201,390 research outputs found
The voice of Jesus in six parables and their interpreters
No full text'Figures of speech' provide a suggestive key for approaching the question of Jesus' individual tone of voice. Apprehending a figure implies insight into an intention, and beyond intention to discern unconscious influences upon the speaker. This is the conceptual framework for a study of the 'voice of Jesus' in six parables peculiar to Luke (10:25-37; 15:11-32; 16:1-9; 16:19-31; 18:1-8; 18:9-14) and in commentaries upon them. In the premodern era commentators approached the parables with an immediacy of insight, seeking the divine intention behind the texts. Nevertheless we may hear the voice of Jesus echoing in their commentaries in morally specific tones. In the work of Jülicher 'insight', though repudiated, is still important, as he seeks the intention of Jesus through the figure of simile. Jülicher offers insight into Jesus as a passionate communicator, but goes beyond Jesus' intention in making him a propounder of generalities. More recently a concern with the intention of Jesus is replaced by a concern with how his voice was heard. The necessity of insight remains apparent in B.B. Scott's use of metaphor as an interpretative key. An impression is given of Jesus as a provocative subversive. In their context in Luke-Acts, the parables function as metonymies of the gospel, and yield an impression of the voice of Jesus as suggestively concerned with the life of this world. In the ministry of Jesus the parables function as synecdoches, offering hearers a realistic and hopeful 'part' of the world from which they must fashion a 'whole’. Against the background of Scripture the parables display a deep continuity with older forms of discourse, but also important tokens of newness. A stream of influence can be traced from the Old Testament, through Jesus and Luke, and on through their interpreters, though recently its course has been somewhat diverted
Jesus Remembered in 1 Peter? Early Jesus Traditions, Isaiah 53, and 1 Pet 2.21-25
No full textThis is the accepted version of the chapter. Please cite the published version which is available via http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/james-1-2-peter-and-early-jesus-traditions-9780567420534.First presented as a paper at SBL, this chapter argues that 1 Pet 2.21-25 reflects knowledge of various traditions concerning Jesus' trial, suffering, and death, though the lack of specific verbal overlaps does not indicate literary dependence on the Synoptic Passion Narratives. Through the extensive use of Isa 53, the author in effect "scripturalizes" the Passion narrative in ways that would, of course, prove highly influential and significant
The anger 01- jesus in mark's gospel
No full textThe textual variants in Markan passages depicting the anger of Jesus coupled with Matthaean and Lukan amendments to and omissions from them, suggest that discomfort at the thought of Jesus' anger is no merely modern phenomenon. Nevertheless its possibility still strikes some as bizarre and some as impossible. However, in this thesis I argue that, far from being extraneous or peripheral. Jesus' anger is integral to Mark's presentation of the gospel First, it illustrates Mark's claim that Jesus was the son of God. Many of the themes associated with God's anger in the Old Testament are discernible also in Mark's Gospel. Furthermore, in Mark Jesus alone expresses 6prn . and, while the indignations of others are invariably condemned, Jesus' expressions of anger are always cast in a positive and even divine light. Secondly the anger of Jesus highlights the importance of the various issues which were the subject of intense debate between Christians and Jews, within Judaism itself and among his own followers. The status of the law, the nature and purpose of miracles, the meaning of suffering, the roles of children, outsiders and Gentiles are all very much to the fore in the Markan pericopae which depict Jesus' anger. His anger proclaims their seriousness and the urgency with which they should be tackled The notion of Jesus' anger involves, inevitably, some recognition of the mystery surrounding his character and his relationship with God However, one of Mark's main points seems to be that Jesus is an enigma only to the hard of heart and the blind in perception. In the six Markan passages, which are the subject of this thesis, Jesus lays down clear principles for faith, action and discipline. His anger underlines their importance and his own authority
Those who heard it first: The political implications of the sermon on the mount to Jesus’ Jewish audience
No full textThis dissertation examines the Sermon on the Mount (in the Gospel of Matthew) from the perspective of politics and peace. It investigates not what Jesus meant, but what his audience heard and were likely to have understood. It does this in order to ascertain the novelty or otherwise of Jesus’ teachings on peace with regard to Jewish thought and political understandings of his time. His audience was primarily Jewish, and the political implications they drew from Jesus’ teachings would have been influenced by established Jewish thought on ethics and governance. This dissertation researches specifically this: how would Jesus’ Jewish listeners have interpreted the peace sayings of the Sermon on the Mount? This dissertation finds that the Jewish intellectual framework within which Jesus’ first audience heard the Sermon on the Mount contained many specific sayings found in Pirkei Avot, and also a history of practice of non-violent action found in Jewish tradition, and that the oral law and the Sermon on the Mount both reflect Jewish ethical ideologies of non-violent resistance.
