scholarly journals READING JEREMIAH 13:23 IN AN AFRICAN CONTEXT

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 500-530 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Tuesday Adamo
Keyword(s):  
Black People ◽  
Black African ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
English Translations ◽  
African Context ◽  
High Esteem ◽  
The Military ◽  
Theological Message ◽  
Proper Translation

This paper examines the meaning and importance of Jeremiah 13:23 critically. The author argues that one of the greatest prophets of ancient Israel, having been familiar with the military might, wisdom and vastness of their African territories does not despise black African people but uses them as standards against which to evaluate Israel in Jeremiah 13:23 as did other biblical passages (Amos 9:7; Is 17:3, 11-15; 30:1-2; 31:1-3; 45:14; Ez 27:7; Dn 11:43). The reasons for using black people and nations as standards against which to evaluate Israel are: first, their vast territories, great military might and power, wealth and wisdom (Is 19:5, 11-15; Is 45:14; Ez 27:7; Dn 11:43); second, it makes their high esteem to be boosted when these nations are cited as paradigmatic. The central theological message of Jeremiah 13:23 is to address the question of Judah’s habituation of sin which leads to slavery that is irredeemable. Judah has an indelible stain and “her evil habits held her fast like bands of steel”. The various English translations of Jeremiah 13:23 in different English versions of the Bible are misleading and therefore a disservice to the black race all over the world. The proper translation according to this author should have been: “Would Black Africans change their skin or the leopards their sports? So also you who have learnt to do evil could do evil.”

‘Limping, Yet Made to Climb a Mountain!’ Re-Reading the Vashti Character in the Hiv And Aids South African Context

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Madipoane Masenya (Ngwan’A Mphahlele)
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
External Factor ◽  
Hiv And Aids ◽  
African Women ◽  
South African Context ◽  
Land Grabbing ◽  
The Bible ◽  
History Of ◽  
African Context

The history of the Christian Bible’s reception in South Africa was part of a package that included among others, the importation of European patriarchy, land grabbing and its impoverishment of Africans and challenged masculinities of African men. The preceding factors, together with the history of the marginalization of African women in bible and theology, and how the Bible was and continues to be used in our HIV and AIDS contexts, have only made the proverbial limping animal to climb a mountain. Wa re o e bona a e hlotša, wa e nametša thaba (while limping, you still let it climb a mountain) simply means that a certain situation is being aggravated (by an external factor). In this chapter the preceding Northern Sotho proverb is used as a hermeneutical lens to present an HIV and AIDS gender sensitive re-reading of the Vashti character in the Hebrew Bible within the South African context.

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.

Clio and Canons: in Search of a Cultural Poetics of the Hebrew Bible

1997 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 300-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert P. Carroll
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
New Historicism ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
Cultural Poetics ◽  
Leading Edges

AbstractThe enterprise of writing "histories" of "ancient Israel" in which biblical historiography is reproduced by old credulists or critiqued by new nihilists represents one of the leading edges of contemporary biblical studies in relation to the Hebrew Bible. This quest for a cultural poetics or cultural materialist accounts of the Bible is virtually equivalent to a New Historicism in the discipline. In this article analyses of three topics from current debates in biblical studies (historiography of "ancient Israel", the empty land topos, canons and context) are used to provide insights into how new historicist approaches to contextualizing literature may contribute to these current debates about the Bible.

Textualization and the Book of Jeremiah

2021 ◽  
pp. 144-158
Author(s):  
Joachim Schaper
Keyword(s):  
Speech Act ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Written Texts ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
Specific Object ◽  
Book Of Jeremiah

Textualization implies the emergence of the concept of a “text” as a specific object that needs to be handled in a specific way: an object that is conceptualized as part of a tradition of reading and interpreting—indeed, an object that is constituted by the desire to preserve and make available a specific utterance (irrespective of whether that utterance was originally produced orally or in writing). Written texts therefore are the results of the desire of an individual or a community to establish a tradition for a speech act that the individuals or the community intend to preserve. As is the case with oral texts, written texts can give rise to ritualized or otherwise significant uses of the text-object. This is the key to the understanding of prophetic collections in the Bible, and especially in the book of Jeremiah. While “tradition” (Überlieferung) is the aim of textualization, that tradition comes in various shapes and forms. The growth of prophetic books is an excellent illustration of Konrad Ehlich’s analysis of the characteristics of textualization and its purposes, especially with regard to the fact that prophetic oracles were, in ancient Israel and Judah, textualized for the purpose of being preserved and performed and of serving as the basis for Fortschreibungen.

