Seminars

This paper is an exercise in contextual reading. The rich, complex, mottled contexts of Puerto Rico will serve as exegetical and theological ground for a reading of the Gospel of Luke. In conversation with Latinx theological themes, I argue that contemporary contextual realities provide a rich vein of possibilities for exegetical work by clarifying dynamics of the past as well as the limited purviews every interpreter brings to the exegetical task. Questions about empire, food cultures, and the ambiguities of home overlap in my reading of Luke alongside the history and peoples of Puerto Rico. In the end, reading Luke from Puerto Rico is not the only way to read the text. Like all contextual footing, there will be richness and there will be gaps. Instead, contextual reading is always and inevitably a communal effort to contribute a clarifying voice of interpretation alongside many others whose stories deserve our hearing. Even more, we interpret among many others whose stories we desperately need.

Scholars typically understand Jewish and early Christian thought about the divine world as “monotheistic” in contrast to various forms of Greco-Roman “polytheism.” Indeed, the idea that monotheism rises to replace polytheism is one of the enduring ways of organizing religious history. Running on somewhat different track, are a chorus of scholars in classics and ancient philosophy have pushed for the idea of “pagan monotheism,” by which they typically mean the kinds of philosophical theologies (or cosmologies) that run through most strands of ancient philosophy, save for the atomists. The writings of Philo of Alexandria would seem to bring together both these strands of thought. In this paper, I argue that neither Philo’s Jewish commitments and self-understanding nor his adaptation of philosophical ideas are aptly construed as “monotheistic.” As I argue, the category of monotheism (both in its “Jewish” and philosophical senses) is a form of polemic that blocks more critical accounts of Philo’s cosmology. I contend that this has especially blocked appreciating the monarchic discourses and traditions that inform Philo’s thought about the divine world. On my approach, texts that have often been understood as “monotheistic” are better understood as developing a cosmology that is organized as a monarchic political system. Indeed, as I will ultimately argue, Philo’s cosmology is better understood broadly as a form of monarchic polytheism.

This paper is drawn from a chapter in my current book project, which focuses on reading early Christian narratives as their own form of rhetoric. The earliest followers of Jesus were deeply concerned with what is spiritually but also narratologically other-worldly: early Christian stories frequently address the miraculous, the divine, the ineffable – that is, they work to express the inexpressible. I argue that approaching narratives as attention-directing technologies can help us understand the myriad ways they point toward that which exceeds, transcends, or overwhelms humans and the (story)worlds in which we live. In this paper, I specifically explore the ancient concept of sublimity as one manifestation of this outwardly-focused dimension of narrative rhetoric in key moments of the Gospel of Mark and the Protevangelium of James.

Despite ample evidence that John 1:1-18 was not read as prologue to the gospel until the 18th century, modern translations and most contemporary scholars assume that the so-called Prologue was there “in the beginning.” In this paper, I review evidence from ancient manuscripts and from pre-18th century gospel readers to encourage a thought experiment. What difference would it make to the interpretation of the Fourth Gospel if we read without “the” prologue? I suggest that one major difference concerns the characterization of John, the main focus of this paper. But, I also point to implications for the relationship of the Fourth Gospel to the synoptic gospels, and more generally, for theories regarding the composition of the gospel.

In early Christian writings, kakos, poneros, agathos, and kalos are usually taken to be generic terms with wide application and limited interest. This paper argues that, across New Testament and other early Christian writings, they are in fact used strategically and specifically in ways that illuminate our understanding of both divine revelation and human ethics.

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.

"Where is the promise of God's coming? Since the beginning of the world, all things continue as they have been" (2 Peter 3:4). Behind these words lies the conviction, held by diverse thinkers, that the cosmos was eternal and indestructible. Indeed, it was widely believed that even to contemplate the dissolution of the universe was not only foolish but blasphemous. In response to these serious objections, 2 Peter seeks to make the idea of a cataclysmic "Day of the Lord" more intellectually and religiously palatable by recasting it in the language of Stoic physics, and by drawing on ideas—both biblical and philosophical—of the origins and nature of time itself. By examining how texts such as the Apocalypse of Peter and Sibylline Oracles 2 depict the cosmic conflagration, we can arrive at a new interpretation of the conflagration as described in 2 Pet 3:10-13. For instance, Sib. Or. 2.325-29 describes an eschatological end of time: gone are days and nights, seasons, years. This sheds light on 2 Pet 3:12, and other comments about "time" in 2 Peter. With the melting of the heavens and the stoicheia comes the end of time itself, and the inauguration of "the day of God" (2 Pet 3:12) and "day of eternity" (2 Pet 3:18). 2 Peter depicts a return to the timelessness of God's unique "day one" (Genesis 1:5; 2 Pet 3:8), a "day" outside of time. Those who "partake of the divine nature" (1:4) will, in the "eternal kingdom" (1:11), share in God's own transcendence of time.

Within this paper, Denise Kimber Buell advocates for the significance of incorporating spiritualists, particularly those engaged in the central practice of mediumship, as a partial precursor to recent interventions in New Testament studies from feminist, womanist, and queer perspectives. By highlighting spirit mediumship as a widely popular and publicly scrutinized practice during the period of professionalization in New Testament and early Christian studies, the author seeks to explore novel avenues for examining the underlying implications in historical and contemporary debates surrounding approaches to biblical texts and antiquity. This paper constitutes a segment of Dr. Buell’s ongoing book project.

In recent years, a “within Judaism” approach has been applied to the Pauline letters as well as the Gospels. This approach seems to be in the process of taking root for Johannine studies, especially the Gospel of John. “John within Judaism” has been featured in SBL sessions in 2021 and 2022, with a third session scheduled for SBL 2023. It has also been the subject of a half-day colloquium sponsored by the Enoch Seminar in March 2023. A volume of essays on “within Judaism” edited by Karin Zetterholm and Anders Runesson is set to appear within the next few weeks. In this paper, I will argue that, important as this approach has been in Pauline studies, it is not a helpful approach for Johannine scholarship, where it acts as a constraint on interpretation.

Alexandria's account of true beauty in relation to his vituperative reflections on same-sex eros. The analysis focuses on his treatment of Antinous, the famous erōmenos of the emperor Hadrian. Here I seek to situate Clement's scathing condemnation of Antinous as an erotic object within his larger theological argument about things (e.g., ornaments, statues) and persons—and about how their interrelation indexes the problem of the beautiful. I argue that, following Diotima's speech in Plato's Symposium, Clement subscribes most basically to an account of beauty that links it with ascent to the divine. As such, the figure of Antinous poses a particularly difficult problem for him—rendering visible the potential impossibility of maintaining true beauty as the telos of divine ascent, while attempting simultaneously to excise erotic desire entirely as the motor of that ascent.