Called to Question
presents
Taking God's Name in Vain?
A Closer Look at a Misinterpreted Passage of the Bible (Exodus 20:7)
with guest speaker
Carmen Joy Imes, Ph.D.
Carmen is Associate Professor of Old Testament at Prairie College in Three Hills, Alberta. Carmen's primary areas of research are Exodus and Psalms. She is the award-winning author of Bearing YHWH's Name at Sinai: A Reexamination of the Name Command of the Decalogue (Eisenbrauns, 2018) as well as the forthcoming Bearing God's Name: Why Sinai Still Matters (IVP, December 2019), which makes the results of her doctoral study available accessible to non-specialists.
This evening's talk will examine Exodus 20:7 (or the "command not to take the Lord's name in vain"), which is usually interpreted as a prohibition against speaking Yahweh's name in a particular context: false oaths, wrongful pronunciation, irreverent worship, magical practices, cursing, false teaching, and the like. However, it lacks contextual clues needed to support the command as speech related. Taking seriously the narrative context at Sinai and the closest verbal parallels, a different picture emerges-one animated by concrete rituals and their associated metaphorical concepts. The result is a command that has much broader implications for faith communities.
Date and Time:
Saturday October 19, 2019 at 7pm
Coffee and snacks provided.
*Please let us know if you plan on attending as seating is limited.
