bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Arthur McGill: A Memoir
Authors: Cain David
Published: June 2011

When on any occasion his father engaged in an argument with somebody … [Johannes Climacus] was all ears. … His father always allowed his opponent to state his whole case, and then would ask him very carefully whether he had anything more to say before he began his reply. … The father's rejoinder would follow, and lo! in a trice everything would be changed. How this happened remained a riddle to J. C. But his soul was delighted by such a drama. The opponent would speak again, and J. C. would be still more attentive, so that he should miss nothing. … [T]he father … would then perorate, and J. C. could almost hear his heart beat, so impatiently did he await what should happen.
Senatorial Bishops in the Fourth Century
Authors: Gilliard Frank D.
Published: June 2011

In the triumph of Christianity after Constantine's victory at the Milvian Bridge, no group has been more assiduously studied than the senatorial aristocracy of the fourth and fifth centuries, theclarissimiand their families, whose initial reluctance to abandon paganism is as clear as their ultimate accommodation to the new religion. An important indication of their Christianization is the number of them who were willing to forego traditional political careers for ecclesiastical office. Ambrose comes immediately to mind as an example of such a senator from the fourth century, and Sidonius Apollinaris from the fifth. With precipitous speed Ambrose resigned the governorship of Aemilia-Liguria to become bishop of Milan, and Sidonius accepted ordination to the see of Clermont in the year after he had been urban prefect at Rome. Because of these senators and some others like them, students of Late Antiquity have been willing to identify many fourth-century bishops as members of the senatorial aristocracy who seemingly chose between two competing forms ofvita activa, the Empire and the Church. The issue is not trivial, especially if one believes with Arnaldo Momigliano that “when the choice is offered, when you can choose between being a bishop and being a consul, you are no longer an ancient man, you are a medieval one.” I think that there were few if any such medieval men among theclarissimiof the fourth century. I propose to argue here that when the identification of fourth-century bishops with imperial senators is cross-examined, it seldom carries conviction, and that the episcopal lists of the fourth century contain surprisingly few names from senatorial families.
Apologetic Literature and Ambassadorial Activities
Authors: Schoedel William R.
Published: June 2011

The following study on aspects of the form of apologetic literature in the early church and Judaism grows out of a previous analysis of themes in the apologist Athenagoras that reflect the manner of praising kings in the Greco-Roman rhetorical tradition. My argument was that, although Athenagoras'sLegatiois correctly read as apologetic literature, the task of the orator to render the judge well disposed to his cause is carried out by Athenagoras by calling on familiar epideictic strategies known to us primarily from Menander's (or Ps.- Menander's) codification of them in the third century. Meanwhile, Robert M. Grant has reoriented my discussion of Athenagoras by reading it against the background provided by Fergus Millar in the latter's detailed investigation of the activities of the Roman emperors in meeting the appeals and requests of the people of the Roman empire. Here the fact that Athenagoras's apology is entitled “Embassy” is seen as significant in the light of the importance of embassies in presenting appeals and requests to the emperor. It seems natural to look at the kinds of addresses that ambassadors gave in such circumstances for more precise clues to the literary character of the Christian apologies. The following study is intended as a contribution to the inquiry that has been opened up by that suggestion.
New Testament Textual Criticism Past, Present, and Future: Reflections on the Alands'Text of the New Testament
Authors: Epp Eldon Jay
Published: June 2011

History, theory, and practice are interwoven in most realms of human knowledge, yet students approaching a field often care little about its history; they are more concerned with its application and how the discipline is practiced. This may be illustrated from the physical and biological sciences, where it is common not only for novices but even experts to take an interest only very late—if at all—in the history of science, and more so among physicians, to whom the history of medicine is usually a curiosity at best. Students first grappling with NT textual criticism are not likely to be different—they want to know the “jargon,” the “rules,” and the basic methods that will permit them to practice the art and (as they are more likely to view it) the science of textual criticism. In this particular subfield of NT studies, however, the history and the practice of the discipline cannot easily be separated. After all, the canons of criticism—the so-called “rules” in textual criticism—are anything but objective standards that can be applied in a rigid, mechanical fashion.
No Ordinary Lament: Relecture and the Identity of the Distressed in Psalm 22
Authors: Menn Esther M.
Published: June 2011

One of the most significant shifts in Psalms scholarship in recent years has been the emergence of a new interest in tracing how early religious communities interpreted this religious poetry within the context of an emerging scriptural canon. Whereas the form-critical studies that dominated much of the twentieth century concentrate on recovering the originalSitz im Leben(or “life setting”) of the liturgical compositions collected in the Psalter within Israel's religious cult, the recent scholarly turn emphasizes how these prayers and praises came to be reread in light of narratives and other material found elsewhere in the Bible. In point of fact, the earliest evidence for this practice of canonical relecture is preserved within the Book of Psalms itself, where historical superscriptions correlate a number of psalms with specific events in King David's life. Through the addition of superscriptions, the moving penitential prayer found in Psalm 51 becomes “A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba” (compare 2 Samuel 11-12), the lament of an individual surrounded by threatening enemies found in Psalm 3 becomes “A Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his son” (compare 2 Samuel 15-18), and so forth.
“He who sits in the heavens laughs”: Recovering Animal Theology in the Abrahamic Traditions
Authors: Patton Kimberley C.
Published: June 2011

