Feminist Queries for Ruth and Joshua: Complex Characterization,Gapping, and the Possibility of Dissent

Abstract

This essay positions reflections on Ruth and Joshua at the nexus of literary analysis and feminist inquiry. Building on the contributions of Robert Alter and Meir Sternberg, the arguments here explore the characterization of Ruth and the force of gapping in Josh 5,13-15. Nothing Foucault’s configuring of discourse as a space of multiple dissensions, this essay argues that the complexity of characterization of Ruth the Moabite and aporetic narrativity in the story of Joshua’s encounter with the commander of YHWH’s army constitute resource for feminist dissent. Readings of Ruth and Joshua may use these texts to destabilize ideologies of subjugation, move beyond essentialism in the identity formation of individuals and communities gathered around Scripture, and facilitate work for justice and shalom.     

David and Hazael: War,Peace, Stones and Memory

Abstract

This paper reexamines the rise and fall of two regional empires: the Israelite kingdom of David and Solomon, and the Aramaic kingdom of Hazael and his son Bar-Hadad III. The author presents a comparison between these two regional empires, discussing the following main points: the rise to power of the founders: David and Hazael and their charismatic character; their wars and peace treaties; the boundaries and the administrative organization of these two empires, and the decline and fall of the kingdoms in the days of the founder's sons: Solomon and Bar-Hadad III. The author is of the opinion that the existence of a regional empire in the days of Hazael and his son is of great significance for the reality of the empire of David and Solomon, since the former clearly proves that in certain geopolitical circumstances the making of a regional empire that controlled most of the area between the Euphrates and Philistia was entirely possible. The phenomenon of the Aramaean regional empire of Hazael and his son does not prove the existence of an Israelite regional empire, but it indicates that the biblical account of the rise and fall of an Israelite empire in the days of David and Solomon was possible, and even reasonable.     

“Have You Considered My Servant Job?” A Reflection on the Book of Job

Abstract

The Book of Job is often viewed as a story of unnecessary and undeserved suffering. A man who is “blameless” in the eyes of God is put through senseless anguish and misery simply because God and the Adversary have a wager. It is a story of a whimsical God who does not understand or care about human beings and their sufferings, and of an insignificant and yet defiant being who epitomizes human dignity and fortitude. This and other similar accounts make God villainous and human sufferings mysterious and incomprehensible. This article seeks to cast these issues in a different light by exploring some of the key terms in the Prologue and the speeches of God in the Theophany. The exploration ends with some reflections on Job in the Epilogue of the Book.     

"Dead or Banished": A Comparative Reading of the Stories of King Oedipus and King David

The rise and fall of two of the most famous legendary kings, Oedipus and David, seem to bear great resemblance to each other. This is especially the case in the central narrative of Sophocles' Oedipus the King and the Second Book of Samuel where the kings are usurped by a close relative upon the intercession of a violent third party. The article argues that the stories are based on conventions of the rise and fall of a sacred king who restores order to a violent and “plagued” kingdom. It proposes a comparative reading of the texts, in conjunction with an anthropological reading in accordance with the insights of Rene Girard. This will provide not only a way of reading these ancient texts but also give insight into the perspective of and reality referred to in the texts. This is to read the text with appreciation of the dynamics of text and reader through the anthropological perspective opened up by the recognition of the victim.     

从秦简《日书》看牛郎织女故事之形成与流变

出土文献睡虎地秦简《日书》中有两则与牛郎织女传说相关的史料,这为解决牛郎织女故事形成时间上限、传说早期形态、起源地等问题提供了线索。秦简《日书》出土于湖北云梦县战国末期秦墓中,因此战国末期应该是牵牛织女故事形成的时间上限,简文说明牵牛织女婚姻悲剧故事此时已经成型。睡虎地《日书》浓郁的楚文化特色为诸多起源说之一汉水说提供了更为有力的证据。     

Comments on Yoram Hazony,The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture

