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Jessie Rogers

Pontifical University, St Patrick's College, Maynooth, Co Kildare ,Ireland, Theology, Faculty Member

University of Stellenbosch, Old and New Testament, Research Fellow

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I am a Scripture scholar and currently Dean of Theology at St Patrick's Pontifical University. Maynooth.

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Papers by Jessie Rogers

Wisdom - Woman or angel in Sirach 24?

Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages, 2001

Abstract: In Sirach 24 personified Wisdom addresses the heavenly assembly and describes her cosmi... more

Book Review: Paul, a New Covenant Jew: Rethinking Pauline Theology

Irish Theological Quarterly, Apr 14, 2021

programme in the area financed by the Guinness family. Many of the bodies in the churchyard were ... more programme in the area financed by the Guinness family. Many of the bodies in the churchyard were moved to Mount Jerome and the organ case is now in the National Museum of Ireland. This volume is the ninth book in a series of texts and calendars published in association with the Representative Church Body Library of the Church of Ireland. This publication ensures the story of a lost church is not forgotten.

Singing the Lord's Song in a Strange Land (or, how to pray when our world falls to pieces)

Maynooth College Reflects on Covid-19. New Realities in Uncertain Times (Dublin: Messenger Publications), 2021

How do we pray in the midst of a pandemic that drags on and on and scrambles every aspect of life... more How do we pray in the midst of a pandemic that drags on and on and scrambles every aspect of life? In this situation the "Help, Lord!" cries that arise naturally in response to a sudden crisis are not enough. Our prayer has time to develop and deepen. But do we know how to pray those more expansive prayers? If our prayer seems hollow or God seems distant, it could be that there is a disconnect between what we say and how we feel or what we are experiencing.

As ploughing and reaping draw near to her: A reading of Sirach 6:18-37

by Jessie Rogers and Johann Cook

Lettere En WysbegeerteAntieke StudiePlease help us populate SUNScholar with the post print versio... more

Wisdom for the Synodal Journey

Doctrine & Life (incorporating Religious Life Review) 72/6, 2022

Jessie Rogers reflects on wisdom as allowing a space for God’s newness, the paschal mystery being... more Jessie Rogers reflects on wisdom as allowing a space for God’s newness, the paschal mystery being a reminder that God works in surprising ways. It calls us to embrace the wisdom of vulnerability. She concludes: ‘To become a synodal church means to journey together. It means to open ourselves to others, to listen and to speak, to reflect and discern, and to take the next step together. The road is made by walking. Wisdom is found in responding to the Lord’s invitation to journey with the Spirit, with one another and ultimately with all of creation as we co-create a future which is God’s dream for the world.’

Synodality: Some Scriptural Perspectives on Communio, Peripheries and the Sensus Fidei

Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, 2022

Synodality is so much more than the current pope's pet project or a passing fad. 'It is precisely... more Synodality is so much more than the current pope's pet project or a passing fad. 'It is precisely this path of synodality which God expects of the church of the third millennium.' 1 The challenge of synodality-to walk together as the whole people of God-is consonant with fundamental convictions that find expression in the New Testament. Scripture, therefore, offers a rich resource for helping us to imagine the life and mission of the church in a synodal key. And that which we can imagine, with the Spirit's help, we can become. In this article I look at an image from St Paul and a story from the Acts of the Apostles, asking what light they shed on our own synodal journey.

To tear down and to build up: insights from Jeremiah for the Irish Church

The Furrow 71/2, 2020

Karl Rahner on Childhood

Irish Theological Quarterly, 2021

Karl Rahner’s ‘Ideas for a Theology of Childhood’ has become increasingly influential in childhoo... more Karl Rahner’s ‘Ideas for a Theology of Childhood’ has become increasingly influential in childhood studies. In this article I critically assess Rahner’s ideas in this seminal work to highlight the answer Rahner proposes to the question of the meaning and task of childhood. This is brought into brief conversation with writings of Jürgen Moltmann and Jerome Berryman. Rahner’s ideas of childhood can be critiqued for a lack of careful engagement with the details of Scripture, concrete life settings, and for underestimating the effects of childhood trauma. One can also ask whether transcendental philosophy provides an accessible language, particularly in an interdisciplinary context. Nevertheless, ‘mystery of the child’ language is now near-ubiquitous in contemporary Christian authors on childhood. Rahner’s insights into childhood can function like the reality of childhood itself, remaining as a life-giving root in a theology that unfolds as others take it further.

