Denise Rector

The article traces the history of Lutheran women’s Bible studies in the United States back to the late 1800s, reports reflections of contemporary Bible study authors and participants, and analyzes the role of biblical critical methods and Lutheran theology in such studies. With Susan McArver and Diane Jacobson.

This essay integrates cultural anthropological insights about life in the ancient Mediterranean world with traditional historical critical methods for reconstructing the life of Jesus. As I assess the historicity of Matthew‘s birth narrative, I ask how its claims would have been understood by the 1st century Judeans in the text and who produced the text, […]

In this essay I contend that the Greco-Roman system of patron-broker-client relations shaped early church structures in important ways, even when the language of patronage was not explicitly used. This is especially evident in Ignatius of Antioch‘s letter to the Ephesians in which he ascribes various functions to bishops that most resemble the role of […]

Drawing on the work of anthropologist Mary Douglas, I define purity rules as symbolic expressions of a group‘s identity and core values. Reading Mark 7:1-23 through this lens demonstrates that Jesus and the Pharisees are both concerned about the purity of personal and social bodies, but differ in their assessment of what threatens that purity […]

Applying reader response criticism and ritual studies, LaHurd examines Jesus’ encounter with the Gerasene demoniac in Mark 5. Mark’s portrayal of Jesus is illuminated by analysis of such ritual elements as liminality, exorcism, and the categories of clean and unclean.

Taking account of the religious perspectives of contemporary Arab Christian women and LaHurd’s own observations of women’s lives in Yemen, this chapter reinterprets Luke 15 in dialogue with other feminist and anthropological readings and finds new insights into women’s roles and informal power as displayed in the parables of lost sheep, lost coin, and lost […]

I explore the roles of stewards, prophets, keepers of the word in the ancient Mediterranean cultures in order to demonstrate how early church leaders in the first and second centuries drew on these roles to subvert dominant power structures, justify innovation, create and preserve the emerging traditions of and about Jesus. This study draws on […]

This book is about remembering why our ancestors in faith wrote the Bible and recovering its importance for the church today. I seek to provide an alternative to literalism and liberalism by integrating ancient perspectives with contemporary scholarship so that we can once again claim the Bible as a means of grace that forms, informs, […]

(here is where annotated bib info would go)