….be very careful to do exactly as the priests, who are Levites, instruct you. You must follow carefully what I have commanded them. Remember what the LORD your God did to Miriam along the way after you came out of Egypt and what he did to Michal and Jezebel. Remember what the priests did to Athaliah in Judah (c.f Deuteronomy. 24:8b-9). These female politicians were cornered, arrested, charged, beheaded and fragmented! Only their heads (names) that were hanged in this public place, the Bible, remained. Nobody would tell that this is Miriam, Michal, Jezebel or Athaliah. Lists of their crimes stand appended to their heads and names in public. When they were all silenced and the kings had sat in their rightful places, all the people of the land rejoiced and there was peace in the cities because these women had been slain (c.f 2 Kings 11:20). So be very careful to follow instruction and rules such that you do not end up like any of them. (Embellished by the author) Indeed, Miriam, Michal, Jezebel and Athaliah are politically killed off in the Hebrew Bible. Certainly, no one would tell from the Hebrew Bible that these women were people of significant political and leadership profiles; but merely as wicked in the history of humanity. All their political significance and contributions were literary and ideologically mutilated and separated from their names and left in the wild to be eaten by stray dogs. Their decapitated and fragmented images minus their political profiles have been ingested into an ideological system that regulates gender world order and influences social, intellectual and linguistic discourses and pictorial misogynistic polemics in the modern world. Figuratively, the remains of these women have been preserved in the way politicians of the ancient times and recent past would keep remains of their opponents. Ancient rulers would preserve a head (skull) of a particular enemy. David in the Bible cuts off Goliath’s head (1 Samuel 17:51); and the Philistines cut off Saul’s head (1 Samuel 31:9). In the Roman Republic of early 1st Century BC, political enemies like Marius and Sulla were decapitated and their heads displayed in the Forum Romanum. In 1355 Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice in medieval Italy was beheaded and his head hanged in a public place for staging a coup that was aborted. English traitors especially during the Elizabethan era were mutilated and their heads customarily spiked on London Bridge and other public places. In all these mutilations, other parts of the body were never accounted for. Stray dogs and other scavengers ate them as the case was with Jezebel in 2 Kings 8. Both head and name are proper national and political identifiers of every individual. So also the name! A head and a name are good identifiers of a person’s identity and activities. In modern times, identity documents and political campaign posters bear personal names and portraits. Preserving mutilated remains of an enemy served an ideological purpose of scarring and deterring future oppositions. It also symbolised total subjugation and control of the enemy. In movies about the political history of Uganda, Idi Amin is shown speaking ridiculously to the mutilated heads of his opponents. Preserving names of female politicians in the way they are preserved in the Hebrew Bible narratives merely serves an ideological purpose. I have argued in this paper that Miriam, Michal, Jezebel and Athaliah are political women. To African postcolonial Bible readers, they are political characters that stand for unconformity, radical activism, dissension, equality and self-reification to lead their people as their male counterparts. Although theirs is leadership based on royalty (and social prestige particularly in the case of Miriam), in their literary form they experience similar chronic maladies of patriarchal stereotype as the modern women whose political participation is based on liberal democracies. They are presented as foreign and aberrant gender in the politics of their time according to the ideological standards of the Hebrew Bible narrator. Their remains in the Hebrew Bible are positioned to ideologically kill off their political significance and portray them as evil women who destabilise the natural order. The study is contextualised on women and politics in sub-Saharan Africa with Uganda and Kenya as case studies. Both Uganda and Kenya are East African countries, with similar colonial experiences. They are predominantly Christian countries and the Bible is a very significant literature in the lives of people. It is literally the Word of God that does not only prescribe a faith, but a culture, philosophy and ideologies that are perceived as holy and pristine in socio-political intercourse of the people. Though the recent histories are different between Kenya and Uganda, in both cases the rise in female influence in politics has been paralleled by a rise in linguistic and sometimes physical abuse of female politicians. The similarities between the androcentric cultural worldview of the Bible and the African cultures have fostered a negative attitude against women’s influence in national politics. The biblical image of Jezebel is often used as a summary figure of this misogyny. Jezebel, the foreign Canaanite queen turned ‘harlot’ by the Dtr redactor is used to name a political threat—a foreign gender group infiltrating the political arena in East Africa.

