I’m happy to share that my paper, “What Does the Haustafel Have to Do with the Eschaton? An Exploration of Apocalyptic Identity Formation in First Peter,” has been accepted to the Letters of James, Peter, and Jude section for the SBL Annual Meeting this November. I received the confirmation yesterday and I’m hoping it’s not a cruel April Fool’s joke.

This is the project that I have been working on with my Graduate Research Mentorship funding at UCLA under Ra’anan Boustan. The focus of the paper is the relationship between the household code and the heightened eschatological expectation of 1 Peter. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, M. Dibelius argued that the household codes of the NT were brought about by waning anticipation of the parousia (not unrelated to arguments about “early catholicism” [Frühkatholizismus]). The underlying assumption is that ethics and eschatology are somehow at odds–an assumption that has been effectively challenged by a number of folks (even if the assumption is not yet dead and feels quite happy with some).

Still, though, the conversation regarding household codes (ethical exhortation) and eschatology remains at the level of sequence or chronology. That is, Dibelius is wrong because the two ideas can clearly coexist sequentially (the Christ-confessing movement need not “move on” from one to the other), eschatology offering “comfort” in present suffering and/or lending “urgency” to ethical instruction. I’d like to shift the focus. This is not just about “ethics” and “eschatology” coexisting, but about the social function of two different types of discourse in an effort to construct a complex communal identity. I believe the apocalyptic discourse of the letter (including, but not limited to eschatology) is aimed at one aspect of identity formation, while the exhortation of the domestic code is aimed at another, complementary aspect of identity formation.

I add in my abstract: “This paper may be viewed more broadly as speaking to the Balch–Elliott debate as well. Rather than imagine an impassable conflict between sectarianism and acculturation, social identity studies offer us a means by which we begin to see a more nuanced scenario where multiple constructions of identity live in tension. Indeed, such dynamic identities constituted the nature of the early Christ-confessing movement.”

By the way, my apologies to those who follow my feed for the blog laying a little dormant for some time. Life has had a multitude of distractions lately. In the coming weeks, I will try to discuss some of the background info for the paper (e.g., the Balch–Elliott debate, the nature of dynamic identities) on the blog here. Also, this project has helped me find some interest in ancient letter writing, an area where I feel like I might “hang my hat” for a little while (as a contextual setting for discussing apocalyptic discourse and group identity construction). So, more may be coming on epistolography as well.