The Bible Culturally Speaking: The Role of Culture in the Production, Presentation and Interpretation of God's Word

2009 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 282-283
Author(s):  
Robert Vajko
Keyword(s):  
The Bible ◽  
God's Word

Witches and Forgers

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Mandelbrote
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Republic Of Letters ◽  
The Bible ◽  
God's Word ◽  
1 Samuel ◽  
The Witch

Scepticism and loyalty represent the poles of van Dale’s career. Two contexts have been mentioned as relevant here: the seventeenth-century attack on magic and superstition, and the circles of friendship that created a contemporary Republic of Letters. This chapter evaluates both contexts, as well as others that may throw light on his relatively neglected attitude to the text of the Bible. It brings into focus two important intellectual episodes: his treatment of the account of the Witch of Endor (1 Samuel 28:3–25), and his engagement with Hellenistic sources relating to the text of the Old Testament, especially to the miraculous composition of the Septuagint. These issues brought van Dale to ask questions about God’s Word. The chapter explores the limits of his scepticism, the extent of his scholarship, and the role of friendship and isolation in his development. Finally, it draws attention to his place in contemporary Mennonite debates.

Scripture

2019 ◽  
pp. 121-136
Author(s):  
Michael Mawson
Keyword(s):  
Main Part ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
The Bible ◽  
God's Word ◽  
Biblical Texts

This chapter outlines the contours of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s approach to Scripture as God’s word and witness to Christ. It begins by examining the role of the Bible in Bonhoeffer’s own life and work, emphasising two of his main influences: Karl Barth and Martin Luther. The main part of the chapter turns to Bonhoeffer’s ways of attending to biblical texts in their historicity and substance. Finally, the chapter suggests that Bonhoeffer’s approach is marked by a posture of reading the Bible ‘against ourselves’—that is, to remain open to the Bible as God’s own cruciform word and witness.

Africa and the Biblical Period

1971 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 483-500 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert A. Bennett
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Theological Education ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
Black Theology ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Divine Revelation ◽  
Association Of Theological Schools ◽  
The Bible ◽  
God's Word

The Holy Bible represents the literary deposit of the Hebrew people's faith in God's intervention within human history to liberate them and mankind from physical and spiritual bondage. Even though this divine revelation was given to a specific people at a specific time within history, its power and hoped-for fulfillment continues to be the basis of religious faith for Jew and Christian alike. Consequently, the most potent aspect of the Scriptures for the Black community in Africa and the Americas is its present meaning and revelation for us in our struggle today for physical and spiritual liberation. The particularity of the mode of biblical revelation — the witness of a specific people at a particular point in history — suggests that the medium is also the message, namely, that God's word is intended for identifiable situations rather than to be taken as amorphous, generalized truth having little to do with the specifics of the human condition. The American Association of Theological Schools' journal, Theology Today, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Spring, 1970) plus Supplement, turns its attention to this question of the divine revelation and a specific human situation under the title of “The Black Religious Experience and Theological Education.” James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation (New York: Lippincott, 1970), offers a forceful argument for the biblical basis of the present black social and spiritual revolution. See also, J. Deotis Roberts, Liberation and Reconciliation: A Black Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1971). However, while the hermeneutical task of proclaiming God's word to contemporary ears is of the greater importance — it is ontologically prior, there is also the necessity — chronologically prior — of adequately describing the Biblical word on the basis of its own setting. Dean Krister Stendahl has given classic statement to the fundamental role of the descriptive process, of what the Bible “meant,” before we take up what it “means,” in his article on “Contemporary Biblical Theology,” Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. I (New York: Abingdon, 1962). Black consciousness is ultimately informed and inspired by the biblical message, but it also has some questions which it would address to Holy Scripture. Among these questions are those concerning the African presence in the Bible and the role of Africa in the period of biblical revelation.

The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Biblical Interpretation

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Church History ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Bible ◽  
God's Word ◽  
Sacred Scripture ◽  
The Church

The Bible was the lifeblood of virtually every aspect of the life of the early churches. The essays in this Handbook explore a wide array of themes related to the reception, canonization, interpretation, uses, and legacies of the Bible in early Christianity. A first group of studies examines the material text transmitted, translated, and invested with authority, and the very conceptualization of sacred Scripture as God’s word for the Church. A second group looks at the culture and disciplines or science of interpretation in representative exegetical traditions. A third group of essays addresses the remarkably diverse literary and non-literary modes of interpretation, while a fourth group canvasses the communal background and foreground of early Christian interpretation, where the Bible was paramount in shaping normative Christian identity. A fifth group assesses the determinative role of the Bible in major developments and theological controversies in the life of the churches. A sixth group returns to interpretation proper and samples how certain abiding motifs from within scriptural revelation were treated by major Christian expositors. A seventh and final group of studies follows up by examining how early Christian exegesis was retrieved and critically evaluated in later periods of church history. Along the way, readers will be oriented to the major resources for, and issues in, the critical study of early Christian biblical interpretation.

