The Exodus in the Christian Bible: The Case for “Figural” Reading

2002 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 345-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard J. Clifford
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Systematic Theology ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Figural Reading

[Many Christians find the Christian Bible, comprised of the Old and New Testament, diffuse, lacking unity, and therefore difficult to use in systematic theology. Yet the Bible itself uses a powerful organizing principle that spans both testaments and unites them, namely the Exodus in its dual aspects of liberation and formation. There are three Exodus moments. Exodus I is the thirteenth-century B.C.E. foundational event. Exodus II is its sixth-century renewal. Exodus III is the first-century C.E. climactic renewal of Israel by Jesus.]

scholarly journals Injil Barnabas Dan Makna Pentingnya Dalam Studi Heresiologi

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-71
Author(s):  
Yosef Yunandow Siahaan
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
First Century ◽  
Orthodox Christianity ◽  
Religious Background ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Library Research ◽  
Apocryphal Gospels ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Biblical Teaching

The Portrait of Jesus in the Apocryphal Gospels often contradicts the Portrait of Jesus in the Canonical Gospels in the New Testament. For evangelical-orthodox Christianity, the canon of the Scriptures has been final, and has been endorsed at the Hippo and Carthage councils, however some Muslims always make the news that the Apocryphal Gospels, especially the Gospel of Barnabas, are the original Gospels, while the gospels accepted by Christians today is a false gospel. This interest is worth examining aside, looking into the texts of the Gospel of Barnabas insofar as they pertain to Biblical Teaching. This study will use a biblical approach to library research. Namely by looking at the texts in the Gospel of Barnabas and comparing them with the Bible text of the New Testament by doing a little exposition of some parts of the Bible. After all, the Bible is the primary source because it comes from direct eye witnesses and is only fifteen to sixty years apart from the time Jesus lived. The problem is that the Gospel of Barnabas has been mentioned in the Pseudo Gelasius I Decree which seems to support that the Gospel of Barnabas was written by the Apostle Barnabas during his lifetime. However, it is easy to trace that the Gospel of Barnabas contains many trivial errors that could not have been written by the Apostle Barnabas who had a Jewish background, living in the Palestinian-Israel area in the first century AD. Doing a study of the time of writing, writers, geographic and religious background, and language, if necessary the theological motive needs to be done in order to study the study of Heresiology or teachings that deviate from the truth of Evangelical-Orthodox Christianity. Abstrak Indonesia Potret Yesus dalam Injil-Injil Apokrif seringkali bertolak belakang dengan Potret Yesus dalam Injil-Injl Kanonik yang ada dalam Alkitab Perjanjian Baru. Bagi kekristenan yang Injili-ortodoks kanon Kitab suci telah bersifat final, dan telah disahkan pada konsili Hippo dan Kartago, Namun sebagian umat Islam selalu membuat berita bahwa Injil-injil Apokrif khususnya Injil Barnabas adalah Injil yang asli, sedangkan injil yang diterima orang Kristen saat ini adalah Injil yang palsu. Minat tersebut layak dikaji di samping, melihat ke dalam teks-teks Injil Barnabas sejauh itu bersinggungan dengan Ajaran Alkitab. Penelitian ini akan menggunakan pendekatan penelitian kepustakaan yang bersifat biblika. Yaitu dengan melihat teks-teks dalam Injil Barnabas dan membandingkan dengan teks Alkitab Perjanjian Baru dengan melakukan sedikit eksposisi dari beberapa bagian Alkitab. Bagaimanapun juga Alkitab adalah sumber primer karena berasal dari saksi mata langsung dan hanya berjarak lima belas hingga enam puluh tahun sejak Yesus hidup. Masalahnya Injil Barnabas pernah di sebut dalam Dekrit Pseudo Gelasius I yang tampaknya mendukung bahwa Injil Barnabas di tulis oleh Rasul Barnabas semasa hidupnya. Namun mudah saja di lacak bahwa Injil Barnabas mengandung banyak kesalahan-kesalahan sepele yang tidak mungkin di tulis oleh Rasul Barnabas yang berlatar belakang Yahudi, tinggal di daerah Palestina-Israel pada abad pertama Masehi. Melakukan kajian terhadap waktu penulisan, penulis, latar belakang geografi dan keagamaan, dan Bahasa, jika diperlukan motif teologisnya perlu dilakukan dalam rangka mempelajari studi Heresiologi atau ajaran-ajaran menyimpang dari kebenaran Injili-Ortodoks kekristenan.

scholarly journals The ancient Mediterranean values of honour and shame as a hermeneutical procedure: A social-scientific criticism in an African perspective

