Reading Of Scripture Research Articles

Temple Theology, Holistic Eschatology, and the Imago Dei: An Analytic Prolegomenon

In this paper, I offer something of a prolegomenon, outlining some areas in which certain strands of biblical theology and analytic theological reflection can be mutually informative. To do so, my paper unfolds in three ways. In the first section, I provide some reasons to think that biblical theologians are onto a reading of Scripture that merits the attention of analytic theologians. In section II, I outline some areas in the biblical theological data that would benefit from analytic exploration and reflection. Finally, in sections III and IV, I present a test case: the imago Dei and the importance of the future bodily resurrection. This should help show how this strand of biblical theology and analytic theological reflection can be mutually informative.

The Bible in a Disenchanted Age: The Enduring Possibility of Christian Faith

The Bible in a Disenchanted Age: The Enduring Possibility of Christian Faith

The attitudes of British Buddhist teens towards school and Religious Education

To ascertain the relative contributions towards affinity for education made by being Asian and being Buddhist, a quantitative study explored, for teen Buddhists growing up in Britain, attitudes to their school learning environment with particular reference to Religious Education (RE). A variety of attitude statements concerning school and RE were rated for levels of agreement using postal and online surveys for 417 self-identifying Buddhists aged between 13 and 20. Asian ethnicity was more important than being Buddhist for happiness in school, liking fellow pupils, feeling school was a preparation for life and thinking teachers did a good job. Being Buddhist was more important than Asian ethnicity for respecting teachers, perceiving the emancipatory role of education and ability to handle study stress. Attitudes towards RE were positively related to being Buddhist generally, and specifically to the practices of bowing to parents, meditating and reading scripture, but inversely related to temple attendance.

From Common Prayer to Common Ancestor: The Quest for Anglican Liturgical Identity and the Legacy of the Reformation

AbstractAnglicanism's relationship with its Reformation heritage represents a tension. It looks to the Reformation as the movement from which an English Church, independent of papal authority, was inaugurated. At the same time, it refuses to be labelled as a “church of the Reformation”, pointing to its continuity with a much longer history of Christian practice in Britain. The growth of the Anglican Communion and current controversies over church order, the interpretation of scripture and the exercise of authority make Anglican identity difficult to define. Identity would once have been sought in liturgy, but the view that liturgy completely enshrines Anglican doctrine has been convincingly put to rest by scholarship since the 1970s. This paper argues that the liturgical legacy of the Reformation (especially use of the vernacular, concern for the orderly reading and interpretation of scripture, and attention given to the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist) offers categories that can help to form possible approaches to the current crisis of Anglican identity.

Book Review: Inspired by Pentecost: A Christian Hermeneutic: Craig S. Keener, Spirit Hermeneutics: Reading Scripture in Light of Pentecost

Book Review: Inspired by Pentecost: A Christian Hermeneutic: Craig S. Keener, <i>Spirit Hermeneutics: Reading Scripture in Light of Pentecost</i>

Ephraim Radner, Time and the Word: Figural Reading of the Christian Scriptures

Ephraim Radner, <i>Time and the Word: Figural Reading of the Christian Scriptures</i>

Brevard Childs and the treasures of darkness

AbstractContemporary biblical studies is populated by ‘comparativists’ and ‘theological interpreters’: scholars who read the Bible in the context of ancient artefacts, and scholars who read it in the context of Christian theology, respectively. These camps relate to one another mostly by feuding – or by mutual avoidance. The Old Testament theologian Brevard Childs is usually taken as a champion in the cause of theological interpretation, and so also as reinforcing one side of the disciplinary division. But under certain conditions, Childs also authorised the use of ancient artefacts (‘the treasures of darkness’) for reading scripture theologically. This article reactivates the latter possibility within Childs’ interpretive programme, especially through two cases studies: the first by Childs himself, when he uses the Sargon Legend to interpret Exodus 2; and the second a reprise of Childs’ procedure, using the Mesha Inscription to interpret 1 Kings 22.

