scholarly journals A reading of the leper’s healing in Matthew 8:1–4 through ethnomedical anthropology

2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fednand M. M’bwangi
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Setting ◽  
Anthropological Perspective ◽  
Anthropological Theory ◽  
The Social ◽  
Health And Healing ◽  
Healing Narrative

Scholars offer several options for Matthew’s value of the leper’s story in his narrative that range from revealing Jesus’ attributes of compassion and sympathy, manifesting God’s empire, to portraying Jesus’ function as a temple. Although these suggestions aptly portray Matthew’s rhetorical use of the leper’s healing in his narrative to address societal concerns of his time, for lack of referring to the social setting of the narrative, they do not capture the holistic healthcare system embodied by Jesus in Matthew’s narrative that portrays Jesus as a superior healer to the rest of the other healers in the Roman Empire. The findings of the research for this article establish the argument that employing ethnomedical anthropology as a lens to read the leper’s healing narrative in Matthew 8:1–4 in the context of Matthew’s social setting reveals Matthew’s ideology for a transcendent and immanent Christology. The aim of the article is to demonstrate the effectiveness of medical anthropological theory in explaining the dynamics of health and healing reflected in biblical texts.Contributions: This article contributes to the interdisciplinary approach to the study of religion by employing a ethnomedical anthropological perspective to read the leper’s healing in Matthew 8.1–4 in reference to the first century CE health systems in the Roman Empire. This approach procured that Matthew’s immanent and transcendent perspectives of Christology is crucial in demonstrating the text’s function in constructing and sustaining the identity of Matthew’s community in antiquity.

Interactional means of teaming up: enacting the features of contemporary working life in a theater performance

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Riikka Nissi ◽  
Melisa Stevanovic
Keyword(s):  
Working Life ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Setting ◽  
Live Performance ◽  
Societal Issues ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Social ◽  
Workplace Organization ◽  
The One

Abstract The article examines how the aspects of the social world are enacted in a theater play. The data come from a videotaped performance of a professional theater, portraying a story about a workplace organization going through a personnel training program. The aim of the study is to show how the core theme of the play – the teaming up of the personnel – is constructed in the live performance through a range of interactional means. By focusing on four core episodes of the play, the study on the one hand points out to the multiple changes taking place both within and between the different episodes of the play. On the other hand, the episodes of collective action involving the semiotic resources of singing and dancing are shown to represent the ideals of teamwork in distinct ways. The study contributes to the understanding of socially and politically oriented theater as a distinct, pre-rehearsed social setting and the means and practices that it deploys when enacting the aspects of the contemporary societal issues.

scholarly journals The rich, the poor, and the law

2004 ◽  
Vol 60 (1/2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dieter H. Reinstorf
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
First Century ◽  
Good Society ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Rich

This article explores the social and religious dynamics of parables of Jesus in which “rich” and “poor” are juxtaposed. It focuses on Luke 16:19-31 (the parable of the rich man and the poor beggar Lazarus) and on Luke 18:9-14 (the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector). The core of the exploration relates to questions concerning “wealth” and “poverty” in a limited-good society such as first-century Palestine. The article aims to expose the legitimisation provided by the Israelite elite to ensure the collection of taxes placed on the peasant population by the Roman Empire.

scholarly journals The Turn to Precarity in Twenty-First Century Fiction

2014 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-29
Author(s):  
Jago Morrison
Keyword(s):  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Judith Butler ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cultural Shift ◽  
The Social ◽  
Biographical Study ◽  
Way Finding ◽  
Twenty First Century

Abstract Recent years have seen several attempts by writers and critics to understand the changed sensibility in post-9/11 fiction through a variety of new -isms. This essay explores this cultural shift in a different way, finding a ‘turn to precarity’ in twenty-first century fiction characterised by a renewal of interest in the flow and foreclosure of affect, the resurgence of questions about vulnerability and our relationships to the other, and a heightened awareness of the social dynamics of seeing. The essay draws these tendencies together via the work of Judith Butler in Frames of War, in an analysis of Trezza Azzopardi’s quasi-biographical study of precarious life, Remember Me.

Psalms of Solomon as Resistance Poetry

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 366-385
Author(s):  
Matthew E. Gordley
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Dominant Discourse ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Poetry Of Witness ◽  
Psalms Of Solomon ◽  
The One

Two trends in recent scholarship provide a new set of lenses that enable contemporary readers to appreciate more fully the contents and genre of Psalms of Solomon. On the one hand, scholars such as Richard Horsley, Anathea Portier-Young, and Adela Yarbro Collins have now explored the ways in which early Jewish writers engaged in a kind of compositional resistance as they grappled with their traditions in light of the realities of oppressive empires. These approaches enable us to consider the extent to which Psalms of Solomon also may embody a kind of resistant counterdiscourse for the community in which it was edited and preserved. On the other hand, scholars within biblical studies (e. g., Hugh Page) and beyond have examined the dynamics of the poetry of resistance. Such poetry has existed in many times, places, and cultures, giving a voice to the oppressed, protecting the memory of victims, and creating a compelling vision of a possible future in which the oppression is overcome. In this article the poetry of Guatemalan poet Julia Esquivel is interwoven with Psalms of Solomon to illustrate these dynamics and to illuminate the kinds of concerns that scholars like Barbara Harlow and Caolyn Forché have highlighted within the poetry of witness. Since Psalms of Solomon has yet to be explored through these dual lenses of resistance and resistance poetry, this article examines these early Jewish psalms in light of these scholarly trends. I argue that Psalms of Solomon can be understood as a kind of resistance poetry that enabled a community of Jews in the first century B. C. E. to resist the dominant discourse of both the Roman Empire and its client king, Herod the Great. The themes of history, identity, and possibility that pervade resistance poetry in other times and places are central features of Psalms of Solomon.

