Canons to the Left of Him: Brevard Childs, his Critics, and the Future of Old Testament Theology

1997 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iain Provan
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Biblical Theology ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Probable Origin ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

It is well known that the seeds from which the modern discipline of OT theology grew are already found in 17th and 18th century discussion of the relationship between Bible and Church, which tended to drive a wedge between the two, regarding canon in historical rather than theological terms; stressing the difference between what is transient and particular in the Bible and what is universal and of abiding significance; and placing the task of deciding which is which upon the shoulders of the individual reader rather than upon the church. Free investigation of the Bible, unfettered by church tradition and theology, was to be the way ahead. OT theology finds its roots more particularly in the 18th century discussion of the nature of and the relationship between Biblical Theology and Dogmatic Theology, and in particular in Gabler's classic theoreticalstatementof their nature and relationship. The first book which may strictly be called an OT theology appeared in 1796: an historical discussion of the ideas to be found in the OT, with an emphasis on their probable origin and the stages through which Hebrew religious thought had passed, compared and contrasted with the beliefs of other ancient peoples, and evaluated from the point of view of rationalistic religion. Here we find the unreserved acceptance of Gabler's principle that OT theology must in the first instance be a descriptive and historical discipline, freed from dogmatic constraints and resistant to the premature merging of OT and NT — a principle which in the succeeding century was accepted by writers across the whole theological spectrum, including those of orthodox and conservative inclination.

Learning to Pray by Singing

2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-121
Author(s):  
Stefan Klöckner
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Gregory The Great ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Christian Perspective ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Canonical Order ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Church

Gregorian chants are mostly based on Old Testament texts, predominantly from the Psalms. Decisive for their interpretation in the light of the New Testament are texts of the Church Fathers (Augustine, Gregory the Great, etc.). The texts often do not follow their canonical order in the Bible, but were primarily compiled on the basis of broader associations. Hence, it is not uncommon for new content references to emerge that are committed to a Christian perspective, emotionally and theologically very bold. This article describes an imaginary ‘Gregorian Composition Workshop’: the individual ‘chambers’ include compiling texts, the choice of a suitable mode and melody, as well as the most refined rhythmic differentiations. The final piece, through its unique quality as the ‘sounding word of Holy Scripture’ permits an intensive view of the spirituality of the ninth and tenth centuries, and a realistic understanding of the Psalms as the basis of Christian existence.

scholarly journals Die huwelik as identiteitsmerker in die Ou Testament

2007 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pieter M. Venter
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

Marriage as identity marker in the Old Testament The formularies used for consecrating marriages in the Nederduitsch Hervormde Church reflect this church’s view on matrimony. As the biblical bases of the formularies are deficient, new ways of exploring biblical information on this subject should be followed. This article proposes that data on marriage in the Bible always be used in conjunction with other concepts to form theological constructs to outline who God is and who his people are. It is always intended to be an identity marker to the members of the church. In the three Genesis cycles of Genesis 11:10-25:11; 25:12-35:29 and 36:1-50:26 heirship, marriage and land are used in an integrated construct to indicate the identity of the post-exilic community in Yehud. In the penitential prayers of Ezra 9:6-15 and Nehemia 9:5b-37 the concepts law, land and marriage are jointly used to depict the identity of the “real” Israel. The conclusion drawn from this investigation is that the Bible does not present models for marriage, but rather theological constructs to understand the relationship with the Lord in metaphorical terms and to reflect on the meaning of everyday life of that relationship including matrimony under ever changing social circumstances.

scholarly journals Antropologi og poetik i Verdenskrøniken 1814

1982 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-62
Author(s):  
William Michelsen
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
Garden Of Eden ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Tower Of Babel ◽  
The Bible ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Trinity

