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Contributor
Join Date: Jun 2000
Location: Los Angeles area
Posts: 40,549
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Society of Biblical Literature meeting 2007
Anything of particular interest here?
Abstracts
There is a "Historical Jesus" unit headed by Crossan, but the only paper I see is a discussion of the geography of Galilee.
There is a "John, Jesus, and History" unit with more of interest:
Quote:
John 13: Footwashing and History
Program Unit: John, Jesus, and History
Jaime Clark-Soles, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University
What claim, if any, does the foot washing in John 13 have to historical veracity? The question has not been raised to date but bears investigation. Scholars readily adduce Joseph and Asenath and the Testament of Abraham as parallels since both have references to foot washing and are probably 1st cent. CE documents. One reads of Abraham’s gesture of welcome (Gen. 18). Philo notes that foot washing was required before entrance into the temple. Mary Coloe, God Dwells With Us (74-82), admirably treats the theme of foot washing in John as it relate to FE’s temple replacement theme, but historicity is not her lens in that piece. Generally, the literature emphasizes the washing of feet as the job of a servant, done routinely and necessitated by wearing sandals in a dusty world. But is that truly all we can say? For this paper, I will investigate ancient literature to fill out the picture regarding this practice. I will then relate it to the likelihood that John’s account reflects an historical event.
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There is a program unit on Hebrews
Quote:
Apocalyptic Fire in the City of Rome: Memory and the Cultural Repertoires of Hebrews
Program Unit: Hebrews
Ellen B. Aitken, McGill University
The question of how Hebrews is to be related to an ancient social context remains a fundamental methodological question in the interpretation of this discourse. In order to approach Hebrews with attention to its social, political, and cultural dimensions, as well as its theological and ethical aspects, it is necessary, with as much historical specificity as possible, to examine how the text makes and evokes meaning. This paper proposes a strategy for interpreting Hebrews that connects the imagery used in the text to the cultural repertoires available to an audience in Rome in the late first century C.E. It takes as a case study the use of apocalyptic imagery in relation to the heavenly sanctuary in Hebrews 12. By correlating this imagery to the importance both of temple fires and of the Flavian building programs within the city of Rome, the paper develops a method for understanding how Hebrews responds to its cultural context. ....
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Likely to be used as evidence against the idea that NT scholarship can be taken seriously:
Quote:
Gossip as Adjudicative Testimony for an Elusive Jesus in John's Gospel
Program Unit: Johannine Literature
John W. Daniels, Jr., University of South Africa
While important work has been done recently on how the cultural phenomenon of gossip might be brought to bear on the New Testament, none significant has yet been applied to the function of gossip in John’s gospel. Although the gospel offers examples throughout of texts reporting gossip, there are as well a number of texts explicitly describing gossip as it occurs. . . . Richard Rohrbaugh, in his most recent book, has proposed that testimony, martyria/martyreo, is in fact, part of the semantic field for gossip, which suggests a relationship between the concepts of testimony and gossip. Moreover, since the forensic character of the Fourth Gospel has been emphasized in recent work, it may stand to reason that gossip in John exemplifies a kind of testimony. Indeed, it may then be asked whether such curious testimony – testimony embodied in argumentative gossip – serves not only to advance the narrative, but also to process John’s portrait of Jesus in such a way as to keep Jesus “under construction” and so continually “up for grabs” in disputatious discourse underscored explicitly in a number of scenes by schism.
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Most scandalous paper:
Quote:
The Ms. Potiphar-Joseph-Potiphar Triangle: Interse(x)(ct)ionality of Race/Ethnicity, Gender, Sexuality and Social Class in Genesis 39:1-18
Program Unit: Bible and Cultural Studies
Randall Charles Bailey, Interdenominational Theological Center
This paper explores the proposed hetero-erotic relationship between Ms. Potiphar and Joseph and the actual homo-erotic relationship between Joseph and Potiphar in Genesis 39. In so doing issues to be explored are the cover-up translation strategies of splitting v. 6 and the translation of v. 9aa, the speech of Joseph as a taunt, enslaver-enslaved sexual politics, and the sexual maligning of/signifying on the Egyptians as an ideological narrative strategy.
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11-17-2007, 03:25 PM
