Browsing by Author "Wagner, Ross"

This dissertation focuses on three metaphors in Galatians 3:19-4:31 that cast the Law as enslaved: the Law is an enslaved παιδαγωγός (3:19-25), an enslaved ἐπίτροπος and οἰκονόμος (4:1-11), and Hagar the enslaved παιδίσκη (4:21-31). This particular cluster of metaphors has gone largely unnoticed by interpreters of Galatians, who have instead focused on Paul’s depiction of humanity’s enslavement to the Law. This dissertation examines Paul’s depictions of the Law as an enslaved enslaver, situating these metaphors in the context of first-century Roman slavery and drawing out their implications for Paul’s theology of the Law in Galatians. The study argues that Paul flexibly uses a variety of slavery metaphors to make a series of claims about the enslaved Law’s agency in relation to other agents. Before the coming of Faith, the Law worked effectively with God in a preparatory role (3:19-25). But when the Galatians themselves attempt to come under the Law’s authority after already receiving the Spirit, they end up frustrating both their own intentions and those of the Law (4:1-11, 21-31).

Many first-century Jewish leaders considered the marginalized outside the reach of God’s mercy. But Jesus seemed to challenge this social and religious value. This study explores the paths to restoration for society’s outcasts in the Gospel of Luke, whether their outside status was the result of sinful “conduct” (prostitution, tax-collection, etc.) or a culturally-defined “condition” (blindness, leprosy, nationality, gender, etc.). I attempt to show that Jesus drew a distinction between the “conduct marginalized” and the “condition marginalized” and sought to meet their needs differently based on their proper classification. Jesus addressed the specific needs of these outsiders which avoided over-condemning on the one hand and premature restoration on the other hand. He did not regard the condition marginalized beyond the pale of redemption; he did not regard the conduct marginalized beyond the possibility of repentance. Both were worthy to hear the message of the gospel.

The Gospel of Luke provides unparalleled resources for my investigation. This Gospel emphasizes society’s outcasts more than the other Gospels, especially Gentiles, lepers, the poor, and women. According to Simeon, the Christ child will be responsible for the rise and fall of many in Israel (Luke 2:34) reversing the status imposed by culture on the powerful and the weak alike. Jesus’ warning that those who exalt themselves will be humbled while those who humble themselves will be exalted is repeated twice only in Luke’s Gospel (14:11; 18:14). Jesus inaugurates his public ministry by citing Isaiah’s liberating promises to the poor, the captives, the blind, and the oppressed (Luke 4:18). The dinner table in Luke 14 is occupied by the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame, while the entitled powerful “will not taste of my banquet,” Jesus says (Luke 14:16-24). Jesus tends unconditionally to invite these outcasts to gather to him on the “outside” (away from Jerusalem, away from Jewish leaders, etc.). Instead of perpetuating the condemnation of the condition marginalized, Jesus seems to invite their restoration by confronting the myth that some sin lies at the root of their condition.

At the same time that Luke elevates these condition marginalized, he also places a greater stress on “repentance” for the conduct marginalized than we find in the other Gospels. It is Luke’s Jesus, after all, who famously adds “to repentance” in 5:32 to the expression, “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” in Matthew 9:13 and Mark 2:17. It seems that some outcasts are victims of societal injustice while others are suffering the consequence of marginalization as a result of their own choices. To further complicate matters, we find Jesus dining with “tax collectors and sinners” throughout the Gospel of Luke. This table fellowship is noted and condemned by some Jewish leaders who find Jesus too welcoming. But Jesus rejects the insult that he is a “friend of tax collectors and sinners,” along with being labelled a glutton and a drunkard. Instead of unconditionally accepting the conduct marginalized, Jesus invites their repentance for community restoration.

Many additional questions are raised in the process of this research: Does the Gospel of Luke allow us to classify the marginalized as “conduct” or “condition” and, if so, who might fit into those categories (alternative category labels might be “active” and “passive” marginalized—as in those who actively contributed to their marginalization through their behavior and those who were passively marginalized through no fault of their own)? Do these categories still exist today? How much cultural luggage is involved in the station of the first century’s outcasts? Was Jesus more accepting of people than his followers are today? Did Jesus consider himself a friend of tax collectors and sinners, unconditionally welcoming them? Did he use table fellowship as a means to drawing sinners into a relationship with himself? Is it culturally objectionable to refuse anyone inclusion today, as it seemed culturally objectionable to welcome everyone in Jesus’ day?