2001 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Mahlangu
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
First Century ◽  
Value System ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
African Context ◽  
African Perspective ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
People Today

The life of modern people evolves around economics and all that goes with it, such as labour, production, consumption and possessions. These things do not only motivate many peoples' behaviour, but claim most of their energy and time. Therefore, the organising principle of life of people today is instrumental mastery - the individual's ability to control his or her environment, personal and impersonal, to attain a qualityorientated success: wealth, ownership, "good looks" proper grades, and all countable indications of success. But, in the first century Mediterranean world, economics was not the be-all and end-all. People worked primarily to conserve their status and not to gather possessions. Thus, the pivotal values of the first century Mediterranean world was honour and shame. This article looks at how social-scientific critics have attempted to show how the understanding of these values would lead to an understanding and interpretation of the New Testament. In this article the author approaches this paradigm from an African perspective. It is shown that the African interacts and transacts with the New Testament with his/her own value system in which these values are also encountered. This, therefore, makes the reading of the Bible in an African context possible.

Christians and Jews in First-Century Alexandria

1986 ◽  
Vol 79 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 206-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Birger A. Pearson
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
First Century ◽  
Realistic Interpretation ◽  
Substantial Role ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Church And Society

Krister Stendahl represents, to my mind, the very best of Scandinavian-style “realistic interpretation” of the Bible, resolutely faithful in his exegesis to the historical situation of the text and its author but then marvelously insightful in eliciting from the text a fresh and sometimes surprising address to contemporary issues in church and society. As is well known, it is precisely Stendahl's interest in relations between Jews and Christians (Jewish and Gentile) that has made so much of his New Testament work so stimulating and innovative. As it happens, though, his research has tended to concentrate geographically on that large sweep of territory “from Jerusalem and as far round as Illyricum.” What I want to do in this article in his honor is to explore an area relatively untouched by my teacher—Alexandria—in an effort to see if anything can be said of Jewish-Christian relations there in the first century. In doing this I must perforce extend our investigation mainly to noncanonical sources. Even so the task is formidable, for the first-century Alexandrian church is, as Stendahl says, something “about which we know nothing.” What follows is, therefore, largely a matter of inference, at least insofar as it bears upon first-century Christianity in Alexandria. Insofar as it bears upon first-century Judaism, that giant among Jewish exegetes and philosophers, Philo Judaeus, will play a substantial role.

Saint Photius of Constantinople. Amphilochia. Treatise 1

2019 ◽  
pp. 78-108
Author(s):  
Дмитрий Евгеньевич Афиногенов
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Language Usage ◽  
Biblical Exegesis ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Correct Application

Трактат 1 из сборника «Амфилохии» св. патр. Фотия на примере истолкования конкретных мест из Библии объясняет методологию библейской экзегезы вообще. Во внимание должен приниматься не только богословский или исторический контекст, но также чисто филологические аспекты: семантика, интонация, языковой узус Нового Завета и Септуагинты, возможные разночтения и т. д. Патриарх убеждён, что при правильном пользовании этим инструментарием можно объяснить все кажущиеся противоречащими высказывания Св. Писания таким образом, что они окажутся в полном согласии друг с другом. The first treatise from «Amphilochia» by the St. Patriarch Photios expounds the general principles of the biblical exegesis on a specific example of certain passages from the Bible. It is not just the theological or historical context that has to be taken into consideration, but also purely philological aspects, such as semantics, intonation, the language usage of the New Testament and Septuagint, possible variant readings etc. The Patriarch is convinced, that the correct application of these tools makes it possible to perfectly harmonize all seemingly contradictory statements of the Scriptures.

Imagining Sound as the Absolute

2019 ◽  
pp. 15-30
Author(s):  
Saam Trivedi
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Scientific Ideas ◽  
The Universe

Saam Trivedi ponders the Sangita Ratnakara by the Ayurveda physician Sarangadeva. In this thirteenth-century manuscript, Sarangadeva asserts that Sound, identical to the Absolute, is the only fundamental thing in the universe and that all other things are illusory or, at best, some derivative or other manifestation of Sound. While the twenty-first century, non-monist Trivedi is critical of this claim, he finds much to be fascinated by, and, in his dissection of the main points of the Sangita Ratnakara, he offers the reader an imagining of sonic monism that, while far-removed from the orthodoxy of today’s acoustics and natural sciences, might one day come to be seen as inspiration for the latest scientific ideas concerning sound.