Scripture as Real Presence: Sacramental Exegesis in the Early Church by Hans Boersma

Reviewed by: Scripture as Real Presence: Sacramental Exegesis in the Early Church by Hans Boersma Daniel A. Keating Scripture as Real Presence: Sacramental Exegesis in the Early Church. By Hans Boersma. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2017. Pp. xix + 316. $39.99 (cloth). ISBN: 978-0-8010-1703-2. For some time now, scholars across the theological spectrum have raised their voices in defense of a theological reading of Scripture. Often included in this defense is a renewed appreciation for ancient, and specifically patristic, modes of biblical exegesis. In Scripture as Real Presence, however, Hans Boersma offers much more than simply another account of how Scripture can be read theologically. With the Church Fathers as his primary exemplars, Boersma illustrates and argues for what he calls a "sacramental" reading of Scripture that relies upon a metaphysical understanding of God's action in history. Acknowledging the major shift that has occurred in his own thinking on biblical exegesis, he takes aim not just at nontheological readings of Scripture governed by the historical-critical method, but also at a historically grounded theological reading of Scripture as practiced, for example, by N. T. Wright. While admitting that Wright and other scholars of the new perspective on Paul have given us many valuable insights, Boersma judges that their historical exegesis, which eschews metaphysics, ultimately leaves the Old Testament behind: "For Wright—and for an increasingly large number of evangelical biblical scholars—exegesis is primarily a historical discipline, one that escapes the 'abstract' and 'timeless' theology of Western, Platonized Christianity" (xiv). The result, according to Boersma, is a distancing of the reader from the Old Testament text itself: "Strictly historical readings of Scripture separate the reader from the original event described in the biblical text" (xv). In contrast, Boersma recommends reappropriating a sacramental reading of the Old Testament whereby the text already contains Christ and does not simply point to him externally. On this model, if Christ is already present in the Old [End Page 299] Testament, then believers who are in Christ are also "present" in the text and can find themselves in the text, precisely because this sacramental hermeneutic already places them there. In defense of these claims, Boersma opens with a general study of how the Church Fathers practiced a sacramental reading of Scripture and follows with nine chapters that illustrate this sacramental reading. Following the canonical order, he walks the reader through various themes, beginning with Genesis, moving through Exodus, the historical books, the Psalms, Proverbs, and Song of Songs, and ending with a study of the beatitudes. In these nine sketches, Boersma shows an admirable mastery of the patristic writings—with Origen occupying center stage—and indicates the diversity and complexity of readings found in the Fathers within a common sacramental hermeneutic. He takes pains throughout to assure his readers that he is not simply recommending that we adopt the particular readings of the Church Fathers, which, in any case, are often contrary to one another. Rather, through the variety of patristic readings, he hopes to illustrate the kind of sacramental, participatory hermeneutic that he believes can and should be reappropriated today. Much of Boersma's argument for a sacramental reading of Scripture appears in the opening chapter. A comparison between Origen, Hobbes, and Spinoza sets the stage for his broad claims. From Origen, we learn that attention to metaphysics pays dividends in terms of scriptural interpretation: "good metaphysics leads to good hermeneutics" (5). The point is that the way we understand the relationship between God and the world (and history) is closely linked to the way we read and interpret Scripture. Origen—and the Fathers more generally—saw the world in participatory terms: visible things participate in and are revelations of invisible things. The world itself is sacramental. Boersma locates the crucial shift in biblical interpretation in the Enlightenment's rejection of metaphysics, and specifically with its rejection of a broadly Platonist view of the world. Hobbes and Spinoza both follow Ockham by rejecting the idea that visible things have a real and participatory relationship to invisible things (7). Through fear of an overly dualist view of the world, these Enlightenment thinkers—and with them many thinkers...

