Papers

Dr Martin O’Kane (Lampeter): Biblical Art from Wales: Text and Context

Ms Elizabeth Harper (Durham): Genesis 5:29: It’s all in the name

Dr Elzbieta Lazarewicz-Wyrzykowska (Cambridge): Male Body, Masculine Honour: A Gendered Reading of the Samson Narrative

Dr Jenny Dines (Cambridge): ‘What if the Reader is a She?’ Biblical Women and Their Translators

Dr John Jarick (Oxford): Imagining a qōhelet as an ekklēsiastēs

Dr John Tudno Williams (Aberystwyth): The Fourth Gospel and Jewish Worship: Guilding’s Theory Revisited

Dr Carly Crouch (Cambridge), ‘Sit Down upon the Dust: A Talionic Approach to Warfare in Deutero-Isaiah’

Dr Florentina Badalanova Geller (Royal Anthropological Institute), ‘The Akedah: Ethno-hermeneutic Interpretation’

Professor Nicolas Wyatt (Edinburgh), ‘The Griffin in the Ideology and Iconography of the Levant’

Dr Yvonne Sherwood (Glasgow), ‘The Persistence of Blasphemy: The Bible as a Public Edifice in the “Secular” State’

Professor Michael Fox (Madison), ‘Job’s Tale’.

A Career Development workshop was led by Dr Stuart Weeks (Durham) and Dr James Aitken (Cambridge).

Aileen Guilding Conference

Professor Steve Moyise (Chichester), ‘Quotation and Allusion in Paul: The Minor Prophets as Test Case’;

Professor George Brooke (Manchester), ‘The Influence of the Dead Sea Scrolls on Modern Interpretations of Jewish Traditions in the New Testament’

Dr James Aitken (Cambridge), ‘The Characterization of Speech in the Septuagint’

A celebratory banquet closed proceedings.

Abstracts

Dr Martin O’Kane (Lampeter): Biblical Art from Wales: Text and Context

The presentation reported on a three year project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, which focussed on highlighting the wealth of biblical art that exists throughout Wales, in the medium of painting, stained glass, and ceramic. The illustrated talk included a discussion of biblical images found in churches, synagogues, art galleries and private collections, demonstrating the pre-occupation that existed in nineteenth-century Nonconformist Wales with translating the biblical word into image in a way that safeguarded and prioritized the authority of the word. The presentation opened with the iconic image of Mary Jones receiving her Bible from Thomas Charles, an event that triggered the founding of the British and Foreign Bible Society, and concluded with the importance of the Bible as a source of inspiration for contemporary Welsh artists.

Ms Elizabeth Harper (Durham): Genesis 5:29: It’s all in the name

In Genesis 5:29, Lamech claims that his new born son Noah ‘will comfort us from our burdensome manual labour, from the soil which YHWH has cursed’. Two verses later Lamech dies and shortly after, except for Noah and his ark, all living things expire in the flood. Is it cold comfort, then, that Noah ends up bringing to ‘us’? Moreover the Noah stories never again talk explicitly of the cursed soil. Was Lamech deluded? Is 5:29 an anomalous fragment that has no place in the Noah stories? This paper suggested that the enigma of 5:29 went even deeper. It pointed out how ambiguous and uncertain 5:29 is and then traced the riddle of 5:29 through the ebb and flow of the final-form flood narrative, discovering numerous echoes throughout the story. The flood story read through 5:29 takes on a rather different hue highlighting themes often overlooked (cleansing, the priority of the earth over Noah). By the end, 5:29 still remains an enigma, for none of the traditional answers are fully satisfactory (for example, 8:21, 9:20).

Dr Elzbieta Lazarewicz-Wyrzykowska (Cambridge): Male Body, Masculine Honour: A Gendered Reading of the Samson Narrative

This paper provided a close reading of the Samson narrative (Judges 13-16), guided by an anthropological understanding of masculine honour, intrinsically connected with the male sexual body. It was argued that in the story of Samson’s ill-fated marriage to the woman from Timnah, and in the resulting exchange of acts of violence between him and the Philistines (Judg. 14.1-16.3), his honour and masculinity are challenged. They are subsequently lost as a result of his defeat, humiliation and mutilation of his body (Judg. 16.4-25). Finally, they are restored in his act of vengeance, albeit at the expense of his life (Judg. 16.28-31). Such an approach helps explain the motives for the character’s behaviour. Furthermore, it shows that the violent defence of honour, depicted as a means to fulfil God’s plan for Israel, is employed in the ideology of war reflected in the book of Judges.

