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Exploring nonviolent images of atonement— The “sacrifice” of Jesus is one of the most central doctrines in Christianity—and one of the most controversial, especially in contemporary debate (and after the appearance of films such as The Passion of the Christ). The implications of a violent parent and the necessity of innocent suffering are profoundly troubling to many people. Are they nevertheless necessary elements of Christian theology? Christian A. Eberhart makes a decisive contribution to these debates by carefully and clearly examining the Old Testament metaphors of sacrifice and atonement and the ways these metaphors were taken over by early Christians to speak of the significance of Christ. Eberhart shows that these New Testament appropriations have been misunderstood as requiring a logic of necessary violence; rather they speak to larger Christological themes concerning the whole mission and life of Jesus.
Can a feminist interpretation of Romans discover anything new? In this volume, Christian Eberhart pays special attention to the fact that Paul entrusted Phoebe, a gentile woman, with the task of delivering the letter to Rome. There, she would have been the person who recited it aloud and by heart in front of various audiences. Yet as the leader of a congregation in Corinth, Phoebe had likely also been involved in the process of composing the letter, as some passages reveal. This multi-faceted engagement of a woman gives new meaning to the vision of human society in Romans that celebrates the full participation of women and men, Jews and gentiles, weak and strong, and free and slave.
Critical and creative studies that offer fresh perspectives on ancient ideas and practices The contributions to this volume deal in various ways with the cult at the Jerusalem Temple that epitomized the religious, cultural, and socio-political identity of Judaism for many centuries. Some essays examine ancient constitutive practices and concepts, such as purification rituals, sacrifices, atonement, or sacred authorities at the temple, with the goal of interpreting their meanings for modern readers. Other essays explore alternatives to ancient cultic meaning and practice. Essays critique established traditions, attempt to renegotiate them, or use metaphor and spiritualization to expand the po...
The sanctuary and rituals of ancient Judaism are long gone, yet their concepts, especially that of sacrifice, have remained essential to the rhetoric of politics, religion, and secular culture. The essays in this volume deal with central aspects of sacrificial rituals and processes of metaphor development and spiritualization in Judaism and Christianity.
"Biblical scholar Christian Eberhart unpacks the words of institution of Christian communion services by explaining how first-century Christians would have understood "This is my body, this is my blood." Using a conversational style, Professor Eberhart makes his extensive scholarship accessible to a non-academic audience. Readers will find their own experience of communion deepened after reading this book." Rev. Dr. Priscilla Eppinger, Professor of Religion, Community of Christ Seminary at Graceland University All Christians know that Jesus instituted a celebration with bread and wine. It has various different names, such as Last Supper, Lord's Supper, Communion, or Eucharist. Why do Christi...
Blood for Thought delves into a relatively unexplored area of rabbinic literature: the vast corpus of laws, regulations, and instructions pertaining to sacrificial rituals. Mira Balberg traces and analyzes the ways in which the early rabbis interpreted and conceived of biblical sacrifices, reinventing them as a site through which to negotiate intellectual, cultural, and religious trends and practices in their surrounding world. Rather than viewing the rabbinic project as an attempt to generate a nonsacrificial version of Judaism, she argues that the rabbis developed a new sacrificial Jewish tradition altogether, consisting of not merely substitutes to sacrifice but elaborate practical manuals that redefined the processes themselves, radically transforming the meanings of sacrifice, its efficacy, and its value.
In the ancient Near East, the distinction between the divine realm and the material world was not always clear. In Mesopotamia, statues, kings, and even cultic utensils could become "gods" in their own right. Certain biblical traditions show this idea as well. Yhwh appears as a human during visitations to Abraham and Jacob (Gen 18:1-2 and 32:25-31). Yhwh also can act through objects (Gen 15:17; 1 Sam 5:1-5). This suggests that, in Israel as in Mesopotamia, a distinction between humans and gods was one of status more than ontology. Throughout the ancient Near East, religious literature included motifs that emphasized divine status, such as power, size, wonder-working ability, and the possessi...
"Jane Barter Moulaison's remarkable book engages contemporary critical understandings of Jesus Christ including postcolonial, feminist, pluralist, ecological, and socialist to argue that the core convictions of traditional Christology remain a viable, valuable, and even indispensable witness to the gospel in an imperiled world. Contemporary theology often makes a virtue of deconstructing traditional claims about the person and work of Christ. Claims about the central significance of Jesus Christ appear to be oppressive, intolerant, and even violent. Jane Barter Moulaison engages several contemporary christological critiques of classical Christology and argues that such critical theologies ar...