Pub Date : 2022-07-01DOI: 10.1017/s0017816022000256
Philip Michael Forness
Abstract The uncovering of manuscripts over the last one hundred years has repeatedly changed how early Christian history is told. With no signs of this trend abating, this article seeks to take stock of how scholars respond to manuscript discoveries by focusing on three debates over the orthodoxy of an early Christian figure that extend over two hundred and fifty years. New manuscript evidence sparked no less than three debates over the christological views of the Syriac author Jacob of Serugh (d. 520/521) from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries. In the first debate, the arrival of manuscripts in Western Europe led to a conflict between the Maronite scholars who viewed Jacob as a Chalcedonian thinker and certain textual evidence that suggested otherwise. The second debate began in the late nineteenth century after manuscripts from Egypt arrived in London that contained Jacob’s extensive epistolary corpus, which includes clear expressions of non-Chalcedonian, miaphysite christology. A new acquisition by the Vatican Library in the mid-twentieth century featured a previously unknown homily that included two lines that could be interpreted in a Chalcedonian manner. This inspired several Western scholars to dig yet deeper into the manuscripts to resolve this long-standing debate over his christological views. The focused analysis of the pendulum swings initiated by manuscript discoveries in the scholarly discourse surrounding Jacob of Serugh serves as a mirror for self-reflection on the way that scholars discuss a past whose many unknowns still await discovery.
{"title":"Manuscript Discoveries and Debates over Orthodoxy in Early Christian Studies: The Case of the Syriac Poet-Theologian Jacob of Serugh","authors":"Philip Michael Forness","doi":"10.1017/s0017816022000256","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0017816022000256","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The uncovering of manuscripts over the last one hundred years has repeatedly changed how early Christian history is told. With no signs of this trend abating, this article seeks to take stock of how scholars respond to manuscript discoveries by focusing on three debates over the orthodoxy of an early Christian figure that extend over two hundred and fifty years. New manuscript evidence sparked no less than three debates over the christological views of the Syriac author Jacob of Serugh (d. 520/521) from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries. In the first debate, the arrival of manuscripts in Western Europe led to a conflict between the Maronite scholars who viewed Jacob as a Chalcedonian thinker and certain textual evidence that suggested otherwise. The second debate began in the late nineteenth century after manuscripts from Egypt arrived in London that contained Jacob’s extensive epistolary corpus, which includes clear expressions of non-Chalcedonian, miaphysite christology. A new acquisition by the Vatican Library in the mid-twentieth century featured a previously unknown homily that included two lines that could be interpreted in a Chalcedonian manner. This inspired several Western scholars to dig yet deeper into the manuscripts to resolve this long-standing debate over his christological views. The focused analysis of the pendulum swings initiated by manuscript discoveries in the scholarly discourse surrounding Jacob of Serugh serves as a mirror for self-reflection on the way that scholars discuss a past whose many unknowns still await discovery.","PeriodicalId":46365,"journal":{"name":"HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW","volume":"115 1","pages":"416 - 440"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56778305","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-01DOI: 10.1017/S0017816022000219
M. Chalmers
Abstract Paul’s Jewishness has often acted as a pivot in scholarship about the relationship between Christianity and Judaism, especially in recent conversation about the date and duration of the so-called “Parting of the Ways.” Too little attention has been paid, however, to who represented Paul as Jewish (or not) and why. I examine the late antique reception of Paul’s ethnic identity in Epiphanius of Cyprus, heresiologist, bishop, and someone for whom representation of Jewishness often served as a foil for the manufacture of orthodoxy. I argue that for Epiphanius, when Paul’s ethnic identity is relevant at all, the focus falls on an Israelite, Benjaminite Paul. Paul’s Jewishness becomes peripheral. Building on this observation, I suggest that we must understand even the reification of Jewishness familiar to current scholarship as only one of the late antique Christian behaviors that governed identification as Israelite.
