Christian Bible Research Articles

Gadamer, Barth, and Transcendence in Biblical Interpretation

The essay reflects on how Hans-Georg Gadamer and Karl Barth view interpretation of the Christian Bible. It proceeds in three main sections. The first contends that Gadamer secularizes Christian theology, and that this has drawbacks for the sort of reading his hermeneutic can give to Christian Scripture. The second part turns to Barth, arguing that the whole structure of his approach to the Bible factors in theological commitment, with benefits for the readings he can deliver. The final part makes a case that contemporary reflection on interpretation can nonetheless glean important insights from Gadamer, especially regarding the readerly reception of texts, because his perspective has a certain sort of richness that Barth’s cannot match. The overall suggestion emerging from the interrogation of these two thinkers is that phenomenology and theology might learn from one another, that they each contribute something valuable to discussions of biblical interpretation.

Orality, gender and sacred texts in the context of tele-evangelism

In oral cultures such as (traditional) African cultures and the cultures that eventually produced the Christian Bible, women formed an integral part of the art of storytelling. In patriarchal cultures where the normativity of a male is taken for granted, once orality was tampered with by that which happens in the sphere traditionally reserved for men as in, for example, the introduction of literacy, the important role of women as storytellers, including the telling of the stories of Jesus of Nazareth (read: biblical discourse) gets tampered with by subordination and silencing amongst others. Whilst the participation of women in ordained ministry and the delivery of public biblical discourse still remains a challenge in many African ecclesiastical settings, the advent of the digital era (cf. tele-evangelism in this essay) is not necessarily helpful towards the affirmation of women, especially first ladies in the context of huge ministries and mega churches. Contribution: The present essay seeks to answer the following main question: If the intersection among orality, gender, sacred texts and biblical discourse are analysed in the context of the full participation of African Christian women, especially the wives of the ‘men of God’, which power dynamics regarding gender and biblical discourse can be unravelled?

Epistemological Implications of a ‘Convergent Parallel Mixed Methods’ Research Design

The philosophy of an educational research project is important to reflect upon and declare, but can often be left unexplained. In order to address this area of thought, this study discusses the implications of the epistemological paradigm of a ‘convergent parallel mixed methods’ research design. An actual research piece was chosen to assist in bringing focus to the study. How the epistemological paradigm impacts upon data collection and analysis techniques, and therefore the conclusions of the research, was examined. The design was then critiqued from a Biblical Christian perspective, including ideas for how it might be reformulated and used within a Biblical epistemological paradigm. A significant aspect of such a way of thinking is that educational research is more than increasing knowledge for knowledge sake, but also to grow personally and professionally in an understanding of God: who He is, of His creation, including humanity, and the interrelationships between each of these.

Evaluasi Program Professional Development di TK-SD XYZ Menggunakan Konsep Trilogi Kualitas Ditinjau dari Perspektif Alkitabiah [An Evaluation of The Professional Development Programme in XYZ Kindergarten and Primary Using the Concept of The Trilogy of Quality Viewed From The Biblical Perspective

Covid-19 brings a significant change in education practice. Due to school closure during the pandemic, teachers must adapt to distance learning implementation. Even in the abrupt change, schools must maintain the quality of education. The previous research proves that Professional development plays a significant role in improving teacher’s competency and performance. As front liner in the education field, improvement of teacher’s competencies and performance will impact the quality of the school. In this essay, professional development during the pandemic situation in TK-SD XYZ will be evaluated using The Juran Trilogy. First, The Juran Trilogy is analyzed using systematic theology approached. The result illustrated that The Juran Trilogy is linier with biblical Christian worldview. The purpose of this evaluation is to ensure how TK-SD XYZ performs quality management practice to maintain its quality during the pandemic situation. This evaluation finds that TK-SD XYZ has applied The Juran Trilogy concept. The practice of quality management in the professional development program in TK-SD XYZ brings a positive impact in increasing customer satisfaction in distance learning practice.

