scholarly journals The strange biography of Samson

2003 ◽  
Vol 24 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 19-36
Author(s):  
Yair Zakovitch
Keyword(s):  
World View ◽  
Biblical Story ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Book Of Samuel ◽  
Book Of Judges ◽  
Story Elements

The biblical story of the life of Samson hides much from the reader&&the Book of Judges has deleted from the story elements that were deemed improper for the book’s placement among the Holy Scriptures. In this article, the author shows how the Bible transforms Samson from a mythological hero, the son of a god, to a mere mortal whose extraordinary strength came through the spirit of God that rested with him so long as he kept his Nazirite vows. The biblical storyteller could not prevent the story of Samson from entering into the biblical corpus since it was a tale of tremendous popularity. He thus told it in such a way as to bring it closer to his monotheistic beliefs and world-view. In its ‘biblical’ form the story does not bring honor to the figure of Samson, and so his placement as the last of the judges in the Book of Judges prepares the reader for the establishment of the institution of kingship, in the Book of Samuel.

Rewriting Gideon

2019 ◽  
pp. 17-36
Author(s):  
Kelly J. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Gender Norms ◽  
Reception History ◽  
First Century ◽  
Biblical Story ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Jewish Historian ◽  
Book Of Judges

Chapter 1 argues that the Bible we read today reflects periods of rewriting, understood as a kind of reception history, and illustrates how revisions and expansions to earlier texts provide readers with a window onto changing expectations for gendered performance, as inscribed in the biblical story of Gideon. The chapter analyzes the significance of a manuscript found at Qumran, 4QJudga, which lacks the unnamed prophet now in Judg 6:7–10. Additionally, the chapter explores how constructions of gender often define men as the opposite of what is considered “womanly,” citing two examples: first, by examining how the prophet in Judg 6:7–10 connects the story of Deborah to the story of Gideon; and, second, by discussing how the first-century Jewish historian Josephus retells the stories of Deborah, Barak, and Gideon from the book of Judges by rewriting these characters in light of ancient Roman gender norms.

Comment le rapport au texte biblique transforme le rapport au texte littéraire au XVIIIe siècle : le cas Rousseau

2013 ◽  
pp. 40-47
Author(s):  
Geneviève Di Rosa
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Xviiie Siècle ◽  
Radical Enlightenment ◽  
Biblical Intertextuality ◽  
Full Force ◽  
Xviiie Siecle ◽  
Book Of Judges ◽  
Literary Reception

In the 18th century, the Bible felt the full force of criticism by radical Enlightenment thinkers who read it piece by piece and denounced the process of its creation as an imposture – thus extending the break initiated by moral and historical critiques of the previous century. In doing so, they nevertheless failed to grant it the literary status of a “profane work”. Yet, Rousseau, who produced a literary rewriting of the Book of Judges with his Levite of Ephraim, pondered over the violence inflicted on biblical intertextuality during his exile in Môtiers: in his Letters Written from the Mountain, he compared it to the violence caused to his own literary works. By draw-ing this parallel, he opened a reflection on the different manners of reading a text, as well as the possibility of regulating the reader’s violence through proposing an ethics of literary reception. Analogy might not work as a substitute; however, it enabled Rousseau to go beyond the mistreatment which anti-philosophers or philosophers inflicted on his works, by giving, among other things, an autobiographical orienta-tion to his writing: one in which the author is ready to take responsibility for giving himself to the reader. The ambivalence of the sacred and the profane, the perception of a common essence of religion – defined either by sacrifice or gift – were thus what helped Rousseau invent the autobiographical pact.

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 Being Biblical? Slavery, sexuality, and the inclusive community

2008 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A. Burridge
Keyword(s):  
Church Leadership ◽  
World View ◽  
Careful Analysis ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Ethical Debate ◽  
Ethical Teaching ◽  
Women In Church Leadership ◽  
The Last Two Millennia

The use of the Bible in ethical debate has been central for the last two millennia. Current debates about sexuality, or the position of women in church leadership, are marked by both, or all, sides of the argument using Scripture. However, this has been true of many issues in the past. This is demonstrated in the debate about slavery two hundred years ago. Careful analysis of the use of Scripture in both the justification and critique of apartheid reveals how both sides quoted Scripture in its various modes, such as rules, principles, paradigms, and overall world-view. The biographical nature of the Gospels means that we must set Jesus’ rigorous ethical teaching in the context of the narrative of his deeds, including his open and welcoming acceptance of all people. It was an inclusive community of interpretation which changed the debates about slavery and apartheid, and a similar inclusive community is needed today.

