Testament Scholarship Research Articles

South African Old Testament criticism: Squeezed between an ancient text and contemporary contexts

The article focuses on a debate initiated by Masenya and Ramantswana in 2012 about the lack of engagement with contemporary issues by South African Old Testament scholars. The article shows with reference to the book of Leviticus that ancient texts grew over time in order to become relevant for later generations. It then asks, if it is possible for Old Testament scholars to construct ancient examples of writers engaging with contemporary issues, why these same scholars are reluctant to make these texts relevant for today? The article then engages with the work of Farisani and describes strong points and weaknesses in the way in which he uses biblical texts to engage with contemporary debates before returning to the central question.

Aquinas on Paul’s Use of the Old Testament: The Implications of Participation

Aquinas on Paul’s Use of the Old TestamentThe Implications of Participation Charles Raith II (bio) Is the attempt to understand Paul’s use of the Old Testament a metaphysically neutral inquiry? Or are interpretations affected by one’s metaphysical commitments? Within contemporary New Testament scholarship, Paul’s use of the Old Testament has become a topic of study in its own right with numerous methodological options now being offered.1 When the scholarship is analyzed, we find that those who adhere strongly to a historical-critical approach to Scripture continue to assume an objective stance to the raw data of the text that yields various scientific results.2 For some, right method and adequate literary skills alone are thought to yield an accurate analysis of how Paul uses the Old Testament.3 In the main, whether the approach is of a conservative or progressive bent, metaphysical considerations are at best secondary issues to be explored only after the particular method has yielded its results. The problem with this situation is that approaches to Paul’s use of the Old Testament are in fact deeply affected by prior philosophical and theological judgments—judgments that are intrinsic to the approach itself.4 The topic of Paul’s use of the Old Testament is uniquely interesting because any scholar who explores this will also indirectly reveal his [End Page 66] or her convictions and assumptions, sometimes stated but more often left unstated, pertaining to the doctrine of inspiration, the metaphysical involvement of God in history, the locus of authorial intent, the Christological linking (or lack thereof) of the canonical writings, and the metaphysics (and not merely literary qualities) underlying the doctrine of the different senses of Scripture.5 Not surprisingly, the burgeoning scholarship on Paul’s use of the Old Testament has largely avoided premodern accounts; if premodern accounts do appear, they do so often only to highlight the superiority of modern exegetical methods.6 But premodern engagements with Paul’s use of the Old Testament help reveal the metaphysical and theological commitments implicit (and often undetected) in modern approaches—commitments that are simply assumed by most scholars and readers. And recovering some of the participatory dimensions of premodern approaches can aid contemporary exegesis in exploring the full depth of Paul’s engagement with the Old Testament. In what follows, I focus on the basic “fundamental commitments” (to use Steve Moyise’s term7) about Scripture that inform Aquinas’s approach to Paul’s use of the Old Testament, most of which revolves around his theology of participation.8 A participatory approach to biblical exegesis understands the order of creation not only as the linear unfolding of individual moments—the approach taken by modern historical-critical methods—but also as an ongoing participation in God’s active providence, both metaphysically (i.e., in the order of creation) and Christologically-pneumatologically (i.e., in the order of grace). The biblical texts and their authors, then, “are already historically caught up in a participatory relationship, however obscure, with the trans-temporal realities of faith.”9 A participatory approach to Paul’s use of the Old Testament calls into question the naturalist assumptions of most critical scholarship, in which “not only the empirical findings of science have been conflated with metaphysical naturalism, but also . . . historical-critical textual criticism has uncritically assumed naturalism as a dogma rather than as a merely abstractive methodological assumption of scientific inquiry.”10 [End Page 67] Insensitivity to the metaphysical differences between much of modern exegesis and Aquinas’s exegesis has led, as we shall see, to the erroneous claim that Aquinas is a forerunner to modern (and sometimes postmodern) methods of exegesis due to his emphasis on the literal sense and the role that virtue formation plays in his theory of cognition. But Aquinas’s emphasis on the literal sense and the role of virtue for proper interpretation presupposes a participatory ontology in which the world is guided through its participation in God’s providential activity in a way often bracketed by modern (and postmodern) approaches to Scripture. The following is an exploration into Aquinas’s participatory approach to Paul’s use of the Old Testament in conversation...

