Resurrection Narratives Research Articles

“Going to the Father” Sacrificially

Abstract This article contends that John portrays not only Jesus’s death but his entire progression to the Father (that is, his crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension) sacrificially. Discussions of Jesus’s sacrifice in John have tended to focus on Jesus’s death. Such an emphasis on death, however, coheres neither with the way John presents Jesus’s crucifixion and ascension as a singular action nor with how most ancient persons understood ritual sacrifice. It is more likely that John and his ancient audiences would have been attuned to the sacrificial connotations not only of Jesus’s death but of his arrest, trial, burial, resurrection, and ascension. By adjusting the hermeneutical category of sacrifice to agree with ancient understandings of the ritual act and its instantiations on Yom Kippur and Passover, this article traces the sacrificial logic running through John’s passion and resurrection narratives. It then concludes by demonstrating the significant social and theological implications of Jesus’s sacrifice in the Gospel of John.

Rescue and Resurrection Narratives: Reexamining Bernard MacLaverty's Career through Blank Pages and Other Stories

Rescue and Resurrection Narratives: Reexamining Bernard MacLaverty's Career through Blank Pages and Other Stories

The significance of the wounds of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel

In the resurrection narratives of John 20–21, the wounds of the risen Jesus serve a number of important functions. They work as markers of revelation, enabling disciples to recognize the identity of the crucified one in the risen one. They are symbols of colonialism and imperialism, creating solidarity between Jesus and the victims of such abuse and suffering. They are cultic symbols of sacrifice and purification, linked to the Johannine motif of Jesus as the Temple and sacrificial Lamb of God whose death on the cross effects cleansing, taking away the world’s sin. The wounds are also figures of new life and peace, forged ironically through violence and death, signs of triumph and glory. The wounds of the Johannine Jesus thus spell the end of what they embody: suffering and its healing, violence and its peaceful resolution, death and its defeat.

Let the dead talk: How deepfake resurrection narratives influence audience response in prosocial contexts

With the unceasing advancement of novel digital technologies, artificial intelligence (AI) is projected to change and challenge established social dynamics. As such, a deeper understanding of AI and its impacts will prove to be crucial in an AI-enriched world. In the current study, we focus on an emerging AI-based technology, deepfakes, and investigate the effects of a lesser-known use of deepfakes (i.e., using deepfakes for prosocial purposes). Specifically, we examine the impacts of exposure to a “deepfake resurrection” narrative on individuals' policy support and activism intentions in two contexts (i.e., drunk driving and domestic violence). We conducted a between-subjects experiment (N = 1990) that varied in the use (vs. non-use) of deepfakes and tested four psychological processes related to the effects of deepfake resurrection narratives. While the moderating role of point of view and the mediating role of perceived desecration of the dead did not receive much support, the narrative-based and the surprise-focused mediational pathways were shown to be important mechanisms of deepfake resurrection narratives. Finally, we reflect on the potential of prosocial deepfakes and deepfake resurrection narratives and discuss the findings’ relevance to both theory and practice.

A feltámadás (újra)értelmezése az ApCsel 1–2-ben

Like the other Gospels, Luke describes the resurrection only very briefly. In Acts, however, the Lucan resurrection narrative is subjected to further reflection on what this event means and what follows from it for the emerging church. In this paper, I examine the beginning of Acts (specifically Acts 1:9-11 and 2:14-36) and attempt to explore how it (re)interprets the resurrection narrative of Luke 24. I argue that the author of Luke–Acts conceives and reinterprets Jesus’ resurrection through two key narratives: the story of the Ascension (Acts 1:9-11) and Peter’s sermon at Pentecost (Acts 2:14-36). Luke thus chooses two hermeneutical approaches, one narrative and one rhetorical, to explore the theological depth of the resurrection event. Common to both approaches is that they invoke the authority of Old Testament Scripture, which serves both as evidence of the necessity of Jesus’ transition from earthly to heavenly reality and as an interpretive key to understanding the final chapter of the Gospel.