摘要保罗的犹太性经常成为关于基督教和犹太教关系的学术研究的支点，尤其是在最近关于所谓“分道扬镳”的日期和持续时间的对话中。然而，对于谁代表保罗是犹太人（或不是犹太人）以及为什么代表保罗，人们关注得太少了。我研究了保罗在塞浦路斯的主显节（Epiphanius of Cyprus）中的种族身份的晚期接受情况，他是异端学家、主教，对他来说，犹太性的代表往往是正统制造的陪衬。我认为，对于主显节来说，当保罗的种族身份与之相关时，焦点就落在了一个以色列人，本雅明人保罗身上。保罗的犹太性变得微不足道。基于这一观察，我建议我们必须理解，即使是当前学术界熟悉的犹太化，也只是晚期古代基督教行为之一，它支配着以色列身份的认同。
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Pub Date : 2022-04-01DOI: 10.1017/S001781602200013X
Mark A. Awabdy, Tobias Häner
Abstract Job’s burnt offerings for his sons and daughters followed by their death (Job 1) resembles the sequence of Aaron’s burnt offerings for himself and his sons followed by the death of his oldest sons (Lev 8–10). Within this common sequence of events, the two stories share a cluster of important, identical lexemes. Although it is not impossible that these features could have resulted unintentionally from a shared scribal culture, the textual evidence is strong enough to indicate that the scribe of Job’s prologue alludes to the priestly inauguration story of Leviticus 8–10. By reading Job after Leviticus, one sees the sharp contrast between the divine silence following Job’s intermediary sacrifices (Job 1:5, 18–19) and the divine response both to Aaron’s and to Nadab and Abihu’s sacrifices (Lev 9:22–10:3). This study clarifies how the story of Job rejects a mechanistic understanding not only of traditional wisdom, but of the Priestly cultic tradition of ancient Israel and Judah.
{"title":"Sacrificial Fathers and the Death of Their Children: How the Story of Job Challenges the Priestly Tradition","authors":"Mark A. Awabdy, Tobias Häner","doi":"10.1017/S001781602200013X","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S001781602200013X","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Job’s burnt offerings for his sons and daughters followed by their death (Job 1) resembles the sequence of Aaron’s burnt offerings for himself and his sons followed by the death of his oldest sons (Lev 8–10). Within this common sequence of events, the two stories share a cluster of important, identical lexemes. Although it is not impossible that these features could have resulted unintentionally from a shared scribal culture, the textual evidence is strong enough to indicate that the scribe of Job’s prologue alludes to the priestly inauguration story of Leviticus 8–10. By reading Job after Leviticus, one sees the sharp contrast between the divine silence following Job’s intermediary sacrifices (Job 1:5, 18–19) and the divine response both to Aaron’s and to Nadab and Abihu’s sacrifices (Lev 9:22–10:3). This study clarifies how the story of Job rejects a mechanistic understanding not only of traditional wisdom, but of the Priestly cultic tradition of ancient Israel and Judah.","PeriodicalId":46365,"journal":{"name":"HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW","volume":"115 1","pages":"149 - 170"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46960903","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-01DOI: 10.1017/S0017816022000141
Daniel D. Pioske
Abstract The question of how to approach the Hebrew Bible as a source for the histories we write of ancient Israel continues to divide scholars. This study responds to such concerns by pursuing an approach informed by a historicized view of knowledge, or a framework in which the claims we make are understood to be reflective of the eras in which they are realized. What this line of research encourages, I argue, are historical investigations into the underlying modes of knowing that would have contributed to the stories told in the biblical writings. Since knowledge about the past is itself historical, this study contends that it is necessary to situate such claims in time, examining the normative assumptions of an era that establish the parameters by which this knowledge is organized and granted credibility. The epistemic conditions that gave rise to the stories recounted in the Hebrew Bible are as much an object of historical interest, on this view, as the stories themselves for assessments of what evidence they might offer.
