Early Christian biblical interpretation

2021 ◽  
pp. 933-943
Author(s):  
Mark Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Early Christian

Posthumanism

2019 ◽  
pp. 196-218
Author(s):  
Denise Kimber Buell
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Human Origins ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Genesis 1 ◽  
Early Christian Studies

For New Testament and early Christian studies, posthumanism provides a vantage point for contemporary readers to appreciate just how fully contingent ancient texts perceive “the human” to be. This chapter opens by linking the study of gender and sexuality with posthumanism. Situating posthumanism especially in relation to intersectional feminisms, this chapter explores ways that New Testament and early Christian scholarship has engaged posthumanism and might further contribute to this field. Juxtaposing New Testament and non-canonical writings with contemporary critical theory that may be associated with posthumanism, this essay offers new possibilities for reading ancient narratives of human origins such as Genesis 1-3 and its retellings, for identifying non-reproductive kin-making and multispecies mutualisms through rhetoric and ritual, and for reconsidering temporality. A brief case study of Ephesians also shows how biblical interpretation offers a caution to those who view posthumanism’s potential as primarily liberatory.

Tragical Mimesis and Biblical Interpretation II

2020 ◽  
pp. 67-101
Author(s):  
Paul M. Blowers
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Judas Iscariot ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Hebrew Scriptures ◽  
John The Baptist ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Divine Justice ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Sacrifice

This chapter, following on the last, expands to other case studies of dramatic interpretation and tragical mimesis in patristic exposition of tragic narratives in the Bible beyond Genesis, in Old and New Testaments alike. The horrific story of Jephthah’s fateful vow and the “sacrifice” of his daughter (Judges 11), perhaps the best single example of tragedy in the Hebrew Scriptures, vexed its patristic interpreters by its ostensive moral senselessness and resistance to theological redeemability. The flawed character of other tragic heroes such as Samson and King Saul added to the hermeneutical perplexity, while the story of Job was largely taken as a testament of pious endurance of tragic circumstances. The New Testament meanwhile presented, to its patristic interpreters, the proto-Christian “tragic heroics” of the Holy Innocents and John the Baptist, and the “tragic villainy” of Judas Iscariot and Ananias and Sapphira, each story prompting its own questions about freedom, determinism, and divine justice. Early Christian interpreters consistently put forward and even amplified the elements of tragedy in these stories in order to educate their own audiences in confronting irrevocable evil and suffering.

Scripture in the Christological Controversies

2019 ◽  
pp. 454-472
Author(s):  
Andrew Hofer, OP
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Cyril Of Alexandria ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
John Of Damascus ◽  
In Christ

After its introduction on believing in Christ in accordance with Scripture, this chapter begins its treatment of biblical interpretation in the Christological controversies with methodological matters at stake in assessing early Christianity’s journey from biblical questions to scholastic answers. It then examines the era of the ancient ecumenical councils and select theologians of those times in their increasingly developed Christological scholasticism, with special attention to Christ’s suffering in their treatments of offering rules for reading Scripture rightly. Most influential is Cyril of Alexandria, whose exegetical arguments opposed Nestorius’ rejection of the Marian title Theotokos, a term symbolizing an exegetical method that seemed to Nestorius to insult God’s impassibility and that needed further clarification. It concludes by returning from John of Damascus’ intricate rules for biblical interpretation on Christ, after centuries of scholastic development, to the biblical questions that generated early Christian responses and continue to generate answers today.

Christian Apocrypha

2019 ◽  
pp. 284-294
Author(s):  
Stephen J. Shoemaker
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Direct Connection ◽  
Parallel Development ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Equal Importance ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Canonical Texts

This chapter focuses on the production of early Christian apocryphal writings as an act of biblical interpretation. Particular attention is given to the ‘parabiblical’ nature of many such writings—that is, the ways in which these texts often reflect parallel development of traditions that came to be included in the biblical canon. Many early Gospel traditions and Pauline apocrypha preserve independent, even rival versions of the earliest Christian traditions. For the historian, these texts frequently share equal importance with the canonical traditions in the effort to understand the earliest formation of the Christian biblical traditions. Other early Christian apocrypha relate to the canon in a more supplementary fashion. These serve to fill major gaps in the New Testament tradition, some having a more direct connection to the canonical texts than others.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. xxx-3
Author(s):  
Paul M. Blowers ◽  
Peter W. Martens
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Theological Hermeneutics ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Sacred Scripture

This Introduction sets out the crucial role of sacred Scripture in the life, faith, and practices of the early churches, a centrality that is the very premise of all the essays in this Handbook. The editors also contextualize this Handbook within the burgeoning of interest in early Christian biblical interpretation that has unfolded in patristic studies in recent decades, and indicate its interest for scholars and readers from disciplines broader than patristics. An important aspect of this Handbook, highlighted here, is its attention to forms, modes, and genres of biblical interpretation beyond line-by-line commentary undertaken by scholarly exegetes. Only by observing these does one begin to grasp how Scripture was the lifeblood of early Christian communities. The Introduction closes by insisting on the importance of including early Christian biblical interpretation, whatever its foreignness to modern biblical-critical methodologies, in contemporary conversations over philosophical and theological hermeneutics.

Marcion and his Critics

2019 ◽  
pp. 365-382
Author(s):  
H. Clifton Ward
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Jewish Scriptures ◽  
Editorial Work ◽  
The Church ◽  
Critical Methods ◽  
Philosophical Understanding

Marcion of Sinope was active in Rome in the middle of the second century ce. Marcion’s views on Scripture and hermeneutics led to a separation from the Church in Rome and the creation of a concurrent Marcionite community. This chapter examines Marcion’s legacy within subsequent early Christian biblical interpretation, seen most clearly in his role as an early practitioner of philological reading techniques to interpret Scripture. This chapter considers Marcion’s conception of the diversity of two gods—the Creator and the unknown God—in light of contemporary philosophy, and it suggests that Marcion’s literary-critical methods were deployed to confirm this philosophical understanding of deity. After an analysis of Marcion’s philology, seen in both his hermeneutical stance towards the Jewish Scriptures and his editorial work on the New Testament, this chapter concludes by arguing that writers like Tertullian and Epiphanius rejected Marcion’s philosophical conclusions while coming to terms with the validity of the methods of philology for biblical interpretation.

scholarly journals The Creation of the Devil and the End of the White Man’s Rule: The Theological Influence of the Nation of Islam on Early Black Theology

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 305
Author(s):  
Marjorie Corbman
Keyword(s):  
White Supremacy ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Black Theology ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
Nation Of Islam ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Black Power Movement ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Complete Identification ◽  
The Devil

This article examines the emergence of the Black Theology movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the context of the religiously diverse milieu of Black political movements during the same period. In particular, the theology of the Nation of Islam was widely understood by contemporary commentators as a major source of the confrontational rhetoric and tactics of the Black Power movement. Drawing upon the writings of the radical Black nationalist minister Albert B. Cleage, Jr., this article examines the importance of what Cleage termed the Nation of Islam’s “Black cultural mythology” in providing the possibility of a break in identification with white Christianity. In particular, it traces the influence of the Nation of Islam’s proclamation of God’s imminent apocalyptic destruction of white America on the theology of James H. Cone and Cleage. In doing so, this article argues for the importance of examining questions of racial and religious difference in American history alongside one another. It was precisely through creative appropriation of a non-Christian framework of biblical interpretation, rooted in faith in God’s complete identification with Black humanity and the consequent imminent judgment of white America, that early (Christian) Black Theologians were able to retain their Christian identity and sever its entanglement with white supremacy.

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