Between Biblical Criticism and Poetic Rewriting

Between Biblical Criticism and Poetic Rewriting
Author: Samuel Tongue
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2014-04-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004271155

In Between Biblical Criticism and Poetic Rewriting, Samuel Tongue offers an account of the aesthetic and critical tensions inherent in the development of the Higher Criticism of the Bible. Different ‘types’ of Bible are created through the intellectual and literary pressures of Enlightenment and Romanticism and, as Tongue suggests, it is this legacy that continues to orientate the approaches deemed legitimate in biblical scholarship. Using a number of ancient and contemporary critical and poetic rewritings of Jacob’s struggle with the ‘angel’ (Gen 32:22-32), Tongue makes use of postmodern theories of textual production to argue that it is the ‘paragesis’, a parasitical form of writing between disciplines, that best foregrounds the complex performativity of biblical interpretation.

The Messenger of the Lord in Early Jewish Interpretations of Genesis

The Messenger of the Lord in Early Jewish Interpretations of Genesis
Author: Camilla Hélena von Heijne
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 436
Release: 2010-09-29
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3110226855

The focus of this book is on early Jewish interpretations of the ambiguous relationship between God and ‛the angel of the Lord/God’ in texts like Genesis 16, 22 and 31. Genesis 32 is included since it exhibits the same ambiguity and constitutes an inseparable part of the Jacob saga. The study is set in the wider context of the development of angelology and concepts of God in various forms of early Judaism. When identifying patterns of interpretation in Jewish texts, their chronological setting is less important than the nature of the biblical source texts. For example, a common pattern is the avoidance of anthropomorphism. In Genesis ‛the angel of the Lord’ generally seems to be a kind of impersonal extension of God, while later Jewish writings are characterized by a more individualized angelology, but the ambivalence between God and his angel remains in many interpretations. In Philo's works and Wisdom of Solomon, the ‛Logos’ and ‛Lady Wisdom’ respectively have assumed the role of the biblical ‛angel of the Lord’. Although the angelology of Second Temple Judaism had developed in the direction of seeing angels as distinct personalities, Judaism still had room for the idea of divine hypostases.

Saint Jerome's Hebrew Questions on Genesis

Saint Jerome's Hebrew Questions on Genesis
Author: Saint Jerome
Publisher: Clarendon Press
Total Pages: 294
Release: 1995-06-29
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0191585203

Jerome was one of the very few early Christian scholars to know any Hebrew. This is a unique introduction, translation, and commentary of his Questions on Genesis - a fascinating work showing a Christian working alongside Jews in an age very different from our own. Jerome's influence on the Church is well known - but this work is equally important for the light thrown on the history and origin of many ideas at the heart of the Jewish tradition.

Relating to the Text

Relating to the Text
Author: Timothy J. Sandoval
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 409
Release: 2003-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0826470491

This collection contains studies reflecting the contribution of Martin Buss to biblical scholarship, focusing on the forms and genres of biblical literature and on interdisciplinary approaches to biblical interpretation.

The Sensual God

The Sensual God
Author: Aviad M. Kleinberg
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2015-09-08
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0231540248

In the Old Testament, God wrestles with a man (and loses). In the Talmud, God wriggles his toes to make thunder and takes human form to shave the king of Assyria. In the New Testament, God is made flesh and dwells among humans. For religious thinkers trained in Greek philosophy and its deep distaste for matter, sacred scripture can be distressing. A philosophically respectable God should be untainted by sensuality, yet the God of sacred texts is often embarrassingly sensual. Setting experts' minds at ease was neither easy nor simple, and often faith and logic were stretched to their limits. Focusing on examples from both Christian and Jewish sources, from the Bible to sources from the Late Middle Ages, Aviad Kleinberg examines the way Christian and Jewish philosophers, exegetes, and theologians attempted to reconcile God's supposed ineffability with numerous biblical and postbiblical accounts of seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and even tasting the almighty. The conceptual entanglements ensnaring religious thinkers, and the strange, ingenious solutions they used to extricate themselves, tell us something profound about human needs and divine attributes, about faith, hope, and cognitive dissonance.

Jesus and the Thoughts of Many Hearts

Jesus and the Thoughts of Many Hearts
Author: Collin Bullard
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2015-02-26
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567660362

In the Gospel of Luke, the aged Simeon foresees the future opposition which Jesus will face (2.34-35) and concludes his ominous oracle with a vivid description of the final outcome of Jesus' ministry: '...so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed' (2.35). Bullard presents an investigation of the narrative and Christological significance of this 'revelation of thoughts' in the ministry of Jesus, especially as this revelation is demonstrated and fulfilled in Jesus' ability to know the thoughts in the hearts of those whom he encounters throughout the Gospel. Bullard first explores a number of potential literary parallels to Jesus' knowledge of thoughts in Greco-Roman and Jewish sources. He then undertakes a narrative- and redaction-critical study which spans the Gospel in order to provide a full description of the 'revelation of thoughts' in Jesus' ministry. What Jesus knows and how he knows it are fundamental features of his identity, governing how he relates to others in the narrative. Yet the issue of whether, or how, Jesus' knowledge of thoughts fits into Luke's overall Christological portrait has been given only superficial attention. Bullard offers an account of the Christological significance of Jesus' knowledge that makes sense of both its internal narrative development and external literary parallels.

The Bible in Arab Christianity

The Bible in Arab Christianity
Author: David Richard Thomas
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 428
Release: 2007
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004155589

This collection illustrates the place of the Bible in Arab Christianity as a source of authority and information about Christian experiences under early Islam, and the importance attached to upholding its authenticity in the face of Muslim criticisms.

Handbook of Patristic Exegesis

Handbook of Patristic Exegesis
Author: Charles Kannengiesser
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 703
Release: 2004-06-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9047403959

Through this comprehensive Handbook, the reader will obtain a balanced and cohesive picture of the Early Church. It gives an overall view of the reception, transmission, and interpretation of the Bible in the life and thought of the Church during the first five centuries of Christianity.