Theology and Translation Technique in the Old Greek Version of Job 28

Towards a Theology of the Septuagint, ed Johann Cook and Martin Rősel (Atlanta GA: SBL Press), 2020

Working within the broad consensus that Septuagint Job is a relatively free translation of a Heb... more Working within the broad consensus that Septuagint Job is a relatively free translation of a Hebrew Vo r l a g e similar to MT, I conduct a reading of the unasterisked text of LXX Job 28, which is taken reliably to reflect OG Job. The study proceeds as a comparison of the Hebrew and the Old Greek, minimizing the theological import of those changes that are more easily explained as misreadings, driven by literary considerations, or examples of translation technique. I approach OG Job 28 not as a discrete wisdom poem but as the second part of Job’s speech that begins in Job 27:1. The focus is on the one major plus in LXX Job 28:4, with the minuses largely attributed to an abbreviating tendency evident in the translator’s rendering of the majority of the speeches in the book and driven by stylistic more than theological concerns. The change from third- to first-person pronominal suffix (“my eye”) in 28:10 alters the theology of the passage but is nevertheless not indicative of theological tendenz, since it is more likely a misreading of the Vorlage. I suggest that, for OG Job, emulation is a more helpful model than interlinear translation for interpreting the changes made by the translator. Emulation allows for an integrated reading that respects the text of OG Job as an adaptation of Hebrew Job, an adaptation that is both a translation and a work of literature in its own right.

The Testament of Job as an Adaptation of LXX Job

Text-critical and Hermeneutical Studies in the Septuagint, J. Cook and H.-J. Stipp (eds). (Vetus Testamentum Supplement Series 157. Brill: Leiden) pp. 409-422., 2012

The book of Job has generated an impressive volume and range of retellings across a wide variety ... more The book of Job has generated an impressive volume and range of retellings across a wide variety of media and genres. This is indicative of the diverse reading strategies, the precommitments and interpretative choices that readers bring to this complex text. This chapter is concerned with one particular instance of the reception of the book of Job, the pseudepigraphic Testament of Job , written somewhere in the period 1st century B.C.E. to 1st century C.E. In claiming that Testament of Job is an adaptation of LXX Job, the author argues for a familiarity with the actual text of LXX Job, and not just dependence on a generally circulated memory of the story of Job. The Testament of Job takes up the actual text of LXX Job in places and it respects the order of events in its precursor. Keywords:LXX Job; Testament of Job

Where is Wisdom to be Found and How do We Apprehend Her

Septuagint, Sages and Scripture: Studies in Honour of Johann Cook ed Randall X. Gauthier, Gideon Kotzé, and Gert Steyn. Supplements to Vetus Testamentum. Brill, 2016

This paper examines two particular aspects of poems in Proverbs, Job, Sirach, Baruch and the Book... more This paper examines two particular aspects of poems in Proverbs, Job, Sirach, Baruch and the Book of Wisdom which present personified wisdom in the context of the wisdom quest. I analyse these passages through a twofold lens: spatial and sensory. For the first, I track the localities from where Sophia speaks and also where she is sought or found. Is she in the public or domestic sphere, inside or outside, in heaven or on earth, present or absent? The sensory aspect revolves around how humans are imagined as getting wisdom and the answer given in each text is analysed in terms of the senses invoked-sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell. Highlighting these particular aspects of the literary presentation of Sophia illuminates subtle continuities and discontinuities in the conceptualisation of this figure across the canonical and deuterocanonical wisdom books.

