Biblical Scholarship Research Articles

African Christian Theology and Christology: A Study of the Contributions of Kwame Bediako, John S. Mbiti, Justin Ukpong and Charles Nyamiti

The article discusses the scholarship of Kwame Bediako, John Mbiti, Justin Ukpong and Charles Nyamiti to decipher their contributed to the development of a framework for theology, Christology and biblical scholarship in Africa and the development of the African context as an alternative to theology, Christology and biblical scholarship in Africa and beyond. The article used a combination of methods for data collection, interpretation and analysis. This included (a) the biographical with emphasis on intellectual scholarship. This enabled the researcher to assess the intellectual works of selected scholars. (b) there was also content analysis of primary and secondary sources across literature and scholars to evaluate the extent of the impact of the writings of the selected scholars. These works were evaluated in context with both contemporary and modern scholarship. The objective was to decipher how their scholarship has advanced the African context for Christian theology, christology and biblical hermeneutics in Africa. The study discovered that since the rise in the need to identify and make an African contribution to the continuous nomenclatures of Christian theology, christology and biblical hermeneutics that recognize the African experience as a critical necessity in the search for a more wholistic and comprehensive theoretical framework for theology, christology and biblical hermeneutics, these scholars made such a huge contribution not on methodology alone but also on conceptualisation. They contributed to a very large extent to the recovery of African dignity, and the establishment of a philosophy, theology, christology and that was authentically African, credible and viable for any academic scholarship. They were also able to explain how the African context contributes to existing scholarship on nomenclatures of normative Christian theology, Christology and biblical hermeneutics in Africa. Keywords: Christianity, Theology, Christology, Traditions and Culture

Phenomenology and Biblical Criticism: The Case of Michel Henry

Phenomenology and Biblical Criticism: The Case of Michel Henry

Esau’s wives and the question of cross-ethnic marriage in Genesis

Esau‘s marriage to Hittite women has been explained by many as a wrongful act that placed him outside the chosen family. By this interpretation, commentators over the years have overtly and covertly endorsed ethnocentrism. As African readers, what are we to make of such interpretations, in the complex context of multiple ethnicities in Africa? In this paper, I interrogated the issue of crossethnic marriages in the Old Testament, using the case of Esau and his wives. Isolating three texts that focus on Esau‘s marriage (Gen 26:45, 27:46, and 28: 1-9), and using literary analysis, I read the texts in a way that suppresses the ethnocentric overtones of the narrative. This was achieved mainly through exploring the gaps within the narratives. My reading revealed that there was no explicit condemnation by the narrator of Esau’s marriage to Hittite women. It was also revealed that the behaviour of Esau’s wives towards their in-laws, not their ethnic background, was the source of strife. Since a poor management of the high ethnic and cultural diversities in African countries can lead to conflicts, African biblical scholars need to interrogate ethnocentric narratives through a constructive engagement with the Bible.

The Soul of Desire: Discovering the Neuroscience of Longing, Beauty, and Community

The Soul of Desire: Discovering the Neuroscience of Longing, Beauty, and Community

‘One Thing’: Stoic Discourse and Paul’s Reevaluation of His Jewish Credentials in Phil. 3.1–21

Biblical scholars frequently discuss Paul’s relationship to his Jewish ancestral practices and heritage, a debate that is due in no small part to his inconsistency on the topic. Although some recent scholars have highlighted statements expressing Paul’s esteem for such credentials, the correct interpretation of his devaluation of them in Phil. 3.1–21 is a lingering scholarly problem. I argue that this text evidences adaptation of Stoic patterns of discourse that indicate that Paul’s devaluation does not depict his repudiation of such practices and credentials but his refusal to compare them to ‘knowing Christ’. His use of these patterns of discourse is designed to establish the first-order value of ‘knowing Christ’ and to model for the Philippians the epistemological evaluation he believed was crucial to their eschatological salvation.

