On the Aquedah in Modern Philosophy

2007 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-108
Author(s):  
Ze'ev Levy
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Final Conclusion ◽  
Biblical Story ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Fear And Trembling ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Do So

AbstractThe story of the Aquedah represents one of the most moving stories of the Bible. Most modern discussions on it take their point of departure from Soren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling. I shall do so too in this essay, which focuses on the relations between ethics and religious belief and tries to show that Kierkegaard misinterpreted the story. The inquiry analyzes philosophical responses to the Aquedah from Philo and Jewish and non-Jewish philosophers until the present. It underscores its paradoxical implications, including a structuralist analysis and comparison of the Aquedah with the biblical story of Yephta's daughter. The final conclusion asserts that what Kierkegaard extolled, Judaism condemns as sacrilege.

Part Four

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert J. Fogelin
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Do So ◽  
As If

Philo presses arguments as if drawn from a Pyrrhonist handbook: attempts to put religious belief on a rational footing fail to do so, and even more, they undercut the very commitments they are intended to establish.

scholarly journals The Apocalyptic Interlude: Revealing Death in Kinshasa

2005 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 11-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Filip De Boeck
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Book Of Revelation ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Collective Imagination ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Point Of Reference

Abstract:Temporality in contemporary Kinshasa is of a very specific eschatological kind and takes its point of departure in the Bible, and more particularly in the Book of Revelation, which has become an omnipresent point of reference in Kinshasa's collective imagination. The lived-in time of everyday life in Kinshasa is projected against the canvas of the completion of everything, a completion which will be brought about by God. As such, the Book of Revelation is not only about doom and destruction, it is essentially also a book of hope. Yet the popular understanding of the Apocalypse very much centers on the omnipotent presence of evil. This article focuses on the impact of millennialism on the Congolese experience, in which daily reality is constantly translated into mythical and prophetic terms as apocalyptic interlude.

Global Thefts of Biblical Narrative

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald West
Keyword(s):  
Third World ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
Biblical Story ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Narratives ◽  
African Experience ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Family Resemblances ◽  
African Perspective ◽  
The Subject

This chapter takes its starting point from the African experience, across a range of African contexts, of Africa as both the subject and object of biblical narrative. When the Bible came to Africa, it came with well-established colonial metanarratives, constructed in part from biblical narratives. These colonial metanarratives were in turn partly reconstructed by the engagement with African others, from both a European and an African perspective along two diverging trajectories, with biblical narrative making a contribution to both. This chapter focuses on the capacity of biblical narrative, biblical story, to be both incorporated into “local” metanarratives and to shape these metanarratives. The contexts that are the focus of this chapter are largely “third world” contexts, across which there are significant family resemblances and important contextual differences.

scholarly journals Emancipation from the Whirlwind: Piety and Rebellion among Jewish-American Post-Holocaust and Christian Liberation Readings of Job

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
David C Tollerton
Keyword(s):  
Modern World ◽  
Jewish American ◽  
Political Opposition ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Theologically Conservative ◽  
State Of Israel ◽  
Political Radicalism ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Do So

This article focuses upon the manner in which the Book of Job’s dissonant messages of theological radicalism and conservatism have been utilised within discussion of two specific episodes of innocent suffering in the modern world – the murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust and the suffering of the oppressed in the developing world. Overlaying the discussion, the following model is proposed: that, firstly, Christian liberation theologians emphasise the more theologically conservative messages that can be drawn from Job while asserting radical political opposition to those who possess power. Conversely, Jewish Holocaust theologians empathise with Job’s more theologically radical elements, yet do so within outlooks committed to conservatively maintaining the security and power of the state of Israel after two thousand years of Jewish powerlessness. This model is tested by focusing upon seven treatments of Job associated with liberation or Holocaust theologies. It is concluded that, although there are significant complications, in broad terms the model largely holds ”“ offering a comparative insight into contextual Christian and Jewish interpretations of the Bible in which political radicalism and theological radicalism are found to be at odds with one another.

scholarly journals The strange biography of Samson

2003 ◽  
Vol 24 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 19-36
Author(s):  
Yair Zakovitch
Keyword(s):  
World View ◽  
Biblical Story ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Book Of Samuel ◽  
Book Of Judges ◽  
Story Elements

The biblical story of the life of Samson hides much from the reader&&the Book of Judges has deleted from the story elements that were deemed improper for the book’s placement among the Holy Scriptures. In this article, the author shows how the Bible transforms Samson from a mythological hero, the son of a god, to a mere mortal whose extraordinary strength came through the spirit of God that rested with him so long as he kept his Nazirite vows. The biblical storyteller could not prevent the story of Samson from entering into the biblical corpus since it was a tale of tremendous popularity. He thus told it in such a way as to bring it closer to his monotheistic beliefs and world-view. In its ‘biblical’ form the story does not bring honor to the figure of Samson, and so his placement as the last of the judges in the Book of Judges prepares the reader for the establishment of the institution of kingship, in the Book of Samuel.

