Decolonising the Reading of Psalm 8 in an African (Yoruba) Context.

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
David Tuesday Adamo
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Tradition ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
Name Of God

Psalm 8 is one of the most important psalms of praise to YHWH. Unlike other psalms of praise, this psalm begins with the name of God, Yahweh, which clearly and unmistakeably expresses that he is glorious throughout his creation. Psalm 8 not only expresses the glory of Yahweh, but also the value and responsibility of humanity. This article examines how Psalm 8 is read and interpreted in an African/Yoruba religious and cultural tradition as a psalm of protection, healing, and success. Some archaeological evidence seems to support the use of the Bible that way. The effectiveness of such use in the African/Yoruba Christian tradition is not doubted because a strong faith is behind it. Such use represents an African/Yoruba affirmation of faith in Yahweh who will repeat the miracles of healing, protection, and success that he had performed in ancient Israel in their present lives.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Christian Humanism

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Zimmermann
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Theological Interpretation ◽  
Christian Humanism ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Theological Politics

Based on a comprehensive reading of his entire work, in this book Jens Zimmermann presents Bonhoeffer’s theological ethos as a Christian humanism, that is, as an understanding of the gospel rooted in apostolic and patristic writers who believed God to have renewed humanity in the incarnation. The heartbeat of Bonhoeffer’s Christianity that unifies and motivates his theological writing, his preaching, and his political convictions, including his opposition to the Nazi regime, is the conviction that Christianity as participation in the new humanity established by Christ is about becoming fully human by becoming Christlike. In eight chapters, the author details Bonhoeffer’s humanistic theology following from this incarnational starting point: a Christ-centered anthropology that shows a deep kinship with patristic Christology, a hermeneutically structured theology, an ethic focused on Christ-formation, a biblical hermeneutic centered on God’s transforming presence, and a theological politics aimed at human flourishing. In offering a comprehensive reading of his theology as Christian humanism, Zimmermann not only places Bonhoeffer in the context of the patristic and greater Christian tradition but also makes apparent the relevance of Bonhoeffer’s thought for a number of contemporary concerns: hermeneutic theory, the theological interpretation of the Bible, the relation of reason to faith, the importance of natural law, and the significance of religion for secular societies. Bonhoeffer turns out to be a Christian humanist and a modern theologian who models the deeply orthodox and yet ecumenical, expansive Christianity demanded by our time.

Ritualizing Iconic Jewish Texts

2020 ◽  
pp. 239-255
Author(s):  
James W. Watts
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Interpretation ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Oral Performance ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Christian Worship ◽  
Scholarly Attention

Bibles and parts of bibles are themselves used as ritual objects in Jewish and Christian worship. Their display and manipulation, oral performance, and semantic interpretation have been ritualized by synagogues and churches since antiquity. The origins of these practices are rooted in the Bible itself. Their influence has shaped every Jewish and Christian tradition and reaches beyond them to Muslims, Manicheans, and other religious communities. This chapter and its companions in this volume on Christianity and Islam focus mostly on how the iconic dimension of scriptures gets ritualized, because the iconic dimension has received less scholarly attention than the ritualization of scripture’s oral performance, artistic illustration, and semantic interpretation.

Reading the Bible from Below in the Era of Globalization

2020 ◽  
pp. 111-128
Author(s):  
Rainer Kessler
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Asynchronous Development ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
The World ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
Globalized World

It is evident that the world of the Bible is pre-modern and thus distinct from the globalized civilization. This chronological gap challenges readers, whether they are feminist or not. Mainly three attitudes can be observed among scholarly and ordinary readers. For some readers, the Bible is a document of the losers of a historical process of modernization that already began in ancient Israel. For other readers, the Bible is outdated and of no use to confront the challenges of globalization. A third readerly position challenges both of these views. This essay offers four arguments to orient biblical readers in the contemporary globalized world. First, the essay posits that globalization is an asynchronous development. Thus, even today, most people living in the impoverished regions of the world face conditions similar to those dominant in the Bible. Second, the essay asserts that women are the first victims in biblical times and still nowadays. Third, the essay maintains that biblical texts display social relations that still unveil contemporary relations. Fourth, the essay suggests that intercultural Bible readings give hope, as they nurture biblical readings from “below” to strengthen people to overcome the fatal consequences of today’s globalization.

