Session 1
Chair: Dorothee Bertschmann, College of the Resurrection, Mirfield and Durham University
Lily Tsai Su, University of Glasgow, ‘The Reception and Compositional Technique of the Pastoral Epistles’
Most scholars today largely believe that the Pastoral Epistles (PE) were pseudonymously composed. And yet, the Pauline authorship of the PE was taken for granted by early Christians. Ancient scribes and readers received the PE as authentically Pauline and used manuscript paratexts to defend their status. What strategies did the author(s) use to enable early Christians, as well as the scribes and readers who produced the paratexts, to receive the PE as authentically Pauline? This paper examines the PE’s reuse of antecedent texts in the compositions, along with manuscript paratexts (including subscriptions and Euthalian apparatus) that attest to the reception of the PE, to understand the compositional and exegetical techniques the author(s) employed to produce the personal letters to Paul’s coworkers. In this paper, I argue that the PE’s strategic reuse of antecedent texts in compositions is part of the pseudepigraphical strategy to present the new texts as authentically Pauline and speak to early Christians in a new context. This paper offers a new perspective for understanding the transmission and reception of the PE
Ian Paul, Fuller Theological Seminary, ‘OT Allusions in the Book of Revelation: The Big Picture’
Much analysis of the use of Jewish scriptures in the New Testament focuses either on the particular use and meaning of individual texts, or perhaps even on the way a particular book of the Jewish scriptures is utilised in a New Testament text. But rarely is any analysis done at a macro-level, looking at the overall use of the variety of Jewish scriptures across a whole NT book. This paper attempts such an analysis. It maps the whole range of the 676 allusions to the Jewish scriptures in the Book of Revelation’s 404 verses, as listed in the UBS 3 Greek NT. It notes the ways that different books of the OT make their presence felt at different points in the narrative of Revelation, and how that affects both the way we read Revelation overall, and the theological connections between Revelation and these different texts.
Chris Jameson, Durham University, ‘John the Commentator: New Avenues for Insights into the Earliest Christian Contexts’
“Narrative asides, or those parenthetical departures from narrative which allow for correction, elaboration, and interpretation, are replete in John’s Gospel with as many as 165 instances, compared with around 15 in each Synoptic. The intrusive and correctivenature of the narrative asides present in John’s Gospel are the author’s attempt to interpret the established story of Jesus for the reader, even offering commentary on the evangelist’s own retelling of the story, to prevent misunderstanding and provide new intimations and limitations on the Jesus event. Several asides in John’s Gospel seem to address or elaborate upon earlier gospel literature or tradition, or even upon possible misunderstandings of earlier Christian theology existing in his day.
One great benefit that may be gained from this research is a new way to discuss the interaction of gospel authors, moving the New Testament scholarly community away from discussions about literary dependence and instead toward discussions of literaryengagement between early Christian authors, especially seen in the explicit, early commentary provided by Johannine asides. In that Johannine asides reveal new aspects
and significance of the Jesus event and address prior historical and theological misconceptions, we witness the process of the earliest reception and use of the Christian tradition by the Christian community. A further benefit of this research is uncovering the unique Johannine voice by examining these frequent asides and the concerns of the evangelist which they pointedly reveal. Rather than being excludable marginal notes, the frequency and essential significance of the asides allow us to identify the author’s chief concerns. Finally, research into the little-known literary-rhetorical device of narrative asides provides a crucial corrective to hermeneutical methods which have until now ignored the significance of this favorite Johannine technique. To establish each point, brief examples of asides which correct, elaborate, interpret, or otherwise engage other traditions are explored from 1st century authors and compared with use in John.”
Session 2
Chair: Olabisi Obamakin, Durham University
Siobhán Jolley, The National Gallery, London and King’s College London & Rachel Miller, University of Manchester ‘Why Let the Truth Get in the Way of a Good Story? On Magdalenes, Jezebels, and Women of Ill-Repute’
Though Mark Driscoll’s self-serving ‘Jezebel spirit’ tirade dominated Christian discourse in April, it was but the latest example of invoking biblical women by reputation. From admonitory artworks to institutional asylums, calling women Magdalenes or Jezebels has long since been a shorthand slur for those who fall short of patriarchal models of propriety. This paper ponders why these are still the stories we tell. Through feminist analysis of New Testament texts that have shaped the expansive reception of Mary Magdalene and Jezebel (the Luke 7:36-50 anointing woman and critique of Jezebel in Revelation 2:20-23), this paper explores how ancient ideas are still brought to bear on women today, using these pericopes’ shared themes of sexual immorality, prophecy, and legacy. Illuminating our analysis with examples from wider cultural reception, we argue that these archetypes of fallen women endure because patriarchal preoccupation with women’s agency endures. Ultimately, we make the case that we should indeed let a truth get in the way of a good story.