"The bark of the letter": Herbert and the Material Text

"The bark of the letter":Herbert and the Material Text Paul Dyck Let us love the country of here below. It is real;it offers resistance to love. – Simone Weil1 We also need to conjure up the physicalityof ourselves reading. – Random Cloud2 When the radical bibliographer Randall McLeod playfully and seriously asks why would you read a book when you can look at it, he would appear to be running afoul of George Herbert's comments on Juan de Valdés concerning those who neglect God's work in the heart by attending only "to the bark of the letter."3 Valdés was concerned about what he saw as a Protestant tendency to study Scripture without the heart being spiritually moved, and he prescribes instead the reading of Scripture as preparation for the Christian's purely inward conversation with the Spirit, at which point Scripture ought to be set aside. Herbert energetically responded by insisting that letter – the bark – and Spirit must not be separated in devotional life. McLeod, like other bibliographers of the radical school of unediting (including Jerome McGann and D.F. McKenzie), insists first and always that we attend to the bark of the letter, as it were, that we attend to a text as a "thing in itself," a thing that editing seeks to atomize.4 Radical bibliography resists the dominant direction of modern editing, which carefully considers multiple textual witnesses and produces from them a single, united text.5 This, of course, is the norm with almost any literary text we read. In response to this practical usefulness, McLeod offers impracticality: libraries full of unique editions and copies, each with secrets of its own. McLeod does not offer a plan for better editions; instead he "sheds darkness" on texts as we know them, or think we know them, that is, as the editorial tradition has normalized them.6 McLeod's meticulous and radical attention to material texts underscores the value of bibliographical work by doing the opposite of editing: by making the familiar text strange. But while McLeod has [End Page 81] protested that he is not reading Herbert's poetry but rather looking at it, and further, that he will leave doctrinal interpretation to Christians, I wish to lodge a counter-protest, suggesting that in fact McLeod's moves are the right moves not only bibliographically, but theologically as well. McLeod would impishly lead us to The Temple, to a point beyond which only Christian reading can take us further, but this only works because his stubborn insistence on embodiment and its particularity is already deeply sympathetic to Herbert's Christian sensibility. McLeod rightly apprehends that Herbert means something theological by his material moves, and following this, that when modern editing alters that materiality in order to stabilize meaning, it alters Herbert's theology too. Put another way, if we think of theology as assigning a stable meaning to things then modern editing is too theological. But for Herbert, theology was about anything but assigning a stable meaning to things.7 In what follows, I will take up McLeod's reading of "The Altar" and then ask how McLeod's attention to reading bodies might shape a reading of "The Altar" and "The Sacrifice" together. I will then consider in detail Herbert's strenuous objections to Juan de Valdés, who imagines spiritual growth as transcending the text and leaving it behind for inner conversation with the Spirit. When McLeod praises looking and Herbert criticizes those who attend only the bark, they seem to be going in opposite directions. But they are actually addressing very similar problems from different angles, and both are insisting on material particularity, as it were, that body and soul cannot be separated. When McLeod pits looking against reading, he actually demands both, insisting on material resistance to our idealizing notion of the text. And when Herbert refers to the bark of the letter, he simultaneously agrees with Valdés that reading should involve the heart, but also and more profoundly objects to Valdés's division of the literal and the spiritual. In the first meaning, "bark" names the literal exterior, an exterior to which...

Preface: The Word in Words and Images

PrefaceThe Word in Words and Images David Paul Deavel Catholicism is "not a religion of the book." It is instead a religion of the Word—Christ himself, the Logos of the Father in whom everything has been communicated to us and passed down in two forms. "Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture," the Second Vatican Council's Dei Verbum tells us, "then, are bound closely together, and communicate one with the other. For both of them, flowing out from the same divine well-spring, come together in some fashion to form one thing, and move towards the same goal." That goal is that the presence of Christ be made manifest in the life of the Church throughout history. This understanding, shared by our Orthodox brothers and sisters, is usually denied by our Protestant brothers and sisters, who generally deny that the Word is found in any medium except the written Scriptures. For them, Scripture is the only place to which one can turn to receive the message of the Word in a public, authoritative way. Catholics (and Orthodox, for that matter) are not forbidden from thinking there is something true about the traditionally Protestant take on Scripture. While the Protestant notion of Scripture as perspicuous, or clearly expressed and easy [End Page 5] to understand, is not something that a Catholic can accept, the notion that all truth is indeed found in Scripture is quite easy to believe. Bl. John Henry Newman's Essay on Development argued for the development of doctrine and the need for an infallible authority in part on the basis of the inchoate and seemingly incomplete nature of the Revelation of Jesus Christ as it is found in the Bible. Where, for instance, does the Bible have an inspired table of contents that tells us which books are in it? Nevertheless, Newman indicated a belief that all truths might be found there. In fact, he seemed to think that the seeming incompleteness of the Bible was not caused by being incomplete, but by including all truth in an unsystematic, mysterious, and veiled fashion. It is in point to notice also the structure and style of Scripture, a structure so unsystematic and various, and a style so figurative and indirect, that no one would presume at first sight to say what is in it and what is not. It cannot, as it were, be mapped, or its contents catalogued; but after all our diligence, to the end of our lives and to the end of the Church, it must be an unexplored and unsubdued land, with heights and valleys, forests and streams, on the right and left of our path and close about us, full of concealed wonders and choice treasures. Of no doctrine whatever, which does not actually contradict what has been delivered, can it be peremptorily asserted that it is not in Scripture; of no reader, whatever be his study of it, can it be said that he has mastered every doctrine which it contains.1 A 1984 commercial for Prego pasta sauce features an Italian-American father chastising his newlywed son for getting sauce from a jar. As he lists what ingredients must be there for a successful sauce—and marriage—the son repeats, "It's in there." After the son puts a spoonful of sauce into his mouth, the father exclaims, wide-eyed, "It's in there!" So it is with Scripture. Those who approach with faith and openness will find that all the truths of the world, [End Page 6] though not obvious on the outside and not accessible simply by reading without the tradition and authority of the Church, are indeed "in there." That is why the development of lay Catholics studying Scripture has been such a powerful one in the modern world. While many Reformation-era polemics about the Church's denial of the laity's right to read the Scriptures in various time periods have been exaggerated, it is nonetheless true that in the last few centuries regular reading of Scripture has not always been emphasized in the whole of the Catholic Church. Newman himself complained of the lack of Catholic scripture study in an 1883 letter to...

