The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Narrative

2015 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Narrative Criticism ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
Biblical Narratives ◽  
Narrative Constructions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Aesthetic Characteristics ◽  
Time Frames ◽  
Relationship Of

Comprised of contributions from scholars across the globe, The Oxford Handbook to Biblical Narrative offers critical treatments of both the Bible’s narratives and topics related to the Bible’s narrative constructions. The volume’s fifty-one chapters fall into five sections: The first section covers the general work of biblical narrative, the history of biblical narrative criticism, the socio-historical influences on biblical narrative, and issues of narrative genre. The second section focuses on the biblical narratives themselves, from Genesis to Revelation, providing both overviews of literary-critical treatments of individual biblical books and innovative readings of biblical narratives informed by a variety of methodological approaches and theoretical frameworks. The third section targets how various kinds of bodies are constructed in biblical narrative. The fourth section explores the natural, social, and conceptual landscapes of biblical story worlds. The final section raises questions of reading, particularly the relationship of culture to biblical interpretation and the ethical responsibilities of readers. The volume as a whole combines literary sensitivities with the traditional historical and sociological questions of biblical criticism and puts biblical studies into intentional conversation with other disciplines in the humanities. It reframes biblical literature in a way that highlights its aesthetic characteristics, its ethical and religious appeal, its organic qualities as communal literature, its witness to various forms of social and political negotiation, and its uncanny power to affect readers and hearers across disparate time-frames and global communities.

Is The Bible Historical? The Challenge of ‘minimalism’ for Biblical Scholars and Historians

2004 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas L. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Academic Institutions ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Narratives ◽  
History Of

This article examines the attempts to deflect attention away from issues that I first raised over thirty years ago, and which have not sufficiently been addressed since. It argues for the necessity of distinguishing between the interpretation of the Bible, which is the task of those engaged in Biblical Studies, and the attempts to write a history of the region in the pre-biblical period, which is the domain of historians and particularly archaeologists. ‘Minimalism’ in Biblical Studies refers to a trend that, in the estimation of its opponents, plays down the historical character of the biblical narratives. Having illustrated some of the hostility towards Minimalism exhibited by some biblical scholars, academic institutions and organisations, and propagandists, through personal attacks, ridicule, dismissiveness, etc. this essay argues the case for it. The underlying issue, of course, relates to the question of the writing of the history of Palestine today, and the implications of such an enterprise.

Biblical Narrative Analysis from the New Criticism to the New Narratology

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen D. Moore
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Narrative Criticism ◽  
New Criticism ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Classical Narratology ◽  
The One

This chapter chronicles the emergence and consolidation of biblical narrative criticism in the 1970s and 1980s and traces its development down to the present. It details the debts of narrative criticism to Anglo-American New Criticism, on the one hand (a debt exemplified by the work of Robert Alter), and to French structural narratology, on the other hand (a debt exemplified by the work of Adele Berlin, Alan Culpepper, and others). It also describes early alternatives (exemplified by the work of Mieke Bal) to the formalist model of biblical narrative criticism. It then recounts the movement in secular narrative theory from “classical” narratology to “postclassical” narratologies that began in the late 1980s, structural narratology gradually being transformed by such discourses as poststructuralism, feminism, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, and cognitive psychology. The final section ponders the possible contours of a postclassical narrative criticism in biblical studies.

The Commanding Faces of Biblical Stories

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary A. Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Paul Ricoeur ◽  
Narrative Ethics ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Ethical Responsibility ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
Biblical Narratives ◽  
Paul Ricœur ◽  
The Face ◽  
Wayne Booth

This chapter describes a variety of self-identified ethical-critical readings of biblical narrative. The essay situates narrative ethics in relation to the “turn to ethics” traversing literary, philosophical, and biblical studies. Narrative ethics is seen as a multidisciplinary critical and creative response to contested assumptions about the nature of self, society, and ethical responsibility and the urgent need to assess the ethical impact biblical narratives and their readings have on readers. Biblical readings are discussed in terms of their philosophical, ethical, and rhetorical influences, in particular the Aristotelian virtue ethics and phenomenological/hermeneutical traditions. The contributions of Wayne Booth, Paul Ricoeur, and Emmanuel Levinas’s are traced. The chapter concludes with a narrative-ethical reading of Luke 10:38–42 using Levinas’s notions of the “face” and “excessive responsibility” to demonstrate ethical engagement with a problematic text and its commentators.

Abraham in London, Marburg-Istanbul and Israel: Between Theocracy and Democracy, Ancient Text and Modern State

2008 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-153
Author(s):  
Yvonne Sherwood
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Ancient Text ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
The Core ◽  
Genesis 22 ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Sacrifice ◽  
Political Figure

AbstractThis article examines three occurrences of the sacrifice of Isaac in relatively recent cultural and political histories: the case of Godden versus Hales (England, 1686); Erich Auerbach's 'Odysseus' Scar' in Mimesis (Istanbul [Marburg], 1943-1945); and the use of the akedah as a political figure for the modern Israeli nation state. In these three very different cases the biblical narrative undergoes a theological-political translation and the God who issues the exceptional command to sacrifice becomes a figure for the sovereign and/or the state. Each political translation also calls forth critical responses in which the core question becomes the relationship of divine monarchy/state authority to freedom, or, to put it another way, of democracy or would-be 'democracy' to 'theocracy' and its various modern political correlates. By analysing these translations and responses, this essay explores how the questions as it were forced on us by Genesis 22 are not just religious, though they can be understood through the idioms of the religious. It concludes by asking whether such theological-political translations could be relevant to 'Biblical Studies Proper' as a more expansive discipline looks outwards to questions of religion, politics and ethics.

