<p>The New Testament book known as the epistle to the Hebrews contains little obvious reference to Jesus' resurrection. Modern interpreters generally account for this relative silence by noting that the author's soteriological and christological concerns have led him to emphasize Jesus' death and exaltation while ignoring, spiritualizing, or even denying his resurrection. In particular, the writer's metaphorical appeal to the Yom Kippur sacrifice, with its dual emphasis on the slaughter of the victim and the presentation of the victim's blood by the high priest, allows him to explain the salvific significance of Jesus' death and exaltation. The crucifixion can be likened to the slaughter of the victim, while Jesus' exaltation in heaven can be likened to the high priest entering the holy of holies. In this way the cross can be understood as an atoning sacrifice. Such a model leaves little room for positive or distinct reflection on the soteriological or christological significance of the resurrection. </p> <p>This study argues that the soteriology and high-priestly Christology the author develops depend upon Jesus' bodily resurrection and ascension into heaven. The work begins with a survey of positions on Jesus' resurrection in Hebrews. I then present a case for the presence and role of Jesus' bodily resurrection in the text. First, I demonstrate that the writer's argument in Heb 1-2 for the elevation of Jesus above the angelic spirits assumes that Jesus has his humanity--his blood and flesh--with him in heaven. Second, I show that in Heb 5-7 the writer identifies Jesus' resurrection to an indestructible life as the point when Jesus became a high priest. Third, I explain how this thesis makes coherent the author's consistent claims in Heb 8-10 that Jesus presented his offering to God in heaven. I conclude that Jesus' crucifixion is neither the place nor the moment of atonement for the author of Hebrews. Rather, in keeping with the equation in the Levitical sacrificial system of the presentation of blood to God with the presentation of life, Jesus obtained atonement where and when the writer says--when he presented himself in his ever-living, resurrected humanity before God in heaven. Jesus' bodily resurrection is, therefore, the hinge around which the high-priestly Christology and soteriology of Hebrews turns.</p> / Dissertation

<p>This dissertation investigates the text of Paul's Epistle to the Galatians and its history, how it changed over time. This dissertation performs a stemmatic analysis of 92 witnesses to the text of Galatians, using cladistic methods developed by computational biologists, to construct an unoriented stemma of the textual tradition. The stemma is then oriented based on the internal evidence of textual variants. After the stemma is oriented, the textual variants near the base of the stemma are examined and the text of Galatians is established based on stemmatic and eclectic principles. In addition, two branches of the textual tradition, the Western and the Eastern-Byzantine, are studied to assess the nature of textual variation in their history. This study reaches the conclusion that a modified stemmatic approach is an effective way to study both the text of a New Testament book and its history.</p> / Dissertation

My dissertation presents a new reading of a rarely-studied early Christian text, the First Apocalypse of James, and seeks to intervene in major scholarly debates concerning martyrdom, scriptural interpretation and sexual difference. I begin by showing how the text exhorts its readers and hearers toward martyrdom by narrating the progress of James, the brother of Jesus, in overcoming his fear and preparing for martyrdom. Here Jesus' revelation to James sets out a ritual of ascent that constitutes the martyr's confession of faith&mdash;a previously unattested form to articulate the meaning of dying for God. I use intertextual methods to identify an interpretation of the Gospel of John in which Jesus' statements of identity in John are read as descriptions of the true nature of the perfected martyr. This analysis locates scripturally-based debates about the nature of Christ within a context in which practices of preparation for martyrdom are being devised. 1ApocJas also reads Isaiah to identify female heroes whose example it exhorts James to follow. I use this reading of 1ApocJas to challenge the notion that a strict gendered hierarchy was reinscribed equally by Christian martyrdom texts. Through comparison to select examples of Valentinian theology, I establish that 1ApocJas envisions a productive tension in the divine realms between lower and higher female divine figures. By associating female martyrs with the higher female divinities and contrasting them to the lower female divinities, 1ApocJas valorizes martyrs as female and thus complicates any straightforward masculinization of the martyrs. My reading of 1ApocJas broadens our understanding of how Christians prepared themselves for martyrdom by interpreting scripture in innovative ways, devising new ritual practices, and developing distinctive articulations of human and divine sexual difference.

