Interpretation articles from July 1997

Interpretation archives from July 1997

Negotiating boundaries: the old and new generation and the theology of Numbers.
July 1, 1997... The prophet Hosea recounts God's tender care for young Israel in the wilderness as they traveled from the slavery of Egypt to the promised land of Canaan. Of all the stories Hosea could have chosen, the prophet selects the story of Israel's...

Encroaching on the sacred: purity and polity in Numbers 1-10.
July 1, 1997... The book of Numbers begins in midstream of Israel's sojourn from Egypt. Having witnessed the revelation at Sinai, erected the Tabernacle, and been instructed in its operation, the Israelites now prepare themselves for the march through the...

The portrait of Balaam in Numbers 22-24.
July 1, 1997... The unusual story of Balaam is preceded by the narrative of Israel's attempt to enter the promised land from the east (Num 20:15-21:35) after failing to do so from the south (14:39-45). Moses sends messages to four kings of the lands on Israel's...

Life after grace: preaching from the Book of Numbers.
July 1, 1997... "Heard any good sermons from the book of Numbers lately?" I have been posing this question to friends, students, and complete strangers for the better part of a year now. The response has been almost uniformly negative, though it is often infused...

Ruth 1:1-18.
July 1, 1997... Although we do not know precisely when the book of ruth was written, we can paint a vivid portrait of its setting. The winding down of the late Bronze Age and the dawn of the Iron Age were not subjects of scholarly inquiry in the hill country of...

Psalm 24.
July 1, 1997... The Psalms have long been considered "the prayerbook of the Bible," as Dietrich Bonhoeffer described them, intended to be our words of praise and lament addressed to God. The language of the Psalms shaped much of the church's liturgy and...

Mark 6:30-34.
July 1, 1997... You know how it is. Just when you think you have everything under control, when life is neat and tidy and the way you have always wanted it to be, something comes along and upsets the applecart. You are living the American dream, on the...

Ephesians 4:1-16.
July 1, 1997... With the conjunction "therefore" at the beginning of this pericope, one expects a transition. Most often in the writings attributed to the apostle Paul, it is a transition from doctrinal issues to ethical issues, or as often stated, from Paul's...

The Theology of the Gospel of Matthew.
July 1, 1997... Radically different in their approach to the task of articulating a Gospel's theological message, these studies are both nevertheless worthy additions to the Cambridge New Testament Theology series. In a monograph that first appeared in German in...

The Sermon on the Mount, including the Sermon on the Plain (Matthew 5:3-7:27 and Luke 6:20-49).
July 1, 1997... For people who have become skeptical about the power of classical historical exegesis to enlighten a text, Betz has provided an antidote. His extensive and powerful commentary on the Sermon on the Mount (and Sermon on the Plain) works with the...

Paul's Letter to the Philippians.
July 1, 1997... Fee contributes a second volume to this series (his first was on 1 Cor) for which he now serves as general editor. In keeping with the intent of the series to provide "critical yet orthodox commentary marked by solid biblical scholarship within...

The Yahwist's Landscape: Nature and Religion in early Israel.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1997... Riding on the crests of recent biblical scholarship and renewed environmental interest, Hiebert's book was a study waiting to happen. By offering a fresh reading of the Yahwist's presentation of nature and culture, Hiebert overturns once and for...

Old Testament Theology.
July 1, 1997... One might have expected that, in the four decades following Gerhard von Rad's first volume, the production of Old Testament theologies would have abated, or at least that the nature of the product would have changed dramatically. Regardless,...

Theologie des Alten Testaments zwiscchen Anpassung und Widerspruch: Christologische Auslegung zwischen den Weltkriegen.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1997... The concern of this interesting volume is to offer a critical, historical assessment of the so-called christological exegesis of the Old Testament which emerged in Germany during the period between the two World Wars. Lying behind the...

The Dead Sea Scrolls: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek Texts with English Translations, vol 1, 'Rule of the Community' and Related Documents.
July 1, 1997... The centerpiece of this handsome volume, the first of a series of ten which aims to publish all the non-biblical Dead Sea Scrolls, is a new edition of the so-called Community Rule, the pivotal document of the Qumran corpus. Elisha Qimron...

Text to Text Pours Forth Speech: Voices of Scripture in Luke-Acts.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1997... Brawley draws upon theories of intertextuality to examine the "sustained interplay" Luke-Acts has with Old Testament scripture. He argues that explicit scriptural allusions signal the reader to "hear" and appropriate not only verses specifically...

John's Wisdom: A Commentary on the Fourth Gospel.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1997... This is a helpful commentary for pastors and students of the Fourth Gospel. The introduction identifies the Gospel of John as a biography, which is significant because a biography assumes that there is a real human life at the center of the...

