letters most often overlooked. For, from patristic times to the present, exegetes who accept Irenaeus’s insistence that Paul had no secret teaching have dismissed the apostle’s emphatic claim that he did. Furthermore, those focused on dogmatic and ethical themes in Paul’s letters often miss poetic and mythological language at play in sources like the Gospel of Truth.","PeriodicalId":46365,"journal":{"name":"HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW","volume":"61 9","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135813891","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":"Mark 1:1: How to Display Differences in Biblical Manuscripts in Editions and Translations","authors":"Kalle O. Lundahl","doi":"10.1017/s0017816023000378","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0017816023000378","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This study has selected Codex Sinaiticus and Mark 1:1 as a test case to propose a new way for Greek New Testament editions and translations to present textual uncertainties in manuscripts. The article suggests that editors and translators use a partial cancellation type of erasure in a continuous line over problematic text . This method draws inspiration from a technique used by Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida known as sous rature (under erasure). This form of limited cancellation aims to expel indifference and elicit a visceral reaction in the reader. The technique also has a philosophical and theological aim, namely, to work within Heidegger’s view of truth as a process of hiding and revealing. Finally, the limited cancellation, which both conceals and shows, fits with the theme of “messianic secret” in Mark’s Gospel, wherein Jesus both reveals and hides his identity.","PeriodicalId":46365,"journal":{"name":"HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136235364","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":"The Fiction of the Seven Letters in the Apocalypse: Representing Heavenly Authority in the Shadow of Paul","authors":"David Frankfurter","doi":"10.1017/s001781602300038x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s001781602300038x","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract While scholars have traditionally taken Revelation’s “letters to the seven churches” (Rev 2–3) as documentation for the experiences of the Christ-movement in those cities, this article argues that the letters amount to a fictional device—that the Apocalypse appropriates epistolary forms in response to the increasing authority of early Pauline collections among the late first-century Asia Minor Christ-movements. With its divine epistolary authority and heavenly sevenfold “collection,” the Apocalypse attempts to exceed and denigrate Pauline authority in the Christ-movement, and it elevates a Jewish Christ-devotion based in priestly apocalyptic traditions. In the end, we can see John of Patmos both as a competitor to the Pauline tradition and as a witness to the earliest circulation of Pauline collections.","PeriodicalId":46365,"journal":{"name":"HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136235525","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":"Jesus’s Secret Journey in John 7: A Symbol of the Ascension","authors":"Hugo Méndez","doi":"10.1017/s0017816023000408","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0017816023000408","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In John 7:8–9, Jesus tells his brothers he will not “go up” to Jerusalem, but in the very next scene, he makes the ascent in secret. This essay interprets Jesus’s unusual, and seemingly deceptive, behavior in the episode as a symbolic action akin to others structuring the first half of the Gospel. The episode immediately precedes a dialogue in which Jesus predicts his imminent departure from the world. Jesus insists that he will soon “go” to God so that unbelievers “will seek” him “but … not find” him (7:33–34; cf. 20:17). Foreshadowing this future, Jesus “goes up” to Judea but in such a way that leaves unbelievers unaware of his whereabouts, leaving them to ask, “Where is he?” (7:10–11). The article highlights half-truth as an important speech device in the episode and dialogue that follows. It also concludes that the episode is key to interpreting other scenes sharing a motif of misdirection, delay, and secret reversal.","PeriodicalId":46365,"journal":{"name":"HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW","volume":"42 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136236197","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":"The Anti-Father and His Silent Sons: Disability, Healing, and Critique in the Acts of John","authors":"Kylie Crabbe","doi":"10.1017/s0017816023000391","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0017816023000391","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article analyzes the second-century Acts of John 56–57, in which Antipatros seeks healing for his twin sons whom he claims he cannot support as he ages. I argue that this passage turns on a layered critique of Antipatros. First, the text censures medical commerce. Second, it uses his threat of murder, economic circumstances, and name to undermine Antipatros as both father and inquiring disciple. The episode thus leverages criticism of a character whose negative attitudes lead him to contemplate destruction of those with infirmities. However, it retains a mixed message: while the character of the apostle John comes to focus on the sons, the narrative silences them. Ultimately, the text emphasizes what the critique means for the flawed male, elite father, rather than the experience of the impaired sons. Such dynamics warrant close attention as we continue to expand our understanding of attitudes to disability in sources from antiquity.","PeriodicalId":46365,"journal":{"name":"HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136313385","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":"A Smothering Embrace? Hermeneutical Issues in Catholic Discourse about Jews and Judaism","authors":"Emma O’Donnell Polyakov","doi":"10.1017/s0017816023000366","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0017816023000366","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article examines how Jews and Judaism are envisioned in the Catholic imagination, through a critical reading of contemporary Catholic discourse on Judaism. It identifies three problematic areas. The first concerns the tendency of Catholic discourse to project a specifically Christian vision of salvation history onto the Jewish people, which reflects Christian rather than Jewish self-understanding. Second, this article analyzes patterns in language and imagery in Vatican documents about Judaism, alert to troubling allusions implicit in the texts. The third area concerns a hermeneutical obstacle to deep interreligious understanding, one which may be ultimately insurmountable: namely, the challenges of understanding the religious other according to its own self-understanding. This article reaches an ambivalent conclusion, conceding that the goal of recognizing the self-understanding of another religious tradition may ultimately be impossible.","PeriodicalId":46365,"journal":{"name":"HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW","volume":"2016 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136313951","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":"HTR volume 116 issue 4 Cover and Back matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s0017816023000342","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0017816023000342","url":null,"abstract":"An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.","PeriodicalId":46365,"journal":{"name":"HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW","volume":"120 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135153360","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}