On the Eve of Spinoza

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk van Miert
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Textual Criticism ◽  
Linguistic Analysis ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
The Status ◽  
Historical Contextualization ◽  
Radical Ideas

Chapter 8 demonstrates how biblical scholarship became part of normal public discourse in the course of the 1650s and 1660s. Discussions on the Sabbath, on usury, on long hair, on vernacular translations, on chronology, on the Septuagint all conspired to normalize textual criticism, linguistic analysis, and historical contextualization as ways of approaching the Bible, in juxtaposition with theological and dogmatic readings. Meanwhile, such theological discussions raged particularly in the 1660s, with pamphlet wars over newly voiced radical ideas. Together, all such disputes made very fertile ground for Spinoza’s radical biblical scholarship, which took its lead from precisely the philology developed and was made popular by Scaliger, the translators of the States’ Translation, Gomarus, Heinsius, Grotius, Saumaise, La Peyrère, Isaac Vossius, and a host of other participants in what had become a highly charged public debate over the status of the biblical text.

CODEX B 19A: STAGES OF LEGITIMATION OF THE MASORET BIBLE ANCIENT EXAMPLE

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-42
Author(s):  
Sergey V. GRIGORISHIN ◽  
Ekaterina V. NOVOKRESHCHENNYKH
Keyword(s):  
Research Methodology ◽  
Textual Criticism ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Philosophical Hermeneutics ◽  
Effect Relationship ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Status ◽  
Rabbinical Literature ◽  
Single Standard ◽  
The Moment

This article examines the cultural and historical circumstances of the appearance and introduction into the scientific circulation of the oldest manuscript code of the Hebrew Bible — the Leningrad Code B 19A. The authors of the article make an attempt to restore the contextual connections of the Code with Jewish philosophy and biblical textology. The concept of the research is built on the basis of genealogical analysis, which opened up the opportunity to first analyze the stages of legitimation of Codex B 19A that are closest to the present, and then move into the depth of chronology, right up to the moment of creation of the studied text. The result of the study was the identification and explication of internal links between the Codex B 19A, Masoretic schools, Rabbanites, Karaites and, finally, medieval critics of the biblical text. The research methodology is based on the principles of philosophical hermeneutics, the comparative historical approach of the genealogical method as applied to textual criticism. Revealing the cause-and-effect relationship in the legitimization of the Masoretic Bible showed that the need to create a single standard for the sacred text arose already by the middle of the 8th century, the time of the emergence of the Karaite movement. The refusal of the Karaites to submit to the authority of classical rabbinical literature led to a rethinking of the biblical text. Together with the status of the main sacred book, the Bible turned out to be a text around which philological, philosophical and theological discussions became possible. Awareness of the fact that the biblical text has different interpretations led the Rabbanites and Karaites to the conclusion that it was necessary to create a philological standard for the Bible. For this reason, the authority of the Masoretes as specialists in the vocalization of the text, the direct creators of the vocalization system, has sharply increased. The Ben Asher family of Tiberias emerged as the main Masoretic school, and its last representative, Aaron Ben Asher, became the most authoritative Masoretic. Aaron Ben Asher owns the Masorah system introduced in the Aleppo Codex and copied in the Leningrad Codex B 19A. Maimonides was the first among Jewish philosophers to appreciate the textual achievements of Aaron Ben Asher, which significantly raised the authority of the Masoret in rabbinic and Karaite intellectual circles.