When I wandered into the “vast ocean of the Talmud” a decade or so ago, unaware of the warning within the same texts that Gentiles who undertake the study of Jewish sacred literature should be put to death, I finally found what I had been seeking for years. Here at last was a glimpse of God's personality–His likes and dislikes, His idiosyncracies, His religious observances. To my delight, I also dis-covered in the tractate 'Abodah Zarahthe answer to another mystery. What does God do all day?
In Search of Origen's Commentary on Philemon
Authors: Heine Ronald E.
Published: June 2011

In a letter to Paula, in which he includes a list of Origen's Pauline commentaries, Jerome refers to a commentary on Philemon. There is no extant Greek manuscript tradition of this commentary by Origen. There are also no Greek fragments attributed to Origen in the catena commentary on Philemon edited by Cramer from the eleventh-century codex Parisinus Coislin 204. The Codex von der Goltz, which has provided helpful information on some of Origen's other Pauline commentaries, has only two brief, marginal references to Origen on the textual reading of Philemon at verses 10 and 12. The only known portion of Origen's commentary on Philemon that has been preserved is a fragment of his comments on Philemon 5 in Rufinus's Latin translation ofIn Apologeticum S. Pamphili.
Confrontation in the Synagogue of Narbonne: A Christian Sermon and a Jewish Reply
Authors: Chazan Robert
Published: June 2011

The middle decades of the thirteenth century saw a remarkable upsurge in Christian missionizing activity. While efforts to spread the regnant faith by eloquent persuasion had never been totally lacking in medieval Christendom, widespread interest in proselytizing and the creation of effective missionizing techniques are especially prominent during this period. Old and new ecclesiastical institutions channeled their energies towards evangelizing, and some of the most learned and original minds lent their talents.
From Eschatology to Arian Heresy: The Case of Francis Kett (d. 1589)
Authors: Wallace Dewey D.
Published: June 2011

Considerable attention has recently been given to the subject of radical ideas in English religion, especially in the period of the Civil War, as Christopher Hill'sThe World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolutionperhaps best illustrates. Nonetheless, much of the story of English radical religion—its sources, milieu, and impact—remains obscure, especially in the Elizabethan period, and the modern investigator is scarcely satisfied with the comment of the seventeenth-century heresiographer, Daniel Featley, who argued, in explaining the rise of heresy, that “it is moste certaine, that where there is a propension in any mans minde to any olde heresie, the malice of the Devil easily supplyeth the want of reading.” Did the radical religious ideas of the Civil War period spring up suddenly out of the tensions of Puritanism or had such ideas long flourished on the margins of the Puritan movement? To what extent were such ideas indebted to continental influences such as the Anabaptists? If indigenous, to what aspect of English religion should one turn for the context and basis of such developments?
The Apostolicity of Gallic Churches
Authors: Gilliard Frank D.
Published: June 2011

At the end of the nineteenth century Louis Duchesne's Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule decisively undermined the foundation for maintaining the apostolicity of Gallic sees. This epochal study proved that, of the twenty-five lists of Gallic bishops which were credible and could be verified, only that of the church at Lyon reached back as far as the second century, and only four others as far as the third century. Thus it effectively discredited the pious medieval myths which had been created to prove that the Gallic episcopal traditions derived from the apostles, and led Duchesne confidently to conclude that, except for the “mother-church” at Lyon, established probably in the middle of the second century, no other church was founded in the Gallic provinces of Belgica, Lugdunensis, Aquitania, and Germania much before A.D. 230.
On Separating Life and Death: An Explanation of Some Biblical Laws
Authors: Carmichael Calum M.
Published: June 2011

Certain biblical laws can be satisfactorily explained only on the basis of their concern to avoid a blurring of the two opposites, life and death. The famous prohibition against boiling a kid in its mother's milk (Exod 23:19; 34:26; Deut 14:21b) is to be explained in this way. In cases where the mother's milk was so used, an ancient observer must have noted that the milk that is naturally associated with the life of the animal was given a reverse role and was now applied to the dead animal. The law represents a reaction against the uncomfortable position of having to juxtapose the natural state of life before death with the unnatural state of “life” after death.
The Enochic Pentateuch and the Date of the Similitudes
Authors: Greenfield Jonas C. , Stone Michael E.
Published: June 2011