The path to restoration for society’s outcasts in the Gospel of Luke ran through Jesus. How they were restored by Jesus, however, seemed to take on different forms depending on why that person was marginalized in the first place. This study concludes that those who were marginalize through no fault of their own (condition outcasts) were unconditionally redignified by Jesus, whereas those who were marginalized due to sin (conduct outcasts) were offered forgiveness in exchange for repentance. Jesus did not hesitate to classify people as sinners. Those who thus repented were celebrated with large meals fitting those found who were formally lost. Furthermore, Jesus directly confronted self-righteousness and those who were guilty of oppression. If we seek to model ourselves after Jesus, we may require a measure of correction that aligns us with this portrait of Jesus presented in Luke’s Gospel.

This dissertation examines how three ancient Christian poets scripted female biblical figures as models of emboldened faith for all to emulate. Through imagined speech and narrative embellishment, they brought familiar figures to life for the entertainment, edification, and instruction of their audiences. These male poets, writing in Syriac and Greek, explored the hermeneutical possibilities of female voices and perspectives. While previous scholars have shown that early Christian authors portrayed female martyrs and ascetics subverting normative behavioral expectations, I argue that poetic depictions of biblical women form an additional category of exempla who pressed the bounds of acceptable speech and action. Through attending to the underexplored genre of poetry, this dissertation brings greater depth and nuance to previous accounts of how late ancient Christians constructed holiness and gender.

The dissertation investigates the poetry of three roughly contemporaneous authors from the late fifth and early sixth centuries: Narsai, Jacob of Serugh, and Romanos Melodos. While these three helped to set the interpretative and theological trajectories of their respective ecclesial communities in the eastern Mediterranean and Mesopotamian regions, they have never been brought into sustained conversation. Writing in Syriac, Narsai and Jacob were heirs to common literary and theological traditions, while the poems of Romanos Melodos, a Syrian composing in Greek, show thematic and artistic affinities with Syriac poetry, thus pointing to the interconnectedness of the multilingual regions of the eastern Roman and Persian empires.

Selecting from the sizeable extant corpora of these authors, I focus on poems recounting New Testament narratives about four unnamed women: the Canaanite woman, the Hemorrhaging woman, the Sinful woman, and the Samaritan woman. In the initial three chapters I trace the interrelated themes of the body, ethnicity, and the voice to illuminate the distinct interpretative approaches and exegetical concerns of the three poets. Each of these themes supplies a lens through which the three poets underscore the tenacity of biblical women. Narsai and Jacob emphasize the moral agency of biblical women more consistently than Romanos, in part due to their poetic style as well as their strategies of characterization.

At the heart of the dissertation is a chapter on representations of women’s voices, in which I show how the three poets alternatively depicted transgressive female speech and curbed potential dangers of female audacity. The penultimate chapter examines the constellation of terms the poets use to speak about boldness, employing the tools of feminist and philological analysis to show how idealized religious boldness was created through language subject to the ambiguities of gender. The final chapter reflects on the significance of this reception history for understanding the dynamics of verse exegesis in Late Antiquity. While Narsai, Jacob, and Romanos stand as three independent artists, they jointly contribute to the poetic mode of biblical interpretation. Inhabiting the voices and vantage points of female biblical characters, the poets produce complex portraits of bold, self-assertive women pursuing the life of faith.

Drawing upon the literary treasury of Syriac and Greek poetry, this study contributes to the historiography of late ancient literature and the construction of gender. It maps new territory in the reception history of these biblical narratives through close, comparative readings that reveal the distinctive portraits of biblical women painted by Syriac and Greek poetic literature. Within liturgical and academic settings where women’s activity and speech were strictly curtailed, these representations of tenacious, outspoken women provide invaluable insights into how Christian authors inhabited marginalized subject positions to imagine idealized models of faith.

What would a conversation between John of Patmos and Jordan of Portland look like? To say it another way, how might Christ’s apocalyptic address to the seven churches of Revelation (Rev 2-3) aid in the faith formation of today’s emerging adults whose worldview has been described as Moralistic Therapeutic Deism? This thesis utilizes biblical and practical theology to address three issues facing emerging adults: the replacement of a love ethic with a tolerance narrative that aids market globalization but harms emerging adults; the problem of mass consumerism; and the coddling of young people with the aim of safety over against a life filled with a willingness to suffer for lasting joy. The thesis concludes with a whimsical conversation between John and Jordan that demonstrates what a mentoring relationship might look like between two people in different stages of their faith development.