Seminars

This paper challenges conventional modes of thinking about the hereditary conferral of Israelite priestly status. We will examine two biblical narratives, both about priests named Phinehas, who appear to flout the principle that priests are (to borrow a phrase) begotten, but not made. These narratives demonstrate that priestly status can be re/allocated, intensified, and even revoked, forcing us to consider alternatives to the conventional paradigm of priestly descent as well as to the nature of the priesthood itself.

The forthcoming Oxford Handbook of the Bible and Animals brings together 38 essays from scholars in biblical studies and adjacent fields, grappling with what it means to interpret biblical texts, contexts, and intertexts with nonhuman animals at the centre. In this lecture, the editor of the Handbook draws out pertinent themes that are suggestive of the major research trajectories in this area. These themes fall into three main groups: animals in themselves, animals in their relationships with humans, and animals in broader systems of meaning and power.

This talk examines the limitations of historical reconstructions of identity in the Iron Age southern Levant through two Shephelah sites, analyzing both archaeological and textual evidence. Rather than treating uncertainty and indeterminacy as problems requiring solutions, I argue that they constitute a methodological and ethical praxis that clarifies evidential limitations, acknowledges the boundaries of knowledge, and offers a responsible path forward for historians and biblical scholars.

In this paper I will offer a set of reflections on the traditional interpretation of the dialogue between Yahweh and Abraham over the fate of Sodom in Genesis 18. I will suggest that most readings of this passage treat it as somehow isolated from its literary context, and as a result miss what the story was actually about; if, however, we read it in its proper literary context, a striking alternative reading presents itself.

Though the scholarly view of the David story has been significantly altered by the literary insights synchronic analyses have developed, understandings of David’s election have for the most part remained the same. If some continue to see David’s unusual status as a reflection of his inner constitution, others feel that the designation he receives expresses the complete freedom of choice God enjoys. While this debate has centered around a few key verses and terms found in the stories of Saul’s rejection and David’s introduction, the present analysis employs discourse-oriented methods to suggest that this narrower conception of David’s election be expanded to deal more adequately with the complex narrative interconnections synchronic approaches have uncovered. For as this paper endeavors to show, the same patterns that elevate David flip to fell him, and his election is accordingly best seen as the driving factor behind not just his rise but also his fall.

his paper traces the political textuality of treaty ritual performance through high-level royal scribal vocations from the late second millennium to the Second Temple period. I propose that royal scribal performance is a key element of the contact zone between biblical literature and treaty rituals. This period covers Hittite, Aramaic, and Neo-Assyrian treaties as well as versions of the biblical passages that adapt this regional political textuality. I will highlight the range of performative scribal skills necessary to execute a treaty by establishing a context of royal scribal vocations in which officials operated as representatives of the king.

This presentation will explore the presentation of the ger in Pentateuchal law. We will examine how biblical law works to create identity, and we will discuss the canonical presentation of the ger as a member of Israelite society.

This paper first explores the current map of the relation between Torah and Prophets by means of some examples, including Deut 30:1-20. It explores parallels such as Amos 2:6-8 / Exod 22:25-26; Am 8:2/Ezek 7:2-3/Gen 6:13; Isa 56:1-7/Deut 23:1-9; Jer 30:18/Deut 13:17; and Jer 4:23-26/Genesis 1. It then reconstructs the elements and factors in the history of scholarship that paved the way to the current discussion (with a specific focus on continental Europe). In a third step, this paper outlines a few perspectives on the thematic contacts between Torah and Prophets that could be relevant for redaction-critical reconstructions of their literary growth in possible dependence upon one another.

Within the series of six Woe Oracles that span Isa 28–33, those that comprise Isa 28–29 form a tightly-structured argument, one punctuated by an ambivalent Oracle of Salvation in Isa 29:22-24. The promise of children to Jacob in this oracle is ambivalent, at once both positive and negative: Jacob shall “not now” be put to shame when he sees his children, who are the “work of [God’s] hands” (i.e., through divine interposition). Interpretations tend to favor particular moments of prophetic fulfillment: the apostolic age (as in early Christian polemics), eschatological restoration of Israel (as in medieval rabbinic commentary), or restoration from exile in the Assyrian or Persian period (as per modern scholars). In this paper, I will attempt to show how the figuration of Jacob and his children completes the argument of Isa 28–29, which is a pedagogy of self-othering over time and thus irreducible to any particular event in history.

This presentation stems from a book project on contextual feminist interpretations of the book of Ruth, which includes interpretations by both biblical scholars and lay readers. I will focus on a Bible study of the book of Ruth through the lens of migration, conducted with a group of migrants and people who accompany migrants in Costa Rica. The Bible study was informed by the model of lectura popular de la Biblia, which was developed in base ecclesial communities and remains widespread in Latin America. I bring the insights of these lay readers into conversation with contextual readings of Ruth by Latin American biblical scholars.

This session represents an exploration into the relationship of "biblical" writing to the world of the old Iron Age Kingdoms using one specific case study. It will present an unexpected phenomenon: the linking of the Northern Kingdom of Israel to the name Isaac and the southern site of Beersheba in 8th century BCE. The first part of the session will discuss (and perhaps explain) this surprising historical situation, but the higher priority will be the second part of the session, namely, the bringing of our historical insights back to selected narratives about Isaac. The goal will be to see if these narratives are in any way enriched by our historical discussions.