The Artist as Reader of the Bible. Visual Exegesis and the Adoration of the Magi

2005 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 337-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin O'Kane
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
Biblical Story ◽  
Image Viewer ◽  
The Bible ◽  
History Of ◽  
Entire History ◽  
Visual Exegesis ◽  
Textual Meaning

AbstractThe article explores the processes at work in a painting's engagement of its viewer in biblical subject matter. It accentuates the role of the artist as an active reader of the Bible and not merely an illustrator of biblical scenes, the dynamic that occurs in the text-reader process as paradigmatic for the image-viewer relationship and the important role of the developing tradition that felt the need to change or rewrite the biblical story. The processes are explored in terms of hermeneutics and exegesis: hermeneutics defined as 'the interweaving of language and life within the horizon of the text and within the horizons of traditions and the modern reader' (Gadamer) and exegesis as 'the dialectic between textual meaning and the reader's existence' (Berdini). Applied to the visualization of biblical subject matter, the approaches of Gadamer and Berdini illumine the key role given to the viewer in the visual hermeneutical process. The biblical story of the adoration of the Magi (Matt. 2: 1-12), the first public and universal seeing of Christ and one of the most frequently depicted themes in the entire history of biblical art, is used to illustrate their approach. The emphasis in the biblical narrative on revealing the Christ child to the reader parallels a key concept in Gadamer's hermeneutical aesthetics, namely Darstellung, the way in which a painting facilitates its subject matter in coming forth, in becoming an existential event in the life of the viewer.

Anti-corruption: prevention and control

2018 ◽  
pp. 124-142
Author(s):  
James L. Newell
Keyword(s):  
Prevention And Control ◽  
The Public ◽  
Factors Influencing ◽  
Public Pressure ◽  
Corruption Prevention ◽  
And Control ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Do So

The chapter takes its point of departure from the fact that scandals of the kind considered in the previous chapter are important in driving efforts to tackle problems like corruption because they create the public pressure needed to ensure they are taken seriously. Against this background the chapter considers, first, the conditions under which measures to tackle corruption are likely to be more or less successful, bearing in mind that any given measure may work well in some contexts, less so in others. Then it asks about the conditions under which the authorities’ efforts to tackle corruption will be greater or lesser – bearing in mind that in order for the authorities to make any attempt to combat corruption, they have to be aware of it; they have to want to combat it, and they have to have adequate means to do so. Finally, in light of the factors influencing the efforts the authorities are likely to make in tackling corruption, the chapter considers what they are actually doing.

Introduction

Black Samson ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Nyasha Junior ◽  
Jeremy Schipper
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
American Literature ◽  
African Descent ◽  
American Art ◽  
Biblical Story ◽  
Court Records ◽  
White American ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Popular Subject

Samson is a popular subject in biblical scholarship on the use of the Bible in art, literature, and popular culture, although this scholarship tends to focus on Samson in White European and White American art and literature. The introduction explains how Samson becomes identified with people of African descent in American literature. It discusses the biblical story of Samson and the lack of physical descriptions of Samson in the Bible. It provides examples of the racialized uses of Samson in poetry, sermons, speeches, narratives by enslaved persons, court records, and newspapers. It offers some possible reasons why the biblical story of Samson may have become associated with African Americans.

Forging a New Spain

2020 ◽  
pp. 227-280
Author(s):  
David M. Carballo
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
New Spain ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Religious Conversion ◽  
World History ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Global World ◽  
Do So ◽  
Hybrid Forms ◽  
Personal Adornment

Histories of the conquest often end with the fall of Tenochtitlan, but the forging of New Spain required decades of continued military invasions in which central Mexicans, in particular, played leading roles. This chapter examines how the Tlaxcalteca and other Native allies petitioned the Spanish Crown for certain rights and privileges, as a form of negotiation within a system of domination and oppression, even sailing across the Atlantic to Spain multiple times to do so in person. Imperial rule and religious conversion could occasionally be challenged or proactively shaped by Mesoamericans, generating hybrid forms of religious belief, public spectacles, art, architecture, diet, and personal adornment, all inscribed on Mexico’s natural and cultural landscape. Such exchanges also crossed the Atlantic, and eventually the Pacific, to begin a truly global world history.

scholarly journals Die ontmoeting van wêrelde en die beginsel van sola Scriptura

2015 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yolanda Dreyer
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Reformed Tradition ◽  
Normative Power ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The World ◽  
Fusion Of Horizons ◽  
Point Of Departure

The meeting of worlds and the principle of sola Scriptura. Rather than function as a catalyst for unity, the Bible can be the cause of conflict among Christian believers. The Bible is also often the reason for strife, specifically in the Reformed tradition, even though Protestants uphold the creedal truism of sola Scriptura and though the authority of the Bible is seen as selfmandatory, transcending the normative power of ecclesiastical or confessional traditions. This article focuses on biblical interpretation as both a cause of disunity and a possible means to achieve greater unity. The point of departure is that biblical interpretation consists of a fusion of horizons; it is primarily about the fusion of two horizons, namely that of the Bible and that of the reader. However, both these horizons represent a great diversity of perspectives. A variety of readers interpret the Bible from diverse contexts. The Bible itself also communicates a diversity of ideas. Even the notion ‘Jesus Christ’ does not function as a unified or unifying concept. The article proposes that the idea of ‘Jesus’ cause’ (Sache Jesu) could provide continuity between the world of the reader and the world of a biblical passage.

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