Review of Jason A. Whitlark, Resisting Empire: Rethinking the Purpose of the Letter to “the Hebrews” (LNTS 484; London: Bloomsbury, 2014), x + 232pp. (original) (raw)
Related papers
Religious Studies Review, 2012
Jerusalem to Rome is marked by a series of turf battles between the apostles and representatives of Hellenistic religious practices." Whether a clash with sorcerers at Samaria (Acts 8) or Paphos (Acts 13), pagan prophets at Philippi (Acts 16), or powerful brokers of the cult of Artemis at Ephesus (Acts 19), early Christian messengers required both familiarity with and necessary tools for confrontation with these varied beliefs and practices. Such narratives also echo countless pastoral warnings by Peter, John, and Paul concerning the former lives of believers who "had turned from idols to serve. .. God" (1 Thess. 1:9). Johnson exhibits disappointment with a long-standing scholarly tradition that gives minimal attention to the role of first century "pagan" religion or adheres to old and artificial structures that merely regionalize Judaism and Greco-Roman culture. To counter, Johnson identifies four pervasive religious domains. Seekers typically pursue salvation for personal benefits, moral transformation, transcendent experience, and/or societal stabilization. Each "type" shares various fundamental quests, yet interacts and competes with core dynamics of Christianity. This outstanding volume should become the standard for customary graduate/seminary courses on NT backgrounds. (Johnson includes over one hundred pages of footnotes filled with invaluable primary sources.) Finally, Johnson suggests proponents of contemporary Christian advancement require similar breadth for engagement of present-day religions; perhaps a more careful reading of the NT will encourage readers to better understand and wrestle with the complexities of our contemporary mosaic of global religions.
2018
One area of study that received a newfound level of attention during the twentieth century’s Liturgical Movement was the relationship between the Bible and liturgy. The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum concilium, highlights the importance and centrality of this relationship, declaring that “[s]acred scripture is of the greatest importance in the celebration of the liturgy” (SC 24). The broad movements of ressourcement and la nouvelle théologie, particularly figures such as Jean Daniélou and Henri de Lubac, emphasized the deep unity between Scripture and the very text of liturgical rites and argued that the liturgy is an expression of spiritual exegesis (whether it is called “typology” or “allegory”). What did not figure in these studies was a specific demonstration of these broad claims through the study of particular liturgical texts. This dissertation seeks to fill that lacuna through a study of one liturgical text—the Roman Canon Missae—and the enormous influence of one specific book of the Bible on its textual development: the Epistle to the Hebrews. A significant motivation for this research is a concern to demonstrate how this new scriptural avenue of inquiry can provide an additional source of rich material to liturgical scholars for any liturgical text, not just the Roman Canon. My approach situates this exploration of the ways Hebrews was used as a source within the broader orbit of the emergence and development of the text of the Roman Canon in order to demonstrate that attention to the place of Scripture, or even a single biblical book, can radically enrich the search for the origin and early evolution of liturgical rites. This new methodology includes a detailed proposal for a way to categorize the ways in which a liturgical text can utilize Scripture as a source. Most of the unique features of the Roman Canon—including its unique institution narrative, emphasis on sacrifice, repeated requests for the Father’s merciful acceptance of the sacrificial offering, the use of the phrase sacrificium laudis as a way to name and describe the eucharistic sacrifice, centrality of Melchizedek’s sacrifice in conjunction with those of Abel and Abraham, and the essential structure and content of the anaphora’s doxology—have their origin in the Epistle to the Hebrews. [Submitted; defense is March 21, 2018]
2019 Early Jewish Biblical Scholarship and the Pagan World
Knowledge and Profanation: Transgressing the Boundaries of Religion in Premodern Scholarship, 2019
Essay examines pagan commentary on the Hebrew Bible and some interpretive practices and hermeneutic assumptions common to early rabbinic midrash and contemporary pagan commentary to Homer.
articles focus on Paul, one on the importance of mimesis for the NT and another offering a political reading of Ephesians. Finally, the Revelation of John and the importance of an exilic setting are addressed. Section 2 includes a range of topics from ,citation practices in Luke-Acts to the genre of the Didache. The second volume explores the connections between Hellenistic Judaism and early Christianity. There is a vast array of topics within the first section on social contexts ranging from a discussion of canon, the figure of Herod the Great, covenantal nomism, resurrection, the connection between the Spirit and early Christology, and the ethnic context of Paul's letters. Section 2 addresses the literary enrironment and offers comparisons with Second Temple Jewish literature including Qumran, Wisdom of Solomon, and Josephus. Finally, the volume concludes with a reflection on Torah instruction and prophecy in first-century synagogues and fragments from a Jewish-Christian dialogue. Both volumes offer a valuable contribution to our understanding of the social world(s) of early Christianity. The emphasis in the first volume on the importance of microrhetoric for the understanding of the NT is notable, and the articles that use rhetorical strategies are particularly strong. Exceptional in the second volume is the excellent article on ethnic language in Paul's letters and the importance of ethnic interpretation as a new avenue for interpretation. The articles are easily accessible and should appeal to a wide range of interests. As with many edited volumes, the value of these works will vary depending on the reader's interests and focus.
