The Women In The Life Of The Bridegroom

This book sheds new light on the women in the Fourth Gospel. Unlike most works that approach the topic from a historical-critical perspective, this book approaches the topic from a historical-literary perspective and attempts to illustrate for the modern reader how a first-century reader would have understood the characterizations of the women, given first-century cultural and literary norms and the theology of the implied author. The thesis of this book is that the primary purpose of the women in the Fourth Gospel is to support the portrayal of Jesus as the Messianic Bridegroom and further the plot of Jesus' giving the people the power to become children of God (John 1:12). This historical-literary analysis exposes a highly androcentric and patriarchal text, which leads the author in the end to question current assumptions that behind the text exists a community or school whose egalitarianism extended to women.

The bestselling follow-up to Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist. Includes a reader's guide and an excerpt from Pitre's The Case for Jesus. In Jesus the Bridegroom, Brant Pitre once again taps into the wells of Jewish Scripture and tradition, and unlocks the secrets of what is arguably the most well-known symbol of the Christian faith: the cross of Christ. In this thrilling exploration, Pitre shows how the suffering and death of Jesus was far more than a tragic Roman execution. Instead, the Passion of Christ was the fulfillment of ancient Jewish prophecies of a wedding, when the God of the universe would wed himself to humankind in an everlasting nuptial covenant. To be sure, most Christians are familiar with the apostle Paul’s teaching that Christ is the ‘Bridegroom’ and the Church is the ‘Bride’. But what does this really mean? And what would ever possess Paul to compare the death of Christ to the love of a husband for his wife? If you would have been at the Crucifixion, with Jesus hanging there dying, is that how you would have described it? How could a first-century Jew like Paul, who knew how brutal Roman crucifixions were, have ever compared the execution of Jesus to a wedding? And why does he refer to this as the “great mystery” (Ephesians 5:32)? As Pitre shows, the key to unlocking this mystery can be found by going back to Jewish Scripture and tradition and seeing the entire history of salvation, from Mount Sinai to Mount Calvary, as a divine love story between Creator and creature, between God and Israel, between Christ and his bride—a story that comes to its climax on the wood of a Roman cross. In the pages of Jesus the Bridegroom, dozens of familiar passages in the Bible—the Exodus, the Song of Songs, the Wedding at Cana, the Woman at the Well, the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, and even the Second Coming at the End of Time—are suddenly transformed before our eyes. Indeed, when seen in the light of Jewish Scripture and tradition, the life of Christ is nothing less than the greatest love story ever told.

Looking into some of the most intricate details of the Bridegroom King, we discover the ultimate sacrifice He made for His bride. This special relationship has been our invitation to discover who He is. As we learn how His blood restores in every way, His life fulfills, and His love completely satisfies our deepest longings, we come to know, discovering her, we find our place in Him. "Come, let's take this journey together."

The second feminist volume volume on Johannine literature includes an Introduction by Amy-Jill Levine; Adele Reinhartz on Women in the Johannine Community: An Exercise in Historical Imagination; Satako Yamaguchi, 'I Am (I Do)' Sayings and Women in Context and Dorothy Lee, Abiding in the Fourth Gospel.Colleen Conway writes on Gender Matters in John; Adeline Fehribach on The Crucifixion in the Fourth Gospel: A Birthing Moment; Deborah Sawyer on Water and Blood: Birthing Images in John's Gospel; Harold Attridge on Don't Be Touching Me: Recent Feminist Scholarship on Mary Magdalene; and Jane Schaberg, Thinking Back through the Magdalene.

The early Christian writer Tertullian first applied the epithet "bride of Christ" to the uppity virgins of Carthage as a means of enforcing female obedience. Henceforth, the virgin as Christ's spouse was expected to manifest matronly modesty and due submission, hobbling virginity's ancient capacity to destabilize gender roles. In the early Middle Ages, the focus on virginity and the attendant anxiety over its possible loss reinforced the emphasis on claustration in female religious communities, while also profoundly disparaging the nonvirginal members of a given community. With the rising importance of intentionality in determining a person's spiritual profile in the high Middle Ages, the title of bride could be applied and appropriated to laywomen who were nonvirgins as well. Such instances of democratization coincided with the rise of bridal mysticism and a progressive somatization of female spirituality. These factors helped cultivate an increasingly literal and eroticized discourse: women began to undergo mystical enactments of their union with Christ, including ecstatic consummations and vivid phantom pregnancies. Female mystics also became increasingly intimate with their confessors and other clerical confidants, who were sometimes represented as stand-ins for the celestial bridegroom. The dramatic merging of the spiritual and physical in female expressions of religiosity made church authorities fearful, an anxiety that would coalesce around the figure of the witch and her carnal induction into the Sabbath.

By focusing on the religio-political dimension of the Gospel of John and using a postcolonial framework, Kim reads the Gospel of John as a Jewish nationalist discourse that develops at the expense of its female characters.

Are you, like so many, seeking refreshment and restoration for your soul, as you walk through the desert of our present culture? Have you found only mirages and "false loves" as your soul thirsts for Living Water? Perhaps you already know Jesus and you recognize that He is exactly Whom your heart has been seeking. This book opens the pathway for a deeply personal and unique heart-to-heart relationship with Jesus. God tells us throughout the scriptures that His love for us is the love of a husband for his wife, spousal love. God desires to enter a marriage covenant with each and every human person. This short yet profound book, "Consecration to Christ the Bridegroom," leads the reader to a deep understanding of God's spousal love by describing, through Scriptures, art, and teachings of the saints including St. John Paul II, how the sacrificial life-giving love of Christ is spousal love in its purest form. This book contains 9 days of prayers and reflections leading up to your consecration and enthronement of Christ the Bridegroom as King and Spouse of your heart. Each of the 9 days includes a scripture reading and a reflection from the book, The Cantata of Love, a Verse by Verse Reading of The Song of Songs, by Ignatius Press. Thought-provoking questions invite the reader to meditate upon each day's content and apply to his/her own life. Through the 9-days of prayer and reflection, our hope is for the reader to foster a new relationship with Jesus; begin to develop heart to heart conversation and spousal prayer with Christ; and to respond to the Bridegroom's invitation to enter into a more personal and intimate spousal relationship. This consecration is a call to be set apart and made holy for Christ. As you grow in love of Him and drink deeply of His life-giving Love, you will realize that your emptiness is filled, your thirst is quenched, your aching heart is soothed and the spousal love you share with Him is overflowing into your relationships, your vocation, and your life.