himself the title ‘Defender of the Faith’ and it has remained as a title of English monarchs since. Christianity has played an influential role within English politics since the 8th century. The laws of Alfred the Great are prefaced by the Decalogue, the basic ten commandments to which Alfred added a range of laws from the Mosaic code found in the old testament. So, even at this stage there was a strong Judeo-Christian stamp on the law. But it was the close connection between Crown and Church which developed after Henry’s break from Rome that allowed English law to be greatly influenced by Christianity This has led to the situation that now prevails in contemporary England that there is a close interdependency between the norms of Christianity, the law and the constitution. In the coronation oath, the monarch promises to uphold the Christian religion by law established. The Archbishop of Canterbury asks the monarch ‘Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the laws of God, the true profession of the Gospel and the Protestant reformed religion established by law?’ To which the Monarch responds ‘All this I promise to do’. No monarch can take the throne without making the oath. The next section brings together the issue of language, Christianity and law to draw out some of the problems of language. 2.4.1 Sacred texts, English law and the problem of language The sacred texts of the Old Testament and the New Testament collected in the Bible have been translated into numerous languages. Many misunderstandings of texts can be caused by mistranslations. English translations of the Bible are translations of translations. The Aramaic of the original speakers of the Christian message was written in Greek during the first century and from there translated into other languages. The historical Jesus did not, so far as we know, speak to people in Greek; he most likely spoke Aramaic. A few fragments were written in Aramaic, yet the English translations are made from the ‘original’ Greek! The Old Testament was written in Hebrew. However, the English translation is from an ‘original Greek translation’ of the Hebrew. To suggest why the source of translation might matter is also to illustrate the importance of other readings, other interpretations. Other readings and other interpretations are core issues for lawyers: what do these words mean for this situation rather than what do these words mean for ever. To illustrate this point within religion the first phrase in the first sentence from a Christian prayer known as the ‘Our Father’ or ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ will be considered. The English translation found in the ‘King James Version’ from the ‘original’ Greek will be compared to an English translation from an Aramaic version dating from 200 AD. The King James version is authorised by law for use by the Anglican church established by law. The King James Version of the Bible was developed after much bloodshed in the 17th century, and the Aramaic comparison is derived from Douglas Koltz who tried a reconstitution of the Aramaic from the Greek. This latter translation is, therefore, a little suspect as Aramaic is far more open textured than Greek (or indeed English) as will be discovered. However, the exercise provides a useful illustration of the flexibility of language, as well as the manipulation of language users!

2012 ◽  
pp. 28-28
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Lord's Prayer ◽  
Sacred Texts ◽  
The Bible ◽  
English Translations ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
English Law ◽  
The Law ◽  
King James Version

scholarly journals Biblical hermeneutics as the structuralist of the poetics of "The Word of Law and Grace" of Ilarion

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Eternal Life ◽  
Biblical Hermeneutics ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
The Law ◽  
Allegorical Interpretation

The article states that, for the purpose of interpreting the Biblical topos of the Law and Grace, Hilarion refers to the genre of the word. Hilarion takes first place in the title, and then in the text of the work God brings out wisdom. By law, he believes the Old Testament, which has already fulfilled its task, and Grace - the New Testament, which outlines the existence of man, his relationship with God, gives hope for eternal life. The subject of the "Word" breaks the sermon into four fragments. In the first of them, we notice the allegorical meaning of reading the Scriptures in relation to the history of mankind. The second part is devoted to the interpretation of the image of Jesus Christ, which appears as a synthesis of God and human nature. The third fragment depicts events beyond the boundary of the Bible. It is devoted to the baptism of Rus. In the fourth fragment Prince Volodymyr is glorified. Following the best traditions of Byzantine oratory prose, the author of the Word simply pours his text into quotations from the Bible and adds to them a predominantly allegorical interpretation, emphasizing that the work is not intended for proclamation, but for reading, which enabled the author to interpret the Scriptures and in the literal, and in allegorical sense. The advantage of the New Testament over the Old Testament is embodied by the author in the images of the free wife of Abraham Sarah - Grace and his servant Hagar - Law. Laconic retelling of God-inspired text, Hilarion interprets the old-czarist images, as those that represent the new covenants at the level of allusions, presented them in the form of additional parallel antithesis. The same anti-colored color is also depicted by the images of their children. Isaac was born from a free woman, which means that he represents freedom, Ishmael is from a slave, hence his image symbolizes slavery. He who receives Grace receives goodness, love, becomes the son of God, and begins to live a new life in the Holy Spirit through which the believer is through. The overcoming of the Law and the perception of Grace means, according to Hilarion, the acquisition of spiritual freedom.

