A slow conversation between two voices about Norman K. Gottwald, “Social Class as an Analytic and Hermeneutical Category in Biblical Studies”, Journal of Biblical Literature 112 (1993): 3-22, his presidential address to the Society of Biblical Literature given in San Francisco on 21 November 1992. About forty minutes.
Covered: the address and its moment, Gottwald’s life from Chicago to Berkeley to New York Theological Seminary, The Tribes of Yahweh and its critics, what he means by social class, the tributary and communitarian modes of production, class across Israel’s history, and then his worked examples: the split of the kingdom and Josiah’s reform, the Song of the Vineyard and Second Isaiah, and the parables of Jesus read as negative wisdom stories rather than pictures of the kingdom. It closes with his personal turn on owning one’s own class position, the later archaeology, Herzog on the parables, and the thread back to Boer and Abraham.
Sources
- Norman Gottwald obituary, Berkeleyside, 1 August 2022
- Walter Brueggemann, Christian Century, May 2022
- Richard Coggins, review of The Tribes of Yahweh, King’s Theological Review 3.2 (1980)
- Gottwald, Norman K(arol) 1926-, Contemporary Authors via Encyclopedia.com
- Roland Boer (ed.), Tracking The Tribes of Yahweh: On the Trail of a Classic (Sheffield Academic Press, 2002)
Leave a Reply