Abstract This article sheds new light on the Servant of YHWH texts in Isaiah 41–49 by reading them from a literary perspective. The much-debated question of whether the Servant designates an individual or a collective, is approached using the stylistic device of “pars pro toto”, in which a part represents the whole. After an analysis of Isaiah 41:8–10 and 49:1–6, which deals specifically with the Servant’s relationship to the people, a discussion of the interpretations of Ulrich Berges and Martin Buber follows, who represent different exegetical traditions. This is followed by an outline of how pars pro toto and metonymy have already been reflected upon in literary studies. The pars pro toto figure is also compared to two other interpretive models, corporate personality and personification. In conclusion, the concept of pars pro toto does justice to the tensions within the text without resolving them.
Abstract This article examines Revelation 6:9–11 through the lens of Frantz Fanon’s concept of ‘absolute violence’, arguing that John’s vision of divine judgement parallels Fanon’s call for the destruction of oppressive systems in the creation of a ‘new humanity’. Rather than relativising or denouncing Revelation’s violence, this study seeks to explore the opportunities for taking the text’s violence seriously as a site of anti-imperial meaning-making. Revelation’s theological impetus, while attached to John’s socio-political context, invites renewed ethical scrutiny for theological application today. The martyrs’ witness challenges Rome’s cultural logic, and their cry for vengeance calls for God to enact cosmic, de-creation violence that overthrows imperial structures and establishes a new creation centred on Jesus. This essay is an open-ended and heuristic juxtaposition of two bodies of thought that address the ambiguous transformation of empire through violence, not to justify either perspective, but to inhabit the theological and ethical tensions they produce.
Abstract Yahweh’s speech “I have been a ‘little sanctuary’ ( מִקְדָּשׁ מְעַט , Ezek 11:16c, literal translation) in the countries where they have gone,” seems to be significant in understanding Ezekiel’s conception of God in the material conditions of the Babylonian exile. The poignance of the cryptic phrase is accentuated by the fact that Ezekiel’s language of God is largely concrete and anthropomorphic, especially the discourse of kābôd Yahweh . The phrase seems to have some resonance with the experience of the exiles in Babylon. Hence, the question of whether the “little sanctuary” entails a concrete representation of Yahweh embracing and embodying the material conditions of exile is crucial. Furthermore, what does מקדּשׁ מעט imply for the community of exile in the margins of the Babylonian empire? This paper employs the concepts of vulnerability and precarity, as articulated by Judith Butler, to shed light on the life situation of the Babylonian exile, and thereby to understand the theological ramifications of the enigmatic phrase “little sanctuary” in the material conditions of exile.
Abstract In Mark 7:24–30, Jesus calls a woman a “dog.” From a Peranakan perspective – a hybridised identity – Jesus’ words are self-evidently problematic. Not only is Jesus dehumanising, but in Peranakan culture, dogs are either house pets or can be seen as unclean animals, meaning there is no redemptive quality to this word. Reading the text, which minimises or downplays the harm of this word, echoes the racial slur that degrades the Peranakan people. The historical interpretation of this name-calling ha favoured the dominant voice in the text, Jesus. Interpreters have largely downplayed the harshness of this saying, rejecting the harm caused by Jesus’ reinscribing of; patriarchal and ethnic norms upon women with hybridised identities. Therefore, there is a need to read from “below” and from an intersectionality perspective where the reading can enlighten the struggle at the same the agency of the Syrophoenician woman.
Abstract This article traces the reception history of the Book of Hosea in African American tradition from 1619 to 1968, offering a close reading of how Hosea’s wilderness theology, wounded divine love, and covenantal imagery became central resources for Black spiritual survival and liberationist imagination. Drawing on the methodological frameworks of Wil Gafney’s womanist midrash (2017), Albert Raboteau’s foundational study of the invisible institution (1978), and James H. Cone’s theological analysis of the spirituals (1972), the article argues that African American interpreters did not passively receive Hosea but actively transformed it—making the book’s most dangerous theological claims into a grammar of resistance against chattel slavery, its aftermath, and structural racial terror. The analysis proceeds across three historical arcs: the hush-harbour appropriation of Hosea 2:14 as wilderness theology among the enslaved (1619–1865); the reclamation of Gomer as the patron saint of sanctified Black women in the holiness tradition (1865–1940); and the deployment of Hosea 11 as the emotional and ethical grammar of nonviolent resistance in the civil rights movement (1954–1968). A concluding section reflects on the implications of this reception history for womanist biblical hermeneutics and the continuing conversation about divine solidarity in contexts of communal trauma. In each era, Hosea emerges not as a text of judgment but as a love song—dangerous, scandalous, and fiercely protective of a people whom no earthly power could finally claim.