Filling in the Gaps: 'Faithful' Readings of the Book of Job

PIBA (Proceedings of the Irish Biblical Association) 33-34, 2011

The book of Job is difficult yet endlessly fascinating, or so the diversity of interpretations an... more The book of Job is difficult yet endlessly fascinating, or so the diversity of interpretations and retellings it has generated would suggest. It is this reception of the biblical book of Job that I explore herewhat is often referred to as the world in front of the text. To ask questions about the author, origin and development of the text would be to explore the world behind the text. The world of the text is the world generated by the text as autonomous literary object, approached through literary methods. The world in front of the text is the world in which the text is read. The process of reading is a complex one. There is a text and there is a reader. 2 The text suggests the contours for the reading but cannot dictate its meaning unequivocally because literature by its very nature will have 'gaps' and ambivalences which invite interpretation, particularly in a complex work like biblical Job. The reader, for her part, brings perspective and intent to the process of reading. She is not herself a blank slate onto which the text can project a meaning without distortion, but brings to it a matrix of intertexts, values and prior commitments. What the reader sees and hears is shaped by what has been read and experienced before, by the particular nuances given to words, by conceptual frameworks, prior knowledge and life commitments. This is true even in the world of scholarship. Take for example Rachel Magdelene's article on biblical Job. 3 Her title, "Job's Wife as Hero: A Feminist-Forensic Reading of the book of Job" already flags her distinctive perspective. Her aims shape the questions she asks of the text, and in asking those questions and not others, she unavoidably focuses on certain aspects of the text and downplays or ignores others. Her feminist commitments cause her to dwell on the figure of Job's wife and to look for a sympathetic interpretation of her exhortation to her husband to curse God and die. The similarity of Job's wife's suggestion to the Satan's insinuation is a 'given' in the text, but there is more than one way in which Job's wife can be playing devil's advocate: as the Satan's unwitting spokesperson, or as a spur to shake Job out of numb acquiescence. Magdelene's extensive knowledge of ancient Babylonian legal texts provides a conceptual framework which highlights aspects that other commentators might overlook. These distinctive intertexts open up new and persuasive possibilities for a forensic interpretation of major aspects of the book. Typical of biblical scholarship, her argument includes careful exploration of the semantic domains of key words and the choice from a range of possibilities of a particular nuance of meaning which best serves the argument. The end result is a very credible but distinctive reading of biblical Job. And all readers perform similar moves, even if they hide behind a veil of supposed objectivity and are less overt about their pre-commitments. As James Crenshaw asserts: ... the book of Job offers incontrovertible proof that a text functions as a mirror, revealing the minds of interpreters, in addition to its own contours … The multiple understandings of Job among modern critics subscribing to the same hermeneutical principles tellingly illustrate this fact. Readers bring as much to a text as they discover in it. Otherwise how could they view the book as blemished perfection and flawed editing; a literary masterpiece and an unfinished, or damaged, work; naïve religiosity and studied irony; heroic dissidence and failure of nerve; growth in spiritual perception and progress toward productive hypocrisy? The emotional ride on a rollercoaster seems characteristic of Job and his critics. 4 Not all interpretations are created equal, however. What constitutes a 'good' reading? The answer depends on why the reading is being done in the first place. In this paper I explore the idea of a 'faithful' reading, a criterion that seems suited to interpretations of a text which has canonical status in both Judaism and Christianity. But fidelity is relational; one has to ask: faithfulness to what? To supposed authorial intention? To the commitments of the community reading the text? To the text itself? The criterion of faithfulness is particularly fraught when applied to readings of biblical Job because, although it is included in the Hebrew Bible, its message does not seem to fit comfortably with much of what we find there. If the canon of Scripture is a list of approved books whose primary function is to enforce doctrinal and ideological conformity in the community of faith, it is hard to explain quite how biblical Job made the grade. Robert Alter, speculating how the book of Job made it into the biblical canon, suggests that if Jews had only read it in Aramaic or Greek translation "it is rather unlikely that they would have felt impelled to put [it] in the Bible". 5 He credits its literary power in the original Hebrew, together with the willingness of the canon makers "to tolerate a certain spectrum

"The shame of men is at their backs ••• " The gender implications of diserepancy between proverbial wisdom and the law