Hazony's insightful book advances three theses: (1) The Tanakh, the canonical Hebrew Scripture, is coherent, by virtue of its distinctive vision of the Whole and of the Israelite People's special place in it. (2) The Tanakh is a philosophic as well as a religious text. (3) The study of the Tanakh should find a home in departments of philosophy and political science as well as religion or religious studies. Granting the first and third points, we may raise questions about the second: Does philosophy require a concept of Nature qua Necessity, which is at odds with the Scriptural God's radical freedom? Does Hazony, to present the Tanakh as philosophic, overrationalize it, and therewith offer interpretations that, although fruitful and inspiring, fall wide of the mark? Of particular interest are his translation of the Hebrew word lev, literally “heart,” as “mind”; his sketches of five of the Patriarch Jacob's sons as politically relevant character types; and especially his take on the Patriarch Abraham's near sacrifice of his son Isaac, which understates this text's poignancy and wonder. An alternative reading reveals the Book of Genesis as a set of cautionary tales about the hazards of unaided human reason, for which the Mosaic Law provides a needed corrective. On the other hand, Hazony should not be judged too harshly for his critical comments on a dogmatic strand (but only a strand) of Christian thinking that he associates with the early Church Father Tertullian.     

An Indecent Proposal: The Theological Core of the Book of Ruth

ABSTRACT

Traditionally, biblical commentators either tone down the sex-ual tension within Ruth 3 or celebrate it with sensationalistic exuberance. However, theologians have not attempted to integrate the provocative nature of the passage into a theological understanding of the book or the character of Ruth. This essay outlines the reasons why Naomi's plan is rightly interpreted as an attempt at sexual entrapment. Ruth follows this plan until the very last minute when she reveals herself and her intentions to Boaz. Both of these ac-tions―showing fidelity to both Naomi and Boaz―exposed Ruth to potential harm and as such serves as a picture what ?esed entails.     

Knowledge of God According to Hosea the Ripper: The Interlacing of Theology and Social Ideology in Hosea 2*

Abstract

A semiotic reading of Hosea 2 suggests that two stories are told: The story of Hosea and Gomer, and the story of Yahweh and Israel. This semiotic entanglement, however, is also present in the passage of cosmic promises, Hos 2,18–25. “Knowing God” in the Book of Hosea is not just a question of adhering to a system of religious thoughts, it is a question of knowing how to live one's life according to specific social rules, namely that of patriarchy. The theology of the text cannot be separated from the ideology of the text. This is to be tested on the text of Hos 2,18–25 in which the emphasis is apparently firmly placed on the universal signified.     

Mutual Recriminations: God and Israel in the Book of Malachi

ABSTRACT

From the time that Pfeiffer’s work on the structure of the Book of Malachi was published, scholars have divided the Book into six oracles with a common question/answer answer format. Most scholars attempt to identify the genre of the oracles and their sitz im leben according to this struc-ture. However, scholars have overlooked one basic feature connected with this format in the Book of Malachi, a feature that has significant ramifications for the understanding of the book. Examining the content of the questions and answers, we discover that they fall into two different categories, one in which the prophet rebukes the people and the people attempt to justify their actions (in the second, third, and fifth oracles), and one in which the main accusation is made by the people against God, while God justifies Himself against the people’s accusations (in the first, fourth, and sixth oracles). Having made this distinction, we can understand more clearly the principle on which the whole book is based. The oracles of Malachi reflect a breach in the covenantal rela-tionship between God and the people that is expressed through mutual accu-sations. The prophet seeks to repair this breach through a message designed to renew and strengthen the people’s feeling that God is committed to the cove-nantal relationship with Israel.     

‘Let’s find out’: the historian laureate and participatory heritage discovery

ABSTRACT

Developing modes of engagement in the construction of public heritage knowledge emphasize participatory media and active collaboration with citizens. The City of Edmonton created the first historian laureate position in Canada in 2010, and related programs are still rare. This article considers the interaction of narrative content with social and technological contexts of production, viewing the role of the historian laureate as amateur historian and professional storyteller. The historian laureate operates primarily in accessible contexts of leisure, mediated in part through digital technologies, and can respond relatively directly to community interests as a heritage coordinator rather than expert. Rather than representing oppositional or disruptive power to official heritage discourses, the project enables the production of ‘small heritages’ through a series of story episodes. These stories focus on events, people, places and artifacts that typically fall outside the meta-narratives and monuments of a city’s heritage landscape. The historian laureate, embodying or articulating local experience in ways amenable to leisure activity, demonstrates capacities to produce largely indeterminate, diverse and porous ideas of place and histories as part of a bottom-up social generation of knowledge.     