Elucidating the Nexus between the Gospels, Exegesis, and the Visitatio sepulchri in the German-Speaking Lands

In the German-speaking lands, the Easter Sunday liturgy and the Gospels of the Resurrection inspired two distinct traditions of the Visitatio sepulchri (The Visit of the Sepulcher). In this fully sung rite, commonly referred to as a liturgical drama, clerics or monastics reenacted the Marys’ visit to Christ’s abandoned tomb at Easter Sunday Matins. This article demonstrates how the differences among the four evangelists’ Resurrection accounts posed hermeneutic challenges for medieval Christians and affected the development of the Visitatio sepulchri in the German-speaking lands. I argue that the creators of type-one German Visitationes skillfully compiled preexisting liturgical chants with texts that quoted Matthew’s and Mark’s accounts to create Resurrection narratives that complemented the Resurrection account read at Easter Sunday Matins. By contrast, type-two Visitationes employed mostly newly composed chants with texts that drew together details, wording, and events from the four Resurrection accounts into one unified narrative. Type-two Visitationes began circulating in the twelfth century, the period when Hugh of St. Victor was imploring exegetes and students to scrutinize the historical details of scripture. This renewed interest in the literal, rather than the allegorical meaning of scripture, made the differences among the Gospels all the more apparent. I propose that the creator of the type-two Visitatio sepulchri adopted techniques from Gospel Harmonies, pedagogical works that drew together the four Gospels into one narrative, to prove that the four accounts agreed.

Who was first? Mary Magdalene, Peter and the Ending of Mark

This article discusses one of the most perplexing questions in textual criticism – the wide variety of endings for the gospel of Mark. The most reliable early manuscripts end at verse 8, but this is a very strange ending, and other endings seem to have been added later: the shorter and the longer ending. The article discusses various hypotheses about whether an original ending was lost or whether this ending was deliberate and concludes that Mark decided to end this way because of conflicting versions of the Easter story circulating in his community: One was the early traditional version, probably proclaimed by the Jerusalem apostles and taken up by Paul, that Peter was the first one to see the risen Christ. The other was more controversial and had implications for questions of authority and leadership in the church: the testimony that Mary Magdalene, or several women, were first. Mark chose to allow the women the place of first witnesses to the empty tomb, but to leave open the question of who had the first encounter with the risen Christ. The different factions were then free to choose their own ending. As the empty tomb was not an integral part of the Petrine resurrection narrative, Mark’s version did not undermine this early Easter account, but opened the way to integrate the women’s story in official Christian tradition. Keywords: Ending of Mark, Mark 16, Mary Magdalene, Resurrection, Empty Tomb, Easter, Mark 16:8

Normal, post-normal and new normal: A theology of hope in John 20:1–29

This article re-reads John 20:1–29 to foreground the normal, the post-normal and the new normal realities within the Johannine resurrection narrative. The narrator of John demonstrates the normal situational aspects by taking into consideration the setting, characterisation, thematic development, point of view and plot development of the story in closer relationship with the temporal and spatial mechanisms. The ordinary, local and existent realities are expressed to reveal the colourless human experiences in relation to the divine aspects within the narrative framework. The resurrection of Jesus introduces a post-normal situation within the Sitz im Leben Jesu and the Sitz im Leben Kirche. The post-normal situation was introduced by placing the story of Lazarus at a strategic place (Jn 11:1–45) and thereafter by unfolding the essentials such as speed, scope, scale and spontaneity. The unfolding of the divine within the existential human realities created a post-normal situation where the Johannine community had to undergo expulsion and persecution from the side of the dominant structures. The narrator gives the reader a hope about a new normal situation above and beyond the existent struggles of the Johannine community.Contribution: This article presents a new perspective concerning the normal, the post-normal and the new normal realities and dynamism within John 20:1–29 and suggests a new way forward in interpreting the Fourth Gospel by taking into consideration the existential aspects of the COVID-19 and Omicron pandemic situations. As a contextual and theological interpretation of the Fourth Gospel, this article fits well within the scope of HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies.

