First Testament: Isaiah 63:16b-17, 19b; 64:2-7
Psalm: Psalm
80:2-3, 15-16, 18-19 (4)
Epistle: 1
Corinthians 1:3-9
Commentary
These readings offer insight into the current political climate as the
Howell maintains that we avoid such identification through
psychological defensive mechanisms that Freud originally labeled repression,
but which she labels disassociation. Paul disassociated himself from the
Corinthians, to the point that the manuscripts containing 1 Corinthians 1:4 are
inconsistent. I see that inconsistency as a sign of disassociation that Howell
describes. In the future, the better all living in the
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Annotated
Bibliography
Material above the double line
draws from material below the double line. Those uninterested in scholarly and
tangential details should stop reading here. If they do, however, they may miss
some interesting scholarly details.
Isaiah 63:16b-17, 19b; 64:2-7
Isaiah 63:7-64:11
Though there are many implied references, Isaiah 63:1 is one of the few direct references to the LORD as Father. Such primary human relationships as paternity form the basis of much psychological human development, development that researchers are yet far from examining systematically.
Isaiah 63:7—64:11
William H. Irwin, C.S.B., review of Burkard M. Zapff, Jesaia 56—66[2]
This
is the official German Catholic commentary to go with the translation of
Isaiah. Zapff argues that “the lament of the servants of God—in Isa 63:7—64:11
is Israel’s [the people] response to the promises of Isaiah 60—62.” In other
words,
Isaiah 63:7—64:8
John Paul Heil, "Jesus with the Wild Animals in Mark 1:13"[3]
The Lectionary does not refer to wild animals. In a paragraph-long sentence, Heil explains what Isaiah means.
That God’s Spirit descends upon Jesus as God’s beloved Son in the context of the people of Israel repenting and confessing their sins in preparation for God’s new exodus or “way” of salvation recalls for the audience of Mark [from which the Lectionary Gospel draws this Sunday] how God’s Spirit descended upon Israel as a son loved by God to guide them on the “way” in a new exodus context of repentance from their sinfulness in straying from God’s “way” (Isa 63:7—64:8).
Isaiah 63:17
Matthew
J. Lynch, "
Lynch explains, “… the `fear’ of Yhwh (such as the nations exhibit) carries a positive sense in Isaiah, often designating the appropriately humble response to Yhwh’s kingship (Isa 66:2b; cf. 57:11; 63:17 [used here]; 66:5).” Isaiah 63:17 reads as follows:
Why do you let us wander, O Lord, from your ways,
and harden our hearts so that we hear you not?
Return for the sake of your servants,
the tribes of your heritage.
This Isaian lament
readily applies to the racist content of
Isaiah 64:1-4
Matthew
J. Lynch, "
Lynch continues to explain Isaiah,
… it should be no surprise that theophanic themes are again picked up in the lament immediately following (63:7—61:12), in which the community pleads with Yhwh to reenact the Sinai theophany and bring deliverance (64:1-3 [used here]) even though that same community had been experiencing Yhwh’s warrior judgment (63:10).
Psalm 80:2-3, 15-16, 18-19 (4)
The Codex Sinaiticus has these verses.[6]
I am uncomfortable with verse 2, which seems to include the God of Jacob, though God of Jacob is not in the Lectionary.
Psalm 80:1-2, 3
Margaret Barker, The Great High Priest: The
Barker asserts that
the Psalmist “drawing down the LORD into the temple was a major element of the
temple service.” Today, that is the function of the Consecration of the
Psalm 80:18-20
Di Lella draws
attention to Psalm 80:18, the son of man,
which “is a lofty designation for `man.’” Di Lella goes on, “… the distress of
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
1 Corinthians 1:4
Lectionary (1998) …
for the grace of God bestowed on you …
The Vulgate (circa 410) …
in gratia Dei, quae data est vobis …
Douay-Rheims (1582-1610) …
for the grace of God that is given you …
King James (1611) …
for the grace of God which is given you …
Catholic RSV (1969) … because of the grace of
God which was given you …
New American (
New Jerusalem (1985) … for the grace of God which you
have been given …
The word you is my reason for
examining this verse. The original Greek manuscripts pose a problem, because an
alternative reading would be us. The
manuscripts represent the memory of the Church collecting the original data. At
that point, we become involved with what the psychoanalysts label projective identification, a
relationship between patient and analyst. So, which is it, you or us on whom grace
is bestowed. Is Paul identifying himself with the Corinthians? From other
studies, I do not think so, because they seemed to have something of an
adversarial relationship.
For relevance in the world of today, psychoanalyst and traumatologist
Elizabeth F. Howell quotes Toni Morrison.[9]
“Africanism”
is the “vehicle by which the American self knows itself as not enslaved, but
free; not repulsive, but desirable; not helpless, but licensed and powerful;
not history-less, but historical; not damned, but innocent; not a blind
accident of evolution, but a progressive fulfillment of destiny.”
