Genesis 9:20–27 raises difficult exegetical questions, such as why Noah curses Canaan rather than Ham in 9:25–27. Additionally, the text has an infamous history of providing a popular defense of slavery in Africa and the United States. Some African American interpreters have argued that Noah’s curse should not be understood as divinely sanctioned words because Noah is still under the influence of alcohol when he speaks. Linking Noah’s actions in Gen 9:20–24 with his words in 9:25–27, these interpreters attend to the literary context of Noah’s speech while also combatting one of the most noxious uses of the Bible in recent centuries. This article adds exegetical support to this approach, demonstrating how this interpretation avoids the pitfalls of other treatments while working exceptionally well on a literary level with the passage itself. All of Noah’s behaviors in 9:21–27 align with clinical descriptions of alcohol intoxication.

Contrary to the enduring image of Israelite priests as enveloped in an aura of serene sanctity, there is a darker side of the priesthood––one which associates its members and their ancestors with disturbing acts of interpersonal violence. The motif of priestly violence is a significant, albeit overlooked literary trope in the Hebrew Bible and post-biblical Jewish literature. This article identifies this motif and episodes in its reception, demonstrating how it relates to human sacrifice and the slaughter of animals in the sacrificial cult, and illuminating these connections with contemporary theories of religious and workplace violence. Finally, this study makes clear that certain negative portrayals of the priesthood are part-and-parcel of the Jewish interpretive tradition and should not be reflexively dismissed as reflective of anti-clericalism or anti-ritualism.

The story of Mary and Martha is a “text of terror” for women and the mentally disabled, elevating Martha as emblematic of the spiritual failure of the anxious woman. While scholarship has focused upon the precise nature of Martha’s work, this article argues that whether Martha was in the kitchen or doing ministry, she was doing servile labor and incurring the “slavish” worry associated with such work. Attention to the socio-economic context of Martha’s worry recenters the labor dispute that is at the heart of this short passage. Rather than naturalizing ancient norms about worry or continuing to use the disabled body as something to “think with,” this article contextualizes Martha’s “worry and distraction,” demonstrating the ties between the female body, worry, anxiety, and enslaved labor in antiquity. Martha’s worry is a disability that is manufactured by unjust labor structures that purposefully assign worry to some bodies and not others.

Exodus 2:1–10 has been thoroughly analyzed from a feminist perspective. This is appropriate because women play a significant role in the story. However, it is important to note that these female characters are not only defined by gender but also by ethnicity and social status. Combining analyses of ethnicity, gender, and class, this article demonstrates how the female figures in Exod 2:1–10 ignore, challenge, and subvert the polarizations established in Exod 1:8–22 by the Egyptian king. Exodus 2:1–10 can even be read as an example of cross-ethnic, cross-class, and cross-generational solidarity against a despotic regime that marginalizes and oppresses by using marks of differences. However, upon closer analysis it becomes evident that the female figures’ interactions are also determined by an unequal power dynamic. The article demonstrates how examining differences in gender, ethnicity, and class provides a nuanced understanding of power relations within biblical texts.

The original beliefs of Uyghurs, who were known for their conversions to Manichaeism and Buddhism, have not been examined in detail until now. Uyghur inscriptions as well as Chinese and Islamic sources provide some information regarding these beliefs. Historical sources indicate that they believed in a variety of celestial and natural cults, the most prominent being Täŋri, the god of sky. Cults devoted to other natural and celestial beings included earth, mountains, trees, sun, moon, and fire. The words Täŋri and Täŋrikän were also used for other beings, reflecting flexibility in their beliefs. Although some scholars thought that Buddhism was practiced prior to the official conversion to Manichaeism in the 760s, this article demonstrates that this is hardly the case and shows how these ancient cults survived even after their conversions to major religions.

This article re-thinks the development of Paul’s thought between 1 and 2 Corinthians. Instead of the traditional developmental interpretation of Paul that emphasizes the differences between 1 Cor 15:35–57 and 2 Cor 5:1–5, I argue that a discernable development is to be found between 1 Cor 12:13 and 2 Cor 4:7–12. I demonstrate significant parallels between the two latter texts in terms of topic, argumentation, and the conceptual structure on which Paul’s argumentation is built. Based on the parallels, I argue that 1 Cor 12:13 conceptually allows for the innovative idea of “ongoing transformation,” which is formulated in 2 Cor 3:18, and provides the conceptual structure of “double body-containers” in 2 Cor 4:7–12 to expound this new idea. In the context of 2 Corinthians, responding to opponents’ challenge against the apostle’s physical weakness in sufferings, Paul goes on to develop the idea of ongoing transformation further by transforming mortality. Mortality becomes a form of human participation in God’s cosmic war and is considered constructive to the ongoing transformation of the inner person and the complete transformation in the future.

