The relationship between the chief Israelite deity Yahweh and his people is often figured in terms of the so-called ‘marriage metaphor’, by which Yahweh is husband and Israel wife. The sexual language used to describe Yahweh’s body and his attitude towards Israel is taken to be a convenient method to outline the thoughts, feelings and expectations Yahweh has of his people in terms of religious practice. However, this has led to various interpretations in which divine sexuality in itself has been labelled ‘pagan’, an activity which Yahweh supposedly ‘transcends’. The aim of this thesis is to question these interpretations. In the first part, an examination of other ancient West Asian literature from Sumer, Ugarit and Egypt, each depicting divine sexuality in stark terms, is completed in order to set a historical mark by which the biblical texts themselves can be judged. In the second, a selection of biblical passages is examined: some from the texts which are structured by the marriage metaphor (as from Hosea, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Isaiah) and others not (texts about bones, temples, urination, circumcision and loins). Ultimately, one discovers that Yahweh is in fact embroiled within sexuality, whether in the marriage metaphor or not, rather than transcendent above it and that Yahweh’s body, described in heavily masculine terminology throughout the Bible, while indeed sexualized, phallic and perhaps even penised, is nevertheless, ambiguous, liminal or ‘multigendered’ as to the features of his body. It is argued that this does not impede Yahweh’s masculinity but may even work to strengthen it.

Awareness of trauma’s potential effects sheds light on many of the book of Lamentations’ complexities and suggests new interpretive possibilities. Growing numbers of scholars have analyzed intersections between biblical scholarship and trauma studies; and trauma-oriented readings of biblical texts yield fruitful, often provocative, insights. Because their reading strategies are not without pitfalls, including a tendency to ignore historical questions, trauma readings can be enriched by more nuanced applications, including attention to history. This study argues that social, political, cultural, and religious contexts are key for understanding how individuals and collectivities construe, respond to, work through, and create trauma. Three characteristic features of traumatic experiences make this concept useful for a critical reading of Lamentations: 1) survivors’ testimonies often convey a history that is not straightforwardly referential; 2) trauma causes rupture in life; and 3) the trauma process includes rhetorical dimensions; individuals and communities work through and construct trauma in different ways in order to reconstitute themselves and ensure their survival in the aftermath of extreme violence. Following an overview of trauma studies and its application to biblical studies, this study outlines the traumatic matrix of Lamentations. Structural analysis of the Book demonstrates and mirrors the debilitating realities of caesura in life often associated with experiences of trauma. The concept of non-referential history functions as a heuristic lens through which to view the “historical” significance of the Book’s tropic and stereotypical uses of language. Utilizing insights from study of the rhetorical dimensions of the trauma process in cultural trauma, this study asserts that Lamentations strategically adapts certain religious traditions to ensure the survival of those whose voices it echoes. Lamentations' contents and structure highlight the sheer enormity of Daughter Zion’s trauma, which overshadows and undermines acknowledgements of her culpability. Further, protest, ambiguity and ambivalent hope form the foundation for resilience and survival in the Book. One of this study’s major implications is that trauma-oriented readings of biblical literature that utilize an historically-informed, synchronic approach enable biblical scholars to pursue the interpretive possibilities of trauma studies without bracketing historical questions.

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As methods by which texts are to be understood, positivism and historicism have a long tradition and continue to exert wide influence in all academic disciplines. Other approaches to textual concerns have recently emerged to challenge the dominance of these two approaches. Foremost among these new approaches are hermeneutics and deconstruction. Both of the latter approaches recognize that interpretation is inescapable. The latter challenges even the possibility of determinate meaning. A theoretical discussion of historicism and positivism uncovers questionable and troublesome difficulties. Hermeneutics in its conservative or radical variations overcomes the difficulties of interpretation that positivism and historicism can't explain. As an example of the problems of positivism and historicism, several narratives from the Book of Mormon illustrate how readings by revisionist Mormon readers—those who believe it is a modern work of fiction rather than an authentic ancient document—find exactly the evidence sought, largely without consulting the text they attempt to explain. Using biblical criticism with the assumption that it will illuminate the Book of Mormon text, especially of the literary rather than the historical variety, the narratives are complex and sophisticated works. Four narratives (the stealing of the daughters of the Lamanites, the broken bow, the Nahom incident, and the building of the ship narrative) illustrate the texture of the Book of Mormon as a set of complicated narratives that draw strongly from biblical archetypes of the exodus and patriarchal narratives.

