Testament Texts Research Articles

Frihet under ansvar? Bibelöversättning som institutionell praktik

In this paper, I discuss the relationship between structure and agency in institutional translation. My case is a Swedish retranslation of the biblical texts commenced in 1972. Against the background of the directives issued to the translators, and through a case study of how three Old Testament texts were translated by the team, I argue that the team members bypassed certain aspects of the directives. This, however, was not primarily because they exercised their individual agency, but because they collectively related their work to the abstract institution of biblical studies, which can be conceived of as a belief system which structured the interpretation and translation of the biblical texts. The case is hereby discussed to critically assess the relationship between agency and structure, and to suggest a non-binary way of understanding the relationship between the two.

Restoring the Spirit through the Redemption of Memory

Restoration and redemption of the soul are, in biblical terms, essentially life-bringing acts. Yet even the present reality is so frequently a spirit deeply in need of renewal and new life. Memories contribute greatly to this felt need: as the psychological building blocks of an individual’s sense of self, their joy and their pain reverberate through the self, reaching deeply to shape identity and worldview. What is needed is not only the redemption of our souls but the redemption of our memories as well. Such an inner transformation would indeed prove both a restoration and a transformation, an experience now of the future kingdom in which God will reconcile all things to himself (Colossians 1:20). This article explores how the New Testament text provides a psychologically and neurologically coherent model to leverage memory formation and reconsolidation toward restoration and renewal.

Parallelism as a Stylistic Feature in the New Testament Texts of Tolerance

Parallelism as a Stylistic Feature in the New Testament Texts of Tolerance

Decolonizing the New Testament Texts: A Postcolonial Task

This essay traces some of the major directions of New Testament interpretation, both in terms of a turn to empire and also specifically in India. Attention to the impact of empire in shaping the world and texts of the New Testament is argued to be a crucial development which provides an important foundation for postcolonial hermeneutics. Postcolonial hermeneutics is shown to be especially influential for interpreters in the Indian context, and various streams and trends within Indian biblical interpretation are presented. Decolonizing the New Testament texts will require such an empire-critical and postcolonial hermeneutic, as well as the incorporation of such concerns within the Western academy. Finally, a reading of Jude 23 is offered as an illustration of this postcolonial hermeneutic in practice. This text illustrates both the imperial context of the early Christian communities and also their efforts to develop a spirituality of resistance.

Decolonizing New Testament Studies: A Māori Perspective

Beginning with my personal experience of encountering ideas about decolonization in various settings, and considering what it might mean for New Testament studies in Aotearoa New Zealand, this essay then presents the contributions of the few Māori scholars who have worked in biblical studies, identifying how they reflect on the legacies of colonization and the challenge of decolonization. As an example of a Māori engagement with a New Testament text, I present a reading of the Canaanite woman’s encounter with Jesus as presented in Matthew 15.21–28, focused on issues of racism, people, and land. Finally, the essay concludes with some proposals on what a decolonized New Testament studies would look like based on my experience as a Māori student and then lecturer.

Re-reading the Story of Hagar From a Nias Bride’s Perspective

Nias women are an essential part of the social life of the Nias people, a tribe that occupies the outer islands of western Sumatra. As patriarchal customs and culture strongly govern women in communities, there are crucial issues regarding the position, function, and existence of Nias women who, on the one hand, are honored but, on the other hand, are treated as servants in the household. This article will re-read the story of Hagar in the Old Testament from the perspective of the marital life of Nias women. This reading is critical not only in identifying the root of the problem but also in providing lessons from a biblical perspective on how to survive in the oppressive patriarchal environment of a society. Using narrative analysis of the Old Testament text of Hagar, it is concluded that the Nias bride is a modern portrait of Hagar’s story in a patriarchal circle. In an unchangeable situation, Nias women must have resilience like Hagar to survive and continue to fight for their fundamental rights.

