The old Testament in the Age of the Greek Apologists a.d. 130–180

1973 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-150
Author(s):  
W. H. C. Frend

For or against the Old Testament? Such was one of the main issues that divided developing orthodoxy in the primitive Church from its Gnostic and Marcionite rivals during the second century A.D. Was the Old Testament the work of an inferior god of the Jews to be read perhaps for the sake of the Decalogue and a few striking passages, and the remainder rejected, or did it unfold the gradual story of human salvation, and in the prophetic books, by foretelling the life and death of Christ, assure the Christian of his right to consider himself the Third (and chosen) Race of mankind? Behind this issue lay another equally important, namely the relationship between the Christians as the new Israel and the Old Israel represented by orthodox Judaism, whose role as the light to lighten the Gentiles it was challenging and would eventually take over. If the Old Testament did indeed contain the word of God, to whom did its promises refer, to the Christians or the Jews? Could the Christians claim with success that the prophecies in the Old Testament spoke of Christ and none other? The debate which was to span the second century was carried out in the tradition of the synagogue. At times the Church's essential message of hope and salvation threatened to founder amidst the demands of a new haggadah and halakhah evolved from the ceaseless challenge of Jewry.

Author(s):  
Frances Young

This chapter focuses on the relationship of the Word of God inscribed in Scripture and Word of God incarnate in Christ, both being expressions of God’s revelation and constitutive of the divine oikonomia, and both involving God’s self-accommodation to creaturely limitations. The development of the Christological meaning of Scripture as a whole is traced from second-century debates about the continuing validity of the Jewish Scriptures to the holistic reading of Scripture in the light of the Rule of Faith, and from allegorical reading to the search for Scripture’s dianoia. Thus it becomes clear that God’s entire purpose and strategy is revealed in Scripture’s testimony to Christ.


2006 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marius Nel

Animosity in apocalyptic literature – the Book of Daniel What is reflected in apocalyptic literature about the subject of animosity? Apocalyptic literature is limited in this article to the Book of Daniel, because it is the most extended apocalyptic text in the Old Testament. Before an apocalyptic work can be discussed, it is important to answer several preliminary questions: what is apocalyptic literature, and what is the phenomenon of apocalypticism? What are the characteristics of this genre? And what are the socio-historical origins of apocalyptic movements?   To understand the Book of Daniel, it is imperative to discuss the two “Sitze im Leben” present in the development of the book. These “Sitze” are the supposed sixth-century BCE exile of Judah, and the second-century BCE Jewish persecution under the Syrian king, Antiochus.   The patterns of animosity in the Book of Daniel are discussed in terms of the relationship between God and people; Jews and a foreign king; Jews and their neighbours; and two groups operating in the Jewish community according to apocalyptic perception, believing and compromising Jews. The story of Daniel in the lion’s den (Dan. 6) is used as a case study to demonstrate these patterns.   The conclusion of the study is that the tales (Dan. 1-6) and visions (Dan. 7-12) can only be understood properly in terms of the patterns of animosity present in the different plots behind the texts.


Author(s):  
Michael Graves

Greek Old Testament texts were being translated into Latin by the second century ce, with a complete Old Latin version extant by the third century. Tertullian was aware of Latin translations but typically consulted the Greek directly. The Old Latin version underwent revisions and textual diversification in the third and fourth centuries, reflecting updates in style and adjustments based on evolving Greek texts. In 391–405 Jerome produced his Latin translations based on the Hebrew. Although he doubted the inspiration of the LXX and promoted the hebraica veritas, Jerome never ceased commenting on the LXX and sometimes acknowledged its traditional ecclesial status. In contrast, Augustine consistently affirmed the inspiration of the LXX, although he eventually recognized the value of the Hebrew. Over time the Old Latin version steadily lost ground to Jerome’s Hebrew version, although elements of the LXX were preserved in Latin through the deuterocanonical books and Jerome’s Gallican Psalter.


2000 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 335-352
Author(s):  
W. G. Thirion

A practical theological model for the relationship Old Testament/New TestamentFor all Christians the Bible consists of the Old and New Testament. The relationship, however, between these two parts is a hermeneutic-theological problem which confronts the communicative praxis of the Christian faith. Therefore it is necessary to develop a hermeneutic-theological theory for Christians which can serve as a paradigm within which the texts of the Old as well as that of the New Testament may regard as equal authoritative Word of God. As far as this study is concerned, there is but one approach only which can achieve this and that is a theocentric approach to both Testaments. A theocentric approach to the relationship Old Testament/New Testament, a) is capable of treating both Testaments as equal authoritative Word of God, b) prevents the practice of "two-sermons-in-one-sermon" in an attempt to make the message of the Old Testament more Christian like, c) is especially capable of communicating the message of the Old Testament in the communicative praxis of the Christian community and the modern society without reading by force Christ into the Old Testament.