monarch’s power, delegated to the Lord Chancellor, gave rise to a stream of English law known as equity, that area of law which rectifies the cruelties and injustices of the common law. An area of law where would-be litigants must prove their moral worth prior to the hearing of the case. It can be seen that it is the body of the sovereign that tacitly unites religion, law and politics. It is, of course, the Government that has acquired these powers in reality; the monarch is merely the symbol of their existence. English monarchs still retain, by law, the power to heal. The English system of secular justice, in terms of personnel, processes and rules, is steeped in the Judaeo-Christian justice as interpreted and mediated through English translations of the Greek translations of the Hebrew and Aramaic of the Bible. A Greek language whose vocabulary is shot through with the philosophy of dualism— light/dark, good/bad, good/evil, male/female, slave/free, gods/humans—a dualism not that apparent in Hebrew and Aramaic. This dualism has entered the law through language. So language is powerful, it enables the manifestation of the past in the present and the projection of the future into the present. Language, thus, facilitates easy discussion of complexities like time. Lawyers too, in a similar manner, have tried to prove that the integrity of the judge and/or legislator is carried in the words. A key problem in relation to the integrity of law is the maintenance of certainty despite the variability of language. Some legal doctrines relating to the interpretation of law deny that language has a flexibility, fearing that this would be a sign of its weakness and lack of certainty; others acknowledge the flexibility of language and look to the legislators intention. This, too, is a search for the mythical as legislation is changed for a variety of reasons during its drafting and creation stages. If language is seen to be too flexible, the law begins to look less certain. The root problem here is the language, not the law, yet the two are intimately connected, for the law is carried by the language; so is it not true that the law is the language? The following illustration of linguistic difficulties that concern translation, interpretation and application initially draws quite deliberately from religion to attempt to break preconceptions about language, and to illustrate the problems arising from the necessarily close relationship between language and law. There will be a return to law shortly. The Christian religion, rather than any other religion, is being considered because it is the religion that remains today at the core of English law. This is one reason why English law can have, and has had, difficulty with concepts from differing religious traditions that have presented themselves before the courts demanding acceptance and equality. Whilst English law states that it maintains neutrality in matters of religion and yet fails to resolve major tensions within it in relation to Christianity, discrimination remains at the heart of English law. The law’s understanding of Christianity has come from the collected texts that make up the Bible: texts that different Christian groups in England, Scotland and Wales went to war over in the 16th and 17th centuries. The wars were initiated and supported by differing political factions established after Henry VIII made his break with the authority, but not the theology, of Rome in the early 16th century. Henry VIII took for

2012 ◽  
pp. 27-27
Keyword(s):  
Henry Viii ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The Bible ◽  
English Translations ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
Political Factions ◽  
English Law ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Government ◽  
Female Slave

scholarly journals Equity in America

1921 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph H. Beale
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The North ◽  
The People ◽  
Middle Colonies ◽  
Lower Courts ◽  
English Law ◽  
The Law

The first colonists in America might be divided roughly into two streams. Those that went to the North were of the Puritan stripe; those that went to the South were, so far as the ruling class is concerned, Englishmen quite in sympathy with existing affairs, who went only to better themselves. The middle colonies, between New England and Pennsylvania, were not first settled by Englishmen; they require different consideration. The people, then, who settled New England, and to a considerable extent the people who settled Pennsylvania, were not in sympathy with existing conditions in England; and they had as a result of their experience a certain antipathy to the English law as it had been administered. In Massachusetts Bay this antipathy was carried to the extent of forbidding any English lawyer to live in the colony; and they abolished the English law by ordinance, and provided that all matters should be settled by appeal to the Bible, which nreant, to them, the Old Testament. That continued for a while, but, of course, it was absolutely an unworkable condition. Men trained in the thoughts of Englishmen could not think like the ancient Jews, and could not really be governed by the law of Moses; and the ordinance rather passed out of their recollection. It was still true, however, that lawyers did not plead in their Courts. The Courts were magistrate Courts, presided over in the highest Court by the persons elected as governor and assistants, in the lower Courts by the lesser magistrates. The law administered—if one can call it law—was simply the whim or the good sense of the magistrate, along with such ordinances as had been passed. The same thing was true of the other New England colonies and—as time passed—was equally true in Pennsylvania.