Diagnosing Demons and Healing Humans: The Pastoral Implications of a Holistic View of Evil and Collusion between Its Forms

Demons as a motif in New Testament narrative may express an allusion to the undifferentiated experience of evil and suffering, rather than to distinct, supernatural intelligences. While a strand of New Testament scholarship argues convincingly in this regard, the magisterium teaches that demons exist as disembodied persons. When evaluating requests for major exorcisms, the Church insists that demonic possession is distinguishable from natural ailments so as to associate demons with distinctly supernatural phenomena. This paper argues that, even if demons do exist as free-willed, intelligent persons, their agency may be insidiously intertwined with social and natural forms of evil so as to be experienced in the undifferentiated manner suggested by the biblical authors. The collusion of personal sin and with social sin, recognized in many contextual theologies and in Catholic Social Teaching, offers a broader insight into collusion between the forms of evil. If evil can defy clear categorization in this manner, this may point to the need for a holistic pastoral response. The paper includes a brief case analysis in relation to the tragic death of Anneliese Michel in Klingenberg, Germany, in 1976. This case exemplified an extremely dualistic approach to the pastoral care of a person claiming to be the subject of demonic attack, and influenced the Catholic bishops of Germany to recommend reform in the manner in which such situations are addressed. The case analysis is followed by a survey of New Testament exegesis on exorcism narratives, and a harmatological argument for an interplay between the forms of evil.

Feminist New Testament Scholarship in South Africa

Feminist biblical scholarship in South Africa that focuses on the New Testament cannot be separated from the larger context of feminist scholarship in South Africa or even Africa. Its emergence and development was tied to the emerging consciousness of women and men who began to question the roles of women in family, society, politics and religion, especially Christianity. This happened during the 1980s, thus lagging behind the North-American and European feminist movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Rather later than never! New Testament scholarship in South Africa has contributed to feminist knowledge production. The objective of this article is to provide an understanding of the contributions by feminist and female scholarship in the New Testament Society of Southern Africa by focusing on completed doctoral theses at South African universities and theological seminaries, and feminist research produced by females and males published in Neotestamentica, the official journal of the New Testament Society of Southern Africa. The purpose is to determine the New Testament feminist themes and knowledge that have been produced; to identify obstacles that might have influenced or might influence feminist New Testament scholarship; to determine possible research areas; and to discuss the future of feminist scholarship in the New Testament Society of Southern Africa.

Parameters of (South) African Old Testament Scholarship

Parameters of (South) African Old Testament Scholarship

Ants, spiders or bees ... and ticks? A typology of Old Testament scholarship in South Africa since 1994 within its African context

Ants, spiders or bees ... and ticks? A typology of Old Testament scholarship in South Africa since 1994 within its African context

‘An extremely dangerous book’? James Hope Moulton's Religions and Religion (1913)

On 4 April 1917 the British steamship SS City of Paris was torpedoed by a German submarine in the Gulf of Lions, and sank with considerable loss of life. Among the passengers was the Wesleyan Methodist scholar James Hope Moulton.’ Paying tribute to his friend and colleague,Arthur Samuel Peake recorded the ‘tragic irony’ of the death under such circumstances of an eloquent advocate of peace and of a scholar whose international reputation in New Testament studies was signalled by plaudits from Harnack, a doctorate from the University of Berlin and a longstanding academic friendship with Adolf Deissmann. Moulton, however, was more than a New Testament scholar. His presence in the Mediterranean in the spring of 1917 came about through his expertise in the history and thought of Zoroastrianism, which had taken him to India for eighteen months’ work with the Parsee community under the auspices of the Indian YMCA.

