Authors:Helen Paynter First page: 133 Abstract: Source: Volume 26, Issue 2, pp 133 - 157The Samson narrative is notable for its cycles of violence and revenge. Sometimes this has been understood to be an expression of lex talionis (‘an eye for an eye’); indeed, Samson appears to assert as much, though his actions do not match up to the ideal. This paper argues that while the narrator permits Samson to make this claim, he demonstrates that a far more sinister dynamic is at work: namely, Girardian mimesis and scapegoating. At the centre of the rivalry between Israel and the Philistines is Samson, ‘monsterised’ by both sides, and represented in hulk-like terms. His sexual rivalry with his Philistine ‘companions’ embodies the rivalry between the two nations. Using a Girardian hermeneutic reveals how the cycles of violence are, in fact, an escalating form of mimesis, which twice approach crisis, but conclude with Samson escaping from the scapegoating role by taking matters into his own hands. PubDate: 2018-05-07T00:00:00Z
Authors:Christopher M. Jones First page: 158 Abstract: Source: Volume 26, Issue 2, pp 158 - 181The unity of the final form of Ezra-Nehemiah has long been the consensus position among scholars in the field. This article challenges that consensus by comparing and contrasting the use of embedded written documents in Ezra 7 and Nehemiah 10 through the theoretical lens of colonial mimicry. I argue that the Artaxerxes rescript in Ezra 7 strategically mimics imperial discourse by assuming that propagandistic Persian rhetoric to Babylon and Egypt should also naturally apply to Yehud despite its peripheral status. By contrast, Nehemiah 10 invokes indigenous Judean writing to challenge the legitimacy of imperial domination. The sharply differing political programs articulated by these two texts, combined with literary and manuscript evidence from antiquity, suggests that the canonical book of Ezra-Nehemiah is an outlier among ancient Judean texts in juxtaposing the figures of Ezra and Nehemiah. PubDate: 2018-05-07T00:00:00Z
Authors:Jacqueline Vayntrub First page: 182 Abstract: Source: Volume 26, Issue 2, pp 182 - 206How should we understand the naming of legendary figures like Solomon in biblical titles' The ancient practice of attribution is often obscured by scholars committed to the modern construction of authorship. Texts such as 11QPsa XXVII (“David’s Compositions”) demonstrate an altogether different understanding of this ancient practice. Using Prov. 1:1 as a test case, this essay examines how biblical authors and editors assigned texts to legendary figures, and how this kind of attribution evokes a set of imagined associations in the broader literary tradition. The essay presents a description and categorization of biblical titles and textual frames, and compares these titles and frames to textual frames of ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean collections of instruction and poetry. The essay argues that Prov. 1:1, like other textual frames, uses attribution to imaginatively stage the text in the broader literary tradition. PubDate: 2018-05-07T00:00:00Z
Authors:Stephen B. Hatton First page: 207 Abstract: Source: Volume 26, Issue 2, pp 207 - 218The article traces the dialectical unfolding involved in the Markan naked young man text (Mark 14:51-52). It follows the dialectical process of (1) Jesus’s seizure; (2) the young man’s seizure which diminishes the impact of Jesus’s seizure; (3) the young man’s non-seizure and absence; and (4) the young man’s return to presence through reification of his garment. Finally, it focuses on the last dialectical moment in which the Gospel of Mark text seizes the young man and Jesus. PubDate: 2018-05-07T00:00:00Z
Authors:Matthew James Ketchum First page: 219 Abstract: Source: Volume 26, Issue 2, pp 219 - 243This paper employs theories of spectrality and haunting to read the Gospel of Mark alongside textual and archaeological materials representing the Roman emperor. I argue that the relationships between the figures of Jesus and the emperor are both more subtle and complex than is typically seen by empire-critical scholarship. I show how both the Roman emperor and the Gospel of Mark’s Jesus are constructed in undecidable negotiations of life and death, absence and presence, and past, present, and future. Scenes like Jesus walking on water, the transfiguration, and the empty tomb display the spectrality of Jesus in Mark’s gospel. Ghost stories and the globalizing logic of the imperial cult do the same for the emperor. The common spectrality of the emperors and Jesus in Mark’s Gospel signals how they are both haunted by the systemic violence of Rome’s empire. PubDate: 2018-05-07T00:00:00Z
Authors:Simon Butticaz First page: 244 Abstract: Source: Volume 26, Issue 2, pp 244 - 265The article aims to investigate – in two autobiographical fragments of the Pauline writings (1 Cor. 15:8-10 and Gal. 1:13-24) – how the narrative mode enables the apostle to grasp the continuity and coherence of his identity, while integrating in the construction of his self disparate and discordant elements (like the Damascus event) which continually threaten the “narrative unity of a human life” (MacIntyre). Furthermore, since “collective memory” precedes and shapes the individual representation of the past (Halbwachs; Assmann), the article also examines how Paul integrates and negotiates in his construction of self-identity the “communal memories” shared by his social group, and in particular his past as persecutor of the Church. Finally, we shall describe the integration of these autobiographical fragments within their respective literary contexts and explore the “metaphorical truth” – or the “refiguration” of reality – which is produced by these different “configurations” of Pauline identity (Ricoeur). PubDate: 2018-05-07T00:00:00Z
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