Jacques Ellul's Innocent Notes on Hermeneutics

1979 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 268-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald R. Ray
Keyword(s):  
The Bible ◽  
Critical Method ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Jacques Ellul

The work of Jacques Ellul as interpreter of the Bible is a warning to the guild of professional exegetes that the historical-critical method can become a technique for mastering the text without being mastered by the subject of the text.

The first century of English protestantism and the growth of national identity

1982 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 309-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Fletcher
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
First Century ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
John Foxe ◽  
Religious Attitudes ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Religious Zeal

Their sense of national identity is not something that men have been in the habit of directly recording. Its strength or weakness, in relation to commitment to international causes or to localist sentiment, can often only be inferred by examining political and religious attitudes and personal behaviour. So far as the early modern period is concerned, the subject is hazardous because groups and individuals must have varied enormously in the extent to which national identity meant something to them or influenced their lives. The temptation to generalise must be resisted. It is all too easy to suppose that national identity became well established in England in the Tudor century, when a national culture, based on widespread literacy among gentry, yeomen and townsmen, flowered as it had never done before, when the bible was first generally available in English, when John Foxe produced his celebrated Acts and Monuments, better known as the Book of Martyrs. Recent work reassessing the significance of Foxe’s account of the English reformation and other Elizabethan polemical writings provdes a convenient starting point for this brief investigation of some of the connections between religious zeal and national consciousness between 1558 and 1642.

Terms of Scriptural Interpretation: A Study in Hebrew Semantics

1962 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Gertner
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Behaviour ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Scriptural Interpretation ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Religious Doctrine ◽  
Divine Wisdom ◽  
The Subject

In the last centuries before the current era and in the early centuries after its beginning the major intellectual and literary activity in the realms (first) of the Jewish and (later) of the Christian communities was wholly centred in the field of interpretation. The OT, as the mainspring and foundation of all religious thought and teaching in those days and in those spheres, was the subject of this interpretation activity. In both the Jewish and the Christian world the Bible was considered to be not only holy and authoritative, but also, and this is in our context more important, the only and exclusive source of divine religious doctrine and of good ethical behaviour. Also historical events, political or religious, were seen, even foreseen, and evaluated from the aspect of this holy source of divine wisdom and planning.

Ruth

1975 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward F. Campbell , Jr.
Keyword(s):  
Generation Gap ◽  
Sensitive Analysis ◽  
King David ◽  
Moving Force ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Times ◽  
The City ◽  
And Linguistics

Ruth, a tale of human kindness and just dealing far beyond the norm, contains elements that for centuries have been the subject of debate. With a sprightly translation and a commentary rich in informed speculation, Professor Campbell considers the questions of layman and scholar alike. Finding no overt mighty acts, the layman asks, “Why was Ruth included in the Bible at all? Where is God?” Professor Campbell shows that God is not only present throughout but is indeed the moving force behind all the developments of the story. Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz each act as God to each other, by taking extraordinary responsibility and performing extraordinary acts of kindness. And it is God who is responsible for the series of coincidences on which the plot hinges. The scholar’s questions deal with such matters as purpose, date, and genre. Professor Campbell’s research into ancient customs and linguistics suggests to him that Ruth is a historical novelette, entertaining and instructive, composed not long after the reign of King David, during the time of Solomon or within the subsequent century. Professor Campbell demonstrates the storyteller’s skill with sensitive analysis of form, pacing, and wordplay. By delving into word origins and nuances he shows how convincingly the characters are developed. One instance: Naomi and Boaz use obsolescent language, emphasizing the generation gap between them and Ruth. In addition, the illustrations help the reader understand unfamiliar elements of the story—the setting, the agricultural seasons and harvesting, the clothing of the times, the city gate where elders and interested villagers gather to make sure that all is done in a just and godly way.

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 Celestial Spheres

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-186
Author(s):  
Austin M. Freeman
Keyword(s):  
Dimensional Space ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Good Evidence ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Higher Dimensional ◽  
Spatial Dimensions ◽  
Modern Physics ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Three Dimensional Space

Angels probably have bodies. There is no good evidence (biblical, philosophical, or historical) to argue against their bodiliness; there is an abundance of evidence (biblical, philosophical, historical) that makes the case for angelic bodies. After surveying biblical texts alleged to demonstrate angelic incorporeality, the discussion moves to examine patristic, medieval, and some modern figures on the subject. In short, before the High Medieval period belief in angelic bodies was the norm, and afterwards it is the exception. A brief foray into modern physics and higher spatial dimensions (termed “hyperspace”), coupled with an analogical use of Edwin Abbott’s Flatland, serves to explain the way in which appealing to higher-dimensional angelic bodies matches the record of angelic activity in the Bible remarkably well. This position also cuts through a historical equivocation on the question of angelic embodiment. Angels do have bodies, but they are bodies very unlike our own. They do not have bodies in any three-dimensional space we can observe, but are nevertheless embodied beings.

scholarly journals Mikołaj Rej jako wzorzec dla pisarza Józefa Wereszczyńskiego (syna podsędka chełmskiego)

2008 ◽  
pp. 223-240
Author(s):  
Halina Wiśniewska ◽  
Keyword(s):  
16Th Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Subject

The subject of the article is the political-moral treatise by Józef Wereszczyński entitled “Reguła to jest nauka abo postępek dobrego życia króla każdego chrześcijańskiego” from 1587 as the imitation of ”Żywot człowieka poćciwego” by Mikołaj Rej. In the 16th century, imitation (following a model) was valued art of writing. That is why J. Wereszczyński repeats M. Rej’s “Żywot” on 40 out of the 86 pages of “Reguły”. Both works are juxtaposed and compared by the author in philological terms to show how J. Wereszczyński, writing his treatise, imitated M. Rej’s work. Such issues as, inter alia, those referring to the titles and contents of the chapters, text composition, the names of the characters – exempla from the “Bible” and ancient history, have been analyzed therein. What is more, the article also presents the chapter on justice from “Reguły” and “Żywot” to show J. Wereszczyński’s imitation in a better way.

