Pub Date : 2022-01-27DOI: 10.15699/jbl.1404.2021.6
Elizabeth M. Schrader, Joanna E. Taylor
Abstract:While it is common today to refer to Jesus's disciple Μαρία[μ] ἡ Μαγδαληνή as Mary "of Magdala," with Magdala identified as a Galilean city named Tarichaea, what do our earliest Christian sources actually indicate about the meaning of this woman's name? Examination of the Gospel of Luke, Origen, Eusebius, Macarius Magnes, and Jerome, as well as evidence in hagiography, pilgrimage, and diverse literature, reveals multiple ways that the epithet ἡ Μαγδαληνή can be understood. While Mary sometimes was believed to come from a place called "Magdala" or "Magdalene," the assumption was that it was a small and obscure village, its location unspecified or unknown. Given the widespread understanding that Mary Magdalene was the sister of Martha, it could even be equated with Bethany. However, Jerome thought that the epithet was a reward for Mary's faith and actions, not something indicative of provenance: Mary "of the Tower." No early Christian author identifies a city (Tarichaea) called "Magdala" by the Sea of Galilee, even when they knew the area well. A pilgrim site on ancient ruins, established as "Magdala" by the mid-sixth century, was visited by Christians at least into the fourteenth century, and thus the name is remembered today. In view of the earlier evidence of Origen and Jerome, however, the term ἡ Μαγδαληνή may be based on an underlying Aramaic word meaning "the magnified one" or "tower-ess," and is therefore best lefft untranslated.
{"title":"The Meaning of \"Magdalene\": A Review of Literary Evidence","authors":"Elizabeth M. Schrader, Joanna E. Taylor","doi":"10.15699/jbl.1404.2021.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15699/jbl.1404.2021.6","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:While it is common today to refer to Jesus's disciple Μαρία[μ] ἡ Μαγδαληνή as Mary \"of Magdala,\" with Magdala identified as a Galilean city named Tarichaea, what do our earliest Christian sources actually indicate about the meaning of this woman's name? Examination of the Gospel of Luke, Origen, Eusebius, Macarius Magnes, and Jerome, as well as evidence in hagiography, pilgrimage, and diverse literature, reveals multiple ways that the epithet ἡ Μαγδαληνή can be understood. While Mary sometimes was believed to come from a place called \"Magdala\" or \"Magdalene,\" the assumption was that it was a small and obscure village, its location unspecified or unknown. Given the widespread understanding that Mary Magdalene was the sister of Martha, it could even be equated with Bethany. However, Jerome thought that the epithet was a reward for Mary's faith and actions, not something indicative of provenance: Mary \"of the Tower.\" No early Christian author identifies a city (Tarichaea) called \"Magdala\" by the Sea of Galilee, even when they knew the area well. A pilgrim site on ancient ruins, established as \"Magdala\" by the mid-sixth century, was visited by Christians at least into the fourteenth century, and thus the name is remembered today. In view of the earlier evidence of Origen and Jerome, however, the term ἡ Μαγδαληνή may be based on an underlying Aramaic word meaning \"the magnified one\" or \"tower-ess,\" and is therefore best lefft untranslated.","PeriodicalId":15251,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Biblical Literature","volume":"140 1","pages":"751 - 773"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44752790","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-27DOI: 10.15699/jbl.1404.2021.10
Rhiannon Graybill
Many feminist conversations about the ethics of citation begin by asking, Where are all the women? Sometimes this question is an innocent inquiry, but more frequently it signals suspicion, frustration, or doubt. Often, there is work written by women or nonbinary scholars on the topic at hand; it is simply not included.1 Frustration about the issue is well earned: our erasure is common enough to have spawned its own nomenclature; thus manel (an all-male panel) and manthology (ditto, but an edited volume) have entered the lexicon.2 Where are all the women? offers a concise way of summing up these dynamics, as well as making absence visible. It is a simple, necessary question to put to texts and their authors, and one that feminist scholarship has begun to ask with increasing frequency. This, in turn, broaches the larger issue of what citation does—what it does now, and what it can do, when we take it seriously as a feminist practice. Building on the work of my feminist colleagues who have asked, Where are all the women?, and have used this inquiry to gather data, excoriate bias, and demand new ways of doing scholarship,3 I want to explore the broader possibilities of a
