Interpretation articles from January 1997

Interpretation archives from January 1997

The strange silence of the Bible. (public reading or performance of the Bible)
January 1, 1997... The oral/aural power of the Bible has been strangely neglected within the worship life of the church as well as in recent biblical scholarship. In order to recover the Bible's power to take captive the imagination of readers and interpreters, we...

Balancing the Old and the New: the Law of Moses in Matthew and Paul. (continuity in the Old and New Testaments)
January 1, 1997... The Law of Moses in Matthew and Paul Both Matthew and Paul view Christianity as the fulfillment of the Old Testament scriptures, yet they also accent the newness that fulfillment brings with it. Each writer articulates in his own way what it...

The salt of the earth. (the high cost of discipleship)
January 1, 1997... Despite much misunderstanding among modern readers and preachers, Jesus' saying in Matthew 5:13 ("You are the salt of the earth") concerns sacrificing one's life to follow Christ. Moreover, this high cost of discipleship has cosmic significance....

He will come again. (Jesus's Second Coming)
January 1, 1997... Biblical descriptions of Christ's second coming are diverse and metaphorical. To read them literally is to diminish the resilient power of Christian hope, which is centered in the revelation of Christ already given. One thing we can be sure...

Psalm 84. (historical and eschatological pilgrimage)(Between Text and Sermon)
January 1, 1997... Psalm 84 may be read by Christians as both the joyful experience of the pilgrims of Israel on their way to worship in Jerusalem and as the experience of the church in pilgrimage (cf. Heb. 13:14) toward the eternal life promised by its Lord. All...

Isaiah 2:1-5. (prophetic vision of Zion vs. apocalyptic vision of Armageddon)(Between Text and Sermon)
January 1, 1997... Two mountains: Sinai and Zion. A new era arrived in ancient Canaan when Israel crossed its borders during the time of Joshua. To this land in which only Canaanite rulers, the well-born, and the rich had full rights and privileges, came a new...

John 21: 15-17. (foundation, nature, and challenge of Christian discipleship)(Between Text and Sermon)
January 1, 1997... John 21 is almost certainly an epilogue to the Fourth Gospel. Nevertheless, in the evangelist's presentation of a conversation between Jesus and Peter concerning discipleship (vv. 15-17), we see not only the tradition of the rehabilitation of...

Hebrews 9:11-14. (Christ as the mediator of the New Covenant)(Between Text and Sermon)
January 1, 1997... The lectionary readings for Monday of Holy Week 1997 include Hebrews 9:11-15. The passage asserts the purifying power of Christ's blood and concludes that Christ is the mediator of a new covenant. Jesus Christ appears as the high priest who...

A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period, 2 vols.
January 1, 1997... Rarely does one come across a work sure to become a classic in the field. Albertz's two volume history (German original, 1992) is a monumental achievement that fills a noticeable void in the study of ancient Israelite religion. Yet these two...

They Cried to the Lord: The Form and Theology of Biblical Prayer.
January 1, 1997... With thus volume Miller offers a broad and remarkably comprehensive treatment of biblical prayer. A prolegomenon (chaps. 1-2) surveys the "universal experience" of prayer in the ancient Near East and the variety of terms and designations for...

Overtures to Biblical Theology: Prayer in the New Testament.
January 1, 1997... In 1925 Cullman published his first theological essay, and in 1995 Fortress Press brought out his latest book, Prayer in the New Testament. This scholar, whose bibliography spans seventy years, should be brought to the attention of the Guinness...

Literary Currents in Biblical Interpretation: Reading Esther, A Case for the Literary Carnivalesque.
January 1, 1997... Craig reads Esther in light of Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin's category of the literary carnivalesque. After an overview of Bakhtin's work, Craig explicates the carnivalesque as the spirit expressed in the medieval and Renaissance...

Roots of Wisdom: The Oldest Proverbs of Israel and Other Peoples.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1997... This English translation of Wurzeln der Weisheit, originally published in 1990, provides a thorough examination of the sayings found in Proverbs 10-31. Westermann's concern is for the earliest forms of wisdom literature, the proverbs or short...

Guides to Biblical Scholarship: Rhetorical Criticism: Context, Method, and the Book of Jonah.
January 1, 1997... When James Muilenburg proposed what he termed "rhetorical criticism," he inaugurated a new era in the reading of the Bible. Many following his lead take rhetoric to be the art of composition and seek in structure, verbal patterns, and stylistic...

Old Testament Library: Zechariah 9-14 and Malachi: A Commentary.
January 1, 1997... This volume represents Petersen's second commentary in this series (Haggai and Zechariah 1-8 appeared in 1984). The organization of the commentary is as follows: introduction; Zechariah 9-11, the first "oracle"; Zechariah 12-14, the second...

JSOTSup 196: Corporate Responsibility in the Hebrew Bible.
January 1, 1997... Kaminsky attempts to moderate between H. Wheeler Robinson's views on corporate personality and those of Robinson's critics, including J. R. Porter and J. W. Rogerson. Kaminsky maintains that Israelites did indeed have a nuanced understanding of...

The Biblical Seminar 24: The Old Testament in Fiction and Film: On Reversing the Hermeneutical Flow.
January 1, 1997... Kreitzer examines the interrelationship between the Old Testament and film around the following themes: the Ten Commandments; Melville's Moby, Dick and the books of Jonah and Job; Steinbeck's East of Eden and the story of Cain and Abel; Shelley's...

