scholarly journals The History of Scholarship on Ancient Israelite Religion: A Brief Sketch

2020 ◽  
pp. 17-47
Author(s):  
Theodore J. Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
History Of Religion ◽  
Israelite Religion ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Scholarship ◽  
Critical Turning Point

In order to study the broad topic of divinity, it is essential to survey the history of scholarship, especially to understand the foundation of views inherited by modern scholars. The Enlightenment is chosen as a starting point due to the growth of the critical study of the Bible during these times. Germanic scholarship of the Hebrew Bible in nineteenth century is articulated as a critical turning point. Subsequent developments include the emergence of sociological methods, the “history of religion” comparative approach, and the “myth-and-ritual” school of thought. Newly discovered archaeological remains caused yet another shift, with scholars now debating whether ancient Israel’s religion was in fact as unique as confessional traditions taught. More recently, varying methodological approaches have exploded on the scene including epigraphy, socio-historical linguistics, revisionist historical hermeneutics, feminist approaches, intertextuality, and iconographic studies together with the maturing of the fields of archaeology and sociology.

scholarly journals Exploring similarities between the German and the Dutch ‘ethical’ traditions: Possibilities of the history of religion for a theological approach to Old Testament studies in South Africa

2010 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan H. Vorster
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Religious History ◽  
History Of Religion ◽  
Israelite Religion ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Diverse Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relevant Factors

This article shows how dialectic theology caused a loss of interest in the history of religion, which was seen as out of touch with the current world. The distinction between theology and the history of religion became increasingly vague. The article focuses on the contribution of Rainier Albertz in his two-volume Religionsgeschichte Israels in alttestamentlicher Zeit (History of Israelite religion in the Old Testament period), 1992. Albertz proposed that the history of religion should be restored to serve as the ‘more sensible discipline for abridging the Old Testament’. This article points out several advantages to this approach, namely a different kind of Old Testament theology, starting from current theological problems and searching through the thematic segments of Israel’s religious history and that of early Christianity for analogous insights relevant to the problems in question. This article develops the argument that Albertz’s suggestions open up possibilities for establishing a vibrant theological environment in South Africa, where theologians from a diverse society can start from different perspectives on current problems, consider the Bible as part of a uniquely defined set of relevant factors and present a kaleidoscope of cross-balancing ‘African’ theological perspectives. The aim of this approach is to enhance the possibilities of Albertz’s suggestions by relating them, in context, to insights from ethical theology in the hope of reviving the debate regarding repositioning the history of religion in a different kind of theological approach. This debate is long in coming: it may already have lost close to 20 years in deserved attention.

David in Reception History

2020 ◽  
pp. 495-510
Author(s):  
Dominik Markl
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Reception History ◽  
Psychological Traits ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Modern Times ◽  
Books Of Samuel

David is one of the most colorful figures of the Bible and of the entire literature that has come down to us from antiquity. David’s characterization as a sensitive musician, a violent warrior, and an emotional lover is intertwined with his political career as king of Israel. David’s characterization in the books of Samuel, already transformed in the Psalter and in Chronicles, is the starting point for a variegated history of reception. In the New Testament, David appears as the ancestor and type of Christ. From late antiquity to early modern times, Christian emperors and kings were portrayed as new Davids. Only the Enlightenment cast dark critical shadows over the figure of David. Modern interest shifted towards his individual, psychological traits. After sketching the biblical images of David, their reception, especially in political terms, is traced up to the present.

Identity Turn: Managing Decolonialization and Identity Politics in the Study of Religion

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Jørn Borup
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
Theoretical Orientations ◽  
History Of Religion ◽  
Western Power ◽  
History Of ◽  
Academic Study

Abstract The academic study of religion, with its concepts and theories that originate in a Western, Protestant context, has justly been criticized in postmodern and identity-focused discourses, in recent years under the umbrella of decolonization and social justice activism. It has been suggested that allegedly universally-applicable theories and methodologies are relativized and revealed as particularized Eurocentrism in the hegemonic representations of “white” or “Western” power regimes. While acknowledging such reorientations in the philosophy, sociology, psychology, and history of religion, this article also critically investigates and discusses the “critical study of religion.” It is suggested that the revisionist deconstruction emphasized by contemporary identity perspectives, with their discourses of difference and re-essentialized understandings of religion and culture, are not only problematic as theoretical orientations. Radical identity politics also imply methodological constraints on the academic study of religion, where comparison, analytical categories, and reflexive emic–etic distinctions must remain key factors.

