Showing papers on "Exegesis published in 1987"

The Books of Haggai and Malachi

Abstract: This commentary by Pieter A. Verhoef offers a thorough exegesis and exposition of Haggai and Malachi two important books of Scripture that, unfortunately, are little studied and stresses the relevance of these prophets' messages in terms of continuity and discontinuity for the Christian church. Verhoef's introduction to each book elucidates questions of authorship, style, text, structure, historical background, and message. Making extensive use of structural analysis, Verhoef argues convincingly for the authenticity, unity, and integrity of both books. Verhoef also brings his knowledge of the ancient Near East, the Old Testament, and biblical scholarship to bear in the commentary proper, and he displays theological acumen and pastoral sensitivity in tailoring his exposition for the student and pastor as well as for the scholar."

First and Second Kings

Abstract: Richard Nelson examines the books of Kings and treats the text as theological literature, emphasizing the literary impact of this important part of the Old Testament canon. Nelson recognizes King's as a useful though uncritical source of historical information, its purpose to transform the beliefs of its first readers, to get them to re-evaluate their identity before God.Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching is a distinctive resource for those who interpret the Bible in the church. Planned and written specifically for teaching and preaching needs, this critically acclaimed biblical commentary is a major contribution to scholarship and ministry.

On Hidden Hatred and Open Reproach: Early Exegesis Of Leviticus 19:17

Abstract: As is well known, the beginnings of biblical exegesis are to be found within the Hebrew Bible itself: later books or passages often comment on earlier ones, clarifying perceived ambiguities, at times harmonizing apparent contradictions, or seeking to bring an ancient text up to date, even rewriting history or trying to bring out some would-be esoteric meaning. Indeed, evidence of these interpretive concerns is to be found not only within the later parts of the Jewish canon, but among the biblical apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, in the Qumran documents, Hellenistic Jewish writings, the New Testament, rabbinic literature, and so forth. Sometimes we can do more than simply catalogue how a given verse or passage was interpreted in various sources—we can actually try to glimpse something of the history and evolution of its interpretation.

Theological Exegesis and Aquinas's Treatise ‘against the Greeks’

Abstract: According to Pope Leo XIII, it could almost be said that Thomas Aquinas “presided” over the deliberations at Lyons (1274) and Florence (1438) when these councils confronted the Greek church.1 This judgment, which would be true at best and in part only for the later council, both enshrines and encourages a misreading of Thomas's short treatise Contra errores Graecorum. In fact, the Contra errores is neither as well informed nor as technically argued as other Latin polemics of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It is a treatise limited in form and argument, motivated by another, poorer treatise.

Melville's Confidence-Man: An Uncharitable Interpretation

Abstract: TN Book Three of On Christian Doctrine, Augustine defines the means and goals of Scriptural exegesis by invoking the concept of interpretive "charity." Charity, "the motion of the soul toward the enjoyment of God for His own sake, and the enjoyment of one's self and of one's neighbor for the sake of God," requires that any apparent ambiguities or inconsistencies in God's Word be clarified and reconciled: "what is read should be subjected to diligent scrutiny until an interpretation contributing to the reign of charity is produced." 1 For Augustine, then, the interpreter's task is to recover or reconstitute the preexisting and essential unity of the Biblical text. As a number of recent critics have shown, literary scholarship has long taken such clarity and integrity as its standard: a text may be shaped by authorial intention or interpretive context, organic form or generic convention, but it is always assumed to be a self-consistent whole. What, however, is our "charitable" critical practice to make of a text that calls the very notions of charity and self-consistency into question, a text that problematizes interpretation itself? This is precisely what Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man does, and critical commentary on the novel exemplifies the scholarly desire to "recover" a text's formal and/or thematic unity, even if this means reshaping it in the image of one's own interpretive ideal.2

The Last Tormentor of Christ : An Image of the Jew in Ancient and Medieval Exegesis, Art, and Drama

Abstract: Fonde sur une interpretation erronee du texte evangelique, le personnage du porteur de l'eponge au vinaigre est une figure constante de l'iconographie et du drame religieux medieval jusqu'aux 15e-16e s. Sa difformite et son ridicule en font l'un des symboles antisemites les plus patents et les plus malfaisants

Who's kidding whom?: a serious reading of rabbinic word plays

Abstract: The study of midrash, the rabbinic commentaries to Scripture, has recently taken a literary turn. This turn is evident in the increasing use of literary theory by interpreters of midrash as well as the interest among literary critics in rabbinic exegesis. In part, this trend is a natural result of post-structuralist literary theory-particularly readerresponse criticism and deconstruction-that criticizes the foundationalism endemic to Western philosophy and the theory of reading that derives from it. The attempt to escape the presuppositions of that tradition has drawn attention to literatures not shaped by it and has sparked a general interest in rabbinic interpretation. The turn to midrash, however, often involves even stronger claims. For some, rabbinic interpretation of Scripture is a forerunner of certain contemporary theories of reading.1 One school of recent criticism argues that all texts sustain a multiplicity of equally valid readings, each informed by its own set of assumptions. The text itself is said to exercise little control over its interpretation. Instead, the constraints of interpretation reside with the community of readers (eg. Fish). In this view, there can be no single meaning of a text but only various readings from different points of view. Deconstructive criticism takes this position to the extreme by claiming that true readings

Development of a Biblical Paradigm for Ministry to Unbaptized Seventh-day Adventist Children

Abstract: DEVELOPMENT OF A BIBLICAL PARADIGM FOR MINISTRY TO UNBAPTIZED SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST CHILDREN

Jewish Hermeneutics and Contemporary Theories of Textuality: Hartman, Bloom, and Derrida