{"title":"Where Are All the Women?","authors":"Rhiannon Graybill","doi":"10.15699/jbl.1404.2021.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15699/jbl.1404.2021.10","url":null,"abstract":"Many feminist conversations about the ethics of citation begin by asking, Where are all the women? Sometimes this question is an innocent inquiry, but more frequently it signals suspicion, frustration, or doubt. Often, there is work written by women or nonbinary scholars on the topic at hand; it is simply not included.1 Frustration about the issue is well earned: our erasure is common enough to have spawned its own nomenclature; thus manel (an all-male panel) and manthology (ditto, but an edited volume) have entered the lexicon.2 Where are all the women? offers a concise way of summing up these dynamics, as well as making absence visible. It is a simple, necessary question to put to texts and their authors, and one that feminist scholarship has begun to ask with increasing frequency. This, in turn, broaches the larger issue of what citation does—what it does now, and what it can do, when we take it seriously as a feminist practice. Building on the work of my feminist colleagues who have asked, Where are all the women?, and have used this inquiry to gather data, excoriate bias, and demand new ways of doing scholarship,3 I want to explore the broader possibilities of a","PeriodicalId":15251,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Biblical Literature","volume":"140 1","pages":"826 - 830"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43214999","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-27DOI: 10.15699/jbl.1404.2021.12
W. Jennings
Biblical scholars lack nothing. They have everything the modern academy requires. They have objects of study, texts. They have diverse and dazzling methods of study for their objects. They perform objectivity, thereby exhibiting the proper distance from their objects of study. They are, in effect, scientists (without lab coats) engaged in the work of producing new knowledge through deciphering and adjudicating between various and oftentimes warring interpretations of their objects. All of us in the humanities are textualists of one sort or another, but biblical scholars are first-order textualists, fused to an immediacy with their objects that positions them between archaeologists, on the one hand, and historians, on the other hand, with linguists in the dead center. Biblical scholars reign in the world of religious studies as our epistemic emperors, positioned at the very fount of all our work. They carry ancient claim given that theological studies began (and some would say ends) in biblical study. Yet they also carry pride of place in the configurations and constellations of knowledge(s) in the modern academy. They have chameleon power to position themselves along the continuum from hard scientists to literary theorists, from ethicists and social theorists to writers and poets. Their epistemic supremacy is not by accident. It grows out of the way textual study functions in modernity, as both a practice of retrieval and extraction and a practice of conceptual framing and cognitive mapping. Yet that supremacy also grows out of the formative accomplishment of cultivating white masculinist selfsufficient intellectual form. White male self-sufficiency has been a governing image for formation and intellectual development in the Western world since the beginning of colonial modernity.1 That image, embedded in the pedagogical imagination
{"title":"Renouncing Completeness: The Rich Ruler and the Possibilities of Biblical Scholarship without White Masculine Self-Sufficiency","authors":"W. Jennings","doi":"10.15699/jbl.1404.2021.12","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15699/jbl.1404.2021.12","url":null,"abstract":"Biblical scholars lack nothing. They have everything the modern academy requires. They have objects of study, texts. They have diverse and dazzling methods of study for their objects. They perform objectivity, thereby exhibiting the proper distance from their objects of study. They are, in effect, scientists (without lab coats) engaged in the work of producing new knowledge through deciphering and adjudicating between various and oftentimes warring interpretations of their objects. All of us in the humanities are textualists of one sort or another, but biblical scholars are first-order textualists, fused to an immediacy with their objects that positions them between archaeologists, on the one hand, and historians, on the other hand, with linguists in the dead center. Biblical scholars reign in the world of religious studies as our epistemic emperors, positioned at the very fount of all our work. They carry ancient claim given that theological studies began (and some would say ends) in biblical study. Yet they also carry pride of place in the configurations and constellations of knowledge(s) in the modern academy. They have chameleon power to position themselves along the continuum from hard scientists to literary theorists, from ethicists and social theorists to writers and poets. Their epistemic supremacy is not by accident. It grows out of the way textual study functions in modernity, as both a practice of retrieval and extraction and a practice of conceptual framing and cognitive mapping. Yet that supremacy also grows out of the formative accomplishment of cultivating white masculinist selfsufficient intellectual form. White male self-sufficiency has been a governing image for formation and intellectual development in the Western world since the beginning of colonial modernity.1 That image, embedded in the pedagogical imagination","PeriodicalId":15251,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Biblical Literature","volume":"140 1","pages":"837 - 842"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43119505","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-27DOI: 10.15699/jbl.1404.2021.2
Paul K.-K. Cho
Abstract:This article argues that Esther, as befits her intersectional identity, employs a combination of tactics and strategies, as defined by Michel de Certeau, to navigate and dismantle the overlapping power structures of the Persian empire to deliver Jews from death.