History of Religion as Critique of Religion?

2021 ◽  
pp. 10-30
Author(s):  
Hans Joas
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Religious Texts ◽  
History Of Religion ◽  
Universal History ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Literary Character ◽  
History Of

The Scottish eighteenth-century philosopher and historian David Hume can be considered a pioneer of the “natural history of religion” in the sense of a universal history of religion that is not based on theological presuppositions. This chapter offers a characterization of his methodological achievements and a reevaluation of his empirical claims concerning monotheism, polytheism, religion and tolerance. It also interprets the German reception of Hume in Herder and other eighteenth-century thinkers as a serious critical continuation that is free from Hume’s anti-Christian motives. This continuation opens the perspective of a serious study of the literary character of religious texts, in this case of the Bible. All simple contrasts between Enlightenment and religion are overcome as soon as we take this interaction of thinkers into account.

Art and Science: or Bach as an Expositor of the Bible

1992 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 343-353
Author(s):  
W. R. Ward
Keyword(s):  
East Germany ◽  
The State ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
National Tradition ◽  
Long Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Moment

For a long time before dramatic recent events it has been clear that the German Democratic Republic has been in die position, embarrassing to a Marxist system, of having nothing generally marketable left except (to use the jargon) ‘superstructure’. The Luther celebrations conveniendy bolstered the implicit claim of the GDR to embody Saxony’s long-delayed revenge upon Prussia; still more conveniendy, they paid handsomely. Even the Francke celebrations probably paid their way, ruinous though his Orphan House has been allowed to become. When I was in Halle, a hard-pressed government had removed the statue of Handel (originally paid for in part by English subscriptions) for head-to-foot embellishment in gold leaf, and a Handel Festival office in the town was manned throughout the year. Bach is still more crucial, both to the republic’s need to pay its way and to the competition with the Federal Republic for the possession of the national tradition. There is no counterpart in Britain to the strength of the Passion-music tradition in East Germany. The celebrations which reach their peak in Easter Week at St Thomas’s, Leipzig, are like a cross between Wembley and Wimbledon here, the difference being that the black market in tickets is organized by the State for its own benefit. If Bach research in East Germany, based either on musicology or the Church, has remained an industry of overwhelming amplitude and technical complexity, the State has had its own Bach-research collective located in Leipzig, dedicated among other things to establishing the relation between Bach and the Enlightenment, that first chapter in the Marxist history of human liberation. Now that a good proportion of the population of the GDR seems bent on liberation by leaving the republic or sinking it, the moment seems ripe to take note for non-specialist readers of some of what has been achieved there in recent years.

‘Religion,’ ‘the Secular’ and the Critical Study of Religion

2011 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 419-442 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Engler
Keyword(s):  
Religious Studies ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
History Of Religion ◽  
Critical History ◽  
Il Y A ◽  
History Of ◽  
A Current ◽  
Academic Study

This essay critically engages Timothy Fitzgerald’s Discourse on Civility and Barbarity (2007), arguing that it takes an important step beyond Fitzgerald’s first book, The Ideology of Religious Studies ( 2000 ), in diagnosing a current malaise of the academic study of religion and in modelling a way past this malaise. Highlighting this valuable aspect of the book, I argue, requires correcting certain problems with its argument. Specifically, there is a tension between two overarching goals: writing “a critical history of ‘religion’ as a category,” and criticizing “modern discourses on generic religion.” Once these genealogical and critical projects are brought into more effective alignment, the book models an approach where a properly critical study of religion begins with a contingently and strategically theorized domain of ‘religion’ and explores its relation to other domains—not only ‘the secular.’ Cet essai reconsidère d’un œil critique le livre Discourse on Civility and Barbarity (2007), de Timothy Fitzgerald. Il soutien qu’il donne un pas important au-delà du premier livre de Fitzgerald, The Ideology of Religious Studies ( 2000 ), dans les faits de diagnostiquer une malaise actuelle de l’étude des religions et de modeler une piste alternative. Pourtant, pour accentuer cet aspect important du livre, on doit corriger des problèmes logiques avec son argument. Spécialement, il y a une tension problématique entre les deux buts du livre : l’écriture « d’une histoire critique de ‘religion’ comme une catégorie »; et la critique « des discours modernes sur la religion générique ». Dès que ces projets généalogiques et critiques sont apportés dans une meilleure alignement, le livre modèle une approche de grande valeur : c’est le travail d’une étude proprement critique du concept ‘de religion’ de le suivre où il mène, et d’analyser ses relations avec des autres concepts.

