Biblical Interpretation Research Articles

Thomas Fulton. The Book of Books: Biblical Interpretation, Literary Culture, and the Political Imagination from Erasmus to Milton Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021. Pp. 371. $75.00 (cloth).

Thomas Fulton. The Book of Books: Biblical Interpretation, Literary Culture, and the Political Imagination from Erasmus to Milton Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021. Pp. 371. $75.00 (cloth).

Genesis 15:1–6 and child adoption in Awkunanaw, Enugu state, Nigeria

Adoption is a global phenomenon, and many childless couples choose adoption because they cannot have children biologically. Over the years, legally approved orphanages have been a beacon of hope for prospective adoptive parents. However, in contemporary times, many childless couples have employed both legal and illegal means to have children. As a result, baby-making industries have become a lucrative business because it is a fast means for childless couples to have children. In the contemporary Awkunanaw, this practice has devalued socio-cultural practices and made the Awkunanaw society and her dwellers vulnerable to social vices. This study investigates the importance of adopting a child from a known background other than a strange one. Genesis 15: 1–6 tells of God’s covenant with Abram in which God promised him a great reward. Amid the divine promises of greatness and protection, Abram was worried about his state of childlessness. The part of the pericope which relates to this study is that Abram adopted an heir from a known background. The exegetical research methods employed in studying Genesis 15:1–6 include a narrative method and sociological approach to the study of the Old Testament. The data obtained through interviews and secondary sources were analysed using the phenomenological method. The study aims to advocate that Awkunanaw parents who patronise baby-making industries should desist from such practice as it contributes to the prevalence of social vices in the community.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The article studies adoption in Awkunanaw, Enugu state, Nigeria, in the light of Abraham’s narrative in Genesis 15:1–6. In Awkunanaw culture, adoption from an unknown background is abhorred. The article submits that adopting children from unknown backgrounds is precarious for the social development and peace of the Awkunanaw community. Hence, the study is a contribution to Old Testament discourses on religion and society. Its related disciplines are sociology, biblical interpretation and practical theology.

Lovely tents: a Jewish ecospiritual perspective on urban homeless encampments

ABSTRACT Engaging with Jewish texts through a lens of ecospiritual social work provides a framework to incorporate housing rights and homelessness into ecospirituality. This article deploys a Jewish Ecospirituality perspective to consider the issue of urban homeless encampments as a spiritual and environmental justice issue. This article incorporates biblical interpretation and ecospiritual perspectives to situate a Jewish understanding of ecospirituality. It draws connections between the diasporic history of the Jewish people and the displacement found in urban park encampments utilizing Jewish environmental ethics and ecospiritual social work theory to deconstruct the rightful use of public space in the context of urban citizenship.

Distinctions: Uses of the Bible in Immigration Debates

This article considers and responds to some of the ways the Bible is used in US immigration debates, focusing on restrictive interpretations by conservative scholars. It highlights how biblical texts are often applied to support modern distinctions, such as legal versus illegal immigrants, by selectively interpreting passages like those referring to the “least of these” or the treatment of sojourners versus foreigners. The discussion draws on some complexities of theological history, including how Western Christianity’s colonial mindset distorted biblical teachings, leading to exclusionary practices. The article contrasts these views with more inclusive biblical interpretations that emphasize hospitality and justice.

Artificial intelligence and Afrocentric Biblical Hermeneutics crossroads in Zimbabwe (Col 2:8)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) isset to revolutionise global knowledge domains and biblical hermeneutics is no exception. At face value, in Zimbabwe, AI has been stigmatised as a humanistic and profane technological system with an immense propensity to cause general religious backsliding, degeneracy, vain philosophising and secularisation of the Gospel of Christ. This article isolated Colossians 2:8 as a lens to investigate the congruency of Artificial Intelligence to the pericope’s scope of ‘philosophy, vain deceit, tradition of men and rudiments of the world’. The Zimbabwean setting was used to examine whether the Colossian Christian Church’s philosophical aspersions bear any semblances to how AI is viewed among the clergy, theologians, Christian believers and academics of religious studies. The qualitative methodological paradigms of African Biblical Hermeneutics and Exegetical Method were employed in the study. The study mainly established that AI, like a tool in the hands of a workman, can either build or destroy, enhance or adulterate biblical hermeneutics depending on how it is viewed and used.Contribution: The article reflects on how the world’s most nascent technological development, Artificial Intelligence, impacts on biblical interpretation generally, but, more particularly, in the Zimbabwean context.

Enraptured by Rapture: Production Context, Biblical Interpretation, and Evangelical Eschatology in The Rapture, Left Behind, and This is the End

Enraptured by Rapture: Production Context, Biblical Interpretation, and Evangelical Eschatology in The Rapture, Left Behind, and This is the End

The Educational Significance of Feminist Theology in Contemporary Christian Education: Possibilities for a New Reading of Bible - Through the Examples of Biblical Interpretation by Berg, Moltmann, Moltmann-Wendel

The Educational Significance of Feminist Theology in Contemporary Christian Education: Possibilities for a New Reading of Bible - Through the Examples of Biblical Interpretation by Berg, Moltmann, Moltmann-Wendel

Anatomizing God?

