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Archive for the ‘denkschrift’ Category

Is Isaiah also among the wise?: J. William Whedbee, Isaiah and Wisdom

Posted in denkschrift, reseña, tagged , , on September 8, 2007| Leave a Comment »

In five well-balanced chapters, the author opens up the important question about the extent to which the prophet Isaiah—and thus the book that bears his name—was influenced by the strain of Israelite reflection that scholars call ‘wisdom’. In setting forth his apology and objectives, Whedbee recognizes the danger of explaining the prophets systematically based upon a narrow selection of texts. For some time, scholars drove a deep wedge between the ‘prophet’s word’ and the ‘sage’s counsel’. (more…)

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grief on ice: Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (Penguin Classics)

Posted in denkschrift, reseña, tagged , , , on September 8, 2007| 1 Comment »

Forget everything you’ve heard about its obscene girth (1444 pages in my edition). Throw away the popular notion that it’s an impenetrable Russian monster where every character has four different names. You may have other issues that separate you from the epic tale Tolstoy set during Napoleon’s early nineteenth-century invasion of Russia. Whatever they are, get over them already and read this great story, considered by some to be the finest novel ever written. (more…)

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a master craftsman plies his trade in an open storefront: Walther Zimmerli, I Am Yahweh

Posted in denkschrift, reseña, tagged , , , on September 7, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Alongside Gerhard von Rad, Walther Zimmerli is one of the giants of 20th-century biblical theology. In his customarily lively prose, Brueggemann introduces this collection of four essays by showing how Zimmerli is a model of theologically-acute biblical criticism who `stays close to the text’ and therefore does not pay too high a price for the rebuttal of larger concepts like those put forth by von Rad, G.E. Wright and others of the time. Brueggemann paid his dues in the scholarly salt mines by editing and interpreting Zimmerli and H.W. Wolff relatively early in his career, labor that certainly enriched his own tradition criticism later on. The essay that introduces this volume contains some delicious irony, such as the observation that recent (in 1982) continental scholarship is `inclined to return to a critical, pretheological perspective’. This slightly acid turnabout on the terms `theological’ and `precritical’ anticipates criticism of the mature Brueggemann and sometime soul-mates like B. Childs for being `too theological’ and even `precritical’. (more…)

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tradition criticism with panache: Hans Walter Wolff and Walter Brueggemann, The Vitality of Old Testament Traditions

Posted in denkschrift, reseña, tagged , , on September 7, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Some books introduce their topic more clearly by analyzing its various components parts than by taking a standard survey approach. This is the case with Brueggemann and Wolff’s excellent analysis of the Pentateuchal sources. Readers will discover in this slim volume a clear introduction to the standard ‘sources’ of Pentateuchal criticism, but also a compelling presentation of form/tradition criticism in the tradition of G. von Rad. (more…)

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illuminating thoughts on a noble task: Craig R. Dykstra, Christian education and the moral life. An evaluation of and alternative to Kohlberg

Posted in denkschrift, reseña, tagged , , , on September 7, 2007| Leave a Comment »

In this thoroughly revised Princeton University doctoral dissertation, Craig Dykstra contrasts L. Kohlberg’s `juridical (decision-making) ethics’ with his own proposal for `visional ethics’. As the author notes in his introduction (pp. 1-4), the same landscape looks rather differently when viewed from these two divergent angles. Dykstra has adapted the fruit of his doctoral labors to a form likely to prove more helpful to religious educators, a group whose affinity to Kohlbergian ethics Dykstra finds surprising. (more…)

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Creation against chaos, creation for community: Bernhard W. Anderson, Creation Versus Chaos. The Reinterpretation of Mythical Symbolism in the Bible

Posted in denkschrift, tagged , , on September 7, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Reissued with a new afterword twenty years after its initial publication, this little volume places in the reader’s hands a reliable and thought-provoking survey of how Israelite faith reinterpreted the mythical elements that lay strewn about its terrain. American Jews and American Christians look, speak, and think like Americans, so Belgium Jews and Christians do the same in that country. Even so, Israel-as it worked out the often radical commitments of Yahwistic faith-would have looked, lived, written and prayed in a manner well accented by the Canaanite milieu in which it developed. It is the religio-mythical elements of that environment to which Anderson so helpfully directs his scrutiny. (more…)

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no word less deconstructible than hope: Walter Brueggemann, Ichabod Toward Home. The Journey of Gods Glory

Posted in denkschrift, reseña, tagged , , on September 7, 2007| Leave a Comment »

This is not Walter Brueggemann’s best book. Still, it is the measure of this man’s perceptive insight that a lecture series at Princeton Theological Seminary with off-the-cuff roughnessess still evident can make for the kind of compelling reading that merely fine writers are fortunate to achieve once or twice in a career. (more…)

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Begin *here*!: Bernard Lewis, The Crisis of Islam. Holy War and Unholy Terror

Posted in denkschrift, reseña on September 7, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Full product information for this item, together with my review, my ranking of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

A first reader of this renowned Princeton Arabist might puzzle for a moment over whether he is a sympathist or an adversary of Arabs, Islam, and the Muslims. He is both. (more…)

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a contrarian must read for biblical scholars who assume too much: Jon D. Levenson, The Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and Historical Criticism. Jews and Christians in Biblical Studies

Posted in denkschrift, reseña, tagged , , on September 7, 2007| Leave a Comment »

These six collected essays from one of biblical scholarship’s leading thoughtful curmudgeons prove beyond doubt that unexamined assumptions corrode the core of the enterprise of biblical scholarship in the secular academy. That they come from the pen of a Jewish scholar teaching at one of liberal Protestantism’s foremost shrines (Harvard Divinity School) is only the first irony that Levenson explores here with contrarian zeal. Readers who believe in the craft—whether naively or upon reflection—will find Levenson’s articles an unsettling and necessary read. (more…)

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possibly Brueggemann’s best work: Walter Brueggemann, The Land. Place As Gift, Promise, and Challenge in Biblical Faith (Overtures to Biblical Theology)

Posted in denkschrift, reseña, tagged , , on September 7, 2007| 7 Comments »

Though this may be the best of Walter Brueggemann’s many books, it is not a work for the faint of heart. Brueggemann’s prose sometimes seems to overtake his meaning. One wonders at times-Brueggemann himself might say-whether there is a surfeit of meaning in this text that eludes immediate penetration, or simply a surplus of words. (more…)

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