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Meira Z. Kensky examines scenes of the divine courtroom in Jewish and Christian literature from antiquity. Her central argument is that these courtroom scenes, though fanciful in nature and often remarkably entertaining, are part of a serious inquiry taking place throughout the Mediterranean as to the nature of divine justice. These scenes can contain explicit criticism about the adequacy and equity of God's justice, or can be used to attempt to vindicate God from charges of injustice and inequity. What is important is that this amounts to a rotation of the courtroom scene: the courtroom, rather than simply functioning on the narrative level with the reader as an additional spectator, is rotated so that the reader is in the judicial position, and it is the judge and the process itself which are being adjudicated. When man is tried, it is truly God who is on trial.
Revised version of the author's thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Chicago, 2009.
Contributors to The Divine Courtroom in Comparative Perspective treat one of the most pervasive religious metaphors, that of the divine courtroom, in both its historical and thematic senses. In order to shed light on the various manifestations of the divine courtroom, this volume consists of essays by scholars of the ancient Near East, Hebrew Bible, Second Temple Judaism, early Christianity, Talmud, Islam, medieval Judaism, and classical Greek literature. Contributions to the volume primarily center upon three related facets of the divine courtroom: the role of the divine courtroom in the earthly legal system; the divine courtroom as the site of historical justice; and the divine courtroom as the venue in which God is called to answer for his own unjust acts.
What can early Jewish courtroom narratives tell us about the capacity and limits of human justice? By exploring how judges and the act of judging are depicted in these narratives, Trial Stories in Jewish Antiquity: Counternarratives of Justice challenges the prevailing notion, both then and now, of the ideal impartial judge. As a work of intellectual history, the book also contributes to contemporary debates about the role of legal decision-making in shaping a just society. Chaya T. Halberstam shows that instead of modelling a system in which lofty, inaccessible judges follow objective and rational rules, ancient Jewish trial narratives depict a legal practice dependent upon the individual j...
David J. Rudolph raises new questions about Paul's view of the Torah and Jewish identity in this post-supersessionist interpretation of 1 Corinthians 9:19-23. Paul's principle of accommodation is considered in light of the diversity of Second Temple Judaism and Jesus' example and rule of accommodation.
Paul's visit to Athens, in particular the Areopahus speech, is one of the most well known excerpts of early Christian literature. It is the most significant speech by Paul to a Gentile audience in Acts functioning as a literary crest of the overall narrative. Yet critical analysts also describe it as an ad hoc blend of Green and Jewish elements. In this study, Clare K. Rothschild examines how the nexus of popular second-century traditions crystallizing around the Cretan prophet Epimenides explains these seemingly miscellaneous and impromptu aspects of the text. Her investigation exposes correspondences between Epimenidea and the Lukan Paul, not limited to the altar "to an unknown god" and the saying, "In him, we live, and move, and have our being" (17:28a), concluding that in addition to popular philosophical ideals, the episode of Paul in Athens utilizes popular 'religious' topoi to reinforce a central narrative aim.
The death of Jesus and its interpretation present both exegetes and theologians with a puzzle. For Jesus himself seems to have left his followers few clues, and the story of his passion is ambivalent, embracing both his reluctant self-surrender in Gethsemane and his reproachful cry on Golgatha. Some of the various motifs and images used by his followers to explain this event were taken over by Paul despite the opposition he saw between the message of the cross and any human wisdom. Yet what meaning do two of the central themes of his soteriology, the corporate, representative role of Christ and the language of "righteousness" and "justification" hold for us today? Or does Paul offer just as little help here as Jesus himself did?
The English term "prayer" is usually understood as communication with God or the gods. Scholars of Jewish ritual until now have accepted this characterization and applied it to Jewish tefillah. Does rabbinic prayer indeed necessarily entail second-person address to God, as many scholars of rabbinic prayer to this point have presumed? In this work, Yehuda Septimus investigates a boundary phenomenon of talmudic prayer - ritual speech with addressees other than God. The book represents a fresh look at the possible range of performances undertaken by talmudic ritual prayer. Moreover, it places that range of performances into the historical context of the rapid emergence of prayer as the centerpiece of Jewish worship in the first half of the first millennium CE.
Is there a counter-imperial message beneath the surface of the text in Paul? Christoph Heilig analyzes the letters of the apostle and concludes that the hypothesis that we can identify critical "echoes" of the Roman Empire in Paul's letters needs to be modified for it to be maintained.
4.5 Initiation Language in Philo's Secondary Mode of Exegesis -- 4.5.1 Excursus: Philo and Enoch Traditions -- 4.5.2 De gigantibus 50-55 -- 4.5.3 A Mixed Economy: Active and Passive Attitudes of Mind -- 4.5.4 Proximate Jewish Perspectives -- 4.6 Conclusion -- Chapter 5: Scriptural Exegesis and the Language of Divine Inspiration in the Allegorical Commentary -- 5.1 Introduction -- 5.1.1 Chapter Preview -- 5.2 Approaches to Divine Inspiration in Antiquity -- 5.2.1 Perspectives on Divine Inspiration in Plato -- 5.2.2 Perspectives on Divine Inspiration in Aristotle -- 5.2.3 Other First-Century, Non-Jewish Perspectives on Divine Inspiration -- 5.2.4 Ancient Jewish and Early Christian Perspectives...