Abstract This essay analyses Francesca Stavrakopoulou’s God: An Anatomy with reference to some general questions about the nature of biblical interpretation. Stavrakopoulou’s core contention is that Persian-period theological editing has obscured the original nature of Yahweh, who was not different from any other ancient male deity of southwest Asia. That is, Yahweh was bodily with the desires and practices of a violent and sexually active male, no more than a human projection. Four questions are put to her thesis. First, how well does she understand the kind of classic theological reading which she rejects? Secondly, is her outworking of her core thesis self-consistent, or does it function to warrant a distinctive reading strategy for what has not been editorially obscured but is rather the plain sense of the biblical text? Thirdly, does she do justice to the metaphorical dimensions of language in Hebrew and religious language generally? Fourthly, does she appropriately distinguish the nature of Israel’s scriptures from the religious history that may underlie them? Finally, an analogy is drawn with the work of Robin Lane Fox, in exploring the differences that an interested approach may, or may not, make to ancient historical and biblical interpretation.

The “Theology” of Richard Rohr

Based on R. Rohr’s book The Universal Christ, this arti-cle presents a very critical review of Rohr’s „theology“. It focuses on Rohr’s crucial theological decisions, on his hermeneutics, his biblical interpretations and some important theological concepts as sin, evil, or christology. It sets Rohr’s view into a critical contrast to the tradition and current literature to particular topics. As concluded in the end, based on the reasons provided, the article doubts that Rohr’s propsal can stand to academic scrutiny.

Decolonizing the New Testament Texts: A Postcolonial Task

This essay traces some of the major directions of New Testament interpretation, both in terms of a turn to empire and also specifically in India. Attention to the impact of empire in shaping the world and texts of the New Testament is argued to be a crucial development which provides an important foundation for postcolonial hermeneutics. Postcolonial hermeneutics is shown to be especially influential for interpreters in the Indian context, and various streams and trends within Indian biblical interpretation are presented. Decolonizing the New Testament texts will require such an empire-critical and postcolonial hermeneutic, as well as the incorporation of such concerns within the Western academy. Finally, a reading of Jude 23 is offered as an illustration of this postcolonial hermeneutic in practice. This text illustrates both the imperial context of the early Christian communities and also their efforts to develop a spirituality of resistance.

The Politics of Respectability and Biblical Interpretation: Considering and Questioning a Strategy for Survival

The Politics of Respectability and Biblical Interpretation: Considering and Questioning a Strategy for Survival

Toward a holistic hermeneutic and preaching in a divided world

Preachers’ finding a hermeneutical and practical bridge in preaching could bring evangelicals and progressives together for productive discussion. After a brief survey on the history of biblical interpretation, highlighting trends that have led to today’s divisions in interpretive approaches among Christians, I engage with the writings of contemporary scholars and principles of Aristotelian rhetoric. Then, a reflection on Luke 18:35–43 facilitates a theological and hermeneutical dialogue using the insights of both theological spectrums and leads to two practical hermeneutical suggestions for holistic preaching: using literary criticism to read and interpret the focal text with an eye to the “bigger” picture and applying reader-response interpretation to bring in the theological perspectives of those in the community.

Baptists and the Bible in the Nineteenth Century

ABSTRACT This article explores how some Baptists interpreted the Bible in the nineteenth century, focusing particularly on Joseph Angus, Charles Spurgeon, Esther Copley and Marianne Farningham. In light of evidence from Stepney (later known as Regent's Park) College it challenges the suggestion that Baptist reactions to higher criticism were late and uniformly conservative. It also highlights that biblical interpretation in Baptist churches was shaped not only through those educated at the Colleges but also through the writings of women ‘influencers’ such as Copley and Farningham, whose work has been overlooked.

God’s Body and the Material Turn: Divine (Im)Materiality in Biblical Theophanies

AbstractAlthough biblical scholars are increasingly turning their attention to the question of God’s body, few clarify how precisely this “body” complicates the long-held claim that God is immaterial. The present article addresses this oversight by attending to the ways in which biblical accounts of God’s body intersect with wider tradents of thought on materiality and immateriality, including, above all, the recent cross-disciplinary “turn” known as new materialism. The article begins by discussing what biblical scholars mean when they say “God’s body” and how biblical theophanies in particular complicate the belief that God is immaterial. It then discusses new materialism and how key emphases in this scholarly shift similarly complicate the belief in God’s immateriality. Third and finally, the article returns to biblical theophanies by reading these accounts through a new materialist lens, focusing in particular on God’s manifestations in material, nonhuman forms. In the end, I suggest not only that biblical theophanies problematize traditional ways of conceiving God within the history of biblical interpretation but also that new materialism can better enable us to see how these accounts portray the relationship between God and embodied materialities.

