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2023 Catholic Media Association Second Place Award, Scripture - Academic Studies
Reading 1 Peter through the lens of feminist and diaspora studies keeps front and center the bodily, psychological, and social suffering experienced by those without stable support of family or homeland, whether they were economic migrants or descendants of those enslaved by Roman armies. In the new "household" of God, believers are encouraged to exhibit a moral superiority to the society that engulfs them. But adoption of "elite" values cannot erase the undertones of randomized verbal abuse, general scorn, and physical violence that women, immigrants, slaves, and freedmen faced as the "facts of life." First Peter offers the "honor" of identifying with the Crucified, "by his bruises you are healed" (2:24). A Christian liberation ethic would challenge 1 Peter's approach.
Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia-Pontus in north-western Asia Minor, is a contemporary of 2 Peter's writer. The polemical, accusatory genre of 2 Peter, like Jude, originates in Roman judicial rhetoric. The pastor, in the persona of a prosecuting attorney, condemns immoral defendants, including influential women. Their "crimes" encode community tensions over women's leadership, Gentile-members' sexual ethics, their syncretistic deviations from Jewish doctrine on creation, and the certainty of divine judgment and punishment. Citations to Elizabeth Cady Stanton's A Woman's Bible enliven the commentary. The doctrinal disorder prompts the male pastor to sustain loyalists in their commitment to "Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." Second Peter dramatizes an ecclesial crisis whose "solution" was the eventual imposition of a magisterium to silence dissent.
Brief, combative, and assuming a familiarity with a literary culture that most twenty-first-century readers do not have, the Letter of Jude would be an obvious candidate for being the most neglected book of the New Testament. As a model for a pastoral strategy, it can be recommended only with great reservations: almost everyone will find in it something problematic, if not offensive. Yet, in addition to giving a window on a Greek-speaking Jewish-Christian milieu, Jude's energetic prose testifies to the author's visceral concern for those attempting to live by the gospel in difficult circumstances. Furthermore, to the extent that over familiarity with parts of the New Testament can blunt their challenge, this letter provides a salutary reminder that the entire canon originated in a world that is radically unfamiliar to us.
Contents
Contents
List of Abbreviations ix
List of Contributors xiii
Foreword: "Come Eat of My Bread . . . and Walk in the Ways of Wisdom" xv
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza
Editor's Introduction to Wisdom Commentary: "She Is a Breath of the Power of God" (Wis 7:25) xix
Barbara E. Reid, OP
Author's Introduction to 1 Peter: Reading from the Margins 1
1 Peter 1:1-12 Letter Opening 19
1 Peter 1:13-2:10 Letter Body 1: Outsiders Are to Become God's Holy People 27
1 Peter 2:11-3:7 Letter Body 2: Christ's Example for the Oppressed 43
1 Peter 3:8-4:11 Letter Body 3: Love, Service, and Solidarity among the Faithful 69
1 Peter 4:12-19 Coda: Joy in Suffering with Christ 81
1 Peter 5:1-14 Letter Closing 91
Concluding Reflection: Doing What Is Good in Evil Times 97
Author's Introduction to 2 Peter: An Integrative Critical Method and Feminist Analysis 101
2 Peter 1:1-2 Greeting to the Faithful, Simeon Peter as Servant 141
2 Peter 1:3-11 God's Generosity in Summoning Believers to Knowledge of Jesus Christ 147
2 Peter 1:12-18 The Apostolic Witness Authorizing the Teaching: Transfiguration 151
2 Peter 1:19 Morning Star 157
2 Peter 1:20-2:2 The Intrusion of False Prophets and Teachers Disrupting the Community 161
2 Peter 2:3 Judicial Condemnation of False Teachers Like the Prophet Hananiah 165
2 Peter 2:4-10a The Lessons of the Past: Angels, Noah, Sodom and Gomorrah 167
2 Peter 2:10b-22 God's Sure Punishment of Evildoers 177
2 Peter 3:1-10 Assurance of the Coming of the Day of Final Judgment 193
2 Peter 3:11-17 Calling the Faithful to Holiness 195
2 Peter 3:18 Closing Doxology: Knowledge of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ 201
Afterword 203
Author's Introduction to Jude: Attending to a Different Voice 209
Jude 1-2 Who I Am and Who You Are 223
Jude 3-4 A Pastor's Concern about a Dangerous Situation 227
Jude 5-7 What Is at Stake for the Community 235
Jude 8-16 "These People" 241
Jude 17-19 Do Not Lose Sight of the Bigger Picture 259
Jude 20-23 Daily Living as God's Beloved 263
Jude 24-25 Conclusion of the Letter 273
Conclusion 279
1 Peter Works Cited 285
2 Peter Works Cited 293
Jude Works Cited 301
Other Resources 303
Index of Scripture References and Other Ancient Writings 305
Index of Subjects 313
