Biblical Exegesis

In this essay, Galbraith examines Jean-Francois Lyotard's concept of the differend and its potential to provide new insights into the curiously unsatisfying nature of the book of Job. For Lyotard, a differend occurs in a situation where a victim, seeking justice for a wrong, is 'divested of the means to argue' with their accuser due to a lack of a single idiom which both parties can agree upon as a standard of justice. When we read the story of Job in the light of the differend, we uncover, in addition to the more visible injustice of God's physically excessive and arbitrary mistreatment of Job, a radical or absolute injustice operating at the heart of the narrative.

Desde la perspectiva de la vanguardia histórica me he preguntado - al releer Cioran - si se podría hablar, en su caso, de un pensamiento revolucionario. Pronto me di cuenta, sin embargo, que la filosofía no tiene tanto que ver con la idea de una avanzada o de un progreso del pensamiento, sino más bien con el retorno de las viejas preguntas sobre la existencia, la sociedad, el amor, el odio, la muerte y el ser, etc. - las mismas que ocuparon, en su momento, la mente de los antiguos pensadores. Entendí entonces que el pesimismo irónico de Cioran podría devolvernos algo de aquel sentido perene de la filosofía, entendida ésta como "amor por la sabiduría".

Research manager is an essential component of research system. This article describes about academic capacity of the research manager which should at least comprise 1.neutrality, 2.program evaluation skills, 3.knowledge of research methodology, 4.ability to systematically review existing knowledge, 5.research mapping skills, and 6.research on research management.

As an original composition of the seventh-century archbishop of Canterbury, Theodore of Tarsus, it is reasonable to expect that, writing less than a generation after his death, Bede might have known the Laterculus Malalianus, despite there having been no acknowledgment of the text by him, and no discernment by Bede’s readers of its influence on him even up to the present time. Recent analysis of the Laterculus, however, has given cause to reconsider this oversight, as exegetical motifs that appear almost nowhere else across the tradition are developed in the Laterculus and taken up in significant ways by Bede. The purpose of this paper is to set out these exegetical coincidences and propose that, in light of them, the Laterculus Malalianus deserves to be considered among the sources Bede drew on as he set about producing his own, considerable work.

The identity of the κατάλυμα in Luke 2.7 has been debated among Western scholars for over five hundred years. Proposals have ranged from an inn to a guest room. This article argues that the term κατάλυμα has a generic sense of ‘place to stay’ and that the final clause of Luke 2.7 should be rendered ‘because they had no space in their place to stay’. Moreover, three clues in the context—Joseph’s compliance with the census order, the betrothal of Mary, and the manger—suggest that the accommodations presupposed by Luke are a marital chamber too small for giving birth.

In a world which is slowly but surely being devastated by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the church needs to get involved in the fight against this disease. In many places the church has conveniently denied that HIV/AIDS has anything to do with them. In this paper the author argues for the necessity of thinking theologically about the reality of HIV/AIDS, indicating that HIV/AIDS is not merely a matter of “sinners” becoming infected with a virus, but that certain circumstances are conducive towards the spreading of HIV/AIDS which need to be addressed if an impact is to be made on the spreading of the virus. Although many non-religious organisations are fighting this disease, the church is in an ideal situation to assist these bodies as it is already grounded within communities and already have integrity amongst a large part of the population. However, to achieve this goal the churches must be transformed in the face of the HIV/AIDS crisis, in order that they themselves may become a force for transformation – bringing healing, hope, and accompaniment to all infected with and affected by HIV/AIDS.

"""In ultimii ani asistam la o crestere a interesului savantilor in domeniul relativ nou al studiilor religioase consacrate esoterismului occidental, care include studiul alchimiei, astrologiei, diferitelor traditii magice, teosofiei crestine si al unei varietati de grupari secrete sau semi-secrete. Acest studiu se situeaza in interiorul acestei arii de cercetare, explorand in particular modul in care imaginile feminine ale Intelepciunii sau Divinitatii au fost invocate in traditiile religioase si literare ale Europei. Notiunea de "o singura zeita, mai multe manifestari", care este acceptata in studiile asupra istoriei religiilor din Asia de Sud, s-ar putea aplica, de asemenea, traditiilor esoterice occidentale cu radacini in misticismul iudaic si crestin.