Richard Špaček o Janově evangeliu: Kapitola z dějin české biblistiky

Richard Spacek (1864-1925) is primarily known as Professor of dogmatic theology and Dean of Sts Cyril and Methodius Faculty of Theology in Olomouc. It is, however, less known that he began his academic career as a New Testament scholar. This article analyses his paper The Fourth Gospel in Protestant Scholarship, published in the periodical Journal of the Catholic Clergy (Casopis katolickeho duchovenstva) in 1909. I claim that Spacek composed this text, which is a compilation of several German sources, with two intentions. First, he aimed at providing the Czech Catholic clergy with an answer to the translation of Harnack's History of Dogma. Second, he struggled to provide a solution to historical-critical questions, which would be in accord with the recent decision of the Pontifical Biblical Commission.

Semantic Voids, New Testament Translation, and Anachronism

This essay addresses the problem of theologically-inflected English translation choices of the New Testament, and how those translations come to bear in theologically disinterested scholarship on Christian beginnings. As a case study I examine the ubiquitous rendering ofekklesiaas “church” in Paul’s letters. I argue that Paul was not referring to Christian churches, but to the “day of theekklesia” in the Septuagint, when God’s people gathered at Sinai/Horeb. Paul is not making Christians out of pagans; he is making quasi-Judeans out of gentiles. Renderingekklesiaas “church” inscribes Christian essentialism into Paul’s letters, and masks what Paul is actually doing with this word. The bridging of Greek-to-English semantic voids on the part of translators and New Testament scholars is a consistent problem that frustrates advancements in Pauline studies, and in studies of the religions of the Roman Empire more generally.

Jesus and the Anti-Roman Resistance

Although the hypothesis according to which Jesus the Galilean was involved in anti-Roman, rebellious thinking and activity has been advanced since the eighteenth century, it is now held only by a minority of New Testament scholars. The aim of the present article is to carefully survey the arguments supporting that hypothesis, and at the same time putting them forward in a novel way. I contend that the cumulative effect of these arguments is compelling, and that only a reconstruction of Jesus in which the aspect of anti-Roman resistance is consistently contemplated deserves credibility. The essay argues that there is in the Gospels a great amount of material which points precisely in the direction of a seditious Jesus, that this material configures a recurrent pattern, and that this pattern enjoys the highest probability of historicity. Furthermore, I evaluate different interpretations which try to make sense of the pattern, with the aim of deciding which of them is historically the most plausible. The essay then argues that the hypothesis advanced here has the greatest explanatory power, that the proposed alternatives are unconvincing and often far-fetched, and that every objection levelled against the hypothesis can be reasonably countered. Finally, I point out the disastrous implications for scholarship of the dismissal of the seditious material and of the correlative rejection of the hypothesis.

Potestas Gladii in Jesus' Trial

The question of potestas gladii in Jesus' trial, i.e., who had the legal authority to put him to death has been for a long time one of the puzzles of the New Testament scholarship. The present article resolves the question with a balanced view that even if the ultimate potestas gladii belonged to the Roman procurator, the Jewish Sanhedrin possessed the right to condemn and execute Jesus to death on charges of the Temple offences and blasphemous utterances. However, Jesus´ activity encompassed more than just a religious threat. The Jewish representatives feared also a public tumult and uprising if they had tried to put Jesus to death by themselves. They also did not want to be publicly blamed by the masses for killing a prophet type of a person and thereby adding to their negative public reputation. Therefore they handed Jesus to Pilate even though they could execute him by themselves on the basis of blasphemy.

Albert Schweitzer and the Jews

Albert Schweitzer's engagement with Judaism, and with the Jewish community more generally, has never been the subject of substantive discussion. On the one hand this is not surprising—Schweitzer wrote little about Judaism or the Jews during his long life, or at least very little that was devoted principally to those subjects. On the other hand, the lack of a study might be thought odd—Schweitzer's work as a New Testament scholar in particular is taken up to a significant degree with presenting a picture of Jesus, of the earliest Christian communities, and of Paul, and his scholarship emphasizes the need to see these topics against the background of a specific set of Jewish assumptions. It is also noteworthy because Schweitzer married a baptized Jew, whose father's academic career had been disadvantaged because he was a Jew. Moreover, Schweitzer lived at a catastrophic time in the history of the Jews, a time that directly affected his wife's family and others known to him. The extent to which this personal contact with Jews and with Judaism influenced Schweitzer either in his writings on Judaism or in his life will in part be the subject of this article.

