scholarly journals Die hermeneutiese proses onderliggend aan Paulus se eksegese van Eksodus 17:6 en Numeri 20:7–11 in 1 Korintiërs 10:1–4

2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacobus D.W. De Koning

The hermeneutical process underlying Paul’s exegesis of Exodus 17:6 and Numbers 20:7–11 in 1 Corinthians 10:1–4. In this article, Paul’s use of the Old Testament in 1 Corinthians 10:1–4 comes under scrutiny. In contrast with the theory of some modern scholars that Paul uses, ‘fanciful analogies’, ‘startling figurative claims’ and metaphors that ‘should not he pressed’, in reaching his conclusion that ‘the rock was Christ’, in 1 Corinthians 10:4c, it is indicated that Paul is indeed taking the original text, the Old Testament’s interpretation of the text, and the Jewish tradition of the interpretation of the text, seriously, in the light of the Christ-event. To prove this claim, research of the text (Exodus 17:6 Numbers 20:7–11), that Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 10:1–4, is followed by research of the ‘world in front of that text’ (Deuteronomy 32, the Psalms and Second Temple Judaism).Contribution: The conclusion that is reached indicates that Paul established within the context of contemporary Jewish practices, a true dialogical relationship between an intertextual handling of the text, and his interpretation thereof in the light of the relevance of the Christ-event for the conflict in the Church of Corinth.

2009 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pieter M. Venter

Inclusivism and exclusivism: A study of two trendsThe identity of the church can be either inclusivist or exclusivist. Van Ruler’s theocratic theology views the church as being an inclusive community in service of God’s kingdom. It is the vehicle God uses to introduce his kingdom into the world. According to Van Ruler, however, the church also shows a unique character based on its relationship with Jesus Christ. Although the church can take many forms, Van Ruler’s opinion is that the Christian Church could be advised by Old Testament Israel in this regard. This study shows that both inclusivist and exclusivist trends are present in the Old as well as the New Testament. The New Testament inherited the debate between these two opposing stances from the time of the Second Temple. Returning from exile, Sadocitic priests propagated an exclusivist identity for the Judaeans. Their viewpoint was based on the programme of Ezekiel 40–48, as is illustrated in the literature of Ezra–Nehemiah, the Priestly Writing, Chronicles and Jubilees. On the other hand, indeed there was an inclusivist approach as well, as is depicted in the books of Jonah, Ruth, Trito-Isaiah and even Numbers and Joshua. The conclusion drawn from the study is that both exclusivist and inclusivist trends are present in the Bible. Although the church does not have any other option in the present postmodern world but to be primarily an inclusive community, it should also show some form of exclusivism.


2013 ◽  
pp. 174-183
Author(s):  
Piotr Sadkowski

Throughout the centuries French and Francophone writers were relatively rarely inspired by the figure of Moses and the story of Exodus. However, since the second half of 20th c. the interest of the writers in this Old Testament story has been on the rise: by rewriting it they examine the question of identity dilemmas of contemporary men. One of the examples of this trend is Moïse Fiction, the 2001 novel by the French writer of Jewish origin, Gilles Rozier, analysed in the present article. The hypertextual techniques, which result in the proximisation of the figure of Moses to the reality of the contemporary reader, constitute literary profanation, but at the same time help place Rozier’s text in the Jewish tradition, in the spirit of talmudism understood as an exchange of views, commentaries, versions and additions related to the Torah. It is how the novel, a new “midrash”, avoids the simple antinomy of the concepts of the sacred and the profane. Rozier’s Moses, conscious of his complex identity, is simultaneously a Jew and an Egyptian, and faces, like many contemporary Jewish writers, language dilemmas, which constitute one of the major motifs analysed in the present article. Another key question is the ethics of the prophetism of the novelistic Moses, who seems to speak for contemporary people, doomed to in the world perceived as chaos unsupervised by an absolute being. Rozier’s agnostic Moses is a prophet not of God (who does not appear in the novel), but of humanism understood as the confrontation of a human being with the absurdity of his or her own finiteness, which produces compassion for the other, with whom the fate of a mortal is shared.


Author(s):  
C. D. Elledge

This chapter summarizes the major claims of the study and offers observations on how the nascent church and the Tannaim reinterpreted earlier Jewish theologies of resurrection. Both the church and Judaism charted their own responses to theodicy in continuity with the earlier discourse of resurrection that originally developed within the Second Temple era, yet they did so in strikingly different ways, as illustrated in Mishnah Sanhedrin and Paul’s letters. Sanhedrin allows considerable freedom regarding the finer details of what form resurrection might take. What is more significant is the relevance of resurrection to the collective survival of “all Israel” and the restoration of the land. Paul illustrates how resurrection became increasingly invested in the person of Jesus and, thus, took on an entirely new meaning. He further illustrates the relationships between resurrection and the restoration of God’s dominion over the world that can also be identified in earlier Jewish writings.