«Исаии ныне пророка глас...»: о необычной атрибуции ветхозаветного пророчества в древней церковной гимнографии

The article considers an unusual case of "incorrect" attribution of the words of the prophet Malachi to the prophet Isaiah on the example of two hymns of the service of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist (24 June), written by St. John of Damascus (7th – 8th centuries) and St. Kassia (9th century). According to the author, this attribution is due to the fact that the hymnographers did not directly use the text of the prophetic book, but quoted this prophecy in the transmission of Mark 1. 2. The form of the quoted Gospel text corresponded to the Alexandrian text-type of New Testament manuscripts, where the prophet Isaiah is indicated as the author of the prophecy quoted in Mark 1. 2. The following is a discussion of the possible reasons for the use by the hymnographers in question of the New Testament text instead of the Old Testament text: (1) the words of Mark 1. 2 (and the parallels in Matt 11. 10 and Luke 7. 17) may have been more familiar to Christians of that time than their Old Testament prototype; moreover (2) the Gospel restatement of the prophecy revealed its meaning, pointing to the divinity of Jesus Christ, as well as clarifying the sense of John the Baptist's ministry. The reasons for the use of Mark 1. 2 (despite the problematic character of these apostolic words because of the unusual attribution of prophetic words) could be the prominent position of this verse at the beginning of the Gospel of Mark and its connection with the proclamation there of the messianic dignity of Jesus Christ, as well as the fact that the hymnographers continued the patristic tradition of advocacy of the correctness of the words of Mark 1. 2. At the end of the article some peculiarities of the use and interpretation of the text of the Holy Scriptures in Byzantine hymnography are pointed out on the basis of the material considered. First of all, it is the use of the Old Testament words in their New Testament version, because this version of the words is better known to Christians and has already been interpreted by the apostles themselves. It is no less important that in their use and interpretation of the biblical text the hymnographers clearly followed the preceding patristic exegetical tradition, including trust in the words of the Holy Scripture.

Multicultural Worship in the Song of Zechariah and Contemporary Christian Worship

This article explores the ethics of “speaking” the artistic languages or idioms of diverse cultures in the earliest Christian communities. This article presents a key New Testament text, the Song of Zechariah (the Benedictus in Luke 1:68–79), as a poetic text meant for communal performance and examines that cultural phenomenon through the lens of “musical caring” to examine the meaning such a poetic phenomenon has for modern Christian life and worship. First, I will briefly summarize the evidence for the Song of Zechariah as a lyrical poem containing the artistic “multilingualism” of both Hebrew and Greek poetic idioms. Then, I will assess such an artistic communal expression in its first-century context with Myrick’s concept of musical caring, broadened to allow for uncertainty of the Song of Zechariah’s first-century performance methods. Finally, I will consider the twenty-first-century implications or lessons from such care and inclusivity in the first century.

The Value of Christological Titles, in Conversation with Leander Keck

AbstractForty years ago, Leander Keck criticised the ‘tyranny of titles’ in the study of New Testament Christology. While Keck rightly criticised early- to mid-twentieth approaches to titles for Jesus, there is no denying the importance of titles in New Testament texts. This article summarises classic twentieth-century approaches to christological titles and discusses the most important criticisms. The root issue of such approaches is the conflation of titles and concepts. A constructive proposal is offered for reading christological titles as literary strategies of characterisation. This approach begins by carefully defining what is meant by a title and how titles might be distinguished from common nouns and names. Six principles for the productive interpretation of titles are then discussed: 1) titles must be distinguished from other christological material like motifs, typologies, and references to biblical texts; 2) titles must be distinguished from each other; 3) titles are meaningful not because they refer to particular ideas but because of their relationship with biblical texts, religious life, and culture; 4) what a title does is more important than what a title means; 5) titles are flexible, polyvalent, and ambiguous; 6) titles must be read alongside other titles and non-titular material. Finally, it is demonstrated how this literary approach to titles will be fruitful for contemporary discussions in New Testament Christology and contribute to the renewal of New Testament Christology that Keck called for several decades ago.1

Are Metaphors Getting Lost? – The Usefulness of Linguistic-Poetic Analysis of Old Testament Poetic Texts for Theological Interpretation

