The use of archaeological materials for interpreting New Testament texts poses many problems. While many archaeologists have interpreted the Hebrew Bible, this early interface of archaeology and the study of the Hebrew scriptures is due in part to the fact that the relation-ship between biblical texts and the realia from Palestine seemed more direct. Since archaeological materials tend to deal with mainstream culture and since the texts from Israel and Judah were connected to institutions that were part of that area's dominant culture, the study of archaeology has contributed much to an understanding of the Hebrew scriptures.

The noted Provencal antiquarian Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580-1637), perhaps the most dedicated of an international circle of acquaintances studying and collecting classical antiquities in the early seventeenth century, took an especially keen interest in ancient gems. With his friend, the painter Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), he planned an extensive publication on the subject that unfortunately never saw completion. Although Peiresc focused most of his attention on collecting Roman gems portraying classical iconography, he was also intrigued by the enigmatic series of magical gems—as were many others in the Renaissance, who considered the gems to be the products of early Gnostic heretics. A correspondence between Peiresc and Rubens in 1623, frequently cited in the modern literature, discusses the putative meaning of an amulet in Rubens's collection depicting a bell-shaped object thought to represent the “divine womb.” The gem is a Renaissance forgery based on genuine ancient examples; the concurrent—and correct—identification of this puzzling type as a uterus, however, contrasts markedly with the fanciful interpretations later fashionable in the nineteenth century.

The theory of religious language advocated by the twelfth-century philosopher-jurist Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) contains an apparent paradox. Maimonides’ radical stance regarding the absolute unknowability of God leads him to an austere theology of negation, which appears to be incongruous with his representation of God as a moral agent or intellect. Through analysis of the functions of meaning and reference in Maimonides’ theory of language, as well as his explicit or implicit distinctions between literal, metaphoric, and symbolic uses of language in theological discourse, I argue that the purpose of the Maimonidean theology of negation is to establish the reference of the name “God,” thereby making possible a rationally disciplined constructivist theology. This article shows how Maimonides sought to include a certain type of religious anthropomorphism in a theology that upholds the wholly other nature of God.

Studies of Benedict Spinoza's biblical interpretation rarely pay more than cursory attention to the contemporary context of that work. Analyses tend to focus on authors whom Spinoza singled out for attack in his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, such as Moses Maimonides (died 1204) and a rabbi who later attacked him, Judah ibn Alfakhar (died 1235). After his excommunication in 1656, however, most of Spinoza's intellectual and social circle—those with whom he shared his philosophical ideas and surely his ideas about the Bible—were Christian, or of Christian background, and not Jews. Spinoza's Treatise was not conceived in a vacuum or in a segregated Jewish context, nor was it aimed primarily at Jewish readers. Among Christians, the work engaged a national debate, involving church, state, and the universities, about the authority and interpretation of the Bible. Great political as well as intellectual issues were at stake.

The work of Ludwig Wittgenstein counts among the most significant philosophical influences on Gordon Kaufman's recent theology. Yet important convergences between Kaufman's theological worldview and Wittgenstein's philosophical teaching remain unexplored. In this essay I shall examine a number of such convergences connected with the concept of the human. The thought of Stanley Cavell will play a central role in the discussion. Kaufman shares with the skeptical Wittgenstein revealed in Cavell's writings an abiding concern with the ordinary in human life—for example, everyday language, the human body—but both are interested in this ordinariness as the locus of ineradicable mystery. A richly textured treatment of the ordinary (and mysterious) situation of face-to-face human encounter emerges when relevant passages of Wittgenstein's, Cavell's, and Kaufman's writings are compared. This article will develop some of the implications of this comparison that hold particular promise for theological anthropology. The orientation and concerns of the paper are thus primarily constructive.