The Gospel of the Son of God: An Introduction to Matthew

The Gospel of the Son of God: An Introduction to Matthew

Sandra Schneiders, Critical Exegesis, and the Theological Interpretation of Scripture

Current trajectories in biblical interpretation have increasingly shelved or even attacked historical-critical methodologies, replacing these methodologies with doctrinally grounded (meta)narratives as the primary framework for the interpretation of Scripture. This trajectory is particularly apparent among proponents of the “theological interpretation of scripture” (TIS). These interpretive trajectories tend to be self-referential inasmuch as their primary aim is to buttress the doctrinally grounded narrative framework itself rather than providing any critical function that could move readers beyond ecclesially established horizons. Sandra Schneiders, however, stands out in the field of theology as a potent exemplar of nonreductive critical biblical exegesis, and her performance as an exegete has long anticipated the concerns of TIS. Schneiders' approach marks an important path forward for interpreters of Scripture, one that is critically informed, hermeneutically sound, and both theologically and spiritually fruitful. Schneiders’ own account of the Johannine resurrection narrative may prove helpful and even exemplary for contemporary exegetes and systematic theologians alike.

Come and Read: Interpretive Approaches to the Gospel of John ed. by Alicia D. Myers and Lindsey S. Jodrey

Reviewed by: Come and Read: Interpretive Approaches to the Gospel of John ed. by Alicia D. Myers and Lindsey S. Jodrey Luke Macnamara OSB alicia d. myers and lindsey s. jodrey (eds.), Come and Read: Interpretive Approaches to the Gospel of John (Interpreting Johannine Literature; Lanham, MD: Fortress Academic, 2020). Pp. xiii + 231. €95. This volume of collected essays originated from the Johannine Literature section at the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting in Boston, Massachusetts, in 2017, where participating scholars reflected on various rhetorical elements in John 10 and the plurality of possible interpretations. This gave the impetus to the editors to explore four broadly defined interpretive approaches and illustrate the application of these approaches to three passages from the Gospel of John, namely, the prologue (John 1:1–18), John 10, and John 20. The introduction provides a concise overview of the four types of reading—narrative, sociocultural, intertextual, and rhetorical—and a brief summary of each of the twelve chapters. The volume intends to showcase the different questions, vantage points and diverse responses of the four approaches. The collection is divided into three parts, with each part dedicated to a particular biblical passage, treated in four chapters illustrating the four approaches. Contributions in part 1 are Sherri Brown, “Beginnings: Introducing the Narrative of the Word through the Prologue of John’s Gospel”; Lindsey S. Jodrey, “John 1 Beyond the Binary”; Craig S. Keener, “Revealing the Fuller Word”; and Jo-Ann A. Brant, “Ambiguity as a Rhetorical [End Page 536] Strategy in the Prologue to John’s Gospel.” The essays represent, respectively, the narrative, sociocultural, intertextual, and rhetorical readings. Employing a narrative approach, Brown first discusses the narrative function of the prologue, which tells what the rest of the narrative shows, and then exposits the narrative of the mission of the incarnate Word and its potential implications for the audience. Part 2 contains examples of the four approaches to John 10: Dorothy A. Lee, “The Parable of the Sheepfold: A Narrative Reading of John 10”; Warren Carter, “Jesus the Good Shepherd: John 10 as Political Rhetoric”; Catrin H. Williams, “Persuasion through Allusion: Evocation of ‘Shepherd(s)’ and Their Rhetorical Impact in John 10”; and Alicia D. Myers, “Discerning Characters: Parrēsia, Paroimia, and Jesus’s Rhetoric in John 10:1–21.” Carter’s contribution, classified as a sociocultural reading, examines how the Good Shepherd passage interacts with Greek and Roman traditions of rulers as good shepherds. John’s rhetoric contests and challenges these traditions but also imitates and reinscribes many of the features of the ideal ruler, including the exercise of domination and subjugation. The portrayal of Jesus thereby emulates that of the ideal ruler, with Jesus not simply the “good” shepherd but the “best.” Part 3, focusing on John 20, follows the same pattern and includes further examples of the four approaches: Craig R. Koester, “Narrative-Critical Interpretation of John 20”; Angela N. Parker, “Reading Mary Magdalene with Stacey Abrams: Developing an Inclusive National Consciousness”; Helen K. Bond, “Recognition and ‘Those Who Have Not Seen’: John’s Reception of Synoptic Resurrection Narratives”; and Kasper Bro Larsen, “Rhetorical Vividness in John 20: Making Jesus Present before the Eyes.” Larsen explores the ancient rhetorical feature of ekphrasis, or vividness, not primarily in the ancient rhetorical handbooks but in the more elementary progymnasmata. These, Larsen notes, probably reflect better the level of rhetorical training available to John. The strategies employed by John to demonstrate vividness include the dramatic present tense, imitation of real discourse, repetition, visual vocabulary, circumstantial detail, suspense, and narrative asides. The ekphrastic rhetoric makes readers spectators through the Gospel, but Jesus’s final words (John 20:29) emphasize hearing rather than seeing. The audience, who have been made a party to eyewitness testimony, are now brought back to their actual situation as hearers of the Gospel story. While several of the contributions resume previous scholarship, the set goal of the volume to place four approaches to three chosen texts side by side in order for readers to compare and contrast them is met. Comparisons may also be made among the three examples of each approach, given the diversity within each. For example, the sociocultural approaches include queer...

