Brown Bag Religion: Recent Episodes
MF CASR
Fifteen minute recordings of the Lunchtime Lectures at MF CASR (Centre for the Advanced Study of Religion). Each week, MF CASR invites an expert scholar to give a brief presentation to the public about their research in religious studies. Topics range from sociology to philosophy to manuscript studies of ancient texts.
2 Samuel 13 contains one of the most detailed rape scenes in the Bible. It also contains one of the most detailed food preparation scenes in the Bible. These two statements may sound discordant, even irrelevant to each other—but a closer look reveals that their juxtaposition is no coincidence. My investigation into this text showed that, contrary to most biblical translations, it describes the preparation of boiled bread rolls, and that the process of boiling draws on the powerful cross-cultural metaphor of heat as lust. The cooking process therefore becomes a twisted foreshadowing of the rape that will follow, revealing both the agency of the princess Tamar and the lustful perspective of her rapist. At this session, I will share tastes of my own recipe for the bread that Tamar makes, and discuss the ambiguities of a Bible story that describes but does not condone sexual assault.
In the Prologue of De doctrina christiana, Augustine prefaces his work on the proper interpretation of Scripture by defending against three hypothetical opponents. The first does not understand what Augustine is saying and the second understands but lacks the intellectual faculties to follow his method; both are quickly dismissed as inept critics. However, the third claims to possess divine access to the Holy Spirit which allows them to understand the Scriptures without human aid and apart from the sensory experiences of hearing the Gospel read aloud in the liturgy and seeing it written in the codex. Confronting this opponent sets up a major theme which runs through all four books of De doctrina christiana but which has been largely overlooked by modern scholarship: the necessity of human agency and sensory experience in divine learning.
I base the presentation on a draft article discussing a particularly powerful (or magic) word: AGLA. The word appears in Scandinavian Medieval inscriptions as the runic AGLA (ᛆᚵᛚᛆ) and in Jewish amulets and texts like the Hebrew ʾaglāʾ (אגלא).The first section gives examples and illustrations of how runic inscriptions from Scandinavia used AGLA and in what contexts. Scandinavian runic-text inscriptions containing AGLA differ in writing materials, genres and original contexts and find spots.The second section discusses the function and meaning of ʾaglāʾ in Jewish tradition, particularly in Hebrew amulets and other esoteric literature. Did ʾaglāʾ originate as an abbreviation (notarikon), either or the ʿĀmîdâ’s second benediction (Birkat gəbûrôt), or Gen 49:8–11?The subsequent section discusses the relationship between AGLA and ʾaglāʾ. Do the runic AGLA and Hebrew ʾaglāʾ represent the same powerful word? The tentative answer is “yes.”The last section speculates on how the Jewish ʾaglāʾ migrated to Scandinavia and became the runic-text ᛆᚵᛚᛆ. Did ʾaglāʾ become ᛆᚵᛚᛆ via a route from starting somewhere in the East, for example, in the Jewish Khazar Empire? Or did the powerful word migrate into Scandinavia from the West, directly from a Jewish community (e.g., Cologne, Worms, Lincoln, or Rouen), or via a Christian centre of Hebraism (like Ramsey Abbey in England or the Abbey of Saint Victor in Paris)?
Hva skjer når journalister lager undervisningsmateriale til religionsundervisning? Audun Toft ser nærmere på NRKs ambivalente rolle som medieprodusent og leverandør av undervisningmateriale og diskuterer mulige konsekvenser dette har for religionsundervisning.
The ERC DEChriM Project based at MF focuses on material culture of fourth century Christianity in Egypt including several research fields. One part of this project is devoted to ceramic study mainly based on archaeological work. This talk will present an overview of this research including the methodology, the progress and the limits encountered.
Dystopian literature has received considerable attention lately as it has “achieved symbolic cultural value in representing our fears and anxieties about the future." (Adam Stock, Modern Dystopian Fiction and Political Thought.) Yet how this literature utilizes biblical ideas and material has been less explored, even though a significant portion of contemporary dystopian and post-apocalyptic novels draw heavily on biblical literature. The research project Bible in the Dystopian World seeks to open a dialogue between dystopian (and post-apocalyptic) literature and biblical texts.