Sustenance and Survival in Biblical Narrative

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer L. Koosed
Keyword(s):  
Religious Identity ◽  
Food Production ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
Early Judaism ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
Class Status ◽  
Cultural Code ◽  
Shape Characterization

Food is a comprehensive cultural code. In ancient Israel and early Judaism, food production and preparation structured lives; what one did in the process was determined by gender and class status and sometimes even marked by ethnic and religious identity. Food also serves to structure narrative, shape characterization, and add layers of symbolic signification to story. In the Bible, the drama of the first few chapters revolves around proper versus improper eating, and the final book portrays God as a lamb sacrificed for the Passover meal. Between picking and tasting the forbidden fruit, and slaughtering and eating God, a whole host of food-related plots, characters, and images proliferate, many of which revolve around the most important of foodstuffs: bread. This chapter explores the centrality of bread in the story of Adam and Eve, the book of Ruth, and the gospels of Jesus.

The Idiom of Scripture, Leviticus 18:5, and Theology at a Time of Paradigm Shift

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 155-170
Author(s):  
Merwyn S. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
World War ◽  
Post World War Ii ◽  
The Bible ◽  
English Translations ◽  
The One ◽  
Law And Gospel

Leviticus 18:5b ( the one doing them shall live in them) offers a prism through which to view the idiom of Scripture—the distinctive dynamics and theology of the Bible. The verse pinpoints the interplay between God's doing-and-living and ours. At issue is whether the commandments reflect a “command-and-do” structure of life with God, which maximizes a quid pro quo dynamic between God and us; or do the commandments delineate a “covenant place where” we abide with God and God with us, as a gift of shared doing pure and simple? The article traces Leviticus 18:5b through both Old and New Testaments, to show how pervasive it is. The main post-World War II English translations misstate the verse at every turn, in contrast to the 16th-century Church Reformation, which understood the verse and the issue under the topic of Law and Gospel.

scholarly journals Reading the Bible in the African context: Assessing Africa’s love affair with prosperity Gospel

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ntozakhe Cezula
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Prosperity Gospel ◽  
Bible Translation ◽  
African People ◽  
Traditional Religions ◽  
The Bible ◽  
African Context ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Bible Reading ◽  
Socio Economic Factors

The aim of this article is to examine Bible reading in the African context and the willingness and enthusiasm to embrace prosperity gospel in Africa. To achieve this objective, a discussion on the developments in biblical interpretation in Africa will first be presented. This will be done by examining three historical periods: colonial, independence and democratisation periods. This will be followed by an outline of migrations that have taken place from traditional religions to different versions of Christianity in different times in Africa. These migrations will be examined in connection with Bible translation. The relationship between prosperity gospel and African people in Africa will be discussed by considering the tools prosperity gospel uses to appeal to African people, namely the religio-cultural and socio-economic factors. The article will then provide its assessment of contextual reading in the prosperity gospel and a conclusion will follow.

Retrieving At-one-ment in the English Soteriological Tradition

2021 ◽  
pp. 002114002110391
Author(s):  
Joel R. Gallagher
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Theological Discourse ◽  
English Translations ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Early English

This article examines the use of the word atonement in biblical-theological discourse in the English language and early English translations of the Bible. It traces the word’s origin and development, and it uncovers its original signification and the meaning of the words from which it derives. It suggests that modern English-speaking theologians could benefit from a re-evaluation of this word given that it was first introduced in English translations of the Bible and subsequently used in Christian theological discourse for a specific purpose which is no longer operative. It suggests that a recovery of its original signification can be helpful to understanding how some medieval and early Renaissance English Christians interpreted that word, scriptural passages, and Christ’s salvific work.

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.

The Two Kinds of Depression According to St. Paul

1967 ◽  
Vol 113 (500) ◽  
pp. 779-780 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark D. Altschule
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The World ◽  
Current Classification ◽  
English Translations ◽  
The One ◽  
Similar Classification

One current classification of depression divides the syndrome into psychotic and non-psychotic varieties. It is interesting that a similar classification developed over a thousand years ago out of some words of St. Paul. In his Second Epistle to the Corinthians, Ch. 7, v. 10, Paul wrote: “For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of, but the sorrow of the world worketh death.” The word sorrow used in English translations of the Bible stood for the tristitia of Latin versions (Greek λνπη); connoting sadness, sorrow, despondency, depression. Paul's distinction between the two kinds of tristitia, the one “from God” and the other “of the world”, led mediaeval theologians to enlarge on differences between the two kinds of depression.

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