Interpretation articles from April 1994

Interpretation archives from April 1994

Psalm 146. (evangelism in the Bible)
April 1, 1994... DESPITE THE FACT that many believe that the psalms should be sung (which they should!) and not preached, I believe they are permeated with rich homiletical possibilities. Psalm 146 is a good example. The psalm introduces the fifth and final...

Isaiah 43:8-15. (evangelism in the Old Testament Bible)
April 1, 1994... This brief passage from Isaiah is an excellent one for showing both the necessity for and the task of evangelism. While it does not have a place in the ecumenical three-year lectionary cycle, it would be appropriate for the Epiphany season with...

John 4:5-42. (evangelism in the New Testament Bible)
April 1, 1994... "So the woman left her waterpot...." (v. 28) The story of the Samaritan woman in John 4:5-42 is old, cast in the customs of an ancient world where water is drawn from deep wells by waterpots, and racial and gender animosity rule social and...

I Corinthians 13. (congregations in the New Testament Bible)
April 1, 1994... Dialogue with I Corinthians 13 engages us in conversation with the faith and practice of both the church at Corinth and the contemporary Christian community we seek to address. Listening to these voices brings us into awareness of the givenness...

Galatians.
April 1, 1994... By Frank J. Matera. Sacra Pagina, Vol. 9. The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, 1992. 252 pp. $24. 95. ISBN 0-814-5811-3. It is intriguing that for nearly sixty years (from Burton to Betz) there were few significant commentaries in English on...

Life in the Spirit.
April 1, 1994... By Thomas C. Oden. Systematic Theology, Vol. 3. HarperSanFrancisco/HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 1992. 548 pp. $30.00. ISBN 0-06-066349-9. Life in the spirit is the third and concluding volume of Oden's ambitious (1561 pages) effort in...

Passion for Justice: Retrieving the Legacies of Walter Rauschenbusch, John A. Ryan and Reinhold Niebuhr.
April 1, 1994... By Harlan Beckley. Westminster/John Knox Press, Louisville, 1992. 391 pp. $27.00. ISBN0-664-219446. Beckley has written an important book for the serious student of Christian ethics in the United States. The subtitle, "Retrieving the...

Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing.
April 1, 1994... By Rosemary Radford Ruether. HarperSanFrancisco/HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 1992. 310 pp. $22.00. ISBN 0-06-067022-3. Gala and God is an admirably readable, wide-ranging account of world-views, claiming that the past has been too...

Old Testament Theology: Essays on Structure, Theme and Text.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1994... by Walter Brueggemann. Edited by Patrick D. Miller, Jr. Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 1992. 318 pp. $16.95 (paper). ISBN 0-8006-2537-4. FIFTEEN of Brueggemann's essays, published in eight different scholarly journals (e.g., JSOT, CBQ) and two...

In Search of "Ancient Israel."
April 1, 1994... by Philip R. Davies. JSOT Sup. Series 148. JSOT/Sheffield Academic Press, Sheffield, 1992. 172 pp. $39.50. ISBN 1-85075-380-6. MOST PEOPLE scholars included, continue to assume that the Old Testament was written by an ancient society called...

Social Justice and Deuteronomy: The Case of Deuteronomy 15.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1994... by Jeffries M. Hamilton. SBL Dis. Series 136. Scholars Press, Atlanta, 1992. 168 pp. $20. 95 (paper). ISBN 1-55540-748-X DEUTERONOMY 15 was chosen as the focus of this dissertation because it contains two provisions for the relief of...

Toward A Grammar of Biblical Poetics: Tales of the Prophets.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1994... by Herbert Chanan Brichto. Oxford University Press, New York, 1992. 298 pp. $35.00. ISBN 0-19-506911-0. THE INTEREST in literary approaches to the reading of biblical texts continues unabated and is carried forward in positive ways by this...

Psalm and Story: Inset Hymns in Hebrew Narrative.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1994... by James W. Watts. JSOT Sup. Series 139. JSOT/Sheffield Academic Press, Sheffield, 1992. 246 pp. $46.50. ISBN 1-85075-343-1. PSALMS THAT APPEAR in the context of narratives of the Old Testament have not received as a group anything like the...

Wisdom in Theology: The Didsbury Lectures, 1989.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1994... By R. E. Clements. The Paternoster Press, Carlisle/Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, 1992. 188 pp. $16. 99 (paper). ISBN 0-8028-0576-0. ONCE THE NEGLECTED PART of the biblical canon, the wisdom corpus of the Old Testament has...

Tragedy and Biblical Narrative: Arrows of the Almighty.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1994... by J. Cheryl Exum. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 1992. 206 pp. $49.95. ISBN 0-521-41073-8. THIS BOOK BEGINS with two provocatively juxtaposed quotes, the first claiming that tragedy is alien in the Judaic sense of the...

Greeks, Romans, Jews: Currents of Culture and Belief in the New Testament World.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1994... by James D. Newsome. Trinity Press International, Philadelphia, 1992. 475 pp. $26.95. ISBN 1-56338-037-4. THE PURPOSE of this book is to introduce the interested reader to Jewish history, literature, and theology in the GrecoRoman period....