In a famous essay, Michel Foucault introduced the term “author-function” into scholarly discourse, and later scholars of authorship in antiquity have applied the term in different ways to different concepts. Some scholars center the notion of authorship around authority, while others look to the notion of authorizing a work as a finished literary work. This article seeks to retrieve a suggestion in Foucault’s essay that the author-function can fruitfully be understood under the notion of Foucault’s French term appropriation, that is, making something belong to a person, for purposes of punishment or praise. This article applies all three notions of the author-function in scholarly use to the complex testimonium on the authorship of the Gospel of Mark by Papias in Eusebius, Church History 3.39.15, and concludes that Foucault’s own construal of his term explains best the intricacies of this ancient statement of gospel authorship.

Dorotheos of Gaza (6th cent.) was a monastic leader whose works, along with the correspondence of his mentors, Barsanuphios (d. after 543) and John of Gaza (d. 543), provide insight into the Second Origenist Controversy and the tenor of theological investigation at a key juncture in late antiquity. The evidence of Dorotheos, who several times cites Evagrios by name, has been noted but its significance not yet fully appreciated. This essay reassesses Dorotheos’s theology and Gazan monastic culture through study of his eschatology in Instruction 12, in context of which the Evagrian passages appear, and which he develops from Origen’s On First Principles. Analysis of Dorotheos’s modifications and developing ideas suggests a more vigorous—indeed, “Origenist”—theological life in Gazan monasticism than has been recognized and calls for a new perspective on the effects of the Second Origenist Controversy as well as Dorotheos’s own position relative to it.

This article reconsiders the sixteenth-century Idealist Neo-Confucian philosophy of Wang Yangming (1472–1529) in light of the development of twentieth-century Latin American liberation theology. After defining liberation theology, this study identifies the crucial contributions made to it by Emmanuel Levinas’s assertion of the primacy of ethics over ontology and critique of the egocentric nature of Western philosophy. It then delineates the epistemological and deontological criticisms made of Roman Catholic orthodoxy—and institutionalized Christianity in general—by Latin American liberation theologians, particularly Enrique Dussel and José Porfirio Miranda. These are compared with Wang’s critique of the Rationalist Neo-Confucianism that had been official orthodoxy and the legitimating philosophy for imperial China for three centuries. The study finds that Wang’s Idealist philosophy incorporates epistemological, spiritual, and ethical perspectives with powerful democratic and liberationist elements that prefigure the development of late-twentieth-century Latin American liberation theology. Thus, contrary to the conventional view of Confucianism as a conservative philosophy, these elements in Wang’s Neo-Confucianism render it a theology (or philosophy) of liberation.

Scholars have long maintained that Irenaeus rejected the use of Hellenic resources in Christian theology. While recent decades have seen better recognition of Irenaeus’ philosophical and rhetorical knowledge, Irenaeus’ use of poetic literature, especially Homer, has received little attention. The present article rectifies this deficiency. First, it defines the role of Homeric material in Irenaeus’ broader theological project. Then, studying Irenaeus’ use of a unique Homeric word, proprocylindomene (Haer. 1.11.4), it demonstrates that Irenaeus appropriates Homer to his theological project with the facility that Quintilian associates with a practiced and skillful rhetorician. In light of this, the article concludes by contending that Irenaeus likely composed the Homeric cento in Haer. 1.9.4 himself. If this is the case, Haer. 1.9.4 constitutes perhaps Irenaeus’ most skillful appropriation of Homer to his theological project. It best illustrates how for Irenaeus the poet could be used in a Christian theological project.

The famous account in the Historia Augusta of Severus Alexander’s lararium, which contained an image of Christ alongside other figures including Apollonius of Tyana, Vergil, Orpheus, and Achilles, has long been accepted with insufficient discernment and dubious judgment. The present article challenges this ongoing scholarly trend, suggesting that the story should be rejected not only as history but even as a plausible fiction. In defense of this position, both literary and archeological evidence is presented and considered. Ultimately, in line with the basic orientation of modern HA scholarship, the whole tradition is suggested to be understood best as a fictive expression of “innovative traditionalism,” i.e. part of the late fourth-century polytheistic author’s fanciful yet culturally conservative reaction to the ascendant Christian culture of the post-Theodosian world.