Abstract: "Midrash," from the Hebrew verb drash, meaning search, inquiry, or investigation, is the traditional exegetical method of Jewish biblical hermeneutics. According to James Kugel in "Two Introductions to Midrash," an essay from Midrash and Literature, "The word midrash has been used to designate both the activity of interpretation and the fruits of that activity" (the collective body of such interpretations developed by the rabbinical guardians of Torah). But at bottom, Kugel tells us, "midrash is not a genre of interpretation but an interpretive stance."' Though alien to the Christian exegetical tradition, the midrashic relation of interpreter to scripture immediately suggests parallels between its stance toward commentary and the intertextuality of contemporary criticism, where readers recognize the fluid boundaries between text and interpretation, rather than the imperious unity of the primary text, and tend to emphasize conversation over objectivity and systematic uniformity in interpretation. Midrash and Literature, which offers selections from eighteen writers from various disciplines associated with Hebrew and literary studies, suggests correspondences between the types of textual interpretation practiced in ancient Israel and "the new criticism." Not accidently, this anthology contains essays by Geoffrey Hartman and Jacques Derrida as well as a section entitled "Midrash and Kabbalah" which invites consideration of Harold Bloom. I have paired my reading of Midrash and Literature with an examination of John Llewelyn's Derrida: On the Threshold of Sense,2 which, though it does not emphasize Derrida's relation to Jewish commentary, is a detailed examination of Derrida's relation to metaphysics. Reading these two books together has prompted me to think about general Judeo-Christian themes which speak to possible interrelations among Hartman, Derrida, and Bloom, both as Jewish readers and as critics who have placed themselves inside and outside Jewish literary history in order to question the metaphysical tradition and the classical logos. My discussion begins with a brief historical sketch of Jewish sacred literature, centering on distinctions between Jewish and Christian exegesis and the entanglement of rabbinical midrash with kabbalah. My analysis will then turn to Hartman, Bloom, and Derrida, whom I will discuss according to the following themes: the status, or "question," of the Book; Jewish tradition as orthodoxy and heresy; and the relation between rhetoric and "ontotheology" (Heidegger's description of the religion-based, transcendental ideas of Western philosophy). Because Jewish literary history and contemporary themes emerging from it are enormously complex

The commentary on the Qurʾān

Abstract: Al Tabari's Commentary on the Qur'an is, after the Qur'an itself, one of the greatest Islamic texts. This commentary, written in the 3rd Century of Islam, is undoubtedly the most famous and most widely accepted in Islam. In his Tafsir, Tabari collected the ample material of traditional exegesis, including practically everything that was said before him on each verse of the Qur'an, and thus created a standard on which all later commentators drew. The Tafsir is still a mine of information for historical and critical research by scholars. It is also of great use to Muslims and non-Muslims interested in the Quran. This is the first translation of the Tafsir into English. The edition will be complete in five volumes, of which this is the first to appear.

Anselm of Canterbury and Medieval Augustinianisms

Abstract: From Boethius and Cassiodorus to the late medieval mystics and scholastics, the history of philosophy and theology is, in large measure, a continuing exegesis of the texts of Augustine. For that tradition Augustine is, as Matthew of Aquasparta put it, 'the exemplary doctor, whom catholic doctors, and especially theologians, ought to follow'.

Hermeneutical Procedure and Theological Method in Origen's Exegesis . By Karen Jo Torjesen. Patristische Texte und Studien 28. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1986. xi + 183 pp. DM 78.

Abstract: Christian hypogeal cubicula, but Snyder never even mentions them. The chapter on methodology is confused and the bibliography very spotty. The question remains: to whom is this book addressed? It is not a reliable and comprehensive introduction, and hence it cannot be recommended to beginners. Nor does Snyder's book begin to satisfy the requirements of more advanced scholarship in this complicated area of early Christian studies. University of Missouri PAUL CORBY FlNNEY Saint Louis, Missouri

Meister Eckhart on the Book of Wisdom: Commentary and Sermons

Abstract: A common view of medieval thought focuses on the separation of speculative thought from biblical exegesis which occurs with the rise of the universities. Whereas in the patristic era and the early Middle Ages theology and exegesis formed a unity, the introduction of Aristotle and the techniques of quaestio and disputatio detached theology from the study of scriptural texts. The results were twofold: theology attained a new autonomy and a distinctive form in the summa, and exegesis — free of the demands of theological speculation — could pursue a more literal and historical style of interpretation. Whatever the historical accuracy of this view, it has certainly shaped modern scholarship on medieval thought. Theologians and philosophers have focused on summae and disputed questions to such an extent that the Leonine edition of Thomas Aquinas has yet to publish his major Commentary on the Gospel of John. Since Thomas is considered first of all a theologian, not an exegete, his biblical commentaries have been accorded less interest and attention than his systematic works. In contrast, students of medieval exegesis may so emphasize literal and historical interpretation that they exclude or dismiss commentaries that are speculative or mystical. Beryl Smalley's The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages represents this trend, as it devotes little attention to Bernard of Clairvaux but concentrates on commentators like Guerric of St. Quentin, who gave ‘his attention to the literal sense first and foremost.’

Elements of Peshat in Traditional Jewish Bible Exegesis

Abstract: Malgre la preponderance de l'approche midrashique dans l'exegese juive traditionnelle, une approche critique visant a etablir le sens litteral, le " pshat ", s'observe deja dans les derniers livres de la Bible, notamment dans les Chroniques, et se poursuit jusqu'a l'apparition de la critique biblique moderne. L'A. le montre en examinant les " al tiqre " (" ne pas lire ") du Talmud, l'exegese de Saadia Gaon, Ibn Ezra, David Kimhi, Nahmanide. Jona ibn Janach, Rachi et l'ecole francaise, S. D. Luzzatto