Is There Still a Place For Christ's Infused Knowledge in Catholic Theology and Exegesis?

Is There Still a Place For Christ's Infused Knowledge in Catholic Theology and Exegesis?1 Simon Francis Gaine O.P. It seems to me that questions arising from the reading of Scripture require a theological account of Christ's knowledge that can itself then shape a speculative exegesis and that this was the approach of Thomas Aquinas. In this way, beyond the divine knowledge that pertains to Jesus's divine nature, Aquinas also attributed to the earthly Christ three forms of knowledge in his human mind. These three are beatific knowledge, infused knowledge, and acquired knowledge.2 The first, the knowledge had by the blessed, is the supernatural intuitive knowing of the divine essence enjoyed by the saints and angels in heaven, our fullest participation in divine knowledge.3 The second, infused knowledge, is a more conceptual knowledge supernaturally imprinted onto Jesus's human mind, the kind of knowledge had naturally by angels and exercised by disembodied human souls.4 The third is knowledge empirically acquired through experience, the kind that is natural to bodily human beings.5 [End Page 601] Aquinas wanted to clinch the fact that Christ must have had each of these three kinds of knowledge while on earth in terms of how each uniquely contributes to the perfection he needed in order to be our Savior, such that each kind of knowledge has its own particular argument for its presence in his mind. Although theologians today largely differ from Aquinas in the details, the reality of Christ's acquired knowledge seems currently to hold universal consent among theologians, the hesitations of other scholastic positions having long given way. However, not only have the reasons Aquinas gives for which the earthly Christ had beatific and infused knowledge been rejected in recent years by opponents of his teaching, but those reasons have also been reconsidered, adjusted, nuanced, or amended by those working more in tune with Aquinas's scheme. The need for Christ's infused knowledge has been defended most recently by Philippe-Marie Margelidon, who helpfully traces the historical development of Aquinas's thinking on infused knowledge and covers the objections standardly put against Aquinas's account.6 However, when I myself argued in favor of the need for Jesus's beatific knowledge in a recent book, I noted that my own argument seemed to undermine the rationale now often given for infused knowledge. I stated, however, that it was not my intention to reject Christ's infused knowledge and that it deserved a proper consideration of its own from the point of view of the Catholic theologian.7 My purpose here is to clarify and extend my argument about beatific knowledge and then reconsider the case for infused knowledge in that light. Taking his cue from 1 John 3:2—'We shall see him just as he is'—Aquinas recognized this eschatological knowledge as the fulfilment of our natural desire to know the essence of God, such that this beatific vision is the formal core of our ultimate beatitude.8 Though we had lost the way to this vision through the Fall, the way was restored to us through the salvation wrought by Jesus Christ. Aquinas argued that the Savior himself enjoyed the knowledge of the blessed for the saving purpose of sharing that same beatifying knowledge with us. In other words, our heavenly beatific vision will have been caused by his beatific vision, the members of his body benefitting from what [End Page 602] the Head of the body enjoys preeminently.9 Now, one respect in which Aquinas's argument has been criticized concerns the necessity it ascribes to the presence of this vision in Christ's mind before his death and glorification. Aquinas's opponents are generally happy to allow that Christ attained to vision in the next life and that his beatific vision in heaven is the cause of our heavenly beatific vision. What they do not accept is that his beatific vision need be present already on earth in order for it to be the cause of ours.10 I suggest that we can understand more recent defenders of Aquinas's position to be providing a response to this objection...