How American Newspaper Comic Strips Portray God, Angels, and Humans

2020 ◽  
pp. 398-413
Author(s):  
Leonard Greenspoon
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Online Media ◽  
Comic Strip ◽  
Comic Strips ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Texts

The comic strip as a mainstay of print and more recently online media is an American invention that began its development in the last decades of the 1800s. For many decades in the mid-twentieth century, comic strips were among the most widely disseminated forms of popular culture. With their succession of panels, pictures, and pithy perspectives, comics have come to cover an array of topics, including religion. This chapter looks at how the Bible (Old and New Testament) figures in comic strips, focusing specifically on three areas: the depiction of the divine, renderings of specific biblical texts, and how comic strips can function as sites in which religious identity and controversies play out. Relevant examples are drawn from several dozen strips. Special attention is also paid to a few, like Peanuts and BC, in which biblical imagery, ideology, and idiom are characteristically portrayed in distinctive ways.

Christ as Yogi: The Jesus of Vivekananda and Modern Hinduism

2021 ◽  
Vol 90 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-140
Author(s):  
David J. Neumann
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Advaita Vedānta ◽  
Advaita Vedanta ◽  
The West ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Modern Hinduism ◽  
Swami Vivekananda

AbstractSwami Vivekananda was the most influential pioneer of a Yogi Christ, illustrating well over a century ago how the life and teachings of Jesus might be incorporated within a larger Hindu worldview—and then presented back to Western audiences. Appropriation of Jesus, one of the central symbols of the West, might be viewed as the ultimate act of counter-Orientalism. This article begins by providing a brief biography of Vivekananda and the modern Hinduism that nurtured him and that he propagated. He articulated an inclusivist vision of Advaita Vedanta as the most compelling vision of universal religion. Next, the article turns to Vivekananda's views of Christianity, for which he had little affection, and the Bible, which he knew extraordinarily well. The article then systematically explores Vivekananda's engagement with the New Testament, revealing a clear hermeneutical preference for the Gospels, particularly John. Following the lead of biblical scholars, Vivekananda made a distinction between the Christ of the Gospels and the Jesus of history, offering sometimes contradictory conclusions about the historicity of elements associated with Jesus's life. Finally, the article provides a detailed articulation of Vivekananda's Jesus—a figure at once familiar to Christians but, in significant ways, uniquely accommodated to Hindu metaphysics. Vivekananda demonstrated a robust understanding and discriminating use of the Christian Bible that has not been properly recognized. He deployed this knowledge to launch an important and long-lived pattern: an attractive, fleshed out depiction of Jesus of Nazareth, transformed from the Christian savior into a Yogi model of self-realization. Through his efforts, Jesus became an indisputably Indian religious figure, no longer just a Christian one. The Yogi Christ remains a prominent global religious figure familiar to Hindus, Christians, and those of other faiths alike.

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.

Be Ye Speakers of, and Listeners to, the Word: The Promotion of Biblical Engagement through Encountering the Scriptures Read Aloud

2017 ◽  
Vol 129 (4) ◽  
pp. 149-157
Author(s):  
Cherryl Hunt
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Reading Aloud ◽  
Read Aloud ◽  
Performance Criticism ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Form Part ◽  
The New Testament

Ordinary Christians’ responses to a dramatized reading of the New Testament, together with reflection on research in the area of performance criticism, suggests that understanding of the Bible and spiritual encounter with its texts may be promoted by the reading aloud of, and listening to, substantial portions of the Bible in an unfamiliar format; this might be found in a dramatized presentation and/or a previously unencountered translation. This practice should form part of any programme designed to promote biblical engagement within churches.

The Parousia of Christ in the Synoptic Gospels

1959 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. P. Owen
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Second Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Synoptic Gospels ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
2 Peter ◽  
Apostolic Church ◽  
Second Coming

The Second Coming (otherwise called the Parousia)1 of Christ constituted a serious problem for the apostolic Church. One of the earliest of Paul's Epistles (1 Thessalonians) shows how quickly his converts became discouraged when some of their number died before the Lord's appearing. In reply Paul repeats his promise that the Lord will soon return, although in his second epistle he has to give a reminder that Antichrist must first make a final bid for power (1 Thess. 4.15–18, 2 Thess. 2). Similarly the author of Hebrews, writing to a disillusioned and apathetic group of Christians some decades later in the first century, recalls the words of Habakkuk that ‘the Lord will come and not be slow’ (10.37). Finally 2 Peter, the latest book of the New Testament (written, perhaps, as late as the middle of the second century), continues to offer the hope of an imminent Parousia to be accompanied by the world's destruction and renewal (ch. 3). If Christians are tempted to despair they must remember that the word of prophets and Apostles is sure (v. 2) and that with God ‘a thousand years are as one day’ (v. 8).

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