Click HERE to register here for the 1-hour event, which will take place via Zoom on 16 December 2021, 10:00-11:00am EST (3-4pm GMT; 4-5pm CET; 5-6pm IST)

Oxford University Press will be offering a 30% discount to attendants who would like to purchase either volume of the OCDSS series (Damascus Document or Habakkuk Pesher).

Program:

• Introduction: Timothy Lim, Series Editor (University of Edinburgh)
• Book Presentation: Steven Fraade, Author (Yale University)
• Responses: Vered Noam (Tel Aviv University) and Lawrence Schiffman (New York University)
• Q&A

Email Kaitlynn Merckling at K.C.Merckling@sms.ed.ac.uk for further information.

This event is organized in collaboration with The Center for the Study of Christian Origins (CSCO), NYU’s Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, The Catholic Biblical Association of America, and The Enoch Seminar.

Full-size flyer available here: Damascus Document Book Launch

The post Book Launch Event:  The Oxford Commentary on the Dead Sea Scrolls: The Damascus Document by Steven Fraade. first appeared on CSCO.

Today we are featuring a short interview with Dr Patrick McMurray, who recently published his University of Edinburgh PhD thesis with Fortress Academic.

Dr McMurray, tell us about how you came up with the idea for this project.  

The basic framing of the project owed a great deal to my supervisor Dr Matthew Novenson. Before the Masters (which I also pursued here at Edinburgh), I had completed a degree in Ancient and Modern History (at Queen’s University Belfast, subsequent to earlier studies at Oxford). I have always been interested in religion, and when studying ancient religion I had of course encountered sacrifice. During the Masters Dr Novenson suggested that I investigate hilasterion in Romans 3:25 for my Masters dissertation, and he helped me to analyse this. The broader idea was that this study of hilasterion might lead onto a reconsideration of Paul’s sacrificial language more generally as part of a PhD. Dr Novenson drew my attention to authors including Nancy Jay, Stanley Stowers, Pamela Eisenbaum, and Caroline Johnson Hodge, who had all discussed new understandings of sacrifice, and in particular the idea of sacrifice being used to construct familial and ethnic membership. As the PhD proceeded, it became clear that the main substance of my analysis was focused on Paul’s letter to the Romans. I started to realise how these new developments in our understanding of sacrifice might connect powerfully with authors such as Paula Fredriksen and William Campbell, who emphasised ethnic distinction within Paul’s writings, and whose analyses I had always found plausible. I also started to realise that Paul’s pairing of sacrifice with brotherhood in 12:1 could fit very well with this, and Paul might be using sacrifice to construct gentile familial membership (within Abraham’s lineage) but yet to retain distinction (by conceptualising this relationship in terms of brotherhood i.e. alongside Israel). Towards the latter stages of the PhD, I was running out of time somewhat, and so in the third year of the project it was slimmed down to focus solely on Romans.

More broadly, how would you characterise the key arguments that you make within this project?

I argue that by pairing sacrifice and brotherhood in (Romans 12:1) Paul is using sacrifice to ratify the gentiles’ brotherhood with Christ (8:29) and membership of the Abraham’s lineage (4:16-18), alongside Israel (9:4; 15:10). Here Paul is constructing brotherhood and familial membership in line with the ancient familial function of sacrifice as used to construct kinship. To proceed with the sacrifice invoked in 12:1 is to confirm and accept the linked familial designation. The promise explicitly requires ongoing ethnic plurality, and so is being brought to fruition. In 12:1 bodily ascetic practice is eschatologically and familially instrumental for Paul (cf 8:13-14). The gentiles’ new familial membership is also transformative (12:2), bringing reciprocal gifts (12:6) and spiritually empowering the lives of love (12:9-11) that will also fulfil the law (13:8-10). The ethne’s lives become coherent with the law which is spiritual (cf vitally 7:14). I further suggest that this constitutes the gentiles’ circumcision of the heart (with Christ as servant of circumcision as linked to the promise in 15:8 implementing Abraham as the gentiles’ father of circumcision 4:12, the role of the Messiah being ethnic cf Galatians 3:29). As I see it, Paul’s fundamental struggle in Romans is against gentile physical circumcision, which would undermine the required ethnic distinction and hence fulfilment of the promise. The ethne’s fraternal and spiritual union with the resurrected Christ also brings theosis (13:11; cf 2 Corinthians 4:14). Preceding all this, I additionally put forward a new analysis of hilasterion (3:25) as referring to a conciliatory gift on the occasion of a truce (cf anoche 3:25; ransom 3:24; gift 3:24), meaning that the ethne do not need to get circumcised. Generally, then, I suggest that Paul’s central invocation of sacrifice in Romans is the explicit thusia of the gentiles in 12:1 (cf 15:16; Isaiah 66:20), which is familiarly, ethnically, and eschatologically instrumental. The transformation it brings constitutes the culmination of the dynamic within Paul’s letter to the Romans. Christ frees the gentiles and then becomes their brother and brings them into the Abrahamic lineage, reconciling them with God. Contrast the misguided latreia and consequent handing over to Impurity and the Passions in 1:24-28 (cf slavery to Sin 6:6), these being problems with which Paul had framed the letter, and which are now thereby resolved.