The relationship of the scleractinian corals to the rugose corals

Paleobiology ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 6 (02) ◽  
pp. 146-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
William A. Oliver
Keyword(s):  
Critical Points ◽  
Scleractinian Corals ◽  
Convincing Evidence ◽  
Early Triassic ◽  
Rugose Corals ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Biologic Factors

The Mesozoic-Cenozoic coral Order Scleractinia has been suggested to have originated or evolved (1) by direct descent from the Paleozoic Order Rugosa or (2) by the development of a skeleton in members of one of the anemone groups that probably have existed throughout Phanerozoic time. In spite of much work on the subject, advocates of the direct descent hypothesis have failed to find convincing evidence of this relationship. Critical points are:(1) Rugosan septal insertion is serial; Scleractinian insertion is cyclic; no intermediate stages have been demonstrated. Apparent intermediates are Scleractinia having bilateral cyclic insertion or teratological Rugosa.(2) There is convincing evidence that the skeletons of many Rugosa were calcitic and none are known to be or to have been aragonitic. In contrast, the skeletons of all living Scleractinia are aragonitic and there is evidence that fossil Scleractinia were aragonitic also. The mineralogic difference is almost certainly due to intrinsic biologic factors.(3) No early Triassic corals of either group are known. This fact is not compelling (by itself) but is important in connection with points 1 and 2, because, given direct descent, both changes took place during this only stage in the history of the two groups in which there are no known corals.

Meat without Animals: Outcast Objects and the Improvement of London

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ted Geier
Keyword(s):  
Animal Rights ◽  
Legal Reform ◽  
Meat Production ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Covers the long history of the Smithfield animal market and legal reform in London. Shows the relationship of civic improvement tropes, including animal rights, to animal erasure in the form of new foodstuffs from distant meat production sites. The reduction of lives to commodities also informed public abasement of the butchers.

From Competition to Cooperation: A History of Canada–US National Park Relations

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terence Young ◽  
Alan MacEachern ◽  
Lary Dilsaver
Keyword(s):  
National Parks ◽  
National Park ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Us ◽  
Park Service ◽  
Settler Societies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Flow Of Information ◽  
The Relationship

This essay explores the evolving international relationship of the two national park agencies that in 1968 began to offer joint training classes for protected-area managers from around the world. Within the British settler societies that dominated nineteenth century park-making, the United States’ National Park Service (NPS) and Canada’s National Parks Branch were the most closely linked and most frequently cooperative. Contrary to campfire myths and nationalist narratives, however, the relationship was not a one-way flow of information and motivation from the US to Canada. Indeed, the latter boasted a park bureaucracy before the NPS was established. The relationship of the two nations’ park leaders in the half century leading up to 1968 demonstrates the complexity of defining the influences on park management and its diffusion from one country to another.

Health and Medicine in the Islamic Tradition

1990 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-90
Author(s):  
Dennis Michael Warren
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Medical Care ◽  
Human Health ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
Medical Tradition ◽  
Islamic Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

The late Dr. Fazlur Rahman, Harold H. Swift Distinguished Service Professor of Islamic Thought at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, has written this book as number seven in the series on Health/Medicine and the Faith Traditions. This series has been sponsored as an interfaith program by The Park Ridge Center, an Institute for the study of health, faith, and ethics. Professor Rahman has stated that his study is "an attempt to portray the relationship of Islam as a system of faith and as a tradition to human health and health care: What value does Islam attach to human well-being-spiritual, mental, and physical-and what inspiration has it given Muslims to realize that value?" (xiii). Although he makes it quite clear that he has not attempted to write a history of medicine in Islam, readers will find considerable depth in his treatment of the historical development of medicine under the influence of Islamic traditions. The book begins with a general historical introduction to Islam, meant primarily for readers with limited background and understanding of Islam. Following the introduction are six chapters devoted to the concepts of wellness and illness in Islamic thought, the religious valuation of medicine in Islam, an overview of Prophetic Medicine, Islamic approaches to medical care and medical ethics, and the relationship of the concepts of birth, contraception, abortion, sexuality, and death to well-being in Islamic culture. The basis for Dr. Rahman's study rests on the explication of the concepts of well-being, illness, suffering, and destiny in the Islamic worldview. He describes Islam as a system of faith with strong traditions linking that faith with concepts of human health and systems for providing health care. He explains the value which Islam attaches to human spiritual, mental, and physical well-being. Aspects of spiritual medicine in the Islamic tradition are explained. The dietary Jaws and other orthodox restrictions are described as part of Prophetic Medicine. The religious valuation of medicine based on the Hadith is compared and contrasted with that found in the scientific medical tradition. The history of institutionalized medical care in the Islamic World is traced to awqaf, pious endowments used to support health services, hospices, mosques, and educational institutions. Dr. Rahman then describes the ...

Light and Sensitivity: Love in the Time of the Daguerreotype

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Czeczot
Keyword(s):  
Male Gaze ◽  
History Of Photography ◽  
Sensitive Material ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Passive Object

The article deals with the love of Zygmunt Krasiński to Delfina Potocka. The point of departure is the poet's definition of love as looking and reads Krasiński's relationship with his beloved in the context of two phenomena that fascinated him at the time: daguerreotype and magnetism. The invention of the daguerreotype in which the history of photography and spiritism comes together becomes a pretext for the formulation of a new concept of love and the loving subject. In the era of painting the woman was treated as a passive object of the male gaze; photography reverses this scheme of power. Love ceases to be a static relationship of the subject in love and the passive object – the beloved. The philosophy of developing photographs (and invoking phantoms) allows Krasiński - the writing subject to become like a light-sensitive material that reveals the image of the beloved.

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