This thesis examines the composition of 2 Thessalonians 2 and focuses specifically on the relationship of the participles Τό Kαtεxov and Ό Kαtεxwv to the chapter's main theme, the Parousia of Jesus Christ. The study begins with a discussion of the various interpretations given to solve the referential meanings of the participles (chapter one). This exploration of the various attempts of scholars to account for the participles concludes with the challenge to seek answers elsewhere. To help situate and evaluate what the writer says in regard to the participles, it was necessary to reassess the role of 2 Thessalonians 2 in the epistle as a whole (chapter two). This broader compass of the letter contributed to an understanding of the author as engaged in practical admonitions of several different concerns. It exposed the myth of centrality surrounding 2 Thessalonians 2 and thereby warned of determining the meanings of the participles except from the immediate thought of the context wherein they are found. A detailed exegesis of 1 Thes 2:1-15 was presented in order to confirm and clarify the specific nature of verses 2:6-7 (chapter three). This made familiar the context in which the participles are located. Particularly, it established the limit of the passage as extending to v. 15 rather than v. 12. In addition, the flow of thought contained in the text was demonstrated to center on the appearing of Christ, a significant point of perspective for interpreting the two participles and other elements in the passage. With the literary and exegetical foundation lai., it was left to deal witn the participles themselves. k guiding principle in their interpretations was the that thr should be understood from a strict relationship to their context. It was shown that the technique of an inverted parallelism at the climax of the first pericope (2:1-6) helped explain the meaning of the neuter participle as signifying the two preliminary events of the apostasy and the revelation of the Man of Lawlessness. This interpretation was based on a correlation in the parallelism between tαϋtα (v. 5 and Τό Kαtεxov (v. 6). An important ramification was that the personal pronoun αύtόv in v. 6 must then refer to Christ and not the Man of Lawlessness. It was the Day of the Lord that was being restrained because the two pre-signs of the apostasy and the revelation of the "Antichrist" had not yet occurred. Accordingly, the masculine participle Ό Kαtεxwv was a particularization of the content of the neuter participle; thus, it was shown that Ό Kαtεxwv represented the Man of Lawlessness. The thesis concludes with a brief review of each of the chapter studies and underscores the present need for scholars to give more attention to the proposed meanings of the participles, especially in light of there having been other advocates of interpretations for the participles that are similar to the one this thesis develops--most notably, N. F. Freese, P. Andriessen, Joseph Coppens.

In this paper I will undertake a study of the worship practices of two major religions, Judaism and Christianity, as they existed during the early days of the Christian Church. Through an examination of specific aspects of worship, historical developments, and especially the prayers of the two communities, I wish to demonstrate that the worship of the Synagogue community had a definite influence upon the liturgy and theology of the church.

Escorial Biblical ms. I.I.8 (E8) is a translation from the Vulgate into Spanish which contains the Old Testament, from Leviticus through the Psalter. Although portions of the ms. have been published (the Pentateuch, Tobit and the Psalter), much of the text remains unedited. This study proposes to make available an edition of I and II Samuel and to describe the language of the text in a phonological commentary and a vocabulary which examines items of linguistic significance, particularly those peculiar to Biblical texts of the 13th century E8 has generally been considered to be a 15th-century Aragonese copy of a Castilian text from the 13th century, but a theory of Riojan provenience has been proposed. The more widely-held theory is supported by a peculiarity of the Books of Samuel, namely, an abrupt shift in the phonetics of the text at II Samuel 10:10, with a concomitant semantic shift, such that the two portions of Samuel represent separate dialects. A conclusion about the Books of Samuel is offered, but any generalization about the whole text must be postponed until it has all been studied / acase@tulane.edu

The female protagonist of the Apocryphal Book of Judith inspires myriad representations in the arts and humanities. Numerous transformations in her mythos move beyond her representation as a wealthy young widow who chooses to live as a solitary ascetic. The apocryphal Judith, who destroys an enemy general and is feted as a national hero in Israel is interpreted in the twentieth century as a "phallic woman" and a "femme fatale". This dissertation asks "how do we account for this" and analyzes the phenomenon from a feminist critical perspective. / Part one. Social Location, proposes that representations and realities of women in the social cultural milieu of authors and artists influence characterizations of Judith. A dialogue which examines the social location of Jewish women in the late Second Temple period and that of the fictional Judith as a wealthy widow, solitary religious ascetic and educated woman indicates Judith would not have been considered anomalous in the cultural ambient of the author. / Part two. Psyche and Persona, traces transformations in the Judith mythos among theologians and biblical scholars. This analysis determines the extent to which Judith is represented as self-actualizing subject or as objectified and functioning to perpetuate the patriarchal ethos of Jewish and Christian traditions. / Part three. Judith and the Cultural and Personal Agendas of Artists discerns patterns in representations of Judith over the centuries as well as the influence of the personal agendas of artists upon the Judith mythos. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 52-08, Section: A, page: 2955. / Major Professor: John F. Priest. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1991.