{"title":"An Archaeology of Ancient Thought: On the Hebrew Bible and the History of Ancient Israel","authors":"Daniel D. Pioske","doi":"10.1017/S0017816022000141","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0017816022000141","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The question of how to approach the Hebrew Bible as a source for the histories we write of ancient Israel continues to divide scholars. This study responds to such concerns by pursuing an approach informed by a historicized view of knowledge, or a framework in which the claims we make are understood to be reflective of the eras in which they are realized. What this line of research encourages, I argue, are historical investigations into the underlying modes of knowing that would have contributed to the stories told in the biblical writings. Since knowledge about the past is itself historical, this study contends that it is necessary to situate such claims in time, examining the normative assumptions of an era that establish the parameters by which this knowledge is organized and granted credibility. The epistemic conditions that gave rise to the stories recounted in the Hebrew Bible are as much an object of historical interest, on this view, as the stories themselves for assessments of what evidence they might offer.","PeriodicalId":46365,"journal":{"name":"HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW","volume":"115 1","pages":"171 - 196"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45812639","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-01DOI: 10.1017/S0017816022000189
Sarah E. Rollens
■ Introduction The Lives of Objects is an object about objects. This is admittedly an odd way to describe a book, for we often focus on the cerebral content contained within the physicality of the book. But such a description fits with the project at hand, which, in author Maia Kotrosits’s words, is “a book about the lives of objects considered through a history of the ancient Mediterranean” (1). Yet, Lives is about more than static objects that live at a remove from people. It is also about our relationships with and attachments to said objects, how they embed themselves in our psyche and continue to exert an influence on us over time. By focusing on unconventional objects—as we will see, some might even debate whether some are objects at all— Kotrosits wants her project to bring “nonobvious histories” into relief (1). Each chapter is thus a kind of case study in thinking through an ancient object (again, broadly conceived) and its relationship with early Christ followers. Taken as a whole, Lives demonstrates a creative rethinking of the histories we tell about the origins of Christianity. In the review that follows, I quote liberally from Kotrosits’s
{"title":"Abject Objects: The Lives and Times of Early Christian Material Culture","authors":"Sarah E. Rollens","doi":"10.1017/S0017816022000189","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0017816022000189","url":null,"abstract":"■ Introduction The Lives of Objects is an object about objects. This is admittedly an odd way to describe a book, for we often focus on the cerebral content contained within the physicality of the book. But such a description fits with the project at hand, which, in author Maia Kotrosits’s words, is “a book about the lives of objects considered through a history of the ancient Mediterranean” (1). Yet, Lives is about more than static objects that live at a remove from people. It is also about our relationships with and attachments to said objects, how they embed themselves in our psyche and continue to exert an influence on us over time. By focusing on unconventional objects—as we will see, some might even debate whether some are objects at all— Kotrosits wants her project to bring “nonobvious histories” into relief (1). Each chapter is thus a kind of case study in thinking through an ancient object (again, broadly conceived) and its relationship with early Christ followers. Taken as a whole, Lives demonstrates a creative rethinking of the histories we tell about the origins of Christianity. In the review that follows, I quote liberally from Kotrosits’s","PeriodicalId":46365,"journal":{"name":"HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW","volume":"115 1","pages":"294 - 307"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44360095","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-01DOI: 10.1017/s0017816022000153
Adam Afterman
Abstract This article examines the development and transformation of the holy spirit within Jewish mysticism. It begins with a brief analysis of primary trends concerning the holy spirit in biblical, rabbinic, and medieval Jewish texts that served as crucial material for the holy spirit’s ascendence in sixteenth-century Jewish mysticism. Following, it examines the writings of leading Jewish mystics: Moses Cordovero, Elijah de Vidas, and Ḥayyim Vital, who resided in the remote Galilean town of Safed. These luminaries each developed the concept of the holy spirit along a spectrum of pneumatic, fusionary, mystical, and revelatory experiences. Ultimately, they transformed the holy spirit into the peak experience of Jewish mystical life— experienced as prophecy, sanctification, and embodiment. This article highlights an important, yet understudied, Jewish mystical phenomenon.