I have investigated the situation in Galatia in Paul’s times, the relationship between Judaism and Christianity in general and the situation in Antioch in John Chrysostom’s times. All the evidence cited in my introductory chapter points to the conclusion that the situation in fourth-century Antioch is very similar to that in first-century Galatia. This study, in part two, deals with early Christian exegesis and its methods of exegesis. It appears that early Christianity took over the existing methods of exegesis which were in use in Hellenism and Judaism adapting them to meet its own needs to confront Arianism, Nestorianism and Monophysitism in the fourth century. A special reference was made to Chrysostom outlining his education, his philosophical and spiritual formation, his use of scripture. I have also dealt with Chrysostom’s use of typology and allegory, the main methods of exegesis espoused by the schools of Antioch and of Alexandria, and his system of exegesis of Paul’s letters. Having given Chrysostom’s position within early Christian exegesis, I have proceeded, in part three, to examine Chrysostom’s understanding of Paul’s statements about the Law, comparing it with that of modern scholarship. The similarities between the situation in first–century Galatia and the situation in fourth-century Antioch, are not the only reason for taking Chrysostom’s understanding of Paul seriously. Chrysostom’s ability to analyse Paul’s rhetorical strategies, his extensive knowledge of scripture and his constant interest in searching for the literal historical meaning of scripture, make him also a good reader of Paul. Finally, and more importantly, Chrysostom’s approach to the question of Paul and the Law provides a coherent line of thought and makes sense of Paul’s views as a whole. Thus, Chrysostom might have a better understanding of Paul, and for these reasons his views should be taken seriously by modern scholarship in their effort to re-evaluate and even to revise their views in order to attain a consensus on the question of Paul and the Law.

Conversion has been a neglected topic in recent New Testament research. The thesis attempts to end this neglect through the pursuit of two inter-connected aims. They are: (i) to clarify crucial theoretical issues surrounding the study of conversion and converts, so making more accessible to New Testament scholars the insights offered by recent studies of conversion in several different disciplines. (ii) to explore the understanding of conversion held by Paul and the Corinthians, so contributing to our knowledge of each, and allowing the perspectives of an advocate of conversion and those who responded to his advocacy to be compared. The structure of the thesis flows from these aims. Part 1, Studying Conversion and Converts, examines theoretical issues. The nature of conversion is discussed. Is conversion a universal phenomenon or a particular one? Is it essentially an individual phenomenon or a social one? It is concluded that conversion is best approached through particular understandings of it, but that there are some common features across time and across the boundaries of religious traditions. One of the most important of these common features is that conversion involves both a personally acknowledged transformation of the self and a socially recognised display of change. Alongside the need to understand conversion stands the need to understand converts. Recent studies recognise that converts are active in their own transformation, especially in the accounts which they offer of their conversion experience. Taking issue with dominant recent trends, it is concluded that although such conversion accounts develop they do not necessarily distort. The work on conversion of New Testament scholars Gaventa and Segal is briefly reviewed in the light of the preceding theoretical discussions, and some broad questions with which to approach particular understandings of conversion are defined. These concern expectations as to how conversion takes place, and expectations as to its consequences. Anthony Gidden's structuration theory is selected as an appropriate theoretical resource with which to pursue these questions.

