One of the characteristic features in Matthew’s Gospel is his emphasis of the title ‘Son of David’ in Jesus’ healings. However, there is sparse reference to the expectation of a ‘healing messiah’ in Jewish literature. Recent study has attempted to understand this issue within Jewish traditions by focusing on the shepherding motif in Ezekiel 34 (Matt 9:36; 10:6; 15:24). While this result seems convincing for some scholars, another issue may arise relating to Jesus’ healing ministry: Why does Matthew quote explicitly (Matt 8:17; 12:18-21) from Isaiah (Isa 53:4; 42:1-4), but only alludes to Ezekiel 34? This thesis will seek to demonstrate that the phenomenon of ‘healing messiah’ is a product of Matthew’s reflection upon early Jewish traditions rooted in the Old Testament as well as upon the received Christian traditions, and that the varying aspects of the depiction of Jesus in healings suggested in recent studies are, to some extent, dependent upon their methodological approaches. Through the employment of appropriate methods, a more comprehensive picture of Jesus as the healer will emerge in this thesis. The Matthean presentation of the ‘healing Son of David’ is traced to Jewish messianic expectations, which understand the establishment of justice as a function of a Davidic kingship (Isa 11:4-5; Jer 35:5; Ezek 34:16; Ps 72:1-3; cf. Pss. Sol. 17). For Matthew, the Davidic theme provides a framework to elaborate healing aspects of Jesus (as ‘servant’ and ‘shepherd’) and to emphasize the nature of his kingship, in which healings belong to a category of care for the marginalized. This depiction of Jesus contributes to the understanding of christology of Matthew’s Gospel, and also serves as a critique towards the traditional Jewish expectation of a militant Davidic messiah (cf. Pss. Sol. 17-18) as well as towards the Roman imperial rule.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Can we read the Gospel of Mark as tragedy? How so? With what limits? With what results? I depart from previous explorations of these questions by rejecting their definition of tragedy as a work faithful to the dramatic conventions described in Aristotle's Poetics. I build instead on Aristotle's essential definition of tragedy as a work that inspires fear and pity in an audience. Using a narrative-critical approach, which allows a focus on the effects generated by Mark's plot and characters, I conclude that Mark, while more tragic than Matthew, is not clearly tragic or comic: the gospel maintains a careful balance of tragic and comic possibilities, challenging the reader to appropriate the story in her own world and tip the scales towards the comic. The effect of the text, however, is dependent on audience; Matthew's rewriting of and Papias' comments on Mark demonstrate that contemporary readers probably did not perceive Mark as tragic.

The bitter mention of foreign tyrants in Mark 10:42-43a has long been interpreted as an accurate description of "pagan" life that contrasted with life in ideal Christian community. More recently, it has been read as a piece of rhetoric aimed at imperial Rome. These explanations are too simple, since they do not take into account the fact that contrasting ideal authority with stereotyped foreign tyranny was an established habit within imperial Roman rhetorical culture itself. I argue that the passage is best understood as Jewish participation in this Greco-Roman tradition. This study traces the evolution of the stereotyped image of foreign tyranny in Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Greco-Roman Jewish rhetoric, and suggests that the rhetorical strategy of Mark 10:42-43a parallels the selective and strategic use of the image in the Greco-Roman Jewish work of Josephus, and represents a similar simultaneous resistance and accommodation in the face of Roman imperial culture.

