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Archive for the ‘reseña’ Category

rumors of demise are overstated: Gramophone

Posted in reseña, tagged , , on September 21, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Conventional wisdom and damned statistics conspire to persuade that the population of classical music listeners is declining measurably year upon year. You’d never know it from reading GRAMOPHONE. Readers are typically devotees of the musical form and not about to let the rest of the world persuade them that their devotion is misplaced or–horrors–out of date. GRAMOPHONE obliges them with passionate coverage of the artists, the music, and the industry. (more…)

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endearing writing from an accomplished story-teller: Meir Shalev, The Blue Mountain

Posted in reseña, tagged , , , on September 20, 2007| Leave a Comment »

The Eastern European emigrants to Palestine at the beginning of the 20th century assured that what would become known as the ‘Second Aliyah’ would bear a Yiddish accent, a socialist ethic, and a hard-nosed disdain for the religious Zionism of some fellow travelers. Meir Shalev provides us an angle on their experience that makes it difficult to reduce their exploits to those of secular saints and impossible not to love them for their deeply human foibles. (more…)

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thoughtful primer on preaching from a master preacher: Elizabeth Achtemeier, Preaching from the Old Testament

Posted in denkschrift, reseña, tagged , , on September 20, 2007| 2 Comments »

The author of these thirty-two short chapters begins and ends with the assumption that problems we experience with the Old Testament are our problem, not the Bible’s. This subordination of the Bible reader to the well-weathered book he holds in his hand opens doors, not to forced harmonizations of problematic passages but to fresh reappraisal of difficult texts on their own terms. (more…)

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explicit methodology, for good and for ill: Peter D. Quinn-Miscall, Reading Isaiah. Poetry and Vision

Posted in denkschrift, reseña, tagged , , , on September 20, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Perhaps it requires a breakdown of certainties and ‘assured results’ like the one that has reigned in Isaiah studies for two decades to produce a book like this. In the wake of a century of historical reconstruction of the stages by which the book of Isaiah is alleged to have grown, Peter Quinn-Miscall is clear about what he feels we do not know. His ‘new way’ of reading Isaiah is meant to allow readers to make their own decisions about the ambiguities and contradictions which he believes characterise this long and eminently quotable Old Testament book. (more…)

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an underrated work by a first-rate Old Testament theologian: R. W. L. Moberly, The Old Testament of the Old Testament (Overtures to Biblical Theology)

Posted in denkschrift, reseña, tagged , , on September 20, 2007| Leave a Comment »

The republication of Moberly’s 1992 study in an accessible paperback provides a further look at this textually-focussed work of Old Testament theology at a time when the reconfiguration within Pentateuchal studies has had another decade to run it course. The ‘revelations of the divine name’ in Exodus chapters three and six are key texts for classical Pentateuchal criticism. It is there that such an approach to the text finds one of the most notorious disjunctions between the ‘Yahwist’ source, on the one hand, and the ‘Elohist’ and ‘Priestly’ sources, on the other. (more…)

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sensible and impassioned erudition: Paul J. Achtemeier, Inspiration and Authority. Nature and Function of Christian Scripture

Posted in denkschrift, reseña, tagged , , on September 20, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Nearly two decades after initial publication under a different title, this lightly revised and expanded second edition renews Paul Achtemeier’s irenic arbitration of a discussion which tends in more acerbic directions. In seven accessible chapters, he seeks to understand how the Bible is different. (more…)

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methodological precision for readers of biblical narrative: J. P. Fokkelman, Reading Biblical Narrative. An Introductory Guide

Posted in denkschrift, reseña, tagged , , on September 20, 2007| Leave a Comment »

This book is meant to teach people to ‘read with understanding’. It accomplishes its objective by inviting its reader to go back over the same biblical narratives numerous times, viewing the text through a different lens on each visit. One is trained to seek out each story’s hero, a concept that is linked to the notion of quest (the effort to solve a problem). Fokkelman believes that the distance separating us from the biblical stories is not to be feared, since a well-written story will ‘come into its own’ when it meets an attentive reader. The book places the concepts and nomenclature of narratology in the hands of the Bible reader, whose subjectivity is not to be lamented. Rather, it is the sphere in which he encounters the text’s art. Meaning is conferred in the interplay of the reader who bestows it and the text which in some sense ‘has’ it. (more…)

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an encyclopedia of information and discerning interpretation: Philip S. Johnston, Shades of Sheol. Death and Afterlife in the Old Testament

Posted in denkschrift, reseña, tagged , , on September 20, 2007| Leave a Comment »

The author organises this encyclopaedic study under four parts: Death, the Underworld, the Dead, and the Afterlife. An introductory apology for the study confronts the reader with a paradox: death and the underworld are fascinating topics for Judaism, Christianity, and modern scholarship, yet ‘Israel’s religious writers were not particularly concerned with the underworld or with the dead. The related to Yahweh in this life, and were relatively uninterested in the life hereafter.’ (more…)

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An Old Testament scholar goes theological and pastoral, with admirable results: Christopher R. Seitz, Figured Out. Typology and Providence in Christian Scripture

Posted in denkschrift, reseña, tagged , , on September 20, 2007| Leave a Comment »

This spirited, fascinating, and occasionally sermonic book is noteworthy not exclusively for its subject matter, some of which falls outside of the author’s principal field of Old Testament criticism. Rather, its interest lies in the incursion of a main exponent of B. Childs-style ‘canonical criticism’ into ethical, pastoral, and ecclesial arenas which frequently remain beyond the horizon of biblical scholars. (more…)

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a must read for any scholar of Jewish and/or Christian messianism: William Horbury, Jewish Messianism and the Cult of Christ

Posted in denkschrift, reseña, tagged , on September 17, 2007| 2 Comments »

Four densely argued chapters argue for a coherent and pervasive messianic concept in the Old Testament and subsequent Jewish literature in a way that cuts across recent trends in the field. Horbury’s first chapter (“Messianism and the Old Testament”) lays out the case for a messianism that grows organically out of the Old Testament materials from earliest times. While not rigid, a coherent messianic myth probably existed from the early monarchy. Far from being an insignificant concept, the ‘widespread currency of the unexplained technical term’ for ‘Messiah’ together with fuller designations had spread across several languages by at least the second century BC, coherently referring to a ‘rightful ruler of Israel … the coming Davidic king’. This chapter complements analysis of the textual inventory with attention to ‘landmarks in the study of the origins of messianism.’ The argument is advanced that the supposed mutual incompatibility between God’s unmediated rule and Messiah’s rule which has much occupied scholars is a false dichotomy, since the texts show little concern to exclude one while focussing upon the other. The editing of the individual biblical books reflects a messianic preoccupation that encourages finding in the canon a ‘coherent series of messianic prophecies’. This circumstance fomented both the reading of still further oracles in this light and greater specificity as the tradition advanced. Such a development of the tradition will have been influenced by forms familiar to Israel’s cultural neighbours, as by the presence of ‘messianic prototypes’ within the Bible itself (Moses, David, et al.). (more…)

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