Mengisahkan Ziarah Eksodus Melalui Eskterior Bangunan Gereja

The exterior of Church building is the clearest face of the community of its members because it is openly showed by anybody. It is not only evidence of the very art and historical heritage but also a content of theological narrative and re-narrative of Church role in the world. This writing will show that there is a theological narrative behind the Church building. In this writing, that theological narrative is limited to the story of the journey and the sojourn of the Israel people in the wilderness to the promised land. From the exodus narrative, I renarrate the role of the Church in the context where it lives. This writing used the theory of bottom with three elements, namely: concept, category, and proposition. The early concept is the exodus narrative according to the Bible. Catching the category, this exodus concept will be anriched by the blended with the narrative of some Church buildings in Indonesia, theology of the Old Testament and liturgy, the anthropology of culture, and the philosophy of architecture. The result of this research is renarrative of the living Church buildings. The proposition is an offer on an interrelation between Biblical narrative, a historical roll of the Church building, and the renarrative or the storytelling renewal, with the present of Church mission. Eksterior bangunan gereja adalah wajah paling jelas persekutuan anggotanya, sebab terlihat secara terbuka oleh siapa pun. Ia bukan hanya bukti mahakarya seni arsitektur dan peninggalan sejarah, tetapi juga berisi narasi teologis dan merenarasikan peran gereja di dunia. Tulisan ini ingin memperlihatkan bahwa ada narasi teologi di balik eksterior bangunan gereja. Dalam tulisan ini, narasi teologi tersebut dibatasi pada kisah perjalanan dan persinggahan umat Israel di padang gurun menuju tanah perjanjian. Dari narasi eksodus tersebut, saya merenarasikan peran gereja di dalam konteksnya.Tulisan ini menggunakan teori dari bawah dengan tiga unsur, yaitu: konsep, kategori, dan proposisi. Konsep awal adalah narasi eksodus sebagaimana kesaksian Alkitab. Untuk mencapai kategori, konsep eksodus ini akan diperkaya dengan memadukan narasi beberapa bangunan gereja di Indonesia, teologi Perjanjian Lama dan liturgi, antropologi budaya, dan filsafat arsitektur. Hasil penelitian adalah renarasi bangunan gereja yang hidup. Proposisi berupa tawaran akan hubungan-hubungan antara narasi Alkitab, guliran historis bangunan gereja berdiri, dan renarasi atau pembaruan penceritaan, dengan misi gereja kini.

Liberation Theology in Latin America

Liberation theology is a critical reflection on the workings of God in the history of humankind that emphasizes the active, divine redemption (liberation) of humans from the sinful bonds of political and economic oppression. The biblical Exodus narrative became the core metaphor for the theological understanding of liberation and freedom. The Latin American bishops, during their second meeting at Medellín, Colombia, in 1968, coined a signature tenet of liberation theology: “the preferential option for the poor.” Liberation theology emerged formally among theologians in South America in response to rising expectations produced by two key external factors: the successful Cuban revolution (1959) and the ecumenical zeitgeist associated with Vatican II (1962–1965). The movement spread quickly while increased literacy among the faithful inspired lay leaders, trained by sparse clergy and women religious, to organize Christian base communities (CEBs), to “read” their own reality in light of the Exodus story, and to campaign for social justice in alliance with secular political actors. The swift repression and assassination of clergy, nuns, and lay activists by security forces hostile to democratization of the political economy in the 1970s and early 1980s fueled international awareness of liberation theology. Heightened internal opposition within the Vatican in the 1980s to some of liberation theology’s fundamental tenets culminated with the ten-month silencing in 1985 of the Brazilian theologian and Franciscan priest Leonardo Boff. Liberation theology has since inspired other marginalized social actors to explore what liberation means for those forced to live on the periphery due to racial, ethnic, and/or gender-based discrimination; homophobia; and a rapidly deteriorating environment threatened by unsustainable development models.

Resistance of Oppression in Exod 1-15 and Southern Africa: An Intersectional Perspective

The article investigates the oppression of people as well as its resistance in Exod 1-15 and Southern Africa, from an intersectional perspective. The Zimbabwean migrant women embody the intersectional struggles of the working-class people (class), women (gender) and immigrants (internationality) in Southern Africa. This scenario might have been the case in the world of the biblical texts. First, the study outlines the lived experiences of the Zimbabwean migrant women in South Africa in order to highlight the multi-layered and intersectional character of and the resistance of their oppression. Second, the essay probes the resistance of oppression in the Exodus narrative, with a specific interest in women. Third and lastly, the study shows how the intersectionality theory assists us in drawing a broader and relative depiction of the oppression of women in Exod 1-15 and in Southern Africa as well as the need to resist such oppression.