{"title":"A House of Her Own: The Tactical Deployment of Strategy in Esther","authors":"Paul K.-K. Cho","doi":"10.15699/jbl.1404.2021.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15699/jbl.1404.2021.2","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article argues that Esther, as befits her intersectional identity, employs a combination of tactics and strategies, as defined by Michel de Certeau, to navigate and dismantle the overlapping power structures of the Persian empire to deliver Jews from death.","PeriodicalId":15251,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Biblical Literature","volume":"140 1","pages":"663 - 682"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44129374","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:The identification of the biblical [inline-graphic 01] (millôʾ; Millo) in Jerusalem (e.g., 2 Sam 5:9) has long been debated. Considering recent archaeological investigations in the vicinity of the Gihon Spring in the city of David, this paper argues that the Millo and the related [inline-graphic 02] ("house of Millo," 2 Kgs 12:21) should be connected with the fortifications that surrounded the Gihon Spring—the primary water source for Bronze and Iron Age Jerusalem.
{"title":"The Setting of the Assassination of King Joash of Judah: Biblical and Archaeological Evidence for Identifying the House of Millo","authors":"C. Mckinny, Aharon Tavger, N. Szanton, J. Uziel","doi":"10.1353/jbl.2021.0030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jbl.2021.0030","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The identification of the biblical [inline-graphic 01] (millôʾ; Millo) in Jerusalem (e.g., 2 Sam 5:9) has long been debated. Considering recent archaeological investigations in the vicinity of the Gihon Spring in the city of David, this paper argues that the Millo and the related [inline-graphic 02] (\"house of Millo,\" 2 Kgs 12:21) should be connected with the fortifications that surrounded the Gihon Spring—the primary water source for Bronze and Iron Age Jerusalem.","PeriodicalId":15251,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Biblical Literature","volume":"140 1","pages":"643 - 662"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48168508","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-27DOI: 10.15699/jbl.1404.2021.4
Dominic S. Irudayaraj
Abstract:With recourse to some relevant postmodern sensibilities—especially the pertinence of peripheries and the value of plurality—this article examines the occurrences of mountain(s) in Micah with a view to highlighting the tension between the abstractness of space conceived of with a single center and the complex pluriformity of places that it overwrites. The work proceeds in two movements: (1) a syntopic (contra synchronic) reading that builds on the ancient western Asian worldviews of space, and (2) guided by theories of critical spatiality, a diatopic (contra diachronic) reading that highlights some peripheral details that contribute to the Mican vision, paving the way for a "syndiatopic" suggestion.