Paul the Apostle: His Life and Legacy in Their Roman Context. By J. Albert Harrill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. xv + 208 pp. $25.99 paper.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Paul Apostle: His Life and Legacy in Their Roman Context . By J. Albert Harrill . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 2012. xv + 208 pp. $25.99 paper.Book Reviews and NotesThat Saint Paul . . . . He's one who makes all trouble. Anyone who wants to understand that trouble would do well to take up this book, and anyone charged with teaching course on troublesome apostle will find it made for this purpose. That author chooses this line from Hemingway for an epigraph tells us that he, too, wants to stir up bit of creative trouble, in classroom and in academic discourse about Paul. The book is an admirably succinct introduction to current state of Pauline scholarship but wants also to offer an important correction. The book, identified as a historical biography with full awareness of ambiguity of both adjective and noun, is divided into two roughly equal parts: the and the legend.Those address in turn two pivotal insights that emerged in twentieth-century scholarship on Paul. First, to understand life one must know social and cultural context within which that life was lived and by which surviving evidence for it was shaped. Second, to discern significance of life one must explore ways its story was retold and appropriated or resisted by succeeding generations of interested parties.In late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scholarship, cultural context of nascent was defined by supposed antithesis between Judaism and Hellenism. Only slowly did we come to realize, by turn of this century, that there were many different ways in which Jewish communities adapted to complex culture of Greco-Roman world, appropriating some elements, resisting others, in order to maintain but reshape their own identities. And little sect and emerging trans-ethnic cult that would become Christianity must be understood--not against that background, but--as indigenous in that dynamic culture. Harrill is fully in accord with that shift of consensus, but he wants to correct it in one important respect: Paul was not only Jew and Greek, he was also Roman . That is subject of chapter 3, which is effectively book's center, and will likely provoke most surprise and resistance. New Testament scholars tend to dismiss notion that Paul might be in any way pro-Roman, as they tend to doubt assertion of book of Acts that he was born Roman citizen. The recent influence of post-colonialist theory has strengthened this tendency; Paul is now commonly seen as deliberately anti -Roman. Harrill will have none of this, dismissing it as wishful thinking (91-94).The key term for Harrill's understanding of Paul's romanitas is Latin auctoritas , which he translates clout or influence. …

Après le déluge: Københavnerskolen eller kaos?

The article is based on the author’s farewell address at the Universityof Copenhagen and includes a review of recent scholarship in thelight of the achievements of the Copenhagen School. The changes ofparadigm from classical historical-critical scholarship to contemporaryOld Testament scholarship after le déluge which was the CopenhagenSchool are considerable. First of all the link previously assumed betweena text in the Old Testament and what really happened in Palestine inancient times has been broken when we realized that there is actually inthe case of the Old Testament so little that unites history with narrativethat it is misleading to understand biblical historiography as “history”.It is a story about the past, a kind of cultural memory, and to those whowrote these stories about the past, the real past was not very important.Another result of the contribution of the Copenhagen School relatesto the dating of biblical literature that was hardly collected before theHellenistic Period, and probably not in Jerusalem or in Palestine. Therefore,with the retirement of the last original member of the CopenhagenSchool it is a totally different scene in Old Testament studies whichremains, not because everyone accepts the theses of the school but because it has set the agenda for present and future discussion.