Are religious individuals against renewables? Exploring religious beliefs and support for government investment in energy transitions in the United States

Religious values and beliefs influence many attitudes relating to the environment, suggesting that they are also likely to shape preferences over energy policy. Several years’ responses from the General Social Survey, a large, nationally representative poll of United States adults, confirm that, in this context, the association between greater religiosity and lesser support for pro-environmental policy extends to questions of energy transition: more fervently religious respondents, and those who more fully endorse fundamentalist interpretations of the Christian Bible, are less likely to support government funding of developing alternative energy sources. This result holds even when accounting for respondents’ broader attitudes towards environmental and science policy. The connection between religiosity on attitudes towards energy policy is more robust in some Christian traditions than others: among Catholics, though not Protestants, it appears even when controlling for broader ideological positions.

Counterpoint to Henry Widdowson’s point

English evolved as a creole from several languages in islands off the European coast. It was consolidated as a unifying national language by creative writing that reached a peak in the sixteenth century, and in translation of the Christian Bible into English. There has always been considerable variation in speech, whereas the generalization of education in the nineteenth century consolidated a standard form of the written language. This was a nation-building task, part of colonization, both in the United States (Webster’s dictionaries leading to linguistic independence) and England educating for a unified, stratified United Kingdom. To suggest, as Henry Widdowson does, that there is no serious study of ‘educated native speakers’ is disingenuous. Dictionaries are a benchmark. The emergence of phonetics led Daniel Jones to consecrate Received Pronunciation as a class dialect. The status of the privileged variant is confirmed in plays from Shakespeare to Shaw, and in novels from Defoe onwards. In twentieth-century analysis, normative, hierarchizing forms and functions were clarified by Basil Bernstein, Raymond Williams, Nancy Mitford, and many others. The team of grammarians, led by Randolph Quirk, proclaimed their grammar as ‘comprehensive’, but were in reality focusing on and standardizing middle-class British norms. Studies of regional varieties and Black English celebrate diversity but do not challenge this hierarchy. Educated native speakers are those who do reasonably well in formal education.

Überlegungen zu ausgewählten Aspekten der Behandlung des Jeremiabuchs in der Monographie von Benjamin Ziemer „Kritik des Wachstumsmodells“ (2020)

Abstract In a massive study, Benjamin Ziemer has launched a scathing stricture of redaction criticism in Old Testament studies. Based on comparative material from an impressive range of Ancient Near Eastern, biblical, early Jewish and early Christian literature, he maintains that diachronic research is unable to deliver meaningful reconstructions that reach more than one stage of textual development behind the present biblical text. Moving beyond that boundary would amount to unfettered speculation. While his appraisal is overwhelmingly negative, there is one biblical book on which he endeavors to devise a redaction-critical hypothesis of his own: the book of Jeremiah. The article evaluates Ziemer’s theory on Jeremiah and draws some general conclusions regarding the validity of his verdict on traditional redaction-critical research.

Edukasi literasi terhadap warga binaan pemasyarakatan membaca dan memahami kitab suci

This community service activity is aimed at the community assisted by the prison in Binjai Class II Lapas, Sumut. The situation that encourages the implementation of this activity is the large number of assisted residents who spend their free time just sitting and chatting. On the other hand, they are people who need guidance, be it moral, spiritual, and also training related to the needs of the community after going through the prison process. The method of activity is community development in prison. Activities carried out with training and group exercises. The material provided was then trained in each group. This community service activity takes a model of how to understand the text of the Bible in Christianity which is called Bible Digging (BGA). The BGA method is very simple and in its simplicity, it is believed to encourage Christians to live better lives in God and to pray diligently. The BGA training was finally able to motivate the assisted residents to read the Bible more actively and committed. Therefore, it is hoped that similar training can be adopted for Lapas or other communities to provide a better sense of well-being .