Long Ago God Spoke: How Christians May Hear the Old Testament Today.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1997... This attractive volume emerges from a career of teaching Old Testament studies to theological students. Holladay takes Hebrews 1:1 as his starting point, and endeavors to communicate the enduring values of the Old Testament to Christians and...

Behold the Man: Re-reading Gospels, Re-humanizing Jesus.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1997... In this eminently readable volume, McCormick helps laypersons and ministers alike grapple with popular interpretations of Jesus' divinity that minimize his real humanity. As McCormick notes, that divinity is commonly associated with five...

God With Us: A Pastoral Theology of Matthew's Gospel.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1997... As applied to books on the Bible, "pastoral" is all too often a code word for "shoddy and anti-intellectual." In Powell's tightly packed volume, however, the word "pastoral" is reclaimed for intellectually rigorous yet eminently helpful...

A Master of Surprise: Mark Interpreted.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1997... Juel's title suggests his theme. Mark's seemingly incomprehensible story is a surprising and dramatic assertion that God has torn asunder the boundary separating God and humankind. Juel first argues for the appropriateness of interpreting Mark as...

Cruciformed: The Literary Impact of Mark's Story of Jesus and His Disciples.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1997... By its very nature, literary criticism is oriented toward a holistic appreciation of the Gospels, requiring interpreters to pay attention to "everything at once." This is what Wegener attempts to do in the present study. An extensive introduction...

New Testament Theology: The Theology of the Gospel of John.
January 1, 1997... Smith, whose own work on the Gospel of John spans over three decades, describes his monograph far too modestly as an "attempt to bring some of the theological insights of Bultmann into conjunction with the [historical] work of Martyn and Brown"...

Conflict and Community in Corinth: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1997... This socio-rhetorical commentary seeks to serve "a general audience that includes college and seminary students, pastors and lay persons" (p. xiii). While Witherington accepts many traditional historical critical tools, he rejects reader-response...

The Crucifixion of Jesus: History, Myth, Faith.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1997... The cross of Jesus - scandal and provocation to some, central symbol of the divine drama of salvation to others - is back in the scholarly spotlight, as several major studies of Jesus' death and its interpretation have been published since 1990....

Resurrection Reconsidered: Thomas and John in Controversy.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1997... Why did the author of the Gospel of John single out Thomas for emphasis, and what did Thomas doubt? These questions lie behind Riley's book. To answer them, he begins by examining the spectrum of beliefs concerning the afterlife and resurrection...

Zaccheus Studies: New Testament: Conversion in the New Testament.
January 1, 1997... The zacchaeus studies series seeks to provide responsible scholarship for a broad readership through a consideration of important theological and scriptural topics. Witherup's topic is conversion, a subject of lively interest especially in...

Princeton Theological Monograph Series 38: How to Do Biblical Theology.
January 1, 1997... This short but substantial book is essential reading for anyone interested in biblical theology. Stuhlmacher has devoted much of his career to theological exegesis of the New Testament and reflection on the theological use of scripture. He is...

The Bible in te Modern Culture: Theology and Historical-Critical Method from Spinoza to Kasemann.
January 1, 1997... This book is preeminently a survey of modern historical-critical study of the Bible. After a review of the precritical way in which the Reformers read the Bible, there is a chapter-by-chapter discussion of major figures selected as representative...

Hollywood Dreams and Biblical Stories.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1997... This book brings more than fifty American films into dialogue with biblical stories in an effort to provide "examples of an American mythology" (p. 3). Scott, a veteran analyst of biblical parables, deals with cowboy heroes like Shane, isolated...

Serenity, Courage, Wisdom: The Enduring Legacy of Reinhold Niebuhr.
January 1, 1997... The legacy of Reinhold-Niebuhr continues to be debated, and with particular fervor since the 1992 centennial of his birth. Sectarian critics, who recommend a principled withdrawal from public life, accused Niebuhr of selling his Christian...

One Faith: Biblical and Patristic Contributions Toward Understanding Unity in Faith.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1997... This is an ambitious book. Henn's goal is to explore what it means to be "one in faith," and he looks at the biblical and patristic writings from this perspective, hoping to recover their various notions of unity in faith with an eye toward...

Reluctant Witnesses: Jews and the Christian Imagination.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1997... Haynes's thesis is "that Jews must always be special cases in products of the Christian imagination, because of the uniquely ambivalent place which the Jewish people inhabit there" (p. 3). Jews "function in the Christian mind as fundamental...

Luck: A Secular Faith.(Brief Article)
January 1, 1997... The thesis of this book is that it is far wiser to entrust one's life to God's providence than it is to believe in luck, approaching life as a game of chance. The discussion covers the concept of chance, fatalism, gambling, and beating the odds,...

Body, Sex, Pleasure.
January 1, 1997... The author asserts "The Christian sexual tradition uses scripture and theological tradition as supports for a code of behavior which developed out of mistaken, pre-scientific understandings of human anatomy, physiology, and reproduction, as well...

The Stained Glass Ceiling: Churches and Their Women Pastors.
January 1, 1997... Readers familiar with typical staffing patterns in mainline Protestant churches will recognize immediately the unique setting for Sally Purvis's research: two large, successful, prestigious churches led by women pastors. Focusing on issues of...