Anthropology and Poetics in World Chronicle 1814By Knud SølvbjergAn exposition by William MichelsenThis article is a brief account of the contents of a thesis written in 1976 at the Institute for Scandinavian Studies at Århus University under the title N .F .S . Grundtvig's Thoughts on Anthropology and Poetics between 1814 and 1828. It contains excerpts of a chapter with the same title as this article. The choice of material and the commentary on it has been made by William Michelsen, under whose supervision the thesis was written.The article deals with the considerations concerning mankind and the art of poetry that Grundtvig expresses in his interpretation of mankind’s fate and of the relationship between prophecy and poetry according to the Old Testament. At first these thoughts are set against the idea of all the visible world as an organism with a universal consciousness, as expressed in Henrich Steffens’ introduction to Philosophical Lectures 1803 amongst others. According to Grundtvig, mankind’s development is due not to human reason but to a divine power. And even though Grundtvig’s division of history into three is reminiscent of the division to be found in the concept of the world as an organism, there is no basis for any prediction of history’s development. The pattern which the ancient history of Israel passes on shows how mankind would have developed without the Fall. The divine image is still to be found in mankind and reflects the trinity in God. But the Fall has so confused the inner vision, the emotions and reason that “false images mingled with true images so that the emotions became unclean and reason became ready to judge what it did not understand” (WC 1814 p. 18ff).The Fall in the Garden of Eden, the Flood and the building of the Tower of Babel mark mankind’s step-by-step defection from God. Not until Jesus’ death on the cross did mankind’s relationship with God change for the better. The development in the individual through three stages in which the life of the soul is dominated in turn by the imagination, the emotions and reason also takes place in the individual nation and in the human race as a whole. It is true not merely of the individual but also of the nation and mankind in general that reason is the last faculty to develop. The epistemological consequence is that reason must believe, in the sense that it must believe in the concept of the truthit is to acknowledge. Grundtvig’s idea is that that which at some stage in the future will be recognized, is present beforehand as an imaginative concept. For the nation this means that in the final age it will be able to explain its poetry and its historical achievements on the basis of the previous two. What was once present as a concept returns at the level of reason. History becomes an epistemological process. But without the Bible mankind cannot acknowledge this, according to World Chronicle 1814, inasmuch as Israel’s history is a pattern of the path of history. That is, God does not reveal Himself only in the hearts and consciences of mankind but also in history. But God also reveals Himself in the imagination of the poets - not just amongst the Israelite prophets but also amongst other poets and prophets. For a particularly clear Biblical example of this Grundtvig goes to the story of the prophet Bileam (Numbers 22). Grundtvig does not equate Israel’s prophets with present-day poets, but settles for claiming a likeness between them. He justifies this by pointing to the more powerful imaginations of the ancient prophets, as well as the fact that the Hebrew language had particular qualities because it was closer to the original parent language. Poets should be the people’s guide. After the Fall it is the task of the poet in particular to distinguish between the false and true images that appear to his imagination. According to Grundtvig this cannot be done without the Bible, “unless the poet was inspired in some strange way and became what we call a seer or a prophet”. (WC 1814 p. 167).Bearing recent Grundtvig research in mind it seems surprising how little the passages cited in World Chronicle 1814 have been commented on and utilised to  characterise Grundtvig’s poetics. One major reason could be that that they can only be understood in conjunction with Grundtvig’s epistemology and anthropology, which has only recently received a closer examination. It is not enough to see Grundtvig’s poetics as the product of romantic inspiration in a Christian direction. The question is, how was Grundtvig able to combine his experiences as a poet with the Christian faith that he recognised in 1810 to be the only true one. That is the question which this article attempts to answer.

scholarly journals A Palavra do Senhor. Comentário e destaques à Exortação Apostólica Pós-Sinodal do Papa Bento XVI

2019 ◽  
Vol 71 (283) ◽  
pp. 606
Author(s):  
Filippo Santoro
Keyword(s):  
Vatican Ii ◽  
Lectio Divina ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Dei Verbum ◽  
God's Word ◽  
Religious Dialogue ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church ◽  
Point Of Reference

