Virtual Conference
November 6-8, 2020
Bridging disciplinary divides of the academy, this virtual conference brings together international scholars from New Testament Studies and Classics to examine if and how the New Testament can help us to understand our moral obligations on issues dividing our world with increasing fury. While conference sessions are offered as webinars open to the public, scholars will be summarizing their papers for discussion, not presenting them in full.
This conference is organized by faculty members from the departments of Religious Studies and Classics at the College of the 51小黄车 with support from the Rev. Michael C. McFarland, S.J. Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture.
Conference Schedule
Session 1: Friday, November 6, 2020 | 9-10:15 a.m.
Presider: Caroline Johnson Hodge, College of the 51小黄车
An Argument for Being Studiously, Seriously Less Disciplined
Denise Kimber Buell, Williams College
This paper brings together the urgent need for racial justice in the United States (and beyond) and the widely perceived 鈥渃risis of the humanities鈥 in higher education to explore how scholars of the New Testament and early Christian studies and of Classics do and might respond to these overlapping concerns.
Aesthetics as Ethics: New Testament, the Classics, and a Scrap of Lead
Laura Nasrallah, Yale University
This paper takes up the conference鈥檚 topic of using the texts of the New Testament and texts associated with the Classics 鈥渢o think critically and creatively about how to conceptualize our obligations to take positive moral stands on issues of our own time that are dividing our world with increasing fury.鈥
Respondent: Timothy Joseph, College of the 51小黄车
Session 2: Friday, November 6, 2020 | Noon-1:15 p.m.
Presider: Tat-siong Benny Liew, College of the 51小黄车
Citizenship and Equality
Jorunn 脴kland, Norwegian Institute at Athens, Greece and the University of Oslo, Norway
The paper will preliminarily explore the ancient conceptual history of "equality" and other terms that implied some level of unity and oneness.
r > g*
Allen Callahan, Independent Scholar
This paper triangulates between three stories: one about the ; another, about Jesus鈥 encounter with a chief tax collector named Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-10); and third, about what to do and how to do it in "weeks where decades are happening."
Respondent: Douglas Boin, St. Louis University
Session 3: Saturday, November 7, 2020 | 9-10:15 a.m.
Presider: Tat-siong Benny Liew, College of the 51小黄车
The World of Kandake: Foregrounding Ethiopian Queens and Empires
Gay Byron, Howard University
Drawing upon ancient historians and classicists, this paper discusses queens and empires of 鈥淓thiopia,鈥 and reveals gender and ethnic interpretive biases that continue to keep the broad African origins of Christianity hidden and inaccessible.
Wayward and Willful: Porneia and Other Twists Among the Members Before and Beyond Paul鈥檚 Letters?
Joseph Marchal, Ball State University
This paper returns to arguments about immorality, perversion, and receptivity鈥攏ot only because willfulness and waywardness are features of ancient arguments about a set of constructed Others (as one can find in several of Paul鈥檚 letters鈥擱om, 1 Cor, and Phil, among others), but because willful, wayward affects can also be techniques for approaching and archiving those figures targeted with such terms.
Respondent: Shelley Haley, Hamilton College
Session 4: Saturday, November 7, 2020 | Noon-1:15 p.m.
Presider: Caroline Johnson Hodge, College of the 51小黄车
鈥淵ou Are Not Your Own鈥: Master Jesus and the Enslaved Apostles
Jennifer Glancy, Le Moyne College
This paper focuses on the relationships between Master Jesus and enslaved apostles, and suggests that attention to the subtle representation of domination in early Christian writings points to some significant limitations of contemporary theory.
Visualizing Oppression: Slavery and the 鈥淎rts of Domination鈥
Abraham Smith, Perkins School of Theology/Southern Methodist University, USA
This paper discusses the work or effect of iconographical and metaphorical representation, including that of metaphorical uses of slavery, to understand the weight even today of metaphors and monuments that visually divide the world into the binary trap of the 鈥渃onquerors鈥 and the 鈥渃onquered.
Respondent: Dominic Machado, College of the 51小黄车
Session 5: Sunday, November 8, 2020 | 9-10:15 a.m.
Presiders: Caroline Johnson Hodge, College of the 51小黄车 and Tat-siong Benny Liew, College of the 51小黄车
Apocalypse, Plague, and the Ethnic Other
Yii-Jan Lin, Yale University
This paper considers the phenomena of divinely inflicted plague and the association of outsiders with filth in the book of Revelation in conjunction with U.S. anti-immigrant rhetoric of the mid-19th century to our current COVID crisis.
What Large Letters: Invisible Labor, Invisible Disabilities, and Paul鈥檚 Use of Scribes
Candida Moss, University of Birmingham, UK
The purpose of this paper is both to examine the unspoken assumptions in scholarly analysis of Paul's letter to Galatians and to explore what it may tell us about the intersection between invisible labor (i.e. the bodies and skills of enslaved or formerly enslaved workers) and invisible impairments (i.e. ordinary disability) in the production of Paul鈥檚 letters.
Respondent: Thomas Martin, College of the 51小黄车