Interpreting Blake’s <i>The Magdalene at the Sepulchre</i>

In 1805, Blake painted the beautiful, solemn watercolor The Magdalene at the Sepulchre for his friend and patron Thomas Butts. It illustrates a scene from the resurrection narrative in the gospel of John, capturing the moment before Mary recognizes that the figure who appears to her, outside the tomb, is the risen Jesus. The Magdalene at the Sepulchre is a consummate example of Blake’s incarnational aesthetic and a striking visualization of his interpretive approach to scripture. By choosing to illustrate this specific episode from John’s gospel, he invokes the illustrious Noli me tangere tradition while departing from it, or, more accurately, by refusing to enter it at all.

Kebangkitan Yesus: Analisis Naratif Injil Lukas 23:56-24:12

The Scriptures are the main guidelines in the Christians’ life of faith. The significance of this role has stimulated various interpretation methods of the Scriptures that are oriented to help the faithful find meanings relevant to their lives. Narrative analysis is one of the methods that are developed to reach fuller understandings and to communicate the biblical messages to a wider context of readers. It pays greater attention to the forms of personal stories and witnesses, which are typical of the Scriptures as well as of human communication model. Doing narrative analysis to the scriptural texts refers to the same elements and techniques as analysing narratives in general. This method explores the narrative elements of a scriptural text as a starting point for its further interpretation, that is, towards imagining the narrator and his or her viewpoints, the characterisation, the plot, the setting (concerning time and place), and the storytelling style. This article examines the resurrection narrative of Jesus Christ in Luke 23:56-24:12 by revealing its previously mentioned narrative elements and offering day-to-day inspirations that might be beneficial to the Christians.

Fanged Future: A review of Jerry Rafiki Jenkins, The Paradox of Blackness in African American Vampire Fiction

