Currents in Biblical Research 17, 3 (June 2019)

The latest Currents in Biblical Research recently arrived, with titles and abstracts of the main articles as below.

Chloe Sun

Recent Research on Asian and Asian American Hermeneutics Related to the Hebrew Bible

Compared to Eurocentric biblical interpretations, Asian and Asian American hermeneutics is a relatively late phenomenon. Yet in the past three decades it has gradually emerged as one of the critical interpretations in contemporary scholarship. The common themes shared among Asian and Asian American hermeneutics revolve around the issues and intersections of identity, race, gender, class, liberation, and how one’s social location shapes the ways in which one interprets scripture. As regards Asian and Asian American hermeneutics related to the Hebrew Bible, the book of Exodus has received particularly broad attention due to its migration and liberation motifs. In addition, border-crossing characters and characters with hybrid identities, such as Moses, Ruth, Hagar, Daniel, and Esther, become key subjects for theological reflection. Methodologies are centered on ethnographical, feminist, postcolonial, intercontextual, and culturally specific perspectives such as Dalit and Minjung theologies, as well as LGBTQ readings. As Asian and Asian American hermeneutics related to the Hebrew Bible continues to flourish, the future of this particular way of reading scripture will likely include intersectional and integrational approaches and reception history, and will contribute to the broad interpretive spectrums of the twenty-first century.

Shawn J. Wilhite

Thirty-Five Years Later: A Summary of Didache Scholarship Since 1983

This article provides a summary of Didache scholarship over the past 35 years (1983–present). The review of literature focuses on the individual participants, including notable Didache scholars such as Jonathan Draper and Clayton Jefford, and the field’s respective contributions to Didache research. This article directly considers the vision of the Didache and its role in early Christianity via the literature of participants in Didache research. I consider the individual treatments of numerous Didache scholars and a list of their publications. In the conclusion, I highlight some points of agreement and disagreement to prompt further areas of specific research. I offer four suggestions to continue the work in Didache studies: (1) Wirkungsgeschichte and reception theory; (2) social-scientific methodologies (social identity theory; self-categorization theory); (3) exclusive attention given to H54; and (4) intertextual concerns beyond the Gospel of Matthew and Epistle of James.

Wesley Thomas Davey

Playing Christ: Participation and Suffering in the Letters of Paul

Paul’s theology of suffering has been the subject of a spate of recent scholarly investigations. This article provides a roadmap for the burgeoning conversation, doing so by targeting two objectives. First, it offers a historical account of the origin of interest in the concept of ‘participation with Christ’ in the Pauline letters. The genesis of participation studies played an indispensable role in catalyzing research into Paul’s perspective on suffering, as the article shows. Second, with that stage set, the article then turns to highlight authors who focus more narrowly on ‘suffering as participation with Christ’ in the letters of Paul. Although the current conversation about Paul’s theology of suffering hosts a wide array of approaches and opinions, there is a broad consensus that Paul interprets believers’ suffering as an indispensable part of what it means to be united to a crucified Lord.

Sarit Kattan Gribetz and Lynn Kaye

The Temporal Turn in Ancient Judaism and Jewish Studies

Despite the apparent finality of Heschel’s pronouncement, in 1951, that Judaism is a ‘religion of time’, the past two decades have seen renewed scholarly interest in the relationship between time, time-keeping, and forms of temporality in Jewish culture. This vibrant engagement with time and temporality in Jewish studies is not an isolated phenomenon. It participates in a broader interdisciplinary examination of time across the arts, humanities and sciences, both in the academy and beyond it. The current article outlines the innovative approaches of this ‘temporal turn’ within ancient Judaism and Jewish studies and reflects on why time has become such an important topic of research in recent years. We address a number of questions: What are the trends in recent work on time and temporality in the fields of ancient Judaism and Jewish studies? What new insights into the study of Judaism have emerged as a result of this focus on time? What reasons (academic, historiographical, technological and geopolitical) underpin this interest in time in such a wide variety of disciplines? And finally, what are some new avenues for exploration in this growing field at the intersection of time and Jewish studies? The article identifies trends and discusses key works in the broad field of Jewish studies, while providing more specific surveys of particular developments in the fields of Second Temple Judaism, Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, rabbinic literature, and some medieval Jewish sources.