Returning To China: Biblical Interpretation in Postcolonial Hong Kong

1999 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Archie C.C. Lee
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Hybrid Identity ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
New Framework

AbstractThe paper aims to construct a new framework for biblical studies from the context of postcolonial Hong Kong. While present biblical scholarship has largely depended on historical-critical exegesis, biblical scholars of Asia have begun to conceive a different approach to the Bible, because of not only a new context of reading, but also a radically different cultural-political location of the reader. This location, as it is now being formulated, is a reading between East and West, between the dominant interpretation and scholarship of the formerly colonial and Western cultures and the newly arising consciousness of emerging postcolonial identities in the histories and cultures of Asia. After about some 150 years of British colonial rule, the identity of being a people of Hong Kong is highly hybridised. It is a hybrid identity of being cultural Chinese and yet pragmatically British, both a strong sense of identification with China and an unexplainable fear of being national Chinese. Such location of a reader transforms one's understanding of a biblical text such as Isaiah 56-66 and sheds a new light on the meaning of the return in some of its major passages.

Exegesis seeking appropriation; appropriation seeking exegesis: Re-reading 2 Samuel 13:1−22 in search of redemptive masculinities

2013 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald West
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Critical Distance ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Biblical Exegesis ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Common Concern ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Traditional Sense ◽  
2 Samuel

Exegesis in the traditional sense is concerned with generating as much (scientific) detail about a biblical text as possible. Whilst the two primary modes of biblical exegesis � socio-historical and literary-semiotic � do this differently, they share a common concern for the detail of the text as an ancient artefact. Critical distance is a key concept here, with the exegetes bracketing (for a moment) their own contexts and concerns. However, such bracketing is impossible to sustain, and so the exegetes� interests (shaped by their contexts and concerns) �leak� into the act of exegesis. Most exegetes today recognise this leakage, and whilst some still view such leakage as contaminating the exegesis, others, including the tradition of African biblical scholarship, actively identify the contextual concerns they bring to the task of exegesis, both respecting the detail of the text and desiring to be accountable to their contexts in which the Bible is a significant text. This article explored some of the dimensions of forms of exegesis that actively seek appropriation, using 2 Samuel 13:1�22 as an example. In this case, the article analysed the contextual shift from a focus on women as the victims of sexual violence to an emerging emphasis on masculinities. Reading the same text from these different contextual concerns �activates� particular details of the text, and so both draw on different elements of the text and thus guides the gaze of exegesis.

Defamiliarizing the popular image of the bible in some contemporary rewritings in english

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Ewa Rychter
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Status ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Popular Image ◽  
Fervent Believer

Abstract This paper focuses on the ways some recent British and Irish rewritings of the Bible estrange what has become the publicly accepted and dominant image of the biblical text. Recently, the Bible has been given the status of “home scripture” (Sherwood, Yvonne. 2012. Biblical Blaspheming: Trials of the Sacred for a Secular Age. Cambridge: CUP) and become a domesticated and conservative text, a rather placid cultural/literary monument, an important foundation of democracy, a venerable religious document judged more tolerant and liberal than other scriptures. Though the Bible used to be perceived as an explosive text, peppered with potentially offensive passages, today its enmity is neutralised either by linking the Bible with ancient times or by relating it to people’s religious beliefs and by entrenching its more scandalous parts within the discourse of tolerance. It is such an anodyne image of the Bible that the biblical rewritings of Roberts, Winterson, Barnes, Crace, Pullman, Tóibin, Alderman, Diski defamiliarize. By showing biblical events through the eyes of various non-standard focalizers, those novels disrupt the formulaic patterns of the contemporary perception of the Bible. It is through these strange perspectives that we observe the critical moment when the overall meaning and the role of the biblical text is established and the biblical story is actually written down. Importantly, it is also the moment when somebody moulds the scripture according to their ideas and glosses over all the complexities, violence and immorality related to the events the biblical text describes. Also, contemporary biblical rewritings defamiliarize the currently popular image of the Bible – that of a whitewashed text which inculcates morality, conserves social order and teaches love and tolerance, by employing images of disintegration, dirt and contagion as well as by constructing a figure of a fervent believer in the Bible and its ideas.

scholarly journals Overtuigend gezag. De schriftvisie en wijze van omgang met de Schrift van Alvin Plantinga