Book Review: The Return of Oral Hermeneutics: As Good Today as It Was for the Hebrew Bible and First-Century Christianity

Book Review: The Return of Oral Hermeneutics: As Good Today as It Was for the Hebrew Bible and First-Century Christianity

The spiritual world, Christ, ancestors, angels, and demons in Hlungwani's art and theology

Jackson Hlungwani’s vision of a New Jerusalem is shaped by his unique African Christian theology teachings. They are expressed through his wooden sculptures in an “independent African Church which would echo the wish to Africanize Christianity and represent a new cultural and spiritual phenomenon through his art” (Rankin, 1998: 46; Steyn, 2019: 184). It is through this vision and his artworks that Hlungwani prophesied the coming of an Apocalypse, which would result in man's salvation, and signify an ultimate victory over evil. This article concerns the New Jerusalem (the ‘imagined’ and the ‘built’) and reveals Hlungwani’s Christian and traditional ideas around the spiritual world, Christ, the ancestors, angels, and demons. Hlungwani’s vision of a New Jerusalem should therefore be understood in the context of a unique African Christian theology created from the perspective of an African cultural context. The two altars for the New Jerusalem site and a number of wooden artworks are selected for their connection with both the artist’s vision and the supernatural world, angels, ancestors, and earthly warriors. The selected sculptures are the Crucifix IV, the sculpture God and Christ, and the panel Cain and Abel. They are discussed and analyzed as I believe that they reflect profound visual metaphors derived from spiritual visions, the visions of the Prophet Ezekiel, and of the Apocalypse of Saint John from the final book of the Christian Bible, the Book of Revelation.

Christian Oughtness for Today: Biblical Perspectives for Christian Living

The world has traveled on a path that has presented inherent complexities and untold challenges as well as difficulties to the living of the ‘religious’ life in general and the Christian life in particular. Often, modern-day values offer a contradiction to traditional, religious, and biblical values which most of the time eclipses the Christian understanding of how one ought to live in the awareness of one’s Christian identity and vocation. This has culminated in the laxity of awareness in the Christian oughtness, in other words, of how the Christian ought to live in response to one’s identity and calling. This paper has sought to re-present the Christian oughtness anew situating it in its biblical-ethical perspectives. The paper used a narrative paradigm to reflect on biblical Christian ethics in the light of imperatives from the Old and New testaments. The paper envisages deepening a treatise on the awareness of the Christian oughtness from the biblical ethical perspective as a new paradigm through which Christians and people of goodwill would live as they ought to live, in promoting justice, progress and development of all people and their nations. Keywords: Christian Oughtness, Ethics, Biblico-imperatives

A New King David for Late Antiquity: Classical Exemplarity and Biblical Personality in Pseudo-Hegesippus

In late ancient Christian literature, King David is ubiquitous. Not simply cited as the famous author of many psalms, he almost always appears as a model of penitence, a foreshadow of Christ, or a paradigm of Christian virtues and values. But not always. In one fourth-century Christian text, King David appears in a striking and distinctive relief. This Latin text, known as De excidio Hierosolymitano (On the Destruction of Jerusalem), sometimes called PseudoHegesippus, presents King David as a figure familiar from Judaeo-Christian tradition, but in a way that resonates most strongly with classical Greco-Roman literary norms. This text rewrites Josephus’s Jewish War from a Christian perspective, and mentions David at a dozen points. In each case, David appears as an exemplum associated with a particular biblical episode or theme. Often, the treatment of these episodes in Josephus or other early Christian literature helps explain why Pseudo-Hegesippus presents David in particular lights. However, taking all of the appearances of David in De Excidio into view, this article shows that Pseudo-Hegesippus is not only beholden to biblical, Josephan, or early Christian precedents, but creatively constructs his own portrait of David within his historiographical framework. This article then suggests that this David’s rhetorical valence and distinctive character are best explained vis-à-vis the traditional (Greek and) Roman use of exempla inasmuch as Pseudo-Hegesippus’s David conspicuously lacks any of the theological, doctrinal, or ethical features so characteristic of his portrayal in most of ancient Christian literature. Pseudo-Hegesippus portrays King David in terms resonant of both Greco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian traditions.