The Nicene Creed (AD 325), expressly states that Jesus Christ "for our salvation came down from heaven" and that He "was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried and the third day He rose again, according to the scriptures." Here the structure and sequence of soteriological events are explicitly stated in creedal formulation, where Christ's crucifixion holds the strategic centre point, where Jesus not only dies, but dies for our salvation. The Cross is the emblematic sign of Christian authenticity, the kernel of the kerygma of faith and paradoxically the preferred mechanism that God uses for salvation. Indeed, St Paul proclaimed to the world in the first century: "We preach Christ crucified a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." Even in the Gospels the apparent contradictory sign of the Messiah being nailed to a tree is highlighted, with taunts from onlookers and the last satanic tempatation, to "save yourself and come down from the Cross", is used to psychologically torment him in a last ditch attempt to abort the salvific enterprise; but salvation transparently can only come through the acceptance of the Cross. For as the great Spanish mystic and doctor of the Church St John of the Cross declares: "If you desire to possess Christ, never seek him without the Cross ... whoever seeks not the Cross of Christ, also seeks not the glory of Christ." Jesus indicates the magnetic pull of the Cross when He says in His own words: "and I, when I am lifted up from the Earth, will draw all men to myself", thus indicating the portal or ladder to heaven that the Cross symbolizes, where the divine glory shines diaphanously through the wood of the Cross. "It is as well to remember, however, that when we speak about the glory of God we are in fact speaking about the disclosure of his nature, which means that in his death, Jesus glorifies God and he himself is glorified; in other words, we see here the nature of God, and the nature of his Son. The glory of God is revealed." On Good Friday the centrality and instrumentality of the Cross is venerated, "behold the wood of the Cross on which hung the saviour of the world." The Cross is thus heavily laden with soteriological significance but we should never look at the Cross without being reminded of the resurrection, for the death and resurrection of Christ cannot be separated, since both are part of the mysterious purpose of God.

To date, the single criterion of Family 13 constituency has been the relocation of the Pericope Adulterae from its traditional location in John 7:53. This dissertation demonstrates why this criterion is inadequate and proposes a new criteria. After an overview of the history of research, potential Family 13 witnesses are classified by means of a methodology originated by Dr. David Parker’s use of Text und Textwert. This process identifies 8 witnesses inappropriately nominated as Family 13 members, thus establishing GA 13, 69, 124, 346, 543, 788, 826, 828, 983, and 1689 as valid members. Each of these 10 witnesses is then described palaeographically as a discrete artefact. Phylogrammatic software, originally designed for DNA analysis, is then adapted to exhaustively study these Johannine Greek texts. The by-product of this novel process complements and validates the earlier Text und Textwert process. Also available as a result of this study are original witness transcriptions (available at http://www.iohannes.com/family13/), a Critical Apparatus of Family 13 in St. John’s Gospel, an exhaustive description of the contents of 18 potential witnesses, and a description of the computer analysis process used in the study.

This study assesses Augustine's worth as a witness to the text of the Bible and evaluates his evidence for the Gospel according to John. The full collection of citations is presented in the Appendix. In the analysis a distinction is proposed between primary citations, which Augustine makes with reference to a scriptural codex, for example when preaching, and secondary citations, for which this cannot be demonstrated. The latter constitute the majority and often correspond to his mental text , a consistent form of a verse showing characteristic alterations attributable to memory. In polemical works, Augustine displays a different form of text which he has normally adopted from his opponents. Such variations in the biblical text suggest that the citations have been transmitted accurately, without interference by copyists. Augustine's text of John demonstrates the continuity in the Latin Bible between Old Latin versions and Jerome's Vulgate. Most of the non- Vulgate renderings in Augustine's citations are paralleled in one or more Old Latin witnesses, which suggests that the Old Latin texts known today are a representative selection. Nonetheless, his primary affiliation is with the Vulgate, which even comes to permeate citations made from memory in later works.

Colossians 1:24 has throughout church history presented problems of interpretation. This thesis investigates the possibility that the author expresses a belief in vicarious suffering within the church, and begins with a thorough linguistic analysis of the text and vocabulary to produce a radical fresh translation which emphasises Paul’s ministry of suffering on the church’s behalf. Two chapters investigate the reception history of the passage, with particular emphasis on three periods: the Church Fathers, the Protestant Reformation, and the modern era. Following evaluation of the many interpretations, an excursus on attitudes to suffering in modern Western evangelical churches, and a discussion whether the passage applies only to Paul or is of universal Christian relevance, three key topics are investigated in depth: the 'woes of the Messiah' and related eschatological issues; attitudes to substitution in the ancient world; and the 'common life' or koinonia expressed in Pauline descriptions of the church. This study indicates the probability that the author and his first readers shared cultural and religious understandings which comfortably accommodated a belief in vicarious suffering. In conclusion, the theological implications of such a belief are discussed, and the consequent repercussions for pastoral care.

