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  • About
  • The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers to find electronic theses and dissertations. This service is provided by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
    Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
1

Birthing the apocalypse: images of pregnancy and childbirth in first century apocalyptic literature

Felder, Alexis Lee 26 January 2018 (has links)
Images of pregnant women and women in childbirth play an important role in first-century apocalyptic literature. The embodied experience of labor pains and parturition captured the imaginations of male authors of apocalyptic eschatology as they envisioned how the eschaton might occur. These writers, while often critical of the present state of the world, were not isolated from it; rather, as active participants in the broader culture, their visions and fantasies are best understood within the literary and material context of the Roman Empire. Imperial and apocalyptic arguments alike employ discourses of gender, power, and futurity, engaging the reproductive body as a fundamental point of connection between humanity and the divine and between the present and future. At the same time, votive offerings and uterine amulets related to pregnancy and childbearing further illustrate the centrality of fecundity and childbearing to women and their families. Reproduction was a cultural imperative achieved, at least in part, by means of appeals to the divine. Medical writers also addressed successful pregnancy, in this case by associating feminine anatomical inferiority with the ability to become pregnant. Together, this evidence serves as a framework for this study of apocalyptic images of pregnancy and childbirth in the writings of Paul, the book of Revelation, and 4 Ezra. Each of these works employs images of pregnancy and childbirth to assert the power of God over humanity and creation, to emphasize the appropriate societal regulation of women’s bodies, and to describe the end of the known world. The reproductive bodies of women become the ground upon which claims of divine authority and human futurity are made and disputed.
2

Paul among the apocalypses? : an evaluation of the 'apocalyptic Paul' in the context of Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature

Davies, James P. January 2015 (has links)
One of the most lively and enduring debates in New Testament studies is the question of the significance of ‘apocalyptic' thought in Paul. This has recently given birth to a group of scholars, with a common theological genealogy, who share a concern to emphasise the ‘apocalyptic' nature of Paul's gospel. Leading figures of this group are J. Louis Martyn, Martinus de Boer, Beverly Gaventa and Douglas Campbell. The work of this group has not been received without criticism, drawing fire from various quarters. However, what is often lacking (on both sides) is detailed engagement with the texts of the Jewish and Christian apocalypses. This dissertation attempts to evaluate the ‘apocalyptic Paul' movement through an examination of its major theological emphases in the light of the Jewish apocalypses 1 Enoch, 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch and the Christian book of Revelation. Placing Paul in this literary and historical context confirms his place as an apocalyptic thinker, but raises important questions about how this is construed in these recent approaches. Each chapter will address one of four interrelated themes: epistemology, eschatology, cosmology and soteriology. The study intends to suggest that the ‘apocalyptic Paul' movement is characterised at key points in each area by potentially false dichotomies, strict dualisms which unnecessarily screen out what Paul's apocalyptic thought affirms.
3

Luke/Acts and the end of history

Crabbe, Kylie January 2016 (has links)
This thesis investigates how understandings of history in diverse texts of the Graeco-Roman period illuminate Lukan eschatology. Two strands of Lukan scholarship have contributed to an enduring tendency to underestimate the centrality of eschatology to Luke/Acts. Hans Conzelmann's thesis, that Luke focused on history rather than eschatology as a response to the parousia's delay, has dominated Lukan scholarship since the mid-twentieth century, with concomitant assumptions about Luke's politics and understanding of suffering. Recent Lukan scholarship has centred instead on genre and rhetoric, examining Luke/Acts predominantly in relation to ancient texts deemed the same genre while overlooking themes (including those of an eschatological character) that these texts do not share. This thesis offers a fresh approach. It illuminates the inherent connections between Luke's understanding of history and its end, and demonstrates significant ways in which Luke's eschatological consciousness shapes key themes of his account. By extending comparisons to a wider range of texts, this study overcomes two clear methodological shortfalls in current research: limiting comparisons of key themes to texts of similar genre, and separating non-Jewish from Jewish texts. Having established the need for a new examination of Luke's eschatology in Chapter 1, in Chapter 2 I set out the study's method of comparing diverse texts on themes that cut across genres. Chapters 3 to 6 then consider each key text and Luke/Acts in relation to a different aspect of their writers' conceptions of history: the direction and shape of history; determinism and divine guidance; human culpability and freedom; and the present and the end of history. The analysis shows that in every aspect of history examined, Luke/Acts shares significant features of the texts with which, because they do not share its genre, it is not normally compared. Setting Luke/Acts in conversation with a broader range of texts highlights Luke's periodised, teleological view of history and provides a nuanced picture of Luke's understanding of divine and human agency, all of which is affected in fundamental ways by his portrayal of the present time already within the final period of history. As a result, this study not only clarifies Lukan eschatology, but reaffirms the importance of eschatology for Lukan politics and theodicy.

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