Journal for Semitics 15/2, 2006

A culture's proverbs point to the matrix of beliefs and values in which its people's lives are em... more A culture's proverbs point to the matrix of beliefs and values in which its people's lives are embedded. Interventions to empower women can backf'll"C when this matrix is not sufficiently factored in. The wisdom and legal traditions of the Ancient Near East were aligned in the boundaries they drewal'OWld women's place and power in society. This could be regarded as a double oppression, but ironically the alignment of these two traditions bas positive implications too. In modem Africa, however, legal context and traditional wisdom are not necessarily as unanimous in the position they assign to women. Using a micro-finance scheme in central Kenya as a case study, we explore how traditional beliefs around gender relations as reflected in Kikuyu proverbs can sabotage an attempt to empower women. Proverbs, however, both reflect and shape a worldview. While their power to perpetuate the oppression of women is clear, they can also be seen as a potential tool to change people's thinking and values.

As ploughing and reaping draw near to her. A reading of Sirach 6:18-37 Jessie Rogers (US

Old Testament Essays 13/3, 2000

The figure of Wisdom in Sirach is a metaphor, not a hypostasis. To be precise, it is a feminine p... more The figure of Wisdom in Sirach is a metaphor, not a hypostasis. To be precise, it is a feminine personification of wisdom that is filled out with a cluster of metaphors. Sirach 6:18-37 uses metaphors of agriculture, hunting, yoking and courtship to describe the quest for wisdom. It is not the abstract concept of wisdom but the personified Woman Wisdom that acts as the tenor for this metaphor cluster, lending coherence to the diverse array of images in the text. The figure functions to highlight the attitudinal, affective dimensions of the wisdom quest.

Book Review: Paul, a New Covenant Jew: Rethinking Pauline Theology

Irish Theological Quarterly, 2021

.

Book Review: Faith in the Face of Empire: The Bible Through Palestinian Eyes. By RahebMitri. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2014. Pp. 166. Price $20.00 (pbk). ISBN 978-1-62698-065-5

Irish Theological Quarterly

religious word no longer operates in a vacuum’ (p. 279). With blogging, a wide audience with diff... more religious word no longer operates in a vacuum’ (p. 279). With blogging, a wide audience with differing opinions and ideals are able to engage with the conversation. Treasures of Irish Christianity: A People of the Word offers a readily accessible collection of short but remarkably comprehensive array of articles. The various sections see us move from Foundations to New Realities. The articles commented upon above hope to give just a taste of the wealth of information discussed in this volume with its focus on the people of the ‘word/ Word.’ There is much in this volume for those interested in the history of Irish Christianity and given the array of topics and the level of scholarship it is impossible not to be illuminated with the information contained therein. It is not surprising that a third volume has recently been published.

Wisdom - Woman or angel in Sirach 24?

Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages, 2001

Abstract: In Sirach 24 personified Wisdom addresses the heavenly assembly and describes her cosmi... more

Is wisdom a mediatrix in Sirach? : a study of the wisdom poems

The figure of Woman Wisdom appears in several key poems in Sirach, namely Sir 1:1-10,1:11-30,4:11... more The figure of Woman Wisdom appears in several key poems in Sirach, namely Sir 1:1-10,1:11-30,4:11-19,6:18-37,14:20-15:10,24:1-34 and 51:13-30. Woman Wisdom is a metaphor that employs feminine imagery to speak of the tradition as taught by the sages and contained within the sacred writings of Judaism. Ben Sira uses it to show that the Jewish tradition is the pathway to genuine piety. The metaphor functions to reinforce the implicit claim of conservative scribal circles to be the legitimate interpreters of the tradition. The personification of wisdom is the basic . trope underlying the presentations of Wisdom. This feminine personification is then filled out with a number of metaphors, rendering Woman Wisdom an easily recognisable entity in the text despite the wide range of imagery applied to her. The wisdom personified includes both the content of the Jewish tradition and the disposition to live in conformity with that tradition, summed up in the fear of the Lord. This tradition is ...