In a recent, extensive article in this Journal, J. T. Milik made public some of the conclusions which he had drawn from his studies of the Qumran Enoch fragments, conclusions which have serious implications for the history of Jewish literature in the last centuries before the destruction of the Temple. Two of Milik's conclusions about the Enochic literature will be examined here: first, that there was at Qumran an Enochic Pentateuch, and second, that theSimilitudes of Enoch(chaps. 37-71 of the EthiopicEnochbook) are a late, Christian composition.
Reflections on Aspects of Immortality in Islam
Authors: Smith Jane I.
Published: June 2011

As many of you know, I have been engaged for some time in a study of Islamic conceptions of life after death. It was for purposes of research in this area that I spent last spring in Egypt and other parts of the Middle East. There I had the opportunity not only to consider contemporary writings on this subject but to talk with a number of persons who have been concerned with Qurʾānic exegesis and the formulation of Islamic theology. With reference to this modern perspective I would like to think with you today about some aspects of the Islamic experience of the divine in relation to the human—in this world as well as in the world to come.
Being and Some Theologians
Authors: Thomas O. C.
Published: June 2011

A crucial issue in contemporary theology is the doctrine of God and especially the nature of the divine reality. What kind of reality is God? How is God's reality like, unlike, and related to other kinds of reality? There are many ways to talk about the reality of God. I want to focus on one way, namely, God as being or beingitself, not because I believe that it is the best way to talk about God but because it is one of the oldest ways, because it seems to be undergoing something of a revival, and because I am baffled and intrigued by it.
Two Christians in the Familia Caesaris
Authors: Clarke G. W.
Published: June 2011

There are, notoriously, a number of general literary observations on the large number of Christians in Caesar's household and in Caesar's employ in the late second and in the third centuries A.D. but there are remarkably few particular examples to substantiate these general claims. Particularly rare (for reasons of security?) are traces of such individual Christians outside the literary remains. C.I.L. 6.8987 (= Diehl I.L.C.V. 3872) would appear to be an exception and to record two such Christians of Caesar's household. It thus provides welcome attestation, though, curiously, the inscription has seldom been exploited for this information.
A Catechesis against Apocryphal Texts by Shenute and the Gnostic Texts of Nag Hammadi
Authors: Orlandi Tito
Published: June 2011

While the discovery of the Manichaean, and then the Gnostic, MS collections in Coptic has provoked a number of studies on the broad cultural context of these two religious movements, the specific Egyptian environment in which the MSS were transmitted remains largely unknown. Lack of documentation generally accounts for this ignorance. Especially in the case of the Coptic Gnostic library, all sorts of ideas and religious sects have been called forth to comment upon the corpus and to explain, it seems, everything except what was common in the Nile valley in the fourth and fifth centuries A.D.
Literary Sources of theTemple Scroll
Authors: Wilson Andrew M. , Wills Lawrence
Published: June 2011

TheTemple Scroll(11 QTemple), the last of the known scrolls from Qumran to be published, is a heterogeneous document whose contents cover various topics of cult, architecture, ritual purity, and civil law. Nonetheless, most exegetes have treated the scroll as the work of a single author. The question whether there might be several independent literary sources behind the document will be the subject of this study.
Early Christianity and Society: A Jewish Legacy in the Pre-Constantinian Era
Authors: Frend W. H. C.
Published: June 2011

It was near the end of the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161–80) ca. 178 that a well-read provincial, perhaps a Syrian, of Platonist inclinations set out to analyze the new Christian religion and to warn his fellow provincials of the danger of its spread. Celsus' work, entitled “The True Word,” has only survived in the considerable fragments that Origen cites in his attempted refutation some seventy years later. Celsus took the trouble to observe the practices of different Christian groups, to read a number of Jewish and Christian works, including the Gospels of Matthew and John and parts, at any rate, of theBook of Enoch, and he was well aware of the stark divergencies and dissensions within the church. His description of the profound hostility between the Great Church and its gnostic opponents, and towards the Marcionites, and the strong feminine element among these opponents qualify him as a perceptive observer, and invite what he has to say about the attitude of Christianity in the mid-second century towards pagan society to be taken seriously.
The Symbolism of Learning in St. Augustine
Authors: Chidester David
Published: June 2011

There is widespread disagreement as to exactly what Augustine might have meant by his theory of learning, in which Christ, the truth, teaches within. The precise interpretation of Augustine's doctrine of illumination has been the subject of centuries of debate. How is this kind of learning process which Augustine outlines—a process by which the word of God illumines the soul—to be understood? The major schools of thought on this subject have been: theontologisticversion, which regards the immediate presence of the divine light, the continuity between the mind of man and the mind of God, as primary in the act of learning; theideogeneticversion, which regards the activity of the word of God, mysteriously producing ideas in the human mind, as primary in the learning process; and, finally, what we might call thenormativeversion, which understands the metaphor of illumination to refer to the way in which the divine light provides an ultimate standard of certainty by which knowledge is evaluated, rather than describing an inner, psychological process through which the act of learning occurs.
Jacob's Marriages and Ancient Near East Customs: A Reexamination
Authors: Van Seters John
Published: June 2011

