In this article, I propose a new reading for both law and narrative in the Aramaic Levi Document (ALD). In the first section, I show that the passage of “the law of the priesthood” pertains to the daily morning service in the Temple. In the second section, I suggest that the narrative that contains these instructions, in which Isaac speaks to Levi at Abraham’s home, exegetically connects the laws to the story of Isaac, whose father offered him up on an altar, and reflects a priestly theology that views the priest himself as an offering.

Contrary to much of the commentary tradition, the book of Job is not primarily a discourse on how to properly speak (or withhold speech) about God in the midst of innocent suffering, nor is it aimed primarily at offering up the character of Job as an exemplar of how to suffer correctly (or incorrectly). Neither is it a treatise about human submission to (or rebellion from) God’s mysterious sovereign prerogative in permitting evil. It is instead a theological exploration of the dilemmas and demands of consolation that confront us given the inexplicable enormities of human suffering. Its unifying aim is to confront us with multiple voices that pull us into an open-ended—and decidedly pessimistic—reflection on what innocent suffering reveals to us about our creaturely limits and the fragility of our hope in God, features of the human condition that require our capacities for compassion to exceed our capacities for theological sense-making.

The adjective χλωρός appears in the Septuagint to translate Hebrew terms that not only denote color, but state as well. In fact, in biblical Hebrew color is not a quality, but rather a “state” of the entities it describes. It is logical to wonder, then, whether it also expresses this in the Septuagint or if it denotes only color. To answer this question, it is necessary to carry out an interdisciplinary study of color and color language. The methodology followed will first study the concept of color in the Hellenistic world and in the Septuagint, as well as the cultural context in which the Septuagint translators lived. Subsequently, an approximate account of the “encyclopedic knowledge” that those translators possessed will be given, followed, finally, by a semantic analysis of χλωρός in the Septuagint. After applying this methodology, it will be shown that in the Septuagint, as in the Hellenistic world in general, natural color expresses both color and state, with color being the visual reflection of that state.

Interpreters unanimously read ἐνευλογηθήσονται in Gen 12:3b LXX as a passive. Good evidence, however, exists to challenge and problematize this conclusion. Recent linguistic studies on the ancient Greek middle voice reveal that aorist and future -θη- forms express a semantically middle domain. When we reexamine the word ἐνευλογέομαι within this light, a better option emerges for seeing its -θη- forms as manifestations of speech actions within this middle domain. In their own unique ways, the LXX as well as Philo, Paul, and Acts further corroborate this alternative. As a result, we may read ἐνευλογηθήσονται in Gen 12:3b LXX as a speech action middle: “to pronounce blessings.” The proposed reading promotes a better understanding of Abraham within Genesis LXX. Rather than a means to an end, Abraham remains at the center of God’s blessing as the earth’s families cry out: “God make me like Abraham!”

This article concerns the role of covenant in early rabbinic literature in relation to biblical and especially Second Temple-era predecessors. The first part establishes that the Qumran sectarians and earlier circles were drawn to the concept of covenant because it represented, especially through the mechanism of covenant renewal, a powerful tool for defining and supporting group identity. The second part shows that for the rabbis, the importance of covenant lay chiefly, instead, in its capacity to conceptualize the notion of Israel as a collective body defined by corporate responsibility. The third part suggests that this novel deployment of covenant arose in part to counter the individuating force of halakah as law, another innovation of the rabbis.

This study has selected Codex Sinaiticus and Mark 1:1 as a test case to propose a new way for Greek New Testament editions and translations to present textual uncertainties in manuscripts. The article suggests that editors and translators use a partial cancellation type of erasure in a continuous line over problematic text. This method draws inspiration from a technique used by Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida known as sous rature (under erasure). This form of limited cancellation aims to expel indifference and elicit a visceral reaction in the reader. The technique also has a philosophical and theological aim, namely, to work within Heidegger’s view of truth as a process of hiding and revealing. Finally, the limited cancellation, which both conceals and shows, fits with the theme of “messianic secret” in Mark’s Gospel, wherein Jesus both reveals and hides his identity.

In John 7:8–9, Jesus tells his brothers he will not “go up” to Jerusalem, but in the very next scene, he makes the ascent in secret. This essay interprets Jesus’s unusual, and seemingly deceptive, behavior in the episode as a symbolic action akin to others structuring the first half of the Gospel. The episode immediately precedes a dialogue in which Jesus predicts his imminent departure from the world. Jesus insists that he will soon “go” to God so that unbelievers “will seek” him “but … not find” him (7:33–34; cf. 20:17). Foreshadowing this future, Jesus “goes up” to Judea but in such a way that leaves unbelievers unaware of his whereabouts, leaving them to ask, “Where is he?” (7:10–11). The article highlights half-truth as an important speech device in the episode and dialogue that follows. It also concludes that the episode is key to interpreting other scenes sharing a motif of misdirection, delay, and secret reversal.