The present article seeks to further the distinctive participatory picture of Calvin through an engagement with the prelapsarian contours of his anthropology and their oft-overlooked importance for the theme of participation that is uniquely found in his thought. The interpretive argument that emerges is that Calvin’s prelapsarian understanding of participation not only necessitated mediation by Christ in a (perhaps unexpectedly) dynamic way but was also synergistic in shape (especially when considered “preceptively” as opposed to “decretively”). Calvin’s postlapsarian understanding of participation will be shown to have adaptively retained its originally dynamic mediatorial aspects through a pivotal shift towards monergism that was brought about by humanity’s fall into sin. Taken together, it will be concluded that Calvin’s prelapsarian assumptions surrounding participation not only undergirded and bolstered the monergistic postlapsarian participatory account of salvation that he is more typically known for but also provides a previously unconsidered angle deserving of conversation.

Scholars have long noted the prevalence of exile as a theme in John Calvin’s theology, which responded to times unsettled by religious persecution and migration. However, research has only begun to describe with precision how Calvin portrayed exile. This article examines the theme in Calvin’s biblical exegesis, demonstrating how his commentaries and sermons problematize exile by establishing two requirements for faithfulness from the exilic experiences of Abraham and David: 1) open confrontation with idolatry; and 2) the pursuit of sacramental nurture. In both cases, the reformer’s exegesis is notable for reflexively invoking Nicodemism, persistently deploying Abraham and David as counterexamples against this contemporary problem. This intersection of crypto-religion and exile, considered spiritually and politically, displays how context drove Calvin’s exegesis toward readings distinctive in the history of interpretation. It also sharpens exile’s polemical potential as a differentiated category Calvin used to encourage the community of believers while disciplining its behavior.

Mark Noll recognized that “the most comprehensive defense of female activity in public life came from Sarah Grimké.” Claudia Setzer lauded Grimké’s Letters, as “the first sustained analysis of women’s rights stemming from biblical and theological argument to be written by an American.” Scholars have studied her use of the Bible, including her critique of translations, but none has detailed Grimké’s use of the influential whole-volume commentaries of Matthew Henry, Thomas Scott, and Adam Clarke. This article documents her citations, critiques, and editing of those commentaries through selection, interruption, omission, and paraphrase. It focuses upon her thirteenth and fourteenth letters, in which Grimké interpreted Acts 2:1–4, 1 Cor 11:4–5 and 14:34–35, and 1 Tim 2:8–12. By studying her critical engagement with commentaries, we demonstrate the veracity of Grimké’s contention that women “shall produce some various readings of the Bible a little different from those we now have.”

The intersections of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism are well known, but scholars tend to treat each as largely independent from the others, at least after some initial point of origin. We seek rather to emphasize their ongoing inter-dependence and demonstrate the implications for both historical and theological work. Christianity, Islam, and Judaism have continuously formed, re-formed, and transformed themselves by interacting with or thinking about one another. That co-production, in all the ambivalence it entails, has shaped not only the rituals and teachings of these traditions but also some of our most enduring forms of prejudice as well as the conceptual tools with which we undertake the study of these religions. After first offering a definition of religious co-production, we then give an example, in the monk Sergius-Baḥīrā, of what historical and theological insights a methodology of co-production can yield. Finally, we offer an exploration of the critical and constructive potentials of that insight, gesturing toward the possibility of both a history and a theology of co-production.

In The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) John Bunyan describes the Flatterer as a “man black of flesh.” This depiction sets the course for the reception and adaptation of his work as a spiritual classic to enact, perpetuate, and even deepen a racist vision. Alternatively, theological awareness of racism and racialization finds expression in critique and correction. The history of the illustration of the Flatterer raises particularly acute questions. Bunyan’s own scripturally informed concern for monuments allows illustrated adaptations, such as Little Pilgrim’s Progress, to be brought into conversation with Ryan Newson’s theological treatment of confederate monuments. Given that so many adaptations of The Pilgrim’s Progress come from within evangelicalism, both racist and racially aware representations of Bunyan’s work are weighed in light of Vincent Bacote’s race-centered, constructive critique of evangelical theology.

Emmanuel Levinas’s philosophy of absolute transcendence has been criticized for defeating any possibility of relationship to the divine as Other. Such critiques restage central theological trends that rely on analogy as opening just such an avenue to the divine. Aquinas proposes analogy in his own criticism of Maimonides’ negative theology of God as beyond any likeness, in ways similar to arguments leveled against Levinas. Levinas, however, proposes a language model, which also illuminates Maimonides’ own language discourses, as a way to allow relationship while sustaining distinction from transcendence. Through language, the divine is addressed while respecting absolute Otherness, in a move away from ontology to ethics.