Matthew, Disability, and Stress: Examining Impaired Characters in the Context of Empire

Jillian D. Engelhardt

doi:10.5771/9781978712041

Summary

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.

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Bibliographic data

Edition: 1/2022
Copyright year: 2022
ISBN-Print: 978-1-9787-1203-4
ISBN-Online: 978-1-9787-1204-1
Publisher: Lexington, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 224
Product type: Book Titles

1. Contents No access
2. Acknowledgments No access
Locating an Impairment-Focused Reading No access Pages 1 - 20
Foundations for Investigation No access Pages 21 - 42
Rome’s Disabling Slave System (Matthew 8:5–13) No access Pages 43 - 92
Demons and Colonization (Matthew 8:28–34) No access Pages 93 - 132
The Labor Market, Poverty, and Impairment (Matthew 12:9–14) No access Pages 133 - 162
Women, Families, and Grief (Matthew 15:21–28) No access Pages 163 - 200
Conclusion No access Pages 201 - 204
Bibliography No access Pages 205 - 218
Index No access Pages 219 - 222
About the Author No access Pages 223 - 224