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Contributions Of This Volume And The De-Johannification Of Jesus (Chapter In John, Jesus, And History, Volume 3), Paul N. Anderson

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Excerpt: "As the essays in this volume demonstrate, the evidentiary basis for excluding the Gospel of John from the historical quest for Jesus is extensively flawed, critically. Many dozens, perhaps hundreds, of instances in which the Fourth Gospel arguably contributes to a fuller understanding of the life and ministry of the prophetic figure from Nazareth require renewed consideration if the fuller database of historical information about Jesus is to be consulted. The question, of course, is how to do so. While it might be safer and less likely to err to exclude John from the quest, such a conservatively reductionistic …

Allan Aubrey Boesak, With Foreword By Nicholas Wolterstorff, Dare We Speak Of Hope? Searching For A Language Of Life In Faith And Politics. Reviewed By Travis Pickell, Travis Pickell

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Review of Allan Aubrey Boesak, with foreword by Nicholas Wolterstorff, Dare We Speak of Hope? Searching for a Language of Life in Faith and Politics (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014). xiv + 202 pp. ISBN 978-0-8028-7081-0

‘Hope’ has become something of a catchword in contemporary civic and political dis-course. In 2006, then-Senator Barack Obama published The Audacity of Hope, his visionary manifesto, which was followed two years later by now-iconic presidential election campaign posters, boldly and simply proclaiming ‘HOPE’ to masses of American voters. Over the past decade, we have witnessed the powerful enthusiasm the promise of hope can bring …

Reading Ceremonies In The Hebrew Bible: Ideologies Of Textual Authority In Joshua 8, 2 Kings 22-23, And Nehemiah 8, Lisa Joann Cleath

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

The covenant reading ceremonies in Joshua 8:30-35, 2 Kings 22-23, and Nehemiah 7:72b-8:18 betray a developing interplay between the people of Israel and the book of the law. These narratives are unique in the Hebrew Bible in presenting the oralization of a covenant document to a specific audience. Previous scholarship on these narratives has focused on reconstructing the source-critical history of each account and the historicity of the reported events. For the following study, Joshua 8:30-35 and 2 Kings 22-23 represent earlier pre-exilic and exilic traditions, while 2 Chronicles 34-35 and Nehemiah 8 illustrate later post-exilic perspectives. However, supplementing source-critical …

Smith's "Poetic Heroes: Literary Commemorations Of Warriors And Warrior Culture In The Early Biblical World" (Book Review), Brian R. Doak

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

A review of Smith, Mark S. Poetic Heroes: Literary Commemorations of Warriors and Warrior Culture in the Early Biblical World. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014. xxiv1636 pp. ISBN-13: ‎978-0802867926

Glimpses Of Jesus Through The Johannine Lens--An Introduction And Overview Of John, Jesus, And History, Vol. 3, Paul N. Anderson, Jaime Clark-Soles

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

No abstract provided.

Monster Violence In The Book Of Job, Brian R. Doak

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

In this paper, I explore the book of Job in terms of the symbolic and ideological warfare waged between God and the human protagonist, Job. Specifically, I argue that the invocation of various kinds of creatures under the “monster” rubric (such as Leviathan, Rahab, Yamm, the Twisting Serpent, and Behemoth) can be illuminated through a consideration of contemporary work—in the history of religions, literary theory, and film studies—that categorizes the monstrous in terms of ecological disorientation, metaphors of the torn human body, and the boundaries of the “home.” Moreover, I draw on the work of Marie Hélène Huet in her …

Second Criticality— An Interdisciplinary Approach To The New Testament And Its Contexts, Paul N. Anderson

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

In my just-released introduction to the New Testament published by Abingdon1 I find myself trying to make several contributions that make this something of a new and serviceable approach. First, I proceed in canonical order, dividing the book into three parts (the Gospels and Jesus, Acts and the writings of Paul, General Letters and Revelation) beginning each chapter with laying out from three to six crises or background issues that help the reader appreciate the contexts in which the twenty-seven books of the New Testament were written. Nearly sixty crises and contextual issues are outlined overall, and I feel this …