{"title":"The Rise of the Holy Spirit in Sixteenth-Century Kabbalah","authors":"Adam Afterman","doi":"10.1017/s0017816022000153","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0017816022000153","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article examines the development and transformation of the holy spirit within Jewish mysticism. It begins with a brief analysis of primary trends concerning the holy spirit in biblical, rabbinic, and medieval Jewish texts that served as crucial material for the holy spirit’s ascendence in sixteenth-century Jewish mysticism. Following, it examines the writings of leading Jewish mystics: Moses Cordovero, Elijah de Vidas, and Ḥayyim Vital, who resided in the remote Galilean town of Safed. These luminaries each developed the concept of the holy spirit along a spectrum of pneumatic, fusionary, mystical, and revelatory experiences. Ultimately, they transformed the holy spirit into the peak experience of Jewish mystical life— experienced as prophecy, sanctification, and embodiment. This article highlights an important, yet understudied, Jewish mystical phenomenon.","PeriodicalId":46365,"journal":{"name":"HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW","volume":"115 1","pages":"219 - 242"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45780873","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-01DOI: 10.1017/S0017816022000116
Jason A. Staples
Abstract Starting from the concept of divine patience in Rom 9:22, this article argues that Paul employs the potter/clay metaphor not (as often interpreted) to defend God’s right to arbitrary choice but rather as an appeal to what Abraham Heschel called divine pathos—the idea that God’s choices are impacted by human actions. The potter/clay imagery in Rom 9:20–23 thus serves to highlight the dynamic and improvisational way the God of Israel interacts with Israel and, by extension, all of creation.
{"title":"Vessels of Wrath and God’s Pathos: Potter/Clay Imagery in Rom 9:20–23","authors":"Jason A. Staples","doi":"10.1017/S0017816022000116","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0017816022000116","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Starting from the concept of divine patience in Rom 9:22, this article argues that Paul employs the potter/clay metaphor not (as often interpreted) to defend God’s right to arbitrary choice but rather as an appeal to what Abraham Heschel called divine pathos—the idea that God’s choices are impacted by human actions. The potter/clay imagery in Rom 9:20–23 thus serves to highlight the dynamic and improvisational way the God of Israel interacts with Israel and, by extension, all of creation.","PeriodicalId":46365,"journal":{"name":"HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW","volume":"20 4","pages":"197 - 218"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41310411","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-01DOI: 10.1017/s0017816022000128
R. W. Cogley
Abstract The American Puritan layman Samuel Sewall (d. 1730) is perhaps best known as a diarist and as a repentant judge in the Salem witchcraft trials. But he was also the author of Phaenomena quaedam apocalyptica (first edition 1697), a work which argued that the New Jerusalem would arise in Mexico City. Sewall’s unusual millennial doctrine may seem undeserving of study, for no other American Puritan thought that the New Jerusalem would first appear in Mexico City or anywhere else in New Spain. Yet when properly contextualized, the Mexican millennium is worth investigating for two reasons. First, it accentuates what the American Puritan millenarian mainstream, best exemplified by John Cotton, Increase Mather, and Cotton Mather, believed about the coming kingdom. Second, the Mexican millennium, like the mainstream position, challenges the academic claim that American Puritan millenarians characteristically believed that they were destined to inaugurate the millennial kingdom in New England.
{"title":"Millenarianism in Puritan New England, 1630–1730: The Exceptional Case of Samuel Sewall and the Mexican Millennium","authors":"R. W. Cogley","doi":"10.1017/s0017816022000128","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0017816022000128","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The American Puritan layman Samuel Sewall (d. 1730) is perhaps best known as a diarist and as a repentant judge in the Salem witchcraft trials. But he was also the author of Phaenomena quaedam apocalyptica (first edition 1697), a work which argued that the New Jerusalem would arise in Mexico City. Sewall’s unusual millennial doctrine may seem undeserving of study, for no other American Puritan thought that the New Jerusalem would first appear in Mexico City or anywhere else in New Spain. Yet when properly contextualized, the Mexican millennium is worth investigating for two reasons. First, it accentuates what the American Puritan millenarian mainstream, best exemplified by John Cotton, Increase Mather, and Cotton Mather, believed about the coming kingdom. Second, the Mexican millennium, like the mainstream position, challenges the academic claim that American Puritan millenarians characteristically believed that they were destined to inaugurate the millennial kingdom in New England.","PeriodicalId":46365,"journal":{"name":"HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW","volume":"115 1","pages":"274 - 293"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44142198","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"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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