Clio and Canons: in Search of a Cultural Poetics of the Hebrew Bible

1997 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 300-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert P. Carroll
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
New Historicism ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
Cultural Poetics ◽  
Leading Edges

AbstractThe enterprise of writing "histories" of "ancient Israel" in which biblical historiography is reproduced by old credulists or critiqued by new nihilists represents one of the leading edges of contemporary biblical studies in relation to the Hebrew Bible. This quest for a cultural poetics or cultural materialist accounts of the Bible is virtually equivalent to a New Historicism in the discipline. In this article analyses of three topics from current debates in biblical studies (historiography of "ancient Israel", the empty land topos, canons and context) are used to provide insights into how new historicist approaches to contextualizing literature may contribute to these current debates about the Bible.

Textualization and the Book of Jeremiah

2021 ◽  
pp. 144-158
Author(s):  
Joachim Schaper
Keyword(s):  
Speech Act ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Written Texts ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
Specific Object ◽  
Book Of Jeremiah

Textualization implies the emergence of the concept of a “text” as a specific object that needs to be handled in a specific way: an object that is conceptualized as part of a tradition of reading and interpreting—indeed, an object that is constituted by the desire to preserve and make available a specific utterance (irrespective of whether that utterance was originally produced orally or in writing). Written texts therefore are the results of the desire of an individual or a community to establish a tradition for a speech act that the individuals or the community intend to preserve. As is the case with oral texts, written texts can give rise to ritualized or otherwise significant uses of the text-object. This is the key to the understanding of prophetic collections in the Bible, and especially in the book of Jeremiah. While “tradition” (Überlieferung) is the aim of textualization, that tradition comes in various shapes and forms. The growth of prophetic books is an excellent illustration of Konrad Ehlich’s analysis of the characteristics of textualization and its purposes, especially with regard to the fact that prophetic oracles were, in ancient Israel and Judah, textualized for the purpose of being preserved and performed and of serving as the basis for Fortschreibungen.

Sustenance and Survival in Biblical Narrative

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer L. Koosed
Keyword(s):  
Religious Identity ◽  
Food Production ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
Early Judaism ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
Class Status ◽  
Cultural Code ◽  
Shape Characterization

Food is a comprehensive cultural code. In ancient Israel and early Judaism, food production and preparation structured lives; what one did in the process was determined by gender and class status and sometimes even marked by ethnic and religious identity. Food also serves to structure narrative, shape characterization, and add layers of symbolic signification to story. In the Bible, the drama of the first few chapters revolves around proper versus improper eating, and the final book portrays God as a lamb sacrificed for the Passover meal. Between picking and tasting the forbidden fruit, and slaughtering and eating God, a whole host of food-related plots, characters, and images proliferate, many of which revolve around the most important of foodstuffs: bread. This chapter explores the centrality of bread in the story of Adam and Eve, the book of Ruth, and the gospels of Jesus.

scholarly journals KATA “ALLAH” DALAM AL-QURAN DAN ALKITAB Kajian Terhadap Pelarangan Menggunakan Kata “Allah” Bagi Selain Muslim

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-176
Author(s):  
Zainal Arifin
Keyword(s):  
Arabic Language ◽  
Religious Tolerance ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Name Of God

Abstract: This study appears due MUIS Malaysia ban the use of the word "Allah" for the citizens is not Islam. This study examined for the purposes of the establishment of religious tolerance based on the understanding of religion. This paper seeks to explain that the word "Allah" contained in the Qur'an and the Bible, by limiting the study of the Qur’an and the Bible, to formulate the concept of "Allah" who became God for Muslims. This study found that the word "Allah" though not derived from Arabic, he eventually became part of the Arabic language of the Koran. He also became the name of God for Muslims. Furthermore, the authors found that in addition to Muslims, Christians and Jews may use the word "Allah" to indicate their God. When a Christian used to indicate the name of Jesus, it is also allowed as a form of tolerance. As the infidels Quraish mention sculpture as a means of worshiping God. Abstrak: Kajian ini muncul akibat pelarangan MUIS Malaysia dalam penggunaan kata "Allah" bagi warga bukan Islam. Kajian ini dikaji untuk keperluan tegaknya toleransi beragama berdasarkan pe¬mahaman agama. Tulisan ini berupaya menjelaskan bahwa kata "Allah" tertuang dalam Al-Quran dan Alkitab, dengan membatasi telaah pada Al-Quran dan Alkitab, merumuskan konsep "Allah" yang menjadi Tuhan bagi Muslim. Penelitian ini menemukan bahwa kata "Allah" walau bukan berasal dari bahasa Arab, ia akhirnya menjadi bagian dari bahasa Quran yang Arab. Ia juga menjadi nama Tuhan bagi umat Islam. Lebih jauh lagi, penulis menemukan bahwa selain Muslim, umat Nasrani dan Yahudi boleh menggunakan kata "Allah" untuk me-nunjukkan Tuhan mereka. Bila seorang Kristiani meng-gunakannya untuk menunjuk¬kan nama Yesus, itu juga dibolehkan sebagai wujud toleransi. Sebagaimana kaum kafir Quraisy me¬nyebutkan patung sebagai sarana me-nyembah Allah. Keywords: Allah, Al-Quran, Alkitab, God, Islam, Kristen.