Invention, Tinkering, or Transfer?

2020 ◽  
pp. 307-354
Author(s):  
Tamara Lewit
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Ease Of Use ◽  
First Century ◽  
Regional Patterns ◽  
Communications Networks ◽  
Roman Economy ◽  
Major Activity ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Military

The production of wine and olive oil was a major activity within the Roman economy, and therefore innovations to the press mechanisms used are of great importance. Historical discussions have focused on the introduction of a screw, and have assumed that presses throughout the Roman Empire were transformed, with the aim of increasing efficiency, by this single ‘invention’ in the first century BC to first century AD. However, recent archaeological evidence reveals a wider range of innovations, not always involving the use of a screw, and over a much broader period, and shows that press types evolved within regional patterns, rather than uniformly. These innovations can only be understood by considering who initiated and spread them, how, and why. Factors such as the physical weight and durability of press parts, access to skills for ongoing maintenance and repairs, the absence of printed treatises and drawn diagrams, the military and communications networks of the empire, and the social context of ownership and local settlement structures all influenced innovation and its diffusion. A drive to increase production cannot fully explain the patterns of change, and some innovations served other purposes, improving safety or ease of use. Innovations seem to have been developed not by an educated ‘inventor’, but at least partly through day-to-day ‘tinkering’ by local artisans and farmers.

scholarly journals The social setting of Jesus’ exaltation in Luke-Acts (Lk 22:69 and Ac 7:56)

2005 ◽  
Vol 61 (1/2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Claude Loba-Mkole
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Social Setting ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Son Of Man ◽  
The Social ◽  
Christian Culture ◽  
Social Turmoil ◽  
A Current

This article presents a model for “intercultural exegesis” and applies this model to Luke 22:69 and Acts 7:56. In this process, the term “Son of Man” is approached from two perspectives: that of a biblical culture in the first century Graeco-Roman world, and that of a current Christian culture in Africa. The study concludes that the “Son of Man” concept in the selected texts not only includes a reference to the eschatological saviour, judge and defender, but also creates a sense of Jesus’ solidarity with his fellow human beings. Such an understanding would certainly have led to Jesus’ exaltation by his followers, who lived under conditions of social turmoil in the Graeco-Roman world of the first century, and would lead to such an exaltation by those who experience similar circumstances in Africa today.

Dictators and Philosophers in the First Century A.D.

1944 ◽  
Vol 13 (38-39) ◽  
pp. 43-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jocelyn M. C Toynbee
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Economic History ◽  
The State ◽  
First Century ◽  
Strict Sense ◽  
Totalitarian Regime ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of

It was just over half a century ago, in 1892, that Gaston Boissier published a discussion of the Stoic ‘martyrs’ under Nero in the second chapter of his well-known work L'Opposition sous les Cèsars. Since then two especially noteworthy studies of the ‘philosophic opposition’ in the first century A.D. have appeared in English, that of M. Rostovtzeff, The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire (1926), pp. 108 ff., and, more recently, that of D. R. Dudley, A History of Cynicism (1937), pp. 125 ff. The story of men who maintained a critical or, at the least, independent attitude in the face of a totalitarian règime is obviously of great significance for us to-day. Theoretically, of course, the term ‘autocracy’, in its strict sense of ‘unaccountability’ of government, cannot be applied to the imperial system of the early Empire. On paper the ‘tyrants’, Tiberius, Gaius, Nero, and Domitian, no less than the ‘enlightened monarchs’, Augustus, Claudius, Vespasian, Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines, were delegates senatus populique Romani, chief magistrates and servants of the state. But in practice the ever-expanding range of the imperial provincia, coupled with the unceasing growth of the ‘mystical’ auctoritas bequeathed by the first Princeps to his successors, had produced an effective absolutism comparable, in many respects, to that of the autocrats or ‘dictators’ of modern authoritarian states. How did political thought and action in the Roman Empire respond to this de facto autocracy? How, above all, did they respond to its abuse? For us these are no merely academic questions. The parallelism, such as it is, between the ancient and the modern situations must serve as an excuse for presuming to rehandle a familiar theme.

Theatre and Democracy

2002 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
John McGrath
Keyword(s):  
Conference Proceedings ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Greek Philosopher ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cornelius Castoriadis ◽  
European Theatre ◽  
The University

John McGrath died from leukaemia in January 2002, having put the final touches to his last book, Naked Thoughts That Roam About: Reflections on Theatre, 1958–2001, edited by Nadine Holdsworth (Nick Hern Books, 2002). The following article forms the conclusion to this collection of essays, lectures, interviews, theatre reviews, 7:84 company documents, programme notes, letters, and poems, for which McGrath provides a contextualizing commentary. Like the other pieces in the book, it testifies to McGrath's faith in theatre's ability to contribute to humanity through its engagement with people, communities, and political processes – a commitment he maintained and developed to the end of his life. In ‘Theatre and Democracy’ he drew on the work of the Greek philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis to frame his hopes for theatre in the twenty-first century – a theatre which would operate in public dialectical debate with the society from which it evolves, and, by asking hard questions about the social processes that construct that society, provide a voice for oppositional opinion and the marginalized. The essay was reworked from a keynote address to the ‘European Theatre, Justice, and Morality’ conference held at the University of London in June 1999, and in its earlier form appeared in the conference proceedings, published as Morality and Justice: the Challenge of European Theatre, edited by Edward Batley and David Bradby (Rodopi, 2001).

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