2009
Introduction: Who were the victims of the fiscus Judaicus under Domitian?__________________________________1 Part I. The Roman Perspective: FISCUS JUDAICUS____ 7 1. The introduction of the Jewish tax by Vespasian and its general history________________________________________________ 9 1.1. Introduction________________________________________ 9 1.2. The epigraphic sources from Egypt (first and second century)___________________________________________ 1.3. Later evidence______________________________________ 1.4. The role of the synagogue_____________________________ 2. Domitian's 'harsh' administration of the fiscus Judaicus______ 2.1. Introduction________________________________________ 2.2. Finance under Domitian_______________________________ 2.3. The administration of the fiscus Judaicus under Domitian____ 2.4. Victims of the fiscus Judaicus under Domitian_____________ 2.5. Conclusion_________________________________________ 3. Nerva's reform of the fiscus Judaicus_______________________ 3.1. Introduction________________________________________ 3.2. FISCI IVDAICI CALVMNIA SVBLATA__________________ 3.3. IMP NERVA CAES AVG P M TR P COS II PP____________ 3.4. Conclusion_________________________________________ 4. Christians: their crimes and punishments from Nero to Domitian____________________________________________ 4.1. Introduction________________________________________ 4.2. The persecution under Nero___________________________ 4.3. 1 Peter____________________________________________ 102 4.4. The persecution under Domitian________________________ 108 ii Part II. The Further New Testament Perspective: Revelation, the Letter to the Hebrews and the Gospel of John___________________________________________ 113 5. Revelation and the fiscus Judaicus________________________ 5.1. Introduction________________________________________ 5.2. Date of Revelation__________________________________ 5.3. Persecution________________________________________ 5.4. The letters to the seven churches_______________________ 5.5. The 144 000 and the innumerable multitude______________ 5.6. Conclusion________________________________________ 6. Letter to the Hebrews: Jewish Christians and the fiscus Judaicus_________________________________________ 6.1. Introduction________________________________________ 6.2. Genre and general content____________________________ 6.3. Date of Hebrews____________________________________ 6.4. Addressees and place of origin_________________________ 6.5. Purpose___________________________________________ 6.6. Conclusion________________________________________ 7. The issue of Jewish identity: fiscus Judaicus, birkat ha-minim and the Gospel of John ___________________ 7.1. Introduction________________________________________ 7.2. The administration of the fiscus Judaicus under Domitian___ 7.3. The issue of the minim (heretics) under Gamaliel II_________ 7.4. The reform of the fiscus Judaicus under Nerva____________ 7.5. The consequences of these developments in the Gospel of John____________________________________________ 7.6. Conclusion________________________________________ 8. Parting of the Ways____________________________________ 8.1. Introduction________________________________________ 8.2. A survey of the debate_______________________________ 8.3. The formal break in 96 CE and beyond___________________ 8.4. Concluding and final remarks__________________________ Bibliography________________________________________ Nederlandse samenvatting (Dutch summary)_____________ Index of Ancient Sources______________________________ 261 Index of Modern Authors______________________________271 iv committee as well. I also thank Prof. Bremmer for his general comment and his sharing of his expertise on the Acts of John. Furthermore, I would like to thank Dr. Gabriella Gelardini (Basel), who took the time to read my chapter on the Letter to the Hebrews and discuss this with me, which was very helpful. I would also like to express my gratitude to Karin Neutel, Henk van Putten, Birgit van der Lans and Kees van Dorp, all fellow (PhD-)students, for our conversations, reading sessions and lunches. They will always be among my best memories of this period. Furthermore, I would like to thank family, friends, fellow members of the 'Leerhuis Hoogeveen', colleagues and business partners, who often inquired about my progress and showed a real interest in the subject. And, referring to the latter (colleagues and business partners), perhaps my daily dealings with legal and fiscal matters in my part-time position as corporate insurance manager of a Dutch multinational corporation, also made me sensitive to the importance of issues of a similar nature at the end of the first century. Last, but certainly not least, I am grateful to my parents for their love, interest and support over many years and in particular to my wife Arine, my sons David and Hans, and my daughter Qian for their invaluable love and the necessary distraction from more serious matters that they provided.
ANNALI di STORIA dell'ESEGESI 39/1, 2022
[B.E. Bruning: The following abstract is not part of the article in ASE; but the article has become even more timely, sadly, because of the rapid increase in antisemitic rhetoric and actions that have often been "justified" with reference to Rev 2:9, 3:9 in the time since we submitted the article--not to mention since I delivered my own early version of it at the 2018 Midwest SBL session chaired by Edmondo Lupieri, whose encouragement and suggestions were invaluable.] A notorious phrase in Rev 2:9, 3:9 describes rival groups to the Smyrnan and Philadelphian addressees. The rival groups are "of Satan," whose power throughout Revelation is portrayed and parodied as counterfeit to heavenly order, and the constituents of these groups are themselves frauds, "claiming to be Judeans but lying." Nearly two decades after David Frankfurter suggested reading John's rivalries apart from the imprecise and anachronistic category of Christianity, few scholars seem to have understood, and fewer follow, his reasonable suggestion that John is rejecting non-Jews claiming to be Jews because they are Jesus-followers--and doing so in language strikingly similar to Paul's problem with non-Jews claiming to be Jews for the same reason (Rom 2:17). Yet Frankfurter's Paul condones (ex-)pagan practices that his John condemns; Frankfurter seeks the root of these disputed allowances in 1 Corinthians and thus leaves unexplored what might distinguish "Pauline" from "neo-Pauline" opponents for John and his communities. In the decades since Frankfurter's proposal of a polemic against "Pauline or neo-Pauline gentiles," Pauline scholarship now suggests a Paul who, despite different contexts and conditions, may have more in common with John's gentile problem, whereas both Paul and John contrast with "neo-Pauline" developments that could account for John's polemic. Reading John "within Judaism" along with recent Pauline studies, and apart from a parting- or parted-ways metanarrative of Christian origins, holds promise for understanding John, his addressees, and their rivals in their own contexts--at least in the context of John's rhetoric. Polemic against not Paul but certain "neo-Pauline" developments, along with other heuristic recommendations, may point toward a corrective to a malignant misinterpretation of these verses and to Revelation as a whole.