scholarly journals The Anti-Corruption Stance of John the Baptist in Luke 3:12-14

Diacovensia ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-90
Author(s):  
Christopher Naseri
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
John The Baptist ◽  
Unethical Practices ◽  
Critical Method ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Law ◽  
Insight Into

Luke 3:12-14 narrates John the Baptist’s responses to the questions of the tax collectors and soldiers. These responses are interpreted in this work as measures against corruption. The text therefore provides an insight into unethical practices in the New Testament times, and the attempts by religious representatives to speak against them. Using the synchronic approach of historical critical method of exegesis this work concludes that the message of John the Baptist provides an insight into reasons for corruption among tax collectors and soldiers of the New Testament era. These reasons include ‘not living within one’s means’ and ‘not acting according to the law’. This work encourages religious representatives to speak out against corruption and be exemplary in their conducts.

scholarly journals Moses, Elijah, and Jesus: Reflections on the basic structures of the Bible

2012 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Abraham Van de Beek
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Human Response ◽  
Jordan River ◽  
John The Baptist ◽  
Promised Land ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The People ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Way

This article deals with the end of the lives of Moses and Elijah as the representatives of the Torah and the Prophets. Moses was not allowed to enter the Promised Land, and Elijah left it before he was taken up. These events are interpreted as indicating that the Law is not able to bring the people into the Promised Land and that the Prophets cannot keep them there. The end of Moses’ life is also the end of the Torah. The Prophets end with the call for a new Elijah. The Ketubim, as the human response on God’s acting, do not better. The Hebrew Bible ends with the exile. The New Testament begins where the Prophets end: a new Elijah, in the person of John the Baptist. He works at exactly the place where Israel entered the land after Moses’ death and where Elijah left the land. It is a reprise of the fulfilment of the promise. John points to Jesus, who begins his work at this place, not going on dry feet through the Jordan River,but fulfilling all righteousness when drawn into the water of God’s judgement. Then the way to the land is open to Moses and Elijah in the glory of God on the Mount of Transfiguration, when they speak about the exodus of Jesus on the cross. Salvation is not in the law or in conversion but in being baptised into Christ in his death.  Moses, Elia en Jesus: Oorwegings oor die fundamentele strukture van die Bybel. Hierdie artikel gaan oor die einde van die lewes van Moses en Elia as die personifikasies van die Torah en die profete. Moses is verhinder om in die beloofde land in te gaan en Elijah moes dit verlaat voordat hy hemel toe gegaan het. Hierdie gebeurtenisse word so geïnterpreteer dat die Wet die volk nie in die beloofde land kan bring nie, en dat die profete hulle nie daar kan hou nie. Die einde van die lewe van Moses is ook die einde van die Torah. Die profete eindig met die oproep vir ’n nuwe Elia. Die Ketubim as die menslike antwoord op God se dade doen nie beter nie. Die Hebreeuse Bybel eindig in die ballingskap. Die Nuwe Testament begin daar waar die profete eindig: ’n nuwe Elia, in die persoon van Johannes die Doper. Hy werk op presies daardie plek waar Israel na Moses se dood die land ingekom het en waar Elia dit verlaat het. Daar is ’n terugkeer na die vervulling van die belofte. Johannes wys na Jesus wat sy werk op hierdie plek begin. Hy gaan nie droogvoet deur die Jordaan nie maar gaan onder in die water van God se oordeel om alle geregtigheid te vervul. Dan is die pad na die land oop vir Moses en Elia en verskyn hulle in die glorie van God op die berg van die verheerliking, waar hulle met Jesus oor sy exodus aan die kruis praat. Redding is nie in die Wet of in bekering nie maar deurdat ’n mens gedoop word in die dood van Christus.

