Tragical Mimesis and Biblical Interpretation I

2020 ◽  
pp. 34-66
Author(s):  
Paul M. Blowers
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Moral Evil ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
Biblical Narratives ◽  
Cain And Abel ◽  
Providence Of God ◽  
Figural Reading ◽  
Reversal Of Fortune

This chapter moves straightaway into the first, and foundational, form of early Christian tragical mimesis, the interpretation of tragic (and tragic-comic) biblical narratives. “Dramatic” interpretation was not a method all its own but drew upon both literal and figural reading of the scriptural texts, and focused on mimetic re-presentation of the narratives in ways that highlighted and amplified their tragic elements. It served a primarily “contemplative” mode, or theôria, of reading tragic narratives, conducive to a tragical vision of sacred history. The chapter turns to some case studies of tragical or dramatic interpretation of the primitive tragedies in Genesis: the precipitous fall of Adam and Eve and their recognition thereof; and the tragic sibling rivalries of Cain and Abel and Jacob and Esau. Attention is given to the specific Aristotelian elements of tragedy (plausible or realistic plots; characters’ fateful miscalculation, or hamartia; reversal of fortune, or peripeteia; discovery, or anagnorisis; pathos, et al.) which patristic exegetes discerned in these stories. Mimetic or dramatic interpretation enhanced these elements all the more as means to draw audiences into the cosmic significance of the narratives related to moral evil, the legacies of sin and death, the fear of determinism, and the justice and providence of God.

Tragical Mimesis and Biblical Interpretation II

2020 ◽  
pp. 67-101
Author(s):  
Paul M. Blowers
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Judas Iscariot ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Hebrew Scriptures ◽  
John The Baptist ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Divine Justice ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Sacrifice

This chapter, following on the last, expands to other case studies of dramatic interpretation and tragical mimesis in patristic exposition of tragic narratives in the Bible beyond Genesis, in Old and New Testaments alike. The horrific story of Jephthah’s fateful vow and the “sacrifice” of his daughter (Judges 11), perhaps the best single example of tragedy in the Hebrew Scriptures, vexed its patristic interpreters by its ostensive moral senselessness and resistance to theological redeemability. The flawed character of other tragic heroes such as Samson and King Saul added to the hermeneutical perplexity, while the story of Job was largely taken as a testament of pious endurance of tragic circumstances. The New Testament meanwhile presented, to its patristic interpreters, the proto-Christian “tragic heroics” of the Holy Innocents and John the Baptist, and the “tragic villainy” of Judas Iscariot and Ananias and Sapphira, each story prompting its own questions about freedom, determinism, and divine justice. Early Christian interpreters consistently put forward and even amplified the elements of tragedy in these stories in order to educate their own audiences in confronting irrevocable evil and suffering.

Early Christian Visual Art as Biblical Interpretation

2019 ◽  
pp. 314-327
Author(s):  
Robin M. Jensen
Keyword(s):  
Visual Perception ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Daily Activities ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Biblical Narratives ◽  
Christian Art ◽  
Devotional Practices ◽  
Intellectual Activities

Comparing textual and visual interpretations of biblical narratives is complicated insofar as the two modes address distinct intellectual activities: reading and viewing. Although early Christian art often presents scenes and characters from Scripture, it represents much more than literal illustration of its source texts. Art necessarily amplifies details, provides expanded context, and places the figures within a larger compositional framework, all of which guide viewers’ interpretation of familiar stories. Images often even diverge from the narratives in significant ways and are juxtaposed in order to point to an overarching, theological meaning. Thus, while early Christian biblical art is essentially exegetical, it operates through visual perception rather than verbal exposition. Images also interact directly with their surroundings in ways that written words do not. They appear on tombs, in churches and shrines, and on liturgical objects and common domestic vessels, thus introducing visual references to Scripture into liturgy, devotional practices, and daily activities, enriching and elaborating their significance. This chapter offers an introduction to the distinct and complex ways that early Christian art represents a form of non-verbal commentary on Scripture and takes a close look at a particularly relevant example: the depiction of Abraham’s offering of Isaac.

Posthumanism

2019 ◽  
pp. 196-218
Author(s):  
Denise Kimber Buell
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Human Origins ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Genesis 1 ◽  
Early Christian Studies

For New Testament and early Christian studies, posthumanism provides a vantage point for contemporary readers to appreciate just how fully contingent ancient texts perceive “the human” to be. This chapter opens by linking the study of gender and sexuality with posthumanism. Situating posthumanism especially in relation to intersectional feminisms, this chapter explores ways that New Testament and early Christian scholarship has engaged posthumanism and might further contribute to this field. Juxtaposing New Testament and non-canonical writings with contemporary critical theory that may be associated with posthumanism, this essay offers new possibilities for reading ancient narratives of human origins such as Genesis 1-3 and its retellings, for identifying non-reproductive kin-making and multispecies mutualisms through rhetoric and ritual, and for reconsidering temporality. A brief case study of Ephesians also shows how biblical interpretation offers a caution to those who view posthumanism’s potential as primarily liberatory.

1 John 3.12, Early Judaism and the Greek Life of Adam and Eve

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 453-471
Author(s):  
John R. Levison
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Text ◽  
Greek Life ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
Early Judaism ◽  
1 John ◽  
Cain And Abel ◽  
Key Features ◽  
Sudden Introduction

The seemingly sudden introduction of an allusion to Cain and Abel in 1 Jn 3.12 is puzzling. To explain this apparent intrusion, select scholars have turned to early Jewish interpretations of Gen. 4. The purpose of this study is to provide further grist for this mill. Beginning with an appraisal of the role Jewish texts play in the analyses of Ernst Lohmeyer, Raymond Brown and Judith Lieu, it continues with a detailed study of an ancient text that has been neglected in the interpretation of 1 Jn 3.12, the Greek Life of Adam and Eve (GLAE). A consideration of key features in the story of Cain and Abel in GLAE strengthens the possibility that 1 Jn 3.12 was part and parcel of an interpretive milieu that sharpened the divide between righteous and evil, between murderer and martyr.

Scripture in the Christological Controversies

2019 ◽  
pp. 454-472
Author(s):  
Andrew Hofer, OP
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Cyril Of Alexandria ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
John Of Damascus ◽  
In Christ

After its introduction on believing in Christ in accordance with Scripture, this chapter begins its treatment of biblical interpretation in the Christological controversies with methodological matters at stake in assessing early Christianity’s journey from biblical questions to scholastic answers. It then examines the era of the ancient ecumenical councils and select theologians of those times in their increasingly developed Christological scholasticism, with special attention to Christ’s suffering in their treatments of offering rules for reading Scripture rightly. Most influential is Cyril of Alexandria, whose exegetical arguments opposed Nestorius’ rejection of the Marian title Theotokos, a term symbolizing an exegetical method that seemed to Nestorius to insult God’s impassibility and that needed further clarification. It concludes by returning from John of Damascus’ intricate rules for biblical interpretation on Christ, after centuries of scholastic development, to the biblical questions that generated early Christian responses and continue to generate answers today.

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