07-29-2009, 05:44 PM
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#1
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Contributor
Join Date: Jun 2000
Location: Los Angeles area
Posts: 40,549
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SBL in New Orleans, Nov 2009
Program Book
A number of papers that might be of interest, including
Quote:
“You are from Your Father the Devil”: John 8:31-47 According to Origen, John Chrysostom, and Cyril of Alexandria
In John 8:31-47, Jesus chastises the “Jews” (Ioudaioi) for being children of the devil. Indeed, this passage comprises some of the harshest words in the entire New Testament. .... By investigating how patristic writers actually read this passage, this paper fills a lacuna nonetheless ironically present in modern studies of both this passage and the status and identity of the Ioudaioi in John. Origen, John Chrysostom, and Cyril of Alexandria, each of whom had his own unique relationship with contemporary Jewish communities, provide the material for investigation. .... Perhaps surprisingly, this study reveals that these interpreters did not read this passage against their own Jewish opponents. Rather, they read this passage mimetically, as they frequently do the rest of the scriptural texts, conceiving of the opponents in John 8:31-47 not simply as “Jews” (Jesus’ contemporaries or their own) but primarily as those within the Christian community who opposed the teachings the interpreter himself was proclaiming ...
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Several sessions on the Historical Jesus, including one devoted to a Book Review: John Meier, A Marginal Jew, Volume 4: Law and Love (or via: amazon.co.uk), one featuring anthropology from African healing, and one that includes a talk by Ken Olson on the TF
Quote:
A Eusebian Reading of the Testimonium Flavianum
Many scholars use the Testimonium Flavianum found in the manuscripts of Josephus’ Antiquities as evidence in their reconstructions of the historical Jesus. While few accept the complete authenticity of the passage, many believe that an original Josephan core text was later expanded by Christian interpolations which interrupt the flow of the passage and differ from it in style and content. This paper argues that the Testimonium makes the most sense as a unified composition demonstrating that Jesus was the Christ of God foretold by the prophets and the Christians are his legitimate successors. The Testimonium begins by calling Jesus a wise man, but immediately questions whether that appellation is an adequate description of him, and gives three reasons to suggest it is not: he was a doer of miraculous works, a teacher of men who receive the truth with pleasure, and he won over both many of the Jews and many of the Greeks. The passage then concludes that he was the Christ. Following the description of his crucifixion and resurrection appearances, the Testimonium claims that these and many other wonders were foretold of him by the prophets of God. The beliefs that the Christ was foretold by the prophets to be a doer of miraculous works, that he came to teach men the truth, and would win over both Jews and Greeks, have close linguistic and thematic parallels in the work of Eusebius of Caesarea, the first author to cite the passage. Eusebius produces Josephus as a non-Christian witness in the course of answering pagan critics of Christianity such as the Neo-Platonist Porphyry, who had claimed that Jesus was a wise man of the Hebrews whom the Christians had mistakenly taken to be divine and misapplied the Jewish prophecies to themselves. The Testimonium likely originated in this apologetic context.
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