Descrieri ale acestor aparitii feminine, prezentate in aceasta lucrare ca "viziuni", pot fi gasite intr-o arie diversa de relatari scrise care au fost categorisite ca "filosofie", "religie" si "literatura" - toate au fost folosite in aceasta carte."""

The ‘war on terror’ has brought to the fore the old debate on the role of religion in politics and international relations, a question on which Tolstoy wrote extensively during the latter part of his life. He considered Jesus to have clearly spelt out some rational moral and political rules for conduct, the most important of which was non-resistance to evil. For Tolstoy, Jesus’ instructions not to resist evil, to love one’s enemies and not to judge one another together imply that a sincere Christian would denounce any form of violence and warfare, and would strive to respond to (whatever gets defined as) evil with love, not force. In today’s ‘war on terror’, therefore, Tolstoy would lament both sides’ readiness to use violence to reach their aims; and he would call for Christians in particular to courageously enact the rational wisdom contained in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Tolstoy’s exegesis of Christianity may be too literal and too rationalistic, and may lead to an exceedingly utopian political vision; but it articulates a refreshingly peaceful method for religion to shape politics, one that can moreover and paradoxically be related to by non-Christians precisely because of its alleged grounding in reason.

Leo Tolstoy’s peculiar religious and political thought has been discussed in numerous studies, yet few of these address a core anarchist concern: his criticisms of the state. Tolstoy denounces not just war but also law and the economy as violent and enslaving, all under the ruthless mechanical supervision of the state machine. Moreover, for him, state authorities are deliberately and hypocritically deceiving the masses, promoting a system that destroys any sense of responsibility, and keeping people hypnotised by regularly whipping up patriotic sentiments – the army being the best example of the strength of all this deceit. Not only is Tolstoy’s denunciation of the state as violent and deceptive eloquently written, but much of it has not lost relevance since he first wrote it more than a century ago.

This article seeks to show that the practices teachers and students engage in—reading, writing, reflection, conversation, teaching, learning—can be spiritually formative. The first part, “Listening to the Voices of the Pages,” explores the monastic approach to reading known as lectio divina, and my own efforts to transpose this ancient method of reading into a twenty-first-century classroom. The second part, “Combining the Letters,” explores the creative power of words to name and bring forth life, and my own efforts to encourage
and inspire students to write.

This article examines the incongruity between most modern translations of Jonah 3:3 and ancient textual and archaeological evidence concerning the size of Nineveh. Every modern solution intended to reconcile a literal rendering of the description in Jonah 3:3 with ancient evidence fails. However, reading Jonah 3:3 as a figure of speech perfectly conveys the author’s intention of representing Nineveh as a very large city.

This essay aims to show that “abiding” or “remaining” is a major theme of John’s Gospel and therefore deserves more attention than commentators usually afford it. It tries to show that abiding is John’s preferred and primary way to characterize discipleship and that, as this abiding is based on the relations between Jesus and the Spirit and the Father, John in some way gestures towards a trinitarian logic. Further, the theme emerges in connection with John’s pneumatology and sacramental theology.

"Arguing From Silence" briefly overviews the main theoretical constructs used in the historiography of the emergence of Israel. From this discussion, methodological considerations related to historical reconstruction using the biblical text are adduced.

Textual and Form criticism can be useful tools for analyzing OT texts however we should be aware of their limitations. In the absence of textual witness, many competing analyses can be justified on the basis of internal criteria. This should lead us to be cautious of dogmatism in the field of criticism.