Where Are My Roots? Reading Jeremiah 17:5–10 with Karl Rahner

Abstract A theological approach to reading Scripture advocates that biblical interpretation should not only shape our theological commitments but also be shaped by them. From within this hermeneutical framework, I wish to address Jer 17:5–10, a section where one can find two contrasting images. On the one hand, vv. 5–8 speak about blessed and cursed persons; their differing fates arise from the way these individuals orient their hearts. On the other hand, vv. 9–10 stress that the human heart is devious, and only God knows it. However, how can the human heart be both decisive for one’s destiny and at the same time deceitful and unknowable? While diachronic and synchronic approaches present their own solutions to this interpretative crux, I hope to contribute to the ongoing discussion by evoking the work of Karl Rahner, whose understanding of grace and truth deeply resonates with both polarities of Jeremiah’s passage. The resulting theological reading then not only amplifies the subject matter of Jeremiah’s perplexing oracles but also offers a construal of faith that honestly engages the complexities inherent in our pluralistic culture.

Discerning the Letter: Erasmus and Luther on the Literal Sense of Psalm 2

Abstract This comparative study will examine the ways Desiderius Erasmus and Martin Luther understood the literal sense of Scripture in their expositions of Ps 2. Building off of G. Sujin Pak’s book, The Judaizing Calvin: Sixteenth-Century Debates over the Messianic Psalms, this study seeks to incorporate Erasmus and compare his exegesis and hermeneutic to the early Luther’s expositions of Ps 2. The article aims to demonstrate how these two exegetes converged (and diverged) in their understanding of the literal sense and to explore what part the literal sense played in their interpretation of Scripture. Further, it will consider the relationship these exegetes have to their antecedent exegetical tradition as well as the role history and philology played in their exegesis and how Christ was related to the literal sense of Scripture. The final section of this study ends with a recommendation for contemporary biblical scholars and theologians in the task of biblical interpretation today.

Sustainability Hermeneutics: The New Task of African Biblical Studies

As a new and emerging approach to biblical interpretation, Sustainability Hermeneutics (SH) combines aspects of the environment, economy, and society in its interpretation of biblical texts. Such an approach to biblical interpretation shows the interaction of the environment, economy and society in biblical texts in line with the understanding of sustainability. It is therefore integrative and holistic. This article argued that such an approach holds so much promise for African Biblical Studies (ABS) at a time when the African continent is faced with myriads of developmental issues. While Sustainability Hermeneutics ingrains biblical texts into an integrative African worldview, the article also argued that the urgency of the use of Sustainability Hermeneutics in African Biblical Studies lies in the fact that the Bible and its messages still make sense to many African Christians. So, Sustainability Hermeneutics, if well utilised in African Biblical Studies, will motivate many African Christians to take actions that will lead to sustainable African societies.

Mitzi J. Smith and Michael Willett Newheart, We are All Witnesses: Toward Disruptive and Creative Biblical Interpretation

Mitzi J. Smith and Michael Willett Newheart, We are All Witnesses: Toward Disruptive and Creative Biblical Interpretation

Mother Tongue Biblical Hermeneutics within the Context of African Biblical Hermeneutics: It’s Origin, Trends and Challenges

This study delves into the intricate landscape of Mother Tongue Biblical Hermeneutics within the context of African Biblical Hermeneutics, aiming to unravel its origins, discern trends, and confront challenges. Employing a qualitative research methodology grounded in extensive literature review and critical analysis, this investigation explores the evolution and current state of Mother Tongue Biblical Hermeneutics in the African context.Findings underscore the significance of linguistic and cultural nuances in biblical interpretation, emphasizing the role of indigenous languages in shaping contextual understanding and relevance. Moreover, the study identifies persistent challenges including colonial legacies, linguistic imperialism, and theological biases that impede the full realization of Mother Tongue Biblical Hermeneutics.In light of these findings, recommendations are proposed to foster the integration of indigenous languages into biblical scholarship, advocate for linguistic diversity, and promote inclusivity in theological discourse. Ultimately, this study contributes to scholarship by illuminating the vital intersection of language, culture, and interpretation in African Biblical Hermeneutics, thereby enriching theological dialogue and advancing decolonial approaches to biblical studies. Keywords: Biblical Hermeneutics, African Biblical Hermeneutics, Mother-tongue Biblical studies, Origin, Trends and Challenges.

HANS GEORG GADAMER'S HERMENEUTICS VS BIBLICAL HERMENEUTICS: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

At first, Hermeneutics as an interacting science was only used among the church as a method of Scripture Interpretation, with a standard system or method of hermeneutics. This hermeneutics is often referred to as Traditional Hermeneutics or Biblical Hermeneutics. However, in its development, Hermeneutics came out of biblical studies into the scope of philosophy, art, literature, and history. This hermeneutics is referred to as New Hermeneutics and appears in various variants. The purpose of this article is to introduce the New Hermeneutics system of the Postmodernist era, specifically Hans Georg Gadamer's Hermeneutics, and compare it objectively with the Biblical Hermeneutics System with the standard Grammatical-Historical method, which is often used to interpret the Bible. This study uses the comparative analysis study method to find fundamental similarities and differences between Hans Georg Gadamer's hermeneutic concepts and Biblical hermeneutics. Finally, the author makes conclusions and recommendations for Bible interpreters who are doing hermeneutics.