This article examines biblical allusions in Simone Weil's “On the Right Use of School Studies,” in which she argues that study can train our attention to God and neighbor. Focusing on Weil's use of Jesus' teachings that mention bread, meals, and table service, this article reveals an underlying theme of Eucharist (communion) in Weil's essay on study. Together with Weil's comment that studies are “like a sacrament,” this analysis suggests that Weil offers a “eucharistic pedagogy” shaped by her mystical theology of Eucharist, a theology itself shaped by George Herbert's English-language poem “Love.” Throughout, the article compares Weil's original French with its English translation, noting where the translation obscures her use of the Bible or her theology, and it also examines the Greek biblical text, since Weil read the New Testament in its Greek original. The article concludes with a critique of Weil's educational vision, which relies on a dyadic vision of eucharist, and suggests that a communal vision of eucharist can support a social vision of education.

Recent publications on theology and film attempting to explain what a parable is remain less clear about how or why a parable works for cinema, and many definitions do not fully take into account the formal dynamics of film qua film nor parable qua parable. I seek to demonstrate the benefits of a more precise conception of cinematic parables by utilizing philosopher Paul Ricoeur's understanding of “parable” to make theological interpretations of film that take audio-visual aesthetics into consideration. I conclude with three recent examples of cinematic parables in order to demonstrate this Ricoeurian parabolic hermeneutic: Asghar Farhadi's Iranian melodrama, A Separation (2011), American filmmaker Anna Rose Holmer's enigmatic The Fits (2016), and Aki Kaurismäki's droll Finnish comedy, The Other Side of Hope (2017). Ultimately, I make a case for film as theology, what I am calling “theocinematics.”

The enigmatic name of the poor man in Luke 16.19–31 has invited diverse interpretations of its significance for the parable's meaning. After sketching the character and function of the poor man, this study evaluates several such interpretations, both ancient and contemporary. It then argues for a narrative-critical reading of Lazarus’ name that is congruent with Luke's putative purpose in including this parable in his narrative of Jesus’ ministry, where the poor are afforded honour and the rich are exhorted to respond to the material needs of their neighbours.

The parable of the unrighteous steward encouraged rich individuals outside the Christian community to use their wealth to make friends of Jesus’ poor disciples, specifically by reducing their debts, so that in the eschatological kingdom Jesus’ disciples would receive these benefactors into their eternal dwellings. It had its setting in the efforts of early Palestinian Christians to enlist the financial support of the wealthy. Since many of these did not wish to sell all their possessions and donate the proceeds to the Christian community, this parable suggested an alternative way that the rich could use their wealth to assist the community.

This study explores the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, elucidating the details of Lazarus' worldly suffering – what it is that ails him, and whether the dogs are friends or fiends. Fresh evidence from the classical world is brought to bear, including medical texts, miracle stories and philosophical treatises, in addition to overlooked Jewish and Christian testimony. The results establish the plausibility of maladies unrelated to diseases or skin conditions, and reveal the dogs to be positive characters that highlight Lazarus' penury and the rich man's depravity. New avenues into several broader interpretive issues of the parable are explored.

Scholars have spent considerable time attempting to characterise Julian of Norwich's relationship to biblical texts. This article will first survey the state of scholarship with respect to Julian and the Bible, defending a minimalist thesis: that Julian thinks theologically in the rhythms of scripture, rendering suggestions that she haphazardly borrows from biblical language demonstrably false. Subsequently, literary-critical readings of biblical texts echoed in the parable of the lord and servant will be deployed to show how Julian echoes not only the language of the Bible, but also its themes, narratives and theology. By highlighting a particular kind of imaginative theology that is nevertheless deeply biblical, the article argues that Julian is at once creative and orthodox: always novel, but never new.

The documents that represent Catholic Social Teaching are primarily papal and clerical. Following the approach of Herbert McCabe that CST is not a body of doctrine but is a response to concrete social circumstances, this paper notes the absence of serious engagement with the Bible in CST and particularly the teaching of Jesus. Using two parables as paradigms, we can see that Jesus was using the social and economic circumstances of his day to provoke debate and an imaginative response that might lead his listeners towards the kingdom of God. In developing the current state of CST, the Church must draw on the practical wisdom of already existing Church groups and must collaborate with groups outside the Church.

The Turkish novel became a national chronotope proper with the founding of the Republic in 1923 and the emergent conception of the national geography following the War of Independence (1919-1922). This was the Anatolian territory, with Ankara as the new capital of the nation instead of İstanbul which had been the Ottoman Empire's center for almost five centuries. Anatolia became the motherland on which the national consciousness of the new nation would be inscribed. In the novels of the republican era, Anatolian iconography and mythography illustrate how this setting became a persistent element of narrative structure as a significant topos in both senses of the word: as place and theme. An inquiry into the permutations of the theme of Anatolia since the War of Independence will reveal the changing attitudes and ideas related to Turkish nationalism and its most outstanding component, the cult of the father personified by Atatürk. This essay, however, does not only aim at a survey of an ideology's history via literature; it also investigates the Anatolian iconography and mythography, as they figure in the Turkish novel of the republican era, and touches upon the various narrative strategies that major Turkish novelists have employed in their search for the right form for this important content, the right form to either reinforce or undermine a sacred story.