Rashi on Creation: Beyond Plato and Derrida

In different places in his Commentaries on the Bible and the Talmud, Rashi discussed things that had been created before the creation of world and by means of which it was created. These preexistent things include tohu and bohu, the four physical elements, and the Torah and its letters. Rashi's theory of creation out of primordial materials is based on his careful reading of Scripture, as well as on interpretations found in the Talmud, the Midrash, and Sefer Yeṣirah. It seems also to be indebted to Plato's Timaeus, which was available in part (until 53c) in Calcidius' Latin translation and commentary. According to Rashi, the world was created out of tohu, which is insubstantial and intangible, and made of the Hebrew letters of the Torah, which are nothing but "mere speech and word."

Eschatological Poetics: The Rules of Iconic Extension

Eschatological Poetics:The Rules of Iconic Extension Cyril O'Regan Here I pursue the question of what role—if any—imagination can play with respect to theology. This is not only a modern issue, as can be seen in, for example: Origen's entertaining questions beyond what is probative in the teaching of the Church, such as the question of universal salvation; the risky explorations of Eckhart in his vernacular German sermons when it comes to God, creation, Christ, self, and Mary, in which he suggests alternatives to the received tradition; and John of the Cross's improvisations on mystical theology offered in the Ascent to Mount Carmel and anagogic reading of Scripture presented in the Dark Night and the Spiritual Canticles. Still, the question of what role imagination can play in theology has become increasingly more urgent and reflective in the modern period, when the limitations of received tradition and reason in the construction of theology come under scrutiny and the notion of talent, and even that of genius, comes to be applied to theological construction. Obviously, Friedrich Schleiermacher is the central figure, but it is also true that this move was repeated in more modest ways by thinkers in the nineteenth century as different as Soren Kierkegaard and Johann Sebastian Drey,1 and in [End Page 835] the twentieth century by theologians as different as Paul Tillich, David Tracy, Sergei Bulgakov, and Hans Urs von Balthasar.2 The very different theological styles of these thinkers, and specifically their very different use of imagination and the authority they accord it, is a fascinating area [End Page 836] of research, although it will not directly be pursued in this article. Here I would like to deal more narrowly with the role imagination plays in Catholic theological reflection on "last things" and, more specifically, in Catholic theology's articulation of postmortem existence. A number of things need to be said about the overall horizon of this article. First, the main authors I deal with here, both contemporary and traditional, are Catholic. Second, for ecumenical reasons, the article will focuses exclusively on heaven. I have basically put aside (without prejudice) the Catholic doctrine of purgatory, which is not shared by the other Christian confessions, and although a doctrine of hell is found in all confessions, I put the representation of hell in parenthesis on the grounds that, in all confessions, there exist minority reports questioning its reality. Third, while I do not put Catholic doctrine of the intermediate state entirely in brackets,3 I treat it in a highly qualified way: insofar as it looks forward to the resurrected body.4 Fourth, and finally, the overall horizon of the article is contemporary and the criteria of adequacy when it comes to representation are not exclusively dependent on the representations generated in the premodern Catholic tradition, even if these representations prove to be both useful and orienting. One major feature of this study is a critical examination of two Catholic thinkers, John Thiel and Paul Griffiths,5 who have provided two very different accounts of heaven. Both are aware of the current anemia when it comes to the representation of the blessed state, and both suggest that the doctrinal under-determination in evidence [End Page 837] opens up the space for responsible symbolic or iconic extension beyond the received tradition. Neither is willing to take the convenient out of substituting the kingdom of God for heaven6 and then proceeding to interpret the kingdom in terms of the transmogrification of the individual or society and/or the transmutation of the cosmos. But only the first part of this study focuses on what I am calling "eschatological poetics" in its modern Catholic forms, meaning forms of theology that involve an iconic extension of and beyond the standard Christian eschatology. In discussing these very different forms of eschatology, I will examine whether and how these eschatologies complement, supplement, or replace influential representations within the broader Christian tradition, whether there are rules for iconic extension, and whether the rules are biased toward either continuity or discontinuity. I will also attempt to isolate as much as possible the assumptions about the negative states of existence that...