Practising piety in a (post-) pandemic time: A spatial reading of piety in Psalm 66 from the perspectives of memory and bodily imagery

Situated in the larger collection of Psalms 51–72, also known as the second Davidic Psalter, the smaller group of Psalms 65–68 is found. This smaller collection of psalms can be classified mostly as psalms of praise and thanksgiving. The relation and compositional work in this cluster of psalms become apparent on many points in the pious expressions between groups and persons at prayer, especially in the universal praise of God, and in the imagery referring to the exodus, the Jerusalem cult and blessing. Such piety becomes most discernible in the imagery and expressions in Psalm 66. The psalm’s two main sections may be described as praise, with verses 1–12 being praise by the group or the ‘we’, and verses 13–20 being praise by the individual or the ‘I’. Personal or individual piety and private piety are expressed by the desire of the ‘we’ and the ‘I’, and the experienced immediacy to God by transposing the past into the present through the memory of the exodus narrative, the Jerusalem cultic imagery and the use of body imagery. In this research article, an understanding of piety in Psalm 66 in terms of the memory of past events and body imagery is discussed from a perspective of space and appropriated for a time of (post-) pandemic where normal or traditional ecclesiological formal practices cannot take place.Contribution: This article makes an interdisciplinary contribution based on knowledge from the Psalms in the Old Testament, social anthropology, literary spatial theories and practical theological perspectives on the church in order to contribute to the relevance and practice of theology today, during a time of turmoil and a global pandemic.

Wearing the Cosmos: The High Priestly Attire in Josephus’ Judean Antiquities

In his recounting of the Exodus narrative of the making of the priestly vestments in Judean Antiquities 3.151-180, 184-187, Josephus provides a vivid description of the high priest’s wardrobe, including its cosmological connotations. This article shows that Josephus uses cosmological motifs in his recounting of the high priestly attire in order to convey a message to his intended audience in Rome. Josephus adds his own accents to the biblical narrative to convince his public that the high priest’s fine clothing functions as a statement that the Judean God is not a national deity with restricted power, but the Highest God, who is the only creator, maintainer, and supreme ruler of the universe. Seen from this perspective, we observe Josephus in dialogue with a well-established Greco-Roman clothing imagery tradition that portrays gods and mortals in symbolic garments to enhance their far-reaching power or authority.

Proverbs 21:1 and Ancient Near Eastern Hydrology

Proverbs 21:1 says that “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it to all whom he will.” The reference to “stream(s) of water” (פלגי־מים) is largely assumed to have a Palestinian agricultural background, and suggestions that the phrase bears any relation to foreign irrigation practices remain undeveloped. I argue, first, that these streams are artificial irrigation waterways and, second, that they connote royal ideologies which were linked to the hydrological procedures of Egypt and Mesopotamia. Most of all, their association with kingship in Prov 21:1 bears a deliberate relation to the Exodus Narrative. Based on a fresh look at written, iconographic, geographical, and archeological evidence from the wider ancient Near Eastern world, this article brings new interpretive insights to Prov 21:1 in several areas: its geographical background, its meaning, its origin, and its connection with other portions of the Hebrew Bible.

Looking for wisdom in Wis 11:2–19:2: between universalism and particularism

The retelling of the exodus narrative in the second half of Wis 11:2–19:22 has often been treated as a thematic shift from sapiential universalism to Jewish particularism. The aim of this article is to contribute to our understanding of Wis 11:2–19:22 through a reappropriation of its universalistic outlook. I argue here that Pseudo-Solomon’s retelling of Israel’s Heilsgeschichte remains focused on the universal order of creation even when discussing themes, such as the punishment of the Egyptians in the exodus narrative, which would lend themselves to polemical and particularistic tones. Integrating creatively historical narrative and sapiential observation of nature, Pseudo-Solomon develops a reflection in which Israel’s particularistic “history of salvation” is at the same time a universal “natural history of salvation” in which salvation reveals itself in the very mechanics of God’s creation.

Biblical Beginnings

This chapter examines the main narrative of the Golden Calf found in Exodus 32, as well as other allusions to this episode from Israel’s history from what became the canonical Hebrew Bible. The account of the Calf in Exodus appears to have been shaped by polemical imperatives in the earliest stages of its development, and reflects complex questions surrounding sanctioned forms of divine worship, the status of different priestly groups, and the relationship of those groups to the Israelite monarchies and the cult forms they sponsored. The conception of the Calf in Exodus appears to reflect ancient ideas about the sanctioned means of worshipping the God of Israel, with an older form of Israelite cult practice—the use of bulls or calves to suggest the invisible divine presence—being critiqued here. However, rather than corroborating the Exodus narrative’s presentation of the affair, the version of the episode preserved in Deuteronomy reflects the profoundly different imperatives of a later age. While the Exodus narrative ultimately hearkens back to a time in Israel’s history in which the making of the Calf was perceived primarily as a lamentable cultic infraction, the reframing of the narrative in Deuteronomy embeds it in a larger discourse in which the making of the Calf appears as the pre-eminent example of idolatry, a distinctive ideological construction of the exilic and post-exilic periods that marked all forms of religious practice not sanctioned as “orthodox” as betrayals of the covenant and regression to the worship of false gods.

Exegetical Puzzles and the Mystical Theologies of Gregory of Nyssa and Dionysius the Areopagite

Gregory of Nyssa and Dionysius the Areopagite both contemplate the Exodus narrative of Moses’ experiences on Sinai. That narrative is complex, with Moses ascending and descending the mountain several times, sometimes in company, sometimes alone. Gregory follows the biblical twists and turns in Life of Moses; the relevant paragraph in Dionysius’ Mystical Theology tells of just one ascent. This article re-examines their dependence on the details of the biblical text, arguing that its exegetical puzzles proved fertile ground for their apophatic insights. Both seize on Exodus 20:21 as symbolising the utter incomprehensibility of God. But they resolve the enigmas of Exodus 33-34 differently. Gregory uses Exodus 33:18-23 as a springboard to his articulation of a never-ending journey into the infinite divine, while Exodus 34:29-35 provides the biblical impetus behind Dionysius’ concept of “union.”