The scholarly consensus on the production of texts in antiquity has shifted in the recent years. Several scholars have begun to highlight texts as products of collaborative efforts rather than the results of an individual author. Thus, the studies raise new questions about women’s involvement in text production in antiquity. I will first demonstrate how women’s unrecognized scribal activities feed the theory of a single male author. Second, I will discuss how the recent developments in the studies on scribalism encourage us to rethink women as intellectual collaborators who participated in text production in antiquity.
Dr. K. Soraya Batmanghelichi will present her recent monograph in which she interrogates how normative ideas of women's bodies in Iran's state, religious, and public health discourses have resulted in the female body being deemed as immodest and taboo in much of its post-revolutionary history. This research greatly benefits those looking at marginalized and under-studied communities in Iran, such as red-light districts and those in temporary marriages.
Interrogating the development and conceptual framework of economic thought in the Islamic tradition pertaining to ethical, philosophical, and theological ideas, this book provides a critique of modern Islamic economics as a hybrid economic system. From the outset, Sami Al-Daghistani is concerned with the polyvalent methodology of studying the phenomenon of Islamic economic thought as a human science in that it nurtures a complex plentitude of meanings and interpretations associated with the moral self. By studying legal scholars, theologians, and Sufis in the classical period, Al-Daghistani looks at economic thought in the context of Sharī'a's moral law. Alongside critiquing modern developments of (Islamic) economics, he puts forward an idea for a plural epistemology of Islam's moral economy, which advocates for a multifaceted hermeneutical reading of the subject, embedded in a particular cosmology of human relationality, metaphysical intelligibility, and economic subjectivity.
The issues of diversity, and the construct of collective identity, are central to Paul's letter to the Galatians. In contrast with a "non-gospel" calling for a collective identity based on sameness, Paul suggests the concept of adoption rather than adaptation. Still, this transition toward a higher level of diversity appears to have had to face reactions from prominent persons even within the movement. As seen from the perspective of social systems theory, increasing the level of diversity is the pathway to resilience – but it is not often an easy one.
Whereas most women mentioned in the Gospels of the New Testament led a settled life and are often mentioned because they assisted the itinerant Jesus and his disciples through their means and property, the women mentioned in the NT letters are often itinerant. The talk will take as point of departure the theories that Christianity in its earliest phase developed along the ancient Roman trade routes, and among the many who travelled, worked and earned a living along those routes. The itinerant women mentioned in the letters will then be placed within this context. The talk will then discuss whether and how the reconstruction that then emerges can expand the picture of the female presence in the Christ movement from the very beginning - and in its earliest developments.
Years before the Covid-19 pandemic struck, Italian philosopher Roberto Esposito presented a thought-provoking analysis of the interconnections and tensions between immunity and community. Mechanisms of immunization characterize our time in paradoxical ways, both auto-destructive and lifesaving, he claims. Throughout history, pandemics have had profound impact on geopolitics and the public role of religion. That will undoubtedly be the case with the present corona crisis, too. But how? For my own work on a political theology of vulnerability, Esposito’s thought provokes new questions and provides possible tools for addressing (post-)pandemic transformations. I will present a few of these challenges in my remarks.
Andreas Hvidsten skal presentere boken "Politiske ideer" som kommer ut på Fagbokforlaget til våren, og snakke om studiet av politisk tenkning og ideologi som tverrfaglig disiplin, med særlig vekt på berøringspunktene mellom statsvitenskap, historie og humanistiske fag. Et hovedspørsmål vil være om slike faggrenser kan hindre en helhetlig forståelse av norsk politisk historie. Han vil bruke konkrete eksempler fra norsk politisk idehistorie.
What is happening to futures now? And how do contemporary futurisms deal with the problems of climate change, demographic change, and technological change? In this presentation, I present the broad outline of the various CoFutures projects funded by the European and Norwegian Research Council, contextualising them within the larger goals of global futurisms movements that are as much artistic as political.
