scholarly journals Reception of Biblical texts within the Bible: A starting point of midrash?

2014 ◽  
pp. 15-24
Author(s):  
Irmtraud Fischer
Keyword(s):  
The Bible ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Biblical Texts

Paradigmenwechsel ‐ welches Paradigma? : Die Pentateuchkrise als Krise der Literarkritik

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-151
Author(s):  
Siegbert Riecker
Keyword(s):  
Historical Background ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
Source Criticism ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Empirical Perspective ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries

Summary It would be too simple to attribute the current crisis in research on the Pentateuch to the demise of the Wellhausen paradigm (the documentary hypothesis) and the resulting diversity of methods. Rather, these are merely symptoms of a fundamental crisis in the source critical paradigm as a whole. The difficulties with the nature of sources, their literary scope and the criteria for their division are only part of the wider problem. The introduction of non-verifiable ‘redactors’ and ‘Fortschreibung’ (updating) to cope with anomalies of a hypothesis seems methodologically just as questionable as the reconstruction of the social-historical background of individual literary strata (‘pseudo historicism’). The increasingly complex diachronic overall models are lacking plausibility and credibility, especially since the reconstruction of several stages in the development of the text is practically impossible from an empirical perspective. The alternative to the classic paradigm of source criticism is a literary paradigm that returns to the starting point of the testimony of the biblical texts themselves. Of course, literary tensions and sources must not be ignored. However, systems of interpretation to explain inconsistencies should not be based on methods developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries but on the ancient literary conventions of the Bible and its environment.

Sex, Spirituality, and Pre-Modern Readings of the Song of Songs

Horizons ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas F. Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Song Of Songs ◽  
Course Content ◽  
Erotic Poetry ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
The Last Two Millennia ◽  
The Erotic

ABSTRACTWhile unfamiliar to many today, the Song of Songs was once one of the most frequently interpreted books of the Bible. This article seeks to counter the current lack of familiarity by highlighting the significance for the classroom of pre-modern exegesis of the Song. As course content, it provides a starting point from which to examine Christian thought and practice over the last two millennia. In particular, it supplies evidence that Christians (and Jews) have expressed some of their most profound insights into spirituality in terms of the erotic poetry of the Song. This essay concludes with an examination of method. How can pre-modern exegesis contribute to contemporary debates about interpretation, particularly of biblical texts?

Spinoza’s Biblical Criticism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jetze Touber
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Dutch Reformed ◽  
Biblical Criticism ◽  
Major Work ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Divine Election ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
The Way

Chapter 1 homes in on Spinoza as a Bible critic. Based on existing historiography, it parses the main relevant historical contexts in which Spinoza came to articulate his analysis of the Bible: the Sephardi community of Amsterdam, freethinking philosophers, and the Reformed Church. It concludes with a detailed examination of the Tractatus theologico-politicus, Spinoza’s major work of biblical criticism. Along the way I highlight themes for which Spinoza appealed to the biblical texts themselves: the textual unity of the Bible, and the biblical concepts of prophecy, divine election, and religious laws. The focus is on the biblical arguments for these propositions, and the philological choices that Spinoza made that enabled him to appeal to those specific biblical texts. This first chapter lays the foundation for the remainder of the book, which examines issues of biblical philology and interpretation discussed among the Dutch Reformed contemporaries of Spinoza.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Christian Humanism

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Zimmermann
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Theological Interpretation ◽  
Christian Humanism ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Theological Politics