This paper presents an interdisciplinary experiment. The core of the experiment is to examine the Hebrew poetic text of the Old Testament through a textual analysis of its textuality prior to theological interpretation and to ask why and which linguistic-literary solutions, i.e. poetic procedures, are used in the construction of meaning. On this basis, a research design can be created that asks how linguistic-poetic analysis can help in the exegesis of Old Testament poetic texts (or of any other textual genre). Poetics is about the production of meaning: all of our verbal utterances are made with some kind of poetics or speech strategy in mind – our communications are not formulated randomly. The linguistic analysis proposed here examines not only whether a word or phrase in a particular poetic text of the Hebrew Bible is written correctly or not but also the poetic role of that phrase, word, sentence, and grammatical or other structure in the larger textual unit (i.e. the poem) under study. Keywords: linguistic-poetic analysis, Walter Brueggemann, Robert Alter, trial metaphor, laboratory translation, metaphor, conceptual metaphor, background metaphor, context, Leningrad Codex, massoretes

Trinitarian Exegesis of the Old Testament

Abstract A number of key Old Testament texts cited in the New Testament are surveyed to determine whether they are amenable to prosopological exegesis (e.g., Dan 7; Ps 45; Ps 110), but in none of these texts is more than one divine figure present, nor do they depict one divine person speaking to or about another divine person. The Christian reader is not required to find the three persons of the Trinity differentiated and assigned different speaking roles in Old Testament texts. However, another mode of Trinitarian reading is credible. The follower of Jesus is not to equate the God of the Old Testament simply with the Father; rather the God of the Old Testament is the triune God, which means that many more Old Testament texts than often thought directly connect to Jesus.

Levirate Marriage & Theo-doctrinal Embargo a Kenyan Experience

African scholars have found themselves in a theo-doctrinal embargo, especially after the 19 th and 20 th century European missionary explosion, that ushered a vibrant protestant Christianity in East Africa that was largely dismissive of cultural dialogues with Christianity. One of the most contested subject, that went beyond the missionary era, and reverberates across the twenty-first century, is the levirate marriage (hereafter, levirate marriage). Outside the missionary armpits, African scholars have continued to debate its efficacy to the christian teachings. In view of this, the theo-doctrinal embargo that has evidently persisted across the mainstream churches and some African Instituted churches (AIC) in Kenya motivated the eventual research and publication of this article. Whereas the mainstream churches maintain that wife inheritance, especially where the male inheritor has another wife is sin, some AICs have tended to support the levirate marriage even where the male inheritor has another wife. They do this by quoting some Old Testament texts, as their reference point. The mainstream churches have insisted that wife inheritance narratives was permitted in the Old Testament in cases where the male inheritor was single and the deceased was childless. This article seeks to examine the biblical understanding of levirate marriage and its place in the Kenyan context. Overall, the article analyzed Scriptural texts dealing with the subject of Levirate marriages and reflected it from an African Christian perspective. The materials in this article were gathered through extensive reading of published works, interviews and via general observation of the practices therein.

‘God really hated the hypocrites’: Hypocrisy and Anti-clerical Rhetoric in the Early Lutheran Reformation

In 1524, two anonymous pamphlets were published, both professing to be letters written by a married woman to her sister, a nun. Both draw on a range of New Testament texts to express criticism of ‘the hypocrites’, a term the anonymous author uses to refer particularly to clergy and religious. This article examines how the author of these pamphlets constructed and characterized the category of the hypocrite. Drawing on the work of Hans-Christoph Rublack, the article shows that her critique is coherent with anti-clerical rhetoric found in a wide range of early Reformation pamphlets. It then compares her strictures on hypocrisy with references to hypocrisy and hypocrites in the early German writings of Martin Luther and Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt to explore the extent to which accusations of hypocrisy were entwined with anti-clerical and anti-monastic rhetoric in the early Lutheran Reformation. It concludes that while accusations against clergy and religious were often couched in terms of their hypocrisy, Luther's use of the term hypocrite was much broader, extending to all those whom he viewed as presenting themselves as ‘holier than thou’, while Karlstadt made less use of the term.

