Did adultery mandate divorce? A reassessment of Jesus' divorce logia

This paper argues that Matthew's so-called exception clauses to the prohibition of divorce (5.32; 19.9) make explicit what was already implicit in versions without them: that adultery required divorce. While biblical law required death for adulterers or expected it as a result of the ordeal of the suspected wife, the issue of divorce arose where communities no longer had capital rights and where guilt was not in question. Matthew's nativity story, the norms of Greek and Roman culture, notions of the defiled wife (Deut 24.1-4) and the use of Gen 2.24 to indicate permanent joining give plausibility to the thesis

Beyond the Shade of the Oak Tree: The Recent Growth of Johannine Studies

The recent growth within Johannine studies has developed as a result of several factors. First, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls led to an appreciation of the Jewishness of John’s origin. Second, new approaches to John’s composition have emerged, followed by a larger set of inquiries as to the Johannine tradition’s relation to parallel traditions. This has been accompanied by a fourth interest: the history of the Johannine situation. Fifth, new literary studies have posed new horizons for interpretation, and sixth, theories continue to abound on the identity of the Beloved Disciple. A seventh development involves new ways of conceiving John’s theological features, leading to an eighth: reconsidering John’s historical features and re-envisioning its historical contributions in new perspective

Dissent and disparagement: Dealing with conflict and the pain of rejection in John

This article addressed the issue of how the author of the Gospel according to John portrayed dissent, in particular, how the author had his protagonists respond to the experience of rejection by those typically designated as ‘the Jews’. Research thus far has usually focused on the identity of the dissenters but rarely on the way dissent was handled. This article’s aim was to examine the range of responses to dissent. It employed a sequential reading of the text to identify the various responses and then brought these findings into comparison with the way dissent was handled in related documents of the time, Matthew and Hebrews. It found that responses included not only argument and blame, including threat of divine wrath but also, beyond these, ad hominem allegations that those who dissent were inherently bad or beholden to the devil or had not been predestined or chosen by God to respond. Such categories were, however, not absolute, because the author assumed that people could choose to respond positively and so move from one apparently fixed and predetermined category to another. They served a rhetorical function. A further ploy was to reduce Israel’s tradition to witness and foreshadowing within the tension of asserting both continuity and discontinuity

Jesus' attitude towards the law: A study of the gospels

In the present study I am concerned with Jesus' attitude towards Torah as it is presented in the gospels. The aim is not to homogenise disparate material into a single picture, but to consider the various ways in which each individual gospel depicts this attitude. This aim belongs within a broader interest which includes the traditions which lie behind the gospels and, ultimately, what we can retrieve about the attitude of the historical Jesus himself. But these are not the subject of the present investigation. Its ficus is on the gospels themselves. Each portrays, directly or indirectly, an image of Jesus' attitude towards Torah..

Sexuality and Ptolemy’s Greek Bible: Genesis 1-3 In Translation: ‘... Things Which They Altered For King Ptolemy’ (Genesis Rabbah 8.11)

The 'King Ptolemy' referred to in this early fifth century rabbinic commentary on Genesis is Ptolemy II Philadelphus (reign: 283-46 B.C.E). 'The things which they altered for King Ptolemy' alludes to instances where the Greek translation differs from the acknowledged Hebrew text..

Book review: No Longer Living as the Gentiles: Differentiation and Shared Ethical Values In Ephesians 4.17– 6.9 Darko, Daniel K. New York: T&T Clark, 2008 pp. x + 160. $130.00

This work is a revision of a thesis presented to the University of London in 2006. In it the author, Daniel K. Darko, Adjunct Professor at the University of Scranton, seeks to address a tension that he detects in scholarship on Ephesians between treatments of 4:17– 5:21 and 5:21–6:9. Chapter 1 explores that tension. Whereas most scholars see the former as sharply differentiating the community from outsiders, variously understood as reflecting ethical concern or social withdrawal, the most common interpretation of the household code sees it serving to enhance the community’s relation with its world, either by enabling it to adapt to community norms or apologetically to display that its own communities are in no way disruptive of what people considered good and orderly. The rest of chapter 1 deals with methods. They include textual analysis, comparative analysis of the text with Greco-Roman and Jewish moralists of the time, and social identity theory, a carefully nuanced discussion identifying current approaches and their applicability. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of authorship, destination, and the relationship between Ephesians and Colossians in which Darko inclines toward Pauline authorship, sees the letter addressing some concrete situation in Asia Minor, and indicates that he will view Ephesians in its own right and not through the lens of Colossians..

The Septuagint, sexuality, and the New Testament: Case studies on the impact of the LXX in Philo and the New Testament

This fascinating book by William Loader shows how the Septuagint created new slants and emphasis on sexuality and explores how they leave their mark in the writings of Philo and the New Testament. Loaderbs useful motif in this study is that bsome things are lost in translation, others gained.b The Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures could not help but result in verbal connections, lost emphases, and novel word plays that ultimately opened the door to new interpretations. One particularly important instance of this effect of translation is the Septuagintbs treatment of sexuality. In the course of his book Loader explores sexuality as it is presented in the Decalogue, the stories of Creation and the Garden of Eden, and the brief reference to divorce in Deuteronomy 24. He looks at each of these three samples in three stages: its Septuagint translation, its use in Philo, and then its possible impact in the New Testament. As an example, Philo makes much of the fact that in his scriptures, as in most early Septuagint texts, adultery heads the list of sins on the second table of the Law, and such changes in turn impacted the New Testament writings. Loader also shows how the Septuagint version of the Creation stories opens the possibility of framing male-female relations in several ways and how the Eden narratives allow for conjuring women as faulty creations or understanding Eve as seduced by the serpent. Such possibilities find fruitful soil in Philo, but also take root in such writers as Paul

'The passion of the christ' and the suffering of jesus: A reflection on Mel Gibson's film

What would it be like to have a camera trained on a session of torture or on the last days of a child dying of starvation or on the events of brutality inflicted on a murder victim? Why does that not make good television? Perhaps with reality TV it would..

Attitudes towards sexuality in Qumran and related literature - And the new testament

Investigation of attitudes towards sexuality in Qumran and related literature shows that the myth of the Watchers served as an aetiology of wrongdoing, but not of sexual wrongdoing in particular as one might have expected, nor as its paradigm. Intermarriage was a major concern, although conflicts over sexual wrongdoing which feature in early sectarian writings disappear in what appear to be later ones. Extensions to holy space and time produce greater restrictions on sexual relations, but without disparaging them in proper space and time. Eschatology which leaves no space for sex created challenges for defending its place in the interim

Book review: Jesus' Emotions in the Fourth Gospel: Human or Divine? Voorwinde, Stephen London: T&T Clark, 2005 pp. xiii + 344. $140.00

This slightly revised doctoral thesis, completed in 2003 for the Australian College of Theology under Rikki Watts and Johan Ferreira, sets out to make a contribution to the discussion of Johannine Christology by examining the references to Jesus’ emotions in the Fourth Gospel. The thesis opens with a brie f description of “the current debate.” The author identifies three major positions: Jesus as “merely human,” attributed to Rudolf Bultmann (6–9); Jesus as “only divine,” attributed to Ernst Käsemann (9–11); and Jesus as “both human and divine,” represented by Rudolf Schnackenburg (11–13). The titles are unfortunately simplistic, but the actual discussion more differentiating. It is sufficient to establish the relevance of embarking on a study of the “emotions” of Jesus, but not for a more detailed engagement of the issues that the work promises..