{"title":"Mountains in Micah and Coherence: A \"SynDiaTopic\" Suggestion","authors":"Dominic S. Irudayaraj","doi":"10.15699/jbl.1404.2021.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15699/jbl.1404.2021.4","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:With recourse to some relevant postmodern sensibilities—especially the pertinence of peripheries and the value of plurality—this article examines the occurrences of mountain(s) in Micah with a view to highlighting the tension between the abstractness of space conceived of with a single center and the complex pluriformity of places that it overwrites. The work proceeds in two movements: (1) a syntopic (contra synchronic) reading that builds on the ancient western Asian worldviews of space, and (2) guided by theories of critical spatiality, a diatopic (contra diachronic) reading that highlights some peripheral details that contribute to the Mican vision, paving the way for a \"syndiatopic\" suggestion.","PeriodicalId":15251,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Biblical Literature","volume":"140 1","pages":"703 - 722"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45554071","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In the heady days of Enlightenment certitude, the ideal of critical objectivity was regularly asserted over against the supposedly uncritical habits of thinking that were bequeathed from the past. “Reason” needed to prevail over tradition. This binary contrast is no longer tenable, even among trenchant defenders of modernity; any effort to recover Enlightenment values now requires complex defenses of public reasoning. In the influential account of discourse ethics advanced by Jürgen Habermas, for example, scholarly arguments might be viewed through the lens of an ideal speech situation in which rigorous and inclusive debate is informed by comprehensive scrutiny of available evidence.1 The ideal speech situation is a norm, rather than a reality, because numerous inequalities of power and resources inevitably influence scholarly proceedings. What aims to be an ideal speech situation often turns out to be, on closer inspection, yet one more example of systematically distorted communication.2 In the wake of a pandemic that has starkly revealed the inequalities of the world, the implications for biblical scholarship are clear: minoritized voices need
{"title":"Social Inclusion and the Ethics of Citation: Introduction","authors":"M. Brett","doi":"10.1353/jbl.2021.0038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jbl.2021.0038","url":null,"abstract":"In the heady days of Enlightenment certitude, the ideal of critical objectivity was regularly asserted over against the supposedly uncritical habits of thinking that were bequeathed from the past. “Reason” needed to prevail over tradition. This binary contrast is no longer tenable, even among trenchant defenders of modernity; any effort to recover Enlightenment values now requires complex defenses of public reasoning. In the influential account of discourse ethics advanced by Jürgen Habermas, for example, scholarly arguments might be viewed through the lens of an ideal speech situation in which rigorous and inclusive debate is informed by comprehensive scrutiny of available evidence.1 The ideal speech situation is a norm, rather than a reality, because numerous inequalities of power and resources inevitably influence scholarly proceedings. What aims to be an ideal speech situation often turns out to be, on closer inspection, yet one more example of systematically distorted communication.2 In the wake of a pandemic that has starkly revealed the inequalities of the world, the implications for biblical scholarship are clear: minoritized voices need","PeriodicalId":15251,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Biblical Literature","volume":"140 1","pages":"819 - 825"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42409428","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-27DOI: 10.15699/jbl.1404.2021.3
T. Linafelt
Abstract:The relationship between the lengthy poetic middle section of the book of Job and the brief prose frame has typically been treated by scholars as a question of compositional history or, occasionally, of genre (Gattung). What is missing from these approaches is a sustained consideration of the form-bound literary resources of ancient Hebrew prose and verse. Such a consideration suggests that, regardless of how many authors the book of Job may have had, poetry is present because it allows the book to do things that by convention could not be done in prose. In contrast to biblical Hebrew prose, verse is used almost exclusively for nonnarrative genres, consistently takes the form of direct discourse (rather than objective narration), is offten employed for the expression of feeling or thought, and exhibits no qualms about the elaborate use of figurative language and visual imagery. The book of Job relies on these elements of biblical poetic style, largely unavailable to biblical prose narrative, in order to achieve the working out of its plot and to stage the intellectual debate essential to the book.
{"title":"Why Is There Poetry in the Book of Job?","authors":"T. Linafelt","doi":"10.15699/jbl.1404.2021.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15699/jbl.1404.2021.3","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The relationship between the lengthy poetic middle section of the book of Job and the brief prose frame has typically been treated by scholars as a question of compositional history or, occasionally, of genre (Gattung). What is missing from these approaches is a sustained consideration of the form-bound literary resources of ancient Hebrew prose and verse. Such a consideration suggests that, regardless of how many authors the book of Job may have had, poetry is present because it allows the book to do things that by convention could not be done in prose. In contrast to biblical Hebrew prose, verse is used almost exclusively for nonnarrative genres, consistently takes the form of direct discourse (rather than objective narration), is offten employed for the expression of feeling or thought, and exhibits no qualms about the elaborate use of figurative language and visual imagery. The book of Job relies on these elements of biblical poetic style, largely unavailable to biblical prose narrative, in order to achieve the working out of its plot and to stage the intellectual debate essential to the book.","PeriodicalId":15251,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Biblical Literature","volume":"140 1","pages":"683 - 701"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48922700","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-27DOI: 10.15699/jbl.1404.2021.7
Brittany E. Wilson
Abstract:Although biblical interpreters often frame divine anthropomorphism as a problem to be overcome, biblical texts themselves typically do not betray any embarrassment over divine anthropomorphism. Instead, biblical texts depict the God of Israel in deeply anthropomorphic terms, and in doing so they portray God as both like and unlike humans. To illustrate this claim, I turn to Luke-Acts as a test case. I begin by demonstrating the ways in which Luke does and does not depict divine anthropomorphism, and I then detail the degree to which Luke "forms" God as an anthropomorphic being. In describing Luke's anthropomorphic God, I rely in particular on Hebrew Bible scholar Anne Knafl's taxonomy of divine anthropomorphism, and I highlight how divine anthropomorphisms permeate Luke's narrative in ways often unnoticed. In the end, I argue that Luke's portrait of God is more reminiscent of the revelatory, corporeal God of Jewish Scripture than the unknowable, incorporeal God of modern-day classical theism.