For many years now, it has become very common for Old Testament scholars to refer to the numerous parallels between the patriarchal customs reflected in the stories of Genesis and the Custom law of the cuneiform documents of the second millennium B.C. Particular attention has been given to the Nuzi texts and to custom law related to marriage. The present study is directed to a reexamination of the parallels to marriage customs as they have been applied to the story of Jacob's marriage to the daughters of Laban.
The Egyptian Cults at Corinth
Authors: Smith Dennis Edwin
Published: June 2011

Several recent publications have presented collections of various types of evidence for the Egyptian cults in the Greco-Roman World. Although valuable, they do not give sufficient critical analysis of the evidence through detailed study of particular sites. The present article attempts to provide for Corinth a more substantial picture of the Egyptian cults than has previously been available.
Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother: Some Themes in Twelfth-Century Cistercian Writing
Authors: Bynum Caroline Walker
Published: June 2011

A number of scholars in this century have noticed the image of God or Jesus as mother in the spiritual writings of the high Middle Ages. The image has in general been seen as part of a “feminine” or “affective” spirituality, and neither of these adjectives is incorrect. The idea of God as mother is part of a widespread use, in twelfth-century spiritual writing, of woman, mother, characteristics agreed to be “feminine,”and the sexual union of male and female as images to express spiritual truths; the most familiar manifestation of this interest in the “female” is the new emphasis on the Virgin in doctrinal discussions and especially spirituality. And the frequency of references to “mother Jesus” is also part of a new tendency in twelfth-century writing to use human relationships (friendship, fatherhood or motherhood, erotic love) in addition to metaphysical or psychological entities to explain doctrinal positions or exhort to spiritual growth.
The Image of God in Man—is Woman Included?
Authors: Horowitz Maryanne Cline
Published: June 2011

“Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind (adam) in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion….’ And God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” Gen 1:26–27 clarifies that the Hebrew termadamstands for the generic species of humanity which is composed of men and women. If there is any doubt on this interpretation, Gen 5:2–3 declares and defines again: “When God created humankind, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them humankind when they were created.”The “image of God in man and woman” opens us to transcend both the masculine and feminine metaphors for God which abound in the Bible and to transcend our historical selves and social institutions in recognition of the Holy One. It would appear that whatever one's interpretation of the “image” and “likeness” of God, one would have to recognize that the biblical text makes explicit that in our resemblance to the Divinity and in our dominion over the earth and animals, men and women share a common human dignity.
Chauncy, Gordon, and Ferré: Sovereign Love and Universal Salvation in the New England Tradition
Authors: Norment Owen L.
Published: June 2011

John Hick has recently observed that within the “spectrum of disarray” in recent Christian theology regarding life after death, some “moderately traditional theologians,” while retaining the idea of an afterlife, have moved to an avowal of universal salvation. In part the importance of this trend lies in the fact that theologians of a universalist persuasion—Hick himself being a notable example—may now increasingly be accounted significant rather than peripheral figures. While universalism has always been an available option for a few, constituting since the early Christian centuries “a small underground stream of belief,” it has usually been strongly opposed by orthodox thinkers.
Matthew 27:51 in Early Christian Exegesis
Authors: de Jonge M.
Published: June 2011

This article deals with Matthew's account of the rending of the temple veil. Matt 27:51 will be interpreted in its context: in vss 51–53 the incident is one of several taking place between Jesus' death and the centurion's confession. At the same time the verse under discussion will be considered against the background of the interpretations in early Christian literature which very often take Matt 27:51–53 as a starting point.
Challenge and Response: Pesiqta Derab Kahana, Chapter 26 as an Oblique Reply to Christian Claims
Authors: Silberman Lou H.
Published: June 2011

Some years ago in an examination of the text noted above, I hypothesized that it could well be a response to some Christian theological position being set forth and argued against Judaism in Galilee in the fourth and fifth centuries. My choice of doctrine was that of the atonement: Christ's atoning death for the sins of humankind. The chapter, to be dealt with below in detail, is in its entirety an argument for the atoning efficacy of the death of righteous persons, that is, a doctrine of vicarious atonement. The material included centered upon the lesson read in the synagogue on the Day of Atonement, the sixteenth chapter of Leviticus. This details the ritual procedures that were to take place once a year on the tenth day of the seventh month in the cult center, in order to expiate for the ritual uncleannness and acts of rebellion, that is, “all the sins of the people.” It concludes with the words: “This shall become a rule binding on you for all times, to make for the Israelites once a year the expiation required by all their sins.”
Africa and the Biblical Period
Authors: Bennett Robert A.
Published: June 2011