Paul's ‘Robust Conscience’ Re-Examined

1985 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-188
Author(s):  
John M. Espy
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Liberation Theology ◽  
John The Baptist ◽  
Protestant Churches ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Law ◽  
Social Orders ◽  
New Generation ◽  
Christian Proclamation ◽  
Christian Message

For centuries most Protestant churches, true to the Reformers' understanding of man and the Law, have preached the Christian message by presenting first the Law, so that the hearer would come to recognize his or her sinfulness, and then the Gospel, that the hearer might be brought to hope, and eventually to faith, in Jesus Christ. As the New Testament begins with the stern exhortations of John the Baptist, so, it has been argued, the Christian proclamation should always and everywhere commence with God's command. But now, in seminaries and churches, some have seized upon new expositions of the Law and used them to oppose this preaching scheme as unworkable, since not all will have any sins against the Law to recognize; and even as wrong, on the grounds that this approach inevitably lapses into trying to make people ‘feel guilty’. The result is that many of the new generation of ministers are learning to preach only consolation, or, at most, the judgment upon certain social orders pronounced by popularized liberation theology. It is with this homilectical situation in mind that I offer the following remarks on Paul's understanding of man's relationship to the Law, and through the Law to sin.

Who Instigated Violence: A Rebelling Devil or a Vengeful God?

2015 ◽  
pp. 93-106
Author(s):  
István T. Kristó-Nagy*
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Social Implications ◽  
The World ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Universe

The contrast between the attitude towards violence of the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament was already explored by Marcion (d. c. 160 ad) before the advent of Islam and has been rediscovered again and again since.1 Marcion saw the former as the creator of the world and God of the law and the latter as the good God, the God of love.2 The character of the former reflects a community’s need for sanctified social norms, while the character of the latter shows the community’s and the individual’s longing for the hope of salvation.3 The God of the Qurʾān is also one of punishment and pardon. This chapter investigates the former aspect and focuses on: (1) the appearance of evil and violence in the universe as described in the Qurʾān; (2) the philosophical-theological questions revealed by this myth; and (3) its social implications.

The Law and the New Testament

Theology ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 103 (812) ◽  
pp. 131-132
Author(s):  
Robert Morgan
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Law

The Theological Appropriation of the Old Testament by the New Testament

1986 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Black
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
General Terms ◽  
Biblical Study ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Law

To speak, in general terms, of trends in modern biblical study is often to over-simplify; and certainly to claim that there has been, in recent years, a trend away from the traditional classicist or ‘hellenist’ approach to New Testament problems towards a more Hebraic or semitic-centred approach would be to be guilty of the same exaggeration as E. C. Hoskyns in 1930: ‘(There are) grounds for supposing no further progress in the understanding of … Christianity to be possible unless the ark of New Testament exegesis be recovered from its wanderings in the land of the Philistines (sic) and be led back not merely to Jerusalem, for that might mean contemporary Judaism, but to its home in the midst of the classical Old Testament Scriptures — to the Law and the Prophets.’ There is, nevertheless, some truth in A. M. Hunter's later statement: ‘After ransacking all sorts of sources, Jewish and Greek (and, we may add, starting all sorts of “hares”, some of which have not run very well), (scholars) are discovering the truth of Augustine's dictum, “The New Testament lies hidden in the Old, and the Old is made plain in the New”’ (Novum Testamentum in vetere latet, vetus in novo patet).

A Law-Observant Mission to Gentiles: The Background of Galatians

1985 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis Martyn
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Jewish Law ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Law ◽  
Jewish Christians

That the early church was intensely and passionately evangelistic is clear to every reader of the documents that make up the New Testament. Equally clear, or so it would seem, is the scholarly consensus that when Christian evangelists took the step of reaching beyond the borders of the Jewish people, they did so without requiring observance of the Jewish law. The work of these evangelists, in turn, is said to have sparked a reaction on the part of firmly observant Jewish Christians, who, seeing the growth of the Gentile mission, sought to require observance of the Law by its converts. Struggles ensued, and the outcome, to put the matter briefly, was victory for the mission to the Gentiles, for the Law-free theology characteristic of that mission, and for the churches produced by it.

Georgian Studies and the New Testament

1983 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 306-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. N. Birdsall
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Critical Method ◽  
The New Testament

Much of the study of the New Testament in the recent decades of the present century has emphasized that we encounter in scripture, not so much a record of the data on which opinion about Jesus and belief in him are grounded, as the forms which these traditions and affirmations have assumed in their use, transmission and development within the early church. From the first impact of the form-critical method, this emphasis has been made more and more until its validity has been acknowledged even in many quarters where at first it might have been vociferously rejected.

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