In
a footnote, Howell continues.[10]
Morrison writes of her discovery that “traditional, canonical American
literature is free of, uninformed and unshaped by, the four-hundred-year-old
presence of the first Africans (and) assumes that the characteristics of our
national literature emanate from a particular `Americanness’ that is separate
from, and unaccountable to, this presence” (pp. 4-5). Morrison continues,
These speculations have led me to wonder whether the major and
championed characteristics of our national literature—individualism,
masculinity, social engagement vs. historical isolation; acute and ambiguous
moral problematics; the thematics of innocence coupled with an obsession with
figuration of death and hell—are not in fact responses to a dark, abiding
signing Africanist presence. It has occurred to me that the very manner by
which American literature distinguishes itself as a coherent entity exists
because of this unsettled and unsettling population (p. 6).
Morrison notes that “because European sources of cultural hegemony were
dispersed but not yet valorized in the new country—the process of organizing
American coherence through a distancing Africanism because the operative mode
of a new cultural hegemony “(p.8). She adds that so many of the first Americans
were, most of all, unfree. They were escaping various forms of ostracism,
poverty, even imprisonment in their native counties, and the [traumatized
Europeans twisted reality so that the] slave population offered
itself up as surrogate selves for meditation on problems of human
freedom, its lure and its elusiveness. This black population was available for
mediations on terror—the terror of European outcasts, their dread of failure,
powerlessness, Nature [sic] without limits, natal loneliness, internal
aggression, evil, sin, greed. In other words, this slave population was understood
to have offered itself up for reflections on human freedom in terms other than
the abstractions of human potential and the rights of man (pp. 37-38).
Just
as Saint Paul struggled to shape his personal identity in the context of 1
Corinthians 1:4, so do Christians in the United States struggle to shape their
identities in the context of one another. Christianity requires such
identification in order to “love your neighbor as yourself.”
1 Corinthians
Sandnes includes “numerous passages in 1 Corinthians.” Asher asserts, “This work is an important secondary source for anyone who is interested in Paul’s letters …”
1 Cor 1:1-11
“
In
arguing that the passage the Lectionary uses is Pauline,
Verses 1-28 proclaim the fact of Christ’s resurrection “as the common ground of all Christian preaching and faith” (vv.1-11), insist that a denial of resurrection negates Christ’s resurrection and thus invalidates Christian faith itself (vv. 12-19), and the final destruction of death (vv. 20-28).
1 Cor 1:6
1 Cor 1:8
Alan
C. Mitchell, review of Chris VanLandingham, Judgment and Justification in Early Judaism and the Apostle Paul[14]
Mitchell writes that VanLandingham “… fails to make a distinction between grace offered and grace accepted or rejected.” Mitchell states “VanLandingham’s boldest claim is that Paul had no notion of justification by faith …”
1 Cor 2:1-5
Richard J. Dillon, review of Tor Vegge, Paulus und das antike Schulwesen: Schule und Bildung des Paulus[15]
Dillon does not like the scholarship of Vegge, referring to his “selectively critical attitude,” “exaggeration,” “springs some serious leaks,” “resisting significant recent progress in Pauline study,” and “arguments ex convenientia.”
Psalm 85:8
Mark 13:33-37
Mark 13:28-37
Elliott C. Maloney, O.S.B., review of Salvador Villota Herrero, Palabras sin ocaso: Función interpretiva de Mc 13,28-37 en el discursó escatológica de Marcos[16]
While Maloney does not like the excruciating detail in the 425-page book, he agrees that Villota Herrero made “a good explanation of the importance of 13:28-37 for the whole Gospel …” the Lectionary does not use the core passage, which is in verse 31, “heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.”
After-Action Report
Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time,
Reading 142A, October 12, 2008
My friend, Marge Nocks has retired to a nursing home in
[1] the Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Vol. 68, No. 3 (July 2006) 397-407.
[6] http://www.codex-sinaiticus.net/en/manuscript.aspx?book=26&chapter=80&inputControl=420&lid=en&side=r&zoomSlider=0# 081012.
[7]
[8] the Catholic Biblical
Quarterly,
Vol. 39, No. 1 (July 1977) 2, 15.
[9]
Elizabeth F. Howell, The
Dissociative Mind (
[10]
Elizabeth F. Howell, The
Dissociative Mind (
[11]
the Catholic Biblical
Quarterly, Vol.
65, No. 3 (July 2003) 480-481.
[12]
the Catholic Biblical
Quarterly, Vol.
69, No. 1 (July 2007) 85, 87.
[13]
the Catholic Biblical
Quarterly, Vol.
69, No. 2 (July 2007) 300.
[14] Theological Studies, Vol.
69, No. 3 (September 2008) 683.
[15] the Catholic Biblical
Quarterly,
Vol. 70, No. 3 (July 2008) 626.
[16] the Catholic Biblical
Quarterly,
Vol. 70, No. 1 (July 2008) 174, 175.