New from Fortress: Covenental Conversations

A recent announcement from Fortress:

Covenantal Conversations: Christians in Dialogue with Jews and Judaism

Eight key topics for Jewish-Christian relations today

This useful volume, edited by noted theologian Darrell Jodock and including leading thinkers both Christian and Jewish, explores the shared theological framework, special historical relationship, and post-Holocaust developments and current trouble spots that situate the Jewish-Christian relationship today. Covenantal Conversations is a special gift to students, scholars, and Christians of all descriptions who wish to understand the vital link and special promise that Jews and Christians share.

Eight special topics or talking points get special attention from the chief contributors and their dialogue partners: Judaism Then and Now, Covenants Old and New, Law and Gospel, Promise and Fulfillment, Difficult Texts, Promised Land and Zionism, Healing the World and Mending the Soul, and Jewish-Christian Relations in a Pluralistic World.

Contributors include Esther Menn in conversation with Krister Stendahl, Ralph Klein in conversation with Isaac Kalimi, and six other conversations and responses.

Darrell Jodock is Drell and Adeline Bernhardson Distinguished Professor of Religion at Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, Minnesota.

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Regional SBL

I recently learned that my paper proposal for the upcoming New England Regional Meeting of the SBL (April 18 at Andover-Newton Theological School) was accepted. The proposal was based upon my first term paper at Yale--written for Prof. Adela Collins in the fall of 2005. Here's the abstract:

Splish, splash: the symbolism of water in the Book of Revelation

Nearly two thousand years after its initial composition and dissemination, the Book of Revelation remains among the most enigmatic and inscrutable components of the biblical canon. Generations of clerics, commentators, scholars, and students have struggled to penetrate the thick veneer of historical, cultural, and hermeneutical patina which has so successfully hidden its secrets. But as Adela Yarbro Collins, Frederick Murphy, and other sensitive modern exegetes have noted, attention to Revelation’s original historical and literary milieu provides the most illuminating insights into its character and purpose. A cursory examination of the book reveals that its author is heavily dependent upon the symbolic imagery of the ancient Near East, as found in portions of the Hebrew Bible and in the literature of other contemporary societies. The author often utilizes this imagery in a fairly universal way, incorporating it into his own work while retaining and exploiting the intrinsic emotional and thematic connotations present in his source material. This paper will present an extended analysis of one of the most pervasive of these symbolic elements: the element of water, which appears more than two dozen times throughout the work in an array of forms. With this analysis in hand, it is eminently clear that the author of Revelation has appropriated three established aquatic archetypes—the tumultuous sea and other raging waters; life-giving rivers, streams, and springs; and the elements of the storm—as crucial buttresses for his presentation of the Christian God as the sole possessor of sovereign power.