In the following paper I will attempt to define the genre of Daniel 2 according to its dream characteristics. To demonstrate that this literary style is not unique to Daniel 2 but was widespread in the ancient near east over a long period of time, I will survey what I believe to be parallel dream narratives from the Old Testament as well as from Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite, and Egyptian texts. The numerous similarities of these narratives will not only provide a sufficient base for positing a dream genre, but will also clarify the fundamental theme of Daniel 2 which has many times been cluttered or overlooked by its identification with other overlapping genres. By including details from most of the dream narratives of antiquity, I believe it will become clear that Daniel 2 is not so much about wisdom, courts, or even an apocalypse, so much as it is about the acknowledgement of an ultimate power who is omniscient and lord over kingdoms past and future.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the role of human sacrifice within the narrative of Genesis 22:1--19. For several decades, biblical scholarship has interpreted the role of human sacrifice within this particular narrative as an established and accepted practice, which was, only later abolished and replaced by the Law of Redemption (Ex 22:29--30). This thesis will study the archaeological data surrounding the practice of ritual human sacrifice in the expectation that it will provide added insight into the meaning of the ritual act within the narrative of Genesis 22. / The study will also investigate the use of ritual offerings as a symbolic code and as a literary construct to transmit the interests and concerns of the author. These concerns were generated by specific political, social and religious realities brought about by the events surrounding the Babylonian and Persian invasions of the Syria-Palestine region.

This thesis assumes that the narrative form of the Fourth Gospel is important for understanding the Gospel's meaning. Narrative is a communicative transaction whereby meaning is transmitted from author to reader via the way the story is told. Meaning is also established by overt speech-acts, and the 'act' performed in the overall structuring of the story. It arises within a context of rule-governed speech behaviour which determines parameters and implications that inform understanding. The Gospel's narrative form meets with readers' conventional expectations about how it relates to ostensive historical reality. Factors internal and external help determine genre. Part one examines aspects of the Gospel's narrative art. The way in which the narrative situation varies over the course of the narrative is outlined. The implied author manipulates the narration to create a close association in the reader’s mind between the narrator and the beloved disciple. In John 3 the voice of the narrator merges with those of Jesus and John. These strategies have implications for the Gospel's theological meaning and the relationship of the implied author to the story world. Speech-act theory elucidates the narrative act by which the implied author conveys the Gospel's message and seeks to induce belief in the reader. Part two considers the Gospel's relationship to historical reference. Factors which influence a decision as to whether or not the Gospel is to be taken as fictional are examined, for example, whether aspects of the narration suggest fictional discourse and whether the speech-acts operate within a 'pretended' world. Descriptive categories for the Gospel as natural narrative and 'display text' are proposed, as is a flexible model of genre, which modulates the poles of 'fiction' and 'history'. An analysis of the Temple Cleansing pericope provides illustration of the Gospel’s status as an historically-based, theological display text.

The present work has two aims. The first aim is to introduce the method of narrative criticism to New Testament scholars and we attempt to do this in Part One. Narrative criticism of the Bible has been practised since the early 1980's, but since that time no one has established the nature and the aims of the method. This thesis is the first work to define what a comprehensive narrative-critical approach to the gospels might entail. It is also the first work to include historical concerns in the narrative-critical programme. The examples of narrative criticism we do have in New Testament studies all assume that narrative criticism must be an a-historical method. We point out the fallacy of this view by drawing attention to the recent sociological studies of the narrative form and to the narrative history debate in History Faculties during the 1960's and 1970's. These two movements in scholarship necessitate an historical dimension to narrative criticism if the narrative form is not to be greatly restricted and over-simplified. In Part One we provide an apology for narrative criticism and we show how future Johannine scholars might examine JOHN as narrative Christology (chapter one), narrative performance (chapter two), community narrative (chapter three) and narrative history (chapter four). In Part Two we provide an illustration of the method at work. Taking the Johannine passion narrative as our text (John 18-19), we show how this part of JOHN might be examined as narrative Christology (chapter five), narrative performance (chapter six), community narrative (chapter seven) and narrative history (chapter eight). This thesis is the first to expose these chapters to a thorough and rigorous literary approach. Our analysis reveals that the fourth evangelist has constructed his passion story with great artistry. We draw particular attention to narrative echo-effects, characterization, tragic mood, the reader's response of "home-coming" and time-shapes in John 18-19. These, and many other narrative strategies, contribute towards the classic, disclosing power of JOHN's story of the death of Jesus.