Seminars

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.