Edited by Patricia K. Tull and Jacqueline E. Lapsley
After Exegesis frames an inclusive feminist biblical theology, exploring creation, providence, divine judgment, salvation, praise, justice, authority, inclusion, the “other,” moral agency, suffering, violence, reconciliation, flourishing, and hope. Each chapter places multiple related biblical texts in dialogue around a common theological concern. In so doing, this work exemplifies a central feminist claim: that bringing two or more texts, often born of different contexts, into conversation with each other generates a productive tension that transcends the dominant theological tradition.
After Exegesis thus underscores the fact that the context for feminist biblical theology must be understood more broadly than it has been traditionally construed. The volume demonstrates feminist theology fulfilling this promised breadth, while also staking a claim to the future: theology must attend to humanity’s interdependent connectedness to the rest of creation and to such realities as human embodiment, suffering, oppression, hope, and the multivocal nature of truth.Isaiah 1-39
The prophet Isaiah’s influence extended
from his long career in Jerusalem in the late 8th century BCE through Judah’s
exilic and Second Temple periods. Through the ages in both Judaism and
Christianity, Isaiah’s words have funded subsequent theological writings,
liturgies, lectionaries, hymns, poetry, and art. Among early Christian
writings, Isaiah was seen as “evangelist rather than prophet,” foretelling
Christ’s birth, life, death, and resurrection—a view that continues to prevail
today, though scholars have long argued that Isaiah addressed his own time and not, in the
first instance, the distant future.
Readers
of Tull’s engaging guide will come to understand Isaiah as visionary spokesperson of ancient Jerusalem’s God in a
critical moment in the history of western faith. They will learn about the
paths the book traveled as it grew, absorbed new meanings, underwent
reinterpretion, and emerged as Scripture for synagogues and churches.
Preachers, teachers, and students will imagine afresh the connections between
modern people and this ancient book.
Old Testament prophets were
concerned with many of the same issues as Christians today: issues of
righteousness, obedience, social justice, and visions of hope for the future.
This study explores how what the prophets proclaimed to the people of their
time still has urgency and importance for our time as well.
Being Reformed: Faith Seeking Understanding is a series of biblically based mini-courses
that provides adults with a foundational understanding of the Reformed faith.
Each six-session study—written by well-known and respected scholars—features
Scripture, prayer, in-depth commentary, and questions for reflection. Each
study addresses its subject from a Reformed theological perspective.
In classic Interpretation Bible Studies
style, Patricia Tull leads the reader through a ten-session study of the entire
Old Testament books of Esther, with its stories of faithfulness, courage, and
survival, and the ethical questions posed by its ending, and Ruth, with its
themes of community, loyalty, and friendship.
This far-ranging volume offers a survey
of the history of Isaiah’s interpretation over the course of two millennia,
from the Septuagint and early versions, continuing through the centuries in
Jewish and Christian exegesis, and concluding with the late twentieth century.
Each chapter includes an introductory survey of Isaiah’s interpretation within
a particular historical context and pursues a particular facet of Isaiah’s
interpretation by one of Isaiah’s many readers in that time period.
Problems of race and gender
confront Americans publicly every day. About once a week, anti-Semitism becomes
a national news item, either in reminders of the Holocaust or in outbursts of
neo-Nazism. Power, violence and vengeance dominate not only actual events but
also fiction, on television, in the cinema, and in countless novels.
The biblical book of Esther is filled brimful with these same themes:
vengeance, violence, power, racial and gender conflicts, even anti-Judaism. All
of these ever-so-contemporary themes make the story read like a modern parable.
Set in the ancient empire of Persia, and opening as exotically as “A Thousand
and One Arabian Nights,” the book of Esther quickly draws us into its
extravagantly dangerous, darkly funny, sharply satirical and yet breathtakingly
poignant world of intrigue in the palace of King Ahasuerus. There, failure to
heed the call of drunken kings spells banishment, and refusal to bow down
before arrogance means death. Yet Esther, a young heroine who is at once
foreigner, woman and orphan, takes courage alone and, aided by a providential
chain of circumstances and an excellent wine list, rescues the Jewish nation
from genocide.
It has long been recognized that Isaiah 40–55 partakes of the
themes and forms of a variety of other biblical texts: not only other prophetic
books, but also pentateuchal stories and several psalms and laments. Remember
the Former Things argues that this correspondence is quite
intentional, that a driving force of Second Isaiah's rhetoric is the
recollection, or re-collection, of other, already familiar texts into its own
poetry. Be reusing words known to the exilic community, Second Isaiah reapplied
the "former things of old" shaping them into a "new
thing" for a society in a radically altered situation, a people reevaluating
their national self-understanding in the wake of the destruction of their
capital city, monarchy, and temple.
