I have wrapped up several projects recently – or sent them off for peer review – and as I wait to hear back on them, I am turning my sights back on first scholarly dance-partner, The Letter to the Hebrews, transing my earlier readings of it (from … gulp … a decade ago) – and the critiques of my earlier readings. Here’s my starting point:
By faith, Abraham heard when he was called to come out into a place which he was to take as an inheritance, and he came out not understanding where he was going. By faith he wandered into a land of promise as a foreign place dwelling in tents with Isaak and Jacob, who where joint inheritors of the same promise. For he waited for the city that has foundations whose architect and builder is God…. In accordance with faith, all of these died without receiving the promises, but they saw and greeted them from afar, confessing that they were strangers and foreigners upon the earth. For those who speak in such ways make manifest that they were searching for a fatherland. If they remembered where they had left behind, they would have had a time to return. But now they desire something better, that is, heavenly.
(Heb. 11:8-10, 13-16a; my fairly literal translation).
Preliminary discussion points:
1. To Come Out Into
2. Wandering / Erring / Queering: Purposeful Peripherality
3. Desiring Something Better: Reasserting & Resisting Metronormativity
4. Is Pistis Cruel or Willful?
Jaeda Rising & Reborn: Ancient Jewish & Christian Crossings & Transitions 