1,807 research outputs found
Artful living and the eradication of worry in Søren Kierkegaard's interpretation of Matthew 6:24-34
No full textDanish thinker Søren Kierkegaard published fourteen discourses, across four collections, on Matthew 6:24-34. The repeated readings of the biblical text, whose themes include the choice between God and mammon, worry, what it means to consider the birds and lilies, and how to seek first the kingdom of God, converge with Kierkegaard’s interest in anxiety, despair, worry, subjectivity, indirect communication, choice, the moment, and life before God. Accordingly, the discourses make connections with his larger works, elucidate frequently explored Kierkegaardian themes in recent scholarship, and contribute to his critique of nineteenth-century Copenhagen. Additionally, the collections present an interpretation of each verse and phrase of Matthew’s text and, held up against modern Matthew scholarship, they correlate with and contribute to Sermon on the Mount and New Testament studies. Kierkegaard’s reading of Matthew also holds implications for the practice of biblical interpretation as it promotes the importance of awareness of sin, interestedness, and appropriation as central to proper reading. His emphasis on Christ as the primary exemplar of Matthew’s text adds an additional Christological element to his hermeneutic. Furthermore, the discourses serve as spiritual treatises which provide the reader with theological terminology to help confront the problem of worry and suffering. In light of a human being’s distinctiveness as imago Dei, Kierkegaard elucidates ways an individual may respond artfully to the ongoing possibility of worry, a possibility which the discourses connect with Christian anthropology and external labels associated with possessions and status. The Matthew 6 discourses intimate Kierkegaard’s sympathy with classic Christian spirituality and, in combination with the cultural-ecclesiastical critique, the creative exegesis, and the in-depth analysis of the cause of and cure for worry, his work emerges as an excellent example of spiritual theology
Matthew’s Emmanuel Messiah: a paradigm of presence for god's people
No full textThe motif of divine presence is a clear phenomenon within the Gospel of Matthew. The modern critical means for assessing the ancient biblical text have multiplied to the point, some claim, of disparity. This study employs both narrative and redaction criticism in an attempt to respond authentically to the structural, historical and theological dimensions of Matthew's Gospel. This study begins with the presumption of the wholeness and integrity of Matthew's narrative, and assumes the gospel story to have an inherently dramatic structure which invites readers to inhabit imaginatively its narrative world and respond to its call. But since we are concerned with the role of both reader and author, this study also assumes a text with an historical author and context. The introduction focuses on the meta-critical dilemma facing New Testament students - what is the text and how do we read it? - and seeks some balance in terms of Krieger's analogy of the text as both window and mirror. Proposed is a narrative reading of Matthew's presence motif alongside a redaction critical assessment of it. In Chapter 2 the elements of narrative theory are introduced and relevant terms defined: the structure of narrative, the function of the narrator, points of view. Chapter 3 becomes an exercise in narrative reading, with Matthew's presence motif providing the focus, and the implied reader’s interaction with the story being predominant in interpretation. Characters, rhetorical devices, and points of view are discussed, to understand the motif's development throughout the story's progress. The thrust of Chapter 4 is thereafter to examine divine presence as a dominant motif within Matthew's most important literary context: the Jewish scriptures. Here the primary paradigms of divine presence provided by the Patriarchs, the Sinai experience, and the Davidic-Zion traditions are assessed. Chapter 5 follows with a more detailed examination of the OT "I am with you/God is with us" formula and its µeo' vµwv/ηuwv language, so strongly connected to Matthew's presence motif. Chapters 6-8 build on these investigations with a closer analysis of the three critical "presence passages" of Mt 1:23. 18:20 and 28:20. The passages and their contexts are probed from a redaction critical perspective, guided by the narrative investigation of Chapter 3, and the background from Chapters 4 and 5.The three major "presence passages" examined in Chapters 6-8 are also complimented by a number of secondary issues: worship, wisdom, the Spirit and the poor in Matthew, and their relation to Jesus' divine presence. These are discussed in Chapter 9. Chapter 10 summarizes and looks briefly at some implications. Matthew' presence motif proves to be an important element of the Gospel’s rhetorical design, redactional strategy and Christology. The presence of Jesus, the Emmanuel Messiah, exhibited in his risen authority, becomes the focus of his people's hopes and experiences in the post-Easter world. What the presence of Yahweh was to his people. Jesus now provides in a new paradigm for his people - his followers, the little ones, the poor and the marginalized, from all nations