2011 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-92
Author(s):  
Cullen Tanner

AbstractThis article traces John's use of Zechariah 4 through its most likely first century perceptions in conjunction with the implicit ecclesial audience of Revelation. After placing the Apocalypse amid the atmosphere of Second Temple Judaism in the Roman Empire, it provides conjecture as to the theological implications of these speech acts on the Church of Revelation. These findings are then used to piece together the illocutionary force of John's use of Zechariah 4 and the resulting perlocution, which together comprise an essential element of the pneumatology that John supports in Revelation. When interpreting through such a lens, one ought to ask not only who the Spirit is but how this biblical author anticipated his audience to act in response to this document and to the Holy Spirit.


2012 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory Y. Phillips ◽  
Fika Janse van Rensburg ◽  
Herrie F. Van Rooy

The aim of this article is to develop a specific approach to interpreting New Testament use of the Old Testament. The approach has integrated the most useful insights of studies in both Second Temple Judaism and present day literary theory in order to reach most consistently and effectively a valid explanation of the biblical data. In the process, severalimportant hermeneutical issues have been addressed. The focus of New Testament use of the Old Testament in the person and redemptive work of Jesus should always be the goal of Christian interpretation. Whilst old and new texts mutually interpret one another, it has been argued that there has been no ultimate ambiguity about the author’s intended, singular meaning or distortion of the original meaning of the old text. It is important to be aware that all readers come to a text with preconceived worldviews that are inevitably a mixture of biblical and unbiblical perspectives. However, this does not prevent a reader from attaining a valid understanding that adequately overlaps with the most probable meaning of the text as intended by the author. This most probable meaning is determined by the explanation that logically makes the most coherent and natural sense of most biblical data. The methodological procedure proposed has taken thegrammatical-historical method as the normative starting point of exegesis. It has then proceeded to imitate the New Testament in consideration of the broader canonical context, before considering explanations derived from the Second Temple literature or present day literary theory.Die ontwerp van ‘n geïntegreerde benadering om Nuwe-Testamentiese gebruik van die Ou Testament te verstaan. Die bedoeling met hierdie artikel is om ’n benadering te ontwerp om die Nuwe-Testamentiese gebruik van die Ou Testament te verstaan. Dié benadering moet die mees bruikbare insigte van die navorsing oor die Tweede Tempelperiode en die hedendaagse literêre teorie integreer, met die oog daarop om op die mees konstante en effektiewe wyse ’n geldige verklaring van die Bybelse data te gee. In hierdie proses word etlike hermeneutiese vraagstukke onder die loep geneem. Aangesien die fokus van die Nuwe-Testamentiese gebruik van die Ou Testament die persoon en verlossingswerk van Jesus is, is dit nodig dat hierdie fokus by die Christen se verstaan ook teenwoordig is. Dit is so dat ouer en nuwer tekste mekaar interpreteer; dit hou egter nie in dat daar dubbelsinnigheid is oor die outeur se bedoelde enkele betekenis, of ’n skeeftrekking van die oorspronklike betekenis van die ouer teks nie. ’n Leser kom noodwendig na die teks met ’n spesifieke wêreldbeskouing, wat ’n mengsel is van Bybelse en onbybelse perspektiewe. Dit verhoed die leser egter nie om by ’n geldige verstaan van die teks uit te kom wat voldoende oorvleuel met die mees waarskynlike betekenis van die teks soos wat die outeur dit bedoel het en wat logieserwys die meeste van die bybelse data goed en organies verreken nie. Die voorgestelde benadering neem die grammaties-historiese metode as die normatiewe beginpunt vir eksegese, en volg dan die Nuwe Testament self na deur die breër kanoniese konteks te verreken. Eers dan word die literatuur van die Tweede Tempelperiode asook die literêre teorie van die huidige tyd verreken.


2014 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wouter C. Van Wyk

The contribution that Professor Pieter M. Venter has made to the study of the Old Testament during his academic and ecclesiastic career is reviewed. After a brief biographical introduction, the article surveys the development of his research interests, focusing specifically on his contributions to the study of wisdom literature, narratives and narratology, second temple literature, the formation of the canon, and Old Testament Theology. The review concludes with reference to his way of practising critical theology, taking full cognisance of research into the linguistic, historical critical, narratological and ideological aspects of Old Testament texts, but always with a sensitivity for the needs of the church as interpretive community.