The Artist as Reader of the Bible. Visual Exegesis and the Adoration of the Magi

2005 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 337-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin O'Kane
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
Biblical Story ◽  
Image Viewer ◽  
The Bible ◽  
History Of ◽  
Entire History ◽  
Visual Exegesis ◽  
Textual Meaning

AbstractThe article explores the processes at work in a painting's engagement of its viewer in biblical subject matter. It accentuates the role of the artist as an active reader of the Bible and not merely an illustrator of biblical scenes, the dynamic that occurs in the text-reader process as paradigmatic for the image-viewer relationship and the important role of the developing tradition that felt the need to change or rewrite the biblical story. The processes are explored in terms of hermeneutics and exegesis: hermeneutics defined as 'the interweaving of language and life within the horizon of the text and within the horizons of traditions and the modern reader' (Gadamer) and exegesis as 'the dialectic between textual meaning and the reader's existence' (Berdini). Applied to the visualization of biblical subject matter, the approaches of Gadamer and Berdini illumine the key role given to the viewer in the visual hermeneutical process. The biblical story of the adoration of the Magi (Matt. 2: 1-12), the first public and universal seeing of Christ and one of the most frequently depicted themes in the entire history of biblical art, is used to illustrate their approach. The emphasis in the biblical narrative on revealing the Christ child to the reader parallels a key concept in Gadamer's hermeneutical aesthetics, namely Darstellung, the way in which a painting facilitates its subject matter in coming forth, in becoming an existential event in the life of the viewer.

EARLY CHRISTIAN REPRESENTATIONS OF MAN BETWEEN THE BIBLE AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY – THE FEATURES OF THE RELATIONSHIP

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 104-111
Author(s):  
A. V. Laputko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
World View ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Ancient Greek Philosophy ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Final Design

The article examines the preconditions for the formation of Christian ideas about man. The emphasis is on the fact that the doctrine of a person has never been a separate problem of theology, and, consequently, was formed in parallel and within the basic tenets of Christianity. The author focuses attention on the contradiction in understanding the origin of representations of a person between the traditional branches of Christianity. On the whole, while remaining in common positions, each denomination identifies its own fundamental source of the origin of anthropological ideas, not taking into account the complex and contradictory path of interpenetration of the ideas of ancient Greek philosophy and Christianity. The author shows the path of formation of the main anthropological representations from the Old Testament notions to the New Testament, which receive their final design only in the works of apologists of Christianity brought up by the logic and culture of thinking of ancient philosophy. Thus, the birth of a new world-view anthropological paradigm, which remains one of the most popular and discursive in the modern world, takes place within the framework of a dialogue between ancient Greek philosophical thought and Old Testament ideas.

Introduction

Black Samson ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Nyasha Junior ◽  
Jeremy Schipper
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
American Literature ◽  
African Descent ◽  
American Art ◽  
Biblical Story ◽  
Court Records ◽  
White American ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Popular Subject

Samson is a popular subject in biblical scholarship on the use of the Bible in art, literature, and popular culture, although this scholarship tends to focus on Samson in White European and White American art and literature. The introduction explains how Samson becomes identified with people of African descent in American literature. It discusses the biblical story of Samson and the lack of physical descriptions of Samson in the Bible. It provides examples of the racialized uses of Samson in poetry, sermons, speeches, narratives by enslaved persons, court records, and newspapers. It offers some possible reasons why the biblical story of Samson may have become associated with African Americans.

On the Aquedah in Modern Philosophy

2007 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-108
Author(s):  
Ze'ev Levy
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Final Conclusion ◽  
Biblical Story ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Fear And Trembling ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Do So

AbstractThe story of the Aquedah represents one of the most moving stories of the Bible. Most modern discussions on it take their point of departure from Soren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling. I shall do so too in this essay, which focuses on the relations between ethics and religious belief and tries to show that Kierkegaard misinterpreted the story. The inquiry analyzes philosophical responses to the Aquedah from Philo and Jewish and non-Jewish philosophers until the present. It underscores its paradoxical implications, including a structuralist analysis and comparison of the Aquedah with the biblical story of Yephta's daughter. The final conclusion asserts that what Kierkegaard extolled, Judaism condemns as sacrilege.

scholarly journals Are we »Christians« only on Sunday? What about Monday? - The biblical drama in four acts as a framework for an integrated view of work

2017 ◽  
Vol XV (3) ◽  
pp. 425-448
Author(s):  
Dražen Glavaš
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Theology ◽  
Biblical Story ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Theology Of Work ◽  
Biblical Drama ◽  
Biblical Faith ◽  
Complete Framework ◽  
New Framework

By percentage Croatia is a highly »Christian« country (more than 91 percent), sadly that does not mean that it is a country of high ethics. In reality Croatia struggles on many ethical battlegrounds. We start this paper with the assumption that a rightly understood and clearly communicated integration of biblical faith and work can contribute to the solution of problems in Croatia. But we found through research that few people read and understand the Bible. When the Holy Scriptures do not have such importance, for most people who describe themselves as Christians, it is hard to understand and talk about the biblical view of work or biblical theology of work. We propose a new framework for an integrated view of work as a lens through which we can better understand the whole biblical story. Without looking at this more complete framework, we lose the context and conception of work.

The Bible in Pop and Rock Music

2020 ◽  
pp. 329-343
Author(s):  
Michael J. Gilmour
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Rock Music ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
Biblical Story ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Status ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Conservative Values

The Bible is ubiquitous in pop and rock music of the 1960s through to the present. This is surprising given that the art forms subsumed under these catchall categories are typically oppositional in nature. They resist the status quo and are often antiestablishment in posture, and by their very nature inclined to push back against the conservative values and authoritarian tendencies of organized religion. This chapter examines reasons why biblical and religious language is so persistent a feature in the popular music of recent decades, emphasizing the collective memory of the biblical story among songwriters and their audiences and the fragmentary nature of these “readings” of sacred texts and traditions.

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