Tropologies: Ethics and Invention in England, c. 1350–1600 by Ryan McDermott

Reviewed by: Tropologies: Ethics and Invention in England, c. 1350–1600 by Ryan McDermott Jennifer Clement McDermott, Ryan, Tropologies: Ethics and Invention in England, c. 1350–1600, Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 2016; paperback; pp. 446; 8 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. US$45.00; ISBN 9780268035402. This fascinating book investigates the use of the tropological mode of reading in a range of texts, mostly from the late medieval period. Tropology is that mode of exegetical reading that seeks to transform Christian doctrine into the practices of the reader’s own life, as distinguished from allegorical reading—which seeks to explicate doctrine—, and anagogical reading—which seeks the final fulfilment of doctrine in the union of the soul with God. As Ryan McDermott puts it, tropology ‘is a practice by which readers are led by the hand […] from history through doctrine (the allegorical sense) to action, converting the perverted will in the process, and lighting the path to the future consummation of the good (the anagogical sense)’ (p. 3). As the author makes clear, tropology is an everyday, non-academic mode of reading that translates reading into ethical practice and is therefore process-based and unending. He also notes that, as he uses the term, it extends far beyond exegetical discourse and into ‘a range of interpretive and inventive practices that concern the conversion of words into works’ (p. 21). Because tropology is centrally concerned with this conversion of words into works, he argues, it is never simply interpretative, but also always inventive and productive of new literature. Challenging periodization, McDermott shows considerable continuity between medieval and early modern engagements with tropology. After a short introduction, McDermott’s book begins by using William Langland’s Piers Plowman as the basis for his chapter explicating ‘Tropological Theory’. As he points out, tropology is ideal for thinking about what medieval literature does with Scripture, acting as a mode of invention as it carries out the biblical injunction to turn words into works of love in the world. Literature, in fact, becomes itself a form of tropological action as it actively reworks Scripture into a new form. Chapter 2, ‘How to Invent History’, turns to the poem Patience and the Glossa ordinaria to discuss tropology in terms of ethics. Here McDermott argues that Patience demonstrates how the literal and the allegorical are complementary to one another rather than opposed, and, in Patience’s interweaving of the two, readers can see how the literal always already contains the allegorical within it. Chapters 3 and 4 both focus on Piers Plowman again. In Chapter 3, McDermott suggests that rhetorical readings have obscured the ways in which invention can operate tropologically. Whereas traditional rhetorical theory views [End Page 225] imitation and invention as practices of rivalry, tropological imitation or invention is non-competitive, seeking rather to fulfil the promise of the scriptural source rather than to replace or challenge it. In Chapter 4, McDermott focuses on the middle part of Piers Plowman to show how this section develops a tropological commentary on Scripture that characterizes the virtuous life as one lived in a constant cycling through the sacraments of penance and Eucharist. This chapter focuses on the concept of penitential satisfaction as the means by which failure can be redeemed; tropological intention, McDermott argues, is the means by which Protestant writers can continue to engage with satisfaction even after the elimination of penance. Chapter 5, ‘Tropology Reformed’, moves us into Reformation territory to highlight how, in spite of the general assumption that Reformation means a turn to the literal at the expense of spiritual exegesis, tropological readings assume a definite prominence in this period—some in continuation of older traditions, and some breaking with traditional theological readings of Scripture. Examining writings by Calvin, Luther, More, Tyndale, Erasmus, Udall, Bucer, and the Protestant near-martyr John Careless, McDermott shows how his focus on tropology can uncover previously unnoticed continuities between Protestant and more traditional modes of religious exegesis. Chapter 6 focuses on the discourse of optics and mirrors in the York Doomsday Pageant, an annual event held up until 1569. McDermott points out that the York play reverses the perspective so that its spectators...