Exploring how the climate crisis discloses the symbol deficit in the Christian tradition, this book argues that Christianity is rich in symbols that identify and address the failures of humans and the obstacles that prevent humans from doing well, while positive symbols that can engage people in constructive action seem underdeveloped. Henriksen examines the potential of the Christian tradition to develop symbols that can engage peoples in committed and sustained action to prevent further crisis. To do so, he argues that we need symbols that engage both intellectually and emotionally, and which enhances our perception of belonging in relationships with other humans, be it both in the present and in the future.
According to Henriksen, the deficit can only be obliterated if we can develop symbols that have some root or resonance in the Christian tradition, provide concrete and specified guidance of agency, engage people both emotionally and intellectually, and finally open up to visions for a moral agency that provide positive motivations for caring about environmental conditions as a whole.
Archives and anthologies are commonly viewed as technologies of preservation, protecting the memory of the past from the dangers of forgetting--and perhaps nowhere more so than with scriptures. Drawing upon theoretical and historiographical insights on the archive, this lecture looks instead to what is forgotten and relegated to forgetting in the process of archivalization. To do so, it looks especially to what the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has revealed about the power of biblical canons in shaping and constraining the memory of the biblical past. What might we see, instead, when we focus on their amnesia-inducing effects, as engines and fulcrums of forgetting? And what might we recover, in the process, about the cultural power of forgetting?
Annette Yoshiko Reed is a religious historian and professor in the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and Department of Religious Studies at New York University. Reed's research profile includes studies of Second Temple Jewish texts, Jewish-Christian relations, parabiblical writings, and Jewish knowledge traditions in Antiquity.
Dr. Blossom Stefaniw, Professor of the Intellectual History of Christianity, will comment on Annette Reed's lecture.
After a decade’s interlude of limited political liberalization (2011–2021), Myanmar is once again under direct military rule, administered by the State Administration Council (SAC). The February 1,2021 coup by the military was met with massive protests—probably in a scale unimagined by the military itself—that have radically transformed political as well as military dynamics. Within days, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets demanding an end to military rule, the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, the release of 400 members of parliament under house arrest, and the restoration of the elected government. At the same time, the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) was formed, which quickly spread across the public sector and furthermore, soon went beyond the public sector, including, at least informally, a wide range of civil society organizations and religious institutions.
This talk will address the multiple religious responses to the coup: In what ways have religious symbols and practices informed resistance to the coup? How have religious actors and religious institutions responded to the coup? And, how do the responses compare to previous uprisings and military crackdowns such as in 1988 and 2007?
The talk builds on a recently published article Religious Responses to the Military Coup in Myanmar, co-authored by Iselin Frydenlund, Pum Za Mang, Phyo Wai & Susan Hayward (2021).
Due to the material turn in the humanities and the increasing attention to manuscript materiality in textual scholarship, many students and scholars of ancient texts now find themselves in a somewhat awkward position: they were never trained to work with manuscripts. In this talk we present our new book project, "Working with Manuscripts: A Guide," under contract with Yale University Press. Drawing on our own experiences (and mistakes), we aim to put together a practical guide to manuscript work that also takes seriously the ethical challenges and legal requirements of working with manuscripts.
Knut Lundby vil presentere noen hovedtrekk i sin nye bok. Religion i medienes grep viser hvordan medienes omformende innflytelse har endret forståelsen av religion i offentligheten gjennom de siste femti årene i Norge.
In this talk, we aim to share the main outcomes of the 2020/2021 Humanities project at CAS, “Books Known Only by Title: Exploring the Gendered Structures of the First Millennium Imagined Library.” We present the major tendencies in the source materials, explore the challenge that textless books represent to scholarship and ask how gender matters to a new understanding of the imagined library of the past.
