Chang, Paul Kuk Won. Metatheology: A Comparative Approach of Synthetic Theology to the Ancient Near East, the Old Testament and the Language of the New Testament
‘The God of peace’ in the New Testament. Why does the New Testament use the expression ‘the God of peace’ and what is the meaning of this phrase? In the Old Testament, the God of Israel is often connected with peace, but he is never called ‘the God of peace’. Not until the Hellenistic period is this expression sporadically found in Judaism (once in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs and once in Philo). As for the biblical Umwelt, the gods of the ancient Near East were not very peace-loving, and in the perception of Greco-Roman culture the god of war, Arès/Mars, as one of the twelve Olympians was much more prominent than Eirènè/Pax. However, the expression ‘the God of peace’ is found several times in the Corpus Paulinum and once in the letter to the Hebrews. This article investigates all New Testament texts that have this formula, suggesting that the apostle Paul could be responsible for the wording. In conclusion, Paul states that the God of Israel desires to establish a definitive peace in his creation through the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ and by finally defeating all powers of evil. This apostolic message further indicates that Christians are supposed to be bearers of peace, promoting a peaceful atmosphere in their environment and in the world.
The concept of the Jubilee, or the collective forgiveness of all debts and debtor/slaves, had its origins in the Ancient Near East where it was a secular practice of kings. It came into the Bible originally also as a secular practice of kings but then became the province of priests and a calendar observance to be celebrated every 50 years. It was finally understood in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament to rest in the hands of God alone, an eschatological concept of the forgiveness of all debts/sins and the redemption of all human sins, or debts to God, that became the very basis of the theological history of Luke/Acts.
Ever since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, scholars have drawn parallels between the way the New Testament authors used the Scriptures and the use of Scripture found in the Qumran writings. This method has raised difficult questions, because some of the exegetical methods, such as allegory, word-splitting and the use of variant texts, are generally regarded as erroneous today. However, other scholars have contended that this comparative approach does not do justice to New Testament exegesis and have argued that the New Testament authors developed a distinctive messianic, ecclesiocentric or trinitarian form of exegesis. This view sheds new light on the old question of whether the Church can use the New Testament in the same way that the New Testament authors use the Old Testament.
This chapter presents a brief outline of the history of ancient Israel, starting with Humphrey Prideaux's The Old and New Testament connected, in the History of the Jews, and neighbouring nations; from the declensions of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah to the time of Christ. The book's purpose, as the word ‘Connection’ indicates, was to set Old Testament history in the context of the history of the ancient Near East. Other similar works include Johann Gottfried Herder's Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit of 1784–1791, an interesting feature of which was a ‘secular’ account of the reason for the downfall of Judah in the sixth century; Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette's Beiträge; Heinrich Ewald's History of Israel, which argued that the Pentateuch and Joshua had reached their final form by way of at least six redactional processes; and Julius Wellhausen's Israelitische und Jüdische Geschichte of 1894 and Israelitisch-jüdische Religion of 1905; Albrecht Alt's Der Gott der Väter; and the writings of Martin Noth.
In this chapter, it is argued that a pivotal episode in Esther, Mordecai’s refusal to bow to Haman, is to be read literarily, as a topos, rather than literally, as a historical event. Drawing on materials from the ancient Near East, the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, Late Antiquity, the Qur’an, and the Islamic era, it is shown that Mordecai’s refusal to bow to Haman is but one link in a very long chain of comparable episodes in Near and Middle Eastern literature. Furthermore, in tracing this topos through history, we are able to cast new light on the Qur’anic passages in which Satan (“Iblis”) refuses to bow to the newly created Adam.
A Study on the Implications of Religious Activities to Longevity in a Perspective of the Ancient Near East: Based on the Lives of Adad-Guppi in the Neo-Babylonian Empire, Daniel in the Old Testament, and Anna in the New Testament