{"title":"Forming God: Divine Anthropomorphism in Luke-Acts","authors":"Brittany E. Wilson","doi":"10.15699/jbl.1404.2021.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15699/jbl.1404.2021.7","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Although biblical interpreters often frame divine anthropomorphism as a problem to be overcome, biblical texts themselves typically do not betray any embarrassment over divine anthropomorphism. Instead, biblical texts depict the God of Israel in deeply anthropomorphic terms, and in doing so they portray God as both like and unlike humans. To illustrate this claim, I turn to Luke-Acts as a test case. I begin by demonstrating the ways in which Luke does and does not depict divine anthropomorphism, and I then detail the degree to which Luke \"forms\" God as an anthropomorphic being. In describing Luke's anthropomorphic God, I rely in particular on Hebrew Bible scholar Anne Knafl's taxonomy of divine anthropomorphism, and I highlight how divine anthropomorphisms permeate Luke's narrative in ways often unnoticed. In the end, I argue that Luke's portrait of God is more reminiscent of the revelatory, corporeal God of Jewish Scripture than the unknowable, incorporeal God of modern-day classical theism.","PeriodicalId":15251,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Biblical Literature","volume":"140 1","pages":"775 - 795"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43663834","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-27DOI: 10.15699/jbl.1404.2021.8
Abraham Smith
Abstract:Scholarship on prisons and prison scenes in Acts has clarified the materiality of ancient prisons, the mythical structure of prison-release scenes, and the literary function(s) of the specific scenes in which Paul was a prisoner. Working with a narrow view of violence as only a physical and direct act of harm, though, scholars generally have not explored Luke's use of prisons as a part of a broader juridical nexus through which Luke amplifies the tyranny of violence faced by Acts' protagonists. Thus, to secure a broader conceptualization of violence, I initially review the work of recent philosophers and sociologists. Informed with an expanded view of violence, I then reread the account of the imprisonment of Paul and Silas in Acts 16 as a part of Luke's broader strategic objectives: (1) the aforementioned amplification of violence; (2) the interrogation of incarceration as both a physical and a social harm; and (3) the demystification of the xenophobia that Jesus's prophetic movement likely faced and tried to overcome.
{"title":"Incarceration on Trial: The Imprisonment of Paul and Silas in Acts 16","authors":"Abraham Smith","doi":"10.15699/jbl.1404.2021.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15699/jbl.1404.2021.8","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Scholarship on prisons and prison scenes in Acts has clarified the materiality of ancient prisons, the mythical structure of prison-release scenes, and the literary function(s) of the specific scenes in which Paul was a prisoner. Working with a narrow view of violence as only a physical and direct act of harm, though, scholars generally have not explored Luke's use of prisons as a part of a broader juridical nexus through which Luke amplifies the tyranny of violence faced by Acts' protagonists. Thus, to secure a broader conceptualization of violence, I initially review the work of recent philosophers and sociologists. Informed with an expanded view of violence, I then reread the account of the imprisonment of Paul and Silas in Acts 16 as a part of Luke's broader strategic objectives: (1) the aforementioned amplification of violence; (2) the interrogation of incarceration as both a physical and a social harm; and (3) the demystification of the xenophobia that Jesus's prophetic movement likely faced and tried to overcome.","PeriodicalId":15251,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Biblical Literature","volume":"140 1","pages":"797 - 817"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46433326","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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