The Quranic Jesus: Prophet and Scapegoat

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 183-220
Author(s):  
John Ranieri
Keyword(s):  
Major Theme ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Christian Understanding ◽  
The Way

A major theme in René Girard’s work involves the role of the Bible in exposing the scapegoating practices at the basis of culture. The God of the Bible is understood to be a God who takes the side of victims. The God of the Qur’an is also a defender of victims, an idea that recurs throughout the text in the stories of messengers and prophets. In a number of ways, Jesus is unique among the prophets mentioned in the Qur’an. It is argued here that while the Quranic Jesus is distinctly Islamic, and not a Christian derivative, he functions in the Qur’an in a way analogous to the role Jesus plays in the gospels. In its depiction of Jesus, the Qur’an is acutely aware of mimetic rivalry, scapegoating, and the God who comes to the aid of the persecuted. Despite the significant differences between the Christian understanding of Jesus as savior and the way he is understood in the Qur’an, a Girardian interpretation of the Qur’anic Jesus will suggest ways in which Jesus can be a bridge rather than an obstacle in Christian/Muslim dialogue.

Scripturalizing and the Second Amendment

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosamond C. Rodman
Keyword(s):  
White Women ◽  
White Children ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Second Amendment ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Status ◽  
Us Constitution ◽  
Half Decade

Expanding beyond the text of the Bible, this chapter explores instead a piece of political scripture, namely the Second Amendment of the US Constitution. Over the last half-decade, the Second Amendment has come to enjoy the status of a kind of scripture-within-scripture. Vaulted to a much more prominent status than it had held in the first 150 years or so of its existence, and having undergone a remarkable shift in what most Americans think it means, the Second Amendment provides an opportunity to examine the linguistic, racial, and gendered modes by which these changes were effected, paying particular attention to the ways in which white children and white women were conscripted into the role of the masculine, frontier-defending US citizen.

The Power of the Cross and Cruciform Devices in the Carolingian World

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ildar Garipzanov
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Manuscript Culture ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Early Byzantine

This chapter shows the unquestionable role of the sign of the cross as the primary sign of divine authority in Carolingian material and manuscript culture, a role partly achieved at the expense of the diminishing symbolic importance of the late antique christograms. It also analyses the appearance of new cruciform devices in the ninth century as well as the adaptation of the early Byzantine tradition of cruciform invocational monograms in Carolingian manuscript culture, as exemplified in the Bible of San Paolo fuori le mura and several other religious manuscripts. The final section examines some Carolingian carmina figurata and, most importantly, Hrabanus Maurus’ In honorem sanctae crucis, as a window into Carolingian graphicacy and the paramount importance of the sign of the cross as its ultimate organizing principle.

Humanism, the Bible, and Erasmus’s Moral World Order

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xavier Tubau
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Just War ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
World Order ◽  
Moral Order ◽  
Moral Formation ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Moral World

This chapter sets Erasmus’s ideas on morality and the responsibility of rulers with regard to war in their historical context, showing their coherence and consistency with the rest of his philosophy. First, there is an analysis of Erasmus’s criticisms of the moral and legal justifications of war at the time, which were based on the just war theory elaborated by canon lawyers. This is followed by an examination of his ideas about the moral order in which the ruler should be educated and political power be exercised, with the role of arbitration as the way to resolve conflicts between rulers. As these two closely related questions are developed, the chapter shows that the moral formation of rulers, grounded in Christ’s message and the virtue politics of fifteenth-century Italian humanism, is the keystone of the moral world order that Erasmus proposes for his contemporaries.

“In the Bible Belt:” The role of religion in HIV care and prevention for transgender people in the United States South

2021 ◽  
Vol 70 ◽  
pp. 102613
Author(s):  
Darius Scott ◽  
Nastacia M. Pereira ◽  
Sayward E. Harrison ◽  
Meagan Zarwell ◽  
Kamla Sanasi-Bhola ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Hiv Care ◽  
Bible Belt ◽  
Transgender People ◽  
United States South ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Role Of Religion

scholarly journals History and theory of Scripture translations

2008 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Claude Loba-Mkole
Keyword(s):  
Frames Of Reference ◽  
Functional Equivalence ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Bible Translation ◽  
Bible Translations ◽  
The Bible ◽  
History And Theory

This article argues for the importance of Bible translations through its historical achievements and theoretical frames of reference. The missionary expansion of Christianity owes its very being to translations. The early Christian communities knew the Bible through the LXX translations while churches today still continue to use various translations. Translations shape Scripture interpretations, especially when a given interpretation depends on a particular translation. A particular interpretation can also influence a given translation. The article shows how translation theories have been developed to clarify and how the transaction source-target is culturally handled. The articles discuss some of these “theoretical frames”, namely the functional equivalence, relevance, literary functional equivalence and intercultural mediation. By means of a historical overview and a reflection on Bible translation theories the article aims to focus on the role of Africa in translation history.

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