Review: Making Christian History: Eusebius of Caesarea and His Readers, by Michael J. Hollerich

Book Review| February 01 2023 Review: Making Christian History: Eusebius of Caesarea and His Readers, by Michael J. Hollerich Michael J. Hollerich, Making Christian History: Eusebius of Caesarea and His Readers. Oakland: University of California Press, 2021. 316 pp. ISBN: 9780520295360. $95. Philip Wood Philip Wood Aga Khan University Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Studies in Late Antiquity (2023) 7 (1): 166–169. https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2023.7.1.166 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Philip Wood; Review: Making Christian History: Eusebius of Caesarea and His Readers, by Michael J. Hollerich. Studies in Late Antiquity 1 February 2023; 7 (1): 166–169. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2023.7.1.166 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentStudies in Late Antiquity Search Eusebius of Caesarea was a prolific polymath. Writing in the aftermath of Constantine’s accession, he was the author of biblical scholarship, apologetics, history, theological polemic, and celebrations of the new Constantinian order (such as the Vita Constantini). He worked at a major cusp of Christian history, when Christian thinkers tried to sort out their new relationship to a state that had persecuted them in the very recent past. Michael Hollerich’s Making Christian History focuses on the significance of Eusebius’s work as an ecclesiastical historian and on his enduring influence on the genre of ecclesiastical history. Chapter 1 examines Eusebius’s Historia Ecclesiae (HE) itself. The HE can be read, in part, as the emplotment of a Roman civil war onto the biblical narrative of divine deliverance. But it was also a continuation of Luke-Acts, which saw bishops (and exegetes) as the successors to the apostles and Nicaea as... You do not currently have access to this content.

Literary Forms/Techniques & Methods of Study

Literary Forms/Techniques & Methods of Study Fred W. Guyette, Christopher T. Begg, Richard A. Taylor, and Brian J. Meldrum 170. [Bible Study in Orthodox Judaism] Hayyim Angel, "Bridging Tradition and the Academy: The Literary-Theological School in Orthodox Bible Study," JBQ 50 (1, 2022) 19–35. Traditional Judaism includes core beliefs in prophecy, the divine revelation of the Torah through Moses, and the existence of an Oral Law that accompanies the Written Torah. However, beginning in the seventeenth century with the philosophers B. Spinoza and T. Hobbes, and moving through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with Liberal Protestant critical Bible scholarship, these and other basic religious foundations came under attack by a host of writings and new assumptions. Can faith and scholarship walk together? Nehama Leibowitz (1905–1997) believed these two approaches could enrich each other. Rabbi [End Page 53] Mordecai Breuer (1921–2007) accepted many of the claims of the JEDP model proposed by J. Wellhausen, except that he did not think the documents were written by a human being. Rabbi Yoel Bin-Nun, for his part, is among those who choose to bypass historical considerations in order to take a literary approach to Scripture. Bin-Nun believes that it is important to see the nuances, the complexities, and the faults of biblical heroes. Only in this way can value and moral meaning truly be drawn from, e.g., the stories of the patriarchs.—F.W.G. 171. [Literal and Allegorical Readings of the Psalms] John Barton, "Literal and Allegorical Readings of the Psalms: Imagining the Psalmist," Psalms and the Use of the Critical Imagination, 138-45 [see #927]. For most contemporary readers of the Bible, there is an irreducible difference between Jewish and Christian readings of the Psalms. The roots of the traditional Christian reading can already be seen in the way Peter uses Psalms 16 and 110 in Acts 2:24-36. On the Day of Pentecost, Peter was trying to explain to a gathering of Jews why Christ died, how God raised him up on the third day, and how Jesus ascended into heaven. The Church Fathers—Ambrose and Augustine spring readily to mind—took this allegorizing approach to the Psalms even further. For them every Psalm somehow pointed to Christ, the promised Messiah. For Jewish readers, however, the Messiah has not yet come, and God is One, not Triune. For them, a more literal approach to the Psalms is called for: each Psalm is a prayerful dialogue between the human soul and God, the Creator of the Universe. A passage from Richard Hooker's Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1597) can help bring this difference into sharper focus. Hooker begins by saying that the Psalms can teach the virtues that all people need to live a moral life: "Heroical magnanimity, exquisite justice, grave moderation, exact wisdom, repentance unfeigned, unwearied patience …" But then Hooker's summary of the Psalms continues in a way that has more to do with a Christian view of salvation history. They show us, he says "the mysteries of God, the sufferings of Christ, the terrors of wrath, the comforts of grace, the works of Providence over this world, and the promised joys of that world which is to come." We cannot undo the ancient "parting of the ways," but there are good reasons for Jews and Christians to keep probing the boundaries that separate them from one another, in ways that build up friendship and mutual respect.—F.W.G. 172. [Claus Westermann; The Assumptive World of Trauma Survivors] Elizabeth Boase, "Engaging Westermann and the Assumptive World," JSOT 46 (2, 2021) 177-92. The work of Claus Westermann was foundational for the modern study of lament literature in the HB. Westermann's work on the Psalms arose from his experiences in World War II, where he learned to value both the praise and lament elements of the Psalms. This article reconsiders Westermann's contribution to the theology of lament in light of contemporary theory concerning the impact of trauma on individuals, focusing on the understanding of the impact of traumatic experience on the "assumptive" world of those who suffer. There are, I argue, significant points of...