"For it shall be a witness between us" a literary reading of josh 22

ABSTRACT

Eusocial species form societies in which subordinates, which belong to an obligately sterile caste, help raise the young that dominants produce. As in any eusocial species, reproduction was strongly “skewed” in the Ancient Near East: kings assembled harems of thousands of women, and fathered hundreds of children; but their families were provisioned and protected, in part, by eunuchs. As early as 4th-millennium Uruk, “beardless” subjects waited on bearded monarchs; large numbers of eunuchs were commanding imperial armies and administering imperial palaces by Ashurbanipal's time. Assyrian emperors, on the other hand, left records of hundreds of harem governess and weavers, servants and singers; and Artaxerxes II, the Persian king, is supposed to have fathered 115 bastards, along with 3 legitimate sons. So it went in Ancient Israel and Judah. Hebrew kings from David to Zedekiah grew dependent on eunuch messengers, eunuch stewards, eunuch army commanders and eunuch palace guards—who served as workers and soldiers for their hundreds of concubines and wives, and their housefuls of daughters and sons.     

“Ill‐natured comparisons”: Racism and relativism in European representations of ni‐Vanuata from Cook's second voyage

Landes’ anthropological theorizing, highlighting the connections between race, gender, sexuality and class, expressed an Eastern European Jewish female praxis well-established by the late 1920s and early ‘30s when Landes began her research career. Landes’ changing Jewish identification through her life resulted from gendered aging and the reformulation of Jewish racialization processes in the U.S. Her late life reflections are evidence of what Susan Watkins calls ‘gendered late-style’ as well as Jewish conceptions of time as anti-linear and counter-normative. I investigate how her Jewish socialist Yiddish-speaking family background inflected her interpersonal and professional networks and her writings on anti-racist, class and gender-based themes.

Abbreviations: RLP: Ruth Landes Papers; NAA: National Anthropological Archives; SI: Smithsonian Institution; RBP: Ruth Benedict Papers; ASC: Archives and Special Collections Library; VCL: Vassar College Libraries     

Narrating feminisms: what do we talk about when we talk about feminism in Estonia?

Abstract

Drawing on interviews with women who identify as feminists in Estonia, this article explores how the stories we tell about feminism and its past influence the kind of theoretical and political work we are able to do. Zooming in on the story of the emergence of feminisms in postsocialist Estonia which has not been thoroughly researched yet, this article calls upon feminists in Estonia to reflect critically on how they conceptualize feminisms, while at the same time building a framework to think about local feminism within transnational feminist context. Starting from stories of how women became feminists in Estonia since the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, I reflect on the gaps, chance encounters and tensions that my fieldwork revealed to narrate feminism differently, to bring forth new aspects of feminism in this context. In particular, I focus on two moments: the common imaginary of ‘real’ feminism as Western mass movement and the tensions between the local context and ‘Western feminism’. I complicate the narrative in the article through including interludes in between the main text to highlight how the incidents that happened outside and around the interviews shape my story of feminism in Estonia.     

What’s Up Doc? Seventh Sons in Victorian and Edwardian Lancashire

Abstract

Folklorists have long acknowledged that seventh sons had a reputation as healers in England. It has not previously been appreciated that in the region around Blackburn, Lancashire, seventh sons were frequently given the Christian name ‘Doctor’ in Victorian and Edwardian times. This article examines seventh-son traditions there and their connection to healing by reconstituting families with sons named ‘Doctor’. The article finishes with two reflections on folklore transmission and folk beliefs in Lancashire in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.     

Theory and methods in settlement studies

Ruth S. Tringham, ed. Ecology and Agricultural Settlements: An Ethnographic and Archaeological Perspective. Andover, Mass.: ‘Warner Modular Publications, 1973. Unpaginated (ca. vi + 146 pp.). Tables, figures, and notes. (paper).

