New Blog Address

Dear Friends,

I have fallen prey to the devilish desire to abandon my roots and migrate over to Wordpress.

Follow Me and UPDATE your SUBSCRIPTION to my blog at its new home

robgreid.wordpress.com

Obama is sort of God: The Rhetoric Just Doesn't Get any Better than This

Special thanks to Mike Whitenton for pointing this out to me. Over at SingingintheReign the professors pointed out a very interesting comment on national television by the editor of Newsweek no less, I will let you judge for yourself, but I think this clip points out the unabashed bias, devotion, and fundamentally skewed thinking with regard to the nature of Obama's political career. Sure he's black, he's young, he's hip, he's intellegent, he's left, that's all fine and good. He is a great polititian. However, doesn't anyone else find the rhetoric surrounding his "reign" to be blatantly frightening?



I'm just wondering how long it will be before "those who love America" will offer insense and declare "Obama is Lord" in nationalistic fervor for the new era of America, the "new" "remade" America.

Evil Cheney favored more by American Public than Nancy Pelosi!

Dear Friends,

While we have heard for the past several years what an evil, diabolical villain Dick Cheney is, being the archenemy of basically everything good, I find it absolutely hilarious that more people like him than Nancy ("the whore of Babylon") Pelosi. Frankly, I find Pelosi absolutely detestable, far more than Cheney. I don't personally favor Cheney, but I am thrilled that more people like him than Pelosi. Now it is empirically proven that most people agree with me, that Pelosi is an idiot, lying ideologue, lunatic who has no business being the speaker of the house.

See the Gallup Poll proof HERE.

P.S. Dallas, I told you so!

John Anderson at Wordpress... an exodus?

I would like to highly recommend John Anderson's blog. It has recently moved to wordpress and I'm wondering why so many of my fellow bibliobloggers are being led out of the wilderness and into the Wordpress holy land.

Anderson is a very astute Old Testament scholar working heavily in the Jacob cycle of Genesis. His insight and commentary is very valuable in my estimation. He is also a PhD candidate at Baylor (congrats again on passing your comps). My blogroll link to his site is also now current to his new address. Thanks for pointing that out John.

My Master's Thesis

Today, I received my 2 bound copies of my master's thesis: "Apocalyptic Imagery as Resistance Discourse: An Analysis of the Son of Man in Daniel 7 and 1 Enoch in Relationship to Matthew 25:31." By employing several analytical tools from postcolonial/imperial-critical analysis in tandem with several of Joseph Fantin's observations from Relevance Theory in order to argue that the "Son of Man" discourse is an apocalyptic discourse that is constructed by the marginalized under imperial persecution and thereby may be understood as a discourse of resistance (similar conceptually to the concept of Negro spirituals sung in the 17th century like "Babylon's a-falling" wherein the slaves envisioned an alternative reality over against their present experience in safely nestled in religious imagery so as to be "coded" to use James Scott's concept of hidden/public transcripts). I argue that this is the case independently and historically for the "Son of Man" figure in Daniel 7, the Parables (Similitudes) of Enoch, and Matthew 25:31. However, of importance to my argument, I view the author of the Parables of Enoch to have taken Dan 7 and dynamically transformed the imagery, that is, s/he took imagery that functioned religio-politically and re-envisioned or "reactualized" the image and developed it further. Indeed, it seems Matthew later did the same thing with the Enochic imagery. What the Parables do with Dan 7 radically furthers the development and in some sense the discourse evolves in a new and different direction. My position is that this is equally the case for Matthew 25:31, namely, that Matthew takes Enochic imagery bearing a normative function and applies it to Jesus. In doing so, I believe that Matthew portrays Jesus in Enochic exaltation language which activates various concepts related to the Enochic portrayal with regard to Jesus, albeit in his own way. Therefore, the Matthean discourse is not merely the Enochic discourse, rather, in some sense, I think Matthew grounds the imagery and conceptual expectation of Enoch in a person, Jesus. Thus, I think in doing so he does not merely say "this is that" but....rather... that, really, is this (Jesus). It seems plausible that if Dan 7 may be perceived, as I have argued, as an imperial resistance discourse, and that the Son of Man in the Parables functions in this way also, that by Matthew relatively clearly employing that imagery and language (i.e. the Son of Man seated on his throne of glory") with the referent of Jesus, that in some sense, that manuever may well have been understood by some, those familiar with the Enochic material, as a discourse of resistance against imperial persecution. Jesus becomes the figurehead whom symbolizes the overthrow of the wicked, the institution of justice, and the marginalized becoming elite.

Therefore, in each chapter I reconstruct a plausible discursive world (conceptual/linguistic world) in which these literary figures arise in order to properly frame the ideological and religious significance of the discourses within the communities in which they arose. Unfortunately, I was severely constrained by the word limitations of a thesis in a school that pressures people who shouldn't be writing a thesis in the first place into doing it. This practice over stretches the faculty and limits those students whose work is advanced enough to warrant much more depth.

Enjoy an excerpt from my conclusion:

This thesis has sought to investigate the literary construction within its milieu of the Son of Man figure within Daniel, the Book of Parables, and Matthew 25:31. Our aim has been to reconstruct the cognitive environment relevant to each document along with its socio-political context in order to analyze the Son of Man figure in that regard. We have determined that each text arose in environments deeply impacted by the phenomena of empire. We have discerned that one aspect of the Son of Man discourse arising in Dan 7, the Book of Parables, and Matthew 25:31 may be understood as functioning among its hearers as a discourse of imperial resistance offering an alternative reality to the hearing community from that envisioned by the dominant imperial powers of the day, in each unique case. Furthermore, we have shown through the use of relevance theory, the likelihood that Matthew 25:31 appropriated and invested with new meaning the “Son of Man” figure as constructed by both Dan 7 and the tradition undergirding the final form of the Book of Parables and applied this new construction to Jesus, in an imperial context, in such way that some of his hearers would have perceived the “Son of Man” as a challenge to the normative power structure enjoyed by the living emperor.

Review of Three Views on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament ed. Bock, Enns, Kaiser

I would like to direct your attention, to what I view as a both fair assessment and scathing critique of Kaiser's position in Three Views. Steve Moyise has articulated a very insightful review, available in the Review of Biblical Literature May 2009 Edition (see the RBL blog). I believe that Moyise has captured the subtle nuances and significance offered in this volume by both Bock and Enns, while rightly identifying the naivete offered by Kaiser's outmoded hermeneutical suggestions.

Imperial Power Exerted

Is it striking to anyone that a cancer patient who is dying does not have the right to refuse treatment? He is a 13 year old boy who took one chemo treatment and doesn't want to continue chemo. His parents support his decision. So what happens? Well a doctor and a judge have determined their opinion should trump both the wills of the dying patient and his parents. So what, in a day in which medical care is supposedly so hard to get, the FBI is hunting down this young man to drag him back and force him to receive treatment! Where is the ACLU to fight for this individuals right to seek alternative treatment.
Moreover, what is next? Will the gustapo come drag you out of your house and force you into service or to receive a "treatment" they deem necessary for you?

-- Post From My iPhone