Inheritance and Resistance (Reclaiming Bible, Body, and Power)

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In this insightful collection of essays, Mothy Varkey makes an important contribution not only to the field of the Biblical studies, but also to the emerging studies on intersection of Bible, Body and Empire. He calls for a critical decolonizing reading of the scripture, capable of reclaiming the radical subversive power of both the physical human body and the 'body of the faithful' called ekklesia. This book proposes 'embodied ecclesiology' and 'embodied anthropology' as tools to resist the empire.

Rev. Dr Mothy Varkey is Professor of New Testament at the Mar Thoma Theological Seminary, Kottayam, Kerala. He is also the visiting fellow at the Murdoch University, Australia. Among his many and influential works are Concept of Power in Matthew: A Postcolonial Reading (CSS, 2010), Salvation in Continuity: Reconsidering Matthew's Soteriology (Fortress, 2017), and Church and Diakonia in the Age of Covid-19 (ISPCK, 2020).

First and foremost, thank God, the source of my being and in whom I exist, whose amazing grace, guided, and molded me all my life. This book is divided into two sections. This book is a compilation of essays that have appeared, either verbatim or edited into shorter versions, in various theological journals-NCCR, Religion and Society, and Bangalore Theological Forum etc., and books. A few articles are revised versions of papers presented at national and international seminars.

Section One comprises five essays which attempt to reclaim the intersectional relationship between body, power, and scripture. The first chapter-"Earth as Collective Inheritance"-argues that human beings are created in the 'green-image' of God (Genesis 2-3) and can thus become the agents of green ethics and green justice. "Power, Body, and Resistance" unpacks the counter imaginations of power as reflected in Matthew's Gospel. The third article, "Cruciform Humanity' and Jesus' Miracles," examines M. M. Thomas' hermeneutical approach towards Jesus' miracles in Luke Gospel. In the fourth essay, "Paul's Self-Description as Aborted Apostle," the focus is on Paul's resistance to dominant discourses on apostolicity confined to 1 Corinthians. The fifth essay-"The Melchizedek Tradition and Jesus' High Priesthood"-investigates the use of Melchizedek tradition in the Letter to the Hebrews from the vantage point of postcolonial biblical interpretation.

**Contents and Sample Pages**