The dissertation recounts the variegated journey of the sea in the Hebrew Bible through the lens of myth, metaphor, and muthos. The journey begins outside the Bible in ancient Near Eastern sea myths exemplified by the Ugaritic Baal Cycle and the Mesopotamian Enuma Elish, which tell the story of a sea deity whose defeat in cosmic battle against a protagonist god precedes three goodly consequences: creation, kingship, and temple. The story continues with the analysis of the biblical presentation of creation, kingship, and temple with emphasis on the constellation of themes and characters of the sea myth. The dissertation next analyzes the use of the sea myth as a metaphor for three events on the plane of history: the exodus (Exodus 14-15), the Babylonian exile (Isaiah 40-55), and the eschaton (Isaiah 24-27 and Daniel 7). Finally, the discussion moves from the analysis of the ways in which the sea muthos functions as a metaphor for the biblical presentation of individual events to the examination of the role of the sea muthos as a metaphor for a biblical view of historical reality in toto. In sum, the dissertation extends the study of sea imagery in the Hebrew Bible from mythology to metaphorology and narratology to argue for the deep, enduring, and transformative place of the sea myth within biblical tradition. / Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

The otherworldly depiction of Jesus in coordination with the origin and function of descent-ascent language in the Gospel of John is the subject of this study. In Chapter One it is found that the gospel explicitly and repeatedly refers to Jesus' heavenly origin, his divine titles, his descent from heaven, and his ascent back to his celestial home in order to emphasize his preeminent revelatory authority. Furthermore, it would appear that the gospel attempts to suppress a competing revelatory point of view in which heavenly visions and heavenly ascensions by mortals are normative. A review in Chapter Two of the way in which modern scholars have attempted to come to terms with these matters indicates that the Fourth Gospel depicts its protagonist according to one trans-cultural conceptual paradigm containing a descent-ascent pattern for revelatory figures in order to oppose an alternative paradigm in which both divine descent-ascent and human ascent-descent patterns are present. Focusing upon ancient Jewish and Christian angel stories, Chapter Three demonstrates that an essential difference between the two paradigms has to do with whether the locus of divine-human discourse is earth or heaven. In the EARTHBOUND paradigm revelation is transmitted solely upon the earth and the heavenly messenger possesses unrivaled revelatory authority. But in the alternative HEAVENWARD paradigm the role and status of the heavenly messenger are patently subordinated to the mortal who is permitted to see if not actually journey up into the celestial world. Chapter Four's selective but narratologically-informed reading of the Gospel of John shows how the gospel's depiction of its protagonist according to the EARTHBOUND paradigm methodically suppresses and deconstructs revelatory and salvific beliefs rooted in the HEAVENWARD viewpoint. Of particular interest is the way in which an historically necessary departure from the EARTHBOUND schema, by ironically representing the ascent of Jesus as a lifting up upon the cross, effectively puts to death (from the gospel's point of view) ideas about the possibility of mortals ascending to heaven with or without Jesus prior to the end of their own lives.

What is "the Book?" Theology and philosophy have traditionally postulated the metaphysical precedence of orality and considered literacy as a subsequent, historical turning point: one day, an original logos "came down" and "enclosed itself" inside the Book. The "community of the Book" has continued to read and write within the epistemological boundaries of this first inscription. Literature has increasingly disengaged the Book from this logocentric foundation. Modern writers have even postulated the philosophical priority of "being in the Book" (Jabes) and redefined logos as one phase of writing (Derrida). Simultaneously, they have attempted to describe the "outside" of the Book: not as logos or truth, but as the endless, meaningless murmur of words which Blanchot calls "rumeur." Rumor, not unlike logos, is yet another form of writing inscribing exteriority within the Book in a complex textual strategy which Nancy calls "excription." Writing may then be defined as the production of an oscillating limit ("&") between an inscribed livre and an "excribed" parole. Exergue: Rumeur. Blanchot's rumeur, Beckett's voix, Serres's noise, Bonnefoy's parole, as well as John's logos en arche are extreme cases of textual "excription." Introduction. Critical review of speech/writing theories. Chapter 1: Sacre/Le Livre & la Parole. In Exodus, Ezechiel, John, Koran, and Dogon myth, the divine Word "descends" into the Book, forming an ethical community. Chapter 2: Cycle/Le Livre & le Monde. The closed figure of the Book is projected onto the indefinite spaces of world (Dante, Koyre), mind (Rorty) and episteme (Foucault, Diderot, Hegel, Novalis). Chapter 3: Modernite/La Litterature & le Livre. Jewish Kabbalah (Isaac the Blind, Zohar) offers a grammatocentric counterpoint which has influenced modern definitions of "Book" (Mallarme, Jabes, Derrida). Logocentric metaphysics undergoes serious alterations as the figure of the Book "melts" into literature (Rabelais, Cyrano, Voltaire, Valery). Conclusion. What generates the fragile delineation between livre and parole is an insatiable desir de l'ecrire (Bourjea).

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