Lds At The Annual Meeting Of The Society Of Biblical Literature

[maklelan]

This year's annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) will be held in Baltimore, MD, from Nov. 22-26. The program book for the event can be accessed here. Following is the section in which I'm presenting and the abstract for my paper:

Theology of the Hebrew Scriptures

11/24/2013

9:00 AM to 11:30 AM

Room: Key 6 - Hilton

Jacqueline Lapsley, Princeton Theological Seminary, Presiding

Frederick E. Greenspahn, Florida Atlantic University

Canon and Codex (30 min)

Daniel O. McClellan, Trinity Western University

YHWH and El: The Conceptual Blending of Their Divine Profiles (30 min)

Rebecca Hancock, Harvard University

'The Poor One Cried and the Lord Heard Him' (Ps 34:7): The Significance of the Psalms in Developing a Theology of the Poor (30 min)

Margaret Odell, Saint Olaf College

All Lives are Mine: Ezekiel, Child Sacrifice, and Political Theology (30 min)

YHWH and El: The Conceptual Blending of Their Divine Profiles

The point of departure for this paper is the theory that the patriarchal and exodus traditions represent originally independent traditions of Israel’s ethnogenesis. The most explicit—and perhaps original—attempt to link the two traditions and their concepts of God (Exod 6:3) acknowledges distinct divine names associated with the two traditions, namely YHWH and El Shaddai. Quite different theological profiles emerge from the disentangling of the traditions most closely connected with those names, but by the time of the composition of Exod 6:3, those profiles were fusing. Within the resulting composite view of Israel’s God, certain concepts associated with the earlier profiles were emphasized while others were marginalized. New concepts also developed out of the process and the socio-religious exigencies of the authors and editors. The complex and tensile conceptualization of YHWH found in the Hebrew Bible’s final form represents several centuries of conceptual blending and innovation against the backdrop of Israel’s scriptural heritage. Scholars of early Israelite religion have dedicated a great deal of attention to the socio-religious impetuses for and results of the conflation of YHWH and El, but there is little that examines the cognitive processes that may have attended and influenced that conflation. This study seeks to fill that need. It will first isolate and schematize each tradition’s conceptualizations of its central deity, paying close attention to the centrality of the imagery to that deity’s representation. It will then evaluate the conceptual blending of the two schemas, highlighting the analogous and complementary concepts that facilitated that blending, as well as the conditions that contributed to the development of new divine conceptualizations. The fundamental goal is insight into why God was represented in the texts the way he was.

Edited July 3, 2013 by maklelan

[Damien the Leper]

Love it, Mak! I'm excited for your presentation.

[phaedrus ut]

Congratulations. This is very impressive but to those who've read your participation here over the years it shouldn't be very surprising.

Best Wishes,

Phaedrus

[maklelan]

Thanks, y'all. I'm looking forward to presenting this paper, which is basically a chapter out of my most recent master's thesis.