Dr Jenny Dines (Cambridge): ‘What if the Reader is a She?’ Biblical Women and Their Translators

Although women in the Hebrew Bible have received a good deal of attention from both feminist scholars and those interested in cultural reception history (retellings in painting, film, opera etc.), very little has yet been done on the Septuagint. From the perspective of a contemporary feminist reader, my paper examines how various translators treat some of the more lively female characters in their source-texts. Do they alter the women they encounter, either by enhancing or diminishing them by their characterization? What might any differences reveal about the interests of the translators and their original readers? Particular attention is paid to texts which have come down in two distinct forms: the A and B texts of Judges (for Deborah, Jael and Bath-Jephthah), the LXX and Alpha texts of Esther, and Gk^I and Gk^II for Tobit (Anna, Edna and Sarah). The outcome will reveal considerable variety in translational treatment; the distinct differences in the case of each of the double recensions will prove especially significant.

Dr John Jarick (Oxford): Imagining a qōhelet as an ekklēsiastēs

One of the most intriguing characters in the Hebrew Bible goes by the designation of qōhelet. We cannot be sure what this designation is meant to convey, since it is a feminine Qal participle of a verb not otherwise used in the Qal, though it presumably has something to do with the noun qāhāl(‘assembly’). Is the sage a woman, functioning in a man’s world and presenting herself more or less as a man? Or is the sage really a man, but taking on the persona of Wisdom, a feminized concept in Hebrew imagery? Or is he a eunuch, working in a royal court where the prerequisite for certain kinds of civil service was castration? In any event, under this enigmatic title the protagonist of the book of Qohelet imagines himself/herself as the greatest of all the kings of Jerusalem and proclaims as that personage that everything is vanity. In the Greek version of the book, the sage is designated as an ekklēsiastēs, which carries the clear meaning of ‘assemblyman’, a member of the ekklēsia(‘assembly’). Thus the thoughts in the Greek version are presented as those of a common man, a citizen among citizens, and so when this individual imagines himself as a king it is analogous to the character Samippus (in Lucian’s dialogue The Ship), who daydreams of being a great king of the east and concludes that it is not a happy business after all. Thus in the Septuagint book of Ecclesiastes we encounter an assemblyman acting as a king, drawing his readers into his imaginings and thereby entertaining and perhaps convincing them with his musings.

Dr John Tudno Williams (Aberystwyth): The Fourth Gospel and Jewish Worship: Guilding’s Theory Revisited

The paper offered a summary and critique of Guilding’s theory as propounded in her book of 1960 and considered its reception at the time it was published. In particular, major problems remain regarding the dating of the Triennial Lectionary Cycle, which formed the basis of her theory. It was suggested that the theory’s impact on subsequent discussions of the Jewish background of the Fourth Gospel was on the whole limited. However, it was noted that C.K. Barrett stood out as a major expositor of this gospel who had made most extensive and practical use of her work. Certainly, subsequent to her research, over the last fifty years much work has been expended on the festal and liturgical aspects of the gospel.

Dr Carly Crouch (Cambridge), ‘Sit Down upon the Dust: A Talionic Approach to Warfare in Deutero-Isaiah’

no abstract provided

Dr Florentina Badalanova Geller (Royal Anthropological Institute), ‘The Akedah: Ethno-hermeneutic Interpretation’

no abstract provided

Professor Nicolas Wyatt (Edinburgh), ‘The Griffin in the Ideology and Iconography of the Levant’

no abstract provided

Dr Yvonne Sherwood (Glasgow), ‘The Persistence of Blasphemy: The Bible as a Public Edifice in the “Secular” State’

no abstract provided

Professor Michael Fox (Madison), ‘Job’s Tale’.

no abstract provided

In addition to those summarized above, the following papers were also presented at the Aileen Guilding Conference: Professor Steve Moyise (Chichester), ‘Quotation and Allusion in Paul: The Minor Prophets as Test Case’; Professor George Brooke (Manchester), ‘The Influence of the Dead Sea Scrolls on Modern Interpretations of Jewish Traditions in the New Testament’; Dr James Aitken (Cambridge), ‘The Characterization of Speech in the Septuagint’. No abstracts are available for these papers.

[index of past meetings]