As I do some last minute packing for the annual Society of Biblical Literature meeting in Denver this year (November 16-20, 2018), I wanted to give a final shout out to the plenary session of the Intertextuality in the New Testament Section which I co-chair with Alice Yafeh-Deigh at Pacific Azusa University.
If you're like me, when I plan for SBL, I first get all my requisite business meetings, lunches/dinners with colleagues, and publisher's appointments all in my calendar first. Then on the plane, I thumb through the annual program and plan out what sessions I attend. If so, I hope you'll consider as you travel to Denver attending and participating in the session on Greco-Roman allusions in the New Testament. We have a stellar roster of leading New Testament scholars who work with the Greco-Roman material and texts which illuminate the interpretation of the New Testament. Their papers titles and abstracts are listed below.
Much ink has been spilt on the Old Testament echoes and the intertextuality between ancient Jewish discourse and the New Testament. Little has been done in analyzing systematically how the New Testament authors allude to Greco-Roman texts and artefacts and what exegetical methods they use to deploy such material. This session is an attempt to offer some initial explorations. Hope to see you there! MJL
S17-131
If you're like me, when I plan for SBL, I first get all my requisite business meetings, lunches/dinners with colleagues, and publisher's appointments all in my calendar first. Then on the plane, I thumb through the annual program and plan out what sessions I attend. If so, I hope you'll consider as you travel to Denver attending and participating in the session on Greco-Roman allusions in the New Testament. We have a stellar roster of leading New Testament scholars who work with the Greco-Roman material and texts which illuminate the interpretation of the New Testament. Their papers titles and abstracts are listed below.
Much ink has been spilt on the Old Testament echoes and the intertextuality between ancient Jewish discourse and the New Testament. Little has been done in analyzing systematically how the New Testament authors allude to Greco-Roman texts and artefacts and what exegetical methods they use to deploy such material. This session is an attempt to offer some initial explorations. Hope to see you there! MJL
S17-131
Intertextuality in the New Testament
9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
11/17/2018
Agate (Third Level) - Hyatt Regency
Ancient Exegetical Methods in Greco-Roman Discourse and the New Testament
Each paper will be 25-30 min long. Peter Oakes will be responding after each paper for 10 min. There is a general discussion at the end of the session
9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
11/17/2018
Agate (Third Level) - Hyatt Regency
Ancient Exegetical Methods in Greco-Roman Discourse and the New Testament
Each paper will be 25-30 min long. Peter Oakes will be responding after each paper for 10 min. There is a general discussion at the end of the session
Max Lee, North Park Theological Seminary, Presiding
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Bruce Longenecker, Baylor University
Intertextuality in Pompeian Plaster: Can
Vesuvian Artifacts Inform Our Expectations about Intertextual Expertise among
Sub-elite Jesus-Followers? (30 min)
Abstract: Audiences of New Testament texts are often enticed into
intertextual tropes embedded within those texts. One of the difficulties
regarding the effectiveness of intertextual tropes pertains to the expertise
required by the audience in order to recognize and appreciate them. Was
expertise of that kind restricted to the educated elite (as evidenced, for
instance, by Seneca), or were intertextual tropes appreciated by a broader
segment of Greco-Roman society? This paper (1) addresses that issue by
canvassing a selection of the archaeological data from the first-century town
of Pompeii and (2) suggests the relevance of that data for the study of New
Testament texts.
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Judith M. Gundry, Yale Divinity School
Roman Household Religion and the
Interpretation of 1 Corinthians 7:14 (30 min)
Paul’s discussion in 1 Corinthians 7 is widely assumed to
address a Roman concern with mastery over the passions, or a Stoic ideal of
freedom from distraction through celibacy. It is thus curious that virtually
all scholars suppose that in 1 Cor. 7:14 Paul is addressing a “Jewish
concern” with purity: “For the unbelieving husband ἡγίασται
by his wife and the unbelieving wife ἡγίασται
by her husband. For otherwise your children are ἀκάθαρτα,
but as it is, they are ἅγια”... A more plausible reconstruction, as this paper will
argue, is that Paul is addressing a Roman expectation of religious uniformity
in the household, where religion played an important role (e.g., Plutarch,
Tibullus, Hierocles). Apart from such unity, divorce may have seemed
inevitable to the former Gentiles in Corinth. But, according to Paul, the
unbelieving spouse who is willing to “live together” “is consecrated” to God
– for the (also unbelieving) children are “consecrated” to God – similarly to
the Christ-believer, who is a “consecrated one” (ἅγιος).
Hence, Paul forbids divorcing the unbeliever.
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Paul Trebilco, University of Otago
Echoes in Ephesus: "From the
beginning" in the Johannine Letters and in Ephesian Foundation Myths (30 min)
In 1 and 2 John, the phrase ‘from the beginning’ is used a total
of ten times – a surprising number, given their short length. In each case,
the stress is on ‘antiquity’ or on ‘foundations’. This emphasis resonates
with the foundation stories of the cult of Artemis and other stories in the
city of Ephesus; the sense of ‘looking back’ to antiquity was a vital part of
what it was to be an Ephesian. In this context, it was entirely
understandable for John as an author to speak of ‘what was from the beginning’,
which for him referred to the one true ‘foundation story’, the one they had
heard ‘from the beginning’, concerning the person, life, death and
resurrection of Jesus.
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