Abstract This study begins by highlighting the largely unrealized potential of biblical stained glass as a source for students of visual biblical reception and its treatment thus far in terms of either ‘visual exegesis’ or ‘visual criticism’. It then suggests that while a stained-glass window may serve as an instance of reception, it may also serve as a metaphor for the visual reception of the Bible in various media, including stained glass. The interpretive utility of this metaphor is suggested by an analysis of David Instructing Solomon (1883), a stained-glass window designed by the famous Victorian artist, Edward Burne-Jones, for Trinity Church in Boston, Massachusetts. This analysis suggests that a stained-glass window’s refraction of the Bible may be illumined by attention to a variety of personal, artistic and circumstantial contexts and factors but that a window may also invite fresh reflection on the biblical text which it interprets.
Abstract Building on previous studies of kissing, this article explores kisses of betrayal in Gilgamesh and Huwawa A, the Succession Narrative (2 Sam. 14–15, 20), and Proverbs 7. These cases illustrate how kissing, generally associated with pro-social dispositions and involving physical proximity to the other, can function as a treacherous act with lethal consequences. Appearing in texts linked to kingship, kissing emerges as a democratic weapon of deception and destruction, wielded across all social ranks and targeting individuals of all statuses and genders. Using studies on ekphrasis in ancient literature, psychology of betrayal, and moral injury, this analysis shows how through ekphrasis, these traditions create a highly visual, almost “voyeuristic” or “immersive” experience of betrayal, which goes beyond aesthetic value to solicit ethical reflection. Thus, the kissing episodes serve as ekphrastic commentaries on royal failure, i.e., visualising unchecked power, hubris, and desire, that endanger subjects and backfire on royal figures themselves.
Abstract This article employs an intersectional empire-critical approach to analyze John 4:1–42, examining how imperial ideology shapes ethnic, gendered, cultural, and religious dynamics within the pericope. By considering the consequences of Roman imperialism and its impact on the relevant characters, it highlights the complex nature of Jesus’s dual role as both the victim of imperial oppression and as the perpetuator of his own imperializing ideology that proclaims him as the “Savior of the World.” Foregrounding the historical specificity of Roman Samaria—including the imperial cult at Sebaste, auxiliary military forces, and the destruction of the Gerizim temple—this study demonstrates that the Samaritan woman’s gender, ethnicity, and sexual history intersect to render her structurally necessary for the text’s imperializing mission. Her compounded marginality enables her to serve as the primary point of access for Samaria’s incorporation into Christ’s emerging dominion: she mediates the community’s inclusion while her own agency is instrumentally absorbed; her ethnic identity is dissolved even as her gendered identity remains marked. The narrative’s mission and harvest language (4:35–38) models a template of acquisition and expropriation that mirrors Roman imperial strategies and anticipates the text’s later utility in global missionary and colonial projects, showing how ostensibly “inclusive” rhetoric can simultaneously authorize hierarchical control.
Abstract This article analyzes the palimpsestuous interplay between the Book of Job and the cover-art of Slayer’s 2001 album, God Hates Us All . The album’s cover features digital manipulation of pages from the Book of Job, where certain biblical excerpts remain visible amidst a backdrop of blacked-out sections and overlaid with lyrics and annotations. This fusion lends Slayer’s lyrics a dual theological and exegetical dimension, encouraging listeners/readers to explore the texts in tandem. The study seeks to uncover any discernible patterns in the treatment of biblical passages, analyze how the resulting theodicy reveals a particular reading of the Book of Job, and elucidate the contemporary relevance and purpose of this act of reception and artistic creation. In doing so, the article contributes to the ongoing exploration of the Bible’s Nachleben , emphasizing that exegetes and theologians are neither the only nor the most important interpreters. There are other voices literally screaming to be heard.
