“Your Father Knows that You Need All of This”: Divine Fatherhood as Socio-Ethical Impetus in Q’s Formative Stratum
The observation that the Q people understood themselves as a new symbolic family, with God as Father, is certainly not new in Q studies. Likewise, it is not uncommon for an interpreter to mention during her analysis of an individual Q text that the instruction in question is motivated by imitatio De...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
NTWSA
2016
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| In: |
Neotestamentica
Year: 2016, Volume: 50, Issue: 1, Pages: 9-33 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Parallel Edition: | Non-electronic
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| Summary: | The observation that the Q people understood themselves as a new symbolic family, with God as Father, is certainly not new in Q studies. Likewise, it is not uncommon for an interpreter to mention during her analysis of an individual Q text that the instruction in question is motivated by imitatio Dei rhetoric. However, the pervasiveness of this link between Q’s theology of divine fatherhood and its socio-ethical programme has not received enough attention in Q scholarship. In an attempt to address this deficiency, the current article argues that the idea of divine fatherhood is the primary paradigm that informs, determines and motivates the alternative socio-ethical programme of Q’s formative stratum. More than being just an interesting observation in relation to some Q texts, divine fatherhood and imitatio Dei rhetoric are central to the radical socio-ethical programme of Q’s formative stratum. After an overview of Q’s self-perception as God’s symbolic family, the article turns to the analysis of specific texts in Q’s formative stratum, first considering the theme of divine fatherhood, and then considering its socio-ethical relevance. These discussions are finally related to the notion of “mutual-mothering,” with some implications for our understanding of women in the Q movement. |
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| ISSN: | 2518-4628 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Neotestamentica
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1353/neo.2016.0033 |