Reconstructing the Original New Testament: A Critical Analysis of Bart D. Ehrman's Arguments on Textual Errors and Manuscript Transmission

This study aimed to discuss the thought of Bart D. Ehrman, an American New Testament Scholar, regarding this idea of the contradiction in his research into the New Testament in many of his books, which was considered controversial and initiated a heated debate among theologians and other scholars. This research employed a library research method by analyzing various written sources such as books, articles, and scientific journals that discuss Bart D. Ehrman's thoughts on the contradictions in the New Testament. The nature of this research is qualitative, where the researcher analyzes and interprets textual data to understand Ehrman's thoughts and their implications for New Testament studies. Ehrman affirmed that since its initial copying process, the Bible had been using the hand-copying method, resulting in many errors in the manuscript. Up to the number of copyists who copy back the wrong copy and make new mistakes; eventually, many copies of the New Testament exist today, but none of these copies are known to be copies of the original book, nor copies of the first copies. Instead, they are copies of copies of other copies that have been scattered long after the original writing period. Which undoubtedly contains very many errors and differences in each copy. Mistakes that arise because they are intentional or unintentional. This study concluded that, according to Ehrman, it has been very tough to reconstruct the original text of the New Testament. Nevertheless, even so, he still stated that it was a big mistake deciding to stop learning the texts of the New Testament.

Учительство Христа в классической западноевропейской иконографии

The article examines the visual embodiment of the theme of Christ's teaching in the European visual tradition. The author shows that the pedagogical metaphors of the Teacher and the Educator, vivid in the New Testament texts and the works of the first Christian writers, were reflected in the fine arts through certain iconographic formulas. An assumption is made about the possibility of a pedagogical interpretation of the symbolic image of the Good Shepherd (basing on Clement of Alexandria). Variations in the image of the Teacher in the works of the 4-5th centuries are also analyzed: these are compositions with Christ the Wonderworker and Christ the Philosopher, which had different iconographic prototypes. Regardless of the characteristics of the portrait interpretation of Christ, special attributes (rhetorical gesture, pallium, scroll or open codex) allow to identify Him as a Teacher. The view on Christ as the Teacher and righteousness and divine wisdom, incomparable with earthly knowledge, is a specific of the patristic tradition. The development of Christian art under the influence of liturgical theological the formation caused appearance of new subjects and interpretations in medieval art. Plots previously associated with the theme of Christ’s teaching receive a different view within the framework of typological exegesis. The author shows that the main “pedagogical” plot, which received consistent development in the art of the Middle Ages, is the image of the young Christ in the Jerusalem temple (Luke 2:41-51). The plot was popular due to the veneration of the image of the baby Jesus, general interest in His childhood, and also in connection with the cults of the Mother of God. In the iconography of the 15-17th centuries the polemical component of the plot is often emphasized, with the scene being interpreted as a variant of a dispute. In apocryphal texts dedicated to the childhood of Jesus, there are episodes of interaction between the Divine Youth and school teachers, who generally showed pedagogical carelessness towards the child and recognized His “disability to learn.” In illustrations of the plot children sympathize and support their “classmate” and even glorify Him as God. Finally, in the late Middle Ages, the story of the giving of the Lord's Prayer was spread, with the direct interaction of the Teacher and Preacher with their listeners articulated.

Deeds of Will on Papyrus and the Use of the Term διαθήκη in the Letters of Paul

AbstractThe numerous testaments on papyrus provide a valuable basis for an investigation of legal language around διαθήκη in the Pauline letters. Of particular importance is the ancient practice of revoking wills, which I consider to be the legal frame of reference for the recipients of the Pauline letters to grasp expressions like καινὴ/παλαιὰ διαθήκη. In the Corinthian correspondence the conformity to the current legal practice is evident, but in Galatians Paul turns the whole procedure upside down, manipulating in the construction of his argument not only the practice of testamentary cancellation, but also the traditional connection of Abraham with circumcision. We are compelled to a text-internal solution of the problem in Gal 3.15–17 by the fact that the papyrological evidence shows clearly that no other type of document than the ordinary revocable διαθήκαι can be taken into consideration. This approach is not compilatory, as it is often the case when dealing with documentary papyri applied to New Testament texts, but heuristic, with the purpose of elaborating new exegetical insights in old controversies.