Allusive Soundplay in the Hebrew Bible by Jonathan G. Kline

Reviewed by: Allusive Soundplay in the Hebrew Bible by Jonathan G. Kline Elaine T. James jonathan g. kline, Allusive Soundplay in the Hebrew Bible (AIL 28; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2016). Pp. xxi + 155. Paper $27.95. In this measured and concise volume (a revision of his Harvard University Ph.D. dissertation [2014]), Jonathan G. Kline argues a convincing case for a type of inner-biblical interpretation, "allusive paronomasia." [End Page 121] His argument is that tradents used subtle wordplay to read and transform existing texts to address their own theological concerns. He draws especially on the models of Michael Fishbane (esp. Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel [Oxford: Clarendon, 1985]) and Benjamin D. Sommer (esp. A Prophet Reads Scripture: Allusion in Isaiah 40–66 [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998]) to contribute to discussions about the growth of the texts of the Hebrew Bible. The most significant contribution is his methodology for identifying allusive paronomasia. In three subsequent chapters he offers nine examples illustrating how allusive paronomasia is used in the development of ancient Israel's theological traditions. These illustrations are meant to be exemplary, not comprehensive, which leaves the reader with a taste of this artful mechanism of theological discourse and the sense that there is work yet to be done. The most substantial chapter of the volume is chap. 1, "The Role of Soundplay in Innerbiblical Allusion," in which K. brings welcome clarity to the terminology of what has been loosely called "wordplay," or "soundplay" (p. 8), and a methodology for identifying both allusion (pp. 18-23), and allusive paronomasia (pp. 23-31). His principles are (1) similarity of sound; (2) difference in meaning; (3) proximity; and (4) deliberate juxtaposition. Interestingly, one of his criteria is that the allusive element serves a function—it must be shown to differ from the source text as well as to transform its meaning (e.g., pp. 5, 24, 29, 30). The function of the allusive paronomasia is a way plausibly to trace the author's intentional evocation of an earlier tradition (a criterion that is vital, though somewhat circular). K.'s useful framework will spur further thinking and perhaps lead to a more comprehensive typology of paronomastic allusion. The examples are organized by theological theme: theodicy (chap. 2); judgment (chap. 3); and salvation (chap. 4). In chap. 2, K. examines how the Book of Job wrestles with accepted wisdom traditions (Psalm 8; Proverbs 13; 22). His theological sensitivity is apparent. He writes, for example, of the use of the verb דקפ (pāqad) in Ps 8:5 and Job 17:17-18, which in Psalm 8 means "to care for" but in Job 17 means "to scrutinize": "in Ps 8:5-6… humans are highly exalted creatures whom God has established as nothing less than his viceregents on earth … [but] in Job 7:17-18 … God's scrutiny of Job is much more than he, a mere mortal, can bear" (p. 47). He goes on to a lovely summary statement about the use of paronomasia in the Book of Job: Profound engagement with the graphic and oral/aural shapes of received traditions and the diverse potentialities or implications of those shapes—changing a letter here or a word there—was one way the authors of the book of Job wrestled with the tradition and with God on these issues. By refracting old words of wisdom through the prism of their poetic skill, these ancient sages demonstrate that the difference between the exaltation of humanity and its depravity, between being a little lower than the angels or one step away from Sheol, is sometimes no greater than the difference between two similar-sounding words. (p. 52) Here and elsewhere, K. detects reverence in the tradents' attitude toward their source texts. He writes that "the authors of the alluding texts appear to have sought not (primarily) to undermine the tradition they inherited but rather to mine it for incipient meanings that they believed could only be understood in the light of new circumstances" (p. 6; emphasis original; cf. Bernard M. Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation [End Page 122] [New York: Oxford University Press, 1997]). While K. suggests that his examples illustrate this larger...

A Summer Obesity Prevention Program for Hispanic Kids and Families through Vacation Bible School: A Pilot Study