Religious Authority and Divine Action

1971 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
M. F. Wiles
Keyword(s):  
Religious Authority ◽  
Divine Action ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Christian Theologian ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Church

‘Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end: and then stop.’ The King of Hearts' advice is not as easy to follow as might seem on first hearing. It is not simply that I want to speak about the interrelation between two major subjects and there is a certain arbitrariness in choosing with which of the two to start. The problem is far more fundamental than that. Where for the theologian is ‘the beginning’? At whatever point he does begin he is always uneasily aware that way back behind the point that he has chosen there probably lie a number of unquestioned assumptions which have largely prejudged the kind of answer he will give to the very question he is setting out to investigate. This difficulty is not, of course, peculiar to the theologian. None of us, whatever the subject of our investigation, can ever really ‘begin at the beginning’. But if this is a difficulty which the Christian theologian shares with other scholars it is none the less real for that. One obvious and important feature of the tradition in which the Christian theologian stands is that it gives some kind of special authority to the Bible, to the Church and above all—though it is sometimes a little bit elusive to know exactly what is meant by saying this—to Christ himself.

The Evangelical Discovery of History

2013 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 330-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
David W. Bebbington
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Churches Of Christ ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Evangelical Protestantism ◽  
Protestant Churches ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Cross ◽  
The Church

‘From some modern perspectives’, wrote James Belich, a leading historian of New Zealand, in 1996, ‘the evangelicals are hard to like. They dressed like crows; seemed joyless, humourless and sometimes hypocritical; [and] they embalmed the evidence poor historians need to read in tedious preaching’. Similar views have often been expressed in the historiography of Evangelical Protestantism, the subject of this essay. It will cover such disapproving appraisals of the Evangelical past, but because a high proportion of the writing about the movement was by insiders it will have more to say about studies by Evangelicals of their own history. Evangelicals are taken to be those who have placed particular stress on the value of the Bible, the doctrine of the cross, an experience of conversion and a responsibility for activism. They were to be found in the Church of England and its sister provinces of the Anglican communion, forming an Evangelical party that rivalled the high church and broad church tendencies, and also in the denominations that stemmed from Nonconformity in England and Wales, as well as in the Protestant churches of Scotland. Evangelicals were strong, often overwhelmingly so, within Methodism and Congregationalism and among the Baptists and the Presbyterians. Some bodies that arose later on, including the (so-called Plymouth) Brethren, the Churches of Christ and the Pentecostals (the last two primarily American in origin), joined the Evangelical coalition.

Yin-Yang (Yijing) and the Bible

2021 ◽  
pp. 200-218
Author(s):  
Claudia von Collani
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Old Chinese ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Christianity In China ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Critical Method ◽  
Chinese Religions ◽  
Catholic Mission ◽  
Early Modern Times ◽  
The Way

Chinese religions, philosophy, and especially Confucianism constituted a great challenge for the Catholic mission since its beginnings in China in early modern times. This essay looks at the way the missionaries, especially the Jesuits, made several attempts to solve the problem. Niccolò Longobardo s.j., for example, refused to use Chinese terms for the Christian God, dismissing them as insufficient or atheistic. Most Jesuits, however, advocated for terms such as Tian, Shangdi, Tianzhu, and Taiji for God in China. The Mandate of the Vicar Apostolic Charles Maigrot m.e.p., prohibiting the use of the Yijing and Taiji as the Chinese name for God, became a great challenge for Joachim Bouvet s.j. in developing his Figurism. With this system, he found complements for Christianity in China and created a new theology combining Eastern and Western ideas. These efforts were stopped by the prohibition of the Chinese rites and by the historical-critical method for reading the old Chinese books.

Biblical Israel in the Ninth Century?

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
PHILIP R. DAVIES
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Critical History ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
United Monarchy ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Crucial Part

Most archaeologists of ancient Israel still operate with a pro-biblical ideology, while the role that archaeology has played in Zionist nation building is extensively documented. Terms such as ‘ninth century’ and ‘Iron Age’ represent an improvement on ‘United Monarchy’ and ‘Divided Monarchy’, but these latter terms remain implanted mentally as part of a larger portrait that may be called ‘biblical Israel’. This chapter argues that the question of ‘biblical Israel’ must be regarded as distinct from the kingdoms of Israel and Judah as a major historical problem rather than a given datum. ‘Biblical Israel’ can never be the subject of a modern critical history, but is rather a crucial part of that history, a ‘memory’, no doubt historically conditioned, that became crucial in creating Judaism. This realization will enable us not only to write a decent critical history of Iron Age central Palestine but also to bring that history and the biblical narrative into the kind of critical engagement that will lead to a better understanding of the Bible itself.

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