Interpretation articles from July 1996

Interpretation archives from July 1996

"Because the whole earth is mine": theme and narrative in Exodus.
July 1, 1996... The Book of Exodus has often been interpreted in ways that are theologically much too restrictive.(1) The overriding interest in God's actions in history led to the neglect of the creational dimensions of God's activity. The focus upon the...

Passover: the time of our lives.
July 1, 1996... "Time is one of the world's deepest mysteries. No one can say exactly what it is. Yet, the ability to measure time makes our way of life possible. Most human activities involve groups of people acting together in the same place at the same time....

The jagged cliffs of Mount Sinai: a theological reading of the Book of the Covenant (Exod. 20:22-23:19).
July 1, 1996... The Pentateuch contains three distinctive collections of laws: the priestly laws in Leviticus, Exodus, and Numbers (including the "Holiness Code," Lev. 17-26); the deuteronomic laws in Deuteronomy, and the Book of the Covenant (also called the...

Back to the future: the tabernacle in the Book of Exodus.
July 1, 1996... The Pentateuch devotes more verses to the tabernacle than to any other object. Within the Book of Exodus, all of 25:1-31:18 and 35:1-40:38 deals with the tabernacle, its furnishings, its priesthood, and related issues. Next to the exodus itself...

Genesis 32:22-32.
July 1, 1996... As the descendants of Abraham and Sarah remembered their history in narratives that formed, informed, and reformed their distinct identity as the people of God, they told and retold the story of Jacob at the Jabbok. This and other traditions...

Psalm 139: the pathos of praise.
July 1, 1996... I occasionally have a recurring dream that, I am fully convinced, should rank as the nightmare of all nightmares. It is the end of a college semester and I am in a math class to take the final exam, when I suddenly realize with a sinking feeling...

Matthew 11:16-30.
July 1, 1996... At the theological center of Matthew's 11th chapter is the judgment of the God who is revealed in hiddenness and the grace of the God who chooses to be known. From the children calling to each other in the marketplace, to the cities where deeds...

Romans 10:5-15.
July 1, 1996... It is mid-August. The leaping, laughing days of summer have skipped by and the lazy, hazy "dog days" have slunk into their place. A stuffy stillness descends upon the life of the church, as the dust settles after vacation Bible school, choir...

Two Nations Under God: The Deuteronomistic History of Solomon and the Dual Monarchies.
July 1, 1996... The author of this work addresses one of the major problems concerning a centrally important biblical composition, the deuteronomistic history. He perceives its scope, design, and interconnectedness in terms of proleptic and retrospective design....

The Life of Moses: The Yahwist as Historian in Exodus-Numbers.
July 1, 1996... This study is a sequel to the earlier work of Van Seters, Prologue to History: The Yahwist as Historian in Genesis (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1992). In the previous work Van Seters argued that the Yahwist (J) was an ancient historian of...

The New Interpreter's Bible.
July 1, 1996... The publication of the Interpreter's Bible (IB) in 1952 marked a significant event in the history of Christian publication in North America. At the time it was the only commentary on the whole English Bible to have appeared in fifty years, and it...

Should the Children Pray? A Historical, Judicial, and Political Examination of Public School Prayer.
July 1, 1996... Should the children pray? Fenwick aims to be objective, not providing a personal answer to the question she asks in the title, but allowing history, legal case authority, and finally quotations drawn from political debates to answer the question...

That Godless Court? Supreme Court Decisions on Church-State Relationships.
July 1, 1996... Should the children pray? Fenwick aims to be objective, not providing a personal answer to the question she asks in the title, but allowing history, legal case authority, and finally quotations drawn from political debates to answer the question...

Theology in Exodus: Biblical Theology in the Form of a Commentary.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1996... The book asks only one question: What does Exodus say about God? Thus it is both less and more than a standard commentary: It explores exclusively major affirmations about the divine and then traces these through the rest of scripture and into...

Deuteronomy.
July 1, 1996... The introduction to this commentary, intended for lay readers, surveys standard critical views of the Book of Deuteronomy. Mann explains, for example, in accessible terms the apparent reliance of Deuteronomy on the ancient Near Eastern suzerainty...

Deuteronomy and the Death of Moses: A Theological Reading.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1996... The author has attempted a theological reading of Deuteronomy which would "take seriously the full structure and movement of the book as a whole from beginning to end" (p. 1). Commendably, he has also welcomed insights from both literary and...

Theology of the Pentateuch: Themes of the Priestly Narrative and Deuteronomy.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1996... Lohfink, a Roman Catholic scholar, is among the most prolific and influential contemporary German scholars. I mention his Roman Catholic identity because his church context characteristically leads his scholarship beyond critical matters to...

Matthew in History: Interpretation, Influence, and Effects.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1996... Luz names three limitations deriving from the historical critical method: the ditch between past and present, that between objective meaning and personal interpretation, and the problem of plurality in the Bible. How, then, do we understand...

The Narrative Function of the Holy Spirit as a Character in Luke-Acts.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1996... This is a welcome contribution to burgeoning study both on Luke's understanding of the Holy Spirit and on the application of narratology to the New Testament. Redaction-critical study of the Spirit in Luke-Acts has tended to focus narrowly on the...

