I am excited to let you all know that a new volume that I co-edited with Dan Batovici is nearly in print. The collection is called, Reactions to Empire: Sacred Texts in their Socio-Political Contexts (WUNT II/372; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), and is the result of a session of the International Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature that Dan and I co-organized in the summer of 2013.
Here is the official blurb about the volume:
The authors of this volume explore various instances of theo-political visions of authoritative texts in Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism, and Early Christianity, and as such offer a broader perspective on the topos “sacred texts in their context.” Instead of a narrow exploration of the “political intent” of a singular text or group of texts, the volume contains the treatment of a wide range of texts, out of different corpora, with their discrete contexts. Their juxtaposition, as well as that of the respective scholarly approaches of the essays, offers fresh insights on the matter. Each of the essays in the collection addresses the issue of oppressive imperial ideology and the extent to which the authors of sacred texts engaged their political contexts, and eight of the essays specifically present reactions to the Roman Empire.
Here is the list of contributors and the titles of their essays:
Loren T. Stuckenbruck: A Place for Socio-Political Oppressors at the End of History? Eschatological Perspectives from 1 Enoch
Amanda M. Davis Bledsoe: Attitudes Toward Seleucid Imperial Hegemony in the Book of Daniel
Nadav Sharon: Between Opposition to the Hasmoneans and Resistance to Rome: The Psalms of Solomon and the Dead Sea Scrolls
Matthew V. Novenson: What the Apostles Did Not See
Christoph Heilig: Methodological Considerations for the Search of Counter-Imperial “Echoes” in Pauline Literature
Alexander P. Thompson: Thwarting the Enemies of God: Contrasting the Death of Herod and the Resurrection of Jesus in Luke-Acts
David I. Starling: “She Who Is in Babylon”: 1 Peter and the Hermeneutics of Empire
Brandon Walker: The Forgotten Kingdom: Miracle, the Memory of Jesus, and Counter-Ideology to the Roman Empire
Candida R. Moss: Resisting Empire in Early Christian Martyrdom Literature
Bernie Hodkin: Theologies of Resistance: A Reexamination of Rabbinic Traditions about Rome
If you are interested in the volume, it can be found on Mohr Siebeck’s website, or Amazon.
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