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-152
Author(s):  
P. De Vries
Keyword(s):  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
Christian Belief ◽  
Alvin Plantinga ◽  
Cognitive Faculty ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
The Status ◽  
Sensus Divinitatis

This article analyzes and evaluates Alvin Plantinga view of the status and authority of the Bible. It shows the relevance of two or more kinds of Christian Biblical scholarship Plantinga develops in Warranted Christian Belief. Plantinga argues that we can speak of knowledge when there is a warrant.Cognitive faculties include a sense of experience, the sensus divinitatis, and the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. A properly functioning cognitive faculty produces knowledge. The Christian belief that the Bible is the Word of God is not just a conviction but knowledge, knowledge that leads one to glorify and enjoy God.

scholarly journals Michael Riffaterre’s ‘Interpretant’ Reinterpreted

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-277
Author(s):  
Mateusz Andrzej Krawczyk
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
The Many

Bible exegesis is dealing at times with the accusation of superficial implementation of methods from various fields of science and of disrespect for the theological character of the Bible in hermeneutical and methodological presuppositions. This accusation can be directed also towards the many uses of intertextuality in biblical scholarship. The article challenges this situation and proposes what has been called a ‘theological model of intertextual interpretation’ – an approach based on literary theory of the ‘interpretant’ as understood by Michaele Riffaterre – that tends to respect more fully the theological character of the biblical text. After a detailed description of the approach and its methodological elements, the second part of the article deals with an example of the application of thereof – an intertextual exegesis of Rom 2:7 and Wis 2:23; Wis 6:18.19.

Application of New Epistemological Theories for the Interpretation of the Biblical Text

2019 ◽  
pp. 213-225
Author(s):  
Алексей Андреев
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Ultimate Truth ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Epistemology Of Science ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
True Meaning ◽  
The Right

В настоящей статье рассматривается возможность применения новых эпистемологических теорий, разработанных такими исследователями, как Ч. С. Пирс, А. Тарский, К. Поппер, У. В. О. Куайн, для интерпретации библейского текста. В современную эпоху распространилось представление о том, что текст Писания может заключать в себе неограниченное число смыслов, которые могут быть одновременно противоположны друг другу, при этом ни один из них не имеет права претендовать на исключительность и окончательную истинность. Данная ситуация породила определенную стагнацию в современной библейской науке. Как доказывается в данной статье, из подобной ситуации «интерпретационной анархии» возможно выйти, если применить ко множеству библейских герменевтических теорий принципы, разработанные в современной эпистемологии науки. Особое внимание в статье уделяется возможности имплементации теории роста научного знания, предложенной К. Поппером. В статье доказывается, что применение данной модели при анализе множества различных интерпретационных стратегий, разработанных исследователями Библии, позволяет элиминировать ненаучные интерпретации, а также создать возможность конкурентной дискуссии между наиболее правдоподобными гипотезами, что, в свою очередь, должно стимулировать рост научного знания в современной библейской науке. The article discusses the possibility of applying new epistemological theories developed by researchers such as Ch. S. Pierce, A. Tarsky, K. Popper, W. V. O. Quine, for the interpretation of the biblical text. In the Modern period, the idea that the Bible contains only one «true» meaning - the idea of the empirical author of a biblical text - was established. In the present situatuin, which can conventionally be called postmodernism, the idea has spread that the text of Scripture can contain an unlimited number of meanings which can be simultaneously opposed to each other, and none of them has the right to claim exclusivity and to be ultimate truth. This situation created a certain stagnation in modern biblical scholarship. As this article proves, it is possible to get out of such a situation of «interpretative anarchy» if we apply the principles developed in modern epistemology of science to biblical hermeneutic theories. Particular attention is paid to the possibility of implementing the theory of growth of scientific knowledge, proposed by K. Popper. The article proves that the use of this model in the analysis of variety of different interpretational strategies developed by Biblical scholars allows to eliminate unscientific interpretations, as well as to create an opportunity for competitive discussion between the most plausible hypotheses, which in turn should stimulate the growth of scientific knowledge in modern Biblical studies.