Fanged FutureA review of Jerry Rafiki Jenkins, The Paradox of Blackness in African American Vampire Fiction Johanna Isaacson (bio) Jenkins, Jerry Rafiki. The Paradox of Blackness in African American Vampire Fiction. Ohio UP, 2019. At the mention of the word "vampire," a waxen figure of European origin leaps to mind. However, Jerry Rafiki Jenkins insists in The Paradox of Blackness in African American Vampire Fiction that vampire myths have an under-explored heritage in Africa and African diasporic cultures, and that recent African American vampirology offers a subaltern approach to the genre rather than merely a sub-generic borrowing of Dracula-derived tropes. A figure conjured to navigate the horrors of colonial violence and enslavement through the nineteenth century, the black vampire re-emerges in 1970s vampire films such as Ganja and Hess and Blacula. These works inform the black vampire fiction to come and the resurrection of seemingly white vampire mythology such as the Dracula film adaptations of 1979 and 1992 (4). Yet studies of vampire mythology ignore or minimize the influence of the black vampire (6). In Paradox, Jenkins fills this lacuna by offering a detailed analysis of five black vampire fiction novels. He argues that in their articulation of race and sexuality through the "paradox of mortality," these texts counter monolithic notions of blackness. In particular, they diverge from conservative religious visions of black unity and insist on an antinormative project that not only queers the traditional vampire narrative, the black literary imagination, and their guises of universality, but it also … has the potential to denormalize our disdain of hybridity, our boundaries of power, and our obsession with utopias. (8) Jenkins provides insightful, original, and often compelling readings of works that have been excluded from the canon of vampire fiction largely due to their racial concerns, although the book would have benefited from a more rigorous engagement with scholarly work that complicates categories of race and sexuality. His book is part of an important new series from Ohio University Press; New Suns: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Speculative (edited by Susana M. Morris and Kinitra D. Brooks) promises to recognize the significance of African American speculative culture in varied media. Central to Jenkins's exploration of the implicit ideologies in the five novels is Steven Cave's taxonomy of four immortality narratives that cultures adapt to grapple with the "morality paradox": the fact that we must die but cannot concretely imagine death (Jenkins 11). Cave's taxonomy includes the "staying alive" narrative, the resurrection narrative, the soul narrative, and the legacy narrative. For Jenkins, most black vampire novels reject soul and legacy narratives in favor of resurrection and staying alive narratives. The latter insist on the corporeality of the black body, and must therefore navigate black earthly experience, black appearance and its meaning, and black physical pain, along with the hope for an earthly freedom from this pain. While the vampire's status as corporeal undead points to the conception that black identity is defined by the appearance of blackness, Jenkins argues that the novels he explores complicate this notion and instead ask "whether there is more to being black than having a black body" (16). His readings imply that race is ascriptive rather than an inherent part of the body. At times he acknowledges the intractable, structural process of racialization "in a society where economic forms are racialized, and pain is colored black" (27). However, Jenkins returns to a hope of transcending race through the imaginary of black vampire hybridity. In these moments of transcendence, his analysis risks becoming ahistorical. The immortal status of the vampires Jenkins analyzes allows them to stand outside of time, forming a "post-racial" horizon. Yet the paths to this post-historical status do not dismantle the structures of domination that persistently reinscribe race. The periodization of racialized capitalism is particularly relevant to the gothic mode, as Stephen Shapiro argues in his analysis of Dracula and other Victorian gothic tropes. Historical moments of crisis and rupture reveal the uncanniness of commodity fetishism: the condition in which workers are separated from any possibility of life outside capitalism and are fully alienated from their bodies, which become "units of labor-power...

Speaking, Writing and Performing Mary Magdalene in Irish Convents in Early Modern Spain (1499 to 1639)

This article charts how the figure of Mary Magdalene emerged as a central figure within the creative culture, oral and written, of Irish convents in Spain between 1499 and 1639, during the period when Irish female religious settled in Spain and founded their convents. The majority of Irish convents in Spain were Dominican, an order dedicated to an outgoing educational mission. Detailing her centrality to the lives of Irish female religious communities generally, the article explores how Mary Magdalene was used in teaching and entertainment to endorse and commemorate the sacred history and doctrines of the Church and particularly to authorize women’s leadership. Although they were primarily pedagogical in purpose, this study suggests that performances relating to Mary Magdalene in this period specifically celebrate her centrality within the Resurrection narrative and showcase a love, loyalty and faith that surpassed that of the male disciples.

‘His Life Rose With Him’—John 21 and the Resurrection of Jesus

The history of Jesus as portrayed in the Fourth Gospel, not least his relationship with Peter and the Beloved Disciple and his role as light and life of the world, rose with him in the final Easter episode (Ch. 21). The questioning style of Jesus and the love exhibited and commanded by him also rose again in that resurrection narrative. Further themes from the history of Jesus, such as meals, the Eucharist, martyrdom, testimony, and truth, also find their place in the account of the risen Jesus.