Abstract This article offers an integrated reading of Mark 10:46–52, foregrounding Bartimaeus as an honour-aware, disabled figure who exercises significant narrative agency. Combining close analysis of the Greek text, first-century Judaean social dynamics, and Disability Studies critique, it proposes four operational criteria for agency: dialogic symmetry, public resistance, a self-directed post-cure trajectory, and narrative echo with the disciple group. Measured against a Markan control set of healing narratives, Bartimaeus meets all four criteria. Mark’s dense scene construction—featuring a defiant messianic cry, the dramatic casting off of his cloak (ἀποβαλών), and his choice to follow Jesus ‘on the way’ (ἠκολούθει)—positions him as a model disciple in contrast to the Twelve. This reading challenges ableist interpretations that metaphorize blindness, reframing Markan discipleship around the inclusion of disabled agency and modelling a co-operative grace that listens rather than silences.
Abstract This study critically examines the conceptualization of anger in the Hebrew Bible through the lens of embodied realism and cognitive constraints. It reviews existing research on anger metaphors and metonymies, highlighting the influence of cultural, environmental, and experiential factors on emotional expressions. The analysis integrates insights from conceptual metaphor theory, embodied cognition, and the historical situatedness of emotions to explore how anger is represented in Biblical Hebrew. The findings reveal that anger is primarily articulated through literal and metonymic expressions deeply embedded in the physiological, symbolic, and cultural experiences of ancient Israelite society. The study also addresses the distinction between human and divine anger, emphasizing the theopathic model in which divine emotion is understood in embodied, physical terms. This approach not only enhances our understanding of the emotional landscape of the Hebrew Bible but also contributes to broader discussions on the cultural and historical variability of human emotions.
Abstract Reading Jeremiah 29:4–7 dialogically, this study situates the passage at the crossroads of the book’s textual–historical multivocality, intertextual conversations, and contemporary experiences of multiplaced belonging. It contends that common exile–return templates—presuming one homeland and linear restoration—are unsettled by a present-tense ethic of inhabiting place that holds together memory, rupture, and responsibility. Framing multivocality as a hermeneutical principle and multiplacedness as an exegetical lens, the article foregrounds contemporary, multiplaced readers as agents who practice an interpretive ethic—recognizing divine presence within fractured, momentary locales and assembling belonging across places without collapsing layered identities, while encouraging one another beyond linear-restoration scripts. Accordingly, the study reads the city as an interpretive metaphor for nodal, layered belonging amid rupture; urges attentiveness to home within multiplaced realities; and commends the cultivation of dialogical relations as a way of living.
Abstract Many contemporary scholars, when interpreting early Christian texts about Sodom’s sin, refer to ‘homosexual practice’ or ‘homosexual activity.’ In this paper I present a meta-critique of contemporary scholarship on texts that refer to the sins of Sodom, focussing specifically on scholarship that engages with the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. This highly patriarchal and famously misogynist second-century text contains several references to the sins of Sodom. Though the text does not associate sexual activity between men with Sodom, many interpreters explicitly read this in the text. In this paper, I argue that these interpreters assume views of human sexuality and anthropology informed by modernism, heteronormativity and patriarchal thinking, including conceptualisations of ‘homosexuality’, ‘natural sex’ and the male-female sex binary. Thus, they project contemporary homophobia into the second century and wrongfully reinscribe modern configurations onto the complex sexual imagination of ancient Christianity.
Abstract This article explores how the book of Chronicles functions as a form of poetic historiography, a narrative strategy that ritually sustains communal memory of trauma through theological rhythm, literary structure, and liturgical repetition. In dialogue with the trauma fiction of Han Kang, the 2024 Nobel Laureate in Literature, the study draws literary and theological resonances between the Chronicler’s historiographical techniques and Han’s poetic prose. Both bodies of work preserve fragility and suffering without seeking resolution. By reframing Israel’s historical failures as sacred memory rather than erasure, the Chronicler invites postexilic readers to dwell within vulnerability and participate in communal hope. This trauma-informed reading of Chronicles expands current biblical scholarship by highlighting how sacred historiography can witness to suffering, shape identity, and offer a theological space for lament and restoration.
Abstract In Acts, Joseph Barnabas is depicted as a key mediator between the Jerusalem and Pauline missions, simultaneously an insider and outsider. Barnabas is largely overlooked in scholarly literature, most commentary concentrating on his nickname. For many commentators, the narrative aside in Acts 4:36 (ὅ ἐστιν μεθερμηνευόμενον υἱὸς παρακλήσεως) has obfuscated rather than clarified its meaning. Prior attempts to assign a single definition have overlooked the inherently multifaceted nature of nicknames. This paper argues that the significance of Barnabas’ nickname lies not only in its linguistic definition, but also in the social process of nicknaming. This study reexamines Barnabas’ nickname by analysing Jewish onomastics, drawing on social-scientific studies of nicknaming and migration, and considering Greco-Roman ethnic stereotypes of Cyprus. Barnabas’ nickname illustrates Luke’s narrative strategy of legitimising hybrid identities within the early Christian movement.