MARKETING THE TESTAMENTS: CANONGATE AND THEIR POCKET-SIZED BIBLES

2002 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 221-244
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Studies ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
The West ◽  
Positive Potential ◽  
Publishing Firm ◽  
Investment Promotion ◽  
The Bible ◽  
King James Version ◽  
As If

AbstractRecently the Edinburgh-based publishing firm Canongate has brought out the Bible in the form of single books in the King James Version. Each of these volumes is introduced by a writer not necessarily associated with the Christian tradition, thus inviting the readers to approach them as literary works in their own right. For long the Bible came with commentaries written by prominent religious scholars, but now it looks as if it needed an introduction by novelists, pop artists, scientists including and even by some who are outside the Christian tradition to make the once familiar texts now widely neglected in the West come alive again. The purpose of this essay is to look at the following: the positive potential of this Pocket Canon; the role of the interpreter's personal voice within the process of discovering meaning in a narrative; the marketing of the Bible and appropriation of religious themes by secular marketeers; the re-iconization of the Bible though the King James Version; the colonial parallels in the investment, promotion and dissemination of the Bible; and the challenge of personal-voice criticism to biblical studies. Put at its simplest, can this disparate group of essayists rescue the Bible, which is fast losing its grip and importance in the West, and discover fresh significance in it?

Biblical Israel in the Ninth Century?

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
PHILIP R. DAVIES
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Critical History ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
United Monarchy ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Crucial Part

Most archaeologists of ancient Israel still operate with a pro-biblical ideology, while the role that archaeology has played in Zionist nation building is extensively documented. Terms such as ‘ninth century’ and ‘Iron Age’ represent an improvement on ‘United Monarchy’ and ‘Divided Monarchy’, but these latter terms remain implanted mentally as part of a larger portrait that may be called ‘biblical Israel’. This chapter argues that the question of ‘biblical Israel’ must be regarded as distinct from the kingdoms of Israel and Judah as a major historical problem rather than a given datum. ‘Biblical Israel’ can never be the subject of a modern critical history, but is rather a crucial part of that history, a ‘memory’, no doubt historically conditioned, that became crucial in creating Judaism. This realization will enable us not only to write a decent critical history of Iron Age central Palestine but also to bring that history and the biblical narrative into the kind of critical engagement that will lead to a better understanding of the Bible itself.

Sea Peoples and Land Peoples, 1250 BC–1100 BC

The Great Sea ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Abulafia
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Red Sea ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Western Mediterranean ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Archaeological Investigation ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Sea Peoples ◽  
The Hill

Both the fall of Troy and the Sea Peoples have been the subject of a vast literature. They were part of a common series of developments that affected the entire eastern Mediterranean and possibly the western Mediterranean too. Troy had been transformed at the end of the eighteenth century BC with the building of the most magnificent of the cities to stand on the hill of Hisarlık: Troy VI , which lasted, with many minor reconstructions, into the thirteenth century BC . The citadel walls were nine metres thick, or more; there were great gates and a massive watchtower, a memory of which may have survived to inspire Homer; there were big houses on two floors, with courtyards. The citadel was the home of an elite that lived in some style, though without the lavish accoutrements of their contemporaries in Mycenae, Pylos or Knossos. Archaeological investigation of the plain beneath which then gave directly on to the seashore suggests the existence of a lower town about seven times the size of the citadel, or around 170,000 square metres, roughly the size of the Hyksos capital at Avaris. One source of wealth was horses, whose bones begin to appear at this stage; Homer’s Trojans were famous ‘horse-tamers’, hippodamoi, and even if he chose this word to fit his metre, it matches the archaeological evidence with some precision. In an age when great empires were investing in chariots, and sending hundreds of them to perdition at the battle of Kadesh (or, according to the Bible, in the depths of the Red Sea), horse-tamers were certainly in demand. Opinion divided early on the identity of the Trojans. Claiming descent from Troy, the ancient Romans knew for sure that they were not just a branch of the Greek people. Homer, though, made them speak Greek. The best chance of an answer comes from their pottery. The pottery of Troy is not just Trojan; it belongs to a wider culture that spread across parts of Anatolia.

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