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Posts Tagged ‘biblical interpretation’

stilling the waves: Psalm 89

Posted in textures, tagged , on April 20, 2014| Leave a Comment »

The Bible’s Old Testament argues for what we today call ‘monotheism’ by asking a question.

‘Who is like him?’ and ‘Who is like you?’ are the rhetorical thrusts that celebrate YHWH’s uniqueness or, more precisely, his incomparability. (more…)

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early start: Psalm 71

Posted in textures, tagged , , on July 15, 2012| Leave a Comment »

When the writer of Psalm 71 pleads with YHWH to spare him from the murderous intent of his adversaries, he banks on the long relationship that has bound the two together. Crudely put, he reminds YHWH that you don’t abandon an old friend in his darkest hour.

At the core of this extraordinary interaction lies an almost hidden truth: the writer himself did not establish this friendship. It predates his own birth, to say nothing of his eventual capacity to engage the relationship as a rational, articulate person. (more…)

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Legion: Luke 8

Posted in textures, tagged , , on March 29, 2012| Leave a Comment »

It is difficult, absent the strong smells and hideous noises that cling to chaos and its victims, to read off the page the full horror of the scene:

When Jesus had stepped out on land, there met him a man from the city who had demons. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he had not lived in a house but among the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell down before him and said with a loud voice, ‘What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me.’ For he had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many a time it had seized him. He was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the desert.) (Luke 8:27–29 ESV)

Yet the deepest terror of the moment lurks neither in the sight nor in the sound of it. Rather, it comes to us in the single word with which this poor man responds to Jesus’ probing question:

Jesus then asked him, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Legion,’ for many demons had entered him. (Luke 8:30 ESV) (more…)

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and Jesus gave him to his mother: Luke 7

Posted in textures, tagged , , on March 26, 2012| 2 Comments »

Jesus’ attention is so often drawn to women with no way out of their predicament.

As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, ‘Do not weep.’ (Luke 7:12–13 NRSV)

The narrative’s description of the unnamed woman, bereft now of a son and perhaps of her last reliable companion and provider, leaves her alone in a crowd. The details are both sparse and stark. The dead man had been her only son. Her husband had preceded their son in death. (more…)

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ease and unease: Revelation 18, Psalm 146

Posted in textures, tagged , , , on December 27, 2011| Leave a Comment »

The biblical witness privileges the anxiety that we resist.

Taking up a motif that is common to the Old Testament prophets, the Book of Revelation celebrates the demise of ‘Babylon’ by mocking the ease in which she had luxuriated.

Give her (that is, to Babylon) as much torture and grief as the glory and luxury she gave herself. In her heart she boasts, ‘I sit as queen; I am not a widow, and I will never mourn.’ (Revelation 18:7 NIV)

It is often this way when a privileged class of human beings or an erstwhile superpower comes under YHWH’s judgment. Sarcastic irony is deployed against the certainty with which the fallen victim once assumed that his wealth and safety would endure forever. When one gathers such statements together, it appears almost as though presumption itself stands as an indictment again the one who deploys it to ward off the fear of fragility that lesser mortals endure as a feature of everyday life. (more…)

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note: Amnon Shapira, ‘On Women’s Equal Standing in the Bible—a Sketch: a feminist re-reading of the Hebrew Bible: a typological review (Hebrew Studies LX, pp. 7–42)

Posted in reseña, tagged , on December 18, 2010| Leave a Comment »

The abstract of Shapira’s article reads as follows:

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1895) is considered the pioneer of feminist literature; after her, in the 1950s, came Simone De Beuvoir (The Second Sex), and the latest crop of feminist writers includes Phyllis Trible, Mieke Bal, Ester Fuchs, Cheryl Exum, Tikva Frymer-Kensky, Ilana Pardes, and many others. These women deal also with the Bible, as they claim that the female characters, such as Eve and Miriam, have a great influence on the personal and social status of women until today. This is especially true in the Christian world, whose cultural base was the Bible.

The article presents an overview of seven areas in the Bible which point up the equality, and even the superiority of women, and our conclusions are: A) The Bible, which is mainly patriarchal, has an additional, parallel direction, in which there is a clear trend of feminine equality; B) The majority in the Bible is religious, that is, equality of the woman as a person before God, like the equality of each person within the human race; C) From this we see that the Jewish religion, as portrayed in the Bible, contains the elements which form the theological and historical base of equality; D) A possible conclusion from this work is that this ‘feminine’ side of the Bible, from Sarah and Miriam, may become the base at this time for spiritual renewal.

Shapira approaches the text synchronically. The author treats the biblical material responsibly, not supposing that conventional conclusions about the biblical text’s ‘patriarchal’ convictions can be overturned. However, Shapira finds a kind of counter-current to patriarchality that can be accessed as an alternative and subordinate biblical ideology that may be employed to construct a biblically-dependent ideology that hints at something like gender equality even if the data do not prove enough ‘to testify to biblical equality between men and women in the sense which modern democracy defines “equality”.

The author appears both to place value upon the biblical data for constructing an adequate contemporary ideology and to reckon with the possibility that this contribution may manifest itself in the minimalistic shape of a discernible counter-ideology in the biblical materials.

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deporting, revealing: Daniel 2

Posted in textures, tagged , , on November 26, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Babylon’s king Nebuchadnezzar does not come off well in the biblical book of Daniel. It is not difficult to find in the text’s description of his behavior the definition of a neurotic fool.

Yet below the obvious humorous touches in the book’s way of telling a story, a more subtle irony may be detected. Frankly, it is difficult to know whether this kind of thing is really there or whether we read it into the text because we rather like this kind of thing. One such soft-spoken irony is borne along by the Aramaic word gala’ and related forms. (more…)

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