scholarly journals The exile of the patriarchs amongst the prophets: A new beginning or first beginnings?

2010 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christo J.S. Lombaard
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Religious History ◽  
New Beginning ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
History Of

Usually, the primary texts on the patriarchs of the Old Testament are considered to be those in Genesis, not only as to the extent of the material offered, but also regarding the dating accorded the patriarchs in relation to the texts concerned. References to the Old Testament patriarchs in the prophetic texts are often considered to be on the margins. In this article, this �exile� is reversed, at least as far as the dating of the patriarchs in relation to textual references to them are concerned. Repatriating the importance of the earliest prophetic mention of the patriarchs makes possible new insights into where the patriarchs could most plausibly fit into the religious history of ancient Israel.

scholarly journals Humans created God in their image? An anthropomorphic projectionism in the Old Testament

2018 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ndikho Mtshiselwa ◽  
Lerato Mokoena
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Main Question ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
The World ◽  
Genesis 1 ◽  
History Of ◽  
Old Testament Studies

The Old Testament projects not only a Deity that created the world and human beings but also one that is violent and male. The debate on the depiction of the God of Israel that is violent and male is far from being exhausted in Old Testament studies. Thus, the main question posed in this article is: If re-read as ‘Humans created God in their image’, would Genesis 1:27 account for the portrayal of a Deity that is male and violent? Feuerbach’s idea of anthropomorphic projectionism and Guthrie’s view of religion as anthropomorphism come to mind here. This article therefore examines, firstly, human conceptualisation of a divine being within the framework of the theory of anthropomorphic projectionism. Because many a theologian and philosopher would deny that God is a being at all, we further investigate whether the God of Israel was a theological and social construction during the history of ancient Israel. In the end, we conclude, based on the theory of anthropomorphic projectionism, that the idea that the God of Israel was a theological and social construct accounts for the depiction of a Deity that is male and violent in the Old Testament.

scholarly journals Who are the “servants” (Psalm 69:36c-37b)? A contribution to the history of the literature of the Old Testament

2003 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alphonso Groenewald
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Special Group ◽  
Book Of Isaiah ◽  
Singular Form ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
Literary Heritage ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Shed Light

Psalm 69:37a refers to the "servants" in the composite "the offspring of his servants". This composite takes up a concept which already ap-peared as a self-indication of the supplicant of this Psalm, namely in its singular form "servant" (69:18a). The article aims to identify these "servants" (69:37a) who articulated themselves in the voice of the other "person" in Psalm 69. It is postulated that the connections which exist between the servants in Isaiah and the servants in the Psalter are far too distinct to simply regard them as a mere matter of coincidence. The article focuses on the book of Isaiah, as conclusions drawn from Isaiah can shed light on the identity of the "servants" in Psalm 69. Secondly, the focus shifts to the term "servants" in the Psalter, and specifically in book I and II. It shows that the term "servants" not only denotes the pious, but indicates a special group of people who played an active role in shaping the literary heritage of ancient Israel in post-exilic times.

Psalm 2 In The Context Of Biblical Theology

1990 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
James W. Watts
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Biblical Theology ◽  
Theological Reflection ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
History Of ◽  
Royal Ideology ◽  
Psalm 2 ◽  
Religious Nature

AbstractPsalm 2 is an intersection in which a variety of issues in biblical theology meet. The psalm impacts upon our understanding of monotheism in ancient Israel, the religious nature of Judah's royal ideology, the origins of eschatology, and New Testament Christology. Theological reflection on Ps 2 should therefore not only consider the recent exegetical discussions of the text, but also the theological issues raised by the Old Testament context, the New Testament's use of the psalm, and the history of the psalm's interpretation. In what follows, a survey of all these aspects will lay the basis for a theological construal of this biblical text.