Objective: Building a Healthy Temple (BHT) Vacation Bible School (VBS) Program aimed to promote healthy lifestyle for children and their families through integration of spiritual and physical health. The purpose of this study was to test the effectiveness of BHT VBS on healthy behaviors. Methods: The BHT VBS is a week long, multipronged intervention including health-oriented scripture readings, hands-on healthy eating and physical activities as well as parental health education. Using Train-the-Trainer model, the program was implemented in three predominantly Hispanic churches in San Antonio, Texas in 2016. A pre- and post- one-group design was used to evaluate intervention effect through self-administered questionnaires at baseline and one -week post-intervention. Outcome measures included children’s awareness of faith-health connection, self-efficacy on healthy eating, food preference, eating patterns and physical activity (PA) level. Parental knowledge and attitude toward healthy living, as well as eating and PA patterns were measured. Paired t-test was performed to compare pre and post changes in intervention outcomes. Results: Among the 315 children and families took part in the BHT VBS, 114 children and 60 parents consented to data collection, Fifty-three children and 25 parents completing both baseline and endpoint questionnaires. Children significantly increased: awareness scores of the faith-health connection; self-efficacy scores on drinking water and eating whole grains; preference on fruits and whole grains; eating pattern scores for fruits and vegetables (FV), and whole grains; and consumption of fruits and water. Parents significantly increased nutrition knowledge scores, increased FV eating pattern scores and FV intake, and reduced sugary drink consumption. Both children and parents significantly increased weekly PA level and decreased daily screen time. Conclusion: Although brief, the BHT VBS resulted in favorable changes in awareness, attitude, preference, selfefficacy, eating and physical activity patterns toward a healthier lifestyle in both children and parents in Hispanic faith communities.

Philip Sumpter, The Substance of Psalm 24: An Attempt to Read Scripture after Brevard S. Childs

Philip Sumpter, The Substance of Psalm 24: An Attempt to Read Scripture after Brevard S. Childs

Twisting words: does Halakhah really circumvent scripture?

A foundational text in the study of Tannaitic Midrash and Halakhah, Sifre Deuteronomy 122 is a list of places where Halakhah ̔qpt scripture. This word, ̔qpt , has long been understood to mean ‘circumvent’, ‘bypass’ or ‘belie’, and the pericope has been read as a list of places where ‘Halakhah circumvents scripture’, and thus a testament to the power of the accepted tradition to override the words of the Torah. Based on documentary and linguistic evidence, this article questions the interpretation of the word ̔qpt and suggests that it means not ‘circumvent’ but rather ‘multiply’. As it does so, it also suggests a new meaning for the list, as a declaration of the limits of the Midrashic method of the Tannaitic school of Rabbi Ishmael, committed both to accepted traditions and to its more restrictive and systematic method of reading scripture.

Anachronism or Illumination? Genesis 1 and Creation ex nihilo

The aim of this article is to explore the relation between scriptural interpretation, ambiguity, and truth, with a view to testing the following hypothesis: “Christian doctrine has the role of preserving scripture's generativity by holding open its ambiguity.” The hypothesis is tested by way of a case study focused on the opening of Genesis and the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. The article challenges the assumption that the use of the latter as a hermeneutical rule for the former is anachronistic, arguing that such an assumption involves a category mistake, and offering (by contrast) a semi-otic account of interpretation according to which a text's truth unfolds over time. The article responds to a more specific theological and hermeneutical critique of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo by showing how it generatively holds open the ambiguity of Genesis 1:1–4, making way for life-giving readings of scripture that heal contextually specific sin.

Neo-Confucian Sensory Readings of Scriptures

Chu Hsi (1130-1200) of China and Yi Hwang (1501–1570) of Korea, leading scholars of the Neo-Confucian school of the two countries, emphasized readings of Confucian scriptures. They believed that Confucian scriptures have transformative power when read repeatedly and deliberately. Chu introduced the concept—further developed by Yi—of encouraging a scholar to activate at least three senses when reading a text, over and above the experience of merely reading the characters of the text. They advised Neo-Confucian scholars to try to make contact with the sages and fully internalize their teaching through their senses of sight, hearing, and taste by reading scriptures, though they did not directly appeal to the physical senses. First, the text should be recited aloud so the reciters will hear their own voices, sometimes along with those of their colleagues when several scholars read together. They imagined, furthermore, that the voices they were hearing while reading were those of the ancient sages themselves. Secondly, while hearing the voices of the sages, the reciting scholars should visualize their images, seeking personal communion with them. Finally, the meditative reading of scholars was frequently likened to savoring a text’s flavor. The act of reading books was described as eating, biting, chewing, and tasting. When the readers recited the text aloud, pronouncing each syllable using tongues, lips and mouths, they were engaged in a gustatory experience: “chewing” and “tasting” scriptures.