This dissertation argues that, in the Sermon on the Mount, a very Jewish Jesus – a man true to the religio-political views of his day – reaffirms a Jewish ethical form of non-violent resistance. The most important evidence available is the Gospel of Matthew itself, Jewish ethical writings such as Pirkei Avot, other Mishna writings, and writings on the lex talionis. The evidence points to an audience that would have perceived Jesus as teaching non-violence in a context of resistance rather than completely passive submission. The overall finding of this dissertation will be that the writer of Matthew depicts a Jesus who, in style, form, and content, builds on a Jewish ethical foundation to promote non-violent assertion of equality and human dignity in the widely known and oft-cited Sermon on the Mount
Jesus and the Poor: Western Biblical Scholarship, Structural Violence, and Postcolonialism
No full textThis work offers a postcolonial critique of Western Jesus scholarship, focused specifically on discussions about Jesus and ‘the poor’ in British and North American scholarship. While remaining heavily engaged with Western biblical studies, this work challenges fundamental assumptions and projects of Western biblical studies, such as the ‘Quest for the Historical Jesus’, ultimately calling for postcolonial and liberationist readings to be acknowledged in the field as equally valid.
This work begins by using standard Western historical-critical methods to examine the extent to which Jesus and the gospel texts may have been shaped by social and economic factors. Focusing on Luke 4:16-30 and the ‘good news to the poor’ that Jesus announces at the Nazareth synagogue, it is argued that Western scholarship has tended to downplay the social and economic dimension of numerous gospel texts and sayings of Jesus. Further, it is argued that a large amount of scholarly work on Luke 4:16-30 downplays social and economic readings in favour of anti-Judaic and missionary focused readings, which ultimately serve to support Western religious imperialism and oppression of marginalised groups. The subjectivity of such readings is highlighted, and it is argued that such readings result from the positionality of the scholars in the US and the UK who, whilst purporting to illuminate history and the nature of the divine, end up producing writings that legitimise Western supremacy and ultimately perpetuate oppression.
Themes central to recent postcolonial biblical criticism, such as Jesus’ relationship to Empire, and methods of resistance to structural violence are also explored. It is concluded that, paradoxically, Jesus offered a fierce critique of the rich through ‘positive nonviolence’, utilising the threat of divine punishment in the afterlife to challenge the structural violence of economic inequality; a reading that has hitherto not been allowed to surface due to the firm grasp that Western capitalism has had upon biblical scholarship
Structuring Early Christian Memory: Jesus in Tradition, Performance, and Text
No full textSocial memory research has complicated the relationship between past and present as
that relationship finds expression in memorial acts (storytelling, music- and image-making, textproduction,
and so on). This relationship has emerged as a dialectic in which the phenomena
'past' and 'present' are mutually constitutive and implicating. The resultant 'messiness' directly
affects the procedures and products of 'historicaI Jesus' research, which has especially depended
upon the assumption that we can neatly and cleanly separate 'authentic' (past) from
'inauthentic' (present) traditions. This thesis establishes some problems that attend to this
assumption and attempts to establish a 'historical Jesus' programme that is more sensitive to the
entanglement of past and present. Social memory research has especially identified 'reputation' .
as a vehicle of this entanglement in the memory of specific historical persons. Therefore, Jesus'
reputation' plays a key analytic role in this project.
Another consequence of social memory research has been the emphatic insistence that
all memorial acts are culturally and socially conditioned; the meaning of 'memories', the
products of memorial act? emerges from the relationship of memorial acts and their social
contexts. One aspect of the gospels' social context that has been underappreciated in most New
Testament research is the contextualisation ofour written gospels within the vibrant and fluid
oral traditional milieux ofJesus and Israelite communities. This project examines and applies
the poetics of oral traditional narrative, including the textualisation of oral tradition, to our
written gospels.