Some Observations on Cultural Memory, the Hebrew Bible and the History of "Ancient Israel"

Cultural memory as an interpretive concept has had in recent years a concrete impact in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament historical studies. Its main contribution has been to discuss how and to what degree the different evocations (memories) found in the biblical narrative relate both to the history of the production of the biblical texts in antiquity and to the history of "ancient Israel" in the southern Levant, especially during the first millennium B.C.E. The present contribution offers some observations on the matter, essentially from the perspective of social anthropology and critical historiography, reviewing the main aspects of the uses of cultural memory in biblical scholarship, while making some epistemological and methodological observations and proposals.

The Tension between Experiences of Nothingness and Hope in the Metaphorical Meaning of the Names of the Children (Isaiah 7-8) from a Perspective of Generational Imprinted Trauma and Resilience

The texts of Isaiah 7 and 8 are a paragon of metaphorical meanings and signs, especially as they pertain to the name-giving of Isaiah 's sons: Shear-Jashub, Immanuel, and Maher-shalal-hash-baz. This opens a scope of possibilities for Biblical scholars as hardly any research has been done on the implications and corollaries of the three sign names. The significance of children and the function they have within the Hebrew Bible are investigated to give a better understanding of the prophetic utterance of Isaiah. Furthermore, when a perspective of generational imprinted trauma2 is applied to explore and understand the text, an opportunity arises to assess the text within the parameters of pre-migration and the ensuing traumatic experiences. The metaphorical names give us as biblical scholars a glimpse into the possible outcome of fear and threat that is posed by the Syro-Epohraimite coalition and the Assyrian campaign. Within the three sign-names, the pragmatics of individual and collective trauma, healing, and resilience are also underpinned. As the axes sway between hopelessness (nothingness) and hopefulness, the sign-names of the children provide dualistic solutions of either divine punishment or the restitution of a remaining remnant through complete faith and the knowledge that 'God is with us

Moore, Stephen D., Gospel Jesuses and Other Nonhumans: Biblical Criticism Post-Poststructuralism

Moore, Stephen D., Gospel Jesuses and Other Nonhumans: Biblical Criticism Post-Poststructuralism

Human Being and the World in the Capricious Radiance of Talmudic Mythology (Based on a Religious Study of the Little-Researched Work of Yakym Olesnytsky)

The article continues and develops the experience of actual reading of one of the significant, but littlestudied works of the prominent Kyiv Hebrew scholar and biblical scholar of the last third of the XIX – early XX century, professor of the Kyiv Theological Academy Yakym Olesnytsky. Through the religious study reinterpretation of the structural elements of Talmudic mythology discovered by Olesnytsky, the peculiarities of the evolution of the agadic picture of the world were revealed. Being quite structurally heterogeneous, this phenomenon is characterized by “human dimension”, which is the leitmotif of universal natural harmony, social order, moral balance of good and evil. Both the actions of God, and the elements of nature, and the norms and requirements of society are full of mental, psycho-emotional tension, placed in a situation of moral choice and action, appear in fact anthropological projections, the image of human abilities. Therefore, the anthropological aspects of the transformations of agadic consciousness have been studied from the standpoint of religious studies. The transformation of psychological and anthropological motives in agadic angel and demonology and ideas about the human soul is singled out; revealed dimensions of the sacred symbolization of the unity of man with nature, humanity and the universe in the agadic doctrine of metempsychosis; anthropological and socio-political projections of agadic sacred geography and ritualized practices of contact with the afterlife as with the “Other Reality” are demonstrated; the sacred dimensions of ethno-, cultural- and religious-genesis engraved in the agada are traced.

Imagining the Hebrew Ode: On Robert Lowth’s Biblical Species

Abstract: The subject of this article is the reception history of biblical genres, or the metapoetics of genre-making. It argues that the seemingly fixed presentations of the genres of biblical poetry in the twentieth century—as in Robert Alter’s classic guide to biblical Hebrew poetry—emerge from an eighteenth-century encounter: the English exegete Robert Lowth’s dramatic attempt to fit Greek and Roman generic models to the Hebrew text. Lowth’s resulting genres, or what he called the “species” of biblical poetry, were shaped both by the parallels he discovered between classical and Hebrew traditions, and by the small and large aberrations he faced in his process of translation. The article focuses on the characterization of a poetic form that never existed: the ancient Hebrew ode. Although, in this case, Lowth fails in his biblical scholarship, his Hebrew ode demonstrates the spirit of his creative project. By fitting Hebrew poetry to neoclassical models, Lowth subtly transformed neoclassical categories and possibilities, opening up new imaginative expanses within the lyrical mode and preparing the way for a more flexible, complex, and emotionally sophisticated Romantic lyric.