Ruth S. Tringham, ed. Territoriality and Proxemics: Archaeological and Ethnographic Evidence for the Use and Organization of Space. Andover, Mass.: Warner Modular Publications, 1973. Unpaginated (ca. vi + 115 pp.). Tables, figures, and notes. (paper)

Ruth S. Tringham, ed. Urban Settlements: The Process of Urbanization in Archaeological Settlements. Andover, Mass.: Warner Modular Publications, 1973. Unpaginated (ca. vi + 122pp.). Tables, figures, andnotes. (paper).     

Three Philosophers in Paradise: Kant,Tillich and Ricæur Interpret and Respond to Genesis 3

Abstract

The story of the first sin, committed by Adam and Eve in paradise, has not only attracted the attention of biblical scholars. Philosophers have also shown much interest in the story. Study of the relevant work of Kant, Tillich and Ricæur reveals two opposing ways of philosophically reading the biblical story and similar myths about the fate of the first human beings. According to the first way of reading, best represented by Kant and his followers, including Schiller, the fall was a fortunate event, one that set humanity on the path of development and progress. According to the second, represented by Tillich and Ricæur, it was a tragic event, but one that had its merits, for it allowed humans to develop their own potentialities. Freedom was obtaine at the cost of being estranged from humankind’s divine ground of being.     

In the Shade of the Oaks of Mamre: Hospitality as a Framework for Political Engagement between Christians and Muslims

Abstract

This essay is the initial sketch of a theological framework for political dialogue based on traditions of hospitality. This essay is intended to further a normative commitment to pluralism by creating a space for Christians and Muslims to engage in political dialogue on issues of governance. Using the story of Abraham and the three strangers, the essay analyzes hospitality as a possible model for interreligious political dialogue. The essay follows the narrative of the story recounted in Genesis 18 and Surah 51 of the Qur'an focusing on Abraham's greeting of the strangers as expressing a "duty of hospitality"; the "sharing of a meal" as an act of mutual vulnerability; and the gift of Isaac as exemplary of hospitality's possibility for grace and transformation. The goal is to show that a shared theological tradition could be the basis for political dialogue.     

HENRY VAUGHAN,THE LIBERATION OF THE CREATURES,AND SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH CALVINISM

This article examines how Richard Bernard’s commentary on the Book of Ruth, Ruths Recompence (1628), was constructed so as to deliver its messages, specifically those reflecting Bernard’s concern with living well. Attention is drawn to certain parts of the exposition which exemplify Bernard’s views and one part, especially, which caused him perplexity. This last pertains to a central element of Ruth which challenges Bernard and his early modern predecessors, in particular, in expounding the book. This is Ruth’s approach in Chapter 3, following the advice of her mother-in-law, Naomi, to their kinsman, Boaz, on the threshing floor, alone by night to request marriage according to the levirate law. Such an approach is contrary to the voluminous literature in the early modern period setting out how women should conduct themselves. Regarding other parts of the exposition, the article shows how Bernard taught such lessons as desirable relations between masters and servants.     

An Ojibway Artifact Unraveled. The Case of the Bag with the Snake Skin Strap

Abstract

It is rare to come across a work of Native American textile art that is as intriguing for its aesthetic attributes as for the history with which it is associated. Sadly, the reason for this infrequency is not for lack of historical interest, but rather the deplorable deficiency of documentation for most Native American museum artifacts. It was fortuitous then, when I encountered a bag in the collection of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), Toronto, whose striking appearance is matched with documentation of its extraordinary history with Ojibway Chiefs Maungwudaus and John Tecumseh Henry. Recovering the bag's history required detective work. What follows is the story of emerging clues, surprising discoveries and the insights that they facilitated for the artifact 'detective'.     

Latour,Prepositions and the Instauration of Secularism

Abstract

Bruno Latour's understanding of different modes of existence as given through prepositions offers a new approach to researching "secularism," taking forward attention paid in recent scholarship to its historically contingent formation by bringing into clearer focus the dynamics of its relational and material mediations. Examining the contemporary instauration of secularism in conservative evangelical experience, I show how this approach offers a new orientation to studying secularism that allows attention to both its history and its material effects on practice. This shows how Latour's speculative realism extends and provides a bridge between both discursive analysis of religion and secularism and the recent turn towards materiality in empirical study of religion.