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Jordan Peele's horror movie, Us, takes moral ambiguity to its logical extreme by creating a world, or, rather, two worlds, in which good and evil mirror each other on multiple planes—the narrative, the visual, the spatial, the racial, the ethical—and by its use of a biblical verse—Jer 11:11. The Wilsons, who inhabit "our" world, view the "Tethered", who inhabit a nether world, as evil insofar as they have emerged from the shadows to terrorize and kill them. The Tethered, however, view the humans as evil, insofar as they take for granted the ability to enjoy and act in the world. Like the prophet Jeremiah, the film draws the audience's attention to its own iniquity—and the consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

President of the Society of Biblical Literature 2020 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature Virtual Meeting 6 December 2020 Introduction given by James C. VanderKam Vice President, Society [...]

This issue of the Journal of Biblical Literature marks my last as General Editor. On December 31, 2018, I will conclude a sixteen-year stint with the Journal: nine years as [...]

For last year's words belong to last year's language And next year's words await another voice. --T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets Every year, the Oxford Dictionaries choose a word 'that [...]

Contrary to the usual practice, this issue of the Journal of Biblical Literature begins with an editor s foreword. There is no particular occasion for this unusual step. This issue--134.3--does [...]

Despite the distance in time and space that separates twenty-first century readers from the people in biblical stories, our own everyday experience equips us to understand these events as traumas. In this essay, trauma theory will be applied to illuminate the much-contested process by which the Johannine community developed an identity different from, and in opposition to, the Jews among whom they apparently lived. Keywords John, Gospel of; Synagogues, Expulsion from; Incarnation; Trauma theory, The New Testament recounts numerous traumatic situations, shocking events that arouse strong emotions of fear and that abruptly change the lives and even identities of those who experience them. In [...]

The Gospel of John is a sublime theological work describing an exalted vision of the cosmic harmony between God and humankind as mediated by the Divine Word. At the same time, the gospel also vilifies nonbelievers and identifies them with a historical group, 'the Jews,' in a manner that contributed significantly to Christian anti-Semitism for many centuries. This essay describes both the positive and negative elements of John's portrayal of Jews and Judaism, and suggests some ways that twenty-first century readers might come to terms with this problematic issue., THE JEWISHNESS OF JESUS IN THE GOSPEL OF JOHN In the Fourth Gospel, as in the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus, his family, his disciples, his followers, [...]

In his 2014 presidential address to the Society of Biblical Literature, Fernando Segovia called for 'a fusion of the critical and the political, the biblical and the worldly' (JBL 134.1 [...]

One of the most ambitious contributions to the field of feminist biblical exegesis to date is the eleven-volume Sheffield series, A Feminist Companion to the Hebrew Bible. The series, which [...]

'This is the ordinance for the passover: . . . . It shall be eaten in one house; you shall not take any of the animal outside the house, and [...]

Not God's People: Insiders and Outsiders in the Biblical World by Lawrence M. Wills Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, Md., 2008. 257 pp. $26.95. ISBN 978-0-7425-6250-9. THIS BOOK EXAMINES THE vision [...]

Lazarus, Mary and Martha: Social-Scientific Approaches to the Gospel of John by Philip F. Esler and Ronald Piper Fortress, Minneapolis, 2006. 201 pp. $22.00. ISBN 978-0-8006-3830-6. CONTRARY TO THE SUBTITLE, [...]

The Quiet Revolution brought an end to Catholic hegemony in Québec culture and society. Despite the Church's fall from power, Catholicism did not disappear from Québec society after the Quiet Revolution. The continued importance of Catholicism in conjunction with the dramatic shift to secular institutions and values creates a palpable tension in Québec public and private life. One film that explores this tension explicitly is the 1995 drama, Le Confessionnal. The film was written and directed by Robert Lepage, one of Québec's, and Canada's, most versatile artists. This article explores the primary existential theme -- the relationship between the Catholic past (1952) and the secular present (1989) -- by examining plot, character, and symbolism, particularly the use of color. Just as the main characters cannot escape their family history, so too, the film implies, must Québec come to terms with its past, within which the Catholic Church played such an important role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]