Full Description
At the 2006 annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, the Prophetic Texts in their Ancient Contexts section devoted a session to the theme "The Aesthetics of Violence." Participants were invited to explore multiple dimensions of prophetic texts and their violent rhetoric. The results were rich-- engaging discussion of violent images in ancient Near Eastern art and in modern film, as well as advancing our understanding of the poetic skill required for invoking terror through words.
This volume collects those essays as well as others especially commissioned for its creation. As a collection, they address questions that are at once ancient and distressingly-modern: What do violent images do to us? Do they encourage violent behavior and/or provide an alternative to actual violence? How do depictions of violence define boundaries between and within communities? What readers can and should readers make of the disturbing rhetoric of violent prophets?
Contributors include Corrine Carvahlo, Cynthia Chapman, Chris Franke, Bob Haak, Mary Mills, Julia O'Brien, Kathleen O'Connor, Carolyn Sharp, Yvonne Sherwood, and Daniel Smith-Christopher.
Contents
Cynthia Chapman, Oberlin College
"The Aesthetics of Empire: The Depiction and Bracketing of Violence in the
Assyrian Palace Reliefs"
Daniel Smith-Christopher, Loyola Marymount University
"Micah 1-2: On The Pleasures of Prophetic Judgment"
Corrine Carvalho, University of Saint Thomas
"The Beauty of the Bloody God: The Divine Warrior in Prophetic Literature"
Julia M. O'Brien, Lancaster Theological Seminary
"Violent Pictures, Violent Cultures? The 'Aesthetics of Violence' in Contemporary Film and in Ancient Prophetic Texts "
Robert D. Haak, Augustana College
"Mapping Violence in the Prophets"
Mary Mills, Liverpool Hope University, UK
"Divine Violence in the Book of Amos"
Carolyn Sharp, Yale Divinity School
"Hewn By the Prophet: An Analysis of Violence and Sexual Transgression in Hosea With Reference to the Homiletical Aesthetic of Jeremiah Wright"
Yvonne Sherwood, University of Glasgow
"'Tongue-Lashing' or a Prophetic Aesthetics of Violation: An Analysis of Prophetic Structures that Reverberate Beyond the Biblical World"
Chris Franke, title TBA