Through the example of the spring festival Pallavotsava I will illustrate the background and aims of the planned long-term project “Hindu Temple Legends in South India”. This project shall produce open-access digital editions with English translations of the corpus of pre-modern temple legends (Sanskrit: sthalamāhātmya, ca. 15th to 19th centuries) of the South Indian temple city of Kanchipuram. The editions will be interlinked with a dataset that documents oral, performative, and material versions of some of the narratives (images of iconography and architexture, video recordings of rituals, recordings of oral retellings) within a unified, flexible and non-hierarchical digital framework. The interlinking of the different types of data will serve as both a tool and a methodology, opening up new ways of preserving, accessing and understanding tangible and intangible cultural heritage as it is transmitted and lived.
"Religion is widely presented as ""deep"" by believers, non-believers and critics of religion alike. I want to explore the hunch that nationalists tap into the metaphor of depth, presenting religion as a provider of depth to their national projects. Preliminary ideas about what is seen as deep includes i) historical continuity. ii) moral significance and iii) emotional intensity. The metaphorical work done by ""depth"" is that these three become intertwined. Building on this, the metaphor of depth adds further suggestions iv) Something unseen, below/beyond surface appearances v) something unexplainable/irrational, yet compelling. I suspect that this understanding of religion as ""deep"" resonates widely in European populations, even among non-believers and those who do not support nativist populisms. Featuring Lars Åsmund Laird Iversen, Associate Professor of Sociology at MF School of Theology, Religion and Society."
"As the result of an enormous collaborative project, three open-access volumes have just been published, including the work of more than sixty scholars from different disciplines, spanning a millenium of history. In this talk, the three central leaders behind Tracing the Jerusalem Code will discuss what has been achieved and what use can be made of the ""Jerusalem code"" in the future. Kristin B. Aavitsland, Professor of Church History and Medieval Culture at MF School of Theology, Religion and Society Eivor Andersen Oftestad, Associate Professor at Inland Norway University of Applied Science, Hamar Ragnhild Johnsrud Zorgati, Associate Professor, University of Oslo"
Textual remains of Greek philosophers dwindle to almost nothing in the fourth century, at the same time as Christian texts in Coptic start to multiply. The only Coptic translation of Plato is a small excerpt in the Nag Hammadi Codices, consisting mostly of heterodox Christian scriptures. In his talk, Christian Bull will discuss the strange modifications of Plato’s text in the Coptic translation, in the context of the general demise of Greek philosophy in Christian Egypt. Christian Bull is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at MF School of Theology, Religion and Society.
Based on data from over 1,800 non-religious individuals, Tatjana Schnell will provide an insight into how atheists, agnostics and humanists differ in terms of worldview attitudes, beliefs and communication. The results suggest that secularity can be mapped on a continuum from open to decided. Worldview openness vs. conviction will further be connected to findings on mental and existential health. These indicate that when it comes to worldview, openness makes us vulnerable in various ways. Tatjana Schnell is Professor of Psychology of Religion and Existential Psychology at MF School of Theology, Religion and Society.
De "nye" krigene - krigene etter 1989, og middelalderens kriger har langt mer felles enn man skulle tro. Og de skiller fra de "klassiske" krigene mellom stater - de vi kjenner til fra vår egen historie og fra Europas historie de siste 3-400 år. I denne korte presentasjonen vil forfatterne av boka fortelle om disse likhetene, og om hvorfor det er viktig å se på krig med nye øyne. Hans Jacob Orning, professor i middelalderhistorie, Universitetet i Oslo Øyvind Østerud, professor i statsvitenskap, Universitetet i Oslo
In this talk, Lena Liepe will present her newly published book on relics in medieval Scandinavia. Based on a survey of what remains both of relics as such, their containers, and written evidence for the existence of lost relics and the use of relics in liturgy and devotion, Liepe will highlight the veneration of relics as a phenomenon of major importance for medieval lay religiosity. Lena Liepe is a Professor in the Department of Art and Music, Linnæs University
Fra 2022 blir fosterdiagnostisk tidlig ultralyd et tilbud til alle gravide. Hvilke etiske dilemmaer byr det på? Eivor A. Oftestad og Morten Magelssen har nettopp gitt ut boken «Hva vil vi med fosterdiagnostikken?Fosterdiagnostikkens etikk». De vil diskutere etiske sider ved det nye tilbudet om fosterdiagnostikk. De er også opptatt av hvordan tilbudet legger føringer for morgendagens enda mer avanserte fosterdiagnostikk. Eivor Andersen Oftestad er kirkehistoriker og førsteamanuensis ved Institutt for humanistiske fag ved Høgskolen i Innlandet. Morten Magelssen er lege og medisin-etiker. Han er førsteamanuensis ved Senter for medisinsk etikk ved Universitetet i Oslo og professor II i bioetikk ved MF vitenskapelig høyskole.