Lost in translation

Irish Arts Review, 2012

Wisdom in Sirach

Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages, 2004

Abstract: After describing the concept of wisdom that seems to be presupposed in the Prologue to ... more

Wisdom - Woman or angel in Sirach 24?

Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages, 2001

Abstract: In Sirach 24 personified Wisdom addresses the heavenly assembly and describes her cosmi... more

Book Review: Paul, a New Covenant Jew: Rethinking Pauline Theology

Irish Theological Quarterly, Apr 14, 2021

programme in the area financed by the Guinness family. Many of the bodies in the churchyard were ... more programme in the area financed by the Guinness family. Many of the bodies in the churchyard were moved to Mount Jerome and the organ case is now in the National Museum of Ireland. This volume is the ninth book in a series of texts and calendars published in association with the Representative Church Body Library of the Church of Ireland. This publication ensures the story of a lost church is not forgotten.

Singing the Lord's Song in a Strange Land (or, how to pray when our world falls to pieces)

Maynooth College Reflects on Covid-19. New Realities in Uncertain Times (Dublin: Messenger Publications), 2021

How do we pray in the midst of a pandemic that drags on and on and scrambles every aspect of life... more How do we pray in the midst of a pandemic that drags on and on and scrambles every aspect of life? In this situation the "Help, Lord!" cries that arise naturally in response to a sudden crisis are not enough. Our prayer has time to develop and deepen. But do we know how to pray those more expansive prayers? If our prayer seems hollow or God seems distant, it could be that there is a disconnect between what we say and how we feel or what we are experiencing.

As ploughing and reaping draw near to her: A reading of Sirach 6:18-37

by Jessie Rogers and Johann Cook

Lettere En WysbegeerteAntieke StudiePlease help us populate SUNScholar with the post print versio... more

Wisdom for the Synodal Journey

Doctrine & Life (incorporating Religious Life Review) 72/6, 2022

Jessie Rogers reflects on wisdom as allowing a space for God’s newness, the paschal mystery being... more Jessie Rogers reflects on wisdom as allowing a space for God’s newness, the paschal mystery being a reminder that God works in surprising ways. It calls us to embrace the wisdom of vulnerability. She concludes: ‘To become a synodal church means to journey together. It means to open ourselves to others, to listen and to speak, to reflect and discern, and to take the next step together. The road is made by walking. Wisdom is found in responding to the Lord’s invitation to journey with the Spirit, with one another and ultimately with all of creation as we co-create a future which is God’s dream for the world.’

Synodality: Some Scriptural Perspectives on Communio, Peripheries and the Sensus Fidei

Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, 2022

Synodality is so much more than the current pope's pet project or a passing fad. 'It is precisely... more Synodality is so much more than the current pope's pet project or a passing fad. 'It is precisely this path of synodality which God expects of the church of the third millennium.' 1 The challenge of synodality-to walk together as the whole people of God-is consonant with fundamental convictions that find expression in the New Testament. Scripture, therefore, offers a rich resource for helping us to imagine the life and mission of the church in a synodal key. And that which we can imagine, with the Spirit's help, we can become. In this article I look at an image from St Paul and a story from the Acts of the Apostles, asking what light they shed on our own synodal journey.

To tear down and to build up: insights from Jeremiah for the Irish Church

The Furrow 71/2, 2020

Karl Rahner on Childhood

Irish Theological Quarterly, 2021

Karl Rahner’s ‘Ideas for a Theology of Childhood’ has become increasingly influential in childhoo... more Karl Rahner’s ‘Ideas for a Theology of Childhood’ has become increasingly influential in childhood studies. In this article I critically assess Rahner’s ideas in this seminal work to highlight the answer Rahner proposes to the question of the meaning and task of childhood. This is brought into brief conversation with writings of Jürgen Moltmann and Jerome Berryman. Rahner’s ideas of childhood can be critiqued for a lack of careful engagement with the details of Scripture, concrete life settings, and for underestimating the effects of childhood trauma. One can also ask whether transcendental philosophy provides an accessible language, particularly in an interdisciplinary context. Nevertheless, ‘mystery of the child’ language is now near-ubiquitous in contemporary Christian authors on childhood. Rahner’s insights into childhood can function like the reality of childhood itself, remaining as a life-giving root in a theology that unfolds as others take it further.

