SPCK
The Women's Bible Commentary - Construction of the Sanctuary and Priesthood
The Women's Bible Commentary - Construction of the Sanctuary and Priesthood
by SPCK - Newsom, Ringe and Lapsley
Construction of the Sanctuary and Priesthood After the golden calf incident, the Israelites begin construction of the tabernacle as God has instructed. Women have multiple roles in these final chapters…
The Women's Bible Commentary - Women in the Joseph Tales
The Women's Bible Commentary - Women in the Joseph Tales
by SPCK - Newsom, Ringe and Lapsley
Women in the Joseph Tales The Comparative Absence of Women in the Joseph Tales. The Joseph narrative has no heroes who are tricksters, and its women are only two: Asenath, daughter of Potiphera, priest of On, mentioned in one line (41:45) as part of the reward given to Joseph for…
The Women's Bible Commentary - Tamar: Trickster Would-be Mother
The Women's Bible Commentary - Tamar: Trickster Would-be Mother
by SPCK - Newsom, Ringe and Lapsley
Tamar: Trickster Would-be Mother Genesis 38 begins as a story of Judah, who is left in the land of Canaan during Joseph’s ordeal in Egypt. In the Joseph narrative, Judah is one of the villain brothers. He does not actually want to kill the boy Joseph but suggests he be sold to a …
The Women's Bible Commentary - Trickery as Vengeance in Men’s Literature
The Women's Bible Commentary - Trickery as Vengeance in Men’s Literature
by SPCK - Newsom, Ringe and Lapsley
Trickery as Vengeance in Men’s Literature Genesis 34 is a tale of trickery involving female sexuality. Dinah, daughter of Leah and Jacob, is raped by Shechem, the son of Hamor. The question of status that is addressed through trickery is not her status, however, but that of her b…
The Women's Bible Commentary - Rachel: Stealing Laban’s Teraphim
The Women's Bible Commentary - Rachel: Stealing Laban’s Teraphim
by SPCK - Newsom, Ringe and Lapsley
Rachel: Stealing Laban’s Teraphim In an interesting scene leading up to the departure of Jacob and his household from Laban’s land (31:4–16), Jacob speaks to the feuding wives/sisters. He reviews all that has happened to them, tells of a vision he had promising him much of Laban’…
The Women's Bible Commentary - My Brother Esau Is a Hairy Man and I Am a Smooth Man
The Women's Bible Commentary - My Brother Esau Is a Hairy Man and I Am a Smooth Man
by SPCK - Newsom, Ringe and Lapsley
My Brother Esau Is a Hairy Man and I Am a Smooth Man The ancestor hero of Israel, Jacob, father of the Israelites, is smooth, whereas the founding father of the neighboring, related, Semitic-speaking people, the Edomites, is hairy. Particular cultural messages are encoded in such…
The Women's Bible Commentary - Rebekah the Trickster
The Women's Bible Commentary - Rebekah the Trickster
by SPCK - Newsom, Ringe and Lapsley
Rebekah the Trickster In Genesis 27, the woman herself is the trickster who formulates the plan and succeeds, moving the men around her like chess pieces. Lest the reader think that here one finally encounters a more liberated woman, beware that again success is gained through th…
The Women's Bible Commentary - The Wife/Sister Tales
The Women's Bible Commentary - The Wife/Sister Tales
by SPCK - Newsom, Ringe and Lapsley
The Wife/Sister Tales Three times in Genesis, when the patriarch and his wife are “sojourning”— traveling as resident aliens—in a foreign land, the ruler of that country is told that the wife is a sister of the patriarch…
The Women's Bible Commentary - Hagar: Mothering a Hero
The Women's Bible Commentary - Hagar: Mothering a Hero
by SPCK - Newsom, Ringe and Lapsley
Hagar: Mothering a Hero The story of Hagar leads to a wider discussion of the major themes of this study: the barrenness of the patriarch’s wives, the annunciation scenes, and the wives’ positions as mother of the patriarch of the next generation…
The Women's Bible Commentary - “The Daughters of Men”
The Women's Bible Commentary - “The Daughters of Men”
by SPCK - Newsom, Ringe and Lapsley
“The Daughters of Men” Women— “the daughters of men”—are also involved in another, briefer creation tale in Genesis 6:1–4 that marks the passage from ideal to reality. Here the women themselves are the fruit attracting the divine “sons of God,” members of God’s entourage in ancie…
The Women's Bible Commentary - Reading Genesis 3
The Women's Bible Commentary - Reading Genesis 3
by SPCK - Newsom, Ringe and Lapsley
Reading Genesis 3 Like Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, Genesis 3 is about a movement from a fixed and unchanging world to a new, non-static order. Genesis 1 and 2 describe the way in which a sterile world is replaced by one teeming with life…
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 43 Symbols
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 43 Symbols
by SPCK - N T Wright
Symbols (i) Introduction The stories which articulate a worldview focus upon the symbols which bring that worldview into visible and tangible reality. There is no problem in identifying the four key symbols which functioned in this way in relation to the Jewish stories. At the he…
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 42 Conclusion
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 42 Conclusion
by SPCK - N T Wright
Conclusion How then does the basic Jewish story ‘work’, in terms of the analysis of stories outlined in chapter 3? As we shall see in the next chapter, the focal point of the worldview is clearly the creator’s covenant with Israel, and hence, in a period of political oppression a…
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 41 The Smaller Stories
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 41 The Smaller Stories
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Smaller Stories Within this tradition of telling the large story, letting it point forwards in various ways to its own conclusion, there was a rich Jewish tradition of sub-stories. These can be seen in two forms, which criss-cross and overlap. On the one hand, there are expli…
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 40 STORY, SYMBOL, PRAXIS: ELEMENTS OF ISRAEL’S WORLDVIEW
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 40 STORY, SYMBOL, PRAXIS: ELEMENTS OF ISRAEL’S WORLDVIEW
by SPCK - N T Wright
STORY, SYMBOL, PRAXIS: ELEMENTS OF ISRAEL’S WORLDVIEW Within the turbulent history described in chapter 6, and amidst the pressure of parties described in chapter 7, there lived the ordinary Jews of the first century. It is difficult to tell what books, if any, such people read (…
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 39 ‘Ordinary Jews’: Introduction
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 39 ‘Ordinary Jews’: Introduction
by SPCK - N T Wright
‘Ordinary Jews’: Introduction I have dealt thus far with what may be considered ‘specialist’ branches of first-century Judaism, because I think it important to get as clear a historical picture as possible before plunging into a more general account of the Jewish worldview of the…
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 38 Priests, Aristocrats and Sadducees
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 38 Priests, Aristocrats and Sadducees
by SPCK - N T Wright
Priests, Aristocrats and Sadducees We could quite easily imagine first-century Judaism without Essenes or Scrolls. The same is emphatically not true of the priests in general and the chief priests in particular. Josephus, writing at the end of the first century ad, says that ther…
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 37 The Essenes: Spotlight on a Sect