This inquiry combines consideration of the Context Group’s emphases regarding the honour and shame culture of first-century Palestine with careful analysis of ten narrative parables of Luke’s Jesus in order to allow the proposed cultural setting to form an appropriate background for reading and understanding the stories and, in turn, to use the parables as material for assessing the adequacy or inadequacy of the Context Group’s models. In this way the cultural context is in dialogue with the literary text, the cultural context facilitating a non-anachronistic and non-ethnocentric approach to Luke’s narratives, and the literary text serving as a means to evaluate the stereotypical models often taken as a given starting point for hermeneutical reflection. This exploration demonstrates that the emphasis of each particular Context Group model is often too limited in its scope and frequently at odds with the cultural orientation of the parables, thereby highlighting the value of using the literary text to refine the cultural models in question and to restrict the chances of misleading readings. This study shows how dialogue between social-scientific modelling and careful textual interpretation has the potential to enhance both the understanding of the cultural map and the significance of the written word.

When we take a step back from the imposing figure of physical violence, it becomes possible to examine other structurally violent forces that constantly shape our cultural and political landscapes. One of the driving interests in the “turn to Paul” in recent continental philosophy stems from wrestling with questions about the real nature of contemporary violence. Paul is positioned as a thinker whose messianic experience began to cut through the violent masquerade of the existing order. The crucifixion and resurrection of the Messiah (a slave and a God co-existing in one body) exposed the empty grounding upon which power resided. The Christ-event signifies a moment of violent interruption in the existing order which Paul enjoins the Gentiles to participate in through a dedication of love for the neighbour. This divine violence aims to reveal and subvert the “powers,” epitomised in the Roman Empire, in order to fulfil the labour of the Messianic now-time which had arrived. The impetus behind this research comes from a typically enigmatic and provocative section of text by the Slovene philosopher, cultural critic, and Christian atheist Slavoj Žižek. He claims that 'the notion of love should be given here all its Paulinian weight: the domain of pure violence… is the domain of love' (2008a, 173). In this move he links Paul’s idea of love to that of Walter Benjamin’s divine violence; the sublime and the cataclysmic come together in this seemingly perverse notion. At stake here is the way in which uncovering violent forces in the “zero-level” of our narrative worldviews aids the diagnosis of contemporary political and ethical issues. It is not enough to imagine Paul’s encounter with the Christ-event as non-violent. This Jewish apocalyptic movement was engaged in a violent struggle within an existing order that God’s wrath will soon dismantle. Paul’s weak violence, inspired by his fidelity to the Christ-event, places all responsibility over creation in the role of the individual within the collective body. The centre piece of this re-imagined construction of the Pauline narrative comes in Romans 13: the violent dedication to love understood in the radical nature of the now-time. 3 This research examines the role that narratives play in the creation and diagnosis of these violent forces. In order to construct a new genealogy of violence in Christianity it is crucial to understand the role of the slave of Christ (the revolutionary messianic subject). This turn in the Symbolic is examined through creating a literary structure in which we can approach a radical Nietzschean shift in Pauline thought. The claim here, a claim which is also central to Paul’s letters, is that when the symbolic violence which manipulates our worldviews is undone by a divine violence, if even for a moment, new possibilities are created in the opening for a transvaluation of values. Through this we uncover the nature of original sin: the consequences of the interconnected reality of our actions. The role of literature is vital in the construction of this narrative; starting with Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, and continuing through works such as Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener, this thesis draws upon the power of literature in the shaping of our narrative worlds. Typical of the continental philosophy at the heart of this work, a diverse range of illustrations and inspirations from fiction is pulled into its narrative to reflect the symbolic universe that this work was forged through. What this work attempts to do is give this theory a greater grounding in Paul’s letters by demonstrating this radical kenotic power at the heart of the Christ-event. Romans 13 reveals, in a way that has not yet been picked up by Critchley, Žižek, and others, that Paul opposed the biopolitical power of the Roman Empire through the weak violence of love that is the labour of the slaves of Christ on the “now-time” that had arrived.

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