How did you find the experience of pursuing graduate studies at New College?

It was an extremely positive experience, for which I am very grateful, and particularly to my supervisors Dr Matthew Novenson and Dr Philippa Townsend. Dr Townsend is an expert in sacrifice in early Christianity, and it was valuable to be able to discuss these issues with her. The quality of supervision and teaching at New College is extremely high, and the academics working there provided examples of commitment and excellence that were an inspiration to me. The environment at New College is also very collegiate and supportive. The regular meetings of the Novenson cohort to discuss our work and interesting secondary literature really helped my academic development and were very enjoyable. The opportunity to tutor on a number of courses for both Dr Novenson and for Professor Helen Bond was a great experience. There are many wonderful events at New College, such as the Burns Supper every January – even just thinking about this puts a smile on my face as it is a magical evening. The physical setting is of course beautiful, and New College has a magnificent view over the city of Edinburgh, as well as being centrally located. I received a Chancellor’s Career Development Scholarship from the University of Edinburgh, without which I would not have pursued these studies. Perhaps most fundamentally, at New College I had the academic freedom to pursue the evidence without constraint.

What advice do you have for anyone doing graduate level biblical studies?

In my opinion, it is extremely important to get high quality academic input right at the very beginning of any project as its initial framing and conceptualisation is so important to the outcome. Additionally, it is really important to take a lot of time to engage deeply and imaginatively with the primary sources. The time I took to try to enter into Paul’s world and logic was what really allowed me to make progress. The secondary literature is in flux at the moment, and a great deal of it is seriously outdated. Spending time directly with Paul’s texts and trusting your engagement with them will allow the development of more genuinely historical readings. Finally, it is really worth pushing hard at the end of the PhD, as this is when you have it all in your head and so can make important connections. The core of my PhD developed over the final 14 months, and I developed some new ideas in the last 3 months.

Many thanks to Dr McMurray for his insightful interview. 

Be sure to be on the lookout for a forthcoming review of Sacrifice, Brotherhood, and the Body by Paula Fredriksen in the Expository Times.

To learn more about the book, you can head over to the publisher’s website: Sacrifice, Brotherhood, and the Body.

For readers who have access to the University of Edinburgh library, you can read Dr McMurray’s book online via DiscoverEd: Sacrifice, Brotherhood, and the Body.

Dr McMurray with a copy of his new book, Sacrifice, Brotherhood, and the Body: Abraham and the Nations in Romans. The cover is a symbol or metaphor to represent the nations and Israel being brought into the correct alignment or formation.

The post Dr Patrick McMurray on his new book, Sacrifice, Brotherhood, and the Body: Abraham and the Nations in Romans first appeared on CSCO.

(Matthew Novenson, CSCO director) My friend and colleague Hans Barstad has died, aged 73. A great Norwegian scholar of the classical prophets, in 2006 he left his chair in Oslo to take up the chair of Hebrew and Old Testament Studies at Edinburgh, where he remained Professor Emeritus since his retirement. He was the author of The Religious Polemics of Amos (1984), A Way in the Wilderness (1989), The Myth of the Empty Land (1996), The Babylonian Captivity of the Book of Isaiah (1997), History and the Hebrew Bible (2008), and A Brief Guide to the Hebrew Bible (2010), among many other contributions. Together with Graeme Auld, Timothy Lim, David Reimer, and Anja Klein, Hans helped to establish Edinburgh as an outstanding centre for Hebrew Bible research. He was also a kind friend and colleague to those of us in other fields. When I was a new lecturer in Edinburgh, Hans helped me learn my way around the university and its labyrinthine bureaucracy. Himself a fellow (and onetime Secretary General) of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, Hans helped oversee Edinburgh’s Northern Scholars Lectureship, a fund for collaboration between Scottish and Scandinavian researchers. He once went to a great deal of trouble to help me find the right pots of university money to bring Troels Engberg-Pedersen to Edinburgh to give a series of lectures. When he retired, Hans gave me his New College scarf, woven with the traditional purple, silver, and black colours of the divinity faculty. There will be proper obituaries forthcoming from Hans’s Hebraist peers in SBL, SOTS, and elsewhere. Meanwhile, those of who knew him as a colleague remember him very fondly.

The post RIP Hans Barstad first appeared on CSCO.