Theology and Translation Technique in the Old Greek Version of Job 28

Towards a Theology of the Septuagint, ed Johann Cook and Martin Rősel (Atlanta GA: SBL Press), 2020

Working within the broad consensus that Septuagint Job is a relatively free translation of a Heb... more Working within the broad consensus that Septuagint Job is a relatively free translation of a Hebrew Vo r l a g e similar to MT, I conduct a reading of the unasterisked text of LXX Job 28, which is taken reliably to reflect OG Job. The study proceeds as a comparison of the Hebrew and the Old Greek, minimizing the theological import of those changes that are more easily explained as misreadings, driven by literary considerations, or examples of translation technique. I approach OG Job 28 not as a discrete wisdom poem but as the second part of Job’s speech that begins in Job 27:1. The focus is on the one major plus in LXX Job 28:4, with the minuses largely attributed to an abbreviating tendency evident in the translator’s rendering of the majority of the speeches in the book and driven by stylistic more than theological concerns. The change from third- to first-person pronominal suffix (“my eye”) in 28:10 alters the theology of the passage but is nevertheless not indicative of theological tendenz, since it is more likely a misreading of the Vorlage. I suggest that, for OG Job, emulation is a more helpful model than interlinear translation for interpreting the changes made by the translator. Emulation allows for an integrated reading that respects the text of OG Job as an adaptation of Hebrew Job, an adaptation that is both a translation and a work of literature in its own right.

The Testament of Job as an Adaptation of LXX Job

Text-critical and Hermeneutical Studies in the Septuagint, J. Cook and H.-J. Stipp (eds). (Vetus Testamentum Supplement Series 157. Brill: Leiden) pp. 409-422., 2012

The book of Job has generated an impressive volume and range of retellings across a wide variety ... more The book of Job has generated an impressive volume and range of retellings across a wide variety of media and genres. This is indicative of the diverse reading strategies, the precommitments and interpretative choices that readers bring to this complex text. This chapter is concerned with one particular instance of the reception of the book of Job, the pseudepigraphic Testament of Job , written somewhere in the period 1st century B.C.E. to 1st century C.E. In claiming that Testament of Job is an adaptation of LXX Job, the author argues for a familiarity with the actual text of LXX Job, and not just dependence on a generally circulated memory of the story of Job. The Testament of Job takes up the actual text of LXX Job in places and it respects the order of events in its precursor. Keywords:LXX Job; Testament of Job

Where is Wisdom to be Found and How do We Apprehend Her

Septuagint, Sages and Scripture: Studies in Honour of Johann Cook ed Randall X. Gauthier, Gideon Kotzé, and Gert Steyn. Supplements to Vetus Testamentum. Brill, 2016

This paper examines two particular aspects of poems in Proverbs, Job, Sirach, Baruch and the Book... more This paper examines two particular aspects of poems in Proverbs, Job, Sirach, Baruch and the Book of Wisdom which present personified wisdom in the context of the wisdom quest. I analyse these passages through a twofold lens: spatial and sensory. For the first, I track the localities from where Sophia speaks and also where she is sought or found. Is she in the public or domestic sphere, inside or outside, in heaven or on earth, present or absent? The sensory aspect revolves around how humans are imagined as getting wisdom and the answer given in each text is analysed in terms of the senses invoked-sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell. Highlighting these particular aspects of the literary presentation of Sophia illuminates subtle continuities and discontinuities in the conceptualisation of this figure across the canonical and deuterocanonical wisdom books.