Foreword To John's Gospel In New Perspective, Paul N. Anderson

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Over the last half century or more of Johannine scholarship, three issues have been of primary critical concern. One subject of interest has been the literary origin and composition of the Fourth Gospel. A second has been the application of new-literary analyses to the Johannine narrative, wherein the literary artistry and rhetorical design of the text is studied in order to discern how John’s message is conveyed in the interest of better understanding what is being said. A third area of interest has been a sustained interest in the Johannine situation, seeking to learn more about the history of Johannine …

Quakers And Scripture, Howard R. Macy

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

This chapter explores how the Quakers’ use of the Bible has developed, recognizing changes both in the Friends movement and in its historical and cultural settings. Friends’ approaches to Scripture have varied widely as they have responded over time to the influences of the Enlightenment, revivalism, fundamentalism, Modernism, and other factors. The chapter describes how Quakers have viewed the authority and inspiration of the Bible and how they have held the importance of the Bible in tension with the inward teaching of Christ, whom they refer to as the ‘Word of God’. The chapter also contrasts various forms of Bible …

Making The Cut: Covenant, Curse And Oath In Deut 27-29 And The Incantation Plaques Of Arslan Tash (Society Of Biblical Literature: Atlanta, 2015), Melissa Ramos

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

The phrase “cutting a covenant” is familiar to us from texts of the Hebrew Bible. In Gen 15:18, for example, God makes a covenant with Abram that is accompanied by a ritual enactment. This ritual performance involves the slaughter of animals, arranging the pieces in two rows, and fire passing between the two rows of pieces. The phrase that is used in this passage is: כרת יהוה את–אברם ברית , or “God cut a covenant with Abram.” This phrase “to cut a covenant” לכרות ברית) ) is a common one in the Hebrew Bible. The slaughtering of animals and the …

Political Affections: Civic Participation And Moral Theology. By Joshua Hordern. Reviewed By Travis Pickell., Travis Pickell

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Review of Political Affections: Civic Participation and Moral Theology. By JOSHUA HORDERN. Pp. 336. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2013. ISBN: 978-0-19-964681-4.

“Fire tends upwards, stone downwards. By their weight they are moved and seek their proper place ... My love is my weight: wherever I go my love is what brings me there” (Augustine, Confessions 13.9). Augustine long ago recognized that affections are an inescapable dimension of human existence. Why, then, have emotions and affections been so largely neglected, even opposed, in political philosophy? In Political Affections, Joshua Hordern, University Lecturer in Christian Ethics at the University of Oxford and …

“Glimpses Of Jesus Through The Johannine Lens—An Introduction And Overview Of John, Jesus, And History, Volume 3”, Paul N. Anderson, Jaime Clark-Soles

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

In November 2010, Professor Gregory Sterling opened the joint session between the John, Jesus, and History Group and the Historical Jesus Section of the Society of Biblical Literature by correctly acknowledging that the two disjunctions levied by David F. Strauss of Tübingen a century and a half ago were largely accepted by Jesus researchers and New Testament scholars in the 19th and 20th centuries. First, Strauss argued that the Jesus of history must be divorced from the Christ of faith. Second, given some irreconcilable differences between the Synoptics and John, and the three-against-one reality, one must choose between the Synoptics …

Review Of Pope-Levison's "Building The Old-Time Religion: Women Evangelists In The Progressive Era", Benjamin Hartley

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Review of PRISCILLA POPE-LEVISON. Building the Old Time Religion: Women Evangelists in the Progressive Era. New York: New York University Press, 2014. Pp. ix, 270, ISBN-13: 978-1479889891.

Systematic Theology And Spiritual Formation: Recovering Obscured Unities, Jeannine Graham

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

No abstract provided.

Written With The Finger Of God: Divine And Human Writing In Exodus, Brian R. Doak

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

"The presence of writing in the book of Exodus must be considered not only for its contribution to the narrative as story, but also as a witness to several key socio-political issues (such as the interplay of textuality and orality in ancient Israel), for the role of writing in the history of Israel's religion, and for the struggle to define, through several centuries and editorial layers, the nature of YHWH's "true image'' in the world."