The narrative-theological function of Matthew's baptism command (Matthew 28:19b)

The triadic name given in the baptism command of Matthew 28:19b has often been considered awkward in its context and perhaps anachronistic in light of later Christian Trinitarian doctrine. This article argues that Matthew 28:19b is rather a fitting climactic conclusion to a narrative-theological motif throughout Matthew’s Gospel where triadic or at least dyadic language is employed within revelatory contexts that affirm Jesus’ divine sonship and messianic mission: either in small apocalypses or within apocalyptic discourse. This argument finds its crux in the baptism of Jesus itself (3:13–17) which is presented as an apocalypse in which the heavenly fatherly voice reveals the identity of the Son and anoints him with his Spirit, with the stated goal of “fulfilling all righteousness.” The revelation is presented by Matthew so that it is directed to the public within the narrative and implicitly to the reader disciple. The baptism revelation is then closely associated both with the lengthy citation of Isaiah 42:1–4 in Matthew 12:18–21, another triadic text, and with the visionary transfiguration account (17:1–8). Other passages are analyzed in order to trace the pattern throughout the Gospel. In the resurrection narrative (28:1–20) it is demonstrated that the resurrected Jesus is portrayed as a now heavenly, yet still embodied, revealer who is worshipped such that the Great Commission passage (28:16–20) is presented as a divine revelation. Within this “ultimate apocalypse” the risen Jesus commands his followers to make disciples of the nations by teaching and baptizing in the triadic name. The baptism command, in light of the triadic motif throughout the Gospel has the rhetorical effect of inviting Matthew’s reader-listener disciples to identify with Jesus in his own triadic baptism such that they too have an affirmed filial relationship with God and receive the anointing of the Holy Spirit to continue and extend Jesus’ messianic mission into the world under his universal authority and with his promised presence.

Fleshly Resurrection, Authority Claims, and the Scriptural Practices of Lukan Christianity

In this article, I argue that references to the fleshly resurrection of Jesus in Luke and Acts, both those that tell of Jesus eating with his apostles and those that assert that Jesus’s flesh was “incorruptible” (Luke 24:36–53, Acts 1:4, 2:31, 10:40–41, 13:37), share thematic continuity and are best understood as stemming from Luke’s concern for the exclusive authority of the twelve apostles. I assume that Luke has access not only to oral and written resurrection narratives but also to a collection of the Pauline Epistles and that Luke frames Lukan narrative as the result of the scriptural practices of one second-century textual community, among others. In mapping both divergences and convergences between Lukan understandings of resurrection and views often attributed to Marcionites and/or so-called docetists, I challenge the view that Luke’s assertions of fleshly resurrection represent (proto)orthodoxy’s incipient battle with heresy over the nature of the resurrection of Jesus.

Julian and Porphyry on the Resurrection of Jesus in the Gospels

Julian, in a Syriac fragment of his Contra Galilaeos, attacked the resurrection narratives in Matthew and Mark, because they were inconsistent with each other concerning the time of the arrival of the women to the tomb, the nature of the being they met in the tomb, and the women’s subsequent actions. Other texts in Syriac and Latin indicate the probability that Julian took over the substance of his argument from Porphyry.

“Why Do You Seek the Living among the Dead?” Rhetorical Questions in the Lukan Resurrection Narrative

This article addresses the role of the rhetorical questions in the resurrection account in Luke 24–Acts 1 in order to provide insight into the rhetorical strategy of the author of Luke-Acts. The preface to Luke implies that Jesus's story was met with uncertainty (Luke 1:4). Indeed, the resurrection of Jesus was a central point of debate. I propose that in each of the four postresurrection appearance narratives— those of the two angelic men (Luke 24:1–12, Acts 1:9–14) and those of the risen Jesus (Luke 24:13–35, 36–53), the rhetorical questions raised by Jesus and the two men (Luke 24:5b, 26, 38; Acts 1:11) function to identify clearly, and ultimately defend, the crucial issues in the debate over Jesus's resurrection. I argue that the author employs these rhetorical questions in accordance with ancient rhetorical theory to help provide a cogent argument for the truth of Jesus's resurrection in the face of skepticism. This argument depends on three areas of investigation: (1) the criticism directed at the Christian tradition of Jesus's resurrection; (2) the use of rhetorical questions in ancient rhetorical theory; and (3) the function of rhetorical questions in Luke 24 and Acts 1 in light of Greco-Roman rhetorical standards. The goal of this article is to further scholarly understanding of the concern Luke-Acts manifests for the utilization of rhetorical standards in narrative composition and to give insight into Luke's apologetic purpose.