Aspects related to the influence of Christianity on the Society

In this paper the author analyzes the influence of Christianity on society. There will be demonstrated that through its structure, man was created to live in the community. He discovers himself by relating to the world surrounding him, as it is argued by Martin Heidegger, and Martin Buber. Here we also include the relationship with the transcendent. The philosophical and sociological arguments help us understand the influence Christianity had on European society. The religion of the European nations had a strong influence on the civilization of the continent and the world. Researchers have come to the conclusion that man was created with an innate religious feeling. Rudolf Otto sought to demonstrate that man's religious experience can only be explained by the aprioric existence of the sacred. So did Mircea Eliade, who introduced a new term "hierophany" to define the act of experiencing the sacred. There were also researchers who reinterpreted the relationship with the sacred. Emile Durkheim argued that ultimately, religion in its present form will be replaced by a so-called "civic religion," which will replace religious services in churches. Accepting the perspective of Scripture, the author tries to show the idea of the presence of Divinity in the believer's life (John 14:15-26). Jurgen Moltman asserts that if society were to enter the process of Christ's discipleship, she would discover the divine alternatives that bring the long-awaited results. Max Weber argued that Christian religion, and especially the sects of Protestantism, had a decisive role in influencing the culture and civilization of modern Europe, and the world at large. From his point of view, the decision of man in capitalist society to make a great effort in his work, has a religious motivation, namely, the doctrine of predestination. Considering that the moral and theological dimension of Christianity lies at the root of human significance, Christians struggle to defend the revealed message. A good example is given by Francis Schaeffer, who in his book Trilogy pleads to preserve the traditional moral values of the Bible. Schaeffer attempts to link the idea of revelation, as it is presented in the Christian Bible, with the discovering of man's significance.

Audacious retellings: Multilingualism and translation in Jnāneswari and Kristapurāṇa

ABSTRACT The present study analyzes the relationship between translation and multilingualism through a reading of Jnāneswari (1290 AD) and Kristapurāṇa (1616 AD). Jnāneswar's Bhavarthadeepika, or Jnāneswari, is a translation of the Sanskrit Bhagvad Gita into Marathi. Jnāneswar's “audacious” translation took considerable liberties with the Sanskrit source text and retold it in the framework of Marathi culture, thereby inaugurating the tradition of Marathi saint literature. Three centuries later, the Catholic missionary Thomas Stephens SJ (1549–1619) composed Kristapurāṇa in the same tradition of Marathi saint poetry. Kristapurāṇa may be read as the earliest retelling of the Christian Bible in a South Asian language. The article juxtaposes Jnāneswari and Kristapurāṇa to examine the manner in which translations drew on and contributed to the literary multilingualism in the region. In doing so, the article also critically reflects on early South Asian approaches to translation as “retelling”, as delineated in these two texts.

Persekutuan Dalam Perspektif Biblis-Kristiani

Communion is a theological idea that have very deep and deep roots the Christian Bible, which are later reflected more mature in the living pilgrimage oh the Church. In the bible is stated, both implicitly and explicitly that communion is the essence and mission of God. It is also explained that multidimentional felleowship is a basic human call and the antitthesis sin.

Advocacy for Teaching Mindfulness Practices and World Religions in Public Schools

People from various walks of life, professions, and traditions, including Christians, have been implementing mindfulness practices as cost-effective tools to deal with physical and mental health issues. Notably, numerous studies have demonstrated that mindfulness training has brought tremendous benefits to K-12 students physiologically and psychologically. As a result, this training should be implemented in public schools for the sake of our children’s well-being, behavior, mental health, and educational success. Some states, such as Texas and Kentucky, have granted the Christian Bible priority in teaching the New Testament and Old Testament while excluding other traditions and sacred texts. This precedent, however, violated the First Amendment. Instead, public schools should provide teachers proper training and knowledge to teach their students broader perspectives on world religions, including Western and Eastern traditions, in this modern globalized era.

