Book Reviews

The Inven­tion of Reli­gion: Faith and Covenant in the Book of Exo­dus by Jan Ass­mann in Read­ing Reli­gion: A Pub­li­ca­tion of the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Reli­gion | 22 Sep­tem­ber 2020

The Con­struc­tion of Exo­dus Iden­ti­ty in Ancient Israel: A Social Iden­ti­ty Approach by Lin­da M. Stargel in Read­ing Reli­gion: A Pub­li­ca­tion of the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Reli­gion | 15 Jan­u­ary 2019

Conference Presentations

“From Pharaoh to Yahweh: Grace, Debt, and the Dark Side of the Gift”

Pre­sent­ed at:
- Mid-Atlantic Region­al Meet­ing of the Soci­ety of Bib­li­cal Lit­er­a­ture — online | 12 March 2021
- Drew’s Trans­dis­ci­pli­nary The­o­log­i­cal Col­lo­qui­um — Assem­bling Futures: Econ­o­my, Ecol­o­gy, and Democ­ra­cy — online | 16 Octo­ber 2020

Abstract:

While many have inter­pret­ed Yahweh’s pro­vi­sion of man­na and quail in Exo­dus 16 to be a response to the Israelites’ grum­bling and said grum­bling to be a result of the harsh con­di­tions of a bar­ren wilder­ness, I argue that the Israelites’ dis­con­tent is not born of mere des­per­a­tion. Instead it emerges from a grow­ing recog­ni­tion of the community’s indebt­ed­ness to Yah­weh for Yahweh’s deliv­er­ing and sus­tain­ing acts. Here, the con­cept of gift econ­o­my helps shed light on the com­plex rela­tion­ship between Yah­weh and the people.

Recent Pauline schol­ar­ship, such as John M. G. Barclay’s Paul and the Gift, rep­re­sents a Protes­tant attempt at sal­vaging the the­ol­o­gy of grace as a “free gift” by engag­ing the con­cept of “the gift” and economies of gift exchange. These attempts tend to pro­mote the gift econ­o­my as a pos­i­tive and more just alter­na­tive to oth­er eco­nom­ic mod­els. How­ev­er, these con­clu­sions fail to ful­ly account for the dark side of the gift econ­o­my: gift giv­ing is at once an act of benev­o­lence and of sub­jec­tion. Gift-giv­ing is embed­ded in a net­work of social rela­tions in which exploita­tion and imbal­ance is always pos­si­ble, if not inherent.

It is with this asym­me­try in mind that I exam­ine the rela­tion­ship between Yah­weh and the Israelites in the sto­ry of man­na and quail par­tic­u­lar­ly, as well as in the Exo­dus nar­ra­tives of pro­vi­sion in the wilder­ness at large. Where Pharaoh’s pol­i­cy of enslave­ment is an obvi­ous sort of oppres­sion, Yah­weh par­tic­i­pates in a more insid­i­ous, hid­den form of entrap­ment and exploita­tion. In this paper I will demon­strate that the first step in assem­bling a less exploita­tive eco­nom­ic future is to unpack the ways in which gifts and gift­ing economies are not free from the manip­u­la­tive, hier­ar­chi­cal social and eco­nom­ic rela­tion­ships that cur­rent­ly struc­ture our world.

“The Reaper of Mars & The Man of the Mountain: Power and Vulnerability in Exodus and Red Rising”

Pre­sent­ed at:
Ford­ham’s Pop Cul­ture and The­ol­o­gy Con­fer­ence — New York, NY | 20 April 2018

Abstract:

