And General Befuddlements

2021 ◽  
pp. 146-162
Author(s):  
Kristin Swenson
Keyword(s):  
Modern Reader ◽  
Literary Context ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Texts

This chapter discusses some of the oddities in biblical texts that continue to befuddle even scholars. Reasons include the vagaries of transmission and how far removed the modern reader—as well as the modern scholar—is from the cultural, historical, and linguistic contexts in which the Bible was written. Some of these puzzling texts may assume familiarity with customs or stories well known to the authors but lost to us now; others may be cases of stories missing significant parts; in still other cases, one might simply want to know more than the texts reveal. This chapter investigates the Bible’s range of translation possibilities, its literary context and forms, its historical contexts, and particular theological assumptions at work, including the fact that all the texts were collected and presented by believers, not disinterested reporters. The chapter then reveals that some possibilities for interpretation and understanding are stronger than others. Furthermore, even in those cases where the Bible's oddities defy experts, the possibilities for understanding, interpretation, and even application are not without limit.

Spinoza’s Biblical Criticism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jetze Touber
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Dutch Reformed ◽  
Biblical Criticism ◽  
Major Work ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Divine Election ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
The Way

Chapter 1 homes in on Spinoza as a Bible critic. Based on existing historiography, it parses the main relevant historical contexts in which Spinoza came to articulate his analysis of the Bible: the Sephardi community of Amsterdam, freethinking philosophers, and the Reformed Church. It concludes with a detailed examination of the Tractatus theologico-politicus, Spinoza’s major work of biblical criticism. Along the way I highlight themes for which Spinoza appealed to the biblical texts themselves: the textual unity of the Bible, and the biblical concepts of prophecy, divine election, and religious laws. The focus is on the biblical arguments for these propositions, and the philological choices that Spinoza made that enabled him to appeal to those specific biblical texts. This first chapter lays the foundation for the remainder of the book, which examines issues of biblical philology and interpretation discussed among the Dutch Reformed contemporaries of Spinoza.

Reading the Bible from Below in the Era of Globalization

2020 ◽  
pp. 111-128
Author(s):  
Rainer Kessler
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Asynchronous Development ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
The World ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
Globalized World

It is evident that the world of the Bible is pre-modern and thus distinct from the globalized civilization. This chronological gap challenges readers, whether they are feminist or not. Mainly three attitudes can be observed among scholarly and ordinary readers. For some readers, the Bible is a document of the losers of a historical process of modernization that already began in ancient Israel. For other readers, the Bible is outdated and of no use to confront the challenges of globalization. A third readerly position challenges both of these views. This essay offers four arguments to orient biblical readers in the contemporary globalized world. First, the essay posits that globalization is an asynchronous development. Thus, even today, most people living in the impoverished regions of the world face conditions similar to those dominant in the Bible. Second, the essay asserts that women are the first victims in biblical times and still nowadays. Third, the essay maintains that biblical texts display social relations that still unveil contemporary relations. Fourth, the essay suggests that intercultural Bible readings give hope, as they nurture biblical readings from “below” to strengthen people to overcome the fatal consequences of today’s globalization.

Teaching the Bible and Popular Media as Part of Contemporary Rape Culture

2020 ◽  
pp. 423-439
Author(s):  
Beatrice J. W. Lawrence
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Sexual Assault ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Rape Culture ◽  
Pedagogical Strategies ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Cultural Myths ◽  
Biblical Texts

This essay explores pedagogical strategies for addressing rape culture in biblical studies courses, employing Genesis 34 and Judges 19–21 as primary texts. The first section discusses the nature of popular culture and its impact on gender. The following four sections highlight cultural myths about sexual assault by focusing on significant biblical texts and incorporating aspects of popular media to facilitate conversations about rape culture. The conclusion summarizes the main points and encourage further studies that combine the study of popular media and biblical texts. Overall, the essay contributes to the reading and teaching of the Bible within contemporary rape culture so that students become critical interpreters of biblical texts, as they become resistant readers of past and present rape culture.