O A. sintetiza a Exortação Apostólica Pós-Sinodal Verbum Domini, realçando sua estrutura dialógica e chamando a atenção para o que considera os pontos fortes do documento: a continuidade entre a Verbum Domini e a Dei Verbum (do Vat. II) no que concerne à centralidade da Palavra de Deus (Cristo); esta, como sendo o miolo do documento, não a Bíblia, embora esta seja seu receptáculo; uma renovada comunhão entre exegese, teologia e pastoral; Maria, ponto de referência para se compreender a relação entre Palavra de Deus e Igreja; leitura orante e lectio divina como abordagens que favorecem o encontro pessoal e comunitário com a Palavra; a dimensão inerentemente missionária da Palavra de Deus, que se dá, sobretudo, pelo testemunho de vida; o impulso ao diálogo ecumênico e inter-religioso decorrente do encontro com a Palavra; a comunhão e a alegria, resultantes desse encontro; o estilo sapiencial do texto e sua linguagem viva, calorosa e comunicativa, fruto da experiência de encontro com o Verbo encarnado, Palavra de Deus. Neste quadro, a Bíblia é vista como verdadeiro código primordial da humanidade, capaz de falar a uma sociedade plural, desejosa, em tempos de árido relativismo, do Evangelho da Vida.Abstract: The Author summarizes the Post-Synod Verbum Domini Apostolic Exhortation, emphasizing its dialogical structure and calling attention to what he considers to be the strong points of the document: the continuity between the Verbum Domini and the Dei Verbum (of the Vatican II) with regard to the centrality of God’s Word (Christ’s); considering the latter – rather than the Bible that would be just its receptacle – as the kernel of the document; a renewed communion between exegesis, theology and pastoral; Maria as a point of reference in order to understand the relationship between God’s Word and the Church; praying-reading and lectio divina as the types of approaches that encourage the individual and the community encounter with the Word; the inherently missionary dimension of God’s Word, that happens, above all, by the testimony of life; the impulse towards the ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue resulting from the meeting with the Word; the communion and the joy resulting from this meeting; the sapiential style of the text and its lively, warm and communicative language, fruit of the experience of the meetingwith the incarnated Word, God’s Word. In this picture, the Bible is seen as mankind’s true primary code able to speak to a plural and yearning society, at a time of arid relativism of the Gospel of Life.

Ephesians

1975 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Barth
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
The Body ◽  
Apostle Paul ◽  
Traditional Notion ◽  
The Social ◽  
Pauline Theology ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

Encompassing the body of Pauline theology, Ephesians (volumes 34 and 34A of the acclaimed Anchor Bible series) has been called “the crown of St. Paul's writings,” yet both its authorship and addressees are the subject of continuing dispute. Through line-by-line examination of its vocabulary, its difficult style, its Qumran and Gnostic affinities, its parallels with and distinctions from the undisputed Pauline corpus, its use of the Old Testament, and its dialogue with orthodox and heretical Judaism, Markus Barth demonstrates that Paul was almost certainly the author. And, after exploring previous explications of this hymnic and admonitory epistle in detail, he concludes that it was intended for Gentile Christians converted after Paul's visits to Ephesus. On this basis, Barth reexamines the relationship between Israel and the church, discounting the thesis that Ephesians suggests an “early Catholic,” or high-ecclesiastic or sacramental doctrine. Instead, he finds in this letter a statement of the social reconciliation which conditions the salvation of the individual. And reevaluating the section describing the relation between husband and wife, he offers an alternative to the traditional notion that Paul degrades women or belittles their rights and their dignity. In these two volumes Barth has followed the structure of Ephesians: upon the praise of God (chapters 1-3) are based the admonitions (chapters 4-6). But just as the epistle is an integral whole, so is the author's commentary. Through his special understanding and love of the apostle Paul, Markus Barth reopens to modern man the ancient message of love, worship and joy.

The End of the Word as We Know It

2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 165-184
Author(s):  
Timothy Beal
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
Cultural Icon ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Material Objectivity ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Relationship

This essay attends to a distinction that requires closer examination and theorization in our discourse on iconic books and other scriptures: the difference between iconic object and cultural icon. How do we conceive of relations between the particular, ritualized iconicities of particular scriptures in particular religious contexts and the cultural iconicities of scriptures in general, such as “the Bible” or “the Quran,” whose visual and material objectivity is highly ambiguous? How if at all are the iconic cultural meanings of the ideas of such books related to the particular iconic textual objects more or less instantiate them? These questions are explored through particular focus on the relationship between the particular iconicities of particular print Bibles, as iconic objects, and the general iconicity of the cultural icon of the Bible.

scholarly journals Grounding semantic transparency in context

Morphology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rossella Varvara ◽  
Gabriella Lapesa ◽  
Sebastian Padó
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Distributional Semantics ◽  
Semantic Transparency ◽  
Inclusion Measure ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Semantic Point ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractWe present the results of a large-scale corpus-based comparison of two German event nominalization patterns: deverbal nouns in -ung (e.g., die Evaluierung, ‘the evaluation’) and nominal infinitives (e.g., das Evaluieren, ‘the evaluating’). Among the many available event nominalization patterns for German, we selected these two because they are both highly productive and challenging from the semantic point of view. Both patterns are known to keep a tight relation with the event denoted by the base verb, but with different nuances. Our study targets a better understanding of the differences in their semantic import.The key notion of our comparison is that of semantic transparency, and we propose a usage-based characterization of the relationship between derived nominals and their bases. Using methods from distributional semantics, we bring to bear two concrete measures of transparency which highlight different nuances: the first one, cosine, detects nominalizations which are semantically similar to their bases; the second one, distributional inclusion, detects nominalizations which are used in a subset of the contexts of the base verb. We find that only the inclusion measure helps in characterizing the difference between the two types of nominalizations, in relation with the traditionally considered variable of relative frequency (Hay, 2001). Finally, the distributional analysis allows us to frame our comparison in the broader coordinates of the inflection vs. derivation cline.