Mary: Glimpses of the Mother of Jesus.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1997... If readers expect a sparse Mary in deference to Jesus or a melodramatic Madonna, Gaventa will surprise them. Though mindful of Mary in history, Gaventa focuses on Mary as a literary character. She provides interpretations of four accounts of Mary...

Judas: Betrayer or Friend of Jesus?(Brief Article)
July 1, 1997... Klassen's "quest for the historical Judas" leads him to study Judas's name, his role as informer, his portrayal by the Gospel writers, and his handling in the subsequent scholarly tradition, both Christian and Jewish. Using the tools of redaction...

Romans.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1997... This book is part of a series designed primarily for use by the laity of the church. After a brief introduction to Paul and an overview of Romans, Bartlett leads the reader through Romans with a section-by-section commentary. The text includes no...

The Mystery of Romans: The Jewish Context of Paul's Letter.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1997... With its emphasis on the Jewish context of Paul's ministry, this book continues an important trend in contemporary Pauline scholarship. Nanos begins from the somewhat obvious but no less important insight that Paul wrote Romans to an audience...

The Cross and Human Transformation: Paul's Apocalyptic Word in 1 Corinthians.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1997... The focus of this book is the function of the word of the cross in 1 Corinthians. The author maintains that Paul's aim in preaching the cross is "to alter his hearers' perception of the world in such a way as to alter their experience in the...

God's Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1997... This masterful book fills an important gap. It shows the "absolutely crucial role the Spirit plays in Paul's Christian experience and therefore in his understanding of the gospel" (p. 896). Fee provides responsible exegesis of every. reference to...

The Letter of James: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1997... Johnson's "replacement" commentary on the Letter of James for the Anchor Bible is about evenly divided between matters of introduction and commentary. After a thorough review of the letter's relationship to other Christian literature of the first...

Hearing the New Testament: Strategies for Interpretation.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1997... This volume provides a sophisticated introduction to the complex task of interpreting New Testament texts. The work is a collection of essays by scholars who have distinguished themselves as specialists in the interpretation of the New Testament...

Related Strangers: Jews and Christians 70-170 C.E.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1997... The century from 70-170 CE was a "tunnel period" in the history of Jewish-Christian relations, Wilson tells us, a period of varying attitudes "where things looked one way at the beginning and rather different at the end" (p. xv). Wilson offers...

Reimagining God: The Case of Scriptural Diversity.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1997... In the spirit of the Women-Church movement beginning in the 1980s, Elizabeth Johnson's book She Who Is, and the 1993 Re-Imagining Conference, Hebrew Bible scholar and feminist theologian Bos has written a summary of the major issues and arguments...

Evil: A Historical and Theological Perspective.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1997... As the subtle indicates, this book deals with evil both historically and theologically. Historically, Schwarz surveys treatments of evil in behavioral research, psychoanalysis, the Bible, dualistic religions, Christian theology, and other...

The Persistence of Purgatory.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1997... Despite its title, this book is neither a chapter in the history of doctrine nor a constructive theological treatise but a meditation on Western attitudes toward time since the thirteenth century. Purgatory, for Fenn, is more of a metaphor for...

Responsibility and Christian Ethics.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1997... In this tightly argued monograph Schweiker offers an account of the central questions an ethic must address and answers them in a theologically grounded ethic. This is among the best philosophically sophisticated, theological ethics to be...

The Early Church: Origins to the Dawn of the Middle Ages.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1997... For three decades Henry Chadwick's The Early Church has served as the standard work for those seeking a concise yet comprehensive introduction to the first centuries of the history of the church. Hinson has provided a worthy successor to...

Catherine of Siena: Vision Through a Distant Eye.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1997... Noffke has produced a fine volume devoted to consideration of the thought of Catherine of Siena. Part one is comprised of essays that analyze the writings of this remarkable Dominican laywoman. While the essays on Catherine's spirituality are...

Speaking of God: Reading and Preaching the Word of God.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1997... In his introduction the author compares himself to a juggler capable of keeping only three balls in the air at any given time. In the present work he juggles: (1) an understanding of the way paradigms work in interpretive theory and practice; (2)...

Confirmation: Presbyterian Practices in Ecumenical Perspective.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1997... The practice of confirmation in the mainline churches is failing. According to the evidence cited in this book only half of those who are confirmed still remain active in church twenty years later. Clearly, we need to rethink what we are doing...

The Child's Song: The Religious Abuse of Children.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1997... Capps has written with courage and dignity about one of the last taboos in theology and pastoral care: how organized and personal religion has contributed to and perpetuated the physical and emotional abuse of children. Beginning with an...

With God's Oldest Friends: Pastoral Visiting in the Nursing Home.(Brief Article)
July 1, 1997... Simmons and Peters begin by placing modern retirement and nursing facilities in their historical context. This background furthers readers' understanding of certain attitudes and anxieties affecting many nursing home residents and their families....