Katie Marcar – Divine Regeneration and Ethnic Mapping in 1 Peter

Episode: Erin speaks with Dr. Katie Marcar about metaphors of divine regeneration in 1 Peter, metaphors of generation in other Jewish texts from the Second Temple period, seed metaphors, breastmilk metaphors, and how all of these topics work together to form an audience's sense of ethnic identity. Dr. Marcar is the author of the book Divine Regeneration and Ethnic Identity in 1 Peter: Mapping Metaphors of Family, Race, and Nation, published by Cambridge University Press in 2022.

Guest: Dr. Katie Marcar is a Teaching Fellow in Biblical Languages at the University of Otago, New Zealand. She completed a Masters in Biblical Studies at Edinburgh University before completing a PhD in New Testament Studies at Durham University. In her doctoral thesis, she studied the theme of divine regeneration in 1 Peter. Dr. Marcar's research interests include textual criticism, the use of the Hebrew Scriptures in the New Testament, and the influence of Jewish apocalyptic thinking on New Testament texts. Katie is a Lay Minister in the Anglican Church in New Zealand. She is actively engaged in church ministry, preaching, and youth work.

Book (from the publisher's website): In this book, Katie Marcar examines how 1 Peter draws together metaphors of family, ethnicity, temple, and priesthood to describe Christian identity. She examines the precedents for these metaphors in Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity in order to highlight the originality, creativity and theological depth of the text. She then explores how these metaphors are combined and developed in 1 Peter to create complex, narratival metaphors which reframe believers' understanding of themselves, their community, and their world. Integrating insights on ethnicity and race in the ancient and modern world, as well as insights from metaphor studies, Marcar examines why it is important for Christians to think of themselves as one family and ethnic group. Marcar concludes by distilling the metaphors of divine regeneration down to their underlying systematic metaphors.

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