The Holy Bible represents the literary deposit of the Hebrew people's faith in God's intervention within human history to liberate them and mankind from physical and spiritual bondage. Even though this divine revelation was given to a specific people at a specific time within history, its power and hoped-for fulfillment continues to be the basis of religious faith for Jew and Christian alike. Consequently, the most potent aspect of the Scriptures for the Black community in Africa and the Americas is its present meaning and revelation for us in our struggle today for physical and spiritual liberation. The particularity of the mode of biblical revelation — the witness of a specific people at a particular point in history — suggests that the medium is also the message, namely, that God's word is intended for identifiable situations rather than to be taken as amorphous, generalized truth having little to do with the specifics of the human condition. The American Association of Theological Schools' journal, Theology Today, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Spring, 1970) plus Supplement, turns its attention to this question of the divine revelation and a specific human situation under the title of “The Black Religious Experience and Theological Education.” James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation (New York: Lippincott, 1970), offers a forceful argument for the biblical basis of the present black social and spiritual revolution. See also, J. Deotis Roberts, Liberation and Reconciliation: A Black Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1971). However, while the hermeneutical task of proclaiming God's word to contemporary ears is of the greater importance — it is ontologically prior, there is also the necessity — chronologically prior — of adequately describing the Biblical word on the basis of its own setting. Dean Krister Stendahl has given classic statement to the fundamental role of the descriptive process, of what the Bible “meant,” before we take up what it “means,” in his article on “Contemporary Biblical Theology,” Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. I (New York: Abingdon, 1962). Black consciousness is ultimately informed and inspired by the biblical message, but it also has some questions which it would address to Holy Scripture. Among these questions are those concerning the African presence in the Bible and the role of Africa in the period of biblical revelation.
A Learned Minister at Harvard Willard Learoyd Sperry
Authors: Seaburg Alan
Published: June 2011

On the wall in the hallway directly outside the newly refurbished Sperry Lecture Room at Andover Hall, Harvard Divinity School, hangs an oil portrait of the older Willard Learoyd Sperry. It is somewhat dull with age but that probably does not matter to the students and visitors who pass it by. It is doubtful that they know who Sperry was, even though he served as Dean of the Divinity School from 1922 until 1953, longer than any other person. He was not only Dean of the Divinity School, but a preacher to Harvard University for a generation.
A Model for a Public Theology
Authors: Cady Linell E.
Published: June 2011

A small but growing number of theologians have begun to call for the development of a “public theology.” Although the proposals vary, they are fueled by a common desire to counteract the cultural marginalization of contemporary theology. Having lost its former power to influence public debate about our beliefs and actions, theology has increasingly become a privatized form of reflection. Too often theologians have become comfortable with this state of affairs, abandoning all presumptions to speak to or for those outside their narrow communities. Theological arguments have degenerated into dogmatic assertions or confessional accounts of personal beliefs which lack the power or intent to persuade others. As David Tracy so aptly puts it, we have fled to local “reservations of the spirit” where we need not confront the wider indifference to and impotence of our work.
The Resurrection of the Soul
Authors: Cobb John B.
Published: June 2011

After Immanuel Kant the issue of whether there is life after death moved to the periphery in the writings of major Protestant thinkers. Of course, the great eschatological images have continued to play a role. There have been discussions of the resurrection of the body and the immortality of the soul showing the differences in the anthropologies underlying the two forms of hope. But it is usually difficult to determine what the theologian actually expects will happen after death. The focus is on the symbolic value of these images or on their existential meaning.
TheAutobiographyof Josephus and the Hypothesis of a Second Edition of hisAntiquities
Authors: Barish David A.
Published: June 2011

Josephus dates the publication of hisJewish Antiquitiesto the 13th year of Domitian's reign and the 56th year of his own life (93/94 C.E.). Because theAutobiographyevidently forms an appendix to theAntiquities(see below), many scholars in the 19th and early 20th centuries dated it along with or soon after theAntiquities' publication. A problem with this supposition, however, is that theAutobiographyassumes the death of Agrippa II, while the 9th-century ecclesiast Photius apparently places his death in the 3rd year of Trajan (100 C.E.). Thus, with the conflict of testimony, other scholars dated theAutobiographyafter 100 C.E.
Ignatius and the Archives
Authors: Schoedel William R.
Published: June 2011

