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Matthew, Disability, and Stress

Examining Impaired Characters in the Context of Empire
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In Matthew, Disability, and Stress: Examining Impaired Characters in the Context of Empire, Jillian D. Engelhardt examines four Matthean healing narratives, focusing on the impaired characters in the scenes. Her reading is informed by both empire studies and social stress theory, a method that explores how the stress inherent in social location can affect psychosomatic health. By examining the Roman imperial context in which common folk lived and worked, she argues that attention to social and somatic circumstances, which may have accompanied or caused the described disabilities/impairments, destabilizes readings of these stories that suggest the encounter with Jesus was straightforwardly good and the healing was permanent. Instead, Engelhardt proposes various new contexts for and offers more nuanced characterizations of the disabled/impaired people in each discussed scene, resulting in ambiguous interpretations that de-center Jesus and challenge able-bodied assumptions about embodiment, disability, and healing.
Jillian D. Engelhardt (PhD., Brite Divinity School) currently works for the Amon Carter Museum of American Art and adjuncts at Texas Christian University.
1. Locating an Impairment-Focused Reading 2. Foundations for Investigation 3. Rome's Disabling Slave System (Matthew 8:5-13) 4. Demons and Colonization (Matthew 8:28-34) 5. The Labor Market, Poverty, and Impairment (Matthew 12:9-14) 6. Women, Families, and Grief (Matthew 15:21-28) 7. Conclusion
Centering the impaired bodies of Gospel characters allows Jillian D. Engelhardt to move the focus of the Matthean "miracle" stories away from Jesus and to the somatic-societal circumstances of these characters who are often given minimal textual attention. Her multifaceted hermeneutic that foregrounds stressors exposes the ambiguities of the healing stories whether by removing and/or intensifying and/or introducing new ones. Refusing "spiritualized" readings and attending to the somatic-societal-imperial circumstances of these impaired characters, she rejects optimistically unrealistic readings with the recognition of ambiguities and nuances. This is an important book. -- Warren Carter, Phillips Theological Seminary
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