누가 성령론 이해와 평가 －서구 신약학자를 중심으로

This article has critically reviewed the major Western New Testament scholars’ opinions on the Holy Spirit in Luke-Acts since 1970s. I have presented three representative scholars’ understandings of Lukan pneumatology, particularly on the meaning of receiving the Spirit along with other related issues: (1) J. D. G. Dunn, (2) R. P. Menzies, and (3) M. M. B. Turner. According to Dunn, the reception of the Holy Spirit in Luke-Acts is the matrix of Christian life in a manner similar to that found in John and Paul. In contrast, examining both Luke-Acts and the Jewish intertestamental literature, Menzies argued that Jesus and his disciples received the Spirit not as the Spirit of sonship or of new age or covenant, but as a prophetic donum superadditum (i.e., additional gift after being saved) which enables them to accomplish successfully their appointed tasks. In other words, the Spirit in Luke-Acts can be considered the typical Jewish ‘Spirit of prophecy.’ Interestingly enough (but not convincing to me at least) Menzies distinguished three developments of the concept of the Spirit in the early Church to persuade his position. First, Pauline ‘soteriological pneumatology’ possibly influenced by 1QH and Wisdom literature. Second, ‘charismatic pneumatology’ found in the primitive community as for Mark, Matthew, and Q, which took up the Jewish concept of the ‘Spirit of prophecy,’ yet including miracles of healing and exorcism. Third, ‘prophetic pneumatology’ as the typical Jewish concept of the ‘Spirit of prophecy’ irrespective of miracle function, which was found in the Urgemeinde of the non-Pauline early Church inclusive of Luke-Acts. In many respects, Menzies’ basic thesis reminds me of E. Schweizer’s interpretations. Menzies’ sharp analysis of the typical Jewish concept of the Spirit and its development in early Christianity, however, has been severly questioned by Turner. Turner unlike both Schweizer and Menzies maintained that the Jewish ‘Spirit of prophecy’ was associated with miracles, yet was not related to the power of preaching, a perception later developed in Hellenistic-Jewish Christian circles. Thus, Luke, according to Turner, not only adopted the Jewish Spirit of prophecy, but also modified it. As a result, Luke in light of Turner’s perspective understood that receiving the gift of the Spirit was not a donum superadditum in Christian life. Rather it was the sine qua non (i.e., essential condition) of Christian existence. While agreeing that previous scholarship has meaningfully contributed to Lukan pneumatology, I have also noted that their interpretative methodologies were limited to historical criticism, especially redaction criticism. From this point onwards, critical and responsible readers are called to re-visit this ongoing Lukan subject matter for more nuanced and dynamic understanding. By the way, I as a Korean researcher have provided some major contemporary Korean NT scholars’ viewpoints on Lukanpneumatology in footnotes of this paper.

On the Treatment of the Supernatural by Zeba Crook

In a recent article, New Testament scholar Zeba Crook argues that in order for the study of Christian Origins to be taken seriously alongside other academic disciplines, a naturalistic philosophy must be adopted. Currently, there is a blend of openness, agnosticism and rejection among New Testament scholars with regard to miracles in the New Testament. This article responds to the concerns about an openness to the supernatural and offers a suggestion on how the study of religion can remain an academic discipline apart from theology and yet still be open to supernatural explanations.

영적 전투 이해증진을 위한 여호와의 전쟁론 고찰

The ‘Yahweh's Warfare’ theory is the one that has emerged as a important issue in modern missiology. It is a theory first claimed by the church growth theorists from Fuller theologicalseminary by C. Peter Wagner and accepted mostly in Asia, Africa, and South America. This theory has a strength that it makes the supernatural events of the Bible a real experience and brings the expansion of the Evangelism. On the other hand, I think it lacks the Biblical base and focuses only on overcoming Satan and demons, hence it weakens the main points of the Bible such as the proclamation of the Truth and the salvation of souls. Therefore, it is necessary to put this movement on a sheer balance so that it can be helpful to bearing positive fruits to Christian ministry, based fully on the Bible. This issue was addressed during the Lausanne Covenant and then focused on as main contents at the Manila Covenant in 1989, and at Capetown covenant in 2010. However, the dispute over the issue is not completely solved and is still demanding the full Biblical base. In the same line, in order to understand the spiritual warfare through the Biblical base, the present paper investigates the ‘Yahweh's Warfare’ theory that the Old Testament scholars presented and argues, and that is helpful to basing the spiritual warfare theory to sublimate it spiritually in Christ. Thus, the present paper proposes to present the principles of the spiritual warfare by studying the ‘Holy Warfare’ theory argued by G. Von Rad in 1940’s, the writings of the ‘Yahweh Warfare’ theory and consulting the Old Testament texts regarding the ‘Yahweh Warfare.’ The main points of the Yahweh Warfare theme are: (1) Jehovah is the warrior who wages wars and orders in them; (2) the Christians who participate in the wars should be holy and belong to God fully; (3) the enemy of the spiritual warfare is Satan; and (4) the aim of the Yahweh Warfare is the establishment of the divine kingdom while the spiritual warfare aims to build the kingdom of God. The present paper does not deal fully with the Biblical base for the spiritual warfare, but confines itself to presenting the Biblical base for the spiritual warfare simply through the Old Testament texts on the Yahweh warfare.