Postcolonial theory in the mode of Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, and, above all, Homi Bhabha has long been a resource for biblical scholars concerned with empire and imperialism, colonialism and neocolonialism. A yet more ambitious body of theoretical and praxical perspectives on these planet-encircling realities, meanwhile, has developed alongside postcolonial theory, and postcolonial studies as ordinarily understood. It is associated with such names as Aníbal Quijano, Walter Mignolo, María Lugones, and Sylvia Wynter; with such concepts and strategies as the coloniality of power, decoloniality, and epistemic delinking; and with such theses as that modernity, race, gender, and the human/nonhuman dichotomy are all colonial constructions. Biblical scholars have, as yet, barely begun to tap into decolonial theory. It invites a delinking of biblical interpretation (both academic and "ordinary") from the colonial matrix of power, and provides conceptual and analytic resources for doing so. Decolonial theory also begs a radical reconception of the origins and operations of critical biblical scholarship, which will be the focus of this presentation.

Who is the resident alien discussed throughout the Pentateuch, and how does this inform our understanding of Israelite views of Gentiles and specifically their potential for a relationship to the God of Israel? Literature abounds about the language of goy, the development of Noahide law, and biblical views of Gentiles generally; fewer scholars address the resident alien of the Pentateuch, and those who do have little consensus! Focusing on the treatment of the ger in Pentateuchal texts, I explore the identity of the imagined ger and the theological picture that is painted through legal discourse concerning the ger. Additionally, I consider the innovative category of voluntary obligation which the ger adopts in taking on the ger status, and what this category does to Israelite perceptions of divine law and Gentile identity. Theologically, scholars have insufficiently tended to the ramifications of these laws for a ger’s relationship to the God of Israel. Thus, I will argue that the legal discourse surrounding the ger demonstrates the conviction in the biblical imagination of Gentiles rendered capable of having a divinely-commanded relationship with the God of Israel through the very particular means of becoming a resident alien among Israelites.

The central domains of women’s work in ancient Israel are related to household and body, including textile production, the bearing and rearing of children, musical composition and oral performance, and the daily production of food. These domains leave little to no trace in the material record; they are ephemeral. While archaeologists of gender have noted certain paucities of evidence for women’s cultural lives, the discipline’s emphasis on the material record, what objects can be found, has meant that we don’t have much by way of systematic reflection on the nature of ephemerality itself as a characteristic of women’s cultural contributions in ancient contexts. What happens if we take the ephemerality of women’s work seriously as an object of consideration? As I will suggest here, the aesthetics of women’s work and the ephemeral arts of the everyday are worth exploring as sites of affective value. Not only will this help us to better understand and appreciate the ancient context, a desideratum of our historical knowledge, but occasionally, these ephemeral arts also become a subject of philosophical reflection, as is the case in the late texts of Qohelet. The Collagist celebrates work that is ephemeral, especially textiles and food. These are types of work, and the fruits of work, that are temporally bounded—they do not outlive their makers. As such, Qohelet offers a source for exploring an aesthetics of the everyday.

The Elihu speeches (chs 32–37) are one of the most problematic features of the book of Job. Scholars have debated whether (1) these speeches are later additions to the book’s dialogues or integral to the structure of the book; and (2) whether the speeches add anything of substance to the book’s exploration of piety, justice, and suffering, or amount to (strategically contrived) bombast. In light of the significant body of scholarship on ‘legal metaphor’ in Job, it may be useful to see whether Elihu’s relation to the ‘trial’ that unfolds sheds light on questions concerning the book’s compositional history (is Elihu ‘structurally’ important and therefore likely original to the book?) and conceptual framework (is Elihu theologically important and therefore an essential voice in the book?). Drawing on recent scholarship, I argue that language and textual variants in Job 32:1–5 serve as clues to a version of the Joban ‘trial’ in which Elihu is both structurally significant and theologically non-trivial.

Previous scholars have noticed various points of contact between Samuel and Genesis (e.g., the Nabal ~ Laban nexus), but the extent of the thematic and phraseological interconnections has not, to the best of my knowledge, been fully documented and appreciated. This talk presents these literary and linguistic correspondences anew, with the overall goal of establishing the intertextual relationship between the two books.

The question of literacy remains at the forefront of discussions about the epigraphy of the kingdom of Judah. Whether it concerns the rate of literacy within the population, the ability of the Judeans to write down literary texts, or the development of literacy throughout the centuries, researchers are more divided today than ever. Some scholars continue to regard Israel/Judah as a unique case compared to the rest of the ancient Near East and to the classical world, arguing that it was marked with a relatively widespread literacy from the Iron Age. Most historians, to the contrary, tend to align Israel and Judah with the other ancient societies, in which literacy was the preserve of a few. On the other hand, a recent tendency consists in minimizing the extent of literacy in the early monarchic period in Judah (in contrast to the situation in Israel), and to maximizing it at the end of this period. In this paper, after a brief overview of the diverse approaches developed by scholars to tackle these issues, I critically examine new arguments, and new versions of older arguments, that play an important role in recent discussions on literacy in the kingdom of Judah, and I urge the need for a nuanced view on this subject.

This paper gives an overview of adoption in the Hebrew Bible through comparative, cross-cultural, and linguistic study to discern the hallmarks of texts indicating adoption in the Hebrew Bible (HB). Using a childist approach, I bring insights from child-centered biblical studies to explore select passages that portray adoption, with a focus on those related to women and girls. Through examination of the language in Exodus 2:1-10, 21:7-11, Ruth 4:14-17, and Esther 2:7, I show how these scenes relate to different types of adoption arrangements. Anthropological insights from adoption practices around the globe further reveal a wide range of practices that are reflected in the HB. The conclusion reviews the role of adoption in ancient Israel and its theological implications.