History: changing the forms or forming the changes?

2005 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
SVEND ERIK LARSEN
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Future Planning ◽  
Long Period ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Vitruvian Man ◽  
Human Responsibility ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Individual Human

Change in European cultural history has, for a long period, been discussed through two interrelated notions, that of science and that of history. This paper traces the various stages of this discussion from Antiquity to the present day from the point of view of history. Two reoccurring and paradigmatic characters of mythological descent, Odysseus and Prometheus, illustrate how history as a realm for human responsibility and future planning has established itself as a specific European construct, with the 18th century as its final breakthrough in practical and ideological terms. A close analysis of Leonardo da Vinci's drawing the Vitruvian Man, in statu nascendi, shows how the individual human being carrying the obligations and the promises of this history, is envisioned. The final remarks underline the importance of scientific knowledge in the concrete shaping of this responsibility and a plea for an increased cooperation across the disciplines.

Practising piety in a (post-) pandemic time: A spatial reading of piety in Psalm 66 from the perspectives of memory and bodily imagery

2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lodewyk Sutton
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Social Anthropology ◽  
The Past ◽  
Body Imagery ◽  
Research Article ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
Practical Theological ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Exodus Narrative ◽  
The Church

Situated in the larger collection of Psalms 51–72, also known as the second Davidic Psalter, the smaller group of Psalms 65–68 is found. This smaller collection of psalms can be classified mostly as psalms of praise and thanksgiving. The relation and compositional work in this cluster of psalms become apparent on many points in the pious expressions between groups and persons at prayer, especially in the universal praise of God, and in the imagery referring to the exodus, the Jerusalem cult and blessing. Such piety becomes most discernible in the imagery and expressions in Psalm 66. The psalm’s two main sections may be described as praise, with verses 1–12 being praise by the group or the ‘we’, and verses 13–20 being praise by the individual or the ‘I’. Personal or individual piety and private piety are expressed by the desire of the ‘we’ and the ‘I’, and the experienced immediacy to God by transposing the past into the present through the memory of the exodus narrative, the Jerusalem cultic imagery and the use of body imagery. In this research article, an understanding of piety in Psalm 66 in terms of the memory of past events and body imagery is discussed from a perspective of space and appropriated for a time of (post-) pandemic where normal or traditional ecclesiological formal practices cannot take place.Contribution: This article makes an interdisciplinary contribution based on knowledge from the Psalms in the Old Testament, social anthropology, literary spatial theories and practical theological perspectives on the church in order to contribute to the relevance and practice of theology today, during a time of turmoil and a global pandemic.

Biblical theology and/or theological interpretation of scripture?

2008 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel J. Treier
Keyword(s):  
Internal Structure ◽  
Biblical Theology ◽  
Theological Method ◽  
Theological Interpretation ◽  
Theological Hermeneutics ◽  
Disciplinary Boundaries ◽  
Organic Unity ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Biblical Teaching

Abstract‘Biblical theology’ has long influenced modern theological method, especially Protestant, as both boon and bane. Its role has been seen as either pivotal or problematic in the attempt to construe the Christian Bible as scripture with unified teaching for the contemporary church. The attempt to unfold biblical teaching as having organic unity, related to an internal structure of theological concepts, is frequently perceived as a failure, a has-been that leaves us only with fragmentation – between parts of the Bible, between academy and church, church and world, clergy and laity, and between various theological disciplines. Today a new movement is afoot, often labelled ‘theological interpretation of scripture’. Some of its adherents define this practice as distinct from, even opposed to, biblical theology. Others treat the two practices as virtually coterminous, while perhaps contesting what ‘biblical theology’ is typically taken to be in favour of new theological hermeneutics. Much of the difficulty in defining the relationship, then, stems from lingering debates about what biblical theology can or should be. The rest of the difficulty is perhaps rooted in the dilemma of any interdisciplinary efforts: how to breach unhelpful sections of disciplinary boundaries without redefining territory so nebulously that no one knows where they are.

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