I would have lived in peace. But my ene­mies brought me war. I watch twelve hun­dred of their strongest sons and daugh­ters. Lis­ten­ing to a piti­less Gold­en man speak between great mar­ble pil­lars. Lis­ten­ing to the beast who brought the flame that gnaws at my heart. “All men are not cre­at­ed equal,” he declares. Tall, impe­ri­ous, an eagle of a man. “The weak have deceived you. They would say the meek should inher­it the Earth. That the strong should nur­ture the gen­tle. This is the Noble Lie of Demokra­cy. The can­cer that poi­soned mankind.” His eyes pierce the gath­ered stu­dents. “You and I are Gold. We are the end of the evo­lu­tion­ary line. We tow­er above the flesh heap of man, shep­herd­ing the less­er Col­ors. You have inher­it­ed this lega­cy,” he paus­es, study­ing faces in the assem­bly. “But it is not free. Pow­er must be claimed. Wealth won. Rule, domin­ion, empire pur­chased with blood.” [1]

Thus sayeth Dar­row, future leader of the Ris­ing, soon to be known as the Reaper of Mars, but for now he is a boy stand­ing in a school har­bor­ing a secret that could cost him his life. Dar­row, like Moses, was wrenched from the hands of death and remade in the iden­ti­ty of his oppres­sors. In the world of Pierce Brown’s Red Ris­ing tril­o­gy, Dar­row inhab­its a third space, an in between and unan­tic­i­pat­ed space. Plucked from his low­ly sta­tus as a Red – the min­ing class that toils beneath the sur­face of Mars and oth­er plan­ets, unaware that entire civ­i­liza­tions exist upon the dirt and vast skies above their heads– Dar­row is quite lit­er­al­ly remade in the image of his masters.

Sci­ence Fic­tion has long been a genre in which the sociopo­lit­i­cal and the­o­log­i­cal ques­tions of mod­ern soci­ety are not avoid­ed but tak­en up and addressed head on. Pierce Brown’s epic space tril­o­gy con­tin­ues in this tra­di­tion. Set sev­er­al hun­dred years in the future, human soci­ety has spread through­out the solar sys­tem and is strat­i­fied by social class into a sort of caste sys­tem des­ig­nat­ed by col­or. In The Soci­ety, biotech­nol­o­gy has advanced to the extent that the Col­ors are incom­pat­i­ble for repro­duc­tion. Strict­ly orga­nized by their socioe­co­nom­ic roles, Gold serves as the rul­ing class and Reds, the work­hors­es of The Soci­ety, are enslaved to the whims of their Gold mas­ters. In star­tling and illu­mi­nat­ing par­al­lels to the Exo­dus nar­ra­tive, the Red Ris­ing tril­o­gy explores ques­tions of race, gen­der, pow­er, and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty as Red fights to over­turn the hier­ar­chi­cal Col­or sys­tem and destroy the hold Gold has on society.

In par­tic­u­lar, this paper offers a com­par­a­tive analy­sis of Brown’s main char­ac­ter, Dar­row, and the char­ac­ter of Moses in the Exo­dus nar­ra­tive. Both come from hum­ble begin­nings, face death ear­ly in their life, har­bor feel­ings of inad­e­qua­cy when faced with the task of lead­er­ship, and even­tu­al­ly come to lead their peo­ple out from under the yoke of their oppres­sors. Both under­go the trans­fig­u­ra­tion of their human bod­ies via con­tact with the suprahu­man. Both are unique­ly posi­tioned as bor­der crossers, as those who stand in two places, and it is this hybrid iden­ti­ty (at least in part) that allows them to be suc­cess­ful lead­ers. After pre­sent­ing the analy­sis of Dar­row and Moses, I will then explore the ways in which that analy­sis illu­mi­nates how the char­ac­ter of Moses and the Exo­dus nar­ra­tive are able to func­tion as the par­a­dig­mat­ic sto­ry of lib­er­a­tion not just in overt­ly the­o­log­i­cal arti­facts of pop­u­lar cul­ture, but also in con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­can nar­ra­tive writ large.

[1] Brown, Pierce. Red Ris­ing (The Red Ris­ing Series, Book 1). New York, NY: Ran­dom House Pub­lish­ing Group, 2014. Kin­dle Edition.