The well known passage about the “archives” and the “gospel” in Ignatius’Letter to the Philadelphians(8.2) is one of the most intriguing glimpses given us of debate in the church early in the second century. Wide agreement about the meaning of the passage seems to have been reached, and the current view may be summarized more or less as follows: Ignatius recalls a conversation that picks up just after he had made a theological point during his visit to Philadelphia (he gives us no direct information on the subject of the discussion). His opponents had replied (according to most commentators) that if they did not find it in the “archives” (that is, the Old Testament), they did not believe it to be in the “gospel.” Ignatius had retorted that Scripture in fact supported him: “It is written” (γέγραπται). But his opponents had answered that his certainty was not well grounded: “That is just the question.” The passage concludes with a statement that may represent not so much what Ignatius said then as what he now regards as an appropriate way of ending such debates. The “archives” (he says) are Jesus Christ; or (as he rephrases it) the “inviolable archives” are Christ's cross, death, resurrection, and the faith that comes through him. If this is what the passage means, it represents a remarkable reliance on the “gospel” and the events of salvation as opposed to the formal authority of the (Old Testament) Scriptures.
Liturgical Scholarship at the Time of the Investiture Controversy: Past Research and Future Opportunities
Authors: Reynolds Roger E.
Published: June 2011

To state that the period dominated by events at Canossa was a watershed in the history of ecclesio-political relationships is almost trite. But it is not so commonplace to state that this same period was also a high plateau in the history of liturgical scholarship. For modern students the picture of investiture by ring and staff represents the struggle between Church and State in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, but it should not be overlooked that the tradition of these tangible instruments was a liturgical act also signaling an intensity of concern for the liturgy and its proper performance and interpretation unequaled since the Carolingian age. Thus it comes as a surprise to many students of ecclesio-political theory to find that a majority of the publicists of the age of the Investiture Controversy whose works fill the three fat volumes of the Libelli de lite of the Monumenta Germaniae historica were avid observers of the liturgy. Peter Damian, Humbert of Silva Candida, Bonizo of Sutri, Bernold of Constance, Ranger of Lucca, the Norman Anonymous, Ivo of Chartres, Sigebert of Gembloux, Hildebert of Le Mans, and Honorius “of Autun” all wrote tracts in which aspects of liturgy were described and explained. And while the political ideas of these publicistic worthies have lost their cogency in modern times, their liturgical scholarship still graces the footnotes of many a modern popular exposition of the liturgy.
On Breaking Teeth
Authors: Hackett Jo Ann , Huehnergard John
Published: June 2011

In several passages in the Hebrew Bible, we find similar phrases used to describe the punishment the authors hope the deity will mete out to those who are their enemies. In Psalm 3, the psalmist's situation is described in this way:
On The Meaning of “Act of God”
Authors: Kaufman Gordon D.
Published: June 2011

The concept, “act of God,” is central to the biblical understanding of God and his relation to the world. Repeatedly we are told of the great works performed by God in behalf of his people and in execution of his own purposes in history. From the “song of Moses,” which celebrates the “glorious deeds” (Ex. 15:11) through which Yahweh secured the release of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt, to the letters of Paul, which proclaim God's great act delivering us “from the dominion of darkness” (Col. 1:13) and reconciling us with himself, we are confronted with a “God who acts.” The “mighty acts” (Ps. 145:4), the “wondrous deeds” (Ps. 40:5), the “wonderful works” (Ps. 107:21) of God are the fundamental subject-matter of biblical history, and the object of biblical faith is clearly the One who has acted repeatedly and with power in the past and may be expected to do so in the future.
The Song of Heshbon and David'sNîr
Authors: Hanson Paul D.
Published: June 2011

Several perplexing problems cluster around the interpretation of the Song of Heshbon (Num. 21:27b–30). Thecrux interpretumis vs. 30, a verse which in the course of the textual transmission has become severely corrupted. A failure to penetrate deeply enough into the textual history behind that verse, resulting in a misunderstanding of its original relation to the remaining verses of the Song, has misguided the two major lines of interpretation in past scholarship.
The Ransom of Captives: Evolution of a Tradition
Authors: Osiek Carolyn
Published: June 2011

The admonition to ransom captives has a long paraenetic and social tradition that is documented in a variety of genres in early Christian literature. It is a tradition which, like many of its companion pieces in paraenetic literature, springs from roots in the Hebrew Scriptures which were consciously adopted by Christians as an important base upon which to build their own theology. The development of this particular tradition in early Christianity is an interesting example and test case of how a theological and moral conviction was not limited to verbal expression but was effectively translated into practice and creatively adapted to changing situations.
The Attraction of Aristocratic Women to Pharisaism During the Second Temple Period
Authors: Ilan Tal
Published: June 2011