Filling in the Gaps: 'Faithful' Readings of the Book of Job

PIBA (Proceedings of the Irish Biblical Association) 33-34, 2011

The book of Job is difficult yet endlessly fascinating, or so the diversity of interpretations an... more The book of Job is difficult yet endlessly fascinating, or so the diversity of interpretations and retellings it has generated would suggest. It is this reception of the biblical book of Job that I explore herewhat is often referred to as the world in front of the text. To ask questions about the author, origin and development of the text would be to explore the world behind the text. The world of the text is the world generated by the text as autonomous literary object, approached through literary methods. The world in front of the text is the world in which the text is read. The process of reading is a complex one. There is a text and there is a reader. 2 The text suggests the contours for the reading but cannot dictate its meaning unequivocally because literature by its very nature will have 'gaps' and ambivalences which invite interpretation, particularly in a complex work like biblical Job. The reader, for her part, brings perspective and intent to the process of reading. She is not herself a blank slate onto which the text can project a meaning without distortion, but brings to it a matrix of intertexts, values and prior commitments. What the reader sees and hears is shaped by what has been read and experienced before, by the particular nuances given to words, by conceptual frameworks, prior knowledge and life commitments. This is true even in the world of scholarship. Take for example Rachel Magdelene's article on biblical Job. 3 Her title, "Job's Wife as Hero: A Feminist-Forensic Reading of the book of Job" already flags her distinctive perspective. Her aims shape the questions she asks of the text, and in asking those questions and not others, she unavoidably focuses on certain aspects of the text and downplays or ignores others. Her feminist commitments cause her to dwell on the figure of Job's wife and to look for a sympathetic interpretation of her exhortation to her husband to curse God and die. The similarity of Job's wife's suggestion to the Satan's insinuation is a 'given' in the text, but there is more than one way in which Job's wife can be playing devil's advocate: as the Satan's unwitting spokesperson, or as a spur to shake Job out of numb acquiescence. Magdelene's extensive knowledge of ancient Babylonian legal texts provides a conceptual framework which highlights aspects that other commentators might overlook. These distinctive intertexts open up new and persuasive possibilities for a forensic interpretation of major aspects of the book. Typical of biblical scholarship, her argument includes careful exploration of the semantic domains of key words and the choice from a range of possibilities of a particular nuance of meaning which best serves the argument. The end result is a very credible but distinctive reading of biblical Job. And all readers perform similar moves, even if they hide behind a veil of supposed objectivity and are less overt about their pre-commitments. As James Crenshaw asserts: ... the book of Job offers incontrovertible proof that a text functions as a mirror, revealing the minds of interpreters, in addition to its own contours … The multiple understandings of Job among modern critics subscribing to the same hermeneutical principles tellingly illustrate this fact. Readers bring as much to a text as they discover in it. Otherwise how could they view the book as blemished perfection and flawed editing; a literary masterpiece and an unfinished, or damaged, work; naïve religiosity and studied irony; heroic dissidence and failure of nerve; growth in spiritual perception and progress toward productive hypocrisy? The emotional ride on a rollercoaster seems characteristic of Job and his critics. 4 Not all interpretations are created equal, however. What constitutes a 'good' reading? The answer depends on why the reading is being done in the first place. In this paper I explore the idea of a 'faithful' reading, a criterion that seems suited to interpretations of a text which has canonical status in both Judaism and Christianity. But fidelity is relational; one has to ask: faithfulness to what? To supposed authorial intention? To the commitments of the community reading the text? To the text itself? The criterion of faithfulness is particularly fraught when applied to readings of biblical Job because, although it is included in the Hebrew Bible, its message does not seem to fit comfortably with much of what we find there. If the canon of Scripture is a list of approved books whose primary function is to enforce doctrinal and ideological conformity in the community of faith, it is hard to explain quite how biblical Job made the grade. Robert Alter, speculating how the book of Job made it into the biblical canon, suggests that if Jews had only read it in Aramaic or Greek translation "it is rather unlikely that they would have felt impelled to put [it] in the Bible". 5 He credits its literary power in the original Hebrew, together with the willingness of the canon makers "to tolerate a certain spectrum

"The shame of men is at their backs ••• " The gender implications of diserepancy between proverbial wisdom and the law