The resultant theoretical perspective dramatically affects gospels and 'historical Jesus'
research. Since both these fields are too vast to encompass here, this project focuses its attention
on We appearance of Jesus' healing and exorcistic praxis in the sayings tradition. Afterwards, we
will suggest a few areas in which critics might fruitfully pursue future research in the gospels and
on tile historical Jesus
Sophia and the Johannine Jesus
No full textThis thesis examines the relationship between the Jewish figure of Sophia and the Johannine Jesus, Recognising the problem of identifying the female Sophia with the male Jesus, we ask how the Fourth Evangelist has tackled it and what effect, if any, the solution may have had on the portrayal of women within the Gospel. Following an introductory chapter outlining the scope of the thesis, Chapter Two examines the context from which John has drawn on Sophia. Bearing in mind always the monotheistic character of Judaism, we discover the way in which traits of ANE Goddesses have influenced the development of Sophia as a figure within Jewish thought. We find that by the time of the writing of John's Gospel, on the one hand there was a highly developed picture of Sophia as a feminine expression of God active in Israel's history, while on the other hand there were efforts to repress her gender significance. Chapter Three examines the relationship between this female figure and John's picture of Jesus. The Logos of the Prologue, found to be influenced at almost every turn by Sophia speculation, proves to be a useful cover employed by the Fourth Evangelist to effect the switch of gender from Sophia to Jesus. Further study shows that all the main themes of the Prologue are worked out in detail in the body of the Gospel. Hardly a major Johannine theme remains untouched by some measure of Sophia's influence. This leads us to the conclusion that John has intentionally presented us with Jesus as Jesus Sophia Incarnate. Chapter Four examines the possibility of a connection between the discerned Sophia christology and the prominent role played by women in the Gospel. We find that all the stories concerning women appear at important christologlcal points in the Gospel. Further investigation shows that all the women demonstrate the essential characteristics of discipleship, in a way in which the traditional male disciples of the Synoptic tradition do not. The women are seen to function as paradigms of discipleship for the community to which the Gospel Is addressed. In addition, traces of influence from Sophia speculation are also to be found in the way in which the stories concerning women are told. Finally, some reflections are offered on the wider implications of the findings in chapters three and four, along with some suggestions for further research
Methods and models in the third quest of the historical Jesus
No full textIn this thesis I examine some of the major contributions to current historical Jesus research, now commonly known as the third quest of the historical Jesus. As most of the participants in the third quest define their work primarily as historiography, in Chapter 11 situate these reconstructions in the landscape of present-day historiography, with special attention to the reaction of the authors in question to the challenge of postmodernism. In view of the methodological diversity of the third quest as well as the lack of consensus about the criteria to be used in the reconstructions or in their evaluation, after a brief survey in Chapter 2 of the history of "criteriology" in life-of-Jesus research, I found It necessary to devise my own list of evaluative criteria in Chapter 3. The general criteria are to do with the overall shape and style of the reconstructions, while the criteria of historical reasoning evaluate them in terms of their presentation as historiography. Finally, a modified version of the "traditional" criteria of the historical-critical method is designed to evaluate the text-related arguments within the reconstructions. In chapter 4 I analyse some selected contributions from the standpoint of the most hotly debated issue within the third quest, eschatology
What Led Jesus to be Called the Son of God? An Historical Investigation of how an Appellation of Alexander the Great and of the Roman Emperors came to be used of Jesus.
No full textAbstract of a Master of Letters Degree, Durham University
The Reverend Canon William Ernest Lionel Broad M.A., Durham University
By 100 CE the principal appellation of Jesus of Nazareth had become ’Son of God’; a title of such importance to his followers that one of their principle activities for the succeeding 350 years was to define its meaning. Yet this dissertation maintains that widespread belief that the title originates in the Hebrew Scriptures is misplaced. Investigation of Jewish literature leads to the discovery that the title ‘Son of God’ was seldom used in it and never in such a way as to justify it becoming Jesus’ most significant appellation. The aim of my thesis is to examine where else in the ancient world the appellation ‘Son of God’ was used, and, when it was used, to see if it could provide the basis for describing Jesus by this title. The objective of the dissertation is to establish that the use of this title by Greeks and Romans provided the model for Jesus of Nazareth to be called ‘Son of God’.
Chapter 1 examines the religions of Persia, Egypt and Greece and finds that, in the world of mythology, Greek heroes were born as a result of intercourse between a god and a human being and were called sons of the gods. Chapter 2 examines the career of Alexander the Great and especially his visit to the shrine at Siwa and finds that he was there proclaimed a son of god. It establishes that this proclamation transformed the appellation ‘Son of God’ from a mythological to a historical title and led to Alexander’s deification. Chapter 3 examines the Hebrew Scriptures and other Jewish literature with the results described above. Chapter 4 examines the use of the title ‘Son of God’ in the New Testament and discusses the development of this title in the unfolding history of the first century church. It finds that the title was first used of Jesus in Greece during Paul’s ministry to the gentiles and that it provided the motif for Mark’s Gospel. Chapter 5 assesses the use of ‘Son of God’ in post apostolic literature and establishes that, though this literature shows a development of the appellation, it provides no further clue as to it origin. Chapter 6 investigates the effect that the titling of Augustus and subsequent Roman emperors as sons of god had on the way Jesus was portrayed by the evangelists. In particular, it finds that Augustus, originally called a ‘Son of God’ because his father was deified on his death, is portrayed as a figure of such excellence that he was deified during his lifetime.
Chapter 7 concludes the thesis. It shows that Alexander, a person whose historical doings more than justified his being described as ‘the Great’ and who was surrounded by fabulous legends, provided a precedent for a human being to be called a ‘Son of God’ and hence for Jesus of Nazareth to be so described. It indicates how events at Siwa were a precursor of the baptism of Jesus, how one of the temptations was clearly modelled on Alexander’s experiences at Siwa and how Jesus’ reported age at his crucifixion was perhaps chosen because it was Alexander’s age when he died. It also shows how the widespread titling of Roman emperors as sons of gods seriously influenced the way Jesus was perceived as ‘Son of God’. Three appendices examine the birth stories of Alexander, the Messiah as ‘Son of God and some of the titles of Augustus that are relevant to the thesis
Heber J. Grant
No full textPhotograph of Heber J. Grant, he served as the 7th President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1918 to 1945
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