The Relevance of Textual Criticism in Biblical Interpretation

Textual criticism refers to the techniques used by biblical scholars in interpreting a given text of the Bible to ascertain its original wording, the nature of its composition, sources, date, and authorship. Textual criticism is an essential aspect of biblical interpretation, which some interpreters technically dodged from it thinking that the word “criticism” is negative. Far be it from this assertion, biblical criticism is relevant, and it remains relevant. Textual criticism is significant; it helps us understand that Scripture cannot be overestimated. It is vital to the understanding of Scripture as the Word of God. It seeks to investigate and understand the situation of the original recipients of the word to discover precisely what the original writers of the scriptures meant by their words. From this Spirit, the writer would shed light on the importance and relevance of biblical criticism, especially to the interpretation of the Bible. To achieve the aim of the writing, the writer uses the narrative-critical analysis method to present the paper’s idea.

New Books across the Disciplines

New Books across the Disciplines

Legislating Gender Prejudice: Religion and the Overturning of Roe v Wade

This paper explores the intersection of religion, gender identity, and gender prejudice within the American context of religious conservatism and the overturning of Roe v Wade. Discussion considers the overturning as a dangerous move that negates the rights and religious liberties of women, with adverse implications also for the rainbow community. Notably, this legislative context depicts the power of conservative Christian ideology to sustain hierarchical gender norms anchored in a binary consciousness, which privileges and empowers men (typically white, elite, heterosexual men), while diminishing and disempowering women and gender-diverse persons as non-normative and subsidiary. Discussion further conveys that this male-centred/androcentric ideology continues the oppressive legacy of male-dominant, fundamentalist biblical interpretation — a mode of interpretation heavily criticised within contemporary mainstream biblical scholarship as flawed and grievous in its promotion of gender prejudice. Accordingly, the overturning of Roe v Wade is relevant to the Australian context, for the same androcentricity and legacy of biblically-justified gender prejudice underpins all Western cultures. That is, manifold people, knowingly or reflexively, religious or otherwise, adhere to this biased interpretation and prejudicial gender consciousness through entrenched psychosocial Western norms. Not least, much scholarship has stressed that the issue of gender bias deeply pervades the structures of Australia’s justice system. Ultimately, this paper emphasises that understanding androcentricity and the legacy of injurious androcentric biblical interpretation is necessary to the tasks of negotiating religious freedom for all persons and cultivating non-sexist social and legal structures that uphold the rights of multiple gender identities and subjectivities.

Dictionary of Paul and his Letters: A Compendium of Contemporary Biblical Scholarship ed. by Scot McKnight, Lyn H. Cohick and Nijay K. Gupta (review)

Dictionary of Paul and his Letters: A Compendium of Contemporary Biblical Scholarship ed. by Scot McKnight, Lyn H. Cohick and Nijay K. Gupta (review)

Miracles, Causation, and Critical Biblical Scholarship

Most historical Jesus scholars agree that Jesus was regarded by his contemporaries as a great miracle worker. However, many of these same scholars deny that they can pronounce on the truth of the miracle stories as historians. There are at least two arguments for this position. One is based on an alleged empirical constraint on historical practice, which excludes divine causation. The other argument is rooted in the presumption that it is anachronistic to impose modern understandings of miracles on ancient authors. I argue that both objections are unsuccessful.

Gospel Harmonies and the Genres of Biblical Scholarship in Early Modern Europe

Early modern Gospel harmonies have received little attention and are mostly studied as poor precursors to modern synoptic criticism. This article reassesses the harmony's significance by reconstructing its development ca. 1500–1700, reaching two conclusions. First, it argues that Gospel harmonies acted as a touchstone for critical intellectual developments such as the rise of scientific chronology. Second, it argues that the harmony's transformation over this period, influenced by multiple overlapping disciplines, resulted in it becoming one of the most creative scholarly genres by the late seventeenth century. This interdisciplinarity was simultaneously the prime attraction of the harmony and the reason for its eighteenth-century decline.