How American Newspaper Comic Strips Portray God, Angels, and Humans

2020 ◽  
pp. 398-413
Author(s):  
Leonard Greenspoon
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Online Media ◽  
Comic Strip ◽  
Comic Strips ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Texts

The comic strip as a mainstay of print and more recently online media is an American invention that began its development in the last decades of the 1800s. For many decades in the mid-twentieth century, comic strips were among the most widely disseminated forms of popular culture. With their succession of panels, pictures, and pithy perspectives, comics have come to cover an array of topics, including religion. This chapter looks at how the Bible (Old and New Testament) figures in comic strips, focusing specifically on three areas: the depiction of the divine, renderings of specific biblical texts, and how comic strips can function as sites in which religious identity and controversies play out. Relevant examples are drawn from several dozen strips. Special attention is also paid to a few, like Peanuts and BC, in which biblical imagery, ideology, and idiom are characteristically portrayed in distinctive ways.

Inspiration and Textual Preservation: A Catholic Essay on the Bible

Pro Ecclesia ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 106385122199391
Author(s):  
James B. Prothro
Keyword(s):  
Textual Criticism ◽  
Multiple Forms ◽  
Theological Interpretation ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Single Text ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
The Church

The doctrine of inspiration grounds Christian use and interpretation of Scripture, making this doctrine at once theoretical and practical. Many theoretical accounts, however, restrict the “inspired” status of biblical texts to a single text-form, which introduces problems for the practical use of Scripture in view of the texts’ historical multiformity. This article argues that such restrictions of inspiration are theologically problematic and unnecessary. Contextualizing inspiration within the divine revelatory economy, this article argues that the Spirit’s same goals and varied activities in the texts’ composition obtain also in their preservation, so that we can consider multiple forms of a text to be inspired while acknowledging that not all forms are inspired to equal ends in the history and life of the church. The article concludes with hermeneutical reflections affirming that we, today, can read the “word of the Lord” while also affirming the place of textual criticism in theological interpretation.

Moral Injury and Biblical Studies: An Early Sampling of Research and Emerging Trends

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-144
Author(s):  
Brad E. Kelle
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Moral Injury ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Emerging Trends ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
The World ◽  
Biblical Texts

Moral injury emerged within clinical psychology and related fields to refer to a non-physical wound (psychological and emotional pain and its effects) that results from the violation (by oneself or others) of a person’s deepest moral beliefs (about oneself, others, or the world). Originally conceived in the context of warfare, the notion has now expanded to include the morally damaging impact of various non-war-related experiences and circumstances. Since its inception, moral injury has been an intersectional and cross-disciplinary term and significant work has appeared in psychology, philosophy, medicine, spiritual/pastoral care, chaplaincy, and theology. Since 2015, biblical scholarship has engaged moral injury along two primary trajectories: 1) creative re-readings of biblical stories and characters informed by insights from moral injury; and 2) explorations of the postwar rituals and symbolic practices found in biblical texts and how they might connect to the felt needs of morally injured persons. These trajectories suggest that the engagement between the Bible and moral injury generates a two-way conversation in which moral injury can serve as a heuristic that brings new meanings out of biblical texts, and the critical study of biblical texts can contribute to the attempts to understand, identify, and heal moral injury.

scholarly journals Pentekostal hermeneutik

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Greger Andersson
Keyword(s):  
Christian Life ◽  
Pentecostal Movement ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Pentecostal Theology ◽  
Biblical Texts

Pentecostal hermeneutics: How do Swedish Pentecostal preachers interpret the Bible? In this article I present a study of Swedish Pentecostal preachers’ interpretations and applications of biblical texts. The study is based on 19 sermons that were published on the website “Söndag hela veckan”, January 19, 2020, by churches with “Pingst” (Pentecostal) in their name. The aim of the study was to contribute to the field of Pentecostal hermeneutics through an analysis of interpretative patterns in present day preachers’ sermons. The study shows that the preachers address a putative desire for a more devoted Christian life and that they do not practice exegetics in the sense of making historical readings searching for the original authors’ intention. Instead they apply the texts to the present here and now, thereby bringing the texts from them to us. This is done by means of generalizations, abstractions, and analogies in the form of parables and narratives. In this way the studied preachers endeavor to encourage and challenge their listeners to continue searching for the richer Christian life they long for. In relation to previous studies, I claim that the studied sermons constitute a special act of interpretation that cannot be compared with academic exegetics. I also suggest that the hermeneutics in the sermons cannot be described as narrative or, for example, poststructuralist. There are some marginal similarities with interpretations of fiction, but the sermons can on the whole be described as “a distinctive interpretive activity”. The message of the sermons is consistent with previous descriptions of Pentecostal theology, except that the preachers do not emphasize the story of the Pentecostal movement and, more remarkably, that traditional eschatology hardly has any place in the sermons.

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