“You Shall Write On The Stones”: Deuteronomy 27 And The Inscribing Of Ritual Curses (Society Of Biblical Literature: San Diego, 2014), Melissa Ramos

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

In Deut 27 Moses commands the elders of Israel, once they have crossed the Jordan and arrived at Mount Ebal, to erect large stones and write on them את–כל–דברי התורה הזאת “all the words of this torah.” I would like to begin by asking the question “What was written on the stones?” In the narrative, what formed the content envisioned in such an inscription? This question is important for the discussion of how chapter 27 fits into the broader compositional schema of Deuteronomy.

Moving The Conversation Forward: Open Questions And New Directions (Chapter In Communities In Dispute : Current Scholarship On The Johannine Epistles), Paul N. Anderson

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Given that R. Alan Culpepper has fittingly summarized the essays in the introduction to the present collection, such an overview will not be necessary in this concluding essay. Rather, my charge is to comment on how the above essays move critical conversations forward as well as noting new directions and open questions regarding state-of-the-art understandings of the Johannine Epistles. As such, this essay will progress through the developments achieved in the three parts of this collection, but then return in reverse order, from the third part to the first, considering the open questions and new directions that emerge.

The Gospel According To Mark -- Chapter 3 Of "From Crisis To Christ: A Contextual Introduction To The New Testament", Paul N. Anderson

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Excerpt from Part II: Features of Mark:

Mark has nο birth narrative; it simply begins with announcing "The beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ, God' s Son" (Mark 1 : 1 ) . Good news, of course, is what the word gospel means. As a herald would sound a declaration of the emperor, so the first of the Gospel writers declares the good news of what God has done through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ Jesus. This is similar also to Paul's language. Yet Mark does far more than outline the Christ Events; Mark also constructs …

God And The Gaps, Ross W. Mccullough

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Excerpt: "Most often the story is told like this: There is some feature of the world that science is at a loss to explain. Christians rush to claim that this feature can only be explained by God. Science later produces probable non-theistic hypotheses, and the Christians must beat a hasty retreat. In the early nineteenth century, the feature was the complexity of life, the scientific explanation Darwinian evolution."

The Community That Raymond Brown Left Behind: Reflections On The Johannine Dialectical Situation, Paul N. Anderson

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Among the paradigm-making contributions in Johannine studies over the last half century, one of the most significant is the sketching of “the community of the Beloved Disciple” by Raymond E. Brown (Brown 1979). Extending beyond Johannine studies, Brown’s work on the history of early Christianity and “the churches the apostles left behind” (Brown 1984) is also among the most practical and interesting of his 47 books.1 Here, Brown’s analyses of the unity and diversity of early Christians’ approaches to leadership and community organization2 have extensive implications, not only to historical and sociological understandings of the first-century Christian movement, but also …

Ugarit, Melissa Ramos

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

In 1928 a Syrian peasant farmer stumbled by chance onto a funerary vault of ancient provenance about half a mile from the Mediterranean coastline of Syria and about six miles north of the modern-day city of Latakia. This unforeseen discovery led to an archaeological excavation ofTell Ras Shamra (Cape Fennel) by the eminent French excavator Claude Schaeffer. What Schaeffer's team unearthed was not merely an ancient tomb, but a city complete with palaces, private homes, temples, and streets paved with stone.

Philip: A Connective Figure In Polyvalent Perspective (Chapter In Character Studies In The Fourth Gospel), Paul N. Anderson

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

While Philip plays no special role in the Synoptics, he plays more of a central role in the Fourth Gospel. Aside from references to Peter and the Beloved Disciple, Philip is mentioned in John more often (a dozen times) than any of the other followers of Jesus - either male or female. Interestingly, he plays a connective role in the narrative, and in several ways. At the outset of the Gospel, during the calling narrative, Philip plays the role of an intermediary, connecting Nathanael with Jesus (John 1:43-48). At the beginning of the feeding narrative, Philip is asked by Jesus …

Incidents Dispersed In The Synoptics And Cohering In John: Dodd, Brown, And Johannine Historicity (Chapter Ten Of Engaging With C. H. Dodd On The Gospel Of John: Sixty Years Of Tradition And Interpretation), Paul N. Anderson