VI. The Relation of the Old Arabian Poetry to the Hebrew Literature of the Old Testament

1914 ◽  
Vol 46 (02) ◽  
pp. 253-266
Author(s):  
C. J. Lyall
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Hebrew Literature ◽  
Hebrew Poetry ◽  
The Road ◽  
Alternative Description ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
History Of

Three years ago, in his Schweich Lectures on “The Early Poetry of Israel in its Physical and Social Origins”, Dr. George Adam Smith gave us a detailed examination of all the remains of ancient Hebrew poetry contained in the Old Testament which he thought might reasonably be assigned to the period before the eighth centuryb.c., that notable century which saw the rise of the great Prophets—Amos, Hosea, Micah, Isaiah—who brought to the religion of Israel a new spirit, and set it upon the road of development which has been fraught with incalculable consequences to the history of mankind. Those who heard his lectures, or have read them in their since published form, will remember that in dealing with these ancient relics of literature Dr. Smith throughout examined them with an eye to the compositions of those cousins of Israel, the nomad tribes of Arabia. Comparing the two, at every step he found that the latter threw light on the former, and brought into strong relief the close kinship of these two great historic branches of the Semitic race. “Ancient Israel illustrated by Ancient Arabia” might, in fact, be taken as the alternative description of his lectures, the beauty and eloquence of which those who heard them are not likely soon to forget.

scholarly journals Building a nation: The Jeroboams and the creation of two Israels

2019 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Davies
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
Minimalist Approach ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Reflective Essay

This article represents a short reflective essay in honour of the Old Testament scholar Eben Scheffler. It focuses on the writing of the history of ancient Israel texts; examines different approaches to address the history of texts: minimalist and maximalist; and illustrates a minimalist approach in reference to the figure of the Israelite king Jeroboam II.

scholarly journals Exploring similarities between the German and the Dutch ‘ethical’ traditions: Possibilities of the history of religion for a theological approach to Old Testament studies in South Africa

2010 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan H. Vorster
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Religious History ◽  
History Of Religion ◽  
Israelite Religion ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Diverse Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relevant Factors

This article shows how dialectic theology caused a loss of interest in the history of religion, which was seen as out of touch with the current world. The distinction between theology and the history of religion became increasingly vague. The article focuses on the contribution of Rainier Albertz in his two-volume Religionsgeschichte Israels in alttestamentlicher Zeit (History of Israelite religion in the Old Testament period), 1992. Albertz proposed that the history of religion should be restored to serve as the ‘more sensible discipline for abridging the Old Testament’. This article points out several advantages to this approach, namely a different kind of Old Testament theology, starting from current theological problems and searching through the thematic segments of Israel’s religious history and that of early Christianity for analogous insights relevant to the problems in question. This article develops the argument that Albertz’s suggestions open up possibilities for establishing a vibrant theological environment in South Africa, where theologians from a diverse society can start from different perspectives on current problems, consider the Bible as part of a uniquely defined set of relevant factors and present a kaleidoscope of cross-balancing ‘African’ theological perspectives. The aim of this approach is to enhance the possibilities of Albertz’s suggestions by relating them, in context, to insights from ethical theology in the hope of reviving the debate regarding repositioning the history of religion in a different kind of theological approach. This debate is long in coming: it may already have lost close to 20 years in deserved attention.

Setting the Scene: a Response to John Rogerson

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
KEITH W. WHITELAM
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Biblical History ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
History Of

John Rogerson's review of works on the history of ancient Israel from Humphrey Prideaux to Martin Noth is a fine illustration of Ecclesiastes' observation (1.9): ‘What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun’. The current debates on the history of Israel are often presented as part of some paradigm shift or, at the very least, a new and savage phase in the study of Israelite history. The publication of recent works such as A Biblical History of Israel by Provan et al. and Kenneth Kitchen's On the Reliability of the Old Testament take us back to the starting point of Rogerson's paper and the work of Prideaux before the development of biblical studies as a critical discipline in the nineteenth century. Norman Cantor's observations on the invention of the Middle Ages by twentieth-century scholarship are just as applicable to biblical scholarship and its pursuit of ancient Israel.

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