Praised and Maligned: Receptions of Erasmus’ Paraphrases on the New Testament

Abstract Erasmus was not only the first to have the Greek text of the New Testament printed together with his Latin translation, but he also paraphrased the books of the New Testament—with the exception of the Apocalypse. These Paraphrases were highly successful as evidenced by their many editions and translations. Even an English translation was to be found in every parish in the Church of England. There was also opposition. Theologians from Spain and France scrutinized them for Lutheran ideas, and, of course, found them. However, the interest in the paraphrases was not diminished by this criticism and they had an intense reception in the sixteenth century and a long-lasting one stretching after Erasmus’ death. Parts were included in commentaries on the New Testament, sometimes with reference to the original author, more often without his name.

Extracting the Lives of Stoneworkers from New Testament Texts

Extracting the Lives of Stoneworkers from New Testament Texts

Verb Forms with Aspectual Semantics in Latin and Ancient Greek in the Text of the New Testament (Gospel of Mark)

The results of a comparative study of verb forms with aspectual semantics in Ancient Greek (Koine) (which has an overt category of aspect) and Latin (where aspect is rather a covert category), based on the Gospel of Mark, have shown that the expected correspondence of verb forms appears to be standard in the material as well: it is found in the majority of cases (97,6 % of the Ancient Greek Aorist translated by the Latin Perfect, and 89,4 % of the Ancient Greek Imperfect/Present translated by the Latin Imperfect). Therefore, there must be a considerable semantic overlap between the Ancient Greek Aorist and the Latin Perfect forms and between the Ancient Greek Imperfect/Present forms and the Latin Imperfect forms. For each pair, there must be a common semantic core, corresponding in the first case to the perfective, and in the second case to the imperfective viewpoints. In the minority of cases, we find deviations from this standard correspondence. Some of them can be explained by the trivial fact that the context allows freedom in the choice of the aspectual viewpoint. However, in several cases, the discrepancies are not accidental and can be explained by the existence of specific differences between the grammatical systems of two languages. These include iterative contexts and contexts with speech verbs.

Imitation Curtain Depictions from Byzantine Cappadocia

By scrutinising examples of imitation curtain patterns on Cappadocian wall paintings, this article aims to comparatively evaluate other curtain imitation compositions seen in Byzantine art. In addition to this, the use of curtains in civil and religious architecture (especially at the entrances of large structures) in the Byzantine Period and the theological importance of imitation curtain patterns in the Byzantine Period are also discussed. Curtains were found in all areas of the Empire, although few have survived. In addition to the positive influences of Old and New Testament texts, religious commentaries called tractates written by Gregorius of Nyssa, one of the Cappadocian Church Fathers, may have encouraged the use of curtain patterns in Christian religious structures. Based on this, the theological explanations of aniconic curtain patterns are also included in our article. The article also aims to prove that this pattern we encounter in Byzantine art is a continuation of Roman art traditions. It is possible to find curtain patterns in a lot of handiwork from the early Byzantine Period. Among the churches of the Byzantine Period in the Cappadocia region, which is our main subject, imitation curtain patterns are primarily seen in wall paintings dating to the 9th - 11th centuries. In this study, we have identified that the only exception to this situation is the example in the apse of Ihlara Bezirana Church (end of 13th century, beginning of 14th century). The pattern was implemented especially in the aniconic ornament of the naos or apse wall paintings of the churches in the region, and it is noteworthy that they were painted as the main motif in a row, forming the border of the figural scenes on the lower parts of the walls (in the areas below the human waist). This study explains the properties of the imitation curtain patterns found in the wall paintings of Cappadocia and compares them in terms of ornamental properties, pattern composition, size, colour scale, and theological roots and development in Byzantine art. In addition, the importance of the curtain pattern, its usage areas and its features in the Byzantine Empire have been explained with examples.