Rethinking Contexts, Rereading Texts

Rethinking Contexts, Rereading Texts
Author: Mark Daniel Carroll R.
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2000-02-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567442217

This volume brings together ten essays on the various contexts for texts that social-scientific approaches invoke. These contexts are: the cultural values that inform the writers of texts, the relationship between the text and the reader or community of readers, and the production of texts themselves as social artifacts. In the first, predominantly theoretical, section of the book, John Rogerson applies the perspective of Adorno to the reading of biblical texts; Mark Brett advocates methodological pluralism and deconstructs ethnicity in Genesis; and Gerald West explores the 'graininess' of texts. The second part contains both theory and application: Jonathan Dyck draws a 'map of ideology' for biblical critics and then applies an ideological critical analysis to Ezra 2. M. Daniel Carroll R. reexamines 'popular religion' and uses Amos as a test case; Stanley Porter considers dialect and register in the Greek of the New Testament, then applies it to Mark's Gospel. This is an original as well as wide-ranging exploration of important social-scientific issues and their application to a range of biblical materials.

Text, Context and the Johannine Community

Text, Context and the Johannine Community
Author: David A. Lamb
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2014-04-24
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567129667

Text, Context and the Johannine Community adopts a new approach to the social context of the Johannine writings by drawing on modern sociolinguistic theory. Sociolinguistics emphasizes language as a social phenomenon, which can be analysed with reference not only to its broad context of culture, but also, through the use of register analysis, to its narrower context of situation. The Johannine writings have increasingly been seen as the product of a distinct Johannine Community, depicted by some scholars as a sectarian group, opposed both to wider Jewish society and to other Christian groups. This model has largely been constructed on historical-critical grounds, yet given our lack of reliable external information about the origin of the Johannine writings, a more fruitful approach may be to examine their lexico-grammatical and discourse features to determine what these imply about interpersonal relationships. This study compares selected 'narrative asides' from the Gospel of John with a passage section from 1 John and with the two shorter Johannine Epistles. It concludes that register analysis of these texts does not support the idea of a close-knit sectarian group.

Creation Language in Romans 8

Creation Language in Romans 8
Author: Gregory P. Fewster
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2013-04-04
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004250808

Fewster develops the theory of lexical monosemy, in a systemic-functional linguistic framework, and disputes concensus readings of κτίσις as nature in Romans 8.

The Book of Amos

The Book of Amos
Author: M. Daniel Carroll R.
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Total Pages: 510
Release: 2020-11-19
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1467459402

In this commentary on the book of Amos, Daniel Carroll combines a detailed reading of the Hebrew text with attention to its historical background and current relevance. What makes this volume unique is its special attention to Amos’s literary features and what they reveal about the book’s theology and composition. Instead of reconstructing a hypothetical redactional history, this commentary offers a close reading of the canonical form against the backdrop of the eighth century BCE.

Modeling Biblical Language

Modeling Biblical Language
Author: Stanley E. Porter
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 446
Release: 2016-03-21
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004309365

Modeling Biblical Language presents articles with some of the latest scholarship applying linguistic theory to the study of the Christian Bible. The contributors are all associated with the McMaster Divinity College Linguistic Circle, a collegial forum for presenting working papers in modern linguistics (especially Systemic Functional Linguistics) and biblical studies. The papers address a range of topics in linguistic theory and the Hebrew and Greek languages. Topics include linguistic model building, temporality and verbal aspect, Greek lexical semantics and Hebrew-Greek translation, appraisal and evaluation theory, metaphor theory, corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, and Greek clausal structure. These various areas of linguistic exploration contribute generally to the interpretation and analysis of the Old and New Testaments, as well as to linguistic theory proper.

The Letter to the Romans

The Letter to the Romans
Author: Stanley E. Porter
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2018-05-24
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1498238564

Written at a time when his ideas and practices were provoking opposition even from fellow Christians, the Apostle Paul articulates in his Letter to the Romans his understanding of God’s plan for humanity and discusses the implications of this plan for different groups of people. Romans is considered by many as the most theologically significant and sophisticated book of the Bible. This volume is designed to bridge the gap between studying Romans as an academic enterprise and experiencing how Romans can speak today in the life of the church. All of the chapters in this volume—especially those devoted to the content of Romans—were written with both exegesis and application in mind. All of the contributors to this volume believe that Romans has a crucial voice within the church today and that those who preach, teach, and study the book need to be attentive to its witness and to its timeliness.

Language and Identity in Ancient Narratives

Language and Identity in Ancient Narratives
Author: Julia A. Snyder
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2014-06-24
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9783161532641

When a Christian writer refers to Jesus as the Lord, what does it signify? Is it primarily a way of making a political or theological statement, or might social concerns have had more influence on the writer's choice of words? Studies of early Christianity regularly depend on a nuanced understanding of lexical significance, but current research often fails to consider social aspects of what words mean. Julia A. Snyder argues that methodological improvements are needed in how lexical significance in ancient Greek texts is determined, based on an analysis of the relationship between speech patterns and addressee identity in the Acts of the Apostles, Acts of John, and Acts of Philip. She also illustrates how sociolinguistic variation contributes to characterization and the construction of Christian identity in the narratives, how it sheds light on the rewriting of ancient texts, and how it informs the question of whether apostolic narratives were produced for evangelistic purposes.

The Multilingual Jesus and the Sociolinguistic World of the New Testament

The Multilingual Jesus and the Sociolinguistic World of the New Testament
Author: Hughson T. Ong
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2015-10-05
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004304797

In The Multilingual Jesus and the Sociolinguistic World of the New Testament, Hughson Ong provides a study of the multifarious social and linguistic dynamics that compose the speech community of ancient Palestine, which include its historical linguistic shifts under different military regimes, its geographical linguistic landscape, the social functions of the languages in its linguistic repertoire, and the specific types of social contexts where those languages were used. Using a sociolinguistic model, his study attempts to paint a portrait of the sociolinguistic situation of ancient Palestine. This book is arguably the most comprehensive treatment of the subject matter to date in terms of its survey of the secondary literature and of its analysis of the sociolinguistic environment of first-century Palestine.

Suffering in the Face of Death

Suffering in the Face of Death
Author: Bryan R. Dyer
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2017-04-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567672360

Suffering and death are two topics that are frequently referred to in the Epistle to the Hebrews, but have rarely been examined within scholarship on this important New Testament text. Dyer redresses the balance in this study of these topics, conducting a thorough investigation using semantic domain analysis. He incorporates recent advancements in modern linguistics, in particular the 'context of situation', and then connects these topics to the social situation addressed in Hebrews. In so doing he is able to reveal how the author is responding to the reality of suffering in the lives of his audience. With this awareness, it becomes clear how the author also responds to his audience's pain by creating models of endurance in suffering and death. These serve to motivate his audience toward similar endurance within their own social context. Dyer shows that it is possible to make significant determinations about the social setting of Hebrews based upon an examination and analysis of the language used therein.