Abstract This article rereads the Gospel of John through the experiences of subordinated wo/men in ancient and contemporary patriarchal-colonial contexts, using the Korean film Spirits’ Homecoming as an intercultural lens. I contend that John portrays Jesus as a traumatized Jewish man under Roman imperial rule whose wounded yet resurrected body, remembered through the Spirit-Paraclete, generates decolonizing memory for marginalized communities. As in the film’s butterfly moving back and forth between past and present, the Spirit in John’s Gospel enables truthful remembrance that exposes imperial violence, resists historical amnesia, and transforms haunting trauma into communal agency. Engaging Korean concepts of han and jeong , the article reenvisions Johannine memory as an Arirang -like reservoir of wounded hope, where grief is neither erased nor romanticized but transfigured into solidarity, resilience, and justice. John thereby becomes a contextual theological resource for healing amid the modern afterlives of the patriarchal, colonial, and sexual violence of empire.
Abstract This article proposes an interdisciplinary reading of the book of Job, integrating monster theory and trauma studies to re-evaluate the rhetorical function of Behemoth and Leviathan. Within the post-exilic context, I contend these monsters function as a sophisticated “rhetoric of trauma,” through which the community negotiated theological dissonance and fractured identity. The analysis proceeds in three stages. First, I argue the monsters represent a “chaotic religion” and the collapsed cognitive frameworks following the Babylonian Exile. Second, I demonstrate how these monstrous bodies somatically recapitulate the trauma experienced by Job and, by extension, post-exilic Israel. Finally, I position these figures as a “meaning-making space” for reconstituting communal agency and resilience. Ultimately, the article argues that the divine discourse on Behemoth and Leviathan provides a paradoxical language for the unspeakable, facilitating the survival of the traumatized amidst an unassimilated reality.
This article examines the complex relationship between the Bible and Nordic law, focusing on its evolving legal reception in increasingly secular societies. Once foundational to legal and social frameworks, the Bible's role in Nordic law today is fragmented and context-dependent. Drawing on examples from hate speech law, religious community regulations, asylum cases, and protections for sacred materials, the article explores how the Bible operates as an object of veneration, a source of internal rules for religious communities, and a contested text in legal debates. Unlike the "liberal" or "cultural" Bible identified by scholars like Yvonne Sherwood, the "legal Bible" lacks coherence, reflecting the displacement of its authority in modern jurisprudence. While still relevant in specific contexts, such as asylum claims or religious freedom, the Bible is no longer central to legal regulation but is treated as one of many religious texts subjected to legal scrutiny. Nordic law, thus, engages with the Bible pragmatically rather than reverentially.
Building on the articles in this special issue and Hannah M. Str & oslash;mmen's biblical assemblages framework, this article suggests two key directions for future research on cultural and reception histories of Bible. First, it advocates for deeper investigation into socio-technical dimensions. Within the framework of biblical assemblages, technologies should not be understood simply as tools used by human actors but as assemblages of human and non-human agents embedded within larger assemblages, interacting with other agents to shape cultural meanings and social organizations of power. Second, it calls for increased attention to biblical affects. Analyzing Bibles exclusively as discursive objects, byproducts of language, misses the precognitive, extralinguistic forces of biblical affects that shape individual and collective experiences, relationships, and socio-political organizations. Just as religions come to life and exist as networks of affects, so do Bibles.
This article has two aims. The first is to survey historical-critical biblical scholarship as a form of response to experiences of secularization. I argue that especially in Western academia, the historical-critical method became the scientific response par pr & eacute;ference to the perception that secularization was somehow threatening the position of the Bible in the public space. The second aim is to investigate how the historical-critical method eventually became the object of serious contention, thereby losing its authority as an epistemic foundation of the Bible as public scripture. The two aims are achieved through a case study on the production of a Swedish Bible translation in the early 1970s onwards. While the translators held that the new Bible should be based on historical-critical scholarship, public debates initiated by 1) a group of conservative Christians and 2) feminist intellectuals showed that such scholarship was not an uncontested response to the possible consequences of secularization on the Bible as public scripture.