Selected letters of Matthew Arnold
No full textSelected Letters of Matthew Arnold is a collection of 216 letters by the Victorian poet and critic Matthew Arnold (1822-88). The letters are arranged chronologically and grouped under four headings that represent stages in Arnold's adult life and career: "The Young Poet, 1844-51 " "The Married Poet and Inspector of Schools, 1851-57," "The Professor of Poetry and Literary Critic, 1857-67," and "The Critic of Society and Religion 1867-88." In these letters, Arnold, who wrote no autobiography, tells the story of his life and expresses his intimate views on a variety of subjects. In order to include the largest possible selection of interesting letters from both previously published and unpublished sources, some of the letters are given in part while others are given in their complete form. Along with the most important letters from the 1895 edition by G. W. E. Russell - principally made up of letters to family members - and the 1932 edition of letters to Author Hugh Clough by Howard F. Lowry, this new collection incorporates many significant letters from other sources, including 49 previously unpublished letters. Most of the Russell and Lowry letters have been newly edited, using the manuscript collections at Yale University and Balliol College, Oxford
Recommended from our members
Matthew Paris the Artist
No full textMatthew Paris is the one English, indeed European, artist of the thirteenth century whose life, work, character and thought-processes are remotely open to scrutiny. He is also one of the few men of his age for whom we may even feel actual affection. Matthew was entertaining, industrious, pugnacious, blessed with remarkable powers of assimilation, cautious about the traps of the world, yet one of the liveliest observers of the ‘modern’. Literary men with connexions to the visual arts of any description in the English Middle Ages were extremely rare: Chaucer served briefly as a Clerk of the King’s Works . Matthew was neither a literary nor an artistic genius, yet the prodigious and well-preserved character of his work remains in a class of its own, and in retrospect he can be said to have belonged to an insular tradition of putting words into pictures . His first obligations were to his monastic profession and the Opus Dei; Matthew was secondly a compiler or author, and only thirdly an artist, though not in any professional sense. While others recognised his possession of special skills, there is no evidence that he worked for those with whom he had any prior connection, in return for remuneration. Matthew had a life outside the cloister: he was in Henry III’s presence at Westminster in 1247 and clearly had court contacts, and in Norway in 1248-9. In this he was like contemporary cloister monk-artists such as William the monk of Westminster, one of the king’s beloved painters at several of his residences . But there can be no doubt that Matthew was based firmly at St Albans and benefitted from its wealth and substantial literary and artistic holdings . Matthew appears usually to have worked alone or with limited assistance, and he established no artistic tradition at his monastery which outlived him
Beauty for the Present: Mill, Arnold, Ruskin and Aesthetic Education
No full textThe present thesis examines the idea of aesthetic education of three eminent Victorians: John Stuart Mill, Matthew Arnold and John Ruskin. By focusing on the essence of what they meant with ‘the cultivation of the beautiful’ and, more importantly, the way their ideas of beauty informed their criticism of society, my study aims to contribute to our understanding of the idea of aesthetic education in the Victorian context and, further, to participate in a recent debate about the nature of beauty and aesthetic education.
Chapter One focuses on John Stuart Mill’s concept of ‘feeling’ in a series of essays. I will demonstrate how Mill’s idea of ‘aesthetic education’ was an ‘education of feelings,’ and moreover, how this idea was integrated into his literary criticism, his later critique of democratisation, his description of an ideal liberal society and even his own style of writing. Chapter Two contains a comparative study of Matthew Arnold and Friedrich Schiller. Through a rereading of Arnold, I will argue that his idea of aesthetic education is essentially Schillerian and that their resemblance consists primarily in their stress on the importance of aesthetic unity for modern life, which was becoming increasingly fragmentary and multitudinous. Chapter Three examines John Ruskin’s idea of aesthetic education and concentrates particularly on the cultivation of perception. Perception, as I shall show, was pivotal in Ruskin’s idea of aesthetic education. Just as what happened in Mill and Arnold, the emphasis on the education of seeing continued from his early writings well into his art and social criticisms. It not only differentiated him from his fellow art critics; the conviction that people should perceive with a pure heart also enabled him to link observation of artistic details with moral criticism of contemporary society and, thereby, to turn the cultivation of the beautiful into a moral-aesthetic experience
Discernment of relevation in the Gospel of Matthew
No full textEThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo
All this marvelous potential Robert Kennedy's 1968 tour of Appalachia
No full text"In early 1968, Senator Robert F. Kennedy ventured deep into the heart of Eastern Kentucky to gauge the progress of President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. Author Matthew Algeo meticulously retraces RFK's tour of the region, visiting the places he visited and meeting with the people he met, and explains how and why the region has changed since 1968, and why it matters for the rest of the country"-
Author Correction: Global diversity and biogeography of bacterial communities in wastewater treatment plants (Nature Microbiology, (2019), 4, 7, (1183-1195), 10.1038/s41564-019-0426-5)
No full textIn the version of this Article originally published, the name of the author ‘Mathew Robert Brown’ was incorrectly written as ‘Mathew Brown’ in the main author list and as ‘Matthew Brown’ in the Global Water Microbiome Consortium list. In addition, in the Global Water Microbiome Consortium list, the names of the authors ‘Kevin F. Boehnke’, ‘Janeth Sanabria’ and ‘Adalberto Noyola’ were incorrectly written as ‘Kevin Boehnke’, ‘Janeth Sanabria Gómez’ and ‘Adalberto Noyola Robles’, respectively. The names have now been corrected and the author initials in the author contributions section updated accordingly
The 'slave of all': a tradition-historical study of a synoptic saying
No full textThis thesis is intended to be a study of the 'slave of all' saying, which is found in the Synoptic Gospels (Mk 10.35-45; Mk 9.33-7; Lk 22.24-7 and Mt 23.1-12). Our primary goal is to study how the early Christian communities employed this logion. The saying is examined against the background of Jewish attitudes towards slavery. A comparison of the key Torah laws regulating slavery reveals the development of an anti-slavery attitude. Often this anti-slavery sentiment is associated with feelings of Jewish nationalism. Biblical and non-Biblical materials show this attitude continued into the first century CE. Secondly, we explored the possibility that Jesus did not adhere to this anti- slavery attitude. In addition to a lack of evidence that Jesus was a Jewish nationalist, we argued that Jesus probably used slavery imagery as a positive illustration. It was argued that the 'slave of all' saying is a dominical logion. A comparison of the various pericopes resulted in the conclusion that the saying was originally intended as a rebuke of misdirected ambition. It was probably uttered at a meal setting when the disciples had begun to argue about personal greatness. The remainder of the thesis individually examined the pericopes where the 'slave of all' saying is used. The Gospel of Mark employs the saying twice in a major literary unit consisting of 8.22-10.52. Mk 10.35-45 uses the logion to delineate the Marcan community's attitude towards leadership. Mk 9.33-7 deals with membership in the community of faith. It was argued that Lk 22.24-7, which is seen to be independent of Mk 10.35- 45, takes up the saying and very specifically directs it at the leaders of the Lucan community. Filially, the saying is used by Matthew when dealing with post 70 CE factionalism between his Jewish Christian community and the local Pharisees. The logion is used to summarize the Jewish Christian understanding of leadership
Responses to the Messianic Claim: Characterization as Rhetorical Device in the Gospel of Matthew
No full textWhile the Gospel of Matthew has long been recognized as having a distinctly “Jewish” orientation, the decades following World War II witnessed a growing interest among scholars asking whether Matthew could be regarded as “anti-Jewish,” or as some would argue, “anti-Semitic.” A survey of scholarly works published in recent decades dealing with this issue reveals that most use the historical-critical and socio-critical methods to determine the most plausible explanation for the presence of so-called “anti-Jewish” elements in Matthew. This study is intended to complement historical-critical and socio-critical studies done by others by employing literary-critical methods to support further the conclusion that Matthew’s so-called “anti-Jewish” elements are best understood as a thoroughly Jewish critique of Jewish opponents within the context of Jewish sectarian rivalry.
This study employs the basic principles of narrative criticism, as outlined by Mark Allan Powell, along with the basic principles of rhetorical criticism, as outlined by modern literary theorists such as George A. Kennedy, Burton L. Mack, and Sonja K. Foss. Special attention is given to the author’s use of character and characterization as rhetorical device. Using a more nuanced approach, this study argues that the Gospel of Matthew may be read as a two-sided rhetorical argument presented in narrative form in which the author uses characters and characterization to represent divergent standpoints and different responses to the claim that God’s plan of salvation for Israel, which now also encompasses all the nations/Gentiles, is realized in and through Jesus the Messiah. Accordingly, Matthew’s so-called “anti-Jewish” elements are to be understood not as commentary on ethnic Jews, nor as a sign of rejection of Judaism, but rather as heated rhetoric used to highlight and explain certain details about the antagonists in his story who represent the antithesis to his argument
- …