“We have seen that Paul’s philosophizing, as we now understand it, should not be identified with the picture of Paul’s thought that came to be given in the later, systematic, ‘theological’ reading of him. Instead, Paul was fundamentally working at the same level as other philosophers in the ancient world, arguing his case in as many ways as possible in the hope that he might convince others of the truth of his claims. It is entirely correct to say that Paul does ‘theology’. But he does theology as philosophy, not as some intellectual discipline different from philosophy.

We have also seen that Paul’s philosophizing does more in terms of articulating a coherent set of ideas than merely arguing ad hoc for the immediate purposes of his letter writing. Thus while it is quite right to focus emphatically on Paul’s rhetorical strategy and the practical purposes of his writing, there is more to it than just rhetoric and practical purpose. Paul, it seems, did have a more systematic urge, which led him to construct a (more or less) coherent world view that might then also serve as a warrant for his practical aims. Indeed, we have seen examples of texts where Paul philosophizes in order to make points that are of central importance to his overall aims in the letter.”

–Troels Engberg-Pedersen, “Paul the Philosopher,” in Oxford Handbook of Pauline Studies

The post New in the Oxford Handbook of Pauline Studies: Troels Engberg-Pedersen on Paul the Philosopher first appeared on CSCO.

“A number of recent critiques construe the category of religion as an essentializing tool of Western domination that leads to misleading formulations of its supposed object of study (Fitzgerald 2000; Dubuisson 2003; Nongbri 2013). Among other problems, critics blame scholarly conceptions of religion for tendencies to overplay characteristics of certain traditions (typical Western ones) as universal and for overstating the roles of specialists and ideologues relative to the interests and habits of everyday persons. As others have stressed, however, interpretation cannot get off the ground without generalization, classification, and comparison of some kind. Sensitive to such concerns, I have argued that taking Paul’s letters as evidence for certain practices relating to gods and non-obvious beings proves helpful for understanding the roles, powers, and relationships the letters ascribe to such beings. The scheme of generalization, classification, and comparison advanced here especially illuminates assumptions about the human-like character and political relationships among certain gods or sets of gods. In spite of much special pleading about the unique, incomparable powers of ruling deities in Jewish and Christian traditions, comparisons bring out a distinctive rhetoric about divine power that modifies—but does not radically diverge from—similar schemes of divine rule. Often associated with language about ‘idolatry’, such rhetoric tends to focus on a supreme deity and to imagine highly asymmetrical relationships of power with the lower ranks of beings, whether conceived of as councils, hosts, spirits, mere statues, or favoured and disfavoured peoples. Such discussions offer an illuminating context for Paul’s claims about others gods, idols, demons, stoicheia, and the principalities and powers as gentile gods that Christ will destroy in battle.”

–Emma Wasserman, “Paul and Religion,” in Oxford Handbook of Pauline Studies

The post New in the Oxford Handbook of Pauline Studies: Emma Wasserman on Paul and Religion first appeared on CSCO.

“Have scholars made any progress in the pistis Christou discussion in the last twenty years? I think the answer is yes. Debates on the basis of syntax are all but gone, and good riddance! Also, scholars are taking a more comprehensive approach, widening the scope of study to include parallels and similar phrases from elsewhere in the New Testament, Jewish, Greek, and Roman literature of antiquity, and also in early reception of Paul. The most beneficial conversations today about pistis Christou tend to involve arguments related to specific texts and their meanings in literary and historical contexts. What does the future hold? Alongside ongoing study of early reception, there are important conversations happening about the meaning of pistis in Paul, early Judaism, and early Christianity (see Bates 2017; Morgan 2017; Downs and Lappenga 2019; Pifer 2019; Gupta 2020). And, as far as I am concerned, newer approaches beyond the [subjective genitive] and [objective genitive] are warmly welcome.”

–Nijay K. Gupta, “Paul and Pistis Christou,” in Oxford Handbook of Pauline Studies

The post New in the Oxford Handbook of Pauline Sudies: Nijay Gupta on pistis Christou in Paul first appeared on CSCO.

“The divergent images of Paul emerging from [different feminist] approaches are based on different hermeneutical presuppositions through which specific texts or whole letters are analysed. A focus on the gendered hierarchical structure of the Pauline discourse aims at uncovering its inherent potential for domination. Irrespective of authorial intent—which is, strictly speaking, inaccessible—the reception history of the Pauline discourse, at any rate, supplies ample evidence of this potential for domination. It is, from the perspective of a feminist agenda of liberation and empowerment, one long cautionary tale. But this is only one aspect of the Pauline discourse. Other feminist approaches, whilst acknowledging the patriarchal context, focus instead on trajectories of empowerment in the letters—not so much in order to ‘rescue’ Paul as to recognize that such trajectories are another dimension of the reception history of the letters. The specific context and content of the letters are decisive for uncovering whatever empowering potential there may be in the discourse. In particular, the embeddedness of Paul’s letters within Judaism under the Roman Empire plays a significant part in these approaches.

