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This book examines the role of compassion in refiguring the university. Plotting a reimagining of the university through care, other-regard, and a commitment to act in response to the suffering of others, the author draws on various humanities disciplines to illuminate the potential of compassion in the campus. The book asks how the sector can reclaim the university from the tides of neoliberalism, inequalities and increased workloads, and which moral principles and competencies would need to be championed and instilled to build inclusive citizenship and positive connection with others. A value that is too scarcely taught, experienced, or advocated in contexts of higher education, compassion is reframed as an essential pillar of the university and a means to an epistemically just campus and curricula.
Louise J. Lawrence presents provocative re-interpretations of biblical characters that have previously been sidelined and stigmatised on account of their perceived disability. She introduces approaches taken from Sensory Anthropology and Disability Studies to bring fresh methodological perspectives to familiar Gospel texts.
This volume presents the findings of an international research symposium, held at St Andrews University, Scotland, in July 2003. Contributors include both biblical scholars and anthropologists. The essays presented variously explore and review interdisciplinary links, innovations and developments between anthropology and biblical studies in reference to interpretation of both the OT and NT and pseudepigraphal works. Explored are methodological issues, the use of anthropological concepts in biblical studies (identity; purity boundaries; virtuoso religion; spiritual experience; sacred space) and more ‘field orientated’ work of bible translators in different cultures.
Bible and Bedlam first critically questions the exclusion and stereotyping of certain biblical characters and scholars perceived as 'mad', as such judgements illustrate the 'sanism' (prejudice against individuals who are diagnosed or perceived as mentally ill) perpetuated within the discipline of Western biblical studies. Second, it seeks to highlight the widespread ideological 'gatekeeping' - 'protection' and 'policing' of madness in both western history and scholarship - with regard to celebrated biblical figures, including Jesus and Paul. Third, it initiates creative exchanges between biblical texts, interpretations and contemporary voices from 'mad' studies and sources (autobiographies, memoirs etc.), which are designed to critically disturb, disrupt and displace commonly projected (and often pejorative) assumptions surrounding 'madness'. Voices of those subject to diagnostic labelling such as autism, schizophrenia and/or psychosis are among those juxtaposed here with selected biblical interpretations and texts.
In the first century, endemic food shortages left 25 percent of the population below subsistence level and another 30 percent at risk of slipping below subsistence. In the face of such serious food shortages, the Gospel of Matthew advocates for a society in which all people can have access to sufficient food. Matthew critiques first-century practices and attitudes of both aristocrats and peasants that helped or hindered that goal. It does this by depicting Jesus teaching and performing positive practices that provided the Matthean community with an example to emulate, as well as condemning some negative practices and attitudes. For I Was Hungry and You Gave Me Food provides a pragmatic lens and a new descriptive paradigm of food access in the first century. The perspective and model are useful for analyzing passages concerned with life-and-death issues of the Matthean community--or situations for any other Christian community, past or present. Should not every person have enough food to sustain physical life?
Challenging Contextuality: Bibles and Biblical Scholarship in Context provides a new and innovative contribution to the study of biblical texts by bringing together current approaches to biblical interpretation. The volume sets the agenda for the future of the field and provides a synthesis of approaches to date. In doing so, it aligns itself with the broadly shared hermeneutical conviction that contextuality is a catalyst for interpretation. This applies in equal measure to approaches and methods that are often framed as 'traditional' or 'mainstream' (e.g. the methodological canon of the historical critical approach as the offspring of the European Enlightenment) and those that are often du...
A Marginal Scribe collects eight studies written over a period of two decades, all of which use social-scientific criticism to interpret the Gospel of Matthew. It prefaces them, first, with a new chapter on the struggle between historians and social scientists since the Enlightenment and its parallel in New Testament studies, which culminated in the emergence of social-scientific criticism; and, second, with a new chapter on recent social-scientific interpretation of the Gospel of Matthew. The eight, more specialized studies cover a variety of themes and use a variety of models but concentrate and are held together by those that illumine social ranking and marginality. The book closes with a chapter that ties together these studies.
Sojourn is a Leitwort in the ancestral narratives of Genesis, repeatedly accentuated as an important descriptor of the patriarchs’ identity and experience. This study shows that despite its connotations of alienation, sojourn language in Genesis contributes to a strong communal identity for biblical Israel. An innovative application of Anthony D. Smith’s theory of ethnic myth utilizes the categories of ethnoscape, election, and communal ethics as analytical tools in the investigation of the Genesis sojourn texts. Close exegetical treatment reveals sojourn to strengthen Israel’s ethnic identity in ways that are varied and at times paradoxical. Its very complexity, however, makes it particularly useful as a resource for group identity at times when straightforward categories of territorial and social affiliation may fail.
This two-volume set is part of a growing body of literature concerned with the history of biblical interpretation. The ample introduction first situates key players in the story of the development of the major strands of biblical interpretation since the Enlightenment, identifying how different theoretical and methodological approaches are related to each other and describing the academic environment in which they emerged and developed. Volume 1 contains fourteen essays on twenty-two interpreters who were principally active before 1980, and volume 2 has nineteen essays on twenty-seven of those who were active primarily after this date. Each chapter provides a brief biography of one or more s...
In many societies all over the world, an increasing polarization between contrasting groups can be observed. Polarization arises when a fear born of difference turns into ‘us-versus-them’ thinking and rules out any form of compromise. This volume addresses polarizations within societies as well as within churches, and asks the question: given these dynamics, what may be the calling of the church? The authors offer new approaches to polarizing debates on topics such as racism, social justice, sexuality and gender, euthanasia, and ecology and agriculture in various contexts. They engage in profound theological and ecclesiological reflection, in particular from the Reformed tradition. Contributors to this volume are: Najib George Awad, Henk van den Belt, Nadine Bowers Du Toit, Jaeseung Cha, David Daniels, David Fergusson, Jan Jorrit Hasselaar, Jozef Hehanussa, Allan Janssen, Klaas-Willem de Jong, Viktória Kóczián, Philipp Pattberg, Louise Prideaux, Emanuel Gerrit Singgih, Peter-Ben Smit, Thandi Soko-de Jong, Wim van Vlastuin, Jan Dirk Wassenaar, Elizabeth Welch, Annemarieke van der Woude, and Heleen Zorgdrager.