Over the past three decades, the study of Israelite religion has moved away from text-centered reconstructions toward approaches grounded in practice, space, and materiality. This essay surveys that shift through three interrelated trajectories. The first concerns divine and human embodiment, tracing how scholarship on anthropomorphism, divine materialization, textualized iconicity, and the body has complicated the long-standing opposition between iconic ancient Near Eastern religions and an aniconic Israelite tradition. The second examines the study of ritual space, particularly the turn to household and local religion, pilgrimage, and supra-domestic domestic settings such as Building CP at Tel Rehov. The third addresses small ritual objects, including figurines, amulets, seals, and inscriptions, as active participants in the mediation of protection, identity, and divine presence. Bringing these conversations into dialogue, the essay argues that current scholarship increasingly understands Israelite religion as a materially grounded system of embodied practices operating across multiple scales, from landscapes and sanctuaries to households and individual bodies.
New Testament writings emerge from contexts marked by journeys across geographical, cultural, and linguistic borders, making migration a constitutive force in the formation of early Christian identities. This article surveys recent scholarship in four sections. The first outlines scholarly interpretive frameworks for reading migration and cultural diversity in the New Testament. The second examines how scholars understand the migratory experiences of New Testament authors and audiences. The third explores scholarship on geographical and metaphorical border crossings across Africa, the Southern Levant, and Asia Minor. The fourth turns to scholarly discussions of language, multilingualism, and the linguistic realities of diasporic communities. The article concludes by foregrounding migration as a central dimension in the formation of New Testament writings.
The interdisciplinary nature of ritual studies has drawn contributions from many fields, including biblical studies. This article offers a critical overview of scholarship that integrates ritual studies into the interpretation of the Hebrew Bible. It opens with a brief history of ritual studies, tracing developments from early myth and ritual theories to socio-functional, symbolic, and performative approaches. The central section examines how these models have been appropriated over the last two decades in interpretations of Hebrew Bible passages that describe, prescribe, or envision ritual practices. The article categorizes this scholarship, assesses its methodological strengths and limitations, and outlines four directions for future research, concluding with a call for more theoretically rigorous engagement with ritual in Hebrew Bible studies.
Over the past two decades, there has been an increased interest in the influence of trauma on many biblical texts. In pursuing this interest, scholars have turned to the broad field of trauma studies. The increased influence of trauma on biblical scholarship necessitates an understanding of how scholars discuss trauma in biblical texts and a consideration of the opportunities and shortcomings of applying a trauma lens to the biblical world. This article overviews the two most influential approaches to trauma for biblical scholarship, followed by a topographical look at the scholarly landscape, establishing broad trends and referencing particularly influential works. This overview will lead to a discussion of the challenges and opportunities for trauma hermeneutics in biblical scholarship. Of particular interest will be the challenges posed by applying modern theories and understandings of trauma to ancient texts and contexts.
Among the many exegetical difficulties of 1 Cor. 2.6-16 is the identity of the 'rulers of this age' (2.6-8). Are they human rulers? Cosmic spiritual powers? Some combination of the two? This article will trace the history of the interpretation of these figures with a focus on the modern period of interpretation and the shifting opinions on which religious or textual tradition serves as the most illuminating analogue to Paul's language: is Paul's language Gnostic? Apocalyptic? etc. If the past is the best predictor of the future, then it is likely that the ambiguity of Paul's narrative of the rulers of this age in 2.6-8 will continue to prompt interpreters to draw on these (or some still yet to be proposed) religious and textual traditions to make sense of the rulers of this age.