The Way of the Lord: Christological Exegesis of the Old Testament in the Gospel of Mark.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1994... by Joel Marcus. Westminster/John Knox Press, Louisville, 1992. 221 pp. $25.00. ISBN0-664-21949-7. IN THIS STUDY Joel Marcus applies his impressive knowledge of ancient Jewish exegesis to an investigation of Mark's christology. He argues,...

On Character Building: The Reader and the Rhetoric of Characterization in Luke-Acts.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1994... by John A. Darr. Literary Currents in Biblical Interpretation. Westminster/John Knox Press, Louisville, 1992. 208 pp. $15.95 (paper). ISBN 0-664-2511 7-X AS ONE BEGINS reading a gospel-story, one immediately encounters "characters," that is,...

The Temple of Jesus: His Sacrificial Program Within a Cultural History of Sacrifice.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1994... by Bruce Chilton. Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, 1992. 209 pp. $34.50. ISBN 0-271-008245. THIS BOOK UNDERTAKES two projects: to reconstruct the attitude of the historical Jesus towards levitical purity and sacrifice;...

Heirs of Paul: Paul's Legacy in the New Testament and in the Church Today.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1994... by J. Christiaan Beker. Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 1991. 146 pp. $8.95 (paper). ISBN 0-8006-2525-0. BEKER'S GOAL is to ascertain the extent to which Paul's earliest New Testament interpreters (the pastoral epistles, II Thess., Eph., Col.,...

John's Gospel in New Perspective.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1994... By Richard J. Cassidy. Orbis Books, Maryknoll, 1992. 132 pp. $18. 95 (paper). ISBN 0-88344818-1. These two works are interesting and readable contributions to the field of Johannine studies, each trying to arrive at a plausible explanation...

The Word and the World: The Cosmological Tale in the Fourth Gospel.
April 1, 1994... By Adele Reinhartz. SBL Mon. Series 45. Scholars Press, Atlanta, 1992. 156 pp. $25. 95 (paper). ISBN 1-55540-7994. These two works are interesting and readable contributions to the field of Johannine studies, each trying to arrive at a...

Theological Ethics of the New Testament.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1994... By Eduard Lohse. Translated by Eugene Boring. Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 1991. 236 pp. $12. 95 (paper). ISBN 0-8006-25064. In the crowd of books about New Testament ethics, Lohse's simple, lucid contribution stands out. It does not get...

Divorce in the New Testament.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1994... By Raymond F. Collins. Good News Studies, Vol. 38. Glazier/The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, 1992. 389 pp. $19. 95 (paper). ISBN 0-8146-5691-9. Collins, a priest and theologian, offers an exhaustive exegetical work on the teachings of...

Scripture Within Scripture: The Interrelationship of Form and Function in the Explicit Old Testament Citations in the Gospel of John.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1994... By Bruce G. Schuchard. SBL Dis. Series 133. Scholars Press, Atlanta, 1992. 174 pp. 124.95. ISBN 1-55540-712-9. This union seminary of virginia dissertation leaps into the stormy discussion of the Fourth Gospel's use of Hebrew scripture and...

Hellenists and Hebrews: Reappraising Division Within the Earliest Church.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1994... By Craig C Hill. Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 1992. 237 pp. $24. 95. ISBN 0-8006-2505-6. In this fine book hill explores two major and related topics. As to the first, he concludes that there is no evidence for a fundamental ideological rift...

Roget's Thesaurus of the Bible.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1994... By A. Colin Day. HarperSanFrancisco, SanFrancisco, 1992. 927pp. $28.00. ISBN 0-06-061773-X This work responds to the question, "What does the Bible say about . . .? [I]t groups together verses and passages of the Bible which are about the...

The Bible and Modern Criticism: A Critical Assessment and Annotated Bibliography.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1994... By Mark Allan Powell with the assistance of Cecile G. Gray and Melissa C. Curtis. Greenwood Press, Westport, 1992. 469 pp. $65.00. ISBN 0-313-27546-7. This volume provides a brief introductory essay surveying the dominant trends in the...

Voices from the Margin: Interpreting the Bible in the Third World.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1994... By R S. Sugirtharajah. Orbis Books, Maryknoll, 1991. 454 pp. $19.95 (paper). ISBN 0-88344-770-3. This collection of thirty-two reprinted essays is divided thematically under five main headings: (1) Use of the Bible: Methods, Principles and...

Faithful Persuasion: In Aid of Rhetoric of Christian Theology.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1994... By David S. Cunningham. University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame and London, 1990 and 1991. 312 pp. $29.95. ISBN 0-268-00984-8. Cunnincham argues that theology is a thoroughly rhetorical activity. Doctrines are attempts to persuade,...

Remembering Esperanza: A Cultural-Political Theology for North American Praxis.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1994... By Mark Kline Taylor. Orbis Books, Maryknoll, 1990. 292 pp. $16. 95 (paper). ISBN 088344-798-3. Taylor speks to produce a theology for North American praxis that does not flee from concrete existence into abstraction. To that end, he uses...

The Mediation of Ornament.(Brief Article)
April 1, 1994... By Oleg Grabar. Bollingen Series XXXV, 8. Princeton University Press, Prznceton, 1992. 284 pp. $49.50. ISBN 0-691-04099-0. In this book, Grabar examines under the rigor of complex scholarly inquiry and discourse the ornamentation of objects...