My own research belongs to this latter group. Presupposing the permeation of first-century society with gender hierarchy, my focus is on the traces of a discourse of empowerment in the Pauline letters. Informed by feminist theories of power, I have proposed to read the Pauline letters as a fragmentary discourse of communal conversations (Ehrensperger 2009: 3). This discourse is fully embedded within the Judaism of the first century ce, albeit in the peculiar context of ethnically mixed messianic assemblies. The context of the Roman Empire, with its dominating power discourse, impacts significantly on the interaction and communication of the members of these assemblies. I concur with Davina Lopez that the Pauline discourse is located at the bottom of the imperial hierarchy of domination and that this social location is significant for our reading of Paul’s rhetoric. According to some recent feminist theories of power, if power is defined narrowly in the Weberian sense of ‘power-over’—that is, the domination of one actor by another against the former’s will—then there is no space left for a positive account of empowerment. These theories are not naïve to the all-pervasiveness of power in social relations, but they challenge the assumption that this state of affairs makes domination inevitable.”

–Kathy Ehrensperger, “Paul and Feminism,” in Oxford Handbook of Pauline Studies

The post New in the Oxford Handbook of Pauline Studies: Kathy Ehrensperger on Paul and Feminism first appeared on CSCO.

“[Adolf] Deissmann’s optics for seeing the light from ancient remains reminds us that it is important to think about the hermeneutics that are involved in reading archaeological remains in conversation with biblical texts. As Melanie Johnson-DeBaufre has rightly shown, how we look determines what we see and thus requires that we pay attention to how we direct our historical gaze and what our gaze leaves out… An archaeology of the Pauline mission has to be more than a scholarly tour in the footsteps of Paul. Many scholars of early Christianity and classical archaeologists alike have participated in a larger history of pilgrimage and tourism in search of Paul. The scholars that I have highlighted above demonstrate how we might gaze otherwise on Paul, the communities to which he wrote, and the broader history of early Christianity in conversation with scholars in other disciplines. To do so allows us to see early Christian communities as part of, and not distinct from, the dynamic and diverse landscapes of civic life in the early Roman Empire.”

–Cavan Concannon, “Archaeology and the Pauline Letters,” in Oxford Handbook of Pauline Studies

The post New in the Oxford Handbook of Pauline Studies: Cavan Concannon on Archaeology and the Pauline Letters first appeared on CSCO.

“In examining the ways in which letter writing helped Paul achieve his goals of positioning, community building, and moral formation, I consider evidence from Paul’s own letters, other primary sources from the classical Mediterranean, and recent scholarly literature on ancient epistolography. As will become clear in the ensuing pages, my arguments regarding the functions of the epistolary genre rely primarily on the claims of intellectuals belonging to the upper social, political, and economic echelons of the classical Mediterranean (such as Greek philosophers, Roman statesmen, and epistolary theorists). My reliance on evidence from the upper echelon of ancient Mediterranean culture is, in part, unavoidable: ancient writings on the functions of the epistolary genre tend to come from the hands of those occupying this stratum of society. However, my use of this evidence also betrays my own understanding of Paul’s educational background, his place among ancient Mediterranean letter writers, and his location in the world of Roman religion. In short, I am convinced by others who have argued cogently for an understanding of Paul as a literate, freelance religious specialist who displayed intellectual and textual skills as he worked to promote the Christ movement among Gentiles (see, e.g., Wendt 2016). These intellectual and textual skills can be seen in Paul’s use of rhetorical devices, his deployment of basic philosophical concepts, and his interpretation of sacred Judaean writings. Paul’s skills in these areas suggest that Paul had some intellectual and educational affinities with philosophers like Seneca and aristocratic statesman like Cicero, even if there were still noticeable differences between Paul and these Romans in terms of their ethnicities, political stations, social statuses, economic means, and degrees of education.”

–Laura Dingeldein, “Paul the Letter-Writer,” in Oxford Handbook of Pauline Studies

The post New in the Oxford Handbook of Pauline Studies: Laura Dingeldein on Paul the Letter-Writer first appeared on CSCO.

Your university, college, or seminary library may already subscribe to Oxford Handbooks Online in Religion, but if not, consider asking your friendly neighborhood librarian to subscribe. The print edition will be forthcoming in the next year or two once the last few essays are in hand. Meanwhile, I’ll post some taster quotes here on the CSCO blog during the summer.

–Matthew Novenson

The post New entries to the Oxford Handbook of Pauline Studies first appeared on CSCO.