scholarly journals Poblisk v religiološko misel Hjalmarja Söderberga

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (32) ◽  
pp. 357-367
Author(s):  
Nada Grošelj
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Religious History ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Special Effects ◽  
History Of Religion ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Fire Smoke ◽  
History Of ◽  
Century Thought

A Glimpse into the Religious Studies of Hjalmar Söderberg While the Swedish writer Hjalmar Söderberg (1869–1941) gained a worldwide reputation with his fiction, his later studies in the history of religion, with their discussions of daring reconstructions and interpretations of Biblical events, are more obscure. Of his three monographs on religious history, the paper focuses on his début, The Fire of Yahweh (Jahves eld, 1918). The key thesis about the story of Moses as proposed by Markel, the protagonist, claims that the supernatural events in the Book of Exodus which took place on and at the foot of the mountain, and were witnessed by the Israelite crowd from a distance, were in fact an elaborate and spectacular form of pre-Jewish worship in the area. According to Markel, the fire, smoke and thunder accompanying God’s appearances in the Bible were simply a spectacle for the crowd, and these ‘special effects’ might well have been produced by Moses and his successors through gunpowder. The final part of the paper outlines Söderberg’s immersion in his time and in the spiritual and intellectual shifts of the period, as well as his attitude to religion as demonstrated in some examples of his fiction. Keywords: history of religion, Swedish literature, Moses, Bible interpretation, early 20th century thought

The Pivotal Characterization: Ancient Law as Non-Statutory Law

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua A. Berman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
Biblical Law ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Legal Texts ◽  
Statutory Law ◽  
Ancient Law ◽  
History Of

Scholars of biblical law have long seen the inconsistencies among the law corpora of the Pentateuch as signs of schools and communities in conflict. This chapter offers an introductory foundation for the following five chapters on biblical and ancient Near Eastern law. It demonstrates that the dominant approach to the critical study of biblical law—that is, as statutory law—is based on anachronistic, nineteenth-century notions of how law works and how legal texts are formulated. The chapter traces the history of legal thought in that century, and how it shaped (a better term might be distorted) how we view the ancient legal texts of the Bible and the Near East, and recovers premodern understandings of how law works and how legal texts are to be read in accordance with common-law jurisprudence.

The Origins of the Noahide Laws

2011 ◽  
pp. 11-35
Author(s):  
David Novak
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Moral Standard ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Social Demographic

This chapter traces the origins of the Noahide laws in the history of Judaism. Earlier scholars located its origins variously: in the Bible, among Hittite legal scholars, and during the Maccabean era. The chapter maintains, contrary to prior scholarship, that the concept of the Noahide is absent until the first century CE; that is, it is a rabbinic creation. While theology can discover the beginnings of the Noahide laws in the Torah, their historical starting point can only be established following the social, demographic, and religious dislocations of the Second Temple's destruction in 70 CE. For the rabbis, these laws originated prior to the Sinaitic revelation; they were the moral standard for the entire gentile world, and that world of course included the ancestors of those who would later accept the covenant at Sinai. Israelites before Sinai, then, were Noahides. The Noahide laws were also considered obligatory for all time, and would be the measure by which gentiles would be judged.

Introductory Matters

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Theodore J. Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Israelite Religion ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Scholarship

Chapter One articulates what is entailed in writing a comprehensive work on ancient Israelite religion. After surveying the massive nature of the task, it describes the scope of the present work. The concept of divinity is chosen as an organizing principle. The contents of the following ten chapters are then described in brief. These include: (2) the history of scholarship on ancient Israelite religion; (3) methodology; (4) El worship; (5) the iconography of the deity El; (6) the origin of the god Yahweh; (7) the iconography of Yahweh including the aniconic traditions; (8) how God is characterized as a warrior and a family deity; (9) how God is characterized as king and judge; (10) the holiness of God; (Ch. 11) conclusion. Chapters 8-10, in addition to describing divine traits, probe how divinity can be used as a lens with which to view the lived reality of religious experience.

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