Based on a comprehensive reading of his entire work, in this book Jens Zimmermann presents Bonhoeffer’s theological ethos as a Christian humanism, that is, as an understanding of the gospel rooted in apostolic and patristic writers who believed God to have renewed humanity in the incarnation. The heartbeat of Bonhoeffer’s Christianity that unifies and motivates his theological writing, his preaching, and his political convictions, including his opposition to the Nazi regime, is the conviction that Christianity as participation in the new humanity established by Christ is about becoming fully human by becoming Christlike. In eight chapters, the author details Bonhoeffer’s humanistic theology following from this incarnational starting point: a Christ-centered anthropology that shows a deep kinship with patristic Christology, a hermeneutically structured theology, an ethic focused on Christ-formation, a biblical hermeneutic centered on God’s transforming presence, and a theological politics aimed at human flourishing. In offering a comprehensive reading of his theology as Christian humanism, Zimmermann not only places Bonhoeffer in the context of the patristic and greater Christian tradition but also makes apparent the relevance of Bonhoeffer’s thought for a number of contemporary concerns: hermeneutic theory, the theological interpretation of the Bible, the relation of reason to faith, the importance of natural law, and the significance of religion for secular societies. Bonhoeffer turns out to be a Christian humanist and a modern theologian who models the deeply orthodox and yet ecumenical, expansive Christianity demanded by our time.

Reading the Bible from Below in the Era of Globalization

2020 ◽  
pp. 111-128
Author(s):  
Rainer Kessler
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Asynchronous Development ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
The World ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
Globalized World

It is evident that the world of the Bible is pre-modern and thus distinct from the globalized civilization. This chronological gap challenges readers, whether they are feminist or not. Mainly three attitudes can be observed among scholarly and ordinary readers. For some readers, the Bible is a document of the losers of a historical process of modernization that already began in ancient Israel. For other readers, the Bible is outdated and of no use to confront the challenges of globalization. A third readerly position challenges both of these views. This essay offers four arguments to orient biblical readers in the contemporary globalized world. First, the essay posits that globalization is an asynchronous development. Thus, even today, most people living in the impoverished regions of the world face conditions similar to those dominant in the Bible. Second, the essay asserts that women are the first victims in biblical times and still nowadays. Third, the essay maintains that biblical texts display social relations that still unveil contemporary relations. Fourth, the essay suggests that intercultural Bible readings give hope, as they nurture biblical readings from “below” to strengthen people to overcome the fatal consequences of today’s globalization.

Teaching the Bible and Popular Media as Part of Contemporary Rape Culture

2020 ◽  
pp. 423-439
Author(s):  
Beatrice J. W. Lawrence
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Sexual Assault ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
Rape Culture ◽  
Pedagogical Strategies ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Cultural Myths ◽  
Biblical Texts

This essay explores pedagogical strategies for addressing rape culture in biblical studies courses, employing Genesis 34 and Judges 19–21 as primary texts. The first section discusses the nature of popular culture and its impact on gender. The following four sections highlight cultural myths about sexual assault by focusing on significant biblical texts and incorporating aspects of popular media to facilitate conversations about rape culture. The conclusion summarizes the main points and encourage further studies that combine the study of popular media and biblical texts. Overall, the essay contributes to the reading and teaching of the Bible within contemporary rape culture so that students become critical interpreters of biblical texts, as they become resistant readers of past and present rape culture.

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.

Inspiration and Textual Preservation: A Catholic Essay on the Bible

Pro Ecclesia ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 106385122199391
Author(s):  
James B. Prothro
Keyword(s):  
Textual Criticism ◽  
Multiple Forms ◽  
Theological Interpretation ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Single Text ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
The Church

The doctrine of inspiration grounds Christian use and interpretation of Scripture, making this doctrine at once theoretical and practical. Many theoretical accounts, however, restrict the “inspired” status of biblical texts to a single text-form, which introduces problems for the practical use of Scripture in view of the texts’ historical multiformity. This article argues that such restrictions of inspiration are theologically problematic and unnecessary. Contextualizing inspiration within the divine revelatory economy, this article argues that the Spirit’s same goals and varied activities in the texts’ composition obtain also in their preservation, so that we can consider multiple forms of a text to be inspired while acknowledging that not all forms are inspired to equal ends in the history and life of the church. The article concludes with hermeneutical reflections affirming that we, today, can read the “word of the Lord” while also affirming the place of textual criticism in theological interpretation.

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.

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