Unlike Christianity, which regards the word “Pharisee” as synonymous with “hypocrite,” “legalist,” and “petty-bourgeois,” Jews have always understood Pharisaism as the correct and trustworthy side of Judaism. Since the eighteenth century, all disputants who participated in the great controversies and schisms within Judaism have claimed to represent the true heirs of the Pharisees. For example, adherents of the strong anti-Hasidic movement initiated by R. Eliyahu of Vilna in the second half of the eighteenth century, who are usually referred to in literature by the negative appellation “opposers” (םירננחמ), referred to themselves by the positive title “Pharisees” (םישורפ). When the Reform movement was founded in Germany in the first half of the nineteenth century, with the goal of reforming the Jewish religion to make it more “modern” and acceptable to its neighbors, the reformers perceived themselves as the true heirs of the Pharisees. In his important study of the Pharisees and Sadducees, Abraham Geiger, one of the founders, ofWissenschaft des Judentumsand an important spokesman for the radical wing of the Reform movement, formulated the view of the flexible open-minded Pharisees, who reformed Judaism to the point of contradicting the laws set out in the Pentateuch, in order to accommodate them to their changing needs. Geiger's opponents easily produced evidence that negated his findings and proved beyond doubt that they, in their conservative strain, were the real heirs of Pharisaism. To his opponents, Geiger was a representative of the detestable Sadducees or their later counterparts, the Karaites.
John Chrysostom on Philemon: A Response To Margaret M. Mitchell
Authors: Callahan Allen Dwight
Published: June 2011

I thank Margaret M. Mitchell for her thoughtful criticisms of my article on the interpretation of Paul's Epistle to Philemon. She has pointed out certain limitations of my arguments, both on the culpability of John Chrysostom as the earliest disseminator of the familiar interpretation that Onesimus is a slave and runaway, against which I have inveighed, and also in other areas where, in her parlance, my constructive arguments seem vulnerable. I am gratified that my admittedly unconventional reading has been engaged seriously and thoughtfully by a colleague well versed in both the Pauline corpus and patristic exegesis.
TheMinimof Sepphoris Reconsidered
Authors: Miller Stuart S.
Published: June 2011

Talmudic literature applies the termminto persons who espoused various forms of heresy, including denial of the world to come or resurrection, Gnostic views, or belief in “two powers in heaven.” In addition, the tannaim designated unacceptable halakhic and liturgical practices, which they believed revealed heretical beliefs, asderekh ha-minut, “sectarianism.” Finally, some allusions tomini/minimin the Babylonian Talmud can be shown to refer to Gentiles.
The Humanities and Chaos Theory: A Response to Steenburg's “Chaos at the Marriage of Heaven and Hell”
Authors: Eigenauer John D.
Published: June 2011

In an article in the fall 1991 issue of theHarvard Theological Review, David Steenburg proposes “to consider the potential significance of chaos theory for modern culture.” This important issue has not received adequate attention because the understanding of math and the physical sciences necessary to be able to speak cogently about chaos theory can be intimidating for nonscientists. Those who are not scientists, however, have at their disposal the popular and effective summary of chaos theory by James Gleick. While Gleick's work is solid, it has led some to be captivated by chaos theory's fecund metaphorical terminology and elegant computer-aided graphical images. Although those images, particularly the logistic map, show striking instances of order hidden within chaotic systems, too often they are used to forward the thesis that there are other systems, ranging from modern literary theory to stock market fluctuations, that also house deep structure amid their apparent disorder. The result is, on occasion, analysis that is based only upon metaphor.
The Slavonic Book of Esther: Translation from Hebrew or Evidence for a Lost Greek Text?
Authors: Lunt Horace G. , Taube Moshe
Published: June 2011

Fifty years ago, Charles C. Torrey, writing about Esther, asked on the pages of this journal, “Why is there no Greek translation of the Hebrew text? Every other book of the Hebrew Bible, whatever its nature, has its faithful rendering (at least one, often several) in Greek. For the canonical Esther, on the contrary, no such version is extant, nor is there evidence that one ever existed.” It is common knowledge that the extant Greek versions of Esther, both the longer Septuagint text and the shorter A-text, are textually distant from the Hebrew Masoretic version. Indeed, the distance is so great that when a passage in the Complutensian edition (5:1–2) does correspond to the Masoretic text, Robert Hanhart confidently labels it as “newly translated.” His characterization seems justified in this case; the two verses required a new translation because the original Septuagint text had been removed, along with the apocryphal addition D, and put at the end of the book in accordance with the Latin tradition. Hanhart correctly states, “It is improbable that such an intervention, which sacrifices the inner coherence of the Greek text to the benefit of the Masoretic text, belongs to old Greek tradition,” indicating “a scholarly re-working according to the Masoretic text in the period of the Renaissance”; his confidence, however, rests on the fact that scholarly literature contains nothing about a Greek Esther that resembles the Masoretic text.
The “Horned Hunter” on a Lost Gnostic Gem
Authors: Kotansky Roy , Spier Jeffrey
Published: June 2011

