Graduate Department of Religion

Las Cartas Pastorales están escritas en un contexto de lucha intracomunitaria. La polémica que se produce en el interior de la comunidad entre la doc- trina sana y la «heterodidascalia» es reflejo de las luchas de poder entre dos gru- pos que pugnan por establecer modelos normativos de organización. El presente estudio pretende mostrar las dinámicas mediante las cuales el autor de las cartas pretende deslegitimar la posición de sus oponentes y expulsarlos de la comuni- dad. Al mismo tiempo, las cartas muestran que algunas mujeres participaron acti- vamente en el movimiento de oposición y que reclamaron para sí papeles de auto- ridad y protagonismo. El objetivo de la presente investigación es estudiar el status de las mujeres en la comunidad de las Cartas Pastorales y analizar las propuestas normativas que ambos grupos diseñaron para ellas.

When tackling the issue of homosex, New Testament interpreters either read the bibli- cal text as continuously relevant to our present (continuism) or as completely estranged from contemporary conceptions of desire (alteritism). This article explores the historio- graphical styles underlying both hermeneutical strategies to argue that, despite their many advantages, continuism and alteritism both have homophobic and/or queerphobic foundations and occlude from contemporary debates of sexuality multiple queer desires and practices (like “straights” having queer sex). By surveying recent develop- ments in queer historiography, I conclude that no comprehensive account of desire is equipped to account for the present, and, thus, virtual dis/identifications with the bibli- cal past cannot be guaranteed or foreclosed.

La hermenéutica bíblica en el mundo de lengua hispana ha estado dominada por un paradigma de conocimiento objetivista que postula un lector desinteresado y universal. La crítica poscolonial, al incorporar las aportaciones recientes de la filosofía posestructuralista, propone una nueva óptica que cuestiona algunos presupuestos metodológicos-ideológicos de los modelos tradicionales, permite avanzar intuiciones de las hermenéuticas de la liberación y establece un nuevo espacio de diálogo interdisciplinar en el ámbito académico (estudios de minoría, étnico-raciales, queer, o de género) y culturalmente variado en el ámbito geopolítico.

The place of eros in Christian theology has always been a contested one, not least because it is positioned as being at odds with agape, the kind of love that embodies gospel ethics. Matthew 25:31–46 calls us to " feed the hungry, " " quench the thirsty, " " shelter the homeless, " " clothe the naked, " and " visit the imprisoned " as emblematic examples of agapic love. This essay shows how a queer act, specifically that of a woman breastfeeding a starving man as depicted in the tradition of Caritas Romana, can fulfill the ethical demands in Matthew's pericope. It demonstrates how the action first narrated by Valerius Maximus and then represented by Paul Peter Rubens beautifully fulfills the Matthean agapic demands, and concludes that queer practices have the potential to fulfill the gospel demands, situating the erotic at the core of the agapic.

Many scholars in Biblical and Revelation studies have written at length about the imperial and patriarchal implications of the fi gure of the Whore of Babylon. However, much of the focus has been on the links to the Roman Empire and ancient attitudes towards gender. This book adds another layer to the conversation around this evocative fi gure by pursuing an ideological critique of the Great Whore that takes into account contemporary understandings of sexuality, and in so doing advances a de-moralization of apparent sexual deviancy both in the present and in the past.

Queer theology has not paid enough attention to queer sex, how queers understand sexual intimate relationships outside hetero/homonormative frameworks, and more importantly, what notions of relationality with Otherness undergird those experiences and practices. This contribution exemplifies a trajectory of visualization—a theoretically based approach to reading art— where the practices of barebacking and cruising in queer subcultures trigger a reading of Caravaggio's Conversion on the Way the Damascus that, in turn, reads the biblical text (Acts 9) in terms of radical hospitality to Otherness. Barebacking and cruising as sexual practices documented in queer subcultures offer a framework to understand Caravaggio's artwork as a theological source and as an interpretation of the biblical text.

ordering a milkshake at the drive-through, buying groceries at the local market, taking the bus to the university, participating in a class discussion, inviting your coworker for a shared lunch, or talking to your friends at the coffee shop. Accordingly, the public sphere is the precondition to democracy, to the "demos" understood as the assembly of "we people" as we engage and disengage with each other in what, at first sight, seems to be a free space, a public domain for everyone to interact.

Characterization studies have recently experienced a revival through incorporation of interdisciplinary and processual analyses borrowed, in turn, from the broader field of literary studies. Studies on the Gospel of Luke exemplify a trend that, despite its increasing complexification of readerly strategies, continues to erase the role of real readers and contemporary communities of interpretation in the process of meaning making. In the present study, I offer an alternative to this deficit by analyzing, in intercontextual fashion, both the character of the Gerasene in Luke 8:26–39 and the experiences of prisoners in solitary confinement in the current US supermax prison system. I argue that the notion of social death shows that, in the Gerasene’s and the prisoners’ cases alike, relationality is the conditio sine qua non of subjectivity, and intersubjectivity is the condition of possibility of the political. The Gerasene, I conclude, transitions from an apolitical to a political status the moment another political animal (Jesus) steps into his domain.