Journal for Semitics 15/2, 2006

A culture's proverbs point to the matrix of beliefs and values in which its people's lives are em... more A culture's proverbs point to the matrix of beliefs and values in which its people's lives are embedded. Interventions to empower women can backf'll"C when this matrix is not sufficiently factored in. The wisdom and legal traditions of the Ancient Near East were aligned in the boundaries they drewal'OWld women's place and power in society. This could be regarded as a double oppression, but ironically the alignment of these two traditions bas positive implications too. In modem Africa, however, legal context and traditional wisdom are not necessarily as unanimous in the position they assign to women. Using a micro-finance scheme in central Kenya as a case study, we explore how traditional beliefs around gender relations as reflected in Kikuyu proverbs can sabotage an attempt to empower women. Proverbs, however, both reflect and shape a worldview. While their power to perpetuate the oppression of women is clear, they can also be seen as a potential tool to change people's thinking and values.

As ploughing and reaping draw near to her. A reading of Sirach 6:18-37 Jessie Rogers (US

Old Testament Essays 13/3, 2000

The figure of Wisdom in Sirach is a metaphor, not a hypostasis. To be precise, it is a feminine p... more The figure of Wisdom in Sirach is a metaphor, not a hypostasis. To be precise, it is a feminine personification of wisdom that is filled out with a cluster of metaphors. Sirach 6:18-37 uses metaphors of agriculture, hunting, yoking and courtship to describe the quest for wisdom. It is not the abstract concept of wisdom but the personified Woman Wisdom that acts as the tenor for this metaphor cluster, lending coherence to the diverse array of images in the text. The figure functions to highlight the attitudinal, affective dimensions of the wisdom quest.

Book Review: Paul, a New Covenant Jew: Rethinking Pauline Theology

Irish Theological Quarterly, 2021

.

Book Review: Faith in the Face of Empire: The Bible Through Palestinian Eyes. By RahebMitri. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2014. Pp. 166. Price $20.00 (pbk). ISBN 978-1-62698-065-5

Irish Theological Quarterly

religious word no longer operates in a vacuum’ (p. 279). With blogging, a wide audience with diff... more religious word no longer operates in a vacuum’ (p. 279). With blogging, a wide audience with differing opinions and ideals are able to engage with the conversation. Treasures of Irish Christianity: A People of the Word offers a readily accessible collection of short but remarkably comprehensive array of articles. The various sections see us move from Foundations to New Realities. The articles commented upon above hope to give just a taste of the wealth of information discussed in this volume with its focus on the people of the ‘word/ Word.’ There is much in this volume for those interested in the history of Irish Christianity and given the array of topics and the level of scholarship it is impossible not to be illuminated with the information contained therein. It is not surprising that a third volume has recently been published.

Wisdom - Woman or angel in Sirach 24?

Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages, 2001

Abstract: In Sirach 24 personified Wisdom addresses the heavenly assembly and describes her cosmi... more

Is wisdom a mediatrix in Sirach? : a study of the wisdom poems

The figure of Woman Wisdom appears in several key poems in Sirach, namely Sir 1:1-10,1:11-30,4:11... more The figure of Woman Wisdom appears in several key poems in Sirach, namely Sir 1:1-10,1:11-30,4:11-19,6:18-37,14:20-15:10,24:1-34 and 51:13-30. Woman Wisdom is a metaphor that employs feminine imagery to speak of the tradition as taught by the sages and contained within the sacred writings of Judaism. Ben Sira uses it to show that the Jewish tradition is the pathway to genuine piety. The metaphor functions to reinforce the implicit claim of conservative scribal circles to be the legitimate interpreters of the tradition. The personification of wisdom is the basic . trope underlying the presentations of Wisdom. This feminine personification is then filled out with a number of metaphors, rendering Woman Wisdom an easily recognisable entity in the text despite the wide range of imagery applied to her. The wisdom personified includes both the content of the Jewish tradition and the disposition to live in conformity with that tradition, summed up in the fear of the Lord. This tradition is ...

Lost in translation

Irish Arts Review, 2012

Wisdom in Sirach

Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages, 2004

Abstract: After describing the concept of wisdom that seems to be presupposed in the Prologue to ... more