1,720,984 research outputs found
Spectres of YHWH: some hauntological remarks on Lamentations 3
No full textIn this article, the author offers a brief hauntological perspective on Lamentations 3. After discussing some of the rudiments of the relevant type of Derridean philosophy of history/literature, the hauntological layers of Lamentations 3 are extracted by way of reconstructive informal philosophical commentary. This is followed by a closer look at the representation of Yhwh in Lamentations 3 as a spectre in the Derridean sense of the word. The conclusion is that, from the perspective of hauntology, Lamentations 3 is a good example of ancient spectral theology.http://reference.sabinet.co.za/document/EJC13174
The concept of the love of wisdom in Proverbs (8): a comparative–philosophical clarification
Get PDFThe word "philosophy" can be literally rendered "the love of wisdom". However, while etymological definitions are not always reliable as to the actual use of words, in some sense it is not an inaccurate notion of what some of the ancient Greek philosophers thought they were up to. The ancient Greek senses of "love" and "wisdom" were, however, not univocal. In addition, though the Hebrew Bible is not as a rule considered philosophy proper in terms of genre, the Book of Proverbs does contain several verbal references to the love of wisdom. In this paper the author seeks to elucidate and compare what the love of wisdom meant in both the Greek and Hebrew contexts and how they might have conceptually overlapped and diverged.http://reference.sabinet.co.za/webx/access/electronic_journals/semit/semit_v22_n2_a6.pd
What is a god like? Meta-theistic presuppositions in the letter of Jeremiah
Get PDFIn the apocryphal text of the Letter (Epistle) of Jeremiah (Ep Jer), a long list of reasons is given by the implied author as to why certain entities alleged to be gods are not in fact such. Brief summaries of the author's various points characterise scholarly perspectives thereon. What has been overlooked in the research, however, and the topic of this article, concerns the converse fact that, in the construction of a negative identity for divinity, the text also assumes a lot about what a god must actually be like. Moreover, what is implicit in these "meta-theistic" presuppositions has never before been identified; hence the need for an attempted inferential reconstruction of what, according to the polemics of Ep Jer, makes a god divin
Rethinking the "Dual Causality Principle" in Old Testament research – A philosophical perspective
No full textReframing an old idea in philosophical theology, OT scholars have for the last half-century spoken of what has come to be known as the "dual causality principle " (DCP). The latter is supposed to denote a folk-met a-physical assumption in some OT texts characterized by the assignment of both divine and human causes to account for certain states of affairs. In this article the author challenges the consensus and argues that since the notion of causes is also a philosophical matter the theory behind the DCP may be supplemented by a descriptive metaphysical perspective. Typologies of causation show that the DCP is too simplistic and vague a concept since it ignores a host of complex metaphysical distinctions about causal types, relations and theories. Ultimately, causation in the OT is a complex phenomenon and technically not reducible to duality, causality, or to a principle of any sort.http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2312-3621/2015/v28n1a7.http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1010-99192015000100006http://reference.sabinet.co.za/document/EJC17169
Possible Topics for a Comprehensive Philosophical Approach to Qohelet’s Metaphysical Assumptions
Get PDFUp to now, philosophical approaches to Qohelet (Ecclesiastes) have tended to focus mostly on how parts
of the book relate to some concepts in ethics and epistemology. By contrast, metaphysical assumptions
in the text have received comparatively less attention. Yet while Qohelet is not a metaphysical textbook,
the language of the author invariably contains many metaphysical assumptions about issues of interest
popularly associated with this philosophical discipline (especially in its analytic form) and which still have
not been studied in a conceptually nuanced manner. In light of this gap, the present study aims to provide
a meta-theoretical prolegomenon to future descriptive metaphysical perspectives on the book. Bracketing
controversies regarding the nature and possibility of metaphysics as such, the author offers an
introductory overview of those concepts discussed therein and with reference to which Qohelet could be
read in a comparative-philosophical manner
Descriptive varieties of philosophical commentary
No full textIn this article, the author argues that philosophical criticism as a form of biblical criticism can supplement literary-historical interpretation. Descriptive philosophical analysis has as its primary aim the clarification of meaning, namely understanding - not the justification or critique - of truth-claims. Three forms of functional philosophical commentary are discussed: presupposition reconstruction, conceptual analysis and philosophical translation. The objective is to demonstrate how these varieties of philosophical exegesis aimed at understanding rather than at adjudication are able to reveal dimensions in the text otherwise inaccessible to non-philosophical approaches to the Hebrew Bible.http://reference.sabinet.co.za/webx/access/electronic_journals/oldtest/oldtest_v23_n2_a3.pd
WHAT IS A GOD LIKE? META-THEISTIC PRESUPPOSITIONS IN THE LETTER OF JEREMIAH
No full textIn the apocryphal text of the Letter (Epistle) of Jeremiah (Ep Jer), a long list of reasons is given by the implied author as to why certain entities alleged to be gods are not in fact such. Brief summaries of the author’s various points characterise scholarly perspectives thereon. What has been overlooked in the research, however, and the topic of this article, concerns the converse fact that, in the construction of a negative identity for divinity, the text also assumes a lot about what a god must actually be like. Moreover, what is implicit in these “meta-theistic†presuppositions has never before been identified; hence the need for an attempted inferential reconstruction of what, according to the polemics of Ep Jer, makes a god divine.</jats:p
WHAT IS YOUR GOD? A CLASSIC PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVE ON ×לי -X THEOPHORY IN THE HEBREW BIBLE
No full textWhat, according to the Hebrew Bible, was a god assumed to be? In this article the author looks at data potentially relevant to any attempt at answering this question within a sub-type of ×ל theophory in the Hebrew Bible. These involve personal names that can be rendered into English as “My god is xâ€, where x denotes a phenomenon the deity is prima facie wholly identified with. The approach adopted by the study is philosophical in general and descriptively metaphysical in particular. The objective is to provide an experimental clarification of this particular sub-type of proper names in Biblical Hebrew with the aid of technical conceptual distinctions found within mainstream interpretations of Aristotle’s theory of predication.</jats:p
A Comparative-Philosophical Solution to the Problem of Part-Whole Relations Between רוח -Type Entities in the Hebrew Bible
Get PDFWhat has been called “the pneumatology†of the Hebrew Bible is generally held to be an unsolved problem. To this day, available research operates on the assumption of a “missing link†between theological, cosmological, and anthropological domains distinguished within the meta-language. This is indeed evident from a comparative-philosophical perspective in that the conceptual background for רוח -type entities as encountered in scholarly discourse comes across as ontologically disjointed and metaphysically fragmented. In the present article, the author argues that the riddle of “The One and the Many†is a pseudo-problem generated by anachronistic Platonic dualism supervening on inquiries into the assumed nature of רוח as “Ursubstanz†and the mereology of רוח -type entities in the world of the text. In addition, a unified theory is put forward with reference to the problem of part-whole relations as can be reconstructed from the perspective of more monistic conceptions of spirit in the associated history and philosophy of religion
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