Author(s):  
Steven Grosby

This chapter examines Hebraism as the ‘third culture’, distinct from Greek and Roman Christianity, as a kind of Jewish Christianity. Hebraism, as a current of intellectual history, is expressed in the work of the Christian Hebraists of early modern Europe, the quintessential example being John Selden. Hebraism’s focus on life in this world led to the problems of how life should be organized through law, the territorialization of tradition, and the paradoxical national monotheism of the ‘new Israel’. A different interpretation of the Old Testament emerged, influencing the relation between the Old and New Testaments. The theological, political, legal, and social characteristics of Hebraic culture are clarified.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Atack

Abstract Critics, from Athenaeus in the second century CE and Eduard Zeller in the nineteenth, to the present day, have been concerned with problems of authenticity and the dating of Plato’s work, including the inconsistent internal dramatic dates of the dialogues and other anachronisms within them. This article examines the relationship between the imaginary time of the dialogues and Plato’s own context, between the blurring of time and temporal relationships in the dialogues and the arguments that they contain, the construction of anachronistic communities and genealogies within them, through which Plato negotiates his own relationship with Socrates, and the deconstruction and re-negotiation of familial relationships, particularly those between fathers and sons. It uses insights from recent explorations of temporality in queer theory to generate a historicist reading that emphasizes the affective role of time within Plato’s writing. It argues that Plato uses the temporal setting of dialogues to underscore themes of their arguments, and that these anachronic settings can be read as an artefact of Plato’s own reception of Socrates’ life and death, and its context in the turmoil of the Peloponnesian War and the loss and restoration of democracy.


1992 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
John E. McKenna

Today scholars still struggle to apprehend the meaning of hebel (vanity) in the Book of Ecclesiastes. It has become recognized that Old Testament theologians like Walter Eichrodt, Gerhard von Rad, and Ronald Clements did not essentially integrate the Wisdom Tradition of ancient Israel into the development of their theologies. In his Tyndale lecture on the Old Testament of 1965, David Hubbard argued for a new sensitivity to the relationship that must exist between covenant and wisdom in the community of faith. A. Graeme Auld has insisted that the alienation of wisdom from covenant traditions has caused such acute problems in understanding the Old Testament that we are in danger of not grasping at all the relation between the Word of God and the Word of Man. These problems may be linked not only to the question about why the Book of Ecclesiastes was allowed into the Canon of Israel, but also to the very hearing we claim to possess of the revelation of the Word of God in the world and the way the world has actually been made to be. All this should tell us that the significance of the concept of hebel in the Book of Ecclesiastes requires a real clarification of profound consequence for our knowledge of God in the world.


Author(s):  
Daniel Martin Feige

Der Beitrag widmet sich der Frage historischer Folgeverhältnisse in der Kunst. Gegenüber dem Gedanken, dass es ein ursprüngliches Werk in der Reihe von Werken gibt, das späteren Werken seinen Sinn gibt, schlägt der Text vor, das Verhältnis umgekehrt zu denken: Im Lichte späterer Werke wird der Sinn früherer Werke neu ausgehandelt. Dazu geht der Text in drei Schritten vor. Im ersten Teil formuliert er unter der Überschrift ›Form‹ in kritischer Abgrenzung zu Danto und Eco mit Adorno den Gedanken, dass Kunstwerke eigensinnig konstituierte Gegenstände sind. Die im Gedanken der Neuverhandlung früherer Werke im Lichte späterer Werke vorausgesetzte Unbestimmtheit des Sinns von Kunstwerken wird im zweiten Teil unter dem Schlagwort ›Zeitlichkeit‹ anhand des Paradigmas der Improvisation erörtert. Der dritte und letzte Teil wendet diese improvisatorische Logik unter dem Label ›Neuaushandlung‹ dann dezidiert auf das Verhältnis von Vorbild und Nachbild an. The article proposes a new understanding of historical succession in the realm of art. In contrast to the idea that there is an original work in the series of works that gives meaning to the works that come later, the text proposes to think it exactly the other way round: in the light of later works, the meanings of earlier works are renegotiated. The text proceeds in three steps to develop this idea. Under the heading ›Form‹ it develops in the first part a critical reading of Danto’s and Eco’s notion of the constitution of the artworks and argues with Adorno that each powerful work develops its own language. In the second part, the vagueness of the meaning of works of art presupposed in the idea of renegotiating earlier works in the light of later works is discussed under the term ›Temporality‹ in terms of the logic of improvisation. The third and final part uses this improvisational logic under the label ›Renegotiation‹ to understand the relationship between model and afterimage in the realm of art.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susilo Susanto

In the Old Testament there is a debate between two related topics, namely the mission and grace of God. Specifically seen in the Book of Jonah, this book contains several dialogues which perfectly support the motion of the story and the themes it carries. Its structure provides a contrasting picture of Yahweh and Jonah. To answer this debate, by looking at the relationship between mission and God's grace in the Book of Jonah. We can find in it Jonah's disobedience in carrying out the mission that God gave him and the rewards he experienced by God's grace to him. Likewise the Ninevites received the grace of God which the prophet of God did not want. Then the question arises what is the mission and mercy of God in universal relationships. Thus this paper seeks to elaborate on these two topics.


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