Reading the Bible in Africa: on strategies and ownership

1997 ◽  
Vol 4 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 124-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Punt
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Status ◽  
Biblical Texts

AbstractWithin the continuing search for or development of an adequate African hermeneutic for the Bible, the adequacy of certain generalising claims concerning the interpretation of the Bible in Africa is investigated: the continuity between the biblical and African worlds, and the discarding of the text's historical context in favour of the contemporary readers' setting. These generalised claims, however, introduce an important issue which seems to be in dire need of discussion: the status and role of the biblical texts in their canonical shape. The question of canon cannot be seen in isolation from, but indeed rests on, certain ideological concerns.

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.

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.

Interpreting the Bible Amidst Ecological Degradation

Theology ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 112 (867) ◽  
pp. 199-207
Author(s):  
Ernst M. Conradie
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Biblical Hermeneutics ◽  
Ecological Degradation ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
Contemporary Context

This essay explores the role of interpretative strategies in biblical interpretation. It is argued that ‘doctrinal constructs’ play a crucial role in appropriating the significance of biblical texts in and for a particular contemporary context. Various such constructs typically employed for an ecological biblical hermeneutics are analysed. Suggestions are offered towards the use of more sophisticated constructs, with reference to the notions of the ‘liberation of creation’, the ‘wisdom of God’ and the ‘whole household of God’.

Loitering with Intent: Biblical Texts in Public Places

2003 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 566-578 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
Print Media ◽  
Natural Habitat ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Public Places ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Natural Place ◽  
The Common ◽  
Biblical Texts

AbstractThis essay is about the effect of the Bible in the public arena. It explores the fate of biblical texts as they find themselves in the popular press. Secular newspapers are not the natural place to look for biblical citations but now and then they make appearances either to support or subvert issues ranging from asylumseekers to the use of corporal punishment for children. At a time when biblical allusions and imagery have all but evaporated from the Western consciousness, the intermittent showing up of sacred texts in the secular print media is a sign that the scriptures still have some hermeneutical hold. The essay looks at four areas—international conflict, sexual orientation, law and order and bringing-up children—where biblical texts are being summoned either to endorse or to repudiate. The essay raises hermeneutical issues such as how biblical texts are used in print media, the nature of the texts employed, the interface between popular and professional reading, the role of the common reader as a biblical commentator, and concludes with an examination of the standing and sway of the Bible as it moves outside its own natural habitat.

scholarly journals Greek mercenaries in Sais Egypt

2020 ◽  
pp. 12-19
Author(s):  
Vladimir Il'ich Shubin
Keyword(s):  
Military Service ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Social Origin ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
Initial Stage ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Greek Colonization ◽  
Greek World

This article is dedicated to examination of the history of emergence of Greek mercenaries during the riling time of XXVI Sais Dynasty. The author reviews the status and role of Greek mercenaries in the armed forced of Sais rulers, organization of their service and living conditions. Considering the fact that the use of Greek mercenaries in Egypt army was a part of the traditional policy of Sais rulers and carried mass character, the author refers to the problem  of social origin of the phenomenon of mercenarism in the Greek society of Archaic era. The research applies comparative-historical method that allows viewing the phenomenon of mercenarism in the historical context – based on the comparative data analysis of ancient written tradition. By the time of Sais Dynasty, control over regions that traditionally provided mercenaries to the Egypt army was lost. Under the circumstances, in order to compensate such losses, Egypt conscripted into military service the hailed from the Greek world. Mercenaries became the first Greeks settled on the Egyptian land. The conclusion is made that the Greek colonization, in absence of other ways to enter the formerly closed to the Greeks Egypt, at its initial stage manifested in such distinct form.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Hofreiter
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Reception History ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Texts

The introduction sketches out the moral, theological, and hermeneutical problems posed by ‘genocidal texts’ in the Old Testament, framing the hermeneutical challenge in terms of the following inconsistent set of propositions: (1) God is good. (2) The Bible is true. (3) Genocide is atrocious. (4) According to the Bible, God commanded and commended genocide. (5) No good being, let alone the supremely good Being, would ever command or commend an atrocity. The most pertinent biblical texts are then briefly presented. In addition, the methodological approach, that is, reception history, is set in its historical context, which includes a discussion of its recent resurgence and contemporary relevance. Finally, recent academic treatments of similar topics are discussed and an overview of the rest of the work is given.