2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-130
Author(s):  
Raʿanan Boustan ◽  
Michael Beshay

Abstract This paper traces the historical development of the tradition that King Solomon made use of a signet-ring to marshal the demons as a labor-force for the construction of the Jerusalem Temple and analyzes the shifting ritual uses to which this tradition was put.We argue that this tradition, which is most fully articulated in the Testament of Solomon, is a Christian innovation of the third and fourth centuries rather than a venerable Jewish tradition with roots in the Second Temple period. This branch of the Solomon tradition first emerged within the context of internal Christian debates of the third century concerning proper baptismal practice, where the power of baptism to provide protection from the demons was linked to debates concerning the efficacy of Solomon’s act of sealing the demons in the temple. In the post-Constantinian period, the ring of Solomon was venerated by pilgrims to Jerusalem as a “relic” of Israelite kingship alongside the True Cross. Like certain strands of the Testament of Solomon literature, the pilgrimage practices performed at this potent site figure Christ’s victory on the cross as the fulfillment-once and for all-of Solomon’s only provisional mastery over the demons. In this context, Solomon’s ring gave concrete expression to Christian claims on the Old Testament past, while also mediating between imperial and ecclesiastical power.


The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha is meant to be a premier reference work for the study of the so-called Old Testament Apocrypha, important early Jewish texts that have become deutero-canonical for some Christian churches and non-canonical for other churches and that are of lasting cultural significance. In addition to the place given to the classical literary, historical, and tradition-historical introductory questions, this Handbook will focus on the major social and theological themes of each individual book. Special attention will be given to the Apocrypha’s portrayal of gender and sexuality, their ethics, and their reception history. Several chapters will deal with overarching topics, such as genre and historicity, Jewish practices and beliefs, and the relation of the Apocrypha to the Septuagint, Qumran, Pseudepigrapha, and New Testament, thus also offering important insights on the place of the Apocrypha in Second Temple (or early) Judaism. With contributions from leading scholars from around the world, the Handbook provides the authoritative reference work on the current state of Apocrypha research, and at the same time, carves out future directions of study.


2014 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Llewellyn Howes

This article is the first of three on the relationship between the Sayings Gospel Q and the ancient concept of ‘psychostasia,’ which is the ancient notion that a divine or supernatural figure weighed people’s souls when judging them. The ultimate goal of all three articles is to enhance our understanding of Q 6:37–38, as well as of the Q document as a whole. In the current article, attention is focused on intertexts from the Old Testament, and the occurrences therein of the word ‘measure’ and the concept of ‘psychostasia’. The implications of these results for our interpretation of Q 6:37–38 are briefly noted. A second (future) article will focus on intertexts in apocryphal and pseudepigraphical writings from Second Temple Judaism dealing with ‘psychostasia’. A third study will ultimately spell out in more comprehensive detail the implications of the foregoing intertextual investigations on both our understanding of Q 6:37–38 and our understanding of the Sayings Gospel Q as a whole.


1966 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-73
Author(s):  
George A. F. Knight

In various parts of the Protestant world a re-examination of the question of Mariology has been entered upon. Now that we are in sincere dialogue with Rome, and Protestantism and Orthodoxy are united in fellowship in the World Council of Churches, it has become incumbent on Protestants to cease to be merely negative to the Mother of our Lord. Simply because our Roman Catholic brethren hold doctrines about her that Protestants do not appreciate does not mean that the Virgin Mary should have no theological significance for the Churches of the Reformation. Ten years ago an article from my pen, entitled ‘The Virgin and the Old Testament’, appeared inThe Reformed Theological Review(of Australia), Vol. XII, No. 1. That article was occasioned by an uneasy reaction to a reading of the section entitled ‘Mariology’ inWays of Worship, being the Report of a Theological Commission of Faith and Order in preparation for the Lund Conference of 1952. I acknowledge my indebtedness now to my former article, and thank the editor of theRTRfor permitting me to expand it here.The Protestant has to satisfy himself that any doctrine he holds is securely rooted in Scripture. For the early Church ‘Scripture’ meant only the Old Testament. And to it the Church undoubtedly turned as it sought to understand the place of the Virgin Mary in the Gospel it was preaching to Jews and Gentiles alike, and thus to understand her relationship to her Saviour Son.


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