"The Altar has a unique and complex status in the Bible, since two incompatible characteristcs are attributed to it: it is depicted both as a portable sanctified object and as a stationary building. These opposing characteristics are evident in Maimonides' laws of the Temple (Hilkhot Beit Habekhirah). However, when molded into a coherent legal codex, these laws show that Maimonides not only prefers the building aspect of the Altar, but he also establishes several of the Temple's building rulings in the image of the Altar, even though he had no sources for doing so (especially rules concerning the materials and the building methods).
Thus, Maimonides asserts that the Altar is the fundamental essence of the Temple. Therefore, even if the Temple is not fully constructed, the presence of the Altar alone is sufficient to provide a functional House of God. This view differs from that of the Talmudic Sages, who regarded the Altar as solely a temporary alternative to the Temple).
These conclusions derive from a textual, contextual, and linguistic study of Maimonides' writings concerning the relationship between the Altar, the Temple's outer shell, and the other vessels that were utilized in the divine service."

Biblical passages that narrate how the Tables of the Law were transmitted from God to the people of Israel have been the object of many interpretations, both in Jewish commentaries, Christian exegeses, and secular analyses. A semiotic ambiguity characterizes these passages: on the one hand, Moses is described as the one who transmits to the people of Israel a normative message written directly by God; on the other hand, he is described as the one who transcribes for the people of Israel a normative message that God has transmitted to him orally. Interpretations emphasize either the former or the latter version, with important consequences for the way in which the semiotic status of the Tables of Law is imagined: sculpted directly by God, or carved by human hand, a written message from God or a ‘divine dictation’ from God to Moses. Furthermore, Christian interpretations of such ambiguity play a fundamental role in the way Christianity proposes itself as an alternative to Judaism: a religion where the Law is written on hearts versus a religion where the Law is written on stone.
From the first centuries CE on, both Jewish and Christian images have represented the biblical passages mentioned above, but it would be superficial to consider these visual representations as mere illustrations of the Biblical text and its commentaries. On the contrary, in many cases images too work as commentaries, proposing their own interpretation about the semiotic status of the Law. For once, it is not verbal language that develops a meta-discourse on images, but images that embody a visual meta-language on words (although this visual meta-discourse, in turn, needs the verbal meta-discourse of semiotics in order to be analyzed and interpreted). The paper proposes a survey of these visual commentaries on the key biblical episode of the Giving of the Law, from the frescos on the walls of the Synagogue of Dura-Europos to Chagall.

"Dit boek schetst in grote lijnen het ontstaan van de Bijbel en het vertalen, de wijzen van uitleg en de illustratie ervan. Wat gedetailleerder geeft het de geschiedenis van Bijbelvertalingen die in Nederland op de markt kwamen. Naast informatie bied het inleidende opmerkingen over het lezen van de Bijbel, de eigenheid van de taal ervan, de betekenis van verhalen, vragen met betrekking tot de historiciteit van Bijbelverhalen en de kunst van het vertalen.

In 2004 zijn zowel de Nieuwe Bijbelvertaling (NBV) als de Naardense Bijbel (NaB) verschenen. Rondom deze uitgaven verscheen dit boek van Den Besten (geboren in 1946), predikant van de PKN in Zevenaar. Het boek is een goed geschreven samenvatting van het ontstaan en het vertalen van de bijbel als een bundel van gegroeide geschriften. De bijbel geeft geen historische rapportage, maar is een ontdekkingstocht van vertelde verhalen. Daarnaast geeft dit boek een overzicht van de Nederlandse bijbeluitgaven vanaf de Delftse Bijbel (1477) tot de NBV (2004). Ook gaat de auteur in op de wijzen van bijbeluitleg en op de bijbelillustraties. [] Het is een zeer toegankelijk boek voor cursisten in theologische vorming en voor gemeenteleden die geïnteresseerd zijn in het veelgelezen boek dat steeds weer nieuwe lezers vindt.
H. Buning in: NBD/Biblion (aanschafinformatie aangeboden aan openbare bibliotheken)"

The religious thought of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy is a well documented but often overlooked example of unorthodox Christianity. This paper uses the example of Tolstoy's religious thinking to question the integrity of the current representation of Christianity in UK schools. It also uses Tolstoy's criticism of orthodox Christianity to suggest a possible consequence of the existing depiction of Christianity on students' understanding and attitudes.
Keywords: Tolstoy; Christianity; representation; curriculum