Union with the transcendent God in Philo and John’s Gospel

This article analyses the experience of divine presence within an intimate divine-human relationship, as conceptualised in Philo’s writings, and compares this experience with mystical passages in John’s Gospel. The article explains their understanding of God and how the union with a transcendent God is mediated. The article investigates this union in terms of an underlying mystical pattern that existed in the 1st century CE. The pattern explains similarities of Philo’s works with John’s Gospel that indicates the former’s mystical nature. Special attention is given to Philo’s accounts because his own mystical experiences and views are relatively unknown in New Testament scholarship, whilst John’s Gospel is compared to show how this pattern existed within a Jewish-Christian setting. After an introduction to the relevance of mysticism in contemporary research on Philo and John, the article, without trying to establish any genetic link between Philo and John, evaluates the understanding of mystical union in the light of Philo’s own mystical experience and pronouncements. Then follows a discussion of Philo’s understanding of the divine longing for union with humanity despite the divine transcendence, with attention to the direct and indirect manner in which this union is mediated. Finally, similar motifs in John’s Gospel are investigated.

Is <i>rewritten Bible/Scripture</i> the solution to the Synoptic Problem?

New Testament scholars have for centuries posited different solutions to the Synoptic Problem. Recently a new solution was proposed. Mogens Müller applies Geza Vermes’s term rewritten Bible to the canonical gospels. Accepting Markan priority, he views Matthew as rewritten Mark, Luke as rewritten Matthew, and John as additional source. This article examines Müller’s hypothesis by first investigating the history of the controversial term rewritten Bible/Scripture and its recent application to the New Testament Gospels. Müller’s hypothesis is then compared to other solutions to the Synoptic Problem, such as the Augustine, Griesbach, and Farrer-Goulder Hypotheses. The Two Document Hypothesis is discussed and Müller’s 2nd century Luke theory is compared to Burton Mack’s almost similar stance and tested with the argument of synoptic intertextuality in view of the possible but improbable early second century date for Matthew. Lastly, the relationship between the synoptic Gospels is viewed in terms of literary intertextuality. Müller suggests proclamation as motivation for the Gospels’ deliberate intertextual character. This notion is combined with the concept of intertextuality to suggest a more suitable explanation for the relationship between die Gospels, namely intertextual kerugma. This broad concept includes any form of intertextuality in terms of text and context regarding the author and readers. It suitably replaces rewritten Bible, both in reference to genre and textual (exegetical) strategy.

Gospel Writing: A Canonical Perspective. By FRANCIS WATSON.

In this impressive, energetic new magnum opus Francis Watson sets out to topple key conventional paradigms of gospel origins in favour of a far-reaching new construct. In doing so, he extends the process of gospel formation and canonization well into the fourth century. Professor Watson’s astonishing range of scholarly interests and methods is well known to his readers: he has moved over the years without apparent cognitive dissonance from social-scientific via theological readings of the New Testament to Pauline hermeneutics, and here now to a comprehensive thesis about the gospels. Watson believes New Testament scholarship has been fundamentally misguided in assuming (a) that the writing of the gospels was complete by the year 100 and (b) that their diversity is a cause of distortion and therefore requires either implausible harmonization or else the sequential resolution of a synoptic ‘problem’. Instead of gospel scholarship’s conventional reverse-engineering exercise that sought pristinely ‘authentic’ gold beneath the dross of multiply distorting traditions, Watson claims to show how ‘the dynamic of the Jesus tradition issues in a proliferation of gospel writing and culminates in the construction of a fourfold canonical gospel out of the mass of the available literature’ (p. 7, italics mine).