Why Does the Epistle to the Hebrews Evoke the Desires of the Patriarchs?

The Pontifical Biblical Commission’s document The Jewish People and their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible, calls attention to a threefold connection between the two parts of the Christian Bible: continuity, discontinuity, and newness. The paper offers an analysis of a passage as an example of this relationship. The Epistle to the Hebrews (11:8–22) gives a particular emphasis to the desires of the patriarchs among other attitudes of the heroes of faith. They were looking for what was promised to them and desired by them: a city with the solid foundations planned and built by God. Now these desires can be fulfilled: the everlasting life with God is offered to all who believe in Jesus Christ.

Teaching Scriptures and Ecology

Abstract Any course in religion and ecology can include some discussion of foundational texts, including a critical reading of the literary portrayal of other-than-humans. This article will focus on teaching scriptures and ecology as illustrated in a course entitled “The Bible and the Environment,” which introduces students to an ecojustice reading of the Christian Bible and secondary sources. The article also concerns my adaptation of Felder and Brent’s recommendations for encouraging students to actively engage in class discussion. Since I wanted to introduce more written reflection, I adapted their methods to giving pop quizzes at the beginning, middle, and end of some class sessions. This proved successful in that students were better prepared for class, were more attentive participants in class discussion, and had better comprehension of content, including the ability to apply the concepts of anthropocentrism and ecocentrism to primary and secondary sources.

O colonialismo informal da Egiptologia: da missão francesa ao Estado de segurança

Esta contribuição é uma revisão crítica da história colonial da Egiptologia. Ele traça o desenvolvimento do campo desde seus primeiros dias sob o colonialismo europeu e a competição geopolítica intraeuropeia até o advento do controle egípcio nos tempos atuais. A exploração do passado do Egito antigo foi enquadrada como parte de uma missão civilizadora por meio da qual a Europa arrancaria o Egito das garras da dominação otomana e restauraria a terra à sua antiga grandeza, e também como um veículo para os interesses ocidentais no Nordeste da África. Por meio da Bíblia cristã e do antigo domínio grego e romano, o Egito foi posicionado como uma forma inicial de civilização ocidental, portanto, reforçando as reivindicações europeias sobre a área e possibilitando a apropriação da história egípcia. Estudiosos europeus, ao promoverem a ideia do antigo Egito como um paraíso perdido e paternalista, criaram uma estrutura ocidentalizada e um enquadramento e centro-ocidental para seu estudo, que ainda hoje inspira os padrões de produção do conhecimento, o qual pode ser identificado na produção acadêmica dos centros geográficos e nas línguas primárias em que são produzidos. Os egípcios, cada vez mais autônomos desde a descolonização formal na década de 1950, posteriormente adotaram e mantiveram as práticas estabelecidas quando o controle formal sobre o passado egípcio passou para suas mãos. As narrativas coloniais da antiguidade foram usadas para apoiar o turismo como uma economia vital e passaram a servir ao nacionalismo egípcio e à legitimação das relações de poder existentes, enquadrando a história egípcia como um contínuo do governo do homem forte. O artigo traça essa transição do colonialismo formal para o informal ao discuti-la a partir de conceitos descoloniais, tal como a matriz colonial de poder.

Texts in Dialogue

The International Jewish Christian Bible Week, which is dedicated mainly to the study of the Hebrew Scriptures, includes two sessions called ‘Texts in Dialogue’, usually devoted to reflection by a Jew and a Christian on a New Testament text, or texts from both the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. In 2017, when the conference text was Proverbs, Mark Solomon and Veronika Bachmann chose, for the first time, to turn to a deuterocanonical book, the Wisdom of Ben Sira, both as an outgrowth of the Biblical Wisdom books, and a bridge between the testaments.