The noted Provencal antiquarian Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580-1637), perhaps the most dedicated of an international circle of acquaintances studying and collecting classical antiquities in the early seventeenth century, took an especially keen interest in ancient gems. With his friend, the painter Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), he planned an extensive publication on the subject that unfortunately never saw completion. Although Peiresc focused most of his attention on collecting Roman gems portraying classical iconography, he was also intrigued by the enigmatic series of magical gems—as were many others in the Renaissance, who considered the gems to be the products of early Gnostic heretics. A correspondence between Peiresc and Rubens in 1623, frequently cited in the modern literature, discusses the putative meaning of an amulet in Rubens's collection depicting a bell-shaped object thought to represent the “divine womb.” The gem is a Renaissance forgery based on genuine ancient examples; the concurrent—and correct—identification of this puzzling type as a uterus, however, contrasts markedly with the fanciful interpretations later fashionable in the nineteenth century.
Laodiceansand the Philippians Fragments Hypothesis
Authors: Sellew Philip
Published: June 2011

During the 1960s, a consensus slowly emerged in New Testament scholarship, especially in Germany, that the canonical letter of Paul to the Philippians is likely to be a compilation of fragments of originally separate letters. The case for this partition hypothesis was built almost exclusively on internal evidence, which centered around the abrupt shift in tone and topic at Phil 3:2: βλἐπετε τοὺς κύνας, βλἐπετε τοὺς κακοὺς ἐργάτας βλἐπετε τὴν κατατομήν (“Look out for the dogs, look out for the workers of evil, look out for the incision!”). This section of the letter, which runs from Phil 3:2 to Phil 4:1, is marked by a tone of polemic and personalapologiaabsent from the rest of the epistle. Some of the most persuasive partitioned of the letter, whom we may call the “fragmentarians,” have identified this section as a letter fragment, sometimes called aKampfbriefand sometimes a testament, which is now found in Philippians 3.
Between Death and Judgment: Conflicting Images of the Afterlife in Late Seventeenth-Century English Eulogies
Authors: Spellman William M.
Published: June 2011

One of the more troublesome issues facing Protestant reformers after the abolition of the Roman Catholic purgatory in the early sixteenth century was the need to explain the status of body and soul in the interim between death and resurrection. Eager to identify the precise destination of the whole person after bodily expiration but before the general judgment, preachers sought to bring comfort to bereaved survivors of the recently departed by formulating an acceptable counterpoise to the centuries-old Roman Catholic geography of the other world. Unlike the authors of learned theological treatises on the nature of the soul and body, eulogists faced the unenviable task of interpreting the experience of death and its sequel to an audience that often lacked the sophistication required for the rigors of sustained exegesis. The task of the eulogist was to attempt to make plain the contours of postmortem existence in a manner designed both to warn and to reassure. In their efforts to define an emotionally satisfying alternative to the Roman Catholic story, however, English Protestants formulated an increasingly wide variety of disparate—and sometimes contradictory—accounts of life after death, each of which was normatively based upon a personal understanding of scripture. By the late seventeenth century, even as English funeral sermons that treated the afterlife began to reflect a broad consensus regarding the separate destinations of body and soul, there remained much confusion over the precise condition of those eternal partners before Christ's promised return. The failure to resolve this dilemma in a satisfactory manner and the inability to arrive at an acceptable consensus on a matter of central concern to believing Christians contributed to the growth of mortalist and annihilationist theories by the close of the century. Conceptual disarray within the orthodox camp, then, provided an opportunity for more innovative thinkers to step forward, persons whose understanding of eschatological time, anchored in their own unique interpretation of the Christian scriptures, negated any need for continued debate about a putative “middle place”.
The Past as Destiny: Historical Visions in Samʾal and Judah under Assyrian Hegemony
Authors: Hamilton Mark W.
Published: June 2011

In his groundbreaking study of the literary ramifications of the experience of western imperialism for both conquerors and the conquered, Edward Said remarks:

Appeals to the past are among the commonest of strategies in interpretations of the present. What animates such appeals is not only disagreement about what happened in the past and what the past was, but uncertainty about whether the past really is past.
Condemnation of the Impious in Xenophon'sHellenica
Authors: Pownall Frances Skoczylas
Published: June 2011

In theHellenica, Xenophon prefaces his account of the liberation of Thebes from Spartan occupation by making the following gnomic observation:

One could tell also of many other incidents, both Greek and barbarian, showing that the gods are not unmindful either of those who are impious or of those who commit unholy acts. Now, at any rate, I shall tell only of the events at hand.
The Figure of Abraham in Hasidic Literature
Authors: Gellman Jerome
Published: June 2011

The Hasidic movement started in the latter part of the eighteenth century in the Podolia section of Ukraine, under the influence of Israel Baal Shem Tov (1698–1760). By the middle of the nineteenth century Hasidism came to dominate the religious sensibilities of Eastern European Jewry. As it changed from a marginal, nascent revivalist curiosity to an establishment fixture, it attracted magnetic leaders of great pneumatic powers and created a rich homiletical literature. Its combination of direct religious engagement and a message of joy in the worship of God appealed both to spiritually inclined rabbinic figures and to the masses of the undereducated.