The Emancipation of Biblical Philology in the Dutch Republic, 1590-1670

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk van Miert
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Textual Criticism ◽  
Dutch Republic ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Renaissance Humanism ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
External Development

This book argues that the application of tools, developed in the study of ancient Greek and Latin authors, to the Bible aimed to stabilize the biblical text but had the unintentional effect that the text grew more and more unstable. Spinoza capitalized on this tradition in his notorious Theological-Political Treatise, published in the Dutch Republic in 1670. But the foundations on which his radical biblical scholarship is built were laid by Reformed philologists who started from the hermeneutical assumption that philology was the maidservant of reformed dogma. On this basis, they pushed biblical scholarship to the centre of historical studies during the first half of the seventeenth century. The monograph shows how Jacob Arminius, Franciscus Gomarus, the translators and revisers of the States’ Translation (the Dutch Authorized Version), Daniel Heinsius, Hugo Grotius, Claude Saumaise, Isaac de La Peyrère, and Isaac Vossius all drew on techniques developed by classical scholars of Renaissance humanism, notably Joseph Scaliger, who devoted themselves to the study of manuscripts, (oriental) languages, and ancient history. These scholars’ accomplishments in textual criticism, the analysis of languages, and the reconstruction of political and cultural historical contexts are assessed and compared, and it is demonstrated that their methods were closely linked. Apart from this internal analysis, the book considers the external development of biblical philology. It became the cutting-edge science of the day and grew from an arcane research specialism into a fashionable science for scholars who wanted to share in the fame of being a universal critic.

The Rise and Fall of Biblical Perspicuity: Remonstrants and the Transition toward Modern Exegesis

2014 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith D. Stanglin
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Linguistic Analysis ◽  
Scientific Study ◽  
Biblical Exegesis ◽  
Authorial Intention ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Historical Contextualization ◽  
The Church

The purpose of this article is to examine the biblical exegesis of two seventeenth-century Dutch Remonstrant theologians, Simon Episcopius (1583–1643) and Étienne de Courcelles (1586–1659). Their hermeneutic was characterized by an emphasis on the perspicuity, or clarity, of scripture through the use of reason, combined with the marginalization of spiritual meanings in favor of the literal-grammatical sense alone. In both of these emphases, they went beyond their theological forebear, Jacob Arminius (1559–1609), and adumbrated the methods of later Enlightenment thinkers. The stress on perspicuity and authorial intention led to increasing fascination with text criticism, linguistic analysis, and historical contextualization, highly rarefied disciplines that became prerequisites for correct, scholarly biblical interpretation. This development also pushed the question of biblical fallibility closer to the center of the doctrine of scripture. As a consequence of the philological, scientific study of the Bible, biblical interpretation was relegated to the field of scholarship and doctrinal formulation to the church. The original ideal of biblical perspicuity resulted in biblical obscurity.

Laudian Foxe-hunting? William Laud and the status of John Foxe in the 1630s

1997 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 329-342
Author(s):  
Damian Nussbaum
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Close Association ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
John Foxe ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Status ◽  
Important Position ◽  
Acts And Monuments

When the prosecutors of William Laud were seeking damning evidence against the Archbishop, they seized upon the fate of John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments in the 1630s. They produced a catalogue of abuses, occasions on which Laud had attacked, impugned, or banned the volumes. In his report of the trial, Prynne gave these cases of Foxe-hunting an important position, directly after the accusation that Laud had hindered the distribution of Bibles. The prominence given to Foxe, and the close association with the Bible, were typical of the ways the martyrologist was handled in the early seventeenth century, and tell us much about the regard in which he was held within the English Church. His Book of Martyrs had attained the status of a quasi-biblical text. His works, invoked with an almost scriptural reverence, were appealed to as an unquestionable authority on matters of ecclesiastical history and Protestant tradition.

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