The Bible, Its Status and African Christian Theologies: Foundational Document or Stumbling Block?

1998 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 265-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Punt
Keyword(s):  
Vantage Point ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Human Suffering ◽  
African Theology ◽  
History Of Interpretation ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThe relationship between the Bible and Christianity, including Christian theology, is traditionally strong and undisputed; however, in Christian theology in Africa, as elsewhere, the status of the biblical texts is contested. A brief consideration of the Bible as 'canon' leads to a broader discussion of how the Bible has to a certain extent become a 'problem' in African theology also, both because of theological claims made about its status, and - and in conjunction with - its perceived complicity in justifying human suffering and hardship. The legacy of the Bible as legitimating agent is dealt with from the vantage point of the history of interpretation; but the latter also provides for a 'rehumanising' of Scripture. In the end, this article is also an attempt to explain some of the different views of the Bible's status in Africa, and to address and mediate the resulting conflict by attending to proposals to view the biblical canon as 'historical prototype', foundational document' - as scripture. A number of important aspects regarding the continuing role of the Bible in African theologies in particular, conclude the essay.

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.

Marriage and Sexual Relations in the World of the Hebrew Bible

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ken Stone
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Song Of Songs ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Sexual Relations ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Status ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Male Contests ◽  
Status Of Women

The Hebrew Bible is sometimes understood as the source of a ‘traditional’ Judaeo-Christian approach to marriage and sexual practice. A comprehensive examination reveals, however, that biblical assumptions about sex, gender, and kinship are complex and internally diverse. Some of these assumptions stand in tension with traditional Jewish and Christian norms for marriage and sexual activity. This essay reviews such matters as the biblical vocabulary for, and representations of, marital relations; the status of women in households organized around fathers; the role of polygyny; differing standards for the sexual conduct of husbands, wives, and concubines; intermarriage and inter-ethnic sexual relations; prostitution; the use of sex and marriage within male contests for power and honour; the use of sexual and marital images in representations of Israel’s relationship to God; and the attitudes towards sex and gender found in less frequently read books of the Bible such as the Song of Songs.

scholarly journals “When Noah built the ark…”

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Pihlaja
Keyword(s):  
Metaphorical Language ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Language Analysis ◽  
Explicit Reference ◽  
Everyday Experiences ◽  
Biblical Language ◽  
Biblical Texts

Abstract This article investigates the use of biblical stories and text in the preaching of Joshua Feuerstein, a popular Facebook evangelist, and focuses on how biblical stories are used to position the viewer in comparison to biblical characters and texts. Taking a discourse dynamics approach (Cameron & Maslen, 2010), a corpus of 8 short videos (17 minutes 34 seconds) and their comments (2,295) taken from the Facebook are analysed first, for the presence of metaphorical language and stories taken from the Bible. Second, they are analysed for the role of metaphor in the narrative positioning (Bamberg, 1997) of the viewer, particularly as it relates to Gibbs’s notion of ‘allegorises’, or the ‘allegoric impulse’ (Gibbs, 2011). The corresponding text comments from the videos are then also analysed for the presence of the same biblical metaphor, focusing on how commenters interact with the metaphor and Feuerstein’s positioning of them. Findings show that biblical metaphorical language is used to position viewers and their struggles in the context of larger storylines that compare everyday experiences to biblical texts. This comparison can happen both in explicit narrative positioning of viewers with explicit reference to the Bible, and implicit positioning, through the use of unmarked biblical language. Analysis of viewer comments shows that use of metaphorical language is successful in building a sense of camaraderie and shared belief among the viewer and Feuerstein, as well as viewers with one another.

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