Perspectives from Disability Studies in the Pastoral Epistles

Children in the New Testament

“…Early Jewish and Christian families were not contained to the regions of Judea and Galilee, but rather, lived across the geographical and cultural intersections of the empire due both to diaspora and conversion. As such, scholars of early Judaism and Christianity have sought to highlight the specific experiences of children and families within the wider Roman culture through scholarship dedicated to children and families in early Jewish (Kraemer 1989;Cohen 1993;Botha 1998;Bovon 2002;Marcus 2004;Tropper 2006;Dorff 2012;Sasson 2012;Yinger 2013;Murphy 2014;Garroway 2018;Sivan 2018) and Christian households and literature (Currie 1993;Osiek 1995;Strange 1996;Moxnes 1997;Osiek and Balch 1997;Bovon 1999;Bunge 2001;Bovon 2002;Balch and Osiek 2003;Bakke 2005;Balla 2005;Aasgaard 2006;Osiek, MacDonald, and Tulloch 2006;Horn and Martens 2009;Horn and Phenix 2009;Lindemann 2010;Lutterbach 2010;Miller-McLemore 2010;Punt 2010;Zwilling 2010;Leyerle 2013;MacDonald 2014;Solevåg 2017;Lietaert Peerbolte 2021), including a few studies combining the two (Hess and Carroll 2003;Koskenniemi 2009;King 2013;Tuor-Kurth 2010;Yamauchi and Wilson, 2014). ...…”

“…Indeed, even in the latter cases, more attention is often paid to the adults than the children at the center of their actions. Moreover, interdisciplinary collaboration between scholars of disability and children within the New Testament highlights similar themes of agency and empowerment related to how one reads dis/ability in New Testament texts (Howard 2013; Solevåg 2020).…”

Engaging studies of children in the Bible: What is going on and why you should care

“…Schipper on Mephibosheth in 2 Sam 4:4, 2006; Valentine on the slave girl in Acts 16:16–18, 2018), childist scholarship on disabilities has come to the fore largely through the pioneering work of Rebecca Solevåg (2020, more broadly 2018). Solevåg explains the multiple commonalities shared between children and the disabled (2020, 181–186). Typically absent from positions of power, both kinds of people are therefore easily marginalized and silenced.…”

“…While some of the disabled biblical characters who have received scholarly attention are children (e.g. Schipper on Mephibosheth in 2 Sam 4:4, 2006; Valentine on the slave girl in Acts 16:16–18, 2018), childist scholarship on disabilities has come to the fore largely through the pioneering work of Rebecca Solevåg (2020, more broadly 2018). Solevåg explains the multiple commonalities shared between children and the disabled (2020, 181–186).…”