Paula F . Simpson
I have a Bachelor of Theology (Honours First Division) from the University of Auckland, NZ (2016) and a Masters of Theology (With Distinction) with Creative Work thesis from Laidlaw Graduate School, Auckland, NZ (2019). I also hold a Certificate of Proficiency in Koine Greek (Laidlaw).
My theological interests lie in John's Gospel, Mary Magdalene, angel mythology, Merkabah mysticism, typology, temple theology, creation, biblical books: Ezekiel, Daniel, Hebrews, Romans, Ephesians and Colossians.
I use creative works as a basis for explaining and exploring theological insights. My Honours thesis was a monologue of Mary Magdalene explaining why she was the Beloved Disciple of John's Gospel, despite reference to this figure being male. My Masters was a playscript where I used dramaturgy and bibliodrama to re-create a script going beyond John's Gospel. My Masters focused on Merkabah mysticism echoed in John's Gospel.
Methodologies: Poststructural, postqualitative; Methods: creative works, and theopoetics.
Supervisors: Dr Yael Klangwisan, Dr Adrian Schoone, Previous lecturers: Dr Caroline Blyth, Dr Elaine Wainwright, Dr Robert Myles, and Dr Nicholas
My theological interests lie in John's Gospel, Mary Magdalene, angel mythology, Merkabah mysticism, typology, temple theology, creation, biblical books: Ezekiel, Daniel, Hebrews, Romans, Ephesians and Colossians.
I use creative works as a basis for explaining and exploring theological insights. My Honours thesis was a monologue of Mary Magdalene explaining why she was the Beloved Disciple of John's Gospel, despite reference to this figure being male. My Masters was a playscript where I used dramaturgy and bibliodrama to re-create a script going beyond John's Gospel. My Masters focused on Merkabah mysticism echoed in John's Gospel.
Methodologies: Poststructural, postqualitative; Methods: creative works, and theopoetics.
Supervisors: Dr Yael Klangwisan, Dr Adrian Schoone, Previous lecturers: Dr Caroline Blyth, Dr Elaine Wainwright, Dr Robert Myles, and Dr Nicholas
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Papers by Paula F . Simpson
The critical exegesis narrates, analyses and critiques the interplay between methodology, discipline and artefact. Bibliodrama acts as an exploratory tool for experimental hermeneutic inquiry, and establishes the theoretical framework guiding the creative process. This is done by drawing on drama theory, theatre semiotics, theory of performance and dramaturgical hermeneutics to script the play found in the creative work.
The creative work features as a bibliodramatic script devised for a theatre production. The playwriting results in a creative artefact that, in an innovative way, explores Jesus as the mystagogue and Mary as a mystes. The characters of Jesus and Mary are invoked, remythologised and re-inscribed within the bibliodrama. The effect is that the spectator/reader experiments with a number of new epistemological insights into the potentiality of mystical content in the Gospel. This experimentation was achieved by drawing out the mystical references to “seeing” within certain pericopae used by John. These pericopae were re-scripted as a bricolage into a creative work. The play traces other mystical motifs such as the Son of Man, light, born from above, truth, glorification, indwelling, abiding and ascending/descending as developed by John and draws upon non-canonical writings in relation to these motifs. In the bibliodrama these express an experience of mystical transformation. By invoking intertextuality: from before, during and beyond the time of the Gospel, the bibliodrama enacts a performative exegesis drawing on a range of texts that shed light on the mystery of mystical themes and the relationship of Jesus and Mary.
This thesis contributes to biblical scholarship as a remythologised and dynamic reading of Jesus as a mystic or mystagogue of a Merkabah tradition, particularly for understanding the author of the Gospel and his symbolic language, by using bibliodrama devised as a theatre script. The play embodies the intersection of the Gospel according to John and other texts with newly composed material by the dramatist which creates a complex temporality that effectively dramatises the multiple levels of meaning in the received tradition.
Key Words
Merkabah, mysticism, mystagogue, mystes, mise-en-scène, theoria, fictrix/fictor, cosmology, bibliodrama, dramaturgy, performance exegesis, experimental hermeneutics, bricolage, semiotics of theatre, intertextuality, gnosticism, cento, religious dramas.
The critical exegesis narrates, analyses and critiques the interplay between methodology, discipline and artefact. Bibliodrama acts as an exploratory tool for experimental hermeneutic inquiry, and establishes the theoretical framework guiding the creative process. This is done by drawing on drama theory, theatre semiotics, theory of performance and dramaturgical hermeneutics to script the play found in the creative work.
The creative work features as a bibliodramatic script devised for a theatre production. The playwriting results in a creative artefact that, in an innovative way, explores Jesus as the mystagogue and Mary as a mystes. The characters of Jesus and Mary are invoked, remythologised and re-inscribed within the bibliodrama. The effect is that the spectator/reader experiments with a number of new epistemological insights into the potentiality of mystical content in the Gospel. This experimentation was achieved by drawing out the mystical references to “seeing” within certain pericopae used by John. These pericopae were re-scripted as a bricolage into a creative work. The play traces other mystical motifs such as the Son of Man, light, born from above, truth, glorification, indwelling, abiding and ascending/descending as developed by John and draws upon non-canonical writings in relation to these motifs. In the bibliodrama these express an experience of mystical transformation. By invoking intertextuality: from before, during and beyond the time of the Gospel, the bibliodrama enacts a performative exegesis drawing on a range of texts that shed light on the mystery of mystical themes and the relationship of Jesus and Mary.
This thesis contributes to biblical scholarship as a remythologised and dynamic reading of Jesus as a mystic or mystagogue of a Merkabah tradition, particularly for understanding the author of the Gospel and his symbolic language, by using bibliodrama devised as a theatre script. The play embodies the intersection of the Gospel according to John and other texts with newly composed material by the dramatist which creates a complex temporality that effectively dramatises the multiple levels of meaning in the received tradition.
Key Words
Merkabah, mysticism, mystagogue, mystes, mise-en-scène, theoria, fictrix/fictor, cosmology, bibliodrama, dramaturgy, performance exegesis, experimental hermeneutics, bricolage, semiotics of theatre, intertextuality, gnosticism, cento, religious dramas.