Gainful reappraisal - Presenting the Issue

Scott Bartchy, in Who Should be Called Father? Paul of Tarsus between the Jesus Tradition and Patria Potestas, examines the family values that characterized the society in which Jesus and Paul lived. Bartchy demonstrates how Jesus undermined the authority of fathers and rejected the blood-family ties and the destructive obligations they entailed. Rick Strelan, in "Outside Are the Dogs and the Sorcerers ... " (Rev. 22:15), helps readers today visit the world in which the community of the Book of Revelation rejected the cult of those who used dogs in rituals of purification, replacing this form of purification with the blood of the Lamb. Kenneth G. Stenstrup, in Scripture and Interpretive Method: Why Read Scripture as Canon?, views the biblical canon as a paradigm for understanding how God relates to humans, using the comparative midrash and intertextuality method enunciated by James A. Sanders.

Taken together, these articles present contemporary biblical interpreters with a clear vantage point from which to view the founders of the Christian tradition in their proper world setting. Determining how these points of reference, clarified as to their real-life setting, can be resignified for a modern world setting is the task of biblical theologians in the various contexts of present Christian communities. It is realistic to assume that the present day contexts, when recognized and evaluated, can well benefit, mutatis mutandis, from the insights proposed by the biblical founders' spirit and special aims.

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