The coinage of Bar Kosiba (Bar Kokhba), the leader of the Second Jewish Revolt (132–135/6 CE), has long been acknowledged as a source of data for understanding the ideology and goals of the rebel regime he headed. In particular, the imagery and legends on Bar Kosiba’s tetradrachms have been the subject of many interpretations and controversies. This article proposes that the facade of the temple on the obverse of Bar Kosiba’s tetradrachms and the four species on its reverse side are complementary symbols, joined together to represent the future inauguration ceremony of the restored temple. Furthermore, this imagery on the tetradrachms may have been intended to respond to the coins issued to commemorate the founding of the colony of Aelia Capitolina on the site of Jerusalem.

What changes in the conceptualization of God, the ultimate healer, once God himself becomes the object of healing? This article examines the delicate tensions between divine and human agency in the Lurianic kabbalah, focusing on its grammar of action, and the complex relations between the subjects and the objects of this action. Rather than analyzing the relations between the kabbalists and their God through their conscious perceptions, the article explores how these relations emerge from the Lurianic discursive configurations and describes the role of medical discourse in their shaping. I claim that in order to perceive the transformation in the image of God in this early modern kabbalistic corpus, we should place at the heart of our inquiry the questions of who the patient is in the Lurianic medical clinic and how the relations between the human and the divine protagonists of the Lurianic drama are woven in this clinic.

While scholars have traditionally taken Revelation’s “letters to the seven churches” (Rev 2–3) as documentation for the experiences of the Christ-movement in those cities, this article argues that the letters amount to a fictional device—that the Apocalypse appropriates epistolary forms in response to the increasing authority of early Pauline collections among the late first-century Asia Minor Christ-movements. With its divine epistolary authority and heavenly sevenfold “collection,” the Apocalypse attempts to exceed and denigrate Pauline authority in the Christ-movement, and it elevates a Jewish Christ-devotion based in priestly apocalyptic traditions. In the end, we can see John of Patmos both as a competitor to the Pauline tradition and as a witness to the earliest circulation of Pauline collections.

This article shows that the Gospel of Truth (NHC I, 3), dense with allusions to sources now in the New Testament, most often explored for its resonances with Johannine literature, also offers significant evidence for second-century reception of Paul’s letters, while highlighting poetic images often overlooked. Correlating the language and literary structure of such Pauline passages as 1 Cor 1–6 with the opening of the Gospel of Truth shows that the latter implicitly claims to reveal the secret and primordial “wisdom of God” that Paul declares he teaches only orally to initiates (1 Cor 2:6–7). Thus, this text exemplifies a kind of “heretical” reading that heresiologists like Irenaeus deplore, when, for example, he cites this very passage to complain that “each of (the heretics) declares that this ‘wisdom’ is whatever he invents (fictionem videlicet), so that sometimes they claim that the truth is in Valentinus, or in Marcion, or in someone else …” (Haer. 3.2.1). Furthermore, this research suggests that the Gospel of Truth, narrating primordial creation, followed by a dramatic account of Christ’s incarnation and redemption, claims to offer, as the “true gospel,” a spiritual interpretation that far transcends the brief kerygmatic version set forth in 1 Cor 15:1–3. Finally, I suggest, investigating the Gospel of Truth’s interpretation of Paul’s teaching (which here includes echoes of Ephesians and Colossians) invites us to recognize elements of Paul’s letters most often overlooked. For, from patristic times to the present, exegetes who accept Irenaeus’s insistence that Paul had no secret teaching have dismissed the apostle’s emphatic claim that he did. Furthermore, those focused on dogmatic and ethical themes in Paul’s letters often miss poetic and mythological language at play in sources like the Gospel of Truth.

Religious protest, such as the protest that Job expresses, reveals the manners in which believers experience the absurd while hanging on to God. The purpose of this article is to explore the “grammar” of this paradoxical faith stance by bringing Kierkegaard and Camus to bear upon it, and thereby to show the “family resemblance” between Job, Camus’s “absurd man,” and the Kierkegaardian believer. I begin with a discussion of experiences of the absurd that give rise to religious protest. I then turn to Kierkegaard to explore the manners in which “faith’s thought” renders the “experience of the absurd” a religious one, while pushing the believer further into the absurd. I end with a discussion of Job as an absurd rebel in Camus’s sense.

Theologians have become increasingly attentive to the role emotion and experience must play in theological reflection. Several thinkers have recently done so by appropriating and developing Jon Sobrino’s understanding of orthopathy, or “right affect.” A close examination of these efforts, however, reveals inconsistencies in the way the category is understood and deployed. This article redresses these inconsistencies by complementing orthopathy with orthoaesthesis, or “right perception.” The article opens by considering various appeals to orthopathy before suggesting how William James’s theory of emotion might provide the category with clarifying content. The second stage engages Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch as practitioners of orthoaesthesis. Special attention is given to Murdoch’s “techniques” aimed at transforming how practitioners perceive reality. With Murdoch’s guidance, the article contends that orthopathy is ineluctably bound to and not possible without orthoaesthesis. The article concludes with a constructive proposal to show how orthoaesthesis-orthopathy contributes to a Christian theological anthropology.