Heike Omerzu, Københavns Universitet, ‘Exploring the Ambiguity of Mark’s Family Ethics’
The Gospel of Mark contains neither systematic reflections on family and marital ethics nor detailed instructions on such matters like, for example, in the New Testament household codes (cf. e.g., Eph 5:22-6:9; Col 3:18-4:1; 1 Pet 2:13-3:7). However, Mark offers sufficient indirect ethical orientation on family and marital ethics alongside occasional direct instructions. In this paper, these various statements will be examined within their narrative and socio-cultural contexts, to then conclude with an outline of the Gospel of Mark’s family and sexual ethics alongside some reflections on the lived reality of Mark’s audience. The starting point will be the family as the overarching social structure in early Christianity, to inquire from there into the various family members, their specific roles, and their relationships with each other in terms of ethical aspects. More specifically, this concerns parents, children with respect to their parents and in their own right (or daughters/sons, siblings, and slaves), as well as spouses, including issues of marriage and divorce. It will be shown that there is a noticeable ambiguity regarding family ethics in the Gospel of Mark as it both adheres to traditional family forms and values while, within the horizon of the (still relatively) imminent eschatological expectation, reconfiguring the concept of the houshold to designate the community of Christ-believers as the new family of God (familia dei), with children (unlike than in the surrounding society) being some of the most esteemed members. This ambiguity might be understood as an expression of the intertwining of different traditions, yet it might also reflect the attempt to reconcile various demands in early Christian ethics and thus reflect the lived reality of Mark’s audience.
Justin Meggitt, University of Cambridge, ‘Babilons Bastards’ [sic] and the end of Hell: Benjamin Lay’s antislavery exegesis of Revelation’
The language of apocalypse is increasingly employed to describe the phenomenon of Atlantic slavery but the role of the book of Revelation in the discourse of those who either supported or resisted it has received little attention. Although Revelation’s presence is often faint in early antislavery works, Benjamin Lay’s All slave-keepers that keep the innocent in bondage, apostates (1737), provides a significant exception. As Marcus Rediker puts it in his recent, influential biography of Lay, Revelation was the ‘foundation of Benjamin’s book and his larger political philosophy’ (The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf Who Became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist, 2017, p 86). In Lay’s hands it became a script for his antislavery activism and something he sought to actualise in his day-to-day prefigurative praxis. Lay provides an important case study of how physical, religious, and philosophical alterity, as well as occupational class, can combine to generate distinctive, consequential, and emancipatory forms of exegesis of Revelation.
Session 3
Chair: Tom de Bruin, Radboud University
Zara Zhang, University of St Andrews, ‘The Delay Motif in Old Testament and New Testament Eschatology’
The delay of the parousia in certain NT texts is often understood as a late and novel development in early Christianity. But this paper presents that the concept of delay is already prevalent in OT eschatology. Prime examples of this include Exod 32 (golden calf) and 1 Sam 13 & 15: both Moses and Samuel promised to return, but were delayed; their actual return was triggered by idolatry/unlawful sacrifices, and judgment followed. “Delay” is also frequent in Isaiah, and some of these passages also feature “imminence.” Major OT apocalyptic events (e.g., Flood, Sodom, exodus) arguably all have been prolonged, though they were also “sudden.” OT texts that involve delay (such as Exod 32) are often cited, or alluded to in Jewish apocalyptic literatures as well as in the NT. In summary, the concept of delay in Matt 24-25 and 2 Thess 2 is “indigenous” to Biblical thought. This calls for a fresh look at the “progressive” nature of NT eschatology and how the early church may have grappled with the reality of the delay.
James Crossley, CenSAMM & MF Oslo, ‘Towards a History of the English Radical Bible’
The ‘Radical Bible’ is a term used to describe a long-established cliché or assumption in political discourse that the Bible supports, justifies, or authorises ideas about the transformation of the dominant political, economic, and social order. In England, this is a tradition that arguably stretches back to at least the fourteenth century, certainly in a prominent public form. But it is one which has undergone regular updating through rural and urban discontents, the English Revolution, Jacobinism, the Industrial Revolution, the emergence of the working class and dissenting middle class, questions of democratic representation, various forms of socialism, imperialism, fascism, internationalism, the Cold War, immigration, and so on. This paper will outline a materialist framework for understanding and analysing this history and construction of the Bible by focusing on the Gospels and Acts, explaining which emphases and texts have been forgotten, retained, and rethought—and why. Suggestions will then be made about how to go about writing a reception history of the English Radical Bible.
Karen Wenell, University of Birmingham, ‘The Kingdom of God and the Plantationocene’,
The Kingdom of God, as performative space, has many connections: with earth and heaven, with past injustices and present harms, with calls for rights and solidarity, with religious devotion and practice, not least in the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer over centuries – ‘your Kingdom come’ (Matthew 6:10). It could be maintained that the Kingdom has too many associations with its negative past to remain useful – with slavery, with crusades, with colonisation, and more broadly with supersession and christianised universal thinking. This paper argues that continued interpretation of the Kingdom of God requires coming to terms with the present need for decolonised ways of thinking and consideration of the implications of life in the Plantationocene, a term used by scholars (e.g. Haraway, Barua, Murphy & Schroering) as a way to articulate processes of planetary change in our current era characterised by the ongoing effects of environmental and racial domination of the plantation model. Cautiously, the vegetal imagery of the Synoptic Kingdom of God suggests possibilities for repair and re-performance in new interpretative directions for our time.