<p>Did the early Pentecostals regard themselves as servants to the wider church, bearers of the gifts of the Spirit, sent to bring a renewed focus on love, unity, holiness, and justice to all parts of the church? Or did they see themselves as the only true believers in the midst of apostates, heretics, and reprobates? What can be found among the early Pentecostals, as a people whose primary self-identity was as a people of the Spirit, that carried the Spirit's mission forward in unique or significant ways? Can the loss of such practices help explain the decline of the Pentecostal movement? Narrating the Pentecostal movement through the lens of the Spirit's mission to the world is an attempt to give a normative account of Pentecostal liminality, to describe certain communitas commitments as ones that gave rise to the movement and propelled it forward. This study describes in detail how this understanding itself came to be something else, something quite damaging. Still, the general principle was that the Holy Spirit comes in power and blesses work that aligns with the Spirit's own mission. That is the primary presupposition at work here as well, that through understanding the mission of the Holy Spirit, we may find ways to align ourselves with that mission, to co-labor with the Spirit by privileging the liminal moment. Implicit in this claim is the denial that such alignment is automatic, guaranteed, or even self-sustaining. The argument here is that the incompatibility of the Pentecostal ethos represented by these communal commitments with the uncritical acceptance of evangelical-fundamentalist theological accounts on the part of the second and third generation Pentecostals resulted in a loss of what constituted the Pentecostal movement as such. This dissertation begins with an exegesis of John 16.8-11 in an effort to articulate Pentecostal ethics in terms of participation in the Spirit's mission of convincing the world with regard to sin, righteousness, and power. The conclusions of this exegesis are that the entire world is in view throughout this passage; that the Spirit convicts all with regard to sin, defined as not believing in Jesus, righteousness, defined as following Jesus' example in a life of holiness, and power, defined as the Spirit's judgment on all forms of power that are self-aggrandizing as opposed to the cruciform mode of authority that must characterize the Christian life; and that the Spirit accomplishes this convincing work primarily through the life of the communitas the Spirit forms, embodies, and empowers. These results are then carried to the Pentecostal movement in its earliest instantiation and as it exists as a Christian subculture today, asking what Pentecostal liminality might look like, if the rubric of the Spirit's mission to the world is applied as a moment we are to participate in enduringly.</p> / Dissertation

<p>The central portion of Paul's letter to the Galatians consists of three main arguments, each of which invokes a different image of Abrahamic descent: sons (3:7) in 3:6-14, seed (3:16, 29) in 3:15-4:11, and children of promise (4:28) in 4:21-5:1. Current interpretations of these Abrahamic appeals typically portray them as logically problematical, collectively inconsistent, and/or generally unpersuasive, a situation that then leads most scholars to identify them as <italic>ad hoc</italic> responses to the Galatian agitators. This inability to find a coherent model of Abrahamic descent in Galatians, however, threatens to undermine the very gospel itself by suggesting that it cannot effectively counter a Judaizing call that derives from a simple appeal to Abraham.</p> <p>This dissertation argues that Paul does indeed present the Galatians with a coherent account of Abrahamic descent that accords with his persuasive intent of refuting a law-based circumcision. Its key insight lies in the suggestion that Paul understands the Abrahamic <italic>diatheke</italic> in 3:15-18 as akin to a Hellenistic adoptive testament. As a result, the promised Abrahamic seed must be both a son of Abraham and, because of Abraham's divine adoption through the <italic>diatheke</italic>, a son of God, hence Paul's identification of Christ as Abraham's sole seed (3:16).</p> <p>This twofold nature of the Abrahamic seed then suggests a distinction in Paul's other terms for Abrahamic descent. The dissertation accordingly contends that "sons of Abraham" in 3:7 designates, as it typically did in the mid-first century C.E., the Jews, i.e., those physical descendants of Abraham who also share his faith. In contrast, "children of promise" in 4:28 designates gentiles who have through faith received the Abrahamic blessing, i.e., the Spirit of sonship that makes them children of God. Each group thus requires incorporation into Christ to establish their status as Abrahamic seed: the Jews so that they might share in the gentiles' divine sonship, the gentiles so that they might share in the Jews' Abrahamic sonship. This interdependent union of the Jewish sons of Abraham and the gentile sons of God in Christ then constitutes the single divine Abrahamic seed who inherits (3:29). </p> <p>Paul employs this model to refute the necessity of law observance as follows. In 3:6-14, he argues that Christ's accursed death on the cross divides faith from law observance as a means of justification for Jews; the full sons of Abraham accordingly become those Jews who, by dying to the law and embracing Christ, exhibit the same radical trust in God as their forefather exhibited. In 3:15-4:11, he argues that God added the law and its curse to ensure that the Jews could not receive the Abrahamic blessing promised to the nations--i.e., the Spirit that would make the Jews sons of God and, thus, Abrahamic seed--apart from the one seed, Christ. Finally, in 4:21-5:1, he argues that, like Hagar, the non-adoptive Sinaitic <italic>diatheke</italic> produces Abrahamic descendants (i.e., non-Christian Jews) who share the general human enslavement to the <italic>stoicheia</italic>, whereas the adoptive Abrahamic <italic>diatheke</italic> produces Abrahamic descendants (i.e., Christian Jews) whose divine adoption frees them from this enslavement. Each appeal to Abraham thus undermines the gentile Christians' motivation for submitting to the law by demonstrating that Jewish Christians do not even remain under the law.</p> / Dissertation