This year I submitted four papers to scholarly conferences: one for the Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) and three for the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL). I was pleasantly surprised to have three accepted to be read!

(Later—that is, a week before the back-to-back conferences in Denver, just after I had finished my comprehensive exams—the feeling of being pleased wore off somewhat. Three presentations in one trip was a bit much, and I don’t think that I’ll do it again if I can help it. Still, it was a fruitful experience and a good trip, one that we turned into a family trip.)

Paper 1: “Critical Independence versus Christian Catholicity in Hugo Grotius’s Annotations on Matthew 23.2-3“

I read this paper on Thursday, 17 November 2022, at the second session for Church History: Christian History and Thought Since 1700 at ETS.

In this paper, I examine Grotius’s NT annotations at Matt 23.2–3 as something of a case study both to understand more about Grotius’s exegetical method and to generate additional data for the history of interpretation of those verses from the Gospel according to Matthew. The following are my general findings:

1. Grotius shows a degree of independence to make text-critical decisions that affect translation, even if his decisions are unstated;
2. Grotius’s interpretation of Jesus’s command to the scribes and Pharisees who sit on the chair of Moses depends upon an understanding of jurisprudence, eschews speculation about divine institution of the teaching office, and cuts off redeployment of Jesus’s command in contemporary polemics among Christians;
3. Grotius puts the NT, even the recorded statements of Jesus, in conversation with the received wisdom from “pagan” antiquity; and
4. Grotius demonstrates an awareness of options in the history of interpretation and desires—maybe naïvely and with some self-contradiction—to show himself in harmony with ancient Christian traditions.

Paper 2: “Facing Up to Each Other: The Keyroot *פנה in Genesis’s Stories about Jacob and His Sons”

I read this paper on Saturday, 19 November 2022, in a session of the Cognitive Linguistics and Biblical Interpretation program unit at SBL.

In this paper, I examine the nominal *פנה-root, which occurs 141 times in Genesis with many different senses. There is little doubt that the noun פנים (always construct as פני in Genesis) functions as a keyword in some sections of Genesis, such as the reconciliation between Jacob and Esau (chs. 32–33). But this noun’s prevalence in other sections has been relatively under-explored. Through narrative analysis, supplemented with principles from cognitive linguistics, I aim to establish פנים as a keyword—and even *פנה as a “keyroot”—in the תלדות יעקב (Gen 37.2– 50.26) and then to draw out themes developed by the keyword and keyroot.

This paper proceeds in several stages.

• Part I defines several terms and clarifies points of method.
• Part II explores the occurrences of the *פנה-root in Gen 37.2–50.26.
• Part III demonstrates that פנים is a keyword and *פנה is a keyroot in Gen 37.2–50.26, drawing special attention to occurrences of the *פנה-root that may be overlooked because of diminished semantic referentiality where it occurs as a morpheme in so-called improper prepositions. Looking forward to the conclusions, the theme developed through keyword פנים is one central to this narrative and to Genesis as a whole: God’s preservation of life. When this narrative analysis adds the contribution of *פנה as a keyroot, this theme is developed in a particular direction: God’s preservation of life through reconciliation in the triumph of mercy over judgment.
• Part IV draws a few conclusions and suggests matters for further investigation—such as a Bible-wide theme linked to the *פנה-root.

Paper 3: “Enlightenment for Christological Interpretation in Jacob of Sarug’s Memra ‘Concerning the Veil on the Face of Moses’”

I read this paper on Monday, 21 November 2022, in a session of the Syriac Studies program unit at SBL.

In this paper, I draw from the disciplines of cognitive linguistics and conceptual metaphor theory to augment a close reading of Jacob of Sarug’s (ca. 451–521) memra or metrical homily “Concerning the Veil on the Face of Moses” (ܕܥܠ ܫܘܫܦܐ ܕܒܐܦܝ ܡܘܫܐ). My close reading reveals a concentration of metaphors related to the concept LIGHT and the focus or selection of LIGHT-facets of other conceptual domains. Seeing how the concept LIGHT features in various portions of the memra displays a complex coordination of different scriptural texts referring to or evoking the same concepts. As a result of this observation, I have become aware of several scriptural texts “at work” in Jacob’s thought; these scriptural texts are not used by Jacob merely as literary allusions for rhetorical flourish in his instruction and polemics but rather as means of conceptualizing or structuring his own and his hearers’ thoughts about various topics—a means of shaping thought about Scripture’s teaching in a way that is also derived from Scripture itself. This paper shows the fruit of my close reading with help from the categories of cognitive linguistics and conceptual metaphor theory.

This paper has three main parts:

1. I summarize the memra and draw attention to those sections most pertinent to my analysis.
2. I catalogue Jacob’s language evoking the concept LIGHT and selecting LIGHT-facets in other conceptual domains. This cataloguing allows me to consider various conceptual metaphors at work in Jacob’s thoughts.
3. I enumerate several repeated scriptural allusions, many of which are not identified in Brock’s translation and edition or in other secondary literature of which I am aware. Because of time constraints, I discuss only two of them in any detail.