The Gospel of Jesus: The Pastoral Relevance of the Synoptic Problem.
July 1, 1996... Farmer is well known for his critique of the "two-source" (i.e., "two-document": Mark + Q) hypothesis and his advocacy of the "two-Gospel" (Griesbach-Farmer) hypothesis that Matthew was used by Luke and both of these Gospels were synthesized by...

The Apocalypse: A Reading of the Revelation of St. John.
July 1, 1996... Talbert states, "The motivation for undertaking this little volume is pastoral. My aim is twofold: to offer aid to those who are scarred by harmful readings of Revelation and to encourage mainstream Christians to deal with the Apocalypse" (p....

Apocalypse: A People's Commentary on the Book of Revelation.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1996... This is an exciting commentary on the Apocalypse (the Revelation to John). The author, a leading Latin American biblical scholar and theologian, has taught twice at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia as an adjunct faculty member. He is less...

Arguing the Apocalypse: A Theory of Millenial Rhetoric.
July 1, 1996... As the year 2000 approaches, fascination with the Book of Revelation, and with apocalyptic ideas generally, will continue to grow. In this book O'Leary applies rhetorical theory to select moments in the history of Christian apocalyptic thought,...

An Introduction to New Testament Christology.
July 1, 1996... Brown has written this volume principally for lay believers, although he also kept reflective skeptics in mind (p. vi). With a minimum of technicality, he undertakes to think through two related topics: (1) Jesus' self-awareness of his relation...

Poststructuralism and the New Testament: Derrida and Foucault at the Foot of the Cross.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1996... "In the context of biblical studies, poststructuralism would be historical criticism's id, the seat of its strongest antiauthoritarian instincts - historical criticism unfettered at last from the ecclesiastical superego that has always compelled...

John Calvin's Exegesis of the Old Testament.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1996... Puckett's study provides a clear, attractive exposition and analysis of Calvin's methods of exegesis of the Old Testament and of the reasoning behind his interpretation. He begins by articulating the sixteenth century spectrum of exegesis, then...

Where Shall Wisdom Be Found? Calvin's Exegesis of Job from Medieval and Modern Perspectives.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1996... After stating her presumptions that (1) although texts resist closure of definitive interpretation, they do not have infinite meanings, and (2) texts are rooted in their historical age, Schreiner examines the exegetical tradition of the Book of...

Not the Way It's Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin.
July 1, 1996... The evangelical world, no less than the now marginalized world of liberal Christianity, is dominated by counterfeits. The dominant alloys are of well-known ingredients: The practices and ideas of the modern psychologies have been so liberally and...

Holy Scripture: Revelation, Inspiration, and Interpretation.
July 1, 1996... This is the second book in a seven-volume systematic theology which has been hailed by conservatives as likely to be, when complete, the most substantial theological contribution of any American evangelical since the work of Carl Henry. There are...

Capital and the Kingdom: Theological Ethics and Economic Order.
July 1, 1996... As his title suggests and his last chapter makes explicit, the author sees only "two ways" the world can go, one evil and disastrous, the other good and "choosing life." The first way is that of capitalism, markets, monetarism, profits, death....

And the Poor Get Welfare: The Ethics of Poverty in the United States.
July 1, 1996... Copeland's book is truly timely. The issue of welfare for the poor is on the front burner in the national debate. Furthermore, the book provides the reader with an excellent overview of how the present situation has emerged and of the views of...

The Decalogue and a Human Future: The Meaning of the Commandments for Making and Keeping Life Human.
July 1, 1996... This is the third of three major works published by the late Professor Lehmann. Ethics in a Christian Context (1963) and The Transfiguration of Politics (1975) had established him as a distinctive and significant ethical thinker, and the present...

The Joy of Sects: A Spirited Guide to the World's Religious Traditions.
July 1, 1996... A book with a title as catchy as this calls for a lively review. Fun is to be had here, to be sure, and I will get to it soon enough, but duty demands that I pull a long face for several lines at least. Occhiogrosso, the man once called "the...

Theologie aus asiatischen Quellen: Der theologische Weg Choan-Seng Songs vor dem Hintergrund der asiatischen okumenischen Diskussion.
July 1, 1996... Federschmidt's book is a significant contribution to the assessment of the work of one of the most important contemporary Asian theologians. Besides being the first exploration of the work of Choan-Seng Song in its entirety, this study is also an...

Being Religious, American Style: History of Popular Religiosity in the United States.
July 1, 1996... Lippy sets out to synthesize and systematize the extensive literature on American popular religion that has been generated during the past decade and a half. A prolific author and editor in the broader field of American religious history, Lippy...

The Bible in Christian Education.
July 1, 1996... The centrality of the Bible in Christian education, according to pioneering educator Iris Cully, arises from the nature of the Christian community itself. The church finds it origins and identity in a story, "the story of God's love made known in...

Concise Encyclopedia of Preaching.
July 1, 1996... Preaching is the one dimension of Christian ministry in which all other dimensions come to focus most visibly. When a preacher stands to proclaim the Word of God, the message the preacher conveys has been informed by the whole range of...