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Excerpt: "Between C. H. Dodd’s two landmark magna opera on John, addressing the religious background behind and the historical tradition within the Fourth Gospel (1953; 1963), Raymond Brown published several essays in the Catholic Biblical Quarterly, later appearing in his New Testament Essays.1 In doing so, Brown picks up where the appendix to Dodd’s first major work left off – the central subject that Dodd expanded in his second volume. Both Dodd and Brown challenged inferences that similarities between John and the Synoptics suggest John’s literary dependence upon one or more of the Synoptics, inferring instead John’s essential autonomy as …

Matthew 25:1-13 Exegetical Perspective, Paul N. Anderson

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Excerpt: "The Gospel of Matthew presents a lucid and compelling portrait of Jesus as the Jewish Messiah for third-generation Christians. Having shown Jesus to be descended from David and Abraham (1:1), and fulfilling all righteousness (3:15), Matthew addresses followers of Jesus with such issues as the way of the kingdom (5:2- 16), the order of the church (18: 15-20), and the Great Commission (28:18-20). Along with John, Matthew was the great teaching Gospel of the early church, and it continues to be a favorite for discerning Christian living in every generation."

Matthew 25:31-46 Exegetical Perspective, Paul N. Anderson

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Excerpt: "The parable of the Sheep and the Goats is one of the most moving, yet most vexing among the teachings of Jesus. Found only in Matthew, this parable concludes its final collection of Jesus' sayings in ways striking and disturbing. Over and against earlier emphases about being prepared for the unannounced coming of Christ, here the Son of Man sits as the heavenly judge of the gathered nations, along with his angels, dividing humanity between the sheep and the goats. The sheep, at his honoring right hand, will receive a heavenly welcome; the goats, at his dishonoring left, will …

The Fate And Power Of Heroic Bones And The Politics Of Bone Transfer In Ancient Israel And Greece, Brian R. Doak

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

No abstract provided.

Ezekiel’S Topography Of The (Un-)Heroic Dead In Ezekiel 32:17–32, Brian R. Doak

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

This essay is an attempt to address several interpretive problems in Ezek 32:17–32 in light of religious ideas prominent in ancient Mediterranean expressions of hero cult. Previous studies have not adequately dealt with the richness of Ezekiel’s striking and unusual imagery in this passage, and I contend that a reading that more fully develops the meaning of Ezekiel’s presentation vis-à-vis the history of religious ideas regarding the power of the heroic dead is the most appropriate one in terms of Ezekiel’s overarching message in this chapter. I argue that Ezekiel’s invocation of ancient Israelite heroic traditions involving the Gibborim and …

Wahlde's "The Gospel And Letters Of John" - Book Review, Paul N. Anderson

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

This revised dissertation (Catholic Theology Faculty, Tübingen) was written in conscious dialogue with the Vatican II documents on Jewish and Christian relations. Still, the volume has value for all scholars seeking more clearly to understand the Lukan and Pauline perspectives on the future of Israel. Schafer argues that both Paul and Luke, like most Jewish writers of their time, were deeply influenced by Deuteronomistic theology on the abiding, but conditional, nature of God’s covenant with Israel. According to Schafer, both Luke and Paul regarded the initial presence of a core group of Jewish believers within early Christianity as essential for …

Matthew 25:14-30 Exegetical Perspective, Paul N. Anderson

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Excerpt: "The parable of the Talents in Matthew 25:14-30 provides continued instruction for believers living in the interim between first and second comings of the Son of Man (chaps. 24- 25). As one of several parables Matthew adds to Mark's apocalyptic discourse (Mark 13 ), the second of three parables in Matthew 25 bears the closest parallels with Luke (Luke 19:11-27). It also coheres with the master-servant parables and references elsewhere in Matthew: pray to the lord of the harvest so send forth laborers, 9:37-38; a servant will suffer as did his master, 10:25; laborers need not uproot the tares, …

Biblical Curses And The Displacement Of Tradition (Book Review), Brian R. Doak

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Review of Britt, Brian Biblical Curses and the Displacement of Tradition Bible in the Modern World 34 Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2011. Pp. x + 309. ISBN 9781907534119.