Seeing Light: A Critical Enquiry into the Origins of Resurrection Faith by Peter Gant

Reviewed by: Seeing Light: A Critical Enquiry into the Origins of Resurrection Faith by Peter Gant Glenn B. Siniscalchi peter gant, Seeing Light: A Critical Enquiry into the Origins of Resurrection Faith (Durham, UK: Sacristy Press, 2019). Pp. xii + 302. Paper $31.80. Peter Gant’s thought-provoking book will be of interest to biblical scholars and fundamental theologians whose area of specialization is dedicated to historical-critical exegesis and the earliest Christian claim that “God raised Jesus from the dead.” The first half of the book comprehensively covers the relevant aspects of the ancient Jewish matrix leading up to the emergence of Christianity, including the multiple understandings of immortality (which is consistent with and reinforced by the hellenization of Palestine), Sheol, angelo-morphic visions, rewards and punishments for the dead, the notion of resurrection itself, exaltation, and heavenly redeemer figures and titles. One should agree with G. in affirming that “Jesus’ followers were able to draw on a wide variety of existing Second Temple afterlife beliefs” (p. 19). Gant’s lucid coverage of the wisdom traditions and cultic practices of Judaism sets the stage for the possibility of many nuanced interpretations of the NT evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. He exposits the embedded testimonies and cultural factors that are behind and underneath Paul’s writings and the canonical Gospels. These testimonies include [End Page 158] “a short, powerful and multiply attested formulaic assertion to the effect that God has raised Jesus from the dead” (p. 20). Other considerations include “pre-Pauline christological hymns . . . that speak powerfully of the heavenly exaltation of Jesus. . . . There is also an early Aramaic prayer for the coming or return of Jesus from heaven. And, most especially, there is a very early tradition concerning appearances of the risen Jesus to his disciples, a tradition differing significantly from the much later appearance stories in the Gospels” (p. 20). G.’s text is especially helpful in distinguishing the earliest evidence (i.e., the after-death appearances of Jesus) from later understandings that developed in the first twenty years of the Christian movement. Gant’s assessment of the understandings of the religious background and the NT evidence is fairly presented and consistently informative. Although G. does not completely discount interpretations of the resurrection that resonate with most of the agreed-upon evidence in contemporary studies (see, e.g., the proposals set forth by senior scholars such as Gerald O’Collins and N. T. Wright), he settles for a reconstruction that many critics will want to dispute. Introducing his willingness to push forward a newer depiction of Easter faith, G. believes that “key texts such as Daniel 12:2–3 are capable of more than one interpretation. Even if it is true that ‘resurrection’ without an empty grave would have been unthinkable, allowance must still be made for the possibility of innovation on the part of Jesus’ earliest followers” (p. 197). Consequently, G. maintains that the earliest evidence points in favor of the earliest Christian belief in the exaltation of Jesus (see Phil 2:5–11). However, other believers said that Jesus was raised from the dead. More importantly, these distinct beliefs were not necessarily complementary to one another (p. 262). According to G., the latter point highlights the uncertainty and pluriform ways in which evidence can be assessed. A second controversial point is the irrelevance of the empty tomb of Jesus for resurrection faith. The final controversial contention is that modern scientific worldviews will preclude the possibility and defensibility of miracles. It is unfortunate that G. repeatedly takes this assumption for granted and never explains to the reader why anyone should accept it. Part of the problem is that miracles are defined as divine interference with the laws of nature, but this outdated definition indicates that G. is unaware of the scholarship that discusses miracles in ways that are congruent with science and its relationship to philosophy. Since the nature of the evidence is uncertain, allowing for many interpretations in light of a modern scientific worldview, one should merely resort to theological language for understanding the origins of Easter faith: “resurrection faith emerged as a theological interpretation of the totality of the history of Israel, the life...

Edward Pococke (1604–1691), Comparative Arabic-Hebrew Philology, and the Bible

Edward Pococke is best known to historians today as one of seventeenth-century Europe's preeminent discoverers of Islam. This article explores three less familiar aspects of his work as a scholar of Arabic: his comparative approach to the “Oriental” languages; his interest in the Arabic translations of the Bible; and his study of Judaeo-Arabic biblical criticism. It argues that foregrounding these concerns—developed throughout the course of his long career as Laudian Professor of Arabic and Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford—enables Pococke's work to be situated in its more specific theological contexts. In this way, it seeks to look beyond attempts to position Pococke at the origins of a disciplinary history of modern “Arabic studies,” and to understand instead how his scholarship was intertwined with early modern theological disputes—most of all, the debate about the status of the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible.