Christian Bible Research Articles

Women, Tradition and Icons: The Gendered Use of the Torah Scrolls and the Bible in Orthodox Jewish and Christian Rituals

This article discusses the relationship between Christian and Jewish Orthodox women with their sacred books (the Christian Bible and the Torah respectively) from a feminist point of view. While recent socio-economic changes have enabled women from an orthodox religious background to become financially independent and ultimately prosperous, from a religious perspective women’s status has not undergone major transformations. Using the cognitive principle of conceptual blending, I will focus on common aspects in Orthodox Judaism and Christianity related to sacred texts as objects, in order to shed light on the religious understanding of prosperity in the twenty-first century, beyond that of empowerment as financial gain or social status. The importance ascribed to authoritative texts both as images of divinity and sacred objects of veneration is a common trait of Orthodox Judaism and Christianity. The gendered perception of the sacred is most prominent in two similar processions. Simchat Torah, a Jewish holiday which celebrates the yearly reading cycle of the Torah, is actively celebrated only by men, who are the ones to carry the Torah scrolls. Similarly, the orthodox Good Friday procession involves a cross and the church’s copy of the Scripture together with the Holy Epitaph being carried only by men. The ban on women to carry sacred objects, at least at appointed times, as well as women’s responses in the two communities will be analysed comparatively to establish whether women commonly perceived as prosperous can make steps in order to re-evaluate the theological implications of this restriction.

Positive Outcomes of a Discipleship Process

Biblical Christianity should be a powerful, life-forming, paradigm-shifting experience leading to increasing levels of Christlikeness. Unfortunately, the experience of many Christians today is far short of the transformation described in Scripture. This article reports on a portion of mixed-methods research examining the transformative learning reported by alumni of a 22-lesson discipleship process called the Immersion Experience by Aphesis Group Ministries. Holistic spiritual health involves listening to our emotions, confronting toxic shame, addressing childhood defenses, and untangling our distorted spirituality.

US Public Opinion regarding Religious Involvement in Politics

Religion continues to play a role in public policy debate in the United States. The Supreme Court’s legalization of same-sex marriage, the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act, and questions regarding the accommodation of religious views of traditionalists who oppose LGBT cultures continue. Publicized controversies, as well as survey research, indicate there is considerable disagreement regarding the church-state relationship.1 The appropriate role of religion in the political arena has been the subject of debate since the nation’s founding.2 Nevertheless, knowledge is limited regarding public opinion surrounding this issue.3 Using data from the 1991, 1998, and 2008 General Social Survey (GSS), we focus on attitudes toward the behavior of religious leaders, specifically whether it is appropriate for religious leaders to try to influence how people vote and whether religious leaders should try to influence government decisions. We suspect a change in attitudes towards clergy because there was considerable public debate regarding the relationship between religion and politics during the administration of these three GSS surveys. Christian conservatives were highly visible, mobilizing voters and distributing millions of voter guides and congressional scorecards.4 Scholars and the popular press both gave credit to the Christian conservative movement for some electoral victories, including the 1994 mid-term election when Republicans won both chambers of Congress.5 During the eight years of the George W. Bush administration, many were disturbed by what they viewed as overt sectarianism. Bush developed the Faith-Based Initiative, and his perspective on science and social policies reflected the views of conservative Christians.6 Critics contended that evangelical and fundamentalist Christians exerted too much influence on foreign policy decisions. Indeed, some argued that the decision to invade Iraq resulted from Bush’s belief that he must act as God’s agent during the end of time prophesized by the Christian Bible.7 At the local level, Christian conservatives elected to school boards faced controversy when they attempted to bring back prayer into schools and change the curriculum to reflect their religious values.8 In the states, opposition to same-sex marriage, abortion rights, and end-of-life legislation was primarily fueled by religious groups. Also, beginning in the mid-1990s there was a significant increase in the number of states adopting Religious Freedom Restoration Acts.9 Critics contended that these laws blur the boundary between church and state.10

In Praise of Anger

Anger, as archetypal, is met with ambivalence. Buddhism considers it toxic, and Christianity holds it as a sin and as righteousness itself. Ancient Hebrew and Hindu cultures locate it in the seat of divinity. This article aims to explore and psychologically redeem anger in its everyday manifestations and in its background in the Western tradition. The Christian Bible, Ancient Greek literature, Dante, Blake, and Shakespeare are all visited. An image emerges of a force that paradoxically graces us with its benefactions as well as destroys us.

“Exegetical Torture” in Early Christian Biblical Interpretation: The Case of Origen of Alexandria

This essay engages Page duBois’s work on torture and truth to contextualize a curious logic in Origen of Alexandria’s exegetical method. That logic insisted on “torturing” (Greek, basanos) the text in the style of a forensic investigation. From Thucydides to Galen and Origen, this vocabulary of exegetical torture figured texts as uncooperative witnesses in a situation familiar to ancient readers from the courtroom and in their own households. This agonistic paradigm of torture and truth offers the best interpretative context in which to read Origen’s call for the basanos – a metaphor very much alive in his work and world. The study concludes by connecting exegesis and martyrology as discourses in early Christian literary culture, which share the same fundamentally agonistic rhetoric of cross-examination.

A pastoral evaluation and responses to the challenge of spiritual insecurity in African pastoral ministry and Christianity

This article argues that there is a form of Christian syncretism operating in African Christians� use of traditional African powers to address their spiritual insecurity challenges that arises from their former traditional African worldview of spiritual powers. It provides an overview description of the nature of the spiritual insecurity which still grips African Christians by delving into the traditional African worldview of spiritual powers (such as the notions of a Supreme Being, lesser divinities, spirits and ancestors) and the centrality of traditional powers such as diviners in addressing this insecurity. After underscoring the aforementioned, this article proceeds to demonstrate three predominant views proposed by theological scholars as a response to the spiritual insecurity of African Christians. The first stance calls African Christians to discontinue with anything that is linked to traditional African spiritual worldview because Christianity entails a complete new ontological being. The second stance disapproves African Christians� reliance on traditional African powers and then proceeds to argue that Christian ministry should identify positives within the African spiritual world system and worldview that is useful and can be imported for use in contextualising the gospel. The third position advocates for Christians� continual reliance on traditional African spiritual powers in addressing their African contextual needs. In doing this, the weaknesses and strengths of these approaches are established with the view to outline an alternative biblical theological basis to ensure biblical Christianity in the challenging African contexts of spiritual insecurity. This article concludes by drawing from various theological responses to the spiritual insecurity of African Christians to ensure Christian ministry that is thoroughly biblical and contextual in African Christianity.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article discusses African spiritual worldview and its implications to practical Christianity. It is an interdisciplinary theological article that integrates African Christian theology and pastoral care. It contributes to the discussion on contextualising Christian practical ministry in Africa.

Erotic fantasy, spirituality and Song of Songs

Fantasy plays an essential role in sexual activities. This article investigates (erotic) fantasy from a literary text perspective according to Song of Songs in the Christian Bible. The Song, according to many commentaries, starts with a reference to sex in Canticle 1:2, �Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine�. Although the word sex is not mentioned in the Song, it is referred to and implied a number of times in the deep structure of the text. The fantasies of this most beautiful woman (beauty, a secondary motif in the Song that is complementary to the main theme of love) are part of the rhetoric of the poet (probably a woman) to convince the reader about the enjoyment and beauty of erotic love. These could most likely stimulate erotic fantasies when reading the text. Part of the poet�s rhetoric is the way in which she describes this most beautiful woman and her most attractive lover using metaphors, allusions, symbols and similes to evoke all sorts of imaginations and fantasies in the mind of the reader to complement the erotic fantasies of the reader. The investigation of the composition and �lived experiences� (spiritualities) of erotic fantasies is approached from the perceptions of how the entanglement of the reader in the text augments fantasies, how the dynamic interaction between the text of Song of Songs and the reader involves the reader in the fantasies and spiritualities of the protagonists and the poet, how the lived experiences of the composed images and erotic fantasies in the text of the Song grip and involve the reader in the text and finally how the use or application of human senses in fantasies can intensify the lived experiences of fantasies. This research points out how God�s love and concern for his creatures are present as revealed in the relationship between two lovers. His love and concern are clearly visible in the enjoyment and pleasure given by God to humans in his creation which the lovers find in each other.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This research challenges the traditional discourse about sexuality for an enrichment of it. In the article the disciplines of theology, physiology, psychology and spirituality unite to include the entire person in sexual activities. The potential results would end up in a greater enjoyment of making love.

Research on the New Testament and Early Christian Literature May Assist the Churches in Setting Ethical Priorities

Research on the New Testament and Early Christian Literature May Assist the Churches in Setting Ethical Priorities Bernadette J. Brooten The hashtags #BlackLivesMatter and #SayHerName remind non-African Americans of issues that black communities in the United States have long faced: disproportionate police killings of black persons of all genders, mass incarceration of black and brown persons, economic and educational disadvantages, discrimination in housing, racial and sexual stereotypes that harm both rape complainants and defendants, and so on. I view these issues through a deep lens into history, extending back from Jim and Jane Crow through to religiously sanctioned legal slavery, behind that to the Vatican-approved onset of the Portuguese and Spanish slave trades with West Africa, canon-law sanctioned slavery going back from the Middle Ages to late antiquity, and to the Christian Bible, both testaments of which tolerate slavery. To be sure, Christians were at the forefront of opposing slavery in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and many other factors have played a role in arriving at the current situation. Nevertheless, the Bible and the ancient sources of canon law served as justifications for the slavery whose legacies linger. My mentor Krister Stendahl’s concept of the “public health” aspect of New Testament studies has inspired me to undertake research that may limit harm caused to marginalized persons through specific uses of the New Testament and further the values of human dignity and equality as these interact with the Bible. To that end, most of my research has consisted of historically grounded, close analysis of New Testament, contemporaneous, and other ancient texts, each of which has some relevance for contemporary public and religious debates. I see my work as part of a broader mosaic of scholarly contributions that, together, can provide solid historical depth and religious literacy in contemporary policy discussions. I am reflecting here on how I, as a biblical scholar, respond to structural racism and other contemporary forms of inequality. [End Page 229] As I contemplated current racial and gender inequities and considered how I, as a scholar of the New Testament and of Jewish and early church history in the Roman period, could contribute to solving these pressing ethical problems, I determined that collaboration was the best way to observe connections and contrasts, thereby creating a deep historical picture. Within the Feminist Sexual Ethics Project that I direct, a group of outstanding scholars specializing in several religious traditions and periods of history and in ethics, theology, and law, and activists in the areas of US incarceration practices and contemporary slavery made that possible. In addition, artists in dance, music, and poetry, as well as musicologists, helped audiences to shift their vision, to see the world around them in new ways. Collaborators sought to address the nexus of slavery, religion, and sexuality, especially as it has impacted women and girls. The collaboration resulted in Beyond Slavery: Overcoming Its Religious and Sexual Legacies (2010), as well as an archive of the public conference on the Feminist Sexual Ethics Project’s website.1 The team of scholars, artists, and activists investigated this issue beginning with the Bible and the ancient Near East and extending through to early Christianity; the Talmud; early Islamic jurisprudence; sixteenth-century Valencia; US slavery, including the use of the Bible in antebellum slavery debates; contemporary incarceration practices in the US; welfare reform; reparations for slavery; contemporary cultural depictions of slavery; a reading of the Bible and the Qur’an on slavery by a formerly enslaved woman; and poetry inspired by these themes. The researchers ascertained that sexual access by masters to enslaved women and girls and, although far less frequently acknowledged, to men, boys, and persons of other genders, has de facto characterized the slavery systems analyzed. While the Qur’an and early Islamic jurisprudence explicitly allowed a master sexual access to his enslaved women and girls, which the jurists then regulated by obligating masters vis-à-vis the slave-woman or slave-girl and the child of such a union, the Jewish and Christian Bibles, the Talmud, and the ancient sources of canon law did not prohibit such sexual access even as they showed awareness that such contact occurred in their own communities...

Eden's Other Residents: The Bible and Animals by Michael J. Gilmour

Reviewed by: Eden's Other Residents: The Bible and Animals by Michael J. Gilmour HyeRan Kim-Cragg michael j. gilmour, Eden's Other Residents: The Bible and Animals ( Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2014). Pp. xvii + 169. Paper $24. Animals are everywhere in the Bible, not only as props for the stories but also as actors in important relationships with others. Michael Gilmour demonstrates that the Bible has much to teach contemporary readers, not only about the human relationship with God but about human relationships with animals as well. Gilmour admits, however, that animals and the Bible are rather a strange choice of subject (p. 10). By strange he means a low priority for biblical studies and Christian life. This is partly because what the Bible says about animals is complex and ambiguous. G. makes various references that affirm God's ḥesed (mercy and love) toward all creation, while also providing passages that minimize the value of nonhuman creatures in the Bible. A bigger problem, he adds, is the anthropocentric view in the Bible and in most Christian theological traditions. Gilmour's methodology is complex and diverse. His reading of biblical literature is deliberately provocative and disrupts dominant "reading habits" that exclude animals from commentaries and Christian discourse (p. 15). This disruptive approach is most obvious in chap. 2 (e.g., Judg 15:4-5). G.'s presentation is thematic, ranging from "creation," "animal sacrifice," to "visions of eschatological peace and restoration." He closely examines translations of important concepts and words such as "subdue," "manna," "a herd of swine," and "another gardener," and combines these with contextual and historical exegesis. He takes a transdisciplinary approach, engaging classic literary texts and authors (e.g., the Odyssey, C. S. Lewis, Anne Brontë), and historical tales (e.g., Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins's journal). His wide range of sources draws together to weave a variety of cultural threads that address the place of animals in the Bible and in the world. Gilmour's intertextual readings disclose the scarcity of explicit references to animals in the NT but nonetheless are able pick up the echoes of their presence. To do so, he borrows postcolonial cultural critic Edward Said's "contrapuntal" reading strategy, which refers to ideas in the text that become "figures whose writing travels across temporal, cultural, and ideological boundaries in unforeseen ways to emerge as part of a new ensemble along with later history and subsequent art" (pp. 30-31). An example of such reading is 1 Cor 9:9-10, [End Page 340] where Paul's teaching on Deut 25:4 ("You shall not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain") transforms a teaching about the treatment of animals into an argument that Christian preachers deserve to be paid. The passage from Deuteronomy is one of the Hebrew Scriptures' most explicit teachings on human responsibility to animals, and one may despair that Paul has replaced this meaning in the NT interpretation. "But all is not lost," G. consoles (p. 33). To offer a contrapuntal interpretation of 1 Cor 9:9-10, he travels back to the broader context of Deuteronomy, whose key message is the well-being and the dignity of the defenseless, which includes people and animals because to "speak of caring for laboring animals is to speak of caring for vulnerable human beings" (p. 34). G. applies the "prophetic suggestiveness" of Said to Paul, who did not abandon the message of Deuteronomy but proclaims that "God is not concerned with oxen only in Deut 25:4, any more than other laws demanding generosity, hospitality, protection, and compassion are about human beings only" (p. 35). Ultimately, G. establishes the relationship of animals–humans–God as a "triptych" (p. 38). Codex Vaticanus, one of the oldest parchment manuscripts of the whole Christian Bible, he suggests, is an example of where animals serve as the nexus for an encounter between the divine and the human (p. 58). Triptychs are covenantal relationships that require faithful commitments in which humans and animals are cocelebrants (p. 119), in which God is revealed to humans through animals (p. 131), and in which humans are not independent of animals (p. 145). Although there is cruelty...

A New Perspective on Rashi of Troyes in Light of Bruno the Carthusian: Exploring Jewish and Christian Bible Interpretation in Eleventh-Century Northern France

Departing from the norm in eleventh-century Ashkenazic learning, Rashi advanced peshat (plain sense) interpretation as a yardstick to evaluate midrashic readings of scripture. While he drew upon Jewish sources such as the ancient Aramaic Targums and the lexicographic works of the tenth-century Andalusian linguists Menahem ben Saruq and Dunash Ibn Labrat, important aspects of Rashi’s exegesis are best understood in light of contemporaneous Christian interpretation, especially as manifested in the Psalms commentary of Bruno, master at the Rheims cathedral school. Following the model of Remigius of Auxerre, Bruno developed a grammatical method of analyzing King David’s words as classical grammarians had glossed Virgil, a standard by which Bruno critically selected patristic interpretations that best reflect David’s prophetic intentions, which he naturally assumed to be Christological. Rashi developed similar analytic criteria, perhaps through his training as a glossator of the Talmud in the Rhineland rabbinic academies. It is conceivable that he was aware of Bruno’s grammatically sophisticated method and that this could have spurred Rashi to devise an analogous one to bolster a traditional Jewish understanding of scripture.

Teologisk normativitet og menighetsutvikling

Theological normativity and church development: The significance of the theological normativity for church development thinking and practice This article attempts to answer the following question: how significant is theological normativity for church development practice. At a time when many leaders are busy developing local churches ac cording to secular organizational models and experiences, this question always arises: to what extent does the normative character of the Bible impact Christian faith, church life and ministry and how might normative theology affect development projects that are going on in the church. The overriding issue that both current practice and the article focuses on is how theological normativity and empirical data can be integrated in church development. After explaining the concepts of theological normativity and empirical data and the relationship between them, the article discusses how different national (Norwegian) and international researchers within practical theology attempt to resolve the issues relat ing to integration. The article’s authors believe that these attempts end up in either assimilation or integration that is not fruitful for church development practice. The authors therefore propose an alter native integration model that distinguishes between three levels / degrees of theological normativity corresponding to three different fields / areas for church development. From this perspective, one can see how the integration of empirical data in these three levels of normativity brings both challenges and opportunities. The authors’ conclusion and recommendation concerning the function and signifi cance of theological normativity in church development, is that theological normativity bestows iden tity as well as having a guiding and corrective function.

God, His Servant and the Nations in Isaiah 42:1–9. By FREDERIK POULSEN.

The subtitle of Poulsen’s dissertation explains its fundamental purpose: Biblical Theological Reflections after Brevard S. Childs and Hans Hübner. It reviews ways in which the proposal to impose a method of ‘canon criticism’ to establish a biblical theology, first put forward by Brevard Childs in 1970, has subsequently been explored by a variety of scholars both critically and positively. It falls firmly into two parts, the first examining whether the idea of canon criticism is a viable one and the second examining the interpretation of Isa. 42:1–9 as a key passage for the interpretation of the relationship between the two biblical Testaments. For the first part Hans Hübner is selected as the primary dialogue partner by using his three-volume biblical theology (Biblische Theologie des Neuen Testaments, 3 vols., 1990–5) as the primary basis of criticism. A key feature is that, whereas Childs follows the Reformed Protestant tradition of a Bible comprised of a Hebrew Old and a Greek New Testament, Hübner argues that the earliest Christian Bible was fundamentally a Greek compilation. In such a context the idea of a canon was already based on a Hellenized Greek-language literary tradition. In consequence Childs’s idea of ‘canon’ imposes, rather than presupposes, a return to a Hebraic hermeneutical tradition which was not that of the earliest Christian literature. Against this it appears questionable how far Hübner’s biblical theology authentically reaches back behind that of the New Testament since, in it, the Hebraic element is moulded by the linguistic, textual, and philosophical ideas of the later New Testament authors. Admittedly a weak point of Childs’s original proposal is that, by presuming canon to exist for all Christians in the conventional received form of the sixteenth-century Protestant form, already a long prehistory of debate regarding its function in Christian life and in conjunction with possible Jewish alternatives is presupposed. On the other hand, as firmly endorsed by Hübner’s approach, a purely New Testament theology can scarcely be held to exist independently in view of the extent of inner-biblical exegesis that its writings presuppose. Problems come to the surface when, in a post-Reformation literary scene, inner-biblical links and connections not accessible to the earliest Christian writers are employed, as becomes evident from the plethora of concordances and dictionaries which flourish in contemporary scholarship. This is explored in the second part of Poulsen’s dissertation, covering the hope of a message of salvation extending to embrace all nations. The background to discussion about the possibility and method of biblical theology which formed the starting-point for Childs’s proposal about canon criticism is not carried further, and has, in any case, been well covered in a wide range of bibliographical essays dealing with the most important issues. From the outset Childs’s starting-point was dissatisfaction with the way in which modern, historically focused, biblical studies have diverged a long way from the mainstream of Protestant Christian theological tradition. Preoccupation with philology and dates of authorship of documents which, by their very nature, are imprecise except in very broad periods, had the effect of secularizing a branch of scholarship which had a genuine religious purpose. Concern to recover this underlying religious purpose easily became diverted in attempts to restore outmoded forms of allegorizing or the building up of semantic word links which aroused further objections.

Forgotten Bibles: Friedrich Max Müller’s Edition of the Sacred Books of the East

Max Müller’s edition of the Sacred Books of the East (1879–1910) is doubtless one of the most ambitious and daring editorial projects of late Victorian scholarship. This essay examines the claim that these translations ratified a whole taxonomy of concepts and procedures that would characterize the academic study of religion well into the twentieth century. I argue that it is more appropriate to see the edition as a monument of the emerging comparative study of the religious Orient. The series textualized and religionized (if this word is permitted) the East. The edition also promoted the idea that religious oriental texts function as scriptures in ways analogous to the Hebrew and Christian Bible. This type of orientalism was no one-way street, but the conditions of the conversation were determined by the discursivity of a textualized understanding of religion.

Intercultural Construction of the New Testament Canons

The aim of this paper is to discuss NT canons, using an intercultural method in dialogue with historical and canonical approaches. While focusing on NT canons, this study presumes that a Christian Bible is made of two sub-collections, the Old or First Testament and the New or Second Testament. It also assumes that each of the two sections may have canonical and non-canonical books, but not deuterocanonical books, suggesting that the term “deuterocanonical” is inappropriate for designating books that faith communities regard as either canonical or non-canonical.

Orthodox Christian Biblical Studies in Pursuit of Identity: The Role and Impact of Personal Research Practices

The article explores the pursuit of identity in Ukrainian Orthodox biblical studies not only in liturgical, exegetical, moral, educational and apologetic dimensions, but also from the perspective of academic criticism. It reviews the key points of this process, as discovered in the legacy of prominent representatives of the Kyivan biblical study tradition. Governmental influence on the Church’s educational policies, balancing between loyalty to the Orthodox tradition and Western biblical criticism, is among the factors that have shaped biblical studies, this issue being explored in the article. Historical milestones of biblical studies are presented, as is the research of prominent Kyivan scholars. Considering all these aspects and other crucial issues, the conclusion shows what makes the Kyivan tradition of biblical studies unique and of lasting importance.

Violence in the Christian Bible: Assessing Crossan’s use of ‘violence’ as a key analytical concept

In this article Crossan’s analysis of violence in the Christian Bible is assessed by means of two overlapping strategies. The first strategy takes seriously the insistence by scholars of comparative religion that the application of theorised key concepts to case studies may throw new light on an issue. By taking David Chidester’s mapping of definitions and theories of the concept of ‘violence’ as a point of reference, Crossan’s conceptualisation of violence in the Bible is assessed. Secondly, Burton Mack’s critical application of Girard’s theory of violence to early Christian myth formations and their legacy in the West is compared with and used to assess Crossan’s analysis. In conclusion, the imperative to reflect further on the ethical question of violence is highlighted.

Mark the Evangelist: His African memory

Mark is the author of the oldest gospel in the Christian Bible. Not much is known about him or his family except for a few references in the Bible. The general assumption, originating in the West, is that Mark was born and bred in Palestine. One of the main proponents of the Western view is Walter Bauer, a German theologian of the first half of the 20th century. His views rely heavily on the argument from silence, as Africa had – and to a great extent still has – an oral culture. Contrary to the Western view, Thomas Oden, an American theologian, did research on the oral culture and investigated the African memory of Mark. This article presents a critical discussion and a review of the book written by Oden in 2011 titled The African memory of Mark. Oden seems to be very subjective in his remarks in favour of Africa, as is also clear from his book titled How Africa shaped the Christian mind, written in 2007, and the question is if he really has enough grounds for his postulations.

God Speaks Hebrew: The Hebrew Text and Septuagint in the Search for the Christian Bible

God Speaks Hebrew: The Hebrew Text and Septuagint in the Search for the Christian Bible

Sacrifice and the Body: Biblical Anthropology and Christian Self-Understanding. By John Dunhill.

<i>Sacrifice and the Body: Biblical Anthropology and Christian Self-Understanding</i>. By John Dunhill.

Climatologists, Theologians, and Prophets: Toward an Ecotheology of Critical Hope

Climatologists, Theologians, and Prophets: Toward an Ecotheology of Critical Hope