This article analyzes the second-century Acts of John 56–57, in which Antipatros seeks healing for his twin sons whom he claims he cannot support as he ages. I argue that this passage turns on a layered critique of Antipatros. First, the text censures medical commerce. Second, it uses his threat of murder, economic circumstances, and name to undermine Antipatros as both father and inquiring disciple. The episode thus leverages criticism of a character whose negative attitudes lead him to contemplate destruction of those with infirmities. However, it retains a mixed message: while the character of the apostle John comes to focus on the sons, the narrative silences them. Ultimately, the text emphasizes what the critique means for the flawed male, elite father, rather than the experience of the impaired sons. Such dynamics warrant close attention as we continue to expand our understanding of attitudes to disability in sources from antiquity.

This essay returns to a largely forgotten achievement of mid-twentieth-century philosophical theology, Richard Kroner’s Culture and Faith (1951) and the “philosophy of faith” presented therein. It focuses on Kroner’s idea of religious imagination as the inspired medium of revelation. It considers implications of this idea with regard to religious epistemology and theological language. In doing so, it puts Kroner in conversation with John Caputo, Iain McGilchrist, and Kroner’s friend and colleague Paul Tillich.

In the 1820s it was predominantly Black abolitionists who opposed gradualist abolitionism and the concept of colonization, while, in general, White abolitionists opposed slavery, viewing it as seductive or as sin in itself, but did not want full emancipation for Blacks. Therefore, David Walker’s Appeal from 1829 is a central document in that it calls for immediate and full emancipation as well as opposition to racism and White supremacy. This article argues that the shift in political aim of Black radical abolitionists correlates with an innovation in theological foundation. Walker grounds his quest for immediate and full emancipation in an egalitarian concept of imago Dei. It is this theological foundation that became influential in radical abolitionist discourse and was employed by Maria M. Stewart as well as William Lloyd Garrison. As a result of research on Walker’s theological innovation, it comes to the fore that he most likely was influenced by Black Freemasonry, especially Prince Hall.

This article examines how Jews and Judaism are envisioned in the Catholic imagination, through a critical reading of contemporary Catholic discourse on Judaism. It identifies three problematic areas. The first concerns the tendency of Catholic discourse to project a specifically Christian vision of salvation history onto the Jewish people, which reflects Christian rather than Jewish self-understanding. Second, this article analyzes patterns in language and imagery in Vatican documents about Judaism, alert to troubling allusions implicit in the texts. The third area concerns a hermeneutical obstacle to deep interreligious understanding, one which may be ultimately insurmountable: namely, the challenges of understanding the religious other according to its own self-understanding. This article reaches an ambivalent conclusion, conceding that the goal of recognizing the self-understanding of another religious tradition may ultimately be impossible.

This essay coins a term “Judeopessimism,” engaging questions of some of the contemporary writing on antisemitism and its claim to be historical in nature through the lens of critical race theory, specifically Afropessimism and its offshoots, which make claims of anti-Blackness as political ontology. Is some of this writing on antisemitism really making theological or political ontological claims of “eternal antisemitism” refracted in a less volatile historical narrative? How can critical race theory and its understanding of anti-Blackness help refine, clarify, and push the discussion on antisemitism to be more forthright about its underlying claims? I explore some examples of ontological antisemitism in the writings of Meir Kahane and Naftali Zvi Berlin who each in different ways offer ahistorical and even ontological views on antisemitism that are mostly shunned by contemporary writing on the subject and suggest that Afropessimism offers a helpful way to see beyond the historical veil of how antisemitism is understood today.

In the context of theological interpretations of disabilities, I am arguing for the concept of “strength in weakness.” So far, a “theology of weakness,” which portrays people with disabilities as pointedly illustrating universal human weakness, has played a very prominent role in the field. I argue that this theological interpretation of disabilities should not be the dominant one. I trace the alternative model of “strength in weakness” in discussing writings by the apostle Paul and describe how it is supported by the anthropological concept of intercorporeality. Yet first, the article discusses Stanley Hauerwas’s theology of disability, which is not only a very pointed theology of weakness but also repeatedly associates disabilities with suffering. Since at least the latter aspect is in contrast with widespread self-perceptions among people with disabilities, a theology of weakness amounts to a “narrative prosthesis” (David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder). By contrast, Paul suggests that weakness can allow for distinct strengths. To flesh out distinctive competences of people with intellectual disabilities, I then discuss Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s concept of intercorporeality. Intercorporeality denotes a human competence more generally, but I suggest that it is often partly eclipsed by social norms. However, people with intellectual disabilities often pay less attention to social norms, which helps explain a distinctive intercorporeal competence among people with intellectual disabilities. Reduced attention to social norms can imply a distinctive strength.