Date: Saturday 19 February 2022

Time: Conference - 10h00 to 15h40; AGM = 16h00-16.45

Fee:

• Conference including lunch: €30 (or €20 concession)
• Online attendance only: €15
• Annual membership: €15

Schedule:

• 9h30 - 10h00: Registration
• 10h00 – 10h30: Robbie Booth (Union Theological College, Belfast) 'A Theology of Wealth in the Letter of James’
• 10h30 – 11h00: Timothy Mejida, ‘Jesus’ Obedience in Matthew’s Gethsemane (26:36-46) vis-à-vis the Entire Gospel’
• 11h00 – 11h20: Tea/Coffee
• 11.20 – 12.10: Katharine Dell (Cambridge) 'Does God behave ethically in the book of Job?'
• 12h10 – 13h00: Jessie Rogers (SPCM) ‘What will we tell the children? Adaptations of Job for young readers and listeners’
• 13h00 – 14h00: Lunch
• 14h00 – 14h50: Katharine Dell (Cambridge) ‘What are you doing here, Master Elihu?: The role(s) of Elihu in the book of Job,’
• 14h50 – 15h40: David Shepherd (TCD) ‘The Devil’s in the Detail: William Burges’ Job Window in St Fin Barre’s Cathedral, Cork,’
• 15h40 – 16h00: Tea/Coffee
• 16.00 – 16.45: AGM

Robbie Booth (Union Theological College, Belfast) “A Theology of Wealth in the Letter of James.”

Many cultures in the twenty-first century display a pervasive love of wealth. The poverty gap continues to widen, not only between rich and poor nations, but also among the citizens within those nations. As world continues to reel from the economic fallout of the pandemic, it is vital that Christians re-examine what the Bible teaches about wealth. Arguably, no New Testament book speaks more directly to wealth and poverty than the book of James. This article seeks to shed light on James’s theology of wealth. The first section considers relevant background material including the social-historical context. The second section concentrates on James’s most explicit passages on wealth: (1) 1:9–11; (2) 2:1–7, 8–9, 14–16; (3) 4:13–17; and (4) 5:1–6. The final section synthesizes five prominent theological themes from James and provides practical implications for Christians and the church.

Timothy Mejida (Lobinstown, Co. Meath) ‘Jesus’ Obedience in Matthew’s Gethsemane (26:36-46) vis-à-vis the Entire Gospel’

My doctoral thesis was a narrative analysis of the Gethsemane passage that also explored how it fitted into the overall structure of Matthew’s narrative. The episode revealed that Jesus was characterised as being completely submissive to God’s will and intratextual links between Gethsemane and the body of the Gospel demonstrated that the traits of obedience discovered in Gethsemane were in harmony with Matthean obedience theology. The way these are encapsulated in Gethsemane may present the episode as an exemplar. Gethsemane seems to mirror Jesus’ whole journey or scenario. Specifically, there is a striking analogous connection between the Passion predictions and Gethsemane in Matthew’s Gospel.

Katharine Dell (Cambridge) “Does God behave ethically in the book of Job?”

My paper poses the question whether God behaves ethically or not in the book of Job. The first section under consideration is the prologue with its famous wager between God and Satan, which does not, however, exonerate God from responsibility for inflicting trouble upon Job. The second section is the speeches of God with the delicate balance they contain between a statement of God’s power and of his justice. A stress is placed on God’s knowledge and on the paradox of God’s freedom and yet his desire to be in relationship with human beings. The third is Job’s responses to God in both dialogue and epilogue. His profound challenge and refusal to give up his position in the dialogue is noted and differing evaluations of Job’s reactions are aired.

Katharine Dell (Cambridge) “What are you doing here, Master Elihu? The role(s) of Elihu in the book of Job”

This paper looks afresh at the various roles that Elihu adopts in his answers to Job. In addition to legal and prophetic roles, he is a friendly and diplomatic comforter of Job, whom he addresses by name and whose arguments he regularly summarizes. Elihu has a genuine desire to justify Job and to give his own opinion, sometimes quite sharply, of where Job is going wrong. He shifts roles according to his audience, but those of interlocutor and mediator are also key, alongside wise teacher and finally as an alternative ‘Answerer’ to Job, providing an alternative to God’s answer.

Jessie Rogers (SPCM) "What will we tell the children? Adaptations of Job for young readers and listeners"

Adaptations of biblical stories for children offer a window onto what adults believe about children’s spiritual capacity, the nature and meaning of biblical texts, and how these intersect. Both verbal and visual storytelling are acts of translation and interpretation. The complex and disconcerting book of Job poses a particular challenge to those who seek to package it for children. In this paper I examine several different attempts to do exactly that – through Bible story books, paraphrases, video and Godly Play – reflecting on the diverse interpretative strategies and implicit assumptions about children and about the book of Job at play in these retellings.

David Shepherd (TCD), “Job in Stained Glass - 'The Devil’s in the Detail': William Burges’ Job Window in St Fin Barre’s Cathedral, Cork”

While the figure of Job makes occasional appearances in stained glass in Ireland, William Burges’ devotion of a window to the story of Job in his new Cathedral is noteworthy. In addition to considering what might have drawn Burges to Job, the present paper seeks to illuminate not only how the story of Job is read in the window, but also how reading it through the window brings to light aspects of the ancient text which might otherwise have escaped attention.