This essay is an attempt to re-examine the difficult questions that pertain to the origins of apocalyptic literature and to the rise of Jewish sectarianism. Since the publication of O. Plöger's Theokratie und Eschatologie and P. Hanson's The Dawn of Apocalyptic, the search for proto-apocalyptic origins in early post-exilic period sectarian conflict has generated a fair amount of debate and controversy. The most cogent and sustained response to Hanson's and Plöger's theories, S. Cook's Prophecy & Apocalypticism (1995), came nearly twenty years after Hanson's work and attempted to purge the influence of "deprivation theory" from the field of biblical studies, and, more broadly, social anthropology. Despite the fact that Cook's work represents some definite theoretical advances in the field, several aspects of this ongoing discussion warrant critical re-investigation. One must question whether, despite the frenzy to discredit older theories, several aspects of the older studies can (or should) be rescued. Toward this end, the present essay makes a fresh study of some central lines of thought in these works, especially as they relate to the issue of sectarianism and the sociological framework used for drawing exegetical conclusions. Our goal here will not be to explicate all the nuances of early post-exilic sectarianism, nor to posit a new theory for the origins of the proto-apocalyptic material per se, but rather to explore the very difficult question of a possible interrelationship between emerging sectarian phenomena and the material in Isa 56–66. In particular, we shall review one prominent theory of the symbolic—in our case, textual—expression of sectarian groups, that of the anthropologist Mary Douglas, and then apply this model to a series of enigmatic and highly debated texts in Trito-Isaiah in order to show the continued viability of the "sectarian" interpretation of these passages.

Mark Matson, "The Our Father and 3 rd Person Imperatives" 1 The Our Father and 3 rd Person Imperatives Mark A. Matson Milligan College The Our Father, or Lord's Prayer, is ubiquitous in Christian worship and devotional life. But it is not as common that those who pray or recite the Lord's Prayer understand or appreciate what Jesus' instructions to "pray like this" mean. Indeed it would seem that much of the prayer may be misconstrued, both by worshipers and scholars alike. There are numerous questions raised by a closer examination to the prayer: is it indeed eschatological or is it ethical, should it be communal or personal, how does one interpret the petition regarding temptation or testing?

The nature of presentations like this one is inherently autobiographical, so I will take the privilege of offering some personal context.  When I went to Belmont University in the year 2000, I inherited a course called “Major and Minor Prophets,” which I was assigned to teach once every two years.  I taught the course for the first time in the fall of 2001, and soon after that I renamed the course “The Prophetic Literature.”  I was already committed to using a primarily literary-canonical approach to the prophetic material, which required examining this part of the Bible in the forms of whole books or prophetic scrolls.  This practically necessitated beginning with the book of Isaiah, and reading it all the way through with the class, followed by a similar approach to Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Book of the Twelve.  In that first attempt in 2001, though I was using a literary-canonical approach in the classroom, I decided to use a textbook that took the standard historical approach, starting with Hosea and Amos and the other prophets of the Assyrian period, followed by Habakkuk and Jeremiah and the other prophets of the Babylonian period, and finally Haggai and Zechariah and the other Restoration prophets.  I thought that encountering these two approaches together would provide a synergistic experience for my students, that the two would join forces to provide them with a thorough introduction to this part of biblical studies.  Somehow, I forgot that when two trains travelling in different directions come together, what happens is called a wreck.

An Innocence Project comprises a group of students investigating the case of a convicted person maintaining innocence and who has exhausted the initial appeals process. Students aim to find evidence that will assist them in making an application to an appellate court, or other review body such as the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission.

How do we put text and translation on a par in the Bilingual Concordance to the Targum of the Prophets? In this article I will focus on the parity of source and target text and the editorial decisions underlying equations of Aramaic with Hebrew lexemes in the afore-mentioned concordance. 1 I will briefly discuss the character of Targum Jonathan and present a sample of translations and their Aramaic-Hebrew relationships, especially concentrating on the substitution and glosses of words by way of multiple translation.