The Church of the Reigning Lord

1948 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-73
Author(s):  
R. Stuart Louden
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Pauline Epistles ◽  
History Of ◽  
Four Square ◽  
The Church

We can trace a revival of theology in the Reformed Churches in the last quarter of a century. The new theological interest merits being called a revival of theology, for there has been a fresh and more thorough attention given to certain realities, either ignored or treated with scant notice for a considerable time previously.First among such realities now receiving more of the attention which their relevance and authority deserve, is the Bible, the record of the Word of God. There is an invigorating and convincing quality about theology which is Biblical throughout, being based on the witness of the Scriptures as a whole. The valuable results of careful Biblical scholarship had had an adverse effect on theology in so far as theologians had completely separated the Old Testament from the New in their treatment of Biblical doctrine, or in expanding Christian doctrine, had spoken of the theological teaching of the Synoptic Gospels, the Pauline Epistles, the Johannine writings, and so on, as if there were no such thing as one common New Testament witness. It is being seen anew that the Holy Scriptures contain a complete history of God's saving action. The presence of the complete Bible open at the heart of the Church, recalls each succeeding Christian generation to that one history of God's saving action, to which the Church is the living witness. The New Testament is one, for its Lord is one, and Christian theology must stand four-square on the foundation of its whole teaching.

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.

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 Child Who Does Not Know How to Ask

We Walk ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 115-138
Author(s):  
Amy S. F. Lutz
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Disabilities ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Disabled People ◽  
Learning Differences ◽  
Know How ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The New Testament

This chapter discusses the parable of the four sons, in which the author relates via the character of the wise son known as the “the child who does not know how to ask.” It talks about the representation of the “simple” child that already represents those with learning differences or intellectual disabilities. It also mentions how disability is seldom addressed in the Old Testament, noting that Moses allegedly suffered from a speech impediment. The chapter describes a token directive not to insult the deaf or place a stumbling block before the blind but is belied by the treatment of the few disabled people mentioned in the Bible. It elaborates how the New Testament, by contrast to the Old Testament, is full of disabled people.

scholarly journals Strack-Billerbeck, Orthodoxy and a Jewish New Testament

1999 ◽  
Vol 55 (2/3) ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. Loader
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The New Testament

On the basis of the evidence of publications daing from the eighteenth century, this paper argues that the orthodox doctrine of the verbal inspiration the Bible caused extreme views on the language of the Old Testament which could maybe transferred to the "heathen" language of the New Testament. The resulting void was filled by focussing on the Jewish (read "Hebrew", thought of the New Testament. The work of Chistian Schoettgen, available the author in Vienna, is used in conjunction with the Critica sacra by Johan Gottlob Carpzov to develop the argument for the thesis. Some conclusions ardrawn.

scholarly journals Inspiration and the Texts of the Bible

1997 ◽  
Vol 53 (1/2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk Buchner
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Dead Sea Scrolls ◽  
Dead Sea ◽  
Early Church ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Masoretic Text ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Book Of Hebrews ◽  
Textual Research

This article seeks to explore what the inspired text of the Old Testament was as it existed for the New Testament authors, particularly for the author of the book of Hebrews. A quick look at the facts makes. it clear that there was, at the time, more than one 'inspired' text, among these were the Septuagint and the Masoretic Text 'to name but two'. The latter eventually gained ascendancy which is why it forms the basis of our translated Old Testament today. Yet we have to ask: what do we make of that other text that was the inspired Bible to the early Church, especially to the writer of the book of Hebrews, who ignored the Masoretic text? This article will take a brief look at some suggestions for a doctrine of inspiration that keeps up with the facts of Scripture. Allied to this, the article is something of a bibliographical study of recent developments in textual research following the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls.

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