Marion Grau found that question difficult to answer for her students in classes called Constructive Theology. How does one “do” Constructive Theology? Often the answer felt like just a collection of attributes with no clear cohesion, history or methodology. More and more people working in theology began to use the term “Constructive Theology” instead of, or in addition to “Systematic Theology,” and it began to show up in unexpected places but without an understanding of its history and impulses. It seemed increasingly important to distinguish the terms and their histories and approaches from each other. Together with Jason Wyman, who wrote a history of the development of Constructive Theology primarily in the US, Grau set about to co-edit a volume that would gather exemplary essays from theologians both in the US and further afield, in Europe and elsewhere. The contributors apply a constructive perspective to a wide range of approaches, from biblical hermeneutics and postcolonial studies to comparative, political, and black theology. What is Constructive Theology? shows how diverse and interdisciplinary constructive theology can be by exploring key themes in the field. The contributors explore the porous boundaries between Christianity and other religions, reflect on contextual, liberation and constructive theologies from Africa and from Black British perspectives, explore the connection between embodiment, epistemology and hermeneutics, and take a constructive approach to the dangerous memories and theologies of colonial histories in Belgium and Native Americans in the United States. Marion Grau, Professor of Systematic Theology, Ecumenism, and Missiology, MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society
Sin has traditionally been a significant concept in Christian theology and practice. However, is sin language still relevant and meaningful to young people in the Church of Norway, or has it been subsumed by the concept of shame? Tone Stangeland Kaufman and Kristin Graff-Kallevåg will present the results of a qualitative study on how young people, participating in Christian youth ministries and embedded in what Charles Taylor has termed the age of authenticity, reflect upon existential dilemmas in relation to the concepts of sin and shame. Kristin Graff-Kallevåg is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Religious Education at MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society Tone Stangeland Kaufman is Professor of Practical Theology at MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society
This talk will introduce a new monograph project on an important but understudied element in ancient biographies and gospels: the programmatic scene. The programmatic scene is the main character's first public appearance: for example Alexander's first military campaign, Moses' first address to the Israelites, or Jesus' first programmatic public appearances in the gospels. The programmatic scene functions as main interpretive key to the work in which it appears. Early New Testament manuscripts provide an additional twist to this claim since paratextual features may indicate that even ancient readers of the gospels attached special significance to the programmatic scenes. Kapser Bro Larsen is a Professor of New Testament Studies at Aarhus University.
The technology of the book with pages (i.e., the codex) may appear completely normal, but the use of the codex as a vehicle for literature was actually an innovation of the Roman period (circa 100-400 CE). The replacement of the scroll, which had been the carrier of literature for millennia, marked a major change in the production and transmission of knowledge. Many scholars have suspected that followers of Jesus were among the first to embrace the new technology. The early history of the codex is thus of perennial interest to papyrologists, historians of the book, scholars of early Christianity, and many others. Yet, scholarship on the development and spread of the technology of the codex relies on a set of evidence that is both methodologically and ethically problematic. The body of surviving ancient codices and codex fragments has been inadequately described, contains very few samples with secure dates, and a significant portion of the corpus was acquired illegally. EthiCodex aims to address these issues by cataloging the features and provenance of the earliest codices, distinguishing those that were legally acquired that those that may not have been, funding tests to more securely date early codices, and using that information to provide new grounding for the discussion around the development of the codex. Brent Nongbri is a Professor of the History of Religions at MF School of Theology, Religion and Society.